Part 7 (2/2)
The two men at the center of the crypt were young-Pete noticed that first. One still had a rash of pimples up his right cheek, and their faces weren't hard or cold enough to hide the rush of guilty fear in their eyes. In a restaurant or club, they'd be any two university students trying too hard, in expensive black jackets and black denim, silver charms dangling around their necks, identical spinning-wheel shapes that looked like poisonous spiders.
One found his voice, anger twisting it. ”Who the f.u.c.k are you lot?”
Jack smirked. ”I'm Jack Winter, and I'm here to make your worst b.l.o.o.d.y nightmares come true.”
The two black-clad boys looked at Jack in askance, then each other, questioning. The bepimpled one shrugged ignorance. Then they both laughed in Jack's face.
Pete placed a hand on Jack's shoulder. He shook under her, a leaf raging in the face of a gale. ”What have you done with Patrick Dumbershall and Diana Leroy?” she asked evenly. ”I warn you, lying at this juncture is only going to make me angry enough to hurt you. Both of you. Badly.”
Looks traded again, a nervous shuffling of feet on the stone floor of the crypt. The sound unpleasantly evoked Pete's dream. Take what is yours, Pete Caldecott Take what is yours, Pete Caldecott.
”Go b.u.g.g.e.r yourself,” the second spoke up. ”We ain't doing anything wrong.”
”I'm an inspector with the Metropolitan Police and my a.s.sociate has identified you as the kidnappers of two children,” said Pete, stepping forward. ”Those two facts plus you lot hanging about this tomb add up to me arresting you. Hands on heads, and face the wall.”
Before she could move, Pete felt electricity roil upward from her gut, through her spine, exploding against her brain like a hit to the temple. Power Power. Like she'd felt only once when she faced Jack across the clumsily chalked circle twelve years before. In her second of hesitation, the sorcerer's magic slammed into her.
Wind, like a wall, like seeing the closed lid of the empty coffin at Jack's funeral, s.n.a.t.c.hed Pete and sent her tumbling backward to land in the dirt at Jack's feet.
The sorcerer smiled, folding his hands together like a gun and drawing in a breath to say words of power.
He never got the chance.
Jack held out his right hand with fingers splayed, like he was framing a photograph. Then he twisted his hand, and the sorcerer on the right dropped to his knees, face twisted in supplication.
”I& what&” His words degenerated into breathless gurgling.
Jack took a step toward the fallen boy, and Pete felt the second sorcerer draw on the black well of magic that swirled just beyond sight and sound. She closed the distance between herself and the sorcerer and put a right cross into his half-shaven jaw. A twinge of separation stabbed her between her first and second knuckle. The sorcerer sat down hard, eyes swimming. Pete flexed her hand and said, ”Stay put unless you want to take your means through a plastic straw for the foreseeable future.”
The victim of Jack's attention clawed at his throat, whimpering. Pete perceived a darkness hovering over Jack and the sorcerer, like the thing in the scrying mirror, a hooded and robed figure who stared impa.s.sively with obsidian bird's eyes.
Jack spoke and shattered the vision. ”I've stopped your heart, you little c.u.n.t-rag. Would you like me to make your blood come out of your eyes next? Your coffin will be closed and padlocked when I'm done.” Jack clenched his fingers again and the man screamed, trails of blood oozing from his nose, his mouth, red tears forming and sliding down his face.
”Still laughing at me now, you boss-eyed w.a.n.ker?” Jack snarled.
”Jack,” said Pete. The expression of rage on Jack's face she'd never seen, not even when he'd hit a skinhead in Fiver's with his microphone stand during a brawl. Not that the n.a.z.i hadn't deserved it. Not that the kidnapper didn't, now. But watching Jack torture the boy turned Pete's stomach, and she gripped him hard at the elbow. ”Jack, stop stop.”
He blinked at Pete, almost like she'd just turned visible. ”Fine,” he muttered. ”No fun any longer, anyway.” He snapped his fingers, and the sorcerer jerked and went still.
Pete felt as if her own blood had drained right along with the boy's. ”Jack,” she whispered, papery. ”Did you kill him?”
”Hm? Yeah, probably,” Jack said with a thin smile. ”Not a great loss to the gene pool, trust me.”
b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, b.u.g.g.e.r, and f.u.c.k-all to that, Pete's logical half screamed. Jack, innocent and angry Jack, had killed another human being.
