Greywalker - Vanished Part 14

Michael led the way north and a bit west.

Marsden turned his head toward him as we went, as if he were peering at the boy with his empty eyes. "Your mate has a horse stall in Mayfair?"

"It's his sister's place." Michael blushed, keeping his eyes averted from the disconcerting face beside him. "Loren's family has money-like the kind of money even rich people think is a lot of money." We went a few more blocks into a very nice, old residential neighborhood until Michael stopped in front of a long row of connected houses with tiny yards in front. Then he led the way up a short alley to a green-painted door in what looked more like a shed than a stable. The door certainly wasn't wide enough for any sort of car. Michael dug his keys from his pocket and used one on the padlock attached to the door's hasp and handle a.s.sembly. The door swung open to show a tiny s.p.a.ce packed full of motorcycles and repair gear. There was barely room to step in and move the bikes.

"The Ducatis and the Enfield are his. Mine are the BSAs," Michael said, rummaging through a rack of keys on the wall. "I meant to take the Comet to a rally in a couple of weeks, but I'm guessing that's not going to happen."

"Why not?" I asked. "This should resolve in a day or two. It's not the end of the world. At least not yet." Michael goggled at me. "If Will's skipped work for a week, they can deport us both. I mean, they might not, but who's to say? He's on work contract and he has to show up for work at the job that brought him here or he has to leave. Keeps people from coming at an employer's expense and then ducking out for some other job or just slacking around on the dole." He found the key he wanted and held it up with a shout. "Got it!"

"Where's the boat?" I asked.

"Last time he left it in St. Pancras Basin. It'll have to be somewhere between there and Islington. That's only a mile or so to walk on the towpath, and we can take the Tube to Pankers to start." "St. Pancras will do quite nicely," Marsden said.

"Nicely for what?" I asked.

"Oh, you'll see, girl. You'll see."

Michael looked at me and rolled his eyes. "Do we have to keep him around?"

"Safer to keep him where we can see him," I replied. But it wasn't just that.

Someone had wanted me here in London. There'd been no guarantee Edward would talk me into coming, so I was guessing that the bad dreams sent through the golem had been an additional goad to force my hand-was that Alice's part? Whoever it was had tricked Purcell or gained some kind of hold over him so he'd stopped disputing the customs bill and used the charmed note Jakob took to Sotheby's to help s.n.a.t.c.h Will. They had to have Will to control the golem, and they hadn't wanted anyone but me to come looking for him, so they'd left the golem in Will's place.

I wasn't sure what connection there was to Edward's problems, except that with Alice in the mix there had to be one. I knew she wouldn't want to let that grudge go, but I was also certain she wasn't the key player. I liked that part better for the asetem-ankh-astet, the Egyptian vampires Sekhmet had described. They were involved in this and in my father's fate and my own. I still hadn't figured that angle completely; I didn't know what they wanted or how Wygan-who I was sure was also asetem-fit in, but so far, things were connecting and I thought they'd all come together when I could figure out what Alice was doing and what the asetem wanted with me.

Several things still bugged me. I didn't know why they'd s.n.a.t.c.hed Will instead of Quinton if they were trying to get a lever on me, unless it was simply that he was here and so were they. In addition, Marsden may have spilled the beans to the vampires about where I was, but then he'd shown up to detour me and Michael away from them. He didn't seem to be their friend any more than they were mine. Greywalker or not, he wasn't my friend either, but I didn't know where he really stood or what he was up to. He did know something about my father, though, and I wanted that information, even if it meant playing with fire. I wasn't going to let Marsden slip away-he had answers or he could lead me to them, of that I was sure. I thought about these problems as we made our way north and east toward the ca.n.a.l. Another ride on the Underground got us up to St. Pancras Train Station. It was a ma.s.sive, echoing pile of Victorian Gothic architecture-looking more like a red brick cathedral than a train station-that was being rehabilitated and partially renovated into expensive flats. We had to thread our way through leggy forests of scaffolding to get out of the building and around the back, up several industrial blocks to Regent's Ca.n.a.l.

We pa.s.sed a sign directing us to ST. PANCRAS OLD CHURCH as we detoured around some construction and the rail yards, looking for a way down to the ca.n.a.l. I noticed that the train rails cut right up against the churchyard walls before they crossed the ca.n.a.l on a low bridge. The rail yard was deep with ghosts and blurry with a mess of disrupted ley lines. The ca.n.a.l, being older than the rail yard and full of water, had bent the energy lines of the Grey gently into its own shape so the magical supply lines curved with its bends and crossed them without a hash and noise of magical strife. It was a relief to get down to the water's edge and walk across a small park to find the towpath, away from the growl of furious magic.

