Those who fell were crushed underfoot.
And above the screams of pain and terror, the lightning cracks and the rolling continuous thunder, no one heard the sound of a hunting horn and the triumphant howling of savage beasts.
TONY FOWLER watched lightning dance down Madoc’s main street, skipping from metal to metal, reducing cars to blackened ruin, wrapping ancient lampposts in writhing fiery worms. A man-hole melted to smoldering slag, and Fowler turned away as a young man ran straight into the seething mess.
“Everything’s dead,” Victoria Heath said numbly. “Phones, radio, power.”
The detective turned back to the window. “Dear God, what’s happening?” he whispered. The street was a heaving mass of humanity. He saw two men kick open the door of a house opposite and push their way past the old woman who appeared in the hallway. A score of people ran into the hall, trampling the woman underfoot in a desperate attempt to escape the lightning. Thunder boomed directly overhead, shaking the entire building, lead tiles sliding off the roof to shatter in the street. A young woman went down, a rectangular tile protruding from her throat; the youth who tried to help her collapsed as another dozen tiles rained down on top of him.
In his long career in the police force, Tony Fowler had known fear on many occasions: his first night on the beat, the first time he had faced an armed assailant, the first time he had stood at a murder scene, the first time he had stared into the pitiless eyes of a killer. But time had dulled that emotion, and lately he had been feeling only the terrible anger of the victims. That anger had driven him to hunt down evil people like Miller who could kill and maim without compunction. In the last few years, Fowler had found he had been able to strike back at these people without reservation, treating them as they had treated their victims.
But Tony Fowler felt fear now, the cold, empty fear the rational mind experiences when faced by the unnatural. He was turning away from the window to face Victoria Heath when light blossomed in the street directly outside the window. The glass exploded inward. There was no pain, only an incredible noise and heat, followed by complete silence. He caught a brief glimpse of a tiny red-speckled pattern appearing on Victoria Heath’s white blouse…funny, he couldn’t remember a pattern. The pattern appeared on her face…bloodred slivers of torn flesh. He watched her fall…and then the pain and the noise came.
99
Vyvienne jerked and twitched with every peal of thunder, every lightning flash. The room was in almost total darkness, but the white light silhouetted Ahriman Saurin against the window, naked flesh white and stark. In the distance they could hear screams and explosions, and the fields below the house were speckled with fires. “What time is it?” Ahriman asked numbly.
“Five, six…I’m not sure.” She was standing close enough to feel the chill radiating from his body.
“Looks like twilight,” he said absently. “It can’t be natural.”
“I don’t know. I can feel the Hallows buzzing below us, flooding the Astral with light. I’m blind there.”
Ahriman watched as one of the carefully prepared pyres in the distance burst into flame, long streamers of light flowing up off the oil-soaked wood. Burning figures whirled away from it. Spinning away from the window, he caught Vyvienne by the arm. “We can’t wait any longer. We’ve got to use the Hallows now!”
“But the missing two—”
“We don’t have a choice,” he said savagely. “We have eleven of the thirteen. If we break enough of the locks, then the Demonkind may be able to force their way through.”
“It’s too risky,” Vyvienne said. “The storm isn’t natural. Someone—someone powerful—has called it. And that sort of magic, elemental magic, is one of the oldest in the world. Something’s out there, something old.”
“I’ve waited too long for this.” Lightning washed his face bone white and shadow. “The bonfires will burn, taking the last of the Hallowed Keepers, while the people—the sacrifices—are fleeing. We will never have this chance again. I’m using the Hallows now!”
Vyvienne bowed her head. And because she loved him, she put her hand in Ahriman Saurin’s and allowed him to lead her down the stairs.
She allowed him to lay her down on the pentagram in the middle of the sacred Hallows.
And she allowed herself to enjoy one last kiss before he sliced her body open and peeled back her skin.
100
What the fuck does he think he’s doing?” Sarah’s voice was high and shrill. “It sounds like a war zone.”
Owen ignored her. His eyes were fixed on the farm house directly in front of them. With the sword clutched in both hands, he felt so confident, so assured. He was aware of the thunder and lightning booming and crashing over the village—and only over the village. The fields below were awash beneath a torrential downpour, but the effect was particularly localized, and although they were less than two hundred yards away, there was no rain here.
Moving stealthily forward, Owen could actually feel the presence of the Hallows buzzing in the air around him. There were whispers that were almost words, snatches of what might have been song, but faint, indistinct, ethereal. But he could tell that they were calling, calling, calling. The Hallows were alive: They were trapped and in pain.
“They’re here,” he said simply. “Belowground.”
Sarah didn’t ask how he knew; she was feeling the loss of the sword like a missing limb. While she’d held it, she’d felt so confident, so assured…but now…now she wasn’t sure what she felt anymore.
The farm house was in darkness, no lights showing within. The couple crept across a cobbled courtyard, keeping to the shadows, looking for an open window, but the house was locked up tight, and heavy drapes covered the lower windows. They completed a circuit around the house and returned to the kitchen door.
