Wolf in Shadow-eARC

by John Lambshead

  However, the goon brightened at the onset of a fight. This, his expression seemed to say, was his metier, his raison d’être, the purpose for which he had been put on Earth. It was a shame that it all went wrong so quickly.

  The heavy charged, arms flailing. Max took a step back at the critical moment, and the heavy went past like a buffalo heading for the water hole. He covered the ground with impressive speed for such a large man until he made intimate contact with the fruit machine. It made an angry chucka-chucka noise at the heavy’s impudence, vindictively spraying the gangster with coins while flashing colored lights like a Japanese car console.

  “Friends of yours?” Max asked Rhian.

  “Do they look the sort of people who would be friends of mine?” Rhian asked witheringly.

  The fruit machine shorted out with a loud bang.

  “I am sure your employer can spare you for the rest of the evening,” Max said smoothly.

  “I have to earn a living,” Rhian said.

  “Indeed, and that is what I wish to discuss with you, in private,” Max said, pointedly.

  “Do you know this man?” Gary asked, meaningfully cradling the baseball bat.

  “Yes, he’s a pain in the neck but not dangerous,” Rhian replied, mentally crossing her fingers.

  Gary laughed humourlessly, looking around at the wreckage of his bar. “Tell that to Charlie Parkes’ enforcers—and my slot machine.”

  Max took out his wallet and laid an impressive wad of twenties on the bar. “That should cover breakages.”

  “Perhaps it would be best if I find out what Max wanted, if that’s okay?” Rhian asked Gary, diplomatically.

  “Why not? I don’t seem to have many customers left,” Gary said gloomily, securing the notes.

  The pub had emptied except for the heavies, who had lost interest in the proceedings.

  “Excellent,” Max said.

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  Ever the gentleman, Max held the door open for Rhian. Once outside, he lit a cigarette with an old lighter that smelled of petrol.

  “Those things are dangerous,” Rhian said disapprovingly.

  Max took a deep lungful and exhaled. The smoke curled up, briefly illuminated by the dim street lights before vanishing into the dark.

  “The lighter or the fag?”

  “Both.”

  “I’ve a strong constitution,” Max said.

  Rhian could not see his face, but she just knew he would have a smug smile plastered all over it. Max offered his arm and Rhian found herself resting her hand on it as they walked, like some Edwardian gentle-lady out with her beau. It was all rather old fashioned but somehow right. Refusal would have been churlish and demeaning to her, rather than him. Good manners, she reflected, could be very disarming.

  “You said you had a proposition.” Rhian said. “A business proposition, I trust.”

  “Of course,” Max replied. “You continue to intrigue me, Snow White.”

  Rhian opened her mouth to correct the use of her name but shut it again. The bastard was only trying to get a rise out of her.

  “So I’ve done a little digging into your past.”

  “Really?” Rhian asked.

  “Really,” Max replied. “And guess what I found?”

  “No idea,” Rhian replied.

  “Nothing,” Max said. “You are a high-level witch that no one has ever heard of. I assumed you were a Commission protégée, as you work in partnership with an ex-Commission witch, but they don’t seem to know that you exist.”

  Max did not seem to be taking her anywhere in particular, just looping through the side streets of terraced houses around the pub.

  “I need magical support to deal with the Sith. I tried The Commission, but Karla was unhelpful, so I’d like to put you and your partner on a retainer. Shall we say . . . fifty a day plus expenses, with negotiated bonuses for specific tasks?”

  “Each?” Rhian asked, wondering who Karla was.

  “Okay, each, you drive a hard bargain, Snow White.”

  Rhian had the impression that money was meaningless to Max. She wished she had asked for more but a deal was a deal.

  “These Sith must be important?” Rhian asked.

  “They are bloody dangerous,” Max replied, “But you know that, Snow White, because you’ve met some.”

  Rhian thought of the glamorous couple in the subway and shuddered.

  “Quite,” Max said.

