Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) (43 page)

Of the four men–and they were men, very much men, men who
liked to demonstrate their masculinity through weightlifting more than alcohol–two stood outside like hotel doormen, ready to scrutinise any and all who headed within. It was these two who had the dubious privilege of being the first to perceive that Burns and Stoke was under attack.

“Uh… Ian?” said one.

“Yeah?”

“Um… there’s a troll coming towards us.”

The guard called Ian considered this self-evident truth. He reached for the radio at his side but then noticed that the approaching wall of troll was in no hurry. It wasn’t charging, or shouting, or baring its teeth; in fact it was shambling–yes, that was the word,
shambling
–towards him with an amiable air, accompanied by a ginger man and a dark-haired girl in purple boots.

Nevertheless, they were at
BLUE HIGH
alert, having been hired with the purpose of securing the building against unlicensed access, any seven-foot troll probably not excepted. Also, Ian the security guard couldn’t quite accept that this obvious member of the magical community thought it okay to walk around unhidden by a chameleon spell.

He reached for his radio.

Before he could seize it, a hand fell on his.

No–not a hand–a talon. He looked down to see curled black claws pressing delicately against his skin. The lightness of their touch suggested that their owner was going to extraordinary lengths to avoid causing permanent damage. A small whiteboard was pushed under his nose. On it, in careful green letters, someone had written,

We apologise for the inconvenience.

He looked up to see the man with the ginger hair step in front of him holding what looked like a perfume bottle and spray it directly in his face. Ian opened his mouth to protest and passed out.

His companion guard, an unfortunate gentleman by the name of Louis who didn’t really deserve the fate about to befall him, pulled his radio off his belt, tried to operate it and was, for his troubles, also sprayed in the face from a perfume bottle, this time by the dark-haired girl.

He swayed, then gave a mute giggle.

The girl stared in surprise at him, then at the bottle.

“What did you use?” wailed Rhys, as Louis pressed his hands over his mouth to prevent himself laughing.

“Says ‘Distraction’.”

Louis shrieked with laughter, his head rolled back and his shoulders shook.

“I don’t think it’s meant to do that,” muttered Rhys. “Sorry, maybe I got something wrong when measuring it out.”

“For goodness’ sake,” barked Mr Roding, striding forward. He reached up, pressed one hand against Louis’s forehead and murmured, “Slumber with the damned.”

The guard’s eyes closed, his head rolled. Mr Roding caught him in the small of the back as he toppled, easing him to the floor and pulling the radio off him.

“Oh my God!” shrilled Edna. “You didn’t
kill
him, did you?”

“Of course not!” barked Mr Roding. “I merely put him to sleep until dawn! He’ll wake completely rested, entirely rejuvenated and only marginally more prone to zombie attack.”

Sharon put back the bottle marked “Distraction” into her badge-strewn shoulder bag and pulled out another instead. “This one says ‘Peaceful’–is that good?”

Rhys hesitated. “Um, I’m not sure we should be using Peaceful yet. It’s a little, uh, advanced, is Peaceful. I’m sure it’ll work, but maybe Mr Roding can put people to sleep instead?”

“I’m a necromancer, not a wizard,” retorted Mr Roding, flicking away a decaying fingernail. “If I do magic, I do it using flesh and blood. And if there’s no flesh and blood to hand, I’m forced to use my own. And I would like to leave this experience with my own head of hair at least, thank you very much.”

“I do hope we’re doing the right thing,” quavered Edna as they stepped over the unconscious security men and into the foyer. Sharon picked up the first guard’s radio as they passed, slipping it into her bag. She was disappointed that there didn’t seem to be any magical wards or glowing wands they could appropriate.

Maybe the staff down here weren’t those kind of people. Of the three people inside the main foyer, one was a receptionist, sat behind her desk with a look of disbelief as the alliance of troll, vampire, necromancer, druid, priestess, exorcist and shaman stepped through the
door. The two others were security guards. One of them was brandishing a police baton, its end dented from an impact with something firm but probably organic. Sharon could taste the anger, and violence, and blood that clung about it–but no magic.

