You want to take chances?
Some help here, please? came the bikers voice.
I crawled on my belly round the back of the sofa. My fingers dipped into sticky blood mingling with wine; my elbows crunched on broken glass.
Behind the sofa was indeed the lady in jeans, with the biker, breathless, face spattered with blood but not his own, and what was left of Sinclair, wheezing desperately, the folders clutched to several holes in his chest and belly. Even though he was a large man, the bullets had penetrated well enough; and as he breathed, he sweated, he bled, he stank of salt and urine and death, as if his whole body was unclenching at once, every cell letting out everything within it, chemicals, blood, fluid, life and all.
The motorbiker was struggling to hold him up. Can you do anything? he hissed.
Come on! shrieked the fortune-teller. Theyre coming!
The warlock glanced at Sinclair with a brief look of pity, but kept moving.
Shit, I muttered. Shit.
I pulled back the front of his jacket and there were even more holes. The entire shape of his body was distorted, as if he was sand pocked by tiny meteors, and bent into the odd dips and curves of impact.
Do something! demanded the biker.
I cant just fix this! I retorted angrily.
Fucking sorcerer! he roared.
I heard the ping of the lift door in the hall. Move, we hissed. Get him to the back escape.
Itll be watched, said the woman sharply.
Then fight! we replied. Get him out of here now.
They didnt bother to ask questions. The woman snatched up the bloody folders and gracelessly stuck them down the back of her trousers, the tops protruding from behind the belt. With an almighty grunt she helped the biker raise up Sinclairs great bulk, an arm over each of their shoulders, and started dragging him towards the back door.
I crouched behind the sofa and rummaged frantically in my satchel. I heard footsteps in the corridor outside and, as our fingers closed over the first can of spray-paint, a foot kicked open the remnants of the door. White torches swept across the room, dazzling us, if only for a second.
We stood, letting the world move slowly around us. We stretched out our left hand and pinched out the light on those torches, breaking the glass of their bulbs at our will. With our other hand we threw the spray-paint can at the door and, as it bounced off the shoulder of the first man through it, we pinched that too, and turned our back.
The can exploded with the bang of a firecracker, sending out a shower of blood-red paint and twisted metal. The spray tickled the back of my neck as I ran towards the door, and a razor-sharp shard of metal nearly took my ear off as it spun past. In the doorway I heard screaming, and a familiar voice shouting, Shoot, shoot, dammit! San Khay, a friend of Bakkers even when Id been one too. Id never met him until now but, even back then, back before all the things for which I couldnt find a name, his star had been rising.
One of them got enough paint out of their eyes to find a trigger, but not enough to aim well. I dove through the bedroom door and slammed it shut, one hand already in my satchel for another can of paint. As the crowd of attackers in the other room got control of themselves again, I drew a ward across the door, big and exaggerated, stretching it over the walls in long strokes that eventually described a crude key. A foot slammed into the door, which shook, but didnt open. I murmured gentle words into my ward and backed away. Someone opened fire, the noise at this proximity almost painful, shocking to our senses, but the door didnt splinter, didnt move, didnt open. That wouldnt last long, but it was good enough. I crawled across the room, past a neatly made double bed to where a window stood open, a metal staircase visible below. I half-fell onto the cold stair, damp from the evening drizzle, and saw below the struggling shapes of the motorbiker and the woman, hauling Sinclair down towards the ground.
I scurried after them, and caught up as they managed to drag the gasping Sinclair into a small passage at ground level.
The men? the motorbiker asked me, with a strong grasp of the relevant.
Theyll get through eventually.
Sinclairs face was white and slick. He needs a hospital, I muttered.
You think? snapped the motorbiker.
Do you have a vehicle?
My bike.
Can you get him on it?
Shit, you think hes in a fit state? Youre a fucking sorcerer, do something!
