Sixty-One Nails cotf-1 Page 2

  "Did anyone else see that?" I asked.

  "See what?" said Joseph.

  I looked at where the mouse had been. "There was a mouse, under the train. And then–"

  "Don't worry about them, sir. They live here all the time. They only come out when it's quiet."

  I thought about trying to explain about the grey arm, then thought better of it. Maybe I really did need a check-up. "Can we go up now? I think I'm ready."

  They helped me to my feet and walked me to the escalators at the gentlest of paces, accompanied by the attendant. The escalator was still working and carried us up to the ticket hall, where we were escorted through the side gate and around to the street exit. Up the stairs at street level the mesh gates had been pulled closed, but were pulled back to allow us out into the listless crowd waiting for the station to re-open. Mark cleared the way while they helped me to the waiting ambulance.

  Inside, the ambulance was white and sterile. They insisted that I lay down and was strapped in before driving off. Joseph stayed in the back while Mark went to the driver's seat and used the radio to inform his controller that they were enroute with a conscious patient. Joseph belted himself in and then we were away, siren blaring as the ambulance forced its way into the traffic. We accelerated in a short burst then braked hard as the traffic failed to clear out of the way. The siren wailed at the jammed cars.

  Without warning, another stomach cramp twisted violently into my gut, I gasped and squeezed my eyes shut against the pain, pulling against the restraints and grinding my teeth. Then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, it passed. I opened my eyes and the lady was standing over me. She was undoing the belts.

  "What are you doing?" I asked her.

  "I am trying to get you out of these wretched straps."

  "Stop that. I'm supposed to be going to hospital." There was a sound like a low groan coming from the ambulance.

  "You're not going anywhere. The ambulance is dead, can you not hear it?"

  I propped myself up on an elbow as she loosened the webbing. Joseph was slumped against the seat belt, Mark had collapsed over the steering wheel and the ambulance siren was making a sound like a stranded white whale.

  "How did you get in here?"

  "I followed you. I didn't have to walk very far with you in here. As soon as you had a spasm, all the power died and the ambulance stopped. That noise is the siren using up what little power remains. I would turn it off, but I don't know how."

  "You're crazy. What have you done to Joseph?"

  "He'll be well enough." She grabbed hold of my lapels and hauled me up to a sitting position with surprising strength. "Look, I don't have much time. I need to you to come with me now, away from here and away from the hospital. I don't want anyone looking too closely at you." She flung open the rear door of the ambulance and gestured for me to exit. The sound of car horns blared through the opening from the blocked traffic.

  "You're crazy! What are you talking about? I'm not leaving. I'm sick."

  "You're fine, you have my word. What are you called?"

  "My name is–"

  "I didn't ask you what your name is, I asked you what you were called."

  "It's the same thing," I told her.

  "No," she said, "it really isn't. I shall call you Rabbit."

  "I don't care what you call me. I'm going to the hospital."

  She shook her head. "No," she said quietly, "you're not."

  She grasped my hand in hers. There was a sense of vertigo and a momentary blinding headache.

  When I opened my eyes the ambulance had gone. It was almost dark, the threat of dawn glimmering through the overcast clouds. I looked around, but found only rolling grassland fading away into the darkness. I wiped my long hair back from where it clung to my face in the damp air. Fine rain drifted around me.

  Twisting around, I half expected to see the ambulance behind me, but found only empty grassland and patches of boggy turf in near blackness. Apart from the wind, there was no sound at all. The breeze was fickle and gusty, tugging at my buckskin jerkin and linen shirt.

  I couldn't see more than twenty feet in the dim light. I stuck my hands out around me, trying to break what must be an illusion. The cold breeze twisted through my fingers. Water started seeping into my boots from the soggy turf.

  Where had the lady gone? Where was I?

  A sound came. It drifted down the wind, too low for a wolf, too long for a bear. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. It howled, long and low, and the primitive part of my brain that knew about caves and monsters kicked my feet into motion.

  I found myself stumbling through the darkness away from that sound. My instinct said, Hide, make yourself small. I looked around as I stumbled forward but there was no cover, just stringy tufts of grass and rolling hummocks.

  I started running and the howl came again, rolling down the wind after me. Tripping on a tussock of grass, I went down on my knees. Panic brought me up again, my fingers scrabbling in the wiry turf to get up and away. My heart started pounding in my ears as I accelerated away, the long howl louder now as it gained on me. I sprinted, every ounce of energy focused on getting away. Then the headache came again and blinded me.

  I crashed into something and went sprawling on the concrete. I was surrounded again by the smell of wet pavement, the distant urban drone of diesel engines and motorbikes. My breath came in harsh barks while my heart drummed a staccato rhythm in my chest. I lay on my back, only thankful that the ground under me was hard and the sound of the hunt had gone. I had beaten it.

  A shadow crossed my face and I opened my eyes. It was her.

  "I'm so sorry," she said. "It took me a moment to catch up with you."

  "What in hell did you do?"

  "I used what I called you to create a certain type of reality for you."

