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“We’re almost there,” said Elaine.
The Docklands in east London were a mixture of old and ultra-modern. Their route took them through Canary Wharf and past the headquarters of Barclays Bank, Credit Suisse, HSBC and all the other global financial houses. In the dark the skyscrapers shone as if covered in crystal.
Beyond the bastions of super-wealth came endless, squalid council estates, low and mean and hidden in the gloom, shadowed by the glass titans and circled by busy ring roads.
“Not surprising Savage would set up here,” said Elaine as she drove. “This was where it all started.”
She was right. Savage had begun as a soldier of the East India Company back in the eighteenth century. From there he’d built his fortune through slavery and drug smuggling and conquest. He’d marched with the likes of Napier and Clive, carving up India, creating what would be the heart of the British Empire. Spice ships had docked here, bringing pepper, once more valuable than gold, but there had been gold aplenty too. Gold, silver, diamonds, ivory, and tea and cotton and countless other treasures of the East.
But the old warehouses had all been turned into offices or fashionable apartments for the merchant bankers, now trading electronically and growing just as rich as the nabobs of the Honourable East India Company.
Snow had just started to fall. The clouds were a deep orange from the city. It never truly became dark in London, and small flurries of snowflakes swirled in the pool of amber from the sodium streetlights.
Elaine slowed down and came to a halt at the corner of the road. “There it is.”
The warehouse took up an entire block. Four storeys tall with a multi-pitched roof with plenty of nooks and crannies among the chimney stacks. As it stood alone they could see the building backed on to a dock: a square, artificial bay with a few designer barges and yachts moored, quiet and idle. Two hundred years ago the basin would have been filled with high-masted clippers and men heaving the fortunes of nations off the boats and into the warehouse.
The windows were dark. A white Humvee stood outside the front door.
Ash slid the side panel open and stepped out of the back of the van. He shivered as the wind whipped along the street, but pulled off his coat and threw it back in. He didn’t want it getting in the way. He touched his katar handle, strapped to the back of his belt. “You ready for this, Ashoka?”
“No, but I’m coming anyway.” He slung his bow across his back.
Parvati smiled at him as she stepped out, hand on her urumi.
Elaine leaned out of the driver’s window. “I’m going to hide over the other side of the dock. Good luck and don’t be long.”
They made their way towards the warehouse. Ashoka was pale, eyes darting everywhere.
Ash flexed his fingers, trying to keep the cold out. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to take on Savage. They were on the back foot, going into unknown territory without all their powers.
But that was just the way it had to be.
What and who was in there? Ashoka’s family? Jackie? Savage even? Ash wished he was more ready; that they all were. The only one who looked at ease was Parvati. Nothing ever phased her. Always cool, always in control.
She peered through the letter box in the front door. “What’s the PIN?”
Ashoka inspected his palm. “040776.”
Parvati shrugged off her coat. “I’ll just be a minute.” Then she reached through the letter box, sliding into her cobra form as she did so. Her tale flicked before vanishing through the slot.
Ashoka glanced up and down the street. “I’ve never done anything illegal, and now I’m breaking and entering.”
“How are you finding it?”
“I feel half sick and half excited, you know?”
“Yes,” said Ash. “I do know.”
A minute later the door opened and Parvati, back in human form, smiled at them. “Come in.”
Savage hadn’t stinted on the decorations. It was an elegant mix of old and modern. The walls were original bare red brick, but full-height portraits lined the hallway, each lit by a discreet spotlight hidden among the old wooden beams across the ceiling. A long, dark red Persian rug ran all the way to a wrought-iron staircase, and the doors leading off the hallway were antique wood, their colour glossy and dark from the varnish.
Ashoka stood facing a life-sized portrait. “It’s Savage.”
Ash had seen it before, back in India. “At the beginning of his career.”
Savage wore the red jacket of an officer of the East India Company. He gazed down at them with half-lidded eyes that were cold blue chips of ice. They burned with all the greed, hunger for power, the sense of destiny, and of superiority that would define his three-hundred-year existence. All present in this first portrait of him as a mortal man in his mid-twenties. He held a tiger-headed cane, and the beast’s own gaze was pure red, two small rubies glistening from the silver face, snarling at the painter. Behind Savage lay a pair of manacles and a bundle of dried poppies, the source of his wealth. Further along the hallway was a portrait of him as an old man, then nearest to the stairs the most recent – just him sitting on a stool, dressed in his customary white suit, wearing his black shades. His skin was pearly white, almost luminescent. Behind him was desert and the faint outline of a vast archaeological excavation. His cane rested across his knees.
