‘Language,’ said Tamar automatically.
‘She stole the Rheingold,’ resumed Denny. ‘You know what that means?’
‘She had forsaken love for power,’ said Iffie. Thank God for a classical education.
‘Right,’ said Denny. ‘Great power. Not enough power, not against ours. But the Nephilim … Well, its dicey that’s all. He has a power that I doubt even he himself fully understands. And she has spent years corrupting him – priming him to destroy us. And now he’s out there, furious and grieving. He saw all her lies apparently confirmed. He saw me destroy his mother. I swear I didn’t mean to. I was trying to save her. God knows what he’ll do now.’
‘I’m not so sure she was destroyed,’ said Iffie surprisingly. ‘Not in the way you mean anyway. I mean I don’t think she’s dead.
‘You see,’ she continued, ‘the ring is a thing, like a magical thing. Hecaté says a thing like that can’t go against its basic nature or whatever. So as long as she’s still wearing it, it’ll still make her immortal and powerful and all of that. What’s happened is that it’s destroyed something inside her or something like that. Like her soul or whatever makes her – her. You know?’
‘No, no,’ said Jack impatiently. ‘You’ve got the right idea, but according to the story. What the ring destroys isn’t the self. It’s whatever’s most important to the self. But with Cindy already being a witch before all this. I reckon something even worse could happen.’
‘What was most important to her?’ asked Iffie.
‘Her looks,’ said Denny and Tamar without hesitation.
‘So she could end up like a hideous old crone or something?’ said Iffie.
All the colour suddenly drained from Denny’s face.
* * *
It is not for nothing that Satan is called “The Prince of Lies”. There are more descendants of the Nephilim on the Earth than anyone knows. Ashtoreth intended to find them all. He had seen what had happened to his mother when she tried to face the evil ones alone. But there was strength in numbers.
Denny’s innocent and still slightly juvenile face was imprinted on his memory as the epitome of ultimate evil and degeneracy. He would peel the mask from him, he vowed. Expose his evil to the world and then slowly and painfully destroy him. He was really looking forward to it.
But first things first. Hiding here in the haven that his mother had created was not forwarding his plan. He was safe here, but in order to recruit his army, he would have to go out into the world.
She was out there. He found his thoughts wandering often to Iphigenia. She was the spawn of evil he told himself, yet he could not stop thinking about her. No doubt, he told himself, that was the idea. She had been sent to tempt him away from his cause. To pierce the armour of his righteousness and leave him weakened. And she had too, for a brief time. But there would be no more of such weakness. When the time came, she would die like the rest. It had to be so. And yet … and yet … she was young. Perhaps it was not too late for her. She was not deep in corruption like the others; there was good in her, he was sure of it. He might yet be able to save her. He would offer her a choice. If she chose evil then he would do what he had to. But he fervently hoped that it would not be necessary.
Perhaps even more than he wanted to kill her father, he wanted to save her. Although based on a flawed premise, this was, ultimately, an unselfish emotion. That Iffie did not need saving by the likes of him was a thought that never occurred to him. But the fact that he wanted to do it, was perhaps a sign that he was not completely lost.
He would have been amazed and outraged to discover that Iffie wanted to save him.
So he wandered through the empty halls thinking of the past and the future. Slick had left now, and he had been close to becoming the nearest thing Ashtoreth had ever had to a friend, but that was over now. His mother was dead, and the minions had been sent away before his mother’s tragic foray into the world. He was alone. But not for long; he had plans.
* * *
It was not a dream this time, although Denny did not know this. It was still happening in his sleep. He awoke completely enervated – drained in a way that was totally unfamiliar to him. Even before the Athame, he never remembered feeling like this. It was still dark outside; Denny rose quietly so he would not disturb Tamar and staggered drunkenly into the bathroom where he threw up violently.
