A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(58)

No one will, he heard in his mind, and shuddered at the touch, at the cold of those words. She is under my protection.

He had no hope, of course, that this would be the last—

I need more, came the answer before the thought was complete. Many more. More to strengthen. More to witness. You have seven days.

Seven days.





11





NAN woke straight up from a sound sleep immediately when Neville quorked a quiet alarm call above her head.

As she had expected, it had taken several days for the last of Memsa’b’s “medicine” to purge itself from Amelia’s system. Amelia had looked . . . on edge tonight at dinner, as if she sensed there was something looming over her, and Nan had expected that tonight would be the night she fell into a vision. As a consequence, she had kept a single lamp burning low, just in case.

She was up out of bed and across the room to Amelia’s bedside in moments, Neville fluttering in the soft half-dark to land on Amelia’s headboard. Amelia lay in her bed, rigid, every muscle tense. Nan sat on the edge of the bed, reached out to cup Amelia’s face in her hands, and she didn’t even have to close her eyes; the moment she made mental contact with Amelia’s sleeping mind, she found herself pulled immediately into Amelia’s vision.

Literally pulled into the vision. Instead of being a mere observer, she found herself standing beside a rigid, statue-like Amelia in a horrific nightmare-scape of a ruined London, and she reached out and took Amelia’s right hand without saying a word.

That broke the spell holding Amelia paralyzed; she jerked her head around to face Nan, eyes wide with shocked surprise. Her terrified expression eased, just a little, as Nan smiled reassuringly at her. Her hand clutched Nan’s convulsively.

I’m here. And Neville is anchoring us. If anything threatens us, he can pull us out of this, she said into Amelia’s mind. You’re not alone.

Amelia did not answer in words, but her hand squeezed Nan’s tightly as they both turned their attention to the scene in front of them.

The sky swirled with ever-moving clouds, low and ominous. Lightning lit them from within, but there was no thunder. If Nan were to make a guess about the time of day, she would have said “twilight,” but there were no clues as to the actual time. It was not completely dark; there was a dim, apparently sourceless light. Shreds of mist moved among the ruined buildings around them, but how those wisps moved had little or nothing to do with the wind.

Nan could not tell what part of London they were in; once you got into the “newer” areas, places that had sprung up or gotten built up over the last half century, they all tended to look alike—streets of terraced houses, all built as a single block-long building, streets of houses set narrowly side-by-side, streets of blocks of flats, streets of shops with living quarters above them. She knew it was London because . . . she knew it was London. There was no doubt in her mind that it was anyplace else; the feeling was as certain in her as it was that the earth was round. This happened to be a street of terraced houses; a street that presented a single, block-long face, with identical doors all along it—but what appeared to be a single building was, in fact, broken up into separate homes, each of those doors leading into one of those homes. They were set very near the street, with only a narrow strip of lawn or garden between them and the thoroughfare.

But there were gaps in the row of terraced houses in front of them, like missing teeth. The rest of the houses were in various stages of decrepitude and overgrown with some evil cousin of ivy. The ivy swayed and rustled—again, like the mist, in a way that seemed to have nothing to do with the wind moaning through the ruins.

She felt the urge to walk up the street; in the middle, avoiding that ivy. She looked at Amelia and she could see Amelia felt the urge to move too. The girl was torn between wanting to flee and feeling impelled to move forward.

Remember, nothing can hurt us here. Neville can pull us out. And I . . . with an effort, she summoned the Celtic Warrior she had once been centuries ago, her bronze sword in her right hand, Amelia’s hand still in her left. I am not exactly unarmed.

Amelia’s eyes widened with startlement. But the sight of Nan in her bronze corselet, made from the armor of Roman soldiers she’d killed back then, seemed to put more heart in her. Together they walked down the center of the street, Nan staying wary, ready to fend off anything that threatened them.

But there was nothing this time, no tentacles reaching out of the shadows, no hint of other humans. Nothing but the moaning of a cold, bitter wind and the swaying of the barren trees and that evil ivy.

They came to the end of the row of terraced houses and entered into a section of houses and shops that were set a little apart from each other, with bits of yard in front and more walled backyards behind. These were in no better repair than the ones they had left behind them.

But one, at least, was in good repair. And it showed something like signs of life, although there was nothing about it that made Nan want to go knock on the door.

The house itself was faintly luminescent, a sickly blue ghostlight. There was a dim red light coming from the windows, and as they watched, a terrified girl burst out of the door, ran into the street and looked frantically up and down it before breaking into a run in their direction. From the little Nan could see of her, she looked to be fifteen or sixteen years old, dressed in a coat and woolen hat and decent frock of some dark color. She looked exhausted as well as terrified, and she stumbled as she ran.