Black Tattoo, The Read online

  "You lost," he repeated. "How?"

  Grimly, biting back frustration, Esme closed her eyes. The last move, the kick — that was where she'd overextended herself and left herself vulnerable, obviously. But how? How had it been possible? Concentrating, she played the fight back in her head.

  This latest bout had begun much like all their others. Throughout the opening exchange, she'd pulled back before committing herself to every attack she'd started. This was for the simple reason that each time she'd started a move, Raymond had already been moving to anticipate her, just as he always did. But this time, Esme had tried something new.

  Gradually, as the bout continued, she'd allowed a little desperation to come through into the way she was responding. To a spectator, the two of them would have been moving almost too fast to watch — but as the fight went on, Raymond would have noticed (she hoped) a little raggedness, a little roughness in her usual glassy-smooth technique. In due course, her strategy had been rewarded: the big man had apparently become more confident, letting himself come a little further into her striking range than he usually did. So Esme had launched her main attack.

  She'd begun the move in textbook style, leaping off her left foot into a spinning midkick with her right. If it had all gone according to plan, Raymond should have lowered his hands to protect himself, at which point Esme could have completed the feint by folding her right leg into a further 180-degree spin, letting her left foot scythe up over Raymond's guard to take the big man up under the chin.

  Pretending to attack with one foot only to surprise one's opponent with the other was a classic move. It had taken Esme many months of hard training to master it, but she had pulled this one off, she knew, flawlessly. There was no way, therefore, that Raymond could have anticipated what she was going to do.

  And yet, he had read the feint for what it was.

  He had not reached to the approach of her right foot in the least — just stayed absolutely still.

  And when Esme was fully committed to the follow-up — when she was in the air, well and truly past the point when she could pull back on the kick or prevent what was about to happen from happening — Raymond had stepped toward her. His hands were in exactly the right place to catch her left foot effortlessly as it passed its target. Keeping an easy grip around her ankle, transferring his weight smoothly, he too had spun, once—

  —and released her, letting her own momentum hurl her halfway across the room, to land in an undignified heap on the butterfly room's hard, matted floor.

  "You knew," Esme spluttered up at him, furious.

  "About the kick?" Raymond pretended to think for a moment, then grinned again. "Yup."

  "How?"

  Raymond's bushy beard bristled as his smile widened further.

  "I'll tell you what it wasn't, if that's any help," he said. "It wasn't magic. I didn't read your mind or anything like that." He leaned over her. "And I hope you're not going to tell me about strength. Are you?"

  "No," said Esme sulkily.

  "Well?" Raymond held out a beefy hand to help her up. "How do you think I knew?"

  Esme looked at his hand, made a contemptuous sucking noise with her tongue against her teeth, and got to her feet by herself.

  "I failed," she said. "I wasn't good enough, that's all. Something in the execution must've told you what I was planning. I need more practice. Obviously."

  "No, petal," said Raymond, shaking his head. "You're wrong there. For what it's worth, it was beautifully done."

  "Oh, yeah?" Esme stared at him, exasperated. "If it was that beautifully done, how come I didn't get you with it, then?"

  Raymond's smile faded. He sighed.

  "Petal," he began, "just answer me this one question. Who do you think taught you all about feints and combinations? Who do you think taught you all about putting you opponent off guard? About anticipation? About control?"

  "You!" snapped Esme, not seeing what he was getting at. "It was you, of course."

  "So," said Raymond, putting his beefy hands out to his sides in a small shrug. "How did you think you were going to take me by surprise?"

  Esme froze.

  "Eh?" added the big man.

  There was a long pause.

  "I..." began Esme, then fell silent.

  "You've been a pleasure to teach, petal," said Raymond quietly. "I've never met anyone to touch you for dedication, concentration, or focus."

  "But right now," he added, "everything you've got comes from me."

  * * * * *

  "So how am I supposed to beat you?" asked Esme.

