I have to kill again, he thought.
Six recovered herself. “You’re going? What, like, outside? But you haven’t got any clothes on!”
Klaus moved back into the light, his dark eyes glaring. “Don’t worry about me,” he said finally. “Upstairs I have everything I need. And believe me, little knight, whether as the wolf, or like this, you will give me what I need.”
Six swallowed. “And if I don’t?”
Klaus picked up the knife. “Then you will bleed.”
After five minutes left alone in the darkness, Six began screaming for help.
Neon grimaced and began flicking through the channels. “Well, that’s not very nice, is it? I wonder what else is on?”
The television was, indeed, very clever. Just as the prince had described, it seemed to have distilled all of Neon’s abilities, displaying not only the voices of the people she was watching, but also their thoughts and feelings through the headset.
No wonder I’ve found it so hard to tune my mind to Albion since arriving here, impossible since communicating with the Seekers, Neon thought. He’s stolen my powers!
Professor Chandler was following Carol Lee, Captain of the Kings Guards, into the blacksmith’s. She had a cloth bag full of silver thrown over her shoulder.
“Captain, are you sure you want to do this?” the Professor asked.
Carol was exasperated. “Of course I don’t, but what choice have I got? If we don’t take the fight to this monster soon he’ll have the whole city for dinner.”
“Yes, but he seems to be focusing on specific targets and I’m not sure there’s a need for you, particularly, to go down into those tunnels. You know, you’re very important to the council.”
“That’s very sweet, Professor, but I...”
“And the King is clearly very fond of you,” Professor Chandler interrupted, finally reaching her in his wheelchair. “Captain, we all know how disappointed you were to leave the knights, but you have nothing to prove to us. You really don’t.”
Carol Lee was attempting to appear civil, although inside she was fuming, her mind littered with images of Lord Truth, rejecting her help, spurning her advances, belittling her. “Thanks for your concern, Professor, but really I’ll be...”
“Next!” Neon said to the television as she continued to press the remote’s buttons. She was just beginning to run out of patience with the set when the face of her father filled the screen.
Neon’s heart leapt. But Jon Way looked miserable and his thoughts black. What if I never see her? What if I never see my daughter again? his mind repeated.
“I’m here, Daddy! I’m here!” Neon whispered as loudly as she dared. But her father couldn’t hear her.
He was sitting alone on the jetty by the boating lake wearing his denim jacket, the buttons fastened to his neck and a scarf wrapped to his cheeks. His breath came as a vapour in the frozen air and he cupped the steam in his hands, whispering a spell. Slowly, the steam solidified into three white arrows. The sprites circled his head at first, as if uncertain they wished to leave, but with a flick of his wrist he sent them spinning.
“Fly, my pets,” he ordered.
The arrows chased one another over the surface of the lake, their bodies mirrored in the rippling water. Like children playing tag they zipped across each other’s paths, swooping and tumbling in acrobatic loops. Until, one by one, they dived.
Jon Way bowed his head and a tear collected on the rim of his glasses. He stared at it, the sun magnifying its perfect form, as if all the beauty left in the world was condensed into a single drop of water. But the tear grew larger, fed by the river flowing over the ridge of his nose, until it could bare its weight no more.
Why don’t you speak to me, Neon? Jon watched as the tear fell. Where are your thoughts? Why can’t I hear you?
“I’m here!” Neon tried to reply, her mind straining at the very bone of her skull.
Down deeper and deeper into the pond the arrows swam. Past trout and eels, past a depth where a man could hold no breath. A triangle of brothers, they sank through reeds and floating moss, before breaking left and right in search of their prize.
Jon Way sat at the edge of the lake, his hands hanging from his knees. Why can’t I stop this? he thought painfully. Why can’t I beat this, this spirit that has my child. Why can’t I fight it and win her back? I’d kill him if I could.
Neon watched the television set in the Other Worlds, the black and white plane that was vying to become her home, the world where her feelings would die and surely her body with them.