  "You mean it was real?"

  "As real as you made it."

  This was insane, but still… "What would have happened if it'd caught me?"

  "The same thing that usually happens when wolves run down a rabbit."

  "There was only one," I told her.

  "You only heard one."

  "And it was too big to be a wolf."

  "Suddenly you're an expert on how big a wolf can get. Tell me, Rabbit, where did you come by such wisdom?"

  I squinted up at her then rolled onto my side, still breathing hard, trying to gather my wits.

  "Ah, more cautious now," she said. "Maybe there is some wisdom here after all."

  I looked up at her. The harmless old lady look was beginning to wear thin.

  "What are you, some kind of witch?"

  Her eyes hardened and her expression soured. She reached down to me. I scrabbled backwards to the wall away from her, avoiding her questing touch.

  "That word," she followed me until my back was against the bricks, "is not a kindly word where I come from."

  "Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean anything by it."

  She withdrew her hand. "I'll thank you not to use it again."

  "Fine, whatever you say." She relaxed again, allowing me to look around. "Where are we?"

  "Away from the ambulance and the hospital. In an alley. You collided with a dustbin and ended there. It was just as well you came back to yourself or you might have been trapped."

  "I was fine until you interfered," I told her. "I was going to the hospital."

  Another bout of pain erupted in my abdomen. I curled around it for half a minute or more, immobilised by its intensity. It faded gradually. "Oh God. I'm having another attack. Can't you see?"

  "I told you, you are not going to die of a heart attack. Here, let me help you up." She offered her hand.

  I looked at it, mistrustfully.

  "Have it your own way," she said, withdrawing the hand.

  "Who are you?"

  "You can call me Blackbird."

  "Blackbird? What kind of a name is that?"

  "It's as good a name as any I have ever had and it will serve me nice
ly, thank you."

  Her tone was acid, but I didn't care. "What do you want from me?"

  "From you? You're not in a position to offer me anything, just now."

  "Then why did you follow me? What are you after?"

  "When I revived you earlier, I acquired a degree of responsibility for what happens to you."

  "I was fine. The ambulance men said I was OK, I just needed a check up."

  Another of the stomach cramps twisted inside me and I bent over, momentarily breathless.

  She was unconcerned. "Just try to breathe. The aftershocks will diminish shortly."

  "Is it my heart?"

  "Gracious me, no. Your heart is as strong as an ox and will stay that way for many years to come, should you live that long."

  "I thought I had a heart attack."

  "You don't remember?"

  "Remember what?"

  "You were on the platform of the Underground. Your heart failed. You died."

  I searched my memory. Those last seconds were curiously blurred, as if my brain didn't want to register what really happened. "I can't have died. I'm here."

  "I brought you back. I healed your failing heart and summoned you back into your body, to keep something else from entering and using your corpse. If you were not dead then that other thing could not enter and I would not have to deal with it."

  "What kind of 'other thing'?" This was crazy.

  "The sort of thing you don't want roaming around in someone else's skin."

  "You're talking about… possession?"

  "I am talking about reanimation, but yes, in this case they are essentially the same thing. Unfortunately you were al ready dead and it gained a foothold. I had to heal your heart and summon you back into your body. For a moment I was not quite sure which one of you I had rescued."

  "That's what you were asking me, in the tube station – are you from the other lands?"

  "Had it succeeded, I would have killed it quickly while it was still weak from the crossing."

  "But it was me."

  "It was you. By the time I reached you, though, it had gained a sense of you. It will know you. It will have some of your knowledge, some of your memories."

  "What will it do with them?"

  "It will use them to find you."

  "And then what?"

  She looked at me. "It will kill you."

  "I don't understand. Why would anyone want to kill me?"

  "Because you are not entirely human." She said it so plainly, like it was something she said every day.

  "Are you mad? Of course I'm human. What else would I be?" The old woman seemed rational, but then started talking nonsense. Was she serious? She looked serious.

  "Here," she said. "Let me help you up. I promise I'll not harm you." She offered her hand again.

  I waved her hand away and pushed myself to my feet. I felt light-headed. Perhaps it was from being alive when I ought to be dead.

  "You have something on your trousers. It looks like it came from the bin with which you collided."

  The sight of my trousers brought me immediately back to earth. "Oh no. This suit was just cleaned. Look at it, it's ruined." There were patches of damp and the dark stain of something putrid was smeared into the knees.

  "It is the least of your worries, believe me. If you let me buy you a coffee, I will try to explain."

  She walked to the end of the passage, to where it met the street, and waited while I tried to remove the worst of the stain with some half-used kitchen towel that was protruding from a lacerated bin-bag. I wiped the slime from my hands with the remaining piece as best I could.

  She turned down the street and walked away suddenly, and I ran to catch up with her. I fell into step as she walked along. Mercifully, the rain had stopped, leaving the streets shiny in the autumn sun.

  "Why are you doing this?" I asked her.

  "I do not like loose ends," she answered. "They cause difficulty. Are you married?"

