Chapter 9

 

Kimberly stared out the passenger-side window as Mister Gull drove through the side streets of Rustwood. St Jeremiah’s Hospital was just a pinprick of light on the top of a distant mountain, almost invisible behind sheeting rain. The gutters were backed up, water rising around their tires. When Gull took a corner too quickly he sent a filthy tsunami pluming across the sidewalk.

The streets were familiar. She’d been here only a day before.

The Rosenfeld Mission.

Kimberly’s gut tightened as they pulled up outside the little shopfront, the words ROSENFELD MISSION peeling away as rain worked beneath the paint. The lights were off, shutters drawn.

It didn’t make Kimberly feel any better. She couldn’t forget what she’d seen inside. Mrs Rosenfeld, the woman she’d trusted, bound up in her shawls and cardigans and smiles...

Underneath that clothing, she’d been one of them. A creature of paper-skin drawn over knobs of steel and withered bone. Unnatural. “I’m not going in there,” she whispered.

Mister Gull stared straight ahead through the rain trickling down the windshield. He crushed the steering wheel in his slim fingers. “There’s no need. We’re not going inside.”

It was the first thing Gull had said since emerging from the hospital store-room. He’d seemed haunted since then, drained of colour. “So what’re we doing?”

“The blood is the cage. The lure, the foci, is something else. You already did your part. Time for me to get my hands dirtied.” Gull gave Kimberly an uneasy smile before darting out into the rain.

She took the opportunity to crank the heat, holding her hands before the vents, trying to work away the numbness. It was deep in her bones, curling her hands into claws.

Like that thing in the bed had claws. Emaciated fingers like sticks, eyes yellowed. Christ, it’d been more blister than human.

She misses you so. The Queen wants you to come home.

She must have misheard. No way could that mean what she thought it meant. The Queen wanted her back? Which one? What home? The convent, maybe. Yes, that had to be it. She and Fitch had walked into the beast’s lair and now it was taunting her, crooking a finger, daring her to return.

Well, fuck that. She’d drag the Queens out by their eyelids before she went back into that nightmare.

Outside, Gull was rifling through a dumpster in a nearby alley. He pulled out something the size of a coffee tin, wrapped in plastic, and hurried back toward the car.

“Hey,” she whispered, as the door slammed and Gull stuffed his garbage-prize into the sportsbag. Kimberly got a glimpse of hard angles beneath the plastic as he tugged the zip closed. Angles that reminded her of a jawline. “What were you doing down in that room?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing, my ass. You didn’t steal that key for laughs. You were looking for something.”

Gull ducked his head. “Let’s just say I have... old debts. They’re repaid now.” He shook the rain from his ash-white hair. “I apologise for not telling you. It wasn’t right. From now on, we share everything.” He held out one pale hand, waiting. For the first time, Kimberly noticed the skin on his fingertips was perfectly smooth. “Deal?”

She swallowed and shook his hand. Warm, not unpleasantly so, but it still felt like she was making a deal with a painted-on smile. “So, what next? I still don’t understand how this all works. Blood circles sound like girl scout campfire stories to me.”

Gull licked his dry, thin lips. “There’s so much power in blood, Kim. Would you like me to show you?”

 

They parked in a small gravel lot, out of sight of traffic. Gull retrieved his rainbow umbrella from the trunk before leading Kimberly down a red-brick alley. Tall apartment blocks on either side gave the alley the feeling of a deep, shadowed canyon. Whether it was a trick of the weather or the light, it seemed less rain fell there than on the street. The asphalt was almost dry beneath her feet.

Gull snapped the umbrella open over their heads. “You know where we are?”

The nearest sign read Canif Street. “Fitch told me about this place. Said it was bad.”

“Not bad. Just unfriendly.” He motioned Kimberly forward, offering her the stem of his umbrella. “Don’t be afraid.”

There was nothing to be afraid of that she could see - no dumpsters where creatures like the clicker could hide, no homeless sleeping in cardboard shelters. No rat-piles, no syringes.

And yet, as Kimberly entered the alley, she felt the tickling sensation of someone running spidery hands over her skin. Her molars ached.

She glanced back. Gull was still at the mouth of the alley, head cocked, expectant. Like he wanted her to run.

Damned if she’d give him the satisfaction. Kimberly pushed on, ignoring the puddles and the crunch of gravel beneath her shoes. The red-brick walls twisted around her, almost like they’d melted into place, stone as soft as candle-wax. There were shapes in the walls, as if someone had carved that too-soft stone with a putty knife.

She pressed one hand to the wall and shuddered as it tingled against her palm. Five brick lumps that fit her fingers perfectly, like they could intertwine...

Kimberly jumped back, suddenly unable to breathe. They were fingers, the ghost-impressions of a hand pressing outward from the stone, reaching for her as she passed.

