Wolf in Shadow-eARC (37 page)

She reached the monster and jumped. She snapped at a
parapodium
near the rear, but her teeth closed on spongy flesh that tore easily. The wolf dropped back to the ground. The floater ignored the attack. It continued to pull the struggling youth into the air until only his arms touched the ground.

Their combined flight path crashed the pair into a display, and the youth had the gumption to grab the leg of the table, which Rhian thought was impressive, as his foot must be agony. The floater took the strain and pulled, upsetting the table and spilling plastic star marines and alien predators all over the floor. Its claw scraped along the youth’s leg like a wire stripper, peeling back flesh to the bone. The youth fainted from shock, losing his grip on the table, and the floater began to climb again. It reeled in the cable like an electrical extension lead on a drum, pulling the youth towards the gaping maw.

The wolf leapt onto the floater’s back and tried to bite into one of the ridges along a segment. The monster’s body was heavily armored, like a crab, so her teeth failed to penetrate. Giving up, the wolf ran along the back to the head and tore off one of the stalked eyes. Sour ichor filled her mouth. She spat the monster’s flesh out in disgust and savaged another eye.

The monster let go of the youth, who hit the floor with a nasty thud. The loss of weight caused it to buck, throwing off the wolf, who turned in mid-air to land on her paws. The floater climbed to about ten meters and slowly circled.

Rhian felt the wolf’s excitement and lust for the kill. She was swept along with its fierce emotions and uncluttered motivations. She forgot the youth as if he had never existed. The floater was out of reach for the moment, but if it came down—when it came down—the wolf snarled viciously. She would have the bugger. Nothing hunted her territory without her permission, not while she was alive. All the thing had to do was keep high and go after easier prey, but it was stupid. Its little pea brain clicked to a decision and it angled down.

The wolf stood her ground, muscles so tense that she quivered. Her senses fixed on her target, watching and tracking its flight path. She listened for the faintest change in air turbulence over the parapodia that might indicate a maneuver. She smelled not just rotten seaweed but also the acrid ichor that ran down the monster’s armored head from its torn eye stalks.

Down it came and the wolf didn’t move, not even when its underslung mouth gaped wide, showing the tip of the claw. She waited, until Rhian was almost screaming, wanting her to dodge or attack or something, anything, to relieve the tension.

The claw shot out on the end of its cable so lightning-fast it must have been a blur to the humans. Still the wolf waited until the large clumsy monster was utterly committed to the strike. Then she made her move.

She skipped sideways at the last moment. She moved aside mere centimeters. The horizontal claw raked down the side of her flank. The serrated edge ripped out fur, drawing blood. The wolf whipped around and sank her teeth into the cable behind the claw. She shook her head, ripping out flesh. It tasted like engine oil and had the consistency of power cables.

The floater flexed its segmented body in pain but failed to utter a sound. Perhaps it couldn’t. It vented gallons of oily liquid that smelt of diesel from hidden spouts under the
parapodia
and shot towards the ceiling. As well as upward-facing aluminium pylons on the outside of the building, the roof was supported by downward-facing equivalents on the inside. The rapidly rising floater impaled itself on one. The aluminium point punched through its armor like a warrior’s spear.

The monster thrashed its
parapodia
in random sequences as it tried to escape. The pylon pinned it like an insect on an entomological display. It shrank, folding in on itself like a concertina until only tattered remnants remained. These dropped from the pylon and disintegrated into fine dust that dissipated before reaching the ground.

The wolf howled again, the triumphant howl after a successful hunt to call the junior members of the pack to feed. There was no pack, and nothing to feed on, but it was the principle that mattered. Some rites are so important that they must be observed, irrespective of trivial details.

The wargamers started to clap, to the wolf’s satisfaction. She strutted, enjoying the tribute rightfully hers. Rhian reminded her that their packmate, Frankie, was still fighting and that worse monsters stood poised to invade her realm. The wolf acknowledged the latter point by bounding back to the center display.

Frankie hadn’t moved. She sang, eyes closed, hands on fire with green flames like the ones delineating her magic circle. Rhian was alarmed to see a new vortex spinning over the orc encampment.

