The War in the Dark

by Nick Setchfield

  Hart was floating above the flagstones, dressed in a six-buttoned double-breasted suit, its flamboyant cut belonging to the 1940s. The thread of the tweed glinted as though woven out of light. The other shining beings rose behind him, impossible even to glimpse now that they were fully manifested. Winter sensed rather than saw them, a shudder of something unearthly at the edge of his vision. He had no idea if they were angels or fallen angels or demons who had stolen the names of angels but even their shadows were searingly, blindingly beautiful.

  Winter kept his eyes on Hart, convinced they would turn to ash if he so much as glanced at the Ascendance. ‘You’re not me,’ he said, less emphatically than he wanted. ‘I have no idea what you are but you’re not me. You’re not who I am.’

  Hart laughed, indulgently. ‘Oh, you brave little husk of a man. So adorably spirited. I’m rather proud of what I left behind.’

  ‘You are not who I am!’ Winter protested again, louder, more adamantly. ‘We’re not the same man! My name is Christopher Winter!’

  Hart regarded him. The mischief in his face was gone, replaced by something colder, more determined.

  ‘No, my name is Tobias Hart. You, on the other hand, are a cage of meat and bone. I’m going to take your flesh. You will be my body in this world. I will walk in you.’

  Winter fought to understand the words, to grasp their implication. ‘And what happens to me?’ he demanded. ‘What happens to me when you take my body?’

  Hart gave him a sharp, disdainful look, as if losing patience with a slow child. ‘I’m simply reclaiming what’s rightfully mine. I’m sure you can comprehend that if you try.’

  Malcolm stepped an inch or two closer to the maw of light. Some of his usual assurance had gone. He seemed apprehensive as he approached the spectral figure of Hart. The scent of whisky leaked through his pores.

  ‘I brought him to you, Tobias. Just as I promised I would. Just as I said.’

  Hart turned to appraise Malcolm, as if perceiving the SIS man’s presence for the first time. ‘You brought him, did you? I rather imagine he found me himself.’

  Winter could hear Hart’s words a beat before they were spoken. Somehow they were already inside his head, echoing in anticipation, almost persuading him that they were his own. He wanted to shake them out of his skull.

  Hart spread his hands. They trailed a pale shimmer of fire, leaving a burning after-image in the air. ‘Malcolm. Dear friend. Here I am, so nearly in the flesh.’

  There was no warmth to the words but Malcolm smiled anyway, a sheen of sweat above his lips. ‘We’re close now, Tobias. Everything we’ve always worked towards. Jerusalem!’

  Hart’s eyes were like shards of emerald, clear, hard and bright. There was a sense of immense power compacted in the pupils, like lightning crushed into specimen jars. They sparked and they glimmered.

  ‘Jerusalem!’ he echoed, derisively. ‘O clouds unfold!’

  Malcolm nodded vigorously, missing the scorn in Hart’s voice. ‘We always dreamed of it, Tobias! A new world to burn away the ruins and the filth of this one! A world where you would lead us! The greatest warlock of the century! This is just how we planned it!’

  Hart paused, pursing his lips in mock deliberation. ‘Oh. Was that the plan? I rather thought the plan involved me dying in considerable pain in some miserable little corner of South West Africa. No?’

  Malcolm made to reply but his throat clutched at his words. ‘I… Tobias…’

  ‘You wanted me dead, Malcolm. You wanted me dead for quite some time.’

  Malcolm shook his head, emphatically. He forced himself to find his voice again. ‘That’s not true,’ he insisted. ‘We were always friends! Why would I want you dead?’

  Hart’s gaze was accusatory. ‘I was simply an asset to you. And all good assets are potential liabilities. We both know that. I think I frightened you, Malcolm. And if I didn’t frighten you I certainly frightened Whitehall.’

  A preternatural energy seethed in Hart’s eyes. ‘Somebody clearly feared my ideological sympathies might drift one day. As if such choices concerned me. What’s politics compared to magic, after all? Why would I choose between East and West when I could learn to tear a man apart with a single thought?’

  ‘The service valued you. I valued you.’

  ‘You sent me to Windhoek,’ spat Hart, cutting across Malcolm’s words with a sudden, clipped fury. ‘It was your intelligence I was following!’

