Shrike (Book 2): Rampant
Read Shrike (Book 2): Rampant Online
Authors: Emmie Mears
Tags: #gritty, #edinburgh, #female protagonist, #Superheroes, #scotland, #scottish independence, #superhero, #noir
Contents
SHRIKE:
RAMPANT
by
emmie mears
RAMPANT
By Emmie Mears
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Emmie Mears
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at [email protected].
Thank you for your support of the author's rights.
Published in the United States by Emmie Mears www.EmmieMears.com
Cover Design by Jessica Negrón
For those trying to rebuild.
one
If you'd asked me a year ago what I'd be doing at four-thirty in the morning most nights, I would have told you I'd be sleeping and that you could sod off.
Spatters of rain dot my grey spandex outfit and cling to my eyelids, bringing with them the loamy scent of autumn that almost makes me forget I'm standing in a close strewn with rubbish, about to pummel a pickpocket.
If you'd asked me a year ago how many people I'd had stare at me with enough hatred to make your liver shrivel, I'd have said one. Now the number's somewhere in the hundreds, the latest of which is this bloke.
He circles me like a boxer, jumping from foot to foot as if I couldn't break both of them between hops. I watch him for a moment -- his movements tell me he's had some training, his eyes tell me he reviles the idea of getting the shite kicked out of him by a girl, his nose tells me someone once thought it was worth breaking.
I know he's heard of me. Everyone in Scotland's heard of me. I'm hard to miss, what with the spandex and the black mask across my eyes. Not to mention the tutu, just so he really knows what type of person's about to pummel him.
Well, I can't say he hasn't been warned.
He darts toward me, and I sidestep faster than a stepped-on cat. My hand catches his arm, and he breaks it himself with his own momentum, twisting it backward. I drop it as the sound of the bone cracking reaches my ears, and he goes down with a cry, clutching the arm against his chest.
"Bloody cunt!"
"Och, not anymore. I don't even get me period."
His eyes are all murder and crackle-candy pain that spits out at me like sparks.
"Give them over."
He really does spit now. Right at me. He misses, and the frothy globule lands a yard in front of me. Unimpressed, I take two steps forward, purposely stepping right in the wet splat.
"Give me the sodding wallets." I'd watched him lift five in the two streets it took him to reach a close dark enough for me to jump him, swiping them from groggy commuters en route to work.
The pickpocket makes no move to obey.
"Right. I'll just be taking them, then." I reach for his jacket where I saw him store the stolen pocketbooks, and he raises his good hand to bat my arm away. I swat him right back, aiming my straight hand at a pressure point in the crook of his arm. He yelps, and the arm falls to his side while I frisk him. He'll get feeling back in a few minutes.
I count five, seven, eight total wallets, all holding ID cards that look nothing like him. I don't have a place to stash them, so I use my tutu to fashion a makeshift hammock against my stomach.
"Might want to get that arm looked at," I tell him. "And keep your hands to yourself from now on, or I'll find you again and put your other arm's sticky fingers in a cast too."
I don't care that I look like an arse, waddling away from that twat with my tutu bunched up around a gaggle of other people's wallets. It's morning, but by the depth of darkness lurking outside the glow of Edinburgh's lights, you wouldn't think so. The streets are warming to that early morning buzz, and as I exit the close, the groans of the pickpocket fade into the hum of street lamps and the whirr of traffic on Dairy Road. I've come a long way from home tonight. Farther than I usually venture. Tonight it doesn't feel like far enough, because as soon as I turn onto Dairy Road, a poster catches my eye.
"WANTED" posters aren't really a thing in Scotland. But this one takes up an entire bus shelter. I stop short, the weight of the wallets in my tutu swaying in the spandex.
Blonde hair. Square jaw. Blue eyes the colour of the background of the saltire.
Rosamund Granger.
My lungs expand as though they're bracing me for flight, as if that larger-than-life image of Rosamund Granger will step out of the poster and stomp toward me like Bruce Banner having a bad day. She doesn't, but my adrenaline spike doesn't seem to care.
Suspect extremely dangerous. Discharged from the Royal Military Police. Misconduct.
That's a very British way of saying murder.
That's why her face stares out at me. Wanted in connection with several murders, beginning with the abduction, torture, and death of Glyn Burns. Escaped custody 27 October 2014.
Without my bidding, another pair of blue eyes swims in front of my face. Eyes set in white skin that sagged against bones that seemed like they'd shrunk within a fleshy husk. Glyn Burns and his tortured face. I'd been the one to find him, the First Minister of my country, bound in chains against an azure velveteen backdrop in a grotesque parody of our flag.
