No Shelter from Darkness (2 page)

Ahead of Jorge, the platform ended in bricks and mortar. There were no doors in the outer wall of the station to his right and the locked door at the end looked sturdy. With no other option, he
jumped down onto the track on his left. The bright lanterns of a steaming locomotive were heading straight for him. He fought the urge to freeze and ran onward. Above the mechanical noises of the metal giant, the brakes started squealing to slow its arrival into the station. Past the wall and clear of the platform, Jorge leapt to the right and off the tracks. He continued running alongside the black juggernaut in its opposite direction, merely feet away from the blur of hot metal that made his long coat flap violently.

He slowed and looked back, hoping there had been enough distance between him and the woman to trap her on the platform—or better yet, for her to try and follow and be pulverized by the train. His pluming breath stopped when she landed on the track, lit up by the thundering train. But she didn't flinch. With a furious flurry of fabric she leapt and landed with her left foot on the large, round front bumper before then launching off it to the side. Astoundingly, the black boot of her right foot landed on the side of the station wall. She pushed off, doing the same thing again with her left foot on the steam engine's water tank and then dropped to the ground in a controlled tumble. On foot and bare knee she slid to a stop in the shale, her arm out to the side for balance while her breath bellowed in the cold air of dusk. Jorge was almost at a standstill, in awe of the acrobatics. The woman glanced up through her black hair. In the electric light coming from above, her pupils flashed a luminous pale-green.

Sweating and out of breath, Jorge nevertheless turned back around and kicked up shale as he broke into another sprint. He squinted at the trackside buildings to his right, and despite the dark blue of the evening sky he made out a track-worker's shed. He veered toward it and slung himself through the open door, skidding along the floor on his shoulder to the back wall. He wasted no time opening his leather satchel, taking out his crossbow revolver. He pulled down the lever underneath and flipped out the two halves of the prod from the side. By the time he pushed the lever back up, the silhouette of the woman had appeared in the doorway. Jorge raised the bow and squeezed the trigger.

The wire twanged, and a thin spike whistled through the empty ten yards of air, thudding into his pursuer. She stumbled back a step or two with a pained yelp, but with so little light Jorge couldn't tell if
he'd hit her where it counted. The silhouette straightened up and took a step forward. He'd missed.

He gripped the underside lever of his bow and pulled it down. The wire became taught, the ends of the prod bending back. Jorge already knew he wouldn't be fast enough, but he had to try. He yanked the lever back up, spinning the three-spike cylinder around to effectively load the next round. He lifted the bow and squeezed the trigger again, but she was already upon him and grabbed it, stopping the spike before it left the groove of the shaft. She threw it aside at the wall, the elegant weapon clanging into tools and knocking things over before clattering to the stone floor, somewhere in the darkness. Out of reach.

The woman stooped down, and Jorge felt the lapels of his coat being grabbed, pulled, and he was hoisted up to his feet and smashed against the wall. Winded, he huffed but punched out with his fists, left and then right, striking his attacker in the gut. She released him and staggered back.

“That was lucky,” she said breathlessly.

Jorge didn't waste a second. He launched himself at her with a right hook. For the briefest moment he thought he'd made contact, but instead his fist had been stopped. Caught. It was yanked down and twisted sharply. Joints and bones cracked and he yelled out in pain while trying to twist his body to lessen the strain, but it was too late. His right hand was crippled. The woman clutched his throat and pushed him back against the wall. She grabbed his left wrist and pinned that, too. Jorge could then see the rear of the spike buried in her shoulder, for all the good it had done.

“I should've known the Ministry was involved,” said the woman. “Where is she?”

Jorge noticed the South American inflections in her Spanish, but had no time to wonder about it. “Who?” he asked. The hand around his neck tightened as he struggled to say, “I'm not telling you anything.”

“I promise I'll kill you quickly if you tell me where she is.”

“You'll never find her.”

“I think you know I will.”

“You don't even know what country she's in.”

“Well, now I know she's not in this one.” The shadows of the woman's face changed as she smiled.

