North registered Kirkham’s bellows of protest and Hone’s gritty Belfast tones from the observation deck. Hone and the security forces must have come in through the access tunnels. Fang was ahead of him. ‘Syd, open all doors,’ she yelled. ‘They’re with us and they’re friendly.’
‘North, we have the General secured and the tablet,’ Hone shouted down. Hone had the tablet, and he had the General – but not Lilith?
Fang glared at him. ‘Go get that psycho, moron-person!’
He figured she had the situation under control.
There was no point asking the special forces spilling into the replica streets for a weapon, because they weren’t going to give him one. He’d have to buy one of them a beer and apologize later. He smashed his forehead into the nearest guy’s nose and, as his victim reeled back, ripped the Glock 17 out of the other man’s grasp. He started running, hurdling the rubble and the bits of metal towards the door on the other side. A torrent of abuse followed him out the door.
Lilith didn’t shoot those boys lying under St Bride’s, but she’d kidnapped Fang, and lured North here to his death. And more important than any of that, she’d pulled the trigger on the woman he loved. Her time was up.
Down the concrete corridors of the bunker, he pounded after her, the electric lights flickering. Through the metal door and up the twisting stairway, which jangled at every step. Where was she heading? Not the secret labs – they’d be a dead-end. No. She had to be heading up into the main Derkind building, into ‘The Brain.’ There had been no sign of these stairs on Bald Paulie’s map, but Lilith knew they were here. She’d planned for every eventuality, as he would have in her place. And when Hone broke through into the hangar, she’d taken off and left the General to his fate.
As he rounded a corner, he caught sight of her. She was fifty yards ahead of him, an AK-47 bouncing against the rucksack on her back.
Slamming through a concealed door at the top of the staircase, Lilith took a running jump over the barrier to leap into the void, grabbing hold of a stand-up drone mid-air and shoving its rider off the platform as she landed. There was a scream and a muffled thump as he hit the polished concrete floor of the reception below. ‘Oopsie,’ she called, then swore as the drone dipped and she toppled, hanging on to it by the handlebars, her feet dangling in the air, before swinging herself up to a standing position. As she steadied it, she turned to blow a kiss at North. He was on the ramp that climbed up through the heart of Derkind. He glanced down. Spread out on the concrete of the foyer a shrieking young man was clutching his right knee, surrounded by colleagues. He’d live. Which was more than could be said for Lilith when he got hold of her.
*
He caught up with her in an empty meeting room on the very top floor. A plate-glass window ran the length and breadth of the room, and he could see London spread out for miles. His first thought was that it was an incredible view. His second – that there was no way out. Hone’s people would already have sealed the tunnel, there’d be police marksmen and special forces and security service agents at every exit. Lilith had to know that.
She wasn’t even out of breath.
‘Put the Glock on the floor, North, babe,’ she said. ‘Then lock the door. Tell me you haven’t been waiting for me to say that.’ Her back was to the vast window and her AK pointed at the doorway where he stood. She was wearing some kind of strange black all-in-one with a small tiger-print bag at her waist, and the curled-up sling to the AK was at her feet.
Slowly, he put the semi-automatic on the floor, but not so far away he couldn’t reach it.
‘Kick it over towards the window.’
Inside, he cursed.
‘The door? We don’t want housekeeping disturbing us.’ She smiled invitingly.
He did as she said, and as she flicked a switch the electronic blinds slid across the internal windows on to the foyer. No one could see in.
‘For the record, babe, I’d never have let that sad old buffer kill you and the kiddy-wink. I was waiting for the right moment.’
‘The moment hell froze over?’ An alarm sounded and the vibrations of feet pounding along the ramp came up through the floor of the meeting room. They were evacuating the building. Then they would search it room by room.
‘You have a point, but honest to gosh and Jiminy Cricket, I was conflicted.’ She moved closer, one step, two, three, rustling as she went with a sound like the wind through the trees. He could feel the cold muzzle of her gun pressing into the warm muscles of his stomach, her lips brushing against his, sliding off on to his cheek. Her mouth against his ear – her breath warm on his skin. She smelled of cherry blossom and cut grass and something altogether more dangerous.
‘I’ve considered stopping – like you. I could disappear – move to the country, marry a farmer, make chutney and keep chickens.’
‘Chickens attract rats.’
‘Everything attracts rats.’
‘So why not?’
‘Because I’ve been doing this too long. This is what I am. And without it, I’d end up clawing off my own face and nailing it to the barn door.’
‘That would be a shame. It looks better where it is.’
She pulled back from him, her cheek sliding across his, till all he could see were her blue and green eyes. ‘I took something precious from you and I’m sorry for it. I can’t bring it back.’
He looked away, so she couldn’t see the pain.
‘Say you forgive me,’ she whispered.
Forgive her?
Forgive her for killing the woman he loved a lifetime ago.
Forgive her for almost getting him killed and for everything she’d ever done. Things he didn’t know about but could guess well enough, because he’d done them too.
And forgive the woman he’d once loved for dying on him.
‘Asking for a friend, babe.’ The gun was still pressed against his stomach wall. As if Lilith had all the time in the world. As if his answer mattered.
Asking for a friend. For him, she meant. Because somehow she understood him. Because they had seen death up close and survived it themselves. Because she was an angel of death, as he had been. Because someone had to be.
