Shrike (Book 2): Rampant (34 page)

"York," Heinlein says. "Not Edinburgh or a Scottish city."

"Definitely was York."

"Why?"

"I wish I knew. If I had to guess, they're trying to stir up animosity between Scotland and England again, but I really couldn't tell you."

"Any idea of when?" 

"Friday." I remember Edinburgh at the last second. "Possibly Thursday night. The last one they scheduled at the stroke of midnight as a joke."

"A joke."

I don't know what to say to her after that. "Like I said, I don't know what you'll be able to do with it. I don't know what they have access to or what they're planning. It could be a car bomb, or it could be one like they put in Hammerton."

I'm desperately hoping it's not a bomb that can wipe out a five block radius of York. The very thought makes my skin tighten all over my body. 

There's another pause, and then Heinlein clears her throat. "How do you do it, Gwen?"

"What?" 

"Know these things could happen and not know if you'll be able to stop it."

"I just try. Sometimes it's enough."

thirty-four

The next morning passes with excruciating slowness, and not just because I feel like I can't do anything. I've compiled as much information about Britannia's remaining members as I can — Granger, even though she named a few, clammed up when I asked her for more specifics, and I didn't trust her to tell the truth when pressed — and at noon, I send Magda to St Leonard's with the file and tell her to give it to Sergeant Heinlein.

Gina's gone out on one of her errands, leaving me alone.

Trevor rings me shortly after to ask me for an update, and I give it, but really I think he's just lonely. 

I tell him I'd come to visit him, but there are vultures circling my home.

My identity is officially out, and it didn't take them long to find my home. There is a whole herd of reporters camped out on Primrose Crescent, and when I order my third batch of pizza for the week, poor Gina gets blinded with flashbulbs for having the audacity to pay for it without being me.

Spider-Man never had to deal with this shite, did he?

When Magda returns to the house, she almost has to hit a reporter for getting in her way, and that snaps something inside of me. I stride out the door and bellow at the top of my lungs.

"If you so much as lay a finger on my flatmate, you'll lose an arm. You're invading her privacy and mine, and I want to see all of your arses headed in the opposite direction of my door immediately."

"But Gwen, your people want to hear from you!" A pimple-faced reporter in horribly clashing tweed bawls this at me from my lawn, where he's gone and trod on Magda's flowerbed.

"My people? I'm not the bloody Queen. I'm a sodding normal person. Now sod off, the lot of you, or I'll think twice before stopping the next mugger I pounce." In a fit of temporary insanity, I wink at the reporter as if to say,
Don't be daft, of course I'll still stop muggers
.

I'm not sure if it's my commands or my wink, but the herd of press-folk begin to turn and shuffle away from my door. I'm about to go back inside and eat the rest of my pizza when I hear a startled exclamation from someone to my right. It's a woman in her thirties, and her expertly made-up face has drained of colour, leaving her makeup to resemble a shell or a mask.

Something tells me she's not offended by my telling them to sod off.

I hear another exclamation, then a murmur, then the words reach my ears like the crest of a wave.

"Someone bombed York."

I'm at the speaker's side in half a second, sending a startled gasp through the crowd of reporters. "What did you just say?"

"Someone bombed York. They're saying it was a Scottish Air Force plane."

Suddenly the reporters around me aren't here for a scoop or to catch a picture of me in my knickers. They look at me, and I look at them, and we all in that moment understand that this news is an act of war.

For just a moment, that terror overrides everything else in my mind, but when the murmur in the crowd starts again, reality trickles back into my thoughts. 

"Gwen," Magda's voice calls me from inside, urgent. 

I spare one more glance at the reporters, who are now disbursing quickly, my little identity reveal lost in something of much more dangerous magnitude. A couple of them think to snap pictures of my face before I slam my door shut.

"How bad is it?" I ask Magda. The blood in my skull seems to be sloshing between my ears. York. It wasn't supposed to happen until Friday.

I remember Granger's face when I mentioned York, recall her careful
yes
. 

She fucking knew. Or at least suspected it could happen sooner. She let me believe it would be a specific date and didn't gainsay me, and I, like a complete and utter moron, didn't press her. 

Magda pipes up from the table. "It was a 505 kilogram general purpose bomb, detonated on impact when it hit the railway station. Dropped from a Scottish plane that went AWOL during a training exercise."

I feel dizzy. I lean back against the wall, bracing myself, trying not to vomit. "It hit the railway station. How many people are dead?"

Magda's lack of passion somehow steadies me. "They don't know. At least a thousand."

A thousand. 

In the comic books, superheroes always get there before this happens. They're the one flying beside the plane, catching the bomb as it falls, and dropping it into an empty patch of ocean.

I wasn't there. I can't fly like a plane, and I couldn't save those people. 

I hear Heinlein's question again and want to revise my answer. How do I do it?

I don't.

I can't save them.

A couple straggling reporters photograph me in my Shrike outfit, getting into Taog's Smart Car in front of his flat. I've pilfered his keys from his desk. It's probably one of the more absurd superhero images I can imagine, and I want to shout out the window at them.
Guess what? I'm not a fucking comic book.

