The bright lights of the city centre fell far behind her as she moved steadily southward. Her tentacles pulled her from building to building and swung her over dark roads far above the mixed electric and gas lights that lit South Bank. The moon hadn’t long risen, and was only a little over the horizon, the lit half punctuating the darkness around it. The lights of the city centre were bright enough no stars could be seen overhead, and full darkness was something sleepers only found beneath their blankets. Yet it was dark enough for a shadowy figure in clothes that changed shape and style and slid through shades of dark blue, brown, black and grey to be essentially invisible as she moved across the rooftops of old tenement buildings and watched the streets below her.
Her investigation had netted no results, her attempt to help her detective had been unsuccessful, but Stella was once more motivated.
She really wanted to hit someone.
The area of London known as Elephant and Castle, to Stella’s utter disappointment, had neither castles nor elephants. She wasn’t certain where the name had come from, but they might as well have called it Money and Cleanliness, if they were naming it for things it didn’t have.
She came to a stop on a tenement roof at the end of London Road, and briefly distracted herself by thinking that that was a weird name for a street in London. Every road in London was a London road.
Focus. There was a junction here, where London Road and Newington Causeway and St. George’s Road all met in the street called Elephant and Castle, and where the Elephant and Castle pub stood close to the Underground station that had the same name. This was the heart of the Elephant Boys territory, and that pub was their most used locale, and what most of the gang probably thought of as their headquarters. She knew the MacDonald brothers had a second, secret headquarters, a grimy little flat in a nearby tenement they kept their money and guns in. She’d been there before, and found it wanting.
Mostly wanting a good clean, but wanting in several other ways, too.
It was Saturday night and the pub was filled. A musician was playing a violin, a lively tune that her bibi-daj often played. “When I was at home I was merry and frisky, my da kept a pig and my mother sold whiskey,” she sang quietly, echoing the words that the entire pub seemed to be singing. She heard banging, not drums, more like they were banging hands and mugs on the tables, stamping their feet on the floor, and laughter drifted out into the dark night.
They sounded like they were having a lot of fun.
She looked back the way she had come, where eight of Sabini’s men were walking towards the pub. They strolled straight down the centre of London Road, spread out as if they owned the street. As if eight men attacking the entirety of the Elephant Boys wasn’t just a complicated way to commit suicide.
That thought made her pause, and she moved to the other side of the roof to check St. George’s Road. It was empty. She moved back to London Road, her eyes roaming over each figure. The way their clothes moved around them, the tightness in certain areas, the smooth ripples in others. The way it sat at wrong angles given the symmetry of body shapes. They had guns holstered.
But the Elephant Boys would also have guns?
Unless they intended to stand out in the street, fire into the crowded pub, and not care what innocents they hit. It wouldn’t just be Elephant Boys in there. The staff at least weren’t part of the gang, and there would be others.
The cowards would fire into the crowd and run before the Elephant Boys could retaliate.
Well, now she was really glad she’d decided to swing by and make sure everything was okay. Her mother had told her to protect the innocents.
With a savage grin, she leapt off the roof. A tentacle caught the edge and swung her down and along, and she released it and continued in the same direction, smashing into the centre of the Sabini men, knocking two to the ground. Tentacles grabbed four ankles and pulled four men off their feet, and she stamped down on a knee. The leg snapped beneath her, and she dove forward, rolling across the road and coming up before another. She weaved around a thrown punch, finding herself moving in time with the violin music, and thundered her own fist into a gut. As he doubled over, she planted a hand on his back, pushing him down even as she vaulted over him. Her foot caught another man in his jaw.
The ones her tentacles had downed were back up and she leapt amongst them, tentacles moving around her, kicks and punches hitting soft targets. A gun pointed at her face and she jerked aside before he pulled the trigger. It felt like she could feel the air scream as the bullet past her ear, but that had to be her imagination.
She grabbed the gun and kicked his knee, breaking a second leg, then remembered her promise to DI Donald to stop doing that. Dammit, they had guns. What was a little leg breaking when they had guns? She pistol whipped another Sabini lout and he went down hard, and she still had five to go.
