City of Halves (2 page)

L
ily tried to open her eyes. Her vision whirled. She winced and closed one eye, trying to focus. The boy crouched before her, ripping away the sleeve of her T-shirt up to the shoulder. Her jacket and knitted top had been dumped a few feet away, and her arm was smeared with blood. He caught her elbow in one vice-like hand and with the back of the other slapped her arm, hard, muttering about junkie veins. She wriggled in protest, unable to form the words to explain.

‘Stay still.' On the floor next to him, a large, very old medical textbook lay open. ‘Give me a vein, make a fist. I can't do it for you.'

‘Please,' she begged, ‘don't inject me. I can't—'

‘I know. Type H, yes?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then it's fine.' He cupped her chin in his hand, leaving bloody prints, looking into her eyes. ‘I promise. And if I don't do this, you are Going To Die.'

With the last of her strength, Lily formed a fist, making her blue veins pop beneath white, gore-streaked skin. She didn't even have the strength to wince as the needle slid in. Her head lolled.

‘No. Stay awake.' His hand caught in her hair, above her ear.

Lily opened her eyes. A needle was stuck inside his bicep, his tight sleeve rucked over it. From it a yellowing piece of rubber tubing ran to a two-chambered silver pump, which linked to the needle inside her elbow.

‘No!' she yelped. ‘Please don't. Please.'

‘Shut up. Rest.'

Her nerves began to sing, as if with electricity. Instantly she felt better and looked around, everything coming into a sharp, crackling focus. A strange sense of calm and warmth flooded her, like a drug. The boy knelt in front of her, eyes alternately on the textbook and the pump. He ran his hand through a tumbled mass of hair cut into an unruly short back and sides, then glanced up. Beneath thick, straight brows, his eyes were grey, with bright gold flecks visible in the flat winter light from the window. Lily's heart seemed to skip a beat, then thumped hard.

‘Hello,' he said. The pump whirred.

‘Hello,' she breathed.

He hesitated, then put his hand to her face again. His fingers were warm and dry, palm hard against her cheekbone. Her eyes met his. Lily could hear the traffic on Cheapside. She could feel the blood drying in her clothes. The boy smiled.
Okay, that makes it even harder to think
.

‘How do you feel?'

‘Weird.'

‘Weird how?'

‘Everything's buzzing.'

‘That'll wear off.'

Lily looked around. She was sitting in a threadbare armchair in what looked like a cross between a flat and a makeshift office. The room was large, with worn floorboards, and against each wall were piles of books, some leaning dangerously. There was no order to them, and some were ancient, with peeling leather and gold covers. A spine gilded with the date 1650 was sandwiched between two recent pulp thrillers. A book on folklore rested on top of
A Brief History of Time
.

There was an empty fireplace, a desk and an oil lamp, the plaster around it blackened in a neat ring. Through a doorway, Lily could see the end of an iron bedstead, the paint badly chipped. She looked down and flinched from the pain in her neck and shoulder, then lifted her good hand to feel the damage. She struggled to sit up.

‘Keep still,' he said, catching her hand. ‘It needs more time to work.' Reaching out, he picked up one of her earbuds, which still hung at her collar. ‘These things? Very bad idea. Anything could creep up on you.'

‘What was it?'

‘What?'

‘That thing?'

He looked at her bare shoulder. Lily tried to look too, and winced at the pain in her stomach. Her T-shirts sagged, heavy with blood. Soaked and shredded cotton lay over the flesh of her midriff.

‘Bandogge.' He took a cool, damp cloth from the table and wiped her throat.

‘A . . . bandogge? It had two heads.'

He nodded. ‘They usually do. The pain should go off soon.'

Lily grabbed his wrist. ‘There's no such thing as a dog with two heads.'

He sat back on his heels, letting her hold on to him. ‘What was it, then? And you should wait for it to kick in properly. You'll feel stronger soon, Caitlin Hilyard.'

