I couldn’t wait to see them.
“Are we here?” I asked.
Magog nodded, as silent as she’d been on the drive over, and I craned my head to get a better view of the building Magog had pointed to as we passed. But we were at an odd angle, parked well away from our destination despite there being room to park in front. Plus, the little white van we were driving had no windows in the back, and no matter how I moved around in my seat, I couldn’t see much. I finally gave up, suppressing a sigh as I turned to sit normally again.
To be honest, our drive through the night streets had been disappointing. I’d peered out of the windows, hoping for a glimpse of Big Ben, the London Eye, or Westminster, but we seemed to crawl along darkened suburban roads surrounding the airport for hours in inexplicably heavy traffic, getting no nearer to the city. Still, the views were interesting. The street signs were new, not to mention everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road, which freaked me out every time we turned. Plus, what with the steering wheel being on the right hand side, I kept thinking small children and dogs were driving, or that cars were magically driving themselves while their human passengers sat with bored expressions. The houses were also definitely Not American: most seemed to be row houses, their front lawns paved to hold one of the tiny cars that seemed to be everywhere.
That said, the vast banality of the ’burbs—while not particularly inspiring—had given me an inkling of London’s size. I’d only been in a few “real” cities in my life: Boston, Montreal, and Quebec. Chicago we’d only driven around, never even entering the city proper. After Rockabill, the cities I’d visited had seemed enormous. I realized now, however, that they were really baby cities, barely out of diapers. London must be a city, with a mass of people so huge I found it slightly terrifying.
A sudden desire for the emptiness of my ocean struck me, and I wondered how we’d be able to do anything covert, let alone start a war, in a place as tightly packed as London.
Magog and I sat in silence for about twenty minutes, unbroken except for my initial attempts at conversation—which were rejected—and then my occasional sleepy yawns. I tried to focus on what we were doing here, on what little Blondie had told us, but I found my thoughts continually reverting to happier things. Things with big noses, like Anyan Barghest, for example.
It was during one of these sleepy, Anyan-related reveries that I saw headlights pull up behind me. Magog perked up, peering carefully into her rearview mirror before she exhaled with relief.
“It’s them. We can go in.”
Pushing open my car door I hopped out, then indulged myself in a long, hard stretch. I paused at the top of my stretch to take a deep breath. The air smelled of pollution, but also of water. I could smell river water, and ocean water, and rainwater. The air was saturated with moisture, bathing me in a delicious tingle of power. I closed my eyes to enjoy both that tingle and the ache in my limbs as I stretched, only to find Anyan had appeared and was watching me with a sensual little smile pursing his lips.
My belly burned with lust for that damned man, as my heart picked up its pace in my chest. Anyan and I had been friends, with the hint of something more on the horizon, when we’d both been attacked a couple of months back. I’d saved us, barely, but nearly killed myself doing so. When I’d woken up, everything was suddenly so intense between us. He’d watched me lie in a coma for a month, and had obviously come to some decisions about us on his own. But for me—the one sleeping—no time had passed at all since we’d exchanged those first tentative touches.
I’d woken up to him wanting me with a hunger I couldn’t help but match, but I also couldn’t entirely understand.
Having read way too much for my own good, I knew that a thousand motivations that had nothing to do with me could have created his sudden interest: my saving him, his seeing me almost die, my vulnerability in that coma.
But I didn’t want a man who thought he owed me, or wanted to save me. And even though all of Anyan’s actions towards me up to that point had been anything but paternalistic, I still worried. A worry compounded by the fact that, while I was still at the stage where I wasn’t sure if it was okay to touch him at all, let alone in public, in reality we’d already have had sex if we hadn’t been interrupted by Blondie. And we’d been interrupted to go to another country, to start a war. One in which I was supposed to be some sort of Joan of Arc figure, hopefully minus the horribly painful death by burning.
To say we had some issues to work out was an understatement. But when Anyan looked like he did now, all rumpled and gorgeous in a pair of low-riding jeans, with his bright blue T-shirt making his iron-grey eyes extra cold and inscrutable, I knew the only thing I wanted more than world peace was for those cold grey eyes to warm when they met mine.
