Scenting Hallowed Blood (18 page)

Daniel was silent for a moment.
‘He could be something... marvellous.’

‘We know that,’ Aninka said.
‘We have been looking for him, and need to talk to you before we
take any action.’

‘He doesn’t care,’ Daniel said,
and began to laugh. ‘You didn’t have to lie to me. You could have
walked right in there and taken him. He wouldn’t have stopped
you.’

Aninka glanced at Lahash, whose
posture had become alert. ‘What is his state of mind?’ she asked
carefully.

Daniel looked at her from
beneath a fringe of hair. ‘I suppose if I don’t tell you what you
want to know, I’ll get hurt?’ He shook his head. ‘Eve, why didn’t
you tell me from the beginning?’

‘No-one’s going to hurt you,
Daniel. I’m sorry we had to deceive you, but we had no way of
knowing how you’d react to us. Now please, tell us what we want to
know. It’s very important.’

Lahash uttered a scornful
sound. ‘Don’t be taken in, Ninka. This could just be a front.’ He
prodded Daniel. ‘How many people are with him, and do they have
weapons?’

‘If I’m such an unknown
quantity, how do you know I’ll tell the truth?’ Daniel said. He
shook his head. ‘There are no weapons. This is real life. Shemyaza
is a broken man, and he’s accompanied by an emotional cripple, a
dream-eyed girl and a Grigori dependant who’s over a hundred years
old. That’s our deadly fellowship.’ He laughed. ‘Scared?’

Lahash did not respond to
Daniel’s scorn. ‘Who else? There are other people there.’

Daniel shrugged. ‘A bunch of
weirdoes. I hardly know them.’ He shot a hard glance at Taziel.
‘You met one tonight. Israel.’

‘Harmless,’ Taziel
pronounced.

‘How do we get into the
Assembly Rooms?’ Lahash asked.

Daniel’s face clouded. Aninka
wanted to reach out and touch him. At that moment, he seemed to
have realised Lahash really meant to go to the Assembly Rooms and
take Shemyaza away. ‘I don’t know,’ he said lamely.

‘Not good enough,’ Lahash said.
‘Is it locked up? Do you have keys?’

‘Lily has them,’ Daniel
said.

Lahash glanced at Taziel.
‘Where’s his coat?’

Silently, Taziel picked up
Daniel’s leather jacket from the floor and handed it to Lahash. The
keys were in an inside pocket. Lahash sneered, held them out and
examined them. ‘These presumably open doors in Little Moor?’

‘Yes,’ Daniel said. ‘I brought
them with me from home.’

Lahash grinned. ‘Of course you
did.’ He glanced at Aninka, his eyes alight with the kind of
excitement she did not want to see. ‘I must get over there.’

Aninka stood up. ‘Then, I’m
coming with you.’

Lahash frowned. ‘Is that wise?
We can’t be sure the boy’s telling the truth.’

‘I’m not letting you go alone.’
Aninka did not trust Lahash to try and take Shemyaza alive. Even
now, she felt sick at what might have happened if she hadn’t come
back to the flat with him.

Lahash pointed a stiff finger
at Taziel. ‘Keep the boy here. Are you capable of that?’

Daniel was sitting staring at
his hands, his expression unreadable. Taziel sighed. ‘Yeah. Just
get going.’

Aninka did not envy Taziel’s
predicament, or the explanations he would now have to make.

‘
We need the car,’ Lahash
said as they stepped from the building. ‘But it might be dangerous
for me to fetch it.’

‘Then I’ll go,’ Aninka said.
‘But don’t think you can sneak off to the Assembly Rooms without
me. Wait nearby. Where’s the car parked?’

It required a short tube
journey to reach the car park where Lahash kept his vehicle. He
waited outside, while she rode the lift to the correct floor. She
stepped out from the lift into an echoing vault, which was nearly
empty of vehicles. Aninka recognised Lahash’s sleek limousine
immediately; it was the same car they had used to go to Little
Moor. Nervously, she walked quickly towards it through the echoing
car park. She held the car keys ready in her hand, and her eyes
swivelled this way and that, alert for signs of pursuit, of shadows
becoming real and hard and predatory. Her hands shook as she
activated the central locking system and slid into the driving
seat. For a brief, electrifying moment, she thought she’d forgotten
how to drive, then reality kicked in and she sent the car squealing
down to the street.

