The Secrets of Life and Death Read online

  The sound echoed between the trees. I could see, in the fading light, Dee’s horse being dragged by one of the bearskinned escorts towards a bend in the track. Dee was looking back, his face and long beard pale against his scarlet cloak, as the wolf loped onto the road. My mount stopped abruptly and only the saddlebow stopped me sliding over its neck. The horse squealed, backing, hooves catching on the road. I saw other shadow shapes oiling out of the undergrowth, hesitant at first, then bolder. They were thin, their bellies arched like siege mongrels, open mouths blood-red in the greys of dusk. I kicked the horse with renewed energy and it was startled into a canter past the wolf before us. Another leapt at the horse’s throat but a cut from my whip made it cringe away. It was then that I felt my seat slide loose on the horse’s back, the girth slack. Perhaps when she had stopped, it had loosened or snapped. The saddle, with both packs tied to it and I perched between them, fell into the road. I managed to land on one foot and to stagger into the crowding creatures, waving the whip. One of the beasts had stopped the mare again, who was now screaming in panic, backing step by step towards me and my protection. She lurched into me, so I lost my footing for a moment. The stumble to one knee brought the gleam of white teeth all around me as they closed in. I lashed out with the whip, and shouted at them in English. A few wolves scattered but then re-formed, into a loose circle of gleaming fangs and scarlet tongues.

  The gurgle of the horse made me turn. She was caught by the throat, and fell to her knees even as she tried to pull away, her gaping mouth and whitened eyes a horrible sight. I used the distraction to grab at my leather pack, wrestling with the straps that held it onto the saddle, in an effort to reach a weapon.

  ‘Edward!’ Dee, his voice very far away, began shouting in a mixture of English, Latin and German. I feared any rescue would be too late as another wolf leapt at me, only to be repelled as I swung the bag in panic.

  Hooves pounded in the distance and two of the Magyar escort approached, Dee cantering in their wake. The men drew up short of the circle of wolves and the now dying horse. One man, heavily bearded, called to me in his barbaric language and gestured for me to run through the circle towards them. They had drawn their heavy swords and were using the flats to urge their ponies on.

  A shout from one of the men made me spin around to see the open jaws and flattened ears of a wolf bounding towards me. I swung the pack again, knocking the beast sideways, its teeth caught in the hide. As I grappled with the bag, now in a tug of war with the animal, it yelped and cringed back. The smell of burnt fur rose in the air. The wolves fell back into a wider circle, even the ones that had started to open the horse’s belly, which sprayed red mist with each of the moribund mare’s laboured gasps. I could now see, in the half darkness, the glint of pink flames around me, a narrow circle of foxfire, even as I heard Dee’s deep voice chanting. I could see his hands inscribing the symbols in the air as he strode towards the pack, his cape flowing out from his shoulders making him look twice his usual size.

  The guards had retreated, looking as feral and wild in the gloom as the wolves. The beasts were circling maybe a dozen yards away, salivating at the stench of the mare’s entrails spilling into the mud.

  I hefted both packs, one with its precious books, the other with my clothes, and ran towards Dee. I staggered around the dying mare, my boots splashing in the blood, and jumped over the flames between the two Magyars. Dee had one of the pack mules reined to his saddle, and I clambered onto its bare back, careless of my comfort, lodging the packs in front of me.

  As soon as Dee stopped chanting the fires started to fade. ‘Edward! Are you injured?’

  ‘I – I am well. Thank you, Master Dee.’

  My master hauled on the reins and the mule was forced into a gait somewhere between a trot and a canter, rattling every tooth in my head. The Magyars rode their ponies tight around us, waving swords and shouting strange battle cries. I fought the urge to burst into tears with gratitude or relief and concentrated my efforts on staying on the rough-coated beast. I grasped a handful of bristly mane and urged it forward.

  ‘The castle is ahead. Barely half a mile.’ Dee’s bridle was grasped by one of the men, who spoke in a guttural dialect to Dee, who nodded his head. ‘Come, Edward, not much further now. The king’s castle will offer us refuge,’ he shouted, as if exhilarated. I shivered inside at the memory of the circle of red mouths, and the stink of the mare’s death.

