* * *
The first thing to do then, was to try to find out exactly what this new threat was. This was a new problem. They had never before been up against an enemy without at least knowing what it was. It was not so much a name that mattered, and they knew its powers – which were limited. But they did not know where they were coming from or how many more to expect.
‘They aren’t a type of demon are they?’ said Stiles. ‘They seem like a type of demon.’
‘Demon’s don’t have types,’ said Tamar. ‘Each one is different.’
‘What about vampires?’ argued Stiles. ‘They were a kind of demon.’
‘They were a creation, it’s not quite the same,’ said Denny. ‘But I see what you mean.’
‘Did someone create these things then?’ said Jack.
‘If they did, it was in a vat,’ said Denny. ‘There’re just too many of them for it to be a new species that developed from a single creation like the vampires. That sort of thing takes time.’
‘They are sort of … “Robotic”,’ said Tamar thoughtfully. ‘But it’s more like brain-washing.’
‘We’ve seen magically created warriors before,’ said Denny. ‘But they weren’t like this. They weren’t real for one thing. These are real. And they have sentience, you can tell. They fight as if they can think for themselves, as if they want to survive. Some of them even ran away. Magic warriors never do that. They don’t have the sense.’
‘There aren’t usually so many of them either.’ said Tamar. ‘Ten’s about your usual limit on magical warriors. And magical warriors tend to fall apart at the slightest thing – and I mean that literally.’
‘Okay, so that’s great, we know what they aren’t,’ said Stiles.
‘It’s a start,’ said Tamar.
‘We need more to go on,’ said Denny.
The phone rang. Everyone just stared at it.
‘I didn’t know we had a phone,’ said Denny eventually.
‘We don’t,’ said Tamar. ‘Answer it anyway.’
‘You answer it,’ said Denny, looking at the ringing phone with deep suspicion.
It turned out to be Director Dawber of the Agency. ‘You’d better get over here,’ he said. ‘We have a bit of a situation.’
* * *
That night there were attacks on temples and other places of worship associated with several different religious movements. Pagan, Wiccan, Voodoo, Hermetic, and Asatru (Norse and Germanic gods) temples were hit. All these religions use ritual magic as a part of their belief system.
On the walls of all these temples etc. the words “BLACK MAGIC” were scrawled and a man in a black mask was seen fleeing the scene of at least one of the temples involved. However, investigators found no boxes of chocolates at any of the scenes. But because of the high death toll and the terrible destruction to property involved it was assumed that this was an accusation rather than an IOU.
* * *
‘We were investigating the mysterious disappearances of half the small gods in the area and these guys must have got on to us – unless it was a co-incidence. Now we’re overrun with the buggers. Murder and mayhem all over the place. Say you can help.’ was Dawber’s breathless explanation of the “situation” he had mentioned.
‘What’re small gods?’ asked Stiles.
‘It’s no co-incidence,’ said Denny. ‘Unless they were already planning to come after you too.’
‘Gods of rivers and woods and so on,’ said Tamar. ‘Like Hank was. What small gods?’ she asked Dawber.
‘Quite a few. We have people monitoring the mainframe all the time. Some anomalies were noticed, and we looked into it. Pan is gone, and Silenus and many others – local river and woodland gods, like you said. I mean we could have put it down to deforestation and pollution and that sort of thing – happens all the time. But Pan disappearing was a bit odd. So we investigated and then these guys just turned up and started … Well it’s a massacre in there. Did you say that Hank is dead too?’
‘It’s happening all over,’ said Denny. ‘We’ve got a houseful of refugees at the moment. But we didn’t know about this.’
‘Can you help me?’ said Dawber. ‘I have three thousand employees in there, and they’re dying.’
‘Just get us in there,’ said Tamar. ‘How did you get out?’
‘I have a special access in my office.’
‘I was hoping you were going to say something like that,’ Tamar told him. ‘Back door then. Come on.’
‘They’re extremely vicious,’ warned Dawber.
‘But not too bright,’ said Denny. ‘We can handle them, don’t worry.’
* * *
Inside it was a nightmare. The power had been cut, and black masked figures flitted about like oversized bats in the gloom. But lurking in the shadows can work both ways. Not to mention that fighting in the dark is always a tactical advantage when your enemy has greater numbers than yourself.
‘You start getting them out,’ Tamar told Stiles – meaning the Agency employees. Stiles crept silently away, while Tamar, Denny, Hecaté and Jack (who had begged that he was old enough to help now) made as much noise as possible. And, like a demon through the smoke, came Death with a long, shiny sword in the form of Tamar spitting vengeance and fury, to the terror of the warriors.
* * *
Jack Stiles was trapped. He had managed to get the employees that he had rounded up as far as the exit point, known within the Agency as the “teleportation room”, although what it really was and how it really worked was anyone’s guess. The whole of the Agency headquarters was housed within the TARDIS like expansion of a disused Djinn bottle, and someone had corked it. All the employees had “Master” cards, adapted to the bottle’s frequency in order to allow free passage in and out. But it was not working.
