Extraordinaires 1 (9 page)

K
ingsley woke to the sound of a bell ringing. Not a church bell; it was far more insistent. It took his sleep-befuddled brain a moment to realise it was more like a fire bell and then he bolted out of the supremely soft bed Evadne had shepherded him to after his bath the previous day.

For a moment, he was unsure exactly where he was and that disconcerted him. Bath, bed, he remembered, but his whereabouts beyond that eluded him. He
liked
knowing where he was. Their arrival was only a fuzzy memory, exhausted and mind-battered as he had been, and confused by his ridiculous dream of a boat voyage. He had vague recollections of heavy rain, crowds of people underneath a field of umbrellas, and another stair-enabled descent, but everything else was a jumble.

He was still fumbling with his tie – clean and pressed like the rest of his clothes – when he found Evadne in a round room, twice as tall as it was wide. She was peering at one of a dozen or so oval windows that were set into the wall like a double row of plaques. Underneath them ran a long shelf with an array of switches, knobs and levers. She was wearing a long green leather coat over a dark blue dress that was piped with cream. She had a small hat, quite the opposite of the fashion, something like a top hat much reduced and much less masculine, probably due to the light blue feather stuck in the band.

When he entered, she glanced at him. ‘Stay there!' she ordered. ‘Don't move!'

She left the bank of glasses, disappeared through a door and emerged a moment later hefting a rifle that was a cousin of the pistol she'd used on the hapless police constable: black, sleek and deadly.

‘What is it?'

She ignored him and ran past, disappearing through the door he'd entered by.

A door banged, the bells continued to ring, and all Kingsley was left with was the scent of gardenia in the air.

He went to the door opposite and peered inside. He was confronted by a workshop that looked like a university physics laboratory that had surrounded and taken over a foundry, with power cables strung willy-nilly from roof beams, a brace of workbenches heavily laden with impressive glassware and a row of metal cabinets that looked as if they could take a direct hit from an artillery shell without flinching. For a moment, he hesitated, but the urgency of the bells made him move. He grabbed a bullseye lantern and a shiny metal bar, then set off after Evadne.

Kinsley counted five doors. All of them were open, the last still swinging. He hesitated, reluctant to leave the refuge unprotected, but angry cries echoed down the tunnel in front of him and set him running in that direction.

A stutter of sharp, hard reports came to him, loud enough to hurt his ears. He lurched against the bricks of the tunnel, shivering as the noise of conflict set his wild side on edge. Should he ready to fight, or should he turn tail and run?

Another hammering of gunfire and a chorus of unearthly wails made him bite down on his animal self. His head pounding with the effort, he staggered on, using the metal bar for support and bent over to avoid hitting his head on the roof of the tunnel. He held up the lantern just in time to avoid plunging over the edge where the tunnel gave out onto a shallow, precarious ledge.

Light flashed and a rifle cracked. Echoes swallowed it, tumbled it up with shouts and screeching, a wicked brew of pain and anger. Kingsley swept the lantern and found he'd come to an open space with four or five drains emptying into it – one of which was choked with the rangy figures of those who'd abducted him from the police station.

For an instant, Kingsley pulled back, recoiling from the horrible creatures. Then he crept forward, keeping himself concealed, unwilling to let them daunt him.

The creatures were trapped in the tunnel mouth, pinned by Evadne's rifle fire, but they weren't defeated. They howled and shrieked and threw themselves out, tumbling one over another in a battle frenzy, plunging into the pool and floundering forward before Evadne struck them down.

She stood on a small promontory that jutted into the pool, balanced on a pile of broken masonry, a silver-maned Fury. She fired again. The sound of ricochets added to the cacophony, but she didn't stop. No doubt aided by her light-enhancing spectacles, she fired again, and again with accuracy that bordered on the phenomenal.

She was crying.

The light was poor, but Kingsley could just make out that she was sobbing as she worked the bolt of the rifle, gasping for breath in between tracking the Spawn as they sought her. She dashed tears away with the back of her hand but she held the rifle steady.

Two Spawn threw themselves into the pool, rose roaring and were thrown backward by Evadne's accurate fire.

Kingsley rose from his crouch, squinting, trying to make out figures moving in the shifting shadows. There, on the other side of the pool – where Evadne had no hope of seeing them from her position out on the promontory of rubble.