Arms went around her from behind, and tentacles went around him, and brought them both together. They collapsed, wrapped in endless silk, and rolled across the street, as the other four rained kicks on both of them, and she should have picked them off one at a time.
She was better in stealth and secrecy, swooping out of the dark like a shadow, not in a direct eight vs one confrontation.
Her tentacles unwrapped and she rolled off the beaten man and staggered to her feet, meeting the gazes of the four that remained. They drew their guns.
“I’m not gonna let you hurt innocents,” she told them.
One said something in Italian.
“They’re not innocent,” another said. “They attacked us, they declared war on us.”
“Tell your madre, she might care,” she said, then launched herself at the one on the furthest left. She spun them both to the side as she hit him, putting him between her and the others, so they couldn’t shoot. A tentacle wrapped his gun as the rest reached over his head and grabbed the other men. She considered the man in front of her.
“Unfortunately, I’m not supposed to break your leg.”
“What?”
She broke his nose, right arm, and four of his ribs, then stepped over his crying form to the next man in the line. Silk had bound both his arms together, and his gun was pointing to the street. She kicked him in the balls and punched him in the head as he collapsed.
The third man in the line had dropped his gun, and his hands were desperately clawing at the silk that had tightened around his throat. “Oh, sorry,” she said, loosening the silk. As he clawed in desperate breaths, she hammered a fist into his gut, and he fell to his knees struggling to breathe.
The last man had his arms wrapped to his torso and was staring at her with hate in his eyes.
The music had stopped, and when she glanced to the side, she saw Elephant Boys pouring out of the Elephant and Castle pub, and filling the street. She switched her attention back to the man in front of her. “Get them out of here.”
“What?”
“They will kill you. Flee. Run away, live to fight another day. Get them out of here.” Her silk released him and she turned and walked towards the Elephant Boys. It seemed they didn’t have guns. They had long bars of wood, knives, and one even held a sledgehammer. She could shrug off most blows, but a sledgehammer would hurt. Two others were wielding chairs. “Where’s your little doggy?” she called out. “Wag? Wag your tail for me, little doggy.”
A large man pushed his way to the front of the crowd, and she recognised him instantly. Wal MacDonald. “You’re the one from the tram, aren’t you?” he yelled.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said, cursing inwardly. People kept connecting her masked and unmasked identities. That was not good.
“We’re gonna kill you, then we’re gonna kill them,” Wal said.
“You know, they told me you were the most idiotic of the MacDonald brothers, and I thought no, it can’t be, not when one of you goes by the name Wag. But blow me down, Wal, you really are the dimmest bulb in a box of dim bulbs.”
He roared and started charging towards her. He was nearly thirty feet away, so she had time to glance back over her shoulder and make sure the Sabinis were fleeing. When she saw that they were, she grinned, then turned to charge towards Wal with a roar of her own.
Twenty three vs one. This had to be worth a level or two.
She formed a shield of silk before her, and just as Wal touched it, she pivoted aside, letting him fight his way through the material to find nothing beyond it. Behind him, she slid a foot around his ankle, and pushed him over. He broke his nose on the hard asphalt.
She was already moving amongst the other Boys. Keeping them around her meant they could attack from any direction, but no more than four or five could come for her at once. She blocked blows she didn’t even see with silk tentacles she didn’t consciously control, her movements precise and perfect as she countered and attacked. She was completely focused… no, it wasn’t even focus, it was like she was detached, like she was barely thinking at all, simply moving. It was the way her mother fought, a thing she had imagined she wouldn’t reach for years yet. The purity of combat.
A knife slashed along her side, tangled in the silk layers of her wonderful coat. A bar of wood rammed at the back of her head, blocked by a viper of silk that wrapped around it and pulled it from grasping fingers. She broke another leg with a well placed kick as a tentacle dislocated a shoulder and a punch landed on her jaw and spun her into a boot. She caught the foot with both hands and flipped the kicker onto his back and ducked another punch, then a chair smashed over her shoulders and broke apart and she drew a knife of her own and slashed a leg that was close by.
Blood splurted out as she weaved like it was a dance only she could hear the music to, and her dance partners all had two left feet and fragile glass jaws, and then some of the Elephant Boys were passed her, charging up the street after the limping Sabinis.
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