City of Light & Shadow (2 page)

  Carla looked at the painting again. In truth, she would have been hard pressed to explain the whim that had caused her to take it from storage for this, her big night, except that it seemed fitting somehow that the painting should be present as she reaffirmed her position as society's queen; not as a centrepiece, no, but in the shadow of something even more beautiful, acting as a faded reminder of rivals vanquished and glories past.

  Her gaze finally reached the stage to her far right, where the multi-stringed duoharp was already in position, the great chordophone resembling a stylised heart. Its twin opposing soundboards met at the base, where they converged on the central pillar of polished wood and gleaming metal embellishments before sweeping upwards and outward like wings. Identical curved necks connected the rounded shoulders of the soundboards to the pillar's crown.

  The instrument was to be played by the Gallagher Sisters, said to be among the finest musicians in all Thaiburley. The dark haired girl – older and prettier than her sibling – was already in place, studiously tuning her half of the harp, but the seat opposite her was empty. Carla felt a flash of irritation that both girls weren't ready and she was about to call out when the blonde, sour-faced one hurried over to take her seat, licking her fingers and chewing on something, as if having snatched a bite to eat before the performance.

  Carla pursed her lips. She was tempted to take the girl to task but in the end decided to put it down to artistic temperament. Instead she returned her attention to completing her survey of the room, which ended with a glance down at her own dress. Commissioned from Chanice, one of the Heights' hottest designers, the gown featured a beautifully arranged skirt of layered silks graduating from autumnal russets at the bottom to shimmering scarlet at the top, matching the bodice. The dress was so artfully cut that the skirt avoided being billowy while still drawing in tightly at the waist to emphasise her slender figure. Carla had studied herself from every angle before coming here, and was confident that she looked fantastic. Scarlet could be an unforgiving shade, one she probably wouldn't dare risk in another five or ten years, but she felt bold tonight and knew she still retained enough of her youthful glamour to get away with such audacious display. While she could, she would.

  Finally satisfied, Carla allowed herself a small smile. Everything seemed in readiness; soon the great and the good of Heights' society would be here to pay her tribute. She would accept their compliments with an appropriate degree of grace and modesty, of course, while privately secure in the knowledge that she had earned each and every plaudit.

 

An hour later found Carla in her element, meeting and greeting, sharing a few words with this couple, a sentence or two with another and a joke with the next, before flitting away to greet a late arrival. The Gallagher Sisters were playing divinely, though as more people arrived and the volume of conversation grew louder it was becoming increasingly difficult to hear them unless you were standing right next to the stage. Not that it mattered. The fact that Carla had secured their services when others had failed to do so was reward enough.

  She handed a barely touched flute of finest Elyssen champagne to a waiter – she had been holding the glass for far too long and the wine had lost much of its chill and fizz – and took a fresh one, savouring a sip of cool dry effervescence before the customary smile slipped back into place. She laughed politely at the end of someone's anecdote, a tale she'd only half been listening to. The smile was one which had been perfected over many years: the expression of a hostess who knows her evening is a success and is confident that it will only get better. In the corner of her eye she saw white jacketed waiters circulating with what should be the final trays of warm canapés. It would soon be time to usher the guests to their seats for the meal. Glowing comment had already been made about her khybul sculpture, most pleasingly from young Xyel, a pretty little thing who saw herself as something of an emerging rival to Carla. Poor deluded girl. Her Summer Soirée had been pleasant enough but she still had a lot to learn. Carla reserved a special smile for her.

  A ripple of polite applause ran through the section of the room closest to the stage as the Gallagher Sisters finished their latest piece – surely the penultimate one of their set – and Carla noted waiters returning to the kitchen with empty salvers. She looked across and caught the maître d's eye. He nodded, to show that he was on top of the timings. If things continued to run this smoothly, she might even be able to relax a fraction and enjoy herself during the meal.

