Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) (44 page)

One said, “Uh…”

Another barked, “Wait!”

They waited.

“Can you smell that?”

“Jesus, yes. What is that?”

“Smells like… God, it smells like something rotting. Something…” The guard stopped. He thought he’d heard, just on the edge of hearing, the tiniest huff of indignation. He strained. Footsteps?

Were those footsteps moving on the carpet behind him?

He turned very slowly. For a second he thought he saw…

… but no, it couldn’t be…

… but then…

“Oh, screw it,” said a voice. “Just use the sodding potion.”

And where there hadn’t been a ginger druid in front of the guard, suddenly there was. In one hand he held a perfume bottle; in the other a large grubby tissue was being applied to the druid’s inflamed red nose. The guard had just enough time to notice this before a cool spray trickled down his face, his thoughts and his dreams, and sent all to darkness.

Ten busy seconds later on the lift landing, there were two unconscious guards and three people who were no longer invisible. Music tinkled from the still-open door of the lift, on a theme of abusing the greatest hits of the Beatles. Rhys shook his bottles of potions aloft and proclaimed, “Take that, Birmingham exam board!”

Sharon looked around her, trying to work out which way to go.

“This week Sharon takes the road less travelled,” whispered the voice of Dez in her ear. Briefly she thought she saw the white-suited spirit guide flicker through a door to her right, waving for the camera as he passed.

“This way,” she barked.

“Are you sure?” asked Mr Roding, a schoolmaster judging a precocious child’s work.

Being a shaman, Sharon had decided, was as much about seeming right as being right. “Yup!” She grabbed the still-exultant Rhys by the sleeve and pulled him after her.

More offices, half-familiar from the last time she’d been here, but silent now. It was the silence of the stopped engine, the place where noise should have been. As she strode between the desks with a confidence she did not feel, Sharon realised it had only been people that made this space seem small, and busy, and exciting. Now, with the dead tables and empty chairs, the open-plan place was too cold, too still, too big. The great panes of glass let in enough night-time light to reveal the depth of the shadows without driving any of it away.

And there they were, whispering on the edge of perception, just on the other side of invisibility, things moving, ghosts of workdays past. There the shadow of the place where a hundred workers had grouped and muttered after a bad meeting; here the slow swirl of paper through the air, dancing like mating birds just in the corner of her eye; on the computer screens the burning after-images of dancing numbers; here
too the whisper of changing minds in the telephone wires, the crackle of energy and salty taste of wealth, the sick tug of doubt and the creak of sensible shoes beneath uncomfortable chairs… All here, all just out of reach; and there,
there

Help us
…

… help us help us help us…

She’d felt it before, fear coming out of the walls, but last time she’d thought it was merely the babbling voices of things not understood, the whisper of trapped souls behind locked doors. But now she walked and listened, and felt fear in the mouths of the people who worked here, too scared to ask their neighbours if they too were afraid, and therefore living alone in their fears.

She looked, and saw the shadow of the wendigo move across the walls. Paint that had peeled looked, to a shaman’s eyes, more like skin flaking away from the office walls. Paper was leather, the stains on a coffee cup too dark, too thick. The wendigo had walked these halls, and where his foot fell, the building itself seemed to cringe, as if stone as well as flesh was afraid of challenging him.

“Ms Li?” Rhys hovered behind her, and at his back stretched away the shadows of things seen and dreams broken, his whole history written in a language of lines and crinkles on his face and in his voice. “You all right?”

“I can hear them,” breathed Sharon. “I can hear… This way.”

She moved fast through the office, past posters showing the positive growth trend sought in futures and dividends, round the waste-paper baskets clogged with biscuit wrappers and old cigarette packets, past the cleaning cupboard locked up for the night against any and all who dared steal its industrial-strength blue toilet tissue, and round to the anonymous white door where the voices whispered the loudest and where not even a spirit walker could pass.

Mr Roding sniffed the air, running his hands down the heavy laminated wood. “Warded all right,” he grumbled. “Fairly good work too, not too shoddy.”

“Can you open it?”

Mr Roding thoughtfully scraped an orange fingernail of wax out of the hollow of his ear and flicked it away. “Yeah,” he said. “I can open it. But I won’t be much good to you for a while after.”

“They’re in there,” murmured Sharon. “All the spirits Burns and Stoke have stolen–I can hear them.”

