The Glass God (9 page)

“Is it?” asked Rhys.

“I dunno. Isn’t it?” Turning to Miles to avoid Rhys’s stare, she asked, “Is it safe?”

“Safe? Oh yes, once the circle itself is washed away there’s really no residual energy left. Detergent, in fact, almost guarantees that the original purpose of the circle is neutralised. That’s why, I suspect, this place has such a pungent aroma.”

“Oh. Good.” Cautiously, she stepped into the circle, looking for a shadow of its purpose.

As her foot brushed the centre, her fingers spasmed into fists. Her head twisted up and back, mouth opening in pain, and for a moment she stood there, her heel not yet on the floor, a silent cry of pain at the back of her throat as her body rocked and twisted. Then her own momentum pushed her onward and she staggered out of the circle again. Her hands were shaking, and her eyes rippled with water. “Bloody hell,” she wheezed, leaning against the nearest wall for support. “I thought you said it was safe!”

Miles was by her side in an instant. “I’m so sorry, Ms Li! What happened?”

“What happened? That thing,” she stabbed a quavering finger across the floor, “is hotter than a chippy’s frying pan! So much for the fricking training!”

Miles edged towards the centre of the circle. He knelt down just off-centre, and brushed his fingers over the floor. “Perhaps… something,” he mused at last. “A residual glow, maybe, but… it’s very unlikely. For there to be any lingering magical activity after this time, and after the clean that this place was given, would imply a spell of incredible power – dangerous power – being performed here.”

“Great,” Sharon grumbled. “Because all I wanted to make my day complete were the words ‘dangerous power’. Rhys, do you have…⁠⁠?”

But Rhys wasn’t looking at Sharon. His attention had been drawn to the base of the wall. There was something dark on one of the breeze blocks, a speck of brown against the white paint. He bent down until his eyes were almost level with it. “Um… I think it’s blood.”

Sharon hurried to look. The mark on the wall was tiny, barely noticeable, a fleck of drying, rust-brown particles. “Dunno,” she said. “It’s either blood or a really unlucky fly.”

“I can call a forensic team…⁠” offered Miles.

“How long’ll that take?”

“Well, what with our recent budgetary… upheavals… We’ve had to sub-contract some of this work, and it’ll take a while to process the lab results, but the work they do is highly professional and I really feel…⁠”

“Only I’m thinking,” she cut in, “if we’re dealing with blood, then I know this real expert we could call.”

“Do you?”

“Totally,” she said, straightening up and reaching for her mobile phone. “Only thing is, he’s not much good in daylight.”

Chapter 11

Some Skills Come Naturally

The sun was down over London, slipping beneath a cold, grey sky.

The onset of darkness – if not yet night – brought a shift in the speed and volume of the city’s traffic. Commuters huddled in tighter under the bus shelters, pressing shoulder to shoulder against the wind; hot air flowed out of the doors of packed, sweating bars where men rolled up their sleeves and women let down their hair for a night of warm wine to drive away the darkness. The smell of garlic and saffron tumbled out of the curry houses, stronger now that the light was gone and the mind grew more reliant on other senses. On the steamed-up windows of the buses, schoolchildren wrote messages in the condensation, which faded to grease smears on the glass. Streetlamps snapped on with a washed-out light which swelled to pink, orange or yellow intensity as the last rays of daylight retreated, and children were called in for dinner, muddy trousered as they kicked their shoes off inside the door.

Darkness fell, and, as it did, two rather special things happened.

In a tiny square of land, hemmed in by offices and roads, where plane trees towered over lichen-crusted stone, the warden drew a padlock across an iron gate, snapped it shut for the night and headed for his bike, propped against the sign warning travellers not to rest their cycles here. He reached for the first of the two chains that bound it, and thought he heard, at his back, the gentle tumbling of damp earth. From habit he looked around, ready to curse the local kids, or the squirrels or the foxes that played havoc with his neatly kept graveyard, but none were to be seen. He stepped close to the iron railings around this little patch of greenery in the heart of the city, and listened again, but the slow sound he had heard had now faded. He shrugged, a little self-consciously, embarrassed to have felt the need even to pause and look, and turned, and unchained his bicycle, and pedalled away, dinging his bell at those who didn’t get in his way, and muttering obscenities at any who might.

