Wolf in Shadow-eARC (50 page)

Rhian wondered how many crew it carried, a dozen, two dozen. And she didn’t think they had parachutes in The Great War. But how many men, women, and children were in the bombed houses, and they weren’t even soldiers.

“This is the place,” the phone daemon said. “Attach me to a wall.”

A corner pub had taken a direct hit and imploded. Men were pulling at the wreckage looking for survivors, and someone was screaming that his grandpa was missing. They infiltrated the wreckage, pretending to be rescuers. Frankie slapped the mobile phone on a wall and it stuck, becoming just another gable. She muttered the activation spell.

“What are you doing?” asked a voice.

“She had a torch! She was signalling to the Hun, telling them where to drop their bombs.”

“Spies! Babykillers! Get them!”

The rescue party turned into a vengeful mob at the drop of an accusation.

“Oh, Goddess. Leg it!” Frankie said.

Their pursuers started at the far side of the ruin, giving Frankie and Rhian a head start. Frankie was not built for speed, especially in a ridiculously long Great War dress. They could not shake off the hue and cry, and Frankie was soon exhausted. Rhian looked over her shoulder to find three men only meters behind. Their faces twisted in exertion and hate. One held a piece of broken floorboard like a club, another a razor.

“Keep going, I’ll meet you at the boat,” Rhian said.

Fortunately Frankie was too tired to argue, which would normally have been her first reaction. Rhian summoned the wolf and spun around. She gained momentum in three long strides and smashed through the men like a speeding car. She used her weight to bowl them over. Turning so fast her claws dug up the hard-packed dirt, she reengaged. The one with the club got to his feet, but she knocked him right back down. The razor man took a panic-stricken slash at her. She caught his wrist in her jaws. Exerting just a modicum of pressure, she swung him round until something cracked in his arm. His eyes turned up in his head and he dropped in a faint from the pain.

The other two began to run back up the street and the wolf harried them, nipping at their heels like a sheepdog. The trio rounded a bend and ran straight into the main party of vigilante spy-catchers. The wolf snarled, bit, and shoulder-charged, creating chaos. Shots rang out and a man fell with a little cry. The wolf smelled gun smoke, so she ducked among the crowd for cover.

There, on the other side of the street, a soldier, an officer by his peaked cap, stood holding a pistol like a target shooter. He aimed down the length of his arm. The wolf gathered her hind legs beneath her body, ready to explode out of cover and bring the soldier down before he could take an aimed shot.

Rhian exerted all the willpower she had to check the wolf and persuade her to flee. This man is not our prey, she emoted, not our problem. He only seeks to protect his territory and his cubs. The wolf took off after Frankie, keeping the mass of people between her and the soldier as long as possible. She jinked from side to side to put him off his aim. A couple of shots followed her but whined harmlessly into the night. She lost the pursuers at the next junction.

Rhian had no idea where she was or in which direction the canal was to be found, but the wolf knew. She had a hunter’s map in her head like a satellite navigation system. It was not long before she picked up Frankie’s scent. When she arrived at the landing, the narrow boat was gone. The scent trail vanished at the bank, so Frankie must have boarded.

Rhian urged the wolf to run south down the towpath, assuming that the ferryman would be heading back to Mildred. After a few moments the wolf’s sensitive hearing picked up the sound of Frankie’s voice. She sounded as if she was having a right old strop.

“Stop this ship immediately, you hear. You’re supposed to wait for Rhian, you numbskull.”

The wolf bounded forward and the part that was Rhian gave a metaphysical grin. The ferryman would be regretting starting the voyage precipitously. The wolf gave a burst of speed, catching the narrow boat and pacing it. Frankie failed to notice, busy as she was hitting the unresponsive ferryman with her parasol. The wolf howled.

“There she is. Put into the bank you cretin,” Frankie said.

A shot cracked out, then another. The soldier had found them, but he had discharged all the bullets from his pistol, so his head was down while he reloaded. The wolf accelerated and leapt for the boat. She didn’t have a decent run up and misjudged the distance in her haste, hitting the side of the covered cargo space. For a moment she scrabbled on the edge of the roof, sliding backwards towards the water. Frankie took a firm two-handed grip on the fur around her neck and pulled with all her weight. It was just enough to tip the balance and they fell into the open rear counter.