The thunder and lightning had stopped booming and crashing over the village, and now the screams of the injured echoed across the still air. Car and house alarms were ringing everywhere, and the stench of bitter smoke was replacing the acrid ozone in the air. The air smelled of burned meat.
Owen reached out and touched the door handle. Green fire spat, and he snatched his hand back with a hiss of pain. In the gloom, they could see the blisters forming on his fingertips.
“Ambrose said that the place would be guarded by more than human wards,” Sarah reminded him. “Some sort of magical protection.”
Holding the sword in his left hand, Owen stretched out and pressed the broken end against the door. Green fire danced over the blade, which came alive with cold white light. Then the light flowed out of the sword and raced across the door, outlining it in a tracery of white. Glass exploded inward, and the handle started bubbling, the metal running liquid down the scarred wood. Sarah caught Owen’s arm and dragged him away as the door went crashing inward, liquid metal from the hinges puddling on the tiled kitchen floor.
“I have a feeling they know we’re here.”
SITTING NAKED in the center of the perfect circle, Ahriman gradually opened himself up to the power of the Hallows, first absorbing the trickle of power, allowing it to seep into his flesh, settle into his bones. Images flickered and twisted behind his closed eyes. Power from the burning bonfires flowed into him, the last tendrils of life of the original Hallowed Keepers floating through the air in billows of smoke. Touching him.
He was unaware of the couple upstairs. He was conscious only of the ritual he had practiced every day for ten years, only this time he was doing it for real.
Ahriman Saurin’s hands worked on the floor, brushing back the light dusting of earth to reveal a metal door set into the ground. The door was circular, of old metal, studded with great square-headed rivets set into a frame of massive rough stone blocks. The rust-stained doorway was inset with thirteen huge keyholes. Shapes flickered behind the keyholes. Two thousand years previously, Yeshu’a had banished the Demonkind and sealed their doorway. Yeshu’a and his world were long gone, but the demons remained.
<
br /> Ahriman Saurin reached for the first lead box.
A solid beam of cold white light lanced upward, blinding him, flooding the room with the scents of a thousand Thoroughbred horses. He reached in and lifted out the Halter of Clyno Eiddyn, allowing the leather to fold open, the rich skin hissing and whispering softly. He picked up the first Hallow—in the Astral, the darkness folded over the light—and began to rip apart the ancient material, destroying it.
A gossamer key appeared in the topmost lock—and turned with a rasping click.
IN HIS green cave, Ambrose staggered, pressing his hand to the center of his chest. He felt as if he’d been stabbed. One of the Hallows had just been destroyed. But there was nothing he could do except wait…and listen to the screams of the dying and injured.
“Hurry,” he whispered in the lost language of his youth. “Hurry.”
SARAH STOOD at the bottom of the stairs and looked up into the gloom. She was freezing—the building radiated a greasy chill—and she wanted to turn and run but knew that she could not. The house was silent and empty. Arcane symbols had been carved into the wood above the doorways, and the windowsills were also incised with the curious designs.
She had felt an almost overpowering desire to stretch out and trace one of the twisting patterns, and she had actually been reaching for it when Owen had touched the flesh of her hand with the flat of the sword. The snap of cold metal brought her alert again, and she realized that she’d been mesmerized by the twisting Celtic spiral, tracing it to a non ex is tent center.
“More of the Dark Man’s wards,” Owen said, “designed to ensnare.”
He had changed since he’d taken the sword, subtle, almost imperceptible changes in both posture and attitude. He looked taller, the skin on his cheeks was tighter, emphasizing the bones, and he acted with absolute confidence. Remembering how she had felt, Sarah found herself envying him. She wanted the sword—her sword. “Down here,” he said, reaching out to touch the handle of the cellar door with the tip of the Broken Sword. The door frame came alive with a tracery of fire, scorching the wood, searing away the symbols.
“I don’t think we should—” Sarah began.
“They’re down there,” Owen said simply. The sword was trembling in his hands, vibrating softly as he pushed at the door. It fell off its hinges and clattered down the steps.
AHRIMAN WAS deaf to the world.
He was deeply engrossed in the ritual, transferring the energy from the Hallows, now augmented by the burning flesh of the Hallowed Keepers, into the locks of the metal door.
His hands reached blindly for a second box and opened it.
Again the white light flowed up but was almost immediately extinguished as Ahriman’s large hands closed over it. The Pan of Rhygenydd, perpetually filled with dark blood, crumpled beneath his powerful grip, spraying his naked flesh with crimson. He folded its companion piece, the Platter of Rhygenydd, over and over in his fingers, finally snapping it into four quarters.
Another key formed and turned in the lock. Something hit the metal door, a single blow from below, the sound deep and booming, echoing around the small chamber.
THE SMELL at the bottom of the stairs was indescribable. Old and long dead, the ripe foulness hung in the air in a solid miasma. Sarah and Owen knew it was a body—or bodies—and both were suddenly glad that the light didn’t work. With Sarah’s hand on his shoulder, Owen walked forward. He felt as if he were leaning into an unfelt breeze; he could feel the Hallows’ power washing over him, his clothes heavy and irritating where they rested against his flesh. The air itself had become thick, soupy, making every breath an effort, drying the moisture in his eyes, mouth, and throat until he felt as if he were breathing sand.
