by James Fahy
“I-”
“Keep things tight, okay, Kevin? I’m counting on you.” I gave him a bright smile. “We both are.”
He nodded, flustered. “Of course, I… just, be quick alright. If Ms Cloves…”
“I’ll deal with Cloves.” I made my escape before he changed his mind, talking back over my shoulder as I headed for the stairs down to the cafe below. “Her bark is… well… just as bad as her bite to be honest… but I think I’m slowly building up an immunity.”
I took a taxi to the Castle. Elise had said the tower. Most of what officially made up the bulk of what we called ‘The Castle’ was a hotel these days, after a previous and extraordinarily grim stint as a prison, but the stubby square tower of St George still cut the same silhouette it had since Norman times, grizzled and weather-beaten bricks making it more ancient than anything else in our city. It always looks vaguely alien to me. Something barnacle-covered dredged from a deep ocean and thrust into the city like a great and ancient marker from a lost civilisation. There were a few homeless folk milling about on the mound beneath the hangman’s tree. I wondered briefly, as I approached the tower entrance on foot, whether the hobo who had witnessed our second kidnapping on the bridge near here had been released from Cabal custody yet, or whether he was still being ‘questioned’.
Coldwater’s people could technically hold him indefinitely while this investigation was ongoing, and probably would, rather than risk him blabbing about what he’d seen. Not that anyone would look for him. He could rot in a Cabal interrogation cell for the next twenty years and no-one would even know he was missing. No-one with the power to do anything about it anyway.
Just like the children from the Slade.
Maybe I had been naïve in my thinking. Perhaps it was much easier to disappear in a walled city than I had imagined, if you were practically invisible to begin with.
There was no-one at the front desk to the tower. Sometimes there were tours of the old prison. Ghost walks, that kind of thing. Strange I know, but what the hell do you do with an honest-to-god castle in a town dedicated to preserving history other than tourist trap? I entered through the gift shop, hanging around for a moment to give the impression that I was waiting obediently for a guide. Traffic is slow at this place these days though. There isn’t much passing trade from out-of-town tourists in a world where there is no longer any out of town.
When no-one appeared, I slipped at the earliest opportunity through the inner doors. Out of the well-lit gift shop and into the preserved part of the castle.
It was cold and dark within the ruin. I made my way quickly and quietly through low-roofed, bare walled rooms with earthen floors, headed for the ancient spiral stairs which I knew would take me up to the top of the tower. The cold was a seeping chill that burrowed beneath your clothes. The kind you get deep underground in caves and mines. It was like stepping back in time, long before the apocalypse happened, long before the last civilisation fell, destroyed by the Pale. Humanity never really changed much. Long ago, these walls had been erected to keep out invaders. These days the same applied to the great encircling wall around New Oxford. All that had really changed was the materials. The gloomy and ancient castle I made my way through now was rough and rugged stone. The wall my civilisation had erected? Well to be honest, no-one really knew what it was made from. It had been designed and constructed under the design of Scott Enterprises and the Bonewalkers, who lent their unique skills to keeping us all safe. It looked something like obsidian, a shiny, glasslike dark barrier, soaring into the sky. But it wasn’t quite that. I had been on top of it once. I remember the stones had felt warm to the touch, even in the middle of the night.
The staircase I climbed now was not warm. It was chilly and narrow, and I almost hit my head several times as I hurried upwards, my boots echoing on the thigh-defying steep steps. I wished I’d brought a flashlight with me. The occasional arrow-slit window served to offer no real light, just brief slices of interruption to the shadow. I couldn’t wait to be out in fresh air again.
Eventually I reached the top, panting a little, a doorway spilling me onto the large square flat rooftop of the tower. Battlement crenulations adorned the walls on all four sides. At one time there had been a raised platform in the centre of the roof space to offer tourists even wider views across the city, but that had long gone. The stones of the space were empty, the sky overhead a crisp, clear blue, threaded with thin wisps of cloud which were still tinged gold from the autumn morning light. There was a brisk wind up here. I may have described the tower as stubby, but that was in comparison to the towering new skyscrapers of glass and steel over in our newer city sections. It was still a castle after all. I wouldn’t have liked to free-climb down the outside of it.
