Stoneheart (27 page)
E
die could breathe again. When the Minotaur hit her and scooped her off the pavement, the impact had knocked all the air out of her lungs, and she had gaped in shock for a breath that just wouldn’t come. Then things had gone swirly and black, and she’d lost consciousness.
The pounding impact of the Minotaur’s hooves must have jerked her awake, maybe even kick-started her lungs back into action.
She swallowed a mouthful of air that was half diesel fumes, and gagged again. Then she started to struggle. She was being crushed against a massive black chest, curved like the keel of a great boat, shaggy with rough hair that moved—despite being made of metal—like an animal pelt.
She could hear the thudding of a massive heart against her right ear. Her right eye was squashed into its chest.
The Bull’s Roar She could hear the deep grunt of an anima’s breathing.
She could see a fraction of London with her left eye. Enough to see that whatever was carrying her was running with the traffic, in pace with a red bus.
All these impressions whirled in and hit her at once, like a kaleidoscope.
She struggled.
She kicked.
The beast stopped dead, with a suddenness that winded her all over again. Then the hands gripped her and held her out in front of the beast’s face, and she saw what had grabbed her for the first time.
She saw the head of the Minotaur.
Forehead like an anvil.
Big sledgehammer snout.
Tiny angry eyes.
Sharp curved horns sweeping out and up in an evil, man-gutting curve.
And behind the horns, behind the flattened ears, a gargantuan hump of hunched, impossibly muscled back that loomed over her like a dark mountain.
She felt blackness seeping back in on her brain, and knew she had to fight its dark pull. She knew she had to fight.
She opened her mouth to shout, to yell, to scream, but before she could think which, the Minotaur beat her to it. The head reared, the mouth opened and revealed sharp predator’s teeth that were designed for anything but chewing grass, and then the Bull roared.
No words. Just a bull roar of pure fury and hunger and sound that hit her in a thunderous rolling broadside.
It contained bass notes so deep that her guts began to squirm and loosen in a fear so ancient and hardwired into her, as to be beyond explanation.
It contained notes so high that she thought her ears were going to burst with the keening pain they contained.
And as her eyes reflexively shut, her hair was blown back in a hot blast of breath that smelled of fresh meat and old charnel houses. And Edie did the only thing she could do to stop the blackness sweeping her under. She found what energy there was left in her, and screamed straight back, right into the dark wet cavern of the Bull’s mouth.
Trying to outshout the devil.
B
ack at the Monument, the Gunner watched the spot where the Walker had disappeared around a corner, and slowly exhaled.
“You get all of that?”
There was no reply. The Gunner turned and snapped his fingers impatiently.
“It’s all right. You can come out now. He’s scarpered. Gone to guard the Stone. To stop you getting there without him adjusting things a little.”
George emerged from the door in the plinth. He looked white and exhausted. His eyes were fixed on the distant corner that the Walker had disappeared around.
“Who was he?”
The Gunner crouched down and picked up the two empty shell casings from the ground at his feet. He looked at the empty cylinders and put them in his pocket as he straightened up.
“The Walker. You get her heart stone?”
George pulled the sea-glass from his pocket. The Gunner grunted.
“Don’t lose it. She’s gonna be in a bad enough way as it is. If we manage to get her out of this and you don’t give her the heart stone, she’s gonna be scuppered.”
“What’s happened?”
“The Bull’s running,” said the Gunner, sniffing the air and peering into the distance.
“What?” asked George.
“The Minotaur’s got her.”
“Minotaur?”
“Half-bull, half-man. And all bad. Man half of him hates the bull part, and the bull part thinks the man part’s what makes it unhappy. Primitive, ugly bastard—pardon my French. Dangerous too, dangerous for her.”
“Why?” asked George, his mind racing back to Greek legends he barely remembered his dad having read him one long-ago holiday on an island in the Mediterranean.
“Because Minotaurs think they can make themselves less bull and more man by eating the thing they want to be.”
“He’s going to
eat
her?”
“Not as such. He’s gonna be pulled that way, but he’s under the Walker’s orders, see. The Walker’s a Servant of the Stone. Cursed, like—”
“Weirded.”
The Gunner looked at him, impressed for an instant.
“You been getting an education while I been getting my strength back, I can see that.”
“I met the Clocker.”
The Gunner looked closely at him.
“Did you now?” he said slowly.
“Is he good or bad?” asked George, all of a sudden needing to know very urgently why the Gunner had used that tone.
“Plenty of time to talk about that after we get the glint.”
“Edie,” said George firmly. She’s called Edie. “And how are we going to stop a Minotaur? I mean, that man, that thing, he took all your bullets.”
The Gunner looked ashamed for an instant.
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you let him?”
“Because he’s a tricky bleeder. It was give him the bullets, or he gave Edie to the Bull. You heard that, right?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t understand. About the oath either.”
“The oath’s the thing a spit can’t break. Swear by a Maker’s hand, and you’re done if you break the oath.”
