The wooden chapel door is within throwing distance from where I crouch, swathed in the protection of the shadows. That knocking, I tell myself, is imminent. I will make sure of it.
Imagine the looks in their faces if I can show up to the Globe tonight with my dad.
Every bit the proverbial fox in crosshairs, I gingerly creep through the brush, to the edge of the shade where the sun soaks into the grass.
You’ve got this, I affirm. You know what your bloody name is.
The expanse of rich, green blades seems to sparkle innocently in the mid-afternoon sun as I emerge from the shrubbery. A warm breeze dances with the wildflowers that have overgrown the cemetery, a tide of color flooding row after row of eclectic headstones, all of which are in varying stages of erosion and covered in a thick mossy blanket. The oldest date I catch sight of as I carefully beeline around the edge of the cemetery is 1558, and the youngest age I see is listed on a tiny grave marked with wrought iron and drowning in forget-me-nots: six.
Ow!
Something pelts the back of my skull with enough force behind it to send me careening into the tall grass. It was barely bigger than a peanut. Judging from the strike, if I hadn't been focused on keeping myself armored Magickly, it probably would’ve killed me.
My head throbbing, I bite back a groan, staying low, and lift one hand to check where I was struck.
I’m growing rather sick and tired of hell continuing to break loose around me. I'm honestly starting to feel rather attacked by this point.
But that doesn’t stop whatever wankers—plural, I’m sure—who have claimed vantage points in the trees around the chapel from opening fire the instant they see a flash of movement amongst the flowers. Opening fire with guns. Again, plural.
And plural guns typically only mean one thing: Branch 9.
Keep a cool head, Starling, I snarl inwardly as a bullet whizzes right past the tip of my nose. You’ve still got this… I think.
18 Penny’s Fantastic Idea
I refuse point-blank to die in a bloody graveyard. That level of irony is one I absolutely cannot allow myself to abide.
The noise is deafening. Inside the city limits, most Branch 9 gunfire that I've heard has been suppressed with a silencer. But I suppose out here in the sticks—in Fringe territory, where the poorest of the poor and the strangest of the strange live their lives—they can afford to care a lot less about eyewitnesses.
And a lot less about innocent bystanders.
I growl as I roll onto my stomach, staying as low as I can to the ground. All around, gravestones jut up from the jungle of flowers and grass like big, sturdy bulwarks. But with no idea which direction the snipers are firing at me from, and what the trajectories would be, any cover they could offer me is limited.
Well. Looks like this turned out to be a fantastic fucking idea.
I half-crawl one-handed through the grass on my stomach, dragging my baseball bat alongside me. I dive behind a brick altar tomb and immediately squirm to position myself between it and the church. A second bullet hits my armored shoulder, ricocheting away and fracturing a small wedge tombstone. Another cracks the brick right beside my head, gouging out a decent-sized chip.
“Ugh! Fucking Bashers, will you show some respect!? We’re in a graveyard, for crying out loud!”
The closest door is in the side of the chapel, painted the same beige color as the brickwork which made it more difficult to spot from further away. To reach the main entrance, I would be required to expose myself for longer and risk becoming trapped. And it’s not as if which door is least likely to be locked makes much of a difference for me.
A bullet pings off my chest, knocking me sideways. The skin breaks and bleeds where it strikes. My armor’s weakening, beginning to evanesce as both its Magickal essence and my energy are grated away at and worn down.
I have to move.
Decision locked in, I shoulder my bat, dart out from behind the altar tomb, and sprint. If you’ve ever heard the turn of phrase ‘running for your life’, it quite accurately describes this motion. Legs straining, arms pumping, I hurl myself to my knees at full-sprint. The fingertips of my free hand press into the soil, and I focus on that tingle coursing through my skin as they sink deeper, the ground around them liquifying, melting, not unlike a miniature freak mudslide. Exhausting as it is, I continue to pour Magick into the earth beneath me. I skid on my knees, propelled through the rest of the grass and over the path at a much faster speed than I could run, and a much lower target height.