And it still offered splendid views in every direction.
My city lay spread out around me like a picnic blanket, a riot of rooftops below me in every direction, almost as far as the eye could see. I could make out the unmistakable dome of the Radcliffe Camera far away, the imposing sight of Cabal HQ, the Liver, a building transported to New Oxford from the fallen city of Liverpool. Further off, the Angel of the North held court in a green space now designated Tribal lands, and smoky with distance, the Portmeadow high-rises glittered like the emerald city of Oz. I looked across the river, threading here and there through the streets below like a dropped silver shoelace. In the distance I could make out the Slade and beyond that the woods, which once had lain far outside Old Oxford’s walls, but now had been gathered within our new enclosure, huddling like a low dark shadow right up to the wall.
In every direction, at every periphery, the distant horizons ended at the wall itself. It coiled around New Oxford and every soul within it like a great, sleeping ouroboros. Our only defence from the world outside. From the hordes of Pale who now owned this country and roamed its wastelands in their millions.
I wasn’t the only one up here enjoying the view.
Directly across from me, leaning against the opposite far wall of the tower, looking out over the city was Elise.
It had to be her, I reasoned. Who else would wear a full burgundy velvet cloak at 10.00 am in the morning? It flapped around her ankles in the wind as she leaned out against the battlements. Her long dark hair, unbound, was whipped lightly around her head. Clearly she hadn’t heard me exit the stairwell out onto the roof space.
I walked across to her, the wind up here whistling playfully around me, making my coat flap, full of near-Halloween chill.
“I came,” I called to her. “Elise, it’s me. I’m alone. Now what is this about?”
She didn’t answer me. She seemed lost in her own thoughts, as still as a statue as I made my way over to her. One of her hands was resting atop the wall, palm up. She was holding something in it, clutched tightly. Is this why she had called me here? To give me something? Or to tell me something?
“You said on the phone Allesandro needed my help,” I said, brushing wind-whipped hair out of my eyes as I closed the distance between us. “Something happened to him, didn’t it? I know it did. I’ve been seeing him, in my head. I’m betting you have too. I’m not naïve enough to think you haven’t tasted his blood.”
I glanced over the wall’s edge as I reached the Helsing. Standing alongside her as companionably as I could manage. She and I had never been friends, but she had sounded so distraught and desperate on the phone. I wanted her at ease. It was a lot further down than I’d thought to the ground below. “Look,” I said. “I know you are I have never seen eye to eye, but you called me, remember? You wanted to talk. Are you giving me the silent treatment? Changed your mind now? Cat got your-” I glanced down at her hand, feeling irritated that she was so haughty she hadn’t even acknowledged me, and finally I saw what it held.
“-tongue,” I finished haltingly.
There was a red, wet mess in the girl’s upturned hand, her fingers clawed tightly around it.
I grabbed her shoulder, forcing her to spin and face me.
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Elise’s head lolled and she fell towards me, making me stumble back in surprise and alarm. For a moment I thought she was fainting, then I saw her face. Her eyes, blank and lifeless, wide with terror and glazed with death. Her mouth, usually painted a perfect cupid’s bow of deep red, was a ragged hole, painted bright with blood.
The dead face screamed at me silently.
I screamed much less silently, losing my balance and falling back, her body following me. There was a brief, primal moment of panic where Elise fell on me like a ravenous zombie, her heavy body making me stumble, before I threw her off with all my strength, sending her flying to the side, slumping against the inner wall of the stone crenulations as I rolled away.
I got to my knees quickly, panting, staring wide-eyed at the girl.
At the corpse, I corrected myself mentally, goosebumps chasing up my arms. Elise was dead. The front of her dress was soaked with blood, stained and ruined. That horrified face staring silently up at the beautiful autumn sky, unseeing and unmoving.
