The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge (26 page)

Someone stuck something between her legs. Rosalynne tripped and fell headlong, bursting through the crowd and falling facedown in the monster’s blood. The top-hatted letch withdrew his stick. He giggled childishly like the third hick in a rural horror movie.

“Hello, Rosalynne, we were looking for you,” said a male voice.

She looked up to see Jameson, gun in hand, between her and the door.

“Oh, bugger!” Rosalynne said, with deep feeling. “What have I done to attract the Commission’s attention?”

She could hear the whine in her voice. She sounded like a small-time villain having his collar felt. Not me, Guv, she seemed to be saying, I ain’t done nothing, I wasn’t even there.

“What haven’t you done, Rosalynne?” Jameson asked, rhetorically. “Your little forays into the City’s computer systems are causing chaos. You remember the run on Newcastle Rock?”

Rosalynne considered. She did have some vague memory of people queuing for miles outside branches of a bank somewhere up in the northern provinces.

“The Chancellor of the Exchequer wants someone’s head on a block,” Jameson said, pointing the gun. “And guess who’s in the frame.”

Rosalynne reacted with blind panic and took off through the crowd’s legs. She gambled on Jameson not risking collateral damage by taking a shot through the bystanders. Unfortunately, she ran in the wrong direction, away from the door. She headed for the bar with the vague idea of putting solid wood between her and the gun. She never made it, never even came close.

“Karla!” Jameson yelled, like a man unleashing an attack dog.

Adrenaline surge speeded up Rosalynne’s mind. Everyone seemed to be moving in slow motion, everyone except Karla; she was still terrifyingly fast. Throwing aside a table, Karla was on Rosalynne like a terrier after a rat.

Rosalynne ripped the posy from her jacket lapel. In one fluid motion she turned and threw it at Karla.

The herbs ignited in a cold flash that sent a directional shock wave away from Rosalynne. Karla bore the brunt of the impact but the wave rippled through the room, knocking over people, tables and chairs.

Rosalynne threw herself over the bar. Something went past her ear with a crack. That was no warning shot. Jameson was trying to kill her. The mirror behind the bar shattered in a blizzard of glass shards. She landed heavily on her back behind the bar. A jagged piece stuck in the wooden floor. It was funny what the mind seized on when paralyzed with fear. “Ink Gord” was inscribed on the glass. Breaking a mirror was bad luck.

Henry looked down at her sightlessly and slowly shook his head.

Something stuck its head out of the broken mirror, something that looked like a gargoyle with stubby wings and a single horn on the end of its nose. Its skin cracked as it moved, releasing puffs of purple vapor that ignited into flickering green flames. It partly hopped and partly flew with a single downward wingbeat, down onto the top of the bar.

Rosalynne rolled over.

The gargoyle waved a stubby arm. “Hello, Henry,” it said in a voice that sounded like moving tectonic plates.

There was another thump and the bar panel beside Rosalynne splintered. A missile like a crossbow bolt with inlaid iron strips burst through and stuck in the wall behind. So much for putting solid wood between her and Jameson: the bolt would have gutted her if she had not moved.

Rosalynne screamed. Stupid, stupid, she berated herself. It signaled to Jameson that she was still alive. The gargoyle noticed her, cocking its head on one side like a bird of prey. Its beak split in a broad grin, which was a disturbing anatomical feat in itself, and it wolf-whistled like a white-van driver.

“What a beauty,” it said, admiringly.

Rosalynne scrabbled along desperately on her hands and knees behind the bar. Another missile burst through the spot she had just vacated. The gargoyle admired the rear view as she crawled past and whistled again.

“You’ll do. Yes, you’ll do very nicely.” Its voice was becoming smoother, more baritone, as if it were adjusting to the world.

Rosalynne resisted the urge to stop and pull her skirt down. It wasn’t fair! Everyone had it in for her. All she was trying to do was earn a pound or two. Why wouldn’t they all just leave her alone? She had but a moment to escape before Jameson, or—worse still—Karla, came over the bar after her.

She jumped up and hurled herself headfirst through the broken mirror.

“Goodbye, Rosalynne,” Henry said. It sounded like a valediction.

Rosalynne fell on her bottom into something squelchy. A choking fog seared her throat. She smelt steam engines and the air was thick with a rich mix of organic odors. Stale urine was the dominant constituent.

