London Under Midnight Part 16

'If she was with him at two in the morning when she visited Raj's house, then she might not be alone now.'

'I'm going in there, so get your hands off me.'

'Okay,' Ben said. 'But be warned; you might be in for a shock.'

'Understood.' He jerked his arm away, then shoved open the door.

For a moment Ben imagined he saw shadows on the bed coupling in ecstasy. As he pa.s.sed through the doorway into the room, however, he saw that imagination had played a trick. The bed was empty.

'She was here.' Trajan grimaced at the sickly-sweet odor that hung in the air.

'Or still is,' Ben whispered. 'Try under the bed.'

Trajan hesitated for a second as no doubt nightmarish scenarios buzzed through his mind. Then with a renewed determination he dropped to his knees to check the s.p.a.ce between the bed frame and the floor. Ben squatted too. The heavy-duty blackout blind kept out the sun, so precious little daylight was available to them. Nevertheless, Ben stared at that shadowed void until his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. And there, in near darkness, curled up on her side like a sleeping child, was April Connor. He could just make out the blue mottle around her lips, and the dark rings beneath her eyes. Even her eyelids had darkness in them, as if the skin had absorbed something of the midnight shadows. Her short hair was spiked with a sticky material. The black dress was filthy, while a large rip revealed her grey skin at the waist. Ben guessed that's where they'd find the bite mark.

'She's breathing,' Trajan confirmed. 'I can hear it.'

'Is she alone?'

Trajan awarded Ben a pain-filled glance, then checked. A moment later he sighed with relief. 'Yes, she is.'

'Good. But there's a chance her friend might be around, too.'

'If he is I'll throw him out into the street.'

'Don't do anything rash. Remember what happened to the gang last night.'

Trajan grunted. 'You mean, you don't want me to end up as breakfast?'

'Something like that.'

They searched the rest of the apartment. Five minutes later Trajan called from the hallway. 'Ben? In here.'

Ben found Trajan staring into the cloakroom beside the front door. It was little bigger than an upright coffin, but sitting there with knees raised and his back to the wall was an olive-skinned guy aged around thirty. He'd unhooked the coats from the pegs then piled them over himself. Only his face was uncovered in that windowless cell. His eyes had sunk into his head and his cheeks were hollow. He wore that same kind of shrunken grimace that Egyptian mummies wore when their lips shriveled back. Here, the guy's lips had shrunk enough to reveal large white teeth that were tipped with gold crowns.

'So,' Ben breathed, 'they came here to escape the daylight.' He glanced at Trajan. 'I'm a.s.suming he's alive, too?'

Trajan reached out as if to check the pulse in the man's neck. Only he stopped short, reluctant to make contact with the dead-looking flesh. Ben held the back of his hand under the stranger's nostrils.

'I can feel him exhale.' Ben shrugged. 'So he appears to be alive.'

'Appears to be,' Trajan murmured. 'It's time to call the police.'

'The police? You're kidding.'

'Ben, we need professional help.'

'What the police'll do is take them to some specialized medical unit.'

'That's what we want, isn't it?'

'The only person with knowledge about this is Elmo Kigoma. We'll call him.'

Only it wasn't going to be that simple.

TWENTY-THREE.

For Roma it's webcams. For her brothers Juno and Hadrian it's dirt-bikes. While Roma browsed her favourite webcams they revved the bikes hard on that hot Wyoming evening as the scent of clematis crept in to perfume her room. Roma broke away from the computer and leaned out of the window, squinting as the sun struck her in the eyes. Her brothers cranked their bike motors into a frenzy of skull-piercing screaming.

'Hey!' she shouted. 'I went to the dentist this afternoon! Three fillings! Don't you idiots know the meaning of charity?'

They didn't hear her as they tore away down the track, their bikes flinging up clouds of dust.

