Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (131 page)

By the time the sky started to brighten in the east, I was on Hampstead Heath. I don't know how I ended up there but I guess it's like they say: home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in. I didn't want to go down to talk to Arachne but the grey light of dawn was spreading across the sky and the thought of being caught in the morning sunlight made me flinch. I found the ravine that hid the entrance to Arachne's lair and touched the spot on the root that signalled her. I don't remember what I said, but she opened the door.

I was stumbling by the time I made it down into Arachne's cave, weaving from side to side. Arachne was working on something blue and white, but as she saw me she stopped, turning her head towards me. “Alex?” she said, the clicking rustle of her mandibles an undertone to her words. “What's happened to you?”

“Nothing,” I said, shielding my eyes. “Can you turn the lights down?” I didn't remember Arachne's lair being so bright, but the glare was making me squint.

Arachne stayed still. It was hard to tell but I had the feeling she was staring at me. “How long have you been wearing that?”

“What?”

“Alex.” Arachne's voice was sharp and clear. “How long have you been wearing your cloak?”

“I don't know?” The light was making it hard to concentrate. “I just need to rest until the sun goes down. I'll be—”

“Take it off,” Arachne said.

“What?” I squinted at her. “Why?”

“Take off your cloak,” Arachne said, pronouncing each word carefully. “Now.”

It was a simple enough request but I felt reluctant. The cloak was the only thing keeping me hidden; without it I wasn't safe. “Look, just—”

It's easy to forget how fast Arachne can move. She's the size of a station wagon and by all rights she should be slow, but she's much,
much
faster than she looks and she can go from a standing start to full speed in the time it takes you to blink. I should have seen it coming but my precognition's tuned to sense danger, not movement, and by the time I realised it wasn't registering, Arachne was on top of me. Her two front legs caught the mist cloak and yanked it off me in a single precise movement.

Light stabbed into my eyes, burning through my brain, erasing everything in white fire. My skin seemed to ignite, flaring in sudden agony, and I couldn't see or hear or feel. All I could feel was light burning into me, too bright, too—

* * *

W
hen I came to my senses I was lying on one of Arachne's sofas. I tried to open my eyes, and the light sent a flash of pain bouncing around inside my head. I winced and screwed my eyes shut again.

“Why were you still wearing your cloak?” Arachne asked. I could smell her herbal scent, and from the sound of it she was right next to me.

“Why shouldn't I be?” I muttered. I felt groggy, but also more awake; it was as though something that had been making my thoughts fuzzy was gone.

“I warned you,” Arachne said, and her voice was sharp. “When I gave you that cloak, I told you to be sparing about when you used it. Did you forget?”

“It was ten years ago, okay?”

Arachne sighed. “I suppose for you that
is
a long time, isn't it? I keep forgetting how short human memories are.”

I pulled myself upright and forced my eyes open. I had to shade them with my hand; everything was much too bright. “What happened?”

“Hold your hand up to the light,” Arachne said.

I had to squint but I did as Arachne said, and as my eyes cleared I frowned. My hand looked . . . weird. Too much of the light was getting through around my fingers; it was like my skin was almost translucent. It was eerie and I looked away. “What happened to me?”

“Mist cloaks aren't meant for extended use,” Arachne said. “You were starting to fade.”

“But . . .” I felt confused. My mist cloak's always been the one magic item I've completely trusted. “It's trying to help me.” Somehow I was sure of that. “It keeps me safe.”

“Imbued items don't have a sense of proportion,” Arachne said. “They're alive, but they're not human.” She lifted a foreleg and I looked to see the mist cloak neatly folded on the next sofa over. “The cloak
does
try to help you. Its purpose is to hide its bearer, and that's what it does. And it does it so well that if you wear it long enough, then
nobody
will be able to find you. Not even you.”

I looked at the folded cloth, fading into the sofa, and couldn't help but shiver. “What happens then?”

