There’s a loud buzzing noise. My eyes fly open.
“That’s me,” Susie says apologetically as she glances down at her video watch. “It’s Vashti.” She hits a button, and a small holographic version of Vashti springs from the watch to hover in the air above Susie’s wrist.
“Did Jasmine and Lily make it safely?” she asks.
“Yes,” Susie says with a wave in my direction. “Jasmine’s right over there, in bed. They’re hungry and tired, but okay.”
The holographic Vashti swivels to look at me. A smile breaks out across her face, but it’s fleeting. “Good, good,” she says. “Where is Lily?”
“In the loo,” Susie replies. “Should be back any minute.”
“I can’t stay on here long,” Vashti replies. “You need to pack up just before dawn tomorrow. Cars will come and meet you out front just before five thirty a.m. You must be ready. And be alert tonight. We have good reason to believe that your location is no longer secure.”
Lily walks back into the room. “Vashti!” she says breathlessly. “Where is Cassandra? How is she? Can I see her?”
Vashti holds up her hand, palm forward. “Settle, child,” she says. “Second-borns are supposed to have patience. Find yours.” Her voice is gentle, though. “Your sister is stable. But she’s lost a lot of blood and is in immense pain. We’ve managed to get her a blood transfusion, and she’s on morphine. Tonight will be critical, but I expect her to pull through. She’s a fighter. A true first-born.”
“And her arm?” Lily asks. “Will it be okay?”
Vashti’s face is grim. “It’s bad and will require a long recovery. She will stay with a private nurse at one of my family member’s homes for the next while. Worst-case scenario, she will lose her arm above the elbow.”
“Can I please see her?” Lily asks again.
Vashti shakes her head. “Not at this time. It’s not safe. You must all stay together as things progress toward the Final Battle. Cassandra may be well enough to participate, but if not, we’ll keep her as safe as possible during that time. Lily, this means that you may not be as powerful as you would’ve been together, if you are one of the seven Seers in the battle.”
“Seven Seers?” Lily asks.
“Seven Seers. Seven Angels. Seven Archons,” Vashti says. “We don’t know who the Seers involved will be, but seven of you will be directly participating in the battle. Perhaps seven is the number of Seers that will survive. We’re only beginning to learn everything as we collaborate more fully with the CCT.”
“Well, that’s a cheery way to end the night, isn’t it?” I say, propping myself up on the pillow with my right elbow. “Should I do ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe’ to decide which Seers might live to experience another day and which won’t?”
“You know, we’ve been told about your cheek, Jasmine,” Vashti says, a wry smile spreading across her face. “And, as such, you’re not going to get any reaction from me. Girls, I’ve got to go. Please be on time and keep a low profile whilst moving. Your very lives may depend on it.”
JADE
I’m somewhere dark and damp. The sound of trickling water reaches my ears. It’s running close to where I’m lying. The surface I’m on is as hard as rock, and my right arm, which is twisted under my rib cage at an odd angle, hurts. The air around me is damp and slightly chilly. As I gain consciousness, I hear voices around me.
“Who’s this lot? And how did they find their way down ’ere?” growls a male voice as rough as sandpaper from somewhere above and to the left of me. “Who’s on bloody guard tonight? David? Jermaine? Eh? Who’s the wanker that let ’em in ’ere?”
Groaning, I open one eye and then the other. It’s shadowy, dark. Large candles burn in rows just a few feet in front of me, black fingers of smoke curling above their flames. I place my palm on the ground. It seems like I’m on a concrete platform of sorts.
Mr. Khan slowly sits up beside me. “Where are we?” he asks.
So he’s the one who grabbed my hand during our transitioning. Thank god.
I pry my right arm free and sit up beside him.
“You’re in our space, that’s where you’re at,” the man says, spittle flying from his lips. “Lord’s Tube station, to be precise. Uninhabited and unused for years — nearly a century, to be precise — until we took it over,” he adds, his voice swelling with pride.
