Pandaemonium (15 page)

That’s just the story we tell ourselves; it’s really not very English. Hell, we even had to steal St George from Palestine. The dragons of legend come from much further afield.

Our home-grown, English dragons? It’d save time and trouble if we’d just learn to call them wyrms.

And where else would you look for a wyrm, than under the earth...?

F
LIGHTLESS AND FURIOUS
about it, this wyrm came barrelling out into the stairway, and you did just have to hope that it hadn’t met any trains coming or going. It was pretty much the size of a train itself, and a hell of a lot nastier. If I’d been standing waiting for a ride, and seen that coming up the tunnel towards me – yeah, I think I’d have screamed too. Run too.

I still thought the boy should shut up now.

So did his faceless friend, I guess. His hand clamped over the other boy’s mouth, he could manage that much, though between them they still didn’t have the strength or the wit to get out of there.

Nor did I, of course. Jacey was running for both of us, dragging me along in his wake.

The wyrm was sludge-grey and slimy, absolutely right for a life under London, with a mouth that could doubtless chew its own holes through London clay if we hadn’t kindly dug them for it, sewer and Tube. Actually its front end was pretty much all mouth. It could only see where it was going if it puckered up; open wide, and its own jaws would block its mean little eyes altogether.

Maybe that’s what saved the boys. Maybe it knew from experience that a mouthful that small wasn’t worth gaping for, it was too hard to catch, snapping blind.

Or maybe it was just more directed than that. More driven. A wyrm on a mission, not to be distracted by casual passing snacks.

If so, its mission was us. But we knew that already; it was no surprise to see the thing head straight for the stairs, the dull half-buried eyes turned absolutely and intentionally onto us.

Okay, not the stairs: the escalator. Never mind that that wasn’t working, it would work well enough to snake up by. Besides, the creature was following us. Maybe its primitive mind couldn’t handle the notion of parallel courses.

It would have fitted better on the stairs, but – okay, maybe I exaggerated before. Not the size of a train, it only seemed that way. Maybe not even the length of a train, though its pulsing body still trailed through onto the platform while its head came oozing up the escalator. I was still surprised that it could fit into the narrow gap between the rubber handrails, barely two people wide. Maybe a wyrm’s body is rubbery itself. For sure it’s flexible; it has to flex to move. No legs to carry it, just its own undulating self.

I was surprised too how fast it had covered the ground between the platform entrance and the foot of the escalator. It seemed slower now, squeezing up behind us. Maybe it really was struggling to fit, like toothpaste trying to crush itself into the tube. Like dough, massively overflowing the bread-tin. Muffin-top.

Anyway: we were at the top suddenly, bursting out into the ticketing hall – and now at last Jacey let go of my arm. And didn’t sprint for Reno’s office, didn’t yell. Instead he turned back to the escalator, bent down, gripped the wooden slats of those unmoving stairs and
heaved
.

A Power, in his strength. Yeah. He ripped those slats away.

I could have done the same thing if I’d wanted to, if I’d seen the point. A daemon, in her strength. Yeah.

Only then Jacey plunged his arms deep into the mechanism beneath, found something more resistant to grip, and heaved again.

“Uh, Jacey...?”

“You could help,” he gasped. “If you wanted to. This thing’s bloody heavy.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant the escalator or the wyrm. Either way, really.

I was willing enough, but there wasn’t room for the two of us at the head of the escalator. They are two people wide, just barely, but not if one person is straddling that whole width to get good purchase.

Besides, he might be puffing and blowing a bit, but he didn’t really need me. One more heave, and he tore the whole linked chain of steps loose from its tracks. And then began to pace backward as he hauled, drawing the wyrm ever higher as he went, as it squirmed. Higher, closer...

“Uh,
Jacey...?
” I was starting to sound like a sampled loop, except that my voice too was getting ever higher, while I was no closer to understanding.

“What?” He grinned at me mirthlessly, mercilessly. “You want me to shake the thing loose, is that it?”

“Well, yeah...” I didn’t see the point, else.

“And what, send it down among the little people, let it eat them instead?”

It was what his father would do, coldly and deliberately, no question. Apparently it’s what I would have done without meaning to, without thinking. Not what Jacey would do, even in crisis, even when he’d already said we couldn’t fight the thing.

There are reasons why I like that boy. Why I always did. I have good instincts, maybe. Or he does.

Okay, self-immolation it was, then, for the sake of those below who really couldn’t help themselves. Neither could we, of course, but at least we’d make some noise about it. At least some people would want to know what had happened.

I pictured the Cathars coming to ask questions, and maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all – but it was too late for second thoughts, even if Jacey was willing to stop long enough to allow them. Here came the wyrm, dragged up from below like a worm in a bird’s beak; here was its head, rising up above the handrails while Jacey trudged back and back, doing his conveyor-belt trick.

Leaving me, eye to eye with the beast, and suddenly, oh, yes. Size of a train again.

Size of a train that was looking at me, turning its head to keep me fixed in its sights, utterly focused now. I thought likely it had the brain of a dinosaur, tiny and tailwards, but that was no disadvantage now. This was Oz’s second-tier message, an escalator in its own right. First he sent the Corbies to fetch me, now he sent a wyrm to eat me.

There wasn’t much point wondering what the third tier might prove to be, or when he’d actually come himself, like Jabba the Hutt in a director’s cut. I really wasn’t likely to survive this one.

Still. Even if I’d been willing to stand still and let myself be swallowed, apparently my Aspect wasn’t. It must just be instinct or training, the readiness is all – I really didn’t think it was my Aspect taking over, for all that it felt that way – but I’d already launched myself, feet-first, go down fighting.

