Lies Sleeping (Peter Grant, #7)(65)

Collateral damage, I realised suddenly. That was how Chorley was going to ditch us. Create enough mayhem to make us draw back, and then shift to a second vehicle. He might even have minions already cruising in for a pickup.

His next logical step would be to pick off a bus or something equally high value.

My Airwave was totally dusted, but I had to assume that Nightingale was on his way.

Which meant all I had to do was distract Chorley for long enough for that to happen.

I think it’s important to state that what happened next was totally an accident and I really do not recommend it to anyone in a similar situation. I’d got within three metres of the van, and the angle was wrong to hit the tyres so I used an impello variant to pull the bloody doors off.

Not an easy thing to do when you’re pedalling your guts out, I might add.

I reckoned this would distract Chorley from any notions about creating general mayhem and focus his attention on me, although admittedly I didn’t have a plan of what to do when he did. I can’t be expected to think of everything, can I?

As the doors clanged onto the tarmac on either side of me I tried to accelerate, anticipating that the van would speed up – only for the driver to slam the brakes on. I just might have been able to swerve to the left or right, but I didn’t think of it at the time. Instead I have a very clear memory of the interior of the van growing suddenly closer as my front wheel hit the rear bumper and I went over the handlebars and into the back.

The side door was half open and Martin Chorley was crouched beside it. He’d obviously been in the process of opening it when I’d ripped the back doors off, and had half turned to see what the hell was going on. He was dressed for an afternoon’s gardening at his place in the country, jeans, open neck shirt, tweed sports jacket with elbow patches. I shall treasure the look of dismayed surprise on his face as he found me flying towards him until my dying day. Which almost turned out to be thirty seconds later.

Walbrook was still flattened against the side wall, but now I could see that she was wrapped in chains that were fastened to a cargo rack mounted behind her. Her wrists were chained together and attached by a short length to a purple and white octagonal Quality Street sweet tin, sealed with gaffer tape and wrapped like a Christmas present with a thin bicycle chain. The whole assemblage was attached by a thicker chain to an eyelet welded to the roof.

Her clothes were torn and her eyes were closed, and she was breathing hard, as if in pain.

There was no partition, so I could see through to the driver – although all I got was the sense that he was white and had grey hair in a number two trim – before I smacked face down on the cold metal floor of the van. Chorley came for me and I grabbed the chain attaching the tin to the ceiling to pull myself up.

It was like grabbing a steam pipe. Pain, followed by a shocking numbness.

I screamed and yanked my hand away, which ironically meant that the vicious kick Chorley had aimed at my head went whooshing past my ear. I tried to grab his leg while he was off balance, but he scuttled back out of reach.

‘Vampires?’ I shouted as I got to my feet. ‘Really?’

‘Just a little bit of one,’ said Chorley.

He balled his fist – I felt his spell assemble like the flat of a blade running up the skin of my face. But he never got a chance to release it, because the driver threw the van into a sharp left turn that threw me and Chorley into the right side of the van. Chorley hadn’t seen it coming, but I’d spotted the pair of TSG Sprinter vans skidding into a makeshift roadblock on the road ahead. So while Chorley was flailing around I did my best to kick him out of the half-open side door.

My foot definitely connected with something soft and dangly, because I heard Chorley grunt. But he managed to hold onto the door frame and, before I could follow up, the van straightened and we both went flying the other way. We ended up against the storage rack with Walbrook between us. My arm brushed the family-sized tin of vampire and that was enough to numb it from elbow to wrist.

We’d spent quite a lot of time discussing what I was going to do if I found myself face to face with Chorley. Nightingale said it was like fighting a man with a knife. Get inside his reach and trap the weapon.

‘Don’t bother with magic,’ he’d said. ‘Get in close and strike at his head. You want him dazed and confused.’

He didn’t say what to do if there was a civilian hostage between us.

I dropped back and kicked the tin of vampire at him. I was pleased to discover that the patented acid-resistant soles of my Doc Martens were also vampire resistant. The tin, just as I’d planned, swung like a church censer and smacked Chorley in the face. He shrieked and fell back.

I hit the chain that bound Walbrook to the vampire tin with the hottest thing I had. There was a spark, but I could feel the power being sucked away. I heard a thump, and the tin jiggled as if whatever was inside had moved of its own accord.

There was a moment’s pause during which me and Chorley both looked first at the tin and then at each other. Then I threw a left at his face. He instinctively raised his arm to block, which was what I was waiting for – I grabbed his wrist with my right hand and threw myself out the back of the lorry.

Stephanopoulos wouldn’t have forced the van down a side road if they weren’t planning to contain it. Since I couldn’t separate Walbrook from the vampire tin, I needed to get Chorley away from both so somebody else could get in there with the bolt cutters. It was a brilliant plan with only one drawback – it involved jumping out the back of a moving van.