Chapter 6

 

“We have three options, so far as I can see. None of them good.” Mister Gull kept the leather-bound book tucked beneath his arm, the title obscured by the folds of his grey suit jacket, as he double-knotted the laces of his black leather Oxfords. “The mines, the blood, or the end-times.”

Gull had left the front door open, allowing the rain to splash off the patio and darken the carpet beside the entrance. Every stray gust of wind left Kimberly shivering, snugging her hands up into the sleeves of her jacket. She didn’t want to step out that door any more, not when there could be anything hiding behind the hedges, but if they’d gotten to Peter in their own damn house then they could get to her as well. Sitting scared would only make her a target. “Give me the summary.”

“As you will.” Gull held up one finger. “First, the mines. It’s been hypothesised that the Queens are everywhere at once, spread throughout the town, the water, the air, but that they also keep some vital aspect of themselves beneath Rustwood. My best theory is that we can find that sliver and destroy it by exploring the old coal mines on the north edge of-”

“I’ve been there,” Kimberly interrupted. “Fitch took me. It’s terrifying. I’m not going back in without an army.”

“You may reconsider when you hear option two.” Gull yanked his laces into surgically tight knots, all hard right angles and perfect bunny-ears. “The blood. Instead of seeking the Queens, we bring them to us. It’s not so easy as sending an invitation; we’d need to turn their own energy against them by finding blood already tainted with their power and using it to draw them out. Then we bind them and do our best to end them.”

Kimberly had played with enough blood for one lifetime, but she suddenly had the sickening feeling that she wasn’t done, that she’d never be done. “And option three?”

“The end-times.” Gull’s gentle smile vanished, replaced with cold calculation. “The final option. The Queens are tied to Rustwood, veined to it. This town is their beating heart, which is why they fight over it so desperately. Destroy the heart, and they both die. But there’ll be nobody left to send you home, and I don’t know what will remain of this place if both Queens perish. The ground may split. The sky might burn. There’s every chance that this little corner of the world will simply... cease.” He ducked his head. “It’s an option I’d rather avoid.”

Kimberly shivered as she imagined the clouds swept away by blackness, the concrete boiling beneath her feet as Rustwood ignited from the inside. Screams behind locked doors. No, she didn’t want to know what Gull’s book said about the end-times. She didn’t want that temptation if everything went bad. “Is the blood-thing safe?”

“Absolutely not,” Gull said. “But then again, what is?”

“Then we do that, because I’m not going back into those fucking mines.”

He nodded slowly. The book was still squeezed under his armpit. “If that’s your decision, I’ll follow you. In fact, I have some ideas as to how we begin. But first...” When Mr Gull stood it seemed like he was expanding, stretching up until his crown brushed the whitewashed ceiling. Except, Kimberly told himself, that was impossible. Only a trick of the light. “I’ll need to collect my tools.”

 

Gull held a rainbow umbrella over Kimberly Archer’s head as he led her to the car. The locks thunked down, untouched, as he closed the door behind her.

She tried not to let her nervousness show as Gull climbed in, his long, pale fingers dancing on the wheel. “So, tell me your ideas. Tainted blood means jack to me.”

“Nothing is certain,” Gull said, snapping his seatbelt tight. “I need you to understand that before we begin. If there were guarantees, I might’ve tried this years ago.” He’d set the leather-bound book in the footwell and tapped it with the toe of his shoe. “Old knowledge is hard to hide. We’re not the first to try to turn the power of Rustwood back upon its rulers. So, step one: we build a cage.”

She already knew he wasn’t talking literally. “Steel bars won’t cut it, right?”

“Ah, if only it was that simple. The truth is, the Queens are comfortable down below, in their little palaces. Their... nests. We have to hook them, yank them out.”

“Be a lot easier if you told me what they were.”

“And it would be a lot easier if I knew.”

They eased into the streets. Rustwood blurred outside. Kimberly didn’t know where they were headed, and she was beginning to feel as if she’d made a terrible mistake. The panic was a rising tide, swelling her chest, making it hard to breathe-

Gull’s hand rested on her shoulder, and the fear ebbed away. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“You get into my head.”

