Rhys turned frantically on the spot as Mr Ruislip stretched his fingers through the cold air of the pit. But Sharon was not there.
“Are you here to release the spirits?” asked Mr Ruislip. “I like saying that: ‘release the spirits’. It’s almost as empowering as ‘release the lions’ or ‘unleash the dragon’.
Rhys sneezed, colossally.
“Is… nasal phlegm,” enquired Mr Ruislip, craning in so close Rhys could feel his breath on his face, “a common fear response?”
“I don’t think so,” he babbled, “but I can only speak for me, can’t I?”
“I remember you,” murmured the wendigo. “When my claws went through your flesh, I had to look again to see if any blood had been spilt. Your skin was so soft, I couldn’t feel it tear. Why is that?”
“Moisturiser?” gasped the druid. His back was pressed against the railing round the pit and his head bent back over the drop, so much did he want to avoid the wendigo’s stare.
“Did you bring Greydawn? I did so hope you would. That’s why I let you come so far, travel so deep, bringing the mistress to her master.”
“Uh… bring who to what?”
“I know you have Greydawn,” Mr Ruislip murmured. “I know you’ve found her, because Dog howls in the night but he does not kill. And we watch him, by the streets burning in his wake. Now he comes here, still submissive to somebody… and no one but Greydawn can tame the Dog.”
Rhys sought for something manful to say. Nothing came to mind. He was, he realised, grinning inanely in the hope that this might make the problem go away.
“There was a girl with you,” murmured Mr Ruislip. One finger absently wrapped some of Rhys’s hair about it as if he couldn’t comprehend the gingerness of it. “The shaman. But she’s run into the shadows, leaving you here. Call for her.”
“I… don’t think I should, see?”
Mr Ruislip’s other hand closed gently around Rhys’s fingers. “Call her,” he breathed, “or I’ll break each bone, one at a time.”
His grip tightened on Rhys’s little finger. Rhys barely managed to bite down on a shriek of pain. “I can’t!” he gasped. In response, agony shot through his fingers, his hand, his wrist, up to his elbow and into his shoulder: a great tearing lance that lingered and burned. “Only thing is, Ms Li, she’s really nice, see, and–” another burst of fire, and Rhys’s words dissolved into a scream that echoed round the hall. Behind Mr Ruislip, senior management cowered, turning their eyes away “–and while I don’t want you to hurt me, Mr Wendigo sir, I really don’t want you to hurt Ms Li, so–” this time something cracked in Rhys’s hand. He shrieked, his knees buckling his and eyes filling with tears “–sooooo,” he wailed above the sound of his own gasping, “so please stop hurting me, because, see, nothing you do will make me call for Sharon!”
“I think you’re wrong,” breathed Mr Ruislip. His fingers danced over the pulsing of Rhys’s blazing hand. “I have observed that when females and males of your species are put together in situations of extreme stress, bonds may form which have no bearing on the reality of their various natures. Thus, the shaman-female may regard you, with the rationality of objective thought, as merely a dribbling male of dubious sexuality; yet where danger induces a chemical response, it is more than possible that she, like you, may mistake such a hormonal reaction as, in fact, an inclination towards affection,” the word was spat with contempt, “and thus act without the intelligence that such a situation demands.”
Rhys strove to think beyond the pain shooting up his arm and down the length of his spine. “Eh?” he managed.
Mr Ruislip mimed patience. “Then let me demonstrate. If I hurt you like this…”
This time senior management turned their backs as Rhys’s body arched and his scream bounced away down the hole.
“… then the shaman will react in a manner resembling—”
“This!”
The voice came at the same time as a blow that swung out of nowhere, to connect with the side of Mr Ruislip’s head.
Sharon appeared where she had always been. She pulled back her bag for another strike and swung it as hard as she could. The wendigo staggered.
“You!” The bag swung again, with a crack of metal badge on bone. “Do not!” Again, knocking him back off his feet. “Get to tell me!” Smashing into the crown of his skull as he sprawled across the floor. “About my chemical responses!”
Senior management glanced at each other as Sharon knelt on Mr Ruislip’s chest and hit him again and again.
Then Mr Ruislip moved.
His hand shot up and, through every obstacle, locked itself round Sharon’s throat. Her eyes bulged and the bag slipped from her fingers as she clawed at his stick-wrist and its steely strength.
“Little girl,” hissed the wendigo. “Were the grown men too scared to come and play?”
Something spasmed across Sharon’s face. As her vision blurred and the blood sang in her ears, she grabbed the wendigo by a thin handful of hair and pulled his head up, even as she smote it with her own.
