“I’m sorry Jo, I can’t say much. But it might all be about to become very public.”
The sentry’s face scrunched into a frown.
“Those rebels, I saw one of them up close. They weren’t right, their eyes and tongues were black. They’re not people, are they?”
Isaac had a flashback to the horrors he had witnessed in the jungle.
“No Jo, not quite. When they get here, take them out from range, don’t let them get close to you, understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good man.”
Isaac slapped Johannes on his sweaty shoulder and brushed past him into the building, squeezing past the evacuating UN staff along the way. He powered up the main stairs, his thighs burning from the weight of Arianna in his arms.
“Hey munchkin we’re nearly there, hang on.”
Arianna stirred in his arms. Her eyes flickered and Isaac noticed that they had filmed over with a shadowy layer of black.
“Isaac, I can’t fight it, the black sleep. Don’t let me get lost in it, you need to finish me if that happens.”
Isaac kissed her on the forehead.
“I told you I’d carry you upstairs at some point, didn’t I? Don’t spoil the moment.”
She smiled up at him then drifted out of consciousness again.
Isaac reached the top of the stairs and struggled down the corridor to a locked door marked RESEARCH DEPT DO NOT ENTER: SENSITIVE EQUIPMENT.
Isaac swiped his key card and the door clicked open. He burst inside and laid Arianna down on a sofa in the corner of the room. He frantically searched the work station for something, turning over boxes and files as he went.
Arianna? Arianna? Where the fuck do you keep your box of spooky tricks.?”
He ran back over to the sofa and shook her shoulders.
“Wake up! Arianna where is your occult med-kit? Where’s your box of potions, girl?”
Arianna stirred, her eyes flickered open for a few moments and she whispered.
“Cupboard on the left, little leather bag, little Gladstone bag…”
Isaac threw open the cupboard and grabbed the bag, snapping it open and fumbling through the contents for the little syringe he needed. Finally he found it, pulling the cap off with his teeth and rolling up Arianna’s sleeve.
He injected the contents into her vein and waited a few moments. Slowly her body seemed to relax and she settled into the sofa sedated. Isaac did not know the active ingredient in the syringe, hardly any of the Empire Team grunts understood the thaumaturgy experiments the TURTLES carried out, but he saw her pain ease and that was all that mattered to him.
I don’t care what kind of magic it is as long as it works on her. Slows it down.
He grabbed a laptop bag from the shelf and ran over to a table. The work surface was cluttered with all manner of occult paraphernalia. Isaac brushed it to the floor in a clatter and opened the laptop.
As he set up the system and waited for it to come online, Isaac began to hear gunfire outside the building. He heard the shouts of fighting and the strange glottal war cries of the Anansi’s Web paramilitaries. His fingers started to fumble with the keys and he had to take a deep breath.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast Marlowe.
Isaac heard the explosion downstairs just as the laptop home screen activated. The shouting got closer and he heard the screams of the handful of UN soldiers left downstairs.
They’re in the building.
Isaac turned to look at Arianna lying unconscious on the sofa.
She suddenly looked like the beautiful, gifted creature he had been captivated by these past two months. No fever, no face contorted in pain, just peace.
Isaac Marlowe stops playing the field and falls in love. I’ll never hear the end of this back home.
“I’m so sorry I got you into this mess, girl. I had one job to keep you protected, now look at the trouble we’re in. But I’m not done yet. Sleep tight.”
Isaac switched on the laptop camera, pressed record, and opened up the encrypted channel to the STG. With no IT support and the whole place in shambles, he’d have to send the recording himself. He began to talk;
“Message for Colonel Greystone, priority one. This is Corporal Isaac Marlowe, eight five two three one Delta six. Watch station Deep Country five-niner, Jakanna. Update to last message as of three days ago…Arianna and I have completed the recce to the interior to locate the source of the thaumaturgy surge. Colonel, I found it, we have a hit. I repeat we have a hit.
The Temple of Lilith is here.