  Six years later, lying on the floor again, she realized she'd spoken aloud.

  For a long time, she just lay there. The light from the Fracture had vanished when it had closed. Every lightbulb in the Light of the Moon had exploded in the battle that had just taken place. Esme lay on the ground, in the darkness, alone. After a while, though, as if from far away, she began to be aware of the pain of her injuries as they started to heal themselves. It was the pain, really, that brought the facts of the situation home to her.

  The Scourge had escaped.

  Raymond was dead.

  She, strangely, was alive.

  Slowly, carefully, Esme freed herself from the pile of objects that had held her trapped and stood up. Then, because no better ideas seemed to occur to her, she started walking, a step at a time.

  She went up the stairs. She went out the door, out of the pub, out into the warm, sickly air of the London summer night — and she set off back toward the theater.

  Her insides felt like they were filled with broken things. Shattered clockwork, jagged glass: the wreckage moved and ground and ripped at her with every small step that she took, and something cold and dark was in the place where her heart had been. But she kept walking. And soon, almost before she'd expected it, she was home. She climbed the stairs up to the Brotherhood's headquarters, and to her it was as if she were walking into a dream.

  It was no different, she realized. Her home still looked and smelled and felt exactly the same as it always had, in all the years of her life that she had shared it with Raymond. It seemd inconceivable to her that it could still be the same, when the man at its heart, the man who had made it what it had been to her, was gone. It was incredible. Enormous. She felt like she was balancing on the edge of the world and could fall of it into nothingness at any second. The nothingness feeling was too much. It was going to swallow her. So she got enough of a grip on herself to make a decision.

  It was now nearly five in the morning. On a normal day, in a couple of hours, she would be waking up.

  She would act as if it were a normal day.

  First, she set off toward the bathroom. She stripped, got under the shower, and turned the hot tap on full blast. Hard jets of scalding water drove at her skin like needles, but Esme hardly felt them. She stood under the shower numbly till she'd had enough, then she switched it off and got out.

  Next she combed her hair — then pulled it back, hard, and tied it in place with six ordinary rubber bands, just like normal. She hung up her dressing gown on the back of her bedroom door and changed into the gear she always wore for her morning workout — a clean pair of loose white cotton trousers with a thick elasticized waistband and her second-favorite red hooded top. Then she headed down to the butterfly room.

  Esme opened the doors and flicked on the lights. Then she paused.

  The room was empty.

  Felix — the man who was supposed to be lying on the table in a coma — wasn't there.

  He'd gone.

  Strange.

  Esme frowned for a moment but decided she couldn't deal with that right now. Setting all thoughts of Felix aside for the time being, she concentrated on preparing herself for her morning workout. She fetched a broom and, mechanically, trying to ignore the gaping butterfly-shaped holes in the paint on the walls, she swept her dojo clean. Then she got started.

  Ever since that day six years ago, the day of her failur
e with the feinting kick, Raymond had let her set her own training regime, contenting himself only with a few judicious suggestions once in a while. For six years now, therefore, Esme had always started the day in the same way, with her own combination of yoga, Pilates, and tai chi. After about thirty minutes, when her circulation was up to speed, she moved on to some gymnastics: slow handstands to begin with, followed by rolls, cartwheels, and finally some combination handsprings from one end of the room to the other. Next she turned to the makiwara boards. After perhaps an hour, when she had built up the speed and power behind her attacks until she was outpacing her body's magical ability to repair itself — when all five of the dark oak surfaces carried their telltale smudges of red and the muscles of her body ached with strain — she stopped and picked up her sword.

