He walked on, through the endless row of tents, gleaming palely in the night, where his soldiers were snatching a few hours sleep before his orders sent them out to fight again. No one was abroad, save for a few sentries out on the perimeter, to back up the surveillance equipment, and he didn’t feel like walking that far. He felt mildly disappointed. He would have liked to walk among his men, spreading calm and assurance with a few well-chosen words, and the sheer strength of his personality. Fight on, because the Lord is with you. Take no prisoners; send the demons back to Hell where they came from. That sort of thing. A little touch of King Harry in the night.
But there was no one there to share the night with him. He was alone. Just as he always was, no matter how many people he surrounded himself with. He had followers beyond counting, any number of whom would have willingly laid down their life for him, but not a single friend he could talk to, as one man to another. He had power, but no one to show it off to. He shrugged, and headed back to his trailer. His life belonged to God, and he would walk the path that had been appointed for him. He would lead the Warriors to victory over the Devil’s spawn infesting Shadows Fall, and maybe then, when it was all over and evil had been vanquished, he would be allowed to approach the Forever Door and ask a few simple questions of his own.
Back at his office in his trailer, more reports had appeared in his absence, all but covering his desk. Royce sat down and leafed through them listlessly. He already knew what they were going to say. His people had spread death and destruction throughout Shadows Fall, but not enough to break the town’s spirit. His first wave had been stopped in its tracks, breaking against the inhuman power of the elves. He scowled. Either his sorcerer priests would give him the edge he needed to defeat the Faerie, or he and the rest of the Warriors might as well pack up and go home. He smiled briefly. The elves were so arrogant in their power, so sure in their tactics, but his priests would teach them a lesson they’d remember for what little remained of their lives. Unnatural creatures. He’d show them. He’d show them all.
Outside, the sorcerer priests sat still and empty, their minds elsewhere. Their power grew, gathering like stormclouds, and they sent it sweeping out over the town. Sleepers stirred in their beds as their dreams turned dark and foul. Children woke crying in the night, and would not be comforted. Dogs barked and cats howled and everyone with the slightest trace of magic in them looked nervously up at the sky, and knew not why. Only the elves did not react, because the sorcerer priests had hidden themselves from the denizens of Faerie. So when the priests finally fell on the elves like wolves on unsuspecting sheep, the elves had no warning at all. The priests’ magic came down like a hammer, and in that moment the priests imposed shape and order on the elves, trapping them in a single form, with all its frailties and vulnerabilities. They still had their advanced weaponry, but no longer could they wield it with impunity. From this moment on, the elves could be hurt. The elves could die. There was much panic and shouting among the elves, but the priests did not hear it. They were already planning what to do next. They had so much power, and a whole town to use it on…
The Warrior soldiers burst out of their positions and fell upon the town’s defenders again. Revitalized by a few hours’ rest, and their own fanatical faith, they surged through the narrow streets, their guns filling the night with fire and noise. The elves rose up to meet them, but there wasn’t enough room to use their energy weapons, and the fighting quickly deteriorated into hand-to-hand, and swords clashed with bayonets. The town’s defenders watched almost in shock as the first elves died, shrieking in horror as much as in pain, and then men and women poured out from their safe hiding places to support the elves. The Shining Folk had many friends and admirers in Shadows Fall. Blood flowed in the gutters, and the streets were soon blocked with struggling, shouting crowds, surging this way and that as first one side and then the other briefly gained the advantage.
The battle was so fierce, and pressed on so many fronts, that the defenders completely overlooked one small force of Warriors that bypassed the fighting, slipping quietly between battles, heading always for the centre of town. Royce led them himself, wearing only standard fatigues, with nothing to betray his exalted rank. He saw his men bleed and die, but did not turn aside to help. They were dying to buy him time, time to reach the town park, and the Sarcophagus of Time.
They reached it easily enough, and found the gates already open. A small force of soldiers snapped to attention and saluted Royce as he led his people into the park. He returned their salutes and raised an eyebrow at the officer in command. The officer grinned.
