Wolf in Shadow-eARC

by John Lambshead

  “Where are those womanish raven-starvers off to?” asked a voice from within the building in a bellow that would have shamed Brian Blessed.

  A man in mail with a helmet richly decorated in gold shot through a door and shook his fist. “Goat dung, come back or I’ll eat your livers and throw your entrails to the dogs!”

  He noticed Frankie and pushed his helmet back so he could see more clearly. Frankie was forced to stop as the man was right in front of her.

  “Well,” he said, “so it’s to be that sort of battle.”

  He was joined by a second bareheaded warrior who pulled a long knife from a sheath hung from his belt. The wolf moved to intercept him. Frankie raised both arms to the sky.

  “My Lord Odin.”

  Sunlight lanced through a gap in the clouds, illuminating Frankie and reflecting golden light off her amber necklace so it seemed to burn.

  The warrior in mail knocked his companion to the ground with a single blow.

  “Put the knife away, idiot. Do you not see who she is? She wears Brisingamen, the chain of fire.”

  He looked at Frankie quizzically, head to one side.

  “What service can I do for you, My Lady? What brings you to this place?”

  Frankie chanted slowly, not taking her eyes off the man.

  “The ninth hall is Folkvang, where bright Freyja decides

  “Where her warriors shall sit,

  “Some of the slain belong to her,

  “Some belong to Odin.”

  She paused for breath.

  “Odin, my Lord, has granted me my pick of the bravest warriors of the Danes and the Norse who fall in noble battle at this place as my half, to sit beside me and at my command in Sessrumnir, great and fair hall. He has granted me Fenrir to smell out cowards,” Frankie gestured at the wolf, “and Muninn to spot the deeds of the valiant. Muninn will watch by the Bridge, missing nothing, guiding the Valkyrie in their harvest,” Frankie said.

  The warrior bowed.

  “In that case, noble Freyja, Queen of Magic and Battle, I shall escort you to the Bridge myself in the hope that I may win a warrior’s death and a seat at your table.”

  And that was how it was. Frankie progressed to through the city with an ever-going escort of warriors and perched the “raven” on a warehouse near Lundenburh Bridge. She and Rhian retired as the Norse longships collided with the bridge. Danish warriors rained missiles into the longships. The Norse had ripped thatched roofs from buildings further downstream and they employed these as shields. The air was filled with the clash of iron on wood and the screams of men.

  The Norse swung iron grapples on ropes and threw them at the bridge. Some men fell, but other warriors rushed to take their place. Frankie and the wolf retreated back into the city as the longships backed water. The ropes attached to the bridge stretched taut, shedding water in fine sprays that formed little rainbows. The structure collapsed with a groan of rending wood, hurling many of the Danish warriors into the Thames. Black clouds rolled across the sky, darkening the ground.

  Rhian was back in St. Olaves churchyard, as Rhian, on two legs. The soft red pastel light of a North European sunset filled the garden. As the women walked through the arch, a child’s song drifted from the gardens.

  “Build it up with iron and steel,

  “Iron and steel, iron and steel,

  “Build it up with iron and steel,

  “My fair lady.”

  Rhian half thought she heard a voice croak “nevermore,” but she probably imagined it.

  The IED was hidden in a culvert by the road, but he couldn’t explain that to the rest of the squad however hard he tried. They pushed on, ignoring him. He was insubstantial, a ghost or a whisper on the wind. He shouted and pulled at their clothes, pointing to the electronic bomb detector that ticked ominously in his hand. A soft tone sounded, indicating they were now in the blast zone. Jameson woke up covered in sweat, the duvet twisted around his body. He picked up the phone by his bed.

  “Jameson, is that you?”

  “Kendrics, what time is it?”

  Jameson squinted at the phone, trying to read the time through sleep-fuddled eyes.

  “Two o’clock in the morning.”

  The last clause was unnecessary, as Jameson’s body clock told him that much.

  “What the hell do you want, Kendrics?”

  “That, ah, data you brought back from Shternberg’s country house.”

  “Yes,” Jameson gripped the phone tighter.

  “The household accounts.”

