Good? asked Dana breathlessly.
Buggered if I know.
You know, for a man possessed sorry in a complicated relationship with mystical entities of bloody magic and forgotten life youre pretty useless when it comes to a tight situation, arent you?
This isnt a tight situation yet.
Tell that to the white room and the operating table, she retorted sharply. Looked pretty tight from where I was.
Yes, I replied, but you
did
help me, didnt you?
She opened her mouth to speak, then hesitated, thought about it, then opened her mouth again. You are a total
The lift jerked to a stop. The door slid open with inexorable slowness. Beyond was a single cream-coloured corridor, lined with tinted glass windows that obscured the light and darkened even the shadows beyond it. Outside it was night; inside it was harsh strip-light day, the floor cold and the air dry, unstirred. I stepped out of the lift cautiously and looked around. Dana said, This isnt the ground floor.
Behind us, the lift door slid shut.
I walked to the window and looked down. Some distance below I saw the shape, tinted brown, of what in real life was a bright blue, floodlit fountain of three treble-pronged stone nozzles that squirted water into the pool around them and, chaotically, over the narrow pavement beyond. I guessed it to be about four floors down. Dana said, Im sure I pressed ground.
Im sure you did too, I answered, looking around the corridor. There was no feature in it except a red fire extinguisher next to a closed door. But lifts can be subject to other peoples control.
I didnt feel we moved that many floors
she began again, a note of urgency entering her voice.
Moving without covering all the distances involved, I answered cheerfully. Its been known. Dana?
Yes?
If Mr Bakker got round to teaching you any sort of protective magics, now might be the time to practise them. I could hear a humming, a sound like an angry beehive, or perhaps a very expensive, very badly treated car engine caught in traffic
Is this where the lights go out? she asked.
I wandered over to the fire extinguisher and tugged it out of its rack on the wall. Deep breaths, I said, and kicked open the door.
On the other side was another long white corridor. Standing in it were at least half a dozen men and women, armed variously with grenades, handguns, and rifles, and assorted magical baubles that floated and drifted, or had just been slung down casually at the owners feet. In front of them a huge motorbike dominated the corridor, black tyre marks skidded all around it. Sitting on it, mirrored visor lowered over his face, was the wide form of the biker. He revved his engines.
Dana said, Um
He put his foot down on the pedal, kicked the bike off the stand and, with a roar of engine that filled the whole corridor with an angry thrum, and a burst of black fumes that darkened the faces of the people around him, charged straight for us.
I pressed down on the fire extinguisher.
From its end came thick white billowing gas. I pressed down harder, caught a fistful of gas between my fingertips, spun it into a tornado of whiteness and threw it down the corridor, straight at Blackjack and his friends as they ran towards us. It spread out as it moved, rattling the windows and splattering the walls with patches of pale foam, thickening in an instant to the consistency of froth on hot cappuccino, blinding the eyes of the men with the guns and the women with the bombs as they ran at us, choking them and filling their noses with the stench of chemical suppressants. But not Blackjack. Behind his empty-faced helmet he just kept coming. I grabbed Danas hand, pulled her away from the door and said, as calmly as I could, Run.
Bakker had taught her as he had taught me, because she did as I said without question.
We ran.
Corridors, offices. The offices sat behind dull plywood doors. Most of them were empty. Some were missing panels on their ceilings, through which wires drooped and odd foil-covered pipes poked. Some had water coolers, the gossip-corner of any workplace; some had long rows of endless boring desks lined with endless boring computers that were probably capable of making phone calls to innocent bystanders, but had almost certainly had all the games wiped before installation, with no opportunity to install any more.
We ran into another office of neglected desks and the odd revolving chair. Right behind us, the biker burst through the doors, smashing them apart with the front wheel of his bike. Dana dove left, I dove right and the biker tore between us, spinning around a few metres beyond with a screech of burning tyre that tore a gash in the carpeted floor. He revved his engine a few times, like the challenge a knight gives before the joust, and the sound was so loud that the windows tinkled, the loose wires in the roof swayed, and the chairs creaked and rocked; the noise went straight through the eardrum and made the inside of our nose ache, shook into our stomach and blurred the edges of our vision. From the back of the bike, a cloud of noxious black smoke whirled up around him; its instant taste in our throat was like the stench from a garage forecourt, which could penetrate even the thickest glass and suck moisture from our mouth.
The lights faltered around us and, for a panicked moment, I looked down at the floor to see my own shadow; it was not turning. I looked over to Dana and saw that she had one hand raised towards the ceiling, and was dragging crackling jagged arcs of blue electricity out of the wires above us, causing the lights to dim as she spun it between her fingers. The motorbike roared into life, and went straight for her. She threw her bundle of voltage at the biker, but at the last instant he swerved; and for a moment, there were two of him, one swooping straight into the oncoming blast of Danas spell, the other spinning away from it, behind her already, the two images flickering for a moment as Blackjack worked his magic and moved from A to C, without calling in at B.
He disappeared from in front of Dana.
Instantly, he reappeared, a few feet behind her, and his front wheel was still headed straight for her. I called out a warning and swatted a wave of pressure through the air that wasnt nearly enough to dislodge something as heavy and as fast as the motorbike, but knocked Dana aside enough so that the front wheel missed her. It slammed on past, pounding through a plywood desk that didnt even slow the bike down, but splintered right through the middle without the biker losing an instant of speed. I ran to Dana, grabbed her by the wrist, dragged her up and pulled her through the nearest door. A corridor away there was a flight of stairs, winding round one corner of the building; below I could see a theatre and the bright lights of the crossroads outside it, the evenings crowd pouring out after a performance, the buses struggling round the tight corners and the taxis lining up for their fares in the narrow bus lanes of New Oxford Street to the indignant tooting of other traffic.
