by Mike Wild
"So," she said hesitantly. "Are you going to introduce me?"
"Intimately," the sect leader said.
Helen beckoned and two of her acolyths stepped into the room beside her, then pulled back their hoods. Okay, Hannah thought, now I know what's under 'em. At least it explained why the earlier victims of this place could still be counted.
There was nothing else she could do. She ran. But Hannah didn't get far before the cold, damp, white-faced, leathery things brought her down.
TEN
A day, maybe two, Solomon Ravne thought. No time at all to find an artefact missing for over nine hundred years, and that had, for all intents and purposes, vanished off the face of the Earth. It was a deadline even Jonathan Brand might struggle to meet. As born to research as the good doctor was, success with the usual information-gathering methodology was doubtful to say the least.
The potential urgency of the situation had left Ravne no choice. Matters needed to be expedited.
And so he had come to Abraxas.
Ravne presented his ID at the perimeter gate of the so-called vivisection facility and waited as the guard checked his photograph thoroughly. The place had been on high security status since the raid by animal rights activists some months back.
"First building on the left, Mr Ravne. The supervisor is expecting you. Sir, please refrain from any attempt to access any but the designated building while in the facility's bounds. This is in order to comply with HM Government's current Health and Safety regulations, of course."
Of course, Ravne thought with a dark smile. It was well known these regulations had been drafted to prevent the slaying of overly curious visitors by private armies who lurked in the shadows. But the message was clear: step over the red line and there'd be a silent high-velocity bullet punching its way through his hard hat.
Ravne pulled into the parking lot and braked by a building marked "R&D". He left the car and felt a wind from the surrounding Wenley Moor that made him hunker inside his coat. As he hurried across the searchlight lit, electric-fenced compound, he reflected how on the drive up the moor the searchlights of Abraxas had made it resemble some open air arena or theatre, but if it was a theatre, he knew it to be a theatre of the damned. Abraxas, the ancient god from whom the old conjuror's word Abracadabra was derived, was an appropriate name for the facility, because here they performed the darkest of conjurations indeed.
Inside R&D, Ravne was greeted by the facility's supervisor, one Belinda Futcher, a sixties or so doctor with a brusque Yorkshire accent and manner to match. She was a recent appointee, the former incumbent having been retired following the raid debacle.
"Mr Solomon Ravne," she said. "Our friends have told me a great deal about you."
Ravne said nothing although a muscle in his jaw twitched palpably. This old joke never went down well with visitors because they were all far too aware how much the place's friends had to tell.
"Thank you for seeing me."
"Not at all," Futcher said as she led him to a sealed laboratory door. "After all, Abraxas is in your company's debt." The doctor used a swipe card and the door opened. Lights flickered on.
"These are who you came to see, yes?" Futcher said. "You'll have to forgive them if they don't get down."
Another old joke, Ravne thought. He stared up at the poor wretches to whom the doctor referred. Suspended from the ceiling of the laboratory were three humanoid figures who he knew had once been people but were now something more, or less, than they had been. Each of them hung facing straight down from a complicated arrangement of chains and clamps, their legs bent back at the knees, their arms lashed rigidly together under them. Two men and a woman, they were all completely naked apart from sensory deprivation goggles over zipped-shut gimp masks and rubber food and waste tubes sealed against the appropriate parts of their anatomies. Beyond a periodic pulsing in this tubing, there was no movement whatsoever from any of the three, and their restraints were designed to keep that so indefinitely. This was no temporary bondage.
It was best not to think of them as being male or female, however. They were demi-humans now, permanently transmogrified by demons, themselves summoned and then forcibly bound into human flesh by Abraxas Enterprises. Although the first of the males might at first glance have looked like some overweight businessman, a closer inspection revealed a skin covered with acidic warts, shark fin growths on his outer thighs, and a navel that dilated and revealed a blinking red eye. It was nothing compared to the second, who had been made host to a necrophage. Though he remained vaguely humanoid, albeit larger than the average man, his limbs comprised four legs, an equal number of mandibles sprouting from his back, and hands that resembled crab's claws. The female, finally, was an inferaphim, and perhaps the most human-looking of the three. Human-looking, that was, if you ignored the fact that her normal arms had during her possession been seemingly amputated, replaced by a new pair that grew from her middle back, and a third curling from behind and between her legs, cupping her crotch in the palm of a clawed hand. Ravne had encountered such inferaphim before and knew that were he able to view her face he would see an open circle lined with razored teeth where her mouth had once been.
