Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [85]
Greyfrith seemed like another world. It seemed so far away, so irrelevant. Without realising it, she’d decided she wouldn’t be going back there. What she’d do instead, she wasn’t sure.
She glanced over at the Doctor.
* * *
Ferran watched the Last One from across the table.
‘I don’t usually come to pubs,’ she told him. Her mastery of the human language was impressive, he thought, although her species had always had a gift for translation. As he thought that, he remembered that she had come to Earth as an infant. English was her first language. He wondered if the Doctor had taught her the language of their own people.
She was smiling. She was an attractive woman, Ferran could admit that. From the outside, she was a young woman with a fine figure and a nice smile. But that had always been the way of her family: they looked like ordinary people, but inside that chest beat two hearts, and the blood in her veins wasn’t really blood: the genetic material twisted and writhed and re-formed the whole time. There were legends on many worlds of creatures who wore human form, but who were really demons, shapeshifters. That is what this ‘woman’ in front of him was.
She must die, and now.
‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked.
‘Er... Pernod and black?’ she said, asking him, rather than deciding for herself. She was weak. Where was the fire in her blood that had made her family rulers of the universe?
Ferran nodded, and went to order the drink. He walked up to the bar, tried to accost the serving maid, but the more obvious he made his impatience, the more the girl seemed to ignore him.
‘Fetch your master!’ he demanded.
The woman glared at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Not granted,’ Ferran told her. ‘Fetch your master.’
She called out, ‘Vic.’ This human was fat, jolty.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
‘Yes. A Pernod, a black, a lager. And I want to see this wench punished.’
Vic laughed. ‘Pernod and black and a lager. A pint?’
‘A pint of each,’ Ferran confirmed. The innkeeper chuckled again. ‘Is that your lady?’ he asked, indicating the Last One with a nudge of his head.
Ferran’s stomach lurched at the idea. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Your sister?’ he asked.
Ferran glared at him. ‘I want your wench punished.’
The barman looked at him. ‘Now, that joke was funny the first time, but I don’t think it’s funny now.’ He placed the two drinks down. Ferran threw him a fifty-pound note, and while the man checked it – such insolence! – Ferran slipped a capsule from his pocket. A nanotoxin, tailored to the Last One’s species. Death would be instantaneous. He dropped it into the drink. Ferran watched, quietly fascinated as it dissolved.
The wench coughed. Ferran looked up, about to reprimand her for her poor hygiene. She had a collection of notes and coins in her hand.
‘Your change,’ she explained.
‘How dare you!’ Ferran snapped.
The barman was heading back over. ‘That’s it, young man’ He opened up the till, pulled out the fifty-pound note. ‘Get out!’
Ferran glared at him.
The barmaid delighted in snatching the drinks back off the bar, and pouring them away.
The Last One was behind him. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Get out, the pair of you.’
She grabbed Ferran’s arm.
He recoiled, instinctively.
She pulled away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, hurrying off.
‘Wait!’ Ferran called, running after her.
The Last One hesitated at the doorway, then stepped out.
Ferran followed her into the street. ‘I apologise,’ he said, the words coming more easily than he’d thought possible. ‘I was tense. I meant no offence.’
She smiled. ‘You’re forgiven. Where should we go now?’
Ferran stayed silent.
‘All alone,’ she said, smiling. ‘I think this is the first time we’ve been alone together.’
‘It is,’ he assured her.
‘Someone always seems to interrupt,’ she continued.
‘I had noticed that, too,’ he admitted.
Ferran toyed with the idea of killing her here: the knife was in his coat pocket. A group of office workers bustled past, ending that idea there and then. The road was busy, there would be a lot of witnesses, and Ferran knew he wasn’t