“That’s the dig in Rajasthan,” said Ash, “where we found Ravana.”
Parvati stood by a small electrical panel beside the door. A schematic of the building showed all the alarm locations, now all green. She double-checked and sighed. “The entire building is alarmed.”
“Which means no one’s at home,” said Ashoka. “What are we going to do?”
Ash knew Ashoka was gutted, and he was too. But then did he really believe it would have been that easy? This was Savage they were dealing with. The Englishman would have backup plans to his backup plans.
But they were here. In his house. Who knew what they might find?
“We need to have a good look around,” he said. “Maybe we’ll find a clue as to where they’ve gone. We know they were here recently.”
Parvati didn’t look happy. “It’s a big house.”
“We should split up.”
Ashoka shook his head. “Nope. No way. I’ve seen too many movies where that happens and the loser in the party …” he looked to Parvati, then Ash, “… which, under these circumstances, would be me, comes to a bloody and awful end.”
“Which is why you’ll be staying with Parvati,” said Ash.
“How come I get stuck with him?” replied Parvati.
“Hey!” said Ashoka.
“You have him,” she continued.
“No. Hanging out with him, it’s just too … freaky.” Ash smiled. “And look, you dealt with me when I was young and useless, so—”
“Who says I’m useless?”
Parvati put up a finger. “Shh.” She turned to Ash. “OK, then what are we looking for?”
“The house is huge, and I don’t want to stay here a moment longer than necessary, but we need to try to find out where they’ve gone, and we need to work fast, and that means splitting. I don’t like it any more than you do, Ashoka, but otherwise we have no leads. I’ll start at the top, you two start down here, and we’ll meet in the middle. All right?” Ash turned to Ashoka. Yes, it was still odd, staring at himself. “You do exactly as she says. Got it?”
“I am not useless.”
“Whatever.” Ash checked his watch. “We’ll meet in fifteen minutes.”
Parvati nodded, then took the left corridor, Ashoka close behind her.
Ash went directly to the wrought-iron staircase and climbed, moving quickly and keeping to the shadows. A clock chimed somewhere in the house, but all else was silence. He paused at the first floor to listen, gazing down the corridor. There was no one around. He continued on up.
Clues. I’m looking for clues. Now which door leads to clues?
He was at the top of the house. A skylight illuminated a large square patch of the corridor in a silvery blue. The space was mean compared to the rest of the house. The ceiling was low and the doors were plain, without the ornate panelling of the floors below. It smelled musty and a cold breeze sank through the old frame around the skylight.
He peered into the first room, opening the door slowly to minimise the squeak of the hinges. Linen sat in neat white stacks upon a row of shelves and there was the stuffy odour of mothballs. Ash moved on.
He went quickly from room to room, finding nothing of interest. He saw the stairs at the opposite end. One more room to check, then he’d make his way down to the floor below and search there.
The door was oak and the handle a brass curl, different from the rest. Ash opened it and entered.
Chapter Eight (#ulink_8fe13471-79e6-5349-b96e-cdd460c3bea0)
A study. Savage’s home from home. It had to be. Small, cramped and with a row of windows overlooking the street, but there was a tiger skin on the floor and a large desk by a window. The desk was bare but for an old-fashioned telephone. Most of the wall was covered with shelves overstuffed with books, mainly old, worn and leather-bound. Alongside these were some glass cabinets, each filled with archaeological artefacts from around the world. There were ancient bronze arrowheads, clay statues, feather headdresses and gold coins, rusty swords and urns. Animal heads decorated the walls, everything from tigers to boars with massive tusks.
A chill breeze caressed Ash’s nape.
He’d been in a room a lot like this once, in the Savage Fortress. It had been the night he’d learned his world was stranger than he’d imagined, when he’d discovered monsters – demons – were very real.
A photograph caught his attention. Age had turned it yellow and the black had given way to a metallic sheen.
Savage wore an officer’s uniform. His legs were in puttees, long strips of cloth wound round for protection, and he had an old-fashioned tin hat, a Brodie, on his lap. The soldiers around him looked at the camera, cigarettes or pipes loose in their mouths, weary, with muddy shovels and picks lying around a half-dug trench. One man rested his arm across a large machine gun.
The First World War.
It had to be. The style of the uniforms and the weapons were consistent with the Great War. Ash had studied it and read about the terrible slaughters of the first mechanical war and how thousands of men would march across no-man’s-land to be decimated by machine-gun fire and poison gas.
