The End of the Line

by The End of the Line (retail) (epub)

  But she hadn’t been in time.

  And now you only have one of them left. How will you protect her?

  Amanda twitched as the whispers coalesced into English in her ear. She held herself in place, looked around to see if the others had noticed.

  There’s another way. Who better to rescue a young girl from an aggressive gangster than a demon? No one would dare touch her family again. She’d be a legend even greater than before. There’d be more deaths after, true, a demon had its own agendas after all, but what were a few strangers for family?

  No. She tried to close her mind off. She’d never needed anyone else and she didn’t now. She had her own plans in motion on the AK front. The only deaths on her conscious would be those who deserved it.

  Which brought her to Skeebs.

  There was something almost animal to the boy now – hunted, cornered. He was trembling, his knees tucked up. One leg jiggled constantly. The boy’s breath strained. It was held too long, came out too quickly, juddering and shivering. The steam came in puffs like smoke signals, betraying his thoughts as they snagged and bumped along whatever dark roads the boy was travelling these days.

  The others hadn’t seen it. While Caleb had been up touching the symbols, Amanda had been watching Skeebs. Watched as the boy looked to his own hands and flinched. He’d hesitated in front of Reeves, making sure that he used the correct hand. Not wanting to expose the other. Amanda knew that if she’d asked to see his fingers he’d have refused. But she didn’t need to see them. She knew what she’d seen smudged on his fingertips.

  She hadn’t said anything. Let Skeebs think he was safe for now. Let him make a mistake. It would make things easier. Caleb would have no choice but to take her side when Skeebs decided to act.

  Skeebs (or had it been Reeves?) had been right on that front. He was here more because AK was cleaning house than what was in his head (though it still might hold something important). AK thought he was being smart, cooking up that excuse. But with new revelations about Reeves’ powers coming damn near every hour now, how much did they really need Skeebs’ knowledge? Did the benefits of keeping him outweigh the risks?

  What was one more body in all this compared to how many she’d seen Reeves leave in its wake?

  She had enough corpses filling her dreams already from those three months of hell tracking that thing down.

  Three months she was never going to forget.

  Chapter 17

  Amanda

  One month earlier

  The entire café jumped as the apparition burst through the door with a blast of fetid East London air.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  The Formica chair scraped under Caleb as he stood. Amanda’s stomach twisted at the smell of greasy cooking. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten but it hadn’t been recently. She shut her eyes as a wave of fatigue hit her but caught herself before it got too far.

  Grabbing his phone, Caleb jerked a thumb to the next table over.

  Dane and Stanton. Amanda had been in too much of a rush to recognise them with their backs to the door. Both were big, muscle-bound and entirely useless for what Amanda had in mind.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ The words were barely out of her mouth when she noted the third person at their table, her small frame hidden from view by their bulk.

  Bridget avoided her eye under the pretence of gathering her bag. She was dark around the eyes, her clothes loose on the shoulders and collar.

  Amanda took a step towards her and caught the briefest expression of her fear before the big men closed ranks, sealing her from view.

  ‘Easy,’ said Caleb, holding out a hand. ‘Not here.’

  Amanda looked across the nervous faces peering from behind the counter. The two other patrons were hunched over their drinks, staring into them, intently.

  The Whitechapel street stalls were only beginning to open, the shopkeepers unloading their wares from vans.

  The traffic continued at a snail’s pace, every driver’s attention fixed on the car ahead. There wasn’t a thing out of place. If the police were following her then they were good. But maybe she was just being paranoid.

  Taking a moment to touch the cards in her pocket, she brought out her caffeine pills. She dry swallowed two of them, the small tablets currently the only things holding her head from the ground.

  Countless night hours spent trying to come up with a non-magic solution and nothing.

  Caleb came out prepared for an argument. He got this look on his face like he was turning to granite when he knew Amanda was seething.

  ‘It’s Davis,’ Amanda filled him in.

