The Queen of Sinister (33 page)

They ushered him in, past more burning torches and a flaming oil drum stoked for heat in the chill station. Finally he was presented at a suite of offices, packed with incongruously plush furniture, antiques and works of art. The lead plague warden took him into an office that had once belonged to a faceless executive and was now a sumptuous testament to bad taste, thuggery and greed. To Thackeray, the first was probably the greater crime.

Buckland sat in a leather armchair, feet up on a table, drinking whisky from a crystal glass. He had a look of Boris Karloff about him, with sunken eyes, an icy pallor and silver hair swept back over his shoulders, but was probably only in his mid-forties. He glanced over at Thackeray with cold contempt and then returned to contemplating his porn magazine. The lead plague warden whispered a few words in his ear before Buckland threw the magazine to one side and came over.

'What is it with you people?' Buckland said, irritated that his reading had been disrupted. He was educated but not clever, Thackeray could see from his eyes; he survived on cunning and an ability to be one degree harder, one notch more brutal than anyone else. 'You know the rules,' Buckland continued. 'Everyone on my patch knows them. They were designed for the benefit of the people living here. Are you antisocial or something?'

Thackeray almost laughed, but a very basic fear helped him maintain a straight face.

'Rule number one: no one hoards anything. All supplies have to be held centrally for the good of the people. You know that?' Thackeray nodded; there was no point in lying. 'Rule number two: any sign of the plague has to be reported so we can take steps to deal with it.'

'I don't know anyone with signs of the plague.'

Buckland pushed his face close to Thackeray's; he smelled of meat. 'No, but you hoard!'

'It was a mistake—'

'You're right there. Do you know how hard it is to keep order in this fucking world? Do you, you little toe-rag? Everyone's trying to look after themselves ... no one's thinking about the common good. Except me. And what thanks do I get? No bloody respect.' Buckland finished his whisky and went to pour himself another from a decanter on an antique table in one corner.

Thackeray couldn't quite tell if Buckland had spouted his crazed fantasy so many times that he was starting to believe it himself. But Thackeray knew all the stories of how Buckland had come to power. How he'd used to run the drugs and prostitution rackets in Sparkhill with his gang of local thugs, earning his reputation with the judicious use of a double-bladed Stanley knife to carve up the faces of his enemies because it was impossible to stitch the two parallel cuts at Accident and Emergency. There were so many people walking around Sparkhill with his mark that it acquired the nickname Razor Town. And then, once the Fall began, and communications broke down, and all the weird rumours about what was happening outside the city took off, Buckland was ready to start the looting and the rioting.

In a moment of lucid slyness, he had realised that Sparkhill was too small for him and had moved straight into the city centre, adding to his band of thugs as he progressed. No Stanley knives for him then; he'd graduated to proper weapons. They say he personally killed three hundred people on the first day of his rule. Who could fight something like that? Who had the time or the energy or the inclination when personal survival was paramount? It was somebody else's problem. So here he was: unassailable. The Butcher King of Birmingham. And Thackeray was about to become a lesson for all the other poor bastards living in fear in his Kingdom of the Damned.

Buckland returned with his whisky. 'You know I'm going to have to make an example of you?'

'You could let me go. I wouldn't say anything.'

'You see, it doesn't work like that. People always say they won't say anything. Then they go out and have a drink, or start trying to impress someone .. . some woman . .. and suddenly it's, "Mr Buckland couldn't touch me. I'm better than him. I'm smarter. I'm harder." And some people are stupid - they think that kind of stuff might be true. And then we have problems. You see, problems breed problems. So I always try to sort things out early. It's simpler that way.' He sipped his whisky while staring deep into Thackeray's eyes. A faint smile came to his lips. 'You're scared.'

'Who wouldn't be?'

