The Roving Death (The Freelancers Book 2), Page 2

  It seemed as though Ana was in full control, and as she explored the spectre's mind, it was unable to move or attack, the perfect time to trap the bastard. Rafe began to search for something to contain it in. There were plenty of trinkets around the room, a whole cabinet of decanters half-full of alcohol, but glass wouldn't do. . . His eyes kept returning to the mantelpiece above the fireplace, a porcelain music box with a mirror behind a figurine of a ballerina. Porcelain would keep it locked up tight, and the mirror would distract and confuse it. Plus, he mused, it would have a tiny person for company.

  Taking one last look over at Ana to make sure she was okay, he strutted over to the fireplace and grabbed the music box.

  “What do you think you're doing?” asked the elderly thirty-two year old woman.

  “Need something to stick that guy in,” Rafe said, indicating to the glassy spectre.

  “Well you're not taking that!” she said, ripping it out of his hands. “It's priceless! A family heirloom.”

  “It's thirty years old at a push,” he said, grabbing it back and turning it over, scoffing before he showed the woman the stamp on the base “Priceless heirlooms are rarely made in Taiwan.”

  “It's priceless to me!” she insisted, tugging it back from his grasp.

  “Listen, grandma, I can either take your 'heirloom' here, stick that bastard in it, and try and make you young again, or you can go to work tomorrow and explain to your colleagues why you need a walker and look like a walking testicle.”

  Her eyes became wide, an angry quiver on her pale, prematurely aged lips. Her mouth settled into a grimace and she shoved the box into his hands.

  “Thank you.” He shot her a polite smile that was not reciprocated in the slightest.

  Rafe turned on his heel and launched into a sigil as he walked back towards Ana and the spectralacrum.

  Placing the box on the floor in front of the creature, he continued to trace out the gesture, fingers of his left hand pirouetting through the air as he tapped Ana on the shoulder with the right, telling her to come out of the mind meld with the spectre.

  His fingertips met and he kept an eye on her, waiting for her to blink out of the connection and catch his eye. He took a deep breath, held the sigil in stasis in front of him, waiting for the moment to seal it.

  A gasp emanated from Ana's lips, her fingers left the creature's glassy skin, and Rafe cast to lock the damn thing down.

  Light wrapped around the fiend and pulled it into the music box, the lid slamming shut, never to be re-opened by human hand.

  There was a rumbling exhalation. Gargled words “Yooooou!” deep and inhuman, coming not from the box, “traaaaaped,” but from Ana's lips, “meeeeeee!”

  Rafe turned, his fingers darting through the air, ready to burn the creature out of Ana if needs be.

  A smile crawled across her face, eyes narrowing to thin slits―and she fell about laughing, her voice back to normal.

  “God dammit, don't joke about possession, I could have tried to rip your own consciousness from your body. . .”

  “Tried being the operative word.” She knelt down and picked up the music box. “What the hell is this? Who puts a terrifying receptacle-bum in a dainty little music box that any kid could pick up and play with?”

  “It was the best container on offer.”

  “No excuse. This is how accidents happen.”

  “How'd the mind meld go?”

  “Oh, tons of fun,” she said, with a roll of her eyes. “Are you going to thank me for saving your arse?”

  “You did not.”

  “Did too, again. You're welcome.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Too late, I don't accept.”

  “You can't not accept thanks,” Rafe sighed.

  “I'm gonna let this critter back out,” she said, shaking the music box. “Let you deal with him all by yourself.”

  “Because I didn't say thank you? That doesn't seem even remotely professional.”

  “Neither does not saying thank you...”

  “Thank you,” said the elderly thirty-two year old, attempting to interject.

  “I said thank you!” Rafe squealed, a full register higher than his normal speaking voice.

  “After a prompt, it's not real gratitude if it takes a prompt!”

  “Thank you!” the unnaturally old woman said again. “Now about making us young again...”

  “How did you ever manage without me?” Ana asked, her fingers traced through the air, pointing back and forth between the music box and the elderly couple, sending the life and youth back their way from the creature trapped within.

  “I got hit a lot more. . . but I also had fewer arguments.”

  “This isn't an argument.”

  “It sure feels like an argument.”

  “It's a disagreement.

  “Isn't that just a nice way of calling it an argument?”

  “You'll know when it's an argument!”

  “Will it be as quippy?”

  “I'll be throwing things.

  “Sharp things?”

  “Yup. At your face.”

  “Remind me not to argue with you,” Rafe said, indicating at the door to the room.

  Ana rolled her eyes and threw her fingers through the air as she summoned a door to their next destination. “Needing to remind you not to start an argument with me is on the same lines as needing a prompt to say thank you. . .”

  “See, this feels like an argument. . .” Rafe muttered, resulting in Ana punching him in the arm.

  The door pushed its way out of the wall, wallpaper parting to reveal the sleek black paint on its surface, a rune-etched knob at the right hand side. He cast a sigil as he reached for the handle and turned it, pulling it back and holding it open for Ana to step through.

  “Told you, you'll know it's an argument when I start throwing things. . .” she said, walking across the threshold.

