Ace of Spiders Read online

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘If I knew anything specific, they’d have killed me by now,’ grinned Damien. Through the flames, against the sky, he looked vaguely demonic. ‘Although I’ve heard whispers about black sites where they test out experimental torture techniques. Imagine Gitmo reimagined by H.P Lovecraft.’

  Sounds like fun.

  Also, I wish I’d thought of that phrase.

  He’d recommended a blog to me, called Weird, Sister. It was run by some anonymous conspiracy theorists, and counted among its scoops an exhaustive and, as far as I could see, accurate timeline of the movements of Smiley Joe – minus being axed in the head by yours truly – and fairly detailed reports of what sounded like empowered people: a couple in the UK, some in America, one or two in Europe and the Middle East. I wasn’t sure what to make of those.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of any of it.

  Freeze frame on Damien’s creepy grin, then smash cut back to the present.

  A man emerged from a chicken shop yelling into a phone. ‘You’d better not be telling me this bruv! You know this ain’t what I want to hear!’ I slowed down, pretending to peruse the menu in the window, but the guy was in a taxi and away before I could hear any more of his conversation. I made a face that suggested I’d decided I didn’t fancy chicken after all, for the benefit of anyone who might be watching – no-one’s watching, kid, literally no-one cares – and headed onward.

  It may sound facepalmingly obvious, but things felt so different here compared with things up town, where I’d been patrolling last night, that it might as well have been another city altogether. It was, effectively. Up there, it was all smooth, creaseless suits and severe hair cuts, slimline specimens with shiny black briefcases muttering into hands-free devices, like NPCs in some cyberpunk RPG, albeit one with the punk aspects heavily dialled down. As though if you stopped to talk to them, you would get one of three possible responses: ‘Leave me alone, I’m late for a venture capitalist roundtable’; ‘100100010101101001’; or ‘. . .’. Up there, the buildings were clean and anonymous, the cameras gleamed and the polluted air somehow managed to smell more expensive than the polluted air down here. It was kind of a trip to wander around amongst all that weird, characterless opulence, but I couldn’t help but think that the only way I’d foil any evildoing in that part of town was to wander into random buildings and threaten people into divulging exactly how much tax they weren’t paying.

  Maybe at some point I’d give that a go.

  I’d already tried various different tactics during my year of attempted superhero-ing. By far the most moody and dramatic was lurking on the roofs of buildings, hood up, scanning the streets below, listening, but that was also arguably the least effective (in relative terms – none of my methods were effective) because I didn’t have super-hearing or super-sight. Hanging around waiting for police sirens, meanwhile, was a good idea on paper, but have you ever tried following a speeding police car on foot? On a couple of occasions I’d tried to follow them via the rooftops, moderating my brief bursts of flight so they seemed more like parkour than anything supernatural, but even when I managed to follow the police all the way to the scene of the crime I’d been confronted with a truth that, in hindsight, should have been obvious – if the police were there, my presence was basically redundant.

  I kept walking, eyes darting from person to person. A girl in a red hoody: I imagined us duelling psychically, cars rolling, lampposts bending, shop windows shattering with the force of our mental blows. An old man with two heavy bags of shopping: I imagined him pulling off his face, revealing it to be a dastardly, highly convincing flesh mask, reaching into his shopping bags, revealing them to be full of guns, and firing at me and being oh-so-surprised to find that I had goddamn superpowers. A trio of teenaged boys listening to something grimy through an inadequate phone speaker, leering at passing women and spitting on the pavement: I imagined beating them up, just because they were obviously massive wankers.

  Before I knew it I was standing at the edge of an estate, scarred tower blocks looming over me, eyeing this interloper with suspicious, hooded eyes. Dying street lamps buzzed feebly as I stood there and debated whether or not to enter.

  Sod it.

  I went in, striding purposefully. Suddenly my ghostly shadow act seemed pointless. I wanted to be noticed.

  Come on.

  Come at me.

  Someone come at me.

