The Sunken City Trilogy Page 10

  Mum was angry, obviously. She’d been angry before the lady showed up, after Dad had been drinking again. The lady obviously wasn’t the cause of the anger, and even more obviously wasn’t having an affair with her dad, so Grace saw an opportunity where Mum saw a problem. When she found her mum on Saturday morning, stewing over Dad’s phone, writing something in a notepad, like she was plotting murder, Grace knew she needed to calm Mum down. Her mum said she didn’t understand. Grace said she understood pretty well, actually. Whoever that woman was, she came from a place that her dad knew. He hadn’t been back, for a long time, and he was at least a bit unhappy about it. Maybe it was time he got some closure?

  The problem was Mum didn’t know about it, before. She didn’t realise he needed a little something extra in his life. They’d talked it out, sure, and Dad was doing okay – but there’d been fights and arguments and probably ultimatums. What if they looked at it together, now, a bit more relaxed? Couldn’t she do that for him?

  Mum hadn’t said anything. That was a good thing, Grace thought. It meant she was considering it and not just telling her to mind her own business. And with that on her mind, Mum was more positive than before, and didn’t grill Grace about the million things she had planned that day. Grace left the house pleased with herself, on her way to the Ten Gardens Arndale.

  It was going to be a good day.

  2

  Pax woke up feeling strangely rested, yawning and stretching her arms. She stood and rubbed her eyes with the backs of her fists, calmly noticing the light creeping in under the curtains. Lit like that, the sun was on the east side of the building. Early morning. She must’ve had something approaching a normal night’s sleep for once. She dragged herself lazily to the window and drew the curtains. She thrust them shut again.

  The crack.

  She spun to the bullet hole in the wall.

  Jesus Christ, she wasn’t supposed to be here, with them watching – it wasn’t safe. She shook herself wider awake, whipping past the bed to sweep up her keys, her wallet, her phone. She jammed on her boots, scrambled into her coat. Burst out the door and vaulted the stairs, cursing herself. Stupid. What’d she been thinking, letting Casaria drive her home – should’ve given him an excuse – a late-night game or something – anything to avoid coming back here.

  She ran out of the block and down the road, almost knocking a young man off his bike. Squinting her eyes against the sunlight, she shot looks at the nearby windows. They could be hiding anywhere. She hurried into an alleyway between buildings, concealed by high walls, and cut through to the next street. She looked back. No one was following. The Tube station was a block away, she could lose a tail there, for sure.

  She paused before exiting the alley.

  Why had she come back here?

  Her mind flashed back to the night before.

  Bollocks.

  There was a shoebox in her closet with a tiny woman trapped in it. She’d come back because protecting a fairy – a real life fairy – had put any thoughts of her unsafe apartment out of her mind. More than that, what with all the frantic energy she’d expended pacing about in despair at what the hell this little woman was, she’d finally just collapsed into sleep, still dressed. She must’ve been lying around for hours at risk. Idiot – idiot.

  But wait. She’d been lying around for hours. Nothing had happened.

  Was the lunatic caller no longer watching?

  She took out her phone. No messages or missed calls. Maybe they were giving her time. And she’d seen where Rufaizu was – when the lady called back, they might be able to work something out. Things might not be so bad, at least as far as being shot in her ovaries was concerned.

  On the other hand...she was outside, now, she could skip across town to be sure she wasn’t being followed, then figure out a proper plan of action. Though that small person would wake up trapped in the dark with only the padded comfort of a scrunched-up t-shirt and a small thimbleful of water. She’d made a prisoner of this tiny miracle and now she’d abandoned her without an explanation. Could she explain it? Did little insect women speak, or understand, English?

  What else could she do? Take the fairy with her, risk dropping it or accidentally sitting on it or something? Take it to a vet? She should find her a bed or a dollhouse or something, at least...Pax’s phone vibrated in her hand, the surprise almost making her drop it. After taking a calming moment, she read the message. Barton’s number.

  I’ll meet you. But somewhere safe. Don’t come to Dalford again.