This was not London or, at least, not her London. It was too quiet. Where was the background drone of cars, jets and trains? Come to that, where was the pub?

The Beggar had disappeared: no pub, no bar, no mirror. There was nothing behind her but a narrow, twisting alley. Rickety houses leaned in from each side. Thick fog reinforced the murk. Brown and dirty-green vapor tendrils curled around the alley like eels.

Rosalyn thought quickly. She’d leapt through a gate to the otherworld. Would Jameson come after her? She thought not. Anything could have been on the other side of that mirror. From the look of the gargoyle, a pool of boiling sulphur was a distinct possibility. Jameson would not take the chance. Why should he? In his view, she was probably already dead. That thought caused her to shake with post-traumatic stress. No, they wouldn’t follow her, she told herself, calming down.

Only the threat of immediate and messy execution could have prompted her to take the awful gamble of jumping blind through a gate. She remembered Karla, her speed, her strength, her fangs, and started shaking again.

Rosalynne waited until her tremors subsided, while considering her options. Returning to the Beggar was problematical but the otherworld was a dangerous place. Rosalynne chose the lesser of two terrors. She would take her chances with the Commission.

The gate back to the Beggar must still be there. She just had to open it to get back. She went through the various herbs and items that she had in her bag, selecting what she needed.

Rosalynne drew a stylized door on the wooden side of a building, using chalk quarried from London’s North Downs. Then she tipped ground-up mugwort into her left hand. Mugwort identified the weak points in reality. The Bible said that St. John wore a girdle of the herb on his journey through the wilderness. She cut an incision into her left hand with her athame and let her blood mingle with the herb.

Blood magic could be dangerously unpredictable, but she had no other way of powering the spell. Odysseus had used blood magic to open a gate to the otherworld because it worked. Rosalynne slipped into self hypnosis.

Something jogged Rosalynne out of her trance. She replayed the last few moments in her head. A giggle, she had heard a giggle. She spun around to find she had been wrong. Someone had come after her.

A sword stick punched through her upper shoulder, grating against her collarbone. Blood flooded down her blouse. She tried to move but the pain was excruciating. The letch in the top hat let go of his sword stick. It stuck fast, pinning her against the wall.

Top Hat giggled again. “Not so hoity-toity now, pretty witch, are we?”

He took a large knife out of his carpetbag and moved slowly towards her, waving it backwards and forwards like a cobra.

“Oh, we’re going to have such fun, my beauty,” Top Hat said.

Cold evil flowed off him, like vapor from a bottle of liquid nitrogen. Rosalynne shuddered, tearing the flesh around the sword stick. A sharp pain bit into her shoulder and she was free.

She threw the blood-activated mugwort at him.

It hit him in a shower of sparks. Her concentration had been broken so the spell misfired. It didn’t open a gate but the result was almost as useful. Top Hat froze in a shimmer of light, like an ant in amber.

Rosalynne took the opportunity to leg it before the spell collapsed. She ran for her life. She ran along winding alleys, trying to dodge around the larger or more obnoxious piles of waste, splashing through them when she couldn’t. She was hopelessly lost when she stopped, gasping, out of breath. She nursed a stitch of pain in her side to match the one in her shoulder.

Rosalynne examined her wound, which turned out to be embarrassingly superficial. What was far more of a concern was that she had used up all her mugwort. She needed more to open a gate to home.

She took stock of her surroundings. Doorways and windows broke the lines of the brick and wooden walls. Dim lights flickered in some of the windows but most were dark. None looked particularly inviting. In one doorway, a bundle of rags stirred and held out a grimy hand as she passed. She ignored it. Rosalynne saw no advantage in funding beggars.

The alley fed into a square that was almost solid with lean-to shacks and stalls. She elected to walk around the perimeter where sufficient space had been left for the passage of hand carts. People jostled for space everywhere, the men dressed in dirty shapeless jackets and trousers, the women in long dresses. The more prosperous had threadbare overcoats that hung down to their ankles. Costermongers shouted their wares in a confusing babble of sound: apples, matches, gloves and pies.

Rosalynne had to constantly sidestep around people. She passed another alley. A bully had a woman pinned against the wall with her skirt hitched up. He thrust rhythmically between her legs. Neither made a sound. The bully posed no threat to Rosalynne so she ignored the couple and pressed on to the corner of the square.