“No one knows,” Arachne said simply. “I imagine the cloak still keeps them safe. Somewhere.”

I put a hand to my head. “I can't do anything right, can I?”

“Focus,” Arachne said. “You can feel sorry for yourself later. There's someone here to see you.”

I looked up in surprise. “Who?”

A flicker in the futures made me turn my head. Standing in one of the tunnel mouths, hand resting on the rocky wall, was Variam.

* * *

“Y
ou don't look so good,” Variam told me.

“That's about how I feel.” Variam and I were sitting opposite each other while Arachne sewed quietly in the corner. The orb lights set into the walls of Arachne's cave were soft and muted, but they were still enough to hurt my eyes if I looked directly at them, and I still had that weird disconnected feeling. I could feel the mist cloak's presence, resting quietly on one of the sofas, and even now I had the urge to put it on and hide. I pushed it away with a shudder; I wasn't going to feel comfortable touching that cloak for a long time. “What's been happening while I've been gone?”

“Those adepts showed up while we were at Luna's,” Variam said. “One of them can track people, right?”

“Is everyone okay?”

“There wasn't a fight,” Variam said. “They just hid outside. Think they were trying to spy on us.”

“Anne spotted them?”

Variam nodded.

“The Chinese kid's called Lee,” I said. “He can find people—anyone he's met, probably. Did they show up the night before last, or yesterday?”

“Night before last.”

That would have been just after I'd started wearing my cloak. I'd lost the Nightstalkers at my shop and they hadn't picked me up again. “They couldn't track me, so they tracked you. I guess they were hoping I'd show up and they could ambush me . . . But they don't know what Anne can do, or they wouldn't have tried to hide like that. Are they still there?”

“Not since yesterday. We've been waiting in case they come back, but they haven't shown up.”

“They're waiting for Lee to find me again,” I said, half to myself. No reason for them not to—it had worked every time before. As long as I was in Arachne's lair her wards would hide me but as soon as I stepped outside . . .

“So what's the plan?” Variam asked.

“I don't have one.”

“Seriously.”

Variam was looking at me expectantly. He'd changed into a black shirt and turban and looked ready and alert. “Vari, you know all the times in the past I've told you guys what to do?” I said. “Most of the time I'm making it up as I go along. I'm not as tough as you think I am. Right now I don't know what to do.”

Variam frowned. “You haven't got any ideas?”

“I've got lots,” I said. “The problem is that all of them are
bad
. You know what? You listen to them and tell me what you think.” I held up a finger. “Plan number one. I keep running and hiding. Will and the Nightstalkers keep chasing. I hope they give up or get themselves hurt and go away.”

Variam gave me a look.

“I told you it was a bad plan.” I held up a second finger. “Plan number two. I keep trying to talk some sense into Will. Settle this peacefully.”

“Won't work,” Variam said.

“You said that before.”

“Because I saw him,” Variam said, and shrugged. “If I knew someone had done that to my brother, I wouldn't listen either.”

“Anne thought there was a chance.”

“You destroyed his
life
,” Variam said. “That's how he sees it, right? What are you possibly going to say to make it all better?”

I looked back at Vari for a second, then shrugged. “I wish you were wrong, but . . . yeah. That's how it seems, isn't it?”

“So?” Vari said.

“So plan number three,” I said. “The one you're thinking of. I get you and Luna and Anne, we gear up and pick our ground, and we have a fight.”

Variam nodded.

“Say we do,” I said. “On our side we'd have me, you, Anne, and Luna. They'd have Will with his time magic, the American guy with his guns, Dhruv the life-drinker, and ground-fire girl. They've got at least two others, so figure they'll fight too. Four against seven. You think we'd win?”

“Yeah, I do,” Variam said. “We've been talking it over and we've done the math. Luna's good with that whip, and Anne and I have gone up against a lot worse. And you're a frigging mage. They're just adepts.”

