Ghost of a Chance g-1 Read online

  Some nights, lying on her back in the dark with an exhausted lover slumbering beside her, Melody dreamed of a special Nobel Prize, just for her, awarded for her unprecedented advances in the field of the so-called supernatural. The first woman to make the unseen world make sense.

  She worked furiously, her fierce gaze tracking impatiently from one screen to another, following the flow of information with quick jerky movements of her head. Although she’d never admit it, she always hated this part of the mission, where the other two went off on their own to see what there was to see and left her behind, on her own, to see things second hand through her instruments. She didn’t like being left on her own. Like the girl who tags around after a boys’ gang, and always gets dumped at the first opportunity. She felt better when there was someone else around. Someone close at hand. They didn’t have to be right there with her; just . . . around. So she could call on them for . . . assistance, if she wanted to.

  She felt the same way sometimes when she was alone in her little flat. No matter how many other people had been through it.

  * * *

  Happy and JC returned at the end of the agreed hour, making a certain amount of noise so Melody could be sure it was them coming and not get over-eager with her machine-pistol. None of them had anything specific to report, and the more closely Melody questioned the men about what they’d seen and encountered, the more vague their answers became. And when they questioned her, Melody was forced to admit that while her machines were providing her with more sensor readings than she could keep track of, she had nothing useful to contribute either.

  “I’m picking up ghosts everywhere,” she said quickly, in self-defence. “I’ve never seen so many hauntings in one place. No actual personality or surviving intent in most of them; only images from the Past, impressed on Time by the extreme conditions of their creation. Snapshots of what was, repeating loops of history, preserved like insects trapped in amber. Presumably drawing energy from our other-dimensional Intruder. Unless they’ve been stirred up by our presence. Or my machines.”

  “She doesn’t know what’s going on either,” Happy said to JC, smiling widely.

  JC looked at the state of Happy’s pupils and sighed audibly. “Tell me at least you haven’t touched the little yellow pills, Happy. You know what happens when you take the little yellow ones.”

  “Not yet,” Happy said cheerfully. “But it’s probably only a matter of time. I always get a bit jumpy when the ghosts start manifesting. In case one of them takes a fancy to me and follows me home like a stray dog. I’m probably the only ghost finder in the Carnacki Institute with his own exorcist on speed dial.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” said Melody. “They’d soon leave, once they got to know you.”

  “How very unkind,” said Happy, trying for wounded dignity, then ruining it with a sudden hiccup.

  “Never get personally involved with a ghost,” JC said sternly. “No matter how tragic its story. Nothing good can ever come of it.”

  “Damn, I’m peckish,” Happy said abruptly. “I’d kill for a curry and chips.”

  He wandered over to a nearby vending machine, studied the display of snacks on offer with owlish eyes, and made his selection. He forced money into the slot, then bounced up and down before the machine, humming an old Smiths’ song. The machine chuntered quietly to itself for a while, then a slot opened in the front and the food shot out. Happy actually had the thing half-way to his mouth before he realised something was wrong. He stopped at the last moment, his eyes widened, and his mouth pursed up in disgust as he saw what he was holding. The pastry slip was hot and steaming, but the meat oozing out of it was rotten and decaying. Maggots burst out of the pastry, writhing and roiling. Happy cried out and threw the stinking mess on the floor. It hit with a wet, slapping sound, and Happy stamped on it again and again, making shrill distressed noises, until all the maggots were crushed and dead, and nothing was moving. Then he scraped the bottom of his shoe against the platform and rubbed both hands hard on his jeans.

  “Okay, that was interesting,” said Melody. “There’s no way that could have happened naturally.”

  “No!” said Happy. “Really? You do amaze me. Of course it didn’t happen naturally! Oh, my comfortable glow is all shot to hell now. My anus has puckered itself all the way up to my chest bone.”

  “Far too much information, Happy,” murmured JC.