I look up at him, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. Though he’s thin and wiry, he looks strong. At first glance, I’d say he’s somewhere in his late fifties to early sixties, judging from the deep creases in the leathery skin beside his eyes and the folds that run from his nose to his mouth. A hand-rolled cigarette dangles from the corner of his mouth, its ashy tip ready to fall to the ground. His salt-and-pepper hair is shoulder-length and unruly, and it makes me think of a windblown bird’s nest. I suspect DIY haircuts and a dearth of shampoo and combs to be the main culprits.
“Ow!” Amara says. “What did you do that for?”
I glance over. She’s landed a few feet away from me and Mr. Khan, close to a graffiti-covered wall at the other end of the platform. A group of about five people stand around, peering down at her.
“To see if you was alive,” a tall, broad-shouldered man says. His back is to me, so I can’t see what he looks like.
“Maybe just talk to me, instead of kicking me like a soccer ball. Or, here’s a revolutionary thought. You think I’m dead? Check for a pulse,” Amara says with eyes narrowed as she gets to her feet, brushes off her jeans, and starts over toward me and Mr. Khan.
“We don’t know if you’re armed. If you’re one of them,” one of the girls snaps. “Mick, you want them just moving around here?”
The older man tosses the remainder of his cigarette to the floor and grinds it under the toe of his boot. “You answer this question fer me, then. How did you get in here?” he says to Mr. Khan.
“To be honest, we’re really not sure how we got here,” Mr. Khan says to Mick, who’s clearly the leader of the group. “And we didn’t mean to land here … in your station.”
The group of young men and women that were standing around Amara walk over to where we’re standing. Like Mick, it appears to have been a very long time since they’ve seen the inside of a shower stall or bathtub. Or even a facecloth.
“How do we know you lot are telling us the truth?” asks a girl maybe three or four years older than Amara and me, her eyes narrowing as she regards us with obvious suspicion. She looks at the older man. “Mick, how do we know they ain’t lying to us? How do we know they haven’t sent ’em?”
A grumble of agreement rolls through the group like thunder.
“There’s no way this posh lot are going to put a microchip in me,” the guy that kicked Amara says. His eyes are wide, and I can hear fear in his voice, even though he’s built like a professional football player.
“Are you from MI5?” Mick growls at us. “’Cause if you are, we’ll tear you apart, limb by limb, before you get microchips in us.”
Mr. Khan puts up both his hands, palms forward. “No, no, no. We’re not from MI5. We’re not even British. In fact, we’re from Toronto … Canada.”
“They’re taking the piss! They’re spies!” the pale girl that spoke before shouts. Her hair hangs to her shoulders, dirty brown and dreadlocked. Leaping forward, she shoves Mr. Khan firmly in the middle of his chest, sending him sprawling backward onto the crumbling cement.
Mr. Khan sits for a moment in shock, then slowly rubs his hands along the upper part of his pants. Bright spots of blood seep onto the surface of the skin of his palms. I hold back the urge to run to him and see if he’s okay.
Mick steps forward, his boots crunching bits of gravel and decayed cement. He holds a leathery hand toward Mr. Khan in a gesture of support. An oversized silver skull ring sits on his index finger.
“C’mon, mate,” he says, clenching his teeth as he speaks. “Up you get. Let’s have a wee bit of an honest chinwag, shall we?” He hoists Mr. Khan to
his feet, a bit more roughly than necessary. “You three, keep yer hands where we can see them whilst we talk. Understand?”
The three of us nod in unison. This Mick guy smells rancid — I detect stale cigarette smoke and dirty armpits in the odour wafting off him.
“I’ll ask you this once, and once only,” he says, his eyes narrowing. The skin beside them crinkles as his face contorts into a sneer. I guess this is his way of trying to look tough.
Mr. Khan and Amara nod again. I stare Mick straight in the eye, my gaze and facial expression unwavering. He might have control over us right now, but I want him to know I’m not happy about it. I notice Amara doing the same. And she’s humming again.
“Are you lot sent from MI5 to take us in? To microchip us?”
“Absolutely not,” Mr. Khan says. “Like I said, we’re from Toronto.”
“Microchip you?” Amara laughs. “Why would we microchip you? Are you a dog?”
