“If this is getting too uncomfortable—” began Alison.
Every tentacle on Shgshthx’s back stood rigidly on end, so that he looked like a giant upturned hairbrush lying on the ground. “Pain! The pain isss evewywhere!” reported Shgshthx, his voice even higher pitched than usual as his impromptu throat narrowed. “Twying to move. Pain in evewy diwection. Now the chassser hasss caught up. Sssstanding over him.”
Alison knelt, put out a reassuring hand, then withdrew it when she couldn’t see anywhere appropriate to place it. “Can you see what they look like?”
“No . . .” said Shgshthx, pained. “It’sss too bwight. The sssun isss behind them.”
“Sun?” repeated Victor. “How the hell is there sunlight in the middle of a mine?”
Shgshthx’s tentacles unstiffened and flopped down towards the floor. “They’we not in a mine. Thewe’sss gwassss underneath.”
“Shgshthx, we’re trying to find information about the fluidic that was murdered in this mine,” said Alison tactfully.
“Ohhhh,” said Shgshthx, drawing himself back into a standard pile apologetically. “Sowwy. I thought oo meant the other one.”
A silence passed, one that grew deeper and more cloying as each of the three humans realized, one by one, that they had just unwittingly taken a hard left onto a path that led to dangerous places, or at the very least to a lot more paperwork. Eventually, it was Victor who took up the duty of asking the inevitable question. “What other one?”
“The . . . other fwuidic getting kiwwed. Wight now,” admitted Shgshthx. He nodded the topmost part of his mass towards the thickening forest beyond Diablerie’s portacabin. “Over thewe.”
“Holy shit,” breathed Adam. He was staring in the indicated direction with the darting, unfocused eyes that meant he had switched on his enhanced vision. “Huge red blob. Um, I mean, something big and magical just happened. About two hundred yards that way.”
Now that they were paying attention, they heard a noise coming from the same direction. A sort of THUMP-crackle, like an underwater explosion, followed by the sound of falling debris.
“Why didn’t you tell us there was another dead fluidic?!” ranted Victor.
Shgshthx’s mass made a cringing motion. “Because thewe isn’t. Yet.” There was another magical thump, closer this time.
Without a word, the three humans broke into a run. Adam went first, blindly pursuing the source of the noise. Victor followed closely, then Alison brought up the rear.
The forest closed in behind her as she pursued Victor’s black-clad form, shoving bushes aside and hopping awkwardly over fallen branches. She was several paces behind the two professional monster hunters, and she had to sprint at full power just to keep Victor in sight.
He disappeared into a particularly large cluster of low-hanging branches, and Alison put all of her meager energy reserves into a burst of speed to power through the foliage without stopping. Something hard and stone shaped snagged her foot, sending her toppling forwards. Her hands groped for purchase, found none, and she went sprawling over a sapling, ruining its future ambitions of growing taller.
By the time Alison was back on her feet, another thump had come through the trees, close enough to make the leaves quiver in its wake. Adam and Victor were both out of sight, and Alison couldn’t see anything that might indicate a trail. She listened for rustling vegetation, but the wind had picked up, and the sound was all around her.
She wasn’t afraid of getting lost. Her eidetic memory meant she had no concept of lost at all. She knew precisely in what direction the tin mine lay, as well as how far she had come. She was having to remind herself of all of this to keep panic at bay.
She gave up on finding Adam and Victor and instead focused on remembering the direction Shgshthx had originally pointed toward. She continued accordingly, dropping from a run to a nervous jog to get her breath back.
She had pushed through a layer of foliage into yet another, virtually identical one when she heard what sounded like a human yelp, ahead of her and slightly to the side. She adjusted her path, hopping over another low branch.
Her feet skidded in something wet and slippery, and she fell onto her posterior. The palm of her hand slapped painfully onto what felt like loose gravel. She gave a little gasp of irritation and was about to push herself back onto her feet when she looked down and saw what she had landed in.