She watched as the arrows sprang from the water, spiralling around a small, sopping teddy bear. They carefully lifted Brian, having caught the toy in the vortex of their frantic currents, and delivered it to their master.
“Your father’s so arrogant I’m surprised he didn’t try to walk on water and get that himself,” the Pirate Prince sneered behind her.
Neon took a moment to compose herself, damping down the fire within. “Can anyone do that then?” she said finally.
“Oh yes,” the prince grinned at her from his seat. “Are they coming then, your friends?” he added.
“I think so,” Neon nodded, lifting the headphones from her ears. “It shouldn’t be long now,” she sniffed.
“You’ve done well, my princess.” Jack Bellingham slid off the leather chair, tearing at some parchment and grabbing his quill from the crate beside him. “You’ve been working so hard to contact them I was beginning to fear I would lose you. How’s our sandcastle coming along by the way?”
“Oh, very well, you should come and see it,” Neon turned to him and tried to smile, spying the dagger in his belt and berating herself for not trying to steal it when she had the chance.
Perhaps I could have killed him myself? she thought, wiping on a tear while he wasn’t looking. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, just writing a list,” the pirate scrawled on the paper before rolling it into a tube. He looked up, his black eyes sparkling. “A progress report, you could say, for someone important.”
He then skipped over to where Neon was sitting and, bending down, grabbed the bottle of pop at her side. “Are you finished with this?” he asked, already pouring out the remains of the drink.
“I guess so,” Neon shrugged, watching him stuff the note into the bottle and seal it with a cork. She followed him as he walked down to the beach.
“Can you tell me something,” she asked, running a little to catch up. “Am I dead already? Is this heaven?”
“No, don’t be silly,” the Pirate Prince laughed uncontrollably. “You’re so funny,” he said.
But Neon didn’t feel very funny. In the ‘real’ world people were getting tortured, her body was disappearing, her parents and friends were very upset and she now feared she was leading them into a trap.
The prince had reached the shore and leaned back, his white shirt bunching at his wrist as his right arm wound up to throw the bottle.
It landed with a splash, far out to sea.
Neon screwed up her forehead for a moment with one eye closed. “So what are you exactly?” she pondered. “I mean, you’re not just a boy are you?”
The Pirate Prince grinned broadly as he watched the bottle drifting away. He then turned to her. “Why, I thought you’d never ask. No, I’m an emissary, my dear princess,” he said simply.
“An emissary of the Devil himself.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
GILES pushed a tee into the hard earth and felt the golf ball shift within his plump fingers. His back ached but he had long ago decided he was too old to start bending with his knees. Instead he stooped uncomfortably, plucking snow and huge shoots of grass around the plastic cup. It was only then he noticed Sir Wilfred Justice, upside down, trundling up the fairway towards him in his golf buggy.
Giles didn’t wait for him but straightened up, taking a few practice strokes before focusing on his shot. The head of his three-wood hovered next to the ball
and a thread of string flapped in the breeze as the pensioner drew the club over his right shoulder, turned and swung clumsily.
The ball sailed high into the air and Sir Justice stopped to watch it fly. Without reaching 150 yards, the hooked shot swerved wildly to the left before plunging into a bank of trees. Giles tossed his club to the ground and grabbed a rifle from his golf bag. Sir Justice had already drawn two six-shooters from his belt, training them on the thicket.
Seconds passed as birds chirped their complaints but nothing emerged from the tapestry of leaves, each topped by a hefty blob of snow. Giles gave an audible tut. “You’re late,” he said finally.
The sheriff holstered his guns and drove the decrepit buggy across to his opponent. The cart, patched together with tape and powered by a bunch of blue crystals wired to its back, squeaked every six inches.
“I had to get this little beauty out of storage,” he replied from below his cowboy hat, his broken leg thrust onto the buggy’s bonnet. “Been a while since she’s done a full round but I think she’ll make it.”
Giles raised an eyebrow as Sir Justice stumbled out of the machine, hobbling towards him on crutches. “It might,” the cook said. “What about you?”
