Chapter 10: Aoife (part 3 of 3)

  Some distance now separated Carmichael at the head of the formation and Marlowe near the back. Aoife took this opportunity to quicken her pace and walk right up to him. He glanced sideways then quickly looked away again, fixing his eyes on the back of one of the brutes walking ahead of them. So after all he had done or not done, he was still in no mood to talk. Unfortunately for him, Aoife wasn't in the mood to let things be.

  "Is this all part of your grand plan?" she hissed at him, watching his face. "Selling me out to Carmichael? Is this what it takes to get the Hawthorne Academy to take you seriously?"

  He spun toward her then, nostrils flaring in anger, but he had the grace to lower his face in abashment immediately after. He went back to staring at the man in front of him before mumbling a reply. "He's paying me now. Much more than we made from our fights. Don't know where all the cash comes from. I'm starting to think maybe he's not in this St Marcus business for the money."

  "That's your excuse? Congratulations on your raise, but that's not going to make me feel any better about you helping to lead my family into the hands of a criminal."

  "Come off it, Aoife," he shot back, defiance creeping into his voice. "As if you weren't already a criminal yourself. Besides, he promised me that you and your family wouldn't come to any harm."

  "And you believed that creep?"

  "Well, he's been true to his words so far, hasn't he?"

  Aoife fell silent, pondering this. Marlowe wasn't wrong... yet. Regardless of what Carmichael had planned for her next, he had agreed to let her family pass through without batting an eye—in fact, he had been the one to suggest that outcome himself. From everything he had said so far, it seemed his end goal wasn't bloodshed—at least not for her. Her anger mollified just a little, she turned to another question she had been dying to ask her erstwhile sparring partner.

  "Was it you?" she asked, considerably more subdued. "The goblet that hit the Dragoon while I had my back turned to him?"

  Marlowe fell silent and didn't turn to look at her. For a long while, only the sounds of marching boots and broken breathing filled the air.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he finally mumbled, in a tone that suggested he knew exactly what she was talking about.

  And for the first time since the prospect of leaving Thameside had become a stark reality, Aoife thought that she might want to stay. Maybe this whole thing with Carmichael would turn out to be a big misunderstanding. They'd sort it out, here and now on the banks of the River Thames, and they'd each go on with their lives. She would go back to making an honest living at Aunt Cara's shop. She'd learn as much as she could from Lucy about caring for Ma, about slowing her illness long enough until they could afford to send her to real doctors. Her younger siblings would go back to their teachers and schoolmates, perhaps with Clodagh still chasing her adventuring dreams on the side. Art Carmichael would return to whatever nefarious affairs he busied himself with, perhaps with Marlowe now under his employ. That certainly wouldn't be ideal, but she knew Marlowe could look after himself, and once he'd made enough money, he and Aoife could...

  She found herself growing more wistful with every thought, every iteration of a future where she would be allowed to stay in this city and its darkness. Without anyone or anything showing her what lay ahead, she somehow knew it to be an impossibility. The wheels of the fate of the world and her hand in it had already begun to turn—perhaps long before she was born. And they marched on, indifferent to the lives they trod on, both man and Malady.

  Carmichael had come to a stop ahead of the group, and the men around him gradually parted, forming a semblance of a semicircle around him. Unbidden, Souness took his place on the right side of his employer and resumed his silent watch over the proceedings. Marlowe glanced back at Aoife for a fleeting second before hurrying his way over to the other side of Carmichael.

  Aoife stopped and looked around. They had walked a short distance but now stood closer to the edge of the river banks. Here, off the beaten path, there was no fencing to stop carriages or pedestrians from falling over. Instead, the ground ended in a steep decline that led directly into the water below. It seemed they had come to a kind of storage space occupied by the containers she had spotted earlier from the other side of the bend. The stacks of containers were arranged—whether by accident or design—in a roughly circular pattern with the river bank completing a portion of the circumference. And Aoife now stood in the centre of this circle—the centre of the ring.