'Good riddance!' Roma yelled after them. 'Keep going east! Go the long way round through China!' She touched her lip that was still numb after forty-five minutes in the dentist's chair. The scream of the drill as it tore through tooth enamel still resonated in her ears. In this little town of one hundred and eighty people the drive to the city was usually a treat - a treat that climaxed with pizza and ice cream. Today, the city visit for thirteen-year-old Roma Langelli was anything but a treat. Three fillings, jeez. At least she could spend some time gratifying her webcam fascination. In a tiny town that sat on a dusty American prairie there was precious little to do at the best of times. There wasn't a single store here; school was a fifty-minute bus-ride away, so Roma escaped boredom through the webcams that were her eye on the outside world. With her friends she'd devised games: Weirdest Webcam (a school for ventriloquists in Quebec); Most Boring Webcam: this had lots of compet.i.tion. After all, most webcams that come streaming into your computer via the internet are simply static views of streets, beaches, industrial plants, or skylines. Of course, the cameras had no human operators. They were like CCTV; simply fixed to walls or posts and left to film all by themselves. This afternoon Sue had sent a link to a webcam that filmed patients in a dentist's chair in New York - ha, ha, very funny, Sue. Roma experimentally chewed her lip. The anesthetic was wearing off now so she felt a slight tingle. Also, her tongue encountered gritty bits of amalgam in the bottom of her mouth: filling leftovers. Yuk.

After rinsing her mouth from a water bottle she scrolled through a list of webcams that beamed pictures from around the world. Now for her revenge against Sue for her choice of live dental surgery. Last week Roma discovered a webcam that showed views of stomach-churning intensity; this was guaranteed to gross Sue out. Before e-mailing the link Roma decided to check that the camera was still active, so her friend wouldn't simply be confronted with a blank screen or error message (no fun to be had if Sue didn't suffer at least a teeny bit). She moved the on-screen cursor down the webcam list until she found the link marked 'River Fleet Ancillary Branch'. From previous visits to this website she knew that the River Fleet was a river that ran through a tunnel under the streets of London on the other side of the world. And this 'ancillary branch' of the River Fleet was nothing but a great, humongous sewer.

Roma clicked on the camera icon; a second later a box opened up on the computer screen to reveal a view of a genuine London sewer that must be two hundred years old at least. Jeez, the place is a big watery dungeon. Mentally, she composed her e-mail: Hi, Sue, Check this place of unrivaled beauty. Heh-heh. Look at it then tell me what you think those stalact.i.tes are made of that are hanging from the roof.

She grinned as she watched a picture that in real time revealed what was happening in the London sewer thousands of miles away. The camera must be set on a beam that ran across the throat of the circular tunnel. There were also lights to reveal the curving brick walls that were shades of brown and tangerine. The tunnel rose up a series of brick steps. Tumbling down those was water (and, boy-oh-boy, other stuff) at a depth of what appeared to be knee-high. Unlike most webcams that showed static views of churches or the Grand Canyon or whatever, this actually had a lot going on. Water-levels constantly rose and fell, due to bathroom usage in the buildings above, or storm water surges. Sometimes the waterfall created by the steps was a trickle, sometimes a full-blooded torrent that bubbled and foamed. Then here's the gross stuff. Hanging from the roof were what appeared to be stalact.i.tes anything up to two feet long. Only they weren't rigid. Sometimes a breeze blew along the tunnel, then they'd swing pendulum-like. The River Fleet website helpfully explained that these stalact.i.tes were composed of a build-up of toilet paper and faeces.

Roma chuckled as she imagined her friend wrinkling her nose while exclaiming, 'Ugh! Poo alert!'

Then came a sight even more gross than those literally s.h.i.+tty tunnel decorations. Rats. Big, hairy, bristly, juicy, yellow-toothed sewer rats. The slimy wet rats scrambled up and down those steps in the places that were free of water. Rat noses would sniff the air savoring those subterranean odors. Sometimes - uck, uck! - the big London sewer rats with their bristly backs would sit on their haunches, hold a morsel, in their front claws then nibble away with such an expression of bliss on their ratty faces.