  “Does throwing a punch count?” Rafe asked with a wry smile as he joined her on the other side in the Randy Dowager pub, closing the door behind her.

  “I can still let this guy out. . .” she said, indicating to the music box as they walked across the room. “While you're asleep, let it eat your face.”

  “Spectralacrums don't eat faces.” He knocked on the door to the side of the bar.

  “Well, I'm going to find something to eat your face.”

  “That's a weirdly specific threat. What has my face ever done to you?”

  The door to the parlour at the rear of the bar opened of its own volition, the skeletal figure of Gryph Slugtrough eyeing them up from the solitary booth in the room, as his body rocked back and forth to a beat only he could hear. Ana stepped ahead and placed the music box on the table in front of him.

  “What's this?”

  “Your spectralacrum.” Rafe said, taking the lead.

  “Why's it in a bloody music box?!”

  “It was all we had to hand.” Rafe explained.

  “Gonna to lower the value. . .”

  Ana huffed at the notion. “How does the packaging lower the value?”

  “Don't argue with the man,” Rafe muttered under his breath.

  “We're not taking less than five thousand.” Ana insisted.

  “Find somewhere else to sell it then,” Slugtrough scoffed, running a gaunt, bony hand through his slick, shiny hair. “Sure there's loads of people in the market for one of 'em.” Each of his words was drenched in sarcasm. “And it's certainly not like I have one, single, solitary, very specific buyer. . .”

  “That's where we'll take it!” Ana said, triumphantly, grabbing the music box and turning to the door.

  “Excuse me, love?”

  “The Market,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder. ”Got to be some weirdo who wants a spectralacrum, tons of them I reckon.”

  “Nah, you'll be lucky.”

  “Well, we'll see what happens won't we.” She began strutting towards the door.

  “Alright!” Sl
ugtrough grunted. “Five thou'.”

  “Six.” Ana said, turning on her heel to face him.

  “What?”

  She started stepping towards him slowly, heel-toe, heel-toe. “You want it now, price has gone up.”

  “It's in a bloody music box!”

  “But it's in high demand,” she said, with a confident smile. “Six.”

  “Bloody hell, fine.” Reluctantly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather pouch, counting out six thousand pounds in fifty notes, glancing over to Rafe as he did so. “I don't like your new partner.”

  “Apprentice,” Rafe said, correcting Gryph.

  “Excuse me?” Ana said, with wide eyes and a loud huff.

  “Partner,” Rafe re-corrected, retracting his previous statement. ”Definitely my partner.”

  “Damn right I'm your partner,” she said, grabbing the money from Slugtrough's hands and turning back towards the door. “Come along, bitchcakes.”

  Rafe parted his lips, as if to object to being called 'bitchcakes'. But in truth, he had no objection.

  Although there had been―and would continue to be―no intentional intimate interactions between the two of them, he was enjoying his professional partnership with Ana more than he cared to admit.

  Chapter 3

  If she were still human

  The wood of the front door inside the Millers' house warped and contorted, as it was replaced with another door, mahogany giving way to black gloss. The knob turned, and a tall, muscular man walked through it. The height was not entirely his own, the cuban heels of his faux alligator skin shoes gave him an extra two inches, the in-sole lifts slipped inside them added a third inch, and his hair blow-dried and slicked into a quiff gave him another inch and a half, pushing him to just over six foot one. He wore a long, black coat that came to just above his knee, purposefully left open to wave back and forth dramatically with every stride he took.

  Stepping through the house, his bright green eyes surveyed the scene for signs of intruders, mystical or otherwise. He made his way through the corridor and turned into the living room, then the kitchen, both eerily quiet and entirely devoid of life. It was only when he came to the door to the dining room that he smelled the faint remnants of sulphur on the air, and heard the obnoxious buzzing of flies.

  Casting his gaze across the room, he surveyed it with a grimace on his brow. One body, but four further places set for dinner―this was not good, not good at all.

  Circling his finger through the air, he grabbed hold of the tiny body of the child with a mystical lasso, and tugged the corpse gently out of the remnants of the previous night's dinner. Her jaw fell open, and his eyes narrowed. That should not have been possible―rigor mortis should have had her body rigid for at least another forty-eight hours. . . if she were still human.

  He leaned in, gritting his teeth as he saw the grey lines of tears down from her eyes, and inspected her mouth. The sulphur scent was strong on her tongue, teeth stained black. Running his finger along them, the stain came away, like a thick layer of grime. He ran it back and forth between his fingers and grimaced yet again. The texture was right for what he feared it was, but he couldn't say for sure. There was only one way to be certain, and it wasn't going to be pretty.

  Holding his hands out in front of him, the tips of his thumbs met, followed by his index and middle fingers. The nails of the ring and little fingers tapped together, and as they did so, he pulled his hands apart and raised them slowly. The body of the young girl lifted up off the chair, her body rotating to lie flat in mid-air. With a twist of his hands, his middle fingers met at the distal phalanx, locking on to one another. He tugged hard, and with a loud crack, the girl's sternum ripped open.

