Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 (20 page)

I waited a little longer to look up, and it was to see her positively preening, something that might even have been a smile
hovering at her thin lips. I was pretty sure I could feel the weight of Bela’s gaze on me too, and equally sure his mouth
was hanging open, just a little.

‘Ask your questions, girl.’

‘Sirens.’

‘Sirens?’

‘What could kill one? Not anything big and nasty, not something
even Normals couldn’t miss. It must be something subtle, something that might slip beneath the notice of the Council.’ I buried
my hands deeply in my coat pockets, though I knew I wouldn’t find warmth there either. ‘Something that could reach into a
siren’s chest and squeeze her heart until it stops.’

She slowly scratched her chin while I tried not to stare at the downy cluster of white hairs growing from it.

‘It doesn’t leave a mark,’ I encouraged.

She shook her head slowly. ‘If I don’t know, I don’t know,’ she said rather tetchily. ‘No book contains everything, just as
no mind can hold every piece of knowledge. Sirens – I don’t know!’

I couldn’t help but wonder why she’d even agreed to speak with me if she had nothing helpful to say, but I managed not to
pout, even though that meant all of my wheeling and dealing with Bela was for naught,
and
I was still going to have to uphold my end of the bargain.

‘
But
,’ she added after a moment, crooked index finger raised, ‘but it doesn’t sound like an ordinary hunter, not unless they’ve
managed to summon something particularly vile and vicious for this task, like a ’serker.’

‘With respect, ma’am, I’ve seen a ’serker up close and personal, and they don’t do their wetwork tidily. They like tearing
and rending and smearing – smearing is a big thing too.’ The memory of the ravening creature in that dark house made my leg
ache in spite of all of Louise’s excellent care. ‘Whatever’s killing these women is relatively neat.’

‘Humph.’

Despite my promise to stay on topic, I couldn’t resist pushing my luck – after all, she’d given me nothing. I figured I could
try and get at least one of the other gaps in my knowledge filled. ‘I went for a walk by the river—’

‘Verity,’ warned Bela, but Ursa waved his unvoiced objections away. Her gaze was fixed on me as if weighing the worth of my
words, as if I were suddenly of greater interest than first assumed.

I told her all about the creature; not just how it had made the amorous couple vanish, but how it looked, how it sounded and
moved and smelled. Ziggi’d sent me the link to the clip of the Fortitude Valley incident and, ignoring Bela’s silent fuming,
I pulled out my phone and played it for her. I could’ve sworn her eyes shone as she watched the whirlwind of night and garbage
at its endeavours, then she leaned back and made a humming noise, as if deciding where to start.

‘Well,
that’s
definitely not a ’serker,’ she said at last.

‘The thing that kills the sirens at least leaves bodies behind; this – this
whatever-it-is
– leaves not much at all, just a few bits of rubbish that fall off it. Quite frankly, if there wasn’t the risk of a horrible
death, I’d hire it to clean my place, ’cause it can’t do worse than I do.’

Bela made a strangled noise as Ursa turned to the book on her desk and for a second I thought myself dismissed. With painstaking
care she flipped through it until she found what she wanted, then, gently, angled the volume so we could see the illustrations.

A clever hand had drawn five figures, all of them vaguely human-shaped but none of them human. One appeared to be made of
earth, the others of ice, fire and water. The final one, a cyclonic form of wind and collected dross, had cartoonish marks
around its edges, as if to indicate motion. There were paragraphs beside each sketch, brief descriptions in Latin and Ancient
Hebrew, which I struggled with, so long after university.

‘What do you know about golems?’ asked Ursa, and it sounded as if she might be gloating a little at redeeming herself so spectacularly
after the siren washout.

‘The Prague kind or
The Lord of the Rings
kind?’

Another noise from Bela; this one might have been a sob. Ursa stabbed at the image of the tempest-thing and glared at me.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, then, ‘I thought the Prague golem was made to protect people?’

‘Oh, this much you know?’ She curled a lip. ‘All well and good, little miss, if its creator has admirable purpose in making
his “weapon”. But a gun is a thing without will, either righteous or ill, and the damage it does comes from the heart of the
one who holds it. So too the golem: it’s a tool and has no more – or less – moral compass than the person who controls it.’