The girl with the dreads lunges at Amara, holding her curled fist centimeters away from Amara’s face. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t beat the shite right out of you for disrespecting Mick,” she snarls. “And stop your bloody humming whilst you’re at it.”
Her breath stinks. I can smell it from where I’m standing. Mr. Khan’s giving us a death stare. Amara needs to be quiet. And fast.
“Leave the little girl alone, Martha,” Mick says, taking a deep drag off his cigarette. “Bring me the reader. Let’s see what the identity of this lot is. Enough with the games.”
Martha scampers down the subway tunnel into the darkness.
“Our identity?” Mr. Khan repeats. “I don’t think a UK reader will be able to do that. We’re Canadian. Unless it’s an iris scan. Is it an iris scan? I’ve got identification on my video watch, if you’ll just let me —”
Mick raises a finger to his lips. “Shut it,” he snaps. “Let’s just do this. Enough procrastinating.”
Martha re-emerges from the shadows. She holds out a small metallic object about fifteen centimeters long toward Mick. From my vantage point, it looks like a wand.
Mick takes it with a nod and tosses the remains of his cigarette onto the pavement, crushing it with the toe of his boot.
“Hands out,” he says to me, spitting each word into my face with such violence, they might as well be daggers laced with poison.
I stick my hands out so quickly toward him that Mick jumps back. That makes me smile — more inwardly than outwardly, of course. Jasmine’s not the only one who can be defiant. Second-borns might be patient, but this guy would push even the patience of a saint.
He takes the silver wand, which, at the push of a button, comes to life with a low purr. “Keep still, lassie,” he says, his voice deadly serious. He moves the wand up and down the inside of my forearm, just above the skin, so close I can feel pulsing heat emanating from it, but at no point does it actually touch me.
Mick turns off the wand and frowns at me. I raise an eyebrow at him but say nothing.
“You next,” he barks at Amara.
She sticks out her arms in compliance, but she’s shaking with anger. Her anger is slight, but definitely there. Hopefully I’m the only who notices. I want to tell her not to let this guy get to her, to remind her that we could take him and his whole crew down in a matter of minutes, even seconds, if we wanted to.
She begins to hum again.
C’mon, Amara, I think. We’re Seers. Don’t let this old piece of gristle get to you.
The wand does its thing up and down her arm. Same frown from Mick.
“Everything okay?” I ask, making sure to plaster a bright smile on my face.
Mick frowns at me, but says nothing. His posse stands around, watching intently. The air is so thick with tension, I can almost taste it.
Mr. Khan is next. Same thing. Same annoyed look on Mick’s face. Same feeling of smug satisfaction in me.
“I need to talk to the three of you privately,” Mick barks. “The rest of you, secure all the entrances and exits. Now.”
JASMINE
The alarm on my video watch slices through my dream like a knife. I bolt awake and stare into the darkness, trying to get my bearings. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth as though cemented there with peanut butter. I’m dehydrated. Badly.
“Turn it off, Jazz,” Lily moans from the other bed. “Please. I can’t possibly get up right now.”
Everything comes tumbling back to me. I sit up, swing my legs over the side of the bed, and reach around on the floor for my jeans.
“We need to get ready,” I say, putting on my jeans and standing up. Using the flashlight function on my video watch, I find the sensor for the bedside light. It flickers on, causing Lily to moan again.
“C’mon, just five more minutes.”
I shake my head and lick my dry lips. It’s a futile gesture. There’s not a spare bit of moisture left in my body.
“Vashti was clear that we can’t miss the time for our pickup. This is important,” I say, grabbing my toiletries bag and opening the bedroom door. “Judging from what she said, we’re likely in danger. I’m going to be back in two, and you need to be up and dressed. Seriously.”
The hall is quiet, though I can hear some movement from the other bedrooms. Hearing footsteps behind me, I swing around. It’s Atika coming from the living room.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says as she secures a red elastic around the single black braid she’s woven her hair into. “My favourite colour,” she says, pointing to the elastic with a smile. “It’s my warrior colour. To give me bravery when we go into battle as Seers.” She tosses the braid behind her shoulder.
