The Scioneer (20 page)

Yakuba
came and
knelt at his side, laying his hand on Arid’s back. His face studs
sparkled in the moonlight. ‘Your brother has gone, my friend. True.
He was a brave soldier. True again. Did he not say himself that he
knocked a man down tonight? And now you will do the same. You must
avenge his death. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth.’

The
horrifi
ed screams and
shouts from the hyenas standing on the nearby street corners
reached a new pitch as four lean wolves, three males and a female,
darted into the crossroads and stopped dead as they tried to make
sense of the scene before them.

It was
more tha
n a killing. It
was a slaughter, unlike anything they had seen before. Ronnie and
Reggie were dumbstruck, and could only watch as Dahlia headed
straight for Osaze’s body and Arid weeping next to him.

‘What
happened here?’ she asked, staring at the mixture of emotions
o
n the faces of the
surrounding hyena.

‘One of
your bitches went berserk,’ said Yakuba, ‘she killed an
innocent.’

‘Nobody’s
innocent, blud,’ replied Zevon smartly, and no sooner were there
words out of his mouth, than Yakuba had grabbed him around the
throat with a sinewy hand. In a move which he must have practiced a
thousand times, Yakuba swept Zevon’s legs from under him, and
slammed his body against the tarmac in the middle of the street. He
pulled a knife from his back pocket and held it fast against
Zevon’s windpipe. Ronnie and Reggie found themselves unable to make
a move – they were surrounded by an angry mob of hyena, baying for
their blood.

‘Stick him!’
somebody shouted.

‘Not I,’
said Yakuba and without taking his weight off Zevon, he flipped the
blade and held it out to Arid.

‘A tooth for a
tooth?’

Ar
id stared at
the knife for what seemed like an eternity, then he shook his head
wearily, as though there were simply no other course of action, and
reached out for it.

‘Wait!’
said Dahlia
, unsure of
what she was about to do. She stood up, wiped Osaze’s blood on her
shorts and found her voice.

‘My name is
Dahlia Ortega. I run with the Brixton Wolves. I... understand that
you are angry. Our alpha – the boy’s killer – will be
challenged...’

‘What are
you saying?’ croaked Zevon, and Yakuba squeezed his hand tighter
around his throat.

‘Let the
woman speak. What are you saying wolf?’

‘I am saying,’
Dahlia began, and the words almost choked her, ‘that we will punish
our own.’

‘But what
of our loss? What of our fallen brother?’

‘Accept
this as a gesture of our good will and respect for your comrade,’
and she pulled Domino’s bag from her vest and threw it to
Yakuba.

When he
unzipped it, he was unable
to hide his astonishment at the number of Hyenarc vials
inside. He tipped them out on to the street so that everybody could
see. ‘There must be two thousand creds’ worth....’ Yakuba said to
nobody in particular. ‘What was your name again, wolf?’

‘Dahlia
Ortega.’

‘Go well,
Dahlia Ortega of the Brixton Wolves. Right the wrong within your
pack. We have a truce until you do. You feel me?’ And with that, he
took his weight off Zevon, pulled him upright and signalled to the
rest of the hyenas on the corner of Battersea Park Road and
Queenstown to let them pass.

Ronnie
and Reggie,
Zevon and
Dahlia huddled together to discuss their options.

‘What
have you done?’ said Zevon.

‘What
have
I
done? I saved your life,
shithead. You could start by thanking me. I saved all of our lives.
What
could
I have
done? The hyena are killers - they may not always seem it with
their constant laughing – but make no mistake Zevon, they will kill
to protect what’s theirs.’

‘Roma is out of
line,’ said Reggie.

‘She’s
out of control,’ s
aid
Ronnie, nodding in agreement. ‘That kid is only, what? Fifteen,
maybe sixteen. Beatlemania,’ he whispered.

‘So what
now?’

‘I’ve
made a pact. I have to challenge her,’ said Dahlia.

