An awed smile upon the terrorist’s features. Then with a flash of dark flame and the acrid stench of brimstone, the pair were gone.
Face pressed against the cold concrete, the sudden clouds in the sky above slowly dissipating to allow the sunlight through once more, Agent Jones could only gurgle, watching through tear-filled eyes as his comrades came running towards him.
***
“Sir? What do we do now?” Silence. “Sir?”
Agent Craig Evans rose from the corpse of his comrade and friend, taking a deep and calming breath before replying.
“We need to cordon off the area and get a Clean Up team down here, asap. Then we get back to the office and write up our report.”
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“What do we put in our report?”
Evans sighed and shook his head.
“I haven’t a fucking clue.” He picked up the walky-talky from his belt and pressed the button. Best rally the sniper teams, for all the use they’d been. “Snipers, stand down and-.”
His sentence was cut off by the clang of metal upon concrete. Spinning on the spot, the remaining agents turned as one to the river. There, upon the dockside, an axe wobbled to a rest where it had been thrown. In disbelief, they watched as a hand appeared on the ladder that rose from the water, followed by another.
Slowly, wearily, a figure climbed into view, soaked from head to toe and with tiredness etched upon its face. Evans’ mouth opened in astonishment. It was that Alann fellow from before.
He… he was alive!
Just barely. The figure finally climbed up onto the dockside proper and stood, wobbling on legs numb from fatigue. Blinking furiously to get the water from his eyes, he looked about, taking in the scene.
Then finally he saw the agents. Saw Agent Evans’ cold stare.
“Sniper teams, take him out. Tranq shots only. We need him alive.”
A flurry of whistles as a volley of darts launched through the air. The man shook at the impacts, then looked down in confusion, fingers reaching to grasp one of the darts and pull it out, inspecting it.
Then, with a final sigh of resignation, he collapsed.
Chapter Seven:
Virginie knelt down, offering Nikki a warm cup of tea and an even warmer smile, her soft, brown eyes twinkling in the firelight. With shaking hands, the reporter gratefully accepted it. Gwenna sat by her side on the Common Room couch, one arm about her shoulders and concern upon her face
“Smoke, you said? And high pitched cries?”
Nikki took a long sip of the drink. It was laced with something, she could tell; some kind of alcohol to ease her nerves. She was glad of it. She nodded.
“Yeah. They came out of nowhere. We didn’t stand a chance. The Khrdas, Alann called them. The agents were slaughtered. Alann managed to kill one, but then the others…”
She closed her eyes, unwilling to recount the story again. But it didn’t matter, those that were listening had already heard enough. For the bits that Nikki wasn’t keen to relive, the last surviving Forester from that ill-fated expedition had filled in the details. The Khrdas.
It didn’t seem possible.
Leaving Virginie to tend to the girl, Gwenna moved over to Stone who was standing by the fireplace, staring into the flames, a glass of single-malt whisky in his giant hand.
“How is this possible?” she asked him. “We closed the Portal. It shouldn’t be open for another hundred years, not till the next alignment. We were supposed to have time to prepare. To build an army. But Khrdas, here, on this world, in this time?”
Stone paused a moment to consider her words, then turned to her, staring into her green eyes with his own, the hue so similar, even if one pair subtly glowed and the other did not.
“The ways of our enemy are mysterious. Their reach is long. They managed to reach out across space and time to snatch me, remember, all that time ago. Even if they can’t move the bulk of their army without the Portal that connects our galaxies, it seems they can at least send the elite, in small numbers.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know. Their forces cannot stay here, in this reality, for long. Our universe is anathema to them. They quickly unravel and lose form and power. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless they have something to anchor them to this reality…”
“You can’t mean…?”
“He does.” It was Lord Arbistrath, emerging from the shadows to stand by them in front of the blazing fire. “He means possession.” He wasn’t clad in the customary Tulador armour, for that was off in the Armoury, the forges deep within Draconis, where Marlyn, under Stone’s instruction, was making modifications to it. Improvements. Instead, he was wearing a simple shirt, jeans and boots. A far cry from his luxuriant robes of times long past. “He means the taking of one’s body, controlling it like a puppet on a string.”