He abandoned the lamp. He leaped from the ledge and landed on a narrow, noisome shore. He ran, metal bar in one hand, skirting the pool, aware that if Evadne caught sight of him she could mistake him for one of the Spawn, but not hesitating for an instant – for he'd seen that the two vile creatures had emerged and were creeping up on her, well behind her field of vision.

Kingsley hurdled over a broken wooden crate in time to see the first of these stealthy Spawn rear up behind her. She didn't have a chance to move – it clawed her from her position. She fell and her spectacles flew from her head, glinting in the sparse light of Kingsley's lonely lantern on the other side of the pool.

Instantly, Kingsley was there. He swung the metal bar and the Spawn howled as it was driven back. Its companion wheeled on Kingsley in time to meet the bar coming the other way. It folded when the bar caught it across the midriff. Kingsley kicked and it toppled into the pool.

The first Spawn staggered to its feet. This time Kingsley jabbed at it and took it in the throat. It gurgled and joined its partner in the mucky water.

Kingsley reached Evadne. She was dazed and her head lolled from the Spawn's blow. Panting, muscles burning, he scooped her up, threw her over his shoulder, tucked her rifle under his arm. ‘This is so undignified,' she mumbled.

‘I apologise,' he said. More Spawn were assembling at the tunnel mouth. He set off in the other direction, back towards Evadne's refuge. ‘It seems practical.'

Evadne didn't reply. Kingsley cast around for her spectacles, couldn't see them, then set his teeth and began to jog as fast as he could.

He carried Evadne inside the refuge, following her ragged instructions for bolting each of the doors as they went, holding her in his arms so she could see. ‘The viewing room,' she gasped over the relentless alarm bells. Her face was streaked with grime and looked different without the spectacles. Kingsley wouldn't have dared say more vulnerable, but he was willing to wager someone else might have.

‘Push that switch up!' she shouted over the bells.

A dozen switches confronted him on the wall near the door. All of them were large and brass with rubber handles. ‘Which one?' he shouted back.

‘The green one!'

Kingsley had to use a knee, but he managed to slam the lever home. Instantly, the ringing cut off. She looked him in the eye. ‘You can put me down now.'

She was hardly a burden. ‘Are you sure?'

‘Not really. If you're willing to carry me around everywhere, I'll feign a weakness I don't feel, just for the luxury.'

‘I've always aspired to be a human palanquin.' Kingsley carefully deposited her on her feet in front of the bank of glasses. He was attentive for any sign of injury, but she was steady enough, if a little grimy from the underground skirmish.

Evadne slipped off to the workshop and came back bespectacled. She stood in front of the wall of glasses, scanning them intently.

‘What on earth is going on?' he asked.

‘It looks as if the Immortals have tracked you here.' She pointed at the glass. Kingsley came closer and stood next to her. It wasn't a window at all, not unless they were looking down on a tunnel from a very lofty vantage point. With growing wonder, he realised that each of the glasses showed a different view. In the one Evadne was gesturing at, a dozen figures were crawling through a tunnel on their hands and knees. It was more like a film in a cinematograph theatre than a window, all greys and blacks, but it was clear enough for Kingsley to recognise the spindly forms.

‘They're like the ones who abducted me at the police station,' he said.

‘They're Spawn, the servants of the Immortals.'

‘Kipling's evil sorcerers.'

‘He knows what he's talking about,' Evadne said through gritted teeth. ‘I'd wipe them out in a second if I could find them.'

The intensity of her loathing concerned Kingsley. Where was the insouciant juggler who had befriended him? He'd assumed that she went through life with an attitude of tolerant amusement – the same sort of attitude that had brought her to nominate him as her project. ‘You have a grudge against them?'

‘The Immortals? I've never met them.'

‘And yet you want to destroy them.'

‘I've heard of them.' She glanced at him, but quickly turned her attention back to the glasses. ‘And what I heard put them at the top of my list.' Her voice was both brittle and uncompromising. She touched a brass knob and the view in the glass brightened a little. ‘Leave it at that, Kingsley, I beg of you.'

With difficulty, Kingsley swallowed the multitude of questions that Evadne's confession – and behaviour – had prompted. ‘What are you going to do?'

