The Neon Court (45 page)

Behind me, I heard another whoomph followed by a sound which seemed to flatten all the world around it; I risked glancing back and for a moment, in between the moving everything, the heaving, hauling sea of darkness and light, I glimpsed Penny, her skin clad in thick grey concrete, swing a fist etched with steel knuckle into the glass blade of a daimyo. Then we were round a corner, a narrow little street, the sounds of fighting muffled by the walls of the houses tight around us, wheelie-bins and shops offering beads, wool and organic food for silly prices, our feet shattering the surface of the growing puddles, the light buzzing and humming around us. We got fifty yards before JG, staggering, her injured leg bleeding, slipped and fell on her hands and
knees. I tried to pull her up, but she was a dead weight, hot and prickly to the touch. She put her hands to her head and whimpered, “Can’t stop them can’t stop them can hear can hear …”

Something moved at the end of the road behind us, too fast to see, a shimmer in the dark. I grabbed her hands, pulled them back from her head and hissed, “Look at me!” She looked, and the whites of her eyes were foggy with swirling smoke. I shook her gently. “Jabuile Ajaja,” I hissed, “sister of a sorcerer, you are going to get up right now, and you are going to live, and you are going to be so much more, do you understand?”

She nodded dully, allowed herself to be pulled back to her feet. With one arm slung across my back, she half walked, was half carried to the end of the narrow little road. Another theatre, tucked away, pictures on the walls of men in suits and women in floral dresses looking respectively shocked and awed; a shop ahead, wide windows lit against a dark background offering action-figure dolls carrying wands, guns, rifles and the occasional sonic screwdriver against a backdrop of aliens, demons, screaming women scantily clad and non-specific tentacled monstrosities. Bars with blacked-out windows and posters inviting playful and perky young ladies to be hostesses at the best-paying social club in all of London; restaurants offering menus of snails in garlic butter or leaves of lettuce at £8.50 a throw.

I couldn’t hear the sounds of battle now, but the voices were still there, thousands of them, fingers trying to break out of the walls, faces trying to pull themselves free from the shadows. I saw a light up ahead shining on blue and gold, pulled myself onwards, slipped on the edge of a deep puddle pooling in a blocked-up drain and nearly dropped JG onto the steps of a tall once-white pillar in the middle of a child’s-sized roundabout. On the top of the pillar were seven different faces, painted gold and blue, each adorned with an elegant and utterly non-functional sundial. I looked around, counted seven streets leading off in seven directions, pressed my head against the cold stone steps of the pillar and for just a moment, breathed.

Bakker said, “Where are you going to run?”

I raised my head slowly, taking it one vertebra at a time. He was sat quite casually next to me, watching the street we’d come up, a white napkin tucked into his shirt. In one hand he held a small white biscuit,
adorned with a dollop of white cream and pink salmon. He ate it with one mouthful, his other hand shielding his legs from any fallout from the same. He sighed, eyes half closing with every sign of pleasure, and licked his lips with the sharp end of his tongue.

JG was lying beside him, gasping for breath, sodden and shaking. I crawled over to her, murmured, “You OK?”

She looked up and I could taste the magic on her now, see it flicker and flare in the air around her like a lighter trying to start in the wind. “Something’s coming,” she breathed.

“No shit.”

“Oh look,” sighed Bakker. “Oda’s little sister picked up some of her big brother’s less sanctified traits – what a family!”

“We’ve got to keep moving,” I murmured.

“Where?”

I opened my mouth and found I had no answer.

“Oh look!” added Bakker with sickly sweetness. “The lights are going out!”

He unfolded one long pale finger, stabbing at the street up which we’d just come. I followed it. Above the shop selling DIY Jedi kits, the pink sodium street light flickered, buzzed, thinned to a point, and went out. Then the next one. And then the one after that.

I didn’t move. Didn’t run. “JG?” I murmured.

“Yeah?” she breathed.

“You are what saves us. You are the only thing left that Oda knows and loves. You are the only thing left that makes her human, the only thing that can bring her back. Do you understand?”

“No,” she whimpered. “I don’t understand any of it.”

I found her hands in mine, her eyes fixed on mine, every part of her shaking, cold, fear, name it. “Jabuile Ajaja,” I breathed. “You’re probably the most human thing left in this part of town.”

