by Steve Hester
CHAPTER 6
There was a deep rumbling and the floor lurched momentarily to one side before there was a sudden flash and a high pitched giggle. Lee Hepburn looked briefly up from his kindle and at the group of girls ahead of him on the Metrolink tram. They were all dolled up for a night on the town but the night they had in mind was mid-July. Outside the October chill was starting to bite down with a sense that it was only a little nibble, the real chomping was going to come in a short while and then it'd be duffle coat time.
Lee stared at them for a moment longer. He knew that a little later, probably about half eleven when they were heading to yet another bar these women would be teetering along on their ridiculous high heels, arms clutched around them commenting about how cold it was in-between bouts of chattering teeth. He returned to his book while they continued to take pictures on their camera phone. That'll be lost in a toilet somewhere before the end of the night too, he thought.
It wasn't a particularly engrossing book it had to be said. It was all about government conspiracies and secrets hidden in popular artwork. It was attention grabbing in the same way that driving slightly too fast on a wet road and seeing the car in front suddenly slam it's breaks on was, you just held on and hoped it wouldn't turn out too bad. The lead character was waxing lyrical about how secret people who perfected secret handshakes had hidden secrets, secretly, in a massive painting and how it was important he work out what secrets they were in the next forty-five minutes or Washington was going to be blown up by a nuke.
Lee tapped the screen flicking over the electronic page. Wasn't it handy that this guy who happened to be an expert in all this stuff just happened to be on holiday in the right place at the right time to solve it all? Good job he hadn't decided to go to the Caribbean and spent all day in a hammock drinking rum out of coconuts, who knows what could have happened!
As lee flipped to the next page he realised he was starting at the women again. One of them was wearing a figure hugging black dress and was swinging round one of the poles on the tram. She half collapsed, laughing like crazy and then stood up, bending slightly to brush her legs off and Lee's eyes found themselves locked onto her bum. It was the sort of bottom that little black dresses like that were designed for. He was still staring when the woman's friend tapped her gently on the arm and nodded in his direction.
She turned catching Lee in mid glance. He very quickly looked back down at his kindle; suddenly with a pressing need to learn the secret of a statue that had been carved by an 18th century madman with a predilection for daffodils that, once revealed, would prevent Armageddon. It was either that or look up at the girls and show off his blushing face. The girls huddled in on themselves and giggled.
He wasn't a bad looking bloke, he knew, not exactly going to win any polls for sexiest male but still reasonable and he certainly was no stranger to women but the presence of a clutch of them giggling has a very peculiar effect on most men. Usually it causes worry and uncertainty that they're laughing at something and it's probably them. Riots could be very easily diffused if instead of tear gas and water cannons the police just dropped groups of giggling women in the thick of it.
The pre-recorded announcement on the tram’s tannoy stepped into to save him. “Next stop: Piccadilly Gardens. Piccadilly Gardens is your next stop.” Thank god for that he thought and slipped the kindle into the rucksack on the floor between his legs.
The nearest door was right next to the girls however. Looking round he could see the other one, close but too far from where he was on the tram to make leaving that way look natural. Still radiating like a freshly picked strawberry he put on his best “British person trying to ignore an awkward situation” grin and grabbed hold of the pole near the doors as the tram slowed to a halt. It was still warm from the girls impromptu dancing and the scent of her perfume was also doing strange things to his stomach. It was getting very warm in here!
The tram came to a stop and opened its doors. The girls spilled ahead of Lee, bursting out into a fresh fit of laughter as they got about five paces away. The one he'd been staring at looked back over her shoulder and then bent over, blowing him a kiss. As she turned back his eyes couldn't help but find themselves locked back onto her rear as she wriggled along the platform. He was so absorbed in watching them that he didn't see the man that barrelled into him, sending him slamming back against the tram before sliding to the floor.
“Sorry!” He shouted over his shoulder. Lee was about to get back up when a second body burst past him.
“Yeah, sorry!” Said the second figure. The two had run down the end of the platform and out of site behind the large concrete wall that surrounded Piccadilly Gardens within seconds.
What a night! Thought Lee. I'll be glad when I get back home!
The running man was now in the middle of the gardens. It used to be nothing but an open grassy area slap bang in the middle of Manchester until a few years ago someone with more money than sense thought that what it needed was an office block at one end and a series of “arty” concrete walls dotted along one side. Piccadilly gardens was the favourite haunt during the summer for students and local workers to come and eat their lunch in the bright sunshine and listen to the large water feature spray up into the air from one of the fifty or so nozzles buried in its tiles.
