by J M Hemmings
‘You want me tae shift forms now?’
The Teacher chuckled softly, his baritone voice burbling with amusement, but not mockery.
‘Did I say, “shift forms”? No, young cub, I did not. This is what I need you to remember: you and the tiger are one now. You are no longer merely a man, you are a tiger, and the tiger does not simply live alongside you, it is fused to you. It is every part of you now; it is your bones, your muscles, your nerves, your brain, your blood, your heart … and your soul too. When you truly understand this, you can call upon the tiger’s powers whenever you need to, even without shifting forms. So, use the tiger’s eyes now, use them to observe the glory of that eagle as she rises to the realm of the stars!’
William stared and squinted, straining his eyes, but all that he could see of the eagle was a distant spot in the sky. He slumped his shoulders, crestfallen, and shook his head disappointedly.
‘I cannae, guru ji, I just cannae. I cannae yet dae it.’
The Teacher rested a sympathetic hand on William’s shoulder.
‘Do not be disappointed. Failure is, after all, an essential part of learning. But do not worry, cub, do not worry! There are other ways in which I can help you to overcome the limitations of your old mind. Come, let us trade places.’
William stepped back, relieved to escape the lure of the hungry abyss, and he watched gingerly as the Teacher took his place, standing on the very edge of the roof tiles. The man turned and stood with his back to the edge, smiling at William with a nonchalant ease.
‘Are you no’ afraid, guru ji?’ William asked, his voice tremulous with nerves due to the man’s dangerous proximity to the edge.
‘Not at all, William, because I know that you’re going to catch me when I fall.’
A surge of panic leaped through William’s system, and his heart began to hammer with a great machine-gun-pounding rhythm of terror.
‘Wait, wait, no no no!’ he stammered, fear pumping its paralysing ice into his every nerve, ‘I’m no’ r-, r-, ready fir this, I cannae hold you up, you’re bigger than me! This roof is sli-, slippery, we’ll both fall to our deaths, I cannae, I c-, c-, cannae—’
‘You can, my boy. Your tiger strength is enough to hold us both safely.’
‘N-, n-, no! No guru ji, DON’T!’ William screamed as he saw what was about to happen.
The Teacher smiled, leaned back over the edge … and let gravity do the rest. Without knowing how, William surged forward and shot out his right arm with the speed of a striking cobra, snatching hold of the front of the Teacher’s robe as he toppled back. His feet skidded along the red-painted tiles as the Teacher’s weight yanked him forward, but with a roar he dug his heels in, feeling an immense strength surging abruptly through every muscle in his body.
Panting heavily, with his muscles on fire, he found himself standing on bent knees, holding the still-smiling teacher – who was at an almost horizontal angle over the edge now – with one hand, his fist gripping the rough-spun fabric of his robe.
‘You see,’ the Teacher laughed, joyous and seemingly oblivious to his position of absolute peril, ‘tiger strength! It is not only within you, it is you! Pull me back up now, cub. It should be quite easy now that your tiger abilities are active. You see, what we will have to do is to develop this ability that you already have, and make it into something that you can call upon at will, rather than something that you can only access in moments of sheer panic, when it kicks in by some subconscious instinct, as it has just done.’
The blare of an impatient horn and someone shouting in Thai behind him jolted William back to the present, in which he was straddling a motorcycle in the middle of Bangkok traffic, and he shuddered as the wisps of the memory, like disintegrating spiderweb threads, fell away from his mind and consciousness. He clicked the bike into gear and sped off, accelerating hard and zipping with agile ease through the smog-choked morass of slow-moving cars and scooters.
***
Zakaria flipped open the visor of his full-face bascinet helm and locked a grim stare into William’s eyes.
‘Are you ready for this fight, my brother?’ he rumbled. ‘Mind, body, heart and soul?’
Zakaria was dressed in a full suit of what looked like fifteenth-century plate armour. It was no antique though, and neither was it a mere Halloween costume, like those in which the throng of revellers outside the KSM Nightclub were attired. Zakaria’s suit of armour had been fabricated from modern high-carbon steel, and reinforced inside with titanium plates and carbon fibre to make it somewhat resistant to bullets.