Sir Justice righted the bent, orange tee Giles had sent flying across the grass and placed his own ball upon it before positioning his feet, his right booted, his left wrapped in plaster, either side.
“Donnae worry about me, Giles Haast,” he grumbled in his familiar celtic twang. “Just watch this.”
Gripping his one-iron - he didn’t trust woods - Sir Justice relaxed his shoulders, swinging the metal club liberally from side to side, before baring his powerful neck over the ball. He then swung back almost a full circle, twisting his right foot rather daintily, and drove through, striking his target hard and straight. It whistled down the fairway, the sheriff scowling as he hopped.
The cook’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Good shot.”
They both watched the flight of the ball as it bounced eagerly over a small stream. Sir Justice’s jaw locked in concentration under the hat’s brim as his eyes followed it. “You should have seen me shoot that chap from a hang glider the other morning,” he said.
“Lot of good that did you,” Giles frowned as he picked up his clubs and started down the overgrown course.
“So, am I still under arrest?” he asked wearily over the sound of the creaking cart as the sheriff drove beside him.
“You never were, Giles,” Sir Justice replied, his leg propped up, again, over the dashboard. “I just thought we were due a wee chat, that’s all.”
The cook nodded glumly. “And what about my grand-daughter?”
Sir Justice sighed as they crossed the stream using a small bridge. “We’re following up every lead we can but seriously, Giles, what are you expecting? I donnae think you’ll be getting a ransom note anytime soon. Here it is,” he added, pointing to his ball, like all of them split and marked with a fading crest of Albion. It had landed around 70 yards from the first pin.
“So that’s it? You think she’s been taken?” Giles looked up expectantly, the remains of his grey hair flapping beneath a baseball cap. “You think she’s alive at least?”
“I would have thought it was blinkin’ obvious Giles, even to you,” Sir Justice grumbled, lining up his second shot, “that I haven’t got a clue what’s going on.”
Even though the course had an underground heating system powered by the crystals, many would argue that it had long been unplayable. However, there were a hardcore few, like the two of them, who insisted on trying. The sheriff’s rusted, slightly buckled pitching wedge lifted his ball onto the snow-dusty green, easily avoiding two bunkers.
But Giles remained grim, light flakes of white drifting past him. “Don’t give me that, Wilfred, I know you too well. You always know more than you say.”
Sir Justice shoved his club back into the bag he had stuffed in the passenger side of the cart. He then stared at the cook who had wandered off in search of his own ball, his shoulders hunched, his head low. “Well, why don’t we start,” he called flatly, “with you telling me what you know. Why didn’t you help those people in the bar, Giles?”
Having reached the thicket where his ball had landed, Giles was now swinging his own wedge through heavy grass and brambles. “I was too scared, I guess,” the cook shrugged miserably. “Just didn’t know what to do. I suppose when Lord Truth was here we’d never worry about being attacked, would we? We all felt so safe?”
“Maybe, but when Lord Truth was here,” Sir Justice replied, “we were guaranteed a better supply of golf balls, so try to find that one rather than just poncing around pretending like your looking for it.”
The sheriff pulled the pipe from his pocket and began packing it with tobacco. “Honestly, sometimes I wonder if your idea of this game isn’t as warped as your very dubious morals,” he continued.
But, within minutes, Giles had given up his search and taken another battered ball from his bag. He dropped it on the outskirts of the rough. “About here, do you think?” he offered.
“Aye, if you like.” Sir Justice was about to light the pipe when the cook’s new ball sailed straight over him and into the woods behind.
“Hell’s bells!” the sheriff muttered, his head ducking into the folds of his jacket as the pipe fell from his lips. He swung round as the sound of plastic thudding against bark echoed across the fairway.
A pair of rabbits scattered onto the green, leaving the safety of the trees in panic.
Giles had leapt for his bag but he was already too late. Sir Justice rang off four shots before he’d even touched his rifle. Smoke billowed from the six-shooters as the enormous cook bounded over to the rabbits, giggling excitedly.
