Josh’s heart tripped.
“That’s enough,” Josh said. He we breathing so heavily the words barely made it out of his mouth.
“Give it up, you bag of shit. Just back the fuck off and let us have her. It’s that or we do the pair of you. That what you want, old man?”
Josh leaned into another backhanded swing, the hammer head missing the kid’s jaw by less than an inch as he stood his ground. The kid didn’t so much as flinch. A smile curled at the corner of his mouth.
There were nine of them in the circle. Impossible odds, even if they were just kids.
Josh used the hammer to create a perimeter, giving the woman room to get back to her feet.
“Wrong choice,” the oldest kid said, shaking his head sadly. “Want to try again?”
She stood beside him.
“Back off,” Josh barked, swinging wildly. “Back. Get back.” The hammer arced silver between them.
The kid didn’t budge.
Josh swept the hammer around again and again, each pass a little looser, wilder, than the last. It was getting harder and harder not to hit them.
The fury of exertion began to tell as Josh’s muscles burned.
He kept on swinging.
It was a fight he couldn’t win. There were too many of them. If they came for him at once there was nothing he could do beyond hurt a couple, maybe crack a skull or a jaw before they took him down.
They closed the circle around the pair of them.
Josh stopped swinging.
Instead, he held the hammer out straight in front of him, keeping the schoolkids at arm’s length.
“Everyone needs to just calm down,” Josh said, trying to appeal to reason. Any other day on any other street he’d have described them as decent kids; that was how they looked with their posh school blazers and trendy haircuts that spoke of wealthy parents and nice houses in good school catchment areas. The disconnect between their public schoolboy image and the brutality of their actions was vast. “You don’t have to do this,” Josh said, trying to catch his breath. He was breathing hard. His heart hammered. “Walk away. We’re not going to chase you.”
After a cackle of laughter, they answered him as one, their voices coming together in an adolescent chorus. He couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying. It was more of a chant than argument, the words given a hypnotic rhythm that just made it eerier.
Josh risked a sideways glance at the woman beside him who was none the wiser.
The clamor of noise mocked him, escalating quickly.
Their voices bayed.
“Shut up! Quiet!”
But the cries just spiraled, louder and louder, until they could be heard streets away.
One of them broke the rhythm of the weird ululating chant to quote a line Josh hadn’t heard since he was fifteen, “Kill the pig, kill the pig…” and he knew he’d just been cast in the role of the unfortunate porker.
He pushed the hammer out, stabbing it toward the nearest kid in the circle.
A trickle of sweat beaded and broke on his brow, running down the side of his face.
It was the middle of the morning, in bright daylight, in the middle of the city. It wasn’t like they’d wandered into gang territory in downtown LA, the street on the division between Bloods and Crips territories. It was a couple of minutes’ walk from the pound store and a row of equally depressing charity shops. “We don’t want any trouble,” he said. The words sounded thin and frightened in his own ears.
The kids said nothing.
The silence was worse than all of their chanting combined.
The way they looked at him, the mix of hunger and madness in their eyes, turned his stomach. It was purely animalistic. The fine hairs along his arms bristled as the air around them filled with the charge of danger.
“Let’s all just calm down, shall we? Nice and easy, boys. Don’t do anything stupid.”
One step, they came closer, closing in the circle.
Two steps, they came closer still, just out of reach.
Three steps, it became painfully obvious words weren’t working.
Josh lashed out with the hammer.
He didn’t connect.
And then in the distance some unseen lookout yelled “Scatter!” and the boys broke rank, half-turning, then racing away.
Their laughter echoed the length of the street.
Josh’s arm went limp. The hammer fell against his leg. He watched them go, not quite believing it was over, not quite understanding how it had begun in the first place. He felt his entire body slump as the adrenaline fled his system. His knees buckled. He shrank an inch, but didn’t fall. There was a moment when the one who’d spoken that line from Lord of the Flies looked back over his shoulder, grinning so fiercely it looked like a razor had sliced his smile, and drew a finger across his throat before bursting out into fits of laughter as he sprinted away. It was the most blood-chilling moment of the whole terrifying scene. Josh wanted to turn tail and run in the opposite direction, but before he could the woman broke the silence between them.
“I don’t know how to thank you. You didn’t have to … I mean so many people wouldn’t have put themselves at risk like that … but you stepped in. I just…” she shook her head, struggling to find adequate words. “Oh, God. Oh, God…” she broke off amid desperate gulps, choking back the realization of what would have happened to her if Josh hadn’t turned up. She leaned forward. Josh thought for a moment that she was going to go over, but she braced herself with her hands on her knees and gasped and coughed and gagged on the air she tried to breathe.
“It’s okay,” Josh said, uselessly. “It’s okay. They’re gone. You’re fine. You’re okay.”
All he could do was give her time to gather herself. He didn’t even know her name. That gave him something to say. “I’m Josh.”
“Roz. Rosamund,” she managed after a second. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t stepped in…”
Josh just shrugged. It wasn’t the most eloquent gesture, but it spoke volumes. He had no idea why he’d put himself in the middle of that circle, only that he hadn’t thought; he’d just done it.
