by Edward Cox
Oh, I could hazard one or two guesses, my idiot, Gideon purred.
The doorway opened, the black studs parting, and the Retrospective released its inmates.
Eight wild demons stepped into the chamber. They crept, stalked, twitching nervously. Each of them was tall, thin, gangly but strong looking. Their skin was a hard grey carapace, glistening with an oily film; the fingers of their hands were like sharp blades of bone. Rheumy, fishlike eyes scoured the chamber; long teeth chattered together in gaping mouths.
The demons grouped before the magical barrier, and Clara barked savagely at them. But the monsters did not attack. They made no sound.
Your magic has little effect on wild demons, Gideon said, peevishly. And I’m not convinced Clara can take them all. It’s time to fight dirty.
Van Bam prayed to the Timewatcher, begging for salvation.
With the wolf barking beside him, flashing teeth and spraying saliva, the illusionist once again whispered to the gift he had been born with. Channelling his magic, he made the green glass of his cane malleable. He twisted and pulled, separating his cane into two wicked spikes.
Makes you wish Samuel was here, doesn’t it? Gideon said excitedly.
What about blood-magic? Van Bam suggested – desperate, distressed. You have already shown Clara how to use it once.
Gideon scoffed. There is no time, and I am not Gulduur Bellow. Clara and I could conjure only a fraction of the Nephilim’s power. Besides, I think we have bigger problems than these wild demons now.
The wolf ’s barking stopped abruptly as the Retrospective opened its door again, and a ninth figure stepped into the chamber.
A hulking brute, tall and broad, dressed in a black cassock. Obese of body, thick across the shoulders, powerful in the arms. His head was bald, one of his eyes was missing, and his fat lips were twisted into a cruel sneer. Beneath the golden light shed by the domed ceiling, the scarring on his forehead was easy to see, and Van Bam felt an agonising echo of silver wings being ripped from his back.
Viktor Gadreel, Gideon hissed.
‘Oh shit,’ Van Bam whispered.
The Genii pointed at Clara. ‘Little wolf,’ he said, his voice a rumble of thunder. ‘You have something I want.’
In Van Bam’s head, Gideon’s voice was a long hopeless sigh.
Good luck, my idiot.
Viktor Gadreel clapped his massive hands together, sending out a burst of thaumaturgy that shattered the protective dome of illusionist magic. Van Bam raised his green glass spikes, and Clara bared her teeth. As one, the eight wild demons began screeching with rage and violence, and they rushed forwards.
The demons moved with inordinate speed. With no time to think, the wolf leapt to meet them.
Don’t hold back, Gideon urged. Do what you were born to do, Clara!
But before the wolf could unleash her full fury upon the demons, Viktor Gadreel stepped forwards, wrapped his higher magic around her, and hoisted her into the air. Snarling, writhing, Clara tried to break free of the Genii’s magical grip, but could do nothing but dangle above the fight, watching as Van Bam was surrounded by the vile, grey monsters.
The illusionist tried again to summon his magic, but Gadreel dispelled it with an almost casual wave of his hand. The demons closed in.
No! Gideon shouted.
Clara’s gnashed her teeth, barking and struggling, ineffectual against the power holding her aloft, and Van Bam faced impossible odds alone.
The illusionist gave a shout of defiance, and stabbed one of the green glass spikes through the face of a demon. But as the monster fell, the weapon was wrenched from Van Bam’s grip, and he yelled as another demon plunged its knife-like fingers into his back. Turning his face to the domed ceiling, Van Bam ejected a fountain of blood from his mouth, before he was dragged down beneath the horde.
Please, Gideon begged. Not like this. Not like—
His voice disappeared with such sudden silence it was as if his presence had been cut out of Clara’s mind. The demons screamed in frenzy. As a pack, they tore Van Bam apart.
His blood showered their hard grey shells; his muscle and skin filled their sharp-toothed maws.
Clara howled.
As the demons fed upon Van Bam, sating their furious lusts with his flesh, one of the green glass spikes rolled from out of the pack, across the floor, and stopped at the feet of Viktor Gadreel.
Framed by the doorway to the Retrospective, the Genii stared at the spike, his one eye emotionless, before he bent down and picked it up.
‘Now then, little wolf,’ he growled, stepping away from the feeding frenzy. ‘You have my undivided attention.’
He stood before Clara, his fat, slug-like lips approximating a grotesque smile. Immobile, distraught, desperate, the wolf tried in vain to lunge forward to bite and savage his face. Gadreel rumbled a laugh.
Her eyes beholding the grim spectacle of the shrieking demons, her nostrils cloyed with the heavy scent of Van Bam’s blood, Clara could do nothing but yowl as Gadreel slowly pierced her skin, almost gently, with the green glass spike, sliding the weapon into her stomach with surgical precision.
The wolf ’s voice merged with the screams of the demons.
Summoning another burst of thaumaturgy, the Genii raised Clara higher, and then slammed her down onto the stone table. She landed on her side, blood spraying from her mouth. Gadreel jumped up onto the table beside her, landing with a heavy boom that echoed around the chamber. With one massive fist, he punched the glass tank and shattered it, showering Clara in jagged shards.
The Genii grabbed Known Things and ripped it from the grasp of its Voice. The withered creature that had once been Lord Baran Wolfe collapsed and broke apart.
Holding the diamond-shaped box of black stone aloft, Gadreel intoned the language of the Thaumaturgists, his words growled, guttural. The light of the symbols upon Known Things intensified, glaring with the purple of higher magic. The Genii crouched down beside Clara. He was pleased.
‘The time has come, little wolf,’ said Gadreel. ‘Tell me your secrets. Tell me about Oldest Place.’
With the green spike protruding from her gut and all the strength, all the fight, drained from her, Clara could only whine as two gelatinous tubes slithered out from the sides of Known Things. They whipped in the air as Gadreel moved the device towards the wolf ’s face. Feeling the silence left behind by Gideon in her mind, and the absence of Van Bam in her heart, Clara knew that she would soon follow them both into death.
To the angry noise of blood-smeared wild demons gorging, Clara gagged, then choked as one of the gelatinous tubes slipped down her throat. Gadreel grinned at her, his eye glinting, as the second tube hardened to glass and stabbed into the changeling’s head, cracking open her skull, spearing into her brain.
And while Known Things swallowed the wolf ’s mind, a presence flared inside her, and a voice whispered through her last thoughts.
Be brave, Clara, Marney said. All things are known in the end.
Acknowledgements
So many people to thank. As always, Mum and Dad, Dot and Norm. My fierce agent John Berlyne. My marvellous editor Marcus Gipps, along with Gillian and Simon, Genn and Sophie and Paul, and the rest of the amazing Gollancz team. Olivia, my scary copy editor. My fellow writers for your support (and stories, of course), and the reviewers for your kind words. And always the readers for whom my work is written.
Someone I should’ve thanked in the first book is the wonderful writer Conrad Williams, who was my external examiner when The Relic Guild was a project for a Master’s degree, and who, I later learned, put in a good word with my agent. I still owe you a beer, Conrad.
And lastly, Jack and Marney, my wife and daughter, for your unconditional love and support, and for putting up with me. I can’t imagine my life without you.
Chapter 10, scene 3 of this book is
dedicated to Team Gollancz, as it was written while I visited their grand towers in 2014.
Also by Edward Cox for Gollancz
The Relic Guild
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Edward Cox 2015
All rights reserved.
The right of Edward Cox to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House,
50 Victoria Embankment,
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2015 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 4732 0035 7
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
www.edwardcox.net