Pandaemonium (38 page)
Just me, just a fit healthy normal girl with no enhancements, running pell-mell and helter-skelter as fast as I could up the stairs and up the long passage towards the door and the world outside.
And getting there, chased but uncaught, unmolested; and pulling the door open just immaculately in time to surprise Jacey and Jordan, there on the threshold, two golden boys, princes of the Overworld come to rescue me, just exactly too late to do it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
L
ATER, WE SAT
perched side by side, all three of us on the big white bike where it was parked up in a layby. Squeezed between them, I kicked my heels against the Beemer’s flank and sipped brick-red layby tea bought from a van. The boys were eating something unimaginable, warm and greasy and pressed between the halves of a flabby white bun. Drive-by dining. Each of them had offered me a bite, but that was ritual, not real; they were only teasing. They knew how revolting it was. They must do, they were eating it.
Besides, I was mad at them. Not in the mood to let them feed me. Or tease me, either. Not yet. Not till I’d done with scolding them.
“You were supposed to be leading Oz’s spies
away
, you morons!”
“We did that,” Jacey said, scowling at a drip of red sauce on his jacket, scooping it up on his finger, sucking it off. “For half the morning, for a hundred miles we did that. We figured that was far enough.”
“So then you just turned round and headed for the caves, and drew everybody’s attention to exactly where you shouldn’t?”
“By that time we figured you’d be in and out. Or in, at any rate. Needing help, maybe. So we came back, a bit quicker than we’d gone.”
“Less wind resistance, once I’d dumped that bloody wig.”
“Oh, Jay, you didn’t? You’d better buy Mrs J another one. God knows where you’ll find one, though...”
“Make him go back and find this one,” Jacey said maliciously. “Teach him to go tossing things into hedgerows.”
“
Any
way,” I said determinedly, dragging us back to what mattered, which was me scolding them till they were sheepish, “you just brought all the trouble back with you. Or you could’ve done. What if the Corbies had been following you? You’d have led them straight to me.”
“We did try to call you,” Jacey said, “but we figured you probably didn’t have a signal, all that underground.”
“Or maybe I’d turned my phone off, sweetheart, not to let it give me away when I was sneaking in and idiot boys started phoning...”
“Oh. Yeah. There would be that.”
“It was an idiot plan anyway, mind,” Jordan said. “It’s not exactly sneaking, if you go right up to him and have a confrontation.”
“Worked, though, didn’t it?”
“Only because we arrived just in time to save you from those musclebound hulks pounding up behind you.”
“I could’ve –”
“No, you couldn’t,” Jacey said. “Not without your Aspect.”
And that was true, of course, and something to get used to.
“Will it, y’know, just die now? Now that the demon...?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want it back, though. Even with hulks on my tail and you not around. That’s why I left it, I just couldn’t...” Simply the thought of it made me shudder, now. Now that I knew what it was, where it had come from, what the price had been. The boys felt that, I guess; they both leaned in a little, nicely sharing the duty, holding me tighter without either one of them needing to risk a positive statement, a claim, an arm around me. That might look territorial, and they were treading so cautiously around the margins, it was really rather sweet.
“Of course not,” Jacey said. “You wouldn’t want that. We can do it better, anyway. Whatever you want, but clean. From the top. From my dad. Or from Jay’s.” Ducking territoriality again, or maybe remembering just too late how very much I didn’t like his father.
“Both,” Jordan said. “Why not? The best of everything.”
“No,” I said. Slowly, because it was a big decision; flatly, finally, because it was my decision and I discovered that I’d made it. They would treat me like a minor royal, load me down with honours that I hadn’t earned, the best of everything. Power, immortality, more money than I could ever spend. They were offering me the world, more worlds than one – and I shook my head at them and said no, and it was really hard to do that, but it was still the right thing to do. I’d loved being a daemon, right until the end there, but...
“No,” I said. “I don’t want superpowers, I want just to be a girl again. Nothing extra. I want to be human, I want to live in the same world that regular people do. Now I’m not running away and I don’t have to hide any more. I want to get strong in the gym, stay fit in the pool. I want to defend myself the old-fashioned way, martial arts. Maybe I’ll take up cage-fighting. I want to be able to scare the pair of you stupid.”
Jordan gave me his twitchy, anticipatory smile; Jacey said, “It won’t be easy, just being a regular girl. While you’re still spending your time with us, I mean.” There was no
if
in there, no option of a doubt. “A foot in each camp, you could get torn in two.”
I wasn’t entirely sure that he meant it quite the way he said it, as if he was talking about the mortal and the Overworld and nothing else. Nor was he sure, I think, once he’d heard himself.
I guess we were all listening, all hearing the same thing. All very aware of the three of us, sitting here in complicated company. It was Jordan who said, “So what do we call you, then? Now? You were Fay before” –
when you were with Jacey
, he was saying – “and Desi when you were a daemon.”
When you were with me
. “So what now?”
He wanted another decision, a declaration. This way or that, or maybe the other.
“Idiot boy,” I said fondly.
I’m not answering that.
“We’ll work something out.” This way, that way. Maybe the other.
“NEW TOWN, NEW TROUBLES. THAT’S A RULE.”
Jordan looks like a regular teenager, but he’s not. He acts like he’s not exactly human, but he is. He treads the line between mundane reality and the world of the supernatural. He helps kids on the run find their way back home. He’s good at that; he’s a runaway himself. Sometimes he helps in other, stranger ways.
Desdaemona also knows the non-human world far too well. She tracks Jordan down and enlists his aid in searching for her lost sister Fay, who did a Very Bad Thing involving an immortal. This may be a mistake, for both of them. Too many people are interested now, and some of them are not people at all.
Ben Macallan’s urban fantasy debut takes you on a terrifying journey, lifting the curtain on what really walks our city streets.
‘One of the most innovative and sophisticated writers of horror fiction.’
Tangled Web Books
‘Macallan’s narrative skills weave a spell-binding effect. Seldom, if ever, is a syllable wasted.’
Infinity Plus
on
Tower of the King’s Daughter
Available to buy from the Kindle Store
“What’s the first thing you think of when I say ‘angel’?” asked Mallory.
Alice shrugged. “I don’t know... guns?”
Alice isn’t having the best of days - late for work, missed her bus, and now she’s getting rained on - but it’s about to get worse.
The war between the angels and the Fallen is escalating and innocent civilians are getting caught in the cross-fire. If the balance is to be restored, the angels must act - or risk the Fallen taking control. Forever. That’s where Alice comes in. Hunted by the Fallen and guided by Mallory - a disgraced angel with a drinking problem he doesn’t want to fix - Alice will learn the truth about her own history... and why the angels want to send her to hell.
What do the Fallen want from her? How does Mallory know so much about her past? What is it the angels are hiding - and can she trust either side?
‘Dark, enticing and so sharp the pages could cut you,
Blood and Feathers
is a must-read.’
Sarah Pinborough
Available to buy from the Kindle Store
