Skulk (35 page)

Relief stole all the tension from my body and I sagged back. I allowed the paint can to be taken from my hand. Then someone seized one of my arms and pressed something hard and cold against my neck.

“Hello, Meg,” said Fran. I tried to pull away. “Ah, I wouldn’t. If you don’t care for your own throat, how about the butterfly’s?” She pressed the knife tight against my skin and turned me so we could see a young man holding Mo with another knife under his chin.

“I’ll cut his throat,” he said, “if you don’t do exactly what we say.”

I turned my head, very carefully, and looked up into Fran’s eyes.

“You’d better take me to Victoria,” I said. “I want a word.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I saw Roxie and James exchange assessing looks as we were marched along another bright, panelled corridor. We outnumbered them, four to two…

A searing pain sliced across my throat and I stumbled to a halt. For a second, I thought I was going to die. The sensation drew me in, until I was nowhere but the skin on my neck, seeing nothing but pink mist. I could’ve fainted... but I wasn’t dying. A red ache throbbed under my skin. Blood trickled down my neck and soaked into my clothes and I wanted to raise a hand to it, to feel how bad the cut was, but Fran held me tight against her and pressed the sticky blade to my face.

“It would be inconvenient for me to kill any of you right now, but I’ll take one of her eyes,” Francesca warned.

Fran held on tight to my arm, and dragged me up the spiral staircase to the second floor.

Four pigeons, red-eyed and sharp-beaked, shot along the corridor and battered around our heads. One of them had the skinny, slick body and dark grey feathers – but it wasn’t my mother. My mum had been dead since the moment Victoria and her pigeons had tapped out that horrid rhythm on my drawing room window.

I tried to get my bearings. One big room dominated most of the second floor. Apart from a few load-bearing girders, it was open and almost completely empty. London surrounded us on three sides – the windows were as huge and clear as the ones on the viewing level. On the fourth side, behind us, there was a wall with a doorway that led into the gallery over the dining room.

I almost hadn’t been far off when I’d guessed it might be a ballroom. The floor was made of wood, inlaid with spiralling patterns of light and dark, like the rays of the sun bursting out from a five-pointed star at the centre.

Fran released me and took up a position between us and the staircase, with her knife held to gut anyone who tried to make a run for it. There was no other way to escape the circle. Ryan released Mo, and he stepped over to press his hand into mine. I clutched onto it and glared at Fran.

Is this the knife you killed Blackwell with?

I wanted to grab it from her and throw it from the top of the Shard.

He tried to help me, and he didn’t deserve to be gutted by a traitor.
Another thought followed that one, panting at its heels like a faithful dog.
He may have known more than he let on, more than I know even now. And now he’ll never be able to tell me the rest of it.

At one edge of the circle, Victoria stood by a small table full of...
things
. There were a lot of blades and edges, some vials of clear liquid, screws, wide and glistening metal harnesses. There was a roll of wire, a silvery hammer, and a small blowtorch.

I wondered if you were supposed to be able to tell the difference between magic and torture.

Victoria turned, gave a little smile and waved Fran over.

She was wearing three of the stones. They’d been set into gold and she was wearing them around her neck. There were two empty settings too. She really was after the set. Three stars sparked out at me from the three stones: red, blue and... white.

Wait, a white stone?

The Rabble stone was yellow.

She had the Conspiracy stone. The power of the mind.

I ground my teeth with annoyance and felt the flap of skin slide, opening and closing, dribbling blood down the other side of my neck.

The Conspiracy. In their smart uniforms, in their supposedly impenetrable tower. It was their stone Victoria had stolen first – of course it was.

I wondered if Blackwell knew, or if he suspected, but he just didn’t want to let on that he knew, not even to me. Or maybe he believed it was safe.

Victoria pressed her hands to her chest and shut her eyes. The stones glowed. The red Skulk stone gave off a heat haze and the floor beneath my feet shuddered. One of the dark inlaid lines buckled and rose up like a snake, curled around and between my legs, and then turned back to solid wood, trapping me in place before I knew what was happening. Another pinned Mo’s feet, and the next got Roxie around the waist. James almost moved in time, but the wood leapt up and smacked the backs of his legs so hard he buckled to his knees and was trapped there.