  “Yes, get on with it, man.”

  “Well, it occurred to me that although the records in Shternberg’s office had been well sanitized that there might be some tangential evidence in the accounts. So I looked for something that appeared harmless but was nonetheless suggestive.”

  Kendrics paused. He really had the most annoying mannerisms.

  “And was there?” Jameson asked, encouragingly, trying to hurry things along without flustering the man. Yelling at him would only slow things down.

  “Yes, I noticed a series of receipts from Shternberg’s chauffeur claiming for filling up his car repeatedly from the same petrol station in East London. It caught my eye because it is only a few miles from Whitechapel University but is not in a commercial zone. The area just has private flats and hotels except for a boarded-up listed building isolated on some wasteland.”

  “Empty, boarded-up, and isolated, that is interesting,” Jameson said.

  “Yes, so I checked ownership. It took time to work through a series of shell companies in the Bahamas, but I believe that ultimately Shternberg owns it.”

  “What’s Randolph doing?”

  “I, um, haven’t told him as it’s late, so I thought in the morning, you know . . .”

  “Ring Randolph now,” Jameson said. “Tell him we’ll need the Gamekeeper on-duty crash team and a witch ready to perform the Egyptian Closing of the Way. Karla and I will meet the team at the petrol station. Now, Kendrics, phone him now. Oh, and Kendrics?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve done bloody well, bloody well indeed.”

  Jameson put down the phone.

  “So the game’s afoot,” Karla said, walking into his arms as he stood up.

  He hadn’t notice her come into his bedroom. She was at her most active at night, but he needed sleep, which he wouldn’t get if she prowled his bedroom.

  “Yah, you’ve ten minutes to get ready. Put some clothes on, Karla. You’re distracting me and I need to think.”

  She laughed lightly and departed after giving him a kiss.

  Jameson pulled on his clothes, wondering where she had picked up the Sherlock Holmes phrase, before deciding that he didn’t want to know.

  Rhian also dreamed, but unlike Jameson, her dreams were tranquil. She and James were together, not doing anything special, but together. It was wonderful. She felt a great loss when her mobile beeped gently in her bedroom. It took a few minutes to track it down to where she had dropped it under her rumpled blouse.

  “I would have woken you with a kiss like old times, Snow White, but I can’t get in your house without permission. That odious doorknocker has it in for me, but all you have to do is proffer the invitation.”

  “And why the hell would I do that, Max?”

  “Because I’ve a job for you, little witch, along with your scary friend.”

  Rhian had trouble classifying Frankie as scary, but she could see how Max might think so, or at least pretend to. You never knew with Max.

  “Can’t it wait until morning?” Rhian asked.

  “Nope, the phones have dialed in. They have a fix, little witch.”

  “I thought you needed six operating, and we have only placed three.”

  “Six is optimum, but three will do to triangulate, especially when the energy release is off the scale. The magic source has fired up again and it is going for the big one, a permanent gate to the Land of the Sith.”

  Rhian went cold, re
membering that terrible, perfect couple.

  “Hold on, I’ll wake Frankie.”

  She dragged on a T-shirt and jeans and banged on Frankie’s bedroom door, eliciting a muffled squawk from inside.

  “Max is outside and he needs us to smash the magic engine.”

  Another squawk.

  “Can’t hear you properly, look, I’ll come in.”

  Rhian opened the door and flicked the light switch down. Frankie and Gary sat bolt upright in her bed, blinking at the sudden glare. A trail of discarded clothes, both male and female, marked the path from the bedroom door.

  “Well,” Rhian said, “how long has this been going on?”

  “I can explain,” Frankie said.

  “I’m waiting,” Rhian replied.

  “It’s not like it looks,” Gary said.

  Rhian raised an eyebrow.

  “Frankie and I went out last night for a quiet drink, and she invited me in for a nightcap and . . .”

  “One thing led to another?” Rhian asked.

  “Yes . . . No, it was late and with all the excitement around this manor lately, she thought it would be safer for me if I slept here.”

  “I see,” Rhian said deadpan, trying not to laugh at Frankie’s hot flush and Gary’s guilty face. “But was she safer with you sleeping here?”

