In return, the Guards took the view that the Parachute Regiment dragged their knuckles on the ground when they walked– and that was only the officer’s mess. Of course, both considered the Light Infantry to be farmers with guns who still had straw sticking out of their hair and the Royal Tank Regiment to be sweaty spanner-heads with oily hands. Sometimes Jameson found it surprising that the British Army managed to find any time at all to engage the Queen’s enemies.
“The Guards add tone to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl,” Jameson said, loftily.
“Hello Karla,” Gaston said, ignoring him.
The two grinned at each other without humor like two rival Mafia Capos at a mob “sit down.” Gaston and Karla went back a very long way. Gaston led the Gamekeeper team that captured Karla. He lost a trooper that day. The trooper was not just a colleague but also his girlfriend.
“Where’s the witness?” Jameson asked.
“Jane Littlewick, in there,” Gaston pointed to the van.
The witness was a petite blonde girl in her early twenties, perched on the edge of a fold-down chair like a bedraggled sparrow on a TV aerial. She was dressed in a smart business suit that showed her legs off to advantage. Unfortunately her tights were splashed in blood, rather spoiling the erotic effect unless you had somewhat unusual tastes. Jameson went through the motions of showing her his Special Branch Warrant Card, but she was white with shock and hardly looked at it.
“What did you see?” Jameson asked, softly.
“Ripped to pieces, he was ripped to pieces,” her voice was monotonous, like she had withdrawn her emotions into a ball. She did not react to Karla at all, which was unusual. Karla was normally the first thing people noticed, one way or another. The paramedic with the Gamekeeper team had probably given her a light sedative.
“Start at the beginning, Jane,” Jameson said, encouragingly.
“Mister Fethers parked the car and we got out and walked into the alley.”
Mister, so she was not his daughter or niece, probably a secretary or personal assistant then.
“You worked for Mister Fethers?” Jameson asked.
“No, I’m a student. He’s a client—was a client,” she replied after a pause.
Jameson looked at her blankly before the penny dropped. She was an escort girl, a student paying her college fees by upmarket whoring. The hours were short and the pay was good, three hundred pounds an hour and plenty of time to study. That explained the business suit. The girls wore them so as not to attract attention in the expensive hotels where they serviced their clients. Jameson felt in no position to judge her. You all did what you had to and he wished he could forget half of what he had done. Whoring, by comparison, was an honest, victimless trade. That led him to another question.
“Why were you going to his apartment?” Jameson asked. “What made you take the risk? He could have been a psycho.”
Hotels were safe because the clients had to book a room with their credit cards.
“He was a regular,” she said. “The escort agency knew him.”
“I see, go on,” Jameson said, encouragingly.
“There was a crash and a clang like a girder hit with a hammer. I jumped and looked around, but there was nothing there. Something had hit the bollard. Paint was gouged off, but there was nothing there,” she said dully. “A sudden gust of wind blew dirt in my eyes, so I covered my face with my hands.”
She paused.
“Go on,” Jameson said.
“Screams, terrible screams, and when I looked his face had gone, ripped off, blood everywhere. He tried to run but it slashed him to pieces. Bit by bit, like they strip meat off a kebab spit. I covered my eyes again for a long time, and when I opened them it was gone, so I phoned the police.”
“You keep saying ‘it.’ What did it look like?”
“I told you, there was nothing there. It ripped him to pieces but there was nothing there.” Her voice rose to a scream and she stood up, hitting Jameson ineffectually on the chest. A Gamekeeper shoved a needle into her arm and Jameson caught her as she collapsed, lowering her gently to the floor.
“Ripped to pieces by an invisible daemon, just like Abdul Alhazred,” Jameson said softly.
“Whatever it was, it’s gone,” Gaston said.
“Not very far,” Karla said, speaking for the first time.
“What?” Jameson asked.
“I can feel it waiting, just outside,” she replied. “It’s satiated for the moment, but now it knows where there is an open door to food.”
“What is it?” Gaston asked.
Karla looked at him and cocked her head.
