The Neon Court (44 page)

Her smile twinkled, lilac eyes full of more than life, of stories that couldn’t be spoken out loud, feelings that language hadn’t yet got the tools to express. But not laughing. Not now. She gave a little half-bow, and as her head dipped, she swept the veil back across her face. We remembered what it had been like to breathe. She straightened up slowly, hands folded neatly in front of her, like a priest about to bless.

“Do you know,” she asked, her voice light on the empty air, “what it means to be a chosen one?”

“Buggered about,” I replied.

A thing that wore the look of genuine humour, if anything about this creature could be said to even hook little fingers with the hand of truth, flickered across her shaded features. “
You
are a chosen one. You were chosen by the blue electric angels, a mortal shell for their mind. You were chosen by the Midnight Mayor. You were chosen by me. We did not ask your opinion, we did not seek your counsel, whether you wished these things was of no relevance. It was what we wished, and you could neither run nor resist. Now, this chosen one, this girl hiding behind you, she may have been chosen by a higher power. There may
be a god looking down on us, proclaiming that this is the end of days. But I do not think so. And even if I were to believe that she were
not
chosen, the Tribe will believe that she was, and thus, she is. They have chosen to make, of her, a war. And as she is the cause, and the heart, and the mystery inside this conflict, regardless of herself, or you, or me, so I shall have her. If only to destroy her and end for all this mystery. Perhaps that was always her purpose – chosen to die for no greater reason than she was there. Yet she must die.”

“And what gives you the power to decide?” I asked.

She laughed, the sound of falling glass, and flexed her fingers, encompassing almost without moving the men and women around her. “Will and means, my beautiful blue-eyed fire. Will and means are all that power ever is.”

I half nodded, turning my face up to catch the rain. Something moved along the gutter line of the buildings above us, old former houses, once dignified, now mingled with newer brick slabs and steel concoctions, as time, commerce and disaster mingled together. The air still rumbled with the half-faded sound of distant traffic, of voices raised in drunken merriment, and carried the smell of boiled rice. Not even the perpetual falling rain of Blackout could wipe away the stamp of magic trod like chewing gum into dirt on the paving stones of Shaftesbury Avenue. The green-painted words on the shuttered shop behind Lady Neon were almost entirely gone, washed out with the rain.

TOXIK WO

I said, “How’d it start? Your lot and the Tribe? I mean, how’d it really, really start?”

Lady Neon seemed to think. Then, “I don’t think it’s important any more.”

Something misshapen up in the chimney pots. “Blimey,” I mumbled, eyes fixed on the dark, rain-washed roofline. “That trivial, huh?”

For a moment, doubt. It was just a glimmer like the dimming of a bulb when moved around the wire, but it was there, just for a second. Lady Neon’s gaze flickered to the roofs; it was obvious that she saw what we had already seen and, for just a moment, there it was, something small, and real, and mortal. Bakker said, “Kill her now.”

We felt fire on our fingers.

“Do it, Matthew, this is your one chance, do it now and end it!”

Her head turned back towards us, slowly. Fear. No one else would ever sense it, but it was there, sticky fear clinging to her perfect skin. Then her look drifted to our fingers, saw the flame. She tensed in an expression of surprise, and I heard her whisper, “Treachery?”

Bakker was right beside her, head turned to the roof. I half shook my head, clenched my fist until the blood was driven down deep, taking the fire with it.

“More people will die by your inaction than will be saved,” sighed Bakker.

Then a voice spoke from the corner.

It belonged to a man standing before a nearby cinema. His face was half shrouded in darkness, his back crooked, his stance uneven. His words came with a flare of sudden match-light, which quickly dimmed in the rain to the orange puff of a cigarette. The voice said, “If u giv her da chosen 1, we wil kil u.”

My eyes wandered back to the roof, and yes, there they were, dozens of them, maybe more than dozens, creeping out of the shadows, humans, or once-humans, or humans that had cut away every outward sign of humanity, skin and flesh, in the hope that when they no longer looked human, they’d no longer have to obey human rules. And for some of them, it had worked, for there were men crawling along the brick walls of the houses like they were exploratory ants, and women hunched like bats on the ledges of the darkened windows, ready to dive and strike, and they stank of deep-down airless places and iron, of blood and all the magics that came with it. The Tribe, turning out in force, ready, as promised, to claim their prize.

Toxik, the shaman of them all, stood alone by the cinema entrance, and puffed. I called, “You hear all that stuff I said about how you’re being used?”

