Since they’d left the ring road, they’d barely passed another car. There was no movement in any of the windows. Landon cleared his throat, apparently hoping to break the tension with small talk. “They’re converting some of this into apartments. Maybe putting up some new builds. Might be a good investment, before everyone moves here.”
“Please,” Casaria said. “No one wants to live here.”
“I saw it,” Landon continued. “I read up on some plans for a development. We went past the site back there.”
“You see any building works?”
“Maybe they haven’t started yet.”
“They never will.”
Landon went quiet again. His efforts had failed.
They stopped at the corner of two wide roads, opposite their target building. A free-standing red brick church, with a slanted roof and a large white cross on one wall. It was otherwise unadorned, with no sign announcing sermons and no name, only two massive wooden doors.
Pax felt her pulse racing, maybe from adrenaline, maybe the draw of the Bright Veins. She didn’t dare look at her own flesh in case she saw something moving underneath. Unlikely, but why risk it.
“You two should stay in the car until we check it out,” Landon said. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t take off.”
Rufaizu looked to Pax for guidance, and she said, “You wait here. I need to see it.”
“Me too,” Rufaizu said. “My mission, barfly – I’ve been here for this.”
“No,” Pax said. With all the authority of a young mum. “Sit this out. If things go wrong, or it’s not what we’re looking for, I need you to be safe.”
Rufaizu held her gaze unhappily, but didn’t argue. Pax got out of the car and the sound of the door closing shook the neighbourhood. She started across the road, and Landon called out, “Wait, we’ve got scanners.”
“They won’t help,” Pax said, sure of it.
“We’ve no idea what we’re going to find in there,” Casaria said, briskly following as he drew his pistol. Landon appeared at Pax’s other side, giving Casaria a disapproving look, though his hand moved closer to the lump of his own pistol under his jacket.
“I can feel it. I can...” As Pax moved towards the building, the sensation grew. The tips of her fingers tingled stronger than ever, and the electric throb pulsed from her heart to every inch of her body. It wasn’t like the pained pulses of the surges or the unfocused pulls of being near the blue screens, earlier. It was a dominating warmth, a sense that she was near something big. Stopping at the double doors, she hoped it wouldn’t cause a heart attack or a stroke.
“You’ve got the keys?” Pax said. “Open it already.”
Landon looked to Casaria, malice trumped by a need to defer responsibility.
“Pax...” Casaria said, sounding oddly nervous.
“You feel it too, don’t you? The energy coming from this place.”
Neither man answered, but it was clear in their pallid faces.
Pax said, “Let’s pull the rug out.”
Casaria hesitated a moment longer, then strained to restore his wicked grin. It looked more unconvincing than ever, but he said, “I’ll go first.” He nodded to Landon, who fumbled a ring of keys from a pocket.
It was getting worse. Like the bass of an immense speaker, the pulse shook Pax in waves. There was something incredible inside, something otherworldly.
“Just a moment,” Landon said, testing one key, then another. Casaria tutted impatience. Pax stared at the doors, trying to see through them. The lock clicked. “Got it. Ready?”
Casaria’s legs were spread, two hands on his pistol. He nodded.
Landon took out his own gun, less gracefully, and held it at his side as his other hand rested on the door handle. He gave Pax a nod, then turned the handle and stepped back, heaving the door open.
Blue, bright blazing blue. They all raised their hands to protect their eyes from the light, as it flooded out from the far side of the room. At the sound of the creaking door, or the sense of the air rushing in from outside, the light broke and scattered, like massive fireflies dispersing in fear. Shards of blue raced to the corners of the room and faded into the shadows, plunging the room into darkness.
Pax lowered her arm, eyes adjusting to the sudden dark, and tried to make out what was there, way at the back, where the light had been most intense. The feeling inside her faded, the pulse rapidly weakening, diluting, as the force she’d felt moved away. The faintest echo remained.
But their goal was standing near the altar, beyond a scattering of old pews, even as Pax’s senses returned to normal. It was staring at them, waiting for them to enter.
