“Well, that was special!” Purple’s eyes are wide.
Mo reaches into her purse and pulls her warrant card. “MI5. If you go downstairs you will die: this is a terrorist incident. We need to leave now.”
“I say! You’re—” Producer Guy nearly crosses his eyes until Butterfly Specs takes his arm.
“Come on, Gary, if it’s a joke you can write a letter to the Guardian tomorrow,” she hisses, giving Mo a wide-eyed look as she hauls him towards the open French windows.
Purple looks Mo in the eye. “You’re not MI5, you’re one of them,” she says with a gleam of recognition. “But your agency was dissolved weeks ago. What’s happening?”
“Come on and I’ll tell you.” Mo takes her arm and tugs. “I suppose you are MI5.”
Purple follows. “Have I seen you … oh. Home Office briefings last year?”
Mo nearly stumbles but manages to keep going. “Transhuman Police Coordination, and yes, it was an SOE false flag op. I’m not kidding about the danger, the bodies herding everyone into the cellar are the reason we were officially shitcanned.”
“That man, there was something in his pants that looked like, like—and his eyes—”
They make it across the threshold and onto the flagstones. They’re chilly and rough beneath Mo’s stockinged feet; she looks around for the steps down to the lawn. “He’s under a mind-control parasite. So are Schiller’s other people. I don’t suppose you’re carrying?”
Purple looks at her as if she’s insane. “Going armed at a reception for the Prime Minister? Do I look mad?”
Mo sighs. “Well, fuck.” The crowd in the ballroom is already thinning, mostly drifting back into the great hall and the stairs beyond. She taps her earpiece. “CANDID, MADCAP, sitrep.”
“MADCAP, OCCULUS is pinned down outside the perimeter. Still awaiting support; you’re on your own. Sitrep?”
“In the garden with civilians, Schiller’s people are herding everybody into the basement and sending out armed patrols. I don’t anticipate a hostage situation or siege, it looks like a Jim Jones setup.” Purple’s face is wan in the glow shed by the floodlights on the terrace. Mo gestures impatiently towards the lawn. “I’m going to try and find Zero. Over.” She heads towards the lawn, meaning to circle round behind the stable block.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“Follow me and find out.” Mo regrets it instantly. “Look, we’re in big trouble. Stay back, don’t make any noise, and if anyone shoots me, run away as far as you can, then hide. Better still, find your friends”—they’ve moved away and are standing around in the middle of the terrace, looking gormless—“and get them to do the same.”
Without waiting for a reply she turns and heads for the steps, then down onto the grass (it’s cool and slightly damp, a welcome balm for her sore toes), and heads diagonally away from the house, skirting the big pavilion on her way towards the stables.
But she’s only halfway there when a pulse of released occult power sweeps across her—and then the shooting starts.
*
Driving is a lot like riding a bicycle, Iris finds: it feels very strange at first, but the skills come back rapidly, and within an hour it feels almost as if she hasn’t taken a six-year break.
Of course, this is a dangerous delusion, and Iris is very aware that she’s at risk. Before everything went wrong, culminating in the fiasco at Brookwood and her arrest and trial, she’d driven an older Honda. The new hire car is a Jaguar—only the best will do for this job—and it’s fifteen years newer, a gleaming, streamlined, black and chrome monster that seems to be about fifty computers flying in loose formation. Everything is computerized, including the controls, and it’s totally bewildering, as if sixty years rather than a mere six have passed her by.
At least the basics are in the right place—steering wheel, go pedal, stop pedal, indicators—so she resists the urge to fiddle beyond working out the basics of the satellite navigation system, and sticks to concentrating on moving forward and not hitting anything.
“I say, are we nearly there yet?” Her passenger sounds archly amused, but she still cringes slightly at the faintest implication of dissatisfaction.
She checks the satnav for an updated projection. If they hadn’t hit tailbacks due to a contraflow on the M40 they’d be there already. “Five minutes, sir.” She squeezes her right foot on the accelerator and the big cat purrs very quietly and pushes forward, nosing into the darkness faster than she’s entirely comfortable with.
Dr. Armstrong had told her to take it easy: just a light liaison role, he said. But her Lord had other plans. Plans that involved a brisk afternoon’s shopping for clothes—both his and hers, for he has firm ideas about appropriate business attire for his personal assistant—then a friendly chat with a luxury car rental agency. No money or credit cards pass hands when her Lord wishes to buy a suit or a phone or a helicopter; Saville Row tailors and Bond Street jewelers practically queue up to throw their wares at him and his entourage. “One must make the right impression; first appearances are important,” her Lord explained, “and my staff’s presentation reflects on me.” So Iris, an old biker girl, finds herself encased in a black Hugo Boss suit, white shirt, and matching heels—which are playing hell with her pedal control.
“I do believe the festivities have kicked off without us,” her Lord says, faint disapproval evident underneath his light tone. “Too bad they couldn’t wait, say I.” He snaps his fingers and the darkness beyond the reach of headlamps roils and cringes away, giving her a clear view forward. Iris doesn’t need to be told: she floors the accelerator and the Jaguar snarls forward, around a tight bend telegraphed with illuminated chevron signs, then uphill into a 30 mph limit—the village nearest their destination. “I do so hate to be late to a party,” Fabian sighs.
Iris takes the high street at eighty, then hammers the brakes and yanks the car into a tire-screeching turn into the estate driveway leading to Nether Stowe House. She passes a 20 mph signpost, still doing upwards of double the speed limit, but reluctantly brakes as the drive snakes between trees. The planting is thinning out ahead, under the moonlight, when she sees a big fire truck parked athwart the drive and barely has time to stand on the stop pedal. There is a juddering of antilock as the Jaguar skids to a standstill just short of the OCCULUS truck, and very scary men with guns materialize from the darkness to either side and she finds herself staring into the grooves of a machine gun barrel.