Skulk (29 page)

“Wait,” Mo put a hand on my shoulder, drawing me back into the shadow of a tree. “Can you see that? There’s someone coming out of the gate.”

I looked. We’d just come around the corner and I could see the main gate of the Tower, and the figure of a woman walking out across the bridge. She was white and an adult, though she could’ve been anywhere between twenty and fifty, from here I couldn’t quite tell. She was wearing a knee-length pencil skirt and a tailored blue woollen coat. Her hair caught the street light and glowed a glossy, probably synthetic chestnut brown.

“That’s Fran,” I said. “I’m sure it is.”

“Where’s her friend?” Mo muttered.

Fran paused on this side of the drawbridge and looked at her watch. Then something black shot across the corner of my vision and I grabbed Mo’s arm and pointed. It was a raven. It circled over Fran’s head for a second, and then landed on the barrier right by her elbow.

She spoke to it, bending her head so her hair swung between them like a soft, glossy curtain.

“How come he hasn’t changed?” I whispered. “He can hear what she’s saying, but he won’t be able to answer.”

The raven didn’t hang around for a long one-sided conversation, either – it took off again as soon as Fran stopped talking and soared up and over the moat, over the wall, into the Tower.

Fran immediately turned and walked away, her shoes clicking on the paving stones as she crossed towards the deserted ticket booths on the other side of the wide cobbled space. She slipped into the shadows and vanished.

“Was that it?” Mo wondered. “What did she tell it?”

“She’s not heading back to the Tube.” I strained my eyes towards the ticket booths – they were housed in a low, thin concrete building with parts that were open to the outside. “D’you think we should follow her?”

“I don’t – wait, look.” Mo pointed. I turned back to see a Warder leaving the Tower by the main gate, hurrying along with his coat pulled up high around his face. “Did he change?”

I shrugged. It seemed likely, and yet it had barely been a few seconds. Could he have changed and dressed so quickly? I bet a Yeoman Warder’s uniform wasn’t simple to get on, either.

Mo looked down at me, his eyes soft in the darkness and a little worried frown creasing his forehead. “Maybe she was telling the truth. You think we made a mistake?”

I looked again, and then shook my head. “There’s something wrong,” I said. “That’s not her mysterious Conspiracy contact. That’s
mine
. That’s Blackwell!”

His ginger beard gleamed gold in the street lights and he huddled deeper into his coat as he hurried over to the ticket booths, where Fran had gone. I frowned. Did he know her after all? Why would she say there was some other Warder she knew?

“Put your hood up,” Mo said. I pulled the hood over my head and tucked my hair away inside, and then he put his arm through mine and before I knew it we were strolling, arm in arm, across the cobbles. We slipped into the same covered space, but a couple of booths up from the one we’d seen Fran go into.

“Meg?” I heard Blackwell’s voice, and frowned. Why did he think I was here? Had we been seen?

I met Mo’s eyes and he shook his head –
don’t go to him. Wait.
I nodded my agreement.

“Meg? What’s happening?” Blackwell called. “Are you here? Phillips said you were out here asking for me. I hope it’s worth letting him know you’re–” he broke off.

I stuck my head around the corner as Fran stepped out in front of Blackwell and stood close to him in the little space behind the ticket booths.

Blackwell blinked at her. “Who are – aren’t you Francesca, from the Skulk? Is Meg all right?”

Fran didn’t answer. Then there was a sudden movement and Blackwell let out a gurgling gasp. He staggered against Fran. Her hand pulled away, wet with blood. A blade flashed, twice more, deep into Blackwell’s belly. I tensed and breathed in, but I was too late to spring or cry out. Mo’s hands were on my shoulder, gripping on tight. His breath stirred my hair, shallow and shocked.

Fran stepped back from Blackwell and let him drop to his knees. Blood dripped from her hand like glittering jewels and splashed on the pavement.

“You will give it to me,” she said, in a normal speaking volume.

I frowned. There was something off about the way she’d said it – not, “
give
it to me”, but “give it to
me
”.

Blackwell shuddered. She reached over and knocked the Warder’s cap from his head.

“I’m ready,” said Fran. She knelt down. She peeled off her coat and cast it aside, and she raised the knife again and...

