The Apollonian Case Files

by Mark A. Latham

  It came closer to John’s feet, and he could not move them, though he felt that allowing the blood to touch him would be the worst of all things.

  The pool spread into a body, wings, claws, and a great crested head. The dragon of John’s oldest nightmares stretched out before him, a heraldic mosaic formed from the blood of his mentor.

  Something approached from the long dark; a circle of golden light, distant, but drawing nearer, like the lamp of an approaching train through a tunnel. Soon, John was forced to squint against its brilliance. He could not turn away.

  Elsbet appeared at his side. John felt the freezing aura about her, the sweep of wet, lank hair across his shoulder. He sensed her cracked, blue lips near his ear, and she whispered familiar words to him, words he had heard in a prophecy years ago.

  He is the destroyer of worlds and the healer of worlds. He has seen his realm burn, and seeks to burn ours and everyone within it. Only the young dragon can stop him, but he does not have the strength.

  Her breath formed ice upon John’s cheek. Her words had once prophesied the coming of Lazarus… or had they? They seemed now more poignant than ever.

  Elsbet stood, and walked away from John, her slender figure silhouetted in the onrushing amber glow. The light flickered as shadows pawed and pushed at it from the other side, with sharp claws and hungry mouths. Smoky waves rippled across its surface. Shadowy hands reached from the heart of the glow to embrace their sister. Elsbet did not stop. She walked on and on, through the blood-dragon upon the floor, until the light consumed her, and she was gone, leaving only a trail of bloody footprints flickering in the yellow light.

  * * *

  ‘The power, it stabilise.’ The voice was muffled, swimming into John’s consciousness like the remnant of a dream. He blinked, light attacking his eye immediately. Through a mist-like blur, he watched dark figures move all around. Slowly, they coalesced into solid forms. Soldiers – the Russians. Chinese guards. All laboured as one, cranking handles, tightening metal fittings, lugging machinery about the room. All of them united in one great endeavour: the gate.

  John was sitting upright on a hard chair. His head ached. He could barely make out what was going on around him. But he was near the gate. He could feel its warmth, its energy. He felt electrified. His hair lifted towards the pulsating amber light.

  ‘Better hurry, Tesla,’ a man said, his voice a thickly accented growl. ‘You are almost out of time.’

  ‘If I am out of time, all of us are out of time, no?’

  ‘But you go first, kozyol.’ The first man laughed.

  ‘Russians,’ Tesla moaned. ‘It does not matter which universe, it is always Russians.’

  Slowly, John developed an awareness of his wider surroundings. He tried to stand, but was tied to his chair, the rope wrapping about his waist and binding his wrists. A tall, wiry man glowered at him. It took a moment to recognise the soldier who had knocked him unconscious… how long ago? John’s stomach clenched as everything flooded back to him. He had always prided himself on his ability to observe details, to compartmentalise every fact in order to use them later. But now the thought of Rosanna had come back to him, as though it had all been a dream, and he was struck once more by the feeling of utter helplessness and… grief… that had consumed him. It was only now that he looked about, senses pricked to alertness, and saw her.

  She was one with the light, her yellow dress melding with the crackling portal, whose amber glow seemed to flow into the room like a sentient liquid, some oleaginous form of life, before shrinking back into the ramshackle gateway that framed it, then blinking out altogether, before the pattern started again. With each cycle, it remained stable just a few seconds more. And with each flux, the fearful tuneless trilling became less adequate to mask the other sounds beneath. The scratching, the chittering. The noises that John felt were at once in his head, and behind the light.

  She must have sensed John was awake. She stood there, bathing in the light, and her eyes fixed upon him. Finally, she stepped from the pedestal at the foot of the great circular gate, and approached. The smell of lavender assailed John’s senses. It had so long been a scent he associated with Rosanna, but now it was overpowering.

  ‘I wondered, over the years, if I would ever see you again,’ she said. Her voice was strange. Gone was the exotic warmth of the Romani accent. Instead she sounded stilted, too measured for the hot, passionate woman John had known before. ‘Slowly, it became not a matter of “if”, but “when”.’

