Skulk (37 page)

I sat up. I was right next to the table full of edges. I kept my eyes on Victoria as I shuffled over to it, but her eyes were trained on the pigeons and James’ flaming trackie top, concentrating. Some kind of spell? I couldn’t stop to watch. I grabbed a pair of silver shears with serrated edges that looked like they would cut through flesh and bone with ease, and contorted my hands until I could snap the wires binding my hands.

I was free!

I clambered to my feet and hurled myself at Victoria, knocking her to the ground. The Skulk stone slipped out of her hands and I seized it and drew my arm back. I yelled for James as I threw it across the room. Victoria recovered, elbowed me hard in the chest, and my throw went wide. The stone skittered across the floor as I doubled up and fell onto my back, seeing stars.

“Got it!”

James. James. Thank you.
“Run!” I screamed. “Take it and –” Victoria’s arm came down on my throat, choking off the sentence. Fury etched deep lines into her face as she looked down at me. My vision clouded, pink-grey afterimages pulsating where her eyes should be. I tried to kick her away, but my whole body tensed up, my breath hitching and aching in my chest, my lungs feeling as though they were about to burst.

Victoria reared back with a yell. The next thing I knew the pigeon people were on us, pecking at the air with their mouths and beating their arms around our heads. Victoria was in the middle of them, writhing and screaming. I felt hands around me and clung on to Mo as he dragged me to my feet. He was still dripping blood from his ear and one arm was red from a long patch of torn skin, but he was alive, and still moving. I glanced over his shoulder. James had gone. He’d gone! He’d taken the stone! I almost fainted with relief as Mo started to drag me away.

“Come on, Addie!” he yelled. It was only then that I saw her. The birds hadn’t attacked Victoria – Addie, in fox form, was shooting in and out of the folds of her skirt, confusing them into clawing at their own master. Addie had the Cluster stone clamped in her jaws. She burst out and was gone across the wooden floor like a rocket. The bird people hobbled after her, but she was too fast for them. She vanished down the spiral stairs.

Victoria picked herself up off the floor, pressing a hand to her head. She still had the Conspiracy stone. Its white surface was streaked with her blood.

If I could get it away from her, would the pigeon-people turn back into real people?

Maybe not – but they could die in peace, without pigeons in their heads, without doing Victoria’s dirty work.

Mo was trying to drag me away. We were halfway to the stairs, and Victoria was still reeling, wiping away blood from a long cut on her face. We could make it.

But I can still stop her doing this to my mum.

I wriggled out of Mo’s grasp and launched myself across the room at Victoria, tugging the black spray paint out of my pocket, spraying it into her face. The compressed, chemical air still carried a few drops of paint, and it was enough to make her cough and recoil. I snatched at the white stone, but her fingers were tight on it and she wouldn’t let it go.

“Never!” she shrieked, and spat into my eye. As I cringed away, she kicked my legs out from under me and I fell hard on my back. “This is
mine
.”

I heard Mo gasp just a split second before a violent burst of heat seared across the back of my head. Fran had picked up James’ torch and she was waving it at Mo, laughing hysterically.

“Run!” I yelled.

“Yes, run while you can, Rabble scum,” Victoria snarled. “I’ll come for you soon enough.”

“I won’t leave you!” Mo choked, but the flames seared past his face and he cringed back.

Victoria smoothed down her clothes. Her hands were shaking but her back was straight and she moved slowly and deliberately as she walked over to the table with its impressive range of ways to kill me. I got to my feet, tried to flex my aching shoulders. I looked at the window, and then over at Mo.

“I mean it. Go, before she fries you!” I looked him right in the eye. “Thatch is going to need you later.”

He blinked at me. I nodded once.

Come on. Listen to what I’m saying.

He hesitated for one more second. “All right.” It was more of a sob than a shout. “All right. I’ll... I’ll put the kettle on.”

I swiped my sleeves across my eyes. “Thatch’ll like that!” I choked, a broad smile reopening the cuts on my face.

He shrank in on himself and I saw something yellow and black flutter away and vanish.

Victoria walked up to me, a long blade in her hand.