  She and Max ambled along beside storage units built right onto the pavement. The street was narrow here and used by heavy trucks, so it was double-yellow-lined to keep it clear of parked vehicles. Cars passed at regular intervals, part of the London ambience. She took no particular notice when headlights approached on the other side of the road.

  Twenty meters off, the car accelerated suddenly and swung across towards them. Max reacted instantly, picking Rhian up. He ran towards the car before holding her tight against the wall, covering her with his body. The headlights bounced as the car mounted the pavement with its offside front wheel. The driver couldn’t turn in quite fast enough. It missed Max by millimeters, glancing off the brick wall less than a meter beyond them with a rasp of tearing metal. Rhian had the impression of a large German saloon car, a BMW or a Mercedes.

  Flashes lit up the car’s rear window as it drove away, and there was a series of loud cracks. It took Rhian a moment before she realized someone was firing at them. People didn’t fire guns in London. It just never happened.

  Still holding Rhian with one hand, Max returned fire on the back of the car with his pistol. Rhian was astonished. He must walk around the streets permanently armed, so how did he avoid getting picked up by the police? There was a tinkle of glass, and all the car’s lights winked out. It vanished around a corner and did not return.

  “Are you all right?” Max asked, putting Rhian down.

  She leaned against the wall in shock, feeling faint. She grabbed Max for support, and he winced. One of her hands came away from his side covered in something dark and sticky.

  “You’re hurt,” she said. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No thanks,” Max said. “I’ll heal quickly, Snow White. It was only a bullet.”

  “It could have been me,” she said, realizing he had protected her at some cost to himself. Max wasn’t human and bullets probably couldn’t kill him, but it obviously hurt.

  He still held her against the wall, moving his leg between hers until she gripped him with her thighs. He kissed her long and hard and she closed her eyes, surrendering to his passion.

  “I’ve another proposition for you,” he said, his voice thick.

  “I’m not scared of you. I could rip your throat out if I wanted,” she said, opening her eyes.

  “I know you believe that, and maybe it’s true,” he said, shaking his head with a smile. “A human who doesn’t fear me, I suppose that’s what makes you so bloody exciting.”

  He nuzzled her neck with his teeth. She tilted her head back, allowing him access.

  The trouble with academics, Jameson often thought, was that their brains were so stuffed with information that they could never describe a wood without arguing about the definition of a bloody tree.

  “It’s difficult to draw any conclusions. The ancients used terms like elf, goblin, fairy, troll, and dwarf interchangeably,” Kendrics said. He winced as if the idea of such inaccuracy caused him physical pain.

  “But the name Daoine Sith does appear in Irish folk tales in the context of intelligences from outside our universe.” He shrugged.

  Miss Arnoux opened her mouth. From the light of battle in her eyes, she intended to challenge the multiverse model with her view of the Otherworld. However, she shut up after a frown from Randolph promised pain worse than eternal fire on anyone wasting his time.

  “Anything in the library about sucker Protectors guarding the human race from the Sith?” Jameson asked.

  Kendrics shook his head. Miss Arnoux polished her spectac
les.

  “An organization of suckers sounds as unlikely as a conclave of cats,” she said.

  Jameson tended to agree with her.

  “The word Protector was found on an inscribed stone at Castell Dwywran in Wales and is also recorded in the writings of the British monk Gildas the Wise. It is the title of the sixth-century Irish King Voteporix, who ruled Pembrokeshire. One assumes it is a bastardization of the Latin protectores, the word for a staff officer in the late Roman army. It could just mean bodyguard.”

  Kendrics glanced around. Unnerved by the blank stares of his fellows, he started to babble. “The exact word on the stone is protictoris, but that’s probably a spelling error because the scribe lacked a classical education.”

  Randolph gave him a look that could split granite.

  “Voteporix was one of the petty tyrants running a successor barbarian state after the collapse of Roman authority,” Kendrics added frantically, before winding down like the toy rabbit powered by just the ordinary battery in the television advert.

  “And this is relevant?” Jameson asked.

