The Neon Court (13 page)

“This is our night,” I heard her say. “This is what we are!”

“Stop!” The pavement buckled beneath my feet, cracked and split as I let the magic go, poured it into the nearest thing I could find. Tarmac began to bubble and boil, became sticky, black, reflective, rose up, tangling into fists and fingers, curled around her feet and up her legs, flesh and cloth smoking, and for a moment her fingers released their hold. Someone else would have screamed in pain, but not Oda, or whatever this thing was that Oda had become; liquid tar laced with jagged grains
of stone and dirt bubbled beneath us and I pulled free, slipped on the uneven rolling surface, half fell, feet splashing in tar, oil and rain, turned and ran.

I could hear footsteps behind me, walking in the darkened night, and this time I didn’t look back.

The lights were out in the street, the windows dark, the city sleeping. I dragged my bubble of light above my head and staggered through the rain, eyes burning, nose aching, ears popping, throat a crumpled plastic bag. I could feel the shadows moving around me, the rats turning their heads beneath my feet, the pigeons cowering in the rooftops, the foxes scuttling for their lairs. I shouted, “Wake up! You lazy-arsed lot, wake up!” at the black windows of the houses and nothing moved, nothing stirred. I turned my fists towards the cars parked in the streets around me and set the sirens wailing, yellow lights flashing, filled the street with a cacophony of sound; and no lights came on, no one stirred. The rain was above my ankles now in the middle of the road, tumbling downhill towards the river, not a gutter draining. I dragged in magic to my skin, wrapped it around me, and it came slow and heavy, the magic of things in the darkness, of things half perceived.

I waded through the flooding street, past shutters drawn down over sleeping shops and bus stops whose board indicated

No Service

past Tube stations with the gates locked and under railway bridges carrying rusting metal tracks. And still the footsteps followed me, growing neither louder nor fainter as I passed, a constant
tap tap tap
in the dark, as if these feet were not affected by rain nor flood, and could forever find a dry concrete surface on which to walk. I put my hands over my ears to shut it out, and still it was there
tap tap tap
behind my palms. I had no idea where I was going, and I didn’t dare stop. I picked a road that seemed longer, with more shops than the rest, shuffling down the pavement against a bouncing tide of rainwater. In the far distance I could see the towers of central London, the Gherkin and the National Westminster Tower lit up blue-green-purple agains tthe night, and fixed them as my destination, though I could hold them both between my index finger and thumb.

A feeling behind me, a disruption in the pattern of the falling rain was what made me turn. And she was there, just a few yards behind, one hand outstretched, fingers curled like an animal’s claw. Pain burst again behind my eyes and I ducked, threw a blast of compressed air, hot and smelling of air-conditioning vents, at her belly, which picked her up off her feet and deposited her with a splat onto the bonnet of a car. Shielding my eyes with one hand so I couldn’t see her, I slammed my fist into the roof of the car beside me and its engine leapt to life, a raw thrumming that spread almost immediately from car to car down the street. The exhaust pipes belched, rattling and rumbling, and with a crunch of machinery doing something it hadn’t been designed to do, began to billow thick brown-black smoke that spun and twisted like a tortured ghost in the falling rain. I staggered on, letting it curl up around behind me, pressing the soaked end of my sleeve over nose and mouth, blinking blood and dirt out of my eyes. I thought I could see a point of light ahead, a pinprick of green that as I watched turned to yellow, then to red. I accelerated towards it, heard feet moving behind me again, real, this time, moving fast, running, water slapping underneath shoes and there was a junction directly ahead, a crossroads, a set of traffic lights blinking steadily back to green as I approached. Then something caught the back of my head by the hair and nearly picked me up off my feet, and something else drove into my kidneys like they’d said something rude about its grandmother and I flopped like a fish, dropping to the ground. Somewhere between the smoke and the pain and the dark, I saw a pair of feet move round in front of me, saw the pink palm of Oda’s hand move down and catch me by the chin, pulling my head up. I closed my eyes and she dragged me as easily as a puppy back to my feet.

“Look at me,” she said.

I shook my head numbly.

“Look at me.”

“Don’t make us kill you,” we begged, “Oda, don’t make us burn.”