‘What I should have done in the first place.' Evadne reached for another lever and pushed it to the left. Her lips moved silently for a moment, her expression distant, then she nodded when the glass showed the Spawn recoiling, spinning on their heels and scrambling back the way they'd come. They were followed by a surge of water that rapidly filled the tunnel. ‘That should take care of them.'

‘You did that?'

‘A tiny explosive charge in a spot I'd marked earlier, a tunnel about half a mile away, somewhere under Holland Park. They won't be using that way again.' She touched her lips with a finger. ‘I do love explosives. I just don't get the opportunity to use them as much as I'd like to.'

Kingsley wanted to wave a white flag over his head. ‘I need a cup of tea.'

‘F
irstly, Kingsley, I need to apologise.'

Evadne didn't look at him. In a small kitchen that wouldn't have been out of place in Surbiton, she busied herself with the breakfast making, taking an inordinate amount of care measuring out the tea while he sat on a stylish wooden chair.

‘Apologise? For saving me and bringing me here?' He stuck out his feet. ‘For providing me with a pair of distinctly smart Oxfords in my size?'

‘For my display earlier.'

‘Ah. Where you ran out as if you were possessed and single-handedly tried to wipe out a troop of those creatures.'

‘Yes, that's the one. It was quite unlike me.' She paused, kettle in hand. ‘Well, that may not be entirely accurate. I do have an outrageous temper but it's rarely provoked.'

While making a note to himself never to provoke her, Kingsley asked: ‘And these Spawn set you off, so to speak?'

‘They're soulless creatures, underlings, but I'll strike at them until I can get at their masters.'

‘The ones on your list.' Understanding that he might need his caution some time in the future, instead of throwing it to the winds, he tucked it into a pocket for later use before he asked: ‘What list?'

Evadne paused, then studied the kettle for some time, as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. She cleared her throat, put the kettle down and faced him, leaning against the sink and absently twisting the silver ring on her finger. ‘I have a list of those who hurt children.'

‘Oh.'
Inadequacy, thy name is Kingsley
.

She didn't look at him. ‘The Demimonde can be a dreadful place.'

‘So I've gathered. Then again, so can the ordinary world.'

A small, sweet smile made its way to him, quite unlike the boldness he'd thought her way. ‘That's true. I can't abide those who hurt children in the ordinary world, either.'

‘You sound as if you have a cause.'

‘Like those who go about saving fallen women? Or helping old sailors? Perhaps. I like to think that I'm more . . . vigorous than that.'

‘A crusade rather than a cause?'

‘
That
makes it sound rather spiritual.' Kingsley was pleased to hear a more acerbic tone in her voice. ‘I'm rather more down to earth than a crusader. I see myself as a scourge.'

‘A scourge.'

‘I can't abide those who exploit and hurt children. I'm down on them and I'll do what I can to confound them.' She shook her head and her white hair flew. ‘The Immortals are among the worst of them. They've hurt hundreds of children, thousands perhaps, if the stories are correct.'

‘And they've just come back from India.'

‘So it would seem. Wicked creatures.' Evadne fussed about in a cupboard, looking for teacups. Kingsley deliberately didn't notice her dashing a tear from her cheek with her forearm. ‘Immortal and wicked. It's a terrible combination.'

‘How do you know so much about them?'

‘By and large, the denizens of the Demimonde all know about the Immortals, and are appalled by them. They dwell outside even the loose notions of morality that exist here. Over the centuries various groups have arisen to exterminate them, but they've had a singular lack of success.'

‘They're powerful.'

‘Extremely.'

‘And you want to destroy them.'

‘They deserve it.'

This was a new Evadne, one that Kingsley hadn't seen before. Her passion was clear, but Kingsley saw more than that. Was it sorrow behind the anger? It was clearly a tender area, and he didn't feel he had the right to press. They'd only known each other a few days, after all. A harum-scarum few days, but propriety demanded that he respect her pain.

‘This refuge is part of the Demimonde?'

‘I hope you like it,' she said with a gallant effort. ‘It's comfortable and secure, what more could you ask?'

‘A view?'

‘If you want a view I'll find a painting for you.' She pushed her spectacles up on her nose. ‘Since I move between the ordinary world and the Demimonde, I make sure that I have safe places in both. This is my Demimonde refuge. Living quarters, facilities, viewing room, workshop over there.'