'That's true.' Buckland took a long swig and flashed a glance at the plague warden, who moved towards a door at the back. 'You're a smart bloke,' Buckland continued. 'I can see that. I'm a good judge of character. You know things are different now.' He sucked on his lip while he searched for words to rephrase. 'You know there's things out there you wouldn't even have dreamed of a couple of years ago.'

'I've heard stories.'

'Not stories, friend. The truth. They're ... supernatural.' He nodded with pride at his choice of word. 'And you know how hard I am? I'm so hard I caught one of them. I'm so hard that now it does everything I say, like a Staffordshire bull terrier, because it's scared of me. Can you believe that?'

Thackeray grew even more nauseous. Harvey had been right. He'd expected to be taken out and shot, maybe even beaten to death. But now his imagination was racing at what his fate would be. If Buckland had preserved this particular horror for teaching lessons, there was no doubt it would be even worse than anything he could imagine.

'I think you're going to have to meet him.' Buckland motioned to the door at the back where the plague warden waited.

Thackeray thought of Caitlin.

All the guttersnipes and lowlifes were out on the street at night, slipping through the gloom, avoiding the areas where the occasional torch burned. Everywhere smelled of shit and urine and rot. In one area, women turned tricks for food, thinking there was safety in numbers. Children threw rocks at the rats, whose undulating movements created an eerie optical illusion in some streets where it looked as if the dark was rippling with water.

And the plague wardens came and went, scores of them on circuit after circuit, seeking out the latest poor afflicted, shooting some, herding others ahead of their bikes to the houses of the dead.

Caitlin passed through it all like a ghost. Blood thundered in her head, her heart, colouring her vision. Blood everywhere; inside, from the last surge of her period. Harvey kept a few paces ahead as he led the way, occasionally glancing back, unsure and a little scared of the woman who only hours earlier had appeared so weak and unthreatening.

Caitlin's skull echoed with the constant hard-edged whispers of the Morrigan, telling her terrible secrets, relating horrific stories of battlefields and slaughter, hinting at things to come. Caitlin's own inner voice felt insignificant next to it, but they were both there, side by side, sisters-in-blood.

'New Street Station's just up there,' Harvey hissed, then jumped when he saw that Caitlin already had an arrow notched. 'But I tell you, it's pointless. You'll never get past his guards. There's millions of them! Besides ...' His voice grew sad. '... Thackeray'll be long gone by now.'

'You like him.' Caitlin scanned the approach to the station. Nothing moved.

'He's a good mate, the best. There aren't many that would have stuck with me.' He turned away from her. 'I'm not much good, really. Bit of a liability. Thackeray would have been better off on his own. He's got what it takes to survive. But he stuck by me. I'll never forget that.'

'When I go in, you stay far enough behind so you won't get hurt in any crossfire.'

'Don't worry about that - I'll be a speck on the horizon. You're mad, you know.' He took a step away in case she lashed out.

'That's what they say.' One hand went to her quiver to check her supply. 'I'm going to have to reclaim arrows as I go ... don't have many left.'

'Right, right. You're sure you don't want to try to get a gun first? It would be—'

'Let's go.' She pushed past him towards the entrance.

A firm hand between the shoulder blades propelled Thackeray into the room and the door closed behind him. At first, all he was aware of was the thunder of his heart in his head and the shortness of his breath. Then he became aware of the most foul stink, like rotting meat.

The room appeared pitch black until his eyes grew used to a thin light coming through small holes punched in the walls. It was just enough for him to see where the occupant of the room lay. Initially it looked like a shadow denser than any of the surrounding gloom, as though it were sucking the light into it like a mini-black hole. But then it began to move, rising up in the corner where it had been gnawing on something, and its skin glinted like oil. There were eyes, bestial and lethal, and a mouth, and mandibles, and a carapace of interlocking plates, and bony ridges, but every time he focused on a detail it changed before his eyes, so that all he had was a perception of something monstrous and deadly.

