‘You’re angry,’ he observed.
‘No,’ she said in wilful contradiction of the evidence.
‘You are,’ he insisted. ‘Why?’
‘I’m not angry,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to get changed.’
‘You didn’t like the dress?’ He seemed puzzled.
‘No.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’ he asked, so reasonably that she wondered if she had not, at least in some respects, misjudged him.
‘Because I’m afraid of you.’ Did not seem like the tactful thing to say at this point. ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.
‘I thought it so much more suitable,’ he said. ‘These rags do not do you the justice you deserve. But if it’s what you prefer …’
Iffie looked at him in wonder. There were two of him; it really seemed as if there were two of him. Three if you counted Jack … but that was being silly. Jack was Jack, but Ashtoreth was clearly schizoid. If only this Ash, the one looking at her now with the mute appeal in his eyes, was the only one. But there was the other one. The one who would kill followers, who had given him their trust and deserved his consideration, for his own gain. The one who could plot to murder innocent people including her own family. She must not forget that.
She had never told him that Cindy was alive and well and living with Slick. It had never seemed the right time and now, after all this time, was it a good idea? He was so unpredictable. He might choose to accuse her of lying. Or decide that if it were true then his mother had also betrayed him. And knowing Ash, it would not take a great leap from there to conclude that Iffie would betray him too one day and he might as well kill her now and save time. And all this was true, from a certain point of view. That was the trouble really. He had been brought up, not on lies exactly, but on such a twisted version of the truth that he had learned to twist everything he heard into a warped reality. It would be easy to pity him, but Iffie only had to remember his face when he had been about to kill Jack in order to harden her heart.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. She wanted to get rid of him, but he did not seem to want to go.
She sat down quite deliberately in the window seat, gazing out on the fake stars twinkling prettily over the fake sea. But he did not take the hint. Instead he came and sat beside her.
‘So, are you a dragon now?’ she asked conversationally. Removing her hand from underneath his.
‘No,’ he said eagerly. Glad that she wanted to talk. ‘No, I’m still me, I just have the power.’
‘And the breath,’ she said with a forced laugh.
‘Oh, the dragons’ power is far more than just breathing fire,’ he said. ‘That’s just a little bonus.’
‘Immortality,’ said Iffie. ‘But I never heard that dragons did magic at all. I mean I know you said all that stuff about morphing and healing and understanding foreign gibberish but …’
‘Doesn’t mean they couldn’t,’ said Ash. ‘Fire magic, the most powerful magic in the universe. Fire is life.’
‘Oh, god, it’s cryptic nonsense time again,’ she thought. ‘He’s never going to tell me. I might as well not bother.’
He moved closer to her and she tried to wriggle away, but there was no room on the window seat, he had her trapped. He was stroking her hair.
‘I have learned a lot since we last met,’ he told her. ‘I can make you happy Iffie.’ He leaned in and brought his face closer to hers. It took all her self-control not to rear back. He took her chin in his hand and lifted her face to his. She returned his gaze steadily and coolly, and he sighed and stood up. ‘Not yet then,’ he said and walked away without looking back. Iffie closed her eyes and gave a sigh of relief. ‘Please, please, someone get me out of here!’
* * *
‘And it can’t be a name that’s already been used,’ said Tamar. ‘No Shangri La or Avalon or anything like that.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Cindy a little nettled. ‘What did you think that I was going to call it Xanadu? Just let me think for a minute.’
If Cindy was stalling no one could blame her, but Denny, at least, did not think she was. It was hard to think of something like this, a name that had never been used for any place in the world anywhere. Particularly under pressure. Denny was trying too and could not come up with a single idea.
Cindy’s brow was furrowed in thought. ‘Slick’s good at this sort of thing,’ she said eventually.
‘No, it has to be you,’ said Tamar. ‘No one can help you, it’s your world. If you don’t name it, it won’t work.’
Denny stopped trying to think of something.
‘But my mind’s a complete blank,’ wailed Cindy.
‘So, what else is new?’ muttered Tamar unkindly.
‘You’re not helping,’ said Denny. ‘Let’s leave her alone to think, come on.’
‘He’s going to kill us all, you know,’ said Denny gloomily.
‘Depends on exactly what this new power of his actually is,’ Tamar said. ‘It might not be as great as he thinks it is, at least not against all of us together. But supposing it is, at least we do have a secret weapon against that eventuality,’ she said.
‘Cindy,’ said Denny. ‘Alive and well. If it works.’
‘We nearly lost her,’ said Tamar thoughtfully. ‘The ultimate irony. He was the one who actually tried to kill her, without even realising it, when he went after all witches. If he’d succeeded … What do you mean, if it works?’
‘He might not believe it’s really her.’
‘Let’s not dwell on that eventuality shall we?’
‘You were right you know, the faster we get to him the better.’
‘Maybe we should try letting Jack take us in,’ said Tamar.
They were not completely comfortable with this idea. They had all had Faeries in their heads before. It had not gone well. Mind you, if they could not trust Jack … After all, he could have been in and out of people’s heads for years if he had wanted to, and he never had.
‘Give her a bit longer,’ said Denny.
