Strangeness and Charm Read online

  THE COURTS of THE FEYRE

  "Mike Shevdon strikes sparks from the flinty core of English folklore, as a hero every reader can relate to finds he's part of an incredible and scarily believable parallel realm. If you've been thinking urban fantasy has nothing fresh to offer, think again."

  – Juliet E. Mckenna, author of the Hadrumal Cycle and the Tales Of Einarinn

  "Here is the very best of urban fantasy… A highly-believable page-turner of a quest."

  – Aurealis Magazine

  "If you're a fan of UF – or even if you're not – I'd recommend this book."

  – Spellmaking

  "Shevdon's prose is elegant and simple and winds up being invisible. We notice the story, not the writer. And that's a rare and pretty fantastic thing."

  – Kate of Mind

  IN THE SAME SERIES

  Sixty–One Nails

  The Road to Bedlam

  MIKE SHEVDON

  Strangeness and Charm

  Book III of The Courts of the Feyre

  For Mum and Dad

  ONE

  "Hey Roland, how's it going?" Sandeep pushed the door to the control room closed behind him, feeling the lock click shut under his hand. The shopping centre was closed; there would be no shoppers nosing around where they weren't supposed to be, but security was a good habit to cultivate for a professional.

  Roland stretched in his chair. "Evenin' Sunny." Roland didn't even look away from the monitors, but then he'd have watched Sandeep on the screens, walking through the shopping centre from the back entrance.

  "Any excitement?" Sandeep took the plastic box and a bottle of water from his rucksack and tucked them into the small fridge in the corner. "It's about time we cleaned this fridge out again. What's this?" He poked a foil package at the back.

  "I think it's a kebab. Marky had to leave early – he must've left it."

  "Shall I chuck it away?"

  "Better not. You know Marky. He'd eat it even if it was furry."

  "That boy will poison us all."

  "Reckons he's immune to it. He's built up a resistance, he says."

  Sandeep closed the fridge just as it whirred into life. It buzzed for a moment and then settled down. He put his rucksack on top of it and then turned to stand behind Roland.

  "Is number four not working?" he asked Roland, glancing at the monitors.

  "Been playin' up all day, hasn't it? It comes back periodically, so it's not the camera. Must be a fault on the circuit. I'll have to get the electrician to check it out tomorrow. It might be the booster box gone again. Crappy things – they always buy the cheap ones and then they have to replace 'em every three months."

  Sandeep turned away and went to the log book, running his finger along the spiky handwriting to decipher it. "What's this in the log?"

  "Oh, unit thirty called us down for some kid an hour before closing. You know, the console games shop? He was swearin' at the staff, started pushing the other customers around – threatening people. Marky and me was gonna chuck 'im out."

  "Did you call in the police?"

  "Nah, he slipped past us. Sneaky little sod must'a been quick on his feet."

  "Isn't that where screen four is?"

  "Yeah. We didn't have any pictures for the plod, so we left it. He'll be back – they always are. We'll get him next time."

  "Didn't you get him on any of the other cameras?"

  "Couldn't find him. If you get chance tonight you could go back through the tapes, see if you can get an ID shot."

  "I've told you, they don't have tapes any more. It's all on disk now. What did he look like?"

  "Tall skinny kid, spiky hair, looked like he hadn't seen daylight in weeks. Could'a been one of them gothics. The time's in the log. The plod'll probably already be acquainted with 'im. They usually are with that sort."

  "Goths, Roland. They're called goths."

  "Yeah, them. What the...?"

  Screen four suddenly cleared, showing a pallid face right in front of the camera, leering up into it.

  "Bugger me, that's him. That's the little sod there!"

  "How did he get inside at this time?"

  "He's been 'ere all the time, hasn't he? The little sod's probably been hiding in one of the store cupboards. Quick, ring the plod. I'll go and catch hold of 'im." Roland stood up, pulling down his sleeves.

  "Wait for me, Roland. You shouldn't apprehend alone. It's against the rules."

  "Sod that!"

  Sandeep was on the phone, speaking to the police control centre when Roland marched out. He watched on the monitor as Roland's back retreated down the corridor outside and flicked to screen twelve to catch him as he came out onto the main concourse. Sandeep finished reporting the intruder and put the phone down.

  "Bloody hothead," mumbled Sandeep to himself. "You're not in the bloody army now, Roland."

  Pulling the control room door behind him until it clicked shut, he ran after his colleague. By the time he reached the main concourse he was breathless. He leaned against one of the advertising hoardings. A photo of a youth smiled back at him, holding one of the new smart-phones that Sandeep coveted but couldn't afford.

  He pulled a hand-held radio from his belt. "Roland, I'm right behind you. Wait for me, OK?"

  The radio crackled. There was no reply.

