‘Beth, would you mind getting my pistol and my knife?’ du Bois asked. Beth glanced at him and then bent down and picked up the .45 from the floor near where Markus had dropped it. She did not give it back to du Bois.
‘You know how to use that?’ he asked. Beth ignored him and put the gun in the pocket of her battered leather.
‘What do you guys want?’ McGurk asked cautiously.
‘The same thing we wanted before I shot your friends. Obviously,’ du Bois said.
‘As far as I know, the girl’s dead. She died when her house blew up. You must have seen it on the telly. The mutant thing, a friend of mine found it in a basement.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know, down near the front in Southsea.’
‘Now where’s the girl?’
‘I told you: she’s fucking dead and causing me no end of grief while she’s at it.’
‘I have considerably less compunction in shooting low-rate rapist plastic gangsters than you do police officers. It would behove you to answer my question or I’ll start with your kneecaps.’
‘You can’t get all of us—’
Beth walked forward, grabbed the cane out of McGurk’s hand and laid into him with a ferocity that made du Bois take a step back.
‘WHERE’S MY SISTER?! WHERE’S MY SISTER?! WHERE’S MY SISTER?! WHERE’S MY SISTER?!’
McGurk was battered, bleeding, sobbing in pain and fear and had wet himself a long time before Beth realised that he now really wanted to tell her where Talia was. She stopped beating him. She was still shaking with rage. Curled up in a foetal position, he told her. One of the muscle gave them directions.
‘Remember everything he’s ever done to you,’ Beth told the two thugs. ‘Who wants the stick?’ Then she threw the bloodstained bull penis on the floor, turned and walked out.
With a thought the two .38s slid back up du Bois’s sleeves on their hoppers. He picked up his tanto, sheathed it and followed Beth.
She was waiting for him around the corner just past the second floor, pointing his own .45 at him. Du Bois was moving to the side as soon as he saw the gun. As he was higher than her he risked a kick, sending the .45 spinning from her fingers. Beth didn’t hesitate either. She was as surprised as du Bois was at how fast she ripped her great-grandfather’s bayonet from her inside pocket and stabbed it up through du Bois’s arm as he reached for her.
Du Bois screamed as the force of her blow pushed the tip of the bayonet through his nano-fabric-armoured leather coat and then through his hardening skin. He kicked out forward, hard. His foot caught Beth centre mass in the chest, lifted her up off her feet and sent her flying the rest of the way down the stairs and into the wall at the bottom. She slumped to the floor but started moving again almost immediately. Du Bois was appalled at how highly augmented she was. He did not understand how he could have missed this. He leaped down the stairs, his foot smashing her in the head so hard it cracked the plaster behind it. She was still moving towards him despite the blood oozing from her head. In desperation he triggered the hopper on his left arm, pointing the .38 that slid out at her.
‘Girl, I have been killing for centuries!’ Either this or the gun made Beth stop. That made no sense either. If he shot her the bullets would hurt, they might even incapacitate her, but unless they were coated with nanites or carried a nanite payload that counteracted how quickly her own obviously high-level nanite augmentation could heal her, then she would be fine. It was as if she didn’t know this. ‘Why attack me? Broadly speaking, I’m on your side.’ He wondered if she knew that less than twenty-four hours ago he’d killed her father. Yesterday he would have said no, but then yesterday he had been sure that Beth was a normal girl – for a violent ex-con from Bradford.
Beth glared at him. Du Bois tried to ignore the sound of bad things happening to McGurk above. She wondered if anyone had called the police yet.
‘Seriously, talk to me. I don’t want to hurt you or your sister, quite the opposite really.’ Then it hit him. ‘Are you from the Brass City?’ He didn’t think her look of confusion was faked. She had no idea what he was talking about. ‘The Eggshell?’ More confusion.
‘My father told me what you are,’ she told him.
He didn’t happen to mention what you are, du Bois thought. ‘And what’s that?’
‘You’re in some kind of cult. You bred her for sacrifice.’
Du Bois stared at her. Then he started laughing. Then he sat down on the stairs but kept the gun on her.
‘And you believed that?’ he asked, still laughing.
‘Everything’s a bit fucking weird!’ Beth snapped at him, less than happy that he was laughing at her, and her head hurt, quite a lot, she could feel it moving of its own accord, mending itself, though she was starting to feel really hungry again.
Du Bois thought about it. The truth was arguably odder.
‘Do you know, I almost see where he got that from,’ du Bois admitted.
‘Well, what do you want her for?’
‘It’s true she was part of a selective breeding and genetic manipulation programme. She and many other children were born to have their genetic material harvested, but we weren’t going to kill them, just take samples while they lived privileged lives.’
‘And where are these children now?’ Beth asked. Du Bois thought about lying. Instead he lit a cigarette and tried to ignore the horrific noises from upstairs.
‘They’re all dead.’ Beth started to say something. ‘No, we didn’t do it. To all intents and purposes they were wiped out in a terrorist attack. That’s why we need your sister.’
Beth wanted to believe him. Her instincts were to trust him, but she didn’t feel she could risk it, not when she was so close.
‘I’m taking my sister and we’re going,’ she told him.
‘Something’s coming. Talia is very important, and you’d both be better off coming with me.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t have to have this discussion, Beth. I can take her any time
I want. You don’t even know how to kill me. Trust me.’
‘Would sawing your head off with a World War One bayonet do it?’ she asked.
It might, du Bois thought. ‘I don’t think you’ve got that in you.’
‘You get between me and Talia, we’ll find out,’ she told him evenly.
Du Bois looked at her through the pall of his cigarette smoke. He took another drag. He made his decision. Beth just would not stop going after her sister. She had more will and courage than the entire ruling council of the Circle put together.
‘Fine, but they’ll send others like me after you,’ he told her. To hell with the Circle. ‘And I’m taking some samples from her before we go our separate ways.’ Beth opened her mouth to object. ‘I’m probably going to get killed for this, so no more arguments.’ He stood up and downloaded the route to where McGurk had said Talia was directly into his mind. It was very close. Du Bois supposed McGurk had wanted to keep her nearby. ‘And give me my gun back. It really was a present.’
‘No.’
Du Bois was not sure why he was surprised it was a lock-up. His ability to quote Wilde notwithstanding, McGurk had been a small-minded man. Du Bois let Beth handle the man guarding her sister. He heard bones crack under her fist. He was a little worried that she’d hit him so hard she’d killed him.