‘It’s not your
place to challenge.’

‘I just
bought your life, Zevon, or have you forgotten? I own you
now.’

Zevon
bowed his
head in reluctant acquiescence.

‘But it’s
all moot anyway. We have to find her first.’

Chapter
29

Though
the crowds had dispersed and Lek and
Crystal had been left alone on the streets, they
could tell that something had changed. As they moved further north,
away from Clapham and nearer to Battersea, they became aware of the
orange glow of fires burning in the darkness. The boisterous shouts
and chanting of earlier had turned to screams and cries of pain,
and they saw more young men and women retreating now from the
action, many of them wounded and crying. The further they walked
the more destruction they saw on the roads: smashed windows,
overturned cars and recyclo-bins on fire. Crystal looked worried
and asked Lek if it might be worth taking the back streets instead,
but he didn’t like the idea of getting lost - or worse, cornered -
in the tight network of dead end roads. ‘Plus,’ he said, ‘we’re
heading straight for Chelsea Bridge – this is the most direct
route.’

‘It just seems
like we’re walking into the middle of it.’

‘Maybe we
are, but the clock is ticking. The train leaves in forty five
minutes and we’ve got to get the money before then.’

‘Fine.
Whatever. Where are we anyway?’

‘I think
we’re about five minutes’ from Queen’s Circus.’

***

The news
of the killing had spread like wildfire through the
gangs
, and the entire
mood of the night was changed within minutes. Banter and bravado
became barbed insults and thrown punches. Violent scuffles had
already begun to break out between the wolves and hyena gathering
at Queen’s Circus, before the official commencement of the rumble.
By the time the first gunshot echoed through the night, there were
bodies from both armies lying face down in the gutter. Word had
spread that Brixton Roma was on a killing spree, that she had
already slaughtered a boy on the street and scattered a pack of
jackals shooting-up in a looted pawn-shop. Outnumbered four to one,
but tearing at them with her claws she had managed to rip the
femoral artery of one before the others managed to beat her back
with chains. She was overdosed, they said. She had ‘turned
animal’.

It was
all true and the h
yena
were incensed: just as Osaze had predicted earlier that day, they
fought hard. If the prelim had been a relatively mild affair, this
was an all-out street-war, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in
years. Here, now, knives were drawn, and the sound of shots and the
smell of cordite filled the air. Roma had tasted blood and wanted
more: she felt she could run forever as she bounded into the thick
of it, slashing at any stray jackal separated from his pack. As the
rumble began to take on a life of its own, her presence only served
to fuel the fire. The former order of the wolves was split apart as
she moved at random, knocking down and biting anybody in her path.
A group of wild hyena rounded on her, slashing at her with
flick-knives, but she smashed her way through them and continued
unharmed on her rampage, pouncing on the back of a boy who was
brandishing a machete. As he fell, the blade was forced into his
own chest and tore its way out through his shoulder. His screams
sounded like a sheet of metal being ripped in two. Roma did not
hear them, but moved on pitilessly to her next victim – a young
girl with emerald eyes, who was swinging a weighted bag to defend
herself. Without breaking her stride, Roma barrelled into her
flank, and before the girl had hit the ground, Roma had sunk her
teeth into her scalp, and had pulled away a bloody chunk of flesh
and hair.

Meanwhile, the h
yena fought on bravely, redressing the balance against
lesser wolves. Yakuba’s men, fresh on the scene, chased and
cornered a pack-leader, beating him to death with their fists as he
cried out for help from his gang. Arid was there too, in body, if
not in spirit, watching without seeing, as they tore away the
plastic seats from a Credibus shelter and flung them at a tight
knot of wolves. He saw a jackal whirl a bleeding boy around by the
wrist in a parody of a dance move, and heard the cheekbone smash
when it connected with a hyena’s raised claw-hammer. He saw the
hyena’s back explode as he was shot at point-blank range in the
chest. He saw the horror in the shooter’s eyes as a knife was
plunged into her neck.