She almost smiled, though she didn’t seem to know why. I rubbed water out of my eyes and tried to stand up. Someone had replaced the bones in my legs with rubber. I leant against the cold wet stone of Seven Dials and forced myself to breathe, watching the approaching darkness.

“Well!” I said brightly. “Isn’t this a right old …”

Something brushed the side of my neck.

Something warm.

Something living.

I tried to turn my head to see what it was and couldn’t. I tried to spread my fingers, move my feet, tried to speak, and couldn’t.

I felt breath brush the inside of my ear. Heard a little sigh. Heard silk move. Bakker rose to his feet, arms folded, face stern.

Lady Neon stepped round in front of me.

She was smiling. (Beware her violet kiss.)

Her veil was up, and her lipstick was smudged. I wondered if I’d see some of that colour on the side of my neck, if I ever got to look again. She looked at me, then, no longer interested, down at JG. JG tried to crawl away, scrambling backwards from Lady Neon, kicking away like a stranded starfish.

Lady Neon said, “There’s nothing for you to worry about. You are the chosen one. We will protect you.”

She held out one hand. I saw JG hesitate. I tried to scream. We raged and kicked and tore and tried to reach out, tried to grab her, shake her, tell her to run, to get away. Couldn’t.

“You can fight it, Matthew,” breathed Bakker in our ear. “The kiss of Lady Neon binds all to her will but it can’t hold you for ever, it is as false and shallow a magic as everything else about her!”

JG’s fingers slipped into Lady Neon’s. She rose to her feet, eyes locked on the lilac smile of the white-clad woman. Her hands rested in the palms of Lady Neon’s, like a child about to be led on its first dance. We shook, managed to taste saliva on our lips, force out a gasp of air, a little sound, barely a syllable and even that effort nearly knocked us flat, opened up a pit of hot darkness at our feet. The lights were nearly out in the street in front of us, and going out around too, snapping out in the streets on either side, closing down in a tighter and tighter circle on the little point of light left at Seven Dials.

Lady Neon began to lead JG away, and the girl didn’t resist.

“Come on!” roared Bakker. “Come on, you are the Midnight Mayor! You are the blue electric angels, you are gods on this earth, power made flesh, you are rage and light! Come on!”

I felt my left hand move, half an inch, a twitch, I tried to push power into it, felt my fingers part like my skin was dry clay, sensed the smell of ozone and the hiss of power in the air. From the pit of our throat we managed to make a sound, a bare whisper, a croak, “JG …”

She didn’t look back.

Then something hard and fast flew out of the darkness and caught Lady Neon on the shoulder. She staggered, her touch on JG breaking for just a moment, and looked at the thing which had hit her. It was half a brick. Slowly, disbelievingly, she craned her head round to examine the silk on her shoulder where it had struck. A tiny tear in the perfect fabric, which was slowly turning crimson with blood. She turned, looked back at the thing that had thrown the brick. Another went flying past; she ducked, avoiding it easily, and JG, blinking as the spell began to snap, pulled herself free and staggered away, turning all around to see that the darkness was at the edge of the Dial, was lingering on the edge and all sounds had gone out except the fall of the rain, not even the whispering now. Then her eyes fell on me and she ran towards me, grabbed my hand and at that touch the spell snapped and we staggered forward, gasping for breath, clinging on to her for support as our limbs finally decided to report themselves in for duty. I half turned my head to see who’d thrown the brick, and there he was, Toxik, every crooked part of him, leaning on a dustbinman’s broom, dirt on his face and in his hair, hatred in his eyes as he stared straight at Lady Neon.

I hissed, “Wait …” Toxik raised one hand in command and nausea gripped me, sent me slipping further down in JG’s arms. “Blackout!” I tried to gesture at the darkness all around, at the places where street lights should have been, but he and Lady Neon neither looked nor cared.

“Ugly man,” said Lady Neon finally, “I don’t suppose you’re here to surrender?”

Toxik grinned, shook his head. “U dont lok lik u is givin up 2.”

Lady Neon nodded, drew her hands together in front of her. The white silk sleeves closed around her fingers, hiding them from view. I heard hard surfaces move. Toxik raised his broom, and I saw that the wood was black, embedded with dirt and time and a little bit more besides. Lady Neon drew her hands apart again, and from inside the white folds of each sleeve came a curving blade, of perfect crystal glass.

