Vanished

CHAPTER 48

I could hear it when I concentrated: a storm of rapid footsteps from several directions and the wind-rush of leathery wings beating the air. Ignoring his fears and injuries, I hoisted Will up and supported his left shoulder with my right. Marsden took his other side. Will whimpered but did his best to move with us as we hauled him toward the door.

Marsden snatched at his cane just as it started to fall from the trap, and we burst out of the cell, into the stone-built corridor. And into another figure running toward us in the dimness. We jerked to a halt. The other person, obscured in shadows, skidded and stopped. Then he breathed, “Will!” and launched himself the last few feet into us.

“Michael!” I hissed. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to wait by the bikes! You could have been captured!” I wanted to yell at him, but that angry whisper was all I could risk. The stupid boy! If he’d have been caught.

Michael ignored me and wrapped his arms around his brother’s waist, not noticing the stench or bandages. “Will! Thank God. You’re all right?”

“Not in the least,” Marsden snapped. “Nor shall we be if we linger for family reunions. You got in so tidily, you lead us out of here, boy, and the faster the better.”

Startled by his rough tone, Michael backed off and spun around, jogging ahead. “C’mon! I couldn’t stand waiting for you. I found a tunnel from Hatton Garden—it’s faster than the sewer route.”

We went forward, hauling the emaciated and staggering Will between us as quickly as we could, but our speed was still only a bit better than a jog.

As we plunged into a section of unlit corridor that arched over the grumbling passage of the buried river, a whiff of its effluence leaking through the masonry, Marsden let out a chuckle. “Good thing we smell of sewer, girl,” he mumbled. “They’ll have a harder time following us with the odor of the Fleet below.”

Michael, ahead of us, didn’t hear, but Will did and he made a noise that might have been a cough—or not—and tried to move faster. Every step hurt him—I could see it in the bright red strobing of his energy corona—but he kept on and I saw the white gleam of his teeth as he bit into his lower lip.

“It’s just a few blocks,” I whispered to him. “Not far.”

He nodded in the dark.

We staggered through the murk—we didn’t dare to use the flashlight—with the sounds of pursuit growing closer by the moment. Michael stopped to glance back at us over and over, even though most of the route was too dark for him to see much but our shambling shapes. I began to feel the cold-hot press of blood rage and insanity far behind, like the blast from an explosion bearing down on us in slow motion.

“Harper!” Far away, I could hear Alice shriek my name like a swearword.

“Catching up,” Marsden muttered, voicing my fears.

Michael whipped around a corner and dashed a few feet ahead to a set of steel loops set in the wall. He scrambled up them and pushed the iron manhole cover aside with his back. We could hear it scrape across the road above, and the sound echoed into the tunnels below as if the earth itself had groaned. Behind us, the scrambling and rushing noises paused and changed direction, coming straight for us.

Marsden and I started shoving Will up the steps, using our backs as braces to support him as he tried to pull himself up. I heard a whimper of pain escape as he struggled upward, tangling his mangled feet in the loops and hauling with his injured hands. Michael whispered encouragement from above and, when he was close enough, grabbed his brother’s wrists and hauled steadily. Will’s weight eased off our shoulders and then vanished as he climbed clear of the hole.

“You next,” Marsden said. “I have some more tricks to hold ’em off while you get that infernal motorbike running. But don’t dawdle!”

I scrambled up the rungs and levered myself into the street. A dozen yards away, I saw Michael fussing with Will, who was leaning against a wall and sinking slowly. I ran to them and helped with Will’s helmet while Michael got the small motorcycle started.

Will tried to smile at me, but it was weak and faded away under tears, pain, and exhaustion. “What now?” he asked as I pushed him onto the bike behind his brother and grabbed the webbing straps we’d bought earlier.

“Now you go to the doctor. After that, Michael will take you someplace safe.”

Will was shaking as Michael pulled his arms around his own waist. I strapped the two men together and patted Michael’s helmet to let him know I was done. I hopped back as the small bike zoomed away.

From the open manhole came a flash and a roar. I swung my attention to the other motorcycle: It looked like Michael had borrowed one of the Italian bikes from his buddy, and I was grateful I wouldn’t have to remember the oddities of old British motorcycles as well as how to ride one at all.