  John tried to speak, but the words stuck in his craw. Rosanna saw this, and smiled. It was a smile John recognised, but it was not Rosanna’s.

  ‘I told you not to return unless it was with my sister. But now you have handed Elsbet to my people, so perhaps you are a man of your word after all. The last honest man in London.’

  ‘Why?’ John finally formed the word, though he felt stupefied. ‘Why the Artist? How?’

  ‘So many questions, Colonel Hardwick,’ she said. She turned her face from John, and when she looked back, she was changed. Her features were hard as stone, beautiful as a sculpture, and yet malign. ‘How could I be anything else? I am the Artist.’

  ‘What? You have taken his empire?’

  ‘You really are a fool. I have rebuilt my empire from the ashes in which you left them. I have taken this form, this power, as I foresaw three years past.’ She leaned forwards. ‘Look into my eyes, John Hardwick. I am Rosanna. I am Tsun Pen. We are one.’

  John felt his head spin. Had he not seen wonders and terrors unimaginable, he would give no credence to such madness. But he had seen more than he ever wished to, and thus he could do nothing but believe. He felt sick. ‘It is not possible,’ he said. He denied it. He denied it because he loved her. But he saw more than Rosanna behind those eyes. He saw evil.

  ‘You killed me, Hardwick. You plunged a sword through my heart. You watched me die, and then you burned my house to the ground. And when you did these things, you freed me. I had known all along that my spirit was too powerful to be constrained by mortal tethers, and had even foreseen the object of my salvation: this Rosanna. But I lacked the proper… motivation… to risk leaving it. I had clung for too long to a monstrous form, convinced that from my lair I could hide away from the world, and yet manipulate it. How much more can I achieve now? I am beautiful. I am free. Rosanna was possessed of a power so immense, so pure, and yet for the most part untapped. The two Tsun Pens had power, and ambition, but no freedom. Our souls cried out to each other, reached through the Eternal Night, and became as one. Now, we three, together… we no longer require solitude. We do not hide. We do not even need to peddle prophesies. We see into the future for our own ends. We create the future. And instead of paying the Artist to avert the course of destiny, the governments of the world will pay us not to destroy them.’

  ‘Pay you…’

  ‘What you see before you, John Hardwick, is a demonstration. I have already brought the Order of Apollo to its knees, and they will beg forgiveness before I am done. They betrayed me. They reneged on our blood-pact, and sent you, a useless whelp, to assassinate me. And I let it happen, because I had already foreseen that death was only the start of the journey. I have lived three lives, and in each I was an outcast, a wanderer, a pauper. Now, I shall be a queen. Perhaps I should thank you, but I am not so magnanimous. My goals may be far-ranging, by ambition limitless, but I have chosen this place for a very personal reason.’

  ‘Elsbet?’

  Rosanna tossed back her head and laughed. Now she sounded like the gypsy woman whom John had loved. Her laughter was music and light, but even so, it ended with a hollow timbre. ‘No, John Hardwick. The agony that Elsbet endured was only a motivation. It gave him a foothold into my mind. It helped convince me to let him in. You are the cause of it all.’

  ‘Me?’ John had not felt such dismay since he had signed the order that had condemned Rosanna’s people to capture. But something sparked within him – she’d said ‘let him in’. T
his was Rosanna talking, not Tsun Pen, unless they truly were of one mind.

  ‘Always you! You slew Tsun Pen. You betrayed me! Do you know what became of Nadya, and Gregor? I can see from your eyes that you do know, and yet somehow you live with yourself! Do you know that Esme died of fever because of the life of hardship you inflicted on us? Do you know what happened to Drina when they came for her? Drina, the very best of us all!’

  ‘She was, and she was nothing but light!’ John said. He was desperate, but he recognised fully the voice of Rosanna, and it gave him hope. She was in there still, two – or three – personalities, each with a voice. Only one of them mattered to John. ‘Drina would not want this. She would counsel against such madness.’

  ‘The Five Sisters are no more, John Hardwick. I am the last, and I will make you pay.’ A strange expression crossed her features. The outburst was unmistakeably Rosanna, but there was an instant look of regret, or perhaps inner chastisement, as though she were giving something away; some weakness.

