Poison City (45 page)

Reading to Cally in bed. Every night since she was born. It didn’t matter she couldn’t understand. It was what we did. Either Becca or me, lying in bed, reading books with Cally until she falls asleep.

The sins move closer. Only a few steps away. I can feel their hatred battering against me, tidal waves of raw, primitive energy.

‘Tau,’ says Lilith. ‘What are you—’

I grab the grenade from the back of my belt.

Goodbye, Cally.

I put my other hand behind my back and pull the pin.

I drop the grenade between us.

‘No!’ Lilith screams.

She rushes me, a blur of unnatural speed. Everything changes direction. I’m falling. I see the sins flashing around me, a tornado of black oil that soars up into the sky. Then light, and rushing air. The moon above me and I’m sailing backwards, falling, the storm drain receding above me.

The explosion roars out of the hole, bright orange flames soaring up into the night sky. Rocks and debris strike me, hit my shoulder, my face. My vision goes red: blood in my eyes.

We hit the water.

It’s like hitting a slab of concrete. My head smacks hard against the surface, is shoved forward, hits my chest.

Lilith releases me, shoves away. I’m dazed, can’t think straight. The vestiges of the sins are churning through my system, trying to overwhelm me. I try to hold onto Cally, but the pain drives her away. I reach out, but she recedes down a long tunnel, vanishing into a tiny pinprick of light.

Then I’m floating in nothingness. Sinking.

Allowing myself to just . . . drift away.

I’m done now. I’m too tired.

Time to sleep.

I close my eyes, but I can’t let go. There’s something nagging me. Something I haven’t tried. One last desperate attempt.

I wonder vaguely what it is. I’ve used my ammo. No more grenades. My wand is gone.

I don’t have anything left.

Oh, but I do.

The tattoos.

My eyes snap open. The darkness of the water surrounds me, weighs down on me. My lungs are straining, crying out for air.

The tattoos. I can use them against Lilith.

There’ll be no surviving that, though. There’s no way in hell I have the power to send them back. They’ll pull me into Nightside and rip me to shreds.

But what have I got to lose? This is my mess. I have to fix it.

I start to sub-vocalise the words of awakening. I feel the tattoos writhing excitedly on my back, my arms.

Before I can finish there’s a rush of coolness against my face. I blink, confused, and find I’m floating in the ancient, dark waters of the earth.

Yemanja floats before me, a curious look on her face.

-Why do you sacrifice yourself again? You are already mine.-

-I’m not sacrificing myself.-

-You are calling the ancient wyrms. I can sense your weakness.-
She smiles.
-You are most definitely sacrificing yourself.-

-I don’t have any other choice. Unless . . .-
I feel a surge of hope
. -Unless you want to take Lilith out for me?-

-I think not.-

-But . . . you did it before. With the smilers. Back at the beach.-

Yemanja frowns.
-All I did was bless the water.-

-But . . . the waves, they obeyed you. The water followed me. Came off the beach.-

Yemanja smiles. She drifts forward, her hair floating around her head.
-That was not me. You are mine, my servant. You are mine to command. But I am also yours. Yours to ask for help.-

I’m about to say, ‘that’s exactly what I’m doing, asking for help’, but she cuts me off with a kiss, driving all thoughts from my mind. It’s a more passionate kiss than before. We lock into an embrace and I feel her tongue in my mouth, sliding over mine. Her lips are soft, forceful. I don’t want it to end. I want to enfold myself in her presence and just never let go.

Our lips part and she drifts back into the dark waters.

-I hope to see you again, London Town.
-

She laughs and fades from view.

Pain engulfs me. My lungs strain, clawing at my throat for air. I blink, come back to awareness, kicking my legs, trying to get to the surface before my lungs explode.

I explode from the water. Gasp in huge mouthfuls of air.

When I can breathe properly again, I look around. Lilith is about twenty feet away, clambering over the rocks, trying to get around the crags to the distant beach. I swim after her. She hears me coming and stops, turns to face me, her face a mask of rage.

‘Why won’t you just die?’ she screams.

I reach the sandbank, wade towards the rocks. She’s coming back towards me now, her eyes filled with murder. I look around, but the sins are gone, vanished into the night. Not good. Not good at all.

I can’t think about that now. I reach the end of the sandbank, climb out onto a flat shelf of rock. Lilith clambers over the crags. I notice that her hands have sprouted some serious-looking claws.

I bend over, try to get my breath back. My body is finished. I can barely stand. My eye is caught by movement. A little fish caught in one of the rock pools formed by depressions in the crag. I stare at it for a while, contemplating Yemanja’s words.

A thought occurs to me and I start laughing. I can’t help it.

Lilith freezes a few feet away, looks around warily.

‘What the hell are you laughing at?’

I don’t answer. Just keep laughing.

‘Tau! What are you laughing at?’

I force myself to stop. I wince and straighten up.

‘What am I laughing at?’ I raise my hands to either side, a conductor ready to guide the music. ‘You really want to know?’

‘Tell me!’

‘Fine.’ I grin at her. ‘I’m a fucking waterbender, bitch.’

I fling my arms forward, summoning the water.

It rises up behind me in a huge wave, surges around my body. The water slams into Lilith, sends her stumbling back. But she’s strong. She opens her mouth to scream at me—

—And I send the water down her throat, into her body.