“You don’t want to be afraid. I’m only taking that away.”

“Then tell me your idea, before I call quits.”

“The idea is simple, Kim. Perhaps even familiar. We’ll perform a ritual, like the one dear old Mrs Rosenfeld used, but much larger. Meatier. This cage will be built of blood, along with a foci, a... dog-whistle. It will lure the Queen out... one of them, doesn’t matter which... and hold them in place. Then, once they’re contained, we’ll find out whether they can die. That should be enough to scare the other into opening a door and letting you free.”

A cage of blood? Made as much sense as anything else in the damn town. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”

Lane markings fluttered past. The sidewalks were shadowed by weeping elms. A woman in fluorescent jogging shorts walked her dog in the rain, cigarette dangling uselessly from her lips. Two kids on bicycles raced down the centre line, heads bent, legs like pistons.

Gull coughed into his closed fist, and Kimberly got the impression he was trying to avoid her eyes. “The Old and New Queens are mother and daughter, so far as I know. Creatures of old languages, cut from the same cloth. Those languages have power, especially when written in blood. But for this cage, we’ll need the real stuff, the blood of creatures already touched by the Queen. And for that, we follow the trail of sickness.”

On the horizon, through the rain, at the peak of a great grey mountain, was a familiar monolith. Four stories of grey concrete pricked with flares of white light, perched at the end of a zig-zag road stitching back and forth up the slope. “St Jeremiah’s.”

“Well spotted. The New Queen has been infiltrating this town for years now, slowly, cautiously, one servant at a time. Never so bold as to catch her mother’s attention. She leaves men sick and dying, and they end up in hospital beds with the New Queen’s poison eating them from the inside.”

“The man who attacked me,” Kimberly whispered. “He was a nurse. You think whatever got into him did it there?”

“Anything’s possible. Now, look in the bag below the seat. I brought all the equipment we’ll need.”

It was a blue sportsbag with a shoulder strap, light enough to lift with one hand. Kimberly tugged back the zip and peered inside. “A mason jar?”

“We’re collecting blood, Kim. That jar holds forty ounces. More than enough.”

She dropped the jar back into the bag. “So which of us gets to rob the blood bank?”

“I’m sorry for handing you the responsibility, but you can go places I can’t. As for the blood bank, you’ll be getting it on tap. Look in the other pocket, Ms Archer.”

A hard angle. A cold, wooden handle.

She drew out a six inch kitchen knife.

“See?” said Mister Gull, as morning light played up the length of the polished blade. “Everything you need.”

 

St Jeremiah’s was a concrete monolith, a slab of brutalist architecture, nothing but hard angles and windows sheltered beneath jutting lintels, like yellow eyes peeking out from heavy, furrowed brows. It was impossible for Kimberly to step into its shadow without recalling the weeks she’d spent inside, strapped to a bed, dosed and gibbering.

This wasn’t the first time she’d returned to St Jeremiah’s, but it never got any easier.

Mister Gull held his rainbow umbrella over Kimberly’s head as he walked her up the hospital stairs. “Don’t want you getting a chill, now.” It was a weird gesture of chivalry, but one Kimberly appreciated. Just because she didn’t hate the rain any more didn’t mean she wanted it filling her boots. Gull had given her clean socks and an undershirt, but otherwise she was still wearing the costume pieces from the theatre she and Fitch had made their safehouse. She probably looked like an accident victim herself, painted with muck, her jacket burned at the edges by the fire in the Pentacost Convent and her cheeks scratched deep by razor claws.

The foyer was cramped with the sick and injured, and Kimberly had to ram a path through with her knees and elbows. Gull followed calmly, the sports bag slung over his shoulder, unbothered by the children hacking phlegm at his feet, the elderly women wiping their noses on their sleeves, the sheer mass of illness. The receptionist called, “Hey! Unless you’ve got an appointment, you need to sign in-”

Gull fixed her with an iron stare, and she sat back down, pale-faced.

Kimberly didn’t ask what he’d done or how he’d done it. Just like the burning bird, she preferred not to know. Better to keep quiet and get out as soon as possible. The whole place made her skin itch.