  The place was oppressive, dripping with sadness, potential gone mouldy. I couldn’t work out what I was feeling. On the one hand I was itching for something, some kind of trouble, a battle, a fire, anything. On the other, I felt sorry for anyone who had to live here. Not because there was anything shameful in it, just because it was so depressing. The tiny flats, packed so tightly into ugly, charmless buildings. The grubby windows and grim stairwells. Even the graffiti seemed weirdly defeated. A few people passed me: a woman with some shopping, head bowed, a young man nodding moodily along to whatever was in his headphones, a man in a big coat and a woolly hat, trudging exhaustedly. None made eye contact. I considered approaching a group of kids who were sitting around a minirig, blaring out some hip-hop and sharing a joint, but what was I going to do? Demand to know where their dealer lived? Ask if anyone had a knife on them? Tell them to go and do their homework? Ask how it felt when everyone, even someone like me who liked to think of themselves as reasonable and decent, automatically assumed that they were doing something dodgy?

  I kept walking, my confrontational pose shrinking away until I was just another faceless figure, head down, hands pocketed. The longer I spent in there, the more ashamed I felt of my reason for being there, and eventually I thought balls to this and headed home, stopping on the way to grab a milkshake.

  Connor was already in bed when I got back, but Sharon was awake, drinking tea and reading at the kitchen table. She smiled tiredly. ‘Hello, young man. How’s the world?’

  ‘Still there.’

  ‘Good to know. Tea?’

  ‘No thanks, I won’t sleep if I have caffeine now. Whatchya reading?’

  ‘Sociology. As you do.’

  ‘As you do.’

  Sharon looked at me for slightly too long, and I shifted uncomfortably. ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t get into any trouble, did you?’

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  Me too. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No trouble. Just wandered around. No flying. No fighting. No nothing.’

  ‘Please don’t go looking for it,’ said Sharon. ‘If it finds you, that’s one thing . . .’

  ‘I’m not looking for it,’ I shamelessly lied. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

  Sharon nodded, although she obviously knew. ‘Good. I do worry . . . but so does Eddie. And then he nags. Everyone.’

  Yeah. ‘I know,’ I said, offering what I hoped was a charming and reassuring smile. ‘I’m always careful, anyway. Nos dda.’

  She laughed. ‘Good night in Welsh to you too.’

  I sat at the window in my room, staring out at the dark garden, brooding. I thought about Tara. It was her birthday in a few weeks and I needed to pick an appropriately awesome present. Turns out that I’m not that brilliant at coming up with gift ideas for eleven-year-old girls. I pictured her as I’d first seen her, on our first meeting, blonde curls and red pyjamas, so calm and curious, even though she’d been kidnapped by the worst thing in the world. I remembered us sitting together, waiting for Smiley Joe to come, and her face when she unknowingly saved me from a fatal bullet wound. My daughter, whom my future self had somehow brought back through time. To save her.

  But from what, I had no idea. Not the faintest clue, not an inkling of how it all fitted together. All I knew was that she was mine, mine and Kloe’s. I pictured Kloe, a hundred miles away in Sixth Form in Wales, and my stomach did another lurch. This one hurt, although it was a goo
d hurt, in a way. It was kind of nice to wallow in it, to wax self-indulgently poetical, and for a long moment I daydreamed myself away, imagining her face spelled out in snow, running water, icicles dangling delicately from frozen rose petals. I pictured her in flaming autumn leaves, in a clear sky, in layers of spilled ink. If I imagined hard enough I could almost feel her kisses . . . but I could never keep it up (quiet at the back) for long. Even though it was all occurring in my own mind, it made me feel embarrassed, as though someone were peeping in, spying on my private, silly little romantic brain videos and laughing, and I tossed the dream aside and adopted the pensive frown of the moody superhero.

  You’re too meta for your own good, kiddo.

  I thought about my parents. They’d divorced in the time I’d been away, which had seemed like the best outcome for all concerned, and my dad was apparently living several miles away with the woman who used to occasionally clean our house. I found this blackly amusing, as she wasn’t exactly a fountain of charisma, and the idea of my dad having the energy or patience for courting was faintly ludicrous. I felt bad for my mum, though. I hoped she could find someone else. I knew that Kloe went to see her from time to time, that they got on well, and every now and then I gave her a ring, just to keep in touch, but it wasn’t my life any more. Kloe had friends and school and stuff up there, and I had . . . what I had here. My friends and my powers, and Jack’s sense of futile frustration.

