The Glass God (49 page)

There was a gentle tinkling of glass. Sharon grabbed Kelly by the sleeve and pulled her through the wall as the glass god’s body disintegrated, tumbled down the stairwell and reassembled on the landing below them. The air spun with glass.

In a moment of displacement, Sharon had pulled Kelly out halfway between floors. They fell the last two and a half feet, Kelly landing with a thump of knee and bone, Sharon staggering onto all fours. Behind them, the wall buckled and shook with the impact of the glass god’s fists.

“Where now?” gasped Kelly.

Sharon looked, and found no easy answers.

“Obviously I’d be honoured to die fighting nobly for you and your cause,” said the Alderman. “But if you have any useful advice on the most productive manner in which I could heroically lay down my life for the sake of others, it’d be greatly appreciated…⁠”

Sharon stared into Kelly’s smiling, breathless face. “You know, I get as how this isn’t a great time to ask, but are you
ever
actually kidding?”

Kelly opened her mouth to answer, and the door at the end of the office burst open, spinning off its hinges. A roaring cloud of glass filled the room as the god burst upon them.

Sharon squeaked, grabbed hold of Kelly and pulled her back through the wall they’d just breached. As they staggered out onto the staircase, she looked up, into the face of the small, skinny girl in a small, skinny floral-patterned dress. “Her!” Sharon yelled. “She’s controlling the glass guy!”

Kelly lunged towards her, but the girl gave a shriek and threw up her hands, and a burst of crackling hot air slammed the Alderman and Sharon away from her. Finding herself and Kelly trapped between the girl and the god, Sharon groaned, and pulled Kelly back through the wall, onto the floor they’d just departed.

“Oh, Ms Li,” the Alderman exclaimed, “thrilling as this is, I don’t feel our situation is improving!”

Sharon looked around. Empty space, empty floors, empty walls, no weapons – not even a handy sign of the cross – to hand. Then she saw something grey pass quickly across the windows outside. “Gimme the phone.”

“Are you sure? I’d hate to…⁠”

“The phone!”

Kelly handed over the mobile to Sharon, who said, “Okay, so you go for the girl.”

“This…⁠”

The glass god burst back into the hollow room, still reassembling his component spinning parts. Sharon turned to him, waving the phone over her head.

“Hello!” she sang out. “Found me!”

The creature fixed its eyes on Sharon and strode towards her, the last few pieces melting back into its form as it advanced. Sharon grabbed Kelly and pushed her back through the wall, into the stairwell, her fingers parting from Kelly’s frame as the Alderman reappeared on the other side of the wall. Then she darted back, waving the phone at the glass creature. “Come on!” she sang out. “Come to Mama!”

The god opened its hands, a great spinning vortex of splinters spreading between its fingers. Clutching the mobile phone, Sharon grinned, turned and, slipping easily now into the shadow walk, she ran.

She ran across the office floor, away from the walls, away from the doors, and, head first, out through the nearest window.

Chapter 85

Choose Your Battles Wisely

Some four floors above the place where Sharon Li had chosen to plunge to an almost certain death, things were not going well for Rhys and Mr Roding. It wasn’t just that Mr Roding’s skin was falling away in grey sagging sheets, or that Rhys was beginning to feel drowsy; it was that their opponent appeared unperturbed by everything the druid and necromancer could throw at him. Spells which would have eaten the flesh of lesser creatures, enchantments to addle the minds of all but a genius devil, he absorbed, considered and shook off like a dog drying itself after a paddle. It wasn’t simply frustrating; it should have been,
must
have been, impossible.

And yet there was Mr Roding, his limbs giving out, every gram of strength sapping from him as he deflected another spell, sagging to his knees. Only a few strands of hair still clung to his head; his eyeballs were white spheres sagging from their sockets. He had suddenly become a man of more than a hundred years; and the stench of decay was gone from his flesh, because all the flesh that was left was his own, and it was ruined. Rhys was too late to deflect another reverberation of power as it slammed into him, ripping through his defences like a tiger through silk, sending wave after wave of pain through his nervous system. He toppled to the floor, his body locked in agony.

Above him he felt Arthur moving, and looked up to see the face of the gravekeeper. Rhys tried to speak, but no sound made it through his closed-off throat. He tried to move, and only the toes on his right foot seemed willing to obey. He tried to think, but the thoughts came too many to be understood.