She’d spent days bound to a bed upstairs. Days of doctors peeling back her eyelids and shining lights directly into her pupils, muttering and scribbling on clipboards, whispering between themselves like she was a specimen to be safely sealed away in a jar of formaldehyde. After that, weeks to create the fiction that she believed in her husband, that it was only a psychotic episode. To build a lie brick by brick, strong enough for Keller to believe.

Now, as she followed Gull through the cool white corridors, she waited for a hand to fall on her shoulder, for someone to shout Stop! It’s that crazy lady! She shouldn’t be here, grab her, grab her-

Mister Gull said, “You’re tense.”

She turned away from his gaze. “I don’t like hospitals.”

“We’ll be out as soon as possible.” Gull raised his nose to the air. “How can anyone get well in here with that smell?”

Kimberly caught nothing but the vague scent of bleach and boiled sprouts. “What smell?”

“You’ll understand once this is done. You’ll smell it everywhere. You’ll miss smelling anything else.” He motioned her up a flight of stairs to the third floor. There he paused, bracing with one hand against the wall, like he’d suffered a sudden head-rush.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Here. You’ll have to do it.”

“Are you okay?”

“It’s just too much.” A trio of nurses clattered down the hall, laughing about their weekend plans, and both Gull and Kimberly shrank back against the wall. One nurse glanced at Gull, then back at his shoes, a puzzled expression crossing his face, and walked on.

“Don’t they see us?” Kimberly whispered.

“More like they don’t want to see us. You’re still new to this town, so you stand out. As for me... the longer you live here, the more you become part of the wallpaper. You’ll feel its pulse, too. In some places it grows so loud it hurts... No matter. This the isolation ward, where they keep those touched by the New Queen. They sent for specialists, but none came. How could they? They don’t realise what they have. It’s not an illness at all.”

“Then what-”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Gull handed Kimberly the sports bag, the mason jar and knife inside pulling the fabric taut. “All you have to do is get the blood.”

Kimberly was keenly aware of the three nurses only yards away, muttering as they compared their shifts. “And if I say no?”

She might’ve been mistaken, but she thought she saw a smile tug at the corner of Gull’s mouth. “You’re angry. Angry is good. It’ll take you far. Just remember, you chose this. We could have gone to the mines. We could have stayed home and made tea and waited for the beast to find you.” He glanced at the nurses, still chatting by the stairs. “We have to trust each other.”

“I barely know you!”

“And yet, you came.” Gull went very quiet, almost monotone. “I’m not Fitch, leading you blind into the mouth of your own grave. I’m not Mrs Rosenfeld, hiding behind her sycophants and her locked doors, pretending she can wash away the past with enough good deeds. I’ve seen the worst this town has, and I’ve come out stronger. I’m the only one who can bring an end to it. When we’re done, when the Queens are dead, well...” He waved one slim hand at a window looking out on to the mountainside, the waving firs, the sheen of city lights below. “Someone will have to keep control. All of this could be yours. Take what you want. Rule, if you want. Or claim your memories and go home. A free woman.”

There was something about the way Gull spoke that drove the doubt away. No lies in his voice. If it was all bullshit, it was bullshit he believed. “Kill a Queen, scare the other into opening a door, and get out. That’s all I’m here for. If you think I’ll stay when we’re done, you’re fucking crazy.”

Mister Gull licked his lips. His tongue, Kimberly noticed, was very pale, like it was starved of blood. “If you choose to go home, then you go with my blessing.”

“Says you.”

“It’s true. You should know ill intentions when you see them. After all, you’ve met the devil.”

“Excuse me?”

“The man who took you, the one that wasn’t a man. He had something inside him. What was it like, being so close to the New Queen’s servant?”

Thinking back to the darkness of Bo Tuscon’s basement, the stink of the bodies and the thudding pressure of fear around her temples, made Kimberly grind her teeth. Not as bad as it used to be, not by half - the dreams had almost stopped, and the memory of the creature crawling out of Bo’s throat didn’t leave her gasping for air any more. Maybe one day she’d be able to recall those hours without sweating.

Finally, she said, “He wasn’t the devil. Just some guy. Might’ve been dead the whole time, for all I know.”

“You’re not a believer, then?”