  It was a little thing really in the context of everything else that was going on: the scream that heralded such a dramatic change of fortune for Carla and all those present. Most wouldn't even have heard it. The only reason Carla did was because she happened to be at the top of the small flight of steps, at the spot where she'd greeted the guests, and so was close to the door. The scream came from outside; high pitched and unmistakeably a woman's. Conversation on the mezzanine level died and for a second there was a bizarre contrast between the silence to Cara's left and the continuing hubbub from the rest of the room to her right.

  When no further indication of disturbance came, those closest to Carla resumed talking, with a shrug of their shoulders or a knowing rise of the eyebrows, and muttered comments such as, "Kids!"

  Jean, the maître d', had moved across to speak to the doorman, but nobody seemed concerned and Carla was about to dismiss the incident as a minor glitch soon forgotten, when the doors burst inward and Hell strode through the opening.

  The first figure was merely a giant, towering above Jean and the doorman. The latter tried to block the intruder's way, but the burly man was picked up and tossed into the room in one motion, crashing into a knot of startled guests. The maître d' was simply brushed aside.

  More than one scream rent the air now.

  Further figures were pressing through the doorway behind the first. One or two had human features but most seemed composed of nothing more than silver light, dazzling to look upon. All were of similar stature to the first. Carla gaped, unable to rationalise what she was seeing. She couldn't move, didn't know how to react. She was supposed to be the perfect party host, ready for any eventuality, but not for
this
.

  Several things then happened at once, snapping her out of her paralysis. The tall windows which dominated the wall opposite the stage shattered, seemingly all at once, sending shards of glass raining down on those nearby, and more of the silver light giants strode through the broken windows. This registered only at the periphery of Carla's awareness, her attention focused elsewhere. She stared in horror at the shimmering figure who reached out towards Jean while the maître d' was still recovering from his brush with the first giant. As a glowing finger touched him, a cocoon of light enveloped Jean's body and he froze, all except for his face, which took on an expression of wide-eyed horror that swiftly transformed into one of excruciating agony; eyes screwed shut, mouth thrown open as if screaming, though Carla couldn't hear him. It was a moment she would never forget, as if every tortured line of Jean's face burned itself into her retinas and hence into her memory. A second later the expression was gone, vanishing as his face exploded. No, that was wrong, the process was less dramatic. Jean's face, his whole body, seemed to simply drift apart. One moment there was a shape within the glow that was recognisably Jean, the next nothing human stood there at all. In the brief instant before the glow which had surrounded the maître d' faded, Carla watched a cloud of russet flakes drop towards the floor like ruddy brown rose petals.

  The glowing silver giant was no longer silver or glowing. It now looked like Jean.

  Only then did Carla grasp the full horror of what was happening here; only then did she realise their doom.

  She stumbled away in a daze, with no clear idea of where she was going, just the certainty that she had to get away from these creatures. Somebody bumped into her, causing her to stagger, and she was abruptly aware that pandemonium had broken out and that
everyone
was trying to get away. The thin veneer of politeness, of etiquette, had been abandoned, to be replaced by the drive to survive. Men, women, young or old, it didn't matter; all were screaming, fighting, pushing and elbowing in their desperation to reach the stairs and escape. Never mind that more of the creatures waited below, a whole cordon of them, herding folk towards the stage, instinct still drove people to flee the most immediate threat, and a bottleneck started to form at the top of the mezzanine stairs.

  For those at the back there was no hope of escape. The silver giants moved implacably forward, killing with a touch. The ones that had already adopted a semblance of human form simply killed. The crowd discovered new levels of desperation. Carla watched an elderly woman, resplendent in diaphanous gown and diamond jewellery, knocked from her feet and trampled by her fellows, with no chance of recovering.