“Fran, go put that out for God’s sake, and drag Ryan somewhere out of the way,” she said. “That was touching,” she said to me. “Is that what you call that rat of a homeless kid?”

I feinted to the left and then threw myself right, but there was nowhere I could go. I pressed my back against the windows.

“Go on, kill me,” I yelled. “You’ll get the Skulk shift and you’ll never be the leodweard!”

“It would be my pleasure,” Victoria growled. “Give my regards to the pavement.”

She stepped to one side and touched a control in the window frame. The window behind me flew open with a crack like the earth breaking in two.

Nothingness opened up behind me. Freezing air turned my blood to ice and the wind screamed in my ears. My hands grasped at empty air.

And then I fell.

My shoulder hit the slanted windows of the floor below and I yowled and bounced off into the blue, my whole world turning over and over. The Shard shot up and away like a rocket taking off, and the street below growled up at me, a mouth full of hard and jagged teeth. Sixty-five storeys down, and counting. My insides coiled and twisted. My arms waved like I was drowning. I felt the blood on my cheeks freeze and flake away. Tears tore out of my eyes and flew away into the clouds.

Be right. Be right. Let Victoria be right.

I curled in on myself. I twisted, shifted, fur bursting out of my skin. The wind took my clothes, stole them away, and I tumbled as a fox, without sight, without scent of anything but the cold air and the city rushing up to meet me.

Not helpful! Be something else…

I tried to twist again and felt the cut on my forehead stinging as I shrank into myself. Feelings pressed in on me, stretching in my back, in my head, at my sides. The air felt thicker, almost buoyant like water.

I’d done it. I’d changed. I was the leodweard. I was the metashifter.

I was the person I’d been looking for all this time.

Right now, I was a butterfly. All the way to the furthest reaches of my vision, there was nothing but empty space and shifting clouds of colours like I’d never ever seen before. What
were
those colours? There was a pink that was green and a brown that was purple…

I was falling
up
now, fluttering blind through a swirling tornado of colours and scents that were sort of also feelings. I reached out my antennae into a stream of orange air that had come a long way, sea air mixed with the scent of coal, oil, fishing nets. I spiralled through a swirl of hot steam that was perfumed and chemical and smelled of perfectly folded towels, and was caught up in a freezing blast that rose up from the streets, carrying the ancient dead, copper coins, horse shit, blood, history.

It was too cold, far too cold, and I felt like the wind might tear my wings right off my back. No matter how hard I beat them I couldn’t get a purchase on the air. Instinct told me I was too far up, much too far, and I folded my wings back and tried to stretch into another shape.

I was going for raven, but I got rat.

No, anything but rat right now!

I dropped like a stone. I writhed and wriggled helplessly, unsure which way was up and which was down. Fur prickled out all along my face and my whiskers stung, as if the rushing wind was grabbing and pulling at them. My rat nose wriggled in front of me but after the crazy insect senses the air only felt cold. I lashed out, my tail whip-like and strong but grasping and curling in nothingness.

The spider came to me next. Eight legs, eight eyes. Mandibles. I floated on the air, not flying, not falling, just existing in this vast and terrifying place. I could feel the shape of the world below in the currents of the air on the billion miniscule hairs all over me, subtle vibrations that ran up my legs and filled my entire body.

And then my body filled out, changed, shifted one more time. I was numb with cold, aching, bloodied, hardly breathing. But when my feathers caught the air, I soared.

My sight flooded back, so far beyond what I’d had as a human that I tumbled and dived, distracted by the glinting windows of buildings, the cars, the people, the shimmering beautiful grey of the Thames.

I found the air again, beat my great black wings and swept up and over London Bridge, following the air currents wherever they wanted to take me, coasting with ease over rooftops and around spires and down between the valleys of buildings.

I twirled over the river, tipping this way and that, so fast it almost took my breath away.

I ached all over. I could feel and smell blood in my beak and in my feathers. And I wasn’t exactly a hundred per cent triumphant. Victoria still had the Conspiracy stone.

Something bubbled up inside me and I laughed; a loud, throaty, slightly hysterical
cawww!