Not gravel. It was pure white, and coarse, and looked entirely out of place among the browns and greens of the earthy forest floor. It was salt. A pile of salt arranged in a surprisingly neat circle. Looking around, she could see several more of them, marking a join-the-dots path through the trees.
Alison took a deep breath, mentally prepared herself, and looked down at the sticky puddle that her outstretched legs were lying in.
It was a green-brown liquid, with the emphasis more on the brown than the green, that became black and ragged wherever it touched the patches of salt. Part of the goo was still partially formed into a curved limb, the kind that fluidics employed when called upon to move more quickly than usual.
“guuuuuys,” called Alison as loudly as she could manage, gingerly backing out of the splattered fluidic. “over here!”
Adam arrived first, barreling through a thicket to Alison’s left with two forearms in front of his face. Victor appeared a moment later, his coat pulled tightly around him to avoid snagging.
“Urgh, Christ,” said Victor, taking in the sight and the smell of the substance under Alison.
“Did you see the killer?!” panted Adam.
“No, but . . .” began Alison, before realizing that, now that she was closer to the floor, she could see under the low-hanging leaves of the surrounding trees. There was a shape behind the nearby hornbeam that didn’t belong.
She lowered her head further and saw what was undoubtedly a pair of legs, belonging to no one that was presently accounted for. They were poised in an alert crouch, awaiting developments.
Alison provided one. She pointed. “There! Someone’s there! Do something!”
The owner of the mysterious legs bolted for the forest edge as Victor turned. He swung an arm around as if trying to fling off an unwanted piggyback rider, and every leaf of every tree within his field of vision simultaneously burst into flames. It was quite spectacular, especially when the hundreds of individual fires linked up into a single massive inferno that seemed to engulf the entire wood.
“What did you do that for?!” yelled Alison, getting back on her feet in less than a second.
“You said do something!” said Victor petulantly, snapping the tail of his long coat back as the fire crept along a burning branch toward him. “This is the thing that I do! Which way did they go?”
“I don’t know!” said Alison. “I can’t see him now! There’s a load of fire in the way!”
“Adam, which way did he go?”
The orange firelight played prettily off Adam’s sweating forehead. “Uh. I think we’d better start running the other way, to be honest.”
Victor looked up. Another four or five trees became newly ignited where their top branches met their stricken fellows. Then he looked down as a burning stick dropped onto the forest floor and started making fast friends with the carpet of dry leaves and fallen twigs.
Then, after a quick exchange of glances, the three of them ran back the way they came. This time Alison took the lead, making an efficient beeline for the car.
In short time they reached the tin mine entrance, and Alison skidded to a halt alongside the portacabin. Victor and Adam barreled past her without slowing as she pounded her fist on the bright blue plastic door. “Doctor!” she shouted. “Doctor, there’s a fire!”
There was no response. She glanced back and saw a tree collapse with a splintering crash, revealing the growing inferno beyond. Within seconds, another layer of vegetation between her and the orange hell was engulfed.
She began slapping her hand against the door. “Doctor, please!” she y
elled. “The fire’s getting closer!”
Adam came back, his coat discarded and his entire face glistening with sweat. He stumbled over and grabbed Alison’s upper arm with the barest amount of hover handing. “Come on!” He panted. “You won’t help him!”
“I can’t just leave him here!”
“No, I mean . . .” He paused to suck in a deep breath. “You won’t help him because he’s not in there. He’s waiting by the car.”
“. . . Oh.”
27
The adrenaline wore off quickly. The fire service arrived, and the paranormal agents opted to get out of their way with speed. Adam checked in with Danvers, and after giving a brief account of events, he spent the rest of the conversation wincing with the phone held a few inches away from his head. To nobody’s surprise, he relayed that Danvers had ordered all four of them back to London.