‘So you think what we saw is a golem?’

‘Made of intent and excrement and foul things, all wrapped around a human core.’

‘There’s a
person
at the centre of it?’

‘With the right spells, the right curses, it’s possible. A powerful mage or witch could do it. It takes much energy, much
blood-cost.’

‘That thing doesn’t look like it would happily take orders. How could anyone control it?’

‘An iron will might master it. You must remember that a person surrenders part of themself to another when they become golem.
You need to consider the heart of the thing, who it
used
to be: if they gave themself up willingly, then the desires of creator and creature may well align. That would certainly
make the beast more malleable.’

My breath caught as I shuddered. ‘Human underneath.’

‘Such a working must have a mortal nucleus because anything uncanny is already so touched by magic that enchantments of this
sort would be diluted. They would not function correctly.’

‘Then what does it want?’

‘The thing itself? Now? To feed. That desire will grow stronger as its mortal element shrinks and is consumed. This . . .
this is a
transformation
. Each time it happens, the human within will find a little less of themself to return to. Depending on how often it’s occurring—’

‘—it will burn out?’

She blinked slowly, considering. ‘Eventually.’

‘How long?’

The shrug took her entire body and made it shudder. ‘It depends entirely on the individual, what spark first set it on this
path, how brightly that yearning still shines . . . it may be days, weeks, months . . .’

I looked at Bela. ‘It doesn’t really matter how short its span, does it? It will continue to suck the life out of whoever
crosses its path. It’s not like we can wait it out.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘As you say.’ Ursa’s expression combined horror and fascination. ‘This is what they
didn’t
write down about the Golem of Prague: that it was a real man under the mud and clay. A real man gave his life and soul to
protect the people there. But even a little wickedness in the service of good darkens the soul and robs you bit by bit, because
each time the evil actions become easier.’

‘How can we stop it?’

‘As with most things, you must find its maker. Identify the magician and the magic, then find the spells to undo it.’

‘What if we just kill the magician? Will that work?’ I asked.

‘Possibly, though it’s crude,’ she said with distaste. ‘But I’d not rely on that alone. Sometimes the creature’s desire to
feed is strong enough that it will continue without its master’s hand.’

So I could live with Plan A, killing the mage, but I’d still need to spend time coming up with a Plan B.

‘Thank you,’ I said, truly grateful, and not a little surprised to have been given so much information.

Beside me, I felt rather than heard Bela’s own sigh of relief. All in all, it hadn’t gone anywhere near as badly as it might
have.

‘Oh!’ I said as if something had just occurred to me. ‘One more thing: were you by any chance offered wine a month or so ago?
Made from the tears of children? Someone of your vintage might have been a target market.’

Bela sounded as if someone had punched him in the gut and my conscience prickled, but I could always apologise later. The
Archivist froze and gave me a killing glance, though I’d have thought it obvious by now that I didn’t shame easily.

Through clenched teeth she hissed, ‘Such a thing is not allowed.’ Then she turned her back on us.

By the time we’d returned to the reception desk Bela had recovered enough to say tightly, ‘I thought you’d dropped that? The
Winemaker?’

‘You thought wrong.’ I stared at him for a long moment. ‘Really? After all this time, you thought I’d drop something because
you
told
me to?’

He kept his tone level and I had to admire his restraint. ‘And did you find anything? Apart from dead ends?’

‘No,’ I said sulkily. ‘Not yet.’

When we finally stepped back through to the Normal hall, he continued, ‘So you’ll speak to Anders Baker now? And I mean
now
, as in prioritise his case so he stops calling me every hour on the hour?’

I might not have been enthusiastic about paying back the favour he’d just done me, but a deal was a deal. ‘Ziggi’s waiting
for me outside’ – no doubt illegally parked – ‘so you can let Baker know we’ll head down the coast as soon as I’m out of here.’

‘Do you think you could manage to be polite?’

‘I promise to really try,’ I said, and at that moment I truly meant it.

