The Glass God (10 page)

“Bodily fluids right ahead!”

In the faded light, the smear was almost invisible, and under other circumstances Sharon might have dismissed it as another streak of dirt or an erratic spill of shadow on the cracked tarmac. But as Kevin took another precautionary dose of nasal spray, and Rhys fumbled for his tissues, she looked again at the thin, diamond-shaped splash. “Looks human,” said Miles. “Directional droplets, indicating the victim is moving.”

“Babes, it may
look
human, but I’m telling you, that red stuff is, like, such a big no-no.”

Miles gave the vampire a look. It occurred to Sharon that this might be the first time anyone had called the Alderman “babes”. Kevin, meanwhile, stepped round the blood and nodded towards a small prefabricated building by the water’s edge. “Trail goes that way, if you’re, like, determined to follow it.”

No one seemed determined. Sharon sighed, and with a rallying cry of, “Come on, minions,” marched onward.

The building had been an office. Like elsewhere in that place it seemed to have been abandoned overnight. Desks still stood against the walls; venetian blinds were crookedly locked across the cracked windows. A series of pictures up on the wall showed men in yellow jackets and hard hats beaming at the camera. The oldest photos were yellowing, with grey mould beneath the glass, and painted a picture of the times. In a group from 1982 a hundred men were lined up; seventy smiled out from 1989. In 1993 the first and only woman stood with her fifty comrades for the shot, her white hard hat at a jaunty angle, her hi-vis jacket defiantly bright among the stained garments of the men; by 1997 she was gone, as were another twenty employees. By 2003, in the last photo, twenty-six grim-faced men, all young save three veterans, with knee-high orange boots and chipped hard hats, stared out at the photographer as if trying to warn through silence all who came after to beware the things they themselves had seen. A bronze plaque above an abandoned coffee table read:

Industry Safety Standards Award 2002–2003. Making Britain Better.
 

Across this, and a large section of the wall, someone had written in giant orange paint:

GOODBYE
 

That was all.

Sharon thought about looking at the shadow of the thing, peering into the ghostly depths of the building’s past; then thought again. It was too easily evident right here on the surface of things: a truth that could not but be perceived, and needed no shaman’s vision to penetrate. The line of not-quite-human blood had run in a thin trail of droplets from the water’s edge up to the door of the building. A couple of fingerprints, stained red, showed where the door had been pushed open. The source of the blood trail had then wandered into a corner of the room and, judging by a streak of discolouration down the wall, sunk into a corner to bleed a while longer. There it had gone on bleeding, long enough to leave a still-sticky pool on the floor. “Uch uch uch!” wailed Kevin, flapping like a man troubled by a swarm of invisible flies. “So gross!”

Sharon leant down to examine the small puddle of blood with what she hoped was a suitably professional expression. There was a small indent along one edge, filled with viscous, solidifying blood. It was the tiny corner of a shoeprint, the toe turned towards the wall. Another door stood open; this one led to a smaller yard behind the cabin where thick white pipes still protruded from the earth, a promise of plumbing left unrepaired. Thin drops of blood moved from the cabin to a metal cover set in the ground. From beneath it came the sound of rushing water. Sharon prodded the cover with her toe, and it shifted. “Sewers?” she asked.

“Oh
God…⁠”
whimpered Kevin.

Miles knelt down beside the manhole, tracing with his finger round a drop of blood on its rim. “We must be near an outlet,” he mused. “Whoever’s bleeding went down there.”

“Babes, I
am
on board with the fate of the city stuff,” said Kevin, “but I am
not
going into a sewer.”

Rhys said, “I-I-I can’t say I’d enjoy it, Ms Li, but if someone bleeding did go down there this is very important so if you think someone ought to go into the sewer then, of course, I’ll do what needs to be done…⁠”

Sharon raised a hand to silence the rest of this unhappy thought. “Whoa there. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, yeah? Because, while I think Kevin has got some issues with hygiene – which we all respect that you’re working through – I’ve only got one good pair of boots and even I think it might be time to go health and safety on this one. Let’s just… lever this thing up,” she kicked the manhole cover, “and if there’s not a body obviously in sight, then maybe we should call the professionals. Which isn’t to say that we
aren’t
professional,” she added. “Just that sometimes it’s
professional
to call the professionals.”