Misty shapes slowly coalesced around the edge of the circle, shadows of humanoid figures. There must have been a dozen or more. They flickered like distant images in the desert, solidifying like the picture on an old analog television when you adjusted the fine tune.

Rhian had hoped for another monster: monsters could be fought and killed. With monsters, she and the wolf had a chance, but she knew she wouldn’t stand an earthly chance against a dozen elves. It had taken the combined strength of Max and the wolf to overcome a couple. What could a dozen do?

The wolf felt her fear and laughed—well, snarled, but it was the equivalent of a laugh. Had she expected to live forever? What better way to die than in the company of a packmate, fighting for your lands? New strength fortified Rhian’s resolve. She would do all she could for Frankie and her fellow humans. She could do no more.

When it came right down to it, what else was there in life? It was a far better way to go than the drooling decay of old age in a care home for the senile, so sedated that she couldn’t remember her name. Assuming a car crash or cancer didn’t get her first. She would fight, she would die, and she would join James with her head held high.

The figures were almost stable, almost fully in phase with the world. They were definitely elves, with perfect scent and elegant bodies. Their beautiful eyes gazed at the wolf with latent cruelty.

“Be gone!” Frankie yelled in English, attracting Rhian’s attention.

The witch was wreathed in flames that twisted around her head in a cone of magical force. When she stepped from the circle, the magic went with her. The Siths’ heads snapped around as if noticing Frankie for the first time. She thrust both hands out towards the orc encampment. Streams of fire ran down her arms. They poured off her fingers like a flamethrower, striking and engulfing the vortex.

An elf made a sign, and a pulse of black nothingness flicked out to strike at Frankie. The darkness knocked her back, bending her double in agony. The woman screamed, but straightened. She kept the flow of magical flames going, never hesitating no matter how they hurt her. Fire tightened on the vortex, compressing it down. The elves shrank as if they were being pushed away into the distance on a plane outside of the normal three dimensions.

Another symbol and another pulse of blackness, but this one was so weak that the wolf could see right through it. The attack barely rocked Frankie. She gripped with both hands.

A violent but soundless explosion threw the wolf off her paws. The world flared and compressed into a small green ball surrounded by blackness. Rhian’s last image was of Frankie lying sprawled on the floor, blood flowing from her scalp.

CHAPTER 19
FRATERNAL RITUALS

“I think we might take a run out to Essex,” Jameson said, getting into the car. “To see a lodge about a man.”

“Essex is boring,” Karla replied. “Wet, flat, and full of chavs.”

“The north is quite pleasant,” Jameson protested, “around the old Roman capital at Colchester.”

“Are we going to Colchester?” Karla asked.

“Ah, no, Badford.”

Jameson turned his phone off and checked the satnav was in receive only mode so that Randolph could not track him. He wanted a purely private enterprise after the last fiasco. What The Commission didn’t know couldn’t be held against him. He checked the new Glock that he had wheedled out of Stores before starting the car and heading east, and put a spare magazine in his pocket. He wasn’t expecting to use the pistol anytime soon, let alone start a major firefight, but hard-won experience had taught him that the best time to check one’s weapon was before one needed it.

It was midnight before the Jag crossed under the M25, the largest ring road in the world. The Jag powered out into the flat countryside. One knew one was in Essex when one passed the first burned out old Ford decorating the center of a roundabout like an obscure piece of modern sculpture.

Their running counterparts filled the road, especially Ford STs, the hot hatches that were Essex-man’s answer to Ferrari. Jaguars had a peculiar effect on ST drivers. The mere sight of a Jag in a rearview mirror caused them to downshift and push the throttle to the floor. If ST drivers had a motto, it was “they shall not pass—especially in a bloody Jaguar.”

Jameson enjoyed the thrill of the race, weaving the big sports car in and out of the lines of traffic in hot pursuit of a bright orange ST. In heavy traffic the agile ST was quicker, but as soon as a lane opened he was able to use the endless pull of the big V-12 to power past the four-in-line Ford. He was quite sorry when he turned off to Badford. The car’s satnav guided him to a modern, blocky concrete building located well out of town in the marshes down by the river. The windows were dark, but the front was dimly illuminated by an exterior light. Jameson suspected that there would be additional security lights activated by motion detectors to scare off the local riffraff.