The drive back up was somehow even more tense than the drive down, with Adam and Victor’s car following closely behind like an accusing specter in the rearview mirror. The interior of Diablerie’s car remained dominated by gloomy silence, except for one brief moment when Shgshthx leaned over, turned the radio on, and attempted to bob along to Katrina and the Waves.
The evening was drifting over into night by the time they arrived back at the new building, but Danvers and Elizabeth had waited up for a special, extra-shouty debriefing. Soon, Diablerie, Alison, Victor, and Adam were lined up and standing to attention before Elizabeth’s desk, and Richard Danvers was pacing back and forth with his fingertips pressing into the sides of his head.
“So let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet, like a fuse wire in the moment after the spark disappears into the bomb. “You discover that our fluidic killer is a serial fluidic killer. You discover that he was using the same area for multiple killings. And then, having discovered their main hangout, you proceeded to scare them away from it, lose them, and burn all the evidence.”
“Indeed!” confirmed Diablerie, who had been gradually inching away from the other three whenever he thought nobody was looking. “Acting beyond the ken of the most senior agent! ’Twould be no great loss, says Diablerie, if the tainted ones were returned to school for another—”
“shut up!” barked Danvers, with such naked fury that Diablerie threw his cloak over his face out of reflex. “Where the hell were you while this was going on?!”
With the lower half of his face covered, Diablerie could put full force into his glare. “The minds of little men must be protected from the esoteric ways of Diablerie,” he growled.
“What he means is he was in the bog,” said Victor.
“Close thy accursed mouth!” commanded Diablerie, spinning on his heel. “May thou be consumed by thy own fetid taint!”
“That’s enough!” yelled Danvers, even louder. He jabbed a finger at Alison, making her flinch. “I hope you didn’t have plans tonight, memory girl, ’cos you’re going to write down everything that happened. Every word, every gesture, every slightest cough. And then in the morning we’ll figure out who to punish first. Now get out. All of you.”
He closed the door behind them after they had shuffled shamefacedly through, then leaned his entire body against it with a sigh. “Did I look as much like a schoolmaster as I felt?”
Elizabeth was sitting quietly in the exact same pose she had adopted at the start of the meeting: leaning back in her chair, her hands placed together just below her nose. “Diablerie disappears into a toilet,” she said, breaking her twenty-minute silence. “A killer appears. What do you make of that?”
Danvers released a sigh, then turned around. “I don’t know, Elizabeth. What I do know is that we’re sending children and lunatics to do the job of detectives. We can’t keep this to ourselves anymore.”
“Hesketh reports that magic was in use,” said Elizabeth, maddeningly unemotional. “Not consistent with the presence of the dying fluidic. That means the killer has to be magically trained in some way, and so the investigation remains within our jurisdiction.”
“I’m not disputing that,” said Danvers, as he slowly leaned forward and rested his clenched fists on the desktop. “What I’m saying is that I’m not going to let you sit on this any longer. The people have a right to know when they’re in danger. And I know you disapprove, but as of three months ago, fluidics are people. So either you announce we’ve got a killer on the loose—”
“Very well,” interjected Elizabeth, reaching for her tablet. “I’ll release a statement to the press immediately.”
Richard’s words piled up in his mouth and tripped on his tongue. “B . . . whuh?” He backed out of his intimidating pose. “That easy?”
“You’ve been very convincing,” she replied, flicking icons on the screen before her. “We are in complete agreement. Today’s events have been too drastic to keep secret.”
Richard checked around for hidden cameras. “Okay. Good. I’ll have the statement drafted up in the morning.”
“No need. I’m preparing one now. I’ll send it out before I leave tonight.”
“Are you going to mention the Hand of Merlin connection?”
“Of course not. We already discussed the importance of keeping that to ourselves.” She peered up when he made no motion to leave. “It’s in hand, Richard. You can go home.”
Danvers slowly turned, his body crying out at him for dinner and sleep, probably with alcohol somewhere in the process, but he stopped himself just before his hand reached the door handle. “What are you up to?”