  It was a bokken, a heavy, Japanese-style training sword, a rounded, gently-curved black pole exactly two feet eight inches long, also made out of solid oak. Raymond had given it to Esme for her sixth birthday, when the sword was not much smaller than her: back then, she'd been unable to lift it for more than a few minutes at a time. Now, for the next part of her morning regime, Esme assumed a horse stance (feet parallel and apart, with her legs well bent) and held the sword out in front of her. Though she had built up her strength until she could stand like that for much longer, nowadays she was content to keep the horse stance for just another hour. This, she had found, was long enough for the energy of her workout to spread around her body and for her mind to settle. Standing alone in the butterfly room, Esme waited for the spreading warmth, the sensation of being alive and awake, the relaxed-yet-focused singing of her blood in her veins that time in this stance usually gave her.

  It wouldn't come.

  It was a mess, she decided, after a time. Her whole life was a mess. Her whole life she had trained, her whole life she had waited for the chance to defeat the Scourge — and she had failed. The Scourge had escaped to Hell. She had failed, and Raymond had died.

  Esme felt sick inside: sick and empty and confused and hopeless. She didn't know what to do. And the longer she stood there, hoping for some peace and calm to return to her through the act of going through her daily routine, the more hopeless she felt.

  Still, she stood there.

  Still, she waited.

  And suddenly, the doors to the butterfly room burst open.

  Kicked in by heavy boots, the doors swung round on their hinges and smacked into the walls. Ten — no, fifteen — men, all dressed identically in black, with gas masks covering their faces, poured in and fanned out, the noise of their combat boots on the floor resounding round the room. Seeing Esme, they froze, and there was a lot of ostentatious ratcheting, racking, and clicking from the several varieties of guns that the men appeared to be carrying, as they pointed them all at her.

  "Freeze!" barked the leader, dropping into a firing crouch and leveling a fat-barreled black pistol at Esme. "Stay where you are!" he added, in case she hadn't known what he'd meant.

  There was a pause.

  Esme looked at the group with a strange kind of detachment. Everything was unreal to her after Raymond's death: for a moment, she had the urge to laugh. Slowly, not breaking her stance, she took one hand off the sword and pulled her hood back.

  "Hello," she said evenly. "Who are you?"

  "Oh," said the man, lowering his gun. "You're a girl."

  Esme's eyebrows flew upward. Now she was surprised. "And?" she inquired.

  "It's all right!" called the man. "Weapons down, gentlemen: she's a girl." Instantly, the rest of the group flicked the safeties on their MP5s back on and snapped to attention.

  "All units, this in Number Two," said the man, holding one hand to his ear. "We have a civilian in the main room of the top floor. Lone female, young, apparently harmless. Testing for possible contamination now."

  Esme glanced around at the rest of the men, noting their positions. Holding her stance, keeping both her hands on her practice sword, she looked back at the man who had spoken.

  "What do you mean," she asked, "'possible contamination'?"

  "We are sorry, mademoiselle," said a second man, stepping forward. (He spoke slowly and calmly, with a pronounced French accent.) "We believe you may 'ave been in contact with something rather dangerous."

  "Really," said Esme, still not moving in the slightest. "And who are you people, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "We are the Sons of the Scorpion Flail," the French-accented man replied, a secret international rapid-reaction force, sworn to protect the world from supernatural—"

  "What have I told you, Number Three?" the first man interrupted, rounding on his comrade. "For the last time, what is our first rule of engagement?"

  There was another pause.

  "But she is 'ere, sir," said Number 3, gesturing awkwardly at Esme. "She must be part of zis 'Brotherhood' the informant mentioned, so I see no reason for—"

  "Our first rule, Number Three," the man repeated.

  Number 3's shoulders slumped. "'Operatinoal information may be divulged to civilians only on a need-to-know basis only'," be quoted miserably. "Sir."

  "Thank you, Number Three," said Number 2. "So, enough talk. Number Nine? Number Twelve? Give her the test." Obediently, two men began to advance on Esme from either side.

  "What test?" Esme asked.

  "A blood test," Number 3 told her quickly. "It will determine in moments whether we 'ave anything to fear from you. And we would feel better," he added, "if you would lower your weapon."

  "I'm afraid," said Esme quietly, "that that's just not going to be possible."