“You,” breathed Arthur, his voice resonating through the glass shell. “Never appreciated.”

What it was he hadn’t appreciated, Rhys wasn’t sure. But it seemed to matter enough to Arthur for the wizard to raise his right hand, and to reach with it
through
the glass shell, which rippled around him like liquid to let his fingers pass. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out something wrapped in velvet. It was long, thin. It gleamed as Arthur unwrapped it. A glass blade, the same size, the same shape, the same bite of magic on the air – a copy of the rusted dagger of Old Man Bone, shimmering in Arthur’s hands.

“Don’t worry,” murmured Arthur, as Rhys struggled to fight, to scream. “You won’t feel it.”

“Oi. Squishy.”

The voice was faint, worn out. It belonged to Sammy. The goblin was swaying with exhaustion. His face was bloody, his skin covered in dust, the green hoodie torn in a dozen places to reveal knobbly bone and leathery flesh. He blinked bleary-eyed at Arthur, and coughed dust, a tiny hacking sound from a tiny pair of lungs.

“Little thing,” breathed the wizard. “Aren’t you
cute
.”

Sammy’s eyes narrowed. “Me,” he wheezed. “Second… greatest… shaman… ever!”

So saying, he dragged his arms upwards, and then down, fast.

Sammy vanished.

So did Rhys, Mr Roding, Gretel, Kevin and the Aldermen.

And so did the floor.

Chapter 86

Take the Chances Life Gives You

If Kelly was surprised to be pushed bodily through a wall by Sharon, before the shaman herself vanished to face off against a presumably indestructible glass god, her astonishment was nothing compared to that of the pale-faced girl in the floral dress who now found herself opposite the Alderman.

The two women stared at each other, mouths hanging open. Then the girl shrieked and raised her hands again, to shape the beginning of a spell. With the sense of priorities that she considered essential to a good PA when organising a disorganised life, Kelly swung forward with her fist, and caught the girl squarely on the chin. The girl flopped backwards with a shriek of indignation. Before she could get back up, Kelly threw herself upon her, drove her knee into the girl’s chest, wrapped her fingers round her throat, pushed her head back against the stairs and hissed, “One move and I’ll pull your windpipe out through your nose!”

The girl froze. So did Kelly, surprised that this anatomically implausible notion had crossed her mind, let alone her lips, and a little disappointed by its biological inaccuracies.

Riding the moment while it was still high, she added, “Who are you?”

The girl didn’t answer.

Behind her, Kelly felt something move. She didn’t have to look to know what. The glow of the glass god, golden-white, filled the stairwell. The magic rolling off it was palpable, heavy, a force waiting to be unleashed. Kelly kept her eyes fixed on the girl’s. “If it touches me,” she breathed, “I’ll kill you. And I don’t think that would be good for anyone. You’ll be dead, and I think that means it’ll be dead, too, and I’ll be dead. And when the crime scene investigators come to piece all this back together they’ll be very confused, and I don’t feel that’s fair to them, as they’re just trying to do their job. Besides,” she tightened her fingers against the girl’s throat, “⁠… we want an amicable solution, don’t we? So, hi, I’m Kelly, I’m the Midnight Mayor’s personal assistant. Who are you?”

“V-V-Victoria,” the girl wheezed.

“Hi there, Victoria, lovely to meet you. Sorry about the windpipe through your nose business, it’s really not the image I like to give but, then again, one must adapt, mustn’t one? Now, this glass gentleman behind me,” she murmured, still keeping her eyes fixed on Victoria’s face, anywhere, in fact, but on the creature at her back. “You’re controlling him, aren’t you?”

Silence. But, then, the girl didn’t really need to answer. She was young, Kelly decided – far too young to be playing with elemental constructs – possibly only fifteen years old, and even as she crumpled her face into an expression of bravery, the tears were welling up. “Would you mind making him back off a little?” said Kelly. “Only my feng is getting a little un-shuied and…⁠”

A crash caused her to look up. So did Victoria, her eyes rolling back in her skull to try and see the source of the disruption. It came from a seven-foot troll bursting through the doors upstairs, Sammy tucked under an arm, Mr Roding slung across a shoulder. Neither party looked fit to provide their own forward momentum, so Gretel supplied the effort for both. Shuddering down the stairs in tow staggered a bloody, groggy-eyed Rhys, one arm thrown across Kevin’s shoulders.