  “There’s no way the food could have decayed that quickly inside the machine, under normal conditions,” said Melody. “Whatever it is that’s down here, it’s draining the living energy out of everything within reach. Presumably our Intruder needs help in maintaining its hold on our dimension.”

  “You’re going to try and explain entropy to me again, aren’t you?” said Happy. “Please, JC, don’t let her explain entropy to me again. My head still hurts from the last time.”

  “Hush, man,” said JC. “It would seem our Intruder is accumulating power and adjusting local conditions to suit its own needs. But to what end, what purpose? Why does it need a physical presence in our world? What’s it all about?”

  “My name is not Alfie,” Happy said sternly.

  Melody checked her instrument panels again. “I can tell you this; there’s more than one centre down here, more than one power source. The energy readings are off the scale in a dozen different locations. If I’m interpreting these data correctly . . . we’ve got ghosts, demons, and abhuman creatures swarming all over this station. Drawn here, like moths to a flame . . . or tourists to a disaster site. Something very big, and very bad, is slowly coming into focus here. Once it’s fully manifested in our material plane, it will have established a beachhead, a door between its dimension and ours . . . one we might not be able to force shut again. In which case, the haunting would spread, and the whole of London would get hit by the psychic fall-out.”

  “Damn,” said JC. “And I thought Happy was the gloomy one.”

  “And,” said Melody, “I’m pretty sure . . . we’re not the only living people down here. Someone else is down here with us.”

  FOUR

  TWO MONSTERS AND A GHOST

  Whereas the Carnacki Institute is concerned with gathering knowledge of the unseen world in order to protect Humanity, the Crowley Project doesn’t give a damn. All they care about is amassing knowledge and power for the sake of the Project. They only investigate hauntings so they can take advantage of the situation and exploit it for their own ends. Some say they want to rule the world, and some say they already do. The Crowley Project loot and brutalise all the manifestations of the unseen world because they want to know the secrets of Life and Death. They want to rule not only this world but the afterworlds, too. They want it all.

  Some of them eat ghosts, consuming their energies and absorbing their knowledge and memories. Some of them create bad places on purpose, poisoning the psychic wells of the world with awful technologies and bad intent, dropping bloody bait into the waters to attract otherworldly monsters. For the fun of it, and the sport. They create disasters and glory in destruction, and dance in the aisles of crashing planes. Just because they can. Do what thou wilt is the whole of their law. They are the main rivals and deadly enemies of the Carnacki Institute, and so it has been for centuries. Because the Light must always be at war with the Dark, or because Good and Evil simply cannot abide each other; or maybe because every coin must have two sides. Two organisations, forever at each other’s throats; two small fish in a pond that is so much bigger than either of them have ever realised.

  Field agents Natasha Chang and Erik Grossman have come to Oxford Circus Tube Station on behalf of the Crowley Project. And they’re not there for the ghosts.

  * * *

  Natasha Chang was a self-made femme fatale, her bright eyes and merry smile a cover for a cutting edge and a concealed agenda. A beautiful creature in her late twenties, she had artfully bobbed dark hair, dark, slanted eyes, and an even darker heart. Daddy was a corrupt Hong Kong businessman with
a thing for the English aristocracy, who fled Hong Kong in a hurry, one step ahead of the police and all the people he’d cheated and betrayed. He brought his considerable fortune to the United Kingdom and married a very minor member of a very old family, who needed the money. Daughter Natasha grew up half-Chinese, half-English rose, privileged and cosseted but still looked down on as a half-breed by all her peers at school. She emerged from that venerable institution driven to win at any cost. The coldly ruthless child of cold and ruthless parents, Natasha struck out for freedom and an independent income at an early age. By helping Mummy murder Daddy when she was fourteen years old. She could have spent the rest of her life partying, pampering and indulging herself; but that wasn’t enough for Natasha. There were slights to be avenged. She ached to be out in the world, doing things. Bad things, preferably. Because every femme fatale needs more-and-more-difficult objectives to test herself against, to reassure herself that no-one runs her life but her.

