The Glass God (50 page)

Chapter 87

Victoria

Daddy has always been good to me.

Always looked after me.

They said he did something wrong – or something that the others said was wrong, even though it wasn’t – and Daddy stopped being a wizard, and they took his powers, and tattooed runes into his skin and burnt scars into his bones so he couldn’t be strong any more, so he couldn’t look after me and he said,

Now you must be strong, too, Vicky.

The others took Daddy’s power, but not his knowledge. So I learnt.

When I was seven I summoned my first efrit from the red-hot remnants of a tungsten lens. When I was ten I ensorcelled the minds of Daddy’s enemies, of all the people who’d done him wrong. They said that I was too young, that it was…

… dangerous…

… did damage, that I’d see and hear…

… but Daddy said I was special, that I’d make him proud, and he spent every day with me, and he’d never spent time with me before, because he was so busy, but now he did and I wanted to do better

even when the voices were loud

and my head hurt

and things talked to me in my sleep

but he said be strong

be strong

be brave

try harder

And he said, make a glass elemental for me and it was hard, it was so hard but in the end we found a way and I gave it

my blood

fed it on me

but Daddy said he is a god and people will worship him

but shush it must always be our secret

because there are people who hate us

people who will never understand

so try

a little bit

harder

and give it your soul.

So I did.

I just want to make him proud.

Chapter 88

Every Journey Must Have an End

It was Kevin who collapsed, which caught the others by surprise. He fell, and rolled, and hit the floor, and they dragged him through the door into another empty space, an office waiting to be filled, and he lay there and wheezed and pulled his hand back from his belly and there was blood, cold red blood, seeping through his clothes.

“Be honest with me,” he whimpered. “Does it look like there’s…
dirt
in the wound?”

Rhys collapsed onto the floor beside him. He didn’t know how many stairs they’d descended, how far they’d run, the roar of Arthur Huntley at their back, his grief and his magic blazing in the air, but now they could run no further. “Well,” said Kelly encouragingly, as she sank onto the floor by the vampire, “the good news is that you haven’t been staked through the heart.”

“And the bad news?” gasped the vampire. “Be honest, babes.”

“The bad news is that sometimes death
is
the easy way out.”

Kevin stared at her, goggle-eyed. “What kind of fucking bad news is that?” he shrieked.

“Just trying to find something positive here.”

“I’m feeling a little drowsy…⁠” offered Rhys through a profound, antihistamine-fed yawn.

Gretel carefully deposited her charges on the floor. Sammy lay on his back, staring up at nothing much; Mr Roding just lay, his withered flesh scarcely moving; the only sign of life was the press and shrink of his ribs against bare, shrunken skin. The troll considered her companions, then gave a great shrug and marched back towards the door.

“Where are you going?” exclaimed Kelly.

“I intend to hold the wizard gentleman off for as long as I can,” replied Gretel. “So that you may yet escape.”

A roar filled the staircase, and a crash of glass. No one had dared look back as they fled, but neither could anyone deny that Arthur Huntley was getting closer. “That’s really sweet of you,” said Kelly, “and I think we all appreciate it, don’t we, team?”

This was confirmed by a groan of approval from Rhys.

“However,” went on Kelly, as a flare of light from the stairwell briefly stabbed through the door, “while I am all in favour of noble gestures in suitable causes, the fact that we shall
all
soon be eliminated by an enraged and grief-stricken wizard is going to make it hard for anyone to report back on the nobility of gestures made. Thus, arguably, undermining any such gesture.”

Gretel thought about this. “But… it doesn’t have to be
known
, to be noble, does it?”

“No, of course not; I’m just saying, if we’re all about to be obliterated into little pieces, no one will notice.”

“But that’s a terrible thing to say!” declared the troll. “Why would anyone do anything noble if it was all about the…⁠?”

Behind her, the door burst open. So did a large part of the wall. Arthur Huntley, his feet barely touching the ground, his glass skin smeared with blood, blazed, too bright and too hot to look at. He didn’t speak, didn’t scream, didn’t make any noise or draw any signs, merely threw his arms out towards the gathered refugees and unleashed a wall of rolling golden glass that tore through the air like razored locusts. Gretel threw her hands up to cover her head, a futile gesture before the moving wall of debris. Kelly raised a hand in an attempt at a shield, which buckled even before it was raised. Mr Roding simply closed his eyes. It was, Rhys reflected, if nothing else a reasonably quick way to die.

