The Forever Man (W.A.R.P. 3)

Not dead, then.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We got him. The hostile is down. Area secure.’

Rosa laughed, though it cost her. ‘Area secure? You sound like one of those Secret Service dummies.’

Pointer nuzzled her cheek. ‘Yeah, they wish. Those guys should get a real job. Sunglasses models is all they are.’

‘You know it,’ said Rosa, and she patted Pointer’s head; for once he didn’t mind.

Three pats she managed, each heavier than the last, and with the third her hand rested on Pointer’s head and her chest heaved no more.

Pointer whined a little and nuzzled Rosa’s cheek, but his nuzzling was not to last long as what was left of Rosa Fuentes dissolved into a series of orange sparks that spiralled upward into the mist. Pointer followed their flight for a moment and then was almost overcome by the desire to attack Albert Garrick, but there were bigger factors to consider than his desire for revenge. And he wasn’t an animal. Not yet.

Pointer threw a growl at the band of men wading into the lake to rescue Garrick, then he clamped Rosa’s pistol in his jaws and disappeared into the mist like a ghost hound, leaving only clouds of breath hanging in the air where he had been.

He made it maybe a hundred feet before his body reminded him that, even though the giant squid had been a friend of his, she had almost squeezed the life out of him. Suddenly the tree trunks were all a-wobble and a buzzing filled his brain.

I’m going under, he thought, and staggered into the nearest clump of shrubs for cover.

What a professional, he thought, before collapsing on to the cool moss.

Hunter and Hunted

Mandrake. Huntingdonshire. 1647

Riley would have preferred to make good his escape from Mandrake during night-time, for the dark is the magician’s element and he had spent countless hours blending with the shadows of the Orient Theatre. One of Garrick’s many unorthodox training methods was to lock the doors, bar the shutters, and give his apprentice five minutes’ head start.

You may hide in any nook or cranny inside the theatre, Riley my boy, but take care that I do not find you …

For, if he was found, Riley would suffer six licks of the strap and a twelve-hour fast. This was a game that Garrick named ‘Hunter and Hunted’ and in all the times it had been contested Riley had never succeeded in avoiding the strap. It seemed as though Albert Garrick could see a spider in a hole, so adept was he at pinching the boy’s collar, no matter how gloomy a corner or precarious a ledge Riley chose. In the interest of fairness, according to himself, Garrick would often play the role of hunted and give Riley one hour of the clock to find him, but the lad never laid eyes on Albert Garrick. There was no punishment for failing to find his master, for Garrick found his own smugness reward enough itself.

Slipping out of Mandrake in daylight would prove a small enough challenge for a lad schooled by such methods; there were shadows aplenty cast by the brick houses along the narrow streets. Though there were small clusters of militiamen on duty, Riley flitted past some and sauntered round others and was even brazen enough to snatch a small loaf from the baker’s cart. It pained him to thieve from an honest labourer but he had not had a morsel since 1899, which logically meant that he would not be hungry for some two and a half centuries. Nevertheless, his belly was up in arms, so to speak, and the bread was nicked to quiet the gurgling, if nothing else, for that was how Garrick had found him more than once in their game of Hunter and Hunted.

Riley would have liked to have taken some time to survey the town while he chewed, and to get a lie of the land. It would be easily done to pull his cape tight to conceal his Victorian get-up and walk the grid, as Chevie might say, but there were two factors that precluded this activity. First, the constable and his men were surely already raising the alarm, and so any strange youth strolling the town backstreets would be detained for interrogation. Second, and infinitely more important, was the fact that Garrick was on Chevie’s trail.

And, if he finds her, he will drag her back here for burning, no matter who tries to prevent it.

Riley knew that he could not allow that to happen to his dearest and truest friend, especially when she was addled, to say the least. On a normal day Chevie would have a fighting chance against any villain who might cross her path, but in her current state of mind she would be easy prey for the self-appointed Witchfinder.