  A hint of her heat bubbled deep within her chest, and she became acutely aware of her own heartbeat. Curiously, she also became aware of the Thames—hearing, sensing the currents within it. Energy... power surged within and throughout her bloodstreams, and in this moment, Aoife felt she could scale buildings with one jump and take on anyone in a fight—even the Dragoon of Valor Company.

  Behind her, Mr Rockford walked up and towered over her, Samson trotting beside him. She noticed that the dog had stopped growling at Carmichael and instead pattered about in the circle, occasionally bending down to sniff the ground. He looked to be back to his normal self, broken out of whatever spell Carmichael had held him under. She tried to shake off that absurd thought again, and looked across to the racketeer, waiting with bated breath to hear exactly what he had in mind.

  "Here's the thing, Aoife," his ever hair-raising tenor rang out into the night. He had his hands tucked together in front of him, as if he were about to conduct a sacred ceremony. He stood a step or two ahead of the two men beside him, and from where Aoife faced him, only Carmichael was shone in moonlight, the rest of his men cast in shadows. His pale skin—taut against his gaunt bony features—seemed to take on an otherworldly glow as he continued his speech. "I haven't been entirely truthful with you. About why I'd been hosting fights at St Marcus. Well, I wasn't lying about it simply being exquisitely enjoyable for me to watch. Young men and women going at it, testing their limits. Real desperate stuff. I love it.

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  "But you see, there was an ulterior motive to my business—insofar as an underground fight club can have any motives that aren't secret to begin with, but I digress. I'm what you might call... a recruiter of sorts. Always on the lookout for the next bright talent that can join the army that I'm helping to build. I'm looking for younger people—such as yourself—that have physical tools, mental fortitude, and a flair... for the fantastic.

  "Over the years, I've found that the best way to seek out the particular blend of talent I'm looking for is to... throw candidates into the lion's den, so to speak. I've done this a lot, you see, over a very long time. I have it down to a science. I've learned that the best way to capture the exact mix of the attributes I need is to create a situation where the candidates are forced to tap into all three, and I mean really dig into them. I don't mean because an instructor or an examiner told them to do it, but because they truly believed that if they didn't, then they'd die. That's when we all show our true mettle, Aoife Griffin. When we're staring death and our own shortcomings right in the face.

  "Eventually, I came up with a formula. Set up shop in a neighbourhood most likely to draw the most derelict youths dissatisfied with their lot in life. Dangle wealth, notoriety, and the sweet taste of victory as their just reward. Make them think that they must rely solely on their strength and wits to survive these fights, but every once in a while, turn up the challenge just enough... that those who are equipped to do so are forced to break the rules, beseech an extra bit of help from our little friends that surround us."

  Carmichael spread his arms again in an exaggerated flourish, and for a split second, Aoife thought that she could see the air where his arms had cut through, or the myriad water droplets within it. Her heart now hammered against her chest with unchecked urgency, spraying a dash of heat with each beat.

  He had known—always known—perhaps before she came to terms with it herself, that she was a Magicker. The fights at St Marcus had been one big test to draw this Magic out of her, but to what end? What was this army he was building? Offhand, she could not think of any contemporary war that Brittania might be involved in. Then she felt something move beside her and looked up sharply to find that Mr Rockford had stepped in closer toward Carmichael, his face a mask of quiet fury.

  "So I hope you understand now, Aoife, that you needn't be afraid. I'm never going to hurt you. Why would I? You're the latest of the gems that I've uncovered... or at least, I hope you are."

  Souness stepped out of the shadows and took up a position just ahead of Carmichael, and lowered his hood. In the moonlight, his eyes' sunken quality was even more pronounced, and they seemed to all but disappear into their sockets. Mr Rockford stirred again, and Aoife knew that the blacksmith had also recognized the Consumpted Dragoon.

