AS DAN HAD GOTTEN closer to the ruins of Buckingham Palace, the night had turned quiet. A thick fog hung over the rutted streets and overgrown parkland he was passing. Up ahead in the gray mist now he saw a winged figure floating high in the air, and below it a seated woman.
Slowing his pace, he moved cautiously closer.
This must be the Queen Victoria Memorial, which meant he was nearing the palace.
Chunks of stone and metal had fallen away from the memorial. Names and curses had been painted and etched across the figures.
“Isn’t it awfully late for you to be up and around, Dan?”
He stopped still, staring up.
Perched near the feet of the seated queen was a thin, dark-haired girl. About eighteen, she wore a long, simple black dress.
“How’d you know my—”
“It’s easy, love.” She smiled and tapped at her temple with a slender forefinger. “I’ve got the gift, I do. My name is Morgana.”
“And you claim you can read my thoughts?”
“Don’t claim, love, can. With no trouble at all.” Turning, she started climbing down to the ground. “You really think I’m too skinny?”
He brought his hand up to the side of his head. “Not exactly, but—”
“And that I’m nowhere near as pretty as Nancy?” She landed on the damp ground, shaking her head. “No, I am not a bitch. When you get to know me, why ... Ah, but I’m being forgetful. You aren’t going to have the opportunity of getting to know me.”
“I have to find—”
“Dan, love, I know all that,” cut in Morgana. She stood watching him, head tilted slightly to the left, hands clasped behind her back. “You fancy that you’re on a lovely knightlike quest. Touching, that is.”
“Is she here?”
“That’s a very impressive school you attend,” she told him. “What you have to do now, love, is turn right round and head yourself back for there. Should you survive to reach a safe part of this great bloody city, then you simply hop on a train for Bunter Academy.” She took a few slow steps in his direction. “That’s truly where you belong, my dear.”
“I have to see Nancy, talk to her.”
“That’s quite impossible, Sir Daniel.”
“No, damn it. If she’s here with you people, then—”
“There’s absolutely no way, truly, that you can help her,” Morgana assured him. “You may think of yourself as the lady’s champion, but you’re really just a schoolboy, is all.”
“Schoolboy or not, I’m going to—”
“Let me explain the situation a bit further, Dan, love,” continued the thin, dark girl. “Lancelot, he’s taken quite a fancy to this Nancy of yours, do you see? I really for the life of me can’t understand why, but there it is.”
“Who the hell is Lancelot? And why do you all have names out of the stories of King Arthur and his—”
“All you need to know, sweet, is that Lancelot is the head man,” explained Morgana, bringing her arms in front of her and folding them across her chest. “As I said, Lancelot is smitten, and even as we speak, he’s in one of the royal bedchambers with your Nancy, trying to convince her to—”
“I’m going in there.”
“That you’re not, love. Merlin!”
A heavyset young man with short-cropped blond hair materialized out of the fog. He had on a loose, tattered gray overcoat. “Told you he’d be too dumb to save his arse.”
“I’m going to get inside there,” Dan said. “If I have to fight you first, well, then, okay.”
Merlin chuckled. “Oh, I say, Danny Boy,” he said, shaking his plump head. “I never fight.”
“He doesn’t have to,” explained Morgana. “You may as well go ahead and do it, Merlin love. Don’t, though, hurt him too much, you hear? He’s got some really sweet notions in that cute little head of his.”
Dan decided he’d better make his move before the thickset young man pulled out a weapon.
As he started for Merlin, the chunky young man raised his left hand and pointed at Dan.
All at once Dan felt his breath go whooshing out of his chest. Intense pain spread through his body.
His feet left the ground and he went rising up, in a zigzag way, through the thick night fog.
He slammed into the figure of Queen Victoria. Then he was yanked back. He spun around once before plummeting downward.
Dan smacked into the ground and passed out.
Their car on the underground tubetrain was rushing smoothly along, nearly empty.
“I’m surprised that Denis was so cooperative,” said Marj. “When he first sat down with us, I was certain he was going to insist on coming along.”
Jake grinned. “I persuaded him we didn’t need a reporter.”
“That usually doesn’t discourage Denis. He and his paper are extremely persistent.”
“And I’m extremely persuasive.”
“After you suggested that the two of you talk things over privately in the alley, I expected a fight,” she admitted. “That’s the way the kid gangs settle things.”
“No need for a fight.”
She turned in her seat, studying his face. “I don’t know you very well, Jake, but that looks like a smug expression on your face,” she said. “What really took place in the alley?”
“I used my stungun on him.”
“What? But that’s not—”
“Sporting?”
“I don’t mean that exactly. It’s only that I thought you’d used reason on him and—”
“I had a chat with Gilford earlier. He didn’t strike me as the sort of guy you could reason with.”
“I see, yes.”
“As I told you, Marj, the important thing to me is finding my son.”
“So you used your gun.”
“On its lowest setting. He’ll only be out for an hour or so,” Jake assured her. “And I propped him up in a comfortable, fairly warm spot.”
“I’d forgotten that yours is a violent profession.”
“It is,” he agreed. “If you’d like to resign as my guide, I’ll—”
“No, I’m sticking.”
They rode in silence for a few minutes.
“My brother and I,” she said finally, “used to have long debates on subjects like this. He always accused me of being too idealistic.”
“What’d he think of your going into social work?”
“He never knew about that. He was already dead when I came over here.”
“He must have died young.”
“Yes, much too young.”
The overhead speakers announced, “Knightsbridge Station. Final stop.”
The tubetrain began slowing.
Marj said, “Let the other passengers get off first.”
The car halted, the doors opened.
“Knightsbridge. All off.”
When they were on the platform, Marj said quietly, “We want that door on the left, the one marked Staff Only.”
“You visiting friends?”
“No, this is a shortcut over to the gang territory.” She tapped on the metal door three times.
It slid open. Standing in the corridor beyond was a black-enameled robot wearing a stationmaster’s cap. “Ah, a pleasure to see you, Miss Lofton, as always.”
“I’m making a late call over there, Jarvis.”
“This a beau of yours?”
“A colleague.”
“Take good care of her, lad,” the robot told him. “Were you to ask me, I’d say this is a very risky job she’s got herself.”
“I’ll look after the lady,” promised Jake. “Although she strikes me as being very capable on her own.”
“Nobody’s safe over there.” Jarvis grunted and moved aside. “Good luck to both of you. I’m happy it’s you who’re making this little trip and not me.”
Catching Jake’s hand, Marj led him through another door and into a damp, dim-lit tunnel.