Waita it gets better (or worse!) than that. This would make Sue squeal out loud. Sometimes rats would climb on to the structure that supported the webcam. Then, without warning, a rat's snout would suddenly loom in to fill the screen. At that moment you could believe a monster rat the size of a bull haunted London's sewers. As the mouth dominated the lens you could even see its bright yellow teeth that would be magnified to the size of gigantic fangs with icky bits of brown stuff stuck to them. Roma found herself laughing as she imagined Sue's shriek of disgust.

More gritty particles surfaced on her tongue. Ugh, dental work. She reached for the bottle of water again as she watched what sewercam revealed. In a hotel someone flushed and a moment later a condom came bobbing along the stream. Her eyes were drawn into the depths of the tunnel where the arching wall vanished into the distance. That dark maw beyond sewercam's lights was hypnotic. The more she stared into the shadows of underground London the more she fancied she could see shapes moving. She'd watched a dozen times before, and it always turned out to be her imagination, or maybe it was simply steam caused by hot bathwater being discharged into the icy, cold sewer.

Only today it was going to be totally different. Roma watched the screen as figures emerged from the shadows. One appeared to be in the lead; its feet splashed down in the sewer water as it ran along the tunnel; its movements were frantic; it was like it fled in panic. When the figure reached the illuminated area, it staggered and had to support itself with the iron handrail set into the brickwork. The webcam supplied vision only, not sound. So even though the figure of a young man in a leather jacket opened his mouth to yell like fury Roma could hear absolutely nothing. He reached the top of the waterfall then descended the steps where the brown fluid tumbled. The guy was exhausted. Blood trickled from his eye, and there was this look on his face. The expression of terror became a force in its own right that leapt from the computer screen to seize hold of Roma's heart and squeeze it so hard she could hardly breathe. Even so, her eyes locked on those images; she couldn't avert them. No matter what happened next.

Then Roma saw why the guy ran. A group of men and women pursued him. But what a surreal bunch they were. One guy was dressed in a business suit, another wore some kind of uniform; a cop or security guard maybe. Then came a woman in a suit in black with white trim; then came a lithe young woman who moved like a cat. Her hair was tousled; her clothes were in rags. The expressions on their faces showed pure glee. They exulted in the pursuit of their yelling victim. Bizarrely, there was even a guy in a clown costume with white clown make-up on his face. How did the people get into the sewer? Why were they chasing the man? Didn't they know the kind of diseases they could catch wading through that c.r.a.p? Their faces were splashed with matter; their hands slid across the slimy walls as they balanced themselves. Even those s.h.i.+tty stalact.i.tes brushed their heads as they chased their victim.

The young guy bounded down the brick steps. Even as she watched his feet skidded out from him and he fell down on to his rear so he sat there amid the gus.h.i.+ng water. In that position he faced the webcam lens. Roma estimated he was a dozen feet from it. The man's pursuers reached the top of the waterfall. There they simply leapt off the top to drop the ten feet or so on to him, just like a group of surreal birds of prey. He vanished under the ma.s.s of bodies. They shoved each other aside to grab an arm or a leg. She saw the men and women sink their teeth into the man. Briefly he emerged from the scrum of bodies. She clearly saw his expression of agony as the young woman chewed on his throat. There was such an expression of joy on her face.

The foam at the bottom of the waterfall turned crimson. Roma tasted blood in her mouth; for one wild moment she thought she'd somehow magically fallen through the screen into that London sewer and those b.l.o.o.d.y waters had engulfed her mouth. Then she realized she'd bitten her tongue without noticing. The dental anesthetic still numbed it. In shock she grabbed the water bottle and swilled her mouth. At that moment she took her eyes off the computer screen.

When she looked back she let out a yell of shock. A face had filled the screen as one of the killers loomed in toward the lens. It must be the face of the girl that moved like a cat. Her beautiful almond-shaped eyes stared at her through the gla.s.s. Beneath her eyes were deathly blue rings. Her forehead was spattered with her victim's blood. And as the eyes narrowed Roma knew the creature was smiling at her, even though she couldn't see the mouth. The camera wasn't two-way; it was impossible for the woman to know she was being watched. For the rest of her life Roma would insist on that fact. Yet at that moment, as her blood ran cold, she knew that by virtue of some force she would never be able to understand that she-creature gazed through Roma's eyes into her mind. And knew all about her - right down to the last intimate secret of her soul.