  John tried to cling to reason, to observe this strange enemy and examine her faults, but all he could see was Rosanna; all he could think of was what he had driven her to, what had become of her sisters because of him, and he was heartsick for it.

  ‘What I do now, John Hardwick,’ she went on, more coolly, ‘I do for power, and wealth, and legacy, yes. But I do it also for revenge. I cannot deny that I am glad you escaped de Montfort. There was some pleasure in the thought of you being drained of life by him. But now… seeing your face, your dismay at what your own pathetic sense of honour has wrought upon the world… this is worth more to me than all the jewels in your empire.’

  ‘Stop your gloating and get on with it,’ the wiry Russian interrupted, glaring at Rosanna – at ‘the Artist’.

  She returned that look in kind. ‘Do not presume to instruct me, Orlov.’

  ‘I am paying you. I am protecting you. Perform your tricks and be done, or we leave you here with nothing.’

  ‘Where will you go? Every soldier in London is ready to kill you. There is only one way out of here, and it is through that gate. Tesla provided the science, but I provide the magic, no? Without me, you have nothing but a very large generator, which will quickly become a very large bomb. Now help Mr Tesla, and hold your tongue.’

  Orlov looked as though he might strike Rosanna for the slight, but in the end he gritted his teeth and stepped away.

  ‘Hardwick,’ she said. ‘This gentleman is Dmitri Orlov. He is much like you. Soldier, assassin, spy. He is an excellent shot, also like you. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive him for the death of Sir Toby Fitzwilliam?’

  ‘Sir Toby,’ John gasped. ‘You really did want him dead? And for me?’

  ‘He gave the order that destroyed my people!’ she snapped. For a brief moment again, it was Rosanna, the hot gypsy blood in her veins giving rise to a display of emotion. Then her face became a mask once more, wearing an expression so similar to Tsun Pen’s sardonic sneer that it made John shudder. ‘That it weakened the Order was a considerable bonus. That it made you all act so rashly, to enter my web with insufficient men, with Tesla at your side, and no solid plan… that was all to the good. But yes; truthfully, I did it for you. Now, if you will excuse me, I must tend to matters. You, John Hardwick, can watch.’

  ‘Wait!’ John said. His mind spun with the possibilities of all he had learned. But he grasped for something – anything – to distract Rosanna. To buy time for… he knew not what, but there had to be a way out of this nightmare. He looked about, taking in every detail of his surroundings. Could he move fast enough to disarm a soldier? What then?

  ‘Yes?’ The Artist cocked her head, a bemused smile upon her lips.

  ‘The gate. How can you escape through it? You’ll be trapped on the Otherside, which is surely now in ruin.’

  ‘No, foolish man. Do you think this is the only work Nikola Tesla has performed for me in these years? I have other gates at my disposal, on both sides of the veil. I have travelled far, and seen much since last we met.’

  John looked to Tesla, who avoided his gaze and busied himself with the machinery. The Serbian had mentioned no such developments. ‘How? How did Mr Tesla come into your possession?’

  ‘Possession…’ Tesla muttered, loud enough to draw an irked look from the Artist.

  ‘Mr Tesla attempted to flee the Otherside in his ingenious submarine, during the battle of London Bridge,’ the Artist said. ‘He brought de Montfort with him, though not through choice. I saw it, naturally. I painted it. I knew at once I must have him. Tesla was the true genius behind the Lazarus Gate, after all. He has already built several portals for me, to increase my supplies, to provide my followers safe passage whenever they need it. My arrangements with de Montfort meant that I had to leave Tesla behind – I should thank you for bringing him to me, for with his help my plan will be all the simpler. Look at this, John Hardwick! None of Mr Tesla’s gates were ever as powerful as this one, powered by the handsome supply of electrical energy to this facility. And the Nightwatch, of course.’ She indicated the machinery where Tesla worked. John saw now that more cables and tubes snaked away from it, over into a shadowed corner of the room, where sleeping Majestics lay on steel gurneys, eyelids flickering to the rhythmic pattern of the gate.

  ‘You went to great pains to rescue Elsbet from this fate, yet you are quite happy to shackle these poor wretches for your gain.’