  The other two guys came out next, lining up their broad shoulders. Bridget stuck to their side, a step back so they could intervene if Amanda went for her again.

  She had a big brown leather bag clutched to her chest like it was some kind of protection. Her expression was fixed into a surly pout.

  ‘I hope you understand that I’m equally unimpressed about working with you.’

  The words rocked Amanda back on her heels. She was unimpressed?

  ‘Half my friends are dead because of you,’ Amanda snarled, fighting to keep her voice low. ‘My family is in danger and I haven’t slept in days cleaning up your fucking mess. I am this close to shooting you in the face.’

  The woman paled.

  Dane and Stanton grimaced. ‘Boss wouldn’t like that,’ said one of them.

  ‘Then start telling me why you’re here.’

  ‘I believe I’ve found a way to track him directly,’ Bridget’s voice was brittle. ‘It’s theoretical but—’

  ‘But not stop him.’

  ‘If I can get close enough to him I believe I can re-establish my control long enough to—’

  ‘Just don’t get in the way. Where are we going?’

  ‘Van’s just round the corner,’ Caleb pointed the way.

  The pair pulled ahead of Bridget and her bodyguards so they could talk.

  ‘We need her,’ said Caleb.

  ‘She’ll just slow us down.’

  ‘Think? Looks like we’re standing still.’

  ‘Fine. But the other two stay here.’

  ‘Boss won’t like that.’

  ‘Just get it done.’

  It had been two months since Reeves had slipped his leash, leaving a televised disaster and a pile of bodies behind him. He’d been more discrete in the weeks following, not to mention more creative, picking off the gang responsible for summoning him one at a time, their families included. Just as Amanda had predicted.

  But for one strange detail

  Something about the night of the summoning had caused Reeves to single Amanda out. Perhaps because she’d shot him. It was almost like he wanted her hunting him. It was to her that he sent his little trophies; a tooth, a fingernail, a tongue. Sometimes leaving it in an envelope bearing her name on the nightclub front step. Once it had been handed to her by a glamoured barista. Another by a homeless man on the street.

  They didn’t have the resources for forensics, or the time to phone around and see who was missing. So, with Jamison as a go­between, she’d used Bridget’s magic. With such a large ‘living piece’ (toenail cuttings didn’t suffice) Bridget could identify the location of the owner with a simple spell, which she gave to Jamison who gave it to Amanda.

  It ground her gears having to get even that close to magic. It was like Reeves was taunting her, forcing her to work so closely with it. She would turn her back on the whole job were it not so clear that Simon, the kids and herself were on Reeves’ list.

  So here she was, awake for the fourth day straight and running on empty, not so much tracking Reeves as following in his wake hoping the thing would leave a clue to where it was hiding. What they’d do if they somehow caught up with Reeves on his erratic trail was anyone’s guess. Amanda didn’t believe in Bridget’s assertions that she’d be able to bring Reeves back to heel if she could only get close enough. Amanda was pinning her hopes
on figuring something out before that happened. If she could do it without using Black so much the better. It would crush the idea of gangs using magic once and for all.

  Caleb’s van was just around the corner.

  ‘Licence plates?’

  ‘Got them couple of hours ago. Office car park.’

  Caleb handed her the keys and Amanda rounded to the driver’s side, looking again for suspicious cars and finding none. Caleb held the passenger door for Bridget. The woman cast Amanda a wary glance across the frayed leather bench but made no protest as she climbed in.

  ‘Door’s unlocked,’ Caleb grumbled to the guards as Amanda took her seat. The van rocked on its suspension as the big man pulled himself in after Bridget, forcing the woman to budge up. Her shoulder rubbed uncomfortably with Amanda’s, her elbow digging into the crook of Amanda’s arm. Amanda gritted her teeth against her crawling skin, biting back the hundred more things she wanted to say.

  The back door rattled as Dane or Stanton found it locked. The van was already moving, leaving their protests in the dust.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Bridget twisted in her seat to see into the empty van.