Along the ca.n.a.l wall, several long, skinny boats were moored to iron mushrooms or stakes driven into the gra.s.s. Upstream stood the brick piers and wooden doors of a small lock. Michael led the way toward the lock and around a sharp corner in the path to the sudden appearance of a boat basin. The St. Pancras Cruising Club building stood on the landward side, overlooking a rectangular body of water cut from the ca.n.a.l that was filled with more of the long, thin boats.

The sun was dipping toward the horizon, turning the sky a watercolor pink, but the boats were magnificent even in the waning light, all painted in bright colors and many sporting designs of stylized flowers, castles, and ribbons, with touches of gilding, polished bra.s.s and bronze, and gleaming, varnished wood panels on the hatches. Some of the boats had louvered or shuttered windows along the sides while others had names painted on colored panels on the sides that looked a lot like old-style advertising. Some had tillers of curved and tapered poles covered in rope and ribbon for grip, sticking out of oversized rudders that looked like half a Dutch door, while others had stern rails and tiller poles of slender painted iron. Tin smokestacks poked up from the flat roofs of the low, slope-sided cabins. It was a riotous display but still oddly uniform. All the boats were about the same width and height, and most looked between forty and sixty feet long with flat roofs and very narrow side decks. None had lifelines or stanchions on the outside but seemed to rely on fingerholds on their roofs to keep the crew on board when they scampered along the deck-and scamper was what you'd have to do if you couldn't traverse the boat inside.

Michael trotted down along the basin path and pointed at a primrose yellow boat with green and red trim. "There it is!" The big side board had been lettered "Morning Glory, St. John's Wood" with curlicues of green filling the corners and trailing around the edges of the rectangle, evocative of the boat's namesake vine. He stepped aboard at the stern, pulling from his pocket the padlock key he'd taken from the garage, and opened up the boat.

I stepped aboard and down into the aft cabin. Marsden made a face and chose to stay on the land. I found I had stepped down into a utility room with a tiny washing machine tucked under a counter and a number of foul-weather coats and fluffy towels hanging on pegs nearby. I looked forward, into the boat, following Michael's progress inside. The interior was like a very long and luxurious camper trailer that had been cut down to about seven feet wide. Compact and efficient, it had more than enough headroom for my five-foot-ten frame even in heeled boots. It wouldn't be much fun if you were claustrophobic, but it was fine for our purposes. Michael pointed out that the boat had one large bedroom and a dining area that could be made into another bed, so we'd each have a place to sleep-except for Marsden. That gave Michael pause.

"Don't worry about him," I said. "I suspect he's not going to stay."

"I could stand that-the guy gives me the creeps-but how do you know?"

"He didn't come aboard and he looks like the very idea of a boat makes him queasy. I think it's just you and me, Michael. Right after I have a little chat with Mr. Marsden. Will you be OK alone for a while? Don't go anywhere while I'm gone."

"I can manage. Although . . . we're going to need food. . . ."

"We'll figure it out. I'll be back soon."

I ducked back out and collared Marsden, who was still standing on the quayside, scowling. "Seasick?" I asked.

"Not a bit of it. I don't like them closed-up things-like floating metal coffins."

"Then you're not staying with us?"

"I should say not. Two of us in the same s.p.a.ce for long might attract the wrong sort of attention, and we're not the only things what can see into the Grey and talk back to those hunting you." "I'd like to talk to you a bit more about that-" I started, but he cut me off.

"Good, because there's a few things you need to know. But here is not such a grand idea. Come with me."

"Why and where?"

"Where is old St. Pankers, and why is that the presence of a lot of ghosts may mask the presence of the pair of us. And there's something you should see. Come on."

THIRTY.

He turned and started briskly out of the boat basin, his white cane out but obviously more for show than use. I followed and caught up quickly with my long stride.

We went around the railroad tracks and under part of the new train station and came up in front of a broad flight of steps that led to an elaborate iron and gilt gate with a small church visible through its arch. SP had been worked into the black-painted iron filigree above the locked gates and picked out in gold leaf. A plaque mounted beside them identified the building beyond as ST. PANCRAS OLD CHURCH. Marsden stopped close to the gates. Then he shimmered, went thin, and walked through. "Come in, girl. They'll be waking up soon to do their own dirty work."

