Changeling (15 page)

‘To be honest, Alexa, I’m really not very sure about
most
of the stuff that you’ve had me buy.’

‘But that shop assistant agreed with me that they looked great on you.’ She tried one of her pouts on him, but Trey continued.

‘Yeah, I heard that. I heard that right before she told me that they only cost one hundred and forty pounds.
And
I heard you tell her that we’d take them along with those bloody awful shoes.’ They were outside now, standing on the corner of Oxford Circus. He tried to get her attention as she scanned the traffic for a black cab. ‘Alexa, I have never worn, and almost certainly never will wear, linen trousers. In fact, this will come as a bit of a blow to you, but I have managed to live almost my entire life with probably no more than three pairs of jeans, about twenty assorted T-shirts, sweats and shirts, and few pairs of trainers at any one time.’

The cab she tried to hail sailed right past, turning its large bulbous back on her like some black-bustle-wearing Victorian widow, too grand to acknowledge the hoi polloi daring to try to catch its attention.

‘So what are you saying?’ She huffed at the lack of cabs and started to walk slowly up the street, stopping every few strides at the merest flash of black appearing on the road up ahead.

He looked at her pouting face, and all the irritation that had been building up inside him boiled up to the surface. ‘Listen,’ he hissed. ‘My life has been turned upside down because of you and your family. Everyone I have ever cared for is dead. I only narrowly escaped being burned alive. Added to this, I’ve discovered that I am some kind of abomination of nature: a freak, a wolfman and a potential killer. And to top it all –’ his voice had risen so that the other shoppers openly stared at him now, giving the pair a wide berth – ‘you decide that what I really need is to be dragged miles around London to buy clothes that I wouldn’t be seen dead in. Which is a situation that I have a feeling that will come about all too soon – no thanks to the situation that your father has placed me in!’

Alexa stared at him for what seemed like an age. Her face was a mask of unreadable emotions. ‘Do you think you’re the only one who has suffered in life?’ she said finally. ‘Do you think that it’s easy trying to grow up with a
vampire
for a dad? Trying to carve out a normal life for yourself when everything around you is anything but normal? You’re not the only person to have lost someone. My mum died when I was very young too, so don’t try and pull that “I’m all on my own in all of this” line. I was
trying
to be nice to you.’ A small tear slipped from her right eye and snaked its way down her cheek. ‘I was trying to do something to help you forget the madness that you’ve been living for the past few days. I wish I hadn’t sodding well bothered.’

‘So go home then!’ Trey shouted at her.

During this outburst she’d stood by the edge of the road, keeping her hand held out to hail a taxi. Just then, one of the giant black cabs pulled in beside her; the loud, staccato nagging of its diesel engine filling the air around them both.

‘I’ll do that.’ She opened the door of the taxi adding, ‘You’re a selfish, spiteful, ungrateful pig, Trey Laporte.’ And with that, she piled into the back of the vehicle, dragging assorted bags in with her. The taxi pulled off into the traffic. Trey stood and watched it disappear up the road, noticing through the window of the rear windscreen how Alexa had placed her head in her hands and started to cry again.

Trey stood in the street for what seemed like an age, the few bags that Alexa had left behind still scattered at his feet as people eddied around him, the numbers of shoppers slowly becoming fewer as the evening drew in and the shops started to close. He thought about what Alexa had said, and now that his anger had abated he couldn’t find any fault in her arguments. He had been selfish and cruel. Perhaps he
had
become too self-obsessed. And yet it was hard for him to imagine how he could have gone through everything he had in the last few days and
not
be self-obsessed. He kept seeing the single tear that had escaped her eye and traced a course down the flesh of her cheek. She had been the one person who had really helped him keep it together, and he regretted taking it out on her in the way that he had.

Eventually he became aware of the strange looks that he was getting from the people passing by and turned and walked aimlessly down Regent Street, leaving the little island of shopping bags for some fortunate street-dweller to find that evening – they didn’t seem important any more. He was walking past the department store Liberty when he remembered that it was the only shop that he and Alexa had been in that day where she had lingered over any item of clothing for herself – she’d even gone as far as trying it on before dragging him off to the menswear department. He needed to apologize to Alexa, and he thought he knew the ideal way to do it.

