Eventually, having given up his search of the body, Bray found the severed paw and was about to toss it onto the carcass when he discovered a coin-sized tattoo below the calloused knuckles. It looked like a rough circle with eight tentacle-like appendages - an octopus, maybe? He had never seen it before. He stared at it for a moment, letting the image lodge into his mind before dropping the paw on top of the body.
Taking a step back, he retrieved a small glass vial from the inside of his jacket and held it up to the moonlight. Inside was a black powder that filled the bell-shaped base and came partway up the slender neck. Carrion spore. He removed the stopper and tipped half the contents over the bulworg, then pushed the stopper back on and slid the vial back in his jacket.
Wisps of grey vapour began to spiral from the black powder as it reacted with the creature’s body. The carrion spore lay dormant in the glass vial, yet once in contact with dead flesh it began to feast on it at a microscopic scale, devouring flesh and bone until there was nothing left. Guessing that a creature the size of the bulworg would take about half an hour to be fully consumed, he returned to the door.
He leaned against the frame with his arms folded, scanning the barren patch of ground. Apart from the odd rat darting amongst the brambles and the piles of rubble and brick, he was alone. In earlier times he would have relished any opportunity to stand still and do nothing. Such moments had been rare growing up in the Imperial army; even more so as he progressed to blade-master and then transferred to the Shades, the Emperor’s special forces. After he took the black cloak, standing still was not an option. To be a black cloak, a Shaigun, you had to give yourself body and soul to the Shadojaks, the highest-ranking mortals on Thea. The eight Shadojaks ranked higher than any king and only one step below the Emperor himself and were answerable to nobody but themselves. And each had an apprentice like him, a Shaigun.
He cast his eyes back to the bulworg. The carrion spore was working well, and the carcass was beginning to smoke as the micro-organisms devoured the flesh. The heat reached him where he stood, and an acrid methane smell filled his nostrils. He snorted it out and returned his gaze to the night.
Three years he had spent here on Earth. Learning how people lived, how they went about their lives and communicated with each other. It didn’t take him long to blend in, to hide amongst them while he and his master, Diagus, kept watch. But there was a change coming - a shift in the ether that had the Supreme Shadojak worried. It was the job of the league of Shadojaks to bring balance and stability.
A fox scurried between a gap in the bramble and rubble, pausing briefly to sniff the air before moving on. In the pale moonlight, Bray could make out its matted coat, mottled with stains and midges. It was gone in a moment, leaving the ground undisturbed and no sign of its passing. Bray couldn’t suppress a brief pang of envy. No responsibilities, no orders to follow. Free to come and go as it pleased. Of course, it had a family to feed - but families also meant fellowship, warmth. Love.
Bray could control and suppress his emotions well. It was one of the first lessons he learned when he took the black cloak. Hatred, anger, fear, jealousy, empathy, even love: these were emotions that he had shed willingly and easily. In the Imperial Guard or even as a Shade, a wife and family would have been a possibility. But once you followed the path of a Shadojak, you relinquished all human attachments. You were stripped of anything that could be used against you. To be a Shadojak was to be above mortal life and mortal things. To be a balancer of things, your mind had to be perfectly aligned. Good and evil were merely concepts created by man to identify the things they favoured or opposed. One man’s good was another man’s evil. It was the same for gods, but the effects of their actions were more far-reaching. It was the Shadojaks’ job to step between the two. To intervene in order that the worlds remained in equilibrium. If one side upset the balance, oblivion would threaten all. Life, be it mortal or immortal, would cease to exist. Or so the theory went. It wasn’t his job to question. The principles were thousands of years old, the code written down by the founding fathers of the League of Shadojaks, the original eight who had killed Solarius, the God of Chaos, and taken his sword: a soul reaver and those of his seven knights. Eight soul reavers for eight Shadojaks.
Bray returned to the bulworg - or what was left of it. The carrion spore had worked well, dissolving the flesh of the beast until a small pile of dust remained. The residue would have been unrecognisable to anyone on Earth, but he kicked the pile of dust anyway, scattering it into a more random pile before leaving the warehouse.
A short walk later and he was back beside his motorbike, parked behind a skip on a side road, a sheet of old tarpaulin hiding it from view. He pulled the sheet back to reveal the Ducati Diavel. The engine was a 1198cc V-twin, mighty enough to produce 155 brake horsepower. He had added some refinements: nitros, a turbo-charger, racing pipes and brakes. It wasn’t road-legal, but then, he didn’t have a license or insurance anyway.
Strapping on a matching carbon-black helmet, he swung a leg over the seat, pulled the bike from its stand and pressed the ignition button. He couldn’t help smiling as the engine growled to life. Of course, Diagus would have disapproved. Even a smile was a display of emotion. But Diagus wasn’t here and he wouldn’t have been able to see beneath the tinted visor.