“A hunter,” she said, as if that were obvious.
Karla tended to divide the world into hunters and the hunted, so her reply was not especially informative.
“Gaston, get a combat team ready,” Jameson said.
“Yes, Major,” Gaston replied.
Jameson fished out his mobile and pressed a key while the Gamekeepers changed into combat uniforms and body armour. It rang twice and then a handshake logo flashed as the phone accepted the encryption code from the exchange in The Commission building.
“Yes,” Randolph answered.
“It’s a bad one. I need a clean-up team with Coven support. There was an incursion, and there is still a hole, so I’m putting the Gamekeepers on it.”
“Understood,” Randolph rang off.
The Gamekeepers checked their bolt guns, wide-bore magnetic rail-gun carbines that fired wooden bolts reinforced with steel strips. Jameson fished a similarly shaped pistol out from a holster and examined the power level and ammunition load. They returned to the bollard, trying not to step on body parts. The Gamekeepers took up firing positions.
“One thing puzzled me,” Gaston said. “Why did the daemon focus entirely on the man and leave the totty alone?”
Karla stared intently at nothing and gave a soft laugh.
“What?” Jameson asked, deflected from Gaston’s observation.
“It knows we’re here,” she replied.
The air above the bollard shimmered, and mist coalesced. The wind pulled it into white tendrils. Jameson felt a sudden chill. Something sucked entropy out of the alley. He slipped the safety off his gun. There was a whine of charging capacitors, and a green light came on indicating it was live.
Karla smiled at Jameson, showing long fangs. “It’s coming,” she said, happily.
“Sarn’t?” Jameson asked.
“Sir!”
“Stay here with your men and shoot anything unusual that comes into the alley. See if you can illuminate it with ultraviolet torches.”
“Unusual, right,” Gaston said. “An invisible unusual.”
“After you, Karla,” Jameson said.
“You’re not going in after it?” Gaston asked.
Karla looked puzzled. “Of course, how else do we hunt it down?”
“Is this a good idea, major?” Gaston asked.
“Probably not, but it may be visible in the Otherworld,” Jameson said.
He was rationalizing. Karla would hunt the daemon, and he would support her. What else could he do? On her own, she could get hurt and that would be intolerable. If he went with her the worst that could happen was that they both died, and who would miss him? Hell, he wouldn’t even miss himself.
CHAPTER 9
THE POLTERGEIST
Frankie yelped and made a grab for her, but Rhian was too quick. The dogs stood nonplussed. Their body language said this could not be really happening. You threatened humans and they ran, or screamed, or both.
Rhian focussed on the wolf within and began to growl softly in her throat. The dogs responded by moving to surround her, showing their teeth and snarling. Rhian felt the wolf’s amusement at the challenge. It surged within her, the growl in her throat deepening into a rumble. The dogs dropped their tails and cringed, ears back. Rhian took a step towards them and they broke, scuttling off to hide in a far corner of the compound.
“You can come in now,” Rhian said.
Frankie shut the gate carefully behind her, bolting it with a sharp clang.
“You are full of surprises, honey, aren’t you?”
“I said I was good with dogs,” Rhian said, grinning and lifting her hands palm up.
“How are you with boxes?” Frankie dropped the cardboard box onto Rhian’s hands.
Frankie strode around the building site, her long loose skirt whipping around her legs. She stopped every so often, now stretching her arms out like a sleepwalker in a silent movie, now putting both palms flat on her head like a TV psychic. Rhian sighed and followed. She was prepared to believe Frankie did have magical powers, but was it really necessary to ham it up like this? Sometimes the woman could be so embarrassing.
It was hot on the site, and the air smelt dry. The box became heavier in Rhian’s arms. Haphazard breaths of wind swirled cement dust around her feet, occasionally lifting it into her face. She fancied she could taste the quicklime and wished she had thought to bring a bottle of lemonade with her. They walked up and down between half-built brick houses supported by scaffolding.