TWENTY-FOUR.

Elmo Kigoma wasn't coming. The pressure of trying to persuade Elmo to rush over to the apartment hit Trajan hard. He pressed his hand to the head wound as the pain flared up again. 'Get a taxi. I'll pay the farea No, as I was telling you, April Connor is here, and she's with one of those creatures - the same kind that attacked the guys in the park. Please, Mr Kigomaa there's something wronga we've tried waking hera no, she's breathing. But we can't wake either of them.' Trajan battled with the pain in his head. 'Mr Kigoma, how can we help her? What can we do?'

Ben watched the one-sided conversation with growing impatience.

Trajan continued. 'If you ask me, neither of them are entirely human now. Clearly, we don't know how to help them. We can't call the police for obvious reasons. So, please, Mr Kigoma. You're the only one who can help them. I'll pay whatever you ask. We need an experta no, we need you here now. No, we can'ta'

Ben reached for the phone. 'Trajan. Let me try.'

'It won't do any good. He's hung up.'

'But why won't he help us?'

Trajan closed his eyes as the headache pounded. 'He told me he has to work. Something to do witha conversing with the ancestors and the G.o.ds of his homeland, who in turn will appeal to Edshu.' Trajan grimaced. 'Whoever Edshu is.'

'Elmo told me about Edshu. Trajan, you should take a painkiller.'

'I need to stay focused. What's Edshu?'

'A central African deity that's known as the trickster G.o.d. His purpose is to cause strife amongst humanity.'

'Some kind of devil?'

'Edshu's more subtle than that. Tell me where the meds are, Trajan and I'll get you something for your head.'

'No.'

Ben's impatience grew. 'Trajan, I know you want to stay awake in case there's any change in April's condition, but you'll be no good to her if you're in so much pain you can't think straight.'

Trajan was angry at what he saw as his own weakness. 'Okay, but keep an eye on her, won't you?'

'Painkillers?'

'By the kitchen sink, you can't miss them.'

'Stay on the couch, I'll get them.' Ben brought the pills from the kitchen with a gla.s.s of water. 'What else did Elmo tell you?'

'Basically, he was insisting he shouldn't be disturbed because he had to undertake some ritualistic procedure; that's going to take until late this afternoon to complete.' He swallowed the pair of bright pink pills. 'During the hours of daylight April and the guy in the cloakroom are going to be comatose. But he warned us, too. This ritual he's performing - if it works - has its own dangers.' He began to feel drowsy.

'Go on.'

'Hmm?' He rubbed his forehead. 'Mr Kigoma is of the opinion that if the ritual works we might lose April.'

'And if it doesn't?'

'Then as soon as she wakes, she's likely to attack usa' The last word tailed off to a sigh. Trajan had fallen asleep with the gla.s.s of water still in his hand. Ben eased it from his fingers then lifted the man's feet on to the couch. The slow rhythm of his respiration induced a drowsiness in Ben; however, he couldn't allow himself to relax.

'Check on the patients,' he told himself. With Trajan sleeping in the lounge he went directly to the cloakroom. Crammed into a sitting position against the wall with the coats piled over him, the stranger was still comatose. Ben hurried to the bedroom. April, the woman he secretly loved, still lay curled under the bed. The way the creatures retreated from the dawn earlier suggested whatever had befallen April made her incredibly sensitive to daylight. The stranger had locked himself in that lightless cell under the coats. April had drawn the bedroom blinds, then crept under the bed like a nocturnal creature that couldn't abide the sun.

Even though his position was uncomfortable Ben knelt there; he found it difficult to take his eyes off her. Her face was relaxed, the eyelids lightly shut. Although she breathed there was an aura of death around her. Her stillness tormented his imagination. What if she never woke up? Then again, Elmo Kigoma had warned that they would be in danger if she did. Ben longed to touch her face, only he couldn't bring himself to make physical contact with that skin. Will it be corpse-like to the touch? Will the flesh be soft, or possess the hardness of rigor-mortis?