I looked into the graveyard. The shadows were growing long as dusk fell, but the cemetery in my sight was a field of colored lights, close packed and spiking upward like searchlights reaching for the sky while a tangle of Grey power lines surged beneath it. For a place of the dead, it was one of the liveliest in London. Reluctant, I sank into the Grey and found a temporacline where the gates stood open and rusted. I stepped through and pulled back from the Grey.

The churchyard was busy with ghosts. They pressed in closer than the rush-hour commuters on the Tube had. Marsden led me deeper into the cemetery to a large stone tomb that stood in its own little oval of lawn behind its own iron fence. Marsden slipped through it and crossed the lawn toward the tomb, which looked a lot like an oversized stone phone booth with a tiny Grecian temple in it and a big stone block inside that. Feeling like a trespa.s.ser, I followed him until we were both standing beside the memorial stone of one Sir John Soane, an architect with rather odd taste in monuments, and his family. The silence under the stone roof was profound-even the Grey chorus of the city was distant-and it was empty of everything but the two of us.

"Hundred years ago," Marsden started in a low voice, "this churchyard was three times the size it is now. Reached near to the Euston Road. Then they built a railroad and exhumed the bodies-well, some of 'em. They moved the stones from the lower churchyard to the inner churchyard. There weren't enough room for 'em all, and a lot of the coffins was rotten or they had none to begin with, so they lined 'em up in trenches or ma.s.s excavations or just dumped 'em all in one big hole and made the memorial stones look as nice as they could. Some of them dead was nigh to fifteen hundred years in the ground, and they did not take well to the move. They're restless. Just look out there; look at 'em movin' about. You see how they're cl.u.s.tered like prisoners round that tree and up that rise? Them's the places that fool Hardy stuck 'em, pilin' up the ghosts in batteries that could light half of England. This fella here, he wanted his rest quiet. So he built this. Grand and mad, isn't it?"

I nodded.

"I doubt he quite knew what he was doing, but the way he had it made and the way it's laid, the shape of it as it lies across the leys, makes a sort of eddy in the Grey. We're surrounded by a fence of the supernatural but immune to its touch until we step out. The ghosts don't even know we're here, so they can't gra.s.s on us to any snooping mages or sorcerers. So, what made Edward send you?" "I don't breach client confidentiality without a d.a.m.ned good reason."

"Don't play games with me, girl."

"I think a game is exactly what you want. You keep alluding to my father and to answers, but you're not giving any. What game are you up to? You show up from nowhere and you know too much. Then you vanish and suddenly there are demi-vamps on my tail."

"'Twasn't my work as done that."

"Really? How did you know where to find me today? Or yesterday?"

"I told you-I had a premonition. That's one of my particular talents. Yours seems to be giving offense." "And here I thought it was attracting pains in the a.s.s like you."

Marsden's pale, eyeless face was smooth and cool as the stones we stood on. For once I couldn't see someone grinding ideas and lies into a response, but he was thinking. After a moment, he spoke again, chuckling a bit.

"He's lost his control."

"Excuse me?"

"Edward. He sent you to Purcell. But Purcell's not there. The empire is failing-he's been pulling strings in London for a dog's age, but they've been cut, haven't they? Edward's panicking. He hasn't any more idea what's going on than you do."

"And you do?"

"In no wise."

"Then how do you propose to help me?"

He laughed. "I'm not here to help you, girl. I'm here to stop you."

THIRTY-ONE.

"Stop me from doing what? How can you possibly stop me when you don't even know what I'm doing?" I spoke boldly enough, but I didn't know the answer, either, and I was afraid of him. I pushed myself back two silent steps. Whatever else Marsden was, he was a Greywalker and one with more experience than I had. It would only take a step out of our charmed circle by the tomb to be back in the churning power of the Grey. I wanted a head start.

"I don't give a tinker's d.a.m.n what you're up to for Kammerling. It's what you may become that cannot be allowed. That is what I must put a stop to."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He c.o.c.ked his head and adjusted his stance a little to face the sound of my voice. It hit me that in this Grey-free pocket, he was truly blind; he couldn't see me at all so long as I stuck close to the Soanes' tomb.

"You're meant to take up where your dad wouldn't go," Marsden whispered. "He didn't hop the stick because he could see ghosts, and he wasn't mad, neither. He tried to put a stop to the Pharaohn's plans by destroying the tool: himself. He didn't know about me before him or that you'd be next in line." "Next in line for what? You make it sound like this runs in the family." I wasn't sure it didn't, but I hoped that wasn't true.