“What happened?”
“You saw as much as I did,” Roz said. She wasn’t angry, just lost. This wasn’t her world. He realized she probably walked this street twice a day without anything like this happening to her. Would she ever feel safe again here? Properly safe? Or had that been stolen away from her by a group of kids?
“I mean how did it start? What made them turn on you?”
This time it was her turn to shrug.
“I’ve got no idea. I was just walking to work. I turned down the street, my bus stop’s a couple of streets over that way,” she gestured back in the direction of Aldwych, “when I saw them walking toward me. I didn’t think anything of it.” She shook her head, still trying to make sense of it. “I mean I pass groups of kids every day. There are three schools less than ten minutes’ walk in either direction. They’re everywhere. They’re just kids. Good kids. But it’s strange today. You can feel it, can’t you?” Josh caught himself looking around as though for some physical manifestation of the strangeness she was talking about. The street was just a street, same as it ever was, houses that had seen better days, patches of front garden that had run to seed or been converted into off-road parking. It could have been any of a thousand streets in a hundred identical neighborhoods. But he knew what she meant. Josh had lived through riots in Notting Hill as a kid, and more recently Tottenham and Clapham as an adult. There was something in the air now; same as there had been something in the air back then. The entire city was on edge, holding its breath as it waited for the incredible pressure that had been building up and up since the first murders finally vented. When that happened things were going to turn nasty.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked. It was a stupid question. It wasn’t as though they were going to become best friends because he’d done something unthinkingly stupid to prote
ct her. She’d go her way, he’d go his, and that’d be that.
She nodded.
“I’ll be fine. Can I ask you something?”
He nodded in return.
She looked down at the hammer in his hand. “What are you doing with a hammer in the middle of London?”
He laughed at that, a sharp burst of nervous energy amplified by the release of tension in his body. “I’m off to rack up a lifetime’s worth of bad luck.” She had no idea what he meant, but that was fine by him.
It had been a long time since he’d set foot inside the cemetery grounds, but nowhere near long enough. He never wanted to go back, not after what they’d done. Walking the last quarter mile down the road was harder than it had any right to be. He kept looking back over his shoulder every few yards for the boys, but there was nothing to suggest they were coming back. It was just one foot in front of another, but it felt like he was carrying all the weight of the world on his back—or more accurately, all the weight of London and what was happening to it, so not the whole world, just his part of it. The phrase one for one kept circling around in his mind. Over and over. One for one.
There was something about it that had been nagging at him since the old man had first used it.
Something they were missing.
It was obvious. Right there in front of his mind, just waiting for him to give voice to it. But for the moment he couldn’t. Instead, as he walked beneath the familiar arch with its wrought-iron words, he turned his mind to what happened next. Because, like it or not, they were right; Alex, Julie, even the old man, Damiola. What was happening to those kids was his fault. He’d fucked up. He should have just killed Seth and been done with it, but that hadn’t been enough for him. He’d been determined to make the man suffer for everything he’d done to Eleanor and Josh’s family that he had damned them all.
He was the only one who could do anything about it, and that was exactly what he intended to do. He was going to set Seth free. He’d smash every mirror they’d used to trap Lockwood in that other place, giving the bastard a way back, and do what he should have done the first time, end it. He hit the head of the hammer against his thigh. The impact numbed the muscle where it hit. That was where his plan fell apart, because after that he had nothing. What was he supposed to do? Pray that the same one-for-one logic applied in reverse? That he could somehow put everything right with a hammer?
He walked through the winged gates, and followed the path through the uneven tombstones with their weathered memorials to the daunting dead house where they’d trapped Seth.
He wasn’t alone in the cemetery.
He saw a woman—no, a police officer, he realized as he got close enough to make out the uniform—standing inside the iron cage that fenced off the magician’s final resting place. He was about to call out to her, to tell her about what had happened outside the cemetery and get her to radio in a report for others to be on the lookout for that gang of Lord of the Flies–loving schoolkids when he saw the shape at her feet.
Even at this distance he recognized the layers of the old man’s grubby coats as they spread out around his body.
He wasn’t moving.
“Get away from him!”
The officer turned slightly, looking up to meet his challenge.
“Get away from him!” Josh yelled again, running full pelt across the grass between them, the hammer raised above his head. “What have you done?” He didn’t care what he looked like.
The female officer held up her hands, palms out, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, trying to placate him before he could launch himself at her. “Put down the hammer, Josh. Just drop it on the ground by your feet.” She talked at him, her words coming thick and fast, but Josh couldn’t focus on them. She knew him?
How?
He’d never seen her in his life.
Common sense still controlled his muscles. The hammer fell from his hand. He stopped a few feet shy of the old man and stared down at him. There was no mistaking the deathly pallor. Josh let loose a desperate, keening cry that tore out his heart and fell to his knees.
He saw the officer’s hand on Damiola’s chest, and heard her voice still talking to him—level, calm—asking questions Josh couldn’t focus on.
“Get your hands off him.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. He needs to talk to you.”
Josh lost it.
He couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
Everything crushed in around him, his world coming undone.
He struggled, sinking beneath it all.
He couldn’t find a way up for air.
Her tone was an anchor for him, linked with heavy chains that led all the way back to this place, this time, and his dead friend. And because of that he didn’t want to grab that chain just yet. Instead, he took hold of the old man’s dirt-ingrained hand with its black fingernails and gripped it tight, willing Damiola to open his eyes and grin that damned grin of his one last time.
“He’s gone,” she said. But that couldn’t be right. He’d thought the old man would live forever. He’d already lived more lifetimes than anyone had a right to. Why would he leave them now, like this, when they needed him the most? “If I break contact, I lose him. There’s no guarantee I can get him back. He’s desperate to talk to you. He won’t shut up.”
Josh refused to believe it.
He leaned in, shaking the old man by the shoulders as though he could force him to open his eyes if he just shook him hard enough.
He was so very, very cold.
There was nothing of the old man left in there. It didn’t matter how vigorously Josh shook him; he wasn’t opening his eyes. Josh felt his stomach contract, and had barely scrambled a couple of feet away before he gagged, spitting up bile, and gagged again, the vomit sticking to his lips as his gut emptied.
He stayed on his knees, hands planted either side of the stinking puddle of vomit.
He couldn’t move.
He could hear her voice. She was still talking, but not to him, he realized, as he craned his neck to look at her. She in turn was looking in the direction of the mausoleum, or more accurately the shadows within it.
Pieces of a nightmarish puzzle began to drop into place, their edges barely fitting.
He didn’t want to believe he was right, but couldn’t shake the feeling as he watched her looking again to the shadows for guidance.
He’d come here to finish this, to smash the mirrors and set Seth free, bring him back so they could drive Damiola’s Horned God back to where it belonged. Who else but Seth could have done this? Which meant she’d set him free, didn’t it? That was who she was talking to in the shadows. Had she lured Damiola away from his bench, betraying him to Seth?
If she had, he’d turn the hammer on her.
“What have you done?” he demanded, starting to push himself to his feet. As he leaned forward he planted his hand in the puke. He didn’t care. He shook it off. “Where’s that bastard? Where’s Seth?”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“I’m not talking to that bastard. I’ve come here to kill him.” He realized that was a stupid thing to say to a cop, but it was too late to take it back.
“Stop laughing at him,” she said, not to Josh, to the man hidden away in the shadows. She turned back to him. “He said not to be so stupid, you’re wasting time. He’s not Seth. He told me to remind you the last time you saw him you cut your finger off and lied about it. Does that make sense? He thinks it’s enough to convince you he’s dead and talking to you at the same time.” Josh stared at her, remembering the last time he’d seen the old man. “You’ve got to listen. I don’t know how long we’ve got.” She looked toward the shadows again, seeking encouragement from within them. “Damiola wants me to tell you that Arawn is here. He saw him. He wants you to know he got it wrong, but you aren’t to waste time mourning him. Everything he feared is happening. Now. Here.” She looked away from Josh, back toward the shadow
s, “Slow down, I can’t keep up. You’ve got to slow down.” And then turned back to Josh. “I’m sorry, he’s frantic. There’s so much he’s trying to communicate; I think he’s frightened he won’t have time to tell you it all before he goes.”
“Tell him I’m sorry,” Josh said.”
“I don’t need to, you did,” the Speaker for the Dead said, smiling gently. “He says yes, yes, of course you are, but there’s no time for that.”
Despite himself, Josh smiled at that. It was so absolutely Damiola. It couldn’t have been anyone else.
“They want to tear this place apart, Josh. They won’t stop until they’ve pulled down every building and given the land back to their goddess, the Earth Mother. If you don’t find a way to send Arawn back, no one will be able to stand against the Great Beast of Albion as it wakes. I have no fucking clue what any of that means, but there you go.”
Josh looked at her, trying to make sense of what she was saying. It was a lot to take in. She kept looking from the shadows to the corpse and back to the shadows again.
“You’re talking to him right now, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“What do I do? How do I stop this?”
“You’ve got to go to Coldfall Wood…” she said, nodding as she listened to the voice he couldn’t hear. “There’s a weakness there, a dimgate. He says you’ll know what he means, that it’s like Glass Town, a way through to the Annwyn. That’s what he calls it.” Josh nodded, staring at the shadows, willing Damiola’s ghost to show itself. “There’s a stone circle at the end of an ancient hollow way, a causeway; within it, Arawn’s opened a gateway. It’s guarded by creatures of the Wild Hunt. They are more powerful than they seem. Your eyes will see schoolkids,” he found himself thinking of the pack he’d just encountered, “but they’re just the vessels, the Hunters are parasites that have taken up residence in their flesh. Whatever they look like, they aren’t kids anymore. They want the Sleepers dead so they can stay here. This land used to be theirs. They believe that by following Arawn they are fulfilling an ancient curse that doomed them to protect this place. They see us, humanity, as the greatest threat to the land. You need to cross to the other side. That’s the only way you can save the Sleepers.”
Coldfall Wood Page 18