by Mike Wild
[NOW THINK ABOUT IT, YOU LITTLE FREAKS. DO YOU REALLY WANT TO GET INVOLVED IN A PISSING CONTEST WITH ME?]
The demonic chattering stopped abruptly. There was absolute silence. The answer for the moment, it seemed, was no.
[Shall we go?] Baarish-Shammon said.
Infinitely slowly, cautiously, fearfully, Brand and the Brigadier's men followed Baarish-Shammon down a fall of rocks to the cavern floor. Scree crumbled beneath their feet, clattering away in the unearthly silence. They entered the ocean of demons, each of them gagging at their stench. It was perhaps five hundred feet to the projector.
The demons parted as they passed, although now the humans were bang in their midst, with greater reluctance than they had done moments before. It seemed obvious to Brand that the uneasy truce was not going to last, and his fears seemed realised when one or two demons lunged at the group. They stopped when Baarish-Shammon barked what seemed to be a warning, though it was in a tongue he had not heard before. The warning was repeated as the group progressed.
They reached the projector, its spools rotating endlessly, and Brand switched it off. There were five minutes, by his calculations, before the B-K horizon collapsed. While it had originally been his intention to return the projector through the breach, the mood of the demons suggested it might be better to retrace their steps in as unladen a state as possible. Brand ordered the Brigadier's men to smash the projector with their weapons.
The group started their retreat to the breach, and Brand swallowed hard as he saw the demons had become jittery once more. But once more, Baarish-Shammon's oddly tongued warnings held them off.
The feeling of relief as the group reached the rockfall was palpable. But halfway up the fall, it happened.
It was nothing more than a wave of the arm from Baarish-Shammon, but Brand knew instantly that he had been a fool. As powerful as he knew Baarish-Shammon to be, even a demoness might fall beneath the sheer weight of numbers of a hellhole horde. The bitch hadn't been warning the demons to back off, she'd been telling them to wait. These four soldiers weren't here as reinforcements, they had been seconded in case she needed some sacrificial lambs. It was why she hadn't been concerned when she'd revealed herself to them. She'd meant all along to bargain their lives for his and her free passage.
Oh God...
Brand span as the shooting and screaming began, but it was too late, over before he'd even fully turned. Shakespeare was dead already, a hole in him where his heart had been, and as he dropped his body was ripped apart by the horde. Sinclair fired for another second before his head was torn off and broken on a rock so the demons could suck out his brain. Halliwell too lived briefly, and crawled towards his dropped weapon when a flash of razored claws sliced him from neck to coccyx and left him gazing in bewilderment as his body came apart at the seams. Rutherford - maybe the least lucky of them all - well, Rutherford they simply carried off screaming hysterically, far back into the dark.
No, Brand thought. He was consumed by absolute cold, absolute fury, and it was a sensation that dropped him into a dizzying spin into a twisting black place that he suspected was the inescapable lair of insanity. He grabbed Halliwell's weapon and swung the barrel into Baarish-Shammon's eyes. "You murdering bitch. Do something, or I swear by all that's holy-"
[Blow a chunk out of me and they'll be on you in a second,] Baarish-Shammon said. [Watch your back, loverboy.]
Brand looked behind him. The rockfall was ripe with demons, ascending slowly, like spiders. The academic booted one in the face, somersaulting it backwards, then spent the clip he'd intended for Baarish-Shammon on the ones behind it. It was a pointless exercise; there were many more to come.
[I suggest we leave now,] the demoness said. A wavering in the breach signalled the five minutes before its collapse were almost up.
"I'm not leaving Rutherford!"
[He's dead, Brand,] the demoness said. [A necessary diversion. Or do you still have trouble accepting death through your drunken haze, my sad little boffin?]
Damn you, Brand thought. He wanted to kill her - or try at least - with his bare hands there and then, but there were more urgent considerations to take into account. Their pursuit by the demon horde to the breach had drawn their attention to its existence. They were even now scrabbling for it, and if they broke through...
"Go!" he shouted. And then leapt after her.