  Tentatively, he peered over her levitating body and looked down into the chest cavity, hoping and praying to ancient gods with names that were unpronounceable by human tongues, that the organs were as they should be.

  A scowl carved itself upon his face, his eyes narrowed, a soft, growling sigh left his lips. She no longer had organs plural. Her chest contained one single, oozing organ, comprised of green and grey meat.

  It wobbled back and forth, a gelatinous mass that he knew all too well was formed by breaking apart the regular insides of a human being, transforming them into their base elements and putting them back together as required for purpose. The blood that lay fallow in the body, unable to flow through her veins due to lack of heartbeat, was no longer a lush, vibrant red―it was a thick, black ooze that surrounded the solitary massive organ, like a sickly syrupy sauce.

  Pulling in his little fingers to meet the palm, he held his hands in font of him, fingers raised high. Swiping his hands to the right, the floating body moved away from the table. He lowered his fingers slowly, and placed the body on the floor. Eyes fixed, staring at the slick tide of monochromatic gunk that washed back and forth over the mass of the large organ, slicking up against the inside of the rib cage. This was the very thing he feared. A thing he had seen before, and had long hoped he would never see again. As much as he wished to deny it to himself, he knew that before the week was out he would be seeing many more of these things.

  A loud crash took him out of the moment, and was a welcome distraction from the self-flagellation of his consternation.

  “Police!” came a shout from the front of the house. Mundanes. A welcome distraction indeed.

  A thin, broad smile came to him. Wrinkles crawling from his eyes all the way up to meet the scowl on his brow, as he waited for the officers to find him. The middle finger of his right hand flew in front of his face drawing a clockwise circle, followed by his first finger tracing behind it.

  It had been a while since he was in this kind of situation, faced with mundanes stumbling upon him as he was investigating a mystical incident. The smile grew wider, lips parting as he took a breath, relishing every second of the lead-up to being discovered. Pulling the two fingers in to his palm, he made a fist, running the other hand over his knuckles.

  The police boots were heavy on the thick carpet, even though they were attempting to be something close to stealthy on their journey through the house. He stood by the door, the smile giving way to a muted chuckle as he pulled the fist back by his ribs, waiting for the moment to strike.

  The officers rounded the corner, batons raised, ready to attack any intruder that might wish them harm. Their eyes met those of the magickian who had arrived on the scene before them, and he threw his fist in their direction, fingers spread wide as his arm stretched out, a purple light filled the air around them for the briefest of moments, like a flashbulb going off in their faces.

  Their pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks. Every recent memory blanked out. Their minds and bodies mesmerised in an instant. They stood motionless, minds empty. No longer masters of their own bodies, they were waiting for a command from their new master.

  “Piss yourselves,” he instructed. His cruel smile growing wider as they obeyed his command. A warm, wet stain coursing through their trousers, puddles forming in the carpet under each of them.

  “Now, knock each of the about a bit,”

  The batons flew through the air, cracking skulls and crunching noses as the officers proceeded to beat the living daylights out of one another. Their blood flecked off the truncheons, splattering against the walls in intermittent showers.

  The joy he took from the mundanes' suffering was short lived. As entertaining as it was, he could not allow himself to become distracted with such trivialities for as long as he would have liked. There were more pressing matters at hand, wider implications of the scene. Assuming this young girl was the first, then one had become four. . .

  Within a day those four could become sixteen, maybe more. At the low estimate, sixteen would become sixty four, which would become two hundred and fifty six. Before the week was out, there could be thousands of these things all over the city. Neither magickal nor mundane was safe from them, they crossed the boundaries between the two, infected ind
iscriminately.

  Mundane London would be overrun, and as much as he did not care all that much for the lives and wellbeing of the mundanes, it was down to him to insure that this plague did not spread that far. It was his duty. His responsibility.

  However, as much as he knew it was down to him and him alone to make this right, at that moment he had no idea how on earth―or any other realm for that matter―he was going to do so.

  The one thing he did know, was that he would do whatever it took to stop the spread.

  Chapter 4

  Save the cat

  Rafe and Ana sat at a booth in Day Drinkers, finishing their third celebratory drink of the night. Celebratory drinks had become a mainstay of their professional partnership―or more accurately, drinks had become a mainstay of their professional partnership. Even when a job hadn't gone entirely to plan, there were drinks, albeit in that case referred to as commiseratory drinks. The one thing they had in common, other than magick and a propensity for being remarkably good at saving each other's lives on a regular basis, was a love of whisky.

  To celebrate vanquishing the spectralacrum, they were drinking a 25 year old sherry oak Macallan, which Mallory was unenthusiastic about informing them was “almost nine hundred pounds a bottle!” which resulted in them paying forty five pounds a measure.

  Rafe had never spent quite so much on a shot of anything, he didn't even own an item of clothing that cost that much. But it seemed to make Ana happy, and that was more important to him than being thrifty.

  “What are you going to buy with your half?” she asked, holding the tumbler to her nose and inhaling deeply. A wide, serene smile perched itself on her lips.

  “Buy?”

  “With your three k'”