Was (Was #1)

1x09: There the mages meet aghast sheeted memories of the past

Episode 1x09: There the mages meet aghast sheeted memories of the past

London, December 12th, 2009

‘Ladies and gentlemen, due to a problem on the Northern Line, the Tube traffic between Warren Street and Tottenham Court Road is temporarily frozen. Please exit here at Euston and head to Euston Square for a correspondence with the Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines.’

Train number 234 running on the Victoria line, southbound, had just pulled in Euston station, and the announcement broadcast twice in every carriage and on both platforms raised a chorus of protests from the people who had had no intention of stopping there.

‘Oh come on, why do we have to get out? What’s happening?’

‘Bet it’s some silly broad with her bag stuck in the door.’

‘Hey, why does it always have to be a woman?’

‘Yeah. Why not a stupid drunk man who fell from the platform, for a change?’

Keeping his watchful eyes on the crowd that started to stir with unease, Marek Van Cartier remained silent, paying only the merest attention to the various comments thrown here and there for no one in particular. When it became obvious that the tube would not resume its run, several people made their way to the three doors of the carriage, soon followed by others. He waited for some more time, so as to avoid the inevitable hustle that always occurred in such circumstances, then got up from his seat and, his attache-case in his gloved right hand, stepped out as well.

Although space magic had never been his forte, a few stations’ distance wasn’t enough to prevent him from sensing the wave of raw chaos that had swept over the Northern line, and sent ripples in the fabric of Reality all around. He just knew. The likes of him always did.

It was bound to happen, sooner or later; things had been going too well until now.

The previous evening, he had managed to leave Saint Pancras without anyone noticing his shirt drenched red, nor the girl tucked beneath his arm, leaving a trail of fresh blood from her severed wrists. He did not even have to exert his power that much, except when said girl had started to yell to attract attention; and where she was now, she could bawl as much as she wanted, nobody would ever hear her again.

Nobody either had asked him any questions when he arrived at the Hotel Russell to take possession of the rooms booked for him, nor when he had demanded that no one disturbed him during the rest of the night and the next day. Among all agents of the Anima Mundi, the one going by the code name ‘Zerstörer’ was probably one of the few who could pull the stunt of smuggling a handless, yet still very much living child screaming murder into a high-class hotel, and dispose of his burden as easily as he had brought her in.

Being a Nullifier had its perks, indeed, all the more since he was the only one in the whole Order. If he did not want to be seen nor heard, he had only to will it so. In his early days as a mage, it would have cost him a few hours’ worth of life span just to perform that feat on himself; now he was able to extend it to whoever, whatever was close enough to him, little girl included.

It wasn’t really a child anyway. The real one had died days or even weeks ago, when the Necromancer named Amanda Devereux had evicted her spirit from her body to claim it as her own, severing her silver cord in the process. For all Marek knew, maybe the man he had offed in the railway station had been the girl’s father, but that too was a trifle.

What mattered most today was the storm of probabilities that had been gathering all afternoon long in the vicinity of Bloomsbury, prompting him to follow it as best as he could to determine what might be causing it; and the other agents the ruthless mage was supposed to meet later on, now that he had got rid of his original mission, or at least the part of it that implied catching the Necromancer herself. He couldn’t question her alone; that unexpected partnership was a boon he wouldn’t turn down.