Sarwat Chadda - Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness

Elaine grunted. “I’ll get the van warmed up.”

Ash inspected the rest of the weapons while Ashoka followed Elaine out to the van. Parvati watched him go, her long fingers on her chin, her green eyes glowing. “Interesting, don’t you think?”

“What?” said Ash. “Ashoka notched an arrow and didn’t shoot his own foot?”

“It’s not crossed your mind why he’s picked a bow?”

“Involves minimum running around? What’s your point, Parvati?”

Parvati tapped his forehead. “He’s the Eternal Warrior. Just like you. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Ash stopped and looked at her. “You’re sure?”

She nodded. “It might manifest itself differently, but the bow, his handling of it, I’ve seen it before, a long, long time ago. He didn’t learn that in archery class.”

Could it be true? thought Ash. Why not? They were the same person. They would have had the same past lives. Ash had had visions of his own past existences. They’d come to him in his dreams, with subtle messages as to what he’d be facing, offering coded clues and advice. The problem was, they were always obscure. “You think he’s accessing the talent of one of his past lives? I’ve never been able to do that.”

“Ashoka might be different, though. I don’t know for sure, but, at least at a subconscious level, he’s tapping their knowledge.”

Ash heard the engine start somewhere above them. He picked up his punch dagger. It was all he really needed. “Do you think we should tell him?”

“No. He’ll find out soon enough.”

Ash sat in the back of the van with Ashoka. Parvati was up front with Elaine.

It was good to be doing something. Now they knew where Savage lived there was a buzz in the air, a crackle of anticipation.

He’d been here before, at the eve of a battle.

Then why are my hands so sweaty?

Ashoka strummed his bowstrings nervously. He had an arrow clip fixed to the bow, and six arrows, double-stacked, ready and waiting.

How would Ashoka do in battle? Was he really the Eternal Warrior, just like him?

“How much further?” Ash asked. He just wanted to get started now. Then the nerves would go.

“We’re almost there,” said Elaine.

The Docklands in east London were a mixture of old and ultra-modern. Their route took them through Canary Wharf and past the headquarters of Barclays Bank, Credit Suisse, HSBC and all the other global financial houses. In the dark the skyscrapers shone as if covered in crystal.

Beyond the bastions of super-wealth came endless, squalid council estates, low and mean and hidden in the gloom, shadowed by the glass titans and circled by busy ring roads.

“Not surprising Savage would set up here,” said Elaine as she drove. “This was where it all started.”

She was right. Savage had begun as a soldier of the East India Company back in the eighteenth century. From there he’d built his fortune through slavery and drug smuggling and conquest. He’d marched with the likes of Napier and Clive, carving up India, creating what would be the heart of the British Empire. Spice ships had docked here, bringing pepper, once more valuable than gold, but there had been gold aplenty too. Gold, silver, diamonds, ivory, and tea and cotton and countless other treasures of the East.

But the old warehouses had all been turned into offices or fashionable apartments for the merchant bankers, now trading electronically and growing just as rich as the nabobs of the Honourable East India Company.

Snow had just started to fall. The clouds were a deep orange from the city. It never truly became dark in London, and small flurries of snowflakes swirled in the pool of amber from the sodium streetlights.

Elaine slowed down and came to a halt at the corner of the road. “There it is.”

The warehouse took up an entire block. Four storeys tall with a multi-pitched roof with plenty of nooks and crannies among the chimney stacks. As it stood alone they could see the building backed on to a dock: a square, artificial bay with a few designer barges and yachts moored, quiet and idle. Two hundred years ago the basin would have been filled with high-masted clippers and men heaving the fortunes of nations off the boats and into the warehouse.

The windows were dark. A white Humvee stood outside the front door.

Ash slid the side panel open and stepped out of the back of the van. He shivered as the wind whipped along the street, but pulled off his coat and threw it back in. He didn’t want it getting in the way. He touched his katar handle, strapped to the back of his belt. “You ready for this, Ashoka?”

“No, but I’m coming anyway.” He slung his bow across his back.

Parvati smiled at him as she stepped out, hand on her urumi.

Elaine leaned out of the driver’s window. “I’m going to hide over the other side of the dock. Good luck and don’t be long.”

They made their way towards the warehouse. Ashoka was pale, eyes darting everywhere.

Ash flexed his fingers, trying to keep the cold out. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to take on Savage. They were on the back foot, going into unknown territory without all their powers.

But that was just the way it had to be.

What and who was in there? Ashoka’s family? Jackie? Savage even? Ash wished he was more ready; that they all were. The only one who looked at ease was Parvati. Nothing ever phased her. Always cool, always in control.

She peered through the letter box in the front door. “What’s the PIN?”

Ashoka inspected his palm. “040776.”

Parvati shrugged off her coat. “I’ll just be a minute.” Then she reached through the letter box, sliding into her cobra form as she did so. Her tale flicked before vanishing through the slot.

Ashoka glanced up and down the street. “I’ve never done anything illegal, and now I’m breaking and entering.”

“How are you finding it?”

“I feel half sick and half excited, you know?”

“Yes,” said Ash. “I do know.”

A minute later the door opened and Parvati, back in human form, smiled at them. “Come in.”

Savage hadn’t stinted on the decorations. It was an elegant mix of old and modern. The walls were original bare red brick, but full-height portraits lined the hallway, each lit by a discreet spotlight hidden among the old wooden beams across the ceiling. A long, dark red Persian rug ran all the way to a wrought-iron staircase, and the doors leading off the hallway were antique wood, their colour glossy and dark from the varnish.

Ashoka stood facing a life-sized portrait. “It’s Savage.”

Ash had seen it before, back in India. “At the beginning of his career.”

Savage wore the red jacket of an officer of the East India Company. He gazed down at them with half-lidded eyes that were cold blue chips of ice. They burned with all the greed, hunger for power, the sense of destiny, and of superiority that would define his three-hundred-year existence. All present in this first portrait of him as a mortal man in his mid-twenties. He held a tiger-headed cane, and the beast’s own gaze was pure red, two small rubies glistening from the silver face, snarling at the painter. Behind Savage lay a pair of manacles and a bundle of dried poppies, the source of his wealth. Further along the hallway was a portrait of him as an old man, then nearest to the stairs the most recent – just him sitting on a stool, dressed in his customary white suit, wearing his black shades. His skin was pearly white, almost luminescent. Behind him was desert and the faint outline of a vast archaeological excavation. His cane rested across his knees.

“That’s the dig in Rajasthan,” said Ash, “where we found Ravana.”