"Not exactly, but the possibility was strong in your case, and what your dad did made it stronger. It only needed a bit of pushing in the right direction and you'd be perfect for the job. And he's pushed you ever since your dad blew his own head off. You're knees deep in death, tangled up in the Grey since you was a child. He just needed you to die a little. Then he could shape you a bit while you were out of this armor of flesh." He whipped out the cane and struck me on the shoulder. "Ah, there you are." "Ow! Who? Shape me into what? A Greywalker? I think it's too late to put a stop to that." I stopped talking and eased aside, keeping on my toes to make less noise on the stonework and get a little closer to the steps.

"The Pharaohn-ankh-astet. The king of worms. He has a plan. Has had since he and Edward first faced off here . . . two, three hundred years ago or more. I can't tell you what it is-I don't know-but whatever it is, you can be a.s.sured it is terrible. And he needs a Greywalker. A particular type. And as he couldn't find one, he thought he'd make one."

"Make one?" That rang an uncomfortable bell for me. I paused and stepped back to where I'd stood a moment earlier. "Sekhmet said something about the asetem-ankh-astet. Who's this Pharaohn?" I hoped it wasn't who I thought. . . .

Surprise reshaped his face. "You've talked to the Lady of Dread?"

"You didn't know that? I thought you knew everything I did and everywhere I went." "I have the curse of premonition, but it's not a b.l.o.o.d.y crystal ball, my girl," he spat. "When and where did you converse with her?"

"Today. In front of Sotheby's. She told me Will was missing, that the asetem were involved. That's why I went to see Michael, which was where the Red Guard picked us up after I chopped up the golem standing in for Will."

He stopped and tapped his chin with the handle of his cane, thinking. "She let you live. And the asetem . . . No, that can't be right. It can't. That's how the trouble started." He flicked the cane back up and jabbed me in the chest, shoving me back over the low parapet surrounding the sunken tomb. I rolled aside on the gra.s.s, kicking the cane out of his hands. Then I tucked up my knees and flipped myself to my feet. Marsden was more spry than I'd have thought and hopped up onto the wall after me, his hands scrabbling like spiders for the missing cane.

"d.a.m.n you. I'm sorry to do this, but I have to." He pounced in my direction and I danced farther back, but I moved too far, and the roaring song of London and the gasping mutters of the churchyard's ghosts deafened me for an instant. Marsden could see me like I was spotlit and rushed forward, shoving me hard against and then through the fence in a flash of cold and a tearing of temporaclines across my back. He propelled me backward, toward the large old tree he'd pointed at earlier.

Several hundred tombstones had been arranged around Hardy's tree in a spreading sunburst; rank after rank of grave markers, their memento mori animated into chattering skulls with gleaming golden eye sockets by the tangled and knotted threads of a thousand displaced ghosts. The shrieking of them rose in pitch as Marsden pushed me back. I whipped a look over my shoulder. Where the tree stood in the normal, the Grey showed only a howling void-a hole where the energy around it had twisted up into a vortex. The hole was more than big enough to swallow me and the sound it made was like the baying of starving hounds.

Primal fear ripped through me at the sound. I did not want to be forced into that hungry void. I knew with bone-certainty that what went in never came out. I dug my feet into the gra.s.s and ducked, toppling Marsden over my back.

Something rustled and groaned, tipping out of a crypt with the cry of stone crumbling against stone. I glanced around and saw a pair of something tall and skeletal rushing toward me from the direction of the tiny stone building of St. Pancras Old Church.

Marsden pushed me again toward the sucking void of the old tree. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, they're on to us. Got to . . . get rid . . . of . . . you."

The white things, looking like undead famine survivors as they finally closed the gap between us, grabbed at Marsden and me. Marsden spun around, smashing his fists into the thing that had grabbed him. "Gi'roff, y'soulless b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" he yelled.

The thing's ribs collapsed where he struck it, but it kept on struggling, trying to throw him into the vortex. The other clutched me, keeping me away from the void.

I didn't want its help, sure that whatever it was saving me for was worse than Marsden. I struggled with it, kicking it with the heels of my boots. I felt the brittle bones beneath its stretched white skin shatter and it fell against me, not letting go its grip on my arms.