  Natasha cultivated an arrogant aristocratic poise that never failed to fascinate and intimidate those around her, and she strode through the world as though she fully intended to walk right over anyone who didn’t get out of her way fast enough. A lot of men found that attractive, and a challenge, as they were supposed to, the fools. Natasha’s mixed-race background gave her an exotic air that she exploited mercilessly in affairs of the heart. She’d been married three times and widowed four. (That last one took a lot of killing.) She wore the very best clothes by the very best designers and never looked less than stunning. Because for Natasha, her beauty was another weapon she could use. Currently, her make-up was bold and striking, with subtle Egyptian touches around the eyes; her long, sharp fingernails were painted with real gold leaf; and she wore enough heavy rings on both hands for them to qualify as knuckle-dusters. She was wearing a pink leather cat suit, her favourite, because she had seen Eleanor Bron wear one in the Beatles movie Help! at an impressionable age.

  She was also a gifted telepath. She’d won that ability in the divorce settlement from her first husband.

  Erik Grossman couldn’t have passed for a beautiful creature in a dark room during a total eclipse of the sun. A rogue scientist and self-made mad doctor in his early thirties, Erik had been banned from universities all over Europe for his unorthodox and unethical medical experiments. At the last count, Interpol had arrest warrants out for him under eleven different names. Erik had his own private gallery of Wanted posters with his face on them, the one touch of personal vanity he allowed himself. Erik’s problem was that he saw the human body as a series of fascinating but inherently flawed and inefficient mechanisms; and he couldn’t resist the urge to tinker and try to improve them. To begin with, he cut bodies open and committed terrible, ruthless surgeries on what he found there. When that didn’t work, or didn’t work well enough to satisfy him, he moved on to cybernetics and the brutal introduction of technology into living bodies. And, occasionally, vice versa.

  Erik’s other problem was that he couldn’t always be bothered to find properly willing subjects. So he used stray animals and homeless people, along with drugs and machines and techniques he was forced to create in his own very private laboratories because they didn’t exist anywhere else. He had his successes and his failures, but he wasn’t nearly as efficient as he should have been in disposing of the remains. Erik was on the run, hunted across Europe by a dozen different organisations, when the Crowley Project found him and lured him to its cold bosom with the offer of well-stocked laboratories, cutting-edge technology, and more untraceable animal and human test subjects than he could shake a scalpel at. In return, of course, for his exclusive services.

  Erik wasn’t cruel, as such—unlike Natasha. He didn’t care enough about his subjects to feel anything for them. They were only raw materials. For him, the end was everything.

  He wasn’t much to look at. Medium height, a bit podgy, with flat blond hair and pale blue eyes. People found his presence disturbing because on some level they could sense they meant nothing to him. There was less human feeling in Erik than in many of the ghosts he pursued. He tended to slide and shuffle along, head down, as though always half-expecting to be shouted at, or struck. But when his eyes came up, they were always fierce and angry, a man rehearsing his revenges against an indifferent and ungrateful world. He did have feelings. But typically, he only wanted the things and people he couldn’t have, to justify his doing terrible things to those who denied him what he wanted. This was obvious to many people, but no-one had ever been foolish enough to tell him. It wouldn’t have been safe.

  Erik wore a good suit, badly. Grace and elegance were not in him, only a brute, stubborn persistence. There was always a general air of untidiness and grime about him, and nearly always a few spots of blood down his shirt front. In the field, he carried the bare minimum of useful technology, in a pack on his back.

  Erik didn’t give much of a damn about ghosts or hauntings. But helping investigate them was part of the price he paid for the Crowley Project’s indulgence and protection. They only called on him when they absolutely had to, not least because most other agents wouldn’t work with him, no matter what they were promised or threatened with. Natasha Chang was the first field agent they’d found who’d put up with him, because she found tormenting him amusing. Erik put up with Natasha for his own, very private reasons.

