by Steve Feasey
The black-skinned creature with the rows of deadly looking teeth began to rise up out of its chair behind the desk in the corner and move towards her.
Philippa felt her knees give, and she shot out a hand, grabbing at a pole on the wall to stop herself from falling. She blinked and the world flipped back. The walls were once again a boring shade of magnolia and the punchbag was nothing more than a sand-filled leather cylinder.
‘Are you all right?’ Raul said, halfway across the room now.
Everything that she had seen, she had seen in a fraction of a second. But she knew that that had been the reality of where she was right now, and that the pictures and smells and sounds that were being relayed to her brain now were false.
She turned her back on the demon and ran.
24
Some part of Philippa’s brain – she guessed it must be the part that had been irrevocably changed by the dark magic left behind when the Necrotroph had departed her body – was unable to sustain the Ashnon’s carefully constructed illusory edifice that she was supposed to be experiencing. It was similar to the time when she had woken up with Lucien sitting next to her in the hospital for the first time: she had simply known that he was a vampire. And now that she’d seen a glimmer of what was really behind the New York facade her brain was unable, or unwilling, to maintain the illusion.
The hotel corridor flickered in and out of reality and unreality as she ran headlong down it. Most of the time it appeared as the long, straight corridor of the Waldorf Astoria, but occasionally – as if some part of Philippa’s brain were toggling a light switch, alternating between what she was supposed to see and what was really there – it would transform into a terrible dark tunnel. Loud sobs escaped her as she plunged forward, not knowing, or caring where she was going. She glanced behind her, checking that she was not being pursued, and took some small solace from the fact that the corridor was empty.
For now, she thought.
She knew that she was in danger of coming unravelled; of losing her mind completely if she could not find a way to stop the hellish visions. But they seemed to be coming with more regularity now, and she instinctively knew that this was as a result of the panic that swelled, unchecked, inside her. The small part of Necrotroph that had been left inside her was causing the Ashnon’s magic to malfunction, and she instinctively knew that the more afraid she became, the more this would happen. She couldn’t stay here any longer.
She’d fled the gym and turned left outside, running headlong down the hotel corridor with its tasteful wall lights and plush carpeting. She didn’t know how she’d managed not to scream in the gym – how she’d stoppered up the horror that had consumed her. She wanted to scream now – to run and scream and never stop.
The toe of her training shoe caught on the carpet and she stumbled forward, her arms flying out ahead of her to break her fall, but she maintained her balance. The risk of the fall made her slow down, and she finally came to a halt, looked about her and sucked in great gulps of air to feed her burning lungs. She was disorientated and couldn’t remember where the elevators were. She shook her head, blinking away the tears that were blurring her vision. Now that she had stopped running the pure white panic crept in again, forcing itself upon her .
She was sweating, her skin beginning to chill now that she’d stopped, and her legs, already aching from her earlier exertions, were cramping up.
She blinked and the wallpapered corridor was gone. A black tunnel of cold stone stretched out before her, disappearing into the distance. To both sides, at regular intervals, the tunnel branched off into sub-arteries of pure blackness, and it seemed to her that something moved about in that darkness, something that was aware of her. She gave in to the panic and screamed.
The world inverted again, and the hotel corridor was back.
She stood looking about her, slowly unclenching her hands, which she’d scrunched up into tight balls of flesh and bone.
Please stop this from happening, she begged silently. Please, please stop all of this.
She slowly and deliberately closed her eyes, screwing them shut so that they creased at the sides and a deep frown formed on her brow. She quickly opened them, her pupils dancing from left to right as she took in her surroundings. Nothing.
‘You need to contact Lucien,’ she said aloud to herself. She was way beyond the point of caring that someone might catch her talking to herself. ‘You need to get to your room and use that emergency number that Alexa gave you and ask him what you should so. He’ll know. Lucien will know what to do.’
She swallowed, the action sounding loud in her ears. She nodded her head, confident in the course of action that she must take. She took another deep breath and started off down the corridor at a jog.
She slowed as she approached the elevators. There were six dull metallic lift doors, identical triplets that eyed each other from opposing walls. She jabbed at the button to call a lift, and stood back, trying to calm her breathing and keep herself together.
The low chime announced the elevator’s arrival, and she looked up to see which of the cars it was. Stepping forward to the doors as they slid open, she stopped. The elevator was occupied. An old lady looked out at her, and nodded her head in acknowledgement. Lift music drifted out into the foyer, the bland instrumental music intended to calm seeming at complete odds with the fear that gnawed through every part of her. The old woman placed her finger on the button that held the doors open.
‘Are you going up?’ the pensioner asked, smiling pleasantly back at the girl.
Philippa stood gawping at the figure. She had no idea what the real creature inside the lift looked like, but she had no wish to get in and then blink ‘one of those blinks’ and find out.
She shook her head, her lips clamped together as she concentrated on keeping her eyelids apart; forcing them wide open and ignoring the stinging sensation that had already started up at the edges of her eyeballs.
‘Suit yourself,’ the old lady said and pressed another button, causing the lift doors to slide shut.
