Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [52]
blinked over his shoulder at the room, now partially lit by A cloud of light and energy, like a delicate sea creature, the corridor lamps. The man was gone.
trailing crackling fronds. It had terrified and astonished him.
‘Are you OK? Holly? What happened?’
And, just for a moment, he’d made out a human face, its She shook her head. Slowly at first and then with features writhing and twisting in fury.
unnatural speed, she began gabbling a stream of Vijay put his arm around Holly and together they incomprehensible words.
shambled down the corridor.
Vijay’s hand cracked across her face and she fell, sobbing, The gaudy wallpaper in the TV room was, Ace surmised, into his embrace.
an attempt to bring a touch of homeliness to the otherwise Vijay picked her up bodily, forced her into some clothes sterile station. There were a few cheap prints pinned to the and managed to struggle out into the corridor. He threw her walls and a dog-eared poster of Che Guevara. Skinny over his shoulder and began to walk back to the control Christmas streamers pocked with drawing-pin holes were room. But Holly pulled away and slid to the floor.
ranged haphazardly across the ceiling.
‘All right, Hol. It’s OK now,’ said Vijay soothingly.
After the crisis in the control room, Ace and Robin had She raised bloodshot eyes to him.
been allocated the TV room as their billet for the night. Vijay
‘It was James! It was him!’
had been very kind, helping with bedding and refreshment,
‘James?’
although he still seemed a little embarrassed in Ace’s She grabbed Vijay’s hand.
company. She thought of that old gag, ‘I didn’t recognise
‘My fiancé. You remember?’
you with your clothes on’.
Vijay nodded dumbly.
For a while, she and Robin had watched TV, or rather,
‘He died. He’s dead,’ Holly cried, her voice hoarse. ‘But Robin had watched TV and she had watched him. Blue light he was there in the room. And he wanted me. I could feel it!’
from the screen bounced across his features as he sat Vijay sighed heavily and folded her into his arms, cooing entranced by a programme bravely entitled Colour me Pop!
softly.
Ace liked the curve of his jaw in the moody light and the
‘All right, Hol. Don’t talk now.’
way his Brian Jones fringe hung untidily in his eyes.
She flashed angry eyes. ‘I want to! I want to talk! James is A youthful strutting figure had popped on to the screen dead. How could he be here? How could he?’
and Ace laughed out loud.
‘What is it?’ asked Robin, smiling.
146
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DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
‘Is that who I think it is?’
A thick mist hung about the base of the Minster, gathering Robin frowned. ‘Mick Jagger? Yeah.’
in eddies inside the crumbling yellow niches.
‘You should see him now. He’s well past it.’
Tim Medway strolled to his car, rubbing his hands
‘What do you mean?’
together to keep warm and looking around him at the Ace bit her tongue. She had forgotten where she was. And awakening city. He smiled.
when.
Daylight was bleeding through the dark blue of night and
‘Nothing,’ she said quietly.
milk bottles greeted the morning with a chorus of chinking.
Sometime after eleven, they had settled down for the Coloured bulbs hung across the street like strings of paste night, their beds separated by a pile of coats, boots and jewellery, swaying slightly in the cold wind.
Ace’s rucksack. Robin clicked off the light.
This was Medway’s first time in York. Arriving mid-Ace heard him undressing in the darkness and grinned to afternoon the previous day, he’d found himself so herself. His teeth chattered as he plunged beneath the thick enchanted by the labyrinth of winding streets and tea shops blankets.
that he’d decided to postpone his appearance in Crook Ace was dog tired but her brain refused to quieten down.
Marsham. Old Trevithick could wait for his interview.
An image of that vile corpse out on the moor sprang into Probably had nothing better to do anyway.
her mind and she shook her head