THE BONE MISTRESS
by Jayden Knight
Prologue: Silver Street
5 days before Alliance Celebration Day.
Apart from the rats and rare refuse collectors, no one ever set foot in Silver Street. Well, why would they? The pokey alley didn’t go anywhere, and there was nothing to see beyond a carpet of windblown garbage and the odd oozing bin bag. It was a strange, spooky kind of place, and how anyone could have called it ‘silver’ was a mystery, as there was nothing of value there now. The long, narrow passageway felt as dead as only a dead end can be. The air felt dead, the crumbling brick walls felt dead, and the cracked cobblestones, rusty illuminators and grimy service doors all seemed to be sleeping under some ancient, evil spell. Which perhaps they were, as Silver Street was not just any old derelict alley. Its dog-pee-stinking warehouse docks and smashed-window offices sat dozing right in the heart of the glamorous City district of Lundain. So, if any of them could have yawned, stretched and stood up – even for a moment – a few short steps would have taken them into the blare and bright lights of Plaisance Avenue or Arcadia Hill.
But that, of course, was impossible. The foundations of these empty shells were buried far too deep in shadow, and the people of Lundain had little time for ghosts. Every day an endless flow of tourists, celebrities, Business Bank directors, school trippers, senators, celebrities and Security Bank agents jostled past the alley’s murky entrance, but none of them ever stopped for a second look. Silver Street, it seemed, had simply ceased to exist, and what made this even stranger was that the one person who lived there had vanished too.
As, yes, despite all its neglect and squalor, this urban eyesore could still claim one, actual house. The Property Bank’s Lundain branch was quite clear about the matter. If you typed the words ‘Silver Street’ into its Archive Searcher, up came the appropriate folder with a complete set of information for every building. Admittedly, most of them were labelled ‘Cleared for Demolition’, but the category column of number 39 defined it unmistakeably as a ‘Private Residence’. Strangely, though, the adjoining column, headed ‘Name of Resident’ was completely blank.
Now, as a house cannot be a residence unless it has a resident, this was obviously a mistake. But if you had asked anyone in the vicinity to describe Silver Street’s mysterious occupant, their answer would have been the same empty silence. As no one had ever been seen going into number 39, and no one had ever been seen coming out of it either.
At least that was the way things were until late one afternoon at the tail end of summer. For over six hours a fine, grey drizzle had been filling the City storm drains, and Silver Street was wallowing in its filth as usual. At exactly 3.00pm the Business Bank Tower lit up the sky with its daily ‘Free World Profits’ light show, and while heads were momentarily turned, a tall, athletic, angry-looking teenager appeared at the corner of the street.
Oblivious of the falling rain, the girl hovered there for several minutes, and then, instead of turning away like everyone else, she suddenly lurched forward and began picking her way through the rubbish. When she reached the end, where the cobblestones widened into an arc centred on the rusty, spiked gate of number 39, she paused again and shivered.
The building may have been the only ‘Private Residence’ in Silver Street, but to call it a ‘house’ would have been generous. Its walls were cracked and peeling, its woodwork smashed and splintered, and its grubby attic window had slipped so far down its sloping slate roof, it seemed ready to topple over the edge at any moment. In fact, everything about number 39 looked so utterly abandoned that the thought of anyone living there seemed out of the question.
On chill Lundain evenings, though, someone must have lit the fires whose smoke curled up from its lopsided chimney pots. Just as someone must have turned on the lights that occasionally peeped out through its tightly drawn curtains. And when the girl finally mustered up the courage to shove open the rusty gate and tug at the antiquated bell pull, someone must have opened the huge black front door. As one moment she was there, and the next she had disappeared inside.
Silver Street's spell, then, had been broken at last. But it is not easy to breathe life into bricks and mortar that have been sleeping for decades, and later that same evening, when the bothersome child had finally left, the alley simply yawned and pulled its blanket of grime back up over its head. Everything looked the same, but it wasn’t. When night fell, the rats no longer came out to dance in the moonlight, and even the street's restless sea of rubbish lay still as if waiting for something to happen.
Silver Street's one remaining resident waited, too. As like the rats and the garbage, she also knew it would only be a matter of time before someone else came calling. And that someone came even sooner than she expected.
***
Just thirty-four hours after the girl's visit, at precisely one o’clock in the morning, a blinding beam of light cut through Silver Street’s curtain of shadow as a long, black limomover squeezed into the narrow chasm. Its illuminators were extinguished immediately but, in the darkness, its tyres continued to squeal on the damp cobblestones until they came to a halt, directly in front of number 39. Then the quiet throb of the vehicle's engine died, and in its place, a tense shiver of expectancy quivered in the air.
