Molly grabbed the leech with one hand, grimaced at the feel of the thing, and then tore it off Adam’s neck. It didn’t want to release its hold, but no one argues with Molly Metcalf. The leech came free with a loud, disgusting sucking sound, and Molly triumphantly brandished the ugly thing above her head.
“All right,” I said. “Where did you get that from?”
“I stole it,” said Molly, entirely unrepentant. “I thought your family might be able to do something with it.”
“And you weren’t at all thinking of selling it for quite remarkable amounts of money?”
“Only if your family couldn’t do something with it.”
“How are you able to handle it with your bare hand, without it draining your life energies?”
“Because I’m a witch,” Molly said witheringly. “And nothing happens to me that I don’t allow.”
“Of course,” I said. “I was forgetting.”
Benway, almost in tears, came forward to look at his fallen Adam. “Look at what you’ve done to him . . . You’ve ruined him! It’ll take me months to charge him up again.”
Molly grinned. “Good luck doing that; I’ve got your leech.”
Benway tried to snatch it from her. She held it back out of reach, waggling the nasty thing temptingly. Benway turned to the patients, still watching from their far corner.
“Look!” he said harshly. “They’re stealing the one thing that can cure you! They want to keep it to themselves. Are you going to let them get away with that? Get the leech back from them, and your next treatments will be free! If they take it out of here, you’re all going to die!”
“Time we were leaving,” I said to Molly.
“You think they can stop us?” she said.
“I don’t want to have to hurt them,” I said.
“You always were a soft touch,” said Molly.
We ran for the front door, and the whole crowd came baying after us, everyone desperate, hysterical, reaching for us with outraged hands. If I’d really thought the leech would help them, I would have made Molly give it back. But I had no faith in the thing, and even less faith in Benway and Raven to do the right thing with it. Con men only look after themselves. Benway and Raven were both screaming at the crowd to get the leech, running right along behind, almost out of their minds at the sight of their most lucrative meal ticket departing.
I ran out the front door and onto the street, with Molly treading on my heels. The few people passing by didn’t even slow down to look at us; an armoured Drood and a wild witch with something unnatural in her hand were just business as usual in the Shade. I slammed the door shut the moment Molly was through, and kept it closed by pressing my armoured back against it.
“Now what?” I said. “We can’t just run through the streets pursued by a screaming mob. Someone would notice.”
“Easy!” said Molly. “We steal an ambulance!”
She pointed to the one parked just down the street. The sign on its side read The Peter Paul Clinic. Private Ambulance. Group Bookings Available. No Time-wasters.
The door slammed and shuddered against my back. I turned around, crushed the lock with my golden hand, and then backed cautiously away. The door held, but still shook ominously as a great many fists hammered against its other side. People who’d seen their hope snatched away, and thought they were fighting for their lives. I looked around, spotted a nearby parking meter, and smiled briefly. Never liked the things. I grabbed hold of its column with one hand, and ripped the meter right out of the pavement. Chunks of concrete went flying in all directions. I jammed the parking meter against the door, forcing it into place.
“That won’t hold them for long,” I said. “Those are some highly motivated sick people.”
“Get in the ambulance!” said Molly.
I hurried over to the driver’s door. There was still no one behind the steering wheel, but the door was locked. Molly tried the passenger door, but that didn’t want to open either. I shrugged, and jerked the door open with one golden hand. The lock shattered.
“Ow!” the ambulance said loudly. “That hurt, you beast!”
I wasn’t thrown. I’ve had stranger things talk to me. The ambulance had a sultry female voice that made me think of a mature stage actress, a little past her prime but still game.
“Sorry,” I said. “We’re in a bit of a hurry.”
“Men always are, dear,” said the ambulance. “You have no idea how to treat a lady . . . Hey! What are you doing? Don’t you dare! Get out of me this instant!”
But I was already settling into the driver’s seat. The passenger door opened, and Molly dropped into the seat next to me. She still had the big black leech in her hand. She didn’t seem too sure what to do with it. She didn’t want to risk losing it, but every time she looked at what she was holding, she winced. I looked for the keys to the ignition, but not only were there no keys; there was no ignition. The steering wheel didn’t move under my hands, and there were no pedals on the floor.
“How do you get this ambulance going?” I said.
“Oh, the usual ways, darling,” said the ambulance. “Flowers, chocolates, buck’s fizz . . .”
“You drive yourself?” said Molly.
“Of course!” said the ambulance. “A girl has to make a living.”
“Then take us to the Wulfshead Club,” said Molly.
“I am not taking you anywhere,” the ambulance said haughtily. “I’m on my break. Of course, if you were to take advantage of my generous nature by offering a poor working girl a substantial bribe . . .”
I looked back at the shaking and shuddering Clinic door. It didn’t look like it would last much longer.
“How much?” I said.
“Oh, it’s not about the money, honey,” said the ambulance. “In this business, it’s all about the suffering . . .”