The motocross racing gear in which William was clad had also been enhanced with powerful materials to protect him from bullets. In his bright neon gear, he and Zakaria made a jarringly unlikely pair, but on this one night of the year, nobody batted an eyelid in their direction.
‘Aye brother, I’m ready,’ William answered, his eyes glinting with the same polished gleam as the shining suit of armour.
‘Good, good,’ Zakaria said, his left hand resting on the pommel of his two-handed sword, which, like his armour, was no mere stage prop. ‘But listen, I want you to promise me that if things go awry you must escape. Save yourself; do not worry about the rest of us. Not only for the sake of preserving what knowledge you possess of the Eastern Council’s power, wisdom and teachings, and the location of the lost Mothers, but also for preventing that knowledge from falling into the hands of Sigurd and his Huntsmen masters. You know what kind of darkness would fall over the earth should those demons get hold of it.’
‘I know, old boy, I know. They won’t take me, not alive at any rate.’
Zakaria frowned.
‘You say that now, but I know you well, Tiger. You are stubborn, and more than a little reckless. I want your word and your honour on this – and I want you to swear it to me in her name.’
A look of anxiety, streaked with cutting despair, crossed William’s face. He began to stammer, suddenly unable to reply with any real coherence.
‘I-, I—’
Zakaria remained firm and resolute, his stern grimace unmoved by pity or sympathy.
‘Swear it William. Swear it in her name, or I will call off this entire mission right now.’
William removed his motocross helmet, ran his fingers through his hair and turned to stare down the shadowy passage of the alley, losing himself temporarily in the swirling sadness of the past. Presently, he turned to Zakaria to speak.
‘I swear it,’ he uttered.
‘Swear what? Say all of it, and say that you swear it in her name.’
‘I … I swear that should this mission fail, I will not sacrifice myself, nor attempt any foolhardy rescues of my fellow Rebels. I will stay alive, and I will escape. I swear this on … I swear this in … Au-, Au- … Aurora’s name.’
Tears burned and stung at the corners of his eyes as these sacred syllables passed through his lips, and a knotty sob began to claw its way up his throat. Zakaria nodded, his eyes softening with sympathy, and he reached out to place a steel-encased hand on William’s forearm.
‘Thank you, brother,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry that I made you say that, but I had to. You do understand, don’t you? I had to make you swear this. We, nay, not just we, but the world itself cannot afford to have you captured.’
William nodded, his eyes glistening with a sheen of tears.
‘I know, old friend, I know.’
‘All right,’ Zakaria grunted as he turned and clicked his stiff neck inside his suit of armour, ‘let’s discuss the details of the plan. So far, everything is falling quite into place quite smoothly.’
‘Aye, so it is, so it is…’
William turned stared down the narrow alley at the main street, feeling temporarily hypnotised by the bustle of life that flowed past in a ceaseless deluge of organised chaos. On the other side of the wide road was the KSM Club, an enormous nightclub attached to Sigurd’s brothel that provided a legal front for all the dark activities that took place in the secret laby
rinth of rooms at the back of the massive complex.
‘So, “King Solomon’s Mines” is the unabridged name of that club,’ William muttered as he came out of this minor trance. ‘Our Ice Bear evidently considers himself to be some sort of modern-day King Solomon, does he?’
‘He has the vast wealth and the enormous “harem”, if you could call it that, to fit the bill,’ Zakaria growled. ‘And he is a tyrant, of course.’
‘Whether king or pauper, in the core of that complex lies the devil’s headquarters, and it is into that heart of darkness that we will travel. Tonight, we take the fight to them.’
‘Thank the Great Mother for our man on the inside,’ Zakaria muttered. ‘Without him, this mission would never have been even remotely feasible. No map, no building plans, no smuggled-out keys and keycodes…’
‘Man and woman on the inside, brother,’ William said. ‘Don’t forget the unfortunate hooker who’s going to let Ranomi in.’
Zakaria whistled slowly through his teeth and shook his head.
‘It worries me greatly to put such an immense degree of trust and responsibility in a mortal, especially one that we have not even met personally. However, Kimiko assures us that she is trustworthy, so I suppose we must believe her. And our man on the inside, the Cambodian janitor, he too assures me that she is reliable and will do the job. He is a mortal I would trust with my own life … and there are precious few still alive who could claim that honour. Also, just as an extra precaution, he spun her a tale about Sigurd wishing to use her as a human sacrifice on this night. I think that was enough to scare her into doing what she needs to do.’
