Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [55]
Anji realised they were under the arena now, pillars arching up and bouncing their breathing back at them. It was still there, glowing and ducking as they ran through the corridors of stone trees. Anji spun on her heels, trying to get a clear view now, but it just gave her glimpses, partial views that made no sense. The pillars were spinning around her, disorientating. Looking up, she gasped as faint light glinted off another mosaic corbel. She wanted to fall down on her knees and let it be over.
Another shot cracked out and then Eleana had hold of her wrist, jolting her back and dragging her on.
Down again, always downwards. She almost recoiled as the moonlight flickered over a shape next to them. A dragon or an iguana or something, splayed out in stone.
At last, the gates. Flanked by witches’ cottages. Heavy iron. Black, coiling iron, rolled out like smoke. Eleana slammed into them first, shouldering to open them. She cried out when they rattled but didn’t budge. Locked.
‘Who the hell locked the gates?’ she yelled. Then she started cursing in Catalan and shaking at the bars. The street beyond was well-lit, silent, empty. Anji’s sight jumped about, taking in impressions, looking for a way through or over or round. Could they climb them?
‘Hey! Hey! Comrade!’ Eleana was yelling at a figure running up the street.
Anji pulled at the gates, hoping they were just being stupid enough to push when it said pull. The lock jangled at her, laughing.
‘Stand back,’ the man said and they scrambled away. Then he was shooting at the lock, aiming steadily. Six shots into the iron and then he kicked at it. It buckled. Not much, just enough to create a gap. Eleana squeezed through first, groaning as the hot metal gripped her. Anji was pushing her, shoving so the way would be free. She could almost sense the creature, creatures, advancing. Then Eleana was gone and hands were grabbing her, helping her through. She felt her shirt rip as it caught a twisted edge, then the delayed pain of the metal gouging at her arm. She almost fell into the road, one leg still between the gates. Someone was pulling her through, holding her tightly upright.
‘Anji? Are you all right? Who were you running from?’
She realised it was a familiar man holding her up against him, gripping her upper arms to keep her steady.
‘Jueves?’
She didn’t believe it. She focused on his question. They had been running... they had been running from...
‘There’s something in the parc,’ Eleana was gabbling, ‘it came after us.’
Anji looked back through the twisted metal. There was nothing there. Just a dried up fountain and a driveway. Then that vanished. She was rather embarrassed to realise she was blacking out. All she could feel as her vision went and her legs buckled, was the rough material of Jueves’s dark blue coat.
* * *
Chapter Seven
Odiós
Flicking through the notebooks, Eleana spotted a familiar street name. It was handwritten, in a fluid, hurried script which she guessed was the Doctor’s. The majority of notes in the book were in the neat, slightly squared small caps that Anji used. The street name was scrawled across a page, disturbing the neat lines of Anji’s work. There was a question mark after it. Escudellers?
Miquel. It was the street where they had found Miquel. Or what she knew was her brother’s body, though he had never been identified. The scrawl had a date in November next to it – the same date as he had been found. The same date, she realised, as the Doctor and Anji had first appeared in Barcelona.
She glanced at the bed. Anji was still unconscious. Or perhaps her faint had slipped into sleep. Eleana ran her finger down the notes on the same page. There was nothing obvious, nothing directly about her or her brother. These notes were, she suspected, fairly early. Whole extracts from newspaper reports were replicated, annotated with different coloured