He had abandoned his notions of a great destiny, though, for what could he ever rule but men who would wither and die before him?
But this now: these shenanigans with Riley and Chevron Savano. This is entertainment on a strange and broad stage. And there is tunnel magic involved, for have I not been deposited here twice now? I sense a weakness.
Which was why Garrick had confiscated every silver bangle and pin in the town to protect himself from her pull.
Though precious metal would not be enough if I were to touch the Timekey.
No one shall touch it, he vowed. Savano shall burn at the stake with the key round her neck.
But until then he would enjoy this distraction.
Up ahead the tracker hounds snuffled and abandoned their previous course, taking a sharp right turn towards a wide expanse of green-skimmed bog, which glistened with reflections that promised hidden sinkholes and unsure footings.
Enough, thought Garrick. I will not be made a complete dunderhead.
He cast his eye ahead of the dogs and saw their target. A third hound, sleek and brown, his forequarters poking from the reeds.
‘Aha!’ he called to the handler, a portly, bow-legged fellow whose feet were jammed into some form of wooden clogs, which were proving most unsuitable for a hunt in the fens. ‘Look, man. Look! A decoy.’
The handler was confused. ‘It’s a dog, master. A decoy dog is you saying? Another familiar?’
Garrick looked closer at the brown dog and realized with a jolt of excitement that there was an extra element in his seeing of the dog. He was feeling its presence like a tug at his innards.
There is kinship between us.
The dog was from the wormhole. A mutation.
Here now was a new gift from the wormhole, which was just awakening in him. There was so much of its cursed foam in his make-up that he was able to detect other mutations, for he supposed that he was a mutation himself, just as Chevie now was and, without doubt, this dog. Garrick looked harder with his extra senses and thought he could see the ghost of a man shifting inside the hound.
I can see that which the wormhole has changed. The previous being, as it were.
Garrick knew what had happened. This man was of weak stock and had allowed the wormhole to reassemble him according to the desires of his subconscious.
Pathetic fool.
What other gifts do I possess? he wondered. What more could I be? This was indeed a time of surprises. The previous dawn he had believed his elaborate quest for vengeance at an end, and yet here he was feeling curiosity for the first time in an age.
Garrick gave no sign that he saw anything in the animal other than what it appeared to be; he simply whistled and clicked his fingers as any good fellow might do upon spotting a handsome animal without tether or rope upon him out in the wild.
‘Good chap,’ he called, kindly-like, as though there were a treat in his pocket. ‘Come over here now, and don’t be leading our boys astray.’
Garrick wondered whether he should skewer the beast with one of his throwing blades, for he had several about his person, but thought, No, there is more to be gleaned here, Alby.
Questions first. Painful death later on.
He whistled five notes that he felt hanging in the air around the dog, and its flat head came up and their eyes met. They each felt the other’s knowing, and the dog tensed for flight.
Garrick cursed his impulse to whistle the tune that his brain had simply plucked out of the air.
Even the air has information for Albert Garrick, he thought. I am a superman.
And yet the dog might run and there would be chasing. And, whereas earlier he had not minded a pursuit, now he had questions – serious ones at that – which might change his entire future and that of the world, come to think of it.
As it was, the dog would have run had not the shallow lake directly between it and Garrick’s troop exploded in a geyser of slime, sludge and tentacles.
‘Hah!’ shouted Garrick, enjoying the spray that engulfed him, while the others cowered or were tossed backwards. A phrase came to his mind that he had heard Chevie Savano use once upon a time: ‘Now we have ourselves a party!’
Donnie Pointer had been having himself a ball for the past hour, leading Garrick and his dumb mutts all over the marshlands. Messing with people was one of the only perks of being stuck in dog form. As a matter of fact, Pointer had had himself a little too much fun and got cocky. When he ran out of pee, he thought he might show himself to the hounds, just to drive them insane altogether. In the name of accuracy it should be said that he actually intended waggling his butt at the canines, as that was just about the most insulting gesture in a dog’s arsenal.
While Pointer was scoping out his target for the rear-end wiggle, Garrick caught a look at him peeking out of the rushes, and the Witchfinder’s gaze sent a shiver running from the tip of Pointer’s nose to the point of his tail. There was something about that look. An intensity. Like he knew what was really going on here. Plus the man was as creepy as hell with that pasty face.