A kidnapper. Someone who would blind an eight-year-old girl. Bridget Killigan turned her face to Pete, and hissed at her to let the sorcerer die.
”Tell me where the f.u.c.king children are before he does worse to you,” Pete said aloud to the sorcerer she'd punched. Later, when she was alone and safeguarded, she could break down. Now, Patrick and Diana had no chance without her, the cold and unflappable detective inspector.
”G-G.o.ds&” the sorcerer quavered, looking like nothing but the frightened boy that he was. ”We didn't& I mean, you can't just&”
”Your G.o.ds are not here for you,” Pete rasped. ”Tell me now.”
The sorcerer did what many other criminals of Pete's acquaintance had done before himhe scrambled to his feet and ran, catching his shoulder on the door of the crypt, falling, up and running again for Old Brompton Road.
Jack raised his right hand and Pete felt power pull against her mind like a tide. ”Let him go,” she said. Jack considered, the blank slaty look back in his eyes. Coldhearted Coldhearted, Pete identified it. She should chase the git herself, but then she'd leave both Jack and the dead sorcerer unattended. Pete flexed her fists in frustration as she watched the live specimen clear a garden wall and disappear from view.
”Yeah, all right,” Jack said. ”Run on, little man. Let him tell all his mates what went on here when they're b.u.g.g.e.ring each other at the disco later on. Or applying eyeliner, or whatever it is those black little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds do nowadays&”
”Will you shut up!” Pete shouted. Something skated across her hearing, just beyond her range. A dry, strangled cry. Sobbing, from under the stones. ”They're here,” Pete breathed with relief. ”Patrick and Diana.”
Jack blinked at her, a few tendrils of ice-white curling back from the color in his eyes. Then he was himself. ”I don't see anything in this musty place.”
”Under the flags,” said Pete by way of explanation, casting around for the trapdoor to the lower level of the crypt.
”Here,” said Jack, bracing himself against a sarcophagus carved with the relief of a small girl, smaller than Bridget Killigan or Diana. Pete joined him and pushed. Something in her back gave and she tried not to think about the next time she'd have to chase down a suspect.
The sarcophagus moved with a groan and a rending of stone. A huff of stale air greeted Pete, the essence of the long dead rus.h.i.+ng into the wider night.
Crying continued, dry heaving sobs from a body whose tears had long since dried up and was too shattered to speak.
”Patrick? Diana?” Pete shouted. ”It's the police. Call out if you can hear me.”
Nothing greeted her except the whispering sobs, and Pete cursed as she crouched and dropped herself into the darkness. The fall was longer than she expected and she landed hard, going down on one knee. ”b.u.g.g.e.r all!” Back, kneeshe'd be in fantastic shape the next time something nasty showed up while she was helpless in the loo.
A blue s.h.i.+ne blossomed above her, and Jack's face slid over the gap in the ceiling, witchfire dancing lazy ballet around the ringers of his right hand.
”Thanks,” Pete whispered. The bottom level of the crypt was old, lichens and cobwebs undisturbed, warnings to trespa.s.sers that no one except the dead resided.
In the corner, chained to the ancient slabs by a pair of rusty manacles, Patrick and Diana crouched, naked and crying. The relief that coursed through Pete was indescribable, a slackening of muscles and a quickening of the heart.
Then she saw their eyes. They were gray in the witchfire, but under a good bulb they would be white. Blind. Drained.
Pete pressed her palms to her face. ”f.u.c.k it,” she said quietly enough that no one except her and the angel and demon on her shoulders would hear. She had found the children, but their monotone whimpers told the same tale as Bridget Killiganthe fracturing of a mind and the ruination of a life.
”Anyone alive down there?” Jack called. ”I'm going to feel awfully silly having topped this git if it was for nothing. 'Course, he did deserve exactly what he got&”
”I'm going to throw you my mobile,” Pete said. She swallowed her defeat in a hard ball that sc.r.a.ped down her throat, and made sure she was in control. She was Inspector Caldecott Inspector Caldecott. Finder of lost children. Logical. Unemotional.
And again, too late& ”Call the number in the memory for DI Heath and tell him you're with me. Give him the address.”
”You're not going to bring the kids up?” Jack said, s.n.a.t.c.hing her mobile out of the air when she threw it. He poked suspiciously at the keypad.
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