We wanted to go up; up would be where he was but with Dana I didnt dare risk it, didnt want her in the same building as that man and his shadow for a second longer than necessary, so we went down, winding round the narrow confines of the stairwell, third floor, second
just after the second floor, we felt a tugging of sickness in our stomach, a moment of dislocation, and looking down, we saw that below us was the third floor. We tried again, reached the second floor, dropped down another flight of stairs and were instantly back at the third floor. We could taste Bakkers magic in this, we could feel the familiar taste of his spells, the unique craft and skill of them, but under it, too, a faltering of the lights, a pulling in our stomach.
We looked down at the floor and saw our shadow starting to stretch long, even though we werent moving. Dana followed our gaze, and her hand tightened around ours.
Hes coming, she whispered.
The lights dimmed in the stairwell, and this time it wasnt our doing. I turned to the window and started kicking at it. Dana, realising what I was doing, joined in, but the glass just went
bonk
, as if it was a solid plastic sheet. I cursed in frustration, looking around for some sort of inspiration; Dana got there first. She dug the nails of her right hand into the palm of her left, flinching as she did, until the skin tore and a thin line of blood crawled out. She dipped a finger into the blood and drew, on the glass, the image of a keyhole. For a few moments the shape was nothing more than a dark stain on a dark surface; then it began to hiss and smoke. She clenched her right hand into a fist and punched the glass as hard as she could in the heart of the keyhole.
The glass cracked. She punched again. Little fault lines spread out, thickened; the whole thing started to creak. She drew her fist back for one more punch, and a fist emerged out of the darkness of the glass, and caught her by the wrist, black nails digging into her skin. She screamed, a sound of genuine terror that was the product of I couldnt imagine how many months of fear. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back, and the arm that held hers reached out of the glass, the blackness of its shape growing sickly white flesh, and her blood trickling around his fingertips as he became real.
We snarled, and lashed out at the forming flesh of Hunger, our fingers trailing sparks through the air; and our nails drew three parallel lines of black blood through his flesh. His hand spasmed around Danas arm and she whimpered again, cowering away and shaking her head in numb horror, every instinct she had shut down behind the fear. Then out of the dark glass the head appeared, and leaned forward with its mouth already open, teeth sparkling, tongue licking its blue lips as it reached out for Danas blood, its eyes, nose, skin gradually becoming solid.
I waited for its ears to become real and, though it was probably only moments, that waiting seemed to take for ever. Then I put my hands over Danas ears, drew my foot back and kicked the metal banisters of the stairwell with the sole of my bare heel.
The metal went
booooiinnnnggg.
Hunger flinched.
He
was
scared of us.
We grinned and kicked it again.
The rails responded with a hollow, long, resounding
boooooii innnnggggooinnggggoinnnggg
Bakker had taught me this spell, and knew how it would end. And, because Hunger was, in the end, Bakkers shadow, so did he; even before I levelled a final kick he was retreating, drawing back into the shadows while the lights around us brightened. But just to make sure, to finish him off, I aimed one final kick, and drove my heel as hard as I could against the metal banister.
The stairwell shook. The sound was the sound of hollow metal vibrating, but rising up through more than just a single long rail. It filled the stairwell, hummed up every banister, and the sound fed off itself, the hum in one setting off a vibration in another which set off resonance in the next, filling the whole stairwell with such a clamour of magically enhanced ringing that the cracks in the windows spread of their own accord, that the light fixtures tingled, that dust shimmered down from the plastic-padded walls, that the edges of the black rubber sheath over the top of the banister started to warp under the strain, that the whole world seemed to quake. In the street outside, car alarms sounded; in the blue pool of the three ugly fountains, water sloshed against its sides and one fountain spurted the half-hearted residue left in its pipes over a passing tourist who clung to a lamp-post as the hum rippled through the street.
Hungers fingers uncurled in an instant, his face stretching with pain; and he was gone, retreating into the window. Danas bloody hands were pressed over mine, which were covering her ears; her eyes were shut and her face a twisted mass of confusion and distress. I felt my ears pop and my nose start to run with hot blood something we didnt feel we could afford to lose right now. I staggered up the stairs, pulling Dana along with me by her head, kicked open the nearest door and, blind to which floor or what spell we were trapped on or in this time, fell onto the carpet beyond, pulling Dana down with me, and shoving the door shut behind us.
The echoes slowly faded. I sat up, my ears ringing. Dana pulled herself up and experimentally lifted her hands over and away from her ears. Then she turned to me, her voice shaking, and said, You never taught me that.
It was luck, I replied. Damn things could have been solid, for all I knew.
In this building? Her voice was distant and slightly too low, as if heard through a thin sheet of water. I wiped the blood from my nose and shook my head, as if that would be enough to banish the tinnitus buzzing just behind my eardrums.
Fair point, I conceded. Where are we?
She staggered onto her feet and pulled me up with her. It all looks the same to me, she admitted. But Im pretty sure we should have hit the ground floor by now.
Good old-fashioned spells to confuse, baffle and bewilder, I groaned. We
are
starting to lose patience with this game.
Is that what it is?
For
him
, we replied, and felt that we didnt need to specify for who.
You hear that? she asked.
We put our head on one side, not sure if the tinnitus was fading or if we were simply getting used to it. Perhaps a hint of
Motorbike, said Dana.
Now we really
are
out of patience, we announced.
The door at the end of the corridor burst open, and this time, the motorbike was trailing fire. Dana threw herself through the nearest door and I followed. A female toilet, somewhere neither I nor we had ever been before, and which disappointed us in its plainness.
