The messiah was returning.
She would be reborn and he had brought her sacred bones with him on his pilgrimage. Beneath London the Unseelie gathered around burning oil drums in abandoned catacombs and shared stories in their gravelly tongue.
In one deep cellar, sealed off beneath a Tudor public house, a small group of Otherkind gathered. Broken racks lined the walls, a few dusty bottles of ancient vintage still maturing. A man-sized hole in the brickwork on one side led on to deeper, darker tunnels, interconnected with other basements and sewers.
The group were sitting around the embers of a small fire. They had opened a bottle of hundred year old wine and passed it between them.
A midnight blue Kobold spread his arms wide and wiggled his thick, brown, tunnelling claws.
“Our beautiful Queen, stolen from us in ancient war, has returned to us. She will be reborn and made flesh anew. The surface will be ours!”
A wizened Shadowfey, her white face as folded and wrinkled as a brain, extended a long finger upwards towards the far surface. She had crossed over during the reign of Hadrian and had not ventured topside since the Romans had abandoned British shores.
“She will turn the Tamesis red and we will swim in their blood beneath the sweet moon.”
In the corner of the chamber stood a Wight, tall and emaciated. His Victorian finery was ragged and thick with dust. On top of his frock coat, in a misguided attempt to blend in to the few humans he ever saw beneath the city, he wore a London Underground worker’s Hi-Viz vest. It did little to distract attention from his bat-ears and blind white eyes.
“Are we not too few, too disparate to launch an attack on those above? My thaumaturgy has diminished over the long years. I kill and flay those I find in the dark, but they are stragglers, humanity’s abandoned. They have no fight in them.”
The Kobold flicked a filthy claw at him. His yellow eyes flashed with fervour.
“Have you not felt it? We are becoming stronger. You have cloaked your spirit in their withered flesh, perhaps you are no longer Unseelie?”
The Wight’s fingers began to smoke as he lost grip on his corporeal form.
“I belong here, troglodyte. This body lived the surface as a man when the streets stank of horse manure and black smoke. I hold his memories. I would take this city back and see them all stuck with nails. What do you know of London, other than the sound of footsteps above your head?”
The Shadowfey female extended a hand and drew a sharp fingernail down her own palm. The cut opened wide and a globule of blood the size of a tennis ball drifted out. It congealed into a perfect sphere and floated above her open hand. Her deep eyes peered in fascination at it. The light from the fire was caught deep within the ruby liquid and reflected the faces of the other Unseelie. They stared in wonder at the orb.
The Shadowfey let loose a girlish giggle, a bizarre sound from her crone face.
“I have not been able to conjure the blood in three hundred years. It is true. We are growing strong again. All of us. Stronger than we have been in an age. She feeds us. She nourishes us with her presence. Cornelius has brought us all salvation. The very proximity to her reliquary makes us anew.”
A figure stood in the shadows of the broken section of wall. It stepped forward into the firelight and nodded to the assembled Unseelie. Even with their preternatural senses they did not see him coming.
“Hmmmm, now that is the kind of positive outlook London has been missing for an age.”
Cornelius Fortune lit a long black cigarette that illuminated the shadows of his tombstone face. His eyes were bright with the fervour of the zealot. He was a shade in his dusty black priestly vestments.
The Unseelie bowed before him. The old Shadowfey crone spoke.
“Your eminence, your return is as nourishing as sipping from the Dead Pools of home.”
Cornelius adopted a theatrically elegant gesture and blew out a silvery stream of smoke.
“No no no mother-elf, I am naught but a herald, a town crier bringing the good news to our poor scattered brothers and sisters on our pilgrimage to the place of rebirth. There is no glory in these old bones of mine. I am a worm.”
The Kobold shook his leathery head.
“You underestimate yourself, necromancer. I have been servant to many of your kind over the years. They toy and torment the flesh into shapes that can move, but they are just puppets. You…you are an artist of the craft.”
