Hugh agreed when I explained, then said, ‘We need to plan around this “trap” of Max’s, in case we need to use it to gain entry into the forum. How long before you can come to Old Scotland Yard?’
I looked at Finn and he said, ‘A couple of hours should do it.’
Hugh nodded and we all agreed to meet then. Finn grinned as he slung an arm round my shoulder. ‘So, Gen, you ready to come and commune with the magnificence that is’ – he gave me an exaggerated wink – ‘nature in my glade?’
I groaned and elbowed him (gently) in the gut.
Chapter Forty-Eight
‘The entrance is through there?’ I frowned at the impenetrable tangle of greenery. It was about twelve feet high and wide, and crowded round a double-stemmed oak tree. Ground level was a dense mix of sharp-spiked gorse and stinging nettles. Above, dark-leaved rhododendrons were twisted with convolvulus, the weed’s white trumpet flowers dotting the greenery. Finger-thick blackberry stems sporting wicked-looking thorns and hard, unripe fruits arched out of the tangle, swaying in the summer breeze like the feelers of a monster triffid.
We were in one of the rougher, less-used areas of Primrose Hill park. The wide-spread branches of the oak cast a heavy shade, but other than the bushes beneath it, the area around the tree was free of anything but rough grass for a good thirty or so feet. It meant no one would be likely to use the oak as an illicit trysting place, and anyone using the entrance would have a clear view before either popping out of thin air or disappearing, as we were about to do. Something that would either freak humans out or make them too curious; a trait that doesn’t just kill cats.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks, Gen,’ Finn said encouragingly. ‘Though it’s a touch more overgrown than I remember.’
‘Thought you said this was a regular shortcut?’ The shortcut led through a section of unclaimed Between– the space joining the Fair Lands and the humans’ world – to London’s other parks and green spaces, including Wimbledon Common, home to the satyr herd (and wombles, though the satyrs get a bit ansty when anyone mentions that), and Finn’s glade, obviously. Supposedly the shortcut was a five-minute walk which was way quicker than fighting through London’s traffic for more than an hour, with the added advantage that we’d get to Finn’s glade before the fertility rite magic forced me to commune with the earth or rethink the option of a sex-a-thon with Finn. Not that part of me wasn’t doing that anyway.
‘It is a regular shortcut, or it was anyway. I haven’t used this entrance in a couple of years, though.’ He held out his hand. ‘Just imagine it parting like a pair of curtains, put a bit of juice behind the thought, and stick close to me.’
‘Yeah, me doing spontaneous magic,’ I muttered, linking my hand with his, which was warm and firm and filled me with totally inappropriate ideas about how it’d feel on my body. ‘Like that’s really gonna happen.’
‘Hey, have some faith, Gen,’ he said, plunging into the thicket and pulling me behind him.
I yelped, felt the gorse scratch at my ankles, the brambles snag at my clothes, then the magic slipped over me like grass tickling my skin and darkness swirled as we left the humans’ world. Cinders crunched under my feet as I stepped on to the path: the safe way to travel through unclaimed Between. Paths mean you get to where you’re going, and don’t end up lost or falling prey to the cannibalistic half-formed— semi-evolved spirits hungry for magic and flesh. Finn tugged on my hand and I took another step. My bones seemed to lighten as if gravity had lessened and for a second I felt energised. Then fierce sunshine made me squint, loud bellows followed by high-pitched screams assaulted my ears and I gagged on the stench of shit and sulphur.
‘Hell’s thorns!’ Finn yanked me down behind an ochre-coloured boulder the size of a small car. ‘No wonder it’s so overgrown, a herd of swamp-dragons have moved in.’
I peered round the boulder. About twenty huge beasts, the size of double-decker buses, looking like a mutant rhinos with scales, small vestigial wings and long whip-like barbed tails, were lumbering through the steaming yellow smoke of an apocalyptic-style landscape, snatching at the charred remains of trees. Around another fifteen or so swampies were wallowing in the massive bubbling sulphur craters, sending rivers of liquid sulphur cascading over the craters’ edges. The liquid sulphur shone red like streams of super-heated blood and I could just see its fey-like blue flame as it burned.
Swamp-dragon is a misnomer. The name comes from their first appearance back in the mangrove swamps in Java, Indonesia, in the 1690s. It was thought to be their natural habitat before it was discovered the swampies were just on walkabout after emerging from the Kawah Ijen volcano in the east. They’d made enough of an impression last time I’d run into them, I’d done research.
Good thing about swamp-dragons is they have less intelligence than a cow, aren’t the fastest creatures for their size, and, unsurprisingly given the nose-stinging environment, have absolutely no sense of smell.
Bad thing is they’re omnivores and will munch on anything they stumble across. Usually after stomping on it like they’re playing whack-a-mole: their standard method of disabling prey, despite being able to breathe fire. So long as we could run fast, dodge their tractor-wheel-sized feet, and stay on the cinder path, we’d be okay. Probably.
Another high-pitched scream came from above us, followed by a tiny body thudding onto the boulder then bouncing off to land at my feet. A garden fairy, his throat slashed, still twitching in the last throes of ecstasy as he died. I blinked at it, and then, as another screaming, entangled pair zipped past us, it clicked that this had to be where Lecherous Lampy the gnome was getting his out-of-season stock from. The heat from the swamp-dragons had accelerated the fairies’ life cycle, and being small and fast, the swampies weren’t likely to eat them.
They would us.
I looked at Finn. He’d dropped his human Glamour. His horns curved a good foot above his head, his body still athletic but shoulders and chest broader, muscles thicker, more honed. The angles of his face sharper, feral and even more gorgeous than his clean-cut handsome look— Lust coiled tight in my belly. Forget stinking, stomping swamp-dragons, I wanted to hole-up with him somewhere for at least a week. No, make that a month. I closed my eyes, forced the feelings back.
‘So,’ I said, adding an airy note to my voice, ‘want to go back, or run for it?’
‘Run for it?’ He shook his head. ‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, are you crazy? One slip and we’d be swampie pancakes.’
A low chuffing cough sounded behind us.
We turned as one.
A dark grey cat, striped with black and the size of the tigers in the zoo, crouched belly low to the ground about ten feet away. It stared at us out of gleaming green eyes, ears flat to its skull, tail swishing from side to side as if readying to pounce.
‘What the fuck is that?’ I muttered.
‘Haven’t a clue, Gen,’ Finn replied just as quietly, ‘but it doesn’t look friendly.’
The cat gave another low chuffing sound and its lips drew back, seemingly in a grin, exposing more of its long sabretooth fangs.
‘It doesn’t,’ I agreed. ‘And it’s blocking the exit.’ Coincidence or deliberate? I sent my inner radar out. ‘It pings as an animal. No magic, nothing like human or fae in there.’
‘My take too.’
‘I’m guessing it could be some sort of ailuranthrope?’ I said, though I’d never heard of a weretiger, or even a normal tiger, that strange grey and black colour, not to mention the big cat looked suspiciously like the one that had climbed out of the abyss on the Moon tarot card. The card had said, ‘The beasts are coming.’ Maybe it hadn’t been talking about the Emperor and his werewolves after all.