I tried to move my legs, to press against the wood, but it had gone completely solid; strong and dark as mahogany roots. It would be easier to break my own legs than break their bonds.

Well, at least I knew what my absolute last resort move was going to be.

Victoria picked up a gleaming silver implement with a black handle, and walked towards us.

“Welcome to my home,” she said. “I hope you’re enjoying the view.”

I glared at her. Her dress was pale, creamy yellow silk and white lace. She should’ve been dressed like a sorceress, all black and pointy. Instead, she looked like she was going to a summer cocktail party right after she’d finished with all the kidnap and murder.

She stood in front of the four of us and turned the silver thing in her hands. It was a pair of heavy, sharp-toothed pliers.

“I have a question,” she said. “I’m just trying to think who would answer it best.”

“What is it?” I asked. “Why did you hurt Ben?”

“I thought I could get him to confess,” said Victoria. “It was a stab in the dark. I’m very glad you’re here, Meg. I think you’re the one that’s going to be able to help me now.”

“You’ve got our stone,” I said through my teeth. “I can’t help you with anything.”

“We’ll see,” said Victoria. “Tell me, which one of the Skulk is the leodweard?”

“Oh…” So she knew. Of course she did – there were seven of us and we were all here. Something rebellious sparked inside me and I scowled. “So Fran’s stupid mix-and-match plan didn’t work after all?” I glanced at Fran. Her face was like thunder.

“It was a slightly stupid plan,” Victoria agreed. “But you should be polite to your betters. You can hurt her,” she said to Fran. “But just a little.”

I twitched in my wooden leg clamps and wobbled as Fran walked up to me. “Fran, don’t.” My voice sounded pathetic and childish. She raised her knife, as if weighing where best to stick me. Then she touched the tip to my forehead.

“Keep still if you don’t want an unscheduled lobotomy,” she grinned.

The pain was intense, deep in my skull. I let out a wail as she ran her knife right down the middle of my forehead, all the way to my nose. Blood streamed down my cheeks, mingling with my tears.

“All right, that’s enough.”

Fran stepped back at once.

“I want the metashifter,” said Victoria, “And now I know I already have them. I just don’t know which of you it is. So I’ll give you one more chance.” She pointed her pliers at me, and then at James. “Give the metashifter up to me and you’ll die quickly and painlessly. Final offer.”

“I don’t know,” I said quickly. “I really don’t. Could be anyone.”

“Don’t look at me, darling,” James muttered. I glanced at him, blinking the blood out of my eyes. Could I believe him? Would he believe me, for that matter? I didn’t know who the metashifter was, but he didn’t know that.

Victoria sighed. “All right, well, I apologise if this is unnecessary, but I have to be sure.” Her hand snaked out and pointed at Mo.

“Fran, bring the boy.”

“No!” I yelled. “He’s not it, he’s from the Rabble, it’s a Skulk shifter you want!”

“Yes, I know,” said Victoria. She grabbed my elbow. The wood holding me up suddenly gave way and I staggered forwards, barely keeping my feet as she dragged me across the floor to the window. She thrust me up against it, my face right beside the thin layer of basically nothing between me and a sixty-five storey drop. Then she spun me around and yanked my wrists together, binding them in front of me with some kind of silver wire.

Fran had walked Mo over to us, with her knife digging into his back. I saw him wince and a trickle of blood stain the edge of his T-shirt. She positioned him in front of the table of horrible silver implements.

The wood where he was standing snaked up again, more of it this time. It twisted and snaked around him until he was lying at forty-five degrees, his arms pinned.

“Feel free to try to run,” said Victoria, when I looked down at my own unbound hands. “If you want to hurt him very, very badly.”

I met Mo’s eyes. His lips twisted in horror and he gave a tiny shake of his head. But I don’t think he was telling me
run,
or
don’t run
. Just,
No, all of this is wrong
.