  As we rounded the corner, I could see the curve of a hill silhouetted against an ultramarine sky, jutting above a layer of mist. Perched on the side of the peak were the shapes of defensive walls, surrounded by smaller hovels. The remaining guards had raised the alarm, and an escort of fur-clad men rode out, bearing torches that hissed and spat in coils of smoke. The men’s faces were impersonal, their sharp eyes darting everywhere, their teeth flashing white in dark faces. Surrounded by the stink of burnt tallow and horse sweat, I had the strange sense of being trapped. Behind me, the feasting wolves raised their voices in the song of the forest.

  Chapter 3

  Standing at the station had left a chill that Jackdaw Hammond couldn’t shake. Two days later, she wondered why she was putting herself through it again. Another girl … but first, she had some business to transact.

  She let the rain trickle over her collar and her eyes adjust to the low light. One hand rested against the coat touching her thigh, and against her fingers she felt the outline of the dagger sewn into the lining. Street lights lit the underside of low clouds, glowing to infuse the passageway in front of her with a faint orange.

  She crept along the side of the alley, remembering every cobble, the raised drain, tussocks of weeds. She allowed a fingertip to trail along the brickwork wall, counting steps in her head. Three – four – five – six – seven. She could see the archway onto Thistle Street, the light reflected off water on the pavement. As she approached the entrance she stopped, letting the sounds and sights sink in. There were voices from a few directions; a dog barking somewhere, quickly shushed; traffic humming into the city on the A road. She sniffed the air, getting wet stone, the trails of car exhaust, the waxy scent of her own coat. Colours flickered over a bedroom ceiling, perhaps from a television. She pulled her leather hat lower on her forehead against the rain.

  Yellow light spilled out of a pub doorway. The Seven Magpies, George Pierce’s preferred rendezvous. She walked past the Tudor building to the narrow yard that led down its sagging flank. The darkness was greyed by the flicker of a fluorescent light in a back kitchen. Jack glanced around the street, then slipped into the alley. She switched on a pencil torch, found a blank piece of wall and started chalking. The rain came down harder, inching down her neck and smudging some of her handiwork. She let her mind settle, alert to any change, switched off the light, and waited. She checked her phone again, for the clock. Don’t be late, not tonight …

  ‘Jack.’ He surprised her, his voice reaching her at the same time as the smell of stale cigarettes and sweat. His outline must be melted into the shadows along the wall.

  ‘Pierce,’ she said. He was there somewhere. She slid one hand to the hilt of the knife.

  ‘You got my merchandise?’ He coughed, and spat, close to her boots by the splat of it.

  ‘I have. You got the money?’

  ‘Two grand for five grams, as agreed.’ He stepped out, silhouetted against the end of the alley and the lit street beyond. He was a small, thin man, somewhere between fifty and seventy, barely taller than Jack. The glow from the kitchen window dropped spots of light onto his eyes and illuminated a shock of white hair, yellowed at the front.

  ‘Two thousand for four grams of pure merchandise.’ She reached into an inside pocket, past the hilt of the dagger, for the folded bag of powder. It shimmered as she lifted it out. He shuffled forward in anticipation and she stepped back, closer to the wall and the symbols. Adrenaline rushed through her, warming her.

  ‘Back, rat-man,’ she warned.

  ‘Hostile, Jack.�
� His voice was full of hissing sounds, and he leaned forward into the faint light, squinting at her. ‘That’s no way to treat a business associate.’ He reached for the bag but she stepped back, one hand reaching out for the symbols she had sketched on the bricks.

  ‘I mean it. Remember last time?’

  He choked a cracked laugh, the dog-fox reek of him hitting her. ‘We could conduct our transaction in the pub like proper partners. Then I could have a good look at my merchandise.’

  ‘In there, with you?’ She laughed back, at the thought of taking the raggedy man into the pub. ‘Just throw me the money.’

  He bent over one pocket, drew something out. ‘You and I are two of a kind, Jackdaw.’ He waved the packet at her. ‘The money’s good. Give me the stuff.’