“We had a chance to get here first, Leader, so we thought we’d better take it, if only to make sure no unfriendly types got to the Sarcophagus before you did. Just as well we did; turns out the park becomes suddenly infested with dinosaurs once it gets dark. Big, nasty-looking brutes. Our main force is keeping them busy with mortar attacks and rocket launchers. They’re ugly, but by God they’re stupid. Easiest big game shoot I was ever on. We’ve had some trouble with Time’s automatons, but they disappeared a while back. You do what you have to, Leader; no one’s going to interrupt.”
“Thank you, my son,” said Royce, clapping him on the shoulder. “The Lord is pleased with you, and so am I. Who are those two?”
The officer looked across at the two young men standing sullenly to one side. They were handcuffed, and they’d both recently been on the wrong end of a bad beating.
“Just a couple of locals, Leader. After a little persuading they told us all about the dinosaurs, and how to get to the Sarcophagus safely. I thought I’d better hang on to them in case it turned out they knew anything else useful.”
“Very thoughtful of you, Lieutenant, but I don’t think we’ll be needing them any more. Dispose of them.”
The Lieutenant nodded briefly, and gestured to the soldiers guarding the two prisoners. Knives flashed briefly before sinking into flesh, and Derek and Clive Manderville fell to the ground and lay still as the breath went out of them. Blood pooled around their bodies.
Royce had eyes only for the Sarcophagus; the massive block of grey stone standing on a raised dais. It showed no signs of age or weathering, though it had stood in the park for centuries beyond counting. It looked solid, but it wasn’t. According to some reports, it was a single moment taken out of Time; the exact moment when Shadows Fall was created, frozen in material form to hide and protect it. And now it was all that stood between the Templars and the Galleries of Frost and Bone, Old Father Time, and the Forever Door itself. Royce turned to the single sorcerer priest he’d brought with him, calm and silent in his white robe.
“You’re still in touch with your fellow priests, aren’t you? Good, good. Open this stone for me. Open it now.”
The priest bowed to him respectfully, and opened himself to his brothers. The full force of their magic flowed into and through him to break open the Sarcophagus. The priest’s body burst into cold flames, and his flesh ran like wax down a candle as the magic that roared through him burned him up. A single crack appeared in the stone of the Sarcophagus, and in that moment Royce and his people disappeared, transported elsewhere. All that remained before the breached Sarcophagus were the bodies of two young gravediggers, and the burnt-out corpse of a dead priest.
—
Rhea Frazier slowed the car to a halt, and she and Leonard Ash stared at the crucified man in silence. They both knew him by sight, if not to talk to; Tim Hendry, one of Erikson’s Deputies. He’d been nailed to the wall with long metal spikes through his arms and ankles, and his eyes had been put out. Blood had poured down his cheeks and splashed on his chest. It wasn’t the first crucifixion Rhea and Ash had seen; the soldiers had left them all over town as signs to show where they’d been, like a dog marking its territory. But this was the first victim they’d known, and that somehow made it worse. More real. Rhea revved the engine up again, ready to move off, and Hendry lifted his bloodied head an inch.
“He’s a
live! He’s still alive!” Rhea shut off the engine, opened the door, and scrambled out of the car to stand before Hendry. Ash came round to join her. She looked at him pleadingly. “We’ve got to get him down, get him to a hospital…”
“It’s not going to be easy,” said Ash quietly. “Those spikes are going to be hard to move, and it’ll hurt him like crazy. It might actually be kinder to leave him there till we can find a doctor and the right equipment…”
“If we leave him, he’ll die!” snapped Rhea. “There’s a crowbar in the back of the car; use that.” Ash nodded, and went to look for it. Rhea stared up into Hendry’s bloody face. “Tim; can you hear me, Tim?”
