From somewhere below, there was a crack, a crash, distant, far-off, almost embarrassed to have its effect ruined by the weight of cold winter air between us and it. The Aldermen all at once turned their faces towards the window, and, since this was strange behaviour for anything that wasn’t a pigeon, we followed their gaze as well.
In the darkness of the city outside, a single red light came on, somewhere on the other side of Aldermanbury Square. Then another, then another, a line of little red lights, here embedded in the walls, here stuck on above the street signs, here in the tops of pavement bollards. A spreading line of bright scarlet rippled down from across the other side of the square, shimmered in the double red parking lines on the streets, reflected off the red warnings on the signs, bounced and reflected off the darkened windows of the lurking buildings around, and then more. The light crawled out of its sources, spilt across the square, seeped between the legs of the hoodies — how many spectres could one guy summon?! — illuminated the empty nothings in their hoods, the cracks of nothingness between their loose, grey clothes, and still spread.
It shimmered up the side of the tower, spilt through the windows of Harlun and Phelps and kept growing and rising, a bright, unremitting crimson light that made our head hurt, a photographer’s lamp amplified to the point where the eyes ached to see it. The red light ran up through the whole height of the tower, crawled out of the walls, the floors, the ceiling; everywhere there was a surface to shine, it shone red. When the Aldermen moved, they seemed to trail scarlet behind them, as if the light were a thin solid, or a floating fog, rather than a thing of insubstantial energy, and it occurred to us with the slow shuffling pace of a thought slightly shy to have been caught late to the party, that this same all-pervading light was the same blood-red of the dragon’s cross, and that, looked at from the right angle, the office of Harlun and Phelps might well make a strong starting line from which you could draw the same cross on the very streets of London.
By the bright blood glow, I turned to Earle. “I gotta hand it to you . . .”
But he raised a hand, commanding me to silence. “
Then, “They’re inside. They’re coming up the stairs. Spectres and . . . and something else.”
Earle had never met the death of cities.
“He bleeds paper. You can’t kill him,” I said quickly, “not while the curse is still doing its thing, but you can slow him down. Protective wards, incantations, general big explosive effects. I need a way out of here, I need to get the hat to Ngwenya . . .”
Earle nodded briskly. “Seventh floor, there’s a jump, but if you’re smart . . .”
“Oda!”
She was by my side, face lit up dark, night-time blood in the all-pervasive redness.
“Earle . . .” I began.
“Run, Mister Mayor,” he breathed. “We will slow them, distract them, fight them where we can. Run. Get the hat to your traffic warden. Damnation on you, sorcerer, burn in hell —
We ran.
Blood dripped scatty and unsure behind us, forming diamond-shaped splatters on the thin carpet. The lifts were dead, no point even trying, the stairs were concrete and grey. Oda had a torch, a gun, I had my torch from my jacket pocket. But I didn’t want to risk summoning a light. What little mortal strength we had now, we were not going to waste, not while there was still a chance that we might survive the night. The white light from our torches was gobbled up in an instant by the all-pervasive ruby glow, spilling from every inch of wall and floor. I could see it stretch and part around my feet as we ran/tumbled down the stairs, gasping for breath, heart pounding in our ears, scared, scared, just the anxiety, just scared, just nothing, just feeling, just mortal things for mortals to worry about, just run!
Eighteenth floor; what kind of penis-obsessed architect builds so high anyway?! (Land prices, think land prices, think running . . . )
Sixteenth floor, fifteenth, couldn’t breathe, just keep on falling and gravity should do the rest, fourteenth floor and a sign caught my eye — “Oda!”
“What?”
“Catering.”
“But . . .”
“Come on!”
I dragged her through the fire-exit doors onto the fourteenth floor, pushed her at the nearest line of boring plywood desks. “Fags, Sellotape! Every cigarette you can find!”
Scowling, she started to rummage through drawers. I hurried down the corridor to a pair of white double doors with a round glass window set in each one, pushed them back, lurched into a kitchen of stainless steel and giant tubs for suspicious soups made mostly of floating carrot to boil in, started tearing open everything on the shelves. We nearly screamed our frustration — what kind of big office didn’t have some hidden cache of booze?!
Big cartons of Perrier, fizzy water, lemonade, fruity fizzy water, water with added vitamins, water with added volcano, fruit juice made mostly out of sugar, fruit juice made mostly out of crushed ginger, yoghurt drinks, “power” drinks, protein drinks, more water, carbonated, decarbonated, hydrated, dehydrated, mix and match in one cup and see if your head explodes . . .
“Matthew!” Oda’s voice drifted through the doors.
“What?”
“They’re coming!”
“Get in here!”
She came through the double doors to the kitchen without complaint, carrying a depressingly small armful of cigarette packets and a roll of Sellotape. “Beer,” I muttered, “gotta find beers, where are they?”
“I saw a face . . . a not-face . . . an empty-face at the door.”
“Beer bottles!” I dragged open another stainless-steel cupboard door, dragged down sacks of flour, great packets of gelatin, opened another and there it was! Tucked away discreetly at the back, the shelf of expensive green glass. I dragged them down by the armful, started to fumble at the tops.
“Sorcerer!”
Oda’s voice from my left; I turned and there were two of them by the door, bobbing along to the silent beat, empty nothingnesses inside their hoods, penknives in hand. I raised my hands towards them, pushing my blood- soaked palms out in front of me. “Oda, light the cigarettes, empty the bottles, put the fags in them still burning, got it?”
She grabbed the fallen bottles I’d been working at, and started fumbling in her pocket for her knife, trying to get the lids off. The spectres shuffled towards me, bobbing from the hips down to their unheard rhythms, swinging their shoulders as if to say, “you think you’re hard enough?” So they swaggered towards me, arrogant nothingnesses in a tracksuit, and I held up my hands towards them and felt the crosses carved into my skin, and I said:
“‘It is apparent to me that you, being a . . . thing . . . aged ten or over namely, (a) have acted, since the commencement date, in an anti-social manner, that is to say, in a manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as yourself and (b) that this order is necessary . . .’”
The air thickened around my fingers; blood oozed down my palm, to my wrist, splattered onto the floor. The spectres kept coming.
“‘. . . to protect persons in the local government area in which the harassment, alarm or bloody major distress is caused or is likely to be caused from further anti-social acts by yourself; and as the relevant authority—’
Thick light began to shimmer off my skin, and spill down my arms onto the floor. As the spectres neared, they began to slow, arms sliding through the air like vengeful t’ai chi gurus, each movement reduced to a crawl; but still coming—
“‘. . . for the purpose of determining whether the condition mentioned in subsection (1)(a) above is fulfilled, the court shall disregard any act of the defendant which he shows was reasonable in the circumstances. The prohibitions that may be imposed—’
