The Lost Queen (17 page)

In an instant Tania drew Zara into the shade of a steel stairway.

It was one of the Gray Knights. But how had he been allowed into the club? Did no one see how
inhuman
he looked with his long, slithering gray cloak and his ash white face and his insane smile? And he was carrying the thin white sword openly in front of him as he moved through the crowds.

Tania stared in horror as he glided forward. She saw how the people parted to let him through, even though none of them even glanced at him or acknowledged him in any way. It was as though he was invisible to them, like a cold stirring in the air that made them shiver and move away without knowing why.

The death's head turned, the red eyes raking the room as he walked with slow purpose toward them.

Tania looked at Zara, but her sister had her eyes screwed tightly shut against the noise and seemed unaware of their danger. Taking a firm hold of Zara's hand, Tania broke cover and ran down the wide steps to the dance floor.

She edged into the dancing throng, the strobe lights flashing and swirling above her, the music pounding in her ears. She felt Zara trying to pull away from her, but she kept hold of her as she pushed through to find a place for them to stand.

She managed to take command of a small space somewhere near the middle of the dance floor. The music changed as one song faded and another came pounding out of the speakers, this time with an even faster, more frantic beat to it. Laughing and whooping, the dancers began to bounce off one another. Tania stumbled as someone bumped into her. She felt Zara's hand slip out of hers as the dancers swept them apart.

“Zara!
Zara!
” Her voice was lost in the pulsing of the music.

And then, as Tania struggled to get to her sister, Zara opened her mouth and let out a scream.

Tania had heard nothing like it in her life before. It rose high above the booming of the music, brain-numbingly loud, piercing and intense and painful. People fell against her and she was thrown to the ground. And still the scream went on, blotting out every other sound, forcing Tania to press her hands to her ears with the pain of it.

There were fizzing explosions from the ceiling. Sparks rained down. The whirling of the colored lights stopped. The music ended abruptly as the speakers erupted into crackling smoke.

And then Zara's scream faded and a stunned silence came down over the dance floor.

Tania pushed someone's arm off her legs and sat up.

Zara was standing alone in the middle of the dance floor, staring about in astonishment. All around her dancers were sprawled on the ground as if they had been thrown off their feet by a hurricane. A harsh hissing sound was coming from the speakers.

Tania stumbled to her feet. People were beginning to stir. There were groans and frightened voices calling out in the gloom of the blue wall lights—the only lights that remained now that the revolving strobes had been wrecked.

Tania looked for the Gray Knight. There he was! Standing among the fallen tables on the raised level, seemingly unaffected by Zara's scream. He began to stride toward them, the white blade of his sword shining eerily in the dim light. There was no time to waste. Tania picked her way to Zara and caught hold of her hand. She could see an exit sign on the far side of the room.

“Quickly! This way!” Moving as rapidly as they could through the mass of fallen dancers, they headed for the exit light.

A few people were on their feet now and a murmur of confused voices was beginning to rise from all over the nightclub. Unlike previously, when people seemed to make room for the Gray Knight without even realizing it, they were now milling about him too shocked to step aside, constantly getting in his way as he tried to push forward.

Tania felt a moment of terror as she imagined the
carnage that his sword could cause among those bewildered people. But he showed no sign of wanting to attack them. Perhaps the Gray Knights had instructions not to draw attention to their presence in this world. Not until their mission had been completed and the Faerie princesses were all dead.

Tania pulled Zara up the steps and shoved her through the exit door. They ran along a corridor and up some steps to a door with a bar across it. Tania slammed her hand down on the bar and pushed the door open. They came out into an alley.

“We need to get away from here,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“I did not mean to cause such destruction.” Zara gasped. “I only wished for the noise and the crowding people to go away!”

“I don't think you hurt anyone,” Tania said. “And you stopped that knight getting to us.” She snatched at Zara's hand. “We have to run now, okay?”

“Yes.”

Hand-in-hand, they ran.

The night-dark blanket of clouds was just beginning to turn gray around the edges, and between buildings, the horizon glowed with a thin pale line.

Tania and Zara were still hand-in-hand, but they were walking now. They had run until a stitch in Tania's side had forced her to come to a staggering, breathless halt. She had doubled over, hands on her knees, gulping in air and trying not to succumb to the dizziness that was making the paving stones wobble under her.

