The jump took them to Waterloo Terrace, fifty or sixty yards away. The wolf accelerated immediately into a swift lope, but it held its head as still as possible so Susan was not hurt. She saw streetlights rushing past and could not guess at their speed, but it felt fast. They overtook a car and then another as the wolf turned north onto Upper Street.
There was a long line of cars and trucks there, but the wolf ignored the steady line of traffic, moving around each slower vehicle, using both sides of the road and even jumping over cars when necessary. The drivers did not see the creature, or react to its presence. There was no swerving or emergency braking. Susan shut her eyes at some of the overtaking procedures, when the wolf almost miscalculated an oncoming vehicle’s speed. Even if the humans couldn’t see the monster, it was avoiding possible collisions, which was some relief to Susan. It might survive a head-on at speed. She knew she wouldn’t.
The wolf didn’t stop for red lights. It ran so fast, and the angle she was held at was so confusing with buildings and lights flashing by, that it was impossible for Susan to work out where they were going, until they took the sharp turn at Highbury Corner and she got her bearings.
The wolf was taking the A1, going up Holloway Road. Back towards Highgate and Frank Thringley’s manor, thought Susan. Back to where everything had begun.
Susan slowly moved her wrists to try to find a sharp piece of tooth to saw the cord against, but there was nothing like that. She could see the giant teeth very clearly, she knew she was held between them, but when she moved her bound hands against the surface of the tooth under her, she felt only the weird soft resistance. Her hands sank in a little and then rose back, and all she got was pins and needles for her effort.
Susan stopped the sawing motion and tried to angle her head to get a better view of where they were going. At first it was all nondescript London street and traffic, but then she saw the great arched viaduct of Archway Road, confirming her guess about their destination, only to be confounded a little later when the wolf did not turn onto Muswell Hill Road, but kept on up the A1.
And on, and on, towards the M1.
Northwards, always north.
Merlin swore as the Fenris jumped away with Susan in its mighty jaws. His sword was deeply embedded in the wolf’s left haunch, but he’d aimed for the back of the creature’s head. The wound would slow it down, but there was no sign of that happening quickly, and the weapon had embedded itself so deeply it had also sealed the wound, so there would be no obvious blood trail to follow.
Obvious to one of the right-handed, Merlin hoped, since he didn’t know himself how to track the spilled ichor of a mythic being who both did and didn’t exist in the contemporary world at the same time.
He ran back across the roofs and dropped through the hole into the roof space. The dead man there was a skinhead, safety pins in his ear, chains down his trousers. Probably a local who had no idea he was being set up to be a sacrifice to get the goblins past the roof wards. The hard men who died in the back garden, shot by Inspector Greene, probably hadn’t known, either. Though they must have wondered why they had to wear the strange tubed vests that had been filled with mercury. Merlin wondered about that, whether Greene really didn’t know not to shed blood on the wards, or whether she was part of a conspiracy he was fairly sure was at work. Though perhaps whoever had planned this had been prepared to shoot them from behind anyway, in order to spill both quicksilver and blood, and Greene had beaten them to it.
He lowered himself into Susan’s room, noted the dead man also wore a mercury-filled vest. He was middle-aged, had a holster for a pair of heavy wire cutters on his belt and rings tattooed around his fingers, indicating he was a sworn follower of a malevolent entity. One of those termed “Death Cultists” by the St. Jacques. This one would have known what the vest was for, and had offered himself as a willing sacrifice. He’d probably killed the skinhead on the roof before going on to his own purposeful death.
The alarm bells were loud in the hallway, and Merlin could hear multiple sirens approaching.
He ran down the stairs and found Greene on the phone and her radio at the same time, alternatively barking orders into one and listening to the other. She looked at Merlin.
“Bookshops been notified?” asked Merlin.
“Yes,” snapped Greene. “First thing. Your response teams are en route.”
“I’m going to pack up the Cauldron-Born,” said Merlin.
“What—”
Merlin was already gone. The bookseller went into the kitchen and threw open cupboard doors until he found the saucepans. Taking out a giant soup pot, with its lid, he went out into the garden.
Greene had sat Mrs. London up with her back against the rear wall of the house, her pistol in her lap. She had no obvious wounds, but blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, and she was very pale.
She was conscious.
“Ribs busted, into my lungs, too . . . probably everything else inside,” she gasped as Merlin looked at her.
“Ambulance is on the way,” said Merlin. He hesitated. “Did you ever brief Greene on the wards? And what fresh-spilled blood would do, with mercury?”
“No,” she gasped. “Thought she knew. Always a problem . . . in this job . . . no one knows what anyone . . . already knows . . . or is meant to know.”
“That’s true,” said Merlin with a sigh. “Um, is there anything I can—”
Sipper saliva could not be applied to internal wounds, unfortunately. And the right-handed had healing powers.
But he was not right-handed.
“One short sleep past, we wake eternally . . .” she whispered, and shut her eyes.
Merlin left her and walked across the lawn to where various pieces of the Cauldron-Born were wriggling and writhing, trying to reach each other and piece themselves back together. But Merlin had chopped it up into a great many small parts and stomped them into the damp grass, so they hadn’t gotten far.
The head he’d left intact, because he knew the right-handed would want to talk to it. It was still in the vegetable garden, but had managed to pull itself some distance through the earth using its chin. Merlin bent down and scooped it into the pot and held the lid down as the head used chin and tongue to bang itself against the stainless steel sides. He carried the pot back towards the house, treading down the pieces on the lawn again in a strange, capering dance.
Near the door, he noticed Mrs. London was no longer breathing and her head had lolled to the side. A great deal more foamy, bright blood was dribbling from her mouth.
“And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die,” he whispered. He set the pot down and sat on it, leaning forward to gently close Mrs. London’s eyes with his luminous silver hand.
Chapter Fourteen
In the spring green shoots
Small signs of renewed triumph
Death’s grip is broken
VIVIEN ARRIVED AT THE MILNER SQUARE HOUSE FIVE MINUTES AFTER the response teams from both bookshops and, it seemed, every possible other emergency vehicle. The entire length of the square in front of the safe house was jammed with two police Rovers, a police armored Land Rover, a police van, two police motorbikes, two ambulances, a paramedic motorbike, and two fire engines, one a ladder truck, its turntable ladder being extended to the rooftop of the third town house in the row along from Mrs. London’s. There were uniformed police officers outside almost every house, sending people back inside, who kept ducking out to see what on earth was going on. The short stretch of cross street on the northern end of the square’s garden was blocked by two of the bookshops’ taxis and a dozen motorbikes from the Old Bookshop response team.