Only Savage looked relaxed. He knew that he was going to get out of this alive. He knew the bullets and the gas and the bombs couldn’t hurt him.
One of the men was gazing across at Savage. Ash looked at his face – just some nameless private. Forgotten in history. Was there anyone alive now who knew his name? What sort of life he’d led? What sort of death he’d had? Whether or not he’d made it out of the Normandy mud alive?
If only I could slip into the picture, thought Ash. Stop Savage then, before he became too powerful.
But that might only make it worse. He’d be changing Time himself then, and who knew what the effects would be? The further back you went, the bigger the ripples.
He came to the desk and checked the drawers. Then he grinned.
Got it.
A notebook, the electronic variety. He ran his palm over it. There might be some useful info on it, and if Ashoka could bypass all this security then surely he’d have no problem hacking something like this. He put it in its plastic case and zipped it closed. Too big for his pocket, he tucked it inside his shirt. Ash closed the drawer, had a last look around to see if there was anything else of use – nope. He had what he wanted.
He was out a moment later, the door clicking as he closed it behind him.
He jumped as Parvati appeared in front of him. She was just a silhouette at the top of the stairs, but he knew it was her by her stance and her shape. Even in the darkness he could see the faint shimmer of her scales.
“I’ve got Savage’s notebook.” He patted his chest as he approached her. “It could be useful. You find anything?”
Parvati hissed and Ash stopped.
“Parvati? What’s up?”
Her front foot slid forward and her fingers flexed.
Now, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Ash noticed something different about the rakshasa princess. “What happened to your hair?”
Her hair was always long, down to her waist and as glossy black as oil on water. Now it was cropped short and spiky.
“Parvati?” Ash stepped nearer and reached out. “What’s wrong?”
Her fist rammed into his jaw, propelling Ash into the wall. Stars blazed in his eyes. He blinked and dived as her boot swung towards his head. Her heel smashed the wall lamp, sprinkling Ash with glass.
He blocked the next kick, but couldn’t stop the flurry of punches that came from all directions. It was as if Parvati had six arms. One blow rattled the teeth in his mouth and suddenly he was spitting blood.
“Parvati!” he shouted. “Stop!” What the hell was going on? She had gone mad. But there wasn’t a chance to ask. Parvati reached over her shoulders and there was the ominous sound of steel against steel. Two curved blades shone in the darkness.
He needed to level the battleground. Darkness was Parvati’s element. He stumbled backwards towards the patch of light in the corridor.
“Parvati …”
She swung the twin tulwar blades with mastery. A wall of lightning, blazing silver blurred about him and Ash ripped free his katar, barely deflecting one of the swords before it decapitated him. Sparks jumped as metal struck metal. Ash struck back, a feint to try to wrong-foot her, but Parvati saw through it and he received a cut along his arm for his pains.
“Parvati, please …”
Parvati stepped into the square of light. “My name is Rani.”
Three crooked grooves crossed her face. Her left eye was blind and white, the tip of the upper lip raised in a sneer by the scar that ran from her temple down her cheek. Steel barbs chimed in her hair, tied to the brutal short locks. Her armour was a mixture of ancient and modern, her arms coiled with serpentine tattoos. A pair of daggers had been rammed into the white sash she wore around her slim waist, each with a cobra-styled hilt, matching the designs on her swords, their eyes glistening with emerald stones. She glared at Ash, her forked tongue flicking between her long fangs. Her face was framed by scales, giving her a greenish hue. This wasn’t the Parvati he knew.
“Ash!”
Parvati ran up the stairs. His Parvati. She stared at Ash and the girl he was fighting. Ashoka, huffing and puffing, clambered up behind her, carrying a satchel. His mouth dropped open.
Two Parvatis. And Ash was obviously fighting the evil-twin version.
That explains a lot. None of it good.
Two Ashes. Two Parvatis. Two of everyone.
Parvati flicked free her urumi. The four steel ribbons danced and lashed, eager tongues wanting blood.
“Wait!” shouted Ash. This was Parvati, of this world. Maybe she could help them.
But Parvati wasn’t listening. She pounced.
Rani transformed. She spun between the steel whips, any one of them capable of slicing off a limb, one moment taking the form of a cobra, twisting in the air, then, as the four blades recoiled, landing on the ground, human again.
Parvati couldn’t change that fast, nor with such precision.
Rani spun her swords and came at Parvati. She sheared off one of her locks and Parvati flinched as the tip entered her shoulder. The urumi skated across Rani’s armour but did nothing more than scratch the black-lacquered steel.