At this time of year it was pretty quiet though. A few of the restaurants under the offices such as Pizza Express were starting to fill up with the early evening crowd but the grass was empty of bodies. Jacob glanced up at the sky frantically as Annie skidded to a halt behind him.
“You see it??” She asked, her breath coming in short, controlled bursts.
She followed Jacobs gaze and started to scan the tops of the nearby buildings. She might have been considered pretty in another life, perhaps one that had involved a jet set modelling lifestyle and a debt to the wrong type of “Family” that would end up all over the front page with the headline speaking of suicide. As it was, her features were rock hard and as stern as the tight bun she had her hair in.
Her clothes looked like leather but the way they moved spoke of a much tougher material that never came from a cow. It was all topped off with a long black coat that had up until a second or two ago been billowing out behind her like a superheroes cape.
Jacob was fixed on a point on the roof of the building society across the road. Something didn't look right. He lifted his wrist up to his mouth a spoke into the microphone hidden in the cuff of his hip length coat. “Smithy, you got it?”
Not that far away across the city hunched over a bank of monitors Smithy was sat watching a map of the city centre on one screen in particular. He scratched at his slight belly through his long faded Manic Street Preachers t-shirt before adjusting the microphone on his headset.
“Yeah, should be right across the road from you!”
There was a blip on his monitor that was pulsing just across the square from two others
“Got it!” Said Jacob over the headset.
The two blips started to move towards the third. Jacob and Annie were walking slowly, their gaze, not leaving the chimneystack opposite them. The building, just like many others along this row had started out life as Victorian place of business. Times may have moved on, as could be attested by the modern constructions elsewhere in the city, but if it was still solid then why bother with the bulldozer? The buildings shiny new glass frontage proclaimed to the entire world that it was “The Friendly Society”. A few floors up however the old windows and brickwork still said “get thee to a workhouse!!”
Perched atop the roof was an indistinct shape, its big hairy chest heaving, as its head swam. Stuck in its back was a hypodermic dart the size of a fat Cuban cigar and it had just pumped a considerable amount of tranquilizer into what passed for its bloodstream. It was woozy, woozy and angry.
It had been sleeping peacefully, curled up in its hole when it had been yanked out, smothered and suddenly found itself in this alien world. It had been released and was conf
ronted by strange noises and smells. This place was full of little pink things that had screamed at it so it had flown away but the air was different here. It was heavier and every beat of its huge leathery wings seemed to need more strength than normal.
To make matters worse some of the pink things had started to chase it, they weren't stopping no matter how far it tried to go and it'd been hit by something a few minutes ago that was making it dizzy. As it perched on the roof it could feel the grip it had on the chimneystack loosening. It was a drop of about five stories to the floor below, which for this creature was nothing but the pink things had found it again.
It raised a talon on one of its massive hands and scratched at its jowly face, catching the chain that had been placed round its neck. The pink things started to run so it did the only thing its primitive mind could do; it flapped its wings and started to fly again.
“It's moving again!” Said Annie. The creature flapped away and followed the roofs along Market Street high above the last minute shoppers that filled the street. No one bothered to look up; they were too distracted by the two figures running towards them staring at the sky.
Jacob and Annie hit the bodies moving towards them as they poured out of the department store on one side of the tram tracks. A security guard was on the door ushering people out onto the street, no doubt desperate to get rid of everyone so he could go home but the throng was as good as a wall being thrown up between the two runners and the erratically flying beast above them.
It glided on before dropping out of sight. Jacob raised his hand.
“We lost it on Market Street! Please tell me you still got it!”
Back in front of the monitors Smithy blinked and pushed his glasses up his nose. On the screen the two blips of Jacob and Annie were still pulsing away but the blip representing the creature seemed to be blinking in and out erratically.
“I think so!”
A tetchy reply came back over his headset.
“You think so?? What does...? Excuse me madam please! No I... Well, the same to you!! Sorry, what does 'I think so' mean?”
“It means that something's wrong with the tracker in the hypo, something's interfering with the signal. A glitch maybe, I dunno.”
They broke free of the crowd and bolted across the small road next to the department store, Annie leaping over the bonnet of a fiat and scaring the living day lights out of the driver. She spoke into her mic.
“This is not the time for glitches Smithy! Where is it?”
Smithy hammered a few keys on his computer keyboard and brought up another piece of software on his screen. The signal from the tracker was there but there was something else over the top of it, distorting it. He started to try and clean it up.
“Ok, give me a second...”
Jacob and Annie stopped running outside a large music store. More shoppers were piling out of the doors, jostling them.
The signal still wasn't clearing up. Smithy tried a few tweaks and the blip came back on his other screen. It was still acting strange but at least it had stopped moving.