The necromancer grunted. “You’d better stand back.”

Rhys ducked behind a desk, peeping over the edge like a child playing hide-and-seek. Sharon moved more slowly to join him, thinking how bad could bad really be?

Mr Roding put his palms against the door and closed his eyes. She thought she saw his lips move, heard a slow, rattling breath across the dry surface of his tongue. She looked, for a moment, as only a shaman could look, and saw Mr Roding as he did not want to be seen: a skeleton clad in patchwork flesh, skin grey-white, draped over protruding bones, hands pressed to the shimmering surface of the door pulsing with blood-red power.

She shuddered and looked away, but even in the normal world, the real world of only three dimensions, the air around Mr Roding was thick, spiky hot, a rotting jungle stench in the cold dryness of the room. His face wrinkled with effort and, as the magic passed through him, Sharon saw the thin white surface of his skin begin to peel. It rolled back from his face like liquid glue, revealing soft untouched tissue beneath. It peeled and cracked off his lips, like a time-lapse sequence of decay. His teeth began to yellow; his hair shrivelled and thinned, drifting down around him; his nails turned brown and split; capillaries pulsed vivid red against the whites of his eyes. The necromancer groaned, and his voice was older and cracked and his back violently bent as, with one last, great push, he slammed his palms against the door.

Something hot and white snapped, a camera-flash burst of intensity right in Sharon’s eyes. The door clicked open, pushed back by Mr Roding’s weight, and with a little grunt the necromancer fell forward.

Sharon rushed to grab him, and was surprised by how light he was. His breath nearly knocked her out, and a tooth rolled out of his mouth.

“Damn me,” he hissed. “That was one hell of a ward.”

“You okay?” asked Sharon.

“Nothing a bit of ghoul tongue in the coffee won’t fix,” he grunted, “but that took more out of me than I thought and…” He paused, noticing the hollow where his tooth should have been, then reached up and casually pulled another yellow gnasher from his gums.
“Great,” he grunted. “Took me six months to fit those, thank you very much.”

Sharon looked past him through the open door.

She’d expected, at the very least, a spiral staircase or a hall of Gothic horrors, but no. A bland cream-coloured corridor led to a white lift door. Above the lift a sign read,
AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

If that was all, what
was
the worst that could happen?

“Will you be all right getting out?” asked Sharon. “I mean, if we go on…”

“Course I’ll be all right,” grumbled Mr Roding. “I’ve cast spells with a body mass index of ten point one, you know. And still had power left for cursing the pension authorities. Just… help me up.”

Sharon and Rhys eased Mr Roding onto his feet. He leaned heavily against the wall to catch his breath. “Christ, it’s been a while since I had to do that,” he grumbled. “Being on the side of righteousness is really not my thing. Listen to me, you two.”

They looked uneasily at him.

“This building is far too quiet. And I’m sure you don’t need me to inform you, being as you are so excited by all this, that it’s a trap. But it
is
a trap, and very obviously. Now I’m going to go and chew on some raw flesh, hopefully not mine. Call me if you need some more old-fashioned damnation.”

So saying, shaking slightly all over, Mr Roding turned and hobbled away.

Sharon looked at Rhys; Rhys looked at Sharon.

He blurted, “But it’s a trap! What are we going to do by ourselves?!”

Sharon shrugged.

“Come on, dribble-nose,” she muttered. Seizing hold of him by the sleeve again, she dragged him onwards, through the opened door.

They were being chased.

This was problematic for Edna, Gretel and Kevin, since Edna’s maximum speed was barely more than her usual waddle, and Gretel doing corners was a hazard to both her companions and the local architecture.

Kevin stood on the landing of the emergency stairs, haranguing his companions.

“Come on, guys!” he wailed. “Security is like, so close behind us!”

“Now dear…” panted Edna. “When you’re… like me… you won’t… be in such a hurry…”

Kevin groaned with impatience. “This is just brilliant. We’re like, being chased by these guys with sticks and wands and shit, and I’m stuck with Mother Teresa and a gourmet troll. Gretel!”

“Yes, Kevin?” rumbled the troll.

“Can you carry Edna?”

“I am not going to be carried!” barked the priestess. “It is simply not dignified!”

Below them, the doors to the staircase slammed back and two men barrelled through. One carried a baton and a radio; the other didn’t, but only because his fingers were in the process of growing into long black claws.