  “Probably not,” Kendrics replied.

  “So there is no information in the entire Library records that are of the slightest value?” Randolph asked.

  Kendrics winced and Miss Arnoux smiled grimly. The annual budget assessment was only nine weeks away. No doubt she had plans to use this as ammunition in another bid to grab some of the Library’s money. One had to keep an eye on what mattered. Saving the world was desirable, all things being equal, but the annual budget assignment was important.

  “There are hints and speculations . . .” Kendrics’ voice died away.

  “So speculate,” Randolph said.

  Kendrics cleared his throat. “The Sith come from the Gaelic Otherworld. They enter and leave the world at specific magical places, such as fairy rings or barrows, where the barrier between the worlds is thin.”

  He glanced around the meeting room to see how his words were going down. Randolph flicked a finger, indicating that he should continue, so Kendrics cleared his throat again.

  “The barriers are considered thinnest at sunrise and sunset.”

  “They enter the world at sunset and leave before the dawn, before the Sun burns them,” Miss Arnoux said.

  “Um, quite,” Kendrics said. “There are suggestions in the Irish Book of Invasions of a war between the Sith and Milesians. The Milesians win and drive the Sith back into the Otherworld. According to the myths, the Irish are descended from or owe their existence to these Milesians. The name is probably from the same root as miles, Latin for a soldier, from which we get words like military or militia. So a Milesian is probably a warrior or soldier . . .”

  “Or Protector?” Jameson asked.

  “In the sense of soldier or bodyguard, yes,” Kendrics replied.

  “So, to sum up,” Randolph said, “some unknown powerful magicians are opening gates for paranormal monsters to enter the world, including some particularly unpleasant Elves that threaten the existence of the human race. But not to worry, because an organization of home-grown supernatural killers intend to fight them to a standstill with London and its seven million inhabitants as the chosen battleground.”

  “Put like that . . .” Kendrics began.

  “We’re fucked,” Jameson finished for him.

  “I hesitate to ask this, but does anyone have any additional good news for me?” Randolph asked.

  Jameson raised a hand.

  “It would be you,” Randolph said. “Do tell, is the Sun about to go nova, the seas boil, or is a plague of frogs due in St. James Park?”

  “It may be of no great import, but this Max character suggested the Sith mated with human beings.”

  Miss Arnoux sniffed. “It is not unknown for people of low morals to have sex with daemons,” she said, looking pointedly at Jameson.

  “Not just sex, but viable reproduction leading to hybrids, which I did not think possible. I realise sex and reproduction are outside your frame of experience . . .” Jameson said to Miss Arnoux.

  He stopped when Miss Arnoux looked sick and Kendrics had turned white.

  “What?” Jameson asked.

  “The Children of the Gods, the Heroes,” Kendrics muttered.

  Miss Arnoux, who was made of sterner stuff than Kendrics, quickly regained her composure.

  “There are many stories in Classical times about hybrid children descended from a god or other mystical being and a human woman.”

  “Zeus appearing as a shower of gold or a swan to have his wicked way with a human maiden,” Jameson said with a grin.

  “Yes, and the children would be powerful beyond human imagining, and they could have grandchildren.”

  “The sons of Hercules,” Kendrics said.

  “Quite.” Miss Arnoux paused to choose her words before continuing. “It’s why the conceptual barrier between the divine and the mundane was less distinct in the Ancient World. The emperors could project themselves as gods to their peoples without inspiring ridicule.”

  “Even if true, this is surely ancient history,” Randolph said. “All very interesting, I suppose,”—his tone suggested otherwise—“but of minimal relevance to our current predicament.”

  “Not that ancient,” Kendrics said. “Take Morgan La Fay, for instance.

  “The nightclub off Regent Street, with the gay sex dungeon?” Randolph asked.

  Everyone looked at him in silence.

  “Are you sniggering, Kendrics?” Randolph asked.

