The End of the Line Read online

  The End of the Line

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Two

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Three

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Time for one more heist?

  Copyright

  To Lisa - for everything

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Amanda

  The present

  Everything had been going to plan until Bridget leapt in front of the lorry.

  Amanda tried to recall what the woman had been talking about before she’d swerved their van off the road. If she’d shown any sign that her brain was being hijacked, Amanda had missed it.

  Once the van had crashed, nose crumpled, in a roadside ditch, the occupants piecing themselves back together, it took Amanda a long moment to realise their driver was missing. The door was hanging open and through it she spotted Bridget at the roadside, waiting.

  They’d overtaken the lorry a few minutes before.

  Ears ringing, body hurting, Amanda did little more than blink when Bridget threw herself forward, adding herself to a list of the dead longer than Amanda’s arm. Reeves, the demonic prisoner they were taking halfway round the world to kill, had claimed another victim.

  In that moment, as Bridget sailed through the air, blood arcing black against the grey sky, Amanda knew three things.

  One – she’d said something like this would happen.

  Two – the protective wards on the demon’s steel coffin weren’t as impenetrable as Bridget had promised.

  And three – the job was utterly fucked if they didn’t get moving again. Fast.

  They were the only interesting feature for miles, a look in any direction yielding the same flat view of frozen Russian scrub, grey trees and greyer skies. The road was the only hint of civilisation, straight as a compass needle, east to west, from who knows to who cares. At some point, another driver would see them, pull over and complicate things.

  And who wouldn’t stop? There was the Russian’s blood-stained lorry blocking the road in both directions. There was Bridget on the side, clothes torn and wounds steaming in the cold. There was their van, back tyres in the air. And two minutes later there were the people arguing; one aggrieved lorry driver and three of Britain’s most desperate criminals.

  On top of that there was Reeves. If the wards were faulty, it was only a matter of time before he tried to get someone else to top themselves. And Amanda was determined that nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to stop her from getting back on the road and putting this thing in the dirt where it belonged.

  Of everyone involved, the lorry driver had the least right to be upset. He wasn’t letting that stop him, gesticulating and barking in angry, vodka-fuelled Russian, his red nose bare inches from the skinny black woman’s face. His grimy finger was getting dangerously close to poking Amanda in the chest.

  Twenty minutes, she thought, her sense of urgency fraying her nerves. Twenty minutes and they’d be back on their way, a burning van and another two bodies in their wake.

  If she could just get her hands to stop shaking.

  ‘Axle’s fucked,’ came a voice behind her, preluded by the heavy, steady crunch of cold gravel under sturdy boots.

  Now the Russian faltered in his tirade. He even backed up a step.

  The sight of Caleb did that to most people. The man was built like an ex-Soviet missile train. With the greatcoat and beady eyes glaring out at them from under his fur-lined deerstalker, he looked like a Red Army general. The cold had turned his nose crimson. His breathing was like a mix between a pissed off Alsatian and Darth Vader; audible even from three metres away, a memento of a hard fight, a lost lover and a fractured trachea.

  Seemingly unaware of the effect he was having on Amanda’s adversary, Caleb observed the steam coming off Bridget’s burst body in the near distance. ‘Looks like her soul leaving her body, don’t it?’

  The Russian looked to Amanda like he was expecting a translation.

  ‘We didn’t need her,’ Amanda replied, ‘you’ll see.’

  ‘But we can’t—’

  ‘We’ll figure it out. OK?’ She fixed the big man with a look.

  He shrugged. ‘So, what now?’

  Amanda looked the Russian in his bloodshot eyes.

  Survival instincts finally kicking in, the driver took another step back.

  Caleb moved fast, grabbing him by the elbow. Gasping, the lorry driver fired off more Russian as Amanda went through his pockets producing a wallet and phone.

  The ID was in Cyrillic, no help there. The money went in Amanda’s pocket.

  Caleb grunted. ‘Ain’t he going to need that?’

  She ignored him.

  The phone’s screen was cracked but she pressed the button anyway.

  The image waiting for her struck like a hammer, set her mind buzzing.

  The driver’s face grinned up at her, crouched amongst his three kids; two girls, one boy – a day out.

  ‘You alright?’ asked Caleb.

  She’d had a picture just like it, her, Simon and the kids, pride of place on the mantelpiece. It was probably still there, cordoned off in sigil-warded police tape. It was like she’d swallowed a hot coal. Like she had just lost them to that thing in the box all over again.

  ‘Amanda?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she managed, the word rough in her throat. ‘Yeah,’ it came out clearer the second time, the coldness creeping back in.

  She threw the phone back, the Russian catching it against his chest. Hope kindled in the man’s eyes. ‘I go?’

  The shakes had gone from Amanda’s hands. A hard, cold bolt of grief worked better than a shot of adrenalin.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘you can go.’

  The Russian’s relief had no time to take root, Caleb’s arm snaking around his throat.

  The large man frowned over the driver’s head. ‘One body ain’t enough already?’

  ‘We haven’t got time to argue. Do it.’