After giving herself a minute or two to recover Tania had straightened up and their flight from the nightclub had continued, albeit at a less frantic pace.

Her feet were really hurting now; running hard on tarmac and stone without shoes had taken its toll. Zara walked silently at her side, her head down, her eyes hooded. Tania glanced at her every now and then,
concerned by the uncharacteristically pensive expression on her sister's face.

Eventually she had to say something. “I really don't think you hurt anyone back there.”

Zara looked at her. “I hope that I did not.”

Tania attempted a wry smile. “That scream was amazing,” she said. “How do you do that?”

“I do not know,” Zara admitted. “I felt a great fear growing in me, to be surrounded by so many people. I could not breathe, and that noise like the pounding of hammers in my head—I thought that I should lose my mind.” She looked at Tania, her hand touching against her own chest. “I felt the fear growing here and I had to let it out of my body or I thought I would die.”

“That's some defense mechanism you've got there, Zara,” Tania said, squeezing her sister's hand. “If we get into any more hot water, remind me to stick close.”

“Hot water? Explain, please.”

Tania smiled. “You're a good person to be with when bad things are happening. It's a pity it didn't have any effect on the Gray Knight.”

“Aye, a great pity.” Zara lifted her head and sniffed the air. “Dawn is near. Do we go to meet with the others now?”

Tania nodded. “We've gone a very roundabout way, but we're not far away from where Jade lives. Ten minutes, if that.”

“I hope that they are safe. I am ashamed that I fled so.”

“We were all frightened,” Tania said. “Don't blame yourself.”

Zara flashed her a sharp look. “I do blame myself,” she said. “And it will not occur again.” Looking into her determined face, Tania believed her.

They turned into a wide street of tall Georgian terraces, the entrances reached by flights of stone steps, the lower windows fronted by black railings. One or two lights were on in the houses, but there was no one about on the streets yet.

When occasional vehicles went by, Zara shrank away from them with narrowed, wary eyes.

“They're called cars,” Tania said. “And they're harmless. Well, not if you stand in front of one. But they're just a way of getting around quickly.”

“To what purpose?” Zara asked, staring suspiciously as a white van went growling past in a blaze of headlights.

“It helps people get to where they're going on time,” Tania said. “And it means we can move about the country really fast. Say you wanted to go to Scotland to meet someone, you could be up there in a few hours. It would take forever to walk.”

“Do you not have horses?”

“Yes, but horses aren't as fast as cars.” She smiled. “And we don't have magic to help us like you do. You know, the Mystic Arts.”

“Mastery of the Mystic Arts takes many long years of patient study,” Zara said. “How long do humans study these…
cars
…before they are able
to harness their power?”

“I think it usually takes a few months to learn to drive,” Tania said. “But it's nothing like—
Uhh!
” She came to a sudden jarring halt.

“What ails you?”

“I don't know….” Tania staggered, grabbing at the railings in front of the nearest house to stop herself from falling.

And everything changed.

 

Zara was gone. The cars that had lined the street were gone. The houses were the same except that the brickwork was of a brighter color and seemed less grimy…less old. And along the pavement in place of the slender concrete lampposts, she saw square gas lamps on top of solid iron columns, their light flickering yellow through sooty glass.

She was also aware that the front doors of the houses, which had previously been painted in any number of different colors, were now uniformly black, and the window frames were all white.

Something drew her up the flight of stone steps that led to the front door of the nearest house. A strange thing happened in the porch. It was as if two different realities were lying on top of each other. In one reality the black front door with its brass knocker and knob remained shut, but in the other it swung silently open into a gaslit hall with dark brown wallpaper and a red tiled floor.

Tania stepped into the hallway. The air swirled
darkly around her and suddenly she was in a warm, fire-lit room. She was sitting on a big padded sofa, snuggled up beside a beautiful woman dressed in a rustling lavender-colored gown. Golden curls hung softly around Tania's shoulders, tied with bright green ribbons. An older boy—about nine years old, she guessed—sat at the other side of the woman, and he had a lolling toddler half asleep on his lap. A boy and a girl of seven or eight—twins, perhaps?—lay in front of the fire, the boy busily engaged in cutting black-and-white pictures from a pile of newspapers while the girl sorted them and dabbed thick white paste onto their backs before smoothing them onto the blank pages of a large open book. All of the children were dressed in Victorian clothing; Tania looked down at herself to see a white shift with pleats and ruffles and frills and bows.