“Fuck!” I shouted, horrified. I staggered to my feet. There was blood on my hands. Her tongue had been torn. Wrenched from her mouth. That’s what she had been holding. She was still holding it now, gripped in a white death claw.
She has sounded so urgent and desperate on the phone. Who the hell had done this to her? Someone had followed her here, to our arranged rendezvous point. Had gotten here before I had. Whatever it was Elise had wanted to tell me, she had been well and truly silenced.
I dropped to her side, reaching out with shaking fingers and brushing her hair off her forehead.
“Oh Jesus,” I said. “What the hell…”
Something was nearby. I felt it in my bones, a presence. An animal alarm I didn’t even know I possessed ran through me like a current. My head flicked up from the ragged mess of the dead Helsing’s face, looking back towards the doorway, the only way onto the rooftop.
Walking towards me, somehow more horrific in the daylight than it had ever looked in darkness, was the child-snatcher. The Oxford devil. It walked quickly, arms swinging. Smoke was rising wispily from it everywhere, a smouldering man-shaped balrog. There was something worse, seeing it so clearly. Nightmares like this belong in the shadows. Seeing a creature that belonged in the darkness under your bed hurrying toward me in broad daylight, under an innocent and sunny sky was horrifying.
The smoking entity looked from myself to Elise as it approached, grinning its wide wicked grin behind its constantly sizzling face, and it raised one finger mockingly to its lips. ‘Shhh.’
Its other hand waggled a finger at us, admonishing.
The message was clear. No telling tales.
Abandoning Elise’s body, I stood and backed away, hitting the small of my back almost immediately on the battlements of the old tower. Panic was descending. There was nowhere to go. The only exit was through this thing, and bloody hell it was fast, flying at a trot towards me, eating up the roofspace in seconds.
Before I could make a move, it was upon me. Its hand clenched tightly around my throat, cutting off my air. It lifted me off the floor with one hand, holding me up with ease, my feet scrabbling for purchase on the stone.
Choking, my hands grabbed at its forearms, trying to pry myself free from its grip. Its skin was slick, somehow loose and crumbling under my fingers, as though I were digging away at an overcooked roast joint of beef. I couldn’t get purchase, and it may as well have been made of stone for all the effect my fighting had. Its claws around my neck merely tightened, squeezing at my throat, crushing my windpipe, and I gagged for air as it stepped forward, lifting me bodily over the wall, and hanging me dangling over the battlements. My panic flared into terror as I felt the great gulf of air beneath me, the drop to the ground far below yawning beneath my frantically kicking feet. I immediately changed tactic. Instead of trying to pry the monster’s hands off me, I clung to it for dear life.
It’s going to drop me, I thought in horror. It’s going to throw me off the roof. I always knew I’d die this way, thrown off a castle roof by the devil.
I was aware this babble was hysteria, my mind flailing around and finding giddy humour. I had no oxygen, unable to breath in the demon’s death-grip. My lungs were burning in agony, and blackness was crawling in at the edges of my vision, like a blurring cloud of ants.
It was toying with me, waving me over the edge like a cast fishing line and enjoying my terror. This thing took pleasure in fear. Had it laughed when it had torn Elise’s tongue from her mouth, giggled to itself in that horrible high pitched whine as it placed the severed muscle in her hand, a gift for me to find while it lurked and watched my reaction with glee?
I thought quite clearly and dispassionately: Please let me pass out before I hit the ground. That would be better, right? Than feeling myself hit the ground?
Its skin was so hot, the thin, bitter smoke flooding from it clogging my nostrils, an acrid reek of sizzling, charred flesh. Its ruined face was only inches from mine. Grinning with hideous delight. Its tiny, withered, black eyes rolled in its head.
Something fired deep within me. I didn’t expect it, and it took me by surprise. It felt like a gas fire bursting into flame. A pure heat that started in my stomach and roared through me, spreading like liquid flame.
It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t helplessness. It wasn’t even desperation. It was anger, pure white hot anger. It flooded through my veins and burst into my skull.
This abomination was holding me over the edge of the roof, toying with me, swaying me back and forth, enjoying my fear, and it had the gall to be grinning at me?
