124.

  Being an alcoholic must be rough. Waking up with a splitting headache with no memory of the previous night or how you got to where you are is a pretty poor way to start your day. Yet, that’s how I started mine and I had never drank in my life. Magic is one hell of a drug, I guess.

  I groaned and rolled over. I was on the floor, still fully dressed, my head thumped and my mouth was painfully dry. Holding onto the legs of my desk, I pulled myself into a sitting position. I mashed my sore eyes with the heels of my hands and then sneezed a couple of times. My head felt foggy and sluggish. My body didn’t hurt too bad, so I must not have had a crazy night. As I blinked and looked around the room, I saw the Codex laying on my desk and memory came flying back to me.

  The book had done nothing but leave me with more mysteries and dread. The ritual was evidence that the Syndicate were trying to summon something. But what the hell was a criminal organisation trying to summon? And from where? And what? And what was following me? And why? And… I groaned as my painfully empty stomach rumbled. Questions later, first I needed to take care of some primal needs.

  I went to the toilet and then munched my way through some of the stale pastries Marilyn had brought over. They weren’t good but they were filling. As I ate I thought about Marilyn. She must think I’m a right weirdo. And I had lied about a job, which was another string in the convoluted web of secrets that had become my life. Speaking of work, I hadn’t been to the homeless shelter in days. While the people down there left me to own devices, they also cared. They would start to get worried and possibly involve the police if I just disappeared. I needed to show my face. And a bit of normality might be good for me.

  I finished breakfast, got dressed and headed out, just about beating the morning rush hour. As I walked through the Mulberry, I could already sense the change in the place. People were walking faster again with their eyes glued to the pavement in front of them. Women clutched bags tight to themselves, and children were hurried along on the way to school. People were scared. I didn’t blame them. There had been half a dozen shootings in under a week, a firebombing, and at least 6 murders in and around the Mulberry Estate in the same amount of time. That was a record, even around here. It was amazing how fragile peace really was.

  The mood was similarly grim at the homeless shelter. I noticed there was a lot less activity than there should be for this time of morning. Usually, the indigent population would come in for breakfast and there'd be a line outside, but today there just seemed to be a few people milling around and only half of the shelter’s shutters had been raised.

  When I walked in, I was greeted by Tom, the shelter manager.

  "Alex!" he exclaimed upon seeing me. "It's so good to see you. Where have you been?”

  I shrugged noncommittally.

  "I haven't been feeling very well," I said.

  "Yeah, you look a little bit under the weather. You sure you're okay?" Tom said.

  Tom was a really nice chap. He was from somewhere where they pronounced all their letters correctly, and even though he hated to admit it, I was pretty sure he went to a private school and a fancy university. Right now, he was doing his stint with the less fortunate. I was a little bit harsh on Tom. He seemed to genuinely care about helping other people, but he wasn't from the Mulberry; he didn't really get it around here. He had this weird optimism that eventually everything would just turn out okay, whereas those who were truly from the estate knew that wasn't the case. Things only got worse, they never got better.

  "Yeah, I'm fine," I said to him. "Obviously, with all this stuff that's been happening around the estate, I just kept my head down for a couple of days.”

  "Yeah, it's been absolutely awful," Tom said, wiping his brow. "I mean, the things I've seen in the news, you just wouldn't believe it would happen in a modern city like this. It's like something out of Cartel America or something."

  "Yeah," I gave a short laugh, not knowing what he was talking about.

  "But listen, since you're here," Tom said, "I'd really appreciate it if you could jump onto the sorting line. We haven't really had anybody to sort out new donations recently, and there's a massive backlog.”

  "No problem," I said, grateful to be given my usual position in the back, away from people.

  He wasn't exaggerating either, there were piles upon piles of filthy clothes, rags, and black bags overflowing with rubbish. That was the problem with donations, some people genuinely donated to help, but other people did it just to clear out some space at home. Half the stuff we received wasn't even usable, and the other half often required mending and deep cleaning before we could give it out. But I was happy enough to start sorting through.

  I pulled on a heavy pair of rubber gloves and a face mask and got to work. For a few hours, at least, I was able to pretend that my life was somewhat normal. But even so, thoughts kept trickling through my mind about the horror chamber, about the people that must have been in there and how scared they had to have been. What could the Syndicate possibly be trying to bring into this world, and why?