“I’m up to my job,” she said, not looking away from her work. “Would that everyone around here could be up to something.”
28
The studio lights came up, and Pippa Morment looked to camera with relish, as it meant she no longer had to look at the person sitting to her left. “Good evening,” she said, on autopilot. “Our top story tonight: With the world still adjusting to the appearance of the fluidic race and the existence of interdimensional sentients, as well as the institutional cruelty they were subjected to by the Hand of Merlin and the so-called Ministry of Occultism, it can now be revealed that interdimensional beings have lived among us for far longer, and I mean literally among us.” She winced internally and made a mental note to browbeat whoever had thrown this last-minute script together. “Joining me now are Dr. Nita Pavani, a representative of the Department of Extradimensional Affairs.”
“Good evening,” said Nita. Her television smile was even more rehearsed than Pippa’s.
“And Aaron Weatherby–Byhagthn, a magically infused person of dual consciousness.”
“Hello,” said Aaron and Byhagthn. They maintained a fixed smile, but their facial tentacles writhed unhappily, trying to shield their eyes from the studio lights.
“Now am I right in saying, Aaron,” said Pippa, turning to address the young man and trying not to breathe through her nose, “that you have been possessed by an interdimensional being without a body of its own?”
“W—”
“Excuse me, Aaron-Byhagthn would prefer that you address them by their full name,” interrupted Nita, leaning into shot. “Also, please don’t use the word possessed. You are addressing a dual-consciousness entity that came into existence from a mutual agreement between its two component entities, and to address them as either individually could be considered quite offensive and a denial of personal identity.”
Pippa hadn’t looked away from the gyrating tentacles. They had now grown used to the lights and were nonchalantly messing up the neat hairstyle that Nita and the makeup department had laboriously created for Aaron-Byhagthn. “I see,” she said, diplomatically. “So . . . why did the two of you join together?”
“We have always been together,” droned Aaron-Byhagthn.
“Like all magically infused individuals, Aaron had a connection to Byhagthn almost from birth,” said Nita. “Aaron has special magical capabilities as a result, and when he came of age, he had the opportunity to take on a conjoin
ed identity in order to enhance that capability and to give Byhagthn a chance to experience a physical existence.”
“Could you demonstrate these magical abilities for the camera, Aaron? Er, Aaron-Byhagthn?”
“W—”
“Unfortunately, Aaron-Byhagthn’s particular ability involves fooling other people’s senses, so the camera wouldn’t see anything,” said Nita. “The reason they wanted to talk to you tonight about themselves and young people like them is because they have been victims of the most appalling oppression at the hands of the Ministry of Occultism.” She drew herself up haughtily.
“What kind of oppression?” asked Pippa, unsure of who to address and compromising by addressing the space between the two guests.
“The policy was and still is to imprison magically gifted young people in what is termed a ‘school,’ where they are subjected to forced reeducation that suppresses the consciousness of the interdimensional being and makes a dual consciousness virtually impossible even if they desire it.”
“Dr. Pavani, you mention that this is policy, but you yourself represent the Department of Extradimensional Affairs,” pointed out Pippa.
“Yes,” said Nita, who was ready for that. “I am helping the Department dismantle these lingering policies of the Ministry of Occultism, and that starts with taking responsibility for what those in power have done to an underprivileged minority in our society—”
“If I could interrupt you there, Doctor,” said Pippa, recrossing her legs. In the darkness behind the cameras, a producer bit her lip, recognizing the sign that Pippa was about to go off script. “You’re saying that magically infused people are underprivileged?”
“Yes . . .” said Nita warily.
“Some might argue that having mind-control powers and receiving a free education is a strange definition of underprivileged.”
All of Nita Pavani’s instincts fired at once, and she stammered as several of her favorite sentences crowded to be the first one out of her mouth. “That . . . many would consider that very offensive! When I found Aaron-Byhagthn, they were being kept in what amounted to a dungeon!”
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