  “It’s not like it looks,” Gary said feebly, reduced to repeating himself.

  “Bollocks, it’s exactly like it looks,” Frankie exploded. “Can’t you see the little minx is winding you up. She’s got us making stupid explanations like a couple of teenagers caught in the dorm after lights out.”

  Rhian couldn’t contain herself anymore and burst out laughing until she cried. Truth to tell, she felt pleased for them. It couldn’t be easy finding companionship at their age. She was pleased and perhaps just a little jealous.

  “Go and make yourself useful in the kitchen with a pot of tea while we get dressed,” Frankie said, trying to reestablish some dignity as the senior partner in their relationship.

  “Okay, but get your kit on as quickly as you got it off, because Max is without,” Rhian replied, slipping out and shutting the door behind her.

  A thud suggested that she had been just in time to avoid whatever Frankie had thrown.

  They assembled outside on the street ten minutes later. Frankie was adamant about not letting Max into her home, muttering something about bloody Karla being daemonic enough for one lifetime. Max outlined the situation.

  “Okay, we need to stop by my lock-up so I can put a kit together and fetch my car,” Frankie said.

  “And we’ll have to drop ‘round the pub so I can pick something up,” Gary said.

  “There’s no point you coming, Gary,” Rhian said. “It will be dangerous and there’s nothing you can do.”

  Gary’s lips set in a tight line.

  “Rhian’s right,” Frankie said.

  “I’m not discussing it. I’m telling you. I am going to keep an eye on you two and that’s the end of the matter.”

  “Yes, Gary,” Frankie said meekly.

  Dear God, Rhian thought, it must be lurve.

  “And the ladies’ fee is twenty thousand up front, with a bonus of a further twenty on successful completion,” Gary said. “The terms are nonnegotiable, but I come free.”

  “If you’ve quite finished pratting around, can we get on?” Max said. “Apocalypse, death and destruction, end of life as we know it.”

  Rhian jumped into the front passenger seat of the BMW, leaving the back to Gary and Frankie. She pretended she hadn’t noticed they were holding hands like lovestruck teenagers. Max squeezed her knee.

  On arriving at the lock-up he took one look at Mildred and decided that they would all go in the BMW. Frankie hummed and hawed, selecting various herbs and artifacts until Max nearly lost it. Fortunately, Gary was in and out the Black Swan in two shakes of a dirty duck’s tail. He chucked something in the car boot that Rhian didn’t see, but from the noise it was probably his baseball bat. She didn’t tell Max who might go ballistic at being diverted to fetch a stick.

  Max set a new speed record through the empty streets down into the docklands, and Rhian soon began to recognize landmarks.

  “You haven’t told us where we are going,” she said.

  “You won’t know it. The magic source is in an old boarded-up house . . .”

  “I bet it’s the Admiral of the Royal Dockyards’ grace-and-favor home,” Rhian said. She watched the illuminated campus of Whitechapel University slide by. It looked even weirder at night.

  “Yes, how did you know that?” Max asked, shooting her a look.

  “One gets to hear things,” Rhian said, casually.

  It wouldn’t hurt to let him wonder.

  “You are always full of surprises, Snow White,” Max said patronizingly. “I’m so glad I decided to keep you.”

  Bloody man had an answer to everything and knew just how to wind her up. She searched for a suitable reply.

  “Stop and turn round,” Frankie suddenly said, interrupting her thought processes. “Go back to that garage.”

  Such was the urgency in her voice that Max did as he was bid without argument. The petrol station was an unmanned all-nighter. A single large black people carrier with darkened windows waited in the shadows by the closed shop. Max pulled in behind it.

  “We have company,” he said.

  Rhian turned around to see a Jaguar sports car stop behind them, boxing in the BMW.

  “Oh great, Tweedledum and bloody Tweedledee,” Frankie said as Karla and Jameson got out.

