The City's Son

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

Jo Fletcher Books

an imprint of Quercus

55 Baker Street

7th Floor, South Block

London

W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2012 by Tom Pollock

The moral right of Tom Pollock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eBook ISBN 978 1 78087 008 3

ISBN 978 1 78087 006 9 (HB)

ISBN 978 1 78087 007 6 (TPB)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

For Lizzie, for everything

I
THE BOY WITH THE CITY IN HIS SKIN

I’m hunting. The sun sits low over Battersea, its rays streaking the brickwork like warpaint as I pad through the railway tunnels. My prey can’t be far ahead now: there’s a bitter, burnt stench in the air, and every few yards I find another charred bundle that used to be a rat.

I pick up the pace, racing eagerly over the tracks with my bare feet. Sweeping my spear in a low arc, I feel for the electricity in her trail – divining for the monster.

Around me, the city is oblivious. Under the brick arches, people are walking in and out of the newsagent’s and the off-licence; a couple of schoolkids are chatting, swapping tall stories about some girl they fancy. And then, over their laughter, the moan of evening traffic, the bass from distant music and all the other sounds of the city, I hear her wild, shrieking brake cry.

My heart clenches. They have no idea of the danger they’re in, none of them, not now she’s loose – now she’s awake.

In Mater Viae’s name,
she’s awake
.

*

I’d picked up her trail at King’s Cross, in the nest of interwoven steel north of the station. She’d left her train, a big freight engine, paralysed without her spirit to animate it. The driver had just sat there stupefied, no clue what was wrong with his machine. Other trains tailed back from the obstruction in strings of brightly lit windows, their passengers grumbling, playing with their phones and wondering what the hell the hold-up was.

I’ve pursued her doggedly since then: the relentless hunter.

Well …
almost
relentless.

Once, I let her go – I
had
to. Her trail led through the St Paul’s construction sites, past the Cathedral, right under the claw-like shadows of Reach’s cranes.

Reach – the Crane King. Even I can’t trespass on his territory. I swear I could feel his metal-strutted fingers stretching out to claim me as I turned to run.

I found the trail again easily enough. The dead boy made it hard to miss. He lay tangled across the tracks under a burnt-out signal box. Judging by his size, he’d been about fifteen, maybe only a few months younger than me, but the damage to his face made it hard to be sure: the dried-out skin was cracked and blackened, and empty sockets gaped where the eyeballs had boiled away. Only the metal spraycan in his right hand had survived the voltage intact.

It wasn’t the body that made me hesitate – sad to say, I’ve seen uglier corpses. It was the bloody wheel-print
bisecting the boy’s chest, at
right angles
to the rails, running
across
the tracks. For a moment I struggled to make sense of it. Then I saw the hole smashed through the bricks in the viaduct wall and a prickle of disbelief ran up the back of my neck.

She’d escaped the railway.
She’d got out
.

How in Thames’ name—?

It was then that I started to doubt: if she was that powerful, would I really be able to bring her down?

Out across the city the streetlights were starting to shine as the Sodiumite dancers woke, stretching and warming their limbs to a glow inside their glass bulbs. I slid my fingers into the cracks in the brickwork and pushed myself over the edge of the viaduct, easing myself down to the pavement below. Then, nimble, in the gathering gloom, I slipped into the streets.

Now I’m waiting in a dead-end alley, listening to the steady drip of water from a rusting pipe. I calm myself, letting the tap of the water become the rhythm of my heartbeat. My stance is open, my spear ready.

This is where her trail ends.

Thrum-clatter-clatter, thrum-clatter-clatter …

I can feel her vibration through the ground. A fox squirms out from behind a couple of steel bins and runs for the road, trailing stink. I let my breath stream out in a slow hiss.

Thrum-clatter-clatter …

The concrete shale on the ground starts to shift and a breeze picks up, spattering rain against my cheek. The burnt smell is emanating from the wall at the end of the alley, breathing out of the pores in the brick itself.

A high-pitched wail fills the air: steel shrieking on steel like screaming horses. The clatter grows louder and the bins clang as they are shaken to the ground.

I hear the ghost of a steamwhistle, her mournful, obsolete battle-cry, and I hunker down low. Light starts to bleed through the mortar ahead of me, outlining two glaring, full-beam eyes. I hear the clash of her wheels, stampeding towards me on a path of lighting. The scream rises out of my throat to greet her, cursing her by all of her names: Loco Motive, Bahngeist,
Railwraith
—

—and as she roars out at me, I leap sideways and strike—

‘Beth,
come on
,’ Pencil whispered, ‘we need to
go
.’

Beth studied the picture she’d sprayed on the tarmac of the playground. She flipped her aerosol over a couple of times in her hand.

‘
Beth
…’

‘It’s not finished yet, Pen,’ Beth said. In the dim backwash from the lights nearby she could just make out the Pakistani girl’s fingers worrying at her headscarf. ‘Don’t be chicken.’

