Shrike (Book 2): Rampant (24 page)

I already know what Trevor would say if I brought this to him. That I'm being paranoid and overly suspicious. But it seems like far too much of a coincidence that everyone at Gu Bràth has gotten ill just when Granger's stepped up her killing spree and there are more Gu Bràth folks on her list than off it.

"Do you reckon Taog's the worst off?" I ask suddenly. 

Bronwyn starts to nod, then pauses. "Tasha's pretty bad," she says. "She rang yesterday to say she wouldn't be in to help me with a database I'm working on."

"What database?"

The woman gives me a sidelong glance. "It's just a list of our membership. Who's active, who's lapsed, et cetera."

Lists everywhere. "Does anyone else have access to that list?"

She looks startled by the question, but shakes her head after a beat. "We keep a closed network here and Tasha makes sure all our information is encrypted. Why? Do you think someone would use it for something?"

If Bronwyn is on Gina's list, she must have some sort of knowledge about Britannia, or she wouldn't have been included. "Well, I'm no talking about the Conservative party using it to knock on your doors and try to recruit you."

She gives me a long look. "You said your name is Gwen Maule."

Shite. Here I've been asking questions without considering the implications. "Aye, that's me."

She doesn't say anything, but gives me a full once over, head to toe. "Well. Taog trusts you, anyway. What are you trying to find out?"

It's a good question, and one I don't much have an answer for. My silence goes on too long, and she looks at me closer. "Anything," I say finally. 

"Well, if you think of something more specific, I'll be here today and tomorrow doing work." I know a dismissal when I hear one, and she turns away, heading to the water cooler. She fills a Yes Scotland mug with water and disappears back down the corridor.

I show myself out.

twenty-four

I feel the need to get high above the world.

Instead of going home, I head to Arthur's Seat and climb the path to the top. In the middle of winter, there aren't many people around. No tourists and few locals care to brave the wind and the drizzle on a Saturday better spent inside with a warm cup of tea and some ginger biscuits. It's there I sit for some time, looking out over the city. 

The last time I was up here, the streets below were full of people and candles for Glyn Burns's vigil. Over a million people gathered here from all over Scotland and even Northern England. One of our only truly beloved politicians had met an ignominious end, martyred by Britannia. I was the one who found him. I came here, to Arthur's Seat, the fabled and alleged site of Camelot, to escape the press of the crowds. It was here I realised where Britannia had hidden their bomb. Here I watched the people of my city pulse through the streets like living blood in the veins of a nation.

Now it's grey and quiet, with naught but the wind and the pat pat pat of rain on earth.

I don't expect any epiphanies today, not about Britannia and not about anything. 

But I do want to use the solitude to test myself. 

Rising from where I sit, I survey the land around me. There's a wide open space surrounded by my city. There's no snow; the temperature has hovered above freezing, leaving us only soggy drizzle and grey skies for most of the winter. 

I bunch my legs beneath me and jump as high as I can.

My body leaves the ground, and I feel the air rush past my face. I don't have a gauge for how high I get; there's no frame of reference for me up here, but the ground recedes beneath me in seeming slow motion. For a split second, I wonder what would happen if I didn't stop my upward momentum, if the sky came closer and the ground vanished. If I floated away into the clouds, through the atmosphere. Would I asphyxiate, and how quickly? 

But I reach the apex of my jump and look down, feeling for a moment like I could hover here. Indeed, when I feel the tug of gravity again like a magnet pulling me back to earth, I feel a moment of regret mingled with discordant relief.

I'm not sure if it's only my perception, but I do feel that my return to the grass takes longer than it ought to. When my feet do touch down, I jump again. I bounce around like that for several minutes, seeing my range and how high it is I can jump consistently. I wonder then if anyone can see me, like a human-sized jumping bean in a moon bounce. I don't see anyone, but that doesn't mean no one is watching.

As I jump, I feel like my leaps get higher, like I'm learning to control the push off from the ground, to use my strength to propel me up into the air. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm able to jump almost thirty feet straight up. I've always been able to jump the twenty or so feet from my garden to my roof without much trouble.

I can't tell if my perception of my jumping is skewed by the desperate yearning I have to fly.

There. I said it. I want to fly.

I want my body to be able to soar through the air. I want it to take me into the sky, where I can see the world laid out beneath me. I want to fly like Hamish could, to flit from perch to perch without my feet having to touch ground. I want to know the fierce joy of swooping down on prey, like I did the other night when I rescued Anthony from Johnny. I want to be able to take the Johnny's of the world down before they even see me coming. 

I hit the ground and break into a sprint, running as fast as I can. 

And it's fast. David's timed me before. I've broken the world record for running a hundred meters, and no one knows it. I can run it in less than five seconds. 4.68, to be exact. And that was months ago. 

I throw myself into the air, aiming as much for height as for distance. The chill winter wind whips past me, and I revel in the exultation of my feet far from the ground. 

I never want to come down.

I'm still hurtling forward, twenty feet off the ground. On impulse I twist my body and alter my course. It costs me momentum, but I manage to turn right in midair. Something pulls at my middle with the turn. Something that evades me like a scent on the breeze. It throws me off, and I hit the ground and roll. I come to a halt and pull myself to my feet. I'm wet, but for the first time in weeks — maybe months — I feel a daft grin spread across my face. 