She doubles over, coughing, spluttering. Choking.

I lower my hands. The water stops. Drops to the crags and rocks.

Lilith straightens up. Our eyes meet . . .

. . . I pull my hands apart.

Lilith disintegrates. Every molecule of salt water in her body surges apart, obeying my commands. She explodes into nothingness, a red mist that patters into the ocean, onto the rocks.

I drop my hands. Slump onto the rocks, sitting in the freezing ocean. My head droops. I see the little fish still swimming in its pool, and I carefully cup my hands around it, picking it up and releasing it into the ocean.

I lie back on the rough stone, staring up at the moon, the ocean lapping around me.

It’s done.

For now.

Chapter 24

The summer storm hit like a smash and grab at the traffic lights. A sudden burst of violence, then a silent, shell-shocked aftermath.

I, of course, got caught in the worst of it before managing to find shelter, which is pretty typical of my luck lately.

I nod amiably at the drunk sprawled against the recessed door of the pawnshop. He glowers at me and pulls his bottle closer to his chest.

There are tiny imps scampering across his shoulder, stealing his drink when he isn’t looking. I lean down and flick one of them away, sending it cartwheeling through the air with a squeak of outrage. I give the middle finger to the others then step back out onto the beachfront esplanade.

I check the files in my leather satchel, making sure they didn’t get wet in the storm. They’re all fine.

The sun chooses that moment to burst out from behind the purple clouds. I lift my face, enjoying the heat on my skin.

It’s been a week since I shot Lucifer. A week since I killed Lilith. Two days since I left the hospital. Cracked ribs, broken nose, dislocated vertebrae, massive bruising, infection in my lungs, sprained wrist, and a fractured scapula. Plus, a week of fever and delirium brought on by excessive use of the tattoos.

Still, reckon I got off lightly.

When Lilith died, her vampires did the clever thing and bailed. There weren’t that many left by then. The SSA and their M5 assault rifles had already done a pretty good job at thinning the ranks. The spooks that were left did a runner as soon as they discovered Dillon’s body. Reckon nobody was there on any official business. Hard to explain that to the cops.

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens here now that Kincaid is dead. There’s going to be trouble, power plays, turf wars, the usual shit as the vampires jockey for position, trying to become the King of the East Coast. Armitage put me in charge of it all. As punishment, she says. I also need to look into this war Lilith was talking about. Are the orisha about to try and change things? Is the Covenant no longer holding?

Ranson’s body disappeared. No one knows who took it. Another mystery to look into. Who could get into the Division headquarters? Does it mean someone else was in on the sin-eater conspiracy?

The riots petered out over the following day. They were put down to the effects of an undiscovered gas pocket beneath Durban. A gas leak that culminated in a massive explosion somewhere beneath Whoonga Park.

Over five thousand dead.

That’s not even the final count. They think there are more in the burned buildings they haven’t managed to clear out yet.

Those deaths are on my head.

They’re on Lilith’s head too. But it was me that gave her the soul.

In a rare moment of kindness, in between her bouts of anger and recrimination, Armitage explained that this was actually the best possible way for it all to work out. Even without my help, Lilith would have found the Sinwalker eventually. And we wouldn’t have been there to stop her. So if I hadn’t handed over the ramanga’s soul when I did, it could have been a lot worse. The war would have come and who knows if we’d have been able to stop it.

Still. Doesn’t excuse it. Doesn’t let me off.

Those deaths are on me.

Even more worrying is the fact that God’s sins have vanished. None of our seers or oracles can track them.

I have no idea how, but we’re going to have to find them. They can’t be left to just . . . wander the earth infecting the planet with the sins of God. If everything Stefan told me is true, they have the ability to utterly destroy mankind. To infect us all with their poison until we give in and let the sins take over. How long will the world last then? How soon before someone launches the nukes in a fit of wrath?

No, they need to be caught. Destroyed or contained.

Something else that’s down to me.

The dog looks up as I enter the flat. He sniffs the air. ‘You forgot the sherry, dipshit.’

I drop the satchel on the kitchen counter. Shit. Forgot his booze.

‘Ignore him,’ says Armitage. She’s sitting on my slashed couch, paging through files. ‘I already bought him some.’

‘Come on, Armitage,’ complains the dog. ‘You’re cramping my style.’

My flat has been tidied up. As much as it
could
be tidied. I still need to restock with new furniture and . . . well, pretty much everything, really.

But that’s for another day.

‘So? Did you get them?’ asks Armitage.

I grab the satchel, toss it through the air. She catches it, empties out the folders onto the couch where they join the rest. We must have a few hundred files by now. Any records, mentions, legends, or stories that have anything to do with orisha stealing children.

Because that’s all I remember. Whoever took my daughter wasn’t human.

I grab two beers from the fridge, crack them open. I pour one into the dog’s bowl and sit down on the floor. (Armitage doesn’t drink anymore. Doesn’t eat either.)

I pull the closest file to me.

I can’t remember who took Cally, but I’m going to find out.

Then whoever it is? We’re going to have some serious fucking words.

Acknowledgements

Huge thanks to my agents Sandra Sawicka and Luke Speed, for going over the manuscript many times and offering suggestions that improved the book tenfold. And to my new editor Anne Perry. For getting exactly what I was trying to do with
Poison City
and for being so welcoming to me as I joined the Hodder family.