I hugged her back just as hard, keeping the ghost knife safely pressed to my thigh, breathing in her comforting floral perfume with its faint underlay of antiseptic. ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue, Grace,’ I murmured, totally inadequately, ‘and I’m fine now—but what on earth happened to you?’
She trembled slightly, then sniffed and gave a nervous laugh. ‘That Souler chap, Neil, jumped out at me when I went to help the lad here. Stupid really, I should’ve checked for someone guarding him first.’ She gave another hiccoughing laugh and hitched up her backpack. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this action-rescue business. Although I did bring spells.’ She pulled away and looked back at Bobby, a slightly scared expression on her face. ‘But Bobby took care of him.’
Bobby had laid Moth-girl’s body down on a clear patch of floor and was now staring at Rosa where she lay on her stone slab.
‘Took care of him, how?’ I asked, frowning.
‘Oh, he didn’t bite him.’ Grace blinked, her pupils nearly eclipsing the dark brown of her irises. ‘He just threw him against the wall.’ She did that hiccoughing laugh-thing again and I realised she was suffering from mild shock ... but then, treating victims in a nice bright clinic like HOPE, even the violent ones, took a different type of courage to venturing underground with a couple of vamps and a sometimes ghost girl. ‘He’s dead—broken neck. I checked,’ Grace added with another blink.
Good riddance, he’d certainly got what was coming to him. But Grace didn’t need to hear that right now. I hugged her again and murmured, ‘Hey, it’s okay, you’re doing brilliantly, and the lad’s safe now, thanks to you.’ I looked at the boy in question, who was standing there shivering, hunched over—
Then a thought hit me like a sucker-punch to my stomach.
Grace had broken the circle to get the florist’s boy and the Fabergé egg out.
And that meant there would be no magic to contain the demon when it turned up. And without even the tenuous boundaries of a graveyard to hold it, it would be free to roam anywhere! And it would be free to take anyone—not just the dead!
I had to get everyone out.
And I had to get the circle closed again.
‘You need to get out of here, Grace,’ I cried, letting her go, ‘and take the lad with you. MOVE! Now!’
A rumble shivered the ground.
Grace froze, her eyes wide with shock and fright.
I pushed urgently at her, yelling, ‘You need to get out, all of you, get out now—!’
The rumble came again; this time dust and bits of brick fell from the ceiling and muted explosions like a hundred-gun salute reverberated through the tunnel.
‘What the bleedin’ ’ell is that?’ Moth-girl squealed.
‘Fireworks,’ Bobby shouted, looking warily up at the arched roof. ‘The trolls are having one of their Hallowe’en parties up on London Bridge.’
‘Run,’ I shouted again. ‘It’s midnight.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Midnight.
All Hallow’s Eve.
It’s the time of year when the veil between the living and the dead dissipates ...
... and demons come trick-or-treating.
This particular demon had dressed up for the occasion in a navy lounge suit, his pale blue shirt open at the throat and fastened at the cuffs with links of heart-shaped sapphires the size of thumbnails. His top pocket sported a silk handkerchief the same colour as his shirt. He exuded ‘relaxed man-about-town’ charisma, but as he surveyed the room, the azure of his eyes shone colder and sharper than the sapphires at his wrists. The demon had dressed up as the Earl, London’s ex-head big-cheese vamp, the vamp I’d killed, and the star of my nightmare after the bakery explosion.
I tried to see the irony in that, except my mind was still short-circuiting with fear.
‘Genevieve, my dear, how nice to see you again.’ The demon gave me the Earl’s charming smile. Centuries of practice meant he showed no hint of his fangs. ‘Well now, this is all terribly interesting.’
Interesting wasn’t quite the word I’d have chosen. Everyone apart from Moth-girl and me was frozen in place; she hovered next to Darius, scared, but with a defiant expression on her white-painted face. I frowned as my mind finally came up with a question. Demons aren’t usually the chatty sort, more the fast-food type. He was loose, there was no circle to contain him, and we were in an unconsecrated graveyard. Why hadn’t the demon just gobbled us all up?
Or maybe he really was the Earl, and all this demon stuff was new to him.
‘So did you turn into a demon when you died, or what?’ I asked, surprised my voice came out steady.
‘Oh no, my dear, this is just a guise—I found his soul wondering unclaimed in the pit and decided I liked the look of it.’ He adjusted his handkerchief. ‘I thought you might appreciate its appearance, as you are somewhat acquainted with each other.’ He grimaced slightly. ‘Although I have found his personality is a bit ingrained after all his time in the mortal world—I do keep getting this urge to talk at length about certain things, like the ongoing rights of vampires. It is mildly irritating.’
‘Feel free to go back to hell and change,’ I said offhandedly, keeping the ghost knife close to my thigh. A vague plan started to form in my mind; the tunnels were on the south side of the Thames, so the river had to be to the north. ‘Don’t let us keep you,’ I added.
‘Ah, but our time is so short, a mere hour, so it appears I will need to continue with him for now. So, onto our evening’s purpose.’ He rubbed his hands briskly. ‘I see there is a good collection of souls, spirits and shades on offer next door. Some are a little the worse for wear, but nonetheless acceptable.’ He walked over to study the florist’s lad. ‘And I do approve of the virgin.’ He sniffed at the boy’s neck. ‘It’s been a few years since I’ve been presented with one. They appear to be rather hard to find nowadays.’
‘To be honest, virgin sacrifices rather went out with the Dark Ages,’ I said flatly, cautiously unhooking Grace’s backpack from her unresisting arm. The painting of the barren landscape at the end of the tunnel room showed the sun setting. Whatever the painting’s use was, no sorcerer would have anything that depicted the world incorrectly; it would screw with their magic. I looked along past the painting, so north had to be ... there.
‘Actually it was after the Dark Ages,’ the Earl said pedantically. ‘But that is a discussion for another time. What are you doing, my dear?’
I carefully tucked the ghost knife under my arm, then unzipped the bag and stuck my hand in. ‘Seeing if my friend bought any Holy or Blessed Water with her.’
‘She didn’t,’ he said, sounding pleased. ‘Most remiss of her.’
I rummaged around. He was right, she hadn’t; but I was looking for other things too. My fingers closed round a paper bag of small lumps of a putty-like substance and what felt like a large squishy pack of cotton-wool balls—the spells Grace had brought with her. Other than a bottle of water and some medical stuff, there was nothing else, so they would have to do.
The Earl prodded Malik’s tranqed body with his navy loafer and nodded to himself, then strolled up to Darius. He looked him up and down as if contemplating buying, then reached a hand out to the zipper on his black leather coat.
‘Oy, leave ’im alone,’ Moth-girl snarled at him.
The Earl snarled back, his mouth yawning wide, plunging us into a deep, dark abyss, so deep you knew there was no end, that you’d be forever falling, forever screaming, forever terrified, forever burning, with the darkness and the flames eating you up, over and over again—
Then we were back in the tunnel room, the candles flickering over the roof, sweat beading my forehead and the hot trickle of piss wetting my jeans, and Grace’s floral perfume chasing away the reek of brimstone and sulphur.