‘Hecate’s claws,’ he snarled through clenched teeth. ‘I think I’ve broken something. Possibly several somethings.’ He slumped against the wall.
‘That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,’ Emily said.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘And the bravest.’
He smiled.
‘I can’t move, you’ll have to—’
‘Yep, I’m going now, will you be okay?’
‘I’ll be fine. Good fortune, Emily Featherhaugh.’
‘Just hang on and I’ll be back soon. Here.’ She rooted around in her pocket. ‘Can you take Hoggins? This could get nasty.’
She rubbed noses with the Hog, who was doing a wrinkled face of displeasure at this idea.
‘Look after this idiot for me, Hoggins. I’ll be back, I promise.’ She passed him to Tarkus, gave them both her bravest smile, and turned to go.
She walked a few steps up, then paused. ‘Seriously though, “Smell this?” That’s what you came up with?’
‘It was a fraught moment.’
‘Imagine if those had been your last words? Ha! Smell you later, Violet.’ And with that she was off up to the darkness at the top of the stairs.
She heard her mum before seeing her. Standard. The loud, sarky voice echoing down the stairwell from an open door on the final landing above.
‘Y’know, I just don’t feel like it. Sure and why don’t you have a go?’
Her heart pounded, and she crept up the final steps on the tips of her toes. A pulse of music, half heard, came from the same direction, then the voice she’d never forget.
‘You know that even I am vulnerable to their aura. You will do it for me.’
‘Ye reckon?’
‘They must be positioned carefully on the pendulum. So you will do it, and you will free us all.’
Emily edged her head round the open door. The Nocturne stood inside, her back towards her, then over the other side . . . her mum! Her dreadful, embarrassing, glorious, secret agent, Pooka Mum! She was in a dirty T-shirt and jeans, tattooed arms linked together with a thick set of silver cuffs with a chain between them. Her face was bruised, but she was grinning like she didn’t have a care in the world. She was leaning against the corner of a great big piece of clockwork machinery that could have been an upside-down steam train; the clock’s main mechanism, all cogs and wheels and gears and sticky-out brass bits. At her feet was the small silver box, open on the floor, with the bad pennies gleaming inside.
‘Free youse, ye mean. Everyone else is fine.’
‘Don’t you long to gallop outside again? To taunt and trick the Day Folk once more?’ The Nocturne’s voice was low and urgent, and it was underlined with a deep musical tone that throbbed through Emily’s bones. ‘Do this, unchain the spell and we will be glorious again.’
‘Yer nonsense don’t work on me, love, you should know that.’ Her mum’s grin grew more insolent. ‘The only glory this is about is yers. The rest of ’em won’t last a year. Do ye actually want a war?’
‘I WANT TO FEED!’ The shout made Emily flinch. ‘NO more scraps of stolen music barely keeping me together. NO more fading away. I will reclaim my world and feast, and if all the Night Folk have to burn for me to do it, then so be it.’
‘I’m going to be honest, ye’re not selling it.’
‘Enough of you, Pooka. You will kneel.’
‘Yeah, not famous for that.’ Her mum straightened up, rolled her shoulders and stared at the Nocturne. She wasn’t smiling anymore.
‘So then, the old-fashioned way.’ The Nocturne had her back turned to Emily but the cold blue light of her eyes coloured the air around her. ‘Do it, or I will tear everything you love apart.’
‘Ye—’
‘You know we have your husband, but now we have the coins. Who did they come from?’
Her mum’s eye twitched, but she didn’t speak. The Nocturne spread her arms wide and softened her voice.
‘Your Emily. Your precious girl.’
Emily’s mum’s face tightened in anger. ‘Ye’re bluffing,’ she said. ‘I won’t do it.’ But her voice wavered as she spoke.
‘Would you test me? Truly?’ The Nocturne seemed to suck the light from the air around her, standing in shadows lit by the blaze of her eyes. ‘You saw what I did to my own sister. Think what I will do to your girl.’