  Men in dark combat suits with guns on slings debussed from a sliding door in the side of the van and took up a position in front of the BMW. They didn’t point the guns at anyone but held them purposefully, like a plumber holds a wrench when examining some dodgy pipework. When they got out of the BMW, Rhian noticed that Max had his right hand in his pocket. She prayed that he wouldn’t start anything. He might be bulletproof, but the other three weren’t.

  “Karla,” Max said. “I see you brought your people to the party after all. Well, the more the merrier.”

  “What are you doing here, Max?” Karla asked.

  “Trying to protect our flock from Otherworld wolves, same as you, I expect,” Max replied.

  “Never thought I’d see the day that you’d stoop to working for a sucker,” Jameson said to Frankie.

  “You’re in no position to cast the first stone,” Frankie said, nodding at Karla.

  “Can it, the lot of you,” Rhian said, rather surprising herself at her assertiveness. “We don’t have time for all these petty feuds. You all keep telling me how dangerous and impossible it is to stop . . . whatever’s going on.” She paused because she wasn’t sure she did know what was going on, “so why don’t you start behaving like adults and cooperate.”

  “The young lady makes admirable sense, unlike the rest of you idiots.”

  “Miss Arnoux,” Frankie said. “Surely you are not their magic support?”

  Unnoticed by Rhian, an old woman had alighted from the carrier.

  “Thank you for your vote of confidence, my dear,” Miss Arnoux said. “I realise that my life force is not what it was thirty years ago, but I have not yet found a witch of a suitable talent to train as your replacement. Perforce I must do the job myself.”

  “Not tonight,” Frankie said, shaking her head.

  “I hoped you’d say that, Francesca. I’ve a spell prepared that you can use. Come with me and I’ll teach it to you.”

  Gary wandered over to Jameson and was soon deep in conversation. Rhian edged towards them to eavesdrop but was intercepted.

  “Hello, girl on the train,” one of the armed men said to Rhian, pushing his visor up so she could see his face.

  “The fake ticket inspector!” Rhian said. “So you’re not an SAS man.”

  Gaston laughed.

  “Parachute regiment and then The Commission,” he said. “You weren’t far out.”
/>   “The last time we met you were having a panic attack. You never did ring me,” Gaston said accusingly.

  “It’s complicated,” Rhian replied. “I did keep your number.”

  “By Abbadon’s left testicle, can’t you humans keep your mind on the job for more than a second?” Max said.

  “I rather think I did have my mind on the job,” Gaston said with an innocent smile that made Rhian blush.

  The loosely aligned combat teams ditched the vehicles on the carriageway. Rhian examined the old house in the glow cast by the streetlights. It was one of the strangest buildings she had ever seen. It had always stood independently, never part of a typical London terrace. It was roughly square, with four tall windows on each side now boarded up. The lower half was typical London red brick, but the upper was covered in red slate. The grey-tiled roof sloped steeply to a point as high as a third story. The building’s strangest feature was the hexagonal three-story tower with its own pointed roof sunk into one corner of the main building like a medieval alchemist’s laboratory. Large windows circled the top of the tower so the presiding admiral would have had a grand view over the docks and river.

  Elaborately carved wooden posts supported a wooden balcony around the middle story of the tower. There presumably had once been rails around the edge, but now it held only rolls of barbed wire to keep out intruders. It must have been such an elegant working home once.

  They vaulted the crash bars at the edge of the road and walked cautiously towards the house on ground uneven and poorly lit. Rhian was tempted to call the wolf to enjoy the advantage of four legs and better night vision, but she was reluctant to activate it except in dire need. She stumbled, but a hand gripped her elbow.

  “Do you need a hand?” Gaston said. “We have low-light cameras built into our visors.”

  “Lucky you,” Rhian replied, tetchily.

  Gary stayed close to the women, carrying a double-barreled shotgun.

  “I didn’t know you had a gun in the pub,” Rhian said, sidling up to him.

  “It’s for sport, really, not a weapon,” Gary said. “I find a baseball bat far more useful in an East End boozer. Guns up the ante and can lead to unfortunate results and recriminations, especially with the police. A smack from a bat is not considered worth getting worked up about, let alone reporting to the gendarmes. They probably would officially ignore the complaint anyway. Guns, though, guns are heavy metal.”