  He jogged through the empty shopping centre, glimpsing lurid offers under the bright lights of the stores behind the security grills, massive discounts on artificially inflated prices. It occurred to Sandeep then that the kid hadn't triggered the alarm. If he'd been hiding in the shop, why hadn't the alarm gone off?

  As he turned the corner onto the main strip, he could see Roland up ahead, standing next to the palm trees. The kid was a dark outline beyond him, dressed in a long coat. Maybe Roland was right and the kid was a goth. Sandeep slowed to a walk, relieved to have reached them before Roland got heavy with the kid. The last thing they needed were charges for assault.

  Roland's voice sounded hollow. "Come on, son. You can't escape. Give yourself up and we'll go easy on you."

  Sandeep smiled between wheezes. Roland watched far too many cop movies.

  The boy laughed at him. That was bad. Roland wasn't going to like that.

  Roland started walking forward again and Sandeep picked up his pace to a trot.

  "You don't want to get funny with me, son," called Roland. "I ain't got no sense of humour."

  The laughter petered out and the kid lifted his arms as if he were holding something to his chest. Then his left hand jerked back and forth. Sandeep recognised the gesture; he was pumping a round into a pretend shotgun. A sudden breeze stirred the leaves on the palm trees. Sandeep looked up. Where did the breeze come from? They were inside the shopping centre.

  He slowed to a halt, turning back to find the source of the cool air when a massive thud punched into him from behind. A wave of heat like the draft from an oven door hit him in the back, lifting him off his feet and hurling him back down the tiled walkway. He tumbled in the air and landed rolling and sliding on the hard tiled floor. As his hearing came back, fragments of glass tinkled onto the tiles around him in a bizarrely musical way over the screeching of the bomb alarms.

  He shook his head, trying to clear the ringing in his ears. Pushing himself up, he could see stripes of blood rising on his hands where the glass had slashed him. He turned to look back for Roland, just as the smell of smoke and burning plastic hit him, catching in the back of his throat and making him cough and retch.

  Down the concourse, the kid was walking calmly through the debris under the rain from the sprinklers, black smoke billowing from the shops to either side, their security gratings gaping where the blast had burst them open. He stopped in front of another s
hop, pumped the pretend shotgun and pointed it at a shop. Sandeep squinted through the smoke – there was nothing there. The kid wasn't holding anything. Sandeep watched in disbelief as the kid's hands jerked, as if in recoil, and the shop windows burst outwards to a dull thud, erupting in fire and smoke.

  The kid smiled a long lazy smile and began strolling towards Sandeep, pointing to one side, then the other. As he passed each shop he would pump his hand and aim into the shop. At the gesture, the shops would explode in rolling gouts of flame, erupting in a hail of flying fragments, yet he never flinched or turned away. He walked though each explosion untouched, the detonations timed with his steps. It was like he was playing an instrument, waiting for the beat – a pyrotechnic conductor.

  As Sandeep pushed himself upright, the boy paused and made a show of noticing him. The boy's eyes caught the light from the fire, glowing with the hellish light. He pumped a round and turned to aim towards Sandeep. Before he was aware of it, Sandeep was running, his legs carrying him in huge leaping strides away from those eyes. There was a dull crump and a roll of thunder behind him and he was lifted and thrown down the concourse, spinning in the air to land hard and twisted on the tiles. Sandeep's arm gave a wet crack as he fell on it. As his hearing returned, he recognised the sound of his own hoarse screaming.

  Acutely aware of the pain as bone grated on bone, he made himself roll over and push up to his knees, and then to his feet using his good arm to help him. Once he was up, he cradled his broken arm against his chest, and staggered away from the smoke and the glow from the shop windows.

  He glanced back once, thinking of Roland back there. He had to get help. There was a demon loose and the shopping centre was turning into hell.

  Garvin looked up from the slim brown folder he was reading as I entered the room.

  "This is nice," I told him. "I didn't know you had an office."

  There was a large picture of a pastoral scene in a thick gold frame on the wall. The woodwork of the desk was dark and polished and the curtains were tied back with gold sashes to let in daylight.

  Garvin leaned forward and closed the folder on the desk in front of him, setting it on a pile of similar folders. He gestured at the striped seat of a regency chair set in front of the desk. "I don't. This is Mullbrook's office. He lets me use it."

  I sat down slowly, wondering what circumstance would mean that Garvin needed an office. "Tate said you wanted to see me?"

  "We need to talk. There are things to be done – things I need you to do."

  "What kind of things?"

  "You've been spending a lot of time with Alex. When you're not with Alex you're with Blackbird."

  "Alex needs a lot of attention right now, and Blackbird gets tired easily."

  "Blackbird is strong enough to lift the back end of a car. She's fey, Niall."