  ‘It was solid intelligence!’ protested Malcolm. Behind him the commandos nervously hitched their guns.

  ‘Absolutely solid,’ hissed Hart. ‘You knew what I would find there, Malcolm. You knew exactly who would be waiting for me in Africa. It was an immaculate trap, I’ll grant you that. Pity I spoilt your plan by not actually dying. Deeply selfish of me, I realise.’

  ‘I swear to you, Tobias, I had no idea! I would never have sent you there if I’d known!’

  Malcolm took another tentative step across the stone floor, as if to stress his loyalty. ‘And besides,’ he continued, betrayed by sweat, ‘why would I go to all this trouble now if I wanted you dead?’

  ‘Because you’re an opportunist, Malcolm. It’s your traditional career path. You saw the chance I had to return to this world, to rule it in the name of the Ascendance. And you wanted to be part of it. You wanted to walk in my shadow, as ever. Well, my shadow’s a pretty dark place, dear heart.’

  Malcolm backed away from the burning figure. ‘You came to me in visions,’ he said, a trace of hurt in his voice now. ‘Just like an angel. You promised me our Jerusalem. All I had to do was reunite you with your body. I’ve done that! I’ve brought it here!’

  Hart smiled again, more cruelly. There was a pale dance of flame at the edges of his mouth.

  ‘Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Always so obsessed with Blake, weren’t you? All those quaint notions he had of Heaven and Hell. I should share my own notions with you, Malcolm. They’re a little more informed. Personal experience, you know. Hard won.’

  Malcolm hesitated. For all that he was afraid the thought clearly captivated him.

  His eyelids flickered. ‘Tell me,’ he asked, softly. ‘Tell me about Hell.’

  ‘Of course, Malcolm. Of course I will. But first I think we need to establish a common frame of reference, don’t you?’

  Hart raised his left hand, clenching it into a fist. Vicious white flames swarmed around it.

  ‘Let me broaden your concept of Hell.’

  Winter felt his body quiver as he watched. There was an electric shudder in his muscles, as if he was sharing in the unearthly energy that Hart was summoning. It felt seductive. The faintest shiver of power, deep in his bones. He hated how it made him feel.

  Malcolm staggered back, staring in horrified fascination at the fire swelling around Hart’s hand. Hart tightened his fist and Malcolm’s body was wracked by a fierce spasm, one that seized his spine and tugged it taut. Malcolm writhed, wrapping his arms around his chest as if trying to suppress something massing inside him.

  His shirt flooded with blood. Tusks of bone pierced the cotton, carving their way through his flesh. The ribs were being plucked from his body, cracked apart inside him and pulled out of his torso like spears.

  Malcolm screamed. And he continued to scream as his face tore like fabric, exposing the clutter of teeth and muscle and ganglia that pulsed beneath his skin. Soon all that was left of his mouth was the throat that had been ripped through his jaws.

  Malcolm crumpled, hitting the ground in a slop of blood and body parts, spilling out of a Savile Row suit. His fingers poured over the flagstones, a wet mess of tissue and nerve endings crowned by a gleaming set of knuckles.

  Malcolm Hands had been torn inside out.

  Winter stared at the remains. Part of him felt repelled. Part of him – a part he didn’t even want to acknowledge – felt exultant. He could still taste the power that Hart had invoked. It was intoxicating.

  He finally glanced
away. Karina was looking at him across the church, her face grave. For a moment he couldn’t meet her eyes.

  ‘Well,’ said Hart, matter-of-factly. ‘I trust that was theologically illuminating for you, Malcolm.’

  The commandos opened fire, their Bren guns flashing. The bullets simply melted in the air, dripping in a spatter of lead to the floor.

  Hart seemed to regard this development as deeply tedious. He opened his fist and the circle of flame expanded behind him. The swirl of white fire quickened its revolution. The portal pulled the soldiers towards it, a strange gravity dragging their bodies across the flagstones. They kept firing even as their boots skidded closer to the burning maw. And then, their guns still flashing, the men disintegrated, atomised by flame. There wasn’t even dust where their bodies had been.

