Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [129]
But something was wrong.
The sound was changing. He could hear a strong steady beat, but it wasn’t his heart.
Creed realized it was someone else’s footsteps. This one sound stood out from all the city noises around him. Creed tried to ignore it but the harder he fought it the more it claimed his attention. It was as if his awareness made it louder, singling it out from the barrage of city background sounds.
The swift tip‐tapping of a woman’s footsteps. Creed realized that they were coming from just ahead of him. He looked up and, through a gap in the crowd, he saw her.
She was a small woman with dark hair hanging in short wings on either side of her head. But it was the way she walked that caught Creed’s attention: she marched along swiftly, with great determination, one arm clutching a bag, the other arm swinging at her side, like a toy soldier.
It was an odd walk. It made Creed’s heart turn over. It was Anna’s walk.
The small girl paused at the street corner, waiting for the lights to change. The green man showed and she crossed the street. The small body, the birdlike angle of her head as she watched the traffic, the swing of her hips, that marching gait.
It was Anna.
The lights were changing as Creed hurried to the street corner where she’d crossed. He stepped off the kerb but a shriek of rubber drove him back. A taxi driver made an obscene gesture at Creed as he came off his brakes and accelerated away. The traffic thickened, a solid wall of metal roaring past. Creed waited until he saw a gap then sprinted across the road. On the other side of the road he paused. This street branched into two, like a Y. Anna could have gone either way.
Which direction to follow? Right or left? A crowd of pedestrians came across the road and walked past him as he tried to make up his mind. He realized that the traffic lights had changed. He was wasting time. Which way?
Don’t think about it, said a voice in his mind. Just let it happen.
Creed turned left. It was quiet residential street, moving away from the main thoroughfare. Among the apartment houses there were occasional shops: a seedy‐looking taxi office, a late‐night launderette, two curry restaurants, and under a broad spreading autumn oak tree, a brightly lit café which looked like the hang‐out for the off‐duty taxi drivers.
There were half a dozen cabs parked outside and a couple of men had the hood of one open, inspecting the engine and discussing it.
Creed found himself crossing the road and walking into the café. The bright lights hurt his eyes and for a moment he had trouble seeing.
‘All right, love?’ A girl smiled at him from a steaming coffee machine beyond the gleaming counter.
‘Espresso,’ said Creed. He paid and carried the small cup into the back of the café. The back room was dimly lit and more mellow than the brilliant front of the café. It was a long, rectangular room lined with booths and heavy with smoke and conversation.
The clientele in this place was mixed. In the front section it was mostly the taxi drivers and a sprinkling of other late‐night workers. Through here, in the back room, there were still some taxi men but they were outnumbered by a younger, trendier crowd. Creed figured that the café had been discovered by the Bohemian set. At the table nearest Creed a young man in a beret was gesticulating angrily, making a point as he jabbed his cigarette in the air. Two beautiful girls scantily dressed in bizarre garb were sitting opposite him, nodding like exotic blossoms. Creed hardly registered them as he came in.
Standing at the rear of the room, by a serving hatch, was Anna.
She had her back to him, waiting while a young woman sliced a piece of cake for her. Creed set his coffee down, untasted, on the first table he passed. The young couple sitting there looked at him and the boy made some remark but Creed didn’t hear him. He was walking towards the small woman at the back of the room waiting for her cake. Walking towards Anna.
Creed was halfway there when the thought hit him.
Anna was dead.
His emotions were all howling