The two women stared at each other in silence and it was Emily’s mum who broke first. Her head dropped, and she reached for the necklace of bad pennies in the box and picked them up. She unclipped the clasp, then held the ends in her hands for the space of a few breaths. She closed her eyes, a tear ran down her cheek, and she let the pennies fall, clinking one by one, off the chain and into the box.
‘Ye swear ye won’t hurt her. Or Alan?’
‘Once you do this, no harm shall come to them by my hand.’
‘We both know that’s hardly good enough.’ There was a little flare of anger in her mum’s voice, but she looked beaten.
‘We both know you have no choice.’
Her mum reached down to the box and picked a single coin out. Face emotionless now, she turned and moved to a long, tube-shaped weight, dangling from a chain near the edge of the machine. Emily recognized it from her research; it was the main time-keeping pendulum of the whole mechanism. On the top of it was the bronze gleam of old coins. The timing pennies Emily had read about; tiny, careful weights to keep the clock in order. Emily’s mum leant in and held the bad penny over the pendulum; a small, dangerous weight that could send the Great Working into chaos. The Nocturne moved closer, face exultant and inhuman.
‘Yes.’
Far above her, there was a harmonic vibration, a pregnant, imminent ripple of sound from a giant bell frozen in the act of ringing, now on the brink of release.
Her mum’s hand hovered over the pendulum.
‘Do it. Weaken the charm, and I will do the rest. As soon as there is a chime, there is music I can wield.’ The Nocturne’s voice was a sibilant whisper. ‘Think of the child. Place the coin.’
Her mum closed her eyes and . . .
‘Mum, no!’ Emily jumped out of hiding and ran into the room. ‘She’s lying! I’m okay.’
Her mum went white.
‘What are you doing here? Run!’
There was a blur of blue and the Nocturne stood behind Emily, gripping her by the neck with a frigid hand.
‘You make bluff into reality, you ridiculous child.’ The cold grip on her neck tightened with an inhuman strength, and pain rippled through her. ‘Now, Pooka, if you don’t do what I say, I will show you what tearing apart looks like.’
Her mum squawked. Emily gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and reached for whatever she truly was. Not letting it take her in panic this time, but claiming it. She found it, held it, and as the claw-like nails dug into her throat, she exhaled and let the loose liquid sensation in her chest flow out to fill her whole being. She became energy. Her other forms were here; a glimpse of sharp teeth and big paws, of a flying mane and sleek forequarters, but beyond her reach this time. Instead she reached for the form she’d already become. She opened the wrapper of the thick muscular back legs, twitching nose, long lean back and magnificent ears, and poured herself in, fitting inside the hare, being the hare, and it was the most natural thing in the world.
Her new form wasn’t being gripped by the throat by steel-strong hands. Instead, it was scrabbling at the front of a blue velvet dress, doing some satisfying scratching and biting. The Nocturne cried out as Emily lashed out at her face with teeth and nails, then kicked out hard with her powerful back legs. She bounded on to the floor, skidding on the polished wood, whirling round the Nocturne once in a circle, then accelerating away in a streak to where her mum was standing by the huge clockwork engine. She reached it while the Nocturne was still clutching at her face and whirling round to see where the hare had gone behind her. Emily concentrated, her little hare face all screwed up and paws tensed, and then, with a shudder and
a sneeze, she was herself again.
‘Urgh. Oh god, that’s so wrong.’
She ignored the wave of sickness that passed over her, and grabbed the box with the slew of coins spread over its velvet lining, snapping it shut and stuffing it inside her coat. Her mum, for once, was speechless.
‘Mum, let’s go! Run.’
She reached out and grabbed her mum’s hand, the edge of the silver handcuffs burning her wrist as she did, and yanked her through the door, kicking it shut behind them. They legged it as a steam-whistle of anger hissed from the Nocturne, and panes of glass cracked all around the room.
‘CHILD!’
They skittered on to the landing, and Emily turned to go down, but her mum tugged her across towards the next set of stairs up.
‘But?’
‘We can’t outrun her, she’ll be straight on us. Come on.’
They hammered up the stairs as the door splintered behind them, then a whir of blue movement erupted out of the room they’d fled. By then, they were through a big door at the top of the stairs, and her mum had slammed it and was tipping up benches to block it. She was really strong. Crikey.