  "Half-fey," I corrected him, "and that doesn't mean she can't get tired. It was a long labour. She still hasn't got her strength back"

  "She seems to be managing well enough. She's got the stewards to help her. It's not like she's been abandoned, is it?"

  I looked at the pastoral scene on the wall. The watercolours ran into one another, making it look like it had been painted in the rain.

  "Alex is improving, so Fionh tells me." Garvin sat back, clasping his fingers together.

  "There have been fewer incidents," I agreed.

  "Fionh says she's exhibiting some clear signs of control, but she says you're babying the girl."

  "She said that?"

  "Not in so many words, but that was her meaning."

  "What did she say, exactly?"

  "Niall, you can't carry on babysitting her. She won't take responsibility for herself if you're there making excuses for her every time she screws up."

  "I'm not making excuses. She was tortured – abused. She needs time to adjust."

  "It's about time she was responsible for her actions. She can't learn if you keep stepping in for her."

  "She's fourteen, Garvin. I'm her father. I'm supposed to step in for her."

  "In fey terms she's an adult. She's come into her power, responsible for her own actions, or she would be if you let her."

  "She wants to see her mother."

  "We've discussed that, Niall. It's not a good idea."

  "You said she was responsible for herself. She's an adult, you said. She can take her own decisions. Well, the adult has decided she wants to see her mother."

  "It's better that Katherine believes that Alex is dead. It'll be easier."

  "For whom? For Katherine? I find that hard to believe. I can't imagine a worse situation than losing your child. The loss of her daughter will be the first thing that comes into her head when she wakes up, and the last thing in her mind before she sleeps – if she sleeps. I know, I've been there."

  I consciously softened my tone, forcing down the anger that bubbled up inside me when I talked about what happened to my daughter. "Discovering that she's been lied to will be hard. Knowing what's been done to Alex will be harder. But none of it as hard as living with the loss of your only child. It doesn't compare."

  Garvin met my stare for a few moments and then looked down at the desk. He sighed, then took the folder from the top of the pile and began laying out press cuttings in front of me.

  Shopping Centre Bomb Terror – Flash Flood Swamps Village – Is this the Beast of Balham?

  They were tabloid headlines, and the stories below them were no less sensational. The last was accompanied by a blurry photo, probably taken with a mobile phone. Without any scale to reference the image against, it was impossible to tell how big the animal was.

  "Looks like silly season," I said.

  "Thankfully the shopping centre was closed, though one security guard died and another was injured in the explosion." He picked up a sheet from the folder. "The fire officer's report on the shopping centre is inconclusive. They can find no trace of an explosive or an accelerant, but the fire spread from shop to shop despite fire barriers and a suppression system. It happened in the late evening, so there were only security staff on site. The surviving guard said the security system was on the blink and the screens went dead, but just before the fire he saw someone on the concourse. Two of the guards went down to investigate."

  "Arson?"

  "Terrorism – possibly eco-warriors or anti-capitalists – at least that's the official version. They think the dead guard might have been involved. The alarms didn't go off and the devices appeared to be timed – a professional job. The guard who died had military training – demolition. The destruction was total, everything burned."

  "Sounds bad."

  "Could have been worse. It could have been full of shoppers." He picked up another sheet. "Village of Sawlby in Derbyshire washed away three days ago. It's a Pennine village, pretty little place – or it was. Sixteen dead at the last count. Stream came up into a raging torrent." He picked up the cutting, "A wall of water seven feet high swept through the sleepy hamlet." He replaced it on the desk.

  "As usual it's the vulnerable that suffer – the old and infirm, or the very young. They're digging bodies out of the mud, trying to clear up the mess. Sound familiar?"

  "Alex was here. Fionh's been with her most of the time."

  "Alex isn't the only one, though, is she?" Garvin picked up another sheet. "Reports of very large cat-like creature stalking the streets of Balham. Several people have seen it, usually at night, and there are an increasing number of missing pets. It seems to have developed a taste for rabbit."

  "Could be an urban fox?"

  "One that can open a hutch with a combination padlock on it? The police have been called in, suspecting vandals. They found a trail of paw prints – big ones."

  "So there is a cat?"

  "The paw-prints vanish in the middle of a park. They just run out."

  "What do you mean, run out?"

  "The ground was soft, it had rained earlier in the day. They had a specialist with them – she reckoned it was
panther of some sort. She tracked the creature into the park, hoping to trace it back to its lair. They had a marksman with a tranquilliser gun on standby. She followed the tracks to a kiddies playground. The tracks go into the sandpit, but they don't come out."

  "There were other tracks?"

  "Oh, plenty. Kids and parents had been there all day. The only cat tracks were going in, though, not out."

  I had a sudden memory of encountering a large black cat in the passages below Porton Down. It had stared at me with knowing eyes while chewing on something that might once have been human.