by Alexis Hall
Eve shrugged. “Charlemagne was the dude. The guy invented paladins and, like, Europe.”
“Is this going to help me find a magic pot?”
“Holy Zarquon’s singing fish, have you no intellectual curiosity?”
We pressed deeper into the house, past a bunch of posh staterooms, and through the kind of dining room where you’d hold intimate gatherings for you and thirty of your closest friends. Finally, we came out into an enormous, book-lined gallery that seemed to run the whole length of the building. It was pretty bloody bling, with gold candlesticks on every available surface and vast mirrors between the bookshelves.
Eve went straight for the shelves.
“Pots, not books.”
She’d dragged down a slim, leather-bound volume and was eagerly flipping through it. “I’m looking for clues.”
“So, what, you’re going to read everything in the library?”
“Kate, I’m pretty sure this is an original John Dee.”
And there was that you should know what this means feeling again.
“Look,” she went on, “if we can get some idea what Percy’s up to, we’ll be a whole lot less likely to get killed.”
“Yes, but the longer we stand around in his house, the more likely we are to get killed.”
Eve shrugged and stuffed the book into her inside pocket. Normally, I feel quite strongly that you shouldn’t nick things on investigations, but this guy had tried to kill me twice and stolen my sword, so he could kind of go fuck himself.
I dragged Eve out of the library, through the far door, and we came out into a room entirely decked out in blood-red silk. He might as well have just scrawled I am a vampire over the walls. By my reckoning, we’d walked more than halfway round the ground floor of the house and found nothing remotely pot-shaped. The whole building had been pretty low on hiding places. There’d been lots of little nooks and alcoves, but they’d either been empty or full of statues. I was getting a nasty feeling there was going to be a hidden safe behind one of the portraits or something, and we didn’t really have time to pull up every carpet and look behind every picture.
I gave the room the once-over, checking under the sofas and in the fireplace. There was a silk folding screen in the far corner. It was far too obvious as a hiding place, but I checked behind it anyway, just because it was there. Nothing.
I was just going to tell Eve we should move on and try the next room when I noticed there was a very slight mismatch in the hang of the wall coverings.
An actual fucking secret door. I should have known.
Chapter Twenty-One
Blood & Glass
I approached it really bloody carefully. It was probably rigged to explode or turn me into a chicken or something. I let my senses sharpen, and I ran my fingers gently over the wall, trying to feel the shape of any enchantments. There was something cold and sharp and brittle. I followed the trail out and away from the door. Razor threads spiderwebbed across the room and spiralled towards the huge antique mirror above the fireplace.
Well, fuck. I fucking hate mirror monsters.
“Okay.” I sighed. “I’m going to open this door, and something nasty is going to come out the mirror and try to kill us.”
Eve stripped her coat off, dumped it on a chair, and started adjusting the tech strapped to her forearms. “You couldn’t be a tad more specific?”
“Not really; could be anything. Big cloud of poisonous shadow. Image of your worst fears. Flowy liquid metal thing. Straight up army of demons.”
“And we fight any or all of those things how?”
“We work it out when they show up.”
“Sometimes I am genuinely amazed you’re still alive. Look, why don’t I go back to the library and see if I can find something on mirrors?”
“Take too long.” I crossed the room and yanked open the door.
“Oh, you—”
There was a snapping sound like breaking ice, and the mirror shattered, shards of glass sheeting down onto the carpet and into the fireplace.
I went for my knives.
The scattered fragments of the mirror sprang up like a marionette, taking the shape of a distorted, many-legged spider thing. It lunged straight for Eve, making the kind of eerie, high-pitched noise you get when you run your finger around a wine glass. The creature lashed out with two of its limbs, gouging deep scars into Eve’s body armour.
I rushed it, realising at the last second that my knives were practically useless. They skidded across what I suppose was its body, scoring nothing but a few shallow scratches and a nails-on-chalkboard shriek for my trouble.
Eve, who’d only given up on one thing in her entire life, smacked her gauntlet into it, sending cracks across its surface. She’d been doing tae kwon do since she was about ten, but I was pretty sure she had no experience fighting giant mirror spider beasts, and one swipe of its legs could take her head clean off.
I dropped my knives and looked for something I could use as a weapon. The far side of the room was lined with hefty marble tables, topped with fancy mosaics. I dashed over, reaching for my mother’s strength, and shouted a hasty warning. Eve jumped clear as I grabbed a table and hurled it at the monster.
There was an explosion of glass and dust and stone, and then silence.
Eve rolled to her feet, panting a bit. “Wow, that’s some serious property damage. Hulk smash.”
The table had knocked a huge chunk out of the fireplace and been none too kind to the carpet.
I was trying to think of a witty comeback when I was interrupted by a crackle of shifting glass. The shards sprang back together, creating four smaller copies of the spider thing I’d just fucking killed.
I should have guessed that had been too easy.
Eve brought up her guard. “Oh shit, ads.”
I grabbed the nearest chair and walloped one of them as it came skittering towards me. It stayed down for all of two seconds before its broken pieces reassembled. Great, now there were eight of them and I was running out of furniture.
