by Alexis Hall
I wanted to give her the this isn’t a game speech again, but it hadn’t gone down well the last time, and since I’d just asked for help, I didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“On my way.”
Chapter Twenty
Breaking & Entering
I swung by the office to check in properly with Elise and grab the spare mobile and the car. Efficient as ever, she’d dug up the London address of Henry Percy. He’d made her job easy by living completely openly under his original name and, indeed, opening his house to the public as a tourist attraction for six months of the year. Thank God for cocky vampires.
An hour later, I was standing with Eve in a bright white elevator hurtling down into her actual-I-shit-you-not top secret underground lair.
“You told me you didn’t have one of these.”
Eve grinned. “Yes, but you knew I was lying.”
We went through yet another retinal scanner and stepped out into a vast gleaming mezzanine, like a shopping mall for science, full of busy-looking people in lab coats or fatigues or, occasionally, both. I’d been expecting something basically like this, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the scale of it. I knew Eve had been successful, but I didn’t know she’d gone full-on Zuckerberg.
“What the fuck?”
“Oh, come on. You’ve got to admit, this is pretty fricking awesome.”
“What do you do with all this stuff?”
She bounced a bit. “Science.”
“Is any of this actually legal?”
“I’m not stupid. There’s an understanding. Officially, this is just a large private security firm.”
At that moment, there was a friendly chime and a soft voice announced, “Response team to psionics, response team to psionics.” This was followed by a scramble of activity.
“Uh, is that bad?” I asked.
“It’s all perfectly routine, Kate. This way.”
I followed Eve through a set of swishy doors into supervillain central. It was a circular room right at the heart of the facility. The walls were a shifting montage of images and data, and the only item of furniture was, well, I guess you could call it a chair: an elliptical steel shell on a swivelling base, with a high-backed leather seat and buttons on the armrests. Eve hopped into it with more glee than dignity. I just stood there.
“Welcome to Project Daedalus.”
“Eve, you are fucking nuts.”
“Yet still the most normal person you’ve dated this century.”
She had a point.
“Look,” I said. “I need to track a werewolf. Actually, I need to track a lot of werewolves.”
“The system isn’t set up for that. It’s still a prototype. I’ve got people on the ground, though, and there have been a lot of wild dog attacks in the past couple of days.”
“I need to find Tara Vane-Tempest.”
Eve blinked. “The lingerie model? What do you think I am, Gossip Girl? Have you tried Twitter?”
“She’s an Alpha werewolf, and I need to stop her before she gets a lot of people killed.”
“Seriously?” Eve typed frantically into one of the keyboards embedded in the armrests of her chair. “That explains a lot.”
“Can you help or not?”
A map of London flickered across the walls. “I can plot a trajectory based on incident reports. It’ll show us where they’ve been, and might be able to predict where they’re going. I can cross-reference that with vampire movements, but it’ll take a while to recalibrate, and we’ll have to wait until sundown for a better read on the vampires.”
“Great. Call me when you’ve got something.”
There was a long silence.
“I don’t work for you, Kate. I’ll help you, but I want to know what’s going on.”
I sighed and told her everything. It felt weird to be talking to Eve about this stuff again. When we first got together, we talked about everything when we weren’t fucking or when Eve wasn’t trying to get me to play D&D. And then she got successful, which meant she got busy, which meant I got busy, which meant she got busier, which meant I got pissed off, and the talking was the first thing to go.
Eve raised an eyebrow. “That’s a lot of carnage for a vase.”
“When all you’ve got is a ravening vampire army, every problem starts to look like a lack of wanton slaughter.”
“And you really think if we give the Morrígan this...what...item of home furnishing, she’ll go away again?”
I shrugged. “Old vampires don’t think like the rest of us. And it’s basically all I’ve got right now.”
“Cool, where do we start?”
“We don’t start anywhere. You stay here and get me Tara. I’ll handle the rest.”
She literally double facepalmed. “You know, for about ten seconds, I thought you weren’t going to be a dick about this. You’re in my office, asking for my help, using my resources. You don’t get to say what our next move is.”
And there was me thinking we’d never be fighting about money again, but this wasn’t the time for a domestic. Besides, if Eve wanted to get herself killed, it wasn’t my problem. Not anymore.
“Okay, if you want to tag along while I break into the house of a malevolent vampire wizard, then be my guest.”
“I’m not tagging along, Kate. I’m coming with you. Now give me ten minutes to suit up.”
“I am not going out in broad daylight with you dressed as Batman.”
“I’ll wear a coat. It’ll be fine.”
It was not fine. Eve pressed a button and the seat descended through the floor. I put my head in my hands, and when she emerged, she was wearing the same suit of body armour I’d seen her in a few nights ago, except this time, she’d topped it off with a floor-length, black leather trench coat. It did look pretty hot. It did not look inconspicuous.