“Look at us!”

Her voice, and not her voice. Her lungs filled with someone else’s breath.

I reached out in the dark, grasped her arm by the wrist with both hands. “Sorry,” I wheezed.

“Too late, too late, too late too late too late too … !”

I tightened my grip, dug my fingers into her skin and, without daring to look, without opening my eyes, ran straight towards her. I caught her off balance, she staggered backwards, and kept staggering as I came, feet slopping in the rainwater. I swung her round by her extended arm towards where I guessed the pavement was, half opened my eyes as I let her go, saw her stagger against the kerb, fingers curling over the paving edge, raised my arm and shouted, “Do Not Cross!”

Nothing happened.

I sagged, bending over my own internal pain in the hope that my kidneys might one day forgive me, arm made of lead, throat burning, eyes on fire.

Oda straightened up slowly, turned towards me. I didn’t remember to look away fast enough, felt the pain again as her gaze locked on mine, felt my world begin to cave in from the edges, dropped to my knees, head in my hands, trying to claw the fire out of my skull, saw, in what little was left of the tunnel of my scarlet-stained vision, the traffic lights change.

Saw a flicker of light.

Something moved in the darkness behind Oda. It was orange-red, approximately five foot nine in height, and was on fire. Brilliant bright red light tumbled out of every part of its body, spilt over the ground around it, distorted the boundaries between skin and air. Its face, such as it was, had messy, blurred-out features which might, just might, have been fixed in an expression of infinite weary patience, worthy of the Buddha himself. The earth sizzled where it walked, the traffic lights hummed. I pointed at Oda and managed to whimper, “There may be special signals for pedestrians. You should only start to cross the road when the green figure shows.”

I turned my face away, crawled on my hands and knees, managed to make it onto my feet, staggered a few paces away. Behind me, I heard a sound that could almost have been a snort of derision, heard Oda step out to follow me. The red man moved. A single burning fist caught her arm as she moved after me, and locked tight in place. She struggled to break free and another red fist fell on her other arm, pinning her wrists tight. She looked it in the eye and it had no eyes with which to see, but just gripped her to the edge of the pavement. She tried to kick
it and her foot passed straight through its shin. I looked up at the traffic lights, willed them to stay green, willed my summoned saviour to stay where it was, willed the lights not to turn. They wanted to; so badly the lights wanted to obey their programming and let Oda go, and I forced them to obedience while behind me Oda, or not-Oda, or whatever-Oda shrieked, “Do you think you can hold me here? With
this
? This inanimate thing?!”

“If you have started to cross the road and the green figure goes out,” I whimpered, “you should still have time to reach the other side, but do not delay. If no pedestrian signals have been provided, watch carefully and do not cross until the traffic lights are red and the traffic has stopped.”

I staggered across the junction, felt my control of the spell slipping, felt the amber light start to flicker into life on the traffic lights, felt the presence of the red man begin to fade. This should have been an easy spell, but our head pounded and our eyes were on fire.

“The lights are turning, sorcerer!” called out Oda cheerfully. “You can’t stop them for ever, they’ll turn and your knight in crimson armour will disappear!”

I staggered down the middle of the street, leaning on the cars as I passed by, back burning, head burning, my vision two blurred slits in either eye. Behind me, I heard a little click, heard Oda jerk herself free, felt the traffic lights change. The red man, my red man, dissolved as quickly as he had come, shimmering away to nothing, his purpose fulfilled. Oda was barely fifty yards behind me. I raised my throbbing head, tried to will the lights of the city a little bit nearer, heard footsteps in my ears and, somewhere just behind them, the sound of an engine being revved in the wrong gear.

I slipped down against the side of a grocer’s truck as Oda approached, raised my hands in front of my face. Blurs. Dark brown smudges somewhere in the dark. The footsteps slowed as she neared. I hung my head and let the rain wash some of the heat and terror away.

“Sorry,” I wheezed as she stopped in front of me.

The sound of water being displaced, of something moving in the rain.

“You never say what for,” she replied, and her voice was for a moment almost human.

“Specifically?” I asked as two grey smudges that might have been her knees crossed my line of sight. “As in right here, right now?”