She stared at him. ‘Why did you call me that?'

He pulled the engraved disc of her mother's medical alert necklace from his pocket and held it up. Its chain was broken.

Lily snatched it back. ‘That's my mother's. I'm Lily.'

He watched her for a second. The pump clicked. He looked at it, then cycled the lever a few times. His hands looked strong and capable. A strange black tattoo of what looked like flames sneaked from the cuff at his wrist and down the edge of his right hand.

‘Regan Lupescar.'

That's so not a real name
.

Confused, and suddenly afraid again, Lily tried to stand. Her knees buckled, and he caught her. He was so tall she had to look up, head spinning, to see his face. Over six feet to her five foot one.

‘Thanks.'

‘You're welcome, but like I said, I think you should give it a minute. Let me disconnect us, at least.'

Lily looked down quickly, then glanced up under her lashes and saw that beneath the open collar of his well-washed Henley the same tattoo also curled across Regan's right collarbone, licking up his chest towards the hollow at the base of his throat. She realised she was staring and a blush stained her pale cheeks, the flush deepening as she registered him holding her body up
against his.

The pump whirred again and she slackened as the pressure in her bicep increased, the rush through her veins making her dizzy. He let her down slowly, and dropped back to his knees in front of her. The silence was awkward, only the noise from the pump breaking the air.

‘You live here?'

Regan nodded.

‘It's amazing,' she said truthfully, as she looked around.

‘It's called the Rookery. I inherited it. Along with the family business.'

‘What do you do?'
No electricity? No computer. Nothing
.

He stilled the pump and slid the needle from Lily's arm, then his own. ‘Security. I work nights, mainly. What do you do?'

‘I'm still at school, you know.'

He shook his head and pushed up from the floor, perfectly graceful. ‘Never went. How do you feel now?' He disappeared into a tiny kitchen, the equipment in his hands.

Lily got up slowly, hearing it clatter into the sink. ‘Better, thank you,' she called after him. ‘Maybe I should—' She looked down at her injured shoulder. The pain in her neck was gone. She looked, cautiously, beneath her clothes. Her eyes widened as she saw the massive bloodstain over her chest and shoulder, the torn layers of her clothing matted with it. She pushed them aside. Nothing, apart from smears of blood on her skin. Astonished, she touched her arm near the shoulder, which only minutes before had been ripped and bleeding. The blood was already tacky, sticking to her curious fingers. She examined her stomach, covered in clotted blood but unmarked.

Regan reappeared and leant against the kitchen doorframe,
crossing his ankles and drying his hands. His boots were dusty and ancient, with stitched leather soles and loose straps round the ankles, jeans tucked haphazardly into the gaping tops.

‘You got away lightly, all things considered.'

‘
Lightly?
How did you do that?'

‘Magic,' he said.

‘There's no such thing.'

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Sure?' Ducking back for a second, he came over to her with a pair of scissors. ‘Hold.' He put them in her hand.

Lily looked up at him. He produced three large old safety pins and began to pin the ripped edges of her T-shirt back together on her shoulder. On the back of his left hand and on two of his fingers was tattooed a soot-black flight of birds on the wing, incredibly clear. Taking the scissors from her, he cut away the flopping sleeves, leaving her with half on one side and nothing on the other.

He gave her a brief grin. ‘Could be a new trend.'

Lily looked down at the deep rips in the material over her stomach. ‘Maybe for Halloween.' She smiled up at him, liking his unexpected playfulness.

He looked away abruptly and went back into the kitchen, shoving the scissors in the sink. Near Lily's feet the medical book lay open. It looked decades old, the print cramped and small.

Coming back to her with a damp tea towel in his hands, Regan cleaned the blood from her face with it as if she were a child. She noticed his top was covered in her blood.

‘Sorry.' She gestured vaguely to the stains.

He shrugged. ‘Occupational hazard.'

What does that mean?