I’ve done martial arts training since I turned daemon, but mostly for the opposite reason, to learn control, how not to hurt people. Even with the Aspect on. Especially with the Aspect on, I guess. Sometimes I needed it, sometimes I just wanted it, sometimes it was hard to let it go. Poor Jordan – I’d used it shamelessly, with him. Misused it, probably. I didn’t think I’d ever hurt him, but even so...

Right now it was using me, or that’s how it felt: how it often felt, at the height of action. Hurling me feet-first across that space, to land like a missile between the wyrm’s deep-sunken eyes. One thudding impact, good boots with immeasurable energy behind them. I didn’t jump, nothing so crude or simple, so human and inadequate. I really did feel gripped, lifted, hurled.

I struck and fell away, like a missile spent; and rolled neatly and came up ready for anything, and really there wasn’t any point.

It might have a brain the size of a pea, or else the size of a planet; it might keep the thing anywhere, in its skull or in its tail or offworld or ex-dimensional. It really made no difference. It didn’t bother to shake its head, it didn’t shrug me off; its head did turn to follow me, but it seemed not to have felt the blow at all.

Damn. That was the best I had, guaranteed to carry me through concrete bunker walls. That was my break-into-bank-vaults hurtle. Not that I ever had, but now I guessed I never would.

There was a noise like all the noise that engineering has ever made, all wrapped up into a single shattering effect. That must be Jacey, tossing aside the innards of the escalator. I didn’t flinch at the ruinous catastrophic sound of it, I didn’t glance around. My Aspect has me far too well-trained for that. I kept my gaze on the enemy, my feet grounded and my balance poised. Alert, prepared, pointless.

Something flew by my shoulder and struck the wyrm more or less where my boots had marked the spot. Something the colour of cold steel, with glittery edges: ripped cold steel, then, something torn from the mechanism and thrown with all the power of a Power behind it.

Just for that little moment, it was good not to be fighting alone. Not to be the best we had.

That hunk of metal should have split the creature’s hide, shattered its skull, buried itself deep in flesh and bone and maybe-brain beyond.

Shouldn’t have just bounced off, the way I had a moment earlier.

Hey-ho.

Jacey was at my shoulder now. Following up like a warrior, checking that surge like a warrior frustrated, seeing his first best attack fail utterly.

Standing with me like a boy, helpless and protective.

We glanced at each other, that way you do: half a smile, half a shrug,
I’m sorry it came to this but I’m glad you’re here with me, I’m glad it’s you.
We probably both learned it from the same damn movies.

The wyrm was fixing us with its coldly savage eye, starting to open its mouth.

Then there was another of those ultimate noises, this one like the sound of all doors everywhere being slammed open all at once.

This time, of course I looked. We both did. Why not, how not...?

I think the wyrm looked too.

That was the door to Reno’s office that was flung wide, and there stood Reno.

No:
here
stood Reno, this side of the doorway. Way too big for the doorway, she stood maybe eight foot tall, eight or nine.

I didn’t suppose she had stooped. I didn’t think she’d bothered with the door at all, I thought it had done that all by itself as a courtesy, an announcement, like a flunkey calling out arrivals at the head of the stairs,
Reno has arrived.

She looked... bitterly shiny, like an angel flung down through no fault of her own. I could hardly bear to look at her. For a moment there, I almost pitied the wyrm.

She gazed at the wyrm but spoke to us, which I think surprised Jacey as much as it did me.

She said, “Do you know who has sent this... worm... into my place, against my people?”

That made us her people; I felt Jacey’s hesitation at that, but she was right, of course. We’d come here, and she’d taken us in. And we’d been attacked already, but next door didn’t count as her place, not quite Savoy. We were on our own out there.

Not here. Again, I felt that surge of warm relief.
Not alone.
Not even the two of us.

I said, “Yes. It was Oz, Oz Trumby.”

“Well.” She noted that, accepted it. Filed it away. I didn’t know if there was anything she could do about it, even if she got the chance. Oz was... well, he was the kind of man who could send wyrms to do his work.

The kind of man who could send them and they’d actually, y’know. Go.

She said, “You two should leave now.”

I don’t think either of us wanted to. For that little moment we’d been a different thing,
not alone
, and we didn’t want to change that. If you were feeling generous you might say we didn’t want to leave her alone, but actually it was more complicated than that, and probably less heroic.

Jacey maybe made a move to argue: lifted his hand, took a breath.

She cut him off brutally. “Go. There is nothing you can do here. This is my place. Go.”

No chance to be a hero and die gloriously, not this time. I’d have dragged him away by main force, quickly down the stairs to shepherd unhappy Savoyards onto the train when it came, away to somewhere that had to be safer than this – but they could shepherd themselves, they’d come this far on their own and if there was one thing they knew, it was when to abandon a sinking ship. They could trust the driver to see them through the tunnels and back into the light. They didn’t need us, we’d be no help to them – at best no help, and likely worse than that, likely we’d draw the wyrm down after us – and we couldn’t get to them anyway. Deliberately or otherwise, the wyrm had spread its long grey oozing body between us and the stair-head. No clambering over that.

I said, “Uh, Reno, I don’t know how...?”

There must be an exit from up here, surely – but at street level the building was all boarded up, doors and windows both. We could bust through any boards, of course we could, but Reno might not appreciate that. I was seeing an angel in her wrath, in her absolute power; I wanted to keep her neutral at least, if not appreciative.

I don’t know how the wyrm felt, but she scared me skewy.

“There.” One arm flung out, one finger pointing. Her eyes never shifted from the wyrm’s. Excellent technique. “Go.”

One thing about Jacey and me, we don’t need telling four times. We went.

I was quite proud of us for not actually running. From either of them. We backed off slowly, following the course of her finger.