She felt safe and loved, and more than that she felt
happy
this time, pressed against her mother's side and surrounded by her brothers and sisters.

She gazed drowsily around the comfortable room. The ornately molded ceiling was high and the papered walls were decorated with patterns of birds and vines and scrollwork all picked out in shades of gold and ivory and brown. A warm light came from fluted glass gas mantles on the walls. A cheerful fire crackled and danced in the black hearth under a mantel topped with a gilt-framed mirror and lined with porcelain ornaments. Heavy curtains adorned the windows, drawn back with tasseled ribbons. There
were upholstered chairs and footstools and an upright piano stood against one wall.

Their mother was reading to them from a hard-back book.

“Read me the part again where the cat vanishes, ‘all but the grin,'” said Tania. “That's my favorite part.”

“Better than the tea party, Flora, dear?”

“Oh, yes,” Tania/Flora said. “The tea party is very amusing, but what I love most is to hear about the cat.”

“Very well, my dear,” replied her mother. “But then you must be as good as gold and go straight to bed.”

“Mayn't I say good night to Papa first?” Flora implored.

“Yes, you may,” began her mother. “And you may tell him that…” But even as she was speaking, the voice of the woman and the soft sofa and the family room all melted away in a swirling soup of darkening air.

 

Flora stood at the top of a long flight of stairs, illuminated by gas mantles that hung high on the walls. She was standing at a large dark brown door, barefoot now and dressed in a long white nightgown. She stepped up to the door and knocked on the panels. “Papa!” she called.

A man's voice sounded from beyond the door. He sounded tired. “A moment, sweetheart; it is not safe.” A few seconds passed and the voice spoke again. “You may come in now.”

Flora turned the door handle and pushed open the door. She stepped into a small, plain room filled with tables and bookcases, gaslit again but with only one small gable window and with a stained and sloping ceiling. Her father was there, standing at a table—he was a tall, handsome man with long side-whiskers and dressed in a dark tailcoat. The table was filled with odd scientific instruments, and with a clutter of jars and bottles containing colored liquids and powders, test tubes in wooden racks, bizarre devices of levers and coiled wiring and springs and gauges.

Her father stooped and opened his arms as Flora went running across the bare wood floor. She jumped into his embrace and he lifted her high, hugging her to him. He smelled of chemicals and smoke but Flora didn't mind that one bit.

“And what does my pretty little maid want with her weary old papa?” he asked.

“I am to say good night before I go to bed,” said Flora, catching the sleeve of her nightgown in her fist and wiping a smudge off her father's nose. “And mother says to tell you not to spend all night with your silly experiments or you will make yourself ill.”

“Then I shall finish what I am doing and that will be all for the day. How does that sound?”

“That sounds very sensible,” said Flora. “Now, kiss me good night and put me down. Mother says that if I am in bed within three shakes of a lamb's tail, then she will come up and read to me.” She tilted her head sideways as she looked into her father's face. “She is
reading me a very good book indeed. It is about a girl named Alice. It was written by a gentleman called Lewis Carroll. According to Mother, Mr. Carroll is a mathemagician.”

“Is he, now?” said her father, putting her down. “Are you sure you do not mean mathematician?”

Flora thought for a moment then shook her head. “No, mother definitely said he was a mathe-
magician
.”

Her father straightened up with a smile. “Just so,” he said. “Your mother always knows best.”

“Good night, Papa,” Flora called as she ran from the room.

“Good night, my sweet angel,” called her father. “Good night.”

As she began to patter down the stairs, the world was whipped again into a whirl of dark confusion until with a rush of cool, clear air Tania came to herself and found that she was outside the house and leaning against the black railings.

She gazed up the stone stairway, noticing for the first time that there was a blue plaque on the wall at the side of the door.

 

Ernest Llewellyn

Renowned amateur scientist

Lived here 1851–1869

 

“She didn't die,” Tania said. “She wasn't even ill….”

“Tania!” Zara's urgent voice brought her out of
her dream. “There is no time to linger here.”

Tania gave a gasp of alarm. For a few moments she had forgotten all about Drake and the Gray Knights.

“What was the matter?” Zara asked. “You seemed moonstruck!”

“I'll explain later,” Tania said. “Let's get to Jade's house first.”

They clasped hands again and ran swiftly along the pavement with their dawn-lit shadows stretching out behind them.