Strangeness and Charm: The Courts of the Feyre (10 page)

  As soon as I raised the window I knew something was wrong. There was a smell I dimly recognised, a foetid odour of something bad. My sword was naked in my hand, its weight reassuring, before I slid across the window ledge and into the room. I moved quickly around to the partly open bedroom door and listened. From the stairwell came a shuffling shifting noise, then a dull thud, followed by a long low growl. My heart thumped in my chest – oh now I can hear my heart, I thought. Blackbird would be so pleased.

  I prayed that no one else would hear my thumping heart as I slid sideways along the wall above the stairs, watching the open stairwell for something ready to leap on me. Where was Tate when you needed him – wasn't he supposed to be watching my back? Something shifted on the floor below me, heavy but moving quietly. There was a creak, a shifting sliding noise like a sigh, then quiet.

  Then it occurred to me – I was the invader here. I was the one out of place. Whoever or whatever was downstairs probably knew this house well and knew every creak of the floorboards, whereas I was the one breaking in with a weapon in my hand. Maybe I should put it away – what did Blackbird say – to the man with a scythe, everything looks like grass?

  A low growl from downstairs changed my mind. If I was going to face whatever was down there, I wanted to do it with a sword in my hand.

  I slid around and down the outside edge of the stairway, keeping my weight against the wall where the stairs would be less likely to creak. My movements were covered by the commotion at the front of the house, and I could see a first floor landing through the bannisters with three doors opening off it. There would be more stairs below these leading to the ground floor. The door to the rear room was pushed closed, the other two were ajar. I watched the two open doors as I reached the landing.

  At the end of the hallway was a coat-rack, with a couple of adult coats and a smaller pink coat hanging there. It reminded me of my own flat which I had lost. The lower stairs would lead down to a doorway, possibly shared with the neighbours or possibly a separate private access for the upstairs flat. The downstairs would be a self-contained flat of its own. The police were probably in there even now, trying to assess the situation upstairs.

  Quietly, I pushed the door to the rear room open. It was a compact kitchen with white units and a stainless steel sink, built out over the rear extension. A bottle of blackcurrant squash was open on the counter and two mugs were placed by a kettle. It looked normal.

  I moved towards the second door. The smell strengthened.

  Pushing the door to this room open I could see it had been furnished with a large double bed against the far wall. On the bed were two things – my eyes flickered between them. Standing on the bed was the huge black cat I encountered in the corridors under Porton Down, its black fur rippling in the orange-tinted light coming through the heavy drapes. At least I assumed it was the same one – there couldn't be two like that, surely? Lying on the sheets beneath it with her throat ripped out was a woman, her blood soaked into the sheets. Her dead eyes stared at the wall, uncaring, unknowing. It stared down at her and I could hear its soft pant timed with the ripples in its fur.

  Its head turned in one liquid movement and it caught me in its gaze, the gold flecks in its amber eyes catching the dim light. I held that gaze for too long; it launched at me, twisting in the air and I fell back, pulling the door closed after me. The cat hit the door and clawed a section out with an easy sweep that cracked the door back against the wall, booming through the building and leaving the door sagging from the bottom hinge. That gave me a moment to stagger around and back up the stairs before it slid round the door. It rippled to the bottom of the stairs and mounted the first steps, its hind legs bunching for a leap.

  I edged backwards up the steps keeping my eyes on it, brandishing the bright blade. It ignored the steel and readied for a spring, but then paused, looking back through the doorway to the bedroom. It licked its lips and sniffed again at the air. It was waiting for something – listening perhaps.

  Then it sprang, flinging itself at me with easy speed, claws braced wide, teeth bared for the kill. I tripped backward on the step, went down and lifted the sword-point in defence. I felt the blade jar in my hand, heard a scream that sliced its way into my brain, felt the blade ripped from my hand as the weight of the creature bore down on me. Its warm fur smothered my squeal of terror, its heavy scent enveloped me. I was beneath those lethal claws, utterly at its mercy.

  Then slowly light emerged. Heat radiated out through the fur, veins were outlined before my eyes. The shape twisted in front of me, a man-shaped cat, a cat-shaped man, it lifted its head and called again – a weaker wail against the dark. And then it turned to ashes and dissolved on top of me, leaving me coated in dry dust.

  I had killed it. A lucky hit, I must have pierced its heart. That's the thought that came to me until I tracked back through those last vital seconds. It had me at its mercy. I'd gone down. It could have eaten me alive if it wanted to. It had waited until I was ready.

  I lay sprawled on the stairs in stunned silence for long moments while I tried to understand what had just occurred. It made no sense. My hand sought and found the hilt of my sword and the reassuring weight brought me back to my senses just as the police started breaking in the door.

 

"Police! We're coming in!"

  I sheathed the blade and pushed myself up, shedding clouds of fine ash from my clothes and slipping quickly back upstairs, heading for my exit through the open window in the back room. I went for the window and heard a tiny sound. I stopped. I could hear the commotion as the door to the flat finally gave way and the police entered below. They banged and shouted their way in. It would not take them long to find the body.

  Even so, I knelt down and looked under the bed. From beneath it a pair of wide round eyes stared back.

  "Hello." It was all I could think of to say.

  The eyes blinked.

  "What's your name?" I asked softly, acutely aware of the banging and thumping coming from downstairs.

  "Lucy," she said in a small voice. "Has it gone?"

  "Lucy, any moment now a lot of men are going to come in here and turn the place upside down looking for someone. Are you going to be OK?" What a stupid question.

  "If you came back upstairs," she said carefully, "then it must have gone. Is it safe to come out?"

  I wasn't sure whether it was or not. What would the police do with a small girl who was hiding under her bed? Would they look after her? The image of the woman downstairs came back to me and I realised that Lucy didn't know what had happened down there, or perhaps she did. Perhaps that was why she was under the bed.