"You are probably aware that the last three who occupied these positions were unofficially named Mary, Mungo and Midge," Futcher said. "This was an unnecessary anthropomorphism that I attempted to end upon my recent appointment but a precedent had unfortunately been set." The doctor sighed. "Permit me, then, to introduce you to Bill, Ben and Weed."
Ravne's knowledge of children's TV trivia was a little limited, but even he knew the classics.
"Forgive me - surely it's Little Weed."
Futcher shook her head, remembering how utterly terrified her predecessor had been when dragged here to make recompense for the costly raid. She pulled a sour face. "No, not Little Weed."
"Who were they, originally?" Ravne asked.
Futcher shrugged. "The usual. No one who will be missed."
Ravne snarled inwardly. In his long and varied life he had subjected souls to unimaginable fates but never in the cause of simple greed. Abraxas, if the truth were known, disgusted him. Here the facility had access to the secrets of hell itself but what did they do? They lined the pockets of the corporations who financed the operation. The poor bastards above him had had their lives taken away to provide next month's stock market prices, next year's big new investment prospect, warnings about war and catastrophe, not so that they could prevent a potential holocaust but to be geared up to cash in on it when it happened. All the fools were interested in were hot insider trader tips.
"I'm curious, Mr Ravne. So far you haven't told me why it is you came to meet our charges."
"No," Ravne said. He stared contemplatively at the demi-humans. "I need to enter their psyche."
"I beg your pardon?"
"To bond with one of them, doctor. A matter of some import has arisen that requires me to access certain information."
Belinda Futcher glared. "I understood what you meant, Mr Ravne. But you should know as well as I, such a thing is impossible. We cannot just ask them for next week's lotto numbers, you know; the extraction procedure is somewhat more complex than that." The doctor paused. "Here, let me show you something."
Futcher led Ravne to an enclosed glass booth at the side of the lab, then to an array of monitors on its rear wall. Data folders flashed endlessly on their screens. "Terabytes of information each and every minute," she said. "Strings of data in need of constant cross-referencing, updating, and verification by a bank of mainframes in the basement. All of it random, Mr Ravne: the jetsam of the sea of time. And somewhere within it the secrets of the past, present and future. To make sense of just one of these data strings has been known to take us months."
"I appreciate that, doctor. But I had intended to seek my information using somewhat more arcane methods."
Futcher stared at him. "Corrupt the data flow? No, I can't allow that."
"There will be no corr
uption, doctor. In fact, my chosen demi-human will not even know that I am there. In addition, I'm afraid that you have no choice in the matter."
Futcher frowned. "Ethan Kostabi has authorised this?"
"Indeed. Should you wish to confirm, I believe he can be contacted at his genetics facility, the Laughing Genome."
"That... won't be necessary," the doctor said. "What do you need?"
"Peace and quiet, doctor," Ravne said, smiling. "Nothing more."
Five minutes later, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the laboratory, his torso daubed with the ancient symbols he used to release his psyche from his physical self, a whispered mantra slowly infusing them with power. He had chosen to bond with the inferaphim, as it was the least dangerous of the three psychically. That said, the demons' thought-plane was ever-dangerous and where he was about to go, he did not go lightly.
Ravne slipped into the inferaphim's mind like a thief in the night, stealthily, slowly, to allow himself to acclimatise to what was the sheer madness of infinity. There was no up or down in the demon-plane, no left or right, no now or then, no today, no tomorrow; only what demons saw or what they heard in their realm out of time, waiting to be called to the world from this churning hell.