The ferryman smelled like a decaying corpse to the wolf. She looked under his hood with her monochromatic night vision to see a head like a dried mummified skull.

“I am getting,” Randolph said sourly, “a sense of
déjà vu
about these meetings. The same people sit around the same table having the same discussion. Everyone explains how clever they’ve been, but we are no further forward. Or am I missing something?”

“That’s not entirely fair,” Jameson said. “We now have a good idea what exactly created this crisis.”

He counted off on his fingers.

“Shternberg somehow got wind of the forbidden sections of Budge’s copy of the Book of the Dead. He had the bright idea of using the magic spells to disturb
maat
to precipitate financial crashes in which he could clean up. He bribed or coerced Pilkington’s assistant to provide copies. He gave one to a bunch of academics for modern computer-based analysis, academics which he had already bought with a generous grant. The bloody project worked only too well but with unforeseen results. That’s what one would expect of a load of bloody amateurs playing around. They bored a hole deep into the Otherworld to the Sith, who by now probably control the system. They may still do odd favours for Shternberg, like the Fethers murder, to keep him onside until his usefulness is exhausted.”

“Excellent,” Randolph said. “And when we have a full-blown apocalypse in London with millions dying it, will be just chocolate soldier to know why it happened. It would be rather more convenient to stop the disaster before we get to that stage, don’t you think?”

“We do have a counterspell worked out from the Book of the Dead that should negate the source, the magic engine powering the portals—once we find it,” Miss Arnoux said.

“Once we find it,” Randolph repeated sarcastically, “once we bloody find it. That, of course, is the rub. And are we close to finding it?”

There was a silence while Randolph searched each face in turn.

“I’ve half the Met working on it,” Jameson said. “But Shternberg covered his tracks well. The man himself has gone to ground somewhere. Our accountants have taken his company apart but can find no trace of a likely address. We are still questioning the staff, but I’m not hopeful that will produce any information of value.”

Randolph stood up.

“We need to find where the missing Whitechapel academics have their damned computer systems and shut them down before they create a stable portal to Sith-land. They must be somewhere in East London. Find the bastards!”

“Yes, sir,” Jameson said.

“Why don’t you store me next to the skin? I could vibrate to give you silent instructions, one buzz for left, two for right, and a screaming orgasm for stop now,” said the third phone.

Rhian ignored it, experience teaching her that arguing with a daemonically possessed mobile was about as productive as a debate with a satnav. Mildred trundled sedately down the Mile End Road towards the city of London.

“I suppose most of these phone placements are likely to be in the Square Mile, within the old London walls or very close by?” Rhian asked.

“Yah, that’s where the people were, before modern London expanded in the last few hundred years. On the other hand, we might be heading for Southwark on the south bank or Aldwych.”

“Why Aldwych?”

“It’s the third of the three cities that made up London, well, four if you count Southwark. When the Anglo-Saxons started to build towns again after the collapse of Roman civilization, they tended to seek greenfield sites. They were bothered by the thought of ghosts hanging round the old Roman ruins. So they built Lundenwic a little way upstream. They didn’t move back into London until the Viking raids, Vikings being infinitely more scary than ghosts. They repaired the Roman walls and rebuilt London Bridge to create Lundenburgh. The “wic” bit signified a trading post but a “burgh” is a fortification.”

“Fascinating,” Rhian said utterly insincerely.

“Sorry, honey, I do tend to lecture.”

The mobile was blissfully silent for a while, and the Mile End Road became the Whitechapel Road and eventually Aldgate. Here the eastern gate had once pierced the defensive wall.

“Turn left off the main road and go down Jewry Street when you get to Houndsditch, cuties,” the phone said.

The road system around Aldgate Tube Station had been turned into a complicated one-way network. A large ‘no entry’ sign indicated that they would have to leave the main road and take a loop to the north. Frankie sailed up to the sign, driveling happily on about the history of the area. Rhian had learned to let Frankie’s stream of consciousness pass over her. When Frankie was nervous she talked about inconsequentials. To Frankie, that meant not hairstyles or the latest doings of TV celebs, but London historical trivia.