Cornelius extended a hand to a crouched figure at his feet that had been concealed in shadow. As his cigarette illuminated it, the pitiful revenant cringed and gurgled in pain. It looked like a year old flayed corpse.
“Oh there’s always still time to make puppets, dear. One can serve his guests a banquet of haute cuisine, but sometimes it is good to remember how to bake simple bread. Isn’t that right my pet?”
The horrendous living-dead slave at Cornelius’ feet strained its neck and licked his hand with a sticky grey tongue, like a beaten but obedient dog. It had once been the local mechanic in Carnival, Canada. Now it had no memory of those days whatsoever.
The Kobold grinned, spread his claws and addressed the room. He pointed a finger at Cornelius.
“This, my brothers and sisters, is the one who sculpted the arch-ghoul Isaiah Argent with his own hands! I have never seen an Unseelie priest so subtle nor so wise. He alone has the power to resurrect our Queen.”
Cornelius waved a dismissive hand in a gesture of faux self-effacement.
“Child of stone, you flatter me more than I deserve. Had I the blood left in my flesh my cheeks would be rosy. Our guests will think I have given you coin to act as my sycophant.”
The crone leaned forward, her red eyes squinting past Cornelius into the tunnel.
“Your… guests?”
Cornelius gestured to the tall Wight in the corner.
“Brother, be a darling and conjure me a marshlight. I never mastered Wight-magic. Our guests are tripping over themselves down here with their little gelatinous human orbs, poor souls.”
The Wight removed his top hat and waved a hand across it, like a conjuror about to produce a rabbit. But instead of something small and furry popping out from inside, an amorphous mass of sickly light rose up.
It set a pearly glow about the catacomb and then drifted slowly over to Cornelius. Somewhere in the shifting ball of light an impish face leered and whispered.
Cornelius raised a hand and the Wisp was drawn to it, acting as a magical lantern in the depths. He leaned in and whispered something to it in the Unseelie tongue. It drifted over his shoulder and hung in the air, illuminating two humans. Both were dressed in thick overcoats and hats to protect them from the subterranean chill. Cornelius spoke over his shoulder.
“There you go Lord Bramley, this should prevent you from stubbing your aristocratic toes.”
Lord Bramley stood shivering and impatient in the tunnel. For all his ease negotiating London high society, he too had been wearing a mask for years. He was more than just a survivor, selling out his species to the darker powers. For the past forty years, Lord Alfred Bramley had been a loyal disciple within the Unseelie Cult, the secret society of worshippers that had facilitated the dark powers for centuries.
This was where he belonged, alongside the very necromancer that would usher their beautiful goddess back into the world. He was accustomed to feeling like the most powerful, sophisticated man in every room he walked into, and Bramley felt excitement at now being around creatures infinitely more powerful than himself.
He watched the marshlight float in front of him, the ugly little face inside it regarding him with disdain. It bobbed off a little way down the tunnel, beckoning them with pulsating bursts of colour.
Beside Lord Bramley, his co-conspirator Bellingham glanced nervously after the luminous little snare.
“Lord Bramley, is that a Wisp?”
Bramley nodded in wide eyed zeal.
“Exactly right Bellingham.”
“And what are w
e expected to do?”
The necromancer Cornelius took a drag of his cigarette and grinned.
“What everyone is expected to do with marshlights, Mr Bellingham. You are expected to follow it.”
Bellingham‘s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his thin neck.
“But don’t such things traditionally lead men to certain doom?”
Cornelius waved a casual hand.
“Come now Mr Bellingham, doom merely means destiny. So yes, it will most certainly lead you there.”
Lord Bramley seemed like a man suddenly twenty years younger than his seventy years, his face awash with childish glee.
“It will lead us to our Queen, Bellingham. You are about to be privy to a glorious birth.”
Cornelius nodded to the motley group of Unseelie gathered around the fire.
“We will take our leave of you now my good brothers and sisters. I must show our human guests the shrine, before our queen awakens from it.”