A long gravel drive ran up to the front of the Masonic Hall across flat, featureless land. Jameson drove on past to where the map showed a lane that led to a waterside pub. He left the car at the back of the near-empty car park. The hostelry was still open, presumably catering to a few hardy regulars who were no doubt cronies of the landlord. Mostly the business would rely on lunchtime trade, families if the swings and slides outside were any indication. The map showed the rear of the Hall was but one or two hundred meters from the pub across country.

He and Karla climbed over a gate and set off across a grassy field. He set his small electric torch to diffuse illumination so as not to draw too much attention. A large lump resolved into a cow lying down. It lifted its head to look at Jameson with disinterested eyes, mouth moving rhythmically on the cud.

He backed away slowly and adjusted the torch to throw a tighter beam that reached further. The light revealed more resting bovines. Jameson plotted a weaving course that stayed as far away as possible from the cows. He was a city dweller and found large beasts with horns disturbing. If they weren’t dangerous then they looked as if they might be. Actually the cows did him one favor, because without the longer reach of the torch, he might have fallen down the steep bank into a water-filled drainage ditch that was not shown on his map.

“Flat and wet, Essex,” Karla said in his ear, with the gloomy triumph of someone whose most pessimistic forecasts have proved accurate.

Tossing a mental coin, which landed vertically in a virtual cow pat, he turned left at random and walked along the ditch. After fifty meters or so he found an earthy ramp over the ditch, gated to keep in the cows. Climbing over the bars, they headed back towards the Hall. It seemed further away than when they started.

Jameson stepped into a small drainage channel that ran at right angles to the ditch. Water and mud splashed as high as his knee. He was beginning to regret his cunning plan to sneak in around the back.

“I will shoot you if you mention the topography of Essex again,” he said to Karla.

By the time they reached the Hall, he had tramped through so many pools and channels that he had given up trying to avoid them. He squelched with every step. His shoes were ruined and his suit fit only for the dry cleaners.

At the back of the Hall, Jameson cracked open a window with a small aluminium jemmy that he had taken the precaution of bringing.

“You know,” he said softly to Karla, swinging his legs over the sill, “if there is such a thing as a burglar and petty housebreakers guild then I must by now be eligible for a fellowship.”

He shone his torch around a decent-sized room. It was furnished with leather arm chairs and resembled the lounge bar of a genteel provincial hotel. Broadsheet newspapers were carefully placed on occasional tables. Jameson had never been a Mason. The thought of standing with one trouser leg rolled up, left breast bared, a noose around his neck, chanting things like “so mote it be” was not something that appealed. God knows, Cambridge sporting clubs had been bad enough for stupid traditions, mostly involving alcohol, and, if you were lucky, girls, but at least you were not required to pay homage to a supreme architect. Nevertheless, he had read up on Masonic ritual to prime himself for the night’s jaunt, and the room was not entirely what he had expected. He pushed open a door and entered a large space with a high ceiling done out like a medieval great hall.

“This,” he said to Karla, “is more like it.”

They entered to the right of a stage, on which stood a throne. There was just no other word adequate to describe the high-backed wooden chair upholstered in rich blue leather and fronted by two pillars. Wooden benches ran along the walls to the sides, shields decorated with coats of arms above. A formal double door opposite opened onto the front entrance. So far it might have been the senior common room at a Cambridge college, except that the Master was not usually enthroned. There the similarity ended.

The floor was tiled in a blue-and-white diamond pattern, with a blood-red star in the center. Concrete beams lent the room a pseudo-classical feel, like a Greek temple. The red neon light shaped like a G hanging down from the roof was a wonderfully tacky addition to the décor.

From his research, he knew that the room was supposed to resemble the middle section of King Solomon’s Temple, although he doubted the neon light was an entirely authentic touch. It would be laid out east-west with the Master’s seat facing east to the rising Sun. The clock behind would always be stopped at midday, when the meridian Sun was overhead.