“The world's a big place. You may as well give up now. Even if you find her, it'll do you no good. She's nothing like you.” Jorge couldn't see much, but looking down at the edges of the woman's face he could tell that her smugness was faltering. “Whatever you monsters did, it didn't work. She'll renounce you.” The woman's grip tightened, her hand pressed up under his jaw. Jorge had to step up onto tiptoes.

“You know
nothing
about her,” the woman railed.

“Don't be so sure,” Jorge gurgled through her grip. “We've kept a very close eye on her.” His voice was getting quieter from the pressure on his throat, and he felt like he was shouting just to manage a whisper. “She has a life, and it's nothing like yours.” His coat caught on the jagged brickwork, the tips of his shoes scraping the floor. “That girl will never have anything to do with you,” he strained to say while his vision began sparkling from the lack of oxygen. “She …
hates
you!”

The woman snarled and dropped Jorge to the ground, yanking his wrist and spinning around before throwing him to the floor. He landed on his back and slid headfirst halfway out of the door. Gasping for air as his vision cleared, he lifted his head in time to see the woman pounce on him. She grabbed either side of his head and pushed it back down into the jagged shale outside the door. “I'll find her,” said the woman. “You'll see.” She glanced up, hummed to herself and looked back down at Jorge. “Actually … no you won't.” She smiled sadistically.

In the dim light, Jorge watched her, wide-eyed as her four canine teeth slowly slid out from their sheaths. They appeared to have grown an extra half-inch in only a few seconds.

From the station a steam engine's whistle sliced the cold night air. The woman moved her thumbs over his eyes, making them flitter closed. Her filed nails delicately lifted his eyelids before she placed the point of each in the centre of his corneas. Jorge whined and wriggled, but his head felt like it was held in a vice. She applied the slightest pressure, and his already obscured vision refracted around the edges. The sharp nails scratched the surface as he struggled
and took in short fearful breaths. His left hand had remained uninjured, and he blindly jerked it up. But before he could make contact with her head, her sharp fangs dug into his wrist, slicing the tendons and turning his hand limp. He yelled and struggled worthlessly. She was in complete control.

Above him, Jorge's train began to noisily chuff past with screeching metal and rattling iron. The ground trembled, and with Jorge's screams drowned out the woman leaned forward and forced her thumbs down and into his eyes, forcing the squelching tissue up and out until her nails scratched the bone at the back of his sockets.

ONE

May 10, 1941.

BETH WATCHED HER OWN BREATH
roll like a thundercloud out before her, fading into the surrounding chill. The oil lamp flickered, but its solitary flame did nothing to warm the air. It was unusually cold for a night in May. It should've been spring, with summer just around the corner, but Beth was hugging her knees tightly with her feet up on the bunk. Yet despite her shivers, she pressed her back up against the cold metal of the shelter wall, appreciating the chill that seeped through her tattered coat. It eased the new ache in her lower back. She glanced at her mother to make sure she wasn't looking before straightening her spine to spread the relief; she had no interest in any further red-faced conversations about the “natural cycle of a woman”.

She was thirteen now, probably, and old enough to get through this new trial of life on her own.

It was one of the oddities of her adoption that her birthday three months earlier was—as it always had been—an anniversary of her arrival and integration into the Wade family, and not the commemoration of her birth. She couldn't remember any of it, having been somewhere around one year old at the time, but her olive skin and unfamiliar features made it obvious to all that the Wades weren't her flesh and blood.

From somewhere in the west, likely the heart of London, Beth heard a distant boom. Distracted from her aches and trains of thought, she looked up at the curved metal roof of the Anderson
shelter, as if she were able to watch the clear moonlit sky for enemy planes. “It's started,” she said, hugging her knees tighter and propping her chin upon them.

“Those ears of yours,” mused her mother, Lynne. “
I
can't hear a thing. But that can only be good, right Oliver?”

Sitting on the adjacent bunk, Beth's mother looked down at her son, huddled up against her with drooping eyes. Oliver was only nine, and had that gift of being young enough to find war exciting and certainly nothing to lose sleep over.