*

I hated the Gold Coast. It never felt like a real place, and there was a reason for that: it was a threshold, a crossing place
from this plane to dark ones, and out the other side. Or at least, it used to be. Once upon a time, those people so inclined
travelled along the corridors between the light world and the not-so-light and thought it worth the risk. But then the things
that live in perpetual shadow learned to find their own paths through, and started to bleed into the everyday. Such breaches
put both Weyrd and Normal at risk, so the ways betwixt were sealed, and scarred over – the Gold Coast was one of those scars.
That wasn’t to say that there were no remaining doorways, or that they couldn’t be opened, but it took a lot more effort than
previously, and the cost in blood was a lot higher. Yet again I found myself wondering who’d paid the price to bring over
the ’serker I’d killed months ago.

The Gold Coast wasn’t entirely ugly. As a holiday destination it had appeal – white sands and beautiful blue ocean, fantastic
weather – but both seafront and suburbs were so jam-packed it felt like room to move was a luxury add-on. The housing was
a mix of old- and new-style short-lets and brittle surf shacks in between the ordinary homes where residents tried to get
on with life in the face of the constant swarms of tourists and backpackers. There were myriad restaurants and shopping malls,
and hundreds of souvenir shops, all filled with the same crap imported from China, alongside rip-off attractions like Ripley’s
Believe It Or Not™, all shouldering each other, making the most of their piece of the glitziest, tackiest strip of real estate
in town.

No matter what the promotional photos promised, there were no
deserted beaches, and every inch was at a premium. You had to get up very early to stand a hope in hell of finding your own
little patch of sandy heaven, beating the onslaught of determinedly vacationing families, teenagers skiving off school, mad
keen surfers and militant retirees, all flocking to the seaside for a tan on the pink side and a taste of salty water.

Other bits of the coast, like the Sovereign Islands, were entirely man-made. This estate for the rich and infamous began life
as big boys’ mud pies, not even real landmasses, just piles of landfill dumped in the ocean until even it couldn’t keep swallowing
the crap. Once it’d all been teased into a carefully connected archipelago, the developers rubbed their hands in glee and
started building concrete-and-metal monstrosities for the
nouveaux riches
and
Mafioso
of various stripes to snap up.

One good cyclone and the whole area would be awash with sand and blood and glass. I was really hoping that wouldn’t happen
on the very day I went to visit, but given my luck, who knew?

The Islands were reached by a bridge from the mainland, the Sovereign Mile. Ziggi braked gently as we approached the security
gate, which was firmly closed, presumably to keep the
hoi polloi
at bay.

‘What do you reckon, Ziggi? Should we go with charm or intimidation?’

‘S’okay. I got this,’ he said, sounding relieved he didn’t have to make that decision, this time at least.

A middle-aged man in an uninspiring uniform – too-tight brown trousers and beige short-sleeved shirt with straining buttons
paired with a brown, shapeless, non-uniform cardigan – stepped out of a guard hut. He squinted and shaded his eyes with a
hand as if the combination of sun and purple paint-job were too much to bear,
then his expression cleared, he gave my driver a curt, distinctly covert wave and returned to the booth. The iron barrier
rose silently and we slid through, feeling rather like a shark entering someone’s nice, well-appointed pool.

Ziggi drove slowly, as if there was some chance we might go unnoticed. The winding streets were overlooked by high fences
and higher houses, some mere mansions, others hoping to grow up to be full-on castles. Each abode was a signature piece; not
one resembled its neighbour in even the smallest of ways. Materials, form and colour were all unique, but in those desperate
attempts at individuality, all sense of architectural harmony had been lost. Expensive vehicles lounged in Taj Mahal-standard
carports like big cats. I could almost hear the purring. It didn’t look like somewhere to live, but rather somewhere to be
displayed
.

We took the long road down the right arm, making our way out to the most remote of the islets, until we sat outside a driveway.
Access was blocked by an artistically beaten panel of copper set in a soaring wall of ecru render and secured by the modern
equivalent of a gatehouse, from which stepped yet another security guard. This one was youngish and female, a concrete blonde
with a dark red birthmark up the right side of her neck. She stared at the cab as if it were a blot on the landscape. I could
see her point.