“Not church stuff. I mean, I’m no hardline atheist. Guess I’m waiting for the right God to turn up.”

“The right God.” It sounded like an epithet. “I was never one for hymns either, but I learned my battlefield prayers as a boy. Fiery gospels that show the Lord as he truly is: a mean bastard who breaks backs when he doesn’t get his way. A loving God is welcome when you’re in the Sunday pews, but we need a God that doesn’t take prisoners.”

Kimberly ducked her head as an orderly passed, letting her hair fall around her face. Little chance a nurse would recognise her after so many weeks, but still, if Keller walked by...

Gull took a lighter from the inside pocket of his jacket, spinning it between forefinger and thumb as if considering a lazy afternoon cigarette. Then, thinking better of it, he tucked it away. His hands were supernaturally quick, better than any streetside magician Kimberly had ever seen.

“You met pure evil and you crushed it,” he continues. “You’re strong, too strong to walk away now, not when you’re so close to the answers. I’ve been watching you, Ms Archer. I know you well enough to understand what you need.”

The nurses assembled by the stairs had finally moved on. They were alone in the corridor. The sportsbag slung over Kimberly’s shoulder was impossibly heavy. “I’m not a doctor. I don’t know how to draw blood.”

“I believe it’ll draw itself, when the time comes.”

“Christ.” No more excuses. Nowhere to run. For a moment she wondered whether she was crazy. A day ago she’d been throwing Molotov cocktails at monsters, and now she was going to assault some sick guy in a hospital and use their blood for some bullshit voodoo? Was she even awake, or was this another bad dream?

She swallowed the tension, gripped the bag strap tight enough to ache.

“Show me where.”

 

* * *

 

Goodwell worked his jaw until his ears popped. The arrival of his master always messed with the air pressure, like there was something huge but invisible squeezed into the space around him. It made it hard to concentrate, but he forced the words out anyway. “I’ve got important news. Bad news.”

He’d learned not to panic when the voice grew angry at him, squeezed him hard enough to burst his eyes from the sockets, but something was different. The voice wasn’t frustrated.

It was afraid.

“Why?” Its screams were stitched from wind and the howls of dying men in hospital beds, the panic of soldiers lying bleeding on distant fields. “Why didn’t you keep her safe?”

“Kimberly Archer? She was about to burn in that place and I dragged her out. She’s not the... Look, I need protection. I can’t help anyone if those things are after me. Me, my partner...” He waved at Chan, who was still pressed against the inside wall of the Balkan Circle. “They saw her face.”

“You care for this one? The one you were going to kill?”

Blood smoked at his feet as his offering cooked into the earth. “A misunderstanding. She can help us. Get us somewhere safe.”

“You trust too easily.” The voice was mocking now, laughter like the giggles of children. “They’re coming.”

Goodwell squeezed his eyes shut tight against the wind. It roared around his temples, slapped his hair back, billowed up his sleeves. Tears ran down his grimy cheeks. “Who?”

“Servants of the pretender Queen.”

Goodwell snapped upright. Above the howl of voices circling the sculpture, the throaty hum of his master vibrating in his skull, was the mechanical chug of cruiser engines.

“You have to run,” his master boomed. “Run, Goodwell. Your companion betrayed you. Run!”

He spun, blood pattering from the ends of his fingers. Above, the shield that’d covered the Balkan Circle began to tear. The first tentative drops of rain hit Goodwell between the eyes.

The board he’d pulled over the entrance to the circle had fallen in the mud. Detective Chan had already run.

He left the voice behind. Outside, three cruisers had pulled up on the peak of the hill, police lights flashing. The glare spiked through to the back of Goodwell’s eyes as he crawled through the hole in the plywood. He swore, shielding his face, trying to make out shapes through the blaze of light.

Four... no, five officers, all advancing on the sculpture. Chan was with them, waving and pointing back at the little uncovered entrance. And behind the lead car... was that Commissioner Snow?

No way had the Commissioner come all the way to collect him. Not unless...

Servants of the pretender.

He had to move.