Odd phrases drifted over Rhan’s head as she eyed the rapidly approaching sign: Jewish immigration, Oliver Cromwell, the Jewish Cemetery, and so on. By the time that Mildred had passed the point of no return in its lunge up a one-way street the wrong way, there seemed little point in Rhian yelling. Distracting Frankie probably wouldn’t help.

A red double-decker bus passed them on the right, the driver goggling at the women as if Mildred was being driven by Martians. Frankie was engrossed in describing some battle between Mosley’s blackshirts and Jewish ex-servicemen after the war. None of which made any sense to Rhian, as she thought that Mosley was something to do with motor racing.

A black cab appeared right in front of them. Rhian gripped her seatbelt hard and put one foot up against Mildred’s metal dashboard to absorb the impact. The taxi driver hauled desperately on the steering wheel. He dodged to the right, narrowly missing a builder’s truck. He shook his fist as he passed within centimeters of an outraged Frankie.

“Sodding hell,” said the phone daemon.

“Did you see that?” Frankie asked, indignantly.

“Yes,” Rhian replied, her voice so high up the tonal register that she squeaked.

“He was on the wrong side. Bloody taxi drivers think they own the road. Stick a light on their roof and they think the normal rules don’t apply.”

They cleared the one-way system back onto a normal road and Frankie turned into Jewry Street. She stayed on the road when it became Crutched Friars.

“Stop at St. Olaves,” the phone said.

St. Olaves was a blocky church on the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane. A very Italian-looking tower made it quite unlike a normal English church. Frankie parked on the double yellow no-parking lines outside Seething Gardens. They got out, retrieving their rucksacks from the boot.

“Go into the church and find the pulpit,” said the mobile phone.

The entrance to the churchyard was through a Romanesque arch, which, on close inspection, was not at all in a classical style but more medieval macabre. Three grinning skulls decorated the panel under the archway, with two more on blocks at the corners. A plaque underneath recorded a date, the eleventh of April, 1658. Frankie paused to examine it.

“St. Ghastly Grim,” she said.

“What?”

“I just remembered. That’s what Charles Dickens called this graveyard in one of his books.”

“How come you are such a mine of useless information about obscure details of London history?” Rhian asked, half convinced that Frankie made most of it up just to annoy her.

“If you practice witchcraft in London, the past has a nasty habit of intruding on the present. It doesn’t hurt to be forewarned with a little knowledge.”

Rhian felt a little ashamed as well as resentful, which did not improve her mood. She marched into the graveyard with Frankie on her heels. It was silent and peaceful like a garden, not at all a ghastly grim. A songbird called, but Rhian couldn’t see it.

“Chip, chip, chip, chooee, chooee, chooee.”

A child’s voice lifted in harmony.

“London Bridge is falling down,

“Falling down, falling down.

“London Bridge is falling down,

“My fair lady.”

Rhian shivered, feeling suddenly cold. Her grandmother would have said that someone had walked on her grave. A large black bird hopped onto the path. It looked at her with intelligent black eyes and clacked its beak.

“Isn’t that a raven from the Tower?” Rhian asked.

“Good grief, I believe you are right. There will be hell to pay if one of the seven ravens has gone AWOL.”

“Nevermore,” said the raven.

The two women exchanged a silent glance.

“Probably one of the Beefeaters taught it that to spook the tourists,” Rhian suggested, hesitantly.

“Quite,” Frankie replied. “Let’s go in.”

Large, mostly clear gothic windows allowed plenty of light into the small church. The women were quite alone. Rhian was not a religious person but she always had this sense of awe in one of London’s historic churches. The atmosphere made her want to whisper and tread lightly. A table by the door displayed postcards and a leaflet with a short history of the church. Rhian slipped a pound into the honesty box and picked up a leaflet.

“The church is mostly new,” Rhian said in surprise, reading the leaflet. “Although it goes right back, the current church was rebuilt in 1950 after it was gutted by bombing in the Blitz.”

“Is that so,” Frankie said. “Old Adolf really had it in for London’s churches and cemeteries.”

“It says here that the Reverend Augustus Powell Miller oversaw the restoration. Listen to this quote from him, Frankie.”