“Get what information you can from her but don’t get lured to the water’s edge, she’s a devious creature, especially in the water.” Diagus’s voice deepened, taking on a more serious quality. “When I return we’re going to judge Silk and his takwich army. Do not make a move without me. Understand?” Bray nodded and noted the ‘I’ return, not ‘we’. “Good, now get some rest.”
The sun was a pale ghost. A silver circle barely visible through the overcast sky, casting neither rays nor shadow against the glass fronted salon which disguised Grendel’s shop.
Nobody observed Bray enter the herbalists but as he left he almost bumped into a blonde woman who was entering the salon. She looked surprised to see him appear suddenly, as if stepping out of a wall, but quickly recovered, her eyes regarding him hungrily; a playful smile on her lips. Bray stepped past, ignoring the woman and cursing himself for not checking if there was anybody outside before leaving Grendel’s.
Elora was clouding his mind; his judgement and being at the forefront of any thought or lapse of concentration. He’d already had a near miss with a bus as he’d crossed a busy junction earlier.
He swung a leg over Norgie’s old Triumph and jammed his foot down on the kickstart. It thumped to life, coughing out a cloud of black smoke which cleared as he revved the engine. He slipped the clutch and made his way across London, heading for Tilbury docks, as good a place as any to begin the search for the sea witch.
Grendel had given him the nip-crasters, a way of trying to get back into Diagus’s good books, although the Shadojak couldn’t be bought by favour.
The jar felt clumsy inside his jacket pocket, pressing against his ribs with every bump the old bike found, if the glass shattered the nip-crasters would kill him a whole lot faster than the knoll sap would. And this time he didn’t have Elora to help him. Great, there he went again, thinking about the girl.
Never had somebody filled his thoughts the way she did. And it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it. Even if she was an innocent Earth-born there could be nothing between them; Shaiguns, like Shadojaks, forsake love. Love! Was that it now, had he gone and fallen in love? Impossible.
The traffic lights in front suddenly turned red taking him unawares and he braked harshly, coming to stop three feet over the white line. He checked in his mirror and noticed the driver of the car behind shaking his head. Bray held his hand up apologising and berated himself for being an idiot. Love? That was stupid. The lights turned green and he accelerated away as fast as the old bike would go.
Tilbury docks was busy. Huge container ships were docked; monolith like cranes reaching into their holds and moving cargo straight onto lorries, waiting to transport the loads to the far reaches of the country.
Bray stayed a while, watching the murky grey water eddying white as it sloshed about the hulls of the steel vessels until he was satisfied that the Sea Witch wouldn’t remain somewhere so busy.
He turned his attention inland and followed a narrow road that skirted along the mouth of the Thames estuary and then parallel with the river. It was a slow job, especially since he needed to stop every so often when he lost sight of the brackish water and abandon the bike to scramble through gardens or over buildings. But if he was to find Neptula then he needed to be methodical, if he missed one vital spot he would need to restart the search.
Night began to draw on as he neared Elizabeth Docks, a small yet busy yard on the north bank. Two ships were being unloaded in the quay as he paced around the steel wire perimeter. She wouldn’t be here; he knew that but perhaps some of the workers had noticed strange ‘goings on’ along the river.
Procuring a hard hat and hi-vis vest from an empty cloak room, he began to question the dock workers. Speaking with the local accent he posed as a health and safety officer. Within an hour he had spoken to most of the staff but had found nothing of interest. He was about to give up and head back to his bike when he came upon a young teen at the water’s edge, taking pictures of the ships.
“What are you doing here?” Bray asked, putting on an authoritative voice. The boy started and almost dropped his camera in the water.
“I was only taking pictures. I like the ships,” he answered, staring at the ground. “I got a thing for ships, like others have for trains or planes. I’m really sorry if I was trespassing.”
Bray held his hand up and smiled. “It’s ok. Is it just here you come to take pictures?”
“No. I try to go to as many places as possible, you can get the best pictures from Tower Bridge though, but you don’t get the bigger ships all too often.”
“Have you seen anything strange lately? Anything out of place or unusual?”
The boy cocked his head. “Like what?”
Like a huge bloody sea beast big enough to pull an oil tanker below the waves and crush it like it was a plastic scale model. Bray might have said. “You’d know it if you’d seen it.”