“Done? Like a statue that isn’t on its plinth at turn o’day? Like the Grid Man?”
The Gunner’s head jerked around at the sound of a distant roar that added itself to the rumble of traffic.
“Worse. You Wander. Now shut it and let’s go. We don’t have time,” he said fiercely, closing George’s mouth with a look as he ran off.
“Where’s he taken her?” asked George, running alongside him.
“Ain’t you had an education? Where do Minotaurs always take their victims? Where do they live—in the stories?” he said, leading off at a fast clip.
George racked his brains. He remembered the Greek hero and Ariadne, the king’s daughter, who helped him with a spool of string so he could find his way out of a—
“Maze! He lives in a maze?” he shouted.
“In the Labyrinth. That’s right.”
Then questions were out of the question for a while, as George needed all his breath for keeping up with the Gunner as they crossed roads and sprinted along pavements, always heading gently uphill, mostly north, always away from the river.
The Gunner stutter-stepped on the curb edge as a bus punched past, then grabbed George and carried him in a fast jinking run across a busy, crowded street. George saw unseeing drivers racing at them, and lurched in the Gunner’s arms from side to side as the Gunner dodged them, so much that he felt nauseous when the Gunner deposited him on the opposing pavement.
“But there isn’t a labyrinth in London,” said George unsteadily.
The Gunner snorted in derision and set off northward again.
“Some say the whole boiling lot’s a labyrinth. But don’t worry . . .”
He pointed to a tall dark swerve of brick buttress ahead of them. Signs for the Museum of London flashed past, and a sign reading: LONDON WALL.
“We’re nearly there.”
George was struggling to keep up. It seemed like he’d been running forever. His life was divided into the past, when he hadn’t really run after anything except footballs, and now, when he ran all the time.
“I never heard of the London Labyrinth,” he gasped.
The Gunner pointed at a wall of concrete, pierced with walkways, topped with narrow spiky high-rises.
“Lucky you. Because this is it. As dark and labyrinthine a maze as any Minotaur could want.”
He pulled George into a stairwell and pounded up the steps. George read a sign and an arrow as they passed.
It read: BARBICAN.
S
creaming had done no good. Edie had never put much faith in screaming anyway, but screaming into the Minotaur’s roar had been like throwing a snowball into an avalanche and hoping to stop it.
She’d heard it stop when it was all roared out. She’d felt it shake itself in the rain, like a dog. And she’d seen the look in its unexpectedly small eye as it looked at her before it ran on.
It was a look that hated what it was, and hated what it wanted.
She bunched her fist and thought about swinging at it, but the void in her sapped all energy now, and the hand just twitched.
The void was growing, and there was less Edie and more nothing because, in a horrible way, the mad bull’s-eye of the Minotaur was scooping out what was left of her. It was a hungry eye, a hot eye, a horrible eye.
The Hands of the Minotaur The Minotaur ran into a spiral staircase and, as its hooves stomped up the concrete steps, Edie tried to think of something to do. She felt she was dissolving from the inside out.
They emerged into the rain on a raised walkway. An old man with a cane was ahead of them, shuffling along in the wet. Edie reached a hand out and shouted.
“Help!”
He didn’t react. Of course he couldn’t see her. His mind wouldn’t let him see something as unbelievable as a wet girl being cradled by a striding, bestial statue.
The Minotaur stopped. Looked at her. At the old man. And its bull’s mouth twitched in a sneer and it roared again.
Now she was feeling so empty, the sound seemed to echo around her hollowness and shake every bit of her. She felt the rising blackness at the edge of her vision, and knew she wouldn’t be able to fight it this time.
The Minotaur suddenly pulled her close to its muzzle, and its nostrils sucked in long and hard. It shivered as if the smell of her was some exquisite stimulant, and then, most disgusting of all, she felt the thick swollen weight of its tongue curl out of its mouth and lick her, from her neck to her ear, then over her eye and into the hair over her forehead.
And the last thing she felt before the dark closed in were the hands of the Minotaur squeezing her body, her legs, her arms, the soft bits around her kidney, like a butcher testing his meat.
And then he swept her up and ran on, as her world went, mercifully, black.
T
he Gunner led George out of the stairwell, leaving the faint smell of urine-soaked concrete behind them as they skidded out onto a raised walkway.
George slipped. The ground beneath his feet was slick with rain, a thickening downpour that was just beginning. Running in under the storm clouds felt like running toward something it was infinitely more normal to run away from. As fast as you could.
The Gunner caught him and pulled him to his feet. He stopped and looked hard at George’s hand. At the scar left by the dragon. He grunted.
“What?” asked George.
“Makers mark. The glint—Edie—told me, just before the Raven got hold of you. That mark means you got a choice, and I’d say you’ve made it.”
“What kind of choice? I haven’t chosen
anything
about this!” George protested.