Its not that simple! To repair something like this you need equipment, preparation
Sorcerers cant heal, said the woman. It was the first time Id heard her speak. Her voice was low and cold, almost dispassionate. Its not part of their magic.
I can fucking heal when I have the fucking equipment! I retorted. But no, if youre asking, were not exactly into bringing people back from death or even the bloody edge!
Great, the motorbiker hissed. Youre just so grand, arent you?
We can keep him alive, we snarled. Our blood can hold him for a little; if you can get him to a place to heal.
Perhaps even the motorbiker sensed our intent certainly he was not foolish enough to question us. I pulled out the Swiss Army knife from my satchel, the cool metal slipping in my bloody fingers. My hand was shaking; I didnt know what I was doing, nor if it would work. And if it didnt, then
We steadied our hand, forcing ourselves to be still. We took a long, slow breath, every nerve on edge, and tried to calm our heart from its thundering in our ears. We searched, and levered out the hinged knife we needed from within the casing. Then, careful not to cause ourselves more than a shallow injury, we drew the blade across the palm of our left hand. We could feel the disgust and horror in the woman, even though her expression stayed cold, and see the surprise in the mans face. For a moment, the pain was a shocking relief, a distraction that removed the ringing in our ears, the burning in our eyes and the shaking in our limbs, and focused us entirely on the blood pooling in our cupped hand.
At first the blood was not appropriate: dark, almost black in the poor light. Just crude human fluids; ugly, temperatureless. We waited. After a few seconds, the change began. A bright worm of blue light rose to the surface of the blood welling between our fingers, then dipped down again, like an animal breaking from the sea for air. A moment later, another shimmer of blue flashed like a static spark between two lightning rods across the surface of our blood; then another. I tried to hold back nausea as, emerging like blue maggots, the colour spread throughout the blood in my hand, a bright glow of sparks that rose up to the surface, shimmering and twisting, so bright it cast shadows across our faces, pushing back the darkness in its electric-blue glow. It wasnt just in the blood in my hand; as the writhing blueness spread, I could feel it running up inside my veins, saw my skin turning white and blue as the redness drained from it, a pallor running from my wrist up my arms, that seemed to turn my blood to ice, shuddering through my flesh like frozen electricity, rattling off my bones and making my head buzz with
come be
we be
I closed my eyes as the blueness rose in front of my vision, burning away the darkness and covering the world with its sapphire glow. But even behind my eyelids the blueness burnt and, God help me, we loved it, revelled in it, raised our fingers and felt the electricity flash between them like every nerve carried a hundred volts, like every organ was bubbling acid feeding a spark plug inside my heart that, with every pump, set our skin on fire. In all my life I had never felt so alive, so inhuman.
We moved automatically through the fear, performing our function. We pulled back the jacket of the injured man, peeled away the remnants of his waistcoat around the worst of his injuries and tipped some of our burning blue blood onto his flesh. Where it touched, the flesh crisped, and at every drop the man jerked and moaned like he was being burnt with pincers. We poured a few drops into each of his wounds and pulled open his shirt over his heart. We waited for his breathing to become steadier, and said, You will need to hold him.
What are you doing? demanded the woman.
We will keep him alive, as long as we can without harming ourself, we said. Our fire in his flesh.
We poured the blood over his heart. He screamed, but the man obeyed our command and held him down as we rubbed the blood into his chest, the liquid dividing into worms of blue light, each one brighter than a diamond at noonday, which wriggled across his skin for a moment and then started burrowing, digging down into his flesh, a dozen, more, of our sparks burrowing into his skin, his nervous system. Where they had entered his flesh, they left tiny, pale burn marks, and we were not sure if those would heal. However, he slowly relaxed as the last of our blood dug itself into his skin, and his breathing became more natural. Across his skin and in the palm of our hand, the smears of blood still visible gently faded back to their original dark red; carefully we tore the end off our shirt sleeve to bind around our hand and prevent further bleeding.
