even come from?” They turned through streets he did not know.
“Not now,” Dane said. “We ain’t got time.”
“Get the police …” Beneath Billy’s seat the squirrel made a throat noise.
“Shit,” Dane said. “We don’t have time for this. You’re smart, you know what’s going on.” He clicked his fingers. Where his fingers percussed, there was a faint burst of light. “We do not have time.”
He braked, swore. Red lights disappeared in front of them. “So can we please cut the crap? You can’t go home. You know that. That’s where they got you. You can’t call Baron’s crew. You think that’s going to help? Old Bill sort you out?”
“Wait …”
“That flat ain’t your home anymore.” He spoke in little stabs. “Those ain’t your clothes, they ain’t your books, that ain’t your computer, you get it? You saw what you saw. You know you saw what you saw.” Dane snapped his finger under Billy’s nose and the light glowed again. He steered hard. “We clear?”
Yes, no, yes they were clear. “Why did you come?” Billy said. “Baron and Vardy said … I thought you were hunting me.”
“I’m sorry about your mate. I’ve been there. Do you know what you are?”
“I’m not anything.”
“You know what you did? I felt it. If you hadn’t done that I wouldn’t’ve got there in time, and they would’ve took you to the workshop. Something’s out.” Billy remembered a clenching inside, glass breaking, a moment of drag. “Goss’ll be licking for us now. It’s the man on the back you need to worry about.”
“The Tattoo was talking.”
“Do not start that. Miracles are getting more common, mate. We knew this was coming.” He cried with gruff emotion, touched his chest near his heart. “It’s the ends of the world.”
“End of the world?”
“Ends.”
IT WAS LIKE BUILDINGS SELF-AGGREGATED OUT OF ANGLES AND shade in front of the car, dissipated behind. Something very certain was out that night.
“It’s war,” Dane said. “This is where gods live, Billy. And they’ve gone to war.”
“What? I’m not on anyone’s side …”
“Oh, you are,” Dane said. “You are a side.”
Billy shivered. “That tattoo’s a god?”
“Fuck no. It’s a criminal. A fucking villain is what he is. Thinks you’re up against him. Thinks you stole the kraken. Maybe you used to run with Grisamentum.” Now that was a singsong name, a snip from scripture. “They never got on.”
“Where’s the squid?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Dane turned the wheel hard. “You telling me you ain’t felt what’s going on? You ain’t noticed signs? They are coming out of the darkness. This is gods’ time. They been rising.”
“What …?”
“In liquid, through Perspex or glass. This is in your blood, Billy. Coming up out of heaven. Forced by their season. Australia, here, New Zealand.” All places Architeuthis and Mesonychoteuthis had breached.
They were at a community hall, a sign reading SOUTH LONDON CHURCH. The street stank of fox. Dane held open the door. The squirrel leaped from the car and in two, three sine-curves was gone.
“You better start making sense, Dane,” Billy said, “or I’m just… going to …”
“Billy please. Didn’t I just save you? Let me help you.”
BILLY SHIVERED. DANE LED INDOORS, THROUGH UNTIDY ROWS OF plastic chairs facing a lectern, to a room at the back. The windows were covered with collages of torn coloured tissue paper, faux stained glass. There were leaflets advertising mother-and-child meetings, house-clearance sales. A storeroom full of engine bits and mouldering papers, a bent bicycle, the detritus of years. “The congregation’ll hide us,” Dane said. “You don’t want to mess with them. We scratch their back.” He pulled open a trapdoor. Light reached up.
“Down there?” said Billy.
Concrete stairs led to a striplit hallway, a sliding gate like the door of an industrial elevator. Behind a grille an older man and a shaven-headed boy in boiler suits held up shotguns. The ambient night sound of London disappeared.
“Is that …?” one of the guards said. “Who is that?”
“You know who I am?” Dane said. “Yeah you fucking do. Go tell his holiness I’m here and let us in.” Brusque, but with a gentleness Billy could feel, Dane pushed Billy inside.
Beyond the gate the walls were not featureless. Billy’s mouth opened. Still concrete and windowless, the walls were intricately moulded. Stained by London dirt no scrubbing could remove, a nautilus entwined with an octopus, with a cuttlefish, its flattened frilled mantle like a skirt edge. It encoiled limbs with an argonaut bobbing below its extruded eggcase-house. And squid everywhere. Shaped when the walls were wet.