“See what I mean?” Sir Justice started, holstering the weapons, “completely warped!”
“To the good chef, golf is as much about shopping for ingredients as it is sport,” Giles yelled before picking up the small bodies, riddled with two bullets each. “Although it would have been nice if you’d left enough meat on these bunnies to make them worth eating,” he added, a little disappointed.
“Hmmm, just you remember who shot them.”
Giles ignored him, instead calculating the weight of his dinner. “Should be enough for a nice rabbit pie there, eh?”
Sir Justice shook his head and retrieved the pipe, checking the tobacco. The sun was poking out from behind a low cloud, painting its edges in gold and sending grey shafts of light onto the course. It was getting late.
“So who killed Lord Truth, Giles?”
The cook looked up, the two small tears tattooed on his left cheek stretching as his eyes widened. “What, why are you asking me?”
“Because I already know you were involved,” Sir Justice sucked sombrely on the pipe as he held a match to its bowl. “Now I want to know who you were working with.”
The sheriff continued puffing before hobbling back to his cart. Giles followed on behind, desperation digging at his voice. “That’s crazy! What makes you think I was a part of anything?”
Sir Justice sighed, not looking back. “The girl, Giles, your grand-daughter. She saw the bomb.”
The cook was aghast. “She? She never...”
“Just tell me what you know Giles,” Sir Justice was levering himself back into the buggy. “Just tell me what you know.”
..............
The dipping sun blanched the watchmaker’s white walls with an orange glow like firelight. Tucker stared at them, the terraced shop in Market Street notable, not only for its colour, but for the elegant sundial sitting in the middle of the cobbled road outside. The time was 4:23 exactly.
Tucker had returned to the broadcast tower to don his suit of armour, the silver cutlass he had used to spear the werewolf now strapped to his waist. The light caught on the stained blade, his tarnished breastplate and neck guard. His shoulder and knee pads, elbow guards and greaves were all made from a white plastic, strapped around hi
s mail shirt and jeans, but it was still hot inside the protective gear even as flakes of snow swirled about him. And Tucker was feeling anxious. He’d never investigated a murder scene before.
What the hell am I even doing here? he thought. I’ve no clue what I’m meant to be looking for. And haven’t I been sickened enough already, fighting off a werewolf and then eating breakfast at the local blood bank?
Hesitantly, he approached the shop front, four lead light windows under a black awning that read: Callier’s Clocks. Two of the Kings Guards, dressed in their own uniforms of black suits and bowler hats, stood beside the door.
“Better cover your nose, at least at first,” one of the guards said, handing the knight’s apprentice a clean handkerchief. “It’s the smell that gets you.”
“Thanks,” Tucker nodded, reaching for the door and pushing it open. A brass bell tinkled as he went inside.
A row of carriage clocks sat ticking on a shelf on the north wall, their hands corresponding exactly to the dial outside, but Tucker barely noticed. He was too busy gagging from the putrid stench of the room into which he’d walked. More concentrated than the bar, it smelt like fish rotting on a summer’s day, sickly and sharp. Tucker held the cloth close and tried not to vomit.
His mind swam with the dizzying odour back to his conversation with Sir Justice the night before – a plot to kill Lord Truth, a conspiracy. Surely the telepaths have to be involved? And what about Giles, was he really one of them? The thought cut him deeper than it should. And how is any of this helping Six? he shrugged.
The sunlight was rendered warm and thick as it shone through the mottled panes of the shop window, but the store was tidier than Tucker expected. Usually Callier’s display cases were caked in dust, but they’d recently been cleaned, the wall clocks polished, and dozens of gold and silver watches sparkled in the front counter. Prices had gone up too. A sports watch, like the one Tucker was wearing, was now five Lutons dearer than when he’d bought it.
Clockwork and digital, Terry Callier was known throughout the city for his technical expertise. Since The Fall he had turned his hand to electronics in a big way. He was responsible for building much of the security system Jon Way had designed, as well as adapting all manner of machines for use with the crystals.
The Last Days Page 22