Instead I just turn the car onto the road and get out of Edinburgh as fast as I can. My mobile navigation system is set for the coordinates Granger gave me. 

I haven't given her subtlety enough credit, but now I'm counting on her using me as her backup plan to kill Abbey. She would know that when I got the news I would be furious. If she wants Abbey dead enough, I'm banking on the hunch I have that she would rather I do it than no one.

Too late I see the pattern in Britannia's week. Distract and hit, distract and hit. The riot police shooting, then the bomb at the safe house. Too late I realise that it very well could have been Granger who outed me. Distract me and the press with the breaking news of my identity, have everyone looking at a fluffy superhero in spandex while Britannia somehow get a Scottish plane to drop a bomb on York.

I don't know how they did it, and at this point I don't care.

The drive to Pitlochry passes in a blur. The wind that buffets the car on the Forth Road Bridge. The snow on the hills outside Perth. The winter in the hills is a reminder of what a cruel and inhospitable place Scotland can be. I'm going to give John Abbey the biggest unwelcome party he's ever seen.

Even though I'm a day and a half early to Granger's plan, I still follow through with part of it, stashing Taog's car away on a back road and taking the rest of the trip to the lodge on foot. I feel a fierce surge of triumph that the lodge is precisely where Granger said it would be, a smattering of cars out front showing that there are people inside. Still, it could just be a wealthy winter hunting party. I run at the lodge from one corner and leap as high as I can. The magnetic pull around me seems to share the boiling in my veins, and it lifts me upward farther than I could have jumped before. 

It doesn't make me feel any better, landing on the third storey of this lodge. My dubious powers of flight are not unhelpful, but they didn't do anything for the people of York who expected to be taking a simple train journey today.

I am, however, able to carefully jump from window to window, not unlike a bird. When I find one that's unlocked, my heart gives a little squeeze. I check the rest on the top floor just to be certain, careful at each window to watch out for any human beings, but I see none, though I can hear the tinkle of classical music flirting with the breeze. 

I go through the unlocked window, shutting it carefully behind me. The nice thing about having superpowers is that any window is an exit if you run at it fast enough.

Granger said they meet downstairs in a large salon, so I head out into the hallway. The floors are polished parquet, oiled so brightly that I can see my reflection as I walk, my leather boots making no noise. 

The decor exudes warmth and class, from the tasteful landscapes that line the walls to the understated sconces between them. New money tries to impress you with diamond rings. Old money pats your cheek and gives you a glimpse of cufflinks that cost more than your annual salary.

This is old money.

I find the staircase halfway down the corridor and carefully make my way down, listening every few steps for any sign of people. I hear voices in the distance, but they sound as if they're behind closed doors or solid walls. Nothing close enough to me to cause alarm. 

The place seems deserted. No butlers or maids, no staff at all that I can see. That's how I know Granger wasn't fooling me with this. In my anger, I forgot to check her location. I pause in an alcove and check the tracer. 

It says she's within fifty feet of me. Of course. She would come directly here after hearing the news about York. Again, I revise what happened in the loft. She had to have known about the plan, but someone whose son's being held hostage isn't exactly going to have top level security clearance in cultish secret societies. I poke my head out of the alcove, walking toward the dot. The app is accurate to within five feet, so she has to be in this corridor. It's a long corridor, but not that long.

I find her in an alcove just like the one I've vacated. Her back is to me, and I get the satisfaction of grabbing Rosamund Granger by the throat for the second time in a week. She lets out a muffled grunt as I lift her easily off the ground, one hand pressing into her solar plexus even as the other lifts her by the throat.

Desperation fills her eyes, and she motions wildly at me. I look behind me, expecting to see someone watching, but no one is there. I set her down, but pin her against the wall with my arm. 

"Fuck. You." For a moment I think my hand will betray me, that the red haze in front of my eyes will veil my thoughts and I'll wake five minutes from now with a blue-faced woman at my feet. I make my fingers unclench enough to let her go. 

"Let me kill him," she says in a whisper. She points to the door about fifteen feet from us. "Throw me in prison after, but let me end this."

I hesitate for a moment, deciding whether I want to strip her revenge from her, knock her out, and finish Abbey myself. 

Maybe it's that I think cold blooded murder is slightly more excusable if someone does it for you. 

I nod.

After a moment, Granger walks in front of me on unsteady legs that gain certainty with every step closer to the door.

She opens it, and the two of us walk in to face John Abbey.

He's much as I expected, dressed a couture suit with the exact kind of cufflinks I'd just thought of. They look like they were hand smelted and moulded by someone's fire-impervious fingertips. In the light of the fire, they seem to glow.

For once, he is the perfect image of a super villain. He turns to face us, a glint of a smile showing in flickering light that filters through a series of carved screens. His climber's body is chiseled like an Adonis, and the suit seems to be just as chiseled around it. 

He's not surrounded by cronies and flunkies. He's alone.

A muffled thud sounds through the room, and John Abbey collapses on the floor. Neither Granger nor I have moved, and we both stare at the crumpled form of the man we came to kill.

"Hello, Mum." 

thirty-five