A sharp noise made Rhian jump. A blue plastic cement bag hooked over the top of a steel rod whipped in the wind, slapping against a concrete pylon with repetitive cracks.Frankie picked up some dust and threw it into the air, watching it sparkle in the sunlight.
“The place is haunted,” Frankie said. “There are magical traces all over.”
“So we are talking ghost?” Rhian asked.
“Don’t sound so skeptical,” Frankie said. “We are talking poltergeist; although the word literally means noisy ghost.”
“But definitely things that go bump in the night?” Rhian asked.
“Or day,” Frankie replied. “Most poltergeists are faked by attention-seeking adolescents. Sometimes they can be the result of raw psychokinetic energy from troubled people. In this case, I think we have something more serious. I suspect there is a leakage of power from the Otherworld. The barrier here has become thin and porous. I suppose you could call it a ghost.”
“Oh, a hole!” Rhian said. “That sounds worrying. What causes that?”
“A natural event that releases a storm of violent emotion, like a murder. Of course, holes can be deliberately opened by the right magic.”
She flashed Rhian a quick smile. “Don’t look so anxious honey. It’s easily fixed.”
She took the box from Rhian and knelt down to set up her equipment, which included a small gas camping stove. She lit it with a battery-powered electric spark and placed a small metal bowl on top. Frankie waited until it glowed red hot.
“The trick is to seal the holes,” Frankie said. She chanted and sprinkled herbs into the bowl. They crinkled and browned, releasing acrid fumes into the air.
Rhian noticed that the wind had dropped. The cement bag drooped silently from the scaffolding. The air hung hot and still like the prelude to a massive electrical storm. A trickle of sweat ran down Rhian’s face. Nothing moved except Frankie, and her voice seemed to recede, muffled as if far away. A tiny dust devil barely a meter high danced across the ground, picking up cement dust. It spun into the shade of a wall and collapsed in a puff of smoke like something from a stage magician’s act.
It was not the first dust devil Rhian had seen since coming to London, but she still found them fascinating. She had never encountered one in Wales. It was too windy there, but conditions were favourable in the low, flat Thames basin. Another dust devil appeared, then a third. More sprang up until she was surrounded by them.
Frankie’s voice strengthened as if a veil had lifted. The brick walls of the half-finished buildings shimmered and faded, collapsing into themselves. They reformed into mudbanks and reeds. Frankie clicked into sharp focus, kneeling in long grass. The sky was so large. Rhian could see to the horizon in each direction. Pools and streams were everywhere, scattered between grassy hillocks and reeds beds. Frankie chanted and burnt her herbal mix, seemingly oblivious to the transformation.
“Frankie?” Rhian asked. “Is this supposed to happen?”
She got no answer. Frankie did not even seem to have heard the question.
Dust devils danced across the flat landscape. They were bigger than on the building site, many two or three meters high. One strayed over a pool, sucking up cold water and collapsing in a localized shower of rain. The whirlwinds danced around Rhian and Frankie, colliding and merging. The resulting amalgamations spun with greater energy and were darker and more solid. Eventually, there was only one. It curved slowly in towards the women.
“Frankie,” Rhian said again, shaking the woman’s shoulder without response.
Rhian watched the dust devil suspiciously. She fancied she could see a face in the wind, an old woman, a hag. She heard the whirlwind, heard mad laughter and a creaking voice.
“At last, at last, a sister, a vessel!”
Rhian stood on four legs and the world was monochrome.
Rhian was the wolf, morphing instantly without pain, Rhian one moment and the wolf the next. She did not have time to consider the simplicity of the transformation. The dust devil sucked mud from the ground, spraying it into the air. It stuck together, becoming first a pillar, then a dirt-encrusted figure. The dust devil collapsed but the figure remained.
It moved. Mud flaked off with every step to expose a walking corpse. Rhian had seen bodies in the British Museum that were natural mummies, desiccated and blackened by the dry Egyptian desert. This thing looked like them. Strands of hair that still showed a definite ginger hue trailed from its emaciated skull. Not just a walking corpse but a walking ginga corpse.