‘Grab anything ye can. It won’t hold her, but it might give me a chance to get these cuffs off of me.’
Using all her weight, Emily shoved a big cupboard of tools across the door and piled wooden crates of clockwork cogs up against it too. Outside, something that sounded way bigger and heavier than the petite Nocturne slammed into the door.
‘And don’t think I haven’t noticed this is a school night,’ said her mum as she wedged herself against the heaving barricade.
‘Oh, come on!’ said Emily.
‘Ha! Come here,’ She swept Emily into an awkward handcuffed side-hug, and they squeezed each other until Emily squeaked.
‘You’re loving me too tight!’
‘Sorry, darl.’
Emily squeezed out for a breather, and her mum looked her up and down, as the barricade rang with blows and dark music from outside.
‘Well, look at yerself.’ She curled her lip. ‘I can feel a short and intensely painful conversation with my eejit brother coming on.’
‘Oh, you can talk. I need to— Whoa!’
She had looked around the room for the first time since she’d come in.
It was vast and square, and each of the walls was another huge square of white glass with the backwards numbers of a clock face on, lit by a circle of gas lamps and a crackle of occult fire from outside. From a vast clockwork mechanism in the centre of the room, a system of rods and chains connected to the middle of each of the backwards clock faces and the huge hands silhouetted against the outside. All of them pointed straight up to show midnight. The whole mechanism was motionless and silent, but it throbbed with contained power, and rippled with movement as the emerald actinic light made shadows dance across it. She was behind the clock faces at the very top of the tower. High above her were the dangling forms of immense bells, like five monstrous metal bats in the belfry. A quarter bell in each corner and one huge bell right in the middle; the real Big Ben.
‘Cor.’
‘S’good, ain’t it? I remember them building it,’ said her mum, braced against the stack of furniture. It shuddered as heavy impacts and bursts of deep, bassy sound rocked the whole pile and made Emily’s back teeth and ears throb.
‘Now, stop being a tourist and find something to get these cuffs off. I can’t change with silver on me.’
Emily had a million questions she wanted to ask, especially the one about what year her mum’s birthday was. Instead she tore round the clock room and came back with a giant spanner. As she got back, the impacts on the door stopped, and silence fell.
‘Erm, do you think she’s gone? Only, I left my friend Tarkus out there and he’s got a broken . . .’
A new sound came from outside. A steady throbbing drumbeat, a deep and primitive rhythm with a guttural chant over it. It sounded old and dark and dangerous. Hunting music. Killing music.
‘Oh, that’s never good,’ said her mum.
Emily’s mum’s face drained of colour.
‘We’ve got to get these cuffs off, so I can fight.’
‘What, what’s she doing?’
‘One thing at a time.’
She gestured at the big spanner Emily was holding.
‘I need you to hit these as hard as you can.’ She braced the chain between the cuffs against a metal shelf edge. ‘Quick.’
CLANG!
‘That’s it, hit it again.’
CLANG!
The shelf buckled as she did, and the cuffs gleamed, undented.
‘Dammit. Again!’
The sound from outside grew louder, and now the thrumming vibration was joined by the sound of something bigger beating at the door. The barricade shuddered under the blows.
‘Okay, this isn’t working.’ Her mum grimaced. ‘When she gets in, I’ll lead her up to the belfry and ye leg it.’
‘No, I’m not leaving you.’
The sound reached a pitch, and the door and the barricade were smashed open, tumbling them both out of the way.
The Nocturne strode into the room through the wreckage, and Emily gasped. She was transformed, all traces of the beautiful gentlewoman now gone. She resembled one of those big curvy carvings of the old cave goddesses, just with more horrible scary bits. She was twice or perhaps three times the size she had been. Her dress hung in tatters around her, and her body and head were swollen with an inner fire that stretched and blackened her skin, bulking her into a nightmare figure. She glowed like metal heated in a forge, and stunk of iron and blood. Her eyes were a storm of rage and light, and her face was terrible to behold.
The music throbbed and pulsed round her, all modern sophistication gone, just raw animal rhythms that made Emily’s whole head buzz. It was all too possible to picture the awful things that had been done in her name when her music had pounded long ago.