The glass sliced through the air, spreading out thick and wide to encompass the room, sheering straight towards the Magicals…

… and burst apart before their eyes into a thousand motes of dust. An invisible wall curved up before the frozen crowd, pulverising the blades and needles of glass before they could strike, and smashing them into a harmless drizzle which trickled to the floor. Stunned, Mr Roding opened his eyes, his thin tongue tasting the air like a lizard. Kelly’s mouth dropped open. Sammy sniggered, though even he couldn’t say why, and Arthur Huntley, enraged, turned towards the source of this new frustration, who said,

“You guys know the lifts are working?”

Rhys coaxed his head round to see the source of this intrusion.

Emerging from the entrance to the lift were two shapes. One, shorter than the other, had straight black hair, dyed with streaks of blue. She stood, glowering at Arthur Huntley with almost matronly disapproval.

The other figure, who seemed barely able to stand, had dark brown hair, pale skin that threatened to freckle at the least exposure to sun and eyes bluer than blue. He swayed a little, and, as he raised his right hand in greeting, a pair of crosses, carved in the skin, shimmered with a flicker of blue, burning blood.

“So we thought about the stairs,” he added, reaching out with his left arm to grab support off the figure by his side. “But did I mention… lifts?”

Rhys looked from one face to the other, and found himself smiling.

“So, yeah,” said Matthew Swift, sorcerer, electric angel, 127th Midnight Mayor, protector of the city, guardian of the night. “Basically… hi.”

Chapter 89

Spread Your Wings and Soar

There had been a moment, many, many moments ago, when Sharon Li held a mobile phone close to her heart, turned and ran.

She had run from a glass god, run from an angry wizard and his daughter, run from danger, destruction and despair. In the process, and with a not insignificant pang of guilt, she’d run from her friends.

But mostly, what she’d done was run straight through the nearest window, and out onto the empty air.

And say what you would for the Shard, there was a
lot
of air around it to be empty.

For a moment, this seemed a very silly idea. Her feet kicked at nothing, her head tilted down, her legs swung up, her belly leapt into her throat, her throat crawled into her nose, her spine retreated towards her knees, and all things which had been in proportion, spun and twisted and for a moment she thought, this was it, this was how she was going to die, what a bloody stupid cock-up and what would her mother think? Her parents would never know, never understand, she’d just be a footnote, a squashed footnote, an empty coffin in a muddy grave and the graves would crack and the plague would burst up from the earth and Old Man Bone would walk the streets in the pestilent fumes of the dead and no one would stop the glass god and the Midnight Mayor would wither and perish, his mind destroyed and scattered among the telephone wires and it would all be her fault and the bingo night would never get organised and Rhys would be…

And something grabbed her under the armpits and tried to pull her arms out by their sockets.

Where there had been one body, two bodies now tumbled through the air. Great wings were beating against the roaring wind, trying to get leverage against total nothingness. Acid burst from Sharon’s stomach into her mouth, her eyes rolled in her skull and claws bit into the soft skin under her arm as, with a great heave of muscle and effort, spinning round and round in a vortex of her own beating wings, Sally the banshee caught Sharon as she fell.

Even the most aerodynamically graceful creatures could not have sustained the balance of shaman and banshee in full flight for long, and Sally’s wings stretched and strained as she beat furiously against the air, trying to hold Sharon up. Forward or up or side to side was impossible; but like a parachute Sally spread her wings to hold Sharon in her descent, and instead they twisted round and round like a hula hoop, rushing towards the ground, great blasts of air pressing against Sharon’s face as Sally fought all the laws of nature. The pavement spun up beneath them like water up from a plughole, spinning, filling the world; a swing to one side and Sharon’s legs slammed hard against the side of the Shard; a swing in the opposite direction and it seemed they would land in the river, straight down into the rushing waters of high tide. Sally’s mouth opened in a silent scream, but there must have been a sound since Sharon felt her ears pop, her nose run, her eyes water at the ultrasound shrill of effort that burst uncontrollably from Sally’s lungs as, with a final heave of leather and claw, the banshee flopped the last few metres to the ground.