Bray kicked the bike into gear and let the clutch out as he applied the throttle. His grin spread across his face as he accelerated into the night.
Chapter 4
Silk
Captive in her room on board the Molly, Elora perched on the end of her bed, clutching Nat’s journal. Her fingers were stiff as she held the book to her chest, eyes red and swollen with grief and fear. For the past half an hour she had been desperately casting around for a means of escape, while trying to rid her mind of the image of her uncle lying bleeding or dead on the floor on the other side of the thin partition. The clatter of an approaching helicopter jolted her mind back to the present danger. She had to get out of here. There would only be minutes to get away from the Molly before Reuben handed her over to Silk.
She heard Reuben order one of his thugs to go up on deck. “Bastard!” she muttered under her breath as she jammed her wooden chair beneath the door handle. The door wouldn’t hold for long, especially with Pinky battering against it, but all she needed was a precious few minutes.
When she was younger and liked to play tricks on Nat, she had discovered that the wall between her room and the bathroom was made of thin plastic-coated plywood panels screwed into place. Hiding in her wardrobe, she had unscrewed the back panel and squeezed into the bathroom, confusing Nat. She smiled at the memory. She only hoped the screws were still loose.
Glancing at the door a final time, she squeezed into the wardrobe between her clothes, the plastic hangers clattering as she pushed them aside. Cursing and trying to keep as quiet as possible, she searched with her fingers for the screws that held the panel in place. It didn’t take long to find the ones she had loosened as a child, but she wasn’t a child anymore and she wouldn’t be able to squeeze through a gap that small. She would have to find a way to unscrew the other side as well.
Suddenly she heard the metallic ping of the spring in the bedroom door handle. Somebody was trying to get in.
“Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” came Pinky’s gravelly voice as he repeatedly twisted the handle.
Elora swore under her breath. No time to unscrew the panel. She slid on her bottom so her back was against the wardrobe doors and pushed her feet against the thin wall. She felt the thin plywood flex.
“Open up, you awkward bitch!” Pinky roared as he began to put his shoulder to the door.
Elora pushed against the panel with all the strength she could muster, timing her efforts to coincide with the thumping on the door. If Pinky heard her in here, the game was up.
A final push and the plywood gave with a snap. There was no time to waste. She slid through the hole on her belly and lowered herself onto the bathroom floor.
Pinky still hadn’t broken down the door to her bedroom - she could hear him raging in the corridor. She would get them back for what they did to Nat. But first she needed to get away and ring the police.
Unlike the rest of the windows on the Molly which were of the small round porthole kind, the bathroom window opened wide. She eased it open as softly as she could. Warm air poured in and the sound of the helicopter grew louder. The black shape was hard to make out against the night sky, but it was clearly heading for the adjacent field and she could see the red flashing light beneath. She didn’t have long.
A quick glance out of the window told her the coast was clear. That didn’t mean she couldn’t be seen. But it was a risk she had to take.
As she climbed over the toilet and placed a leg through the window and a foot on the outer ledge, she heard a splintered crash from her bedroom. Pinky had broken down the door. Time had just shortened dramatically.
Swinging her legs over the side of the boat, she dipped a toe in the black water. It was icy cold compared to the warm night air. Struggling not to gasp out loud, she transferred her weight to the steel handrail and lowered herself into the canal.
A moment later the bathroom window was flung open and Pinky’s head poked out. She released her grip on the handrail, took a deep breath and let the weight of her wet clothes drag her below the surface. She prayed she hadn’t been spotted.
Feeling her way across the cold metal underside of the barge, she groped towards the canal bank. Trailing weeds snatched at her legs but soon she felt solid concrete ahead of her and hauled herself to the surface to emerge gasping for air.
A gap of a few inches separated the barge from the concrete side of the canal. Above her, the boat’s rounded hull gave enough room to lift her head out of the water and remain hidden. She tried to slow her breathing as she sucked in the night air.
On the bank the rattle of the helicopter blades died away and Elora could hear Reuben’s voice welcoming the mysterious Mr Silk.
“She was a right handful, that one. Fought like a bloody vixen.”
Beside Reuben, Elora could make out a thin elderly man in an elegantly tailored suit. His face was expressionless, his dead eyes fixed on the Molly. A third man, plainly a bodyguard and even bigger than Pinky, stood some distance apart, glowering in all directions.
“The uncle wasn’t all that easy either. He needed quieting,” continued Reuben. “We had to lock the girl in her room until you came.”
Silk turned and fixed Reuben with an icy stare. His voice was dry, rasping and thick with menace. “I sincerely hope you didn’t leave her unguarded.”
From her hiding place, Elora felt the barge dip with the weight of someone moving around on deck. Then Pinky’s panicked voice rang out.
“She’s gone!”
“What? That’s impossible!” Reuben said. “Find her, she won’t have got far.” He turned to Silk and was about to speak when the older man slapped him across the face.