The woman standing behind the curtains on the first floor of the house shivered too. She had seen the mover enter and edge cautiously down the street, but its appearance neither surprised nor impressed her. She was simply curious. Curious to know when the man sitting in its rear compartment and drumming his pale fingers on a white leather cushion, would make his move.
The man did not seem to be in a hurry, as two weary hours dragged by, and still the long, black vehicle sat motionless in the shadows. Then, with no warning whatsoever, its illuminators blazed back into life, lighting up the entire front of the house. In the left-hand window on the first floor, the curtains twitched shut. But they weren’t quick enough, and for an instant, a ghostly image of the woman who had been standing there, remained stamped on the glass, like a hazymemory. She was slim and graceful with a mass of crinkled auburn hair that glowed like fire around her thin, olive-brown face and bright amber eyes. Tall and dignified, she had an air you were unlikely to forget, and the shadowy bodyguard sitting in the front seat of the limomover knew exactly who it belonged to.
‘Miss Anderson is at home, sir,’ she whispered into the inter-speaker.
‘Excellent!’ came the slightly breathless reply from the back seat. ‘Then we may proceed.’
***
Seconds later the alley's prickly silence exploded into life as a large, armoured personnel carrier thundered onto its ancient cobblestones. While it was still braking, a squadron of heavily armed agents, dressed in the tight black and red uniforms of the Security Bank or SEBA, leapt from its rear doors and ran for cover. Then, as it rocked to a halt, two smaller combat-movers screeched up behind it, both with their powerful twin blasters trained on number 39.
The woman by the window watched all this happen with a look of weary indifference. She was wearing a loose, full-length, green gown embroidered with small golden flowers, and a bright silver ring glinted on the middle finger of her right hand. Her feet were bare, and her face was lined and tired, but a powerful aura of wisdom and authority still hung around her as she stood looking out through a chink in the curtains, and calmly reciting a low, hypnotic chant.
Time passed and Silver Street’s chill mantle of silence rose tentatively back out of the shadows. The agents fidgeted in the darkness and the woman stood quietly moving her lips until a fourth and final vehicle skidded into the street. Unlike the others, this was an off-road utility-mover with an open back fitted with a makeshift cage. At first, it was too gloomy in the alley to see what this contained. But when the short, thickset driver leapt out of the cab, rattling a bunch of keys, the shadows behind the bars greeted him with a deafening chorus of yelps and howls.
‘Dogs! They’ve brought dogs!’ gasped the woman, staggering backwards and clutching at her mouth with long, slender fingers.
‘Who,’ she whispered, ‘Who could have told them this?’ And dragging herself back to the window, she rested her forehead on the cold frame and then pulled back the curtain.
The agents she had seen taking cover earlier were now running in all directions and a burly man – clearly the captain – had climbed onto a wall and was shouting and waving his arms. Amidst the confusion, her eyes flashed back to the utility–mover, but the driver was gone. Frantically, she scanned the street from left to right and finally spotted him, rounding the limomover and marching straight towards her front door. She caught her breath, and then, as he passed under one of the alley’s ancient illuminators her hand flew to her mouth.
There they were, straining on tight, heavy chains: three enormous beasts with broad, heavy heads and small almond-shaped eyes that glinted cruelly in the half-light. As these creatures strutted forwards, the muscles beneath their short, spiky hair flexed ominously and their slathering tongues licked hungrily at their long yellow teeth.
They were not the kind of animal you normally saw on a City pavement, but the woman knew only too well what these monsters were. As a fear of dogs had tormented her ever since her eighth birthday when a pack of rabid strays had cornered her against a battered breakwater on a cold, lonely beach in Normerton. That afternoon she had been lucky. Her father had heard the barking and come running to beat the animals off. But tonight, she was alone and the same choking fog of terror that had crippled her as a child suddenly swirled up around her.
Carpathian Mastiffs were a force she knew she could not defeat, but she had to make a stand. Her only hope was her ring and clenching her fingers around it, she tried desperately to summon its powers. Her knuckles whitened and she screwed her eyes shut, but when a window smashed in the room below, they jerked open again. The beasts were in her house … in her kitchen, and as their baying grew louder, a rising wave of panic swept all her feeble efforts aside. Her hands shook, her head slumped, and she felt herself become that same lonely girl again. In her mind’s eye, she could see the pack in front of her, their hot, panting breath poisoning the air, as their snarling teeth sprayed her face with flecks of spittle. One by one, the tears coursed down her cheeks, and she held up her fists in a futile show of defiance. But it was useless. The only way to save herself was through control. That is what her tutor had taught her. She had to control the panic, to free her mind, and clear these visions from her head until all that was left was a dull, black void.
