Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) (50 page)

Mr Ruislip wasn’t there.

All eyes turned to the doorway. Edna stood in it, swaying, a hand pressed to her side.

She whispered, “I think he went… that way…”

Her hand fell from her side. Down her purple cardigan was a dark stain, which was spreading. Edna crumpled; Swift rushed forward to catch her. He eased her onto the floor, and tried pushing down on the crimson tear spreading across Edna’s body. At the end of the corridor, a long, long way off, the lift doors went
ping
and closed on a figure of flayed skin and shadow.

“Oh dear,” sighed Edna. “This wasn’t meant to happen, was it?”

Sharon looked at Swift, who shook his head very gently. Edna saw the look and swallowed painfully. “Well,” she muttered, “at least I won’t have to argue with the pension office any more.”

“Nonsense,” murmured Sharon, squatting down and fumbling the trailing end of Edna’s cardigan over the wound. “You’ll be losing out on winter fuel credits before you know it.”

“Now, Sharon,” chided Edna. “That’s really very nice of you to say, but I think we both know it’s a naughty little fib.”

“We’ll… get an ambulance,” exclaimed Rhys. “We’ll get a doctor! Has anyone got a mobile phone?”

Silence in the cavern.

Sharon stared down into Edna’s face. To her surprise she saw the old
woman smile. Edna’s hand closed around Sharon’s, squeezed it once, tight. “You don’t get something for nothing, dear,” confided the high priestess. “Sooner or later, someone has to pay the price.”

Sharon opened her mouth to say something profound, something like, “Don’t be like that. That’s really negative; there’s always a way, a good middle ground, a…”

And found that she couldn’t. She stared into the old face beneath her. Edna smiled again and squeezed Sharon’s hand tighter, then, still gripping, eased it away from the wound. Sharon’s fingers were red with blood, which was welling freely now through the fabric of Edna’s clothes.

“Naturally, we like to express our appreciation,” whispered the woman, so soft Sharon barely heard it, and barely needed to, already knew the words. “Do not be afraid,” breathed the priestess. “She is with us.”

Sharon straightened up, looked round the room. Everyone seemed to be waiting for her to do something, their arms limp, their faces bare and grey. Sharon looked from Edna to Swift, from Swift to Mrs Rafaat, then at the open door.

“Oi, sorcerer,” she blurted, “you gonna do that fire and lightning thing now?”

Swift hesitated.

His eyes met hers.

“Oh,” he breathed, realisation dawning. “Yes, I suppose I should.”

Carefully–very carefully–he pressed Edna’s hands tight over the seeping blood in her belly. Mrs Rafaat gave a little gasp of distress as Edna flinched, and scampered forward to press her hands over Edna’s, murmuring, “You’ll be fine, dear. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Druid,” barked Swift. “You’re with me.”

“But Edna,” protested Rhys. “Ms Li—”

“Now.”

Pushing the druid out of the door, Swift glanced back at Sharon. She smiled, a brief flicker without any humour, then turned to Sammy. Beside the tiny shape of the goblin stood the great bulk of Dog, his tongue dangling, his tail between his legs.

“I could…” ventured the goblin.

“It’s fine. I’ll do it.”

“I mean, I’ve got nothing better to do with my infinite abilities…”

“I’ll do it,” repeated Sharon firmly. “I know how.”

Sammy hesitated, then gave a faint smile with a hint of two great teeth over a dangling lower lip. “Yeah,” he declared. “You do, don’t you?”

Swift was already closing the door behind him, shutting off the darkness of the corridor. Sammy nodded once at Sharon, patted Dog uneasily on the flank and walked out through the metal as the lock clicked shut.

“Well,” wheezed Edna, “there are worse ways to go.”

Mrs Rafaat held Edna’s hand tight. “You’re not going anywhere, dear,” she whispered. “You’ll be fine.”

“No,” sighed the old woman. “I don’t think so.”

Dog peered down curiously from Mrs Rafaat’s side, sniffing at Edna’s blood as it pooled on the floor. Sharon wordlessly picked up all the sacrifices Sammy had stolen from the upstairs vault and circled the prone form of Edna, laying them out as she went. The slipper stuck with a faint sound of wetness to the growing pool of blood, which started seeping through it as Sharon placed it at Edna’s feet.

“I feel… cold.”

“I know,” whispered Sharon. “I’m sorry.”