Casaria asked the question: “What the hell is that thing?”
18
“Grug...u...lochs.”
It spoke through thick saliva with a gargle. The orb-like eyes with tiny irises traced an unfocused circle, their dullness adding to the impression of a lack of intelligence. Its mouth hung vaguely open, a foot wide and lined by thick, lumpy lips, glistening with dripping liquid. The hideous face, with its porcine nose, sat in a domed head sunk into a gelatinous torso. Its folds of fat were the sluglike texture of the creature in the Ripton chapel. Two arms drooped all the way to the floor, coated in the same grotesquely rolling flesh, almost molten in its excess. The hands, if that’s what they were, spread across the floor in bin-lid diameters of tubular fingers. One finger tapped up and down, a hollowed suction cup on its end.
The torso rocked slightly to the side, revealing the rest of the body, a curve of pulsing flesh, marked all over by ancient scars and knotty warts. All flowing into an amorphous base, where the thing appeared to melt into the floor, surrounded by thick slime.
“Grug...u...lochs!” it repeated, louder, as a toddler might request food. One of its great arms rose and the trio in the door tensed, Casaria training his gun on it. The hand slapped down with a squelch, snapping the wooden flooring. Its fingers twisted and planted themselves between the cracks, and a blue light appeared around them. A blue screen, forming on the floor. It pulsed, and the creature’s flesh pulsed with it, something bulging up the arm and into the torso like a snake swallowing prey.
“I think,” Pax said, quietly, “I’m going to be sick.”
But she felt warmth, that pull, returning. This was it. Where the energy was going, where that feeling was leading her.
The creature’s head rolled, as though lacking support, from one side to the other. Finally it rested, pivoted on a slanted shoulder, eyes looking their way. Another pulse came up its arm and it exhaled with deep satisfaction. Pax coughed, lifting a hand to her mouth, the smell noxious, even at this distance.
Landon took out his phone, gun still at his side.
“Get ready, for fuck’s sake!” Casaria hissed. “Are we culling this shit or not?”
“Wait,” Landon mumbled, hurrying to make a call.
In their distraction, Pax stepped between the men, closer to the creature. This was the source of the Blue Angel they’d been hunting? It moved impossibly slowly, sliding its hand to the side. Rounding a pew, she got a better look at its base, where its hard flesh seemed to fuse with the floor. How long had it been here, gestating like this? Feeding by proxy through blue screen emissaries?
The light around its hand faded again, and it deflated slightly, done.
“What are you?” Pax uttered.
Its eyes focused on her. Listening. Understanding.
“Grug...ulochs,” it answered, then gave a series of sharp hisses, like air squeezed through a balloon, its whole body convulsing. “Grugulochs’...lair. You...people...”
“It talks?” Casaria said. He was stunned enough to slightly lower his weapon.
“You’re behind all this?” Pax asked, taking another cautious step closer. There was a good twenty metres between them, but something about this thing, hideous and unnatural as it seemed, was oddly unthreatening. “The minotaur – berserker – glo? It’s you?”
Th
e hissing chuckle came again, the creature’s eyes narrowing with delight. “Grugulochs’...city. Belongs...to me.”
“Crispy. Bloody. Geckos.” Pax met Casaria’s eyes to share her shock.
Landon shook his head, phone to his ear. “It’s me,” he said, and in the quiet of the church Ward’s voice came through unapologetically loud.
“I know it’s you! I need you to get to –”
“We’ve found it,” Landon said. “The...thing. It’s...I don’t know what it is...”
“It’s the grugulochs,” Pax told him. “Clearly.”
Ward was quiet for a moment. “What...but...the FTC...”
“It just fed,” Landon said. “Or looked like it was feeding? Test your theory – is it connected to the praelucente?”
“Hold on,” Ward replied. She relayed a series of muffled commands. “Just hold on. Jesus Christ. It’s there? You’re really seeing it? What is it?”