Here lay the history of the races of man, from beginning to end. Here lay the history of races who had come before, and of races who would come after, or come again. Here lay the events of all time, mundane and apocalyptic; the wisdom and the folly of the ages, profound or prosaic. Here lay tales of every beast there ever was or ever would be, and here lay the creation and the destruction of ocean deeps and mountain peaks, of jungle, and of desert, even of the skies themselves. In this place lay all things.
And somewhere in the all lay the whereabouts of the artefact.
Somewhere.
Ravne did not intend to search it out. Such an action would have been impossible. But there was a secret to negotiating the demon-plane, and that secret was not to do so. The only way for a non-demon to absorb information here was to allow the information to absorb them. To go with the flow.
It was dangerous. Highly so. Too short a time and his attempts to extract knowledge would alert the demon psyche to his intrusion, and too long a time would invite insanity and the same fate.
Ravne had reached the point of insanity when he found what he needed. He had to make sense of it quickly. He allowed images, sensations and sound to flood him, sought meaning in the confusion.
Utter darkness, absolute loneliness. Seagulls, a laughing child. Half a McDonald's arch? No - dull, made of bone. The breaking of waves and a candle, flickering out. Cold... so cold. Thor... Thor's bones. Again, the cold, the dark, and a sibilant prayer. Our father. Our father. Was his the cold? No - no, no. The plague, a whale, so much pain and so much suffering oh God, somuchpainandsomuchsufferingandthemonksthemonksthe-
Ravne forced himself to withdraw, overwhelmed by a sudden acceleration of sensation, aware that his defences were breaking down. He had stayed here far too long and needed to get out of the demon-plane now or he never would. He began the mantra to return himself to his body, aware as he did of approaching insanity and the inferaphim consciousness that stalked him in its wake. He only just made it. Emerging from the demon-plane like a swimmer emerging from the dark depths, he inhaled deeply and desperately before collapsing to the laboratory floor.
Ravne had some of what he had come for, but not all. But the facts he did have were disturbing. The images he had seen had obviously been of two different places. The artefact - the Eyes - had, it appeared, been separated, the component parts removed from each other in circumstances he could only guess at. He had recognised the location of the first, the one by the sea. Of the other, the one in utter darkness, he had no idea. It was a painful admission but it seemed that Dr Brand's research skills were needed after all.
Recovering, Ravne did two things. The first was to call Exham Priory and update Brand and Simmons on the investigation. The second was to spin to face the demi-humans, realising he was in imminent danger. The hydraulic thud had given it away. The locking clamps on the captives had been released. The chains were already lowering Bill, Ben and Weed to the floor.
"An excellent job, Mr Ravne," said Futcher. The doctor's voice sounded amplified, artificial, and Ravne realised she was speaking to him from within the glass booth. It had been sealed. "My objections to your bonding did not seem a case of methinks-the-lady-protesteth-too-much, I hope?"
"No," Ravne said. He held out his hands. "But this is a trifle suspicious."
"Yes, I suppose it is. But then I also suppose that you do not recognise me... Dominus."
Dominus? Ravne thought with surprise. How was it she knew that name? Only his most intimate of companions, his cohorts in certain rituals, knew him thus. He pictured them now in their basques, their stockings, their suspenders, disrobing in readiness for the tantric rites. Ah yes. Gustav and Gretchen, Grunhilde and Gregory before them, Gertrude and Gerhardt... So many down the years.
Down the years.
"I can see a glint of recognition in your eye," Futcher prompted. "Obergruppenfuhrer."
Ravne remembered. The camp. The sweeping searchlights, the barbed wire fences, the screams... How he had been excited into seeking out the comfort of flesh. A woman in uniform.
He could not remember the woman's name. But he knew what she had been.
Sonderkommando Thule. Nazi occult ops.
"The years have not been kind," Ravne said.
Futcher laughed. "I do not enjoy the benefits of certain of my operational colleagues. But I am well paid for what I do."