But how to prevent it? How to stop a man who could not be stopped? A demon who, according to himself, could not be killed?

Well, thought Riley, that’s all blather and theory, ain’t it?

Perhaps those who had attempted to do Garrick in hadn’t tried the right methods.

With a shock Riley realized that he was giving consideration to how he would murder Albert Garrick.

Then with a second jolt he saw that if he succeeded in his mission, then he would use all the trickery Garrick had instilled in him to become what Albert Garrick had always intended him to be.

An assassin.

And his teacher would be his first victim.

Now if that don’t have a touch of the ironies about it, nothing does.

Riley arrived at the town wall and sidled along till he came to a hefty gent chopping up a pallet of firewood, enough to see him through the following winter.

Quite an expert the fellow was by the looks of his axe selection. A long-handled swinger for the big logs and a short-heft chopper for the kindling.

Riley waited till the man switched to the smaller axe and busied himself hacking quarters, then with a magician’s sleight of hand he spirited the longer axe under his cloak and was away over the wall in less time than it takes for a hangman to pull the lever.

So Albert Garrick cannot die, he thought as he dropped to the ground and ran towards the trees. That may or may not be true, but I’ll wager he will have a hard time living with his head burned to a cinder and buried in a hole far away from his body.

With this thought Riley took the first step towards becoming that which he had for many years despised.

If Albert Garrick had been travelling on the sly, leaving the scene of a grisly murder of his own doing, as he often had, no man on earth could have tracked him. Perhaps a particularly keen-eyed hawk might have kept pace in daylight, but other than that the trail would quickly run cold.

Fortunately for Riley, Albert Garrick was not his usual skulking self. He was a righteous champion of justice leading a group of zealots on a crusade and, while there was some due paid to stealth, there was no time sacrificed to covering their tracks.

Soon Riley found the path left by the group of clodhopping men. He quickly determined that there were in-and-around ten men, with two more ranging ahead after a couple of dogs. Generally when hounds had a scent in their nostrils the path ran as the crow flies – that is to say, straight-wise – but this pursuit ran from pillar to post and from zig to zag. Riley concluded with a grin that someone was playing games with Garrick’s posse comitatus. The notion that Garrick would be infuriated by this made him grin all the wider.

Riley caught himself in the act and was instantly chilled to his marrow, for he knew his cold expression was that of a killer, even though it was born out of love. But had not Albert Garrick’s first kill been a crime of passion? The difference being that Riley planned to kill to save the one he now loved, whereas Garrick had killed the one he loved for not returning his passion.

Good luck explaining the difference to Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates, he thought.

Then he said aloud: ‘To hell with that and to hell with me too, if it means that Chevie will live.’

And that was it. Riley’s mind was made up and he knew he was willing to pay whatever price necessary to save Chevie, up to and beyond his own life.

Riley had always been a city boy and he found the fens and the accompanying hoots and whistles from the wildlife downright spooky, as his only experience of moors and such came from the images conjured by candlelit readings of penny dreadfuls featuri

ng daring highwaymen and ghoulish undead creatures that roamed the countryside. The fens seemed totally alien to Riley and he could not help but think that the rules of nature would not apply in this particular marshland. The fog too was different from the heavy soot-laden pea-soupers that regularly enveloped London, which could render the city itself almost invisible from Primrose Hill. This fog had a taste of the country in it and Riley found it actually quite bracing, though it did throw up strange shadows and flickerings as the sun endeavoured to break through from above.

Still, like any London dweller of his day, from common muck-snipe to the royal widow herself, Riley was accustomed to navigating through fog. At least this one didn’t have soot flakes in the mix, which could half blind a fellow if one caught him square in the eye.

At any rate, his tracking skills were not required for very much longer, for from up ahead there came fearsome, terrible sounds. Riley had never before heard noises like this but he felt sure they were produced by an enormous, enraged creature.

Run away! said Riley’s sensible voice. Flee!