I smile back. “I like that idea.” I pause. “So, you’ve had to battle demons here in London?”
Atika nods. “Yeah. I mean, we’ve only been together as Seers for the last two and a half years or so. Most of us, anyhow. We all ended up at the same comprehensive, despite not being in the proper postcode or even applying to go there.”
“Comprehensive?” I ask. I’m not sure if it’s fatigue or lack of sleep that’s causing me to be so confused, but I almost feel like she’s speaking a foreign language.
“I think you call it high school in North America,” she says with a wry smile. “Anyhow, it was all very strange at first, and then we found out what was going on. Honestly, I thought I was going absolutely mad, until my sister and I were attacked on our way home one night. Thank goodness Vashti’s my Protector. Mine and Fahima’s. She’s so kind to all of us. I have no problem trusting that she’s looking out for our best interests. Initially, though, I suspected she was a complete nutter,” Atika says with a sad smile. She pauses, looking down at her feet. “But she’s the only reason Fahima and I even had our poles on us when we were first attacked. She saved my life.”
“I guess that’s why they’re called Protectors,” I say with a smile. “I get what you’re saying. I actually thought I was the one going nuts at first. Same thing happened to me — I was sent to a school that I wasn’t supposed to go to — but unlike you, I hated my Protector at first.” I’m not about to tell Vashti that Mr. Khan is not my original Protector.
“That’s tough. We have to put so much trust in them. Do you like her now?” Atika asks.
“Yep,” I say. “In fact, I’m totally sick to death not knowing what’s happening to him and my mom and everyone in Toronto.”
“I thought you said I had to hurry,” Lily interrupts, coming out of the bedroom. She rubs the crusty sleep from her eyes as she shuffles over to where we’re standing. “We need to be outside in less than twenty minutes, FYI. I hope that Vashti comes to see us, or at least lets me know how Cassandra is doing.”
I notice the dark circles framing Lily’s eyes and the way she can barely stifle her yawns long enough to speak to us.
Atika reaches over and places her hand gently on Lily’s arm. “Vashti is brilliant. She’s my Protector, and I trust her with my life. Cassandra is in good hands, I swear to y
ou.”
The door to the third bedroom flies open.
“There are people outside,” Susie says, her voice breathless as she and Sara race into the hall.
“What do you mean?” I ask. I want to add that of course there are people outside, we’re in London, a city of millions, and people are always out on the street, but decide that I’m better off keeping my mouth shut at this point.
“It’s hard to tell, but it looks like four or five blokes. They’re standing on the pavement and seem to be looking straight up here. At this flat. At our windows,” Susie says. Sara nods.
“That’s mad,” Atika says, her eyebrows drawing together in a frown. “It’s five in the morning. And it’s not like anyone ordered a curry.”
“Are you saying we’re lying?” Sara asks, puffing out her chest like a bulldog.
“For god’s sake,” Susie says, placing a hand on her hip with exasperation, “pick your battles, Sara.”
It’s nice to see that Sara pisses off even her twin sister. I can’t help but smile.
“It’s definitely not good if people see us leaving,” Atika says. “I’m going to go and make sure Fahima is up and getting ready. She’s in the living room.”
“Yeah, we should make sure Kiki and Dani are awake, too,” Sara says. She’s definitely more subdued since being told off by her sister.
There’s a rapid banging on the door to the flat. All five of us stop speaking immediately. A heavy silence descends on the hallway like a fog. After a few moments, I realize I’ve been holding my breath since the knocking.
“It’s them,” Susie mouths at us.
I shrug my shoulders. After all, they could just be a random bunch of drunk guys … but my instincts tell me that we’re in danger.
The knocking starts again. It’s as sudden and loud as gunshots. Lily visibly jumps at the noise. This time a loud bang follows.
“I think they’re breaking the door down,” Atika whispers. Her chestnut eyes are wide with fear, and her hand shakes as she tosses her braid behind her right shoulder. “It has to be demons. No human has that strength. Not with that door.”
Darkness Rising Page 10