Behind him, in the darkness beneath the gravestones, something stirred. Limbs of bone and black rotten leather pressed upwards and felt the earth, very softly, give. It was slow going, hard going, but they were getting closer.

That was the first thing that happened as darkness fell.

The second thing was this:

A curtain is opened.

A shutter pulled back from a window.

Then a second shutter, solid metal, slid away.

A pair of watery eyes flick back from the final lingering glow of sunset.

A phone is turned on, the white glow from its screen only highlighting the extreme pallor of the skin which touches it. A text has been received. The eyes scan it, the eyebrows waggle at it, and a voice declares,

“Oh God, that is so totally
gross
.”

It was forty minutes later, but the quality of moan had a depth and persistency that could not be measured in mere time.

“Babes, while I’m, like, totally flattered that you think I’m some sort of expert in blood, I gotta tell you I can’t be working in unsterilised environments. There might be pathogens!”

His name is Kevin and he is, to everyone’s surprise, a vampire. It’s surprising – not because he doesn’t try – pale skin, pale hair, clingy jeans are all, potentially very much In Season for that most fashion-conscious species (or perhaps ethnic grouping, Sharon’s not sure) of the ebon night – but because somehow, with his bag of sterile wipes, latex gloves and dental floss, he just doesn’t give off the traditional vibe.

“So, like, what happened here?”

Rhys looked at Sharon. Sharon looked at Miles. Miles looked at Kevin, smile locked in place ready for battle, and tried to work him out. While vampires were, technically, very dangerous, the Aldermen’s attitude towards them was generally one of, you don’t mind us, we won’t mind you – just remember to register with your local NHS blood bank and no midnight snacks. No one said it was a happy arrangement, but at least it was an understanding. One which he couldn’t fully extend in his mind to cover Kevin.

Seeing that no one else was about to volunteer, Sharon cleared her throat, and said, “Uh… so, we think that the Midnight Mayor was lured here with something to do with an umbrella – maybe this mega-mystic umbrella…” – she waved it in the air – “…where he probably met some kind of dire magic end which I don’t know much about but which I’m feeling was pretty catastrophic owing to, you know, the cover-up and smell of bleach and that, and Rhys found blood. And Miles here…⁠” a helpful wave towards Miles, “thought maybe a forensic team but then I thought,” a note of urgency seeped into Sharon’s tone, “why wait three days for lab results when we could get an expert, a
real
, qualified, totally on it expert, to come down and do the blood thing right now?”

Kevin considered. “Well, babes, it’s, like, really sweet that you thought of me, and I’m touched, yeah, but thing is… this blood you’ve found… it might have been anywhere. I mean, do you know how long tetanus can live outside the body? Fucking ages, that’s how long.”

“I don’t think anyone here died of tetanus,” offered Sharon, shrinking before Kevin’s hygienic disapproval. “Although maybe they did, we don’t know, but it would be seriously unlucky for this whole vanishing-blood-umbrella-mystery thing to coincide with someone going into the dying throes of a rare disease. Unless actually tetanus is involved somehow, in which case I guess that’s something we oughtta know. Either way, I’m sure you can see why we need you?”

The vampire sniffed, inducing an involuntary mirror-sniff in Rhys. “You mentioned bleach?”

Sharon’s face lit up. “Yeah! Bleach everywhere! I mean, it’s so sterile in there, you could perform brain surgery or that! Just a tiny bit of blood, and we’ve been very clean, haven’t we?” – she shot a warning glare at Rhys and Miles – “⁠… so I’m thinking that even if there is tetanus involved, the odds of uncontrolled infection and death are really, really low.”

Kevin swayed almost imperceptibly, considering his options. Seeing him waver, Sharon added, “Also, did I mention… fate of the city and that? I feel kinda guilty bringing it up, because I know it’s manipulative to bring in the whole ‘oh God we might die’ quality here when we don’t know anything, and it might actually not be the case, but I just want you to know that this is how strongly I feel about it.”

The vampire sighed, revealing a hint of sharpened teeth. “Fine,” he grumbled. “But if I get something
disgusting
from this, I think you should know that I’m totally going private, not NHS.”

Sharon beamed. “Knew we could count on you.”