  As far as I knew, the Syndicate was just a criminal organisation. I never got the hint from them that there was anything supernatural going on. But then again, I was assuming that this was the Syndicate; it could be that the warehouse had nothing to do with the criminal organisation, and this was a whole new faction. After all, all I had to go on was the mysterious messages from a stranger who was essentially blackmailing me into doing as they asked. It was so infuriating to be constantly stumbling around in the darkness.

  A small part of me missed the days of battling Brick and his cronies. At least I knew who the enemy was then, at least I knew what they wanted and what they were doing. There was nothing particularly complex about Brick and his gang, they sold drugs and ruined lives, and they had to be stopped. But this? This was different. This felt like I was blundering into something larger than myself, something a whole hell of a lot darker and more sinister with much more serious consequences than beating up some drug dealers on the estate.

  Speaking of the estate, I also didn't know how the hell this all linked together with teens being armed and sent to war on the Mulberry, if it linked at all. It could be that the two things were just a coincidence. That led me to wonder what my priority was. Should I be focused on keeping the people of the Mulberry Estate safe, or should I be concerning myself with whatever the hell was going on deep underground? Were monsters being brought into the world really in my remit? After all, in the grand scheme of things, I was just some kid who knew a few runes and had a few gadgets. What the hell would I do against some sort of cosmic horror being summoned from the darkness? I remembered my battles with Somnix and how outclassed I had been. If whatever this thing was, was anything like that nightmare wraith, then I was definitely well and truly out of my element and out of my depth.

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  The morning passed and my musings didn't get any easier. I'd hoped I would become lost in the work, but it was the other way around. The work became lost in my thoughts, and as my body moved on autopilot sorting, sifting, piling, folding, and washing, my brain just kept spinning round and round, trying to put the facts together in different ways. None of the answers I came up with were any good.

  Then DI Woodley turned up and shattered my whole mental marathon.

  Tom had knocked on the door, which was unusual as he usually just left me to it. When I looked up, I saw there was something weird about his face, as if he was simultaneously concerned and embarrassed.

  "Alex, there's someone here to see you," he said.

  "To see me?" I replied.

  "It's a police officer," he said. I tried to keep my face as neutral as possible as I pulled off the heavy gloves and mask and followed him outside. Waiting outside for me was the gruff form of DI Woodley. The last time I'd seen him, he'd had a gun trained on me and was trying to arrest me. That was as the Gutter Mage. But what the hell did he want with Alex?

  The veteran police officer looked exhausted. He had hardly been the paragon of health and vitality when I first saw him, but now he looked even worse. His skin was sallow, the bags under his eyes were deep black, and they extended almost to his cheekbones. He looked like he had simultaneously lost weight on his face and gained fat around his midriff.

  I swallowed as I saw him. I'd been ducking DI Woodley for months now. Ever since I got out of the hospital, he'd been trying to get hold of me, leaving messages and cards at my door, but I'd always come up with an excuse or a way to dodge him. Now, he'd managed to track me down, and I had no idea what he wanted.

  "Alex," he said when he saw me, his voice gruff and not particularly friendly. "You're a hard man to get hold of.”

  Tom stood there awkwardly for a moment, looking between us, and then I nodded to him.

  "It's okay, Tom," I said. "I can take it from here.”

  "Okay," Tom said, eyeing DI Woodley, "but if you need anything, I'll just be inside."

  I nodded again and he left us alone.

  DI Woodley began to walk, and I fell in step with him without being asked.

  "Where have you been, Alex?" DI Woodley asked me, his tone almost conversational.

  "Nowhere," I replied, "just, you know, here and stuff.”

  "I've been trying to get hold of you," DI Woodley said, and I remained tight-lipped. I just hoped that the Mulberry Estate people's usual reticence with police officers would be enough cover for why I'd been ducking DI Woodley.

  "You're not in any trouble, lad," DI Woodley said, "if that's what you think."

  Again, I remained silent.

  "I just have an investigation that I thought you might be able to help me with.”

  "How could I help you?" I said.

  "Well, you live in the Mulberry, don't you?”

  "Yeah," I replied.