“Got it! It's still fuzzy but it looks like it's stopped on top of the Arndale centre, top level of the car park”
Jacob and Annie started to run again. At this rate it'd be at least five minutes to get through the crowds, the shopping centre itself and up to the Arndale's parking garage. Jacob spoke into his mic.
“Good, keep an eye on it. Connor, did you catch that? Going to take us a few minutes to get up there, where are you?”
Connor was stood outside the Triangle as shoppers flowed out of the high-end stores around him. The lights from the nearby restaurants reflected up at him from the puddles on the road giving his youthful face a red glow and turning his blonde hair orange. His face looked like he was barely in his twenties but his eyes told a very different and much older story. He fingered the silver chain around his neck.
“I'm near enough. I'll make sure it's down.” He ran across the road, not stopping to check for cars and ran full pelt at the side of the Arndale.
“Connor, don't do anything stupid! Wait for us to get there before moving in.” Said Jacob.
“Too late!” came the reply.
He leapt up a full twenty feet and grabbed hold of the edge of one of the painted concrete panels on the side of the building. He was there a moment when he leapt again like a frog and was already almost to the roof when he heard the gasps coming from the people on the street below. No doubt there would be some already going for their camera phones, he thought and he swung up onto the roof. He ran from point to point across its slippery surface with impossible strides until he jumped once again and onto the top story of the car park.
The creature was lying crumpled where it fell, spread across a concertinaed Prius that let out a metallic groan. Its breathing was shallow but noisy as he approached.
“I've got it, looks like the tranq has finally worked. Should do after the amount we gave it!”
The two runners had got the glass lifts in the newly refurbished half of the centre and were starting the achingly slow crawl to the upper levels. Jacob was almost doubled over panting. He gave Annie a look out the corner of his eye seeing her barely out of breath.
“I'm getting far too old for all this running around malarkey!”
She grinned at him. “You need to train more; office work's no good for you.”
Connors message came over their earpieces. Jacob stood up and took a deep breath before replying.
“Good. We're still a minute or two away. Think you can hold it?”
Connor looked at the sleeping heap in front of him. “Please! This things not going anywhere!”
Jacob nodded. “Good, we'll be there soon.”
The lift doors opened ahead of them and Annie made her way out, looking back over her shoulder with a grin. “Come on grandpa!” She said as she started to run.
Jacob shook his head and with a deep breath followed her.
Up on the roof Connor approached the beast. The capture was always the hardest part. Oh, the pursuit could take it out of some of the others, he knew that Jacob was probably coughing his guts up by this stage but for Connor it would take a hell of a lot more. No, the capture was usually when they lost people. A wounded animal would fight with the last of its strength in the wild, completely oblivious that the people coming towards it were only going to fix its infected paw or tag it for study and then release it.
He tried to make each foot fall obvious and put a soothing tone into his voice as he got closer. “Yeah, you're not going anywhere, are you big fella...”
He was ready when the beast surged up at him. It was easily nine feet tall and much wider with the wings. It lashed out blindly at him raking Connor across the chest with its talons. It tore open his shirt and into his skin all the way down to his ribs, exposing the bones to the night air.
Connor jumped back and avoided the following strikes including one that put a deep hole through the engine of a people carrier behind him. Forgetting about the pain in his chest he dove forward into the creatures gut with a tackle that a rugby player would have given his right ear and two of his teeth to be able to replicate. The two tumbled over backwards knocking cars back, crushing one against another until Connor was sat on the creature’s chest. He balled up his fist and rammed it square between its eyes and with a groan the beast finally stopped struggling. He sat there for a moment as he felt its breathing lift him up and down before he rolled off and lay against it.
“Yeah, you're not going anywhere.” He patted its hairy hide and took a look at his chest. The wound had gone, healed up without a trace but the shirt was ruined. He liked this shirt; he'd got it as a gift for his birthday. How many years ago had that been? There had been someone called Toby yelling at him to man the machine guns but that was all he could remember. It was very easy to lose track when you've lived so long. Still it was no good crying about it; it was his own fault for wearing it on a night like this.
He spo
ke into his mic. “It's down guys, no rush.”
Annie came back to him. “You got it?”
“Yeah, had a little fight left in him but he's purring like a kitten right now.”
Smithy stared at his monitor. The signal was worrying him, it was still blinking out and then suddenly it vanished altogether.
“Connor? Connor, you still there? I've lost you and the target, you've just blipped off my screen!”
“Say again?” Connor said but there was nothing but static. He tried again with the same response and it was then he saw the chain round the creature’s neck.
