Dan Abnett - Border Princes

Ninety minutes later, with Gwen sleeping in a naked, loose-limbed sprawl that dominated the bed, James got up. He went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face.

In the mirror, he had eyes of different colours, one blue, one brown.

He blinked.

No, both brown. Too much Chardonnay.

He went into the living room and turned the TV off. He picked up the empty crisp bowl and took it into the kitchen, then scooped up the wine bottle and the two glasses. There was a splash left in the bottle.

Oh, what the hell?

He poured it out into his glass, put hers in the sink, and slid the bottle into the recycle bin.

Sipping from his glass, he walked back into the lounge and turned off the uplighters and side lamps. He was wearing her dressing gown. It was soft, and it would be OK so long as Owen never saw him in it.

He peeked out of the window.

The shadows were still there.

They weren’t shadows.

James swallowed. He was being silly. He was a little bit drunk and a little bit strung out. They were the shadows he’d seen before.

He knocked back the last of the wine, then looked back out.

Not shadows. Men. No, definitely shadows. Who stood still that long, who stared up that long?

He pulled off Gwen’s robe and found his jeans and his shirt. He put on his shoes without socks, and had the good sense to pocket his keys.

He slipped out of the flat, squeezing the door shut after him.

His downstairs neighbours, the Aussies, were in. He could hear them having loud sex as he slunk down the dim staircase. Their mountain bikes cluttered the hall.

He edged past the bikes in the hallway blackness, stepping on menu leaflets and junk mail that all three flat owners had discarded on the floor.

He opened the front door.

It was cold outside. Cold as marble. An October night, almost Halloween.

Yeah, great idea to think of that right at this second , James decided.

He stepped outside. The sky was a silent black bowl pinpricked with dots of fire.

His breath steamed the air. He wished he had brought a coat.

He walked down the path into the street. There was a distant noise of late traffic. The amber smog of Cardiff stained the low sky in front of him with light pollution. Two streets away, someone was yelling and laughing.

He strode directly across the road, tacking between parked cars, their bonnets and roofs just displaying the first etching of frost. He headed towards the phone box.

He headed towards the shadows of the two men. They were still there. Silent, unmoving, even as the night wind licked the trees and all other shadows rocked and nodded.

A step closer now. They still didn’t move. It had been his imagination, his stupid imagination. Just shadows. Just shadows.

He closed on them.

‘Hello?’ he said.

There was no answer. Black and violet shadow patterns stirred as the trees hissed and creaked.

‘Who the hell are you? What do you want?’

He stepped forwards. The shadows had gone. He jumped. Where had they-All in his mind.

He felt decidedly stupid. He turned.

Two grey shapes stood in front of him.

‘Jesus!’ he said, recoiling. Anger swelled. ‘Who the hell are you?’ He lunged forward.

The grey shapes vanished.

James spun around. They were behind him again. Just shadows.

‘What the hell are you? What do you want with me?’

He lunged again. The shadows melted.

He spun. Behind him again.

‘What do you want?’

We are here only to protect the Principal .

‘What?’

Your actions and behaviour are contrary to the Principal’s best interests .

‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

He looked around. A trio of boozed-up lads were ambling down the street on the opposite side of the road.

‘All right?’ one of them shouted.

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,’ James called back.

He looked back at the pair of shadows. They’d gone again. He wheeled. They were right behind him. He grabbed at them.

They darted away.

‘Shit!’ James cried. He grabbed again, without thinking, not where the shadows were, but at where his gut told him they might be.

He realised he had taken hold of something.

A matt-grey forearm, studded with thorns.

James looked up from the arm. The grey thing he was holding onto tried to pull away.

‘No, you don’t,’ James said, tightening his grip.

It struggled, but it couldn’t break free.

‘What are you?’ James demanded, gazing into its grey face. ‘Are you what Jack saw? Are you?’

Let go .

‘Not a chance.’

Let go .

‘Not until you tell me what you are.’

You will not remember this .

‘I’ll… what?’ asked James.

The alarm buzzer woke him at eight. He thumped it off. It was Saturday. Bloody Saturday. He cursed himself for not resetting the alarm the night before. He hoped it hadn’t disturbed Gwen.

He woke again at nine, then at ten thirty. Daylight was streaming in through the window. James roused and looked around. He was alone in bed.

He got up, grumpy and bewildered, and expected to find Gwen in the shower. She wasn’t there either.

He found the Post-it on the counter, attached to a packet of croissants. Gone off on my jaunt early. See you later. XX Gwen .

James sighed and headed back to bed.

She got the eight fifty out of Cardiff Central, Platform 1.

It was a dull morning, with a flat sky that teasingly promised to clear and warm up. Gwen was a little tired, but she soldiered on, invigorated by a sense of purpose.

She got herself a window seat and settled in. Almost three and a half hours to Manchester Piccadilly. She’d bought a coffee and a breakfast roll from a Baguette-away on the concourse, and a paper and some magazines from the news-stand. She sat back to read the headlines. Someone shouted something outside, and coach doors double-slammed.

After a few minutes, the train started to move, just a silent, sliding motion. A faint vibration made her steady her coffee cup.

The speaker crackled some kind of ‘welcome, here’s the buffet’ announcement that she didn’t properly listen to. The carriage was half-full, and no one seemed likely to invade her space.

The speed picked up. Suburban east Cardiff toiled by like a laboriously moved stage backdrop. The sun came out for about ten minutes. She had a go at the quick crossword.

Bored with that, she sat back and put on her MP3 player. Random shuffle. She looked around the carriage, amusing herself by watching the other passengers: a middle-aged man in a suit, reading a broadsheet; two young student travellers with bright cagoules and Gore-Tex backpacks that kept impeding people on their way down the aisle; a young mother with a small boy, who was playing with some toys as she passed him grapes from a Tupperware box; a nice-looking young bloke, who seemed intent on snoozing; a trendy type with fashionable specs working on a laptop; a nondescript guy reading a novel. A young woman who thought a lot of herself, texting on a fancy clam-shell phone; another middle-aged man who looked like a teacher or an academic, working through a sheaf of documents with a pen; two matronly women in expensive twinsets, travelling together, chatting animatedly.

Her MP3 randomly selected ‘Coming Up For Air’. She looked out of the window at the trees flashing by and thought about what she’d say to Rhys.

When she’d had enough of that, she picked up one of the magazines she’d bought.

James wasn’t entirely sure what Gwen had meant by ‘later’, so he assumed the evening. A plan to welcome her with a really pull-out-the-stops, home-cooked meal formed in his mind. He liked cooking, and he figured he’d get a lot of boyfriend points with a gesture like that.