‘There, all done,' he said. His gentleness was as alarming as his orders. He stooped slightly to catch her eye, hands pushed into the hip pockets of his jeans.

‘I should go.' She stepped back.

‘Why?' he asked, sounding genuinely interested.

She looked down at her bloody clothes. ‘Five minutes ago I was bleeding to death. Now I'm fine? And you're . . .'

‘I'm what?' he asked quickly, as if he really needed the answer.

‘Creepy,' she said warily, stepping back.

That didn't seem to faze him. ‘I'll walk you.'

‘You don't have to.'

‘I know. But I'd rather you got out of here in one piece.'

‘What does
that
mean?' she asked, alarmed.

‘Nothing.' He shrugged. ‘Just what I said.'

‘Great,' Lily said, loaded with sarcasm. ‘Because I've only been walking around on my own for about ten years.'

‘And you made a
brilliant
job of it today, Lily Hilyard,' he returned with equal sarcasm, pulling on the long, dirty-white hooded coat Lily had seen on camera. As he did, he watched her.

‘You don't have to use my whole name all the time. Lily's fine. And do you usually stare at people like they're an experiment in a test tube?'

‘Is that what I'm doing?' He didn't look away, settling the coat on his shoulders.

‘Yes.'

‘I want to know why you were in my yard. It's not a place people just walk into.'

‘I'm looking for Harris Stedman.'

His face became shuttered.

Lily's eyes narrowed. ‘He forges papers.'

‘No forged papers here.' He waved at the flat.

She glanced around, as if to study the place. ‘Yes, I'm sure what goes on here is absolutely legal.'

He frowned. ‘I'm not sure it's
il
legal. Although to be honest I've never really thought about it like that.'

‘Are you incapable of giving a straight answer?'

He said nothing. Instead, he opened the door for her in a quaint show of manners. ‘After you.'

Outside the door was a long balcony like a gallery, one of four running all the way around the interior walls of the building, flights of ancient wooden stairs connecting them. Doors led off at regular intervals.
Did he carry me all the way up here?
Lily frowned, burying her chin in her coat collar as she followed him down the switchback stairs.

They passed the body of the animal. Lily walked over and studied it: the two massive heads, the powerful jaws. She shivered. Regan was standing behind her, watching. She turned away from the body.

Through the alley they passed the little stationery shop and the coffee place. A man in his twenties with a neat goatee, wearing a tight white T-shirt, a black apron and a baker-boy cap, stood outside smoking.

‘Hi, Tom. There's a job for Felix in there, if you see him.' Regan gestured to the alleyway with a nod of his head.

Tom's eyes widened. ‘In there?'

‘I know,' Regan agreed.

‘Okay, I'll tell him,' said Tom, and opened the door to the coffee shop, disappearing inside.

Regan pulled up the wide hood of his coat, obscuring his face, and headed out of the alley. The coat looked handmade, antique. He strode out from the hip, totally relaxed. They walked through the busy streets without speaking until they reached Queen Victoria Street. Lily looked at the people passing them, hurrying through the cold with coffees, sneaking a cigarette outside the office fire door. It was a perfectly ordinary weekday, people still slow and grumpy after the Christmas break, facing the new year with heads down, hands in pockets.

‘None of them would believe you,' he said, as if reading her mind. ‘Attacked by a two-headed dog? Here in the City? Right.'

‘Stop trying to freak me out.'

‘If I wanted to hurt you, surely I'd just have left you to the dogge?' He gestured across the street with a nod of his head, just as the pedestrian crossing turned green and began to bleep. They crossed and walked towards Blackfriars. The station was still under renovation, and scaffolding and workmen were everywhere. A thousand questions crowded Lily's mind as she almost winced at the brightness of their fluorescent orange overalls. She felt strung out. Her clothes were stiffening with blood –
her
blood. Lily glanced down. Inside her dark coat, against her black clothes, no one could see. But she knew it was there.