Hence, Stiles was trapped. In fact, they were all trapped. On the other side of the door, the creatures in black were forcing a way through. It would not take them long to break in as Stiles was frantically aware. There were so many of them, they were a battering ram all by themselves.
He had no doubt that either Denny or Tamar would find a way to break the lockdown which no doubt extended to the exit point in the Director’s office. But they were not here. And he had no way of getting to them. He was cut off by hordes of – whatever they were (must give them a name) and people were starting to panic.
It was all about energy, he thought. The specific frequency of the energy that made the bottle into a trap, only opened to the specific trigger that it was tuned to. A sufficient burst of kinetic energy, sustained for long enough, should force a gap in the energy field and let everyone out.
Well, he could not save these people by himself. But perhaps Leir could.
It was the only chance. Stiles drew on the gauntlet of Leir* and accessed the power of the ancient god who had created it.
*[which he now carried with him whenever he thought there might be a chance he would need it – like a fight. Most of the time, really then, but he rarely used it.]
His own mind directed the power of the gauntlet, but it was not his power, it resided in the gauntlet itself.
The energy was invisible but powerful. A gap began to open up in the wall. A bright white light leading to a tunnel, through which the outside world could be dimly perceived.
‘Go, go,’ he yelled. And everybody ran.
Stiles did not know how long he could keep this up; it was draining him to the point of exhaustion, and the gauntlet was red hot. But he was determined to hang on until everyone was out.
He was on the point of collapse. Just as the last one ran through, he let go, too exhausted to follow, and all the energy that had been forced aside sprang back like a steel-trap closing. A massive surge of power travelled back through the energy stream up Stiles’s arm, and lifted him off his feet. He hung there for a moment, suspended in a lighting storm, then the field shattered. Like a bottle being blown outwards (which, in this case, is more than just an analogy) and Stiles was lying in a
field, burned black all over, and surrounded by anxious faces that he did not see.
From the point of view of those still inside, it happened like this: a bright white but soundless explosion and they suddenly found themselves outside standing in a field. The remaining black masked warriors fled, so that was handy, but there were still plenty of people around; standing in a large huddle around something that they could not see.
The words. ‘Is he dead?’ were enough to make all of them run towards the crowd and force a way through. Despite the fact that Stiles was unrecognisable, Hecaté let out a wail of horror and despair. She grabbed at Denny for support, and he held her up as Tamar bent down to Stiles.
‘He’s breathing,’ she announced. And she concentrated hard, trying to heal him. But she sat back with a gasp. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s not working.’
‘Hospital,’ said Denny decisively. Tamar nodded. They had nothing to lose at this point. A moment later, they were gone.
* * *
Stiles was placed in a tank full of water with breathing tubes and monitors all over him. But the doctors shook their heads gravely and looked pessimistic.
‘They asked questions like: ‘Does he have a living will?’ and, ‘who is his next of kin?’ and, ‘is he an organ donor?’
They said he was brain-dead. The machines were keeping him alive. But there was no hope.
They tried to talk Hecaté into switching off the machines.
She agreed. ‘I always knew I would have to let him go one day. But not so soon. Not so soon.’
Tamar disagreed; she had a hunch. The gauntlet, despite their best efforts had yet to be removed. Only Stiles himself could take it off, until he died, at which point it would naturally remove itself. He was still alive.
‘It was an artificial life,’ the doctors said. But Tamar was insistent. Give it a bit longer,’ she said. ‘Or don’t you believe in miracles?’
The doctors did not. They believed in cold hard facts. But without permission, they were unable to do anything.
Hecaté believed in miracles. She had been the author of more than a few. She withdrew her permission.
They offered Hecaté a bed in the hospital, so that she could stay with him. She accepted. It would have seemed ungracious not to. She did not expect to use the bed. It was a wet night, thunderstorms. It seemed appropriate. The others went home.
‘Where’s Uncle Jack?’ asked Iffie. ‘Where’s Auntie Hecaté?’
Tamar told her, and Iffie cried, but Tamar told her there was hope.
‘There’s always hope,’ she said. And later, she cried herself to sleep in Denny’s arms.
* * *
‘One down!’ Ashtoreth was feeling extremely pleased with himself. Not only had his early forays all gone exactly as planned (like his mother, he believed in testing the water before diving in) but one member of that hated household had already fallen. True, it was not the one he most wanted to die, but it was a start. Not that he had planned it that way. It was simply an unexpected bonus. And his enemies would be grieved by his loss. Or … would they? Did the evil feel grief? On reflection, he thought not. But they would be dismayed by his fall at least. Afraid for their own skin.
As well they should be. ‘So shall all tyrants fall,’ he muttered. (It never occurred to Ashtoreth to consider the actions of Jack Stiles as heroic.)
He was conscious, though, of an element of regret. She would be grieved, and the thought of her grief hurt him. A weakness. Oh but she had pierced his armour; pierced it to the core. Thanks to her, it would never be quite whole again. His mother had tried to keep it so. He understood so much more now, about why she had kept him here, away from the world and its dangers. She had been trying to protect him. And now she was dead.
The man responsible was going to pay for that, no matter who got hurt in the process.
So much for regret then. It would not be allowed to interfere with his ultimate goal. And she would come to understand in the end. Good must always triumph over evil.