Forgive Lilith not for Lilith’s sake, but for his own. So that he could finally embrace the future. He didn’t know if he could do that. In Berlin, Hone had said he was stuck in the past. In London, he’d promised Fang that his ‘booze and boohoo’ days were over, but that didn’t mean to say the hurt had gone away. Just that he’d got better at living with it. As a kid, he’d thought the fault must be his. The disconnection he felt – that he couldn’t love or be loved. He knew differently now – he knew he could love and be loved. But was he prepared to accept the risk that went with loving? That sometimes the deck was stacked and you were going to lose everything you had? He’d moved from the past into the present when he took this job. Could he allow himself to embrace the idea of a future? Of forgiveness?
‘You’re carrying your pain around with you. You’ve got to put it down, babe.’ The fingers of her cool hand were against his cheek. He couldn’t feel the gun any more. ‘You’re young and I want that for you. She’d want that for you.’
Something had to be wrong with him to feel this sense of connection with a killer. But all he knew was that what he was feeling felt like kinship. Like she was a kindred spirit. Derkind, an anagram of Kindred – Fang had said it. And you can’t choose your blood ties.
‘There’s nowhere to go, Lilith. This is it.’
She took a step away from him and smiled.
‘They’ll be through that door any second, and they’ll shoot you where you stand.’
‘Time for the soft-shoe shuffle, then. It’s a darn good job I brought my own music.’
She pulled the tiger-print bag away from her, dropping it to the floor as she extracted a black box no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. ‘See you in the Maldives, babe,’ she said, and winked. ‘Mine’s a daiquiri.’ And she pressed the red button in the middle of the black box.
He lifted his arm to protect his face as a million tiny slivers of glass flew across the office in time with an enormous bang. Cold air tore through the hole the explosive had left, and with a jolt North became aware of the noise of brakes and squealing tyres, the screaming of onlookers as more broken glass rained down on them.
Lilith was already running for the jagged hole, the assault rifle still in her right hand, her arms pumping, her legs moving so fast they were a blur.
She was insane. She was going to kill herself and he didn’t want her to die. He sprinted, reaching for her – his arm stretching, fingers straining to catch her and save her from herself – but she’d known what she was going to do. She’d diverted his attention from the window frame so he didn’t notice the detonator cord. The explosion shocked him, but she had been ready for it. She was seconds ahead of him and she was going to make it.
With a bound, she leapt through the space where there’d once been a window, and as she did, she reached for a handgun, pulling the trigger as she turned in the air. Falling backwards, she still held both weapons, one in either hand, and she was firing. The air around him sizzled with bullets, as if she was drawing his outline just to prove she could. Time slowed as he braced for the impact of lead in his gut and for darkness. Her lips were scarlet as she grinned up at him, eyes locking on to his as if they were the only two people in the world.
And then she let go of both guns, flipping herself, spreading her arms and her legs in the black wingsuit, swooping away and into the darkness. The laws of physics were restored, time moved again, and even as he reached into the brick dust and powdered glass for the Glock, North felt the remembered touch of her lips. Lilith had fired the bullet that killed his one true love. He felt the weight of the gun in his hand as he remembered Lilith’s lips parting in a smile. Her eyes on his, with outstretched arms, falling backwards into the void.
She’d planned it all.
Her exit strategy in case it all went wrong.
She must have got into Derkind and laid the PE-4 along the frame of the window before she went down into the bunker. Just in case she needed a way out. It was a risky base jump. He imagined her out in the cold morning air, tugging at a cord, a parachute opening, jerking her back up into the sky for a second while she scanned for the alley she was making for, careful to avoid the snaking train tracks. She would know exactly where to go. He thought he felt it as her boots touched the earth, running, slowing. She’d already be cutting the parachute free, before bundling it up and tossing it into a skip; unzipping the wingsuit, stepping out in something smart – a tiger-print silk coat that moved in the breeze as she did. Emerging into a busy street, hailing a black cab, before disappearing into the bustling city.
Lilith could have killed him. Shot him through the heart over and over, but she chose not to. Should he scour the earth to find her and tear her limb from limb with his teeth? Is that what the woman he’d loved would have wanted? But Lilith was a natural-born predator – would she regret her own mercy and come back for him? Would he look for her? Should he? Or would they leave each other in peace, or what passed for peace for restless souls like them? Esme had asked if killing helped with the pain. But it didn’t. The only thing to do with pain was to walk into it and hope if you kept walking you’d reach the other side before it destroyed the bones of you.
Days ago he’d considered throwing himself out of a Berlin window – falling through air that smelled of soap to his certain death. North placed his other hand on the metal strut and leant out into nothingness and straight away the wind wrapped itself around him. The roar of engines and busy-busy people carried up to him as the day ran onwards regardless. He swayed, feeling the pull of the void, letting his fingers loosen their grip – Fang was safe and Syd recovered. His job was done; it would be easy enough to let go. He gazed down. Some part of him needing to make sure no beautiful corpse lay splayed and ruined on the cold hard ground, waiting for him. But Lilith was already far away. Heading for a plane to drink daiquiris in the hot sun. And he was here, holding on to a broken window, deciding between a state of being and a state of unbeing.
‘Hey, moron-person, Syd connects in thirteen minutes,’ Fang’s voice called from the doorway behind him. ‘We’re in Tobias’s office.’ She slammed the door. Then opened it again. ‘If you jump, wave as you go past.’
Syd connects in thirteen minutes… If Syd connected, Esme believed it was over for the human race.
Maybe he wasn’t quite done yet.
He pulled himself back in. As he picked his way over the debris and towards the door, he ran his fingertips over the tiny crystals of glass embedded in his palm, each one haloed with blood. Sometimes you got hurt in this life – wounds left scars, but they healed and you lived with them. He knew that better than most.
He’d forgiven Lilith, and hadn’t even heard it happen.