There was no response. Ash came back with the crowbar, looked at Hendry almost dispassionately, then eased the end of the crowbar under Hendry’s left arm and applied a steady pressure. The arm jerked an inch away from the wall, sliding along the metal spike, and Hendry raised his head and screamed. Rhea stepped back involuntarily, as though driven back by the sound of so much pain. Ash applied more pressure to the crowbar, and the arm jerked a little further away from the wall. Hendry screamed again. It was such a raw, harsh sound it had to be hurting his throat, but then, Rhea thought, he probably doesn’t notice that compared to everything else he’s suffering. Ash eased the crowbar out from under Hendry’s arm, and looked at Rhea.
“This isn’t going to work,” he said flatly. “In his weakened state, this much pain and shock will kill him long before I can get all these spikes out.”
“But if we leave him, he’ll die anyway. Please, Leonard; can’t we at least save one? There must be something we can do.”
“Yes,” said Ash. “There is something.” He reached out with his empty hand and placed the palm flat against Hendry’s forehead. “Go in peace, Tim.”
Hendry let out his breath in a long sigh, and didn’t take it back in again. His muscles relaxed as much as the spikes would allow, and his chin dropped on to his chest. It took Rhea a moment to realize he was dead.
“It was the only kindness we could do for him,” said Ash. “To put a stop to his pain.”
Rhea looked at him expressionlessly. “You killed him. You touched him, and he died.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Rhea.” Ash looked around the deserted street. “We’d better get moving again. I don’t like standing around like this. It makes us more obvious, and we can’t afford to be noticed. Let’s go.”
They got back in the car, and Rhea drove off down the street. The car’s engine sounded very loud in the quiet. It had once been a residential area, but now there were ruins and burnt-out shells to every side. Most of the street lights had been smashed, but the street was full of shimmering moonlight. It was like driving along on the bottom of the sea.
They’d been driving for some time, turning this way and that to avoid road blocks. Ash could sense them, and any other concentrations of soldiers, long before he could see them, and that gave them an edge. Other people weren’t so lucky in avoiding the soldiers. Rhea and Ash had seen their bodies everywhere, hanging or crucified or just left to lie in the street with bloody holes in them. At first Rhea thought she was going to be sick, but there were so many of them she quickly grew numb. She couldn’t even think about them. It was as though her head was full of novocaine. Ash didn’t say anything, but he didn’t look away either. Presumably death didn’t have the power to disturb him that it once had. Rhea didn’t ask.
She wasn’t really sure where they were going. She’d started out with some idea of contacting Sheriff Erikson or the rest of the town Council, but she couldn’t get an answer from any of them on her car phone. She stopped to try public phones a few times, but it was no good. Most of the time it didn’t even ring through, and on the few times it did, no one ever answered. Which had to mean the Council were either dead, or arrested by the soldiers. So now she was heading for the centre of town, and the Sarcophagus in the park, hoping against hope that if she could just get to Old Father Time, he would put everything right again. If the town could ever be made whole again, after everything that had happened to it. Her mouth set into a firm line. Everything would be put right again. She had to believe that, or she’d go mad. She didn’t say it aloud, though. Partly because she didn’t want to hear Ash’s answer, but mostly because of a crazy feeling that to say it aloud might draw Fate’s attention. She drove on, steering the car this way and that to avoid the bodies in the road.
They’ll have to be picked up soon, she thought, surprisingly calmly. This many bodies will mean flies and rats and disease.
Things got worse the further into town they went. More death, more destruction, blood and bodies everywhere. It was as though everything Rhea had ever cared for had been ruined or defiled by the soldiers. Occasional streams of refugees passed by the car, heading for the supposed safety of the town’s limits. They didn’t know that Time had isolated the town, and Rhea didn’t have the heart to tell them. They carried their most precious belongings with them, like people from some Third World country caught up in the middle of a civil war. Rhea needed to see the refugees. Partly to reassure herself that there were still some people left alive in Shadows Fall, but also because they made her feel angry, and as long as she was angry, there wasn’t room in her to be afraid too. Ash didn’t seem afraid of anything, but then, he wouldn’t be. Rhea found herself smiling. It seemed there were some advantages to being dead.
“Why isn’t Time protecting us?” she said suddenly. “Things like this aren’t supposed to be possible here.”