“Like the Clansmen of Merethia…” Gwenna breathed, gazing into the flames as she remembered the horrific battle before the gates of that city. The once-proud warriors of the Steppes, their bodies taken over by dark and twisted demons, their souls forced to watch in horror as their own hands laid waste to the people and places they loved.
“Exactly,” Arbistrath agreed, his voice low, tone grim. He pulled a cigar from the pouch at his waist, placed it in his mouth and cut the end, before patting his pockets for a lighter. He couldn’t find one and instead glanced over at Stone, giving a shrug. The titan glanced at the end of the cigar, which promptly lit. A nod of thanks and Arbistrath drew deeply, releasing a thick cloud of heavy smoke, enjoying the aroma as it wafted up past his nose. “I saw it, when my men and I were cast into the future. Men, women, children; just vessels thirsting for our blood.” He shuddered as he remembered things he would rather forget. “It’s the eyes that get you. You look into them just before you pull the trigger. For that last instant, that last second before they die, you always see a flicker of the person that was. And the scary thing? They’re always grateful.” He took another deep drag of his cigar. “But I digress. If a stronger demon inhabits a body, they can do more than just possess it. They can remould it, reshape the flesh to their actual form. I saw that, too. The horned buggers, with those glaring red eyes. It’s almost as though they kicked out the lesser demons and took over, easing into the flesh the way you or I would break in a new pair of boots.”
Gwenna closed her eyes at the analogy, but she knew that it was as good as any.
Arbistrath continued.
“But one thing I noticed – the greater the demon, the less time it can spend in its new body. The usual creatures; the soulless, wailing things with black eyes, like those that took over the Clansmen; they seem to endure for a good long while. But the horned ones? Not as long. It’s as though the more power the body is forced to contain, the quicker it burns out.”
Stone and Gwenna nodded in understanding, before sharing a quick and knowing look. That was the reason that Stone himself was so special. Why Those Beyond the Veil had craved him all that time ago. Why the Avatars could make such use of him now.
By luck or design, Stone was the one vessel that could never burn out.
“But one thing that puzzles me,” Arbistrath admitted, “is that all of these other possessions happened after an invasion took place.”
Stone grunted.
“Those possessions were unwilling. The power of the enemy needed to wax strong before they could take place. But if those to be possessed were to be willing…”
Gwenna gasped.
“Are you serious? You believe that there would be people out there actually willing to give themselves up, body and soul, to be taken over by dark powers? Are there really people that bitter, that disillusioned with this world, that they’d be happy for that to happen?”
Stone downed his drink, grimacing at the bitterness, then looked down to the glass. A brief exertion of will and it refilled itself, ice and all. Then he fixed the shaman with a sorr
owful look.
“I did it. And I had less reason than some.” The other two were silent; never had Stone spoken of that time so long ago, his wanderings in the far north where the dark powers of Those Beyond the Veil had filled him. Corrupted him. Turned him into Invictus, the Barbarian King. Silence, for a few seconds, bar the murmurs of conversation from across the room and the low crackle of the logs burning in the fire, then he continued. “So to answer your question, yes, I do believe that. This world is unfair, Gwenna. A world of vast opportunity and wealth, gifted to few and denied to many. A world that breeds disillusionment. A perfect recruiting ground for a cult like this Brotherhood. Even if we find the Khrdas, send them back to hell, Those Beyond the Veil will never run out of willing volunteers to host them all anew.” He took another sip of the whisky and stared into the fire. “That is what we are here to change.”
***
“Did you hear?”
No response for a few moments, as Marlyn continued delicately welding a small piece of metal, the energy that leapt from his Cannon Arm honed to a fine scalpel point. Then finally, his work finished, he looked up from the workbench to the newcomer and flipped up his welding mask.
