Each Ember's Ghost by Steven Savile

Author:Steven Savile [Savile, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616615284
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Publishing
Published: 2012-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Maze Monsters

Alice traveled upriver along the Thames in a sleek-bodied speedboat, skipping over the spume and churning up the black water in its wake.

It was hard to believe the water had ever been clean, let alone fresh.

The small boat was more than powerful enough for her needs. She enjoyed the feeling of raw power beneath her as she surged through the water.

She’d already made the trip by road a dozen times over the last month, running through the various permutations of highway, backstreet, and alley that the streets offered, leaving nothing to chance. None of those routes was faster, or offered such a minimal chance of detection as going in by water.

It also offered her the best chance of escape.

She eased up on the throttle, coming to a stop beside an old jetty on the riverbank, overgrown weeds and tall grasses having reclaimed it. She tied the boat to one of the mooring posts and hopped out. She waited on the jetty for a few minutes in case some officious little man came waddling down the hill toward her, demanding that she should buy a ticket. Stranger things had happened. No one came. She hadn’t really thought they would, but it was better to be safe than sorry. So few staff remained on site that it was hardly surprising they didn’t bother with collecting mooring fees when they had to maintain the grounds, and care for the exhibits, keeping inquisitive and sticky-fingered guests in line. Collecting a couple of pounds for a boat on the slip was quite reasonably well down their list of priorities.

On her last visit she’d ascertained that parts of the grounds were sealed off from the general public, and had marked those out-of-bounds areas on the plans. There was a chance that she might have to venture off the beaten track when it came to making good her escape, but that all depended on exactly how the next hour or so played out.

It was the only part of her plan that she hadn’t been able to map out meticulously because it involved a certain amount of variance, depending very much on how the guards reacted or if they reacted at all. It was very much the fall back option, though. If things went well she’d be back on the speedboat and churning up Thames long before anyone noticed. That was the plan. Anything outside of that would involve a little extemporizing.

Hampton Court lay far enough away from the city that they no doubt hoped it was safe from the strange happenings elsewhere, just because it was out of the shadow of the dark clouds. That was a naïve way of thinking. Naïve and misguided. There were things here, she knew, that rivaled many of the monstrosities she had encountered within the Square Mile.

The difference was they kept themselves hidden, lurking in places where they wouldn’t be recognized for what they were, or for some, hiding out in plain sight precisely because they weren’t recognizable. Alice knew where they lurked.

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