  "Best stay there, I think. Someone will come and find you in a few minutes, but stay there for now. Let them run around."

  It came to me that I had left it too late, that the thumping sound coming up the second set of stairs was wearing size twelve boots. Making it out of the window and clean away was going to be difficult with fifteen stone of policeman romping in behind me. Instead I settled back into a corner by the dresser, strengthening the glamour around me, cloaking myself in a deep sense of unimportance and the ordinary.

  A red-faced police officer burst into the room, staring wildly about. He glanced at the bed, and at the window. He didn't glance at me. A colleague came in behind him.

  "Check the room, I'll check the window."

  While they searched the room, I concentrated on extending the pool of stillness that included me out to the wide-eyed girl under the bed. She watched me, her eyes growing wider still as the men yanked open doors, leaned out the windows, looked behind doors, searching everywhere except under the bed or in the corner.

  "He's gone out onto the roof. Call it in. Tell them to watch at the back. They may be able to see him from the houses behind. He'll have to come down somewhere."

  The burly officer that had come in first spoke rapidly into his lapel radio, explaining the situation. The other pulled down the window and closed the catch.

  "Seal off the bedroom downstairs until you're relieved. Don't let anyone in there, understand?"

  "Yes, sir."

  The two officers hurried back out, followed shortly by the noise of them thumping back downstairs. Outside the hubbub rose and fell like wind in the trees, but in the bedroom there was a deepening silence.

  Eventually Lucy spoke. "They didn't see you," she said.

  "No."

  "Are you invisible?"

  "Can you see me?" I asked her.

  "Yes."

  "Then no, I'm not invisible."

  "Why didn't they see you?"

  I was on the verge of asking her whether her mother told her not to ask too many questions, but then realised her mother was downstairs in the bedroom with her throat ripped out.

  "They didn't see me because I didn't want them to."

  "Oh," She said. "They're looking for Daddy, aren't they?"

  "Are they?" I asked her.

  "He brought the beast home with him, and now they're looking for him."

  "The beast is…"

  "The cat. The really big black one," she said.

  "You've seen it?"

  She nodded solemnly. "It follows him around, and goes wherever he goes. When he lived with us it used to come upstairs when it thought I was asleep and slip out of my window."

  "It came into your room?"

  She nodded again, slowly.

  "You must have been very brave, not to make a noise."

  She nodded again. "You have to be very quiet or it will know you're awake."

  I swallowed. I was about to say that it wouldn't be bothering her again, but then she might know very well what that meant.

  "It won't come up here now," I said.

  "I heard you fighting. Did you kill it?"

  Faced with that open-eyed stare I simply nodded. "Do you think you can be brave again, Lucy?"

  "Why?"

  "We need to get you downstairs and find you someone who will take care of you."

  "What about Mum?"

  "We need to get you downstairs. We can't go down your stairs because of the policeman, but I could carry you across the roof if you were very brave."

  "I'm not supposed to go on the roof. Mum says it's dangerous."

  "It is, but I'll be with you."

  She glanced towards the door. "Won't the policemen see us on the roof?"

  "Not if we don't want them to," I told her.

  She wriggled forward on her tummy and then slid sideways out from under the bed. Standing up, she brushed dust from the front of her clothes. "Mum says I'm not to get under the bed, but I've done it before." Now she was in full view I could see that she had mousey brown hair and wore a long sky blue tee-shirt over dark blue trousers. I judged her about eight years old.

  "I expect it's OK," I said. I loosed the catch on the window again and slid up the sash. The warm breeze tugged at the curtains at either side.

  "Shall I carry you?"

  "It's OK," she said. "I've been on the roof before."

  "Gone across the rooftops?"

  "No, but I climbed out on the roof to look at the stars one night. They said on TV that you would be able to see Saturn, but I couldn't find it."

  "There's probably too much light pollution in the city."

  "Too many stars," she said. "They all have names, you know." She said it in a matter of fact way and I didn't contradict her. Maybe they did.

  I slipped over the windowsill, deepening the misdirection of my glamour, and then helped her join me. The ease with which she slid over the sill made me think she'd done it more than once. Out on the roof it was breezy and warm, more exposed, but it didn't smell of death like the house. Looking down at her I wondered whether she already knew what had happened in the bedroom below. She must have heard.

  "I'll carry you across the gaps and then you can walk the rest of the way," I volunteered.

  She put her arms up and I lifted her. She was more substantial than I'd suspected, but she wrapped her legs around above my hips and her arms around my neck, resting her head against my shoulder. The urge to hug her was strong, given all that'd happened, but I simply said, "Ready?"

  She nodded against my shoulder. Delaying any further would just make it more difficult, so I took a step back and then ran forward, leaping the gaps between the rooftops. It was more difficult with her weight, but I allowed for her and we made it safely across. I walked to the window I had left ajar and she slid down to the flat roof while I opened the window.

  "Do you know whose house this is?" I asked her, wondering if she had a friend here.

  "No," she said.

  "In that case, be careful not to disturb anything," I told her. "We're only visiting."

  I slipped over the sill and she followed me. Inside, she held up her hands again. I hesitated for a moment and then lifted her up. She rested back against my shoulder and we moved quickly down through the house. As we reached the ground floor, the noise from outside increased.

  "This is the front door," I told her. "There are a lot of people out there, but we'll find someone to look after you, OK?"

  She nodded again against my chest.

  We went into the front room looking out onto the street through lace curtains. I scanned the crowds. There were police running back and forth up and down the row, and vehicles being backed out through the crowds, but no one paid us any attention.

  "Lucy, Something bad has happened. Your mum's not going to be able to look after you. Do you have any relatives – an aunty you could go to?