Her skull, his nose.
Mr Ruislip wailed, an animal keen of distress. His grip loosened and a hand flew to his shattered nose. Blood rolled down, thick and dark, curling over the contours of his mouth. Sharon crawled away, gasping.
But now senior management moved. One staggered forward and grabbed Sharon by the collar, pulling her to her feet. Another caught hold of Rhys and swung him against the wall with a jarring thud. Rhys groaned and sank to the floor, cradling his arm, his chest, his whole body with whatever limbs he could spare.
Mr Ruislip staggered up, swaying from surprise and feeling around his nose. Cartilage clicked as he twitched it this way and that, exploring the depth of the break. His mouth twisted with dissatisfaction and pain.
“I think…” he muttered, spitting blood, “that this must be… rage.”
Sharon tried to close her eyes as the wendigo approached. Shuddering, she pulled away from his stare. One of his hands ran up her arm, and she swallowed bile at its touch. For a second she saw a flash of what he really was: flayed skin flapping beneath a silk-suited surface. His hand tightened on her shoulder. Somewhere in the black hole below shadows moved, though there was nothing there to move them.
Help us, shaman…
“Tell me,” the wendigo breathed, “does the human body have a fixed resistance above which it may be ripped apart? Or does it vary from one specimen to another?”
“Okay,” muttered Sharon. “That’s gotta be up there for one of the most whacked-out questions I’ve ever been asked. Sorry, didn’t pay attention in biology.”
His fingers dug into her flesh, creaked against bone.
“Shall we find out?”
“Excuse me?”
All eyes turned to see who had spoken.
Rhys was staggering to his feet, leaning against the wall for support. There was something in his hands, something thin and silvery, possibly covered in foil. As Sharon watched, he slipped it back into his pocket, and his neck tightened and stretched with the effort of swallowing what might well have been a couple of Dr Seah’s anti-histamines.
Aware of all eyes on him, with an effort Rhys straightened and repeated, “Excuse me, I don’t want to cause trouble, see. But I think you should let go of Ms Li.”
Sharon glanced down at the pit, and heard…
footstep on stone
wind through old newspaper
glass shattering in the night
swish of window pane
Help us, shaman!
“Are you… attempting to fulfil a gender obligation?” suggested Mr Ruislip, his grip on Sharon not slackening. “I have observed that it’s considered apt for the male of your species to defend the female, regardless of whether the effort is appreciated.”
“This isn’t a bloke thing,” asserted Rhys. “This is me asking you, politely, to not rip Miss Li limb from limb, because that would make me very angry.”
“Angry? And what form, dare we ask, will your anger take?”
Rhys drew a long breath.
And there it was, that flicker of power about him, that flash of magic which Sharon had glimpsed when she had been in the shadows but which had never got past the hay fever long enough to make itself known. The filaments in the bulbs around the edge of the room flickered and flared; a cold wind, stinking of factory chemicals and ammonia, gently stirred the air. Wires rippled beneath Rhys’s feet. It occurred to Sharon that this was what a druid was, always had to have been, even in the city–somebody at one with their surroundings.
“I’m a druid nearly of the first circle,” he hissed. “I was almost the leader of my peers, practically the chosen one. I didn’t quite summon the essence of the waterways from beneath the city streets, nearly brought forth the glory of the heavens, was almost on time for a conversation with the whispering dryads of the thousand and one lamp posts, and was only a few words away from sealing up the nether gate across the rotting railway tracks. You should maybe fear me, perhaps.”
A stunned silence greeted this statement.
Mr Ruislip raised his eyebrows at one of the suited members of management who, after a second of hesitation, rounded on Rhys and drew back his fingers in the opening gesture of a ritual spell. Rhys threw out his hand and the bulbs around the room flared, a vivid stream of tungsten light. Thin filament coils, burning cherry-red, burst up from the floor and lashed themselves around the feet of the unfortunate member of management, who turned red, then white, then grey, then finally, trousers smoking and hands twitching in pain, began to scream. The filaments, spider-thin and electric-fast, grew and wound themselves round the wizard like a cocoon, dragging him to the ground and smothering him in a writhing, glowing mass of wire, cutting off all sound from within.
Rhys took a step towards the wendigo, and the three remaining members of management took a step back.
“Interesting,” murmured Mr Ruislip. “You appear not to be leaking organic compounds any more from your nostrils.”
Another member of management made the mistake of raising his hands into an attacking spell. Rhys turned, eyes flashing fluorescent-white, and the wizard choked, clawing at his throat, his mouth opening and twitching, his cheeks bulging, until with a hacking cough that brought him to his knees, he spat out a great fat mouthful of tar-stained goo that dribbled from his lips and stained his teeth grey.