The stumpy kobold bowed low and graciously.
“Your eminence, we humbly thank you once again for bringing our Queen back to us. We are honoured to be part of this noble mission. We are here at your disposal.”
Cornelius grinned and bowed.
“Oh fear not, you shall all have much work to do before the end.”
Cornelius led the human worshippers on a long a twisting journey through a myriad of tunnels and catacombs, past interconnected cellars and abandoned underground stations. As they descended, the heat became stifling and Bramley and Bellingham had to remove their overcoats.
They passed old cellars and vaults along the way, walls knocked through to link them to the wider network. Lord Bramley spied Unseelie lurking in some of them, peering out at them with thinly veiled contempt.
Bramley was beginning to feel an unfamiliar sensation in his stomach, an insistent tickling accompanied by prickling grey hairs upon his forearms.
Was it excitement, or was it fear?
A thick mustardy fog was beginning to gather in the tunnels as they progressed. Without the bewitched marshlight to follow, which turned and scowled its insubstantial face at them regularly, they would have been hopelessly lost and confused.
Next to Lord Bramley, Bellingham was growing more nervous with each step. Bramley noticed a cold sweat on his forehead and his eyes were darting about into each shadowy corner as they walked.
Bramley noticed that Cornelius Fortune was eyeing up Bellingham as they walked, glancing askance at him with a flickering grin on his withered face. Bellingham seemed not to have noticed, but Bramley could not discern in the dim light whether it was a look of lust or hunger (did Unseelie know the difference?)
Bramley smiled too. Bellingham had always been insistent in their conversation that his veil had been lifted and he was comfortable being involved in their grand endeavour. Bramley always thought he sounded like the one virgin in a group of teenagers, boasting about his sexual exploits that had happened during the summer holidays with a girl none of them knew. He had signed up for this venture because he wanted to be in the inner circle, but Bramley knew that he didn’t truly belong. Didn’t have the right breeding.
He did, however, have a destiny, Bramley was aware of that even if Bellingham wasn’t. What was it Cornelius had called it? His doom.
The mustard mist grew thicker and the passages deeper and hotter, until finally they emerged into what looked like a much older structure. Bramley had little idea now how far below London they were but he was acutely aware of the pressure of millions of tonnes of rock above their heads. The first pangs of claustrophobia hit him. He focussed on his breathing and took in his surroundings.
Bellingham spoke in a cracking voice.
“What is this place?”
It appeared that they were in some form of partly excavated temple. From the eerie light from both the Wisp and the luminous mist, he could see broken Corinthian columns embedded into the earthen walls. A few headless Roman statues were propped up in alcoves. In the centre of the room were structures that clearly pre-dated the Roman period. Prehistoric standing stones as tall as a man, rough-hewn and flinty, were arranged in a loose circle. The Romans had always been experts at assimilating local religious customs and sacred sights. Romanizing the conquered people’s deities was an effective way to bring them into the fold and allow people to preserve their customs. Bramley guessed that in ancient times the Unseelie cult must have been an extremely secret society, even in those days of pagan slaughter.
Bramley smiled to himself, all fear forgotten. Only religious fervour and joy remained. They had survived through the centuries, shadowy disciples quietly working away in the background, waiting for this day to come.
“It’s a very, very early temple to the Unseelie. Our religion is as old as the druids, Bellingham. I didn’t know this place existed, although I have read the old manuscripts hinting at it.”
Bellingham was almost hyperventilating.
“Can you feel that Lord Bramley? In the air? It’s like this mist is…tangible. Like there is something through it that is causing my hair to stand on end. It’s like the static in the air before a thunderstorm. And the stench! My God.”
Bellingham had covered his mouth with his sleeve but was clearly on the verge of vomiting.
Bramley had to admit the odour was overwhelming. It smelled like a room full of people dying of plague, that stench of unhealthy fever and impending death. To Lord Bramley it was the sweet smell of honey, because it meant that his Goddess was here.
