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Synopsis

For months, Luke and his underground revolutionary group have been planning their biggest operation yet: kidnapping 23-year-old Adeline Woolsaw. They don't want a ransom - they want to expose the Woolsaw Group, the source of Adeline's parents' enormous wealth, a vast yet largely anonymous company that runs everything from military bases and mental hospitals to commuter trains, call centers, and prisons.

But the revolutionaries get a shock when they bundle Adeline into their van. She's about to go into labor. And she may not object to being kidnapped, if it allows her and the baby to escape her despotic parents.

It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary child. He's capable of setting off deadly weather events and summoning plagues of vermin. And that's just the beginning. Luke discovers that Adeline's parents engineered the pregnancy as part of a dark bargain with an ancient evil of nearly limitless power. Now the Woolsaws and their henchmen will stop at nothing to get the infant back, so they can establish an infernal new kingdom on Earth with their grandchild on the throne.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Four paces. That's their window to take her. When she's coming down the front steps of the clinic, that's too early: the steps have cast-iron railings on either side, so they won't be able to get behind her. And once any part of her body is inside the Land Rover, that's too late: the open door will be in their way, and if she manages to hook herself onto some part of the interior, like maybe she wraps her arms around a headrest, then it's a tug of war. So all they have is the four paces between the steps and the kerb. It's no time at all. But if they miss that window, if she slips back into the building or the car drives away with her inside, they will never get another chance.

Across the road from the clinic, Luke is kneeling by his bicycle pretending to tighten the spokes with a wrench, and he's wearing the full kit--spandex trousers and jersey, gloves, helmet, sunglasses, anti-pollution mask--in the hope that anyone who sees him will think, "Yeah, that looks like exactly the kind of nerd who would park up in the middle of Marylebone to tune his bike like it's a fucking viola."

Also, the mask hides his face. The problem is, it's not ideal for taking deep calming breaths. He keeps telling himself that cyclists wear masks like this while they're huffing and puffing up hills, so objectively they can't be that bad, but all the same he feels like he's trying to breathe through a face full of cavity-wall insulation. The only way this could get worse would be if he puked into it before he could get it off, which unfortunately feels like a genuine possibility, because Luke is the most nervous he has ever been in his life. He cannot imagine any happier news right now, any more wonderful gift, than the operation suddenly being called off. Even though this is what they've been working towards for months.

It's 11:46 a.m. He glances up and down the street. On the outside, most of these posh Georgian townhouses look just how they must have the day they were built, but on the inside they have some of the most advanced medical technology in the world; apparently there's a surgeon here who will give you VR goggles when you come for your consultation so you can see what your breasts will look like after he's finished. What surprised Luke when he first came to Harley Street was that even the most exclusive clinics have their waiting rooms right at the front, in what would once have been the drawing rooms, so anybody can peer inside. In fact, the townhouse opposite is the only one on the whole row with frosted glass in its tall sash windows.

Since then he's been on several more scouting missions, so he knows the street's rhythms. The little half-hourly swells of patients arriving for their appointments. The couriers picking up blood and sperm samples. The delivery vans, like the one idling on a yellow line about four doors down--except that one isn't actually a delivery van...

He hears a door open. Looks up.

A bodyguard is coming out of the clinic. Bullet-headed in a grey suit.

And behind the bodyguard, there she is. Twenty-three-year-old Adeline Woolsaw, brown hair pinned up, grey leggings, baggy beige jumper. For months now this woman has been the centre of his universe but this is the first time he's ever seen her in the flesh. As if he's an adoring fan waiting at a stage door.

Four paces.

Luke rises, grabbing the flash-bang from the bike's pannier. With his free hand he wheels the bike at high speed towards the Land Rover, exactly as he's rehearsed a hundred times. A second, older woman is coming down the steps, Adeline's governess or chaperone or assistant or whatever she is, as the bodyguard opens the car door.

Luke pulls the pin of the flash-bang with his teeth and tosses it onto the pavement at Adeline Woolsaw's feet.

It looks like nothing much, just a white plastic cylinder the size of a can of deodorant. They sourced it from a guy who has blown up a lot of buildings: his day job is pyrotechnics at a VFX company. He warned them that a flash-bang isn't nearly as potent outdoors as it is in a confined space. But it doesn't need to burst anyone's eardrums. It just needs to buy a few seconds.

The bike clatters to the ground as Luke turns his back on the Land Rover, squeezing his eyes shut and clapping both hands over his ears, tight enough to make a seal.

But the detonation is still so loud that when he takes his hands away his ears are ringing and his guts are ringing too.

Adeline and the bodyguard and the assistant are all standing there like swatted flies, lolling, helpless. As the delivery van pulls up beside him, Luke lifts the bike up by the frame and pitches it with all his strength at the bodyguard. The bodyguard, who never saw it coming, is knocked over sideways.

The side door of the van slides open and out hops Rosa, who wears a surgical mask and a hoodie with the hood up. Together they grab Adeline Woolsaw, Rosa taking her by the left arm, Luke by the right--so he's touching her, he's actually touching her, this person who until now was only ever really an abstraction, a distant planet. As they drag her into the back of the van, she doesn't resist at all. In fact, she even ducks her head a little bit, as if to make it easier for them. Which has got to be the shock, Luke thinks. At the same time, he's starting to register that she's sort of the wrong shape--

But then, before they can slide the door shut, the assistant or governess or chaperone wraps both her arms around Adeline's left leg. Luke never imagined that instead of the bodyguard, who is only just getting up off the ground, their biggest obstacle would be this little middle-aged woman in a tweed suit. But she has a death grip on Adeline's calf, so for a moment it really is the tug of war they were determined to avoid.

"Just fucking punch her!" Rosa says.

The problem is, Luke has never in his life punched anyone in the face. His first kidnapping has come before his first proper fight. Which sounds ridiculous, but it's true. And so, presented with this woman who looks like somebody's mum, he hesitates.

Rosa handles it instead. She jabs the assistant right in the eye. The assistant staggers backward, releasing her hold on Adeline. At last Luke and Rosa are able to slide the van door shut.

And now Luke becomes aware of two things that he very much was not expecting.

The first is that Adeline Woolsaw is pregnant.

When she was coming down the stairs her midsection was hidden from view by the bodyguard in front, and during the struggle just now he was too busy to really clock it. But she is pregnant. Heavily pregnant, in fact. Huge under that baggy cashmere jumper.

And the second thing is that she's shouting, "Go! Go! Come on! Go!" Urgency in her voice. Desperation.

As if she wants them to get away.

As if she doesn't realise she's being kidnapped.

As if she thinks she's being rescued.

Copyright © 2025 by Kit Burgoyne

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