“Stand still or we will be forced to take action!” barked the guard holding the baton. As defiant challenges went, it had a reluctant quality.

Sharon looked at Rhys, who shrugged. She looked at Mr Roding, who was irritably looking through the old receipts among the depths of his pockets for a plaster to cover the finger with the missing nail. Kevin reached into his great black sports bag and handed him a plastic box containing an eclectic range of plasters.

“I mean it!” the guard shouted. “Come closer and we’ll be forced to take action!”

Sharon stepped forward. “Excuse me,” she said. “Can I ask you a question?”

“What?”

“Well, it seems to me that you’re looking at us as if we’re somehow here with hostile intent. You’ve got this sort of tension about you. And I’m wondering if it’s because you’ve noticed Kevin’s fangs, or the fact that Gretel could crush you like Blu-tack between her thumbs, or because Mr Roding is smelling his age and that. Because if you are, I really think that’s discriminatory of you. I mean, you’re like, judging based on appearance rather than on who we are, and I actually think there’s some government legislation about that. Just because a seven-foot wall of muscle, a blood-sucking fiend from the nether reaches of the night and a living immortal whose blood flows black with the souls of his enemies come walking through the door, it doesn’t mean we can’t have a conversation.”

“A…”

“Yeah. Like, don’t you guys feel that it’s really bad of your employers to just
leave
you here. I mean, just the two of you, guarding this place against possible attack–which isn’t to say we
are
attacking, because I don’t think we are, are we?”

A chorus of “No, us?” went up from the gathered Magicals Anonymous members.

“The point being, if we were attacking, then you two, for all your
training, would be smeared across the floor in big bloody splats before you could go ‘Oh shit.’ And I think it’s really irresponsible of your boss or manager or whoever, to put you in this position. What do you think?”

Whatever they wanted to say, they didn’t seem able to turn thought to speech. To ease things along, Sharon kept on talking.

“Now, I run this group for people who have issues with magic. We meet in… Actually, we probably don’t meet in Exmouth Market any more, but we’ve got this Facebook page and you’d be welcome to join. Because I really think that it’s important to share the debate on stuff like this, rather than just stand by your position of ‘What the fuck is that?’ yeah?”

“Our job—”

Sharon interrupted. “You seem like decent guys. I mean, like you want to do the best by your employer and that. But you gotta ask yourself, will it serve any purpose at all if you get, say, crushed or savaged or mauled or bitten or fried or enchanted or beaten to death? I’d say no, because there’s like, insurance costs to consider there and medical bills and stuff if you have private–do you have private care? Seems very poor to tell you guys to ‘Stop that troll’ and not provide private medical care.”

“It’s just a freelance job,” declared one.

“Gotta think of the mortgage,” insisted the other.

“A mortgage?” exclaimed Sharon. “Jesus, I so understand where you’re coming from–I mean, not me personally, I don’t have a mortgage. But every month I go online and look at my bank statements and I’m like, where did it all go? I mean, the rent, Council Tax, the service charge, gas, electricity, water, medical costs… Not my medical costs, I go NHS, but I imagine you guys won’t be able to if you need treatment for magically induced necrotic decay or vampire bites.”

“Babes, I am
not
biting the fat one,” offered Kevin from his corner.
“Hello,
can’t you smell the bad dietary habits?”

In silence the guards exchanged a look. Without a word, the one who’d threatened them with a baton turned and walked towards the door.

“Fuck it.” After a second’s hesitation, his colleague followed him. Passing Sharon, one stopped to reach out and offer her his hand.

“You seem nice enough,” he said. “You could just be one of those whacked-out hippy types who plants bombs against animal testing, but you seem okay. Good luck to you.”

“Thanks,” said Sharon, blushing a little. “You guys seem cool–hope the mortgage works out.”

Each of them shook hands and departed.

Magicals Anonymous watched them go.

Rhys turned to Sharon.

“Can I buy you a drink some time?” said a dreamy-toned voice, possibly his own.

“Uh… sure.”

The receptionist was still frozen in an attitude of astonishment behind her high counter. Sharon walked up, leaned against it and rested her chin on her folded arms.

