by Jenna Grey
“Will they listen to you?” Finn asked.
“If I can get to speak to the PM, or the Home Secretary, yes. They understand, but I’m pretty certain the people in charge here won’t. We have a bit of time, though, apparently there’s been a hold up of some kind at the St Paul’s end of the tunnel.”
“I thought they’d send the army in for something like this,” Finn said.
Blaine grimaced.
“Eventually they will, if we don’t sort it out first. They have a protocol they have to follow. They’ll send in the TRG first, and if that fails, the Police Commissioner will call the PM, and she’ll decide if they are going to send the army in or not. By the time Cobra get involved, everybody in that train will be dead.”
“There must be something you can do to stop them sending those men in. They don’t stand a chance against those things,” Polly said.
“As far as they’re concerned, they’re doing it by the book, and they’re not going to listen to me. Look at it from their point of view. All they know is that there are a lot of people in there in imminent danger. The longer they leave it to take some kind of action the more people are going to die. I can’t tell them that they are dealing with demon hounds, they’ll just think I’m nuts. The only way they’ll hold back is if they get a direct order from the Commissioner, the Home Secretary or the PM.”
“Then it’s up to us to do something. Is there anything else you can tell us?” Bert asked.
“They’ve sent in drones to find out what’s going on in there. It seems that the dogs have glutted themselves on the people on the platform and the poor sods in the first train carriage. They’ve settled down in the second carriage and are just sitting there, as if they’re waiting for us to do something. The survivors in the other carriages have moved to the last carriage, as far away from the dogs as they can get, but it looks as if they can’t get out. Not sure why. They’re just stuck there waiting for rescue.”
“It would be folly to go in blind,” Bert said. He turned to Polly. “We need your help, Sweetheart.” Polly felt her heart sink. “We need to know what happened here before we do anything else, and what we are dealing with exactly. If they are ordinary hellhounds, then we can deal with them – if they are something else then...” He took Polly’s hand and gave it a little squeeze. “It’s not too late to back out, my dear, we can find another way if you really don’t want to do this.”
“No, I can do it,” she said.
“I’m sorry you’ve got to,” Blaine said. “Up until a few hours ago, I could have spared you the misery.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the two halves of the amulet he’d used on Widget, holding it out for Bert to examine. “I used this earlier to try and find out how someone had died, and it shattered in my hand. I’m beginning to wonder whether it was really an accident or something more nefarious.”
Bert held out his hand for the pieces and Blaine placed them carefully in Bert’s palm.
“Oh, my word. I haven’t seen one of these in years, a Babylonian psychometrist’s charm. This was no accident – these things aren’t meant to shatter. This was deliberate sabotage, no guesses as to who is responsible,” Bert said, handing back the pieces.
“I’ve used it a few times, and it wasn’t pleasant,” Blaine said, putting them back in his pocket. “Are you sure you want to do this Polly?”
“I don’t really have any choice, do I?” she said. “I’m not going to let that bitch force me into being a coward.”
She was trying not to breathe in too deeply, but the overpowering smell; it was almost too much for her to bear. The mask helped; it smelt of disinfectant, but breaking through it there was still that awful smell of raw meat. “We owe it to these poor people to find out what did this and finish it.”
She stepped through the opening onto the platform and just stood inside the entrance, unable to take in what she was seeing for a moment. A field of corpses and body parts stretched out in front of her from one end of the platform to the other – a bloody shambles of flesh, blood and bone. Polly had seen death before, she’d seen the bodies under her house, seen poor Bram’s body, denuded of all flesh, but this, this was far, far worse. The whole platform was awash with blood and entrails; intestines dangled from benches, the walls splattered with gore, blood dripping down the tiles to pool at the bottom. The chocolate machine had been smashed open, and snacks littered the floor, floating in pools of dark crimson. The metal looked as if it had literally been ripped from the wall, the casing twisted; running down it were great claw marks that had torn right through the casing.
They just stood some moments too numb to react in any way, and then Finn rushed back outside, and Polly could hear him throwing up just outside the entrance. Bert looked green, but held on, Blaine just stood pale-faced, watching Polly. Polly, more surprised than anyone, held onto her vomit and just stood in the entranceway, too traumatised to think about doing anything else but staying upright. Her eyes scanned around the carnage, image after image assaulting her. She felt her knees go dizzy and rested against Bert for a moment, trying to keep her legs under her.
“Tell me what you need, love,” Blaine said, putting a hand on Polly’s trembling shoulder. “You don’t want to be here any longer than you need to be.”
Polly had no idea what she needed; her mind was in turmoil. She had to shut it all out, just allow in what she needed, just concentrate on the piece of world in front of her.
“I need to touch one of the bodies. I should be able to see their last few minutes and tell you what happened here, but if you can find someone that died pretty quickly, that would be better for me. I don’t fancy feeling what some of these poor souls must have felt as they were ripped limb from limb.”
Blaine raked his gaze along the bodies, skating over body parts and looking for victims that were relatively whole. There were very few of them. Polly just stood, pressed against Bert’s chest, his arm wrapped comfortingly over her shoulder.