You know what? Pointer thought to himself. Enough fooling around for one day. Time to get old Donnie to a safe distance.
A prudent notion, but one that occurred to Pointer a single second too late, for even as he shifted his weight to his rear legs something surged from the scum-skimmed lake before him.
It seemed as if the entire bog erupted, and Pointer found himself borne aloft on a thick shaft of water, marsh mud and sludge while his body was spun and juggled by rubbery tentacles.
Oh nuts, he thought. Rosa.
Rosa Fuentes had been just about the brightest star in the Puerto Rico FBI field office and had made such an impression on the higher-ups that, instead of promoting her internally where her local knowledge was invaluable, they shipped her to London to get a little European anti-terrorist experience before a ticker-tape parade back home, where she was expected to take over before she hit forty. The only thing the brass didn’t like about Rosa Fuentes was the large intricate tattoo of a giant squid that adorned her back and shoulders. Of course they had no way of bringing this up in interviews and, strictly speaking, they shouldn’t even have known about it, but Rosa was proud of her tattoo and claimed it had been a symbol of good luck in her family for generations. There was a legend that one of her forefathers, way, way back, had actually been rescued from the Caribbean by a giant squid, who had looked deep into his eyes and seen the goodness there and deposited Alejandro Fuentes on the timber wreckage of his own boat. Rosa’s tattoo was based on the charcoal drawing sketched by Alejandro on a loose plank from the gunwale as he waited to be rescued.
So the tattoo was disapproved of but tolerated, and meanwhile Rosa was setting the bar high in the London office – until she was lent out to the sci-fi-sounding WARP division in Bedford Square and her climb up the career ladder stopped abruptly.
Rosa was sent to Victorian London along with Agent William Riley to look after a Mob banker. Bill Riley made it through intact, but Rosa had been lost in the tunnel.
Such was the strength of Rosa’s will that it took on a form of its own in the wormhole: that of her forefather’s saviour. Rosa’s human form was abandoned and her mind was embodied as a gigantic squid, which was routinely dumped in the marsh or lakes dotting the fens and just as routinely sucked up into the rift again. Unfortunately for Pointer, Rosa chose this moment, which was already pretty stressful, to reintroduce herself to her one-time colleague, though they both looked a lot different from how they had been back in London.
Pointer found himself wrapped in thirty-foot tentacles, with the life being squeezed out of him by razor-edged suckers. He was face-to-face with the dinner-plate eyes of a monstrous squid that reared impossibly from the lake, water gushing in rivulets between its rows of suckers, and a howl that belonged to neither human nor sea creature emanating from its beak.
‘Hey, Rosa,’ said Pointer through gritted teeth. ‘What’s up?’
What was up was ap
parently Pointer himself, as the squid tossed him high in the air, bashed him with the knobbly clubs on its longer tentacles, then wrapped him tighter than a mummy in its eight arms.
Pointer could not help it. He howled like a dog, but quickly got a grip on himself.
‘Come on, Fuentes,’ he said. ‘I know you’re in there. It’s me, Donnie Pointer.’
Every Fed in the London office had heard about the giant squid tattoo and, after what Pointer himself had gone through, it took him about two seconds to make the connection to Rosa Fuentes. Also the squid had an eyebrow ring over its right eye, even though it didn’t have an eyebrow. But the ring had been another of Rosa’s trademarks.
‘Rosa,’ said Pointer, making sure not to bark the name. ‘Rosa. It’s me. A brother Fed. We have a mission, Special Agent Fuentes.’
The squid did not release Pointer, but it did not squeeze any tighter either. Instead it held him there, suspended in the marsh mist, and watched him closely, waiting for any sign of treachery.
‘You can trust me, Fuentes. We used to shoot pool, remember? In the rec room. I beat you every time, right?’
This was the wrong animal to tease. Pointer howled as his bones creaked.
‘ OK, OK. You won a few racks too. In fact, it was pretty even.’
The pressure eased a little and Pointer thought he saw something in the squid’s eyes. Recognition maybe, or probably just a slight dulling of the crazed hatred.