Taken

But I couldn’t bring Anne with me. My magic can’t affect the physical world without a focus, and even with a focus I’m terribly weak. A few months ago I’d tried to take the body of a humanoid construct through a gate stone portal, and the body had ended up in three pieces. That hadn’t mattered for the construct. It would matter a lot for Anne.

As I looked through the futures I saw that the men would take no more than two minutes to search each flat. The men were three flats away. Two minutes times three meant that I had six minutes to come up with something.

So far I’d been hoping that if I put the men off balance and stung them enough they’d pull back to regroup. As I kept watching I saw that it wasn’t going to work. These guys were too tough and too committed. They were planning to kill both me and Anne and the longer this went on the better the odds that they’d manage it.

Below, the men came out of 301 and moved to 302. Again they went to work on the door, and again they slipped inside.

I was running out of time.

The man they’d left outside would spot me if I went out the front. What about the back? I moved downstairs, through the glass door at the back that read FULLY AIR CONDITIONED, and out onto the balcony.

The balconies at the back of the flats were a forest of satellite dishes and TV aerials, facing south onto the lights of London. Each balcony was identical, a rectangular hollow of brickwork sticking out into space, one for each flat. I closed the door softly behind me and ducked down behind the balustrade of the balcony of flat 304. A moment later, I heard a creak and movement as one of the gunmen opened the door to the balcony two flats down, in number 302. He glanced quickly around and withdrew back into the flat.

They were being careful. One man outside to make sure I couldn’t sneak out; two men inside covering each other as they searched room to room. I could try to hide but it would be risky. They were ready for someone ahead of them.

But they weren’t ready for someone behind them . . .

The plan flashed through my head in an instant and I spent a precious minute checking for flaws, searching through the futures in which I tried it. As I did I realised there was blood in all of them. No matter what I did, in the next five minutes someone was going to die.

Well, I’d just have to make sure that someone wasn’t me. As I made the decision I felt my mental gears shift. I stayed crouched, hidden in the shadows of the balcony of flat 304, and waited.

There was another creak, closer this time, as the door to the balcony of flat 303 opened next to me. Footsteps sounded, soft on the stone, as the man scanned left and right. He was less than ten feet away but the lip of the balcony hid me from his view. He saw nothing, turned, disappeared inside.

As soon as he was gone I stood and pulled myself up onto the balcony lip before stepping out onto the railing. A cold wind brushed my hair and I took a hold of the drainpipe between the balconies. The gap between was only a few feet. To my right I could see the glow of the night city; the white-yellow cluster of the West End and the double strobe of Canary Wharf in the far distance. I took a deep breath, then before I could think too much about the drop to the darkness below I sprang across. My foot slipped on the opposite railing and my heart lurched, then my clutching hand on the drainpipe steadied me and I dropped down into the balcony of flat 303.

It was only a small change of position. But now instead of being in an area the men hadn’t searched, I was in an area they had searched and thought was safe. The man had left the balcony door open, which made my job easy. I slipped inside into the living room and pressed myself against the wall. From above I could hear the sounds of the men going through the upper floor.

I’ve always had an aggressive side but oddly enough I’ve never been comfortable with fights. One of my martial arts instructors once told me that the strongest attitude to battle, and the only truly strong mental stance, is to face your opponent with a smile and say “Go on, hit me with your best shot! I can take it!” I’ve never been able to do that. Human opponents scare me too much. When I was a child, the bullies I faced were always bigger and stronger than me. Then I awakened to my magic and found to my dismay that nothing had changed. The weakest of elemental mages could swat me like a fly, and I could never, ever face a battle-mage in open combat and live. For the longest time I thought that made me a coward.

But gradually I learnt there were other ways to fight. I’m no good as a duellist or a warrior. But I’m very good as an ambush predator. Stealth and surprise are natural to me, and if I’m a coward I’m a dangerous one.