They were about the size of large cats at this point, and moved about as quickly. Two of them jumped on me, jagged glass pincers shredding my clothes and ripping into my skin. I was bleeding, like, a lot. I tried to pull them off but only managed to slice up my hands as well. Oh, this was not good.
There was a crunch as Eve grabbed one of the spiders and threw it against a wall, shattering it into yet more pieces that turned into yet more spiders. She rushed over and yanked the little fuckers off me in a shower of blood. Well, at least I was taking the carpet down with me.
Eve was clinging to the struggling creatures as a glinting tide of tiny mirror monsters started to crawl up her legs.
We needed a plan.
“Run,” I yelled and did.
There was a tinkling of glass from behind me as Eve shook off her attackers, and we bolted through the secret door, slamming it behind us with a crunch. I heard a scrabbling against the wood as the spiders tried to tear their way through.
Eve bolted the door, but it was only a matter of time.
It looked like we’d found Percy’s study. It would have been quite cosy if it hadn’t been for the complete lack of any other exits. And the swarm of deadly glass monsters lurking outside.
There was a three-foot earthenware pot just sitting on the desk like it was taking the piss. From the looks of it, it had been broken into about eight hundred bits and carefully pieced back together. Guess this was the MacGuffin, then. No sign of my sword, though, which was a bugger because it would have been really handy right now.
“Kate, you’re a mess.”
I was about to say I was fine, but blood was seeping through the ruin of my clothes. There was enough residue of my mother’s power still sloshing through me that I didn’t really feel much pain, but I was probably going to fall over in a bit. I tried not to think a
bout it. “Okay, we’ve found what we came for. Now we just need to get it the hell out of here.”
“How about we deal with your extensive blood loss first?”
“Well, sorry, but I came out without my field surgery kit.”
Eve sighed, dropped to one knee, and unbuckled something from her calf.
“That’s a field surgery kit, isn’t it?”
“Shut up and drop your trousers.”
“Wow, it’s just like we’re dating again.”
I backed up against Percy’s desk and unbuckled my belt. It really wasn’t the time to be worrying about the quality of my pants, but I kind of couldn’t help it.
Eve pressed between my thighs in a thoroughly nonsexual way and started poking around. “You know, one of these is about two inches from your femoral artery.”
I stared at the fancy moulding on the ceiling. “I love it when you talk dirty.”
There was a cracking from the doorway.
“I haven’t got time to stitch this up now. I’ll get the worst of the glass out and whack some bandages on it.”
“I’d really like to be able to put my trousers back on.”
“Give me a minute.”
It was slightly less than a minute and I was fully dressed, or as close to fully dressed as I could get with everything in tatters. That just left the giant pot, the killer monsters, and getting out without getting arrested.
Something pointy thrust its way through the door, filling the room with a chorus of high-pitched shrieks.
“Uh, any ideas?” I asked.
“Build a time machine, go back six hours, tell ourselves not to do this.”
“Thanks, that’s really helpful.”
“Well”—Eve folded her arms—“what’s your plan?”
“I was thinking maybe we could get ripped apart by tiny killer mirror monsters.”
Eve slumped into Percy’s upholstered desk chair and swung it onto its back legs.
I glared at her. “You’re carrying a million bits of kit. Haven’t you got anything to help with this?”
“I must have left my tiny unkillable-glass-spider killing device at home. I don’t even know what they are.”
“My best guess, based on my years of hands-on experience, is that they’re some kind of tiny unkillable glass spider.”
Another shard pierced the door.
“I’m really glad,” snapped Eve, “that an unhelpful wisecrack is the last thing I’m going to hear before I die.”
“No, the last thing you’re going to hear is that awful whining noise.”
The chair rocked forwards with a thump as Eve sat bolt upright. “Kate, you’re a fucking genius.”
“Am I? Oh good.”
“Okay, maybe I’m a fucking genius. Give me your phone.”
I fished the spare mobile out my pocket and handed it over. Eve whipped a set of watchmaker’s screwdrivers out of yet another belt pouch and flipped off the back panel. “What are you doing?”
“Feedback loop.”
“Thanks. But what are you doing?”
“I can explain this to you, or I can save our arses.”
Suddenly, the microphone on my phone started emitting the same terrible noise as the creatures outside. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be keeping it as a ringtone. Eve dashed across the room and bunged the handset through one of the cracks in the door. The screaming got louder, and then louder again, and then even louder, at which point I stuck my fingers in my ears. I could still hear it, and it was getting to the point that I could feel my teeth vibrate. I wasn’t sure what Eve’s plan had been. Maybe it was to make things so uncomfortable that getting torn to shreds would seem like a welcome relief.
Then either I went deaf or everything went quiet.
I think I said, “What happened?” but the ringing in my ears was so bad I couldn’t really tell. Eve tried to explain but I could barely follow her technobabble at the best of times. “What?”
My hearing was coming back slowly. Enough to hear the impatience in Eve’s voice. “Star Trek analogy version: it’s like an opera singer breaking a glass.”