The boy shook his head and was about to leave. Bray placed a hand on his shoulder. “The water’s edge isn’t really a safe place at the moment. Not yet anyway. If I was you, I’d keep clear of the Thames for a while.”
“Ok. I only came here because some businessman bought the old King’s Dock further down. You could get some good pics from the roof of the service dock, if you didn’t mind heights. It’s a long way down to the water from up there. Mind you, the service dock was well deep. Supposedly a ship had once sunk there, went deep enough for the mast to sink below the water. But some rich business guy bought the whole yard and now I can’t even get close.”
“Do you know who bought it?”
“Nope, sorry. Was somebody with a lot of dough though. Put up huge fences. Got security guards, dogs the lot. I’ve even seen a helicopter fly in and land a couple of times. Don’t know what he’s got planned. Hope it’s one of those super docks like they got in the States, but I doubt the politicians would...”
“Was it a black helicopter by any chance?”
“Yep. Could have been. I didn’t take much notice. Like I said, I’m into ships, not aircraft.”
Bray had heard enough. “Thanks for your time. Oh, and take my advice. Stay away from the water.”
Bray hid in the shadows of a doorway at the back of an old paper factory, watching the entrance to the old King’s Dock. The ship enthusiast had been right. A twelve-foot steel fence had been constructed around the perimeter of the yard, blocking the view inside although it seemed quiet from within. Two security guards stood beside the gate, appearing unarmed but showed the bulges of hand guns beneath their jackets. They were statue still, more like professional soldiers than hired security. More like takwiches than humans, Bray guessed.
It wasn’t long before a car pulled up, one of the security guards opened a back door and a cloaked figure stepped out. It didn’t say a word as the other guard opened the gate, bowing his head as it passed through. The tips of the grey cloak swished as it walked, leaving wet foot prints on the dry cobbled street. It was the sea witch. Was she working for Silk? Or was Silk one of her pets?
Bray waited until the car had gone then prowled along the side of the building, out of the guard’s vision. He shimmied up the drain pipe of the building next to the shipyard and climbed onto a window ledge that was a story higher than the fence, crouching low whilst balancing on the balls of his feet.
From this vantage point, he watched Neptula enter a large square building that sat beside the river. Probably the service house the boy had mentioned. Scanning the grounds, he saw no further threat and so launched himself from his perch.
Clearing the fence by a foot before hitting the ground, he flowed into a forward roll. The jump had been silent, but he still checked for any signs that he had been spotted. When it appeared that he hadn’t, he crept to the door the Sea Witch had gone through, hugging the walls and keeping to the shadows.
The only sound he heard from the other side was the steady drip of water but the cause of that could be anything - he was on the docks. Carefully he opened the door as wide as he dared, then slipped through, silently closing the outside world behind him.
Darkness enveloped the inside of the service house, only a faint gloom reflected from the water that almost filled the room, casting ghostly pale fingers around the brick walls. Bray edged closer to the mouth of the service yard and leaned down into the blackness. Maybe Neptula had already gone below and was at this very moment watching him as he sought her out.
The words of Diagus came back to him. ‘Don’t go near the water, she found the last Shaigun delicious. Warily, he took a step back and then another and slowly drew his sword from its sheath.
“Steel can’t hurt me Bray but keep the blade out if it makes you feel safer,” came a voice from the corner of the room, its throat sounding dry and full of dust.
From the blackness the cloaked figure stepped out, closely followed by a takwich, his gun drawn. As she came closer to the water she let her hood fall revealing a hairless head, the face bone white; skin cracked and sagging with deep crags down both sides. She stared from dark pits, a smile causing her flesh to crack further, skin pastry thin floated down to the water’s surface like fish flakes.
“How do you know my name?” Bray asked, his mind already working on a course of action to take the takwich down. He watched Neptula lower herself to the floor and submerge her legs into the river, her back to him. She let out the kind of sigh he imagined a person would make after sinking into a hot bath.
“I know quite a lot, Shaigun,” she said, her voice sounding more seductive and less dry. Bray watched as her face filled out, the dry and dead skin turning to fine silver scales that shimmered with the colours of the rainbow when the light touched it. Thin spikes ran in a single line over the top of her head and down her neck following the line of her spine. An azure blue membrane linked the spines together which she flexed back and forth.