They dropped, a tangled mass of shaman and banshee, limb struggling against limb. Sharon felt her knees graze, her arms graze, every part that could scrape, slam or jolt fulfilling its mission with an indignant cry of bone and skin against hard, fast earth, and she rolled, pressing herself into the ground for fear that the ground might try to go away again, while Sally tumbled across the paving stones beside her and, with a gasp, they were still, and they were down.

They lay there, each trying to breathe, trying to control racing hearts, shaking wings, the urge to vomit. Sharon half turned her head and saw Sally, her wings shuddering against the ground, her arms curled into her chest, like a cripple cradling broken limbs. “You okay?” she wheezed.

Sally nodded, and did no more.

“Thanks.”

Another nod, a flash of fish-fang smile.

Still not moving, Sharon carefully unwound her fingers. In her right hand, gripped so hard it hurt to unclench, she held Hacq’s mobile phone. The screen said:

1 New Message
 

From: Unknown
 

Message: HELP ME!!!
 

Groaning, she rolled onto her hands and knees. Her left leg gave out, and for a moment she lay, face-down, wondering if this was it. Next to her, Sally stirred, with a rustle of concern. Sharon tried again, made it to her hands and knees and then, groggy, nauseous, onto both feet. “Can you fly?” she asked Sally.

The banshee thought about it, then shook her head. She scrabbled for her whiteboard, usually on its string round her neck; but somewhere in the chaos of their descent she’d lost it. A shaking claw, instead, scratched at a paving stone.

Muscle pulled. Take-off unlikely. Very very sorry.
 

Sharon managed a ragged smile. “Don’t worry about it,” she wheezed. “I’m totally on this.”

1 New Message
 

From: Unknown
 

Message: GET ME TO US NOW!
 

She cradled the phone tight again to her body. “Right,” she wheezed. “I’ll get a cab.”

Chapter 90

Do Not Act in Haste…

There was a cab.

It was London Bridge station – there were always cabs, even at this late hour.

The driver took one look at her and told her to take the bus.

To her surprise, she said, “I am Sharon Li, deputy Midnight Mayor, protector of the city, guardian of the night! I have seen things you cannot imagine, witnessed horrors, unleashed magics beyond your comprehension, and I demand…⁠”

Then an American pushed in by her and asked if the cabby could take him to King’s Cross, and the driver said sure, get in. So when the next cab came by her in the taxi rank, she said, “I – I – I’m really sorry my – my – my friend is in trouble and I need to see him before it’s too – too late…⁠”

He told her to hop right in, and she felt only a little dirty as the door slammed shut behind her.

London Bridge. Traffic at Monument, curling round the mess of one-way systems.

St Paul’s Cathedral lit up white; white walls, green-grey dome, the cross on the top massive and gold.

Narrow byways heading north, remnants of an older street plan, guilds with ancient names and quaint mottos, fluorescent lights burning behind glass windows in offices where no one lived, perfect, silver, smooth; the ride was £8.90 and the doorman at the office paid for her as she ran by. The phone vibrated in her hands, one new message, hurry, please, hurry, so close now, so close. She ran through the foyer of Harlun and Phelps, took the stairs down two at a time. There was blood running down her left arm from a thick gash she hadn’t even noticed; there was blood on her knees, seeping through her trousers, blood in her hair though she had no idea where it had come from, dust in her lungs, cracking on her lips, dirt in her eyes; but she rounded the corner and here it was, the corridor of a thousand graffiti, wards against magic, wards against angels, wards against invasion, wards against disaster. A heavy metal door; a room too cold to be borne, ice on the ceiling, ice on the floor, a figure, huddled in a corner, blue fire in his hair, blue fire in his eyes, awake – he was awake; the blue electric angels opened their eyes as Sharon approached, and opened their fingers ready to fight and they were mad, quite, quite mad as they always had been, always would be and in that moment, all they knew was that they were hurt, and trapped, and in pain, and they reached out and…