“I did. Things must have been bad down there. The Woodsman’s still alive, though, right?”
Iain nodded, a curious mixture of relief and frustration plain to see on his face. He wandered closer and placed his pewter tankard of beer upon the workbench, taking care not to knock anything that Marlyn was working on.
“He is, thankfully. Though we couldn’t bring him back aboard; this big lizard can’t do it without those earpiece things. The shamans scried the surface, though, and he’s alive. But the British have him. They’ve taken him away. For interrogation, no doubt.”
Marlyn laughed without mirth.
“Good luck with that! The Woodsman is the toughest man I know.”
“He is that. Regardless, we’re going in to get him. Stone has a plan of some sort. And I’ll be damned if my lord gets imprisoned twice in my lifetime.” His frustrated tirade finally at an end, the Foresters’ second-in-command finally looked about at the workshop. “So, what are you slaving away at down here?”
The Tulador grinned and gestured about the room, the Armoury as cavernous as any of the other chambers within the belly of the great beast Draconis. The ceiling was low, vaulted, but stretched far and wide. At the end of the room, a forge of never-ending flame that needed no bellows to fan. As Iain followed the sweep of Marlyn’s arm, he could see that wooden mannequins were scattered about the edges of the room, upon which the instantly familiar armour of the Tulador Guard was displayed. And yet there was something subtly different about the armour. It looked somewhat bulkier. Faint beeps echoed throughout the warm air. And if he concentrated, he could swear that his ears detected a faint hum of power emanating from them.
That same hum that even now buzzed gently from Marlyn’s arm.
Curious, he wandered over, gently touching a polished shoulder guard with his fingertips. It was warm.
“You’ve been busy, it seems.”
Marlyn wiped his sweating face with a cloth and sauntered over to join his friend. Iain was slightly older than the Tulador youth, but there was common ground and understanding between them. They were both second-in-command of their respective units. And besides; the Tuladors and the Foresters were mere men, armed with nothing more than steel and their own resolute courage. They had no magic powers. They weren’t raised in some distant mountain Retreat and trained from birth in the ways of the spirits. No, the men of the Tulador Guard and the men and women of the Foresters were just that; men and women, no more, no less.
The common room, with its roaring fire and fine drinks, played host to a companionship between the two groups that the shamans with their strange and aloof ways would never be able to share.
“Indeed,” Marlyn nodded. “This world is a world of technological wonders. If we’re to be Lord Stone’s champions in this world, leading by example, then we need to be ahead of the game.” His gazed wandered over the suit of armour next to which they were standing, with all the softness and affection of a man regarding his lover’s sleeping form. “Under Lord Stone’s guidance and instruction, I’ve made some… modifications to the Tulador armour.”
“In what ways?”
Marlyn smiled, then removed the silver gauntlet from the mannequin with his good hand and passed it to the Forester.
“Put it on. Try it out.”
An eyebrow cocked in curiosity, Iain placed his left hand into the gauntlet, eyes widening in something akin to alarm as the soft, spongy interior squeezed tighter and tighter, till his hand and fingers were locked in place. That whining hum grew subtly louder, more insistent. Experimentally, he raised his gauntleted hand in front of his face and wriggled the fingers. Even with the padding inside, they mimicked the motion perfectly.
“Impressive,” he murmured. “More comfortable than I thought. Feels warm, too, and it’s not just the padding.”
“Go pick up your beer,” the Tulador suggested with a grin.
Puzzled, the Forester did so, eyes widening once more as his be-gauntleted fingers wrapped about the tankard and he picked it up.
“That’s… wow! I can feel it. It’s as though my skin is at one with the metal.” He glanced at Marlyn, a look of sheer amazement on his face. “This is incredible.”
A wink from the youth.
“Now squeeze.”
Iain did so, the high-pitched whine of the gauntlet building as he exerted pressure from his fingers. After a token resistance, the tankard crumpled within his grasp like melted candle wax, beer spilling from the top to splash upon the floor in a foamy puddle.