‘Kimiko seemed completely certain that this mortal woman could be trusted, and I fully trust her instincts,’ William said. ‘She’s never been wrong about such things before.’
‘Well, in this mystery woman we must then place our complete trust,’ Zakaria said grimly. ‘I can only hope and pray that my friend is right. Everything hinges on the prostitute doing what she is supposed to do at the time she is supposed to do it.’
‘As I said, in her we’ll just have to trust, my lad … and I’m pretty damn sure she’ll do it if she believes that it’s her only chance to escape her own death. Now, the weapons and Ranomi: is everything taken care of and running according to schedule?’
Zakaria nodded.
‘She’s inside the liquor crate, along with the guns. By the Great Spirit, we’re lucky to have such a tiny and flexible ally as her. I must admit though … I am a little worried about the weak link in our chain.’
William knew right away to whom Zakaria was referring. Chloe had grown increasingly nervous and jittery throughout the evening, but even though they had given her the opportunity to back out, she had stubbornly refused to do so, insisted that she wanted to fight. She, along with Kimiko and Njinga, was already inside the nightclub.
‘She’ll be all right,’ he said.
‘I hope so.’ Zakaria paused and released a long, slow sigh, his huge shoulders slumping with resignation. ‘You know, I’ve fought in countless battles, wars and duels over the centuries, and it never gets any easier. I still feel fear gnawing at my innards like a mass of hungry rodents before every battle. But despite this, my eyes remain focused on the prize, and always, always, I am willing to sacrifice my life if it will achieve that goal, which is to keep the torch of light burning bright, however dark and potent the storm clouds of evil may grow.’
‘Aye. And this mission is so much more important than any of us … we can’t let our own individual fears or worries get in the way, or cause us to halt or falter.’
‘Courage and grit will carry us through these dark times, my old friend. Courage and grit…’
‘Aye,’ William murmured, looking away. ‘Courage and grit.’
William wished he could wholeheartedly agree with everything Zakaria was saying, but the truth was that he never had learned to completely conquer his own fear. He never had fully learned to truly master the worries and terror that churned madly inside him all too often, and he could never detach himself from the fear to the point that he could be a self-sacrificing martyr, like Zakaria. All too aware of his own weaknesses, too frequently he dwelled with such persistence on them that they threatened to overwhelm him utterly, to swallow him up with the force of a rolling ocean wave in a typhoon.
He suddenly felt a desperate craving for a hit of heroin; his body had overcome the desire for warm oblivion, but his mind had not.
‘Hope … it fails you?’ Zakaria asked softly. He saw the fear in his friend’s eyes.
William shook his head and stared at the ground as he answered, trying to will away the craving for his opiate, and hoping that Zakaria would not notice the dark guilt in his eyes.
‘I cannot deny that I feel a dread rising within the depths of my soul, Zakaria,’ he admitted. ‘Now that we’re here, I do feel a sense of fear. And yes … a feeling of hopelessness too.’
Zakaria darted out a gauntlet-clad hand and gripped William’s forearm.
‘Don’t let them win already, Tiger,’ he growled through clenched teeth, his powerful fingers pushing like iron rods into William’s flesh. ‘Don’t let them win! You cannot, you must not! Let the power of the Eastern Council flow through you. You can … you must!’
William breathed in deeply, closing his eyes as he did so. Like liquid warmth, the relaxing balm of the held-in breath billowed gently through his body, and he focused his mind on the air in his lungs as it distributed its revitalising invigoration through his every vein, artery and capillary, doing this in the manner that the Teacher had shown him many lifetimes ago. The craving for heroin began to crumble away, and as it did, he retreated into the deepest recesses of his mind. Eventually he found himself in the monastery on the mountainside, where eagles raked their claws through the mists of clouds, and the silver ribbons of mighty rivers in the canyons below seemed as mere strands of angel hair, flickering brief flares of reflected sunlight at him from miles away as they snaked through the green mounds of forested hills and valleys.
‘Yes, yes! You are there now, aren’t you?’