Baarish-Shammon transformed back into Jenny as she travelled, while Brand shouted for covering fire. Somewhere distant he heard the Brigadier's voice shouting, "Five rounds, rapid!"
They collapsed onto the floor of the warehouse. All Brand could hear for a while was the sound of gunfire, and then the Bachman-Koontz horizon gave out, collapsing in a writhing bundle of non-space before popping out of existence completely.
"And that's a wrap!" Jenny Simmons announced.
Brand didn't even acknowledge the comment. The images of Baarish-Shammon's sacrifices were fired into his retinas far too indelibly for him to be able to do that. But neither could he inform the Brigadier of the truth. Instead he told him that his men simply hadn't made it.
The Brigadier nodded, stoical as always. "Good work nevertheless," he sniffed. "What is it that Her Majesty's Government owes you this time?"
Nothing, Brand thought... nothing at all. In fact, we owe you. But he didn't say that because Caballistics, Inc was still a business after all, and Ethan Kostabi wouldn't be pleased if he did.
He eyed Jenny Simmons. Actually, all he wanted was this abomination out of sight. All he wanted was for him and his own Jenny to be able to go on home.
FIVE
Switzerland.
Nestled high in the mountains above Berne, snug and warm in an imposing snow-capped mansion built in the classical style, a contender for the title of richest and most powerful man on Earth savoured vintage port and watched the world die.
Famine. Terrorism. Drought. Revolution. All of the misery wrought and suffered by mankind was playing out before his eyes.
Ethan Kostabi pursed his lips, frowning darkly, though he had not a single thought for any of the victims. The bloody vignettes reflected from the banks of monitors entirely covering the wall in front of him flickered unceasingly across his unblinking gaze, and it seemed not so much as if Kostabi were viewing the multitude of images as undergoing some strange osmosis. Stranger still, though he was sitting by himself in the room, in a single wooden chair, by the way angular shadows flitted behind him, about him - embraced him - it seemed also that he was far from alone.
There was a whispering in the air. Phrases from ancient and long-dead tongues whose meanings were now lost to most.
But not to Kostabi.
The immaculately attired rake of a man with his head of spiked bleached blonde hair spoke, secure connections despatching his words to his brokers, traders and employees around the world.
"Disappointing results in Abbrovnik. Authorise the deployment of an additional fifty field units with laser sighting so that the job can be done properly. I want President Kanastar in power by nightfall.
"Racoon City. My acquisition of the subterrain bordering East 57th Street is now complete. Make contact with Umbrella and open lease negotiations for a sum not less than ninety million dollars.
"The G8. Our friends from Afghanistan require delivery of the package twenty-four hours before the summit. Expedite this immediately and handle it, please, with the utmost care.
"Good morning, Mr Phelps. The woman in the photograph is Major Ilyana Kostov, the biochemist responsible for the B-764 phage we have codenamed 'Hutson's Bullet'."
Kostabi yawned melodramatically. Though aware that these sordid machinations were vital to the ongoing growth of his global business interests, he considered them, in all honesty, too banal for words. They were minutiae. The petty squabbling of ants. Worse, they involved him in the day-to-day disputes of the human race, when he possessed far loftier goals. When he had commissioned this modest retreat high up in the Swiss Alps, he had instructe
d his people to bear the architecture of Mount Olympus in mind. It was in more ways than one that Ethan Kostabi liked to think of Olympus as home.
There were sides to his business that Kostabi liked to maintain a more passionate interest in, though, if only because they permitted him to pursue his more eclectic projects. The profits, for example, from the Japanese TV company used to fund a number of archaeological digs around the Red Sea. Hi-tech and new media investments used to underwrite research projects into numerology, astrology, the Kabbalah and the study of several of the aforementioned ancient dead languages. His adult entertainment holdings financing fieldwork following the successful decryption of the Jones/Brody Archives at Barnett College in New York.
