No Hero (8 page)

“Not really.”

“Oh.” Clyde chews his lip. “Probably should have seen that coming,” he says. “It all goes back to electricity, you see.”

“I’m lost.” I think it’s going to be best if I’m honest every time that happens, even if it means asking a lot of annoying questions.

“Well, electricity is the universal lubricant between realities,” Clyde says, as if telling me that the sky is blue.

“Erm?”

Clyde tries again. “Any sort of cross-reality breach requires electricity.”

“Can we try words of one syllable?” I ask. “And maybe diagrams?”

“OK.” He nods. “Fair point. Well made. First principles then. There’s more than one reality.”

“Well established,” I say

“The Feeders are not in our reality, but they want to be, right?”

“So I’m told.”

“So, QED and all that, it must be possible for things to travel between realities.”

I think about it while Clyde swings us around the fifteenth traffic circle we’ve hit in quarter of a mile. “I suppose,” I say.

“So how do you do it?” he asks.

I look at him, and apparently it’s a serious question. “Haven’t the slightest of clues, I’m afraid.”

“Electricity,” he says. “Universal lubricant. I’ve mentioned that. Remember it.”

“Oh,” I say, because he’s right, but when he said it last time there wasn’t really meaning attached to it, so I’m not sure if he’s really right, but I’m also not sure if I’m pedantic enough to point it out.

Clyde nods, briefly manages to make it all the way to fifteen miles per hour but then has to go over a speed bump. “So, you can use electricity to get things between realities. Bigger the thing, the more power you need. Small things are the easiest.” He looks away “Well, the essence of things are the easiest. Say, for example, there’s fire in another reality and you want to bring it here. You could use a decent chunk of electricity to bring over the flame, or you could use a little bit to bring over the essence of the fire—in this case its heat. Bring enough heat over and you’ll probably start a fire anyway.

“Now to get something as enormous as a Feeder through,” he continues, “would take an absurd amount of power. And then that power would need to be focused. It’s not really feasible. Which is why,” he takes his eyes off the road to give me a significant look, “the Progeny, who probably came here pretty easily, being small and mostly incorporeal, are now having such a hard time doing it.”

“You focus the power?” Up until now I’ve been buying this, possibly more eagerly than I should be. Any cynicism I possessed has rather had its legs cut out from under it these past few days, but the idea of focusing magical power is beginning to seem a little too New Age mysticism to be real to me.

“Yes!” Clyde nods enthusiastically. “Hence the tattoos. QED again.”

“Wait, what? Q E what?”

“Bugger,” Clyde says. “Sorry. I’m not very good at this. OK. So, the power is electricity. So it flows down the path of greatest conductivity. Now, the body’s a natural conductor so you don’t have to do what I did, but...”

“What you did?” I ask. For a moment I have an image of Clyde in the middle of some group of death cultists in various states of undress. Possibly accompanied by sacrificial guinea pigs and the like. It doesn’t seem to really match him though. “And this is to do with the tattoos?” I ask.

“Yes!” Clyde’s head bobs up and down in a few swift nods. “See, different parts of the body are more powerful for doing magic than others. Your chakras, as it happens. So to get the most juice out of, well, the juice, you want it to be concentrated at those points. The tattoos provide the path of least resistance to the chakras. Except, well... like I said, they’re not exactly tattoos. Here, look.”

His hands come off the wheel, but at this speed it doesn’t really matter. It’s not like we could really do anything any harm. He pushes up a sleeve. There is a fine black line running down the center of his forearm. Occasionally black threads break off from the main line and form small spirals.

“Holy McPants,” I say, “how did you explain those to your girlfriend?”

“What?” Clyde says. “Devon? Oh I’m not really sure. I think she thinks it’s a security system for work.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure how it happened.” He shakes his head. “Devon has a creative mind.”

“But how would a tattoo be a security device?”

“Well.” Clyde hmmms. “It’s not actually ink, you see. It’s copper wire beneath the skin,” he says, finally grabbing the steering wheel in order to dodge a student on a bicycle. “Following the main ley lines of my body. The spirals mark various chakras. And that’s what focuses the power. That and words. Words are important.”

“Words? What words?”