Kingsley took a closer look at the chaotic space he'd barely glanced at earlier. Between the power cables, he could now make out beaten, coppery figures that looked like giant insects hung from hooks near the ceiling and a rack displaying dozens of goggles where glass, leather, rubber, brass and silver were flung together in a variety of combinations. The workshop was an Aladdin's Cave with strange and exotic treasures everywhere he looked.

‘Impressive, but where exactly are we?' he asked over his shoulder and, with embarrassment, he heard the plaintiveness in his voice.

‘That's not always a meaningful question in the Demimonde,' Evadne replied, ‘but in this case, it is. We're right underneath the main stadium at the White City. The Olympic Games are going on right over our heads.'

‘Construction in London is a blessing for the Demimonde,' Evadne explained while Kingsley grappled with bewilderment that had assumed the proportions of an airship. ‘When Wren and Hooke were rebuilding London after the Great Fire, many a lair or warren was worked into the developments, above and below ground. Forgotten parts of the city – parts that were supposed to be demolished – were just appropriated and now have thriving communities away from the overworlders. The Olympics has meant a further frenzy of furtive fabrication.' She clapped her hands together and beamed. ‘Oh, I like that!'

‘It's a gem,' Kingsley said, even though he felt as if his world had previously been confined to a narrow stretch of beach – and now the tide had gone out, making it bigger, wider and more mysterious than he'd ever believed.

Evadne held up the teapot. ‘Another cup?'

‘Please.'

‘Oh. I forgot to ask if you take milk. You don't, do you?'

‘What would you say if I did?'

‘I'd have to send one of my myrmidons to find some.'

‘Myrmidons? Some sort of softly spoken professor?'

Evadne pointed the strainer at him. ‘What on earth are you talking about?'

‘Myrmidons. Murmur. Don.'

‘Please,' she said, ‘don't do that again.'

‘I shan't. Unless the appropriate occasion presents itself.'

‘Hmm.' She sipped her tea before returning to her explanation. ‘Do you remember the rat that found your hiding place near the Fleet?'

‘Let me see. It didn't have three eyes, perchance?'

‘That three-eyed rat wasn't a rat at all. It was one of my myrmidons.'

‘Thank you. That makes it all so much clearer.'

‘Kingsley, you're a nice chap but you're going to have to be quicker than that.' She lifted the teapot and poured him a fresh cup.

‘The Myrmidons were ancient Greeks,' he said. He held his teacup in both hands and felt its warmth. ‘Immensely loyal to their king. Or so Homer said.'

‘That's better.' Evadne's approval did something to Kingsley. Something awkward and unsettling but not altogether unwelcome. ‘Since Homer, the term “myrmidon” has been used to describe steadfast and devoted followers.'

‘And your rat is one of those.'

‘My rat is a machine I made. More or less. They're my scouts, my messengers, my general runabouts. Bring your tea and I'll show you.'

Evadne took him back to the viewing room. The banks of glasses were alive. She pointed at the last two. ‘These are my myrmidon sentinels. What their third eye sees is relayed here. I've sent them scouting and it looks as if the Spawn have all retreated.' She tapped her chin with a finger. ‘I think I managed to intercept them far enough away for this refuge still to be secret.'

Kingsley didn't think that any who'd come close enough to Evadne's refuge survived to tell the tale either. She'd been very efficient in dealing with them. ‘I imagine you've blended cinematograph cameras with wireless Marconi technology?'

‘That, Kingsley, was a very educated guess.'

He bowed. ‘Thank you.'

‘Completely wrong, but very educated. I'll let it rest at that.'

For a moment, Kingsley was prepared to gnaw at this bone, but he was happy to leave the matter lie. Once, he would have said his grasp of science and engineering was solid enough, but Evadne was at home in a realm far from his ken. Besides, he had a task he'd left undone. ‘I've been remiss. I haven't thanked you for rescuing me.'

‘I couldn't simply let you disappear like that. Mr Kipling was most upset until I assured him that I'd find you. He went to consult some friends, he told me.'

‘I hope he's safe.'

‘I think Mr Kipling has considerable resources. More than meets the eye.'

‘He's not the only one.'