He drew the cigarette slowly back from his slashed lips with a pair of fingers more bone than flesh, let out the blue-grey smoke in a slow rolling wave. “Yeh,” he said. “i herd. but if der is a chosen 1, n we didnt do da chosin, den wat kinda sukers does dat mak us?”

I could feel Penny dragging in power around her, taste the sharp sparking of her magics moving in the street. The Aldermen were tight and silent around the motionless car, the shadows turning at their feet, and I could hear …

rumble of bus rumbling for ever

chatter this tongue that tongue chatter chatter look!

get out of the way where’d he learn to drive?

I said two for one two for one

which way for Piccadilly Circus please?

You know, it occurs to me, Matthew, that the power of the Midnight Mayor is one whose potential you’ve never fully grasped.

And if I half closed my eyes I could hear …

five quid mate yours a bargain

go again next time?

Taxi! Taxi!

The fucking Midnight Mayor, mystic fucking protector of the city!

I opened my eyes. They were all watching. Tribe, Court, Aldermen. I became aware of a nasty smell. I looked down. At my feet, the black tar used to patch the uneven roads was hissing, smoking, melting. I looked at my hands. Our nails were black, clawlike, stretching out beyond their natural growth
.
I looked at Lady Neon. She took a step back. I looked at Toxik. He took a shaky puff of smoke. I half turned my head and looked at Penny. Her eyes were bright, and of all of them, in all that place, she was the only one who didn’t seem afraid. I grinned, turned back to Lady Neon, turned back to Toxik, turned my head to the Court and the Tribe and gave an expansive shrug.

“You know what?” I said, and our voice wasn’t our voice, our voice was dripping with city dragon, forking off the end of our tongue. “You guys are absolutely right. Fuck it. I’ve got way more to worry about tonight than what you guys do to one stupid kid from Sidcup. I mean Jesus Christ, there’s five million people who are going to die tonight all because I got my sense of perspective from a discount destiny store off Dalston Lane. Here!” I marched up to JG, grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her into the middle of the road. “Go on! Here’s your chosen one! Now you lot have a lovely bloodbath over her while I go and make the sun come up. Come on!”

They hesitated, not one knowing exactly what to make of this.

“Although,” I added quickly, before the moment could snap or JG could bite my hand off, “I would add, just so that you don’t think I’m not a professional when it comes to these sorts of things, mind where you walk.”

They looked down.

And perhaps for just a moment, everyone in that street, from mutilated kid who thought the key to being perfect was to cut away the bad things, to wanky lady who thought that being herself wasn’t nearly as good as being someone else, perhaps for just a moment they heard it, the sound of …

footsteps footsteps footsteps a thousand footsteps walking on stone on tarmac on cobble on mud on dirt on dust on sand on leather on iron on steel on plastic on rubber on

lost i’m lost sorry can you help me?

late dear for the show

north to cambridge circus south to piccadilly

and the tarmac began to crack

camera flash!

just want to go home

you wait all day for one and then five turn up at once

did you see

looking for the way to

walking fast slow up down back forward late here now then coming going coming going coming going in between coming going and

the tarmac began to split and tear apart, black chasms opening up inside it and we could hear

fire engine siren wailing

another bloody hole already

was it coffee or tea?

I said left idiot!

excuse me which way to
…
?

And there were fingers, each a shadow-blade, whisper-thin, crawling out of the cracks, and behind the fingers stick-arms, and each stick-arm attached to a body no wider than the tears in the earth itself, stretched long and thin as time and memory, crawling out of the street and they were coming alive, shadows and whispers and memories, pulling themselves free of the bricks, slipping out of the windows, flopping from the gutters and dragging themselves one joint at a time from between the paving stones. There were hundreds; then thousands; a blink of an eye and there were thousands on thousands, and still they kept coming, their touch the shiver of a cold wind blown off the river, and they were speaking without mouths, empty black spaces mumbling
at the air but their voices were deafening, all around, everywhere, unstoppable, ringing so big and loud together that all we could hear were

Brake of engine

Rain falling

Foot snap on stone

Umbrella swish open

Phone ringing

Hello?

Which way for
…

Did you see
…
?

I lost my
…

Is it far to
…
?

The memories of the street came crawling up in the dark and talked, pawed at every daimyo and shaman, every thrall and crawling warrior of the Tribe, begged and wheedled and whispered in their ears, an eardrum-shattering whisper that went straight to the brain without bothering to stir the air, and as the street filled and the shadows became too thick to see through I grabbed JG by the hand and turned and ran.

Chaos was too clean a word.