Then, of course, there was the narcotics money laundered in exchange for stolen artefacts. The mining operation in Siberia that would soon bear long-hidden fruit. And last but by far from any means least, his very own occult trouble-shooters, Caballistics, Inc.
Not that they registered anywhere highly on his financial Richter scale. But oh my, yes, he took a great deal of interest in those people indeed.
Kostabi smiled to himself. All in all, quite a portfolio. The true rags-to-riches story of this grimy little oik from the Smoke.
"Mute screens," he instructed. "Play music."
Kostabi leaned back in his chair, cradled hands behind his head. He closed his eyes and allowed the strains that flowed from hidden speakers to soothe him. Typically, it was a refrain from one of his own albums, The Man Who Bought The World.
Oh yes, that took him back...
Many people had speculated as to the exact path this rock star turned internet guru, cutting-edge venture capitalist and new media entrepreneur had taken to reach his current, giddy height, but in fact no one knew the full story, and no one ever would. According to many of his fan biographies, Ethan Kostabi was born on the first of December, 1947: a date with a certain cachet as it also happened to be the day that the satanist Aleister Crowley died. Kostabi had added to the cachet by hinting he'd been born at the exact time Crowley died, and that had done his early record sales no harm at all. But like much of the biographical information deliberately leaked to the media over the years, both facts were - as his now departed executive aide Howard Slater once described them - typical Ethan bullshit.
Of all those who had tried to nail Kostabi down over the years, Howard Slater had come closest to the truth, but then, entrusted as he'd been over a twelve-year period with the organisation of the Kostabi empire's dirty work and wetwork, how could he have not? Slater had been a fool, daring to compile a dossier on his employer that he then planned to wield as personal insurance against the vicissitudes of his unique career. The dossier turned out to contain a number of facts that Kostabi preferred never be in the public domain. He had planned to teach Howard a lesson he would not forget, but unusually for Kostabi, events had stolen a march - and Slater had vanished before he could make his move.
Kostabi had to admit, however, that before his disappearance Howard had done an impressive job.
Born plain old David Smith in the east end of Forties London, Ethan Kostabi's pedigree and early years were unremarkable and he seemed destined to join his fellow neighbourhood urchins in a life of factory toil or crime. That he had flirted with the latter both in and out of school was a fact, though today no schoolboard or any juvenile police records survived. Even in his schooldays, Ethan had been exceedingly proficient at covering his tracks.
As to the matter of toil, well... he had never really needed to toil.
Not after what had happened.
Not after the cellar.
Images flashed through Kostabi's mind: the boy he had been, playing football with his pals. One bad kick and the ball bouncing away down the dark cellar steps of that old, deserted house. And him going in alone to fetch it.
Into the shadows.
Past the rustling and squeaking of rats.
Along the corridor, where the ball had come to rest.
No one had been down that cellar for years.
So who was the figure slumped in the chair?
The emaciated, wisp-haired, Egyptian mummy-like figure sitting there, as if waiting.
"H-hello? I-I'm sorry, mister. I didn't know there was anyone here. My mates, they made me come in to-"
Kostabi remembered the figure's eyes had flared then with an energy unlike any he had ever seen, and its mouth had opened wide. From these three cadaverous pits the energy had travelled, snaking towards him, and as his own eyes and mouth had opened wide in spellbound horror, the energy had slipped inside him.
In that moment he forgot many things. But he learned so many more...
After that, life had become plain sailing for David Smith. He spent the next few years hanging out with the future movers and shakers of the city, accepted by them despite his young years. There was nothing he wouldn't do to ensure their continued acceptance. Nothing. After a while, he graduated into the company of the celebrity A-list of the day, hitting the party circuit with the likes of Andrew Loog Oldham, Brian Jones, Hendrix, Marianne Faithful. Ah - dear Marianne, so very perceptive. She had been the first to comment on - the first to notice - how "old" his eyes were, an observation he naturally preferred to avoid. Sadly, she had not been the last. Not for the first time, Ethan Kostabi reflected that he must have had a soft spot for Marianne because she, at least, was still alive, healthy and sane. He would have so much hated to see that beautiful woman become one of his less salubrious personal statistics, including, as they did to date, four kidnappings and three murders, eight occasions of blackmail, and numerous instances of burglary, bribery and assault. One particularly brutal sexual assault, in fact, of a female journalist working for a well-known British broadsheet.