With midnight approaching and the air raid sirens having faded into silence, Beth watched as her brother's head tipped forward and then jolted back up for the fifth time; his dreams and his equilibrium fighting for control. She smiled to herself, but the distant thunder of incendiaries was drawing closer. It wasn't long before her mother gazed up through that invisible roof and Oliver clambered out of his drowsiness. After nearly three weeks of relative peace, London was once more under heavy attack.

“Come on then, Jerry. Do your worst,” dared Beth's mother, typical of the defiance that kept Britain's capital standing. When the small flame of the oil lamp started to flicker more violently, it was as if the enemy had heard and was rising to the challenge.

Beth could already hear anti-aircraft guns going off in the distance, and as the minutes ticked by more guns joined in the defensive, their bangs getting closer to home. Through the man-made thunder she could pick out the low, monotonous drone of enemy planes, and then in stark contrast were the first whining whistles of falling incendiary bombs. Beth flinched in synchrony with her brother and mother at what sounded like a bomb exploding a couple of streets away. Another second gave them all the time they needed to realize it was just another anti-aircraft battery joining in the fray.

Not for the first time, Beth wondered how safe these oversized tin cans really were, even a well-constructed one like theirs. Dug deep into their small backyard and fitted out as well as could be afforded with limited resources, it was surprisingly comfortable given the cramped conditions. Bill, her father, was the manager of a carpenter's before his conscription and had used his self-taught know-how to build a simple but unique bunk system. A narrow bunk ran
down both sides of the shelter, and then a wider third bunk ran across at the end, a couple of feet above. But when the bombs started to fall, comfort was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered then was how well a few thin sheets of steel would hold up.

Not knowing what was going on outside only made things worse. Practically sealed inside, there was no way for them to know where the planes were or where they were dropping their explosive cargo, other than to guess by sound alone. There was nothing to rely on except luck.

Beth glanced at the oil lamp that had begun to sway slightly from its hook. Tremors began to dislodge loose soil from the sods of earth on top of the shelter, and every now and then a small puff of fine dirt fell through the cracks. Vibrations ran up from the ground and through the wooden frames of the bunks, while outside the blasts grew louder and nearer.

”They're getting a bit close, aren't they?” Beth's mother asked rhetorically. She was trying to keep her tone jovial, but Beth picked up on the fear that edged her words. She felt the same fear, but knew how important it was to stay positive.

“They don't scare us, do they, Ollie?” she asked her brother. He looked up at her and shook his head with determination. Beth smiled back, but it slipped when she looked up at the small gap around the metal door. On a quiet night, she'd see nothing but black; the ambient light of the city that used to give the night sky its glow hadn't been seen for over twenty months due to the blackout. But now, that thin crack flickered with an orange hue.

London was on fire.

*   *   *

The first wave of planes had passed, but the constant tone of the all clear siren hadn't been sounded. Instead, Beth could hear a different drone, the pitch slightly lower than that of the Heinkels that had just rained fire. This was the one-note song of the Junkers, the heavy bombers.

Already the smell of earth and paraffin in the shelter had merged with the faint scent of smoke, and the fires that provided it were now lighting up London with bright bullseyes. In the heart of the working-class East End, Bethnal Green was lit up as well as any target. It was time to pray once more.

In the past the three of them would sing songs and play I-Spy. But after more than six months of what the papers were calling the Blitzkrieg, the Wade family, like so many others, were worn down and fed up. Outside, the thunder drew closer, and Beth saw her mother hug Oliver tightly. She listened and tried to gauge where the bombs were dropping. They whistled just like the incendiaries, but the bangs were louder. It sounded like the neighboring borough was being pummeled.

The ground trembled, and more soil fell between Beth and her mother as bombs dropped frighteningly close. The gap in the door flashed brightly and another explosion roared through the streets. Despite their proximity, the drone of planes was almost drowned out by the barrage of blasts, though above it all the deathly whistles could still be heard. Beth picked one out that was louder than the rest and looked over at her mother, who glanced back with fear in her eyes. For a split second it seemed the world had paused.