“Well, you know.” Clyde oscillates between enthusiasm and sheepishness again. “Once you’ve got the juice to breach realities, then you need to make sure you’re breaching the right ones, that the energy does what you want. You have to shape it. Human will and all that. So there are words to help you do that. All sorts of nonsense. Help you think in the right ways, so you don’t end up blowing off your nether regions instead of turning someone into a toad or some such.”

“Wait a minute,” I say, the penny dropping, “are you talking about spells?”

Clyde shrugs several times in rapid suggestions. “Erm... well... in lay terms, I suppose, yes.”

Spells. Magic spells. OK, that’s cool.

With a certain deftness I hadn’t credited him with, Clyde pilots the Mini into a parking space about the same size as a grapefruit. Quite a feat to behold, actually. Kayla stands by the curb watching events with disdain. As we unfold ourselves from the confines of the car she thrusts out a hand. I flinch but all she does is open her fist to reveal two tan-colored earplugs sitting in her palm. I stare at them, nonplussed. Clyde takes one and hands the other to me.

“Tabitha,” he says, in a moment of surprising conciseness.

He pushes the bud into his ear and I follow suit.

“Warning next time,” says a tinny little voice in my ear. “Little bit. Before a bloody field operation. Be nice.” It’s good to know Tabitha is still in intimate contact with her inner misanthrope.

“Hello! Tabitha!” Clyde sounds far happier than I imagine is usual when there’s someone telling you how much you screwed over their day. “On location. Cowley Road. The sights, the smells, down among the people. Terribly exciting to be out of the office for so long.”

“Shut up, Clyde,” says Tabitha. For some reason he beams. Something’s going on there but I’m not sure exactly what.

“Erm... I...” I say, thus cementing my role as a keen and decisive leader.

“All right,” Tabitha says. “Arthur. New boy. I’m in your ear. You tell me problems. I do research. I fix your shit. So you be my eyes. Don’t want to listen to Clyde mumbling over batteries.”

“Batteries?” I look over at Clyde who pulls two flat silver-cadmium batteries from his pocket and tucks them into his cheeks, gerbil-like.

“Erm?” I say again, just in case anyone missed the benefit of my incisive intellect the last time around.

“Electricity,” Tabitha says into my ear. “He explained, right?”

“Oh,” I say. “Right.”

“Q, E, bloody D then,” she says. Which is actually quite funny, but she delivers the line so aggressively I realize the humor too late to laugh.

Kayla just glowers at me. I don’t look her way for long and I certainly don’t meet her gaze.

Instead I look over to the tattoo parlor three stores away. “So this bloke, Max,” I say to Clyde, “he puts copper wire in folk too?”

“Not exactly.” Tabitha speaks directly into my ear before Clyde can even open his mouth. He doesn’t look at all put out by this, maybe seems even to expect it. “Uses metallic inks. Not as effective. Effective enough, but not as hardcore as Clyde.”

Clyde. Hardcore? The only thing I can really imagine Clyde getting hardcore about is D.H. Lawrence. Probably another imagination failure on my part. And I don’t want to comment until I work out the nature of their relationship. So instead I say, “Metallic inks. Right.”

“Yes,” Clyde says. “It’s students mostly. That’s the problem with the Bodleian being a copyright library. Just about absolutely everything is in there. Makes it hard to sort the grimoires out.”

“Every six months.” Tabitha harrumphs. “Bloody cleanup duty.” She harrumphs again. “Bloody students.”

“And this guy tattoos on the... focusing lines?” That’s probably not the term. I need a cheat sheet.

“Just follow our feckin’ lead, all right?”

It’s the first thing Kayla’s said. She walks away from us; pushes open the tattoo parlor’s door.

She still seems pissed. I probably shouldn’t have called her Progeny. Except I can’t shake the feeling that there is something profoundly off about her. And I can’t help but think of Shaw telling me that there’s no easy way to tell if someone’s infected. So Shaw might not truly know.

I’m not really sure what I can do with my suspicions. Use them to get stabbed again?

I look to Clyde, searching for a lead to follow, when I should be offering up one myself. He hoists his shoulders sheepishly and shambles off after Kayla.

I swallow my pride and follow along. Definitely need to work on my leadership skills with these guys.

The inside of the tattoo parlor is close and dark. The walls are crowded with pieces of paper tacked there, each bearing some twisting design inscribed in black ink. Skulls leer, women pout, vines creep.