Ignoring my protests, she led me out of the office and down again to an even more underground car park, where she had a flotilla of nondescript black vehicles. A squad of five identically dressed minions was waiting by a largeish van.
“They are not coming with us. This is a quick B&E job, not the Normandy Landings.”
“They’re just backup, Kate. We don’t know what we’re getting into.”
It was just typical of Eve to muscle into my operation with her fancy ideas like thinking ahead and not getting horribly killed. I shut up, hopped in the van, and we headed off.
“So what’s the plan?” asked Eve.
“Get in, get the thing, get out.”
“That’s the plan? That’s your plan?”
I shrugged.
Eve sighed, hit a button, and a screen flipped up on the dashboard.
“Right, where did you say this place was?”
“It’s called Syon Park. It’s near Kew Gardens or something.”
“We’re breaking into a stately home?”
“Yeah, I’ve been doing that a lot lately.”
A couple of satellite images flashed up on screen, alongside a friendly-looking website welcoming visitors to Syon Park.
“Kaykay, looks like the park’s open, but the house is closed. I think our best bet might be walking in the front door.”
I gave her a look. “That’s the plan? That’s your plan?”
“Well, you didn’t give me much to go on. It looks like there’s a garden centre next to the stable block. We might be able to get in through there.”
“You’re not dressed like someone about to buy a ficus.”
“No, but I’m dressed like someone who can kick your ass if you don’t shut up about my wardrobe.”
I shut up about her wardrobe.
“You know,” she went on, “if this place is open to the public, they’ll probably have CCTV. I can try to do something about it, but it’ll take a while.”
“I’m slightly more worried about giant tentacle monsters. Nobody’s going to be watching the footage live, and I don’t think Henry Percy is likely to prosecute us for stealing his magic pot.”
“Why not? I thought vampires were all about playing the system.”
“Not if they’ve basically declared war on their entire government.”
“Cool.”
I peered out the van’s tinted windows to see if we were nearly there yet. We were threading through bad traffic on the Chiswick High Street, past tatty off-licences and dodgy pubs. It didn’t look like the kind of place you’d stick your giant wizard palace. We pulled up in the car park of a Majestic Wine Warehouse, and Eve and I jumped out. Eve buttoned up her coat and turned up the collar. On the one hand, it meant you couldn’t see most of her armour. On the other hand, it made her look like Inspector Gadget. If he was hot. And a girl.
It was still a couple of hours before sunset, so hopefully Percy was keeping a low profile if he was around at all. But it did mean that we were basically breaking into his house under cover of daylight.
“Oh, we are so fucked,” I muttered.
“We’ll be fine. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“We’ll be captured and slowly tortured to death by that vampire wizard I keep mentioning?”
“It won’t come to that.”
“What are you going to do? Call in an airstrike?”
Eve said nothing.
We nipped over the zebra crossing and turned left down a long, walled alley where a series of cheerful blue arrows pointed the way to the Snakes and Ladders playground, Syon House, and the garden centre. The dome of an enormous glass conservatory loomed on the horizon like a lost boob. We strolled into the garden centre, doing our level best to look casual. It was the Monday before Christmas and the place was doing a pretty good trade in poinsettias and fir trees. We browsed for a bit in an effort to blend in, just two everyday lesbians doing their last-minute Christmas shopping at a stately home in Brentford.
Wandering out into the aquatics and general nonsense section, where you could buy bits of decorative wood and massive chunks of quartz, I stared at a lump of green stone. “Who’d pay four hundred quid for a rock?”
“It’s a fountain topper, Kate. It’s not that expensive.”
“Sorry, clearly things have changed since the last time I was having a fountain installed in my two-bedroom flat.”
“Look, this is a posh-people shop. They’re going to sell posh-people things. Try not to take it personally.”
“I’m just saying rocks are, like, free. You can pick them up off the ground.”
Eve jammed her hands into her pockets. “I can’t believe I missed this crap.”
I opened my mouth to tell her that some of us had been raised to know the value of money, but then I realised I missed it too. It’s not like Eve had been rich when we started dating, but she’d always been the sort of person who bought expensive cheese from Covent Garden when you can get perfectly good cheddar for two quid from the supermarket.
We stared at the overpriced rock for a while like it was some kind of metaphor for our relationship. Heavy and green and with a hole through the middle. It wasn’t a very good metaphor.
“Back door,” whispered Eve, “four o’clock.”
I glanced wildly around.
“Over there.” She pointed over her shoulder.
Between the restaurant and the pointless fish shop, there was a blue gate leading to the gardens and the conservatory. It was locked with a numeric keypad. We could probably have climbed over it but we’d have looked bloody obvious trying. I sauntered over there and took a closer look at it. Fortunately, it was cold enough that not many people were sitting outside and only the most dedicated rock fanciers were poking around this part of the shop.