We have been compromised and Corporal Levrey is injured. We are currently under attack with limited resources. You need to send everything we have here Colonel.”
Isaac heard automatic gunfire outside the room. He wanted to explain more but there was no time. He leaned in to press SEND.
Before Isaac could send the message, the door burst open and the UN soldier Johannes stood there leaning against the doorframe. His hand was clutching his belly, blood trickling between his fingers.
“Mr Marlowe, there’s so many, you need to get out!”
A thump then a pink mist burst up around Johannes as a bullet went right through his shoulder and into the door. He grunted then sank to his knees. Isaac rushed towards him and Johannes threw his carbine into the room.
“…take it…I can’t move-”
The top of Johannes’s head vanished as a volley of automatic fire hit it. Isaac grabbed the carbine and leapt back into the room. He felt the hot blood of the Afrikaner hit him in the face.
Isaac checked the magazine and then threw over the thick wooden table and took cover behind it. He used it to shield Arianna as best he could.
The world was a mess. People slaughtered each other over resources when in the dark an entire realm of supernatural rage was doing everything it could to wipe out all of humanity. Isaac and the Empire Teams had fought for years to keep that darkness at bay, but since the Bloodmist incident in Carnival they had been on a losing streak. The Unseelie were getting more powerful and bolder by the day. Things were crossing over or coming to prominence that had either never existed before or been dormant for so long the world thought them extinct. That was all nothing compared to the resurrection of Lilith. Every prophecy, prediction, and item of arcane literature pointed to the same thing;
If the Unseelie succeeded in bringing this entity back, it was all over for humanity.
Isaac looked around the room at the sleeping woman on the couch. Suddenly all those grand and worldly matters faded into insignificance. Right here, right now, life was simple.
Protect the woman he loved.
A lithe dark skinned figure appeared in the doorway. It uttered a bizarre rattling as its long black tongue flickered between white teeth. Isaac put two in its chest and one in its skull before it took a step. The room stank of cordite and the thick yellow blood that oozed from the man’s chest. Even as he fell another took his place.
The rebel whooped and fired wildly into the room. His jet black eyes scanned for Isaac but he had already changed position, taken cover behind a solid metal filing cabinet. The rebel paramilitary noticed Arianna and suddenly two shining black mandibles shot from the corners of his mouth and tasted the air. Isaac took the front of the rebel’s face off with a burst of fire and it staggered into the centre of the room.
The faceless creature stood there for a moment, its hollow skull a mess of sickly yellow gunk and twitching chitin. Then it crumpled and slumped over the edge of the upturned table.
Another rebel ran through the doorway and Isaac pulled the trigger. One round hit the soldier in the collarbone but then the working parts of Isaac’s carbine snapped back empty. He leapt up and smashed the creature in the chin sending it crashing backwards onto the floor and twitching like a beetle on its back.
Two more of the ink-eyed fanatics ran into the room, machetes drawn and black tongues rattling. Isaac threw the empty carbine at one of them and drew his Soulblade. In a fluid motion he dropped to
his knees and took the legs clean off one rebel. The creature slapped loudly down onto his back, thick yellow blood squirting across the room from both stumps like burst boils. The other slashed at Isaac and cut a deep gash across his shoulder. Isaac grimaced in pain but managed to parry the next slash. He kicked the rebel in the stomach sending him toppling over one of his fallen brethren. As the rebel was rising, Isaac split his skull in two.
Isaac’s blade was no ordinary jungle tool. The Soulblade was the personal defence weapon of every Empire Team member. It was kept impossibly sharp with thaumaturgy and etched with a myriad of sigils and wards that made it the bane of many an Unseelie beast.
Isaac felt a cold stab in his right thigh, and spun to see a machete dug at least in inch into his flesh. He swept his blade and removed the hand that carried it, the rebel staggering back with a hiss, its mandibles clicking out the corners of its mouth like small tusks. Isaac performed a devilishly fast series of strikes, severing limb and opening flesh like a surgeon. The rebel fell back and crashed through the window, his calf catching on a shard of glass and leaving him hanging upside down on the outside wall, his innards trailing down like Rapunzel’s hair. Isaac felt the warmth of blood run down his leg and spun to make sure Arianna was ok.
