by Greg James
He looked into the eyes of the elder and saw what was there.
The thought waiting for him to see true, and to understand.
He drew the knife which he had secreted in his boot in the bed chamber so long ago, before the feasting began, before the night was lost, and thrust it upwards, knowing what would come next. The point of the knife cut through flesh, scraped over bone and punctured the elder Khale’s heart.
Light dimmed in old eyes, and the curse of yellow flickered away forever.
I remembered, he thought, through all the centuries to come, I remembered one thought from this day.
Lower your guard. Let the blade take you.
He caught the elder Khale as he slumped forward, taking the rest of the knife’s blade into his chest.
“Is it over? Is this how it ends?”
“No,” said the elder, his lips rimned with blood. “This is how it begins.”
Then, he died.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Khale came upon the Crone and her kin in their forest glade; where the night and all its nightmares had begun.
They turned to face him as one, disbelieving.
“How can you have found us without our knowing it? How can you have undone the binding enchantment we placed upon you?”
“Because I have changed greatly since last we met,” came the grim reply.
Khale stepped out from the shadows; they beheld him and they were afraid.
They saw the blood staining his face, beard, and chest, and the wild madness raging deep in his yellow eyes.
“I have eaten my own heart,” he said, “I have partaken of my own flesh and blood from a time yet to come, and I command a strength that should not have been mine for a century or more. The wheel of my life has turned a hundred-thousand-thousand times, Crone, and you thought to change that? I have seen so many come to dust, and I know there is nothing after, but the dust.”
He smiled at them, and it was a livid smear of insanity.
“Come to me,” he said, “come to me, and be free.”
“Sisters,” the Crone whispered, wet-eyed, terrified, “we have erred greatly.”
“You have indeed,” Khale said as he strode towards them. “But fear not, I bring thee a gift.”
“A gift?”
“You bade me spare a life. I did not. I could not. And you knew this aforetime, I think. This night was a trap for me that you sought to spring. So, I bring you each a death in return for this.”
“Flee!” cried the Crone, “Flee!”
They fled before him, but there was no place in the forest where Khale could not find them. And when he did, he bestowed upon them his gift. Its name was death, and it was a long time coming for the Crone and her kin.
*
From the forest, and from the castle, Khale the Wanderer took his leave.
The night’s storm raged on outside, painting the Gods’ wrath across the heavens above and the earth below. Barneth’s lands would be carved up by his neighbours, as Alosse’s had been before him. Life hereabouts would change as much as it stayed the same.
Suddenly, the storm’s violent temper ceased, and a light was cast along his path. Khale’s upturned eyes beheld the full moon shining down through the dense clouds. Its light was wild and gleaming, illuminating the castle and its attendant shadows.
As he watched, the vaulted windows of the castle returned the moon’s light. No, that was not it; they were shining from within, but with the same radiance. He watched as mortal shadows were cast upon the glass from inside, moving as slowly and deliberately as the dead. A sound, like many voices singing, came from the direction of the castle—a funeral dirge that rose quickly into a wordless shriek as fierce as the light of the moon. An answering scream seemed to come from the earth beneath Khale’s feet. Then, the lights went out, the clouds covered the moon once more, and all was silent.
Castle Barneth was dead. Empty. A shadow among shadows, nothing more. War was coming, he could feel it, and the heat of battle was where he belonged.
Khale the Wanderer began the long walk south.
Epilogue
Back through time, before the darkness came and before the white fire burned the world from horizon to horizon, a young woman stepped out of the overheated catacombs that made up the London Underground.
She stood outside the entrance of Leicester Square tube station and breathed in car fumes and the warmth of summer. The sky above was as clear and blue as her eyes. She brushed a few errant strands of blonde hair out of those eyes and began to walk through the crowds that seethed along the pavement and over the zebra crossings.
The air was thick with the shouts of families and friends, as well as with the rumbling of bus engines and the high-toned electronic beeping of pedestrian crossings.
A fly flew close to her, and she swatted it away, for a moment feeling as if she were somewhere else—a desert of ashes, alien ruins, and a giant dragon-fly with a human mouth in its tail.
Dumbass, she thought to herself, as her head cleared and the strange vision faded.
She wasn’t sure why she was here.
This was her first visit to London. She’d wanted to come here for a long time. But why come to this street, the one she was turning into, with its shadows and its dingy, little bookshops?
This isn’t where I want to be.
There was a friend she was meant to be meeting. He was a writer. He’d said he had a story to tell her. She couldn’t wait to hear it.
... a story of the future and a man who could not die ...
But the journey through the city kept getting confused in her head. The nearer she tried to get, the further away she seemed to end up. She looked at the directions on her smartphone and knew that she was going the wrong way, again.
But another part of her said that this was the way.
This was where she needed to be.
So, she kept on walking until she came to the door of a particularly grimy-looking bookshop. The glass was either frosted or incredibly filthy; she wasn’t sure which. Reaching out, she pushed at the door, and it swung inwards, smooth and silent.
A minute bell rang somewhere deep inside.