“The woman there, I think it was pretty quick,” Blaine said, pointing a little way along the platform. There were an awful lot of body parts to step over in between. Polly tried not to breathe too deeply, covering her mouth with her hand because the mask she wore didn’t keep out the unholy stench. Other smells mingled with the smell of blood, where intestines had been torn open, and she really did think she would be sick if she had to stay in here much longer.
Polly moved cautiously through the detritus of filth that covered the platform, stepping over limbs and lumps of flesh. She reached the body and stared down at it. The woman’s throat had been torn out, almost severing her head, which was only held in place by her spine. It hung back at a strange angle, the white bones of her vertebrae clearly showing through the raw meat. Polly couldn’t say she relished the prospect of having her throat ripped out, but it really couldn’t be worse than the Blood Eagle, could it? She’d survived that memory. She could survive this.
She knelt beside the body and gazed into the woman’s bloody face. Her eyes were closed, and she looked almost peaceful if Polly didn’t let her gaze drop below her chin. She closed her hand over the corpse’s fingers; her hand had fallen by her side and was lying in a pool of her blood.
There was nothing for a few moments, and then the world disappeared.
Tracy was standing on the platform, waiting for her train home; the bloody thing had been delayed as usual. Fuck knows what it was this time, signal failure or some other bullshit. They always had some excuse. It had been a long day, and she just wanted to get back home and take a nice long shower. She hated her job, but that bitch in Personnel was giving her a hard time over her switching to a different shift. She’d see about that. She’d recorded the last few nights of Love Island and planned to spend the evening catching up; she could grab a bit of sleep later, enough to keep her ticking over the next day, at least. Sod Lynn, she’d go above her head and talk to David Bulmer about changing shifts. He’d always fancied her, flutter her eyelashes in his direction a
nd he’d do whatever she wanted. She cursed, looking down at her broken nail; now she’d have to file them all down to get them the same length. This day was just getting worse and worse.
There was a commotion along the platform, a fight maybe. Terrific. She turned her head to see what was going on. There was a flash of something beside her, too fast for her to see what it was, just a blur of motion and she was thrown from her feet, hurtling backwards and landing hard on her back. She just lay for a moment, too numbed by shock to know what was happening or to react. There was a sharp sting at her throat, but not bad, as if a wasp had stung her. Then her head tipped back, too far back, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe. She reached up to close her hand over her throat, trying to drag air into her lungs, but there was something wet, something that was pumping over her, out of her. She was choking, drowning.
Then darkness.
Polly gasped in lungfuls of air, her whole field of vision filled with crimson, her heart pounding and her throat a tight knot of red hot pain. She pushed Finn away as he tried to comfort her.
“I’m all right...I’m all right, I just need a moment. Just leave me alone.” She hadn’t meant to snap at him, but she couldn’t bear for him to touch her, not just yet. She drew in lungfuls of air and felt better after a few moments. “It was too quick. She didn’t see anything. I need to try again.” Polly was still finding it hard to breathe; her throat felt clogged, sticky. That had not been pleasant. “I’m glad that at least she didn’t know much about it.”
More screams came from inside the tunnel.
“We need to hurry – sorry Polly, but we need to hurry.”
Polly stood and moved to one of the other bodies, a man, aged about forty, well dressed, handsome. His arm had been ripped out of its socket and lay beneath his head; his groin had been torn open, his genitals a mangled heap of flesh.
“Maybe not,” she said and moved onto one of the other bodies.
The next whole body she stumbled over was a woman, rent open from groin to breastbone, her intestines coiled like snakes from the gaping wound; they lay wrapped around her like party streamers.
“She must have seen what killed her,” Polly said, kneeling beside her, not even noticing at first that she was kneeling in a pool of blood. The woman was middle-aged, so ordinary, so pathetic in death, sprawled on the floor like a broken doll. She was completely unremarkable, her make-up cheap, overdone, plastered over lined and care-worn features, a mask that sat uncomfortably on her face and made her look far older than her fifty-something years. Her roots were growing through, the grey creeping from her hairline into the straggly spikes of hair that were the colour of dried blood. She looked so vulnerable, so very human.
“Polly...” Finn didn’t bother to finish the sentence; he knew that there was nothing he could say that would make Polly change her mind.
Polly closed her hand over the woman’s beringed fingers, too much gold for anyone to wear on one hand, and slipped into another world.
Lynette watched the man just a little way along the platform. He was handsome in an ‘I don’t really care sort of way’, and she wouldn’t have said no, thirty years ago. Now he didn’t even see her, although she was right in his line of sight. He looked right through her to stare at the pretty girl behind her. She wouldn’t have been invisible to him once. Back in the day, she could have had any man she wanted – now nobody wanted her. Perhaps she should give her ex a call, see if he wanted to go out for a drink sometime. He wasn’t so bad, well, not all the time – they’d had some fun, sometimes. Funny how life turned out really – it was a box of chocolates all right, but she’d always known what she was going to get. She looked up as she heard the noise along the platform and froze. There was no way she could be seeing what she thought she was seeing. It was nuts. She laughed. It had to be a joke, someone playing a sick joke on them, had to be. But the screams weren’t funny, or the blood.