Molly slapped the leech onto the dashboard, and it stuck there. The ambulance made a surprised sound. Molly goosed the leech with a small lightning bolt from her fingertip, and the heavily veined flesh shuddered briefly. Lights flashed wildly all across the dashboard, and the whole ambulance trembled for a moment.
“Oh yes, darling!” said the ambulance. “That will do nicely!”
The Clinic door burst open, and men and women driven crazy by desperate need fought one another to get into the street first. The ambulance started its engine. Turning as one mind to look, the crowd saw me sitting behind the wheel and charged forward, shouting and howling. Those in the rushing mass were so out of their minds now, they weren’t even producing words, just animal noises. The ambulance surged forward, and those in the crowd ran along beside it, beating on the sides with their hands. Some of them grabbed hold, and were pulled along as the ambulance accelerated, before falling away again, to be trampled underfoot by the running mob. I looked back at the desperate faces, slowly losing all hope, and then looked at the leech on the dashboard.
“Stop the ambulance,” I said. “Stop right now.”
“Really?” said the ambulance.
“Yes!”
“Well, make up your mind, dear. And if those animals scratch my paintwork, you’re going to be paying for my next makeover.”
The ambulance screeched to a halt, and the crowd took new heart. Those who’d stopped running started again, and the mob soon surrounded the ambulance on all sides, beating on the walls and trying to force open the doors. Others threw things at the windscreen. Molly swivelled round in her seat, the better to give me a very hard look.
“If they get their hands on us, they’ll tear us to pieces. Tell me you have an idea.”
“I have an idea.”
“Is it a good idea?”
“It’s an idea.”
“I’m not going to like this at all, am I?” said Molly.
I explained my idea to her, briefly, and after a mome
nt a big, broad grin spread slowly over her face.
I armoured up my right hand, took a firm hold of the leech, and pulled it off the dashboard. It didn’t want to let go, but finally jerked free with a nasty sucking sound. The ambulance made a disgusted noise. The leech pulsed hungrily in my hand, single-minded as only genetic engineering could make it, but it couldn’t get to me past the strange matter. The crowd had closed in all around us now, rocking the ambulance back and forth. I kicked open the driver’s door, leaned out, and held up the leech so everyone could see it. Everyone in the crowd froze where they were.
“Back off!” I said loudly. “Or I’ll crush it!”
Those at the front backed away immediately, and word spread quickly through the crowd. The noise fell away as people reluctantly retreated, and the ambulance grew still. Those who could see the leech in my hand looked at me with a wretched mixture of hope and despair. I leaned out farther, holding the leech up before me. A dark inkblot against my golden hand. All eyes were fixed on it. Benway and Raven forced their way to the front of the crowd.
“Give it back!” said Benway. “That belongs to us!”
“You’ve no right to it!” said Raven.
“Neither do you,” I said. “It should belong to the people who need it. But if you want it, it’s yours.”
I threw it straight to them. Those in the crowd couldn’t believe it. They made a sound like they’d been hit, and surged forward from all sides at once. Benway and Raven got to the leech first, snatching it out of mid-air. They each got a hand on it at the same time, both to preserve it for themselves and for fear it might fall to the ground and be trampled underfoot. Or that the leech might be torn apart by the crowd fighting over it. Benway and Raven both took a firm hold on the leech at the same moment . . . with their bare hands. In the heat of the moment they’d forgotten all about gloves and special tongs.
Both of them cried out in shock and horror as the leech sucked the life energies out of them. They tried to let go, but their hands had clamped shut on the leech in a convulsive grip. The leech had them, and it wasn’t letting go. I gave Molly the signal and she leaned over me, pointed one finger at the leech, and blasted it with another of her miniature lightning bolts. Just enough to really speed up the process. The leech went into overdrive and sucked all the life energies out of Benway and Raven in a moment. Leaving nothing but two shrivelled, crumpled shapes; desiccated mummies in good suits. They fell dead to the ground, with no more sound than two dried-up insect husks.
Those in the crowd ran right over them to get to the leech; not even looking down as they fought one another to get to the one thing they thought might save them. A dozen hands clamped down on the leech at once, not caring what its touch might do. And Molly hit the leech with a slightly different magical lightning bolt. This one reversed the leech’s polarity, forcing it to release all the life energies it had stored in one great blast. The leech exploded, but there was no blood, just a blast of brilliant light. A wonderful life-giving light that filled the street, washing over all of the crowd at once. They stood still, awed and confused, as the stored life energies sank into them. And the pain left them, one by one, and the madness went out of their faces.
They turned and looked at one another wonderingly, and then laughed and cried and embraced one another, free of the pain and the horror, and the deaths that had been staring over their shoulders for so long. They turned away from the ambulance and went back to the Clinic to share the good news with their friends and family. Not that they were cured, but that they had a lot more time than they’d thought. I watched them go, and wished I could have gone with them. That I had reason to go with them. Molly settled back into her seat as I armoured down my hand and closed the driver’s door.
“All right,” said Molly. “As ideas go, that one wasn’t too bad.”