I eased the door open carefully and peered into the room. The floor was covered in a shimmer of glass dust and the remains of my spare phone. I lose more handsets that way... Okay, once again, not exactly that way.
I let out a breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding. The immediate danger was over, but there was no way Percy hadn’t noticed his wards going down. Somehow, I had to get out of the study, through the house, and across the grounds, without being spotted, while carrying the giant vase that every vampire in London, including a five-thousand-year-old death queen, was looking for.
I went to grab the thing and noticed just in time that it was sitting in a magic circle. A magic circle drawn in blood. I knew jack shit about the occult, so I had no idea what that meant, but it couldn’t have been good. I gave it a sniff—mercury and old paper, wealth and secrets. Not just blood, but Henry Percy’s blood.
I glanced up at Eve. “I’m going to grab this pot. And then something bad is going to happen.”
“For fuck’s sake. Didn’t you learn anything the last time?”
“We’re alive, aren’t we?”
“Kate, I’m serious. Why don’t we go back to the library and see if we can find out about this circle and how to...what’s the word...defuse it?”
“Percy has to know we’re here by now. He’ll be sending people. We need to get this and get out.”
Eve activated her headset. “Cover the grounds, expect hostiles. Send the chopper, I need evac.”
“What happened to subtle?”
“Well, if he already knows we’re here, there’s no point. Besides, sneak your way in, fight your way out. There’s a reason it’s a classic.”
While we waited to be rescued, I yanked open the desk and started rifling.
Eve folded her arms. “Oh, now there’s time to loot.”
“I need to know what this bastard’s up to. If you want to be Giles, be my guest, but the second the chopper gets here, I’m grabbing the pot and we’re leaving.”
“I’m way hotter than Giles.”
I found a stash of letters in the bottom drawer, but I didn’t really have time to read them properly. Even so, it wouldn’t have helped. They were all Greek to me. Half of them literally.
“Found it.” Eve plonked a book down on the desk and pointed at a picture of a mystical circle.
“Great. What’s it do?”
“I don’t know; it’s all in Latin. Let me scan it and run it through a—Hold on.” She put a hand to her ear. “Vampires incoming.” Then she spoke back into the headset: “Do not engage. Repeat, do not engage. We’re moving out.”
There was nothing for it. I grabbed the pot. It didn’t fall apart. I didn’t die. So that was good.
Eve swept up the book, and we hightailed it back into the red room and towards the front of the house. We skidded across a marble-floored antechamber ringed with golden statues of Greek gods and then into a vast, echoing entrance hall decorated with a similar theme of naked dudes and more money than taste. I glanced through one of the windows only to see a small group of vampires gliding over the front lawn. Shit, I’d dropped my knives. But, given I was carrying an enormous pot, it wasn’t like I was in much of a state to fight them anyway.
“Courtyard this way.” Eve kicked open a door on the opposite side of the room, and I chased after her as quickly as I could with the crockery.
It was one of those fountain and hedges arrangements, remarkably low on cover unless we wanted to hide in the pond. I stared up at the dark, chopperless sky.
“Two minutes,” whispered Eve.
Putting down my pot, I got ready to punch a vampire in the teeth. I heard the front door open. I could tell Percy’s goons meant business be
cause I didn’t hear their footsteps in the hall.
Eve fired her grappling hook at a statue of a lion that someone had plonked on the roof for no reason, and shot upwards. Guess I was on bait duty.
I ducked in beside the door, waited for the first vampire to come through and cold-cocked him in the mouth. It didn’t stop him, of course, just broke his jaw and wrecked his day. As he came snarling to his feet, one of Eve’s darts struck in him in the neck, and he went down again. One day, I’d have to ask what was in those things.
Since a body lying right there was a bit of a giveaway, I dragged him across the courtyard and dumped him in the pond.
Blades whirred overhead and a black helicopter came into view over the battlements. It belatedly occurred to me that I had no idea how I was going to get myself, Eve, and a bloody great pot into a helicopter.
It seemed like the rest of the vampires had figured out where we were. Eve took one out with another dart and then rappelled down the side of the building to join me.
A rope ladder thwooshed into the middle of the courtyard. I bundled the pot under one arm and caught the ladder. Eve dropped another vampire and grabbed on beside me.
“Go, go, go,” she yelled.
There was a jerk, and I nearly dropped the pot as the helicopter pulled us into the sky. Then there was another jerk as they started winding the ladder up. I couldn’t hear anything or say anything, and the rush of wind had blown off my fucking hat, but I was damn glad I was getting out of there.
Then a bright blue fireball exploded just above me. The chopper rocked and the ladder burst into flame.
We were already high enough up that letting go wasn’t an option, but it wasn’t like I could climb a burning rope with one hand either.
I was just weighing up my options, and then I didn’t have any.
The ladder snapped.
I barely had time to realise I was falling before Eve wrapped herself around me and we shuddered to a bone-jolting midair stop.
Thank fuck for that grappling hook. I was never taking the piss out of her Batman suit again.
I wound both arms around the pot and tried not to think about the very thin cord that was holding both of us tethered to I don’t know what a good hundred feet above Brentford.