“She’s been judged.” The last words Diagus spoke to him before the line went dead. She’s been judged. Dead, in other words. Neptula’s warning came too late and now Elora had paid the ultimate price.
He had rung as soon as he could, but it wasn’t soon enough, and he couldn’t even call the Shadojak back because his phone lost power. As did the street lights along with Norgie’s motorbike. A passing lorry engine cut out at the same time and glided to a stop, the driver looking baffled as the city fell into darkness.
The leviathan had sung.
Anger, raw and all consuming, boiled through Bray’s core. An emotion he hadn’t felt in years, yet one he could control if he wished it, but did he wish it?
His foot connected with Norgie’s motorbike the instant before his mind registered what he had done.
The old Triumph clattered over, wing mirror shattering against the road, handlebar buckling and denting the fuel tank. As its rocking stopped Bray put one hand against the building and taking a deep shuddering breath he forced himself to gain control.
Elora was dead.
He had only known her for a little over two days, so why was he feeling this way? Was the sea witch right; had he found love and lost it without ever knowing what it was? Was it even possible to fall in love in two days?
Bray stamped his foot into the ground, cracking the flagstone he stood on. He wanted to fight something, he wanted to destroy, to damage. To kill.
Dawn had arrived. A blood-red dawn that bathed London’s tall buildings in an angry glow, reflecting from windows that should have been lit from within.
No electricity. No sounds of engines, the roads eerily quiet, cars and trucks parked haphazardly where they came to a stop after the Leviathan song. There were no planes in the sky, no helicopters, no boats on the Thames. It was like the city had died.
Bray let his feet carry him randomly through the quiet streets, along roads and paths, not really thinking where he was going, not even caring. He passed people, not giving them much notice but got the impression that they were lost without the lights and sounds of the city.
One man was trapped on the inside of a building, banging on the glass, the automatic door not being so automatic anymore and he didn’t have the common sense to find the emergency exit. Bray ignored him and carried on.
Down another street, he startled a cat that emerged from an alley. The ginger tom had a dark lizard-like creature hanging limp in its jaws, black blood dripping from webbed feet.
The cat eyed him suspiciously, watching him pass before disappearing back into the alley, his teeth still clenching its prize.
Bray recognised the dead thing it carried to be a plugrin. They were venomous reptiles that usually lurked in the shallow ponds and swamps in the river lands on Thea. Lucky for the cat he’d caught only a small one, he had seen much bigger plugrins which shouldn’t have been here in the first place. He watched the ginger tail as the cat disappeared and wondered what other creatures would begin to break through the barrier.
By the time the sun had risen above the cityscape, Bray found that his legs had brought him near Canary Wharf. In front of him, looming high and dominating his vision was Silk’s building. He had just enough time to register where he was and hide from view as the entrance swung open and row upon row of soldiers marched out. Each carrying a rifle and wearing combat fatigues.
Bray counted at least twelve platoons, separating as they met the road, half going one way, half the other. At the head of each file rode an officer on horseback, shouting down at the men in that rattily clicking tongue of the takwich. It was clear that they were to head into the city, but for what reason he didn’t know. He doubted it was to keep law and order.
Bray debated whether to draw his sword and cut them down from the rear, letting his steel sing and taking as many down as he could before he was taken down himself. It was a foolish suicide mission but the black mood he was in made it tempting.
He waited until they were out of sight and crept back to scan the main entrance. Two guards stood beside the glass door. Armed with rifles, they would see him coming before he could get close enough to take them down. He guessed the exit at the rear of the building would also be guarded. Silk wouldn’t make a mistake like that. Not when he had done so much planning already. This would be a waiting game, then.
Bray crawled beneath an abandoned a car that had broken down near the gate and kept vigil. Silk had all this planned out. His army was taking the capital and with no electricity, not even battery life, there would be no communications to mount a defence.
The glass door swivelled round, and four policemen marched out, an elderly prisoner cuffed and blindfolded being forcefully led between them, two to each side. They made their way across the car park and loaded the prisoner into the back of a horse-drawn carriage, two of the policeman climbing in the back with him, two in front.
The carriage itself was modern; made from a light metal with slender spoked wheels and tyres. He wondered how many of these Silk had. With the death of electricity and the combustion engine, horses would become the best form of transport and it seemed the takwich had more than a few.
The driver whipped the horses and the carriage wheeled out onto the street and began to make its way toward the city centre. Bray waited until they passed the car he was hiding beneath before rolling out and following.
The horses travelled at a steady trot, metal shoes striking tarmac and replacing the sounds of rolling rubber. It wasn’t hard for him to keep pace, crouching behind parked cars, vans, sprinting the gaps between and avoiding being spotted as the carriage weaved through the vehicles that lay abandoned in the road. If the leviathans had sung at the time of rush hour, the streets would have been a solid block of metal. Maybe that’s why they chose a dawn attack.
They came to a junction, a bendy-bus had stopped across it and made an impenetrable obstacle, forcing the carriage onto the pavement.
Bray waited until they were at a choke point, the back wheels catching against the curb and holding them momentarily. Then he leapt upon the bus, ran along the roof in a crouch, drawing out his blade and as silent as cat he launched himself onto the back of the carriage.
He landed beside the prisoner and drove the hilt of his sword into the takwich beside him. Anger pulsed through his veins as he punched the other man in the throat, collapsing the windpipe while his blade cut deep into the skull of the takwich in front. Blood spraying up as he wrenched his sword free.
The motion startled the horses and they began to buck, one of them kicking the chest of the driver and knocking him off the carriage. The remaining takwich made to grab the reins as the horses bolted forwards, pulling them off the curb with a clatter.
Bray grabbed the back of the seat before he fell out, the horses now in full gallop, hurtling down the street now it was free from the bus. Londoners who had been wandering like lost sheep in the middle of the road, dived out of the way as they raced by.
Bray righted himself as the last takwich took the reins with one hand and levelled a gun in his face with the other. He twisted his head to the left and felt the bullet brush the hairs on his scalp before it thudded into the takwich whose throat he had punched.
Before his attacker had time to fire another shot, Bray grasped the top of the gun, twisted it around and yanked it back.
The hammer fell and connected with the firing pin. The bullet entered through the takwich’s temple and exited the back of the cranium, pulling grey chunks of brain and splintered fragments of skull with it.
The body fell from the carriage and Bray took the reins.
“Woah, easy now,” he spoke soothingly to the horses, pulling gently back on the reins.
They slowed to a trot, but he didn’t stop until he was sure that the takwich that was kicked from the carriage wasn’t going to catch them up.
Guiding the horses onto a quiet road he halted. Climbing back into the rear seats he put a hand to the prisoner’s shoulder and pressed the tip of his sword to the man’s exposed neck. In one fluid movement he pulled the blindfold off and studied the old man.
He was of an age with Norgie, with long greying hair that still held a hint of blonde and the bluest eyes he had ever seen.
“Who are you?” Bray asked, relaxing the grip on his sword.
“My names Nathanial.”