  She reread her own message above his, remembering her desperate idea of dragging this family man back into her mess. She looked back towards her road one last time. Casaria had said the fairy might be knocked out for a day. Maybe it wouldn’t even notice she was gone. Shoving her hands in her pockets and pulling up her hood to hide her face, she slunk away towards the Underground.

  Weirway Park rose over the city of Ordshaw in the north-west, the peak of its green hill offering a panorama that encompassed industrial warehouses, brick terraces, shimmering skyscrapers and, to the east, leafy suburbs. The River Gader snaked around the base of the hill, in earnest to the north and in gentle tributaries to the south. In the autumn, the trees of the park were a mix of gold and red, and the breeze from the sea was brisk without being outright cold. The hill’s peak, wide enough for everyone to spread out and feel alone, felt personal, even with its all-encompassing view. Pax had used it as a thinking spot ever since she moved to Ordshaw. She basked in the quietness of nature while looking over the chaotic city beneath. Apart from it all, but connected at the same time.

  “You alone?” Barton asked from behind. She turned and took him in. His scruffy shirt and trousers looked as if they might have been his old work clothes. He had a builder’s face, with heavy features, untamed stubble and a few incongruous marks that could have been old wounds or natural defects. He had a big gut, and big arms; probably used to work out but got tired of it.

  “Yeah. I mostly am,” Pax said. She held out her hand. “We didn’t get a proper introduction before. Pax Kuranes.”

  “Darren Barton.” He gave her a short but firm shake, his beefy hand dwarfing hers. He looked around, checking that no one could hear them. The nearest person was an elderly man preparing a toy plane for flight, well out of earshot. Pax was about to start, to reel out everything she’d gone through, but Barton’s expression turned serious as he spoke first. “Let’s start at the top. What do you know about the Blue Angel? You tried glo yet?”

  Pax’s hopes for simple answers exploded. She said, “That’s the top, is it?”

  “Pretty much,” Barton nodded, not noticing her lack of understanding. “You met someone from the Ministry, he wouldn’t tell you about that stuff. Chances are he doesn’t know it. But you need to.”

  “Shit.” Pax’s voice fell. She closed her eyes, hit by a wave of exhaustion. She hadn’t slept as well as her waking ignorance had suggested.

  “You come here on the Tube?”

  She nodded without opening her eyes.

  “No wonder you’re tired.”

  “No,” she said, looking at him again. His serious expression had softened, replaced by concern. “I’m not used to being up this early, and I’m kind of up against it right now.”

  “What happened?”

  Pax paused. Barton’s eyes told a whole story. They had been mad like a frenzied dog’s the day before, but now they had the softness of a worried puppy. The sympathy in his expression was genuine. He was deeply driven by his emotions. Would fiercely protect anyone in need, whether it was his family or a stranger. He had actually come here to help her.

  “Let’s sit.” He swung a hand to a bench down the hill. As they walked, he said, “You didn’t run, after what I said?”

  “I got curious,” Pax said. “Same time the Ministry guy got friendly.”

  “So you went with him.” Barton sounded disappointed. “I told you not to.”

  “Yeah. I’ve never liked doi
ng what I’m told. I saw a monster, you know?” As they sat on the bench, she said it again: “I saw a monster. Under the city. Casaria said there’s a whole network down there, and it’s all fucked up. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “That’s up to you,” Barton said, not at all surprised. He’d been through this himself, somehow. “You want to get away from it, now?”

  “Would they let me?”

  “I doubt it,” Barton said. “They never approached me. I’ve never knowingly seen or talked to one of the Ministry myself, but I know people who have. They tend to go missing.”

  “I heard that too,” Pax said.

  “Keep them onside if you can. But if you want answers, and don’t want to be a pawn in their game, you need to contact the Blue Angel. You got family, friends?”

  “No one close. I see my folks, my brother, maybe once a year. That’s how I like it.”

  Barton didn’t ask why, and Pax was thankful. He lived in Dalford, he wouldn’t get it. “That gives you options, at least. I got involved for my family. I was trying to protect the city, because that meant protecting them, too. Then I realised my kid needed me more than she needed this city.”

