Free Sarwat Chadda - Billi SanGreal 02 - Dark Goddess by Unknown Page B

cutting her skin. When we put our garbage in the sea we're pouring poison in her mouth. We make her sick." Vasilisa held up the figurine, turning it toward the moonlight.
    "You know that from her mind?" Vasilisa spoke with such simple clarity, Billi could almost see Baba Yaga's point.
    Vasilisa didn't answer. She just stared, openmouthed, at the window.
    Bright brown eyes peered through the glass. The hulking black silhouette of a werewolf filled the window frame as it perched on a tree bough.
    Billi leaped up, dragging Vasilisa with her. The werewolf smashed its clawed fist through the glass.
    Howls filled the darkness outside, and Billi heard something crash through the front door below.
    Billi pushed Vasilisa out the door as her father bounded up the stairs, Templar Sword in his fist.
    "Out of the way!"
    He barged past, and Billi glanced back to see the werewolf scrabbling through the broken window. It howled at Arthur, flailing its claws at him, but got caught in the small frame. Arthur stepped to the side, checked the distance between them, and hacked at the neck twice before the head came off. By the time it had rolled over to the door, the head had transformed into that of a woman, and not one Billi recognized. Olga and Svetlana had come with friends.
    "Let's go," Arthur said as he flicked the blood off his sword.
    With Arthur in front, Vasilisa in the middle, and Billi behind, they descended into the basement. More glass smashed, this time in the living room. Gareth, a spiked mace in his hand, went to investigate.
    Bors waited in the crowded storeroom. He passed them each a flashlight, then set about moving a large storage trunk.
    Billi found her
wakizashi and
scabbard hanging from the wall. She strapped it to her back and pulled her jacket over it while Bors lifted up a manhole cover. Arthur grabbed his Fairbairn-Sykes dagger, his old Royal Marine weapon, and slid it into a leather forearm sheath, which he covered with his sleeve.
    "If anyone with a tail comes down here, treat them exceedingly badly," he said as he handed the Templar Sword to Bors.
    "Damn right I will," said Bors.
    They climbed down the shaft, Arthur first. He shone his flashlight up and down the tunnel before waving the others down. The stink doubled every yard they descended until eventually Billi touched the floor. Rats squeaked in the darkness, and Billi pointed the light down into the low circular sewer. The old bricks shone wetly, and foul water seeped through the gaps, collecting into a thin stream that trickled along the lowest point.
    A vast labyrinth of underground tunnels and sewers lay under Temple District, and only the Templars knew them all. The old Fleet River had been covered over by the Victorians and turned into a main sewer. One of Billi's earliest training exercises had been to find her way around the system without a map.
    "Which way?" Billi asked.
    "Exit eleven." Holborn. That made sense. They could take the tube straight to Heathrow Airport from there.
    "Don't step in anything," Arthur warned as he led them past colonies of red-eyed rats and pits overflowing with vomit-inducing foulness.
    Eventually they reached a flight of steps leading to a steel door. Arthur unlocked it with a large key, and they emerged into a white-tiled corridor, the Holborn tube station itself. The door said danger—high voltage and had an official-looking London Electricity sign on it, so to the casual observer it was just one of the thousands of substations that covered the city.
    Commuters in their winter coats, heads down and iPod buds in, barely gave them a second glance. It was rush hour and everyone wanted to get home. Billi took Vasilisa's hand and joined the flow.
    Buffeted and shoved along by the crowd, Billi locked her fingers around Vasilisa's wrist as the sea of humanity caught her up. She couldn't see anything but the back of the guy in front of her. A Polenitsy could be right there and she wouldn't know it until the claws were in her