His own was a unique piece. It looked like it was made out of silver but there was no metal on earth or any craftsman that could have made this. At the end of the chain was an ornate cross with three horizontal lines across it. As he absently fingered it, it glowed ever so slightly.
The one round the creature’s neck was nothing more than a length of chain that you'd buy from a hardware shop; it was big and thick and could have been used to tow a car. It was what was attached to it that caused Connor to jump to his feet. There was a medallion and in the centre, surrounded by strange runes was a glowing green stone that he recognised at once. It was a masking stone.
He ripped it from the chain and stamped on it with all his strength. It shattered beneath his heel and the Tarmac under it cracked. Masking stones were used when you wanted to remain hidden, wearing one would render the wearer and anyone else nearby invisible to any kind of supernatural perception. They were hard to get hold of and usually having one meant you were trying to keep something horrible hidden. No wonder Smithy's tracking had been screwed up!
Why put one round this things neck though? It's huge and in the middle of a city! Just because you couldn't sense it doesn't mean you couldn't just use your eyes and see it right in front of you! Something was very wrong.
As the final glows from the stone died away he found out what it was. There was a tear and searing pain. He looked down and saw a flaming sword jutting out from his chest. He could feel nothing but the heat as his body started to go into shock. He looked over his shoulder.
The shadow behind him might well have looked human but its features were twisted. Its mouth was too large, the corners of the lips torn back and bloody and there seemed to be too many teeth grinning at him. It leaned closer and whispered in his ear.
“Corpe hvante shanant macchus. Incarne saintante corpe acarram bechuu!”
Connor couldn't speak. The shadow man withdrew his sword, which vanished into his hand and then ran off across the roof.
Connor dropped to his knees. He felt his breath start to get shallower and shallower, the chill of the assassin’s words echoing in his head. Behind him Jacob and Annie sped up the ramp onto the roof and paused for a moment.
“Oh no...” Said Annie. They ran over to him, Annie catching him in her arms as he started to fall head first onto the cold hard floor.
The sword wound was starting to blacken and spread across his chest with no sign of healing this time. She cradled him in her arms.
“No, no you don't! You shit! Don't you leave me!!”
He looked up at her and began to cry before reaching up and lamely grabbed her lapel.
“I... I know what... He sa... They're coming for...” He screwed up his eyes as the pain grew to a fever pitch; the blackness had now spread to his arms and up to his chin. She leant down and kissed him softly on the lips, her tears now mingling with his.
“I'm sorry.” He said, “I'm so sorry...”
Jacob looked down at him. “We are too.”
Connors last breath left him and his body went limp. Jacob gently but firmly took hold of Annie's shoulders. He'd never seen this before but he knew what was going to happen.
“Let him go Annie.” She stared back at him through red eyes and nodded. Reluctantly she lowered his head to the floor and stepped back.
The wind around them started to grow and build. Despite the blackness on his skin a light seemed to glow from inside Connor's corpse. It started to build and the body rose up off the car parks roof. It was a gale now, howling around the two figures. Jacob grasped Annie close to him as they shielded themselves from the wind and the glow, which was so bright now that it felt like it could burn.
It built and built until there was a sudden inrush of air and for a fraction of a moment it felt as if time had frozen. Everything just... stopped.
A powerful wave of energy suddenly started things again as an invisible pulse and a thunderclap like the pounding of Thor's hammer echoed and spread across the city. As it passed, lights went out plunging the streets into darkness. Annie and Jacob were knocked back across the roof and slammed against one of the walls.
The echo and aftershock died away.
Connor had disappeared.
They stood gingerly as the world returned to normal. Flickers in the dark started to pop up here and there as the power slowly returned to the streets. The lights nearest them came back on, the ones around where Connor had been had been blown apart, the lampposts bent back. The cars surrounding them had been flung back and there was a crater on the floor, exposing the steel rebar beneath.
In the middle was a silver chain.
Annie stepped forward slowly. The air was sticky like the middle of an electrical storm and tasted vaguely of tin. She picked up the chain and clutched it close to her chest. Static buzzed in their earpieces. It slowly started to make sense as a worried voice filled their ears.
“...om.. n... Co.. in! Can you.....me?” Jacob raised his wrist to his mouth.
“Yeah I can hear you.”
At his console Smithy let out the breath he'd been holding for the last few minutes. “What's happened? I lost Connor over here then there was a huge spike and most of the powers out in the city! Please tell me it’s not what I think it is!”
Jacob looked at Annie, as she stood statue-like where she had kissed Connor for the last time. As he moved away from her he saw her take her earpiece out.
“It is. Conner's dead. Call the Conclave.”