‘But Iffie … we don’t know what he’s doing to her in there.’
‘I don’t think he’s doing anything to her,’ said Denny wondering how much he should tell her about his suspicions.
‘You mean because they were friends?’ she said.
‘Maybe he still thinks they are,’ said Denny. ‘He’s got no reason to think otherwise, has he?’
‘He called her a betrayer,’ said Tamar with distressingly accurate recall.
‘Jack didn’t tell us everything,’ said Denny.
‘Well, anyway, even if you’re right. He could still turn on her at any minute.’
Denny knew it – he was trying not to think about it. It was hard always having to be the voice of reason, the calming influence. Especially now, when all he wanted to do was rip the world apart to find his daughter.
‘We’ll find her,’ he said
‘And make him pay,’ said Tamar clenching her jaw.
‘Oh, he’ll pay all right,’ said Denny with a chilling calm that made Tamar shiver. There was something infinitely terrifying about this coldly furious Denny. He was like a distant stranger.
‘He’d kill him without a second thought,’ she thought. She herself was not so certain that she could do that.
‘Anyway, no splitting up this time,’ she said. ‘We all go in the same way and if it works it works and if it doesn’t we try the other way.’
‘It’ll work,’ said Cindy from the doorway. ‘Denny, open the mainframe we’re all going to Kaya-Noelani’
* * *
Iffie was right about Ash. There were two of him, and both of them were in two minds at the moment. Making a total of four minds.
On the one hand, he was positively salivating for his revenge. He could hardly wait to use his new powers on his enemies and destroy them forever. On the other, he was sensing that Iffie was still not at a place where she could easily accept that. Then again, she had chosen him, which must mean t
hat she believed in him. And there was, of course, the sense of an anticlimax. It was going to be far too easy in the end. And, despite the salivating, there was also a temptation to put it off, savour the moment. Do some private gloating over their inevitable destruction.
There can be no mind in the world more tortuous than that of an indecisive schizophrenic. Round and round he went – chasing the various arguments in his head. He was about to have the decision taken out of his hands entirely.
Iffie was wandering through the palace. She drew some curious looks from the various Nephelim around the place, but they all shied away from her as she approached. She could not tell if his was because she was from the unknown species known as “female” or because Ash had warned them off. Either way, it made it easier to move around the place. She was, however, under no illusions that her every move was not being reported back to Ash. If only she could give them the slip. She knew where she wanted to go. And she did not want him knowing about it. It was impossible to teleport in here, wherever the astral plane was it was far away from here, which also put invisibility out of the question.
‘Come on Iffie, are you a witch or aren’t you?’ she chastised herself. ‘There must be something you can do.’
The six men who had sacrificed themselves in such a dramatic manner had not exploded in the flash of white light that had become so familiar to them all. They had been drained and left as desiccated husks. Iffie did not know why it had happened this way with them and frankly she was not that interested. But she did want to see the bodies. Ashtoreth’s reaction to her interest in them had been suspicious in the extreme.
‘What are you doing there?’ he had snapped.
And she had wondered at the time, ‘what does he think I’m doing?’ She had decided to find out. The problem was, if she went directly to the room where he had ordered them taken, (and she had no idea where that was, but one problem at a time) he would find out immediately, what with his goons spying on her the whole time.
She might not be able to make herself invisible here, but there was a trick that was less dramatic but almost as effective. She could fade … make herself, if not actually invisible, then at least, unnoticeable. It was called “ghosting”. No one saw ghosts because they did not want to. It helped that not one of them would look her in the eye anyway. She made them nervous, they would much rather not notice her, despite their orders. She concentrated and sank into herself until she felt no more than a mere shadow on the wall, then she stepped out deliberately in front of one of them. He nearly walked right into her. He simply had not seen her. It took a lot of concentration to keep it up, and the Nephelim were so numerous that she had no respite as long as she was in the corridors.
‘At least he hasn’t got CCTV,’ she thought. ‘There’s no way I could hide from that.’
A handy side effect of the ghosting was that sometimes echoes of you appeared in other places. There could easily be reports going to Ash that she was in the throne room or the south corridor or heading for her room. Anywhere, in fact, that she had passed through recently. It came from splitting your focus for a bunch of technical reasons that she had never bothered to master.
Her concentration was beginning to falter. That one had almost seen her, she was sure. He had done a double take and scratched his head anyway.
She dodged into a room hoping fervently that it was empty. It was not.
There were no Nephelim in here, nor was it the room where the bodies were stored. But, nonetheless, there was something in here. The answer to her question. ‘What did he think I was doing?’
* * *
‘What’s that sound?’ said Denny suddenly looking up from his keyboard. They were in the private study, away from all the clatter of the Agency, while Denny checked that the name Cindy had given her kingdom had been filed.
‘I can’t hear a thing,’ said Tamar.
‘Yes, strange isn’t it?’
The whole world had suddenly gone silent. No screams, or cries for mercy. No marching feet. Through various feeds connected up through the mainframe, they had been keeping tabs on most of the Army of Righteousness’ activity in the world and suddenly it had all stopped dead.