“Just this once,” I said, “nobody dies on my watch. Sometimes I forget that I’m not just here to fight the bad guys. I’m here to save people.”
“With a little help from your friends,” said Molly.
“Of course,” I said. “Okay, ambulance, the Wulfshead Club, if you please. As fast as you can.”
The ambulance set off down the street, accelerating fiercely. With all the alarms and sirens going, at no extra charge.
“I’m going to need a new job, aren’t I?” said the ambulance after a while. “Never liked Benway or Raven . . . and I never really liked being an ambulance. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve had to wash out of the back of me on a Saturday night.”
Molly looked at me. “She keeps saying things . . .”
“I had noticed,” I said. I studied the departing street in the rearview mirror. “This time next week, there’ll be a shrine back there, to mark where a miracle took place. And a whole new bunch of con men will emerge, to take advantage of the situation. Such is life. But it does feel good to do some good.”
“You look good, Eddie,” said Molly. “You look . . . better. How are you feeling? Did any of the leech’s light touch you?”
“No,” I said. “It couldn’t get past my torc. I’m still dying. But for the first time since the Drood doctors gave me my deadline, I feel alive again. I’ve got my hope back.”
“About time,” said Molly. “I was getting really tired of carrying you.”
We laughed together as the ambulance sped through the streets of London.
CHAPTER FIVE
We All Wear Masks
I’ve driven a Nineteen Thirties racing Bentley through strange dimensions, and piloted an experimental jet over worlds that don’t even have names yet. I’ve run across carriage rooftops on the Trans-Siberian Express, and sailed a ship through a Faerie Gate. But I still say travelling in that ambulance from the Peter Paul Clinic to the Wulfshead Club is one of the most nerve-racking things I’ve ever done. Even though I was sitting in the driver’s seat, I had no control over where we were going or how we were getting there. Mostly I just braced my legs and clung to the unmoving steering wheel with both hands, to keep from being thrown back and forth as the ambulance hit London traffic like a shark thrown into a toddler’s swimming pool. She used her lights and sirens to intimidate everyone into getting out of her way, and when that didn’t work, she was quite happy to play chicken with oncoming cars and threaten to rear-end everything else. Or drive right over them. Speed restrictions were treated as mere suggestions, and the rules of the road were only for the weak and the spineless. She had a particular fondness for side-sweeping bicycle messengers, but then, don’t we all?
She also liked to shout threats, abuse, and very vulgar suggestions at people who had the temerity to use pedestrian crossings. I wasn’t sure they could hear her, but I still stayed slumped down in my seat, hiding my face as much as possible. Word must have got ahead of the ambulance, because after a while it did seem like all the other traffic was going out of its way to give her plenty of room, including by driving on the pavements. I could understand that; I’d have moved to another country to make sure she had enough room. I just hoped the ambulance didn’t crash into anything. I really didn’t want to be cut out of the wreckage of a loudly blaspheming ambulance.
“Could we please slow down, just a bit?” I said plaintively. “I think I left my stomach behind at the last mini roundabout. The one you went the wrong way round.”
“Thought you were in a hurry, darling,” the ambulance said cheerfully.
“Not this much of a hurry,” I said. “There are theoretical particles that go backwards in Time that go slower than this!”
“Don’t listen to him!” Molly said loudly. “This is the most fun I’ve had all day! You go, girl!”
“You are really not helping,” I said.
I would have liked to close my eyes, but didn’t dare. There was a horrid fascination in seeing sudden death coming straight at me, at speed. I just hoped the way the ambulance dodged disaster again and again, usual
ly at the very last moment, would turn out to be some kind of good omen. Molly, arms and legs braced, whooped loudly in the seat beside me, treating the whole thing as a roller-coaster ride. She grinned across at me.
“What are you looking so worried about? You can always armour up!”
“Not in public,” I said. “Hey! That was a red light!”
“See if I care, darling,” said the ambulance. “I think they do that just to tease me.”
“This is not how I thought I was going to die,” I said wistfully.
Several near misses and a few heart attacks later, the ambulance finally skidded to a halt at the end of the alley that led to the Wulfshead Club. I slowly relaxed, and looked around carefully. The rest of the traffic carried on as normal, trying to pretend that nothing mind-numbingly dangerous and scrotum-tighteningly awful had just happened. For their own peace of mind. I knew how they felt.
Night had fallen during our journey. Street lamps glowed sullenly, office buildings blazed arrogantly, and the best the night sky could manage was a sprinkling of stars and a crescent moon. A few pedestrians wandered past, but no one so much as glanced at the ambulance, because this was an area for minding your own business. I opened the driver’s door and got out, as quickly as dignity would allow. Molly jumped out of her side, quite happily. The alarms and flashing lights snapped off.
“Told you I’d get you here by the quickest route,” said the ambulance. “Who needs sat-nav? Arrogant little things, with their celebrity voices . . . I know London. I even know bits of it that aren’t always there, and a few that should be.”
“Were you by any chance a taxi driver in some previous existence?” said Molly. “Or even a taxi?”