“Okay,” I said. “So we kill them all, is that the plan? I shoot some, you burn some, Anne stops the heart of a couple more, and we throw the bodies in a pit somewhere?”

Variam looked taken aback. “Uh . . .”

“Your magic creates supernatural heat, Vari,” I said. “It doesn't have a stun setting. If you hit someone full strength, it's not going to knock them out, it's going to kill them. Same with Luna. The more of her curse she puts into someone, the less likely they're going to be walking out alive.”

“You think I don't know that?” Variam said. “I've done this before. I can scale my spells back.”

“I know,” I said. “You can go for glancing hits, try to just scorch them. But now it's not four against seven, it's the four of us
at half strength
against their seven, and they
won't
be holding back, not against me anyway. They'll be trying to kill me. Would you be willing to do the same to them? Even knowing they're not that different from you?”

Variam was silent. “You remember I told you how Anne got kidnapped by Sagash?” he said at last. “And I went to look for her?”

I nodded.

“It took a long time,” Variam said. “I had to look in a lot of places.” He looked at me. “Sometimes things get messy, you know? Someone starts something and there's a guy in your way. And maybe you might have been friends if you'd had the chance, but you don't have time to talk it over, do you?”

“But this is different,” I said. “I know you're no coward, and neither is Luna. But you're not murderers either. And Anne . . . you think
she's
going to go along with a plan that involves killing anyone?” I leant forward. “I've thought about this a lot over the last few days. I've run the scenarios in my head and if it comes down to a fight between us and them, here's what I think's going to happen. Most of us and most of them will start out nonlethal. We won't be fighting to kill. But Will will be, and so will Ja-Ja. And sooner or later something'll go wrong. Someone'll step in front of a bullet, or they'll take a fire blast head-on, or Luna's curse'll hit someone the wrong way. Once that happens it won't be just about me anymore, it'll be about revenge. They'll want blood for blood, and there won't be any way to stop it.” I looked steadily at Variam. “Best case? Four or five of them end up dead and you and Luna have their blood on your hands. Worst case, they wipe us out. But the most likely way I see this ending is that they lose but they don't go down alone. You three are good and so am I, but these guys aren't pushovers either. They're fast and they're strong and they know how to work together. They haven't been trying to kill the three of you so far, but as soon as the first one of them dies that's all going to change. Would you want to win the fight if it meant Anne's life? Or Luna's, or yours? Maybe two out of three? Does that sound like a good deal to you?”

Variam didn't answer. “We aren't strong enough to be able to beat these guys without a good chance of them taking us with them,” I said. “And we
definitely
aren't strong enough to take them down without hurting them. Your magic's lethal, Luna's magic is lethal, and the only weapons I've got that can take these guys down fast are lethal too. I've been trying to think of some way of finishing this that doesn't end up with people dying and I can't see it.”

“So what are you going to do?” Variam demanded. “Sit around? Okay, so the odds aren't great. We've fought worse.”

“Because you didn't have a choice,” I said. “But this time
I'm
making the choice. And if I lead you guys into this then one of two things will happen. Either you get killed, or you'll be responsible for
them
getting killed. You'll have their blood on your hands for the rest of your lives, and someday in the future someone else will wind up coming after
you
the way they've come after
me
.” I looked steadily at Variam. “I won't do that, Vari. I'm not letting the three of you pay for my mistakes and I'm not letting you do the same things I did. Not for my sake.”

Variam stared back at me. I held his gaze, and in the end it was Variam who looked away. “Fine,” he said. He was trying to act annoyed but I knew I'd gotten through. “Great. So what, keep on hiding?”

I sat in silence. For all that I knew that Variam's plan would end badly, he was right about one thing: I couldn't hide forever. Sooner or later I'd have to face Will again.

For what felt like a long time now I'd had a quiet dark voice whispering at the back of my mind, telling me that running wasn't going to work, that talking wasn't going to work, that there was only one way this could end. Now at last I stopped resisting and listened.