And then the Broken Sword flashed alight, burning away the stale air, blue white light bathing the corridor in harsh shadows, illuminating the iron-studded wooden door directly ahead.
Owen darted forward, his grin feral.
FIVE LOCKS were broken now.
Ahriman concentrated on opening the sixth seal, but the pounding of the demons on the far side was incredible, the noise deafening as they hammered on the metal, howling and screeching, rocking the door on its hinges, disturbing his concentration. Hooked claws kept appearing in the openings, and the door was visibly straining upward, metal bulging where the locks had been turned.
The Dark Man was tiring.
The incredible effort of will was draining him, leeching the energy from his body, and the arcane occult formula that he needed to keep crisp and clear was beginning to shift and blur in his head. He was aware that the Demonkind were trying frantically to push open the door and that the ancient metal was shivering in its stone frame…but he knew that he should be aware of nothing. Any lapse of concentration would be worse than fatal, for Ahriman knew that death was not the end, and this close to the demon realm there was every possibility that his spirit would be sucked into that place, to suffer an eternity of suffering.
Holding the sixth Hallow—The Whetstone of Tudwal Tudglyd—in his hands, he squeezed it. The ancient granite stone should have snapped and burst, but nothing happened. Leaning forward, he pressed his left hand, palm down, on the shivering metal door. “Give me strength,” he prayed. “Give me strength.”
Noise and movement on the other side of the door ceased…and then the answer flowed up his arm.
AMBROSE WAS dying; he knew that now. With every Hallow the Dark Man destroyed, he killed a little more of the one-eyed old man. There was blood on his lips, a tracery of veins visible in his eye. He had felt the destruction of the five Hallows as physical blows, had seen the shadows swallow the light, and for the first time in two thousand years he felt the terrible despair of the truly lost. So it had all been for nothing, all those deaths he had caused, and now Sarah and Owen were probably dead, too.
He had a sudden flash of the whetstone crumbling in Ahriman’s fingers, turning to powder and grit, and saw the key turn in the sixth lock.
101
They had waited so long for this.
The legends of their own kind spoke to them of a time when they had walked in the World of Men and feasted off the delicacy known as flesh. There were stories too of those who had escaped through other hidden or temporary doors, bridges, and portals.
But now the time of waiting was over.
Six of the burning locks that sealed the door between the planes of existence had been turned.
Odors, rich and meat and salt and full of possibilities and opportunities, flooded through the tiny cracks, driving those nearest the opening into a frenzy.
102
Standing before the iron-studded wooden door, Owen gripped the Broken Sword in both hands and squared his shoulders.
“What’s the plan?” Sarah whispered.
“There is no plan,” Owen said. He reached forward and touched the end of the Broken Sword against the door. The metal studs hissed and bubbled, and then the wood dissolved into fine dust.
As Sarah followed Owen through the opening, she could have sworn that his skin shimmered with metallic highlights.
The tiny room was an abattoir.
A dark naked man crouched in the center of the room, straddling a butchered body. Much of the face was missing, the teeth marks on the chin and edges of the jaw, where flesh remained, looked like human bites. The Dark Man’s face, neck, and chest were covered in thick blood.
Vyvienne’s torso had been opened from throat to crotch, the skin pulled back to reveal the curve of ribs and internal organs. The remaining Hallows were lying on the woman’s body, thick with gore.
Ahriman Saurin twisted his head to look at the pair in the doorway. His savage smile was appalling, fresh with the meaty blood from Vyvienne’s carcass.
“Good of you to bring me the sword,” he hissed, and plunged the Hallow—a tiny intricate carving of the Chariot of Morgan—into the gaping wound in the body below him, bathing it in blood and fluids. When he lifted it out, he crumpled it in his hands to
a shapeless mass.
Owen and Sarah both heard the click and snap of a lock, and then the butchered body shifted upward slightly. They saw now that she had been laid across a metal manhole that was black with blood. The metal doorway jerked, straining upward, and a gnarled black tongue slithered in the opening, lapping at the blood.
“Too late,” Ahriman Saurin hissed.
Owen felt the sword move, twist of its own accord, and suddenly he was moving forward, the weapon gripped in both hands, keeping the sword low and to the left, bringing it up—
Ahriman jerked up the closest Hallow and shook it out. Owen caught a glimpse of fur, a stag’s head complete with antlers, in the instant before the sword struck it, sparks in the air. “Behold the Mantle of Arthur!” The Dark Man straightened and spun the cloak about his shoulders, settling the antlered hood onto his head. Saurin’s left hand shot out and caught the sword blade in an explosion of green white fire.
Owen tried to pull it back, but it was caught fast.
The hammering beneath the round metal cover was deafening, demanding.
“My subjects hunger,” Ahriman whispered. He tugged at the sword, and Owen felt it slide from his grasp. “The sword is the most powerful of all the keys. If I open its lock, I won’t need to use the others.” He tugged at the sword again, almost wrenching it from Owen’s hands. “You should be honored: The beasts will feast on you first.”
“No…” Owen tried to pull back.
The Thirteen Hallows Page 29