Pax took another step closer, trying to move fluidly, calmly, in case she might scare it off. She asked, “You control all this? The Sunken City? The myriad creatures?”
It nodded excitedly, and added, “Gloooo.”
“To feed?” Pax frowned.
“Feed...good.”
“A great fucking parasite,” Casaria concluded. In awe, in disgust.
“Yes, two minutes ago,” Ward’s voice announced. “A minor spike from the praelucente, south of Old Ordshaw. Does it mean –”
“You manipulated the Ministry?” Pax asked the creature, loudly. “The Fae? This fight?”
It started shuddering again, pleased with its own actions. “Fight...fight...kill...no one knows. No one knows...grugulochs.”
Pax turned a look to the others. Not sure what was more alarming: the confirmation of her theories or the fact that the mastermind of all this was some bulbous slug that seemed too dumb to realise it was giving its own game away.
“Did you hear that?” Landon said into his phone.
“I heard it,” Sam said, stunned like the rest of them.
Landon looked at his phone for a second, like he wasn’t sure what to do next.
“Can you...” Pax took another gentle step forwards. She could feel that pull, that energy, but it wasn’t as strong as before. It was around her, not focused on that one spot. She checked the walls, the shadows. “Can you explain...to us?”
“Explain?” the grugulochs gurgled. Its eyes started rolling again, and a great tongue lapped out of its slot of a mouth, bovine in thickness and texture. “Yesss. Friends?”
“Sure,” Pax said. It was the Ripton Chapel blue screen all over again. This thing felt the world through its blue screens and knew people through their words, the way they wrote. It didn’t know who she was to look at her. “We’re friends. Tell your friends what you’ve done.”
“Tell friends?” Its bulging eyes narrowed uncertainly.
“We can help,” Pax nodded. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”
“I don’t like this...” Casaria said. Pax held a hand up without looking back.
“Minotaur...” the grugulochs said. “Feed. Minis...try? Find minotaur. But...find me. Fairieeees” – it drew out the word, long and high-pitched – “want to hurt. Minis...try. Fairieeees. Want to hurt.”
“Want to hurt you?” Pax said. “Or you want to hurt them?”
“What difference does it make,” Casaria said. “You’re right, it’s an abomination. All this time, we’ve been feeding this?”
“Feeding, yes!” The monster bounced up and down suddenly, hardly moving from its spot, but sending rumbling shakes that rattled the pews and staggered Pax. The walls creaked as it came to rest. It rolled its head towards Pax, and slowly raised one arm.
“Get back, miss,” Landon cautioned, edging into the room. Casaria sidestepped in the other direction, gun rigidly aimed.
“Friend,” the grugulochs said, reaching towards her. Pax didn’t move, transfixed. It was well out of reach, even with the arm fully extended, its fingers spread. There were suction pads all around its palm. With a great effort and a grunt, it moved, the sluglike base snapping free from the floorboards. Pax jumped back. But for all the volume and power of its movement, it shifted an inch at most. “Friend!”
“Step away from it!” Landon ordered, louder. Casaria joined in.
“Pax, you’re too close!”
“Look at it,” she said. “It’s harmless. An idiot. It does everything through those screens, but in the flesh it’s...what? Just a filthy mass.”
“Filthy...mass?” The creature’s arm slapped back down into the floor, its face distorting in an expressively pained look. The lower lip quivered. “Friends say...filthy mass?”
Oh. Apparently it was a sensitive filthy mass.
Pax took a step back. “Well...you have fantastic abilities. You can change things, can’t you? The way they look?”
“Change.” It fixed its eyes on her again. “Change. Yes.”
It leaned onto both arms, arching up like a gorilla. Pax felt the energy coming closer before it appeared; the blue light returned, one square forming around each of the monster’s hands. They pulsed again, but this time a bulge came the other way. Out of the torso, rolling down the arms.
“Change...” Its voice grew grittier, aggressive. “Friends.”
“Step away from it!” Casaria ordered.