She stepped across the threshold and breathed in the musty odour of old books. There were piles upon piles of them, seeming to grow from the ground like twisted trees. The leather bindings were all cracked and faded. Nothing here looked like it had been published less than a hundred years ago. The rear of the store was even more dank, dusty and half-lost in its own shadows.
As she made her way through the labyrinth of tomes, she picked up one of the volumes crowning a particular pile. She blew the dust from the mould-mottled cover and opened it. 5p had been sketched on the flyleaf as a price.
“Elder lore at little cost,” she whispered to herself, “who’d’ve thought?”
She noticed a shadow separate itself from the rest and move towards her. It resolved from the gloom into the shape of a man—and not the kind of man she would have expected to find in a place like this. He should have been stunted and hunched with a skin condition, or, perhaps, a balding willowy creature clad in frayed tweed.
Instead he towered over her. His body was broad and thickly muscled under his check-shirt. Rather than corduroy trousers and scuffed patent leather shoes, he wore stained jeans that’d seen better days and steel-capped biker boots. His hair and beard formed a black and grey mane that hung in thick tangles about his shoulders. His face was fascinatingly ugly, with a broad, wrinkled brow and scars marking his cheeks and nose. Aviator shades obscured his eyes, making him appear even stranger in the dim environs of the bookshop. This man should have been sitting at a bar surrounded by biker-chicks shooting the breeze, not skulking about in the backrooms of a quaint, rundown bookshop in London.
“Can I help you?” he rumbled.
She opened her mouth … closed it … opened it again. “I don’t ... I don’t know.”
His brow creased. “Really? Most people know what they�
�ve come in here for.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m something of a specialist,” he said, “I deal in the outré and the esoteric, not your run-of-the-mill crap.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, sorry, I must’ve gotten the wrong place.”
“Looks like it,” he said.
She looked around, noting how some of the shadows seemed to move of their own accord. This place was weird and this guy was creepy.
Why the hell did I come in here?
“If you’re not looking to buy, could you be looking to leave? I might not look it, but I am a busy man.”
“Okay, sure,” she nodded.
She turned away from him – and she saw something.
A vision of him with her, in another place, another time. Him inside her. Blood on her lips. Death in the night. So much death. Her gone, lost. Him alone, more lost than she was.
Lost in the night.
She turned back, stepped forward, and reached out to him. Before he could draw away, her fingers touched the ridged scars of his cheeks, and then the polished arm of his shades.
He grabbed at her hand. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She took them off before he could stop her. The man recoiled as if struck. In the dark of the store, his eyes glowed, disease-bright.
“Get out,” he spat, “or this will be the last hour of your life.”
She didn’t leave him.
“I remember now,” she said, “I bring thee a gift. I have something for you.”
“What could you have for me?”
“Nothing much,” she said.
She stepped out of her shoes, crouched, picked them up, and then set them down atop a nearby stack of crumbling books. The shoes were her favourite pair, and they were as red as blood.
“Remember these words, Khale, though you will forget me. Say unto them, I bring thee a gift. That is all I ask. Blood for blood.”
With those words, she turned away. Barefoot, she left the store.
A memory of the future for a man who could not die.
End of Book Two
Book Three of Khale the Wanderer
Hordes of Chaos is available here
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Lost is the Night. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a moment, I would also greatly appreciate it if you left a review on the site where you purchased this ebook. No matter how big or small it is, every review counts and matters to a writer because without you, the readers, we are nothing.
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Find out more about Greg James at his Website, Twitter and Facebook.
Titles available by Greg James
Khale the Wanderer – Grimdark Fantasy
Under A Colder Sun
Lost is the Night
Hordes of Chaos
The Age of the Flame Trilogy – YA Fantasy
The Sword of Sighs
The Sceptre of Storms
The Stone of Sorrows
The Chronicles of Willow Grey – YA Fantasy
The Door of Dreams
Voyage of the Pale Ship
All Things True
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for their help, support and contributions;
Lora Kaleva – for listening patiently, offering criticism when needed and generally putting up with me.
Henry & Natalie Kaleva – for their ongoing encouragement and support.
Mark Kelly – for creating yet another awesome cover.
Karin Cox – my very lovely editor and all around sound lady.
Also, Ed M. McNally, Heather Adkins, Cheryl Bradshaw, Graeme Reynolds, Matt Shaw, Michael Bray, Willie Meikle, Craig Saunders, Ian Woodhead, Jim Mcleod, Janet Fix, Ann Giardina Magee, Dianne Hunt, Libby Cummings, Kiley Owens & Misty Jo Hughes.
Not forgetting the guys and girls in the Grimdark Fiction Readers group on Facebook – you have been a source of great support and encouragement.
Finally, to all of my friends, fellow authors and fans that I have not mentioned above – thank you for your support on the journey so far.
Stay grim, stay dark, stay true!
About the Author
Greg James is a critically-acclaimed and best-selling self-published author. He was born in Essex and grew up along the south-east coast of England. He studied literature and media at university and has taught English as a foreign language in the Far East. He has written the acclaimed Vetala Cycle series and the best-selling Age of the Flame trilogy. He lives in London where he can be found writing into the small hours of the morning during the week, and sleeping in on Saturdays.
Table of Contents
Lost is the Night
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author