  “I’ve never felt a special need to protect anyone, or anything, other than myself,” Pax said, but his eyes looked doubtful. Rightfully so; even as she said it she imagined Rufaizu strapped to that chair.

  “You don’t want to walk away, do you?” Barton asked.

  “I don’t want to get torn up by a monster or shot in the ovaries, that’s for sure.” She ignored his questioning look. “Look, first off, I lost a big chunk of cash, which is crazy bad timing – I’ve got rent due and there’s this poker tournament – and these people, the things they’re doing – I mean...” She trailed off, seeing that Barton wasn’t entirely following her, and she turned her toe against the ground.

  He said, “It’s all become background detail, hasn’t it? You want to help. You’re not even sure why. But trust your instincts. Rufaizu’s heart’s in the right place. The creatures down there, they’re bad news. They’ve got one big, ugly purpose, hiding a bigger threat. A force that drains people, feeds off this city. Me, Apothel, the others, we wanted to stop it.”

  “Casaria said there’s something good down there.”

  “What would he know? The Ministry never listened to the Blue Angel, they’re clueless.”

  “What is that? Someone’s lofty codename, right?”

  This made Barton stop. He said, “I’m not sure if you’ll believe me.”

  “I’m about ready to believe in unicorns, Darren,” Pax replied.

  “It’s a little harder to understand than that. The Blue Angel is someone who told us all we needed to know about the Sunken City. They communicate through blue screens that appear on walls, like projections. Maybe one person, maybe more, I don’t know, but they helped us. To a degree. It was never actually enough.”

  Pax slid down into the bench, legs shifting forward until she was almost hanging off the edge, head lolling into the back. She rolled her eyes to the sky and took her time to release a loud groan. Indulging herself in the frustration of a petulant child. She said, “Fuck me. What do I have to do to go home and forget about all this?”

  “You tell me,” Barton said.

  She met his gaze, maintaining her slouch of discontent. Rather than answer that, citing the kidnapped fairy, an imprisoned youth, the Ministry stalker or her sniper friend, Pax decided to move on to what he knew. “What’d you learn from this Blue Angel?”

  Barton continued, “It shared some specifics about the creatures down there, but mostly it pointed us towards glo. Drink glo and you can see everything more clearly. Literally, the Sunken City makes more sense. Most importantly, you can see the minotaur.”

  “Oh piss off!” Pax sat back up like a shot – that word again. “There’s not a minotaur down there.”

  Barton shook his head. “That’s what we called it, the thing that sucks the energy out of people. It appeared as something we could see and understand, when we were on glo, but it’s made of light, or energy, I don’t know.” Pax gave him a blank expression and he went on. “I can’t describe it well, I’m no poet. It’s why I asked about the Tube. It sucks energy from above, but especially from people down there. They blame travelling, don’t even know it’s feeding on them. What we’d do, we’d go down there and find the beast, and we’d communicate through these blue panels with the Blue Angel, and it’d help move it away from the more populous parts of the city. That’s the best we could do. Damage limitation, if not prevention.”

  “Hold on,” Pax said. “How’d this Blue Angel move it? Who’s behind these blue screens?”

  Barton hesitated, as if he didn’t like to admit the next bit. “We never found out. The blue screens were weird.”

  “Compared to the nightmare monsters?”

  He shrugged that off. “To get hold of the Blue Angel, you scratch words into walls. It has to be scratching – don’t ask why. We tried pens and other stuff, no good. The answers come back in scratches. We communicated through these screens for years.”

  “Leaving a trail of love notes on public walls?” Pax said.

  “No, these screens cleared up after themselves. Someone, somewhere out there, wanted to help us, but kept it totally secret. And like I said, that help was never quite enough. Sometimes the directions led us to empty glo stashes. Sometimes we’d find the minotaur and it wouldn’t get moved. And the Blue Angel never contacted the Ministry, or never got through to them, near as we knew – never persuaded them of the truth of what was going on down there. But still, it was the best we had. I could give you an address where you might be able to find a blue screen, if you want. It’s been a long time, might not work.”