Pax didn’t need to be told. The blue screens around its hands glowed bright as a flare, and something sparked out of them, spurring her to run. More sparks crackled around them. Around the whole room. Pax staggered to a standstill, Landon ahead of her, and they both looked dumbly up. In the far corners of the room, other blue squares were appearing, lit like sparkling floodlights.
Arcs of electricity lanced into the room.
They cracked like thunder, building in quick succession as the grugulochs roared, bass voice vibrating the entire building, “Filthy mass!”
Casaria fired a single shot but the wall lit up behind him and something struck him from behind, flinging him into a pew and to the floor. Landon turned and ran. Pax couldn’t move, feeling the energy, the draw all around her, the creature active, alive in the walls. It was coming from all the different points – alive in every blue screen – dozens of them – at least thirty –
“Grugulochs!” The beast thundered its own name as Landon reached the doorway. A fierce whip of electricity snapped out from the doorframe, exploding with a flash that threw him back into the room. His pistol slid past Pax’s feet.
The monster roared again and the room grew ever brighter, the sound of lightning bolts piercing Pax’s ears, pews snapping in half from the shaking. The energy was building, growing in every screen, and focusing again on the grugulochs behind her. A shard of lightning cracked overhead and Pax ducked, snapped out of her trance.
She twisted to where Landon’s pistol lay.
At best she might run and save her own life, for now. But it was going to keep growing in power, going to keep striking, bleeding this city.
She snatched the pistol from the floor and spun back to the beast. It reared up on the great arms rooted into the floor, eyes lit like headlights, brilliant blue flooding out of its gaping maw. A monster full of tremendous power, focusing ferociously on her.
She pulled the trigger.
The lights went out. As the deafening echoes faded away, the monster slumped down, streams of green gunk pouring from the back of its head. Pax blinked and fired again. Again, again, each shot coming easier, hitting the creature’s torso like stones thrown at mud.
When the gun clicked empty, the room was silent. Dark. The blue squares were gone.
The grugulochs was dead.
Pax stood stone still, scarcely believing it.
She could feel its energy, still. All around them, in the walls, but receding fast. It was spreading beyond her reach, all but the tiniest feeling left.
There was still something there. The faintest flicker beneath the grugulochs’ mountainous corpse. Pa
x took a step towards it. Then another. She passed Landon, groaning on the floor a short distance away, apparently alive.
“Pax,” Casaria croaked wearily, somewhere behind the broken pews.
She ignored them both, approaching the beast. It was an empty husk of life, that was plain to see, but her sense for its energy remained. And the closer she got, the better she understood. The energy was beyond it, now. Not within it.
“Don’t,” Landon called out, pushing himself onto his hands and knees. “Don’t get so close.”
Pax frowned, watching the floor and the walls as she felt the energy shifting. The feeling was unclear, unfocused, but she understood it was moving, not fading away. It was still there, that was the crux of it. The monster was dead and the feeling remained, even as it drifted away from her. Its novisan pulsing back into the city through the Bright Veins?
No. It was nothing so innocent as that.
Sam Ward’s voice cut through the stillness, shouting from the phone, “Landon? Are you okay? Is everyone okay?”
Silence for a second, as Pax kept staring at the empty vessel of the grugulochs. She said, privately, “I’ve got you, you fucker.”
“Landon?”
“She killed it,” Landon announced, finally. “It’s over.”
19
Pax sat alongside Rufaizu on the bonnet of Landon’s car, watching as men in hazmat suits marched into the church. They kept stopping in the doorway as they came and went, throwing unsubtle looks at Pax across the road. She wasn’t sure what to feel about any of it. Maybe she should’ve run, before they arrived, but it was too late now, with two vans here and another ministry car pulling up. She was tired and wanted to go home, that was the only thing she was certain of. And she was happy to sit still, feeling, even for a moment, like she had some breathing space. Her hands wrapped around a disposable coffee cup, a blanket over her shoulders, she told herself she was safe – more useful to the Ministry alive and free than confined or dead.
The Sunken City Trilogy Page 65