She was no longer on the sofa.
Arianna? Where the hell is she?
Isaac turned back and to his dismay three more rebels had entered the room, this time brandishing AK47 assault rifles, trained on his chest. Their shiny black eyes regarded him impassively.
After days in the jungle interior and the long fight out of it, Isaac’s strength was fading. He knew a Butch and Sundance scenario when he saw one.
Isaac took a deep breath and slowed down his heart. No point wasting adrenaline. He weighed up the soldiers that stood just out of arms reach and reckoned he could take the throat out of one of them before the other two pulled the trigger.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, Marlowe. I guess the rest of the team will have to pick this one up where I left off.
Isaac tensed for the final spring but suddenly something hit him in the back of the head and all he saw was bursts of coloured light.
He went down to his knees, his Soulblade falling from his hand.
How the hell...did one of them…get behind me?
Isaac felt strong wiry hands grip under his armpits and drag him back to hold him tight in a chair. As he shook his head free of pain, Isaac looked up and saw Arianna standing in front of him with something in her hand that looked like a snow globe. It had a smear of Isaac’s blood on it.
Her scrying crystal.
His eyes slowly rose to her face and saw that his Arianna was no longer there. Her eyes were as black as those of the Anansi’s Web rebels and she regarded him with the predatory detachment of a spider.
The Black Sleep has taken her.
“Arianna wake up. Don’t go under, don’t let it take you.”
Arianna’s face remained impassive but her lips trembled. A shaking voice escaped her lips and she seemed to struggle with the words.
“I’m sorry…Isaac…I want to fight…but I can’t…the voice…it’s all I can hear…there’s no room for me left…”
Isaac struggled but the Anansi rebels held him fast. One of them struck him across the face, sending a glut of blood from his lip to spatter on the floor.
“She’s a non-combatant. She’s a fucking lab geek for Christ’s sake. Just let her go.”
Isaac looked up at Arianna and almost felt his resolve break.
“Honey, whose voice? Whose voice it is you hear. Listen to mine. Let my voice in.”
A figure suddenly stood in the shadows of the doorway. It was short and very thin. In a dry creaking voice it spoke.
“The voice she is hearing, Corporal Marlowe, of the Special Threats group, is mine.”
At first Isaac thought the figure was a child, but the voice sounded like a very old man. His English was heavily accented.
Isaac had an inkling of who this was, and it didn’t fill him with hope for his future.
“And who might you be?”
The figure stepped forward into the room. Isaac saw that it was not a child at all but a wizened and decrepit pygmy man, his face as creased as a raisin. Tufts of white hair stuck up on his head and he was wrapped in what Isaac could only think of as ‘Ghandi robes’.
“The people here call me Uncle Good-Day.”
Isaac nodded in slow understanding. He felt the blood from his leg soaking into his boot. He winced through the pain.
“Is that because of your impeccable manners and your time as a children’s entertainer?
The shrivelled little being smiled and shrugged. He seemed almost benign.
“I’m afraid not.”
“It did seem unlikely when I said it.”
The being stepped closer and raised his sinewy arms wide. He grinned and Isaac saw that he had not a single tooth in his head. His eyes were a faded sparkling blue, in striking contrast to the blackness of his skin.
“It’s because I bring everyone…such a goooood day. Once you go to sleep, you will wake up and see, it’s always a goooood day here.”
Isaac spat blood onto the floor.
“The only good day is when we plug up every Thin Spot and lock you Unseelie pricks up back where you belong.”
Uncle Good-Day reached out and stroked Isaac’s chin. Isaac turned his head away but the little old man tightened his grip in a way he would not have thought possible. Isaac’s jaw was cranked round and Uncle Good-Day was an inch from his face.