  Amanda squeezed the accelerator, beating an amber light.

  ‘Pull over.’ Bridget began to scrabble through her bag. ‘I demand that you pull over right now.’

  ‘Relax,’ Caleb reached over a slow, inexorable hand, pulling the phone from Bridget’s fingers and dropping it back into her bag.

  ‘But Jamison said—’

  ‘Jamison’s not here,’ said Amanda.

  ‘You need me.’ Her voice began to fill the cab, her tempo rising to match her heart. ‘You’ll never find him without me, he’ll kill you one by one. Please, I have a—’

  ‘We’re not going to kill you,’ said Amanda, if only to stop her pleading. ‘Not in broad daylight. That address you sent belongs to Davis.’

  They could hear Bridget’s phone going off in her bag. She made no move to answer it. Amanda watched a police car heading the other way and decided it was a good idea to put her seatbelt on. The others followed her lead.

  ‘Once I’m there, I’ll set up my equipment,’ said Bridget, composing herself. ‘The bond I created between us during the summoning—’

  ‘I don’t need to know the details.’

  Bridget prickled. ‘I’m simply trying to—’

  ‘You think you can follow this bond like a leash between you and him. So, what’s stopping him doing it the other way? He could know we’re coming.’

  ‘…It’s possible—’ started Bridget.

  ‘Better off as bait,’ said Caleb.

  ‘I think a bit of respect—’

  Amanda braked harder than she needed at a red, cutting the woman off as they lurched in their seats.

  The steering wheel leather squeaked under her hands.

  ‘Easy,’ Caleb warned.

  ‘I got pulled up by the police, yesterday. In front of my family. The fucking police. Round my house. Handcuffs. Questions. Because of you. Only got out this morning.’

  Bridget’s fists had tightened on her bag. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Whatever I had to.’

  ‘I didn’t know it would come to this,’ she muttered it into her chest.

  The car horn behind them blared. The light was green.

  ‘Bollocks you didn’t. You were running before your fuck up had even hit the news. You hear that, Caleb? Boss caught her packing her bags and booking plane tickets.’

  ‘Heard that,’ said Caleb.

  ‘You would have done the same,’ she protested. ‘I’m not cut out for this. I’m not a criminal.’

  ‘You’ve got more people killed in two months than the two of us have our whole lives. Men. Good men. Their families. You deserve to swing from a police noose. Not me. Not my family.’ She realised she was shouting, realised people on the street could see her.

  It was the fatigue making her sloppy.

  In her pocket, she felt her own phone buzz. Simon had been texting her every twenty minutes. Thanks to the police, the cat was out of the bag. He wanted to contact his people for help but they both knew that with something like this they would just disappear into the digital aether. They might never hear from them again.

  She’d done her best to keep her family in the dark, more so than usual if she was honest. She had never spoken to Simon about Reeves. It had seemed a problem beyond his scope that all she’d wanted to do was keep her family as far from it as possible. But, of course, they had known something was up. They had read the tension in her. She and Simon had already been arguing, him wanting to know what was happening and her refusing to talk about it. Emily and Michaela had tried to make her feel better, despite not knowing what the problem was, frustrated that they couldn’t ease their mum’s suffering. The panic on their faces when she’d been taken away…

  Bridget’s phone was ringing again. So was Caleb’s.

  ‘Jamison,’ he said.

  ‘Text him. Those guys aren’t to come to the house, there’s enough of us already.’

  Caleb nodded, waiting for the phone to ring out. ‘I need to warn him about the police?’

  ‘He already knows. We’re OK. They’re just shaking trees about the office thing. Usual suspects – criminals, magic activists.’

  ‘Won’t last.’

  ‘No. It won’t.’

  * * *

  It was a quiet little street.

  Men and women in suits and headphones marched to the nearby tube station. An old woman heaved a squeaky shopping carrier ahead of her. Somewhere there was the distant summer buzz of a lawn mower, the sharp tang of cut grass in the air.