  Halfway across the floor toward her, Number 9 and Number 12 stopped and turned to look at their leaders.

  "Drop the stick, honey," said Number 2. "We're not fooling around here."

  Looking at the men, in their black gear and gas masks, something inside Esme came awake with a whoosh: a soaring, sizzling, sparkling sensation that flushed through all her senses and left her tingling.

  "No," she said.

  "Sweetheart," said Number 2, "you have no idea who you're dealing with. We're the Sons of the Scorpion Flail. We travel the world, looking for evil, and wherever we find it, we kick its butt. Now, I'm telling you, girl, drop that thing and take the test; otherwise I'm going to have to get nasty."

  "No," Esme repeated, with a predatory smile. She was going to enjoy this now.

  "I'm going to count to three," Number 2 announced brilliantly. "ONE!"

  If shouting was supposed to make Esme flinch, it didn't work.

  "TWO! Look," said Number 2, when Esme still didn't move, "you want to do this the hard way? Fine! You asked for it. THR—"

  That was as far as he got before Esme's bokken smacked into his face.

  It had happened so fast that no one had seen it, but the faceplate of the man's gas mask now had a jagged spiderweb crack. Esme deliberately hadn't thrown the practice weapon hard enough to do more than give Number 2 a surprise, but he staggered backward, holding his hands up to his face. In the sudden silence as the rest of the men stared at him, the clatter the bokken made falling to the floor seemed very loud indeed.

  "Whuh. What?" said Number 2. "T-uh. Take her down!"

  Number 9 and Number 12 looked at each other. Then they lunged.

  Number 9 got his hand on the girl first. His black-gloved fist closed around her left elbow, and for a fraction of a second he felt pleased with himself.

  The feeling didn't last.

  Esme's first move was minimal, a single small step, turning on the balls of her feet — but Number 9 suddenly found himself off balance, stumbling toward her. To his further surprise (it was supposed to be him grabbing her, after all), Esme took hold of his wrist with both her hands — and now she had control of his arm.

  Esme could have broken Number 9's arm in a number of different places. She could have hurt him so badly that he never did anything with the arm again — but instead, she contented herself with a simple but well-executed aikido move. Numb
er 9 was a good foot and a half taller than Esme, but her utter command of her weight and balance made this no problem: she flipped him, straight into Number 12, his partner, and the two Sons of the Scorpion Flail crashed to the ground, astonished, in a tangle of black-clad limbs and military equipment.

  The third man to reach her didn't fare any better: a bare heel on the end of a whiplash kick exploded under his armored ribs, and, still reaching for the girl, he found himself lifted off his feet, climbing into the air, flying back over the heads of his fellows.

  A scything low sweep cut a fourth man's legs from under him.

  A snapping back-smash with the point of her right elbow dropped a fifth without Esme even needing to look.

  Then, while the rest of her attackers piled at the place where she'd just been standing, Esme sprang into the air, flipped over once in a tight forward roll, and came down in a crouch beside where her practice sword had landed.

  Perhaps a whole second had passed. The man she'd kicked, Number 24, was just hitting the wall: surprisingly high up, he slid to the floor with a crash. At any rate, by the time the rest of the group turned around, Esme had retrieved her bokken.

  The remainder of the fight happened very quickly indeed.

  She struck at knees, and elbows, and necks and ribs and ankles. She struck the breath from lungs and the strength from bodies. She kicked, she flipped, she swept, sliced, and smashed — and all with a fierce and easy joy, because it was what she was good at, what she did best. The heavy black weapon blurred in her hands and — silent and unconscious or howling and clasping themselves — the men toppled helplessly around her.

  Suddenly, it was over. In her right hand she still held her bokken. In her left, she held the group's leader by the collar.

  She had him off balance: she was supporting his entire weight easily with one hand — if she let go of him, he would fall flat on his back. Tucking the bokken's tip under the black rubber edge of his shattered mask, she ripped it neatly off his face and looked at him.