Well, a man had to protect his secrets, did he not?
In the orbit of such celebrities, it became a natural move to enter their lucrative world, and with Kostabi's powers of persuasion it was not long before he had himself signed up to a record label. Here he had made his first serious money - within a year he'd had three number one hits on both sides of the Atlantic. His music shook the foundations of the industry and where he led, others followed. It had been said Bowie, amongst others, made a career out of the musical fads and influences that Kostabi left in his wake.
Such celebrity, of course, brought him far more into the public gaze than he would have preferred, but such was the old price of fame. There were scandals; it was the Seventies, after all. Chief amongst these was the shock suicide of his then girlfriend, pregnant with his child at the time. She had been found face down and naked on the floor of her bathroom, her wrists slashed. It looked to be a normal enough suicide, but the one thing that puzzled the forensic investigators was why she had scrawled in her own blood on the bathroom tiles a single word or name: "NYARLAHOTEP".
During his interview, the suitably grief-filled Kostabi had said that he didn't know, he couldn't explain. He just regarded the crime-scene photos with his sad, old eyes.
Ironically, it was just the kind of mystery for which Caballistics, Inc might today be engaged.
Kostabi thought back to the morning that he had commenced this new venture. He had been in this very room, on the phone to Howard Slater. He had already been musing on the subject of unexplored business opportunities - the global zeitgeist and its appetite for postmillennial mondo strangeness - when a specific news report had caught his ever-attentive ear.
"In other news today, better wake up grandma and tell her the Second World War's over. Yes, that's right, apparently the British government has just realised that World War Two ended almost sixty years ago. But a recent government review found that a secret department founded in 1941 to combat so-called Nazi 'occult warfare' was still in existence and receiving taxpayers' money..."
Kostabi had wasted no time. He told Slater to contact their friends in Downing Street and draw up an acquisitions contract that very moment. He also approached a number of individuals both here and abro
ad, people he had had his eye on for some considerable time. Jonathan Brand and Jennifer Simmons, for their ties with Department Q as much as their encyclopaedic occult knowledge. Hannah Chapter and Lawrence Verse, for the pair's damage control and extermination expertise in the more unusual of the world's theatres-of-war. Solomon Ravne and Michael Ness, the former because he had unique experience of the deepest arcane affairs, the latter simply because every group should have a resident psychopath... one never knew when one might come in handy.
Kostabi himself had decided to christen the six of them Caballistics, Inc - that juxtaposition of spells and bullets, he'd thought, great for their street-cred and so much better than the execrable Ghostbuster Squad and other alternatives that had been mooted. Such a name would bring in business soon enough, he was sure. All he wanted was them out there in the thick of things. Out where they would be noticed.
He was gratified that they soon had been. They had already, in fact, carved themselves quite the niche in the underbelly of reality.
The Caballistics had a literal baptism of fire, a case they called The Holborn Triangle, in which a demonic infestation of the London Underground had led to the mass cremation, dismemberment and general gleeful consumption of a good number of innocent commuters. It was a paranormal disaster on a scale not seen since the Hobb's End or Yeti incidents in the Sixties, caused, they discovered, by the presence of a V3 hellbomb - a nasty piece of apparatus designed by the Nazis' occult warfare division, Sonderkommando Thule, to rip a hole in the fabric of the psychosphere, turning the heart of London into an outer zone of hell. The bomb had failed to detonate when it had impacted in 1945, and over time its energy had drained away, though not completely. An accumulation of human misery, that eternal foundation stone of hell, had eventually reactivated the V3 bomb, but the resultant dimensional breach was now mercifully quite small and Solomon Ravne, with the help of Jennifer Simmons, had managed to seal it. The exact means he had used to do this, however, were still not quite clear.