Marsden snatched at his cane just as it started to fall from the trap, and we burst out of the cell, into the stone-built corridor. And into another figure running toward us in the dimness. We jerked to a halt. The other person, obscured in shadows, skidded and stopped. Then he breathed, “Will!” and launched himself the last few feet into us.
“Michael!” I hissed. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to wait by the bikes! You could have been captured!” I wanted to yell at him, but that angry whisper was all I could risk. The stupid boy! If he’d have been caught.
Michael ignored me and wrapped his arms around his brother’s waist, not noticing the stench or bandages. “Will! Thank God. You’re all right?”
“Not in the least,” Marsden snapped. “Nor shall we be if we linger for family reunions. You got in so tidily, you lead us out of here, boy, and the faster the better.”
Startled by his rough tone, Michael backed off and spun around, jogging ahead. “C’mon! I couldn’t stand waiting for you. I found a tunnel from Hatton Garden—it’s faster than the sewer route.”
We went forward, hauling the emaciated and staggering Will between us as quickly as we could, but our speed was still only a bit better than a jog.
As we plunged into a section of unlit corridor that arched over the grumbling passage of the buried river, a whiff of its effluence leaking through the masonry, Marsden let out a chuckle. “Good thing we smell of sewer, girl,” he mumbled. “They’ll have a harder time following us with the odor of the Fleet below.”
Michael, ahead of us, didn’t hear, but Will did and he made a noise that might have been a cough—or not—and tried to move faster. Every step hurt him—I could see it in the bright red strobing of his energy corona—but he kept on and I saw the white gleam of his teeth as he bit into his lower lip.
“It’s just a few blocks,” I whispered to him. “Not far.”
He nodded in the dark.
We staggered through the murk—we didn’t dare to use the flashlight—with the sounds of pursuit growing closer by the moment. Michael stopped to glance back at us over and over, even though most of the route was too dark for him to see much but our shambling shapes. I began to feel the cold-hot press of blood rage and insanity far behind, like the blast from an explosion bearing down on us in slow motion.
“Harper!” Far away, I could hear Alice shriek my name like a swearword.
“Catching up,” Marsden muttered, voicing my fears.
Michael whipped around a corner and dashed a few feet ahead to a set of steel loops set in the wall. He scrambled up them and pushed the iron manhole cover aside with his back. We could hear it scrape across the road above, and the sound echoed into the tunnels below as if the earth itself had groaned. Behind us, the scrambling and rushing noises paused and changed direction, coming straight for us.
Marsden and I started shoving Will up the steps, using our backs as braces to support him as he tried to pull himself up. I heard a whimper of pain escape as he struggled upward, tangling his mangled feet in the loops and hauling with his injured hands. Michael whispered encouragement from above and, when he was close enough, grabbed his brother’s wrists and hauled steadily. Will’s weight eased off our shoulders and then vanished as he climbed clear of the hole.
“You next,” Marsden said. “I have some more tricks to hold ’em off while you get that infernal motorbike running. But don’t dawdle!”
I scrambled up the rungs and levered myself into the street. A dozen yards away, I saw Michael fussing with Will, who was leaning against a wall and sinking slowly. I ran to them and helped with Will’s helmet while Michael got the small motorcycle started.
Will tried to smile at me, but it was weak and faded away under tears, pain, and exhaustion. “What now?” he asked as I pushed him onto the bike behind his brother and grabbed the webbing straps we’d bought earlier.
“Now you go to the doctor. After that, Michael will take you someplace safe.”
Will was shaking as Michael pulled his arms around his own waist. I strapped the two men together and patted Michael’s helmet to let him know I was done. I hopped back as the small bike zoomed away.
From the open manhole came a flash and a roar. I swung my attention to the other motorcycle: It looked like Michael had borrowed one of the Italian bikes from his buddy, and I was grateful I wouldn’t have to remember the oddities of old British motorcycles as well as how to ride one at all.
The bright yellow bike roared on the first press of the starter. I threw my leg over, tucked my hair down my collar, and jammed the helmet on as I felt Marsden’s weight hit the back.
“Go!”
“Hold on!” I yelled back. As his arms locked around my waist, I kicked the bike off the center stand. It leapt forward and bit into the road with both tires, chirping as it bolted. Even over the engine, I heard something more of flesh and rage roar behind us with an eruption of wing beats and a howl of fury.
I could hear Alice’s screeches of wrath among the howling and the voice of something that nearly jellied my spine, raking at some lizard-brain part of my mind that contained primal fear. My grip on the throttle slacked and the bike gurgled quieter, slowing.
Marsden jabbed me in the ribs. “I’ll kill you first if you drop us,” he hissed. The ridiculousness of the threat struck through the terror and I clamped back down on the throttle, twisting it hard. The Ducati jumped forward, screaming.
We were the only prey left to follow, but we had a lead. They’d have to go back for their own bikes if they wanted to follow. Too bad there hadn’t been time to hobble them.
The streets were busy and narrow and they twisted into each other at odd angles, reducing the maximum speed I could put into negotiating a path away from Clerkenwell. Our pace was still excessively fast, but something seemed to be close behind, something that breathed the stink of death down our necks and jinked through the traffic as nimbly as a gazelle. We were ahead of it, but I didn’t imagine that would last long. Distantly I heard the throaty sound of other bikes and knew it was Alice and her cohort—I only hoped it was a small one, that her wanton slaughter of Glick and the loss of me had driven a wedge into her control of the Brotherhoods and the support of the local asetem.
I raced the bike northwest, toward King’s Cross and St. Pancras. I was fine on the one-way streets, but I dreaded the bigger roads and had to concentrate on sticking to the left side of the line. At the first opportunity, I moved, even though it meant using smaller streets where there were fewer witnesses to anything the vampires might try if they caught up. I twitched the bike into a right turn across traffic, shooting through a hole in the pattern to race into a new route, dragging our pursuers away from the main streets. If I’d been a more experienced rider, I might not have made the move, but as it was I relied on the luck of fools.
We made it. I turned twice more, up into Pentonville and then west, dropping to a smaller road and flashing past the boat basins on the south shore of Regent’s Canal. Then a hard right-left jink at York, staying south of the canal and sprinting the bike through the emptiness of Goods Way, which sliced between the back of King’s Cross and the cement banks of the canal. We drove past the skeletal ring of a Victorian gas regulator that stuck its black iron fingers into the sky and under the S-turn at the back of St. Pancras Station.
I skidded the bike to a stop on the sidewalk in front of St. Pancras Old Church and we left it, with my helmet thrown to the ground beside it, like a signpost gleaming yellow and rippling the night air with its heat, as we scrambled for the only magical place in England I was familiar with: the graveyard. It wasn’t ideal, but I knew the dead spots and the hazards, and the vampires would have to take bigger risks than Marsden and I would. If we were lucky, they’d already left Alice to sink or swim on her own.