There wasn’t time for a sneaky exit, a slow crawl around the slats of the Balkan Circle. He went hard and fast, ignoring the calls to stop, headed for the highway. His heart was a misfiring engine, his pulse crashing in his ears with every step, and he was almost there, almost clear of the police cruisers, almost-

It was the flip-flops that brought him down. Rubber skidded on wet grass and he fell to his knees, rolling end over end down the hill until one of the officers closed the gap and slammed him flat on his belly. A knee drove into his spine, crushing the air from his lungs. “Don’t be an asshole, Goodwell!”

He recognised the voice. One of the beat-cops that sometimes worked the front desk. He bucked, twisted, trying to free his arms, but the officer had him in an iron grip. “Llewellyn?” he gasped. “The hell’s going on?”

“Stop resisting! I don’t want to have to cuff you.” Officer Llewellyn jerked Goodwell to his feet and frogmarched him back up the slope, towards the waiting cruisers. “Dunno what you’ve done, but you shouldn’t’ve run. You know that’s gonna look bad.”

“I didn’t do anything! Llewellyn, come on...”

Up ahead, Chan and Commissioner Snow were arguing, silhouetted by police lights. Chan waved her arms, miming a pistol pointed at her head. Snow was expressionless, eyes hidden behind huge, mirrored sunglasses. Goodwell’s anger was a hot, living thing, boiling in his throat. He’d saved her, for God’s sake. Could’ve dropped her down a well but instead he’d kept her safe, led her true.

He didn’t know why he bothered. She was the same as everyone else in Rustwood. A knife in the spine as soon as you turned away.

“There’s been a mistake!” he shouted, even as Llewellyn jammed him into the back of the nearest cruiser. “Guys, you know me! You know-”

It was Chan’s furious cry that grabbed his attention. He’d expected to be manhandled - hell, if they so much as suspected him of killing the kids, it was a wonder they hadn’t skipped due process, kicked him to the ground and put a bullet in his head. But the only thing Chan had done wrong was be assigned to the wrong case, and now she was caught in a bearhug, one of the officers crushing her against his chest.

“Get off me! I called you!” Chan tried to twist free but the officer only squeezed harder. Her eyes bulged from her skull. “You... shit...”

“Don’t hurt her!” Goodwell threw an elbow back, catching Llewellyn in the chin. A jag of pain shot up his forearm but he ignored it, shoved the officer’s hands away and tumbled out of the cruiser. “She didn’t do anything!”

Chan was only three short steps away, but that was all the time Commissioner Snow needed to dart in and throw a wild right. Too fast to duck away - Snow’s fist caught Goodwell in the throat. He fell to his knees with great black stars erupting behind his eyelids.

“Don’t make this hard,” Snow said. “I was always good to you. Be good to me, and we’ll sort it out back at the station.”

Goodwell blinked through tears of pain. Commissioner Snow whirled above him, framed by black clouds and wind-bent pines, all spinning, spinning, spinning. “I don’t know what you’re-”

“Three missing boys, Goodwell. Fuck me, I knew you were close to the case, but there are accusations...” He inclined his head toward Chan, who’d gone limp in the officer’s arms. “But you can tell me all about it once we’re out of the rain.”

One of the cops returned from peering into the centre of the Balkan Circle. “Nobody hiding, Commissioner.”

Snow scowled. He still hadn’t removed his wrap-around sunglasses. “Get these two cuffed before they catch cold.”

Goodwell didn’t resist as they loaded him into the police cruiser, hands secured behind his back. His forearm throbbed but he pushed the pain away. He was more worried for Chan.

They’d arrested her. Maybe they thought she was involved in the three missing kids - covering for Goodwell maybe, or that she’d helped keep that fucking kid quiet.

Maybe something worse. Maybe Snow didn’t care about the kids at all.

A woman stood behind the nose of the furthest cruiser, the collar of her leather coat flipped up around her cheeks, a woollen beanie pulled low over peroxide-blond hair, eyes hidden behind huge bug-eye lenses. No cop that Goodwell knew, but he thought he’d seen her before.

Crossing a parking lot. Meeting Snow in his car outside the PD.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Who is that? Who the hell is that-”

But they were already moving, leaving the Balkan Circle behind, and the cop driving didn’t say a goddamn word.