“Screw… you…” I hissed in a gurgle, somehow forcing the words up my choking, burning throat. My hands gripped the forearms tighter. I dug my fingers viciously into its flesh, as hard as I could, tearing at its tendons, using them for purchase to pull myself forward towards it. A red mist was descending over my vision, my body temperature flaring, feverish. I felt my teeth grinding against each other in fury as I saw for the first time the wide torn grin of the demon falter. Its face, half lost in the continuous miasma of thin smoke, looked curious, almost… interested.
I knew what this was. This feeling pouring through me. In the one small sane corner of my mind where I was still me, the part that wasn’t furious and filled with no other notion or thought than to rip and tear and kill this thing, I knew this was survival.
The Pale virus, dormant in me, kept in check through my self-medication, had risen like bile in my throat. To protect itself. And it was fucking angry.
With a roar, feeling the monster’s arm actually buckle slightly beneath my abuse, I heaved myself forward, head-butting it as hard as possible in the centre of its cracked, ghastly face. It staggered backwards, taken by surprise. Animal joy screamed in me at the sound of its pain. A rushing, shivering pleasure at its anguish. I wanted more. I wanted to make it scream. I wanted to tear it apart. For Griff, for Dee, for the lost children. Hell, even for Elise. I wasn’t afraid of this thing. It should be afraid of me, the crispy-fried fucker.
Swinging my body wildly, I made it stagger and used its momentum to swing my legs up, wrapping them around its waist. I clung to its fetid body like a feral cat as it wheeled around, furious, trying to throw me off. Dropping my head, I sank my teeth into its shoulder, hard enough to break bones. Feeling the crisp and disgusting flesh give way beneath my jaw, sloughing off between my lips. It tasted dead. Vile and unclean. I gnawed at the corruption, uncaring. I only wanted it to hurt. I wanted it to suffer.
I could feel that I was losing myself. I knew that if I didn’t stop, the Pale would take me completely. If I allowed myself to abandon to this euphoric, bestial anger, to the power and fearless hatred it brought, I wouldn’t be able to come back from this. And I didn’t care. If I could take this thing with me, if I could stop it, for once and all, it would be worth it.
We stumbled back from the battlements, entwined around each other in a flailing mass of twisting limbs, and the devil tripped
over Elise’s body, bringing us down in a heap of fury, blood and smoke. I was still tearing into it, snapping and biting, as mad as a foaming dog, but it was not weak. Its hand reached around and grabbed the back of my head, pulling me back and away from it, my teeth snapping at thin air, even as with my fists I delivered blow after blow into its body, pounding away.
No, my quiet inner voice said. It’s not enough just to kill this. Who will find the children? Who can find Pargate? I have to come back.
If I came back, forcing myself up out of this cloud of fury, this thing would kill me. But I knew that if I didn’t, I was as good as dead anyway.
It was grinning up at me again. I was tearing it apart, chunk by chunk, and though it had roared in anger, it didn’t show any pain. Like the death I tasted in my throat, I don’t know if it felt anything at all. I had heard it laugh before, but I had never heard it speak. Now, as it looked up at me, its wicked face seemed almost curious, it spoke.
“Interesting.”
The one word bubbled out of its throat like swamp gas flooding up through a deep black marsh. A wet and rolling gurgle. A voice that sounded torn and broken.
And then it giggled at me again.
I was stunned. Enough for the rage of the Pale virus to be momentarily derailed, just enough for the sane fragment of my mind that still recognised who I was to claw a finger hold in the animal I was devolving into. I registered movement at the corner of my eye. Someone else was on the rooftop, someone swathed in a long cloak or robe, covered head to toe as though wrapped in a pale fire blanket, and they were running towards us.
My brain, still filled with screaming hunger, could barely interpret it. For a moment I thought it was a Bonewalker. Then I heard it shout, ‘Get off her!’
The demon I straddled took advantage of my momentary distraction and, its hands still gripping the back of my skull, it flung me off with a roar, tossing me high into the air like a rag doll.