“W-what are you doing?” stammered Mrs Rafaat. “She needs an ambulance, first aid…”

Edna gripped Mrs Rafaat’s hand harder, commanding silence. The hem of Mrs Rafaat’s sari was lying in the blood, a rising crimson stain spreading through the silk. “Please,” breathed Edna. “Stay with me?”

Sharon stepped back from the slowly discolouring slipper. Arms limp at her side, she declared, “This is the slipper of the old woman who has lost her way. She sneaked out of the nursing home in the middle of the night, and wandered in search of a lost love through the
silent streets. Her slipper fell off on the way, but she was not afraid, for even in the darkest hours of the night she was not alone.”

“Stay with me,” repeated Edna as Mrs Rafaat made to pull away. “My lady, stay.”

Sharon didn’t know where the words were coming from, didn’t know what they meant. But as she held up each object, she knew it was true, knew it was right. “This is the child’s glove found abandoned on a spike on the fence. The parents called out for their missing infant but could not find her, but though she wandered lonely through the night, hands bitten by the cold, she was not alone. No one is alone in the city.”

“I’m not sure I… I-I-I don’t think…” stammered Mrs Rafaat.

“This is the greaseproof paper that held a piece of chicken given to a starving man as the last shop closed. He was told, ‘Come back, whenever you want, and I’ll give you what you need to live,’ and as he walked away he offered his thanks to Our Lady of 4 a.m., who had preserved him through another night.” Sharon tore up the greasy piece of chicken paper, scattering the fragments over Edna’s body. The priestess was smiling, but her pupils were widening and the blood was coming slower now, too slow, from her wound.

“This is the umbrella that blew inside out while crossing Hungerford Bridge. The woman who carried it was soaked through, her clothes clinging blackly to her skin. But in the quietest hour of the night she took her shoes off and pulled down her hair and laughed at the rain, free from the judgement of men and safe in the city that was her own.”

Dog was sitting up straight now, his ears sticking up from his head like antennae. Mrs Rafaat stared into Edna’s eyes. “I don’t think… I-I didn’t mean…” stuttered Mrs Rafaat.

“It’s all right,” breathed Edna. “It’s for the best.”

“This is the bag the beggar man carried his clothes in. Lasts a lifetime. Worn out in a week. Life passed him by, but she did not.”

Sharon laid the bag above Edna’s head and stood back. Mrs Rafaat’s clothes were sticky with blood, her hands crimson with it. She looked down at her feet, at the slow spread of the redness up her sari, then back into Edna’s eyes.

Edna Long, sometime hairdresser, beauty parlour owner, high
priestess of the Friendlies, thankful congregation to Our Lady of 4 a.m., smiled at her.

“You’re in the presence of She Who Walks Beside,” murmured Sharon as Dog dipped a curious paw into the blood on the floor. “And the sacrifice has been made. Tradition says you get to make a wish.”

Edna smiled still.

“Greydawn,” she breathed, and it seemed to Sharon that the breath kept coming from the furthest depths of Edna’s lungs, rolling out between her lips, her bare-whisper sending shimmers through her blood and skin, seeming not to cease even as the last vestiges of sound passed from her body and the smile on her face faded to an empty stare, fixed up at nothing.

Dog whined–a long, slow, animal note.

Mrs Rafaat carefully laid Edna’s hand aside, folding it across the high priestess’s chest. She stood, the blood shifting beneath her feet, and turned to look at Sharon.

“Oh,” she said, and seemed surprised she’d spoken. “Oh,” she said again. “Is that what I mean?”

The blood rippled at her feet like a cup of water trembling in an earthquake. Mrs Rafaat looked down at it, curious, then back up at Sharon.

“The thing is…” she murmured as the crimson stain spread further, racing upwards faster than nature could accomplish.

“What I think I wanted to say…” And the blood passed from the sari she wore and spread over her hands, a wriggling, living thing. It stretched tendrils up and around her neck, wove itself across her face and into her hair.

“What I was trying to say all along, really…” Her fingers began to dissolve, falling away into nothingness beneath the sheath of Edna’s blood; her sari billowed around her knees and hips as the bones that had supported them shimmered down to no more than raging air.

“… was how very much I liked being me.” Lips curled into face, face dissolved into air, air contracted, twisted and shrank down, pulling the hollow shroud of the blood-soaked sari to the floor with it, and, without any more fanfare or calamity, Mrs Rafaat was gone.