I spun and stopped short and hard, the creature slingshotting off one arm to flail wildly at me, trying to rea.s.sert its hold. I ran toward the vortex, bashing at its remaining fingers until it lost its grip and fell away. I kicked it and it tumbled into the whirling hole in the Grey, vanishing with its empty mouth agape as if it would scream if it only could. The vacuum of magic tugged at me and I fought my arm free, feeling the edges of the thing bend and flex like rubber as they clung to me. I struggled and twisted my hand loose, feeling a tiny bit of the emptiness break away and spin off into another sucking black hole the size of a pinhead. But the original hole was no smaller. Instead it had grown ragged around the edges and seemed to be reaching for more substance to swallow. I had to crawl across the tombstones, digging in with my fingers and toes against the magical tide, to get out of its pull.

Once out of the maelstrom, I turned back toward Marsden, who was having a rougher time with his monster. He tore off its remaining hand and shoved it away, battering it to pieces with his cane until it fell to the ground in a pile of grave dust.

In the shriek of the vortex, even the chorus of the city was hard to hear, so I was sure Marsden wouldn't hear me as I crept up and s.n.a.t.c.hed his cane away again. Then I used it to poke him backward toward the hole as he'd done with me.

"What the h.e.l.l were those things?" I demanded, watching him slip on the tiny hole and fight the edge of the Grey whirlpool's grasp.

"Lych wights," he panted. "Animated corpses."

"What did they want?"

"How the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l should I know?"

I poked him again and he stumbled a little, grabbing at a fence railing near the tree to keep himself from being sucked backward.

"They're probably the advance guard!" he shouted over the scream of the vortex. "Now we're out in the Grey, someone can feel us moving around. Whoever sent those Red Guard after you and the lad, most like. They'd have killed us both, no doubt."

"I don't think so," I snapped. "They could have just let you push me in that thing and then tossed you in, too, but they attacked you. They only tried to hold on to me."

"They must be working for the Pharaohn-ankh-astet, then. He'd want you alive-such as you are. I can't believe it-the asetem working with the brotherhood . . ."

"What are you talking about?" I screamed against the storm of noise at the vortex's edge. "Egyptian vampires," Marsden panted. "The asetem are the commoners; the Pharaohn is the king-like the word 'pharaoh,' y'see? He's the one what's after you for his own. He's the one what tormented your father till he killed himself. That's why I have to get rid of you. So he can't use you, like he's been trying to use one of us for centuries."

"You were going to kill me!"

"I can't b.l.o.o.d.y well kill you, you stupid git! You have a limited number of deaths-it's like a d.a.m.ned reset b.u.t.ton for our sort."

"What? You mean like a cat's got nine lives? Are you insane?"

"It's true! We bounce back from death-you've done it! For a while afterward, you're malleable. If I killed you, they'd rush in and grab you in limbo and reshape you for whatever he's got in mind! It's only a few minutes but that's all they need here-we're in the middle of the biggest magical well in southern England and they're looking for you. The moment your body was shut down, they'd be on you like jackals! I was just going to put you somewhere else for a while. Someplace safe."

"Safe? Where does that . . . hole lead?"

"I don't know."

"Then you don't know if I would have survived it!"

"I don't care! I only care that they couldn't have got at you. I don't mean it's safe for you! I mean safe for the rest of the world. You need to stay out of the Pharaohn's clutches and you ain't got a lot of choices, girl. I couldn't do it on the Tube-there weren't nowhere to put you. I had to get you here, to the tree. But you couldn't just fall in. No! Now they're looking for us again-for you." His hair whipped in the preternatural wind around the shrieking hole of the Hardy tree. His hands were locked on the protective fence around it like the claws of some dead white bird.

"My choices are not yours to make! Why doesn't this Pharaohn come after you? You're a Greywalker, too."

"I'm damaged goods. He's tried with me already and failed. He's sent ghosts and monsters to kill me and shape me, but he made a mistake with me he can't unmake. I'm at my limit. Next death's for good and all."

"What?"

"I told you: We got a limited number of deaths. It's more than one, but it's not infinite. I'm at my last." "How do you know?"

"I just do! You will, too. It's like . . . gravity. You get close enough to final mortality and it grabs on. You can feel it holding you to the earth."

"Then what happened to my dad?" I asked, poking him again. He was getting too comfortable and I didn't trust him to keep on spilling his guts if he wasn't afraid I'd topple him into the sucking hole in magic. I knew there wasn't a lot of time, but I thought I was probably risking his life more than mine. "He tricked 'em. A clever man was your father-though not half clever enough to save you. He diverted their attention to his nurse-"

"She was his receptionist, Christelle. She died. I think your asetem killed her."