Like a pro footballer who's just scored his first ever World Cup goal in the eighty-ninth minute of the final, I slide into the wooden door on both knees, caked in mud from the shin down and wearing a shit-eating grin from the lips up.
Beautiful.
Crushing myself low against the threshold, I clench my teeth and brace for any one of the recent barrage of bullets to nail its mark. None do. A break in the piercing din betrays my assailants’ need to reload, and my next best opportunity to act. I spring from a kneel to a stand in one fluid motion, hone that tingling sensation, and plunge my hand through the wood around the Yale lock. It dissolves beneath my fingers into a sticky, tacky pulp, and I wrench the entire lock out of the door, flinging it into the grass behind me. Yuck.
The mild thrum of overstrain is starting to gnaw at the base of my skull. I can already tell the limits of my abilities are slowing me down. I throw my body against the wood, piling inside and slamming the door behind me before the next wave of gunfire starts chipping away at the outer wall of the chapel.
Shadows swallow me whole. Other than the bar of sunlight bursting through the hole at waist-height, I'm surrounded by a thick, heavy, palpable blackness. I'm acutely aware of the tile beneath my feet, cold and hard, and the empty space at my back. I wonder how long I’ll have to wait alone in the darkness before a pair of size thirteen tact boots coming kicking down this door.
It’s officially contingency plan o’clock.
Good grief, has this ever gone tits-up. Part of me wishes I’d brought one of the lads. Another part of me is even more grateful now that I didn’t. I knew it was a trap, I bloody knew it, and yet, how was I to ignore such a potential prize? Whatever the risk, and whether the odds are fifty-to-one or five million-to-one, you can guarantee that if my dad’s name is on the line, I’ll be there.
And if that makes me a liability, then so be it. Perhaps I should reconsider this whole ‘traveling with a group of people I care about’ arrangement.
I have maybe minutes before those classless gits are on top of me again, however long as it takes them to regroup and reposition around the building. They’ll probably attack via both doors at once. Which means I need adequate cover, ranged weaponry, and to be as fucking far away from both doors as physically possible.
I’m about done wiping the muck from my free hand to my jeans. I dig into my front pocket for my mini LED torch and switch it on. The beam of dusty light bounces from pew to wooden pew, across an old vaulted ceiling, and down a plain far wall with no reredos behind the small, tapestry-shrouded altar. The chapel is essentially one room, maybe fifteen feet at its width. My options for vantage points have suddenly become horrifically limited.
Bloody hell.
I feel secure enough to drop my armor for at least a minute or two while I rest my head. With a sigh of exasperation, I walk my way down the aisle, using the flashlight to hunt for any possible recesses or perches that might be useful to me.
That is, until it highlights a sculpted face which, while its certainly gorgeous enough to be an angelic carving, is far too real. It blinks, cocks its head, and smiles at me.
Before I can properly register that I’m not alone in the chapel, the strange man is slowly standing from his seated position in front of the altar, and it takes wrestling in every single drop of self-control I have left to keep from screaming like a stereotype.
19 Alfie’s Abandonment Complex
It feels like Christmas. Only with less of
that hypocritical pretend-religion crap thrown in.
But, there’s booze. And socializing. And honestly, that’s good enough for me. I’m a man of simple wants and needs, and now, I want and need some decent down-time with the only three people fate decided I was apparently supposed to be with at this stage in my life.
Ah, well. As that famous fat bloke once sang, two outta three ain’t bad.
“Speaking of tossers,” I greet Oliver, who seems to be the only one around, as I exit the van. He snaps his head up from his laptop, startled by my sudden appearance. “Where’s the rest of the brigade? We should probably get our arses in gear to leave in about an hour, unless they’d rather head down tonight and be fashionably late?”