  ‘Could just bribe him.’

  ‘And what if he tells the police anyway? You want us to bribe them too? See what happens when we get arrested?’

  ‘Just saying—’

  ‘Come on. Clock’s ticking.’

  The pair glared at one another, a silent battle of wills as the Russian struggled between them.

  ‘We’re doing this for her,’ said Amanda.

  Caleb signalled his surrender with a pinch of his lips.

  Bending backwards, he lifted the man off his feet, scowling as he increased the pressure.

  Eyes bulging, red face growing redder, the man scrabbled at Caleb’s arm, nails digging ineffectually at the thick cloth of his coat sleeve.

  ‘We need to tell AK what happened,’ said Amanda.
‘You got the phone?’

  ‘Gave it to Bridget,’ Caleb grunted.

  Thin tendrils of steam continued to stream from the woman’s body, pulled this way and that by the cold wind.

  ‘Shit.’ Riding the emotionless wave she was on, Amanda headed off, head full of nothing but what she was going to say to AK – the man who had dropped her in the middle of this shit storm. She thought the words loud, trying to drown out the grief that clawed at her insides.

  Just a few more days.

  She lifted her collar against the cold. She thought she’d known winter in London but there was nothing like this Russian one. This was cold with its fly unzipped and a look in its eye. She rubbed at her gloveless hands, the skin taut and sore to the touch. She deserved this pain, she reminded herself. Her family were dead because of her.

  But she wasn’t the only one to blame.

  The lorry’s engine was still running, the air around it throbbing. She gave it a wide berth, circling round to Bridget’s body.

  It looked worse up close.

  Bridget’s right shin bone jutted from the calf. Her left leg twisted in at least two directions it shouldn’t. One arm was trapped beneath her, arching her body up uncomfortably, belly toward the sky. Every inch of exposed skin was a patchwork of bruises, scrapes, grazes and gravel, obscuring the myriad mystical tattoos that covered her body. The ink was an Abra’s trademark, no magic user could go without them and expect to perform complex spells without some sort of blowback. Pity for her that there wasn’t a sigil to ward off a moving rig.

  There was pathetically little blood on the asphalt, which, to Amanda, summed Bridget up.

  But she wasn’t dead.

  Every breath was a thin, jagged little thing. The puffs of steam seeping out from between her lips were pink. Her skull was dented, her half-closed eyes a solid red, her mouth a pouch of broken teeth leaking bubble-flecked crimson.

  Bridget shuddered at Amanda’s approach. She tried to move, her free arm rising a bare inch, imploring.

  Bringing her boot down, Amanda pinned the Abra’s hand into the dirt.

  Breath exploded in Bridget’s mouth, the woman trying to speak while Amanda went through her pockets.

  There was the satellite phone. Amanda shook it, nothing rattled. Finally something was going right. She pushed it into her coat pocket.

  ‘Might be stating the obvious but the wards on that box of yours didn’t work as long as you thought they would.’

  Bridget only stared, trying to comprehend through the fog of pain.

  ‘I was thinking I’d kill you once this was over,’ Amanda continued, pulling out her wallet. ‘But if the past few months have taught me anything it’s that no one gives a fuck what I want.’ She teased out the photo, the one they’d hired a professional to take; Amanda, Simon and the three kids. She held it up for Bridget to see.

  Bridget coughed as she tried to speak. Whether it was an apology or some weak defence for what she’d done it didn’t matter, she managed nothing but a click at the back of her throat.

  ‘I should be at home with them. Right now. My youngest should be sitting exams. My husband had an exhibition. Instead…’ The words closed up on her. Or maybe there were simply too many to say beyond a howl. In its place, she managed to squeeze out: ‘I hope this fucking hurts.’

  Bridget’s eyes rolled around the sky, looking for an escape. Amanda moved the photograph, keeping it in her line of sight until the broken woman’s eyes fixed on it again.

  ‘T– Take…’ Bridget forced the word out, slow and thick. ‘Take care of…’

  Amanda took some satisfaction at the panic that flared in the woman’s eyes as she stood. She cleared her throat, managed to line some cold steel in her voice again.

  ‘You know, I don’t know what must hurt more. This,’ Amanda gestured up and down the woman’s ruptured body, ‘or realising that everyone was right about you. We’re going to finish this and when it’s over I’m going to tell every Abra I can find that Bridget Fergusson died not having made a lick of difference to the outcome. If you’re lucky they’ll forget you but let’s face it after everything that’s happened already, we know they won’t. You’re about to become another sad little historical footnote of one of magic’s biggest fuck ups.’

  Bridget’s moan of pain was barely a whistle in her throat.

  ‘I’d let go if I were you,’ said Amanda, standing. ‘It’s not going to get any better.’

  The wind pulled at her as she walked away.

  Caleb was scowling at the corpse at his feet. Big man wasn’t even out of breath.

  ‘He goes in the van,’ said Amanda. ‘We’re burning it. See if there’s spare fuel in the lorry.’

  ‘Bridget?’

  ‘Her too.’