Everything made sense. I don’t know if I believe in destiny, but I’d taken responsibility for the stones, and as it turned out, it was my responsibility to take. I had the fate of all my friends to worry about, maybe the fate of the world – but I
wanted
that worry. I held it to my heart and loved it for what it was. A life. A purpose.
Mine.

I spiralled away over the glinting grey tide of the Thames with a few strong beats of my aching wings.

Mo was waiting for me, back in Acton, with Addie. I pointed my beak to the West – easy, instinctive, even if I hadn’t had London spread out below me like a map.

I soared. I was no longer earthbound. I was free.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I landed on Susanne’s front garden fence and shifted my weight back and forth for a minute, flexing my tail feathers and looking around, still amazed by the clarity of my vision. I could see every insect on every leaf. There were more greens and browns and blues than I’d ever seen before.

I was going to enjoy being a raven.

I flapped over to the window and looked inside. Susanne’s sitting room was crowded with people and animals. I let out a soft
caw
of relief when I saw that Mo was there, human and cleaned up. He looked a little green, and he kept picking up his mug of tea, blowing on it and putting it down again with shaking hands. But he was alive. He had a big bandage around his ear, and it wasn’t even too soaked with blood.

James, Don, Ben and Randhir were in human form as well, arranged around the room perched on the edges of sofas and tables. Rand had even got his jeans back, though Don was still missing his shirt. Roxie was human too, and treating Ben’s cuts and bruises with Susanne’s first aid kit. There were four rats on the coffee table. Addie trotted up and laid her head on the table beside them, swishing her brush, and none of them seemed to try to shoo her away.

I didn’t see Peter anywhere. But I did see Marcus, and someone I didn’t recognise. She was a white lady with very red hair and thick-rimmed black glasses. She was taking in the scene around her with an expression of pure bewilderment, which turned to shock and revulsion when two spiders crawled up the arm of the sofa beside her, one clinging on to the other’s back.

Susanne walked into the room and handed the woman a teacup with a kindly, but rather stressed smile.

Was that everyone? I tried to count off on my fingers, but I didn’t have fingers, or even paw pads – just three sharp toes on each foot and a bunch of wing feathers.

I took a deep breath, ruffled myself up and tapped on the window with my beak.

Mo leapt out of his chair and almost tripped over Addie.

“It’s a raven!” he shouted, pointing. The humans got to their feet and the rats all froze. The poor woman with the red hair just looked confused. I hopped down from the window onto the garden path. A second later, Mo tore the front door open.

“Who are you? What do you want?” he gasped. “What has she done with Meg?”

I hesitated, and then threw out my wings and put my head down. My beak softened and lengthened and I fell, clumsily onto my front as my talons shifted into back legs and my feathers turned into fur. For a second I was half-fox, half-raven, and then I was all fox.

Mo stared at me. I looked up at him. His eyes filled with tears. “Meg,” he gasped.

Then a fuzzy orange bullet shot out from between his legs and cannoned into me.

“Ow, Addie, ow,” I said, as she licked me all over.

“I told them! I said you wouldn’t just die like that.”

“Come on Addie, let her come inside,” said Susanne, steering Mo out of the way. I went in, with Addie trotting at my heels and panting.

I went upstairs to turn human and get dressed. Peter was asleep in Mo’s room, so I put on a skirt of Susanne’s and a T-shirt of Mo’s from the laundry pile in the bathroom. It smelled like him. I felt a bit stupid for enjoying it.

“Meg? Are you decent? And human?” Mo’s voice came softly up the stairs.

“Yes, both,” I said, quickly smoothing the T-shirt down. “At least… somewhat both.” I smiled at him as he emerged from the stairwell.

He stood on the landing, smiling weakly at me. “Thatch,” he said. “There’s a cup of tea for you downstairs.”

“Yeah. It was all I could think of,” I said. My eyes strayed to his bandage. “Are you all right? Is it…”

“Well, it’s… gone. But I’m OK. I am now, anyway.” His eyes were dark and watery. I blushed. “Meg,” he said. “Um.” He took a step toward me, and then a sort of sidestep, as if he wasn’t sure whether to change his mind. “We should go downstairs,” he said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

I nodded. “We’ve got two stones, and no full groups to protect them.”