“I’m very sorry,” rumbled Gretel, scooping up Edna and popping her under one arm. “But I do think this is for the best.”

“Stop there!” roared the guard who was still human enough to muster speech. His companion was already dropping to all fours, face breaking out into a snout, ginger-red hair spreading across his flesh; and while he wasn’t quite a fox, being larger and more unrestrained, he nonetheless had the fox-like teeth all sorted, and by now the claws and growl.

“Uh, guys,” Kevin squeaked at the guards as Gretel lumbered past, “I know you are doing your jobs and whatever. But I am like, so totally a master of the night and spawn of darkness, and you are seriously cramping my style.”

“Vampire!” exhorted Gretel from beyond the swinging doors to the next floor.

The man-fox-guard prowled up the stairs, the remnants of his uniform barely clinging to his back, hackles raised, teeth bared. Kevin raised a finger in polite request. “Actually,” he said, “hold that thought.”

To his surprise, both the man and the not-quite-man hesitated. Kevin felt himself puff up a little with pride.

“Vampire!” yelled Gretel again, in a voice loud enough to make the banister hum. “Are you coming?”

The fox-man’s lips curled back. A low growl spread from the base of his belly.

“Tell you what,” quavered Kevin. “I’ll like, spare you my awful vampiric wrath, just this once. But only because I’m feeling merciful and it’d totally ruin my hair.”

The fox-man pounced. Kevin gave a shrill cry and ran, slamming through the double doors to the adjoining office. Claws raked the air behind him. Gretel was waiting with a desk manoeuvred and ready. “Get rid of them get rid of them get rid of them!” shrieked the vampire as he ran.

Calmly Gretel waited for the doors to slam back behind Kevin, then pushed the desk across, jamming them shut. There was a scratching of claws and scrabbling of hands from the other side, but the doors rattled against the heavy desk in vain.

“Oh dear,” quavered Edna, propped up in a swivel chair to catch her breath. “Do you think they’re going to be terribly upset?”

“Darling, I think we’re a little past that.”

The scratching at the door abruptly stopped. There was a shuffling of feet and a crackle of radio. Then silence. A deep, expectant silence.

“Uh…” murmured Kevin.

The doors blew in off their hinges, taking the big desk with them down the central gangway. Biros, papers and computer fragments spilled across the room as they flew by. Through the smoking wreck of the doorway stepped the fox-man and his companion. And now there were marks visible on the upright guard’s skin, runic sigils burning–the line through the circle, the zigzag scar of the railway, the raw red stop sign and the blue and white police wards–and carved into his flesh. Seeing the trio, the man with burning skin grinned and drew his hands back, power flickering between his fingertips, lips moving silently around a new spell.

Gretel lurched towards him, swinging a great fist back. The fox, its body as long as a man and its forelegs still patchy with human skin, leapt on her, fangs bared. Fox and troll crashed down together as heavily as a melting cliff of ice; blood and fur mixed as they battered each other.

The rune-wearer turned, seeking a target, and saw Edna cowering behind a pillar. He flung out his hands towards her, and their palms issued a blast of rippling, scalding air flecked with crimson. Edna yelped and dived for the floor, the back of her hair curling and blackening. Behind her the wall turned dark and sticky under a layer of melting chemical goo. The old priestess crawled over the wreckage of a nearby table, looking for safety, and the rune-wearer advanced, drawing more power out of the signs in his skin. Another blast of airborne force, this one black and garnished with diesel fumes and the roar of a bus. It smashed the desk behind which Edna was hunched, sending its remnants into a bookcase above her. Files and folders tumbled all around the priestess.

Grappling on the floor with Gretel, the fox-man was beginning to have the worst of it. His claws had torn her flesh, leaving vivid grey scars through which viscous yellow-brown blood seeped like engine oil, but no matter how much he bit and scratched, there was simply too much of Gretel between him and any vital internal organs. With a surge of silent energy, the troll gave a heave and rolled, slamming the
fox-man against the floor beneath her. Like a bear smothering her prey, she flattened herself on top of him, wrapping one giant hand over his head and knocking it back hard onto the floor. Teeth tore at Gretel’s palm, and brown blood began to roll and mat in the spines of the troll’s skin, but she slammed down again and again until, with an impotent shriek of fury, the fox grew still beneath her.