  Those who passed the van barely gave it a second glance. A road used to decorators and plumbers.

  They were parked in Davis’ driveway up the side of the house. Davis’ car was still in the drive, by the back door.

  Inside a phone rang, the electronic trill echoing through empty rooms. Amanda counted the rings under her breath.

  Squinting across the windows, she looked for a twitch of curtains, a shadow of movement. She could make out a sliver of back garden from where she sat, the bright colour of a child’s slide.

  The phone continued to bleat.

  Bridget winced as Amanda cut the call.

  ‘We’re going to have to go in.’

  ‘If Reeves is still in there?’ asked Caleb.

  ‘Then that’s it for us.’

  ‘I can’t feel him,’ said Bridget, a tremor in her voice. ‘But if he is, I’ll just need a few seconds.’ She began rolling up the sleeve of her suit. Amanda caught a glimpse of the tattoos up her forearm and turned away.

  ‘Few like three or few like forty?’ asked Caleb.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The engine continued to rumble.

  ‘Come on,’ Amanda killed it. ‘He was here, we’d know by now.’

  She went to knock on the door while Caleb went around the back of the van to fetch the tool box. To anyone not looking too close, they’d think they were just seeing a pair of workers on a job.

  Bridget stayed in the van shifting along to sit behind the steering wheel.

  Nothing moved behind the glass. Amanda knocked, but the sound it made was that of an empty house. Amanda let out a growl. She tried to swallow but couldn’t work up the spit. Inevitability weighed heavy on her, everything she did she did under duress. She didn’t want to see another dead friend and Davis had a daughter. A young daughter.

  ‘You smell that?’ Caleb asked.

  Amanda had, she just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

  ‘He’s still alive,’ said Amanda, reaching for the leather break-in kit in her pocket. ‘Reeves let him live and the wife and kid had already been sent to Majorca. He took all the precautions Bridget gave us but he just did them wrong.’ She crouched down, shielded from the street by Caleb’s bulk.

  That was one thing the Abra had tried to do. Everyone had got a recipe for warding paint and some basic r
unes to draw around the doorways. They were supposed to be able to hold Reeves at bay, turn every home into a castle.

  ‘You really believe what she gave us worked?’

  ‘You think she’d be hiding in the van if she thought it did? Anyone watching?’

  ‘No.’

  The lock snicked open. Behind her, Amanda heard the van door open, the Abra finally getting her nerve together.

  It opened onto a kitchen, clean tiles and white sidings. The light was dull, turning whites to greys.

  ‘Davis?’ Nothing.

  The smell was worse inside, so sweet it was sickly, like a drunk’s cloying breath. Amanda flapped her sleeve over her hand to hold to her mouth.

  There were dirty plates by the sink, school books on the table, fractions half completed. A cup of tea sat beside them, curdled milk a creamy cataract on the surface.

  It was hot and airless, that smell held in suspense for too long, bottled and potent. The walls seemed to close in, a trap straining to spring.

  The hallway was dark, the curtains drawn, the red carpet making it look like a dry throat ready to swallow her whole. Dust motes drifted in the narrow razors of light that managed to make it inside, doing nothing but blinding them to the shadows.

  The other two filed in behind, cutting off her escape. Bridget went straight to the sink, wrist to her nose at the stench, gulping against her gag reflex.

  Caleb shut the door. The noise of the regular, outside world dropped away. If the smell bothered him, he didn’t show it. He set the tool box down, the sound unnaturally loud.

  Around the backdoor, the wall was painted with protective sigils, white on white so as not to be seen by someone peering in through the front windows. There were more around the front door.

  ‘I’ll check these,’ Bridget burped.

  The reek was worse down the hall. Bile burned Amanda’s throat when she coughed. She pushed it away, finding spaces in her mind where it didn’t matter so much.

  Davis’ corpse sat slumped on the sofa, chin on his chest, eyes the slimmest bloodshot slits.