Fifteen minutes later Trey left the store and walked out into the cold winter evening. The temperature had dropped quickly during his time in the store, and he pulled his jacket round him and looked for a taxi. The dress was now beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and the assistant had put it into a box and tied the whole thing round with a deep purple ribbon that had the store’s name printed on it in white. He walked a long way north along Regent Street, silently pleased with himself and working out in his head how he was going to put things right with Alexa. The box knocked against his calf as he walked but he ignored it and everything else around him as he played the scene over in his head, practising his apology and trying to work out how she might respond.

Eventually he realized that he’d walked past all the shops and entered Portland Place, approaching Regent’s Park up ahead. There were far fewer taxis going past now, and far fewer people in the street, which was dominated by the foreign embassies of various countries. Those cabs that did come along ignored his attempts to hail them, sailing past him, ferrying people back to their centrally heated homes and away from the cold city air. He paused for a second and debated walking back again to increase his chances of getting a taxi when he saw one coming towards him. He quickly moved to the kerb and put his arm up, leaning out so that the driver would see him.

He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him until it was too late. One of the youths slammed into him, knocking him off balance, the other ripped the bag out of his hand, and the two of them were off, sprinting up the street towards the park. Trey managed to stay on his feet, avoiding slipping off the kerb into the path of the oncoming taxi, but when he looked up again the two boys already had a thirty-metre head start on him. He took off after them, breaking into a sprint to keep them in sight.

Trey’s long legs ate up the pavement as he hurtled after the pair. He could see them ahead of him, and he began to close the gap on them as they slowed slightly. They never looked behind them to see if anyone was following, and Trey guessed that they must have done this kind of thing before and that they simply assumed that with the element of surprise and a good head start most people simply would not give chase. At the top of Portland Place they ran round the semicircle of Park Crescent and disappeared down the steps leading to Regent’s Park underground station.

Trey had to turn sideways to squeeze through the gap in the sliding iron gate that should have been fully open at the entrance to the station from the street. It briefly registered with him that this was odd, but, almost losing sight of the two thieves at the bottom of the stairs, he pushed the thought away and followed them down, taking the stairs three at a time, just in time to see the second boy jump over the ticket barrier and head towards the escalators that led down to the Bakerloo Line. Trey thought it odd too that there was no guard on duty and no people in the ticket area of the station. Then he remembered: Regent’s Park station was closed. There were signs up all over the ticket concourse with information on the station’s closure. It had been shut for months now and was due to be closed for another three or four while the station was refurbished. He grinned as he too leaped over the barrier and headed towards the stationary escalators, knowing that as long as he could keep these two in sight there was no way that they were going to escape him.

He looked ahead, increasing his speed down the rutted metal steps of the escalator, and watched the two boys jump over a fold-out barrier that had been erected in front of the tiled corridor that led to the Bakerloo Line. Trey cleared the ineffectual gate, just catching his trailing foot on the No Entry placard that had been set up on top of it, causing it to crash loudly to the ground behind him. Up ahead he heard a tube train hurtle through the station. No trains had stopped here for months; they tore through at full speed, giving the passengers on board the briefest of glimpses at the work being carried out on the platforms and entrances. Trey was surprised that his muggers had not known this when using the station as a means of escape. Or maybe they
had
known and deliberately used this as a getaway, assuming that few people would be willing to follow them down here through the dark and deserted corridors of a closed station.

He slowed momentarily at the bottom of the walkway, confronted with a choice of platforms: eastbound or westbound. He guessed at one and walked towards the westbound platform, deciding to check that first.

He guessed correctly. The two teenagers were standing just up from the entrance to the platform. They were breathing hard and looking back in his direction as he came through the opening.

Trey stood with his hands by his sides. He too was out of breath, and he eyed the two teenagers carefully while he pulled the stale, dirty air of the underground into his lungs; getting his breathing back to normal.