Too much, too much information across the senses, we couldn’t see for too much seeing, hear for too much hearing, we bent double and charged head first through a thousand thousand shadows still crawling up from a street ripping apart so wide and deep we could see the pipes cracking, the cables rupturing, concrete and rubble and mud and cobbles and deep down the bones upon bones laid on the streets below. They pawed at us with fingers of steam and dust, tried to put their words in our head, tried to crawl inside us through our ears and lips, they were everywhere, hugging the feet of the scrambling thralls, pulling at the clothes of the Tribe’s warriors, and everywhere magic bloomed, random, giddy, out-of-control ignorant magic that tried to blast the shadows away and found itself impacting on nothing more tangible than a little too much time. I saw the Aldermen, or not the Aldermen, things that could have been Aldermen when the lights still burnt, mad red eyes and at their backs, wings, made of black folded nothing, too big and deep to ever end, stretching up almost as high as
the rooftops, teeth turned to fangs, fingers to claws, and I saw Penny, and the air around her was brilliant with wildfire. We wondered what she saw when she looked at us, and then ducked as the glass shattered in the windows overhead, popping like bubbles under pressure from the inside out all along the length of the street, and I could half see the shaman Toxik running along the pavement, hands over his ears, eyes half shut as the glass snapped and popped around him, cutting at clothes and skin, not that he cared. I shouted, “Penny!”

She turned, and there was barbed wire spinning up like ivy from the ground around her, and her hair stood on end with static and her fingers were tangled in blue-yellow burning gas. “Not this time!” she shouted back. “Not tonight!”

I tried to shout something more and a figure dropped from right above me, from the black metal pipe of a black dirty wall, spun and dropped onto all fours like a leopard, and the skin of his face was stabbed through with little metal pipes and so was the skin of his hands and he made an animal noise that had nothing to do with any human feeling and leapt, fists first for JG. She covered her head with her hands and we lashed out, tackling him mid-leap and knocking him to the ground. I got a kick in somewhere in his midriff and briefly all I could see was wild eyes laced with blood and broken teeth raging back at me, then we drew our hand back and slammed it palm first into the point between his eyes, static flaring off them and dancing white fire earthing itself through his flesh as we struck. He went limp, steam rising off the pavement beneath him, and I grabbed JG again and pulled her down the street. Behind me I felt fire bloom, fuel pulled from the mains beneath our feet, and I knocked JG against the nearest wall as the road split and gas flames burst upwards, stabbing into the air like the questing tongue of a frog, gnawing at feet and the wheels of the cars behind. A fistful of flame caught the inside of an engine, made it tick, then groan, then twisted it up into the air and out, blooming with a blast wave that sent all to the ground around it. I pressed myself flat against JG as metal and glass sliced into the wall. Half a wing mirror embedded itself there, a sliver away from my ear, and wobbled, shedding shards of plastic and glass. A pair of pink bouncy dice, one side burning and black, rolled along the pavement and came to a stop by my feet. I waited for the worst to pass, caught JG by the arm and ran again,
the shadows spinning as we passed. I could see the lights of Cambridge Circus ahead, taste the older, deeper magics of Covent Garden off to the south, darker spells for smaller streets than the pounding dazzling magics of Soho. JG staggered and tripped; I looked behind, saw a woman dressed in not nearly enough for the weather, her hair stood up in great blue spikes, sprawled in the gutter, clinging to JG’s ankle. Her nails were painted with the image of a writhing green snake that crawled and became worms, living little worms that were crawling from her hand up JG’s leg, wrapping themselves round it. Bakker whispered right in our ear, “Cut her hand off!” We grabbed the woman by her blue spiky hair, pulled her up until we thought her back could bend no more, while JG kicked and scrambled and wriggled her way loose, and then slammed the woman’s head down as hard as we dared into the grey tarmac of the street. She went limp, the snakes snapping back in retreat to her nails. JG’s leg was grazed from the writhing of the things that had tried to hold her; she limped and said nothing as I pulled her along. Cambridge Circus: the theatre, great walls of bare yellow bulbs that hissed and sizzled in the falling rain, narrow buildings on the triangular corners of winding streets peeking out onto the not-quite-roundabout, bars and pubs, banks, a long red-brick arcade holding sleepy shops selling furry hats, novelty souvenirs and porcelain miniatures of Big Ben, second-hand bookshops offering books in English, Latin, French, Swahili, Sanskrit, German, Dutch, Hindi and ancient Greek, music shops, windows gleaming with brass instruments and polished guitars; life here, so much life if you just knew what to do with it.