“Yeah yeah yeah…⁠”

Kevin ducked beneath the metal shutter, into the white-walled unit; the others followed. Rhys, Miles and Sharon stood uneasily as he prowled, examining the floor and walls with distaste expressed in face, shoulders, arms and back, his whole body unified in apathy. Finally, “Okay, so yeah, I’m getting some blood. Fresh-ish, I think, although bacteria can divide in less than twenty minutes and that’s, like, long enough for some serious contamination.” Kevin looked at the others for reassurance, but was met with blankness. He sighed at his unhygienic companions. “Most of the blood’s human; kinda hard to tell anything about it, though, what with the clean-up. Some of it is…⁠” He sniffed again, then wrinkled his nose and reached for his shoulder bag. “Oh God, that’s just, so disgusting!” he whimpered, pulling out a white face mask in a sterile wrap and, to Sharon’s surprise, a small plastic nasal spray. Inserting the spray first in one nostril, then the other, he gave two great puffs of vapour and slipped the mask over his nose and mouth with a rubber band, before turning to the others and offering them the same.

“Um… thanks, but no thanks?” said Sharon. “What’s so disgusting – specifically, I mean?”

“Babes, some of this blood is, like, totally not human,” Kevin confided. “I mean, it
might
be a bit human, there’s kinda some haemoglobin and plasma and stuff, but if you could smell it, you’d be, like, that’s gross, I mean,
uch
. Like, I wouldn’t drink it even if you put it through a dialysis machine and three months of antibiotics.” Seeing that Miles’s mouth was hanging open, Kevin shifted uneasily and added, “Uh, have I, like, got something on my face?”

Miles switched to default battle-smile. In a voice of drifting serenity, he breathed, “Do you do much blood work?”

“My God,” groaned the vampire. “Getting a decent pint of O Negative is, like, such fucking hard work these days. You’ve gotta get a whole medical history before you know the stuff is any good, and, you know, one in ten people under twenty-five has a sexually transmitted disease, and probably doesn’t even know it?”

“Kevin has Seah’s Syndrome,” explained Sharon. “He can only drink a certain blood type.”

“A certain fucking rare blood type, usually given to wankers in the same section of DNA that codes for living an unsanitary life.”

Miles’s head nodded almost by itself. “I see,” he murmured. “I can understand how that would be problematic.”

“But if we can briefly turn our attention back to the fate of the city…⁠?” ventured the shaman.

“Uh, babes, dunno what else I can tell you. Loads of human blood, I mean, like, way too much to be healthy, and some of this weird-crap not-quite-human blood, all over the place. Chemicals,” he added sourly, “are usually only good for spreading the stuff around.”

“Does any of the blood go outside?”

“Uh, a bit. I mean, I think someone tried to do a bit of a tidy-up in here, cos they get the human outside and it’s still dribbling but, like, way less, so I’m guessing that the human bleeder did most of its shit indoors. The non-human stuff smells pretty much the same outside, too, but we’re talking, way lighter, I mean, like a surface wound or something like that – ew but not icky.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Sharon murmured. “Can you follow it?”

Kevin’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “So long as there’s no danger or anything like that,” he said. “I mean, I totally get the fate of the city thing, but, like, do you know how long it takes for nails to grow after you’re dead?”

They followed him out into the night.

“How did you meet Kevin?” asked Miles, falling into step beside Sharon and Rhys.

“He attends Magicals Anonymous meetings,” she explained. “Also, he’s trying to sue his dentist for ethnic discrimination.”

“Uh, guys?” called out Kevin, half turning towards them. “I can, like, totally hear everything you’re saying, what with these amazing hunter-predator instincts I’ve got going.”

“Stop me if I say anything wrong,” Sharon called back.

“I was just going to congratulate you on your civic spirit and modern attitude,” added Miles. “So refreshing to meet a vampire who isn’t stuck in the 1890s.”

They reached the river. Kevin stopped at the edge of the quay, turning this way and that to sample the air. The tide was out, revealing glistening black mud beneath the embankment walls, and a flight of four rotted wooden steps, the remnants of what had been a proud stairway. “So,” he said, “I’m thinking the human bleeder got thrown into the water. There’s, like, a definite stop in the scent, and a bit of mould, which is, like, uch, because there’ll be spores. But, yeah.”

“What about the not-quite-human bleeder?” asked Sharon. “What happens to him?”

“Trail’s a bit faint,” admitted Kevin. “But he’s still dribbling, and whoever did the bleach job back in the unit hasn’t bothered to do anything out here, so…⁠” He prowled along the waterfront for several yards, head bent towards the ground, before giving a cry of triumph.