  ‘A necessary evil. They serve a greater purpose now.’

  ‘But this… Why go to such lengths if you do not need to?’

  ‘I have always admired your inquiring mind, even if you do not use it to its potential. I need to provide proof of my true power for the Russians, so that they never again question me. In doing so, I shall make an example of Great Britain, and your precious order. This gate is unique. It was constructed from the Lazarus Gate, and it draws upon my own power as well as Mr Tesla’s electricity. It can be used from both sides. And it can do more than that. Mr Tesla discovered how to tune the gate to an infinite number of worlds, and things that cannot strictly be called worlds at all. Once we have left, with every resource we can strip from this “armoury” of yours, we shall open up the gate. By the time this power supply is consumed, who knows what horrors will have found their way into this world?

  ‘This facility will be the epicentre of the greatest catastrophe the world has ever known. For this secret, and others like it, the Russians will make me a queen, and no one will ever dare raise a hand to them – or to me – ever again. This is the ultimate weapon, John Hardwick. A weapon so powerful it will end the prospect of war in our time. Is that not worth any price? Unfortunately, like any such weapon, it must be used, just once, as a demonstration of its efficacy.’

  ‘Surely you know that what happened to the Otherside will happen here,’ John spluttered. ‘It is madness! It cannot be controlled.’

  ‘Tell that to your own Lord Cherleten,’ Rosanna – no, Tsun Pen – scoffed. ‘You know that this gate was almost operational before we even came here? Mr Tesla’s generator merely gave it the power that your scientists could not. We would not have had sufficient time to build an entire gate from its component parts. Apollo Lycea has been trying to activate it themselves for some time. They have been buying etherium from me because they were unable to harvest enough themselves, and they sought a way to find a fresh supply. Etherium, and more besides! They did not ask where it came from, as long as it came.’

  There it was. Cherleten had known about the Artist all along – or at least about someone posing as the Artist. It stood to reason that Sir Toby must have known too. John had always suspected that his retirement to the country had not been challenged robustly enough. Now he knew why.

  The Artist laughed again, this time with pure malevolence. ‘Perhaps you now know what it is like to be betrayed, John Hardwick. Were your masters really worthy of your loyalty? I think not. But do not worry, they shall soon be taught a lesson. The power of the Lazaru
s Gate is the greatest in the world. It is not for Britain to control.’

  ‘No. It is for the highest bidder,’ John said.

  ‘And still you judge me! You really are priceless. Listen to me, John Hardwick – there is a catastrophe coming. You know of the Riftborn? Of course you do. They have seen this world. They lust for it. They want nothing more than to tear every man, woman and child limb from limb. I am going to provide just a taste of what that means, and when I am done, your government will beg for my aid. Furnival thought the Nightwatch could make me obsolete, but I have been able to mask my plans from those simple-minded unfortunates from the beginning. If I control the gates, I control the flow of etherium. I will strip the Otherside clean of weapons to combat the Riftborn. And I will bring forth my own soldiers, using monsters to fight monsters.’

  ‘The ghouls? De Montfort?’

  ‘De Montfort was useful, yes, but his secrets are now mine. With my mercenary army I –’

  ‘Enough of this!’ Orlov snapped. ‘Look.’

  The Artist turned as Orlov pointed. The great amber light was finally coalescing into something else – a solid, juddering mirror, rippling all over its surface like water being vibrated. The pitch of the hateful noise changed subtly. Tesla pounded a fist on the side of one of his machines.

  ‘Mr Tesla,’ the Artist said. ‘Is it ready?’

  ‘Almost, Madam Artist,’ he said, with a sideways look that spoke of fear and loathing both.

  ‘Almost is not good enough, Mr Tesla. I have already foreseen the enemy’s plans. They seek to destroy this facility rather than allow us to hold it. If you do not work faster, you will be here when it is swallowed up by the river.’

  ‘What?’ Orlov said. ‘You never tell us this, witch.’

  ‘Would you have escorted me to an underground facility had you known it would soon fall on our heads, Orlov? As I said, the only way out of here is through this gate. Fear not, I have seen the future. I have seen my deliverance on the Otherside. It is known.’