They were waiting for her outside the metal door.

Rhys staggered to his feet as Sharon stepped out, her hands stained with Edna’s blood.

“Are you…” he asked. “Is she…”

“Edna’s dead.” Sharon’s voice spoke a hollow fact, no room left for anything else. “Mrs Rafaat is gone.”

“But… but then… are
you…”

As Rhys fought for words, Sammy peered past him. On the floor by the hole lay the body of Edna. Both Mrs Rafaat and Dog were gone.

“Greydawn,” he breathed. “She’s gonna be pissed off.”

Sharon glanced down at the goblin and her face hardened. She turned away and marched towards the lift. Swift scrambled to catch up with her, seizing her by the arm.

“Sharon!”

She turned, but there was something in her face which made him let go. Before the force of her stare, he recoiled.

“I’m… sorry for Edna.”

“There had to be blood,” she snapped. “And you knew it. Come on.”

He didn’t move. But Sharon wasn’t stopping. Rhys ran to join her, followed by Sammy. Reluctantly, Swift came too.

“Where are we going?” asked Rhys as the white door of the lift slid open.

“Gonna end it,” Sharon replied. “The way it always had to end.”

He runs.

He has never run before, but now the city is moving, the streets dancing around him, and he runs.

He is a wendigo of the urban forest, he is the shadow that turns as you pass beneath the lamp post, he is the claw waiting on the other side of the locked ancient door, he is the laughing beyond the gate; he purses his mouth and puffs, and the lights go out; he is ancient and old as nightmare and he is…

… running and afraid.

Is this fear?

It must be.

He has never been afraid before. But now he rounds a corner and the streets seem to turn back, trapping him. Left, here, should have been the path to the gate, the traffic gate lowered across Canada Water, but it is not! How can it not be?

He runs again, runs and runs for the bridge across the water, and he can see it. He can see it, but there is the passage to the shopping subways up ahead, the grille drawn across, and as he looks it seemed to grow and grow and swallow him whole, and when he raises his eyes again the bridge is gone!

It is gone because he is not where he should be, and he looks up and
thinks he can see a banshee circling overhead, and he sniffs the air and can smell the decaying flesh of a necromancer, and he looks at his hands and they are no longer human, not even close, not even the shadow of a pretence. Not even the red wash of human blood can disguise the truth that he is wendigo! And wendigos cannot be afraid!

“The city doesn’t want you here.”

A voice from the shadow. And she’s there, of course she’s there, stepping out of the night. But even as he screams with fury and lashes out at her, the shaman is gone, vanished back into the gloom.

“You’ve pissed off the very stones.”

He snarls with fury and lashes out at the air, tearing at cold nothingness.

“You’ve angered the streets themselves.”

“Fight me!” he roars. “Fight me!”

“All this time I never stopped to ask… Why did you do it?”

A glimpse, the girl,
there,
beneath the lamp post, but she is gone again, a flimsy vision sinking back into the spirit walk.

“I don’t think it was for wealth, or power, or prestige–so why? What could be so important to a monster that it would tear the fabric of the city itself?”

“Little girl, little girl!” he screams. “If you’re so concerned for these streets, then fight me for them!”

“Don’t have to. I’m a shaman. I’m part of these streets, and they’re a part of me, and when you attack them, you attack me. I’m sure there’s a name for it. Something old, and deep, and full of time. I forget the details.”

“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you and all of yours.”

“No, Mr Ruislip. You won’t.”

And there she is, standing where–but of course!–where she’d always been, outside the shattered glass and burning lights of Burns and Stoke, watching him, waiting.

Mr Ruislip spreads his claws, opens his jaws that can sever a head with a single snap and, with an animal scream that sets the bulbs singing in the street lamps, launches himself at her, flying through the air, trailing shredded flesh and spatters of bile.

He came to within an inch of her. Something cold and hard and unforgiving manifested in his path, knocking him off his feet and
sending him crashing back. Groggy, Mr Ruislip stared at the thing that had come between him and the smell of blood.

There was nothing there.

Sharon smiled, seeing his confusion, and exhaled into the empty air.

Her breath struck something cold and unseen, and condensed at once into a shimmering cloud. The cloud spilt out and around, winding itself around the invisible nothing that had barred Mr Ruislip’s way, and for a moment, that nothingness had a shape written in steam: it had arms, and legs, and a head, curved and twisting in the air, and it was…