He stares at me. I’m already in my going out button-up and jeans, which I picked up this week (never mind how). I’m even refusing to wear my sling. I would feel judged by the long look he gives me, but I mean, come on. It’s fucking Oliver, for fuck’s sake. Who would feel judged by him?
“Ah,” he says hesitantly. “I, uh, I think they'’e going to be back any minute now.”
“You should work for KING News, muppet. You totally avoided the question.” I laugh and hop up onto the picnic table, crossing my legs and sitting behind his open laptop to stare back at him. He avoids my gaze, and I grin smugly; if he thinks he can hide anything from me, he's got another thing coming.
“Doherty still pissed off about last night?”
“What part of last night?”
I snicker. “The part where he threw a right paddy when I talked about our next job? Typical lazy Scotsman, any excuse for an early retirement.”
“It’s your casual racism I think I enjoy the most,” mumbles Oliver, and despite my surprise at his balls to say something like that aloud, I do little more than laugh.
“What? He can defend himself, he’s a big ol’ bastard.” I flick his laptop again, and again, and on the fourth time, he grips the top of it to keep it from jerking about. “Seriously, son, where my blood at? You’re starting to get me all paranoid here.”
Oliver still refuses to meet my gaze. “Duncan had to go out.”
“Out where?”
“After Penny.”
“Well, where’s Penny gone?”
“Chasing a lead.”
I huff in annoyance. This kid is becoming a proper pain in my neck. I reach out and firmly push his laptop closed with my fingertips.
“Mate. We could do this all day, but don’t make me, or I’ll fucking hurt you. Seriously. I’ll knock your teeth so far down your throat you’ll have to stick your toothbrush up your arsehole twice a day to clean them. You hear me?”
Whether it’s the threat itself or the way I say it, Oliver clearly believes me. He nods, suddenly incapable of looking away.
“Stellar. Now. Where the fuck is Penny?”
Oliver swallows thickly. He’s sweating. “She—we were looking at a tip this morning, but we knew it looked too fortuitous. I mean, it was about her dad, right? And what are the odds her dad would actually be hanging around the same place we’re hiding out? It was too big of a coincidence, so we decided to wait and talk about it as a group, tomorrow after—”
“You really better get to the point a bit sooner here, son,” I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I’m not the most patient geezer on a good day.”
“I’m ninety percent sure she chose to check it out on her own,” he blurts out. I can hear the panic and concern in his voice, and I can relate; my heart rate has probably picked up by several beats per minute already. “I gave Duncan the location, he went after her—”
“And nobody woke me up?”
The silence that follows my question is more than awkward. It’s painful. Oliver’s mouth opens and closes, and his lips and tongue form the start of several different sentences, but none of them come to fruition. I smirk around a bitter laugh.
“You know what? That actually makes a lot of sense. Why would thistle-dick wake me up? I mean, if we’re all doing what's best for ourselves now, instead of what’s best for the brigade, why the fuck would he want me involved? I’ve only been Penny’s best mate since we were in nappies, why would I be worried about her?”
Oliver is shaking his head. “N-no, that’s not it! Really! Duncan just—he ran, he was gone! I don’t think he was thinking, Alfie—”
“Well, that’s a shame,” I spit back. It's out of my mouth and peppered with venom before I can stop it.
And what’s worse? I’m not even in a mental position right now to regret a single word I’m saying.
“Because thinking about the brigade is apparently what keeps us alive these days. Or did everyone just fucking forget what happened last weekend? Kind of like everyone forgot we had a good ol’ knees-up scheduled for tonight, where we didn’t have to think about the fact the Sovereignty are voting on Wednesday to see if being an Anomaly is an imprisonable offense on its own.”
I pause for breath, and Oliver allows it without interruption. He’s staring at me, eyes wide with restrained terror. I glance down as he raises a hand to motion to my chest and notice the collar of my brand new shirt is on fire. Bloody hell.