  She hesitated, four grams of prepared bone dust grinding like sand in the plastic between her fingers.

  ‘What’s it going to be used for? Is this more weird voodoo shit?’

  He shuffled half a pace closer, almost within reach. She kept an eye on him, even as her hand hovered over the chalked sigils behind her.

  ‘What do you care?’ He snorted. ‘Think of it as lucky charms for the modern executive. There’s a stockbroker staying on the coast, just needs to knock up a few talismans.’ He tossed the packet over with a quick movement, making her jump.

  ‘Get back,’ she growled at him, every muscle braced against attack. She was aware of a movement in the road ahead. ‘You better not have brought your human Rottweilers with you.’ She weighed the package, a battered envelope, in her hand. It was heavy enough to be two thousand and he hadn’t short-changed her yet. Good suppliers were hard to find, and Jack was one of the best. Having said that, if he could take the bone powder and get his money back …

  ‘I don’t need help to deal with one skinny little bitch.’ He pointed at the powder. ‘Give it to me.’

  She tossed it to him and he caught it with a snap, holding it up against his face, and then opened the bag, careless of the rain, and sniffed deeply.

  ‘Long dead,’ he commented. ‘What is this, Roman shit?’

  ‘It’s good. A suicide.’

  ‘It’ll do.’ He sneered at her, now close enough to see in the soft grey light. ‘I heard you got yourself a girl. Blood to sell.’

  ‘You heard wrong.’ Her heart speeded up, as she tried to shrug it off.

  ‘Then I heard about this girl, dead on the London train, Monday night.’ He licked his lips. ‘I thinks to myself, that could be one of yours. Then I heard about the sigils, and I knew for sure.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Shit, where does he get his information from?

  ‘Oh, you do.’ He spun on one foot towards the road. ‘You need a girl, or that healer on Exmoor’s going to run out of her supplies. I’m not judging, Jack, doing the work of the angels, you two, healing them little kids.’ She saw his tongue slide out and lick his lips again in the dim light. ‘Thing is, I got a healer too. If you gets another girl, and I’m sure you will, then I can get you very good money. You hear what I’m saying.’

  ‘I’m just a dealer in occult ingredients, for whackos and weirdoes.’ She tucked the money away, drew out the knife, held it loosely in the folds of her coat. ‘Time’s up, Pierce. Now fuck off.’ A scrape of a shoe somewhere distracted her for a moment.

  He bounded forward, arms swinging in her direction. She slid her hand onto the chalk marks she had drawn on the rough bricks behind her, and let the adrenaline charge her up. Maybe the rain helped conduct the energy through the knife, because at the lightest contact a blue discharge crackled between them. He fell, arched into a bow shape, his face distorted with the shock. His eyes were rolled back in his head, and for a moment, she thought she had killed him. After a long moment, he started to wheeze, chest heaving like an old set of bellows.

  ‘You … you …’ he managed, but Jack leapt over his twitching feet and into the street. She surprised two of Pierce’s minions, who loomed either side of the alleyway, by racing between them towards the sanctuary of her car.

  With shouts and heavy footfalls echoing behind her, she turned into the next alley, pulling the bin into the middle of the shadow of the high walls, then ran to the car. She had left the driver’s door unlocked, keys in the ignition, and by the time she had started the engine the first bear was in the road, looking towards her. She snapped on the headlights – full beam – and watched as he staggered back, arms over his eyes. She hit the accelerator, steering around him as he spun in the road, and the car fishtailed on the wet tarmac. She accelerated down towards the town centre, and raced through red lights on the empty street. She glanced at the dashboard clock. Shit, ten-oh-five. It might already be too late.

  Rain clattered on the roof of Jack’s car as she peered at street names. The seer had predicted the death would occur at around eleven. But seers’ prophecies were always a bit hazy. Their directions were worse – along the river, by the spring, the crossroads south-east of the oak-topped hill … The city centre was winding down. The directions had been based on an ancient geography, now smothered under a sheet of roads and houses in the eastern end of the city.