It was not normal to feel like this after a dream. The other times he had not felt like this, he had woken up agitated and unnerved but not strung out like this. He had felt recently as if the dream was getting – not worse exactly, but closer. Definitely closer to being real, but he had put that down to being stuck in the dreamscape, where all his dreams had seemed real.
He had really been hoping that the dreams had been a part of Cindy’s plot, something she had had Ashtoreth do to him to unnerve him. He had good reason to know that Ashtoreth was more than capable of this kind of subconscious manipulation. The fact that the dreams had continued to plague him, even in the dreamscape, seemed to support this idea. But it was time to face the fact that perhaps there was something else going on.
* * *
When Jack caught Iffie scrying in her bedroom mirror he hit the roof. ‘You’re looking for him again, aren’t you?’
‘I’m just practising,’ she said defensively.
‘Really?’ said Jack sarcastically. ‘What’s with the feather?’ He held up exhibit A with disdain.
‘Oh, all right. But you needn’t worry. I can’t find him anyway. I’ve tried scrying, divining, locator spells. It’s like he’s just vanished off the face of the Earth.’
‘Well, we know he has,’ said Jack, ‘or weren’t you listening? They were trying to find Cindy for years. No one knows where she went, and she took him with her. What do you want to find him for anyway? He’s dangerous Iffie. Let your mum and dad handle him.’
‘I just wanted to help. I thought if I could find him … I wasn’t going to go near him or anything.’
‘Oh, come on Iffie, who do you think you’re talking to? I know you. You’re Jonesing. I can tell. What’s so great about him anyway? He tried to kill your dad, Iffie. He did kill mine. And all you can think about is helping him get over his rotten childhood. What about a bit of family loyalty? If not to me then to your own father. How would you have felt about him if he had killed your dad, eh? Would you have been so hipped on helping him then? Or does your family mean so little to you, that, even then, you would still want this bastard in your life? – Oh God, I’m sorry. Don’t cry Iffie, I didn’t mean it.’
‘He’s coming after us Iffie,’ he said, more gently, ‘to kill us all. You heard him yourself. I didn’t want it to turn out like this either. He was like my brother. But … it is what it is. If you keep this up you are going to get hurt. I don’t want to lose you too. I’ve already lost enough.’
Iffie looked up into his eyes. Black eyes, like the eyes of a shark. The only outward sign that he was a Faerie and the only physical difference between him and Ashtoreth unless they unfolded their respective wings.
‘He gave me something Jack, she said, and she produced, from somewhere among her clothing, a shining white orb filled with light.
‘What is it?
‘I don’t know. He never said. I thought it might be some sort of communication device. You know, like giving out your phone number. But I can’t see how it works. Do you think maybe Mum or Dad might be able to use it to find him?’
Jack shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t look like a communication device to me.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s kind of like a crystal ball don’t you think?’
‘Iffie you’re a witch. You know that crystal balls are just … well balls basically.’
‘Nice double entendre,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ he nodded his head in a mock bow.
‘Oh, hell, maybe he got in a gift shop and it’s just a paperweight,’ she said.
‘I’d be careful of it.
It might be a booby trap.’
‘No, it was a gift. He might want to kill me now. But he didn’t when he gave it to me.’
‘What …? began Jack, and then decided that he did not think he wanted to know.
‘What, what?’ she said.
‘Nothing, never mind.’
‘I didn’t do anything stupid Jack,’ she said. ‘We just talked,’
Jack did not believe her.
* * *
Everyone except Iffie and Jack could remember what it had been like after Cindy had left. The horrible sense of limbo, of knowing that disaster was going to strike and having no idea how long they might have to find a way to avert it. Two days, six months, a decade.
After a while though, when nothing happened. Life had settled back down into its regular chaos. No one can spend every moment on high alert, and there were lives to live and children to raise, people to save. But you never quite forget. It hangs like a bat in the back of your mind. One day, one day…
‘Deleted files, parallel universes, the history files,’ Jack ticked them off on his fingers. ‘They looked everywhere for her hiding place. She wasn’t inside the mainframe at all.’