“This brigade is a fucking joke,” I finish off, my fingers crushing out the miniature blaze. “People say we’re family, we’re in it together. Then they hold you back on shit you think is best for everyone, but make their own decisions without talking to everybody else? Piss off. It’s a fucking joke. I’m done with it.”
My heart is racing, pulsing, slamming in my ears. My senses are all off. I can hear my blood rushing, but I can’t feel my hands or feet. There's nothing but the rage, the heat of the fire inside. I want to let it burn. I'm barely still present in my body as it vaults one-handed from the top of the picnic table, not even glancing back at Oliver as it saunters off the pitch, onto the path, and in the familiarly-trodden direction of the Globe.
I hate everything. I want to be numb. I feel hollow, I feel dry, and its perfect kindling for the blaze that’s waking up within me.
If we don’t need the team’s permission to follow our hearts anymore, then there’s somewhere I have to be, and some Magickal folk I have to have a word with.
20 Penny’s New Friend
I’m barely able to breathe as the stranger rises to his feet, full lips teased up at the corners into an unreadable smile.
One thing is very clear: it’s definitely not my father.
“Oh, there you are,” he greets me, his tone bizarrely cordial. “I was wondering if anybody else might be interested enough in this quaint little place to make an appearance.”
His cheerful demeanor is the last thing I’m expecting, and the thing I’m least prepared to deal with. But it’s been a good decade since I last equated politeness and good looks with harmlessness, and my initial suspicion is no different than it would’ve been if he’d been sat there stroking a white cat.
“It’s not the place I’m interested in. I’m looking for someone.”
“Oh. Then my sincerest apologies, I think—I must have misunderstood.” The beautiful enigma scratches the back of his blondish hair, just above the woolen scarf wrapped about his shoulders—an accessory which really shouldn’t work in the current climate. “Well,” he adds brightly, “I personally think this place is fascinating. It’s all so rich in history; the construction, the carpentry, the simple but elegant glasswork. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Not that I don’t appreciate late Medieval architecture,” I mutter with a bite of sarcasm, “but I’ve got about half a dozen Sovereignty-sucking knob-jockeys who are going to be on top me in less than a minute.” I test the rearmost pew with a firm shove, relief flooding my chest when it budges an inch. “I have a red carpet to roll out.”
“Oh, yes, the noisy chaps outside?” To my surprise, Suede Elbow Patches joins me, and the pew shifts a lot easier with the two of us working on it. “About time all the bravado around here finally kicked off, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’ve lost
me.” I want my focus to be on the makeshift barricade, not the posh but extremely peculiar fellow who’s a bit too casual about this whole being-under-fire malarkey. Was he waiting for shit to hit the fan? My mind wanders—and wonders—as we labor as a unit to wedge the pew partially upright in the main doorway. I hurry back to retrieve a second one. Did he follow the police tip here as well, or was he just stalking Branch 9? And if he did come here because of that tip…
I risk a skeptical peek over at the tall, handsome Englishman as he hunkers down to assist me with repositioning the second pew.
Does he know my father somehow?
We use the second hunk of oak to secure the first in place, then fortify the side door as best we can with the pair of chairs and small altar beside it. As I’m locking the two chairs in place, I spy a flash of movement through the wrecked keyhole.
Bollocks.
“Incoming imminent!” I call across the small chapel, my voice carrying, reverberating through the beams above. They’re my next target; if I can climb up into them, I’ll not only have the higher ground, but a possible escape route via the lofty stained-glass windows.
“Right-o,” comes the chipper reply. “Shall we go, then? Blaze a trail, as they say?”
Coincidental as it may be, his use of that specific word throws my mind askew, and I hope he doesn’t notice the way I stare dumbly at him for several seconds before answering. “Go?” I echo. My arms spread at my sides in emphasis. “Unless you’re about to pull a TARDIS out your arse, mate, I think we’re staying for the duration of this party.”
“Well, not a teleportation method per se, but would another equally fun stereotype suit you?”
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