Outside, Lahash jumped into the
passenger seat and snapped directions at Aninka. Much to her
chagrin, she felt excitement begin to fizz up through her mind and
limbs. She pressed her foot hard against the accelerator.

‘Steady!’ Lahash said. ‘Don’t
get done for speeding on the way there.’

They seemed to reach Black Lion
Square too quickly. When Aninka turned into it, she could not
remember any details of the journey there. The square was empty,
street-lamps shedding inadequate light. Aninka drove right up to
the door of the Assembly Rooms and turned off the engine.

Lahash had Daniel’s keys in his
hand as he got out of the car. ‘Don’t lock it,’ he said, as Aninka
pointed the car keys to activate the locking system.

Aninka realised he was
concerned they might need to get away quickly.

The front doors looked as if
they hadn’t been opened for years. There was only a large keyhole,
which could not be unlocked with any of the small keys they had
taken from Daniel. Lahash went to investigate the side alley,
Aninka following. When they found the door, Lahash started
experimenting with the keys.

‘This place is enormous,’
Aninka said in a whisper. ‘He could be anywhere inside.’

‘Don’t come with me if you’re
afraid,’ Lahash answered, and the door clicked open onto darkness.
‘Ladies first?’

Knowing he wanted her to
decline, Aninka took her courage in her hands and walked through
the door. Lahash made a quiet, approving sound and followed
her.

Neither of them perceived the
shadowy shapes standing motionless in the alley behind them.

Emma was arguing with Shem
again. She had already imparted the information that Daniel and
Lily had gone out; a circumstance of which she disapproved.
Predictably, Shemyaza appeared to have no interest in the matter.
He sat listening to her complaints with a pained expression on his
face. ‘Why are you telling me this? What do you expect me to do?’
His hands curved on the air, parting the wreath of smoke from
Emma’s cigarette.

‘We must move on soon,’ Emma
said. There, she had voiced it, though she would give him no
reasons. If she told Shem about how her nerves were jumping, how
she was feeling increasingly edgy, he would only smile.

Shem looked up at her. ‘Go
where you like.’

She ignored this remark.
‘Perhaps we could go abroad. You must know of other Grigori
haunts.’

Shem shrugged, and even opened
his mouth to speak, but Emma silenced him with a raised hand.
‘Sssh! What was that?’

He put his head on one side.
‘What was what?’

‘A noise!’

‘This place is crawling with
noises. Sit down, Emma. Have some wine.’ He was happy to let her
play the role of guardian. All evening, he’d been aware of a sense
of approach, and knew that people were coming for him. Since the
dream of Ishtahar, it had been inevitable. He had let the future
into his life.

Emma ignored his knowing smile
and slunk to the door, her body stooped and tense. She felt it
would be futile to tell Shem of her suspicions. Ever since leaving
Little Moor, she’d been nervous of pursuit, and now her instincts
were screaming in her mind. She wanted to get into her car and
drive, anywhere, but she could not do it alone. Her promise to
Helen Winter bound her to Lily and Owen, and sweet Lily had decided
to abscond for the evening. Shem and the others seemed so sluggish,
indifferent to the dangers of their position. They should have left
this place days ago.

She opened the door as quietly
as possible and went out into the dim corridor beyond. All seemed
normal, but her spinal cord flexed in its column; an irrefutable
warning. She ground out her cigarette beneath the sole of her shoe
and, one hand touching the wall, advanced cautiously down the
corridor. Meagre light illumined the landing beyond. There was no
sound.

She bumped into the stranger on
the stairs. He seemed as surprised as she was, for he took a step
back. He was dressed in a well-cut suit, fairish hair falling over
his shoulders. His long white hand lay upon the banister, his nails
long and curved, dark like eagle claws.

Neither spoke. Emma looked into
the pale eyes of the stranger and saw only relentless purpose
looking back. She knew it was pointless to try and converse with
this creature. Now, she did not feel afraid or nervous.

With one expertly aimed kick,
she sent the interloper plummeting down the stairs.