And that was what she saw now. A vast expanse of nothing into which she slid, slowly but surely, until the ghosts of her past retreated and her knees sank into the soft tufts of the Persian rug on her cosy, sitting-room floor.
***
For several long seconds the woman remained completely still with her eyes closed and her fists pressed into the plush softness of the rug. Then, when the room had finally stopped spinning, and her heart had slowed to its normal pace, she opened her eyes and smiled. She was herself again. The men were still there – she could hear their harsh voices shouting and cursing – but who they were, or what they had brought with them meant nothing anymore. All that mattered was that they had come to kill her, and with a grimace, she pulled herself to her feet and staggered across the room.
A pretty, long-haired, grey cat was cowering behind a cushion on the worn armchair in the corner, and scooping it up, the woman kissed its head and then stared into the glow of its green, unblinking eyes.
‘They have come, Aradia,’ she said. ‘I had no idea they would make their move so quickly, and I have foolishly underestimated their strength. But have no fear, my sweet, all is not lost! We must be brave, and then, who knows, perhaps their own arrogance will be their undoing. So come now, much depends on us, and there is not a second to lose!’
Shifting the cat momentarily into the crook of her neck, the woman tied a loose knot in her long, auburn hair and tossed it over her shoulder. Then, pulling up the gown she was wearing, she belted it firmly around her waist.
‘We may not be young, Aradia, but we must be strong!’ she whispered, and tucking the cat under her arm, she strode to the door and threw it open.
A deafening cacophony of breaking glass, splintering wood and barking dogs rose to meet her and, for an instant, the woman froze. But then turning her back on everything, she ran quickly up the elegantly carpeted staircase. At the top was a long, crooked landing, and the woman raced along it to a heavy, brass-panelled door. When she reached it, she opened her mouth to speak, but before a word could leave her lips, a sound more horrible than any of the others shuddered through her body. Whirling around, she saw a huge, brindled beast standing stiff-legged at the foot of the stairs. Its monstrous head was thrown back and its ear-splitting howl reverberated through the house, silencing even the devastation below. A dangerous madness gleamed in its eyes and, almost idly, it dropped its muzzle, bared its teeth, and then hurled itself up the stairs like a bolt of angry lightning.
Cringing with fear, the woman collapsed speechless against the door and began fumbling for a small key that hung around her neck. Like her voice, though, her fingers had turned to lead, and as she snapped it off its chain, the small golden object slipped through her palms. Jerking forward, she snatched it up as it fell, but her sudden movement sent the cat under her arm tumbling to the floor. The pitiful creature mewed in terror and ran between her legs, as the mastiff that had now almost reached the landing, growled and shook its drooling jowls.
The woman swayed, caught herself, and then, raising her right hand, she pointed it shakily at an old stuffed falcon sitting on a dusty perch high up on the wall.
‘Aha y neshep,’ she gasped, ‘nekh nekh,’ and a bright greenish light flashed from the ring on her finger.
As if it had been merely sleeping, the bird nodded its head, ruffled its feathers, and then, as the dog cleared the last step, it screeched and flung itself down from the wall in a furious beating of wings.
The great beast growled and snapped as the bird sank its talons into its muzzle and pecked at its eyes, and in the seconds that followed, a mad riot of blood and feathers filled the air. At first the woman simply gazed on in horror, but then she tore herself away, twisted the key in the lock, and staggered across the threshold with the cat chasing after her.
‘Spi seba,’ she gasped, finally finding her voice, and the heavy wooden door slammed shut, followed by the clunk of a volley of bolts flying magically into place. On the far side, the bird let out a blood curdling scream, and the mastiff crashed its gigantic head against the door’s solid wood panels. But it was too late. The cat and the woman had escaped.
***
Pausing to catch her breath, the woman ran a tired hand through her hair and groped for the illuminator switch. Then, as the cupboard-like room flickered into life, she lurched across to the desk that stood tucked under the sloping eaves and collapsed into the armchair beside it. Everything in the tiny space was buried under an impossible jumble of parchments, magazines, books, fading photographs and general junk that cascaded down from the tall oak bookcase, across the desk, and onto the sill of the large sash window that overlooked the street. This did not bother the woman, though, as when she leaned back in the chair and the cat sprang into her lap, she even smiled.
‘Well, Aradia, my dear,’ she whispered, ‘I hope you have saved at least one of your nine lives for tonight, as I fear you may need it to survive the trap they have sprung. They clearly know much more than I imagined, but they have not won yet. And if we think and act and make sure every detail is in its proper place, I’m sure all is not lost.’
As the woman spoke, the sound of men’s voices drifted into the room from the landing outside. There was shouting and swearing, and then a massive hammer blow thudded into the timber of the door. It was followed by another and then another, but the woman took no notice.