  “No, sir,” Kendrics sat up straight. “Morgan La Fey as in the, ah, mythological sorceress and enemy of King Arthur,” Kendrics said. “Named after the Celtic Goddess Morgana. “La Fay” literally means The Fairy, meaning that she was partly descended from a supernatural being, not that, ah, um, her sexual orientation was . . .”

  Randolph said. “So what?”

  “Don’t you see?” Miss Arnoux asked rhetorically. “Suckers kill individual people, but they need them: no people, no food. These Sith things interbreed to produce viable offspring, powerful magicians that can walk under the Sun. How long before we ceased to be human at all?”

  “It may be worth noting that the putative Milesian-Sith war coincided with the Dark Ages. Roman culture in the British Isles was completely annihilated. When English settlers arrived, the cities and villas of the Roman lowlands were ruins and the land was empty. Only the Celts hidden in the mountains and the offshore islands survived to become the Welsh and Irish,” Kendrics said.

  “Terrific,” Randolph said. “So how do we stop this happening again?”

  There was dead silence.

  “Any ideas, anyone? Don’t all talk at once.” Randolph asked.

  Karla was gazing up at the ceiling with an expression of mild boredom.

  “You stop the enemy before they get in,” she said. “Find out who is opening the gates for the Sith and kill them.”

  She lowered her head and smiled at Randolph, showing long fangs. He smiled back. No fangs, but he had an expression just as predatory. They looked like two cats discussing what to do about mice.

  “A plan with the merit of simplicity,” Randolph said. “It could even work.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” Miss Arnoux asked.

  She didn’t like Karla at all. Every so often she tried to persuade Randolph to “terminate the experiment,” as she put it.

  “Then your worries are over,” Karla said.

  Kendrics cleared his throat.

  “You have a contribution?” Randolph asked.

  “It occurs to me that the daemonic intrusion at Limehouse Basin was somewhat atypical,” Kendrics replied.

  “In what way?”

  “It takes a considerable effort to open a matter transport gate to let in mass rather than just information or energy.”

  Jameson translated that in his head as to let in a daemon rather than a spirit.

  “And yet the daemon immediately targeted a single individual, ignoring a bysta
nder, and just left. Why didn’t it go on a killing spree?”

  “Yes, Gaston noted that at the time,” Jameson said. “You think it was assassination by summoned daemon.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Randolph said. “What do we know about the victim?”

  Kendrics opened a file on his laptop.

  “Name of Fethers, owned a small bank specializing in commodity trading. No previous criminal convictions, no membership of strange cults or religions, just your ordinary City shark. Of course, I don’t have the capability of going through his business dealings.”

  “No, but I know a man who does,” Jameson said, getting to his feet.

  Frankie was still up when Rhian arrived back at the flat.

  “Gary rang to say you had left work early—with this Max character,” Frankie said neutrally.

  Rhian gave her a sharp look. This was like having an elder brother and sister who could not keep their noses out of her business.

  “I didn’t know Gary had your number?”

  “I must have given it to him sometime,” Frankie said casually. “Gary said there had been some trouble at the pub.”

  Rhian shrugged. “Some local hoodlum sent a couple of heavies to fetch me for a date. Max wanted to talk business, so he tossed them out.”

  Frankie’s eyebrows shot up faster than a nun’s knickers. She was clearly reevaluating her opinion of Rhian’s admirer.

  “What business could Max have with you?” Frankie asked neutrally.

  “With you, actually. Max needs to call on witchcraft and has offered you a contract,” Rhian said.

  “Indeed,” Frankie said.

  “He is offering a retainer of fifty quid a day with bonuses for actual jobs,” Rhian said, slightly defiantly. She handed Frankie a check. “That’s three months’ installment on the retainer.”

  Frankie’s eyebrows travelled so far north that they were in danger of disappearing into her hairline. She resembled a geriatric film star with too harsh a facelift, the sort of plastic surgery that relocates your navel to under your chin.

  “That is a considerable sum of money,” Frankie said, slowly. “What would one have to do to earn it?”

  “I didn’t ask that,” Rhian admitted.