  "Well, I'm carrying out an investigation right now, and I have been for the last couple of months, but I haven't come up with a whole lot, if I'm honest. You see, it's to do with this vigilante running around."

  My blood ran cold. Was this all a trap? Did he have officers waiting to swoop in on me? I forced myself to be calm and not start looking around over my shoulders. DI Woodley might look like a middle-aged man closer to retirement than his youth, but I knew from my few dealings with him that he was sharp. The more he pretended that we were just having a casual conversation, the more careful I needed to be. The man saw everything: every twitch, every movement, every flicker of guilty eyes.

  "You've heard of him?" DI Woodley asked, and I decided there was no point in lying, so I nodded my head. "Well, we'd be very interested in finding out who this vigilante is. You see, he's breaking the law after all," DI Woodley explained, "and we're pretty certain that whoever he is, he lives on the Mulberry Estate.”

  Again, I felt my chest tighten, and I forced myself to remain silent and deadpan.

  "In fact, I'm pretty certain he'd be someone around your age, maybe potentially a little bit older."

  That was it. Did DI Woodley know it was me? Damn it, in the space of forty-eight hours, my so-called secret identity had been rumbled twice. But no, if he knew it was me, we wouldn't be going for a casual stroll, would we? I mean, really, all the police had to do was arrest me, go and search my flat, and they'd find every bit of evidence they could ever need.

  Suddenly, I cursed myself for my own stupidity. Literally, every bit of incriminating evidence was in my bedroom: the gear, the clothes, the Codex. Hell, I was pretty certain there was also a rucksack full of drugs in the back of my cupboard that I hadn't managed to dispose of yet. My heart began to hammer in my chest, and an insane thought popped into my head: to blindside DI Woodley and make a run for it. Maybe I could get back to my flat and dispose of everything before the police swooped. But that was a stupid idea. What would I do after that? Go on the run? I swallowed down the instinct to act, and I just kept walking.

  "You haven't heard anything, have you, Alex?" DI Woodley asked. "Only, I've been on this vigilante for months now, and he hadn’t poked his head back up yet. However, we've been getting reports in the last couple of days that he's all over the place, and there was a shooting yesterday. Did you hear about it?"

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  "Which one?" I said.

  DI Woodley nodded grimly.

  "That's a sad state of affairs, ain't it, lad? There was a shooting last night in a club on the Allwell Estate. Five dead, a few more in intensive care, and word is from those that survived that this vigilante was there and possibly was one of the shooters.”

  Instinctively, I opened my mouth to defend myself, to exclaim how that was nonsense, how I would never shoot anybody. Then I snapped my mouth shut just as quick, and I saw a small flicker in DI Woodley's eyes. Had he seen that?

  "I need to know if you've heard anything, Alex. Any young guys you know that might possibly fit the bill? People on the Mulberry don't really like to talk to police, after all."

  I shrugged my shoulders, keeping my eyes firmly planted on the pavement below.

  "I don't really talk to people much, if I'm honest," I said, "and I definitely haven't heard about anybody being a vigilante.”

  DI Woodley sighed and rubbed one of his tired eyes.

  "Well, if you do, lad, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could contact me. I know from the outside looking in, it seems like this vigilante is doing something real good for the community, but you see, all this violence that suddenly popped up, it's always connected with him. That's the problem when citizens take the law into their own hands, it spirals really quickly. If you have any information, any sightings, anything, you get in touch with me. There's a reward as well." He handed me his card and then patted me on the shoulder. "How's your Grandad, Alex?"

  "What?" I said, looking up sharply. "Oh, yeah, he's okay.”

  "I knocked at your house a few times during the day, and nobody answered," DI Woodley said.

  "Yeah, Granddad likes to go out a lot. He does fishing and stuff."

  "Really?" DI Woodley replied. "At this time of year?"

  "Yeah, down by the river, I think," I said with a shrug.

  "Down by the river?" DI Woodley replied, and again there was that curious look in his eyes, as if he knew I was lying but he was unsure about what. "Well, if you hear anything, lad, you'll be in touch, right?"

  I nodded, and DI Woodley patted me on the shoulder again, gave me another drawn-out look, and then turned and walked away. I watched him go, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. So, the police were now actively investigating the Gutter Mage. That was going to be a problem.

  How much bigger could the pile of shit I had stumbled into get?