Now that she’d seen the hand, the rest became horrifyingly, dizzyingly clear. Those weren’t two random divots - they were eyesockets in the brick, the impression of someone staring out from the skin of the neighbouring building. There, the jut of a kneecap. An open mouth reduced to a whorl-pattern in the stone, just clear enough to make out buck-teeth and a protruding tongue.

She couldn’t look away. “These aren’t sculptures, are they?”

“If only!” Gull’s reply echoed down the alley. “They were sealed here.” The rain ran in streams from his nose and the end of his sleeves. “No, don’t leave yet. Listen. Not to me, to them.”

Kimberly swallowed her fear and waited, even though she didn’t know what she was waiting for. Were the mouths etched into the brick about to start moving? Was it a cruel trick, Gull laughing behind his hand as she stood like an idiot in a filthy alley, waiting for bricks to talk?

And then;

He’s coming he’s coming

You go left, I go right

Is it ready?

Now, now

She blinked. The voices vanished. “What was that?”

Finally, Gull ventured into the alley. Puddles steamed beneath his feet as he strode through the rain. “An echo.” He waved one hand at the walls, the screaming faces embedded in the brick. “Some things don’t want to die.”

“People?”

“On the outside. Inside they were cold and black. Shortly after I learned to do what I do, the Old Queen - she still had power at that time, long before the New Queen began her little revolution - sent servants to stop me. That was a mistake. The flames went so high you could see them on the far side of town.”

Kimberly wanted to touch the mouths again, to see if they’d flex against her palm. At the same time, she wanted to run and never look back. “Are they alive in there?”

“If only. Then I could ask them why they came. Where they’re weak and where they’re strong.” He got in close enough for Kimberly to feel his breath on her neck. “Have you ever woken and not known what day it was?”

She tried not to shiver. “That happens to everyone-”

“Have you ever not known what month it was? What season? Rustwood doesn’t sit right in time. Days are weeks and weeks are days.” Gull waved at the sky, the grey clouds overhead. “Time... hitches. Like whatever runs Rustwood knows how things are supposed to go but can’t keep the train on the tracks. You’re hearing what happened that day when I burned them into the walls. Cause enough damage in one place and it’s like gathering up a fistful of reality.”

She couldn’t hold in the laughter. It was giddy, crazed, ridiculous. “Time travel? Seriously?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what-”

“Rustwood doesn’t exist like we think it exists. It’s a bad sketch on a wrinkled sheet of paper, and every time things get out of control it gets a little more wrinkled.” He rested one hand on Kimberly’s shoulder and squeezed. “But you, my dear. You’re not just going to wrinkle this place. If you kill a Queen, you’re going to tear it in two.”

 

* * *

 

The officers dragged Goodwell into a little concrete chamber attached to the cellblock, a place cops on night-shift sometimes called Club Med. Four foot per side, bare except for a sluice in the sloping floor. A place to dump prisoners covered in puke and shit, the drunkards who needed to be hosed before going back to their cells.

A little folding chair waited in the centre of the chamber. Snow stood behind the chair, but Goodwell wasn’t afraid of the commissioner. It was the woman by his side, the slim blonde, who really made him struggle not to fill his pants. Even in the shadows of the cellblock she kept her sunglasses on, like they were glued to her face.

He knew exactly what that meant.

The two officers forced Goodwell into the seat and re-cuffed his hands behind his back. One seemed uncertain. The other adjusted his own sunglasses and dropped his hands to his sides, waiting for orders.

“You sure about this?” the first officer asked. “Doesn’t feel like-”

“I’ll take care of him.” Commissioner Snow ushered the two out the door. “You have paperwork to file. Go, go!”

The door slammed shut. No lock on the inside, but Goodwell already knew he wouldn’t be able to run. The Commissioner was a monster of muscle. When he wasn’t drinking or being a pain in the ass, Snow lifted iron. In a one-on-one, Goodwell would leave in a hearse.

But maybe that was better than whatever Snow’s companion had planned.

He tugged at the cuffs as the woman in wrap-around sunglasses circled the chair. “You’ve been a very bad boy, Detective Goodwell.”

“Got no idea what you’re talking about.” The cuffs were tight, wound through the chair’s steel frame. His wrists would break if he tried to pull free.

“Oh, please. Why make things hard on yourself?” The woman took a slim red purse from the inside pocket of her jacket and upended it. An array of bright, polished tools clattered on the concrete. “I came equipped. Much easier if you just tell me what I want to know.”

“I didn’t do anything. Come on, Commissioner! You’re going to let this lady-”

The words died on his lips as he took in how Snow wobbled on his feet, how his mouth hung open just far enough to show the white line of his teeth. He, too, wore sunglasses. Aviators large enough to hide his eyes from all angles.

“Please,” he whispered. “Snow. Is it still you?”

Commissioner Snow’s silence was all the answer he needed. “You piece of shit,” he growled at the woman. “Did you mess with his head? Make him like those kids?”