Pencil paced fretfully back and forth. ‘
Chicken?
What are we, like ten? Have you been sniffing your own paints? I’m not kidding, B. If someone comes, this will get us
expelled.
’

Beth started shaking the spray can up. ‘Pen,’ she said, ‘it’s four a.m. School’s locked up. Even the rats have given up and gone home. We covered our faces from the cameras when we jumped the wall, but there’s sod all light there anyway. There’s no one around and we can’t be ID’d so what exactly are you worried about?’ Beth kept her voice calm, but there was a taut knot of excitement in her chest.
She swept her torch over the picture at her feet. Her portrait of Dr Julian Salt, Frostfield High’s Head of Maths, was coming out well, better than she’d expected, especially for a rush job in the dark. She’d got his frowning eyebrows down perfectly, and the hollow cheeks and the opaque, threatening glasses. The weeds bursting through the tarmac added to the effect, looking like unkempt nasal hair.

In fairness, Beth had also given him necrotic peeling skin and a twelve-foot-long forked tongue, so she was obviously using
some
artistic licence, but still …

It’s unmistakably you, you shit.

‘Beth,
look
!’ Pen hissed, making Beth jump.

‘What?’

‘Up there—’ Pen pointed. ‘A light …’

Beth glanced up. One of the windows in the estate overlooking the school was glowing a soft, menacing orange. She exhaled irritably. ‘It’s probably just some old biddy going for a midnight wizz.’

‘We can be
seen
from there,’ Pen insisted.

‘Why would anyone even care?’ Beth muttered. She turned back to the picture. Everyone in year 12 at Frostfield knew she and Salt were enemies, but that was just the usual teacher-versus-student aggro, and it wasn’t why she was here. It was the way Salt treated Pen that demanded this retribution.

She didn’t know why, but he seemed to derive this vicious delight from humiliating her best friend. Salt had put Pen in half the number of detentions he’d sentenced Beth to,
but she was always on the verge of tears when she came out of them. And in Monday’s maths lesson, when Pen had asked to go to the toilet, Salt had point-blank refused. He’d gone on talking about quadratic equations, but he hadn’t taken his eyes from Pen. There’d been this smile on his face as though he was
daring
her to defy him – as though he
knew
that she couldn’t. Pen’d kept her hand raised, but after a while her arm had started to shake. When she’d doubled-over with the pain of holding it in, Beth had dragged her bodily her from her chair and bundled her out of the room. As they ran down the corridor, they’d heard the laughter start.

Afterwards, standing behind the science block, Beth had asked, ‘Why didn’t you just leave? He couldn’t have stopped you, why not just walk out?’

Pen’s face was fixed in the clown-smile that meant she was panicking inside. ‘I just …’ She’d half swallowed the words, and kept her eyes fixed on her shoes. ‘I just thought every second that went by, if I could hold on just
one more
second, one more, it would be okay. And I wouldn’t have to … you know.’

Cross him.
Beth had filled in the end of the sentence.

She’d hugged her friend close. Beth knew there was strength in Pen, she saw it every day, but it was a strength that withstood without ever resisting. Pen could soak up the blows but she never hit back.

It was then that Beth had decided that something needed to be done. And this – this was
something
.

She trained the beam of her torch onto the painting and the tension in her chest was replaced by a warm glow of satisfaction.
A nightmare in neon
, she thought.
Ugly suits you, Doc.

‘Beth Bradley,’ Pen whispered. She still sounded scared, but this time she also sounded a little reverential. ‘You are a proper grade-A
nutcase
.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Beth said, a smile creeping onto her face. ‘But I am
really
good—’

A high-pitched whine cut through the night: police sirens, fast approaching. Instinctively Beth dropped to a crouch and yanked her hood up over her short, messy hair.

‘
Bloody hell
,’ Pen whispered, her voice panicky, ‘I
told
you they’d seen us! They must have called it in – they probably think we’re here to steal something.’

‘Like what?’ Beth muttered back. ‘The canteen’s secret recipe for mouse-turd pie? It’s not like the school’s got anything worth nicking.’

Pen tugged Beth’s sleeve. ‘Whatever – we need to get out of here.’

Beth yanked her sleeve away and dropped to both knees, frantically adding extra shading to the jaw-line. This had to be just right.

‘B, we need to go!’ Pen was hopping from foot to foot in agitation.

‘Then go,’ Beth hissed.

‘I’m not going without you.’ Pen sounded offended.

Beth didn’t look up. ‘Pen, if you don’t get running, and
I mean
right now
, I’ll tell Leon Butler it was you who Tipp-Exed that poem on his desk.’

There was a moment’s shocked silence, then, ‘
Bitch
,’ Pen breathed.

‘
Leon, my lion, I would be all your pride. And not merely in it…
’ Beth quoted in a sing-song whisper. She couldn’t help grinning as Pen took off, swearing under her breath.

Beth got her feet up under her, ready to run even while she drew. The sirens were really close now.
Waaaoooh
—The whine soared once more, then cut off in mid-cycle. She heard car doors open and then slam. There was a rattling on the gates behind her. The school was locked up and the cops were climbing in just like she and Pen had. Beth sprayed colour into a fat cluster of warts under one eye.