Roma had
completed
a full circle
of Queen’s Circus roundabout, killing at will and notching up a
chilling tally of hyena casualties and fatalities. The exertion was
finally beginning to take its toll when she approached the
Queenstown Road exit, and she drew breath for a moment in the
middle of the battle and focused on the people milling around the
edge of the rumble. There, amongst the cowards and the spectators,
she noticed somebody: a woman, and the part of Roma Bruce which was
still human registered a fleeting memory, a spark of envy for the
woman’s beauty.

‘I want a
trophy,’ she growled.

***

Lek paled
at
the scene in front of
him. What had started as a rumble was now a war, raging like an
inferno across a square mile. The dead were strewn everywhere,
others sat at the edge of the crowds, grey with shock and nursing
horrendous injuries, but still there must have been four hundred
youths brawling on the street and on waste-ground in the centre of
the roundabout.

‘What
have we done?’ said Crystal, horrified. We’ve got to go back; get a
later train, anything! We can’t go through this. It would be
suicide
.’

Lek
cursed their luck. He felt his escape slipping away from them, and
the very idea of trying to survive for another hour - or maybe more
- in this city brought tears to his eyes. He struggled to remain in
control, realising he couldn’t let Crystal see him like this. ‘But
we can’t. We can’t,’ he said to himself, knowing that they couldn’t
stay where they were, couldn’t afford to wait, couldn’t carry
on.

They
were
weighing up the
options when something in Crystal’s peripheral vision caught her
attention. Before she had even turned her head, her subconscious
screamed at her to move and she grabbed Lek by the wrist and yelled
at him to run.

Twenty
yards to
the end of the road at full pelt. Hand in hand, Lek and Crystal
sprinted into the darkness of the Kidholme Housing Estate,
screaming for help: the residents knew better than to open their
doors to anybody on the night of a full moon, but they still peered
out from behind their curtains at the strange couple fleeing across
the courtyards. Crystal let out a cry when she heard the deep howl
echoing off the walls around them and she knew they were being
hunted.

‘Who is
it?
!’ shouted Lek. ‘What
is it?!’

‘It’s the
psycho who mugged us in the car. It’s the girl!’

Another howl
resounded in the deserted yards.

‘That isn’t a
girl.’

He pulled
Crystal along a row of squat houses, moving as fast as he could and
trying to keep low. They darted across a pampas grass verge and
found themselves at the foot of a staircase leading up to the
high-rise flats towering above them.

Roma
Bruce was barking somewh
ere in the network of housing rows and they could hear the
sound of her footfalls as she followed their scent and closed the
gap.

‘The lift!’

‘The
doors won’t open! Curfew! Keep moving!’

Crystal
began to
run up the steps, but Lek dragged her back. ‘No, she’ll trap us!
This way!’ and they turned left and ran back in the direction of
the main road, hoping to lose her in the crowds there. The estate
was like a rabbit warren: a maze of walled gardens, underpasses and
stairwells. The pair ran through a covered recyclo-bin shelter and
into another courtyard, banging desperately on the doors they
passed, in the hope that somebody, anybody, might take pity on
them. It was useless.

Roma
Bruce could smell their fear and it drove her wild. She
summoned
the reserves of
her own human DNA. ‘Barbie-doll,’ she sang, ‘Barbie-doll!’ ‘Where
are you baby? You never… introduced me to that… fella of yours. I
just want to be… friends,’ and she cackled hoarsely and the sound
carried though the underpasses and sent a chill down Crystal’s
spine.

‘There!’
called Lek suddenly. He pointed across the yard, but was already
pulling
Crystal in his
direction. He could see the flames of a burning car on the corner
of Nine Elms Lane. When he saw that their path was blocked by a
padlocked iron gate, too high to climb, he swore bitterly. In his
desperation to be in the open space, drawing out the distance
between themselves and the monster, Lek made his mistake. He turned
down a blind alley.