  "I'm a harsh critic, Aoife, but I like to give people second chances," Carmichael continued, ignoring the open aggression Mr Rockford showed toward him and his right-hand man. "And... I also like to give choices when I can, provided their outcomes can be evaluated on an equivalent basis. So I present to you your first option. A long-awaited rematch against our esteemed hero of Enfield, he who single-handedly slew two Wyverns in one battle, the venerable Dragoon of Valor Company. I hope you've been itching for a chance to redeem yourself, hmm?"

  Despite the heat that beat within her and let her know she was up to the challenge, Aoife felt herself back away. She simply didn't understand. Why her? She barely knew anything about Magic, and yet she couldn't imagine that she was the only girl in Enfield who could burn heat within her blood. Why was Carmichael so obsessed with her? And even if she were somehow special—a perfect set of attributes he had been searching for—she had no reason to comply. If he were so keen on giving her choices, then she hoped for the choice to simply walk away.

  "I... I don't know what you see in me... Mr Carmichael," she muttered, deciding at the last second to use the honorific. "But everything you just said... it's way over my head. I just want to go back to my family and live a normal life. I'm sorry I got involved in your fight club, thinking it was fast money. But I'm really not the kind of person you're looking for... physical, mental, whatever. And I'm not interested in fighting in any kind of war. So... sorry for taking up your time, but maybe if we could just put this behind us and you could let me go?"

  Carmichael lowered his eyes, and for a moment, Aoife allowed herself to hope that he was about to ease off. But when he looked up again, there was a new glint to his eyes that didn't take its source from the moon.

  "My sweet Aoife, perhaps you don't realize that what you said is actually quite amusing. Not interested in war? My dear child, you're already in it. From the moment you were born, from the times of your parents, your grandparents, and your ancestors from antiquity."

  Something on Carmichael's face twitched, and his mirthless smile broke momentarily into a cold glare. There was a new source of movement, this time on Aoife's other side. Samson suddenly stood straighter and began to walk, step by steady purposeful step, toward Carmichael.

  "I really hoped you'd take the first option, Aoife. I think at least you would have been happier for it. As for me, though, I think this is a fresh and exciting development. I must admit, when young Seth told me that your aunt had a massive dog with her, I dismissed it as a frivolity common among your kind. Until I laid eyes on this beast myself, I hadn't fully anticipated how this night would turn out."

  Carmichael extended a spindly arm before him then spread apart his skeletal fingers. Samson stopped beneath this hand, his back turned to Aoife. Then he transformed.

  "Your second option, Aoife Griffin, is to put down this ungodly abomination, this freakish product of an unnatural union."

  At first, she thought it was a trick of the eye, some weird artifact of moonlight. Samson's fur suddenly grew, not stand on end in alarm or intimidation but actually lengthen, thicken, and darken. What was once light grey with bluish patches now became uniformly and decidedly black.

  Samson himself seemed to grow larger along with the fur, and it was a few moments before Aoife realized that he had become more muscular—and even more imposing—taking on the bulky presence of a particularly large ox. To her escalating dread, the bumps between his ears—normally hidden among the fur—shot out and reformed themselves into a pair of slick prominences, curved back and downward like goat horns. His characteristic bobtail also expanded, springing out into a ragged shock of undulating black hair. A low growl emanated from him again, though it had taken on a bizarre reverberatory quality. The sound echoed within Aoife's chest, and she could somehow feel her breath catching because of it. Then to her unforgettable horror, he turned around to face her.

  Where there used to be the disarming fur-covered face of a bobtailed sheepdog, the fur had been peeled back to reveal a fleshy mask of pure hatred and agony. The eyes were red and bulging, and somehow, Aoife could hear the screams within them. The snout had flattened and now pushed up against the face, the nostrils turned into jagged vertical slits like some grotesquely mutilated boar. Great streams of saliva dripped from the gaping maw, almost human-like in its angles but within it were rows of sharp uneven teeth that were neither human nor canine. The Samson that now snarled savagely at Aoife wasn't part-dog. He had become fully Malady. A Barghest.

  Then with a blood-curdling roar, this thing that was no longer Samson charged.