Screams.
Blood.
A huge form ripping through the crowd...
fur... teeth...
blood...
screams, screams, screams.
And she didn’t see it as it came at her, just felt a terrible pressure on the front of her body as someone pushed her over. She looked down and saw ribbons on the front of her dress, pretty red ribbons. Then she was gone.
Polly lurched upright, gasping, the pain suddenly hitting her. Lynette had died before she could feel the full horror of it, Polly was still very much alive and feeling every moment of that pain. She began to hyperventilate, shrugging off the hands she felt on her shoulders, clutching her stomach as if she could somehow hold herself in. She looked down, expecting to see her entrails spilling into her hands, but they were empty.
“Just breathe, sweetheart, come back to us,” Bert said, gently rubbing her shoulders. “You know where you are?” She nodded blankly, the world beginning to come back into focus.
“Wolves, two of them. One was a huge black beast; I’ve seen him before. It’s Fenrir. I saw him when I went to Helheim, standing by Hel’s castle. The other was pure white, not as large as Fenrir, but still huge; it’s fur was crimson, soaked in so much blood, dripping from it. Their eyes were amber, like fire. That poor woman didn’t know much about it, none of them did – it was so fast, so vicious.”
Finn helped Polly to her feet and steered her towards a bench that was miraculously not covered in blood and gore.
“I can feel the power,” Bert said, “Terrible power. They were shielding, but now, now I can feel them.”
“Are we talking about the Fenrir? Hel’s brother?” Blaine asked.
Bert gave a grim nod.
“Yes, I believe so. The other is Garm, the hound that guards the entrance to Helheim.”
Blaine looked shell-shocked.
“Can you do anything against them? I mean we are talking old gods here; are you powerful enough to stop them?” He seemed totally disoriented, struggling to cope with this new information. Hardly surprising. He rallied around quickly and drew in a deep breath, steadying himself. “I could maybe call in help from elsewhere if you think you need it. I do know someone that... well, let’s just say, you and he would get on very well together and make any hell god tremble in their sandals.”
That warranted a sideways glance from Polly. As far as she knew, Bert was one of the most powerful magician’s in the world. Could Blaine really know someone that had as much power?
“No, I don’t think we need to bother anyone else, not just yet,” Bert said, “but it’s comforting to know there is someone to call on, should we need it. Finn and I can, at the very least, send them back where they came from. I doubt that I could destroy them, but I can certainly get them out of our hair for now. I just need to get into that tunnel.” Finn didn’t look quite so confident.
Blaine looked across at the group of armed officers waiting by the tunnel entrance. They looked composed, but taut, waiting for the order to go in. Polly could feel a thrumming energy around them, sending a sizzle of warmth over her skin. They must have realised by now that what they were facing wasn’t just a pack of wild dogs. No wild dogs could have caused the devastation they could see around them.
“Shit, they’re handing out the ammo – they’ll be going in, any time,” Blaine said. Polly looked across and saw that each of the men was being given bullets. If they were dealing with hell gods, then they might as well be throwing toffees at them. These men were going to die. She looked at their faces, six good men that would be dead in a few minutes. She couldn’t bear it. They probably had wives and families, kids, that would never see their dad again, and in that instant, Polly hated Hel with every fibre of her being.
“They’ll send in two units, one from each end, in constant touch with each other via radio,” Blaine said. “The unit at the other end will go in and get the passengers out, and the unit at this end will go in and tackle the ‘dogs’. They have to synchronise perfectly, or the whole lot will go arse upwards. The men have nigh
t vision goggles and thermal imaging. The night vision is so they can see further up the tunnel. They already know those creatures are fast, and the more warning they’re heading in their direction, the better.”
“It doesn’t matter how far ahead they can see; those things will be on them before they know what’s happening,” Polly said.
“The thermal imaging won’t do them any good either,” Bert added. “Neither Fenrir or Garm have any body heat. They’re supernaturals, the men will see only the humans, even if the wolves are right next to them.”
“Is there any way we can see what’s going on in there?” Finn asked.
Blaine’s head was shaking before Finn had finished the sentence. Polly was shaking all over.
“I don’t want to see. I can’t bear to see more good people dying.” She didn’t have to finish the sentence, they all knew that she was going to say, ‘Because of me’.
“The men have camera’s fixed to their helmets, so they can relay what’s happening to the commanding officer, but there’s no way I can get you anywhere near the operation, sorry. I should have anticipated this and got you clearance yesterday. Like I said, I’ve really fucked up. I’m so sorry. They might let me muscle in, but you would never be allowed anywhere near.”
Are you happy with your work?
Polly swerved around and stared at the three men behind her.
“What? What did you say?” she asked.
They stared back at her, expressions blank.
“We didn’t say anything.”
Would you like to see the fruits of your labours?
Polly felt bile rise in her throat. Hel’s voice sounded as if it came from right beside her, loud and clear in her ear.
“Fuck off, you sick bitch,” Polly yelled. “This is all your doing, not mine. You will not lay the blame for this at my door!”
Eyes turned to stare at her from every direction. She felt strong arms on her.