‘I think that you’ve got something of mine,’ Trey said.

‘Oh really?’ said the youth nearest to him. ‘What might that be then?’ He had peroxide-blond hair that was cropped close to his scalp, and one side of his upper lip curled slightly and ran into a scar that led up towards his nose. Trey guessed that the disfigurement was the result of surgery on a cleft palate. The teenager angled his head to one side and jutted his jaw forward in a look that Trey thought was supposed to be hostile. He reminded Trey of a dog that used to live in a house near the care home. Whenever anyone walked near the wire fence that ran down the side of the house the little dog would run up to it, snarling and baring its fangs in an open show of aggression.

His colleague was slightly shorter, with shoulder-length black hair that he had shaved down both sides to reveal the blue-black skull tattoos on his scalp above his ears. It was Tattoos that had Trey’s bag in his hands.

Trey guessed that they must both be about the same age as him, although he was taller and heavier than both of them.

‘My bag,’ Trey said, nodding in the direction of the smaller boy.

‘And what makes you think this is your bag?’ asked Harelip.

‘You mean besides the fact that I just followed you down here after you snatched it out of my hand? How about this: it’s got
my
stuff in it, so hand it over. Besides,’ he added, trying to dispel some of the tension, ‘it’s got a dress in it, and I don’t think the colour is going to suit either of you.’

‘Why don’t you come and get it?’ Harelip snarled, pulling a nasty-looking knife out of his jacket pocket. He raised one eyebrow, a thin, mean smile playing at his lips. ‘Or maybe you’ve had a rethink and worked out that it isn’t your bag after all?’

Trey looked at the knife held tightly in the boy’s hand, and then moved his eyes slowly upwards to look into the faces of the two thieves. ‘I’ll give you one more chance to hand me back my bag and walk away from here while you still can. Because, believe me, if you don’t, you two are going to see something that’ll make you wet your bed every night for the rest of your lives.’

‘Get a load of him,’ snarled Harelip. ‘Fancy yourself as a bit of a tough nut, do ya?’

‘You’ve no idea, Scarface,’ Trey replied.

‘Get him!’ said Tattoos. He dropped the bag and lunged towards Trey, balling his right hand into a fist and cocking it by his shoulder.

Trey morphed. One second he was a five-foot-eleven, fourteen-year-old teenager – the next a seven-foot, barrel-chested, angry, snarling werewolf.

And in the spilt second it took him to transform, Trey realized that it was an ambush.

The two demons moved incredibly quickly. They were squat powerful-looking creatures that looked as if they were made of pure muscle. Their inky-black bodies seemed to shimmer as if a black flame burned across the surface of their skin, gobbling up all the available light. Their mouths were ghastly slits, the thin, greedy lips rolled back over sharp, jagged black teeth arranged on the gums in three uneven rows, like lines of pike-wielding soldiers readying for attack – their combatants-in-arms ranked behind them, ready to fill in any gaps made in the line. Their eyes consisted of densely packed clusters of small black globes, sinister and baleful bunches of hate-filled berries that had never reflected back anything but malevolence and contempt.

Tattoos had leaped from its feet and was flying towards him. It slammed its fist into Trey’s cheekbone, instantly reaching forward with its other hand, trying to hook a clawed thumb into Trey’s left eye socket. Trey twisted his head to one side and swiped his clawed fingers at the demon’s body, missing by a fraction. He kicked out with his left leg as Harelip came running towards him with the knife, catching the demon in the midriff and sending the air out of its lungs with a great ‘Ungghf!’

Tattoos landed softly on the balls of its feet. Its wide, ugly mouth stretched back over those teeth in what Trey guessed must be something that passed as a smile. Trey stepped back slightly so that he could keep both of them in his field of vision.

Harelip was similar-looking to Tattoos, except that the entire middle section of its face was missing. A black hole existed where its nose and upper lip would have been, and it seemed to Trey that it should have been impossible to survive a wound like that.