“Maybe something’s happened to him,” said Ash. “Maybe he’s dead. Or been captured.”
Rhea shook her head. “All my life I’ve heard how powerful Time is, and how safe Shadows Fall is, compared to the rest of the world. Now we’ve a serial killer on the loose, the town is a war zone, and Time isn’t doing a thing to help us. I don’t know what to believe any more.”
“Believe in me,” said Ash. “I’ll never let you down.”
Rhea smiled at him, but didn’t answer. She saw the traffic light up ahead turn to red, and brought the car to a halt at the junction. There was no other traffic in any other direction. Rhea drove on without waiting for the light to change. She asked Ash to try the car phone again, but there was still no reply. They drove for a long while without saying anything, deeper and deeper into the nightmare, and then Ash suddenly told her to stop the car. She did so, and looked around her, but the street seemed deserted; Ash’s frown deepened into a scowl.
“There are soldiers up ahead. Just round that corner. I think they’ve caught someone. Drive on slowly.”
Rhea’s first impulse was to turn the car around and take a different route. It wasn’t as if there was anything they could do. She could smell smoke on the air, and not that far away someone was firing a gun. Nothing new in that, but she had a bad feeling about it. She crushed the thought ruthlessly. They had to try. If she just gave up, then the soldiers had won. She eased the car forward and round the next corner, and then hit the brakes. Half-way down the street, a group of soldiers had set fire to a house and were shooting the occupants as they ran out into the street to escape the flames. The soldiers were laughing and making wagers. A man staggered out of the front door with his clothes on fire. The flames leapt up as he hit the fresh air, and his hair caught alight too. He didn’t scream. One of the soldiers shot him in the leg, and then they watched the man scrabble helplessly on the ground, burning up, and they all laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Rhea turned to Ash.
“We’ve got to do something. Use your spook power to make them run away.”
“It doesn’t always work out that way,” said Ash. “I can’t guarantee what the results will be.”
“Try,” said Rhea. “I can’t just stand by and let this happen.”
“No,” said Ash. “Neither can I. Stay in the car. Whatever happens, stay in th
e car.”
He opened his door and got out, and then gestured for Rhea to lock the door behind him. She did, and he smiled at her briefly before running down the street towards the soldiers. One of them saw him coming, and alerted the others. They raised their guns, and yelled for him to stop. Ash raised his hands to show they were empty, but kept on going. One soldier fired a shot between his feet. Ash didn’t even flinch. He was almost upon them now. The burning figure on the ground had stopped moving, though the flames still leapt and danced. The soldier aimed his rifle at Ash, and he stopped and drew his death around him like a cloak.
The soldier paled and swallowed hard. The rifle trembled in his hands as though it had suddenly become very heavy. He lowered the gun, and fell back a step. The other soldiers fell back with him, panic rising among them, and then one of them raised his rifle in a sudden desperate movement, and shot Ash in the chest. The impact sent him staggering backwards. Rhea screamed. Either the bullet or the scream broke Ash’s spell, and all the soldiers opened fire on him. A row of bullets stitched across his chest, and burst out of his back. He kept staggering backwards, jerking this way and that as the bullets hit him, until finally he tripped and fell. The soldiers stopped shooting.
And Ash sat up. The soldiers didn’t move. Ash got slowly to his feet, and absent-mindedly brushed the dust from him. His shirt and jacket were riddled with bullet holes, the back almost completely torn away, but there was no sign of any blood. Ash was dead, and bullets couldn’t hurt him. He ran forward, impossibly quickly, and was among the shocked soldiers in a moment. He grabbed the nearest man, lifted him off the ground with one hand, and threw him a dozen feet down the street. The soldier hit hard, and lay still. Ash grabbed another soldier, and slammed him face first into the nearest wall. He let go and the soldier collapsed, clutching at his ruined face. Blood poured between his fingers. Another soldier stepped forward, and shot Ash between the eyes. His head whipped back, but no blood spilled, and there was no exit wound. Ash coughed once, and spat the flattened bullet out into his palm.
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