The bright yellow bike roared on the first press of the starter. I threw my leg over, tucked my hair down my collar, and jammed the helmet on as I felt Marsden’s weight hit the back.

“Go!”

“Hold on!” I yelled back. As his arms locked around my waist, I kicked the bike off the center stand. It leapt forward and bit into the road with both tires, chirping as it bolted. Even over the engine, I heard something more of flesh and rage roar behind us with an eruption of wing beats and a howl of fury.

I could hear Alice’s screeches of wrath among the howling and the voice of something that nearly jellied my spine, raking at some lizard-brain part of my mind that contained primal fear. My grip on the throttle slacked and the bike gurgled quieter, slowing.

Marsden jabbed me in the ribs. “I’ll kill you first if you drop us,” he hissed. The ridiculousness of the threat struck through the terror and I clamped back down on the throttle, twisting it hard. The Ducati jumped forward, screaming.

We were the only prey left to follow, but we had a lead. They’d have to go back for their own bikes if they wanted to follow. Too bad there hadn’t been time to hobble them.

The streets were busy and narrow and they twisted into each other at odd angles, reducing the maximum speed I could put into negotiating a path away from Clerkenwell. Our pace was still excessively fast, but something seemed to be close behind, something that breathed the stink of death down our necks and jinked through the traffic as nimbly as a gazelle. We were ahead of it, but I didn’t imagine that would last long. Distantly I heard the throaty sound of other bikes and knew it was Alice and her cohort—I only hoped it was a small one, that her wanton slaughter of Glick and the loss of me had driven a wedge into her control of the Brotherhoods and the support of the local asetem.

I raced the bike northwest, toward King’s Cross and St. Pancras. I was fine on the one-way streets, but I dreaded the bigger roads and had to concentrate on sticking to the left side of the line. At the first opportunity, I moved, even though it meant using smaller streets where there were fewer witnesses to anything the vampires might try if they caught up. I twitched the bike into a right turn across traffic, shooting through a hole in the pattern to race into a new route, dragging our pursuers away from the main streets. If I’d been a more experienced rider, I might not have made the move, but as it was I relied on the luck of fools.

We made it. I turned twice more, up into Pentonville and then west, dropping to a smaller road and flashing past the boat basins on the south shore of Regent’s Canal. Then a hard right-left jink at York, staying south of the canal and sprinting the bike through the emptiness of Goods Way, which sliced between the back of King’s Cross and the cement banks of the canal. We drove past the skeletal ring of a Victorian gas regulator that stuck its black iron fingers into the sky and under the S-turn at the back of St. Pancras Station.

I skidded the bike to a stop on the sidewalk in front of St. Pancras Old Church and we left it, with my helmet thrown to the ground beside it, like a signpost gleaming yellow and rippling the night air with its heat, as we scrambled for the only magical place in England I was familiar with: the graveyard. It wasn’t ideal, but I knew the dead spots and the hazards, and the vampires would have to take bigger risks than Marsden and I would. If we were lucky, they’d already left Alice to sink or swim on her own.

Marsden and I slipped through the Grey and into the cemetery.

The first thing to come at us was neither Alice nor her pet sorcerer, but the kreanou, the black streak of fury that had pursued us from the start. We turned back to look from our vantage near the Soanes’ tomb and saw it throw itself against the fence. It stopped when the gates didn’t budge, revealing the silver-eyed man-thing that had attacked Glick and escorted me toward death and doom. It let out a shriek that sent an icy frisson up my spine.

“Holy hell,” Marsden murmured. “At least it’s alone. ”

The kreanou found an angle it liked, stepped back, and vaulted the churchyard wall beside the gate as if it were no more challenging than a beginner’s long-jump competition. Then it charged at us.

We dodged in two directions, Marsden toward the tomb, I toward the Hardy tree and its well of void. The kreanou swerved to track me. I cut behind the tree, hoping the monster was stupid enough to run in a straight line. It jinked right, trying to intercept my path on the other side of the tree. I dodged back, feeling hopeless as it corrected and closed.

“Stop!”

Alice stepped delicately down from the nearest wall, assisted by Simeon and holding one hand up to stay the kreanou. Her black wrappings fluttered and trailed around her like wisps of smoke. She dropped down to the grass near the parade of gravestones in the corner south of Mr. Hardy’s tree. Simeon followed her, but otherwise they were alone. My heart leapt with hope that we might survive after all.