A Rip van Winkle agent, Ravne thought. A long-term sleeper. Installed at the heart of Abraxas to glean what information she could. The sleeper must have been lucky, found out they were coming. Because he'd been used.
The question was, why? Why was Sonderkommando Thule interested in the artefact? What did they know about the Eyes?
Ravne had no time to ponder the question. The demi-humans had reached the floor now, and their tubes and chains were snapping off. Though blind in their sensory-deprivation goggles, the demons sensed his presence, and snapped their attention towards him.
Ravne ran for the laboratory door, thumped its panic button. Facility security would be on its way but it would take them a minute to get there and unseal the door. In the meantime, he had to stay- out of-
A claw slashed at him. He somersaulted.
Out of the demons' way.
Already, he could feel blood trickling hotly down his back, the claws he thought he had avoided so sharp he hadn't even felt them. From the booth he could hear Futcher's voice taunting him.
"I'd have liked time to become reacquainted, my dearest Dominus, but you know how it is... Busy, busy, busy..."
Oh I know, Ravne thought as he crashed into the wall following a swipe from the inferaphim - just another day at the office. He also knew that his plan to avoid harm until security arrived was not going to work. That swipe had been the fourth to make contact in as many seconds. His face now gashed, he realised he just wasn't fast enough to be able to outmanoeuvre three demi-humans in such a confined space. He had to think of a distraction, quickly.
"Blood seems to stimulate our friends," Futcher mused. "Maybe when this unfortunate accident is over I should turn you into one of them."
That's it, Ravne thought. Diving for his coat where it still lay on the floor, he snatched his Luger from inside. It was useless against Bill, Ben and Weed, but-
Ravne aimed steadily and pumped an entire clip into the front of the glass booth. The glass spider-webbed but did not shatter. He emptied a second clip in exactly the same spot.
"Wasting your time, Dominus. Bullet-proof."
Ravne smiled. He knew that. But bullet-proof glass was still glass - it was designed to stop bullets getting through, but it still broke. And all he needed was a hairline fracture or a hole the diameter of a pin.
The necrophage was taking a most likely fatal swing a
t him when it stopped suddenly, as did the others. As one, they sniffed the air. Sniffed a certain scent from beyond the glass.
The woman who had made them what they were.
The demi-humans turned. Belinda Futcher backed up against the wall.
As bullet-proof glass, her sanctuary had held up pretty well. As demon-proof glass, it didn't hold up at all.
ELEVEN
Lightning flared as Lawrence Verse and Mikey Ness crested the top of the hill. There came a rumble of thunder and the odd heavy drop of rain. This leaden and electric sky signalled more than a bad weather front coming in, however. Both could see another ley pulse was on its way.
"There it is," Verse said, pointing. The climb up the hill had been strenuous and he slapped his thighs and panted. "Crowhaven Farm."
The Scotsman didn't even break his stride - the ex-para, yomping. "Aye. Christ, wha' a dump."
The two men made their way along a rutted muddy track bordered with barbed wire and littered with scrap, rotting feed-sacks and gnarled and rusted pieces of farming implements. Tangles of wool were caught on the barbs but these were yellowed and very old. There were no signs of the sheep to which they might have once belonged, and all of the adjoining fields were empty of animals of any kind. The farm, it seemed, was not a working one any more.
Ahead of them lay a bent-out-of-shape gate that led to the farm buildings proper. From it hung a sign that read unequivocally "DOGS! STAY AWAY!". A quick rattle of the chain holding the gate closed confirmed their presence, a frenzied barking from behind the farmhouse.
"Mr Jardine!" Verse shouted. "Mr Judd John Jardine!"
There was no response, not even a twitch of the curtains. Keeping an eye open for the dogs, the ex-priest flipped himself over the gate and moved cautiously up the farmyard. He shouted again, and this time the dogs came running. Damn! Verse thought. Must be trained to attack only when the gate is breached. As two slavering Dobermans ran at him, he quickly leapt onto the roof of a rusty old car, his feet pounding on the metal, and then pulled a shotgun from under his coat. But he did not fire.