Now, I said breathlessly, fighting the spinning in my head and sickness in my belly, hell live long enough to reach a hospital. Can you get him there?
The motorbiker smiled. Oh, yes, he said. I think so.
His bike was parked in the street outside; and the street outside was deafening. Every car alarm wailed, every light was on in every house, and in those where they werent on, burglar alarms were blaring out their distress into the night. I could hear sirens in the streets around, police cars getting closer, and one or two braver souls further from the gunfire, who perhaps hadnt worked out its context, had even opened their front doors and were peering into the street. The bike was big, with huge silver pipes and gears sprawling out of it like the tubes of some demented church organ, and with a giant leather seat and wide handlebars. We slung Sinclair across the front and the motorbiker climbed up behind him, reaching his huge arms across the other mans mercifully unconscious form, hands just resting on the handlebars, a grin on his face. Ill be at UCH, find me, he said. Before they do.
With that, he kicked the stand out from under the bike, and started the engine with a thick, heavy fart of fumes and a roar of the engine like the mournful wail of a dinosaur.
Left behind in the middle of the road, the woman said, This is too easy.
Oh, you just had to go and say it, I muttered, slinging my satchel into a better position.
If they were determined to kill us, Im sure they could have done it in a more efficient manner, she replied primly.
Youre jumping in there with question number two on the list.
And question one?
How the hell did they find us in the first place?
Her eyes roamed quickly across the street. Wheres the warlock? The seer woman?
I have no idea; lets start walking. With my least bloody hand I turned her briskly away from the house. She flinched from my touch like it burnt.
We have to move, I hissed.
She hesitated, then nodded and started walking. I fell into step with her, face forward, breathing steady, hand now on fire, wondering if I needed another tetanus jab any time soon, or if tetanus was even applicable any more.
Our shadows bent around us.
She was right, it was easy, far too easy. I felt cold all over, the fire in my blood simmering down to leave nothing but exhaustion and pain. We felt eyes on us, tasted the same ice-cold shimmer in the air that I had sensed that day two years ago, when Id picked up the telephone receiver with bloody hands by the river; but this time it was stronger. Was that because I was already half-looking for it, or because it had grown in my absence? The lick of its power in the air was like drinking thin black moonlight. I looked down, knowing what I would see, and felt my stomach tighten. My hands started to shake and we could not stop it tears in my eyes, the memory of every single cut, stab, tear, pain, every moment, every trickle of blood from my skin, every instant it was there, real, enveloping me, drowning out sense; and though we tried to fight it down we could see our vision blurring and feel the strength going out from our bones at the thought, astonished that a mere state of mind could reduce our physical form to the consistency of wet paper, and afraid, so afraid that we were about to experience these things for ourself, about to end sensation with these sensations
Whats wrong?
The womans voice was a relief, a knife through the high-pitched buzzin our ears.
We pointed with trembling hands at the pavements where, slowly and surely, our shadows, defined by the orange neon outline around us, were beginning to bend
towards
the light.
Run, I whispered.
What?
Run.
I grabbed her hand when she didnt move and though she tried to pull free, we gripped with all the strength in our bones and pulled her down the street.
We ran.
There was no sign of pursuit, no sound of running footsteps, no shouting of Oi, you!, no sirens, no yelling, no breath at the back of our necks, no gunshot, no symptom at all of being chased. But as we ran I watched our shadows stretch out thinner and thinner, and they didnt bend with the light, they didnt move as we ducked under every lamp, didnt contract and expand they way they did when you ran through the city, moving from pool of shadow to splotch of neon, they just stretched pole-thin, dragging behind us, until my shadow felt almost like a physical weight, a cloak of lead pulling me back head first. My neck hurt with the effort of keeping my eyes forward, my shoulders creaked, every movement of my legs felt like they had sandbags tied to them. She must have noticed too I doubt she would have kept running without the realisation that her own shadow was moving around behind her and becoming distorted, warping, the edge shimmering and melting.