'They called themselves Fomorii,' Buckland had told him before he entered the room. 'The Fall came after a war between them and some others... some kind of gods. The Fomorii lost, and then they were gone, just like that. Except this one. This one couldn't get away because I had him.'

Thackeray had no idea how Buckland knew all this, or if he was just making it all up. He couldn't understand how Buckland could keep something like that constrained, working to his will. It didn't matter.

The Fomor rose up nine feet or more, its shape flowing, becoming more terrifying with each incarnation until Thackeray thought he might go mad simply from looking at it.

He backed slowly into a corner.

Caitlin came down the escalator so stealthily her feet never made a sound. The contrast between the blazing torches and the heavy darkness all around would have been distracting for some people, but Caitlin's vision now operated on a different level. It was as if she was staring through a scarlet filter. Every thing hidden in the shadows was available to her, and distance fell away so that she could pick out the finest detail across the length of the concourse.

She saw the razor-wire wall across the ticket barrier and the door in the centre of it. There was a slot halfway up the door.

Caitlin coughed loudly. The slot slid back and she saw a pair of piggy eyes glinting inside it. Raising the bow and loosing the arrow was a fluid blur. It sped across the concourse, slipped perfectly through the slot and rammed dead centre between the eyes with a sticky thud. A cry of shock rose up from her victim's colleague.

She only expected stupidity and she was easily rewarded. Another pair of eyes appeared at the slot, only this time she didn't loose an arrow. She was already standing a foot away from it, smiling innocently, her bow out of sight. She could almost hear the slow turning of the guard's mind.

'Quick,' she said breathlessly, 'let me in ... before he gets me.'

The guard acted on instinct; the door eased open a little. Caitlin was through it in an instant. The guard was stunned by her speed, but only had a second to register surprise before her stiffened hand rammed into his throat, bursting through his windpipe. She curled her fingers and ripped, tearing across until she ruptured his carotid artery. Blood sprayed all over, gouting up the door, across the floor. The guard fell down, clutching at his throat, still not quite believing what had happened. It was a woman; only a woman.

After reclaiming her first arrow, Caitlin continued down the corridor, turning briefly when she heard Harvey exclaim behind her. For a second she was caught in the glare of a torch, stained red, droplets falling from her nose, her eyelashes, the ends of her hair.

'Jesus Christ!' Harvey said. 'It's like ... Carrie!'

Plague wardens and other guards began to emerge from rooms on every side. Caitlin, her eyes wide, emotionless, turned to meet them. Inside, the Morrigan's whispering reached a crescendo, laced with glee and threat. Caitlin raised her bow.

The arrows swept along the corridor. Four men fell before the others even realised Caitlin was armed. Even though she was a woman, one of them was taking no chances. He pulled up a shotgun and fired. The blast echoed down the corridor, the shot passing through the spot where Caitlin had been. By then she had yanked the shotgun from his hands and brought the butt up hard to shatter his jaw. As he went down, she yanked the gun above her head and brought it down three times in quick succession, smashing his skull into pieces and bursting his brain across the grimy floor.

The rest were caught in disarray. They were burly men, used to casual brutality, but they had no response to the woman who moved like mercury amongst them, savage and relentless as a storm. She appeared next to one, using the shotgun like a club, and before he had fallen she had taken his machete and slashed open the guts of another. Three more fell before the machete was knocked from her hands, and then she launched herself at another's throat to rend and tear with her teeth. She came up from him, spitting meat, blood and skin, to find herself alone.

The Fomor was taking its time toying with its prey like a lion in the veld. Thackeray had managed to duck under two of its lunges and dart to another corner, but he knew he was only delaying the inevitable. And he had discovered what the inevitable was: bones, gnawed clean, lay in a pile in one corner and they were all clearly human.

Despite its size and power, the beast moved sinuously across the room while the array of changes to its form continued with a near-poetic grace, armour plates giving way to rows of cruel spikes, shifting to mighty bat-wings, all gleaming black.