  Natasha strode around the Oxford Circus entrance lobby like the Queen on a state visit, giving every impression that she was slumming just by being there. She took a keen interest in everything but didn’t touch anything; that would have been beneath her. She studied the ticket machines and the closed ticket barriers closely, frowning a bit. Erik leaned back against the closed and locked iron gates and smiled smugly.

  “Would I be right in assuming that you have never travelled on the Tube, Natasha dear?”

  “Of course not,” snapped Natasha, looking at everything except him. “I don’t do anything the common herd does.”

  “Heh-heh,” said Erik, in his low, breathy voice. He pushed himself away from the gates and shuffled around the lobby, his eyes darting back and forth, taking in everything. Including Natasha. She caught him eyeing her covertly, spun round, and surged towards him like an attack dog let off the leash. She grabbed his crumpled shirt front with both hands and slammed him back against the nearest wall. She supported his weight easily, his feet kicking helplessly a good distance above the floor. His arms hung down at his sides; he knew better than to try to grab her wrists. She thrust her face right into his.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Erik. Never look at me like that, or I’ll rip your eyes out and make you eat them. We are partners in the field, nothing more. You are less to me than the filth beneath my feet, and if you even dare to dream about me, I’ll give you nightmares you’ll never forget.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty,” said Erik. And his tongue shot out to lick the tip of her nose.

  Natasha dropped him onto his feet and backed quickly away, rubbing hard at her nose with the back of her hand. Erik readjusted his shirt and sniggered loudly.

  “You’re big and strong and scary, and I love you for it, Natasha dear, but always remember . . . I’m as dangerous as you are.”

  “You think you can threaten me, you little worm?” said Natasha, glaring at him from a safe distance.

  “Heh-heh,” said Eric. “Save the sweet talk for another time. We have work to do here, remember?”

  Natasha gave him her best dismissive sniff, and he ignored it with magnificent disdain. He eased over to the closed ticket barriers, produced a length of wire from somewhere about his person, and stuck it into the gate mechanism. He jiggled the wire for a moment, and the barriers sprang smartly open. Erik made his piece of wire disappear with a somewhat overdone conjurer’s gesture, then stood back and indicated for Natasha to go through ahead of him. On anyone else it would have been a charming gesture, but on Erik it looked sleazy and opportunistic. Natasha stuck her aristocratic nose in the air and s
talked right past him. Erik considered goosing her as she passed but decided that on the whole he rather preferred having his testicles where they were. He glided through the barriers after her, and they both stopped at the top of the frozen escalator, looking down the motionless steps. Erik moved in close beside Natasha, and she made a point of moving away. The light was very bright, the silence very deep, and down below, nothing moved at all.

  “JC, Melody, and Happy are down there,” Natasha announced coolly. “I can feel them. Already hard at work, the industrious little souls. I do hope they turn up something interesting. If only so we can have the fun of taking it away from them.”

  “We’re not only here for the haunting,” Erik reminded her diffidently. “We’re here for them. Oh, I have been looking forward to this. They think they’re so smart, so good . . . I’ll show them what smart really is. Can I kill the girl? I’d really like to kill the girl. I have a brand-new really unpleasant technique I’ve been dying to try out on someone.”

  “JC is our main target,” said Natasha. “He goes first. He’s the dangerous one. Ever since he took charge of this team, they’ve enjoyed success after success. And we can’t have that, can we? Their progress threatens the Project’s intentions. So JC has to die. Once he’s been taken care of, we can amuse ourselves with the junkie telepath and the girl geek.”

  “Vivienne MacAbre seemed very impressed with the whole team,” ventured Erik. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen her so . . . vehement before.”

  “I felt the threats and menaces were quite unnecessary,” Natasha said primly. “I am an experienced field agent. I mean, Come back with their heads or don’t bother coming back? When have we ever needed threats to motivate us? When have we ever failed the Project?”

  “Vivienne scares me,” said Erik. “I like that in a woman.”

  Natasha gave him her best withering glance, but he didn’t care. He was already thinking about things she didn’t like to think about.