‘How is that possible?’ said Iffie.
‘There are places outside the mainframe, your dad says, and they tried all the ones they know of. The old Faerie realm, Hell, places like that.’
‘But she had to have been somewhere!’ pointed out Iffie reasonably.
‘Your dad said she was cunning, maybe she was hiding in plain sight,’ said Jack
‘That’s an Oxymoron,’ said Iffie.
‘What did you call me?’ said Jack with mock indignation and he threw a cushion at her. She leapt on him immediately, and they wrestled like puppies for a few minutes before Jack put his hands up in surrender. ‘Okay, okay, I give,’ he said. ‘Man, you’re strong for a little one,’ he added.
Iffie preened.
‘The point is,’ he said, resuming the subject. ‘If they couldn’t find her hiding place in fifteen years, what makes you think we can?’
‘Young blood, a fresh approach, no previous assumptions, lateral thinking,’ she said. ‘Anyway it can’t hurt to try can it? Like what you said about her hiding in plain sight. What did you mean by that?’
‘It’s like when you don’t look for something because you already know where it is. You don’t notice it because it’s right under your nose.’
‘That would put her squarely inside mainframe then,’ said Iffie.
‘If that’s what she did. Personally I think it’s a long shot.’
It’d be damn clever if she did, though, and she must have done something pretty clever or they’d have found her. I think it’s worth looking into.’
‘Someone found her though, didn’t they?’ said Jack. ‘Your mum said that some bloke they all used to know went after her and never came back.’
‘We don’t know that he found her at all. If he never came back, he might have gone anywhere.’
‘But what if he did find her … I think we need to find out about this guy. I mean maybe if we knew a bit about him, how he thinks …’
‘We might be able to follow how he did it,’ finished Iffie. ‘Now that’s what I call lateral thinking.’
* * *
Everyone was working towards this end with varying degrees of fervency. But with, unfortunately, equal degrees of success so far, i.e. none at all.
Iffie and Jack were working together now; both determined to be the ones to figure it out.
Iffie decided to contact The Agency and find out what she could about Slick who had been calling himself Tony something at the time.
Director Dawber had been pretty forthcoming with what information he had when he understood what it was about, but it was depressingly little. It didn’t matter, Iffie maintained, that the secret lair that this Slick character (stupid name) had found was not the same one they were now looking for. It was, as she explained dramatically, the principle of the thing.
Jack did not even pretend to understand this view of the matter. He was more interested in the orb that Ashtoreth had given her. Even if it was not a communication device as such, it was that thing they had precious little of, a clue.
And he mulled over it for hours and hours but, whatever it was, it was not telling. It just sat there looking as glowy and shiny as an orb can, but it never did anything.
They considered the principle of “hiding in plain sight”. The ideas that this generated went from the sublime to the ridiculous, but nothing remotely helpful. A disused Djinn bottle, known for its TARDIS like properties had been favourite for one exciting minute, until they discovered that you can get in to a Djinn bottle quite easily, but it is not so easy to get out. They were learning, as Tamar and Denny had before them, that the right answers can only be found after exhausting all the wrong ones. It was a disheartening process.
Jack had eventually handed the orb over to Denny – let him cudgel his brains over it for a while. Who knew, he had far more experience of this sort of thing than Jack had, he might find an answer.
He did. He knew what it was immediately. ‘It’s a nightlight,’ he said. ‘You and Ashtoreth both had them. It’s filled with Faerie light. He passed a hand over it, and the light went out. ‘See?’ he said. ‘Very pretty but ultimately useless – sorry.’
‘But it was his for years might it not … can’t we use it somehow to trace him?’
‘What did you have in mind?’ said Denny. It was easy to love him at times like this; he was being perfectly serious.
‘I-I’m not sure really,’ confessed Jack. ‘I thought you might have an idea.’