Frankie knelt transfixed, so the wolf gave her a heavy nudge with her snout. It seemed to wake Frankie up and she looked in horror at the wolf and gave a little cry. The wolf licked her face, startling Frankie even more. From her expression, she could not have been more astonished if the wolf had given an impromptu performance of “Singing in the Rain” with a brolly clutched between her jaws.
“Rhian?” Frankie glanced around, but, apart from her, there was only the advancing corpse and the wolf.
The wolf made a small, whining croon, like a wolf mother to a cub, and licked Frankie’s face again. Frankie pushed her off. “Yuk!”
“Rhian, is that you?” Frankie asked the wolf.
Rhian wondered if she expected an answer. The wolf looked meaningfully at the corpse and growled. The mummy sped up, its gait smoothing as if it was relearning how to walk.
“I guess you are the wolf,” Frankie said, “but what is that?”
She adjusted her glasses and examined the corpse, which had broken into a shambling jog-trot.
“Oh Goddess, it’s that sort of poltergeist,” Frankie said in alarm.
She held both hands out and began to chant. Blue light flickered around her fingers, thickening and spreading as she sang. She pushed at the light and it drifted forward, forming a transparent shield between them and the corpse. A withered claw touched the light and recoiled as if it was electrified. The mummified thing laughed, a dry, cackling, wheezy sort of sound.
“Is that the best you can do, sister?” it asked, voice like a creaking door.
It raised a withered hand and ran a finger like a claw down the blue light, splitting it in two. The halves fell away, dissolving into the swamp. The water flickered and fizzed with blue froth.
“Bugger,” Frankie said. “It wants me, not you, Rhian, so save yourself and run. Tell The Commission, tell Jameson.”
Frankie kept her eyes on the corpse.
The Rhian part of the wolf wondered where the hell she would run to and what The Commission was. Frankie had clearly enunciated capital letters. She was reluctant to leave her friend and the wolf agreed. You did not leave a pack mate to a predator; even, especially, a weedy pa
ck mate like Frankie. The wolf defended what was hers. To flee was foreign to her nature.
The wolf covered the distance to the corpse in a single bound. The monster reacted with astonishing speed for a dead, mummified thing. It slapped the wolf around the head, rolling her over. The corpse promptly ignored the wolf, reorienting on Frankie. Such monomania was not only rude but bloody stupid. The wolf bounced to its feet and charged, knocking the corpse head first into a pond. The wolf seized its shoulder. It was like biting into a tire except that the flesh tasted leathery.
The corpse twisted and lashed out with its free arm, hitting the wolf in the shoulder with a punch like a pile driver. Something cracked and the wolf snarled. Her left front leg hurt when she put her weight on it. The corpse cackled in delight, regained its feet, and reached out.
The wolf feinted a leap but slid under the grasping arms so that the corpse was left hugging itself like a disappointed child. Rhian had an urge to giggle, but it came out as a snarl.
While the corpse looked stupidly at its empty embrace, the wolf pivoted on her hind legs. Rearing up to place her good front paw in the small of the monster’s back, she pushed with her whole body weight. She forced the corpse back down into the mud. Then she jumped on it.
The wolf bit deep into the hole in the corpse’s shoulder until her teeth scraped bone. She clamped her jaws shut and shook her head. Her powerful neck muscles ripped out the corpse’s shoulder joint. The monster hissed and swung its good arm. This time the wolf anticipated the blow, jumping clear.
The corpse’s left arm dangled uselessly on strips of dried muscle. The wolf sprang and took the corpse by the throat as it tried to get up. They tumbled over together and the wolf mauled and tore until the corpse’s head came off.
The monster lay in three pieces. The clawed fist on the torn-off arm opened and shut convulsively. The detached head glowered helplessly at the wolf. The body pushed itself up to its knees, using its remaining arm. Steam hissed from its wounds. It thickened to grey vapor that rolled off the corpse in clouds like the smoke from a bonfire of wet leaves. It covered the wolf until this caused sensory deprivation. Rhian’s personality dissolved in the swirling vapor like sugar in hot tea.
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