Through the shifting bodies she saw a tall, blind man round the corner. He tapped with a cane to find his way through the crowd. A dirty bandage covered his eyes.

“Henry!” Rosalynne shouted over the babble of voices. “Henry, wait.”

Hope flashed through her like a bright flame. Henry knew his way around London’s otherworld. He could help her home. The blind man cocked his head to one side, as if he had heard her. Rosalynne broke into a jog trot.

“Watch where you’re going, Judy,” said a male voice. She cannoned off a bulky figure, tripped, and rolled under a stall.

A stick prodded her in the ribs. “Hoister, thief,” said a female voice. Others took up the hue and cry.

Rosalynne did what she had done all her life; when she could not hide, she ran. She twisted and ducked, evading grasping hands. Howls of protest rose in her wake as she dodged around bodies and jumped over obstacles.

When she reached the corner, Henry had disappeared. A narrow street exited from the square. She dived down it. A ditch in the center of the street drained the waste from paved footpaths on each side. Rosalynne gratefully used the pavement. Her suede boots were ruined and she was pretty certain that she had voided their guarantee. Jimmy Choos were not intended for the otherworld.

Most of the shops along the street sold items that were of little use to her, things like fabrics or food. She had no intention of eating or drinking anything. Food in the otherworld had contaminants far more dangerous than cholera, not that she fancied cholera either, come to that. She rounded a bend just in time to catch a glimpse of Henry’s back entering a shop.

A flickering gaslight illuminated the shop sign—Nell’s Old Curiosity Shop. Rosalynne groaned. Bloody Dickens! Great works of art caused their own shadows in the otherworld, or maybe it was the other way round. Somewhere Long John Silver and Captain Flint probably still plundered the seven seas. Personally, Rosalynne loathed Dickens’ cloyingly sentimental stories about born losers. She was of one mind with Oscar Wilde: “One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears . . . of laughter.”

A bell mounted on a coiled spring dinged as she opened the door. The wooden floor was at a lower level than the outside street. Cabinets and piles of junk were scattered at random. There was no sign of Henry, no sign of anyone. A stuffed owl hung on string from the ceiling. She gave it a gentle pat to make it swing. It twisted its neck round to look at her and hooted indignantly. A tray offered spiders’ webs for sale in matchboxes.

She found a globe on a little wooden pedestal and gave it an experimental spin. Her finger stopped it at random, resting on the west coast of North America. An invisible pen wrote a name on the map by her finger—Portus Novae Albionis. She swiveled the globe around and found a large island in the North Atlantic. She touched it with her finger and the invisible pen wrote Atlantis.

“It will show lost Lemuria as well,” said a voice. An arm reached over Rosalynne’s shoulder and demonstrated. The arm belonged to a young man in a white, high-collared shirt.

“Kit, I presume?” asked Rosalynne, resignedly.

“Alfred,” he replied. “Alfred Pumplecheck.”

“Good grief,” Rosalynne said. “How did Dickens get away with those names?”

“Can I help you, madam?” asked Pumplecheck, icily.

“As it happens, you can,” Rosalynne replied. “A blind man came into your shop a few moments ago. I need to talk to him.”

Pumplecheck tilted his head to one side. “Blind man?” he asked.

“Blind man,” Rosalynne repeated slowly, pronouncing each syllable carefully, as if she were talking to the village idiot. “You know, white cane, bandage round the eyes, that sort of thing.”

“You are my first patron for some time, madam,” said Pumplecheck.

He sounded very sure but Rosalynne searched the small shop. She did not find Henry nor did she locate any way out other than the front door. She needed to think.

“Are you interested in any of the curios, madam?” Pumplecheck asked, breaking her concentration.

“Have you any mugwort?” Rosalynne asked, more in hope than expectation.

He burrowed under a pile of magazines, throwing copies in all directions. Rosalynne caught one. It was an issue of London Society featuring a new exploit of Sherlock Holmes as recorded by Doctor Watson, his faithful Boswell. Pumplecheck gave a cry of triumph and retrieved a small wooden box with an elephant carved on the lid. He thrust it under her nose and flipped up the top. It contained dried plant material. Rosalynne tasted a bit with the tip of her tongue. Result, she thought triumphantly, mugwort.