“The suit not only matches the wearer’s movements, but also doubles their strength,” Marlyn explained to the gobsmacked Forester.
“Incredible,” Iain breathed, even as he undid the latch at the wrist, the whining hum dying down as he removed the gauntlet from his hand and inspected it, wonder written upon his face. “How did you accomplish this? It doesn’t seem far removed from magic in my eyes.”
Marlyn took the gauntlet and replaced it on the mannequin, before nodding sideways with his head.
“Follow me.”
The awestruck Forester in tow, he wandered to a bench at the side of the room. Upon the wooden workbench, a book, or rather a ring-binder of separate pages, many hundreds of them, each covered in doodles, diagrams and barely legible scrawled notes.
The Tulador stood there, beaming.
At length, Iain ventured: “What is it?”
“This is my book,” Marlyn explained, opening the binder and leafing through page after page with a paternal pride. “Ever since I met Lord Stone that first day, something within me just, I don’t know, ‘clicked.’ I’ve always been fascinated by the workings of things; crossbows, catapults, even the ploughs and carts we used on our farm back home. Over the last few months, it seems to have stepped up a notch. Several notches, in fact. I feel like Draconis itself is whispering to me all sorts of secrets. Things that before seemed like arcane mysteries now feel almost… ‘obvious’ to me. At times, it’s like I’m almost on the verge of catching a glimpse of the inner workings of the universe…” He gazed off into the distance for a moment, then seemed to shake himself back to reality. “Things like adding power to these suits of armour; once Lord Stone showed me how initially, it just seemed so obvious, so easy. He does that, I’ve noticed; any traits within you, any spark, and his presence just amplifies it, you know what I mean? If you’re strong to begin with, you’ll be stronger. If you’re brave, you’ll be braver.”
Iain nodded.
“I’ve felt that. I often thought that it was just that he represents our cause, a leader. But no, you’re right. When he’s nearby, it’s impossible to feel down, to falter. Why is that?”
“I have some theories,” Marlyn smiled, “but I shan’t bore you with them.”
Iain nodded, scanning the pages before him, u
nable to comprehend even the slightest note therein. Finally, he spoke.
“You’ve got a gift, young Marlyn. Whether it’s grown through Stone’s aid, the dragon’s aid, or whatever, it began inside of you and you should be proud.” He paused for a moment, then with a frown he reached over his shoulder and pulled free his bow; the long, wooden, hunting weapon used by so many of the Foresters. He proffered it to the Tulador. “Out of interest, what could you do with this?”
***
He was awake. Finally. Head still swimming from whatever drug had coated those darts, Alann blinked and gazed about. Whatever room he was in, it was dark, pitch black in fact. He was seated, his arms bound behind him. He tested the restraints; they were made of metal, cold and digging into the skin of his wrists.
There would be no escaping any time soon.
All of a sudden, a bright, white light blazed forth, harsh and artificial, causing him to turn away and screw his eyes shut in pain. Slowly, as the throbbing in his skull began to fade and the initial brightness dimmed, he opened his eyes and looked about. The room was small, tiled with white. His was the only chair. Before him, a door. Steel. Cold and unyielding.
The clunk of a lock echoed throughout the tiny room, then the door swung open to disgorge suits. Agent Evans. Others. Some wearing long coats of bright and spotless white. All wearing expressions of wary interest and tempered curiosity as they fanned out to surround him.
All save Evans. His face was unreadable.
“You’re an enigma, Alann,” Evans told him, circling like a lion its prey. “We ran your fingerprints, took DNA. Even a photo of your face, cross-referenced against every database that we have, every piece of facial recognition software known to man.” He leaned in close, till the Woodsman could smell the mint on his breath. “Turns out, you don’t exist. Care to explain that?”
Bloodless Revolution (The Graeme Stone Saga Book 5) Page 8