“Yeah, you have. You’ve chosen a lot, son. You’re here. You could be at the Stone, putting your world to rights. But you’re here.”
He nodded as if he approved of something George didn’t understand.
“Standing taller, you are; taller and straighter than when I first saw you. You ain’t apologizing for yourself. You’re fighting.”
“I’m just trying to stay alive.”
“No. If you was doing that, you’d be at the Stone, making your amends, not thinking about anyone else. Not with me, trying to help her.”
He looked George up and down.
“You come a long way, mate, and not just miles. And you know why you’re fighting and not just sniveling?”
“Not because of this mark,” said George.
“You’re fighting because you got something to fight for. The mark is what got you in trouble, but it’s also what might help you out of it. The mark says you might be a maker.”
“I’m not a maker! I don’t make anything.”
But his hand was, he noticed, back in his pocket, kneading away at the plasticene blob.
“You may not know what you are, but I’ll tell you what, the taints know it, and after I seen you with that dragon at Temple Bar, I think I know it. It’s in your blood and it’s in your bone. You done well, son. You looked to be made of pretty dodgy stuff when I first seen you. Just goes to show. It’s like Jagger used to say in his studio—it’s not just the clay, it’s what you make of it.”
George thought of his dad, quietly sucking at the cigarette parked in the side of his face, hands working at the clay in between them. Before he could think further, the Gunner ran on.
“We can talk later. We got our work cut out.”
George ran after him. He realized they were in a new self-contained complex within the City. The raised walkways that they were sprinting along gave it a futuristic feel, especially if your vision of the future involved grime and blank windows staring at you as you passed.
The Gunner pulled ahead, and George followed him along a path that ran parallel with the busy street below. He could see speeding cars and taxis racing past through the glass wall on his right. George had to swerve to avoid an old man with a cane, and bounced off a dustbin that looked like it was made of rubber but felt like it was made of rocks.
He ignored the pain and kept going.
Ahead of them, the four lane street disappeared under a vast arch in a big brick and stone building, as if it were being swallowed by a whale. The top of the arch was glassed in, and he saw people blankly staring out from their tables in a restaurant, chewing under the blue neon “Pizza” sign.
They ran into a covered atrium alongside the arch, and suddenly there were shiny floor surfaces and noise and color and bright artificial light. Diagonal steel pipes pierced the glass wall on his left, buttressing the polished pink granite to his right. A sign reading “Bastion Highwalk” slid past. They ran around a statue of two frozen tango dancers out in the open air. George wished he felt as light-footed as they looked. He felt like he was dragging lead in his shoes.
He was tired, and as he and the Gunner turned and twisted, he began to feel deeply out of control, with no idea where they were going. He was getting lost in the maze.
He had an impression of open spaces to their left, a flash of green, an unlikely white church by some water, and then they were out of the fresh air again and running in a low-ceilinged space. The walkway seemed to hug the roof as it right-angled through a forest of thick concrete columns.
In this long vaultlike space he felt underground again, although his sense told him they were still high above the ground-level of the city. He found it harder and harder to breathe.
“Come on, son. Dig in,” said the Gunner.
They ran toward the square of light at the end of the dim passageway.
When they clattered out into the rain, they were on the edge of a huge rectangular space, entirely closed in by balconied flats raked back like pictures of Aztec pyramids that he had seen at school. The lost-city feel was added to by the vegetation sprouting from every balcony, startlingly green against the gray concrete and the reddy-brown bricks. On the floor of this elongated piazza was an impressive stretch of water, where fountains were fighting a losing battle with the wild downpour that was eclipsing their more ordered sprinkling.
They splashed through a sheet of water on the brick beneath their feet, then along another covered walkway.
George gave up trying to keep his bearings. He just concentrated on not losing the Gunner. He stopped noticing the things and places he was running past as anything other than a blur. Except, at one point, he looked right, and found himself glimpsing something like a giants greenhouse, with tall lush tropical vegetation and groups of schoolchildren standing beneath it, looking out at the rain.
He couldn’t believe he’d been as uninvolved and bored as they looked on his own school trip only a day ago.
He felt the rain on his hot face and thought about how he’d stood out on the steps of the Natural History Museum and been so angry and so sure that being a loner was the safest way to protect himself.
Right now he’d have given anything to be part of that mindless group behind the fuggy windows—not happy, maybe, but also not scared; not exhausted, not where he was now. He couldn’t believe that all he’d been through had been going on for nearly twenty-four hours.
And then he remembered that the clock was ticking down, and that unless he got to the London Stone soon, he was going to be living—perhaps not for very long—something that the Black Friar had called the Hard Way.
Ahead of the Gunner a tall new office block swept into the sky, its bottom floors flaring out like a ski jump. Lit from within, against the dark clouds and driving rain, it somehow lifted the spirits. Maybe because it was glass and light, and not wet concrete.
George felt a bit better.
The Gunner turned a corner.
And then the Minotaur hit him.