Black London 05 - Soul Trade

sallow cheeks flushed. “Don’t take the crow-mage with you.”
    Pete started at that. “I don’t know whatyou mean, Preston. I want to understand, but you’re not making much sense, luv.” To warn her away was one thing, but to suggest that the Prometheans had unsavory designs on Jack was much worse. Nobody who wanted to use him for their own ends was on the side of good, justice, and happy kittens.
    “They’ll pour honey in your ear,” Preston whispered. “They’ll make me out to be the villain, and they’llsend you in my stead. But they’re ignorant at best, and liars at worst. They don’t realize how things have changed because of what Nergal did.” He swallowed and coughed—a wet, contagious sound that came from deep in his lungs.
    “If I had a pound for every time somebody told me that,” Pete said. She didn’t mean to be flip, but Preston looked near tears at the thought that she wasn’t taking hisrant at face value. He thrust the bundle at her with a sharp, violent motion.
    “I know you don’t believe me, and I wouldn’t either, but you have to take this. Take it and don’t show it to them .” When Pete took a step back, Preston snatched her hand and pressed the paper-wrapped object into it. “Take it,” he said. “Keep it safe. Maybe it can help you where it couldn’t help me.”
    Jack came up behindher, and Pete nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke. “This fuckwit bothering you?”
    “No…” Pete started, but Preston was already off and running toward the taxi line and the street beyond.
    “Who was that?” Jack said.
    “He was … I don’t know. Random nutter, I think,” Pete said, though the thought nagged at her that Preston had been entirely too frightened to have made what he said up out ofthe ether. “Told me the Prometheans weren’t what they seem.”
    Jack snorted. “In other news, water is wet, Arsenal’s defence is shit, and the Pope wears a silly hat.”
    “That’s how I felt,” Pete agreed. She told herself to shake the vague feeling of unease as they made their way to the end of the taxi line. Preston Mayflower didn’t have to be a portent of certain doom. He could be crazy or, worse,he could have been sent by the Prometheans themselves as a test, to see if Pete would be a good little soldier if faced with an excuse to try to slip her geas and get away.
    Whatever the reason, she didn’t have the energy to play games with yet another set of shadowy intrigues. She barely had the energy to drag her bag along the curb.
    The ache of exhaustion was the excuse she gave herself afterwardfor seeing a streak of purple from the corner of her eye but not realizing what was happening until it was far too late. Preston Mayflower shoved his way through the throng at the curb, broke through the taxi line ahead of them, and cast a frantic look over his shoulder. His face was nearly the same color as his windcheater, and sweat flew in a sparkling arc from his balding head.
    Pete followedhis line of sight, her mouth forming into a shout, and saw two people pressing through the crowd behind him, the sort of nondescript that usually lent itself to undercover cops. One man and one woman, beige coats, dark hair, nothing remarkable about them. Except the look of fear they elicited from Preston Mayflower.
    A taxi slammed on its brakes, tires screeching, and the driver leaned out hiswindow to scream a curse. The woman of the pair got nearly close enough to touch Preston as he dodged into traffic, but he took another loping step forward, eyes bugging out in terror and seeing nothing in front of him.
    All of it happened in the space of two heartbeats, from her first view of Preston to the squeal of hydraulic brakes and the sickening, final impact of a body making contact witha Manchester city bus.
    Cries went up from the taxi line and the bystanders. A transit copper came running, yelling into his radio, while the bus driver dismounted his vehicle, face ashen and hands shaking.
    “He was just there …” the driver cried. “Nothing and then there …”
    The woman of the pair reached Preston’s body and bent down, rolling him onto his back. One leg and one arm were twisted behindhim, and the body made a sound like a sack of apples being tossed about. To any casual observer, the woman was administering aid, checking a pulse and pulling at Preston’s eyelid, but Pete watched her other hand creep across the windcheater, inside the pockets, and feel around the