Streets of blood (s-8) by Carl Sargent

Author:Carl Sargent [Sargent, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf

20

Midnight was closing in on them by the time they parked the Saab in Aldgate. The club wasn’t exactly classy, but the troll bouncer’s eyes lit up when he saw the notes Geraint waved under his snout. He got a nice advance, a promised fee per hour for making sure no one ran off with the car, and the further promise of a handsome bonus if the Saab was safe and undamaged when they got back. Geraint made a showy display of activating the car’s defense systems.

“Look, if anyone does touch it, some pretty unpleasant gas will start billowing all over the place, not to mention the ultrasonics, so make sure no one even gets close, right?”

The troll took the money and gave Geraint a greedy, confident grin. He opened his Italian-designer jacket and displayed a fine range of heavy throwing knives inside. “Don’t worry, boss. Anyone gets too nosy, you got their nose waiting for you when you get back. I’ll rip it right orf of their face. Pay me by the nose?”

Geraint smiled and walked away. “You’ll be paid well, term. See you soon.” I hope, he added to himself.

“We had to park farther away than I would have liked,” he told Francesca and Serrin. “Let’s hope we don’t have to make a run for it. Any closer to Houndsditch, though, and we couldn’t have relied on the car being in one piece when we got back. Tires would have been stolen and we’d probably find the doors beaten in just for the hell of it.”

“Is all that stuff you told Mr. Ugly true?” Francesca asked.

“Does it really matter? I certainly do have some defenses and alarms but unfortunately nerve gas isn’t licensed as one of them. Don’t know what this country’s coming to.”

They edged down the increasingly dark side streets. Some of the street lights had been shot out, but most had been dismantled and their cables and wires stripped for the copper. To their right, one of the very few remaining church clocks began to chime midnight.

“Hell, Geraint, I don’t like this at all.” Serrin’s stomach was protesting his fear. On top of all the food he had eaten, it didn’t feel comfortable at all.

“Okay, stop. Here. It’s the third house along on the left-see? Yeah, the one with the figure on top.”

Against the glimmering sky with its suffused glow of distant neon, they could dimly see the small statue perched atop the roof. Eros, the child archer.

“Serrin, time to do some checking. Top floor, back of the building.”

They’d discussed this move before setting off. Serrin hadn’t liked the idea of investigating with his astral body; being in a trance in the unlit mean streets of London’s East End was not a particularly comfortable thought. Instead he would simply assense the area first. He was startled by what he found.

“There’s a spell effect in the area. Detection spell. Someone’s running a detection spell.” Reacting swiftly, the elf dropped his astral perception and muttered a few words to activate a spell of his own.

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