  Pax could see this was a bad start. Barton was a few cards short of the full deck, and his unreliable, anonymous source hardly sounded like a solution. “Who else was into all this?” she said. “You, Rufaizu, and Apothel, right?”

  “Not Rufaizu, he was too young. We had a few friends, though. It was stupid, like an adventure club. Some mates get together for a pub quiz once a week, or a game of poker; we got bladdered and picked fights with monsters. We had a scientist helping us, Mandy Rimes. And the filmmaker Rik Greivous. Heard of him?”

  Pax shook her head.

  “He shot weird stuff. He was trying to get glo to work with his cameras, to record it all. The scientist, she tried to figure out what these creatures were made of, so we could hurt them. The Ministry turned a blind eye as long as we never got near the minotaur. They needed the other stuff culled anyway. I took down glogockles, sickles, the things that they didn’t want late-night drunks stumbling across. The minotaur’s not like the other creatures, though. It’s massive, and not exactly...I dunno, physical. Nothing we tried hurt it. No way to record it or study it. You can’t even see it properly without glo. Apothel always had some new idea, though, so we kept at it. Until there was an incident with the kids, and I got into it with the wife. Rik disappeared, he had other things going on. Apothel started to run around on his own. We lost touch and he started talking to the Layer Fae. It was bound to go south from there. The Fae hate everything that’s not Fae, they’re psychotic. I never crossed paths with the little bastards myself, thank God. You wouldn’t see them coming if you did.”

  Mystery psychos you never saw coming. That had been important before, hadn’t it, when he gave her that name? You didn’t actually see the Fae. Little bastards. Pax closed her eyes. The caller had called her “tall”. The tiny woman had had a pistol she’d plucked out of the holster with tweezers. Fae. The word was literal. She said, “The Layer Fae aren’t people, are they?”

  Barton laughed, bitterly, devoid of humour. “They’d have you think they were. But no, they’re not. Again, you won’t believe it. They’re...”

  “Fairies.”

  Barton paused. He was surprised she’d guessed it, but he didn’t care to ask how. “Yeah. Nasty, gun-toting little s
hits. The Blue Angel warned us about them, said they had a long-term interest in the Sunken City.”

  Pax swallowed. She suddenly didn’t feel so guilty about the shoebox. Nor so worried about going back to her apartment, now it was possible it really wasn’t being watched. She said, “Are there a lot of them?”

  “Oh, I think so,” Barton nodded. “But they don’t work together. Antisocial, aggressive things.”

  That was the caller all right. That was the lady Pax had trapped. She snapped in another piece of the puzzle. “Apothel had something they wanted, right? Now Rufaizu has it? Or had it.”

  Barton paused. “Possibly. I knew Apothel was into something with them, and Rufaizu seemed to follow that up, but every plan Apothel came up with was a dead cert, you know? This is the big one, he’d always say. The thing that’ll kill the minotaur. You couldn’t take it seriously.” Barton sighed. “It was me who found him, you know? Apothel. I hadn’t seen him in months when Mandy called up, worried he was missing. I had a kid of my own and began to worry about Rufaizu. I found the boy in one of Apothel’s half-dozen hiding places. Alone. He’d been locked in a room for days, no food. Piss and shit in a corner.”

  “My God...”

  “Finding him was the good news. Apothel was in the loft space above. Rufaizu followed me up there and saw everything. He ran. He ran and I couldn’t stop him. I spent weeks trying to find him, chasing up leads with Mandy, to the point that my wife was all but ready to kick me to the curb. The kid had vanished, though, carrying this image of his dead dad with him.”

  “I’m so sorry,” was all Pax could say.

  “Still not the worst of it. No one did a damn thing. Police barely opened a report. Said it was just another vagrant gone. The Ministry were covering it up. They got in touch with Mandy and told her to drop it. It wasn’t a friendly suggestion. You starting to understand what you’re dealing with?”

  Pax nodded grimly. “So was it the Fae or the Ministry that killed him?”