‘You thought you could challenge me?’ The Nocturne’s voice was deep, and raw. ‘I am greater than you. I am greater than all. I was here first, and I shall be the last thing ever, as the final heartbeat of your ridiculous species fades out. Now, bring me my COINS!’
Emily’s mum got to her feet, hands still cuffed, but fists clenched and teeth bared.
‘Right,’ her mum whispered out of the corner of her mouth. ‘She’s monologuing. The Older Powers always do that. We get one chance. I’ll jump her, and ye leg it.’
‘I said I’m not leaving you!’
‘Have you followed me to the heart of Midnight just to have a barney?’ Her mum shook her head in wonder. ‘I want ye out safe.’
‘I’m staying. There’s nowhere to go anyway!’
‘Eejit. Can you change?’
Emily strained at the new sort-of muscle she had found within, thinking hare-shaped thoughts, but got nothing but a headache for her trouble.
‘No, I’m sorry, I’m too tired.’
‘Best keep hold of that spanner then.’
The Nocturne was still ranting, spitting venom and bile, and working herself into a froth. She was still getting bigger too. Emily’s mum edged around the room, Emily behind her, keeping the clockwork in the middle between them and the thing.
‘I-I did have a plan to get help,’ Emily said in a quiet voice. ‘But I don’t think it’s worked. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything.’
‘Never mind. If there’s a chance, love, get down the stairs.’ Her mum didn’t turn away from the monstrous thing in front of them, but reached back and squeezed her hand, hard. ‘Please.’
‘Okay.’
The music stopped.
‘Enough whispering, animals. It’s time for you to die.’
‘I love ye, sweetheart,’ her mum said and, grabbing a long iron winding rod leant against the clockwork stack, she stepped out to confront the Nocturne. ‘Ah, shut yer trap and get on with it, ye wagon.’
The Nocturne growled and knuckled forward, the music rising up a
gain, one huge arm reaching out towards the tiny form holding an iron bar. Emily burnt and froze at the same time. How had they ended up here?
A small but distinct clearing of a tiny throat cut through all the noise. The Nocturne’s heavy head swung round as she sought out the sound. Emily’s mum let out a low whistle in shock. On the floor between them was a tiny, round, prickly, brown figure.
‘Hog! How did you . . .?’
The Hog did not look back, but shuffled forward, raised his little face, squinted his small eyes, and gave the Nocturne a distinctly old-fashioned look. She leant over to see.
‘And what are . . . YOU!’
She took a step back. Her music slowed and her chest trembled with emotion. Was she going to stop?
‘NO! Not this time! I defy your law. I will be free!’
She drew herself up, the edges of her now licked with a black fire, and raised her club-like hands to smash all before her.
‘Not my Hoggins!’ screeched Emily, and she leapt and skidded past her mum, sliding on her knees and grabbing the Hog as she did, just before the huge hands crashed down where he had been. She slid past and smashed into the wall, rolling over and crawling away, with the Hog spiked into one hand.
‘Ow ow prickly prickly!’
Behind her the monster closed in, hands raised to smash once more. There was a distinct thud as Emily’s mum whanged the Nocturne with her iron bar. It distracted the monster just long enough to turn around and knock Emily’s mum across the room with a backhanded blow, where she hit the floor and didn’t get up.
‘Mum!’ screamed Emily, and then the Nocturne was upon her.
‘You! You enrage me!’
‘You’re not the first person to say that,’ she said, because her gob would apparently not quit, even now.
‘No more.’
The Nocturne raised her terrible fists, and in Emily’s hand the Hog squirmed, and moved and popped his head out. There was a heat in her palm and an unusual wriggle from him and—
A big black bike crashed through the glass of one of the clock faces. A familiar face was crouched at the handlebars, and a larger form bent over him, clutching at his waist. The bike skidded to a halt and her dad – her boring, quiet, composting, dad – threw himself off it, tucked his shoulder in as he landed, and forward-rolled up on to his feet, drawing a flaming sword which he held in a professional two-handed grip.
Midnight Hour Page 17