Philippa glanced around her. She didn’t want to summon another lift for fear that there would be more creatures inside.
She stopped then, her body stiff and unmoving. She didn’t have her room key. She slowly moved her hands up and patted at her tracksuit jacket pocket that wasn’t there: she’d left it hanging somewhere in the torture chamber that she had been using as a gym. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, go back there to get it. Her mind raced as she worked out what she must do. She’d have to go down to the main lobby to get a replacement key, and that meant talking to the receptionist, and that meant not blinking in case the blink turned out to be a blink.
She shook her head, knowing that there was no alternative.
‘Stairs, Philippa,’ she said aloud to herself in a voice that she hardly recognized. ‘Nobody takes the stairs, so you won’t bump into anyone.’ There was a small door to one side of the lifts with a green sign above it indicating that it was to be used in case of a fire. She headed towards it, pushing against its weight and stepping through into a sickly lit stairwell that ran up and down through the heart of the tower.
‘You can do this. Go down there, get a key, get back up to your room, and call Lucien.’
She hesitated, her heart thumping in her chest.
‘C’mon, Philippa. You can do this.’
She grabbed the handrail and let it slide through her hand as she descended, turning her body to one side and taking the stairs three at a time, not caring if she turned over on her ankle. The gym was on the fifth floor, so it wouldn’t be any great hardship to get down to the lobby. Getting back up to her room on the eighteenth floor was not going to be a barrel of laughs though, but it was that or take one of those lifts.
A blink transformed the staircase. She was on a stone spiral of steps that wound down through a shaft that appeared to have been hewn out of the black glassy rock face all around her. The water dripping from a roof somewhere high overhead
made loud plinks as it landed, the sound amplified and echoing around the passage. She glanced at her hand on the rail and instinctively snatched it away. The scales that were carved on the surface felt, for a horrible second, all too real, and she was loath to reach out and touch it again.
‘You can do this, Philippa,’ she repeated the now familiar mantra.
She took a breath and, taking hold of the rail once more, began to descend.
‘Can I help you, madam?’
The man standing behind the reception desk beamed at her, his head angled slightly to one side. He looked immaculate in his uniform, the light from the ornate lamps that lined the long wooden reception surface reflecting back from the gold buttons of his jacket.
‘I … I’ve lost my key,’ Philippa said.
‘That shouldn’t be a problem … Miss?’
‘Tipsbury, Philippa Tipsbury. I’m on the eighteenth floor in room –’ she realized that she had no idea what room number she was in. ‘I’m afraid that I can’t remember the number.’
The receptionist stared at her. He had a kind looking face that was now lined with concern. ‘Is everything all right, madam?’
She knew what she must look like; standing there drenched in sweat, staring back at him with her eyes held open impossibly wide. An itching sensation began at the corner of her right eye. She tried to ignore it, repeating her new-found mantra over and over in her head, but the itch wasn’t listening to anything she had to say – it had set up residence now, and wasn’t moving until it got the attention it felt it deserved. It got worse and was now a burning sting that made her clamp her jaws together in an effort not to give in to its demands.
‘Madam?’
‘I’m fine, thank you. I’d just like my key.’ She shifted from one foot to the other, tapping her hands against her thighs in tight, fidgety rhythms. ‘I’m in a hurry,’ she added.
‘Of course, madam. I’ll just find it for you.’
He turned away from her and tapped the keys of a keyboard to his right.
She blinked. It was impossible for her not to. She sucked in a great breath as she did so, her heart slamming into her chest. But the reception stayed as a reception. She turned around and looked at the foyer, blinking quickly to irrigate her eyes, unable to stop now that she had started. With each blink she steeled herself, expecting the worst. But it didn’t come. The huge, ornate brass clock continued to dominate the lobby space, faces of long-dead American presidents peering back at her from around its base. The old men sitting in the leather seats reading their papers to her left were just men, and the world on the other side of the revolving doors appeared to be New York on a rather wet and dreary day.
She was about to turn back to the receptionist when she saw him. He was standing on the other side of the revolving doors, looking in at her, and as she saw him he smiled, raising his hand in a gesture that was all too familiar to her.
After everything that had already happened that morning, it was almost too much for Philippa. Her knees gave a little, and she staggered for a second, struggling to stay upright as she felt the world slip away beneath her. She pulled in a great, shuddering breath, and the oxygen went some way towards providing her with some much-needed equilibrium. She took a step towards the doors.
Her father mirrored her action, approaching the portal that separated the inside from the outside, a look of elation still on his face. He took another step and then frowned, turning his head quickly as if hearing something from behind him. As he turned, she caught the look of panic on his face, and this was enough to send a shiver of ice running down Philippa’s spine. She had never seen that look on her father’s face before. Something had scared him terribly. He looked back towards her, torn between her and whatever it was that threatened him from behind.
Philippa broke into a run, the rubber soles of her shoes making loud chirping noises as she sprinted towards the doors. She had to get to him. She had to get him inside and away from whatever it was that was endangering him.
