Tim Lebbon - Reaper's Legacy

“Are you sick?” Jenna asked softly.

“No. Not yet. But…”

“But?” Jack asked.

“There are those amongst the Superiors who believe it’s a blight introduced by Miller and his people. To kill us all. Finally turn London toxic for good.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Jack said. They all remained silent for a while, and in the distance they heard motors retreating into the city.

“No,” Jenna said. “No surprise at all. But it’s dooming something wonderful to an early end.”

“Reaper won’t let it happen,” Fleeter said.

“Reaper used to be my father,” Jack said. “He worked in an office, liked banana sandwiches, watched motor-racing on a Sunday afternoon. He went running lots, and my mother never really understood that. He said it was a better mid-life crisis than having an affair. He collected Star Wars figures. Didn’t like milk in his coffee. I saw him crying once when we were watching ET .”

Fleeter went to speak, but said nothing. She shook her head.

“Reaper can’t save you all,” Jack said. “But I’m beginning to think I can. Now take us to him.”

Fleeter turned her back on them. For a moment Jack thought she was going to wink out of existence again and leave them all behind, and he knew he would not follow. But then she walked slowly, cautiously out into the street.

Jack and his friends started to follow.

“She was there. She was there !”

“I didn’t see anyone,” Rook said.

“There, in that open doorway, watching me!” Lucy-Anne pointed at the building she had only ducked into before realising it was empty and lifeless. She had not been afraid to continue inside, but she had been certain that to do so would be pointless. The woman was already gone.

“Nomad,” Lucy-Anne said. “That’s who she is. The wanderer. The ghost of London.”

“Nomad’s a myth,” Rook said.

“And what do you think you are to everyone outside?”

Rook looked troubled. He glanced between Lucy-Anne and the empty building, and she could see that he believed what he said—he’d seen no one there, and to him, Nomad was a myth.

“We should get going,” he said. “Dusk soon. Good time to get into the north.”

“There’s a boundary?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“Only in your head.” Rook set off and Lucy-Anne followed, but she paused to glance back several times at the open doorway. The place had once been a hotel, and she wondered how many rooms with closed doors still housed the rotten remains of the dead. Amongst them had walked Nomad, seeking a place from which she could observe Lucy-Anne.

She’s there in my dreams, and now I’m seeing her for real.

Rook took them through the back end of London—hidden places, alleys and areas that only people who knew they were there would be able to find. Some of them wound behind rows of houses, paths overgrown with rose bushes gone wild and clematis given free rein now that there was no-one there to trim it. Other narrow, cobbled roads seemed to be left over from a much older London emerged from hiding, and if it weren’t for the dusty vehicles sitting on flattened tyres, Lucy-Anne might have believed they had gone back in time.

In some places there were bodies. Shrivelled, dried remnants, or gnawed bones scattered by carrion creatures. Lucy-Anne was surprised how quickly the shock faded.

Dusk settled quickly across these hidden places. Shadows seemed to stretch out from where they had been resting during the day, washing across the ground, climbing walls, enveloping everything and striving to hide things from view. Lucy-Anne felt safe with Rook, and she could still see and sometimes hear his birds following them above, or flitting from roof to roof around them. But that did not prevent her from being unsettled as night approached.

Going north made the darkness deeper.

As Rook led the way, Lucy-Anne noticed something of a change come over him. At first she thought perhaps it was the failing light that seemed to bleed some of his confidence. But he moved slower, more cautiously, until he stopped at the end of an alleyway leading out onto a wide shopping street. He stood facing away from her with his arm held out, and a rook shadowed down and landed on his upturned wrist.

The bird was silent, head jerking left and right and looking everywhere but at Rook.

“What is it?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“I’m afraid,” Rook said. As he spoke the bird gave a caw-caw! and flapped its wings, but remained perched on his arm. Perhaps it was afraid as well.

The admission shocked Lucy-Anne. After she’d seen Rook in action with Reaper she’d viewed him in the same way. Despite his protestations, she saw him as a Superior, a person who considered themselves as more than human, and better.

“Afraid?” she asked.

“I can be, you know,” he said.

“I know, but…”

“Can’t you sense it?” he asked, turning around to face her. The bird watched her, dark eyes inscrutable.

She tried to feel what he was feeling, sniffing the air, listening for anything out of the ordinary, and then closing her eyes. But she felt only what she had ever since entering London—dislocation, and an idea that she could never belong here at all.

“It’s wild !” Rook said. He was speaking quietly, glancing about as he did so. Afraid of being watched. “I’ve only ever been this far north once before, and I turned back and ran. Got lost south of the river, and it felt like going home. Back to my mother’s womb. Safe.”

“What’s so terrible about it?”

“London changed, but this part changed more than anywhere. It’s a different place now. Those left behind here don’t even pretend to be what they were before.”

“And everyone else does?” she asked doubtfully.

“Even Reaper admits to being human.”

She glanced past him into the deserted street, lit only by the faint glow of dusk and the rising moon. “Then what about people here?”

“Like I said. Wild. Just…” He reached out and touched her, and it was like a feather across her cheek. “Just be warned.”

“But you’ll protect me,” she said. “You know how.”

“I know how to try.”

“I have no choice,” Lucy-Anne said. “My brother’s out there somewhere. That’s all I am now. Searching for him defines me.”

Rook nodded once, then glanced away. “Follow me,” he said. “We’ll cut across the street, then through some gardens. Then there’s a wide road, and we’re in Regent’s Park.”

“And why are we going there?”

“It’ll probably be quicker passing through the park than along streets.”

“And safer?”

“Didn’t say that.”

The enormity of their task, always at the back of Lucy-Anne’s mind, came to the fore then. Andrew was a needle in a haystack, a pebble on a beach. And now that they were heading into the wilder north of London, the haystack and beach were more dangerous than ever.

There were six corpses propped against the wall at the edge of the park. Each had a small fire lit in its lap, their arms had been interlocked in a grotesque mockery of dancing, and their heads and shoulders were encased in silvery-grey webbing. They were naked apart from their shoes. That’s what Lucy-Anne noticed first, before the rest of the horror. That they all wore shoes.

“What’s this?” she whispered. Rook squatted beside her in the shelter of a bus stop, two of his birds on the ground beside him. A third bird drifted in through the dark and settled on his shoulder, and he tilted his head.

“Don’t know,” he said, answering her at last. “There’ll be plenty we can’t explain. But the coast is clear.” He went to stand, and Lucy-Anne grabbed his arm.