He held his hand out to me and I took it without thinking, moving closer to him as I did so.
“Good flight?” he murmured, brushing my hair back from my face. The gesture was ironic, considering his own curly black hair was sticking up like that of an electrocuted poodle. An adorable, electrocuted poodle.“Long,” I answered. Before I could help myself, I said, “And I wish you were on it.”
“Me too. I worried about you.”
“It was fine. Easy. Magog was there soon after I got in,” I said, gesturing towards the raven who was removing both my backpack, a big travel one I’d borrowed from Anyan, and her own to carry them towards the house.
“Good,” Anyan said, letting his finger trace down my jaw. I wanted to take it in my mouth, even as I wanted to ask him what he felt, even as I told myself to simmer down. We were sorting things out for ourselves and I needn’t rush things.
But I didn’t do or say anything. I just watched him watch me, wondering what he was thinking. And whether it involved the misuse of whipped toppings.
“Come on, then,” Magog rasped, from under the cold light of a streetlight. “Let’s not dawdle.”
Anyan picked up the pack he’d dropped, as well as another box, laden with official looking stickers. I grabbed that one from him under the auspices of being helpful, but it was really because I wanted it back. The box contained my labrys, my champion’s ax, and I’d missed it. I’d agreed it was better that Anyan bring it into the country as he was a real weapons expert, and would be able to convince any suspicious parties that his falsified credentials as a museum curator were actually real. But just because I knew it was better he carry the ax didn’t mean I’d liked being separated from it.
Once we had our stuff, we trudged up the sidewalk to the front door. I could feel a camouflaging glamour swirling around us: the first time I’d felt any magic from anyone since we landed. Even Blondie, who usually glowed like a sparkler, had kept all her power dampened. But now she was waiting for us under cover of glamour, Magog and another stranger waiting patiently beside her.
When we got close enough to greet each other, I noticed that Blondie looked no worse for wear after her transatlantic flight. Even her pink Mohawk was perfectly spiky, and her oversized jeans and tight maroon long-sleeved T-shirt looked fresh. I felt like I’d been rolled around by hobos on a sidewalk somewhere, and wondered how she did it.
That said, my attention was quickly pulled from the Original to our newest addition. He was huge, first of all. He towered even over Anyan, and was nearly as big as the spriggan, Fugwat, although not as wide.
He was also a curious shade of grey and bald as a bowling pin. I could see black lines covering his skin, more like striations than tattoos, even over his face and down his neck. His eyes were the same shade of grey as his skin, and his features were small and stubby in his big head.
All in all he was massive and terrifying, like the Devil’s bouncer. I was glad he was, at least ostensibly, on our side.
“That’s Gog Coblynau,” Magog said, “And he’s mine.” As a student of mythology gone a bit obsessive about the subject when I learned of my mother’s world, I recognized the word “coblynau.” In human myths, they were Welsh mining spirits or gnomes. I figured that meant, in supe terms, that Gog was an Earth elemental. Come to think of it, he did look a bit like something you’d find in a mine.
I nodded, acknowledging Magog’s words and her claim. She could have Gog. I wanted a coffee.
Gog laid a hand on the door, and I watched, fascinated, as the wood stretched and reformed itself to open a passage without actually unlocking the door. As he did so, the black striations spraddled across the back of his head—more like tattoos than veins, but not quite either—glowed a dull black, casting his grey skin in an eerie pallor.
When there was space enough for us to enter, he motioned us through.
Once inside the house’s slim, long hallway, I peered around. There was a small room to my right that was clearly a living room, and then a small kitchen behind it. A tiny, steep staircase was in front of me to my left, leading to what I assumed were two bedrooms the same size as the living room and the kitchen. Everything was painted cream, and I recognized most of the furniture as Ikea.
I was also pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be there, not least because Gog and Magog were doing the same thing I was—peering about like they’d never seen the place.