“I want to kill her myself,” Alice continued, stalking closer. Simeon seemed to glide over the grass behind her.

The kreanou growled but held still. In the Grey I could see the magical leash between the three as well as if it were a rope in the sun, holding the kreanou equidistant from both Alice and Simeon. I wondered what would happen if I could break that leash.

“I thought you were going to hand me over to the Pharaohn,” I replied. “Oh, but you let me get away, didn’t you? After the way you screwed up in Seattle, too, I guess you don’t get to be Primate of all London after all. And Wygan’s so very unforgiving. ” I edged as close to the tree as I dared. I hated the proximity, but my discomfort wasn’t important; Alice’s was. I wanted her angry enough to kill and not think what it would mean.

“To hell with him!” she screamed. I’d struck the right nerve. “You’ve been the ruin of my plans too often! I should have torn out your throat in Seattle. I should have gutted you when I had a chance. I should have tortured you and feasted on your blood while your lover and the shivering shade of your father watched. But now I’m just going to kill you and let the kreanou scatter your bones like sticks!” She caught her breath and what passed for sanity. “But you can rest assured that once you’re gone, I’ll get my hands on your dear William again and everything I’d like to do to you will be served up to him.” She smirked.

“Talk, talk,” I taunted. “I don’t see you doing anything about it.” Marsden had been circling wide from the tomb and I could make out the white gleam of his trousers among the tombstones far to the street side.

Alice launched herself at me while her companions stood and watched—the kreanou straining with desire for carnage and blood. She wasn’t as fast as the kreanou, but she was fast enough, and only a very quick spin aside kept me out of her clutches. She still managed to rake my face and arm with her nails as she passed and turned. The wind of her passage stunk of rot. Simeon’s spell to knit her back together might not be working quite as well as she thought.

I’d never seriously faced off against a vampire in a fight before and I’d had no idea what to expect. Mostly they intimidated and charmed and manipulated. Now this one was coming on like a street fighter, eyes gleaming red and her hands hooked into claws as she crouched. I didn’t like having Simeon and the kreanou at my back, so I circled, making an arc that forced Alice to counter. She drew downhill a bit, toward Simeon and away from the Hardy tree. I stood my ground. I wasn’t going to bring the fight to her. She wanted me dead; she’d have to come get me.

Behind her I saw a flash of white as Marsden jumped to ambush the sorcerer. Simeon whirled, jumping away—more spry than I’d have expected—and made a gesture with his hands that sank a bright field of green light into the turf. The ground shook and the kreanou darted toward him. But Simeon made a fist and twisted it, and the kreanou came to a quivering halt, poised like an attack dog waiting for the command.

The ground near the fence heaved and a phalanx of the dead struggled up from their graves. Whole or part, they rose and lurched toward Marsden, throwing themselves onto him.

Alice snatched at me and spun me toward the ground. I dropped my shoulder and rolled back up to my feet, reaching behind my back for the knife Marsden had given me in the sewer. I pivoted. I was a little clumsy on the moist lawn of the cemetery; my body ached from the shocks of the guards’ deaths and my legs burned from the infected cuts Jakob had inflicted, so I bobbled to the right. Alice jumped and missed me by inches as I ducked to recapture my balance.

In the distance, Marsden struggled under the weight of the lyches, plunging his hands into them and tearing out the burning threads that animated them. They fell down but only one at a time, and he was badly outnumbered. The kreanou watched with avid eyes, waiting for an opportunity to slip its leash, its head turning back and forth as it watched Marsden and then Simeon, whose hands were burning with the gather of power.

I rushed at Alice and she hesitated a moment as I got close. Then she reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, trying to wrestle me down to her shorter height. Her mouth gaped and her fangs seemed to grow longer, glinting with saliva. I put my weight into her, bowling her under me as her teeth scraped against my collarbone.

The fangs felt like knives and seemed to pierce deeper into my flesh than was possible, cutting past the bone and diving for the arteries that sprang from my heart. I pushed my left arm between us as we tumbled and gripped her jaw, shoving her head up with a wrenching thrust. The agony of her bite eased as her head snapped back and the fangs slid out of my skin. Blood coursed down the front of my shirt.