“The next person who tries that,” murmured Rhys in a dream-like voice, “will drown in liquid tar, see?”
Mr Ruislip caught Sharon’s eye. She gave a tiny shrug. “Hey,” she said, “this is your own crappy fault.”
The woman, smartly trouser-suited, turned and ran for the door. Her colleague hesitated, eyes flicking from Rhys to Ruislip and back, then with a little gasp he too ran, bolting out into the dark.
Mr Ruislip, still grasping Sharon by the shoulder, yelled, “Betrayal will be reflected in your Christmas bonuses!”
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, the man and the woman running for the lift.
There was the swish of…
… a bicycle tyre?
And the footsteps stopped.
Sharon strained and heard…
She heard…
A child laugh.
Somewhere out there, in the dark.
She turned to stare into Mr Ruislip’s pale eyes. “What’ve you done?” she breathed. “What’s out there?”
“The gates are down,” replied the wendigo with a tiny-toothed smile. “Did you think I was the only one to come through the wall?”
“Rhys?” Sharon raised her voice, louder than she’d meant. “You feeling druidic enough to blast this guy into lots of sticky bits?”
Mr Ruislip turned abruptly, pulling Sharon across his body, one arm over her throat.
Rhys yawned, then put his hands over his mouth. “Sorry, Ms Li,” he exclaimed, “That was really inappropriate.”
“It’s okay,” croaked Sharon, against the pressure of the wendigo’s arm. “ ‘These drugs may cause drowsiness.’ ”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t want you to think I was yawning–yawning–while you’re in danger, Ms Li.”
“Rhys, can we concentrate on the wendigo?”
In the darkness beyond the door, where footsteps had run and stopped abruptly, Rhys heard it again–the swish of tyres on stone, moving fast, far too fast for the narrow gloom outside.
“Now,” Mr Ruislip said, shuffling closer to the edge of the pit, “the situation is very simple. You are mortals of no significance, whereas I—”
“What’s in the pit?” Sharon cut in, wheezing with the effort of breathing.
The question caught Mr Ruislip off guard. “What?”
“I can hear… voices. All the spirits you stole, right? You locked them up down there?”
“You really expect me to ans—”
“Well, the way I reason it is this. You’re gonna use me as a human shield, right, against Rhys here until he like, gets mega-drowsy from all the anti-histamines and that. But that’s kinda dumb. Because if you do hurt me, then Rhys is so gonna blast you into tiny bits. And, actually, you may have summoned the nether hordes of darkness or whatever shit it is you’ve got going out in that corridor there. But me…” Her hands tightened suddenly around Mr Ruislip’s arm and it occurred to the wendigo, a second too late, that a vice-like grip went both ways. “… I’ve got this serious shaman shit going down.”
Sharon vanished.
So, for that matter, did Mr Ruislip.
There was a second of confusion.
Mr Ruislip looked round at the shadow world where the shamans walked, and for a second saw all that the shaman could see: walls encrusted with a hundred years of river salt that sparkled like diamonds; the ice that had once been buried here, still visible between the stones; metal crawling with rust mites that burrowed in and out of the iron of the walkway; Rhys burning, blazing with anti-histamine-fuelled magic that spluttered and spat around him like oil in a frying pan.
And, down–a long way down–the pit, a spinning, roaring mass, a great writhing mess of voices and shadows: there the red-brick soul of a warehouse plucked from the cracks in the mortar; there the silvery-glass back of an abandoned church hall, still rippling with the music that had once played within its embrace; there the soapy guardian of an old spa house where Victorian gentlemen had perfected their beards; here the sharp clattering voice of the factory floor, stolen at night from the hollow quietness of the waiting machines–dozens of them, hundreds of them, the stolen souls of the city whirled beneath him, screaming, hammering at their prison bars.
And, as Mr Ruislip looked up, he saw for a brief second his own hands, his own arms, his own skin, the billowing flayed flesh rippling around him like sails in a storm, and he grinned, and in this place his grin had fangs, and for a glorious moment he remembered how he had enjoyed the taste of blood and the thrill of the hunt until…
“Yo, saggy-skin!”
Sharon caught him by the waist, charging head first into his middle and knocking him back against the iron railing of the walkway…
… or, to put more fine a point on it, through the iron railing of the walkway.
For a second Mr Ruislip clawed at empty air, but there was nothing, only time and voices, to cling to; and he opened his mouth to scream as he, and Sharon, fell together into the whirling pit below.