I twitched, nausea rising in my throat. She was cutting herself, somewhere around her stomach, around the same place she’d stabbed Blackwell. She let the pain out in a long hiss between her teeth.

“Come on,” she said. “Just stop fighting. Don’t make me cut your throat, too. Come to me.”

I leaned forward a little, my whole body shaking. Fran seemed to be waiting for something. Blackwell stared over her shoulder, towards us, his eyes heavy-lidded. Something changed. His eyes widened and he refocused on Fran.

“Why?” he muttered, his throat rattling with fluid. “Why now? You have Phillips, you have the Tower. And you already... have... the shift...”

“I’m destined for bigger, better things.”

“You think... oh, you think this will make you a metashifter?” He coughed and doubled up, clutching at the blood welling out of his stomach. “You have no idea. The leodweard is... nature, part of the design. You can’t
make
one.”

“Nobody as powerful as Victoria has ever tried it,” Fran smirked. “And she’s only using a fraction of the power we’ll have when we’ve gathered all the stones.”

Blackwell shook his head.

“Come... closer...” he dragged in a breath, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. Fran hesitated, and then leaned a little closer. “There’s... no such thing as
enough power
. They will write that... on your tombstone.”

“Oh, hurry up and die,” said Fran, her voice suddenly much less smooth, reaching for the knife again. She raised it to Blackwell’s throat and sliced across, hard and violent. A little spurt of blood splattered against the wall and then the flood cascaded down and soaked his uniform.

“Now, give it to me.” Fran sat back, her shoulders rising and falling as she took a series of deep breaths. My hands crawled to my mouth and I chewed on my index finger. What if Blackwell was wrong, and the metashifter
was
made? Was she going to turn into a raven? Could she already be a spider, or a rat?

Blackwell’s corpse fell sideways. I stifled a moan in my sleeve.

“OK.” She rolled her shoulders and clicked her neck from side to side. She leaned forwards, the growing pool of Blackwell’s blood lapping at her knees. “OK, let’s go,
raven.
”

She hunched over. I held my breath, until my throat stung with the tension, straining my eyes in the dim light to make out the first sign of the change. Her arms might shrink back and burst out in feathers, or her hair could slick back and turn iridescent-black. Perhaps her nose and mouth were growing long and sharp and hard. Maybe her eyes were turning into tiny onyx gems in the side of her face.

But none of those things seemed to happen.

“
Raven!
” Fran growled, through gritted teeth.

Nothing happened.

Fran’s shoulders sagged and she threw the knife to the floor. It clattered and skidded in the pool of blood. “Fuck,” said Fran.

“Is someone back there?” A man’s voice. Fran looked up, her chestnut hair bouncing around her face, and then shrank into herself. She was just a thrashing pile of fabric for a few seconds, then she burst out of her shirt in fox form. For a terrifying second she looked like she was considering running right past us. I reached blindly behind me and found Mo’s hand clutching for mine. But then Fran turned again and vanished into the shadows on the other side of the ticket booths.

“Oh my God.” The man’s voice sounded again. A deeper shadow fell across Blackwell’s body, and then a circle of light so bright I blinked and looked away. It made him seem like an impressionist version of a corpse – patches of deeply lined white skin, a golden halo of hair, a splash of red-black at his throat. “999, request immediate assistance. I’m opposite the Tower – there’s been a murder. Oh yeah, he’s dead all right. Multiple stab wounds.” The man leaned down. I caught a glimpse of dark skin and short black beard against a neat black uniform. Not a Warder – an ordinary security guard.

A thrill of anger shivered through me.
Where were you ten minutes ago?

Then I softened.
Where were you, Meg? You were right here. Could you have stopped it?

I didn’t know.

Mo tugged at my elbow. I looked back at him. He looked like he might be about to be sick, but he made a little gesture – he pointed towards the security guard, and then flapped his hands at his sides.

My eyes widened. He was right – if the shift passed to the nearest human, if it wouldn’t go to Fran or me or Mo, then that security guard had just inherited Blackwell’s shift. He was the new raven in the Conspiracy.

I ached to give him something, a clue about what was going to happen to him, to tell him that it was going to be OK – but that he should run, far from the Conspiracy, and not let them find him.

But Mo whispered to me, so close I could feel his lips moving. “We have to get back to the others.”

