Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [77]
‘Still, I wouldn’t mind getting to meet …’ I said, but suddenly Nicholas was gone.
The pentagram was empty, with just my werelight burning at its centre. Before I could snuff it out I felt something grab me by the head and try to drag me bodily into the pentagram. I panicked, pulling and twisting frantically to try and escape. Nightingale had been emphatic about not stepping into the pentagram, and I had no intention of finding out why. I yanked my head back, but I felt my heels scrape in the turf as I was dragged forward – towards the pentagram. Then I saw it. Below my own werelight, in the centre of the pentagram, was a dark shadow like the mouth of a pit dug into the earth. I could see the roots of the grass and the worms frantically trying to burrow back into the sides, the layers of topsoil and London clay fading into the darkness.
I was almost on the brink when I realised that whatever was dragging me was working through my own spell. I tried to shut down the werelight but it stayed lit, glowing now with a sullen yellow colour. I’d pushed my shoulders so far back that I was practically lying vertical, and still my heels ploughed forward.
I heard Nightingale yelling and looked over to see him running flat out towards me. I had a horrible feeling that he wasn’t going to make it in time. In my desperation I had one more thing to try. It’s not easy to concentrate when you’re being dragged into oblivion, but I forced myself to take a deep breath and make the correct forma. Suddenly the werelight burned a fiery red. I made the shape with my mind that I hoped would pour in the magic, but I couldn’t tell whether it was working. My heels ploughed through the edges of the pentagram and I felt a rush of excitement, a hunger for violence and a whole ocean of shame and humiliation and lust for revenge.
I dropped the fireball half a metre and let go.
There was a disappointingly quiet thump, like the sound a heavy dictionary would make if you dropped it. Then the ground lifted up underneath my legs and knocked me tumbling backwards. I hit the branches of the cherry tree behind me and caught a glimpse of a column of earth shooting upwards like a freight train leaving a tunnel, before I fell out of the tree and the ground got its licks in.
Nightingale grabbed my collar and pulled me away as cherry blossom and clods of earth rained down around us. A big chunk landed on my head and shattered, sending dirt trickling down the back of my neck.
Then there was silence; nothing but the sound of distant traffic and a nearby car alarm going off. We waited half a minute to catch our breath, just in case something else was going to happen.
‘Guess what,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a name.’
‘You’re damned lucky still to have a head,’ said Nightingale. ‘What’s the name?’
‘Henry Pyke,’ I said. ‘Never heard of him,’ said Nightingale.
Predictably my headband torch had died, so Nightingale risked a werelight. Where the hole had been was now a shallow dish-shaped depression three metres across. The turf was completely destroyed, ground into a mix of dead grass and pulverised soil. Something round and dirty and white was resting near my foot. It was a skull. I picked it up.
‘Is that you, Nicholas?’ I asked.
‘Put that down, Peter,’ said Nightingale. ‘You don’t know where it’s been.’ He surveyed the mess we’d made of the garden. ‘The rector’s not going to be happy about this,’ he said.
I put the skull down, and as I did, I noticed something else embedded into the ground. It was a pewter badge depicting a dancing skeleton. I recognised it as the one Nicholas Wallpenny had ‘worn’. He must have been buried in it.
‘We did say we were hunting vandals,’ I said.
I picked up the badge and felt just the tiniest flash of tobacco smoke, beer and horses.
‘Perhaps,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I doubt he’s going to accept that as an explanation.’
‘A gas leak, maybe?’ I said.
‘There’s no gas main running under the church,’ said Nightingale. ‘He may become suspicious.’
‘Not if we tell him the gas leak story is a cover for digging up an unexploded bomb,’ I