Extraordinaires 1 (16 page)

K
ingsley and Evadne lingered just inside the doorway, hidden in the shadows but with a fine view. They were confronted with an immense chamber composed entirely of pentagons. The five-sided ceiling was at least a few hundred feet overhead. Soft light fell from it, filling the entire chamber with a radiance that unsettled Kingsley, for it was a touch too blue for honest sunlight or gaslight. Evadne grimaced and quickly changed her spectacles.

Large, five-sided alcoves were set in each of the walls. Two of the alcoves hosted objects that rotated, as far as Kingsley could tell, while floating a few feet above the floor – a large cube and an equally large tetrahedron. They glowed, each side in turn, but in no rhythm that Kingsley could discern. Both shifted colour through the spectrum, attaining some hues that Kingsley doubted had names at all.

The Neanderthals had preceded them. Their flying wedge formation had been met by a chaotic wave of Spawn. Fifty or more of the soulless creatures were flinging themselves at the intruders, preventing them from reaching the middle of the chamber and a hideously ornate golden sofa.

The golden sofa was divided into three separate seats and it was a wince-inducing contrast to the classical restraint of the chamber. Curlicues ran rampant, unicorns and dolphins cavorted, and enough silk cushions were strewn about to lay waste to a generation of silk worms.

Kingsley allowed himself to gape, and not only at the hideous bad taste of the furniture. The golden sofa throne hovered a foot or so above the floor like a balloon. Three chubby, dwarfish figures sat side by side in it, shrieking and gesticulating while the battle raged in front of them.

He raised an eyebrow at Evadne. She shrugged and put her finger on her lips, somewhat needlessly as Kingsley had about as much wish to bring attention to himself as he had of parading naked down Bond Street.

A solitary figure stood next to the throne. He was dressed well and regarded the brawl uneasily, shifting his weight from foot to foot, with his hands clasped behind his back. Occasionally he mopped his brow with a red handkerchief.

With a mighty shout, two Neanderthals in the vanguard cleared a path. In a mass, the rest of them followed, putting their heads down and pushing the Spawn aside through sheer momentum. Weaponless, the Spawn clawed and grappled but were trodden down or simply smashed aside. The chamber rang to fierce battle cries and howls of sheer bestial triumph as the Neanderthals took to their bludgeoning weapons. Thin, colourless Spawn blood sprayed. Some Neanderthals flung their weapons away and used their mighty fists. One young Neanderthal simply grabbed a gibbering Spawn and, with one hand, tossed him at a knot of other Spawn, while casually bludgeoning another attacker with a huge backhand blow.

The Spawn had abandoned any semblance of humanity. In ragged trousers and tunics, they slavered and leaped at the Neanderthals, clawing and biting, their skins grey and sullen like spoiled lead. As they attempted to bring the Neanderthals down with weight of numbers, Kingsley's wolfishness responded. The battle called and the smell of blood was exciting but he had to hold on. He watched, eagerly, and his nails dug into his palms. His heart thumped. His muscles quivered as he leaned towards the fray.

Yes! The pack hunts together, to tear and rend, to separate the weak and to wreak havoc on the others! Terror is our friend!

He became aware that Evadne was looking at him – not with horror, but with concern. Angry at himself, he bit his lip and looked away. He couldn't afford to surrender to his wild side, not now, not in this predicament. He needed all his wits about him, no matter how his blood sang.

The Neanderthals pushed towards the throne, roaring with triumph. The human darted away, disappearing through a five-sided door in the wall near one of the alcoves. The Immortals squeaked and gestured wildly, full of rage and indignation, pointing at the floating cube in the far alcove. It glowed a sickly green, then faded, which appeared to enrage the Immortals even more, but just before the Neanderthals reached the throne all three of them sagged, falling back onto their cushions like rag dolls.

The Neanderthals didn't hesitate. Kingsley's civilised self wanted to look away, but his atavistic wild side was excited. In the end, he watched grimly as the Neanderthals tore the tiny bodies apart, howling and brandishing limbs like trophies.

A new surge of Spawn erupted from the direction the human had fled. They screeched as they ran.

The Neanderthals stood back to back as Spawn attacked. In the middle of the ring, half a dozen were using projectile weapons to pick off Spawn at a distance with darts, bullets, bolts, tiny whirring chains and – astonishingly – tiny balls of fire. The noise was punishing. The Neanderthals clustered around these marksmen, smiling grimly or roaring defiantly, according to personal preference. The floor underneath became slippery with Neanderthal blood mixing with the spiritless ichor of the Spawn.

‘Please drop your weapons and turn very slowly.'

The voice was fussy, polite and human. Kingsley swallowed and shifted around.

A middle-aged man – Kingsley recognised him as the same one who had been standing with the Immortals – regarded them over the top of a decidedly ordinary revolver. In spite of it being ordinary compared to the exotic weapons Kingsley had been confronted with in the last few days, he had a healthy respect for the damage it could do. He took out the Incapacitator and dropped it on the floor. Evadne tossed her pistol aside, then the Scorpion and the Life Changer.

‘The satchel, too, young lady. And the . . . what is it? A sabre?'

With his striped trousers, cutaway jacket and topcoat, he looked exactly like a City stockbroker, if a little frayed around the edges and slightly dyspeptic. ‘Keep your hands away from your pockets. I know you probably only want a handkerchief to cry into, but I'd regret it if you took out something and I had to shoot you.'

Kingsley was convinced. He held his hands well away from his sides.

‘Wait.' The man widened his eyes at Evadne. ‘You are delightful, aren't you, my dear?'

‘Oh yes,' Evadne said. ‘And harmless. Put down your revolver and I'll show you.'