It was a fairly simple lock, mechanical not electronic. I guess Percy didn’t worry too much about mortals breaking in to nick his shit, which meant he probably had something really nasty waiting inside. I couldn’t see any subtle way to bypass the lock, short of trying every possible combination or ripping the damn thing off. Yes, he’d figure out how we got in, but hopefully he’d be too busy fleeing the Council to care.
Eve came over and nudged me out of the way. “I’ve got this.” An eyepiece snapped into place, blue lines crisscrossing over the surface as she stared at the lock. She tapped in a code, turned the handle, and pulled the door open. I slipped inside as quickly and quietly as I could manage, and Eve darted through behind me.
“Neat trick.”
“It’s a surface-analysis package. Measures minute variations in the wear of the metal. You can work out which buttons are pressed most often. The codes for those kinds of locks don’t have to be in order.”
Yep, that sounded like the sort of thing Eve would know. We skirted the edge of the conservatory. Up close, it was even more ridiculous. This guy had a room for his plants that was bigger than my parents’ house. In the middle of the garden was a fountain with a statue of a flying dude, and just beyond that, a pair of wrought iron gates, also locked, this time properly, in a key-requiring way. I could probably have picked it with enough time and the right kit, but right now I had neither and it was easier to go over. I scrambled up, doing my best not to impale myself on the spikes at the top, and finally dropped down the other side. Eve pulled back her sleeve, and a grappling hook shot out from her wrist.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
She grinned and whipped neatly over the gate.
We were in another little walled alley, which led to the main building. Syon House looked like a child’s drawing of a castle, big and square, with crenellations and turrets, all done in thick gold stone. I guess this was the sort of place where you’d build a crazy wizard palace.
The front was way too exposed, so we were going to have to go in round the side. A long run of lowish outbuildings led to an extension that was bolted onto the north wall. Probably the servants’ quarters. If we would get onto the roof of that, then we could dash across to the main house. The whole thing was raised so the ground floor was actually about ten feet up, and the windows looked period appropriate which meant they’d probably pop open fairly easily.
“How much weight can that hook take?” I asked, peering up.
“About sixty kilonewtons.”
I sighed. “And what’s that in real money?”
“About six tonnes.”
“Think you can get us there?”
“Hell to the yeah.”
Eve put her arm around my waist and pulled me against her body, which was pretty solid right now but still felt familiar. I reminded myself that this was a business hug.
“Hold tight.”
She fired off her grapple again. It hooked onto the battlements at the end of the stable block, and whisked us into the air. The last time I’d flown about in someone’s arms, Julian had been carrying me across London. This was way shorter, but I guess I’d got a taste for it. I was a bit breathless when we landed on the roof of the extension.
“Um, you can let go now.”
Eve pulled away.
“That window over there looks like a good bet.”
Eve was busily snapping bits of her tech back into place.
“I’ll just go deal with that, shall I?”
I nipped over the roof, moving as lightly as I could because I had no idea how much weight it would take. As I’d thought, the window was old and not very secure, and it only took a moment’s work with one of my daggers to pop the catch and slide it open. I slithered inside and put my foot straight through a glass display case.
“Shit.”
Eve stuck her head through after me. “Smooth, Kate, smooth.”
I landed in the hall and cleared the worst of the glass out of the way as Eve slipped gracefully through the window. It turned out I
’d stood on a bronze cast of some kind of fruit, which wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting in the lair of an evil mastermind.
“What is that even doing there?” I asked.
“It’s celebrating the fruiting of the first mangosteen to be cultivated in the British Isles.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
Eve’s eyepiece snapped out of the way, and she grinned. “Google image search.”
“What the fuck is a mangosteen?”
“A tropical evergreen tree believed to have originated in the Sunda Islands and the Moluccas of Indonesia.”
“You just looked that up on Wikipedia, didn’t you?”
“Yep. And my Facebook status is currently ‘Infiltrating Syon House.’”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Course I am. I’d never use Facebook.”
We were standing in a fairly narrow corridor with lots of heavy oak panelling that I thought was probably wainscoting. The walls were lined with portraits of serious-looking historical people. I figured it was probably best to avoid the front of the house, in case there was anything big and slobbery there, or, you know, a security guard, so we headed off the other way, passing a really elaborate family tree and a cabinet full of fans.
Eve stopped to take a look at the tree. “Hang on a second. You said this guy’s name was Percy, didn’t you?”
“Yeah? So?”
“What, you mean, he’s an actual Percy? One of the was-in-Shakespeare Percys?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
“Did you not even watch The Hollow Crown?”
I remembered seeing it advertised on telly, and I’d thought at the time it was the sort of thing that Eve would have made me watch if we’d still been together. “I was distracted when it came out because my girlfriend had left me and my partner had just been murdered.”
“Well, that was a conversation killer. But, seriously, Kate, this guy is descended from fucking Charlemagne.”
This was kind of a feature of my relationship with Eve. She’d say a thing and expect it to mean something to me, and it wouldn’t, and then I’d feel like an idiot. “And that matters why?”