To expel the unpleasant thoughts he paced the apartment. Trajan still slept. The stranger in the cloakroom hadn't stirred. Ben made toast and forced himself to eat a few slices. Hunger was the last thing on his mind but his body still needed fuel. After that, he made himself a coffee then returned to the bedroom where he sat on a chair by the bed. Was he guarding April? Or was it a vigil? He didn't know. There was simply an instinct to be close to her. Outside vehicles rumbled along the street. Inside, there was silence. His thoughts were slippery now. He recalled images from last night when the men were slaughtered by the creatures. Almost instantly, the scene of bloodletting would be replaced by a yearning to crouch beside April and run his fingers through her hair.

He straightened in the chair. 'Whatever you do,' he murmured, 'don't go to sleep. Stay awake.' By now, it was noon. Outside the sun shone. London went about its usual daily business. Just a short stroll away, Oxford Street would be swarming with shoppers. Cafes would be starting to bustle. After thirty hours without closing his eyes sleep had become an unstoppable force. As he dozed he dreamt he followed April along a city road. She was healthy and beautiful and irrepressibly 'normal' again. In the dream he hurried after her.

He nearly caught up with her when she turned a corner. Although he only lost sight of her for a split-second by the time he'd rounded the corner she was a hundred yards away. He caught up with her again, almost to the point of being able to put his hand on her shoulder, but then there was another of those corners of the d.a.m.ned. A second later she was a hundred yards away, so he had to play catch-up all over again. Next time I'm close I'll call her name. She'll stop when she knows I'm here, he thought. But she was never so close again. The faster he moved the further she receded into the distance, until she was forever rounding the next corner the moment he caught sight of her.

When Ben opened his eyes a dark figure loomed over him. From the shadows above him the face appeared as an oval shadow set with two brilliant eyes. Its mouth opened. Gold glinted. Ben remembered the stranger in the cloakroom with the weirdly drawn back lips and gold-tipped teeth. The man stared at the wall above Ben's head as if he saw something that mesmerized him, then the eyes swept down to meet Ben's. They pulsed with an uncanny glow. Archaic phrases like 'witch fire' and 'ghost lights' spat into his brain as he tensed, ready to protect himself from attack.

Yet the figure stood there as if it was a staff of wood driven into the floor. The creature's jaw dropped open as it drew in a deep lungful of air. 'We can't exist like this. Take us back to the island. I can protect her there.'

Ben stood up. 'Protect who?'

'Hera April Connor.'

'Who does she need protecting from?'

'Herself.' The figure drooped as its strength expired. 'The island is our only hope.'

'What happened to you?'

The man either couldn't or wouldn't answer. His eyes drifted back to stare at the wall.

Ben kept his distance but he pressed on with the questions. 'What's your name?' No reply. 'What have you done to April?'

'I didn't hurt her. I saved her. Our only chance is to go back to the island.'

'What island?'

'In the Thames. Downriver.' He gulped as if speaking hurt. 'Toward the estuary. A little islanda' His speech became dreamy. 'There's a magic there. We could stop the worsta we were controlling it.'

'Give me the name of the island.' Again no reply. 'Can you tell me what happened to you?'

The man took a step backwards; his eyes were closing. The body was a husk that lacked even the strength to remain on its feet. As soon as he reached the wall he slowly crumpled as his knees bent. Moments later, he sat with his back to the wall with his head sagging forward until the chin rested on his chest. Ben crouched beside the man, ready to check for a pulse. Only there was an unnerving quality to the skin that persuaded him not to touch it. The dilemma of whether to check for life-signs or not was put on hold the moment he heard the knock on the door. As he moved from the bedroom to the hallway a wall clock revealed he'd slept over four hours. When he pulled open the door the daylight nearly blinded him. For a second all he could see was a silhouette, then he recognized the figure standing there.

'Thank G.o.d you've come.'

'That remains to be seen.' Elmo Kigoma stepped inside. 'Because what you do next will be so unpleasant you'll wish to G.o.d that I hadn't come at all.'

TWENTY-FIVE.