  Caleb frowned at that. ‘She got family?’

  ‘Do you care?’

  ‘Might want the body.’

  ‘Just get it done.’ She looked around, a premonition hitting her like an icy shower. ‘Where’s Skeebs?’

  ‘Van.’

  ‘And Bridget’s bag?’

  Caleb didn’t need to reply. By the time he caught the phone, Amanda was already running, aches and pains flaring up and down her body.

  Dazed from the crash, too much to think about, they’d missed the last thing that could fuck this up – leaving Skeebs alone with Reeves.

  The van shifted and rocked, someone moving inside.

  ‘Skeebs!’

  ‘I got this, Danny. This is for them. Danny, I have got this.’ Even outside, she could hear the boy muttering, a low, constant, litany.

  The back doors gave a startled squeak as Amanda flung them open, letting them bounce on their hinges.

  The interior was gloomy, the front window, seen over the front seats, a relief of ditch soil and crushed scrub.

  The back was filled with their belongings, rucksacks, boxes of supplies and foreign shopping bags. With the van tilted, it had all piled up against the back of the driver’s seat.

  Among them, in the centre like a chrome middle finger, was their reason for being here, enclosed in a seven-by-two foot steel box held closed by four thick padlocks. Three of which were now hanging open in their brackets.

  Bridget had warded the locks, magical runes scratched into the plating in an attempt to prevent the thing’s influence from leaking out and causing people to, say, kill themselves. But there were few protective sigils in the world that could beat a skilled lock-pick.

  Skeebs’ hands were shaking as he worked the final lock, a hairpin of Bridget’s twisting between his fingers. It had just jerked open as Amanda threw open the doors.

  The boy’s gabbling snapped off as he blinked against the cold light.

  ‘Skeebs,’ she kept her voice low, ‘if you even think of opening—’

  Frantic, the hair pin dropped from between Skeebs’ fingers as he went for Bridget’s work bag – a large leather affair, leaning drunkenly against his hip. ‘Don’t try to stop me.’ The boy fumbled for the zip, his words tripping over one another. ‘This has to happen. We don’t have a choice, man, I’m telling you. We’re not going to make it all the way there. We have to take our chances and try to kill it now. She was wrong about the box, she could be wrong about the stones—’

  Amanda lurched, pulling herself inside, the van’s suspension groaning beneath her.

  ‘No!’ Forgetting the bag, Skeebs scrabbled at the lid of the package, got his nails under it.

  The box opened, the narrowest, darkest crack. Amanda felt like the air was being sucked from her chest, her heart pulled up through her throat. She staggered, had to balance herself against the wall.

  The van’s chassis reverberated by her ear, a solid bang as though someone had punched the vehicle from without. A split-second later, another followed, this time on the opposite side, making Skeebs flinch.

  Eyes crawling the interior, the boy sank back into the bags. ‘Caleb?’

  In an instant, the whole van was rocking, a multitude
of unseen fists pounding at the walls, fingernails scraping and squeaking, something trying to get in.

  They were in the middle of nowhere and suddenly it sounded as though they were caught in a stampede. Cold light streamed in from behind Amanda, unhindered, the stony plains empty.

  The boy was shaking, twitching at each impact.

  The box shifted this way and that, emanating a cold, sucking silence. All at once, it was the centre of everything, the eye of the storm. It demanded attention, ached to be opened, its whispers heard. The thing within had already killed so many. Released, it would kill many more, its emancipator spared.

  Skeebs reached for the lid again.

  Ears ringing, feeling like she was being battered herself, Amanda’s fist crashed down on the frosted metal, slamming the lid closed on Skeebs’ fingers. Yelling in pain, the boy clutched his hand to his chest.

  Fumbling at the nearest padlock, Amanda snapped it closed.

  Skeebs hissed through clenched teeth, watching as Amanda frantically groped for the next. The boy grabbed for Bridget’s bag again, working at the zip.

  The second lock closing with a click, the urges seeping from the thing in the box began to abate.

  But the fists hadn’t stopped.

  Bag open, Skeebs reached for the knife inside, the handle almost leaping into his hand.

  Amanda pounced at him, letting the van’s tilt and gravity do the work.

  There were voices in the cacophony now, screams and frantic shouts. Amanda couldn’t tell if they were fighting to reach them inside or fighting to flee the grasp of something out in the open.

  She crashed into Skeebs just in time, the knife was only half out of the bag. Her shoulder catching him in the teeth, striking the air out of him, she managed to pin the boy’s forearm under her knee. With a wrench, he pulled his limb out from under her, her knee banging painfully on the floor.

  He brought the blade up, not to stab but to keep it from her reach.

  Amanda’s arms were caught between their bodies, the slope keeping them pressed together. Grimacing with the effort, she wormed her left across his shoulder up to the crook of the boy’s elbow, pushing it into the soft back of the driver’s seat, keeping the knife where it was.

  The screams surrounding them were at the height of terror. ‘He’s coming! Run! Amanda! Please!’ People she knew, victims like Bridget, so many of her friends, her family.