  A small part of Carla's mind remained detached, refusing to accept any of this as real. A symptom of shock perhaps, but that small corner of sanity brought her hope. She realised that the stairs which those all around her were straining towards offered only temporary respite, that even those who reached them would still be trapped. Then her gaze fell upon the door, off to one side, evidently overlooked by everyone. The kitchens, deliberately designed to lead off the mezzanine to ensure that a supply of freshly chilled champagne was always on hand during greetings and that diners could fully appreciate each new dish as it was paraded down the stairs prior to serving. She started to forge her way in that direction, moving across the flow of panicked people. She prised a woman's chest away from a man's back and inserted first an arm and then her whole self between. Moving against the human tide proved to be an unexpected advantage. While others were faced with a wall of backs and had nowhere to go, she could slip through – with a little persuasion. Somebody dug her in the ribs with an elbow, someone else struck her shoulder with bruising force. She ignored the minor flares of pain and kept going, focussing only on that door.

  Doubtless she
knew
these people, many of them would be her friends, yet terror and desperation had converted their faces into those of strangers. She pushed, kneed and fought with the best of them, forcing a passage, closing her vision and her mind to everything else and refusing to think about how close the death-dealing giants were coming.

  She was nearly there, with just a few more people to fight through, when it happened. In her eagerness to find sanctuary she overstretched across intervening legs and feet. Somebody trod on her gown, her beautiful gown, tearing it, and she was jostled as she tried to bring her trailing leg through. Carla stumbled and tripped, falling heavily onto a man's knee and then the floor. Desperately she tried to pull herself along, no longer keeping track of the number of bumps and bruises. Somebody stepped down on her calf and she cried out, barely hearing her own voice above all the screaming and the shouting, which suddenly seemed to intensify.

  A woman to her left, oblivious to her presence, looked about to repeat the act of stepping on her but this time in stiletto heels, when she froze and her body began to glow. Carla scrambled away, pulling her legs in frantically, determined not to touch that nimbus. Within seconds the woman imploded, disappearing in a cascade of rusty flakes, some of which fell onto Carla's exposed arms and legs.

  She lost it then. All rational thought deserted her as she opened her mouth and shrieked and writhed and kicked, not even aware that she had broken through the crowd of people until the door to the kitchen loomed before her nose. She pulled it open and half-rolled half-crawled inside, to collapse, her body wracked with sobs.

  Heat washed over her. The lights were still on but the kitchen was deserted, the cooks and waiting staff having presumably fled. The rich aromas of cooking, which normally Carla would have breathed in deeply and relished, now only made her feel nauseous. She reached up to grip the harsh metal edge of a table, pulling herself to her feet, and stumbled across the empty room towards the service door. Two thirds of the way across, her stomach heaved and she was forced to double over, throwing up onto the floor. It seemed an age before the retching subsided and she could move forward. Not even pausing to find water and wash the sour taste of vomit from her mouth, she finally reached the door, thrusting it open and staggering into the corridor beyond.

  She stopped to draw in fresher, cooler air, amazed at how muted the noise from the ballroom had suddenly become. From out here the shouting, the screaming, the sounds of people being slaughtered, it could almost be mistaken for over-enthusiastic revelry. Almost.

  There was nobody else in sight. Part of Carla was glad, conscious even now of what a mess she must look and relieved that there was no one here to see it, but guilt immediately swept such concerns away as the implications sank in. Surely others must have escaped? She couldn't be the only one; but, if so, they were already long gone. Not that she could blame them.

  Carla took a deep breath and braced herself. It was time to forget that she was Carla Birhoff, celebrated socialite, and remember that she was Assembly Member Birhoff. Her city needed her.

  She wriggled her feet and kicked off the impractical shoes that still somehow clung to them, gathered up the skirt of her ruined gown, and started to run; a somewhat shuffling gait perhaps, but it was the best she could manage – the greater part of two decades had passed since she last attempted to move this quickly. As she ran, she bent over to spit out the taste of sick from her mouth, all decorum forgotten. Such considerations seemed no more than petty affectations in the light of what she had just been through.