Pausing only to glance down and
see him writhing and curling on the next landing, Emma retreated up
the corridor. As she did so, she heard the sound of soft footsteps
running up the stairs. Many of them. They were upon her before she
could draw breath to call for Shem. Blond-haired, all of them. It
seemed like there were a dozen of them, pushing her against the
wall. They spoke in whispers to one another, in a language she did
not know. She knew they would kill her. Claws raked her cheek, her
throat. She felt the fabric of her dress tear. She tried to cry
out, but one of them stuffed sharp-pointed fingers into her mouth,
and the sound came out muffled, gurgling. She tried to kick, but
her feet could not make contact with flesh. They were too quick,
swarming round her like a multitude of tiny things; grouping and
regrouping. Yet the impression of smallness was insane; every one
of them was as tall as she was.

Then the night splintered into
sound and light: a dull crack, a sulphurous flare. Emma’s
assailants made a new noise, high and keening. They dropped to the
floor and scurried back along the corridor on all fours, leaving
her dazed and stiff with shock against the wall. She looked down
and saw that one of them lay just beyond her feet, his angel face
streaked with thin trails of blood. He was dead, shot through the
brow.

The sound of gunfire came
again, and again. Emma ran back up the corridor to Shem’s room.
They must get out. Perhaps through the window.

She was surprised to find Shem
on his feet, staring at the door. Not as apathetic as he liked to
make out, then. She used her moment. ‘We have company. We have to
escape. Now.’

It satisfied her to see the
expression on his face change. Surely he wouldn’t simply sit there
and wait for them? ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

She nodded tersely. ‘Yes. The
window.’

He followed her across the
room. ‘What happened?’

‘Some
things
came for
me. Someone started shooting them. I don’t know who or why. We have
to get out.’

They were on the second floor;
a sheer wall dropped away from them. No time to gather possessions
or even the rest of their party. Shem shook his head and laughed at
Emma as she climbed up onto the sill, ducking beneath the looming
sash. ‘Shem, I’m not joking. There are monsters out there!’ She
experienced a thrill of emotional pain as she thought of Owen,
sightless and vulnerable, sitting on his bed. Would they find him?
Perhaps they would think he was Shem. That might give them some
time. She hated herself for that thought. Lily and Daniel would
have to look out for themselves as best they could.

‘Emma, calm down,’ Shem said.
‘They are no more monsters than I am.’

Emma ignored his remark. ‘I’ll
probably break my leg,’ she said. ‘We have no choice but to
jump.’

The door swung open before she
could find the courage.

‘Don’t move!’

Emma looked up in alarm,
expecting to see one of the blond things. A tall man stepped into
the room, but his hair was very dark. He wore a raincoat, which
hung open. He carried a gun. She thought she recognised him, but
perhaps that was just because he was Grigori. There was no doubt
about that.

Emma looked back at Shem. They
could still make it through the window if they were quick, but Shem
was standing with folded arms, staring placidly at the interloper.
The gun did not appear to worry him.

The stranger moved towards
them, his weapon held high. ‘Get back down, woman,’ he said. ‘If
you jump, you’ll die, or a bullet might get you first.’

She hesitated, then Shem held
out his arm and pulled her back into the room. His voice was calm,
silky. ‘And who are you exactly? Might I ask what you want?’

‘We want
you
,’ said the
man.

‘And who am I?’ Shem asked.

Emma wanted to laugh. Shem
radiated power. It was obvious what he was.

The man did not lower the gun.
‘You are Shemyaza. I’ve been looking for you.’

‘I believe I have a cult
following,’ Shem said dryly.

Outside the door, Aninka heard
the exchange of words. It would take guts to enter the room. The
familiarity of Pev’s voice came at her like a slap across the
mouth. She felt afraid and nervous of seeing him, her heart was
beating too fast. Her body and mind convulsed with the memories of
grief and pointless love. For a moment, she considered running from
the building, but even the thought of that was folly. She knew she
had to see him again.

When she finally entered the
room, everything seemed so still, as if time had slowed down.

He was there, beside the
window, a woman standing against him. It was hard to believe she
had actually found him now, but his presence was undeniable. He
didn’t look that different. She could tell that he recognised her,
but also that he wasn’t quite sure from where. The past, which
meant so much to her, was clearly only partly remembered by him.
Then he said her name, with some wonderment. ‘Aninka?’

Yes,
she thought.
I
have hunted you down
.