  I wanted to fly. I wanted to bathe in the air, roll on the thermals like a peregrine falcon, do backstroke thousands of feet above the ground. I wanted to swoop and dive. I wanted to use London, use its geography, its buildings, as a playground. Jump off the Shard with ‘Baker Street’ playing on my mp3 player, then pull up into flight just as The Best Saxophone Riff Ever™ came in. Or walk down the street with my black coat flapping in the wind, listening to ‘Wake Up’ by Rage Against The Machine, then take off, Matrix-style, just as the main riff dropped. COME ONNN.

  I just wanted to be out there, doing things. Investigating crimes, kicking down doors, throwing bad guys through windows, making threats, combing the streets for evildoers. I wanted to be by Eddie’s side while he did his hard-man thing. Considering that I’d already been involved with plenty of unpleasant violence, I was practically itching for some more. And failing that, I wanted to be in Blue Harvest tapping my feet to some good jazz, or high above the streets, keeping a watchful eye, or just shooting the shit with a talking beagle. I didn’t want to be sitting inside thinking about all the things that I wanted.

  I lazily floated a few of the twigs that had collected on the back lawn, made them spin around one another and snapped them one by one, scattering the debris to the wind. I thought about doing some drawing, but couldn’t be bothered. I thought about reading, but didn’t fancy it. After a while I just went to bed, stewing quietly in the dark.

  If only I’d known that somebody was going to try to kill me a week and a half later. That would have cheered me right up.

  Chapter Two

  IT WAS A Thursday. We were about ten days into October and the weather had taken a perversely warm, cheerful turn, and I spent my lunch break sitting by the river, eating a burrito and finishing the latest Saga trade paperback. It was a carefree day, a light-on-your-feet day, which was ironic considering what was going to happen.

  Back at the shop, systems were operating within normal parameters. Skank, my bushy-bearded Zen geek boss – who also did a pretty good line in heavy weaponry, a fact that nobody seemed particularly inclined to talk about – was at war with a number of online forums, so barely spoke except to say ‘yes please’ or ‘no thanks’ when offered coffee. Connor was currently splitting his time between 110th Street and various labouring jobs around the city, where his super-strength was apparently coming in pretty useful. At least, according to Sharon. Connor and I seemed to have forgotten how to have extended conversations lately. It was troubling, but I didn’t really know how to address it, so I did what any self-respecting eighteen-year-old would do and totally ignored it.

  And while I was a little bit jealous that he was using his powers for something useful – and making some half-decent dollar into the bargain – this did mean that I was often able to declare myself de facto king of the shop, which was a good feeling.

  Being in charge this afternoon involved sitting by the register, reading, drinking coffee and bantering with Nailah. She was about twenty-five and possibly Nigerian, and had first come in to the shop at the beginning of the year. Now she was a regular, popping in at least once a fortnight to peruse the weirder, more out-there indie comics that few other shops stocked, and to chat. Well, chat or wind Skank up, something that she did with an effortless skill that was beautiful to behold. He was indisposed today, though, so we were talking about music. ‘The Beatles are overrated,’ said Nailah. ‘Discuss.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? No we’re not discussing it?’

  ‘No, they’re not overrated. Here endeth the discussion.’

  ‘Correct answer.’

  ‘Obvz.’

  ‘I only brought it up because my friend dropped it on me the other day.’ She rolled her eyes and tossed her intricately braided hair. ‘We were chatting about punk, which led to other talk of old guitar men, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, boom. “The Beatles are overrated, you know”. I’m pretty sure he was just saying it to get a rise out of me.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘Obviously,’ she said. ‘You can’t expect to spout heresy like that unchallenged. And I’m not even their biggest fan. I mean, there’s a lot of their music that I love, but they’re fairly far down my list of people I’d listen to day to day. Stevie, Aretha, Dusty, MJ, pretty much everything that happened in the Nineties. That’s my bread and butter. But you can’t claim to have an interest, knowledge or passion for the history of western popular music and just handwave the Beatles’ contribution away like it’s nothing. History is history and facts are facts, whether you like them or not. Do you concur?’

