The Magpye: Circus by CW Lynch Page A

he staggered back. His feet kicked up old
newspapers and he saw something on the floor, something the ghost
who hid deep in the river recognised. Magpye remembered something
Marv had told him, or at least had told Quirk.
    Magicians could hide traps in
patterns.
    The Magpye collapsed to the
ground, his lungs burning. In his head, the ghosts screamed. They
screamed louder than the day they'd died, louder than the times he
dragged them back from the afterlife through a droplet of blood or
smear of burnt flesh. He felt them become fragments in his head,
shreds of souls torn to strips by the witch's trap. The minds and
memories of his friends became rags and tatters in his head,
leaving him exposed and vulnerable.
    "I wasn't sure what you were," said Grace, standing over
him. Ethereal light shone from within her, casting a silhouette of
the crone she really was up on the wall. "So I thought it best to
trap you. That sigil can hold anything, at least for a
time."
    Behind the mask, it wasn't the
Magpye who looked up, but Able. For the first time in a long time
he was alone in his own head. No Dorothy, no Malcolm, no Magda. No
Wally Wu, no Zip Nolan. No Magpye. Just Able, the boy who ran, the
boy who hid, trapped and alone and looking up a creature unlike
anything he'd ever seen.
     
    ***
     
    Owen dashed across the street, his gun drawn, a
sub - machine slung across his back. Across the street, he
knew Nutt was covering him, but he still felt exposed. The car had
drawn them out, just as he had planned, but at best they'd taken
out a fraction of King's forces. People were expendable to Cane
King, it stood to reason he'd have come here mob handed. Further
down the street, Owen could see Rogers and Hartley making slow but
steady progress along the nearest wall of the mill.
    Rogers was naturally cautious,
but Hartley was just a desk jockey. A computer expert, his job was
to sift through the criminal's laptops and phones to piece together
incriminating evidence. Before Owen had met him he'd been tracking
paedophiles and terrorists, hacking his way into their networks and
hunting them down without ever leaving the comfort of his office.
In another life he'd have been the FBI agent who caught out the mob
on unpaid taxes. He didn't look right, out in the field, and Owen
had to remind himself that it had been Hartley's call to be here.
He said he owed it to Grice.
    With a crackle, Cooper
announced himself through Owen's earpiece. "Reg and I are almost at
the rear gates. Got five, maybe six guys back here."
    "It's open?"
    "Wide open. The bastards want
us in there."
    "We should walk away Owen,"
said Rigby, interjecting. "We've made our point."
    "The hell we have!" barked
Cooper. "Don't you dare go soft on me now, don't you..."
    "He's right."
    Owen smiled. Rosa Blind, the
girl with a mind like a machine. His right hand. "Rosa. I thought
you weren't coming."
    "I'm not. I'm already here.
Already inside."
    "How the hell did you manage
that?"
    "Trade secret. Cooper, get
ready."
    Owen heard shots then a muffled
commotion and the sound of Cooper and Rigby running.
    "Back door's clear!" Cooper
shouted.
    "Not for long, you've got
incoming," reported Rosa.
    For a moment, Owen thought that
maybe they might actually pull this off without losing another cop.
Just for a moment. He waved commands at Rogers and Hartley and
sprinted towards the front gates, keeping his body low and his gun
raised.
     
    ***
     
    King craned out of the window.
At the rear gate he could make out the bodies of more of his men,
all of them dying bloody on the ground.
    "There's a shooter inside the
compound," he spat.
    "I'd keep back, boss," said
Taylor. "Lot of bullets flying around out there."
    King had fury in his eyes when
he turned back to face his henchman.
    "If this thing goes south," he
growled. "There won't be a prison in this country that will be safe
for you, do you understand?"
    Taylor didn't answer. Instead,
he simply pulled his gun from inside his suit jacket and headed