An engine being pushed up to full speed.

“I think it’d have to be my apprentice’s driving.”

I felt rather than saw Oda move, and with all that was left of my strength and might I drew my palms together, pushing the stolen sound of the rain and the car and our words and my racing heart into one thin slice of thunder between my fists, and turned my hands outwards and threw it at her. It lifted her off her feet, threw her the width of the road and slammed her into the side of a parked motorbike, which toppled to the ground wailing like a frightened animal. Two bright white points of light rose up to one side and a sheet of water fountained up and deposited itself squarely on my head. I heard an engine, smelt petrol, saw something darker move against the darkness of my sight, heard a window, heard a voice, familiar and scared, shout, “Come on then, move!”

I fumbled my way forward, felt the shape of a metal door, the heat of an engine, the vibration of a car, felt for the handle, pulled it, felt the door open, crawled inside, bundling my knees to my chest, and an arm reached over and slammed the door shut behind me and Penny’s voice said, “You bloody bleed on my bloody aunt’s car and I’ll make you clean it with a fucking toothbrush!”

“Drive,” I whimpered. “Drive!”

So Penny did.

Blind.

Not total blindness, not entirely.

Enough light to be offensive, like the smell of fresh bacon to a starving man, out of reach, out of understanding.

We couldn’t …

… it wasn’t acceptable to be …

… we were not prepared to be both mortal and a cripple.

We could not permit it to happen.

We did not care what price needed to be paid.

I huddled in the front seat of Penny’s car with my feet pressed against the glove compartment and my hands locked around the handle above the door, saw splotches in the dark, flashes of stained
yellow, streaks of white, dollops of pinkish-orange glow, flickers of grey-blue, daubs of darkness stained red, and had no idea where I was, or where we were going, or how long it took us to get there.

“Is she following?” I asked.

“Don’t see anything behind,” Penny replied, voice hard and busy, far too busy for anything other than a brisk rendition of facts.

“Are there street lamps?”

“Yeah. They came back on at Bethnal Green. Just a power cut. You were in a power cut.”

“I think you and I both know that’s not true.”

She didn’t reply.

After any time between a few minutes and a brisk millennium, we slowed, we stopped, we parked, the handbrake came on with a sharp
snack
.

I said, “Where are we?”

In answer, Penny wound down the window.

I smelt onion drifting on the air, heard voices in the distance, the sound of a motorbike engine misfiring, rain falling busily on shop awnings.

“We’re near Brick Lane,” she said. “You looked … so I stopped. I came as quickly as I could.” I could hear the sound of her grin, in her voice, in the parting of her lips. “Lewisham to Mile End in twelve and a half minutes – not too fucking bad, right?”

“Bet you broke a few speed limits.”

“I fucking broke a few laws of space and time, man! You should have seen me!” She stopped abruptly, the words choking even before they’d finished. I smiled, put my head against the back of the seat. My head pounded, my feet itched, the sticky hot itch of rainwater boiling in thick socks.

“Matthew?”

“Yeah?” I sighed.

“We safe here?”

“Don’t know. If the lights are on and people are moving, then yeah, I guess so, for now, until she comes back. What time is it?”

“Nearly dinner time.”

“Dinner … what about breakfast?”

“What about it?”

“I … it’s …” I swallowed, half shook my head. “We are ten kinds of fucked, apprentice-mine.”

“Yeah. You kinda look it. Matthew?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you see?”

“Not so as you’d care to notice.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“Is there … is there anything we can … I mean can we …”

“I need to get to Bart’s Hospital,” I wheezed. “I don’t know how long we have before she comes back, I couldn’t … You look into Oda’s eyes and you go blind. Jesus, she killed them, she killed the people in the hotel. She killed them all. Something’s got inside her, something’s in her eyes, I shouldn’t have left her, I should have stayed at the hotel. Bollocks bollocks bollocks!” I hit the nearest thing my fist could find, which turned out to be the dashboard of the car.

“Hey!” Penny’s voice snapped across my anger. “That’s my aunt’s car you’re beating up, dripping on and bleeding in, so you watch yourself or she’ll do you!”