  Nelson Road, Trafalgar Avenue, Oak Hill – that might be it. She could feel the muscles in her neck tighten as she thought of the teenager. Ten twenty-three. Maybe the girl was already dead. She slowed to a crawl, wiping a mist of condensation off the inside of the window, scanning both sides of the road.

  A small figure under the bus stop bench might not have been obvious to someone walking by, but Jack’s headlights swept around and picked out a bundle of clothes. She drove the car onto the pavement and leapt out, the engine still growling. She dropped onto her knees and reached for the figure, cold water seeping into her jeans. She grabbed an arm, and dragged the teenager across the ground. The seer had said it would be a long shot.

  ‘Come on, kid, a little help would be good,’ she muttered. Jack pressed her finger to the girl’s throat, feeling a weak flicker of a pulse. Long shot or not, she couldn’t just leave her to die. Jack grabbed two good handfuls of the teenager and lifted her. She staggered under the awkward burden to the car, and managed to get a thumb onto the lock to open the boot. Jack half dropped, half rolled the body onto the dog blanket. The interior light revealed two short boots, slim ankles, pink tights and a leather band that could charitably be called a skirt. Her top half was wrapped in her coat, and as Jack uncovered her head she revealed vomit stuck to the white face and spiky black hair. She stank of cider.

  ‘Just hang on, OK?’ The girl moaned wordlessly in response. Thirty-three minutes to go. Jack slammed down the door of the boot and jumped into the battered estate. This was going to be really close.

  Driving as fast as she dared, she fumbled for her phone and dialled Maggie’s number. Please be ready, please …

  ‘Hello? Jack?’ The soft voice on the other end of the line was sharpened with alarm.

  ‘I’ve got her! The girl, she’s still alive. Shit, Maggie, what are we doing?’

  ‘Saving a life. Just focus on that. I’ve got the room ready, just get back in time.’ She hung up and Jack dropped the mobile onto the passenger seat, praying the police didn’t notice her doing fifty in the city.

  She powered through red lights, and was out of the town in eighteen minutes, down the main road to the turn off in another eight, into the village in six. She no longer had time to count, so she rattled over the cattle grid, and skidded into the yard behind the cottage. She had barely opened the boot before the girl started vomiting again, her lips going blue in the interior light. Jack wrestled her over one shoulder, and lurched towards the back door, held open by Maggie.

  The older woman restrained the dog with both arms. ‘Quick, Jack!’

  Jack staggered in and clipped the kid’s head on the door frame. That would be the least of her problems if she didn’t get her between the circles of sigils.

  The girl stopped choking and fell against Jack’s back, her breath rattli
ng. The concealed door in the panelling that led down to the priest hole was propped open with a pile of books. With the last seconds ticking away, Jack threw the girl down the stone steps into the sanctuary of the cellar.

  Chapter 4

  The package was heavy, sealed with ‘CONFIDENTIAL – POLICE’ tape, and marked ‘FAO FELIX GUICHARD ONLY’.

  ‘Professor? A police officer brought it in for you.’ The admin assistant was looking curious. ‘Rose had to sign for it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He tucked the parcel under one arm, and kept his head down through the group of students, hoping none of them were in any of his classes. He’d only seen them a few times, and he never seemed to remember faces …

  A girl stepped in front of him. ‘Professor Guichard?’

  Damn. ‘Um … yes? Alice, isn’t it?’

  ‘Alix. Hi. I was wondering if I could talk to you about the assignments this semester.’

  He searched in his pocket for his office key, juggling the package, a briefcase full of papers and a laptop in a rucksack. The Georgian door had an original lock, with a key like a church door’s, and he fumbled it into the hole.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t have much time this morning. If you could come back after lunch …’

  ‘I have lectures this afternoon. Can I help?’ She leaned disturbingly close and smiled up at him. She was a leggy, auburn-haired girl, with a healthy tan. He shook off the momentary attraction and smiled.

  ‘Thank you, I’m fine. Or I will be – when I unlock this.’ The mechanism thumped internally and the door swung open.