She took shaking steps towards the staircase and let him lead her down. As they descended through the portal underneath the abbey, she shed Jeanie’s skin and became Ilsa again; the Ilsa who had never belonged in the world above.
II
THE GREY WOLF
Canis lupus
Native to the wilderness of the Northern hemisphere, the grey wolf – the ancestral canine of humankind’s closest friend – is a social animal with strong familial bonds. They live and hunt in packs.
5
Ilsa fell.
Or at least she thought she did. After only a dozen or so steps, the dark stairwell shifted and her stomach lurched. It was like the feeling of being seconds from sleep, and then jolting awake as you fall off the edge of the world. Somehow, she landed on her feet.
She had taken several steps more before she realised they were ascending, and above them, around the bend, there was sunlight.
“You called this a portal,” she said, her voice quaking.
“Slipping from one world into another is not as simple as geography,” Fowler replied as they emerged into the same quadrangle they had left below – or above. Ilsa was blinded by the sun high overhead, and suddenly burning up, as if someone had opened the door of a raging furnace. A stupid, heedless fear told her this was not the quadrangle at Westminster Abbey; that she was dead and this was hell, just like she’d been promised. A metallic rumble split the air. Ilsa cast wildly about for the source, her eyes finally coming to rest on the clock tower striking one. It swayed before her eyes as the ground swayed beneath her feet. Was stepping through a portal into another realm supposed to feel like this?
As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw they were surrounded. Eight or ten people had stirred at their arrival and closed in on them. They weren’t armed, but their manner and the way they positioned themselves told her they were guards or soldiers. This was a whole other world – there was no telling the ways they could hurt her. “No,” she said weakly. The fish market flashed before her eyes; Martha’s blood leaving her, the crates pressing in on all sides.
Someone grasped her hand and pressed something into it. Ilsa willed her gaze to steady, and found Fowler in front of her, cool grey eyes on hers, a frown marring his brow. He was holding her fingers around a flask. “Drink,” he commanded. “Get your wits about you.”
The promise was tempting, but Ilsa tried to push the flask away. “I don’t want it.”
“The choice is yours, my lady, but the trials of this day are not yet at an end for you.”
Ilsa tried to stop her despair showing as she took the flask, unscrewed the top, and sniffed. Scotch. She took a deep drink, then another. All she could taste was blood, but the burn numbed her throat, and as the alcohol started coursing through her, it promised to numb everything else, too.
Her escort turned to face the soldiers surrounding them and raised his hands.
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
A man came forward, braced as if he might pounce at them. “What’s your business here, captain?”
“I’m in the employ of Alpha Hester,” said Fowler. He produced a folded document from the inside pocket of his coat, and added in an embittered tone, “I’d hoped she would be good enough to tell you.”
The guard took the document from him, and as he read it, Fowler turned slowly and took in the other guards. Every man and woman he locked eyes with shifted their weight a little, but none faltered. Ilsa gripped the flask with white knuckles as she imagined witnessing another death match.
Whatever the captain’s piece of paper said, it made the guard’s head snap to Ilsa in red-faced astonishment. He turned his incredulous eyes on the captain, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Stand down,” he commanded the others, and they all relaxed their stance. The guard handed the document back, and lowered his head to Ilsa in a bow. “My lady.”
Captain Fowler plucked the flask off her and tucked it away. “This way,” he said, and before Ilsa could raise any questions, he had rounded the guard and was heading for a door in the cloisters. Ilsa dragged herself after him, through a short passage, then another, and out onto a wide, bustling junction – the same junction.
It was London, yet this was not the city she had left behind in the night. The buildings were the same. The horses and carriages and people on the pavement were all identical. A young man was selling newspapers at the corner of an office building, and some of the men coming in and out were having their shoes shined by a man on the steps.
There were also two chimpanzees, little bigger than babies, wrestling on the pavement. Ilsa came to a jolting halt before them. No other pedestrians paid them any notice, and she wondered whether her mind had finally broken, or whether she had made a very poor decision in drinking Fowler’s whisky. Not even the captain looked concerned; he was watching Ilsa’s reaction with quiet humour.
A harried woman pushed her way through the crowd towards the chimps, scolding them as she approached. As she got close enough to make a grab for one of them, they both transformed into
