London Wild (63 page)

It was less than fifteen minutes later when the sun had risen enough above the horizon to illuminate the world. Had Sult chosen to check the notes now in the better light
, then the game would probably be up, but Sult seemed to have no such desire. Instead he just sat on the back seat of the car, humming an old song of theirs. Jhosatl hoped that he was also keeping an eye on the route they were taking, because once they reached the country lanes that led to the
Cattery he might need some precise directing.

After a while the city streets gave way to a narrow country road, parts of which were too narrow for two cars to pass. Fortunately it was a little used road
, and for the rest of the journey they didn’t pass another vehicle.

The road Jhosatl wanted was located just
past the bridle path that led to the Cattery, not that Jhosatl had any clue when he was passing the entrance. Sult might be willing to help Jhosatl rescue his wife, but he wasn’t about to reveal national secrets to him.

‘This is it,’ Sult commented as they approached the cottages.

Jhosatl nodded and pulled to the side of the road between the two buildings. ‘I’d like to wait here with you, mate.’

‘You know that’s not possible,’ Sult commented
. ‘They want as few witnesses to the transaction as possible. If they see you waiting with me they’ll probably just drive on past, and you’ll never get to see your wife.’

‘Maybe I could hide in one of the cottages,’ Jhosatl suggested hopefully.

‘These people are the Elite,’ Sult told him. ‘If they even suspect someone else is here they’ll probably call the whole thing off. And trust me, they will see you. What’s more, they will recognize you for what you are even through your disguise.’

‘We must go,’ Judith offered
. ‘Let Sult do what he’s good at. Don’t put your wife at risk now; you are so close to getting her back.’

Jhosatl nodded sadly. ‘I guess we’d better leave you to it then
, mate. We’ll return in about an hour or so.’

‘Yeah,’ commented Sult. ‘You’d better get going. They’re probably loading the truck by now. They could be here at any moment.
’

Less than a minute later
, Jhosatl lost sight of the cottages as he took another turning and got out of sight of the road that the truck would be traveling along. Nothing must interfere with his rescue of his wife. He hoped they wouldn’t spot that the notes were fake until the exchange was made and they were long gone from the scene. Well, he could do nothing now but wait, wait and hope and anticipate seeing his wife again.

Time To Go

It was still raining outside as the first rays of the morning sun broke through into the cell
, causing a rainbow-like pattern to be illuminated on the far wall. Khosi opened her eyes from a fitful sleep and looked around at the inert bodies of the other ten inmates of the cell. Some of them were already awake, though, lacking anything much to do in the cell, they just lay there looking at the ceiling, or the window, or at each other. Others were still asleep and might stay that way for a few more hours yet. There was no need to wake up, as there really was nothing to do. Khosi had nothing but contempt for the lot of them.

Two of those
who were already up—and, knowing them, they had woken up the second the sun had peeked over the horizon—were Lara and Amba. They sat by the window, backs to the outside wall, as they always did, with their feet out halfway across the floor of the cell, taking up much more than their fair share of the available space. With them this morning was the one called Starlight. She sat next to Amba, with Lara on Amba’s other side, her knees tucked under her chin and her head otherwise in her hands. She appeared to be sobbing quietly to herself again. 

Khosi closed her eyes again and considered going back to sleep. There was nothing to do here except wait for breakfast. She started to think about escape from this nasty little place and the warmth of her own little room back home. When the opportunity presented itself
, she knew she would take it, and she knew how she would go about it. She just needed that opportunity. She shivered in that cold cell and wished, not for the first time, that the Elite would supply them with some proper heating as she pulled the rags she had been issued tightly about her.  

Memories came to her. Six days ago, her commander had summoned her and her partner, Iashuggent, into the briefing room and ordered them to sit down in front of a large
split map. The right half of the map showed the area around London and the southeast of England. The other half showed the area of Florida mainly occupied by Herbaht. ‘
The leaders of the Herbaht now call themselves the Greater Matriarch and the Lesser Matriarch. Your mission is simple: go and kill them. How you carry out your mission is up to you
.’

Well, it had seemed simple enough. It had been a long time since she had been sent on a mission with such a clear-cut objective. So why was she sitting in a cell six days later, hardly any closer to her target?

She brushed her hair as well as she could with her hand and stood up to try and stretch her legs some. If the opportunity to escape did present itself, she would need to be as fit as she could to take advantage of it. It was no good letting her muscles atrophy from inactivity by just lazing on the floor of this cell as these others seemed to want to.

‘
Females are far more capable hunters than the males
,’ her commander had told her, ‘
and that is why we are giving you the more interesting of the two tasks
.’ She remembered thinking at the time that it was a great honor to be given the more difficult task, as that told her the commander considered her to be the more capable of the pair. She also remembered thanking her commander for his faith in her abilities.

‘
Before you leave here, you will be surgically enhanced. It will be easier for you to get closer to the Herbaht leadership if they think you are Herbaht yourselves. You’ll be altered to look like them, and your scent will be similarly altered—no point changing your appearance if they can just smell straight through you. Some of this will be cosmetic only. We will be taking the opportunity to enhance a few things, though. One thing we will be equipping you with is the Alpha Serum. We are now supplying this to all of our field agents. A single dose will be placed within a breakable tooth and fitted to the back of your mouth. Remember that this drug could kill you if you take it, so only use it if absolutely necessary
.’

She remembered thinking that her partner Iashuggent had been anxious to try out the drug
. It was like a wonder drug, increasing your strength and speed tenfold for about five seconds. To the imbiber, everything else would seem to be moving in slow motion. The imbiber would seem to have about a minute’s freedom in the five seconds the drug would actually work. 