  ‘We are in concurment.’

  ‘So I took great pleasure in explaining exactly how wrong he was. And eventually it came out that he’d only ever listened to one of their albums all the way through. The compilation with all the number ones on it. And he might have been made to sing ‘Yellow Submarine’ at school.’ She shook her head, drumming her fingers on the counter. They were festooned with rings and it made a perilously loud noise, and I saw Skank twitch out of the corner of my eye.

  ‘Ludicrous,’ I said. ‘So did you school him?’

  ‘Oh, I schooled him,’ said Nailah. ‘I school-of-rocked him. Probably didn’t convince him, but I definitely made him wish he’d never brought it up in the first place. I was about to take him track-by-track through their undisputed best album, which is obviously Revolver—’

  ‘The Beatles,’ interjected Skank, not taking his eyes from his computer screen. ‘Popularly known as the White Album.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Nailah. ‘White Album? Best?’

  Skank didn’t answer.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling emboldened, ‘really, Skank? Best? Not “your personal, subjective favourite”?’

  ‘Remember who pays you.’

  ‘Yeah, Nailah,’ I said, without missing a beat. ‘Obviously the White Album is their best.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Skank.

  ‘Or maybe Abbey Road.’

  ‘This conversation can serve no purpose any more,’ said Skank. ‘Please talk about something else, I need to concentrate.’

  Nailah shot me a sly look, and we talked quietly about less contentious matters, like government surveillance, until closing time rolled around. She paid for her comics and left and I grabbed my headphones. ‘See you tomorrow, Skank,’ I said. ‘Good luck on the forums.’

  ‘The war rages on.’

  Deciding not to head home immediately, I wandered into town lis
tening to Jimi Hendrix. I wasn’t on a mission. I had no agenda. It was just a perfect afternoon for wandering. In fact, I got so utterly absorbed in walking and vibing with my music that I might well have been shot in the head had a passer-by not screamed at the sight of a gun. Being an ultra-attuned, hyper-aware superpowered sort, I managed to spin around just in time to think my assailant’s gun away. Unfortunately, the psychic move was sloppy, so I also sent my headphones plunging off the pedestrian bridge that we were on, taking a brief echo of ‘Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)’ with them.

  Said assailant was a tall dark-haired guy in a suit. Nasty eyes, nastier mouth, skinny but in that wiry way that suggested he could still deal out some swift pain. Before I could say or do anything he came at me, wielding a wickedly sharp knife that seemed to have been ejected from his sleeve. I thought that weapon away too, my heart earthquaking in my chest, and in hindsight I kind of have to admire the conviction of the guy’s next move, which was to charge at me and send us both straight over the edge of the bridge towards several lanes of fast-moving traffic.

  So there I was, falling through the air. My brain had one of those long moments where everything seemed to slow to less than a tenth of the speed of reality, as it attempted to make sense of the situation in which I had found myself. It failed. Maybe it was because the situation was completely unprecedented. Or maybe it was simply because it’s hard to form a coherent thought when you’re plunging backwards off a bridge. To be fair to my brain, though, it did manage one coherent, albeit unfinished, thought.

  My headphones . . .

  The drop was at least twenty feet, possibly more, and my brain was screaming fly, but it was all I could do to stop my new mortal enemy from crushing my windpipe with his long fingers. I had just about enough concentration left over to slightly slow our descent.

  THUD.

  Ow.

  Very slightly.

  I landed on my back on the roof of a double-decker bus and bounced, my assailant flying head-over-heels towards the other end of the vehicle. I was half-winded but forced myself to jump up and we faced each other, his face grim and set, mine a mess of pissed-off confusion. The bus was moving at about twenty miles per hour, which isn’t that fast if you’re inside it or watching it from a vantage point of elsewhere, but if you’re standing on the roof it’s fairish quick. I could see people from other cars watching us at the periphery of my vision, and hoped that I could take care of this guy before the police arrived, which they surely would. They only ever seemed to be on hand when I could really do without them. ‘Who are you?’ I said, pulling up my hood. Might as well attempt to maintain anonymity.