‘You're game, too. Excellent.' He glanced at Kingsley, then peered intently at him. ‘Move into the light. Both of you.'

Kingsley and Evadne backed into the chamber. The noise of the battle behind them echoed around the hard angles of the pentagons, blurring and overlapping to become a veritable bedlam.

The man with the revolver stopped smiling briefly, then a broad grin spread across a face that looked unaccustomed so such extremes of emotion. ‘You're the boy that Kipling is after, aren't you? Don't bother to deny it – my question was purely rhetorical.'

‘Why's that important to you?' Evadne snapped.

‘It's a matter of bargaining from a position of strength,' the man said, his grin widening, if possible. ‘With you in my possession, boy, I'm now very strong indeed.'

J
abez Soames was not a gambling man. He preferred activities where luck didn't enter into it. So he was unaccustomed to feeling as extraordinarily lucky as he was at the way things had transpired this evening. If this was how gamblers felt when the dice fell their way or their horse crossed the line foremost, then he could see the allure of Lady Fortune.

‘I want the boy,' Damona said. She was sitting on a marble step in front of the rotating tetrahedron and looked satisfied. Smoke drifted about the grand chamber, left over from some of the more poorly constructed firearms.

‘I guessed as much,' Soames said. The Spawn were heaped in a large pile near one of the vacant alcoves. They would rot quickly and unpleasantly. He took out a handkerchief ready to cover his nose in this eventuality.

Damona grunted. She was unhurt, and Soames thought that the way she gazed at her fellow brutes as they laughed, slapped backs and recounted their various braveries was more like a mother benignly watching children at play than a warlord at the end of a battle. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘What is that?'

Soames was careful with giving away information for nothing, but Damona did have the useful negotiating advantage of a horde of bloodthirsty savages at her back.

‘The Immortals called it a Temporal Manipulator.'

‘Time?' The Neanderthal woman looked at it over her shoulder. ‘Magic stuff?'

‘The Immortals are pre-eminent sorcerers, bending space and time to their will,' Soames said.
It didn't help them this time
, he added to himself and smiled.

‘I can send people to study it?' Damona asked.

As the new landlord, and as someone whose plans had fallen into place so well, Soames decided he could afford to be magnanimous to keep a client happy. ‘Possibly,' he said. ‘In a month, say, once I've organised things here properly.'

The old woman croaked. It took some time before Soames realised she was laughing. ‘A month?' she said. ‘Much can happen in a month.'

‘I'm sure it can,' Soames said, disconcerted by the woman's reaction.

‘Now,' she said, turning her back on the Temporal Manipulator. ‘The boy.'

‘Ah, yes. The boy.'

Soames stroked his chin. The boy and the girl were an interesting problem. They'd refused to tell him why they were here, and he hadn't had time to question them properly. The girl's appearance was singular enough to make him think he'd seen her before, skulking about the Demimonde. If nothing else, he could make a tidy profit selling her to one of the slavers. He'd get a good price for her rare beauty.

The thought warmed him to the point of chuckling.

‘Funny?' Damona spat on the floor. ‘Don't forget. You tricked us. This place was too well defended.'

‘I? Tricked you?' Soames managed to look affronted. ‘I hope, madam, that you are not going back on your word.'

Damona spat again, very deliberately. ‘The place is yours.' She grimaced as she climbed to her feet. ‘I will take the girl and the boy. Their equipment, too.'

‘What?' Queasily, Soames tore his gaze from the spittle on the floor.

‘Your face said you want her. So I want her.'

Soames bit the inside of his cheek, a tactic he employed whenever he had an impulse to shoot a customer dead on the spot. ‘I was about to offer her to you, but you pre-empted me.'

‘Liar.'

‘A pleasure to do business with you. They're in the cells below.'

The Neanderthal woman signalled to two of her bully boys and they hurried through the door Soames indicated. Before Soames could instigate some polite small talk, one of them was back. ‘They're not there.'

Damona cleared her throat. ‘Soames?'

‘I put them there myself,' he said quickly, before she could spit again. ‘If your people released them, I bear no responsibility.'

A shout went up, and a Neanderthal staggered backward through a door. Another emerged holding the white-skinned girl by the back of her neck, her feet dangling off the ground. The boy flew through the air, rolled well enough and snarled as another of the Neanderthals closed on him, but all the fight went out of him when he saw the girl was helpless.

‘One squeeze,' the Neanderthal growled. ‘That's all.'

The boy stood. Soames watched keenly as he shook himself and straightened, becoming an altogether different person – less angry, far more collected. The way he shuddered, however, suggested that he was having to exert himself to maintain this demeanour. It was almost as if he were warring against an impulse to throw himself at the girl's captor, despite the odds.

‘Tie them,' Damona said, ‘then we leave.'

Soames adjusted his cuffs uneasily. He had the distinct impression that something was going on here, something of which he wasn't fully apprised. He hated that.

Jabez,
he thought,
it may be time for honey instead of vinegar.

Soames assumed his most charming aspect. ‘I'm impressed with the way your comrades disposed of the Immortals.'

‘It was good to do it.' She smiled, and it was horrible.

‘They wouldn't be for hire, would they? I occasionally have need of muscular types to help negotiations along, that sort of thing.'

‘No.'

‘I thought not, but no harm in asking, is there?' He went to move away, but then looked back. ‘Oh, one last thing, if you'd indulge me. Curious as I am, I'm interested in why you want the boy so much.'

Silently, Damona regarded him for a moment. Soames was beginning to feel decidedly edible, and then she spoke: ‘Our business.'

‘Of course.'

Damona glanced at her bravoes. They had bound the boy and the girl. Soames was disappointed in losing her, but business was business.

And that, for Jabez Soames, was sufficient reason for nearly anything.