‘I’ll give it some thought,’ said Denny. He really meant it too; he really did.
Tamar and Denny were taking a different approach to the search. Scouring the mainframe – not for the actual hiding place, they had already exhausted this avenue of enquiry over the last fifteen years. But for information on the basic background of the Rheingold and its owner’s powers and behaviour to see if there might be a clue in there about what Cindy might have done. And for information about the Nephilim to see what they were going to be up against when or if they did find him – or he found them.
No one had even considered looking for Cindy… She was dead, wasn’t she?
~ Chapter Nine ~
Iffie and Jack did not bother going through the mainframe files. They knew perfectly well that this had been done and done and done again. They both agreed that it was as Iffie had said. Finding Ashtoreth was going to take some lateral thinking.
Iffie liked Jack’s idea of hiding in plain sight. Since he clearly was not hiding in any of the usual places then it seemed most likely that he was in a much more unexpected location and what could be a more unexpected hiding place than right in front of you?
They racked their brains over this idea for some time.
‘We’re looking for something that isn’t what it seems to be,’ said Jack. ‘Like the hidden code within a seemingly normal looking communication,’
‘Or something very well camouflaged as something else,’ said Iffie. ‘Or is that the same thing?’
‘And don’t forget, they couldn’t find it in the mainframe,’ said Jack.
‘Maybe they didn’t know what they were looking for?’ said Iffie.
‘We don’t know what we’re looking for!’ said Jack and they both laughed.
‘What I mean is, if it’s disguised as something else … oh my God.’
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s not a deleted file, we know that. But there are a hell of a lot of un-deleted files. What I mean is, maybe he’s exactly where you might expect him to be. Hidden in plain sight. Where do gods usually live? What sort of place? ’
‘Er, Valhalla, Olympus, various ideas of Heaven … I don’t know. You think that Cindy just went to live with a load of other gods?’
‘It’s somewhere we’d never look,’ pointed out Iffie. ‘Because we think we know who’s th
ere. It’s a lot easier to hide in a crowd, isn’t it? She could have built her own house or castle or fortress or whatever.’
‘Well,Asgard’s favorite I suppose. What with the Rheingold and all,’ said Jack.
* * *
It turned out that most of the old gods were deleted files themselves and that meant their homes were most definitely former. And there were many pantheons of gods that had no fixed home at all.
But there were a few left.Asgard was one of them, Avalon another. TheDuat, the home of the Egyptian gods, was deleted, as was the home of the Olympians although there was some dubiety about this last, since it had never had an official name – no record of the file, deleted or otherwise, could be found. Iffie thought this weird and rather suspicious and even thought it made it a prime candidate for Ashtoreth’s hiding place.
But top of the list was Avalon. It was close by and the only other likely place. Asgard turned out, on further investigation, to be pretty damn unlikely since, for one thing, that was where Tamar and Denny had actually been whilst Cindy was busy making her new home. It was practically inconceivable that they would not have known if she had been there. And further, the Norse gods would probably not have tolerated her moving in after having stolen the Rhine Maidens gold. Besides which, Odin owed Tamar and Denny a favour. Cindy would certainly have been handed over long ago, had she even set foot inAsgard.
And there were other reasons too, not least of which included Odin’s humanitarian tendencies, which would definitely preclude the idea of his putting up with Ashtoreth’s murderous urges.
All this added up to only one conclusion. That if Cindy had built her safe haven among the gods somewhere, it was on Avalon.
* * *
Iffie was quite excited about the trip to Avalon. She had grown up hearing the stories of her parents’ adventures in such places as the Faerie realm and Mainframe and Valhalla but had never been to any places like that herself.
For the first time since she had met him, Ashtoreth was the last thing on her mind, and this, in spite of the fact that he was the object of the journey in the first place.
Rise Of The Nephilim (The Tamar Black Saga) Page 7