Denny typed frantically, checking file after file. ‘It’s everywhere,’ he announced. ‘He’s recalled his armies – he must have.’
‘What, all of them? Why?’
‘Because he doesn’t need them anymore?’ said Denny shrugging.
‘Oh shit!’
‘We’re going to need more help,’ said Denny.
The phone rang.
* * *
Stiles stirred and opened his eyes. Well, they were in the place where his eyes should be anyway, inside the sockets were glowing orbs of light. He sat up stiffly like Frankenstein’s monster. He turned his head to look at Hecaté who was staring at him with her hands clasped and her eyes shining almost as much as his.
The light faded from his eyeballs, and he gave his well-known grin. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a cigar on you have you?’ he asked.
Hecaté manifested one for him. ‘To hell with the rules,’ she said uncharacteristically. ‘This is a celebration.’
Stiles now took in his surroundings. ‘I’m in hospital?’ he said in surprise.
‘You were very dead my love, but you have been reborn.’
Oh, yeah?’ he said, ‘as what?’
This was meant to be a little levity to distract him from the idea of having been dead, which was not a pleasant thought.
But Hecaté answered him seriously. ‘That remains to be seen,’ she said.
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘You are no longer human,’ she said. ‘You were dead for a long time. Only the gauntlet of Leir has saved you. But to do that it must also have changed you. No human can do what you have done.’
Stiles looked curiously at his arm. ‘I’m still wearing it,’ he said in surprise. ‘I didn’t realise, I can’t feel Leir. He’s not here.’
‘It is a part of you now,’ she said. ‘Leir has gone.’
‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘I feel exactly the same as I always did. Maybe it’s just drained of power, and as for the other thing, I mean you’d be surprised, maybe, how long a human can survive brain death … it can be as long as …’
‘A year?’ said Hecaté dryly.
That shut him up. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish, but no sounds came out.
‘You are a god,’ she said briskly. ‘Accept it. It is not as if such things have not happened before. As long as you do not disappear swearing vengeance and build some castle in the air somewhere, from where you can harass the world it will be all right.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘A lot has happened,’ she said. ‘Shall we talk about it?’
‘We don’t need to,’ he said, his eyes widening in shock. ‘I know.’
‘I told you,’ she said smugly.
When Stiles appeared with Hecaté, a large cigar sticking out from between his grinning teeth, it was as if time had suddenly spiralled backwards. Even the unaccustomed silence from the mainframe added to the effect. It was almost as if none of it had happened. With Cindy in the house and Iffie away, it was almost as if the last sixteen years had never happened at all, but had all been a very vivid dream. Stiles even looked as he had when they had first met him. Many lines of care and age had been smoothed from his face in the transformation. It was a profoundly disorienting feeling.
And Denny suddenly understood what Tamar had been trying to explain to him about his agelessness. Time stood still for you when you had eternity. For a moment, he was the same old Denny he had been when he had first met her all those years ago. All those years ago were just yesterday. He was not older; he had just been around longer.
Tamar ran to Stiles like an excited child greeting a favourite uncle and flung herself into his arms. But she drew back quickly afraid of hurting him. Her power was dangerous to humans; death was often the result of pro
longed contact and she did not want to risk losing him again.
However, Stiles gathered her back up and swung her around joyfully until she was dizzy. When he put her down she gazed at him in wonder. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘You aren’t human anymore.’
‘What, did you think I’d had a quick face-lift while I was in the hospital?’ said Stiles.
‘It was Leir,’ said Hecaté. ‘He sacrificed himself for Jack, and now the power is his.’
‘There’s a lot of it about,’ said Denny.
‘Speaking of which,’ said Stiles. ‘Don’t we have a fairy tale palace to raid?’
Tamar laughed. Only Stiles could put the Herculean task before them that way.
‘Uncle Jack?’ said Jack coming into the room and, with those two innocuous words, time started up again properly.
He had come to tell them what they had already surmised. That the armies of the Nephelim had retreated, and that the Agency guys had no idea what was going on.
‘We have to go now,’ he said dancing up and down excitedly. He tugged on Denny’s arm like a child after sweeties. ‘Now, Denny, now,’ he insisted.
‘He’s right,’ said Tamar. ‘Shortcut,’ she added. ‘No time to check the file exists. Straight into mainframe. ‘Everybody – close file.’
* * *
‘So this is your palace, is it?’ said Tamar conversationally. It’s … nice.’
‘It didn’t look like this when I lived here,’ Cindy said a shade defensively.
‘No, I didn’t think this gothic look was very you,’ agreed Tamar.
‘Is this the time for comparative décor?’ asked Denny a little testily.
‘Are we sure we’ve got the right place then?’ asked Stiles.
‘This is it all right,’ put in Jack. ‘I’ve been here before remember?’
‘It certainly is,’ said Denny, just seconds before they were attacked.
‘I was just going to ask where everybody was?’ said Stiles from the heart of the mêlée.
‘Do be careful Jack,’ said Hecaté anxiously. ‘You don’t want to hurt your back.’ (It was going to take her some time to get used to Stiles’s new situation).
Rise Of The Nephilim (The Tamar Black Saga) Page 21