She was almost there, her long legs gobbling up the ground in front of her. The polished brass and tinted glass of the huge revolving doors loomed in front of her, and she could still make out the figure of her father through the glass. All sense and reason had been erased from her mind. Some part of her desperately tried in vain to remind her that her father was dead, but she blocked out that unwelcome voice, stifling it and denying it. Because he was here, in this world that was made to look like New York – he was somehow here, and she had to get to him.
The receptionist shouted at her from behind. His voice sounded harsh and panicked, completely at odds with the smooth and polished demeanour that he had exhibited only moments before. He must have jumped over the reception desk to pursue her, because she could hear his footsteps gaining on her. She was at the doors now, her pursuer no more than three or four strides from catching her. She urged her aching legs forward in one last effort, stretching out her arms, palms turned up to hit the brass bars of the merry-go-round that led to the world outside the hotel. The doors gave way with surprising ease, swinging about their central column and issuing a weird hissing noise.
And then she was out.
She’d fallen; stumbling as the door behind her hit her in the back and sent her sprawling into the blackness where she collapsed, hitting her head painfully on the floor. Slowly raising herself up on to her hands and knees, she looked down at the cold, black rock beneath her. The hard, rough surface had grated the skin from her palms, and a hot, stinging burn had already started up. The rock seemed to radiate a black energy that made her feel desperately scared, and she blinked, pressing her eyelids together before letting them spring open, hoping to turn the black rock into the grey, regular paving slabs she’d spied through the hotel doors.
From somewhere behind her she became aware of the muffled cries of the receptionist. His voice sounded incredibly distant as though he were shouting at her from inside some giant goldfish bowl. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. She did recall the warnings that he had screamed at her as she had hurtled through the lobby. How he had told her not to leave. How he had begged her to stop.
It was too late now.
She slowly raised her head, looking out from between the strands of hair that hung over her eyes at the lightless landscape before her.
There was no New York.
There was not, and never had been, any sign of her father.
There was nothing out here in this pitiless landscape except for the huge winged demon that was laughing down at her, its great black tongue lolling from its mouth as it eyed the foolish human whom it had so easily lured from the Ashnon’s protective custody.
It reached down and effortlessly picked her up in its clawed hands, cruelly digging the talons down into the soft flesh of her torso until she screamed. The demon threw the girl over its neck. Leaping into the air it beat its great leathery wings, and carried its prey off to its master.
25
‘What is he doing here?’ Jurgen said, the words harsh and sharp as he barked them out in the close confines of the kitchen.
There was no answer.
‘Hit him again,’ Jurgen said with a nod of his head.
‘Jurgen, don’t do this.’ Marcus’s voice was small and quiet from behind the larger man.
Jurgen ignored him, ‘Hit him again, I said.’
Luke looked at them, his eyes flicking between the two faces. When his eyes finally settled back on Jurgen’s baleful glare, he balled his hand into a fist and punched Frank in the side of the head. A small shower of red flicked up into the air, landing in neat, crimson circles on the door of the fridge before growing tails that slowly tracked their way down the white surface. More blood, mixed with spit, hung from the old man’s lower lip, reaching down towards a widening pool of the stuff that had already soaked into his shirt.
‘You need to stop this,’ Marcus said from behind Jurgen. He looked down at the crumpled figure of the blind man and shook his head
. ‘This isn’t right.’ He reached out a hand and took hold of Jurgen’s elbow.
Jurgen spun round to face him, his eyes blazing with a ferocity that made Marcus back away a step. ‘I told you that I was coming down here for some answers.’ He motioned with his head at the man strapped into the chair behind him. ‘He can give me those answers.’
‘He’s an old man.’
Jurgen stepped back, his eyes scanning Marcus from head to toe, as if sizing him up. ‘I expected more from you. I thought you understood the importance of the pack; the importance of keeping it safe. I was wrong about you – you’re weak. If you don’t like what is happening here you’re free to leave.’ His eyes flicked for a second towards the kitchen doorway. Marcus didn’t move; he stood eyeing Jurgen, considering what was the best course of action. When Jurgen spoke again he spat the words in an open display of contempt. ‘Or perhaps you think you can stop me in some other way? Maybe you think you should be the pack leader? Maybe you think it’s your time?’
The silence in the room was broken only by Frank’s ragged breathing. Marcus cut his eyes in the man’s direction, inwardly wincing at what he saw there and wishing that he had the courage to take up the challenge and help him in some way. But Jurgen seemed to have lost his mind, he was uncontrollable right now, and Marcus knew that he stood little chance up against him in a straight fight. He met the Alpha’s eyes again.
‘I want nothing to do with this,’ he said. He looked over at Luke for a moment, but knew that the youngster was too terrified of Jurgen to come with him. He shook his head, and keeping his eyes fixed on Jurgen backed out of the kitchen doorway, before turning on his heels and hurrying down the hallway to the front door.
Jurgen spat in the direction of the retreating Marcus. As the other man opened the front door, the crazy little dog came bundling in past him, racing up the hallway to get to his owner. Jurgen slammed the kitchen door on the creature, leaving it to yap and scratch and bark on the other side.
He turned back to the scene of the interrogation, walking over and bending at the waist so that his head was on the same level as Frank’s.