  Hart turned to Winter. He extended a hand. ‘Come now,’ he said. ‘I think it’s time.’

  Winter hesitated. He saw Karina moving across the nave towards him. He turned his head away from her. As if compelled he raised his left hand to Hart. Their fingers were perfectly mirrored. He wanted to refuse the hand but it was part of him. He knew that now. And it promised so much. Hart’s voice was like honey in his skull. Take our hand, it told him. It will complete us. Make us whole. Make us one. We will be alive. Finally alive.

  Winter reached out, almost without conscious thought. He touched the hand. There was a shock of contact.

  The unholy fire permeated his body. It suffused him. He could feel the light surge in his blood, blaze in his veins. His heart throbbed like a sun. And he could taste it all – the thump of every last pulse inside him, the burning rush in his capillaries, the sway of the tiny hairs in his skin. Even the saliva on his tongue was impossibly sweet.

  No! It was Hart who was experiencing this, Hart who had stolen his senses, Hart who was finally tasting life again. The two of them were fusing, fire and flesh. Now even their thoughts were merging, becoming one.

  As Winter convulsed he fought to preserve himself – everything that defined him, everything he knew as Christopher Winter – but the power that raced through his bones was exhilarating. Part of him wanted to surrender to it, to know it absolutely.

  He inhaled, a hungry drag of breath, deep into his lungs. He could smell the lingering cordite of the soldiers’ guns, the burnt flesh of the radio operator, the sickly organic aroma of Malcolm’s remains. And there was something else, too. The scent of tamarind. A perfume. Karina’s perfume, he remembered. She was close to him.

  He tried to look at her but his eyes were elsewhere.

  He saw a man’s body, some distance below him. The vision was hazy at first but it soon solidified. He seemed to be floating above this man, higher than the ceiling fan whose slats made a rhythmic sweep through thick, sticky air. He felt detached, an observer.

  The figure was sprawled on a canvas bed, one arm flung to the side, the other locked to his left thigh. He was bare-chested and there was a blood-blackened wound in his abdomen. The man was alive, but barely, the slow rise and shudder of his chest the only sign that he was still breathing.

  It was Hart’s body, he realised. And then he caught himself. No. It was his body, lying on a makeshift bed in a cramped, half-lit operating room. The sheet was spattered with blood. There was an insect drone in the air and a heavy, fetid heat. This was Africa. That desperate little desert hospital.

  Now he remembered. He had died in this room.

  He remembered it all. He had left the cave, stumbling into the sun, clutching the stab wound, haemorrhaging life with every step across the sand. A party of Dutch geologists had found him, quite by chance. They had laid him in their truck, put water to his lips and driven like devils across the dunes. The medical station had been part of a former German colony, all but abandoned. He was delirious when they reached its door, murmuring about angels, and vengeance.

  He saw an oxygen mask clasped to his face, fogged with moisture. A ramshackle array of catheters and surgical drips surrounded his body. One tube punctured his side, draining fluid from the wound. The transparent plastic was yellowed with age and smudged with grime. Another tube delivered plasma from a bag mounted on a metal pole. The bag clenched and unfurled as it pumped. Beyond the bed corroded medical equipment thrummed and wheezed and sporadically bleeped. The entire room felt stained with rust and disease.

  Three surgeons hovered over him in green gowns, their faces obscured by surgical masks. The thin fabric clutched their teeth as they breathed. The lead surgeon held a scalpel and used it to bat away a mosquito before plunging into the wound again. Their voices were low, the language impenetrable but the urgency of their words unmistakable. In the background was the steady electronic pulse of the heart monitor.

  The pulse abruptly changed tone. Now it was a harsh, insistent whine. It cut through the voices of the surgeons, the loudest sound in the room. The upward tick of light on the monitor display became a flat line, the white horizon that declared death. The surgeons huddled over the body, a flap of hands and medical tools. The whine of the monitor became louder, more piercing, a screech that built in pitch until it seemed to drill through the world…

  He was elsewhere again.

  At first he thought he was blind. And then he realised he was suspended in total, perfect darkness. It encompassed him like a black womb. It felt still and silent and serene. No sound, no motion. No breath. He didn’t even have a heartbeat here.