“What you saw in the jungle should tell you that is not what is going to happen.”
Isaac felt like his jaw was in a vice.
Whatever the fuck that midget is, he lifts.
“You might have these people fooled that you’re some kind of revolutionary, but we both know what you really are, Unseelie. You bastards keep trying to hide in human skins but you never choose the right ones. You need to look up the word inconspicuous.”
Isaac could smell the stench off the creature’s skin now, a reek he was familiar with from the corpses of countless Unseelie beasts over the years. They just couldn’t hide the corruption. The wizened being drew in closer and hissed.
“Do you want to see what I really am, manchild?”
“Not really. I like this black Yoda thing you have going on.”
A long thin spike of black chitin emerged from the old man’s wrist. It was a vicious bard that dripped sickly yellow poison. Isaac tried to draw back but the two guards held his head still.
“Keep that voodoo shit away from me.”
Uncle Good-Day smiled and cocked his wrinkled head.
“Don’t you want to be with your…woman?”
Isaac’s eyes drifted to Arianna, who stood slackly in the corner of the room, her black eyes impassive. Uncle Good-Day nodded in encouragement.
“You will be together again soon, in a beautiful dark dream. You and all my little Spiders together. All walking in Anansi’s Web.”
Isaac felt the barb slowly prick the skin beneath his chin and force its way upwards into his mouth. He tried to scream, but his tongue was pinned and he could no longer hear his own voice in the blackness.
In the corner of the room, the message box on the laptop screen flashed on and off.
Encrypted message uploaded: SEND? SEND? SEND?
6
“How do you even begin to interrogate something that crazy?”
Usher and Greystone looked through the re-enforced round window into the holding cell. The room was stark white. A titanium chair sat in the centre. Strapped to this chair was Spring Heeled Jack. His face was a jester’s mask of insanity. Even through the glass they could hear his laughter and ranting. His body shook and spasmed against his bonds in way almost too fast for the human eye to see.
Usher shrugged.
“I don’t know Colonel. It didn’t seem to care about telling us that Lilith was in London, I’m not sure it even
fully understands where it is. Personally I’d like to just go in there and slot it.”
Greystone sighed onto the window, steaming up the glass.
“As would I, Major. There’s probably something in the old Grimoires, some binding spell that would compel it. But that’s out with my area of expertise.”
“Ariel would know.”
“Yes he probably would.”
Usher smiled.
God I miss the little weirdo.
Greystone pointed across the room at the work stations.
“I don’t doubt that our Lord Debruler might have a few occult incentives for old Punch in there.”
Greystone turned and looked over at their former occult attaché’s workstation. The rest of Empire One lounged about at their own desks, playing cards, reading reports, and cleaning sidearms. Ariel’s desk was conspicuously empty.
At an empty desk next to it stood Edward Debruler, former custodian of the Bones of Lilith and high ranking member of the secret society the Black Star. He was also, for the past few weeks, temporary occult attaché to Empire One. At that moment he had just spilled a cup of coffee all over the files of top secret documents that were arranged across the desk. As he bent down to pick up the cup he banged his head on the corner of the desk and sat there on the floor in a crouch clutching his face.
Usher shook his head.
“He saved our lives in Canada, Colonel, but I think he is best described as…inconsistent.”
“Debruler is doing his best, Usher. He has more knowledge than anyone I’ve ever met. He just struggles with some of the…military aspects of things.”
Usher looked back over at Debruler, who was now sat sullenly at his desk with one hand on his head. Then he took a bottle of wine from his bag and busied himself twisting a corkscrew into it.
“He’d kinda taken Ariel under his wing this last while, was teaching him to harness whatever latent thaumaturgy was in him. Which was apparently, considerable.”
A particularly mad peel of laughter echoed from the holding cell. The two men took one last look at the demented creature and then walked over to the kitchenette area. Usher poured some coffee from a percolator and offered one to his Colonel. Greystone growled into his cup.
The Last Line Series One Page 64