  "I was. I got divorced last year." It was an old wound, but nearly dying made it freshly painful.

  "No children." She made it sound like a statement.

  "I have a daughter."

  She stopped and stared up at me. "A child?"

  "Yes. She's nearly fourteen. I'm picking her up from my exwife's tonight. We're going to spend the weekend together."

  "A daughter? Well, well." She turned and continued walking, momentarily lost in thought. I followed, crossing Long Acre and heading down St Martin's Lane towards Trafalgar Square.

  "What did you mean when you said I wasn't entirely human?" I asked her.

  "Somewhere in your family tree there is one who is not human, but something else."

  "What kind of 'something else'?"

  "A creature of power. A member of the Feyre, a race far older than humanity."

  "I don't… The…? Is this some kind of wind-up?"

  "You tell me. Did you have a heart attack? Were you cold and dead? Are you a corpse on its way to the mortuary or walking along beside me?"

  A faint smile touched her lips. Was she mocking me?

  "I think… I think I would know if I wasn't… wasn't human."

  "Without Fey blood in your veins, the creature would not have been able to enter your body when you died. It was using your dormant power to bridge the gap between this world and the one it comes from. When I revived you I called to your power, the core of magic within you, and used it to mend your failing heart and bring you back."

  We strolled past people on the pavement while she talked in level tones about magic and creatures. Nobody paid us the slightest attention. It was unreal.

  "How did you… I mean, what…?" It made no sense. "This is… Why should I believe you, any of this?"

  "There was a creature waiting for someone like you, in another place nearby but entirely separate. It was waiting to cross over into our world. It was already in the process of taking your body when I found you. By bringing you back, I prevented it from completing the crossing, but it will have gained a sense of you. It will know you and will be able to predict where you will go and what you will do. Now it knows you, it will come for you, sooner or later."

  "What does it want from me?"

  "I told you, it wants you dead."

  "Why? What did I do?"

  "It wants you dead because of what you are, not what you have done. It knows what you are. As I do."

  "So we're back to that. You think I'm… not human."

  "The only reason you are not lying dead on the floor in the Underground station right now is because you have an ancestor who was Fey. It is the reason you are alive. When I intervened, I took a degree of responsibility for you and for what happens next. If you were to just wander off then things might become… difficult."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The magic I woke in you was dormant, but having woken it, it will not sleep again. It is alive in you now and will stay with you until you die, which unfortunately may be quite soon."

  "I don't understand. First you tell me I'm healthy, then you tell me I'm going to die. You're not making sense. Which is it?"

  "It's both. You're alive because one of your ancestors was not human, that much is certain. The creature that was trying to take your body will know you and will try to find you, that is also certain. It will not be able to cross the gap between our worlds again for some while. It will need a little time to recover, then it must wait for an opportunity to slip across, but when it does it will come for you – and for your daughter."

  "My daughter? What has she got to do with this?"

  "Rabbit, if you have a Fey ancestor then your daughter does too, of course. You don't need to be a geneticist to work that out. It will want her dead as much as it does you. That is why you must stay away from her, at least for a while. Don't go near her and don't discuss her with anyone, no matter how harmless they appear. You do not want to lead it to your family."

  It was bizarre, as if somewhere, at some point in my morning,
I had taken a wrong turn. I found myself sifting back through her words looking for the loose strand that would unravel this elaborate tale. Is that how she got her kicks, conning middle-aged men into believing the unbelievable?

  "What does it look like?" I asked her.

  "A better question would be 'who does it look like?'. The Untainted don't enter our world directly unless they have to. Instead, it will find a host, another body with enough of a thread of magic in it to sustain the crossing. It could be anyone: young, old, fat, thin – anyone." She gestured at the people around us as we crossed the street at the bottom of St Martin's Lane.

  "So how am I supposed to know which one is trying to kill me?"

  "So you believe me now?"

  "Let's say I'm humouring you."

  She sighed. "Their perception of our world is governed by their own time, so they will appear a little uncoordinated, as if they were drunk, or hungover. You will have to be watching carefully to notice the difference, though." She suddenly changed her pace and led the way to a coffee and sandwich shop. I followed her inside and she ordered for both of us, two strong coffees, mine with sugar and hers without.

  I rested my hand on her arm. "How did you know I took sugar?"

  "I didn't, but it is good for shock – and dying counts, do you not think?" She glanced up at me then took a small purple purse from her bag and paid the girl, all in coins.

  The coffee shop was crowded and noisy with nowhere to sit, so we took the coffees outside where the staff were wiping down the chairs and tables. The lady held the door open while I carried the tray. She led the way to the table furthest away from the few other people where the broad pavement sloped down to the dominating presence of the church of St Martinin-the-Fields. I put the tray on the table and she handed me my coffee as we sat down opposite one another.

  I took the opportunity to look at her more closely. She was around retirement age, one of those silver-haired ladies who have worked and now have the resources to lunch in the city whenever they please. Ladies like her were common around the National Gallery and Covent Garden, and I would not have picked her out as anything unusual.