That was it, straight out of the briefing and straight into surgery. Iashuggent left later that same day
, heading for his quarry in Florida. She, on the other hand, had to find out where her target was living first. She had the more interesting target of the Lesser Matriarch in or about the city of London.

Then she came across the snag. The
Lesser Matriarch and her husband were apparently so paranoid that only a very small number of their closest friends and relatives actually knew where they resided. Others only ever got to meet them when they deigned to visit one of the many regional headquarters that littered the area. Khosi didn’t think it was a good idea to stake out one of these places in the hope that they might eventually show up—better to try and find someone who knew where they lived and pay them a home visit. They wouldn’t be expecting a home visit.

Her search
hadn’t taken long. The Elite had taken a prisoner just a day earlier who matched exactly the description of the one known as Lara. She was the daughter of Khosi’s target and almost certainly would have her mother’s address. She remembered how the excitement had filled her being at the discovery and how amazed she was when she realized that the so-called Elite didn’t even know whom they had taken.

She sighed to herself in the cell and w
andered over to the cell door. It was solid wood, and from the few times she had seen it opened she knew it was three or four inches thick. She turned round to face the others in the cell and sneered at them, resting on the door. Lara glanced quickly in her direction and might have sneered back. She moved too quickly to really tell, and then she seemed to be whispering to Amba. Khosi didn’t care what they might be talking about. They could talk about her for all she cared. She knew she was the one with the upper hand. Her tongue quickly found the serum-filled tooth. When it had first been fitted it had taken her a few attempts to find it each time, being so close in design to her real teeth, but after six days in this cell her tongue found it instantly.

She had started having second thoughts before the shuttlecraft had even dropped her off. They had flown over the
Cattery on their way to the closest suitable landing place, and she had seen no less than twenty cell blocks in the confines of the place. What were the chances that she would actually get a chance to see Lara, let alone get placed in the same cell or even cellblock as her?

As luck would have it, the odds weren’t as bad as they had seemed. The
Elite kept all the wild Herbaht in one cell block, males on one side and females on the other. And since Khosi was assumed to be a wild Herbaht, in the end the chances of being put in the same cell as Lara were only five to one. Nevertheless, she considered herself very lucky to be in the same cell and not next door, or even down at the far end of the block. Finding that the Elite were so pressed for space that they had also taken to dumping domesticated Herbaht into these cells had been a bit of a shock for her. Having to mingle so closely with so many of these hated creatures was more than she had been prepared for. It had shown in her expression whenever one of them had tried to talk to her on that first day in the cell. Now, of course, they all tended to give her as wide a berth as they could and do their best to ignore her.

She pressed the door gently with just a finger
, testing the strength. It was a strong door. Not strong enough to stop her if she decided to make a break for it, but how far would she get if she had to drag Lara with her? At least they had stopped taking people from this cell for execution. That had been nasty. Khosi could easily have lost her chance to question Lara if Lara had been taken away for destruction. The idea that they might’ve come for her didn’t even occur to her; there was always the serum.

Then there had been the questioning
. They had taken her to a small room and injected her with something to make her tell the truth. Supposedly it also had an effect of wiping the memory of the prisoner; the idea seemed to be to attack the prisoner’s morale rather than get any real answers. With Khosi things had been a little different. They had wanted to know where she had gotten the shuttle she had landed in. Maybe they should have used a more effective drug on her, but they were working with what they had, and Khosi’s metabolism was sufficiently different than that of the Herbaht that the drug didn’t have the full desired effect. She was well aware of what she had told them, and she had been quite capable of lying had she felt the need. The Elite had learned nothing from her. The only real effect the drug had had on her had been to make her drowsy and eventually send her to sleep.

She brushed some of the dust that had attached itself to her while she had been sleeping from her body and then brushed the dust from her hands. She wished there was enough room to do some exercises, but the cell was so cramped
, and the Herbaht seemed to occupy every spare inch of floor space. How had the Elite managed to fit nearly thirty in here just the other day?

Already her partner must’ve completed his mission and was probably at home with his feet up
, awaiting her return so they could be given their next assignment together. He had a much easier mission than she. She was surprised that the soldiers who guarded this place hadn’t announced the death of the Greater Matriarch. It was the sort of thing they would have loved to share with the inmates, as it would help to demoralize their charges further. Not that they intended to be sadistic so much, but depressed prisoners were easier to manage. It was also known that many of the guards had lost relatives to the Herbaht, so it seemed strange that they wouldn’t take every opportunity to hurt their charges in some way. In a way, it seemed strange that they weren’t more sadistic.

Once again her tongue found the small artificial tooth that carried a very small dose of serum. As powerful as it was
, it did have a very nasty side effect. She would have to make sure that she was clear of danger by the time it wore off, because almost immediately it would make her feel very tired—so tired that even resisting the desire to sleep as strongly as she could, she might still find herself in the arms of Morpheus no more than five minutes after she had imbibed the thing. The second and more dangerous side effect was that the drug was such a jolt to the body that there was at least a twenty-seven percent chance it would immediately induce a heart attack. That twenty-seven percent chance had been calculated based on a healthy body that had had the proper food and plenty of exercise for the last five days, which Khosi hadn’t. It was better than the original version of the drug. The very first variant had induced about sixty-three percent fatalities in those who took it. That had been made for emergencies only, and with the current version still having a twenty-seven percent chance of death, it still took a lot of soul searching before most would risk it. Khosi didn’t think she was likely to have a choice. One-on-one or even one-on-two she knew she could handle these Elite. But if she had to fight against the entire Cattery…!