  It was death and it held him. He wanted it to hold him forever.

  There was a sudden, soundless flare of white fire. It tore open the darkness, atomically bright. He had no idea if the light was above or below him – there was no sense of such things in this place – but he felt himself moving towards it, the black void forming a tunnel around him. The white light was waiting and he knew exactly what it was. It was the light beyond life. It was eternity.

  He smiled and gave himself to its radiance.

  And then something grabbed him.

  A hand had locked itself around his leg. It had come cleaving out of the darkness, a hand that had altogether too many fingers. It clutched him like a current. A throng of hands followed it, equally set on snatching him away from the light. The numberless fingers of the countless hands coiled and tightened.

  The white fire began to recede. It became a pinprick of brilliance in the distance. Now he knew exactly which direction he was moving in. The mob of hands was hauling him down. He felt a gathering heat. It was inside him, throughout him. It was as if his soul itself was blistering. He plummeted, burning as he fell.

  Hell had claimed him.

  Tamarind. He could smell tamarind.

  Winter was back in the basilica. He saw Karina standing in front of him, her face close to his, alarmed but determined. She had seized his lapels and was trying to shake him free from whatever force had overwhelmed him.

  He grasped her hands. He could feel Hart rising inside him, demanding existence. He had no idea how much time he had now but in this moment he was Christopher Winter. And he had a choice.

  ‘We have to stop this.’

  Another convulsion rocked his body. His head jerked back. Karina kept hold of him, steadied his arms.

  ‘How do we do that?’

  Winter had to force the next words through his teeth, defying every instinct in his body.

  ‘Kill me.’

  She shook her head, emphatically. ‘No. I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that!’

  His hands encircled her wrists. ‘Get a gun. Get a knife. Use whatever you need. Just kill me. It’s the only way we can stop this. Do it!’

  Karina broke his grip. ‘I’m not killing you, Christopher!’ She stepped away from him. ‘We can undo this.’

  Winter indicated the burnt-out radio behind them. ‘Look at it! It’s destroyed!’

  ‘We can find a way!’

  ‘There’s no time! Karina, you’ve got to do it! Kill me before he takes this body!’

  There was a pale blaze in his pupils now. White
fire. ‘Please,’ he implored her. ‘Kill me. End it.’

  She looked at him a moment longer, a decision building in her eyes. And then, with a cold certainty of purpose, she walked over to Malykh’s body and picked up the obsidian knife that had fallen to the ground. She weighed the weapon in her hand. And then she crossed back to him, her face emotionless.

  Winter watched her raise the knife. He saw the reflected glare of the Ascendance dance on its edge, a dazzle of light. As she turned the black blade towards him he had a sudden, striking memory. He saw Joe Griggs, strapped to that sacrificial wheel in Krabbehaus, a knife at his chest…

  ‘Wait!’ he hissed.

  The blade was perfectly still in her hand.

  Winter tore his shirt open. His chest was heaving as he breathed. Karina saw the vicious thread of scar tissue on his abdomen.

  ‘This is how they do it, right? How they channel the magic? You said they carved the symbols in people’s bodies. You told me it was the most powerful magic in the world. Well, that knife’s obsidian. That’s what you need, isn’t it? Carve the symbols in me! Send this bastard back to Hell!’

  Karina shot him a protesting look. ‘I have no idea what symbols to use!’

  ‘There must have been something in the book! Something you saw!’

  She shook her head, frustrated. ‘They were summoning runes… They can’t repel. Why would the Ascendance give Dee the means to banish them?’

  ‘He would have found a way. Him and Kelly. They were smart. They would have had a safeguard. A defence. Maybe it’s here…’

  Their eyes tore around the basilica, the walls and the arches, the arcades and the aisles. They looked at it all, the wooden crosses and the marble finials and the carved motifs of martyrs’ faces. There was too much church to find anything in.

  ‘They would have given us a clue,’ said Winter. ‘Like that coin he gave me…’

  Karina heard his words as she scoured the church. And then she paused. And she walked away from him, quickening her pace as she crossed the nave. Keeping Malykh’s knife in her hand she reached down and retrieved the jewelled skull of Saint Cenric, scooping it up by the jawbone.