Marsden yelled and I jerked my knees up, separating Alice from me with a hard thrust of my legs. I raised my head a moment and saw Marsden vanish under a pile of dirt and bodies as the angry dead pulled him down into their mass grave.

The smoke black line that connected the kreanou to Simeon lay less than a body length from me and I lunged for it, throwing myself through the air and snatching at it as I arced into its path.

The kreanou screamed a hunting cry of bloodlust and frustration and Simeon yelled as the magic tugged on them both. Alice scrambled across the churned earth like a deadly crab as I gripped the power link with both hands.

The burn of the energy forced a scream from my throat as I tore the binding apart. The hot fragments of control whipped like fractured guy wires, and half of the kreanou’s leash dissolved.

The silver-eyed monstrosity howled bloody anticipation and rushed at Simeon. It looked like a thin streak of red against the darkness as it pounced.

Simeon screamed as it hit him and he spun, trying to fight off the embodiment of rage, but it tore at him and blood flew. The grid of the Grey trembled and warped to suck in the hastening flow of magic that poured out with his life. The kreanou made bestial sounds of delight as it gorged on him, tearing him to shreds.

The death-shock doubled me over as Alice shrieked in rage and lashed at me, catching her hands in my clothes and dragging me close. She gripped me tight a moment, grinning with a sick parody of a lover’s desire. “You cannot stop me this time,” she whispered, trying to capture my gaze in hers, to hold my will and force me to submit to death.

I flipped the knife in my hand and jerked my arms into her with all my remaining strength, driving the blade into her side. She gurgled and twitched, losing her concentration on me. I ripped the blade down, feeling the rough black fabric of her strange bindings tear and fall away. I felt the power that held her together falter. Simeon was not there to reinforce it. Her legs buckled and I kicked her away. But her upper body stayed clutched to mine by the grip of her hands on my shoulders.

The clothes, after all, were nothing but bandages, holding her severed parts together. As she unhinged her jaw to snap her teeth again into my flesh, my gaze fixed on the choker around her neck. The ruby drops were blood that leaked from the edge of the band.

Footsteps rushed toward us—two pair: one fleet, the other desperate. As I reached for the band around her throat, I felt someone cannon into us, knocking Alice and me tumbling toward the fence that contained the Hardy tree and its sunburst of graves.

The kreanou snarled close enough to ring my ears.

I cut the ribbon and Alice screamed, her grip weakening. I thrust her away and she fell backward, scrabbling as blood leaked from the ragged, half-healed wounds that marked her body, glowing white and ringed in black.

“Kreanou, no!” she gasped.

Trembling, the creature teetered to a halt, only barely human, barely controlled, its limbs pulled around into impossible geometries and its face elongated into a lupine snout bristling with rows of gore-splashed fangs.

“It doesn’t want you,” Marsden called to me, running toward us, covered in dirt and grave mold.

I dropped to my knees and brought the knife down across Alice’s neck, feeling the stitches pop and the magic that held her together wrench apart. And I felt nothing else: no pain, no remorse.

The last leash of magic parted and the kreanou lurched forward. I kicked Alice’s body away from me as the monstrosity pounced onto it. Her head screamed and thrashed, gnashing its jaws as her breath ran out. I picked it up and staggered to the edge of the magical vortex hidden in the core of Mr. Hardy’s tree.

I started to tumble into the sucking hole among the keening, churning ghosts, but I felt hands grab me at the waist and hold me to earth. I flung Alice’s head away into the pit and watched it vanish in the unknown dark. One of the creatures who’d caused my death—the important death at least—was gone, and though it didn’t change me back, I felt relieved by her passage.

Marsden hauled me backward, away from the tree. The sound of distant sirens floated on the haunted breeze. I glanced across the churchyard, the turf torn, muddied, and gleaming with the slowly ebbing spells of magic. Of Alice and Simeon, only bloodied shreds of cloth remained. The half-decayed corpse of a young man lay among the wreck of Alice’s bandages—the remains of the kreanou, extinguished with his creator.

Marsden kicked the moldering corpse into the vortex. Then he shoved on the shapes of time, and I tumbled through to a sunny afternoon in the churchyard that stretched nearly to Euston Road. We staggered, exhausted, toward Regent’s Canal and the waiting Morning Glory.