“That, Bellingham, is the smell of Dark Thaumaturgy. It means my Queen, and yours too, is right here. Am I right, Cornelius?”
Cornelius Fortune stood before the standing stones. He slowly turned his head and nodded. Bramley could instantly see that the necromancer had changed. The carefree artist of dying flesh was gone and in his place stood a sombre priest, humbled in the presence of his deity.
“You are in the presence of the most beautiful and gracious monarch in this world or the other. She can work so many wonders that it puts my feeble talents to shame. She has so much to show us. Once I clothe her in meat and fill her with blood.”
Cornelius waved his hand and the yellow mist dropped away, revealing an altar in the centre of the standing stones. Resting upon was a stone sarcophagus. It seemed to pulse with threat.
The Bones of Lilith.
Lord Bramley dropped to his knee, his old bones creaking. Tears flowed down his dry cheeks.
“For forty years I have dreamed of this moment. The time of redressing the balance.”
Cornelius placed an arthritic hand on Bramley’s shoulder.
“It will not go unnoticed or unrewarded, Bramley. Queen Lilith can bestow a myriad of dark gifts on those loyal to her.”
Bellingham had backed off to the chamber entrance. He was unaware he had done this but some survival instinct had kicked in and told him to step away from danger. When he spoke his voice was thin.
“She…she will be resurrected here? In London?”
Cornelius regarded him with eyes like chips of dirty ice.
“Yes. Can you not feel her power building? She is almost ready to renew her flesh and open her eyes.”
Bellingham swallowed.
Those soldiers of Greystone’s will be hunting her.
“She is quite safe and protected here.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“She is shielded by a thaumaturgy so old and strong that even the King of the Dark could not penetrate it. It is send like a beacon from her temple and birthplace to surround her like a pupae. Waiting for her to be reborn.
“Where is it?”
“Deep in the oldest jungle.”
Bellingham finally understood.
“Jakanna? That’s why we are working with the rebels there.”
Cornelius nodded, but was already moving over to a mist enshrouded alcove.
Bramley slowly got up of one knee, wincing as he stood.
“That is why I h
ave been so involved in the crisis there. The rebellion, the epidemic, the international policy of non-involvement. All of this has taken a great deal of clandestine negotiation on my part. I have moved where the Unseelie cannot, amongst humanity and in daylight, to ensure that these last days go smoothly.”
Bramley’s brow knitted in concern.
Cornelius Fortune finally turned around with a sweep of his torn old coat. His sunken old face was rosy with bitterness. White spittle flecked the corners of his mouth.
“Those war-mongers from the Special Threats Group hunt her. That maudlin old warhorse Usher and his band of misfits with their guns and charmed bullets of steel. There is a weapon older than stone that can harm her sweet new flesh and does what little else can do, harm her bones! All those cruel, violent creatures would take her essence and snuff it out forever if they could. I have heard rumour of it being found here, here in London!”
Bellingham could see the love and hurt in Cornelius’ eyes. He worshipped and adored his dead goddess with all his dry old heart. It was unthinkable to the necromancer that anyone would wish to stop her destroying the world and killing or enslaving everyone in it. Bellingham realized that the necromancer Cornelius Fortune was the most dangerous kind of villain in any world, the one who truly believes that his cause is righteous.
Lord Bramley grinned.
“There was only one man that worked under Greystone learned enough to know about that knife, let alone find it. I already engineered the incident at Marksley Willows well in advance. Made sure he was sent there with minimal resources. He’s out of the picture. Gone.”
Cornelius broke into a sly smile.
“Ah yes the little apprentice wizard Speedman. That idiot Debruler thought he’d found a protégé.”
Bellingham swallowed.
“What about Usher and his team?”
Bramley waved a hand. “I’ve tied them in knots. Shut most of their operations down, removed resources. They’re a lame duck.”
Bellingham chipped in.
The Last Line Series One Page 72