I nodded and climbed to my feet, as silently as I could, trying to ignore the fact that my stomach had turned into a writhing mass of hot snakes at the touch of his lips on my ear.

I’d always wanted to know what it was like to actually fancy someone. But if I ever ran into Cupid I’d strangle him with his own bow string for choosing to give me a practical demonstration at a time like this.

109 Hendon Road was a large semi-detached house on a main road near Finchley. The lights were on, like a beacon drawing us along the street. It looked warm in there, inviting. I visualised a sofa as welcoming as Susanne’s, maybe a cup of tea, and then... the bad news. I shivered. The night chill was starting to get to me and I wished I’d thought to buy a coat as well as a hoodie. But I wasn’t nervous. I suppose because I knew exactly what I was going to say. “Fran is working with Victoria, I saw her kill a man.” There was really nothing else to say.

I rang the bell and after a few minutes, Don opened the door.

I was as certain that this was him as I had been that the woman at the Tower was Fran. Where she was sleek, he was solidly built. His skin was a dark reddish brown in the soft light of his hallway and he was standing tall and tense in his doorway, like a warder in his own little suburban tower.

But he was younger than I expected. I’d seen him as a middle-aged bloke, a patriarch in his home life like he was trying to be with the Skulk. I’d thought he must be some kind of successful businessman and family man, used to getting his own way.

He was about twenty-one, maybe twenty-five at a stretch. He was dressed like an older man – a shirt, shiny shoes, like he was auditioning for
The Apprentice
. Who arrived home at 1am with a pack of foxes in tow, and immediately put on a shirt? I remembered his posturing, his hostility, and I
got it
. And at the same time, the little store of respect and tolerance I’d been carrying for him was melting away. He didn’t have the excuse of being a middle-aged man, set in his ways, used to control. He was just a bit of a dick.

Also, he was scowling at me.

“
You
,” he said. “What have you done?”

I blinked. “What?”

“Are you some kind of spy?” he hissed. “How did you do this?”

“Don, what the hell? I’ve got something I have to tell you, can we–?”

“Damn right you have,” Don growled. “Why did you tell us he was dead?”

“Who?” I racked my brain. Aaron? Blackwell? Angel?

“Me,” said a voice from the hall behind Don. A white man, in his thirties, quite short, with brown curls and glasses. I had never seen him before in my life.

“I have no idea who this is! Come on, Don, let me in, we have some really important–”

“This is Ben Cohen.”

My train of thought ran smack into a brick wall and I reeled. Don was staring at me, expectant and angry.

“No, he’s not.” My voice sounded far off and small.

“Excuse me,” Ben said, “I think I know my own name.”

“But that’s not him,” I babbled. “That’s not the man who was a fox. It’s not him.” I blinked at the man he’d called Ben. I couldn’t doubt myself – the sight of the man who’d given me the shift had been burned into my memory like a brand on my soul. He didn’t look like Ben. But he’d been a fox, so he
had
to be one of the Skulk. Didn’t he?

“There cannot be seven in the Skulk. It’s impossible. There are only six. Me, Randhir, Francesca, James, Adeola, and Ben.” Don counted off, each name like a nail being driven into a coffin. “So where did
you
come from?” Don snarled.

Six in the Skulk. Seven fox shifters.

“It’s one of us.” Don and Ben gave me identical blank stares. “The metashifter. The person who can be any one of the weards. It’s got to be one of us!”

“What are you talking about?” Ben muttered.

“When the wizard’s apprentice split up the weapon and made the different shifters she gave herself the power to become any one of them,” I said, impatiently, and with a hint of
duh
. Then I paused. “That’s what Blackwell told me. He told me it was called the leodweard and there should still be one. Seven shifters in six places, that means one of us isn’t really in the Skulk.”

“We know who’s not really in the Skulk,” growled Don.

“No. It’s not me, it’s one of you, it’s got to be. Maybe Randhir, or – or Ben, or you.”

But Don wasn’t listening.

“No, all this trouble started when you arrived, didn’t it?
You’re
the one who stopped the ritual from working.”

“What? How do you figure that?” I couldn’t keep up with this – I just wanted to address the last thing he’d said but he carried on talking, getting more and more worked up, his face getting redder and more puffed-up. “It all makes sense now. You summoned the pigeons. All that rubbish about your parents, you made it all up and convinced poor Addie to go along with your lies–”