“I don’t know who it is,” I said weakly. “I swear I don’t. If you hurt him I’ll just start blurting names; that won’t actually help you, will it?”

I glanced back at Mo. He was shaking. I looked away again, my chest tightening painfully.

“Come here,” said Victoria, crossing to the little table of horrid implements and beckoning me over, with a smile, as if I had a choice. Panic struck and I tried to dig in my heels, but Fran picked up a pair of scissors and raised them to Mo’s ear, and I staggered forwards.

“I’m going, don’t, I’m going.”

“Meg,” Victoria said, putting the silver pliers down on the table and not, for the moment, picking up anything else. “I really don’t
want
to have to torture anyone, it’s always such a waste of time in the end.”

“Why don’t you just use the fog?” I said, exhausted and confused and unable to look at Mo. “Summon some more of it and use it on me, then you’ll know for sure everything I know.”

Victoria didn’t answer.

That was weird.

I looked down. The cloud parted and I saw the Thames glistening grey and cold, bending around the Southbank and Waterloo as it flowed towards us out of the east. I could make out the Eye, Parliament, the green vastness of Hyde Park.

A burst of homesickness hit me and I swallowed hard. I never knew you could miss a place so much while you were standing in the heart of it.

And then I looked up from the swirling cloud. “You can’t use the fog because that would kill me,” I muttered, my voice harsh and whispery. “You can’t just kill us off until you find the right one, because our shift would go to the closest human, and that’s
you
.”

I half expected Victoria to lash out at me or give Fran the order to hurt Mo – but she smiled. “There you go!” she said, as if she was genuinely pleased with the fact that I’d come to this conclusion. “Hence, I’m afraid, the torture. I have to find out who has it without killing any of you. I wouldn’t get too happy about that, if I were you, there are significantly worse things than death.”

“And you want the metashift for yourself. So if you kill the wrong one of us first, you’ll be stuck with the Skulk shift.”

“And that would really ruin my day,” she said.

I looked down at the table of implements, and then up at Mo.

I could ruin her day right now. I could kill myself, slice open a vein with any one of those and force her to take my shift. It wouldn’t get the stones back, but it would put something in her way. She wouldn’t be able to take
everything
.

The only problem was that I really, really didn’t want to die.

But if it saves Mo… if it saves James and Addie and Susanne…

But would it? Or would it just make you feel you were actually doing something?

“Why do you want to be the metashifter?” I said, buying time while I climbed down from that particular ledge.

“You see these?” She ran a hand over the stones at her neck. The air crackled with static and my hair prickled, frizzing up almost as if I was in a cartoon. “The metashifter can do anything they want, go anywhere they want, take any stone they want, even if the other shifters have protected it. The leodweard is like a wild card, or a failsafe against corruption.”

“Blackwell said it was their responsibility to keep the stones safe. Keep them apart,” I said.

Victoria draped an arm around my shoulders and tapped my nose with one finger, like you’d do to a small child. Did she think I’d giggle? I thought seriously about biting her finger off.

“It’s all about perspective. The metashifter could keep them apart, or bring them together. Obviously, I’m going for the latter.”

I glanced out over London again. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Why do you want this ultimate weapon thing anyway? Are you really going to destroy it all?”

“Destroy? God, no. Rule.” Victoria smiled down at the view, and then up at me. “All I want is all the power available to me. You can understand that, I’m sure.”

She gave my shoulders a squeeze. I wanted to punch her in the face but could only twitch my hands against the wire.

“We actually have a lot in common, Meg.”

I racked my brains. She seemed to think I’d know what she meant, but nothing came to mind.

“We both have excellent reasons to hate our parents,” she said.

“I didn’t hate my dad,” I snarled. “He was… he was…”

“He never helped you. Did he?” Victoria said. “He never stood up to your mother. He let her hurt you and belittle you and never once considered that you were an innocent girl whose only crime was not being exactly what they wanted.”

I sniffed back tears again, just like she wanted me to, but I frowned up at her through them. That was all a little too specific to just be about me.

“Why, what did your dad do to you?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer – but every moment she wasn’t torturing or killing anyone was a good moment right now.