I felt it. The same pull I remember from jumping from building to building, when I went farther than I had before. There's something new in me, and I can sense it.

I turn back the way I just came and churn my legs into a sprint again, launching my body as high as I can. There, in the air, with the wind rushing around me, I listen for the pull in my middle. 

However daft it may be, I close my eyes. 

The pull seems to come from all around me, from the ground, the air, the deepest parts of me. I feel for a moment like I'm suspended in a giant web, and if I could just figure out which strings to pull, there would be no limit to where I could go.

Time seems to slow, much as it did before. 

It's not just time that's slowed. 

I feel no wind, no ground beneath my feet. No sudden impact or jarring movement.

Stillness.

I open my eyes.

The ground is thirty feet below me.

I am not moving.

I am surrounded by air.

I am surrounded by air, and I have no fucking idea if I can get down.

For a moment, a panicked giggle begins to rise in my throat, and I close my eyes again, trying to regain the calm and the new sense I've found by closing off one of the regular ones. I feel it again, the seeming web around me. It feels not like a spider's web, because it's three dimensional. Strands seem to exist through and around me. I don't know what I'm feeling. I lean forward and tumble upside down, still suspended in the air.

My hair dangles down, and blood rushes to my head.

Peter Parker kisses this way? How?

I open my eyes again, concentrating hard on the new sense around me. I imagine the threads of the web like a harness and a zip-line in one. I level my body, feet righted in a downward direction, head up. The blood in my face cools in the chilly mist.

The pull I feel is in all directions and none, like I'm the wrong pole of a magnet inside of me that's been turned against the earth itself. As soon as I think it, I feel something shift within me, and the ground rushes up to meet me. 

I hit it with a thud, tumbling to the side in a clumsy roll.

Once righted and standing once more, I feel for the pull. There is, deep in my core. I try to remember what Frost said about the serum, that he used essentially smart microbes melded with nanobots. Like microscopic cyborgs in bright orange liquid, dumped into a bottle of Irn Bru. He said they were supposed to seek out weaknesses and repair them, teaching Sophie's T-cells how to combat the cancer within her, healing her bone marrow and making healthy new cells to replace those the cancer had destroyed. In me, a healthy adult woman, they did something more.

Maybe I had lingering vestiges of Hamish's DNA on me. Maybe I forgot to wash my hands after handling a feather and popped a dirty digit in my mouth. Maybe, maybe, maybe. All I know is that Frost's serum worked on me in an entirely unexpected way. Maybe this is the serum trying to give me wings. 

I really have had Magda checking my shoulder blades for feathers. Maybe that was too much to ask. Maybe to give me flight, the serum had to do something else. The pull I feel, the web, the strings, all of it — maybe it is magnetic. Maybe something in the serum gave me an ability to manipulate the magnetic fields around me. There's a simple way to test that; if I send a compass haywire by touching it, that'll be a hint.

Or maybe I'm just pulling a Dumbo and the bronzed feather of Hamish's that hangs around my neck is the thing that's allowing me to dangle in midair.

As much as I try, I can't seem to make myself hover without jumping. Whatever force I can manipulate seems to need a bit of a boost before I can really use it.

There's a large stone drop off at the edge of Arthur's Seat. 

I run for it at full tilt. I don't bother to jump when I hit the edge, just run right off it. I feel the drop and the pull of the forces inside me, slowing my descent. 

My feet touch down, a hundred feet below where I left the ground, and this time I don't trip.

Thank you, Edmund Frost, you wanker.

You've given me the sky.

My heart feels full almost to bursting as I make my way home. Elated, effervescent. 

But it doesn't take long for me to come back to earth. With my feet firmly back on the ground, I hurry home. It's been almost two hours, and as much as I wish I could crow to Taog about my newfound abilities, he's been lying at my flat on a sofa, coughing blood while I've been bouncing around Arthur's Seat.

The thought is sobering and chastising, and I double my pace.

The thought that makes me want to break into a run, though, feels like déjà vu. 

I've left Taog alone with Magda, and I've yet to tell him how I really feel about him.

I let my parents die without knowing how much I cared.

I can't let that happen again.

Taog has become a mainstay of my life. His presence has strengthened my spine when I thought I would crumble. I know I've been the same for him. But how much time have we wasted these last few months, just surviving, supporting, existing? We've forgotten to live in the face and fear of death. 

I think of our one real kiss, one that happened mere moments before I thought that bomb would go off and splinter my city into ashes and rubble. I kissed him because I thought there would never be another chance. 

What I want to do now is kiss him because there will be more chances, many more chances. Chances to kiss longer and harder and softer, with passion and tenderness and sleepiness and love. Chances to feel his hands on my body and mine on his. 

What I want is him, whole and well. 

I break into a run on the streets of Edinburgh, careful to keep my pace to something resembling that of a normal human being, ignoring the fact that I'm in jeans and a t-shirt instead of track pants.

I have to get to him before all the shite hits the conspiracies. 

My mind feels awake for the first time in ages. My body feels aware of everything around me, the tiny pressures of the air, the slap of my shoes on the pavements. 

Something kindles inside of me. Something new and fierce and alive.

If I can fly, what else can I do? Maybe find the leaders of Britannia and drop them off the Forth Road Bridge. Maybe save the remaining members of the list. Maybe see Magda laugh again. 

I don't know what it is stirring inside my breast, but it just might be hope.

twenty-five