Cinn gave him an exaggerated eye roll and dropped his grip on Julien’s arm. Julien laughed, looking pleased.
Darcy saved Cinn from further torment by materialising, Eleanor Sinclair in tow. Cinn blinked, not expecting her presence here even though she’d demanded his. It was striking seeing her in a standardised uniform, rather than the power-suit combos she tended to favour. Even more strange was the absence of her black thick-rimmed glasses, which she must have had to leave behind at Auri.
Eleanor looked straight past Cinn to Julien. “I’m still not entirely clear what you and Darcy are doing here,” she said pleasantly enough, but the edge to her undertone made Cinn’s stomach tense.
Darcy’s gaze fell to the ground like a reprimanded child’s, but Julien remained unaffected. “How can I support MEET in developing motetech to handle these umbraphages if I’ve never seen one?”
“Ah, so the director of MEET approved the paperwork? Funny how Jonathan Steele managed to do that, within ten minutes, while being out of the country.”
Darcy now looked like she wanted to die, to sink into the ground and never return.
Cinn stepped forward. Cleared his throat. “It’s my fault, ma’am. Darcy came to take me to the Baths, and I panicked about going alone. I begged them to come with me. Sorry if they should have checked with you first.”
Julien didn’t blink an eye at his lie, but Darcy looked up, looking even more horrified.
Eleanor made a clucking sound. “Well, we’re all here now. But this isn’t a school trip. You’ll follow the instructions from the unit commander to the letter. These things are dangerous. The two umbraphages have already killed six people, one of them ours.”
“Elliot—” started Darcy.
“Is fine. Now follow me.”
The three of them fell into step behind Eleanor, who left the vicinity of the van to march them down the road. For the first time, Cinn took in their surroundings—a residential area, three-storey terraced houses on either side of them. When they reached the end of the road, a line of orange blockades prevented access to the left.
“We’ve evacuated every house in the surrounding blocks, citing a critical gas leak,” Eleanor said. “We were forced to use the LMDs on a couple of residents who saw too much.”
“Lumimeld Memory Disrupter,” Julien said quietly. “My team and I designed them.” The evident pride in his voice made Cinn smile to himself.
Two turns in the road later, the first traces of noise became audible. Shouting mainly, but some other indistinguishable sounds as well. Cinn’s pace slowed as Eleanor’s quickened. He really wasn’t sure what toexpect from these elusive creatures that Auri believed he held the magic key to turning the tide against. What hedidknow however, was that they were likely to be very disappointed when he turned out to be useless.
What would happen if that happened? Would they send him back to London? With his golden band on, he wouldn’t be a danger any longer.
Although, when he imagined himself slotting back into his old life—well, he’d probably need to find a new restaurant to work at—a pang of loss twinged through him. Which in turn triggered a wave of guilt, because Tyler needed him there.
It had alarmed Cinn to get a phone call from Tyler yesterday. Just past nine a.m., but Tyler joked he hadn’t been to bed yet. Cinn hadn’t found the manic note in his laugh funny at all. When he’d accused Tyler of being high, Tyler had muttered something under his breath before hanging up on him. Cinn knew Tyler better than the back of his hand. Tyler felt abandoned, and confused about what exactly Cinn was doing in Switzerland, and hurt by the lack of information he could offer him.
“Hey, this is exactly where that umbraphage attacked the other week, isn’t it? Outskirts of Seville?” said Julien. “I recognise it from the video you showed me.”
“Yes,” replied Eleanor. “We dissipated it, but it’s returned to the exact same place, which is unique enough as it is. But this time, it’s brought company.”
The noises increased in volume until it was clear they’d almost arrived. Turning the last corner, Cinn braced himself.
Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.
His breath caught, and he reached for both Julien and Darcy’s arms simultaneously as he observed the spectacle unfolding before him. Two of the creatures, suspended in mid-air above a sea of navy-blue uniforms—Auri’s gendarmerie. The umbraphages, black silhouettes that emitted a dark, otherworldly glow, writhed and contorted like shadowscome to life. Their formless bodies ebbed and flowed, a dance of darkness that seemed to mock the efforts of the brave team confining them below.
The gendarmerie formed a circle in the wide road, and enclosed the creatures in a barrier made of, or at least powered by, some sort of motes. Millions of tiny flecks of vibrating movements, all working together to create a half sphere of protection.
“They’ll compress the light net smaller and smaller until the umbraphages disintegrate,” Eleanor informed them. “It’s only a temporary measure, however. They’ll be back. We’ve started recording the tiniest individual difference between them, you see. Each of them emits a unique energy signature. That one on the right is the same one that was here before. The other is new.”
As the combatants clashed, tendrils of inky blackness lashed out, and occasionally momentarily broke free of the glowing light barrier, unleashing a round of panicked shouts as more effort was required to channel motes to fill the gap in the barrier it created, and to push the tendril back inside.
Julien gestured towards something, prompting Cinn’s confusion until he clocked Elliot’s wild hair at the far side of the action. Elliot had his feet planted firmly on the ground, left leg bent in front of the other, but he was clearly feeling the strain of whatever he was doing to support the light barrier, as his outstretched arms trembled.
“We’re not going any closer.” Julien positioned himself slightly in front of Cinn. Hilarious, as the chances of him charging into battle like a knight in shining armour were as improbable as a snowman dancing in hell.
A long inky tendril suddenly whipped out of the fractured barrier, the scent of sulphur increasing as it did so, and an umbraphage succeeded in wrapping itself around the upper arm of some poor fighter. The man made a harrowing sound: a scream that reverberated through the air, before punching straight into Cinn’s soul. A spray of blood decoratedthe concrete before the team could push the umbraphage back into the light cage.
Falling to the ground, the man wailed in agony. Two gendarmes lifted a shoulder each to carry him away, towards where the four of them stood. Dashing towards them from the left were two paramedics, and Cinn jumped backwards to allow them quicker access to their patient.