Miles already had a blade in his hand. It was kitchen-knife long, and white, like it was made of pottery. He slipped it under the edge of the manhole cover, teeth clenching as he twisted the knife to give more leverage. Sharon, then Rhys, seized the raised edge of the metal, while Kevin lurked behind them with a cry of, “So I’ll just, like, keep watch?”

The heavy cover slid to one side, cold and damp from condensation. There was darkness below, flecked with the glow of rushing if-only-it-were-water. The cool night air suppressed the worst of the smell, but it was still there, a throat-twisting assault that made every pore clench up. Miles reached out a hand over the gap; his lips moved in an incantation as he opened up his palm to create a small bauble of light, white and fluorescent, which drifted away and down into the shaft. It revealed no bodies, but a certain brownness to the waters rushing below that Sharon could have done without seeing illuminated. Thick grey-green growths clung to the walls of the shaft, and an unignorable warmth drifted up. Then:

“Stop!” In the dull glow of Miles’s light, Rhys had seen something on the walls. “There!”

Miles pulled the light back up to where Rhys was pointing. Sharon edged round the manhole to see better. Scratched in black, burnt onto the wall as if with a smouldering charcoal stick, was a set of stick figures. One, wearing a baseball cap, hurled a bunch of flowers at a woman in a triangular skirt, who in reply held a bazooka aloft. Between them a child stood, a balloon shaped like a bleeding heart attached limply to her wrist by a string. They were crude and small, but it was clear enough what they were meant to show.

Sharon said, “Okay. We definitely didn’t cover this in shaman club.”

Miles lay belly-down next to her and peered at the figures, the light flickering erratically as his concentration wavered between the spell and the drawings. “Damn,” he breathed. “Tags.”

“Tags? As in ‘yo dis is my hood’ tags?” suggested Sharon. “Who tags a sewer?”

The light went out as Miles stood up, brushing dust and slime off, or perhaps further over, his neatly buttoned black jacket. He turned to survey the area before murmuring, “Kevin, if you wouldn’t mind… With your vampire senses, can you tell at the moment if we are being observed?”

From behind the white shield of a face mask, Kevin said, “Darling, my vampire senses are getting nothing but sewage and I seriously think this is getting unhealthy.”

Sharon got back up, and Rhys wrested the manhole cover back over the shaft. “Miles?” she asked. “You’re doing this concerned-but-okay thing, which, being as I am, a knower of the truth, I kinda feel is about nine parts concerned to only one part groovy. What the hell is up with the scratchy street art in the sewer?”

Miles sighed, turning at last back to Sharon and looking her in the eye. “It’s a tag,” he repeated, voice flecked with sorrow. “It’s the mark of the Tribe.”

There was an intake of breath from Rhys, and a sharp, “Goddamn” from Kevin. “Okay,” the vampire added, “well, this has been, like, totally great and I’m feeling, like, so positive about all this, but, actually, I think I’m gonna go now so…⁠”

Sharon’s eyes didn’t leave Miles. “Kevin!” she barked. “Stay!”

He froze, as if embarrassed even to have been caught considering departure. “The Tribe,” Sharon repeated. “Now, I’m gonna make a great investigative leap here, which might be brilliant or could be wank, but which I’m thinking based on the aura of ‘oh crap’ currently going on here in so many ways… when you say ‘the Tribe’ like that, I’m guessing we’re not talking an association of tea-loving teddy-bear fanciers?”

“No, Ms Li,” confessed Miles. “Not so much.”

“And,” Sharon went on, “I’m imagining that when one of your hobbies is drawing stuff on the inside of sewer walls beneath abandoned industrial estates in Deptford where only a few hours ago lotsa blood, some human, some not, got cleared away, I’m imagining that the word you’re gonna use to describe ‘the Tribe’ is not going to be…⁠” – she held back the sound for a moment, considering how best to form it – “⁠…
fluffy
.”

Chapter 12

The Tribe

fck u fck u fck u wrld!!!

fck u fck u fck u 4 finkin u woz betr dan us 4 finkin u woz gr8, u woz ligt u woz beutiful

we is da tribe we is da 1s u cal stupid ugly wrng

u is many

we is few

but jus cos u is many n we is few

dont mean we aint rigt

so fck u 4 finkin u kno us

fck u 4 finkin u culd jus let us die

Chapter 13

Adversity Is Sent to Test Us

Miles said, “⁠… self-mutilation is not strictly…⁠”

Kevin said, “They cut themselves with knives! With
unsterilised
knives!”