“Hi there,” she said. “We’re looking for this wendigo.”

He sits, and stares, and smiles.

“Oh look,” he says, “they came in the front way.”

This is something of a surprise to Mr Ruislip. He has come to assume that anyone foolish enough to take him on will try to do so through as furtive a means as possible, in the naive hope that this will prolong their life expectancy by a few minutes. Observing a gaggle of mystically challenged individuals getting into a lift in Reception, he feels his surprise is perhaps good. This particular emotion is one he always finds interesting.

“Let them come in,” he says. “Let’s see how far they get.”

A door opened in a darkened office.

Feet padded on hard thin carpet.

The quiet and darkness of the office were broken by the scraped-metal sounds of the Docklands Light Railway passing outside the windows, and electric sparks outlining figures that moved between the desks.

“Are we even in the right place?” whispered Edna.

“The nice lady at Reception said that Magical Affairs were through Human Resources, and first left past Development,” Gretel intoned. She added, “Are humans resources?”

“God,
yes,” sighed Kevin. “But like everything else on the planet, they’re a resource that’s been screwed up.”

There was a thump in the dark. It was Gretel bumping into a computer-laden desk, which shuddered under the force of the impact.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered in a voice like a gale through a cheese grater.

“I’m surprised we haven’t seen more security,” said Edna. “Surely if this wendigo character knew we were coming, he’d be trying harder to stop us?”

“Oh my God,” moaned Kevin. “Have you guys been living in like,
the twelfth century? Never invite the wrath of God by wondering why things are going well!”

“Are you always this pessimistic?” asked Edna, ruffling within her purple cardigan.

“Uh… undead, duh?”

A pair of double doors swung back before Gretel’s cautious touch, revealing a long white corridor. It was lit by fluorescent tubing and bore such motivational notices as
THE FUTURE IS STABLE GROWTH
and
IS YOUR DATA SOUND?
At the far end stood another pair of doors. Kevin sniffed the air, then flung out a hand to stop Gretel advancing.

“Uh, guys, I don’t want to fulfil the pessimistic undead cliché,” he declared. “But I’m like, smelling major-league magic down here. And I’m no wizard, so I don’t want to be like, cleaning up from that shit.”

Edna peered round the vampire. “What does major-league magic smell like?”

“You know eucalyptus?”

“Really? Is that what it smells like?”

“No, I was just hoping I could get you to stop asking annoying questions.”

“You really are a very difficult young man, aren’t you?”

Gretel, perhaps with a more sensible grasp of the situation, picked up a heavy red fire extinguisher by the door. She tossed it thoughtfully from hand to hand like a juggling ball.

“Uh, you’re not thinking of—” began Kevin as Gretel drew her arm back and, with the ease of a fast bowler throwing an orange, lobbed the extinguisher down the hall. It travelled ten yards through the air, struck an invisible barrier and exploded with a great ringing bang that sent white foam spilling up the walls.

“You are correct, Kevin,” mused the troll as the cowering Kevin and Edna waited for the last of the shrapnel to fall. “The corridor does appear to be warded.”

“But we need to go this way to find the sacrifices!” wailed Edna.

“See, I’m pessimistic,” muttered Kevin, “but at least I can handle stress.”

Gretel looked thoughtfully down the corridor, then up at the ceiling.

“I’m not very good at numbers,” she said. “But if one of you would be prepared to count footsteps, I may have an idea.”

At the far end of the corridor the double doors swung back. A security guard, hand on his radio, hurried through. He gawped at the foam splattered everywhere and the red metal shards buried in the walls.

“Backup, backup, third floor,” he babbled.

“Okay, now,” muttered Kevin, “let’s try going with Plan B, shall we?”

They ran.

Eleven floors above the events in Human Resources, a lift door went
ping.

Glass swished back to reveal more glass inside.

The lift was empty.

This was a source of some surprise to the two waiting security guards, who’d been phoned by Reception with the information that three burglars were on their way upstairs. They stood either side of the lift, batons out, and in one case shimmering with a sickly red runic magic, and waited for trouble that failed to come.