As seconds tick by, I'm back there, back weeks ago, seeing it all happen again in front of my eyes. Not for the first time, a whisper stirs in my mind, telling me how I ought to have been quicker, cleverer. I ought to have saved him. Now more people are dying.
My mouth is dry, and my fingers feel damp on the hem of my tutu.
A pedestrian walks toward me, not paying attention to me or the fact that I'm wearing a spandex costume and mask until he's nearly upon me. He looks up in an I-missed-my-morning-cuppa sort of way, then blinks and stops walking only to start again as if he's not entirely sure he's really seeing me.
I don't want the morning commuters to gape at me. I should be dealing with any post-trauma in the relative safety of my bedroom. Ducking around the next corner — the man is giving me a surreptitious side eye as I turn — I pull my mobile from my boot and dial with one hand.
"It's Shrike," I say to the constable who answers. "Caught a pickpocket with eight wallets. He'll probably be heading to a hospital to get his arm set." I describe the thief and am about to hang up.
"Oi, before you go." There's a pause and then a murmur, as if the constable's covered the mouthpiece of the phone. "Aye, I'll tell her," he says. "Shrike?"
"Still here."
"I've just been told there's been a murder in Inch Park, over by the university. You ought to have an alert."
"Been a wee bit tied up, but I'll check straight away."
With that, I hang up, trying to find a better rhythm for my breath.
The wallets will go in a drop box outside my flat where Sergeant McLean will pick them up later.
It's what we worked out. He knows my identity and where I live; I leave anything he needs to pick up in a locked post box.
I can't go play peek-a-boo with a murder scene cradling a pickpocket's booty to my midsection.
The trek back to my flat takes longer than it should, because the morning traffic's beginning and I have to gingerly keep a handle on the wallets. My feet wobble, unsteady, Rosamund Granger's face still looming large in my mind. This is the glamour of superherodom.
They don't tell you about the flashbacks in the manual.
After stashing the wallets safely, I click on the alert on my mobile. There's been a murder down on Gilmerton Road. Right by the University of Edinburgh in Inch Park, just as the constable said.
It takes me about a half hour to get down there, and I'd prefer to approach from the rooftops, but the buildings are sparse near the park. Instead, I climb a tree to get a survey of the area. Lately, being up high is the only time I feel any semblance of contentment. The distance from the ground, the clarity that comes with it -- much as I'd rather not admit it, I don't like much to be on the ground these days. Looking out over a small burn, I see the flashing blue lights in the distance.
I stick to the tree line, but the trees are all too small for me to jump from branch to branch. The impulse surprises me, as does the unease I feel at my feet on the ground.
This is new.
Trepidation fills me. As I draw closer, there's blood spattered on the grass. I sidestep it, not wanting to contaminate their crime scene. So far none of the inspectors have seen me, and I don't want to draw attention to myself. I take a wide circuit of the site, thankful that the sky is dark and will remain so for another hour yet.
There are a surprising number of people milling around, taking notes and pictures. I venture closer, using a low shrub for cover. An inspector is talking to a constable who keeps looking from side to side.
"You're sure it was her?" The inspector makes a note, trying to make eye contact with the constable.
"I saw her clearly. It was Rosamund Granger. She wasn't even trying to hide. Looked me right in the eyes after she stabbed him."
I feel cold, and it's not the damp grass underneath my knees. If she's killing people indiscriminately -- no.
Rosamund Granger does nothing indiscriminately. She has a plan and a reason for this. She has to.
I wonder for a moment if Sergeant McLean already knows who did this, if that's why he sent me here. But something tells me I'm the first person -- well, tied with the inspector -- to hear those words.
They're still talking, and I clue in again.
"Keep this quiet," says the inspector. "We'll need to talk to Sergeant McLean."
The constable nods, but catches the inspector's arm as he tries to turn away. I raise an eyebrow at the action, shifting to see more clearly through the bush's branches.
"Do you...do you think I'm in any danger? Will she come after me? She saw my face."
A surge of pity fills me, and I can't help but sympathise with this young constable. I wouldn't want to come face to face with Rosamund Granger again if I could avoid it, but as I'm one of the ones looking for her, that's not a choice I get to make. I will find her, and she will meet justice for what she's done.
Not for the first time, I think of her son's dead face, framed by blood and green marble. He deserved better. We all deserved better that night.