Rhys said, “They certainly have uno-o-o-orthodox approaches to their physical wellbeing, but maybe they just don’t want to be judged by s-s-societal norms?”

Sharon sat with her arms folded behind a high plastic orange table in an all-night café on Jamaica Road whose services included, if you believed the sign, free wi fi, smoothies, shakes, sandwiches, burgers, salads, hot drinks, cold drinks, fresh coffee, herbal tea, ice cream, sorbet, Turkish Delight and international money transfers. The owner, a man missing two front teeth and wearing a poorly glued toupee above his freckled head, beamed disconcertingly at his only four customers as they sat pressed up against the window, bickering.

Miles sat with a small untouched cup of very strong almost-espresso before him. With each point he made, he pressed his index finger against the orange table top for emphasis. “The Tribe believe that the key to power – to self-empowerment – is to rid yourself of concern for physical flesh.”

“Sounds kinda okay…⁠” Sharon’s voice was the drone of one who can’t shake the feeling that, somehow, it won’t be.

“To this end,” went on Miles, the firm teacher with a difficult class, “they do indeed cut their own skin, and often take pride in achieving what society would define as… ugliness.”

“Disgusting!” wailed Kevin, shrill enough to make Rhys flinch in the seat closest to the paper napkins.

“They say,” Miles concluded, “that mankind is trapped by illusions of what it is to be man. They say that by cutting into themselves they become truly human, whatever that means.”

Sharon drummed her fingers. Feeling the need for comfort, she’d ordered a Danish pastry and had been surprised to discover a solid pillow of icing and fat deposited in front of her, its radius nearly greater than the circle of her skull.

“Okay,” she said. “So I can see how these guys might have issues. But hell! We’re Magicals Anonymous! We’re issues-central! And, sure, knives – especially unsterilised knives – are a big no-no at MA meetings, and I can see how the Tribe might have a more relaxed attitude towards that. But you can’t force people to conform to your social expectations, can you?”

“No, Ms Li,” ventured Rhys. He wasn’t sure he believed his own words, even as he uttered them. But Sharon seemed certain enough, and who could trust a knower of the truth and seer of the hidden path?

“Right! So why don’t we just pop along to talk to these Tribe people, and ask them…⁠”

“Like hell no!” wailed Kevin.

“I’m not sure that would be…⁠” put in Rhys.

“There are complexities…⁠” added Miles.

Sharon groaned. “All right, what’s the problem here?”

Three grown men cowered beneath the force of Sharon’s practicality. “Well,” offered Miles, “the relationship between the Aldermen and the Tribe has always been… strained. In recent years, we’ve had an alliance with the Neon Court, who have traditionally been rivals of the Tribe, and this has rather… coloured arrangements.”

“‘In recent years’?”

“Subsequent events have perhaps altered the situation,” he conceded. “And, diplomatically speaking, we are now in a better position, perhaps, to negotiate with the Tribe. However, the fact remains that the last shaman of the Tribe was murdered while fighting a pitched battle with Lady Neon in Covent Garden during an endless night, and the political consequences of this action do remain… somewhat clouded.”

Sharon leant forward to rest her chin on the bridge of her hands, and narrowed her eyes. “Now,” she said, “I’ve been reading up on management speak, and I’m guessing that where you say, ‘somewhat clouded’, what you really mean is ‘totally down the pan and in the shit’?”

“Well…⁠”

“Which isn’t to say I don’t respect you trying to be diplomatic,” she added. “Because it’s bad to colour people’s perceptions before they have a chance to make up their own mind. But, then, Kevin here has been talking about unsterilised knives, and Rhys does look like he’s having an asthma attack. So I’m guessing that, just this once, I should maybe pull in my positive attitude?”

“That does sound… sensible, Ms Li. Also, we have to consider… if a blood trail led us to a sewer tagged by the Tribe, then does this not imply that the Tribe are involved in these events? And, if so, should this not further dent your otherwise admirably positive attitude?”

Sharon considered this. “A Positive Attitude,” she intoned, “Is Healthier Than Negativity.”

“Even with knives involved?” queried Kevin.

“
Especially
,” she declared, “with knives involved. So, Alderman… in your capacity as my minion, which I’m still totally groovy about, by the way, I need you to do a coupla things for me.”