Here, in this palace by the sea, he would stay, safe until the time came. Spending his armies in the fight against evil. The place had changed since his mother’s time. Now it resembled nothing less than a barracks. Filled from end to end and top to bottom with quarters to house his soldiers.
As he sent each division out on their missions he would call them before him to bless them before they went out to face the forces of evil what he was doing at these “blessings” was disseminating his power among them. As each one died, the power returned to him, but in the meantime, he was temporarily weakened. He was able to “bless” upwards of one thousand soldiers at a time. Any more, and their borrowed power would be too weak, too thinly spread, to be effective.
But, at the moment, only seven stood before him to be blessed. For these soldiers, he had a special mission. To accomplish this mission they would need the maximum power he was able to spare. But, should they succeed, he would have more power than any being on the face of the Earth and beyond.
‘It may take you many months to complete this task, perhaps a year or more,’ he told them. ‘There will be hardships. There will be moments of despair. You must not give up. The key to our victory is out there. It is up to you to find it, should you have to search the four corners of the earth. I know I can rely on you. Now come forth and receive your blessing and your tools.’
The “tools” he referred to were laid out on a table before him. One each, wrapped in a cloth woven from a shimmering material of indeterminate origin.
He did not expect them all to succeed. Perhaps one or two. He was even prepared for the fact that one or more of them might find what he sought and never return, keeping the power for himself. It would not matter.
It might be a long time, as he had told them, before the outcome of this search was known to him. He would just have to possess himself in patience. In the meantime, there was much work to do.
Had anyone else been doing what he was doing, planning what he was planning, he would have been the first to condemn them. He now had the same hubris as any god that you care to mention. He would not have accepted the same argument from another, but, as far as he was concerned, it was right because it was he who was doing it.
* * *
The war in ––- came to an abrupt close last night after the deployment of an airborne toxin at the sites of military bases belonging to both sides. Approximately fourteen thousand soldiers in total were killed. Rebel troops known to belong to the ––- that have been seen in the area have refused to claim responsibility for the attack, and it is presumed that protesters against the war have orchestrated this heinous attack. The protesters, going under the name “The ––-” have refused to comment.
Neither government has agreed to make a statement. There have been no civilian casualties reported.
Severe burning over several square miles of the ground just outside the city has been identified by helicopter as words burnt by an unknown medium into the ground. The words read. WARMONGERS BE WARNED.
There is no explanation forthcoming for this extraordinary circumstance. No fires were reported the preceding night, and the fires needed to cause such a large area of burnt ground would have been seen for miles.
This was Ashtoreth’s favourite so far. As far as he was concerned, the overall reaction to this proved that the world was so corrupted that several groups of humans were actually suspected of perpetrating this action against their fellow creatures. It was amazing. No one questioned it. No one was even surprised.
* * *
It was a nightmare; well there was a lot of it about lately. Everywhere was a nightmare at the moment. This particular nightmare had all the usual features. Black masked devils looming, by the several hundreds, through the effectively created smoke, brandishing weapons of all shapes and sizes and attacking in virtual silence. It did not seem to matter who they were going after, witches, centaurs, small gods – whatever, their MO seemed to be the same every time. Slaughter,
slash and kill by whatever means necessary.
They had attacked the house a total of six times until they apparently got the message – that they were wasting their time and forces on pointless diversions that were not working anyway.
As Tamar sliced and diced with vicious precision, her mind was actually elsewhere. What was it this time anyway? The Covenant of Eeeee.* Magicians and Sorcerers.
*[Also known as the crew of magicians who couldn’t think of a better name.]
As she fought, she kept half an eye on Denny – a procedure that she had never felt necessary before, but he was not himself at the moment, although he seemed to be doing all right for now.
There had been times recently, when Tamar had seriously wondered if she would not be better off fighting on her own.
Jack was a competent fighter and a reasonable substitute for Stiles, but still, she always felt as if she needed to watch his back. Experience was what was lacking there. And now Denny seemed to need more backup than he had previously done, (i.e. none at all).
One thing, though, that she had determined on – and she knew that Denny agreed with her – was that no matter how desperate things became, they would not be bringing Iffie into the fighting. If she was distracted now, she thought, how much worse would that be?’
And then she saw him go down, six warriors behind him bore down immediately, and he had not seen them, she was sure of it. She turned and brought down her sword, and six heads rolled as Denny leapt to his feet. He nodded shortly at her and continued to fight apparently unaware of his narrow escape. Not that he was so easy to kill. Even if he had been hit, he would probably have survived. But it should not have happened at all; that was the truth of it, and it worried Tamar.
* * *
It was one of those rooms. You know the kind, without windows and with large, incomprehensible maps and diagrams on the walls.
Several suits sat around a large table, and a military uniform stood at the head of the table. He looked grim.
These men met in times of crisis. The rest of the time they did not know each other at all.
A young man in uniform who nevertheless had “secretary” written all over him, from his neatly parted hair to his shiny shoes, passed out folders and then sat down in a corner to take the minutes.
Rise Of The Nephilim (The Tamar Black Saga) Page 11