“The kids aren’t my concern.” She trailed one cold finger up Goodwell’s jaw. He jerked away, the chair legs squeaking on the concrete. “I’m here with orders from the new monarch. She wants you laid open, Goodwell. Tell me the truth - the Old Queen speaks to you, doesn’t she?”

“Fuck you.”

The woman’s expression was absolutely still. If he hadn’t seen her grinning at Commissioner Snow the week before, that day when they’d met in the rain outside the PD, he’d have thought her carved, not grown.

Christ, maybe she was. He had no idea how the pretender operated. The Old Queen, she did things right. Let people be born and live and die while she kept Rustwood ticking. This New Queen, she was breaking the rules, chewing them and swallowing and shitting them out.

He suppressed a shudder as the woman played with the array of tools scattered across the floor. A child’s Swiss-army knife, a steel-tipped fountain pen, a loop of copper wire. “Do you know what I could do with these?”

Goodwell spat. “Shove ‘em up your ass.”

“No need to be rude. I’ve always been a professional, Goodwell. Fitch knew that. Me and him, we worked like business rivals. Always keeping an eye on each other. Respectfully.” She picked the fountain pen off the concrete and leaned in close, until the strands of her thin, pale hair tickled Goodwell’s cheeks. “You, on the other hand. You’ve got no class.”

She ran the tip of the pen around the bridge of Goodwell’s nose. A light touch, not enough to scratch, but he couldn’t help focusing on the shining tip of the pen. Christ, it was close to his eyeball. A little jerk was all it’d take...

Sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes. “The Queen won’t stand for-”

“Which Queen? Yours is all dried up, Goodwell. A bitter old bitch hiding in the root of the world.” She turned the fountain pen back and forth, letting the tip catch the light. “Considered defecting? I’m sure there’s a place for you by the New Queen’s side.”

“What, so she can turn me into something like you?”

“You don’t like what you see?”

Goodwell couldn’t keep the fury from his voice. “You’re a tool. A... a fucking blunt hammer. You’re not even alive.”

“And what makes you so special?” She traced the curve of his cheekbone with the pen, pressing just hard enough to sting. “You think your Queen hasn’t been inside your head? You think she just lets you run around without a collar?”

He didn’t reply. Maybe that was the wrong choice, because the woman snapped out from the shoulder and slapped Goodwell across the face with the pen in her hand. For a moment his vision went black - no pain, just a curtain of darkness pulled taut across his eyes. Then came fire, a red pulse in his cheekbone. He could feel the imprint of the fountain pen across his eye socket, like he’d been whipped with leather.

“When I speak, you answer.”

Goodwell clenched his jaw, ground down on the pain. His front teeth wobbled when he probed them with the tip of his tongue. The woman might’ve been small, but she had one hell of a swing. If she decided to get serious, start digging that fountain pen into his skin...

The woman stared at her palm, the pen pressed into her pale flesh. “You know what I could do to you. I could empty you out. Make you spit all your secrets.” She dropped the pen and raised one hand to her sunglasses. “I don’t want to go that far. I’d rather have you... intact.”

“You can’t intimidate me,” Goodwell managed, hoping he looked more confident than he felt. “You know who I’ve got on my side.”

“Oh, please. Your Queen is faded. Mine is rising. This is your last chance, Goodwell. Defect, or I make you one of my manservants. You’ll be on the winning side either way.” The sunglasses rested on the tip of her nose. Over the lip, Goodwell could just make out a wriggling darkness. “Want a moment to think it over? Or should we skip the formalities?”

“Like it matters, you-”

There was a knock at the door, hesitant, almost swallowed by the concrete. The woman scowled, nudged her sunglasses back up on her nose, and nodded at Commissioner Snow. He opened the door just wide enough to peer through.

A whisper through the gap. Goodwell took the opportunity to swallow blood. His breath came in gurgled gasps. It was trickling down the back of his throat, Christ, he was going to drown on his own blood if they didn’t untie him-

Snow’s whisper was coarse but didn’t quite carry the length of the cell.

The woman leaned in close. “They’re where? They have who?”

Again, Goodwell didn’t catch the whisper.

“Where?”

“St Jeremiahs’.”

“Why isn’t he here?”

“He was in surgery. He was cut.”

“Get him here before sundown and there’ll be a treat for you.” The woman cupped Snow’s cheek like a lover. “Put Goodwell back in his cell. Nobody in or out.”

Commissioner Snow’s hands beneath Goodwell’s arms was a strange relief. Snow, he understood. “Help me,” he whispered, as the commissioner dragged him out of Club Med, back towards the cellblock. “Please. Snow, I know you’re in there. Just say something. Tell me you’re still-”

“I’m dead,” Snow said. “She killed me.”

Goodwell swallowed blood as his toes caught in the cracks between concrete slabs. “Snow, please-”

“And it feels good.” Snow licked his lips. The tip of his tongue was black and foul. “Feels damn good.”

The only other sound in those dark corridors was the steady drip of blood as it ran from Goodwell’s busted lips and pattered on the floor.