“I don’t think we need bother with apologies,” she murmured as the two faced off.

“No,” agreed Toxik. “dat is mayb da 1 rite thin u av said.”

They charged.

I supposed their fight might have held some points of technical interest. I supposed that if I wasn’t trying not to throw up on my own shoes, I might have keenly observed their battle, staff on swords. As it was, I was, so I didn’t. JG whimpered, “My sister’s coming.”

I nodded, tasting bile.

“Can we go?”

I looked around. Black streets all about, no light burning in any of them, just the sound of rain and weapon on weapon. Neither Toxik nor Lady Neon was obeying the laws of nature in their battle; their leaps were too high, their moves too fast, and when their blades met, the air stank of solder.

Bakker said, “Oda will kill both Lady Neon and Toxik. Problem solved.”

“Yeah, because the Tribe and the Court will sure believe that story. ‘Wasn’t me, guv, was this walking sun-stopping darkness.’”

JG hissed, “You talking to me?”

“No.”

“Oda will kill you too.”

I fumbled at JG’s arm until I had a good enough grip. “Help me up,” I groaned.

She did.

Lady Neon and Toxik seemed happily preoccupied. “These two plonkers,” I said, “are fighting over you.”

JG stared as Lady Neon nearly – and not nearly enough – took Toxik’s head off with a swipe of glass sword. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Seriously.”

“Why? What’s so special about me?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I replied, coughing up dry air and the last lingering sickly taste of other people’s spells that had lodged in my belly. “No magic scars, no epic destinies, no mysterious meteor-showered birth; I gotta tell you, you are pig shit ordinary.” Toxik managed a swoosh of his broom at knee height. Lady Neon backflipped over it like some squirrel had been written into her DNA and didn’t even crease a sleeve doing it. “Great thing about not being a chosen one, is you get to do your own choosing. And now …”

“Yeah?”

In the windows around Seven Dials, the lights were going out, first on the top floor, then the floors below.

“Now I need you to stop these guys fighting.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“How d’you think I’m supposed to do that?”

“Dunno. You’re the girl that everyone wants to get to know better. Think of something.”

She looked uneasily at the two fighters. “Hey, you!” she shouted. “Oi! You! I’m fucking talking to you!”

If they heard, they didn’t care. JG let go of me; I slipped back down onto the steps of the pillar, clinging to it for comfort and strength. She marched out onto the street between them and nearly got a broom to the head for her pains. “You fuckers!” she screamed. “I am your fucking chosen one and you will listen to me are you dense yeah?”

Nothing.

“Stop it!” she shrieked, and the girl had a mighty pair of lungs on her when she wanted to. “Fucking stop it!”

Lady Neon, as casual and calm as anything, without breaking stride or movement, turned beneath a swipe of Toxik’s staff and as she did, kicked out deftly behind her with one white shoe, caught JG squarely in the middle of her body and sent her flying. I started up, felt electricity snap, weak now, so weak, to my fingertips.

Then JG moved. She staggered upwards, one hand curled around her belly, back bent with pain, eyes narrow. She raised her head, opened her lips, and screamed.

I covered my ears, though that barely dented the pain: the volume and pitch of it sliced straight through the stomach, made glass crack, mortar dust sprinkle down, sent ripples racing across the surface of the puddles, twisted the shape of the falling rain into a cocoon around the girl, and still she kept screaming, Toxik and Lady Neon bending back and away from the sound, covering their ears, the glass of Lady Neon’s sword shattering, Toxik’s staff bending and twisting out of shape with the force of it and it went on and on and on until

it stopped. JG doubled over, gasping for air. Lady Neon lay on the ground, staring wide-eyed at the breathless girl; Toxik leant against a wall heaving down lungfuls of air, blood running from the hollows of
his ears. Slowly, painfully, JG half straightened up and wheezed, “So like, yeah, this guy wants to have a word.”

Their eyes moved slowly to me. I crawled up one joint at a time, made it to my feet and stood there, wobbling in the dull breeze. I clenched my fingers into a fist, and opened it out. The little bubble of sodium light was faint now, so very faint, but I cast it up overhead anyway to spread a dull pool on the soaking earth and said, “So guys, the last light will go out … now.”

In the doors of the bright white theatre on Seven Dials, the last light went out.