The artist, a man who knows his audience at the very least, is bent over a chair. In it is a young lad, nineteen, twenty perhaps, shirtless. The artist holds a buzzing needle over his sternum, finishing a vast spiral that stretches from one nipple to the other.

The kid being tattooed defies the Oxonian stereotype of gawky and bespectacled youth. Instead he is lean and muscled in a way that has always eluded me. His skin is ruddy, and too tan to give the impression he has spent years riffling through the depths of the Bodleian Library.

He notices us first. His eyes narrow. I guess we probably don’t look like customers. The tattooist follows his gaze.

“Oh bollocks,” the tattooist says.

“Hello, Max,” Clyde says conversationally

“Third strike, you feck,” Kayla says, not so conversationally.

Clyde puts a finger to his ear. “Large funicular circle. Whole abdomen. Minor thorax involvement. Unilinear.”

The tattoo, I realize. He’s describing the tattoo.

“Cross-referencing now,” Tabitha’s voice comes back.

“I was just copying a pattern from a book,” says Max. He indicates the offending item. It’s on his tray next to his inks. I’ve heard drunken men pinned by their car airbags lie more convincingly about how the wall came out of nowhere.

That said, the book looks too new to be a tome of ancient magicks. It’s a neatly bound hardcover, with a faux-leather spine. Still has the sheen on it. Something’s not right.

“It’s just something I sketched out myself,” the student says.

Beware the painted man’s false promises.
Don’t believe his lies. Q, E, bloody D, he did not sketch that himself.

“If you could just put the needle down, Max,” Clyde says, ignoring the student. “Be a decent chap.”

“Before I make you, Max.” Kayla’s Scots accent somehow makes the words even more threatening.

“This is not even close to being f—” he says, and it’s about that point that I realize that if the student is the painted man, which seems fair enough given that Max himself doesn’t have a single tattoo on him, then really we shouldn’t be worrying about him. And it’s also the point when the kid we’re ignoring legs it.

He moves like lightning. I turn trying to grab him, but his elbow whips out and slams into my gut. I collapse on it like a deflated balloon, air whining out of me.

Clyde manages to half-turn his head by the time Kayla is fully turned around, but even she is too slow. The kid grabs the notebook as he legs it, uses the momentum of his motion to catch Kayla on the back of the head. She steps to steady herself and he’s already passed her. Then the bell on the door rings and the student’s outside.

“Feck!” Kayla bellows in the small space.

I try sucking in an experimental lungful of air. It doesn’t go as well as I’d hoped.

“What’s going on?” Tabitha says into my ear. I don’t bother trying to reply.

“You,” Kayla points to Max.

“Y-y-y-yes?” Any cocky swagger he has put on, any defensive bluster melts in the face of her anger, steams up and evaporates. All that is left is fear.

Kayla steps forward, punches him. His head snaps back and his legs go out from under him. Kayla looks around at Clyde and I. “Why are you still feckin’ standing here?”

I feel that I actually have a decent excuse for this one, but I still can’t get enough breath in to explain that, and anyway, Kayla’s already out the door, and then Clyde is too, his tweed jacket flapping behind him, and I’m not sure that Max, in his unconscious state, would really appreciate the observation. So I make my wheezing way to my feet, and stagger after them. The spot where I was stabbed burns.

“What do you mean he’s running?” comes Tabitha’s voice in answer to some observation I don’t hear.

I can see Clyde a dozen yards away, hand still to his earplug. Kayla is more like a hundred. She’s moving at a terrifying pace. People on the streets leap left and right. She’s heading to a parked car. Some clapped-out old thing, rust showing through the paint. The hood has been popped.

“OK, databases gave me a hit,” Tabitha barks into my ear as I stagger forward. “Tattoo design. Mazalian spiral. South American origin. Originated circa fourteen hundred BC.”

Kayla jumps. It’s twenty yards or more to the car. She arcs through the air. There’s a grace to her. Her arm reaches back almost lazily. Except it’s as if everything has been put on fast forward, everything moved up so fast my eye can barely follow it.

“Mostly used for rejuvenation spells. Crop stuff.” Tabitha drones on.

I catch up to Clyde, wheezing, bent over. He’s standing still now. No need to catch up. Game over.

“Also altered consciousness. Sex rites. Fertility.”