“Tough.” Alexei grunted. “Have deadline, no time to waste.” Although it was true. On a good night in the woods his guys were ghosts, moving silently through ground cover. But something was wrong tonight. Alexei had caught a thin branch like a horsewhip across the face. Then Igor had nearly broken his leg on a hidden pothole, and Yevgeny had sprained his ankle on one of the lurking, hostile tree roots Yuri was rabbiting on about. It was almost like the road didn’t want them here. And that fucking glassy laugh he could swear he kept hearing—it had to be a hallucination, didn’t it? Maybe his mask seal hadn’t been as tight as he thought and he’d caught a whiff of happy gas. The impulse to turn and hose down the road behind him with steel-jacketed disinfectant was strong—but not quite strong enough to break fire discipline. Alexei was a professional, and so were his guys, and nobody was about to start shooting at shadows. Yet.
The plague pit at the end of the sunken trail was something special, and no mistake. His crew went through it with hackles raised and guns twitching outward, covering each other with eyes wide open as Alexei whacked on the locked mausoleum gate with the butt of his gun until it unfroze and opened with a screech like the waking dead. He hustled out onto the sidewalk—pavement, the Brits called it—and tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but relief wouldn’t come: not now, not here, not with tentacles of mist coiling lasciviously around his ankles.
“Have you reconsidered decision to apply for a career as insurance loss adjuster?” Yevgeny asked mordantly. “Maybe should have pick something safe instead? Like test pilot for zero-zero ejector seat?”
They pressed on into the dank, narrow streets of Whitechapel, sticking close together with guns held close, stocks folded for concealment beneath their overcoats. They only passed a handful of locals, and one group clustered outside a bar who grunted a challenge at them. “Are with Vigilance Committee!” Alexei glared at them and twitched his coat aside far enough to reveal a gun barrel. They backed down.
The mist grew thicker as the alleyways and backstreets grew darker and narrower. Alexei was half-tempted to go off-map and start blasting holes through the rotten brickwork and decaying wooden doors to either side, to punch a demolition tunnel through the obstacle course of urban architecture lying between them and the decadent nobles’ reading room. But no: their supply of pyros was strictly limited to whatever Yuri and Igor had packed in their leather satchels (typically a kilo of C4 and a brace of flash-bangs), and there was no telling what kind of unwanted attention they might attract if they started blowing shit up. This was London in 1888, but not the London the history books described. This was a London born of the folkloric horror myths that future London told about its past. A London in which magic had never guttered and died, a London liminal and unstable in its absolute form, crumbling away in the yellowish pea-souper smog clouds that pervaded the frayed edges of reality.
Whenever Alexei glanced over his shoulder he had the most disturbing feeling that the street behind him was not the one he’d just walked down but a hasty substitute, swapped in from some eldritch continuum of crapsack dipshittery stalked by the ghosts of maniacal serial killers and adorable Dickensian street urchins; where every barber’s shop was owned by a grinning slasher with a meat pie sideline, and every bedroom window offered a glimpse into the life of a soiled dove waiting for her Leather Apron lover. This was not the real Whitechapel of 1888 but the Whitechapel of the clichéd collective unconscious: pencilled, drawn, and inked from the scripts that London told about itself.
“Fuck this shit up its left nostril—” Igor began to complain, then emitted a strange, burbling gurgle. A moment later there was a thud of a body falling.
Alexei spun in place, flipping his AK-12 up and out as he scanned for threats. Around him the other five—no, four now—did likewise. Yevgeny dropped to his knees over a mound in the mist while Yuri and Boris took up positions. “He’s a goner,” Yevgeny reported after only a couple of seconds. “Both carotid arteries severed. Very clean work.”
Alexei swore some more in the privacy of his head: a howl of pure rage and frustration directed at the night and mist around them. “Boris, get his satchel and piece. Guys, follow me. Shoot anything that moves.”
They strode through the alleyway shoulder to shoulder. It wasn’t far if the map was telling the truth. Silvery giggles like shattered window glass echoed faintly from above, behind, and the sewer grates below, taunting: but Alexei and his crew held their itchy trigger fingers for now. If Tinkerbell wanted to fuck around with the Transnistrian loss-adjusters, she was about to find her life insurance renewal premium had just gone to infinity. But they were too professional to light up the street without a target.
They had a mission to accomplish. And the reading room was just around the next corner.
“Bring me my sedan chair, minion,” Rupert announced: “Failing that, ready my helicopter. Flight plan for Barclays London Heliport.” He paused momentarily to think. Ms. Starkey would know what to do, but this understudy … “Have the Bentley waiting for me when I get there,” he added, “and prepare my suite at HQ. You—” he addressed the naked woman lying on his bed—“see yourself out, there’s a good girl.” She snivelled something in response, but his attention was already directed elsewhere.
In principle it was possible to have his pilot set down in Kensington Park, within walking distance of HQ—but the police tended to frown on it. Something about babysitting for the royals living at the palace next door, and stopping random joggers from getting sucked into the pedestrian cuisinart or tail rotor or