Kelly sighed. “Please hold that thought,” she murmured at Victoria, and felt the girl’s throat contract and expand beneath her fist. Gretel swung round the corner, saw Kelly, saw Victoria, then saw the glass creature towering behind them. The troll stopped so suddenly that Rhys and Kevin slammed straight into her back. Bleary-eyed, Sammy raised his head from beneath Gretel’s arm, took in the situation and gave a dry cackle.

“
Stuffed
,” he wheezed. “Buggery.”

“Friends!” exclaimed Kelly. “As you can see, you’ve arrived in the middle of a…⁠”

Above them, the wall burst apart, raining mortar and concrete down the stairwell. Arthur Huntley, his glass skin blazing, fire dancing round his fingers, had lost patience with doors, people and the world.

His voice roared down the stairwell. “YOU CANNOT RUN!”

“Uh, can we, like, totally ignore that?” squeaked Kevin.

Kelly turned back to Victoria. “Hi there,” she breathed. “This is shockingly unethical, but would you mind calling for your dad?” She pressed harder into Victoria’s throat, causing the girl’s eyes to bulge. “Now, please?”

“Daddy!” whimpered the girl, her voice wavering up the stair. “
Daddy!
”

From above, abrupt silence.

“Hello there, Mr Huntley!” called out Kelly, gesturing at the rest of Magicals Anonymous to press around her. “I’m so embarrassed to do this, but I fear that unless you back off, I shall have to kill your daughter.”

Silence.

“It’s not something I usually do,” she went on, “and I suspect my employers would frown on it, were they aware of the situation. But as it is, they aren’t, and so, you see, I really will.”

Silence.

At her back, the glass god swayed, fingers twitching at his side.

Then, “Vicky?” Arthur’s voice drifted down, softer now, more human.

“Daddy?”

“You’re a good girl.”

Pinned to the stairs, Victoria smiled even as the tears ran down her face. “Yes, Daddy!”

“You’ve done very well, sweetheart.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

A moment, a pause. Kelly listened to it, and perhaps heard something in the silence, an intake of breath; for her eyes widened.

Then Arthur’s voice rolled down the staircase. “Make me proud.”

Victoria smiled, and closed her eyes. At Kelly’s back the glass god raised its head and opened its mouth, even as Rhys called out a warning. Fragments of glass were splitting off from its skin, from its innards, its glass fingers, filling the void between its glass lips, jagged great bursts of silicon flooding the air like a sandstorm. It reached out for Kelly, the glass exploding, tearing through the air and there was…

A very soft crunch.

A slight crack.

A gentle tinkling.

Shards of glass tumbling to the floor, spinning, falling. Fragments tinkled down the gap between the stairs, cascading end over end, a crystal rainfall. The light behind the glass god’s skin went out, fading like the last red filament in a blown bulb. His head leant forward. Its weight tore at the neck. The neck began to split, to crack. Dragged by its own mass, it tipped forward, tumbled forward, tumbled down. The head fell from the body, and bounced away; cracks in the neck, where it had separated, spread with a slow ripping throughout the god’s frame, splitting each arm in two, its chest into five, severing its legs at the groin, shattering its knees, sundering its glassy feet apart. With a heave of breaking bonds and a sheer of sliding parts, the glass god disintegrated.

Kelly stood slowly. Beneath her, Victoria’s head was turned to one side, eyes open, staring at nothing. There was blood on her throat, and blood on Kelly’s hands. The black talons of the Alderman-dragon were glistening at the end of Kelly’s silver-coated fingers.

Silence, apart from the gentle falling of broken glass.

A sound.

It started soft, a bare gasp on the air.

A tiny exhalation, which became trapped in the vocal chords of a stranger for just a moment, before passing on by.

Another.

Breath which could not stop itself from being breathed.

Another again.

Kelly wasn’t smiling. “Run,” she murmured.

The others stood, frozen.

“Run,” she repeated again, so soft, so quiet, and this time they didn’t need telling. Kevin ran, and the others followed, Gretel carrying the goblin and the necromancer, Rhys staggering behind, Kelly at their rear.

A cry in the hollow stairwell.

It bounced from wall to wall, rose up to the summit and echoed down seventy floors to the earth below. It started as a choke which became a sob which became a scream, a scream of grief, a scream of vengeance, a scream of retribution and regret. And tearing before it like clouds before a storm, they ran, feet crackling over broken glass.