Lord McGuigan folded his arms. ‘Or mine.’
Lady Carr glanced at the other female clan leader. ‘You are the only alpha with form for this type of action. Our wolves are accounted for.’
‘You know what this means,’ McGuigan snarled. ‘The Sullivan Clan is officially dead. The humans will never stand for this! All the diplomacy and plea bargaining in the world won’t let you off the hook this time.’ He looked at me. ‘We are innocent of this, DC Bellamy. You cannot tar every werewolf clan with the same brush. This is not our crime.’
‘They are not my wolves!’ The strain in Lady Sullivan’s voice was unusual.
I pulled back my shoulders. ‘Get in your cars and get back to Lisson Grove. Now,’ I ordered
‘What?’ Lord Fairfax jerked. ‘You can’t make us do that. If werewolves are holding a bunch of humans hostage, we have a right to be here. You might be powerful, DC Bellamy, but you’re no wolf.’
‘Neither,’ I said, ‘are any of the people on that bus.’
Every pair of eyes blinked at me. ‘What?’
‘I might still be relatively new at all of this,’ I said, ‘but I know that no group of werewolves would do this unless they were under your orders. One lone wolf might be this stupid but not three together. And looking at you lot, it’s obvious that none of you ordered it. You know what the consequences would be if you did and you’re not that reckless.’
‘Damn fucking right,’ the petite Lady Carr muttered.
‘Less than an hour ago,’ I continued, ‘a vampire was perched on top of the London Eye. Now three werewolves have hijacked a bus. Lord Horvath left Soho to deal with the vamp. You left Lisson Grove to deal with this.’ I shook my head. ‘These aren’t real incidents, they’re diversions. Someone is trying to distract you. I reckon that when the bus is stormed, it won’t be three werewolves in there – it’ll be three idiots in fancy-dress costumes pretending to be wolves.’
‘What?’ McGuigan’s mouth dropped open. ‘Are you sure?’
Not entirely, but I hoped I was right. A musty smell? A scribbled note? Blue eyes? Tourists wouldn’t necessarily know what a real werewolf looked like, and fear could make you believe just about anything – even that someone in a costume was actually a supernatural creature.
‘Why would someone want us out of Lisson Grove?’ Lady Sullivan asked. ‘If this is a distraction, what is it distracting us from?’
‘I don’t—’
A voice on Fred’s radio, which was clipped to his belt, interrupted. ‘I’m getting some reports of a robbery under way.’ It was Liza, calling in from the office. ‘At the Talismanic Bank on Grosvenor Street.’
Carr and McGuigan were running for their cars before she’d finished her sentence.
Fred stared at me. ‘Shit.’
‘That’s my bank,’ Fairfax whispered. He spun away.
‘It’s the bank we all use.’ Lady Sullivan’s jaw clenched. ‘It’s the bank the vampires use, too.’ She glanced at the bus once more, her expression contorting. Her eyes had narrowed to slits and a dangerous yellow sheen was rolling across her irises. I glanced down and noted the fur springing out across the back of her hands and the sharp claws. Then she also turned and ran for her car.
Fred rubbed his forehead. ‘All this is about a bank robbery? What the fuck? What do we do?’
‘We get to the Talismanic Bank,’ I said. ‘Now.’
Chapter Four
Under normal circumstances I could have driven from Tower Bridge to the bank in less than twenty minutes but there’d been an accident on the main road. Ambulances, police cars and several diversions forced me to detour and I arrived far later than I’d intended, frustration boiling inside me.
I ignored the parking restrictions and pulled up Tallulah directly outside the bank before jumping out and heading in through the grand front doors.
The Talismanic Bank had been established for centuries. It was held in high esteem across the world. Unusually, it remained untouched by the disasters that befell other banks; as far as the Talismanic Bank was concerned, another financial crash was simply another day at the office. There were only six branches – New York, Beijing, Rio De Janeiro, Lagos, Sydney and, of course, London. Antarctica was the only continent it didn’t cover.
Not anyone could stroll in and open an account. To be a client, you had to be a supe: vampire, werewolf or Other. Humans could wander in and have a look around the famous building but they weren’t allowed to conduct business with the Talismanic Bank. That was as a result of the bank’s own rules, nobody else’s.
The London branch was located smack bang in the centre of the city between Soho, where the vamps resided, and Lisson Grove where the wolves were. As the crow flies, it was only half a mile from the Supe Squad office, although the busy London streets and one-way systems meant that getting there from my workplace took longer than it should have done.
The bank was an enormous building made out of Portland Stone. It had massive pillars and elaborately carved gargoyles and grotesques on the outside, and high-ceilinged rooms, steel-lined vaults and dramatic interiors inside. There was so much art hanging on its walls that it occasionally gave guided tours. I had never darkened its door before now. Gazing round the destruction on the ground floor, I wished I didn’t have to do so now.
All four clan alphas and Lukas were already there. My feet crunched on the shattered glass that covered the elaborate mosaic floor. Several of the stained-glass windows had been shot out, as well as the glass that fronted the bank tellers’ booths. I doubted the bank’s administrators had expected that anyone would dare to attack them and had never upgraded to bulletproof versions.
‘Two bank employees are dead,’ Lukas told me grimly. ‘And five customers – four wolves and a pixie. There are also two dead humans. One was killed on the steps outside and one in here.’
I looked at him sharply. ‘Is there any indication that any of the victims were with the bank robbers?’
‘Not so far – most of the dead were customers. The human outside seems to have been an unlucky bystander, and the human inside appears to have ventured inside for a quick gawk. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ Darkness flickered across his face. ‘Everyone was.’
I swivelled round, sick to my stomach. From the amount of blood I’d expected worse, but it was still a desperately high body count. The supernatural community would feel the effects of this for years to come.
‘Did they get away with anything?’ I asked. Surely the security in a place like this would be ridiculously high? It was impossible to believe that anyone could gain access to the vaults and make off with wads of supernatural cash.
A tall man, with a body so thin it was almost skeletal, walked towards us. I looked him up and down. Since I’d been fooled into believing the worst of the ghouls while investigating the gruesome disappearance of a body from a grave, I’d improved my knowledge of the Others. The number of supernatural species who were not wolves or vamps was tiny, but that didn’t make them less important.
I knew without asking that this man was a goblin. Caricatures made by humans usually portrayed them as squat, chubby creatures with avaricious temperaments. In reality, they tended to be quiet, thoughtful beings who were marked by their green eyes and gold-tinged skin. Most lived in mainland Europe, but a hundred or so resided in London. I already knew that this particular goblin was Mosburn Pralk, Moss to his friends. It wasn’t his real name; as far as I was aware, not even his wife knew his real name. That was the price you paid when you were bank manager for virtually every supe in Europe.