It was Zakaria’s voice, but it sounded so muffled and so distant that it was as a half-forgotten whisper. Zakaria’s words faded out to an inaudible echo, and now the Teacher started to speak his wisdom inside William’s mind, his voice sounding just as crisp and clear as it had all those years ago.
‘Feel the forces of the universe flowing through you, William. Feel their pulses, their electricity, their vibrations as they course through your body. Now, tune the vibrations of every tiny part of your own being to the speed and frequency of these microscopic particles … yes, yes! Let the forces of space and time ripple through you as you become a conduit for their power. You are the lightning rod, Tiger, and you are the lightning! You and the forces are one!’
An electric charge rippled and buzzed within William, building up with exponentially increasing force into a crackling and absolutely devastating surge of pure power, enough to pulverise great boulders into powder, to smite whole mountains of granite into piles of rubble, to split planets in two. The power pulsed through him in impossibly rapid waves, like electrical current coursing along vast power lines, blasting out from a gigantic transformer. He began to chant the sacred mantra, losing his individual mind – a mere droplet of water – in the vast sea of collective consciousness. As he did this he started to bring hovering particles of the combined power and life-force of the infinite network of billions of spider-web-bound minds and souls into his physical form, imbuing each and every cell of his body with this energy, molecule by molecule, fusing them with the core of his being as his mind’s eye ventured deeper into the intricate depths of microstructures, and the minutiae of vibrating particles that formed the essence of everything material in this world, and all others. His skin, in the eye of his mind, began to turn bright electric blue, as did his blood, his bones and the fibres of every muscle and sinew that held his physical form together. The power
pulsated and hummed with an increasingly intense glow; now bright, now burning, now searing everything away like a million lightning strikes in the dark, all condensed into one gargantuan arc.
‘I’m there, and I’m here, all at once. I am … the Tiger.’
William awoke to the reality of the present with a jarring jolt. He was lying on the ground, having fallen over during this experience, but now the fear was gone, the self-doubt was gone, and the cravings were gone. They had been replaced, all of them, with an indomitable strength. Zakaria was staring at him with awe gleaming like raving madness in his one good eye.
‘You did it,’ he gasped. ‘You travelled, you broke through the barriers of space and time, didn’t you? I saw your body temporarily die! I saw your breath stop and the life leave your eyes, just for a few seconds … and then, then you were back, recharged with new life! Is it you, William Gisborne? Is it really you in this body?’
‘It’s me, brother,’ William answered calmly. ‘Aye, it’s me, but not only me. It’s me, and it’s everything. It’s the me I’ve always meant to be, the me I’ve been running from all these years. The me who is no longer a mere individual, but who is all energy united. I am … The Tiger.’
Zakaria beamed out an ear-to-ear grin and then roared with joyful, triumphant laughter, punching a fist into the air. He clapped a heavy, steel-encased hand upon William’s back.
‘The Tiger is with us once again! Finally, the Tiger is back! Come my friend, come! We have a lot of work to do.’
‘We will destroy the Huntsmen and the Alliance,’ William whispered, clenching his fists. ‘We will hurl them back into the depths of whatever hell they crawled up from.’
‘That we will, William, that we will.’
45
ADRIANA
31st October 2020. KSM Nightclub
Chloe had never been in a place like this nightclub; the vast dancefloor, like the bowl of a sports stadium, was presided over by bars on multiple levels, each with its own theme and closed-off VIP area. Taken as a whole, the aesthetic of the place made it seem like some sort of spaceship, almost; ominously dark, like the innards of some sort of cybernetic superorganism on the cusp of a singularity. Nodes of LED buttons pulsed their sinister glow into the omnipresent shadows, waxing and waning alternately, illuminating the dark bowels of the beast in ghostly hues, while arrays of bewildering lights and dazzling laser beams spun chaotically and control stations buzzed frantically, as if inundated by a glut of data. The overpowering electronic music – the booming heartbeat of this titanic android – was crushing in the immensity of its volume, the buzzing sound waves so intense as to seem as if they were perforating the membrane of her skin and vibrating their irresistible energy through every muscle, vein, bone and sinew of her body. The atmosphere was surreal; blinding lights arced through the darkness while coloured lasers slashed with mathematical precision through the humid air, which was thick with artificial fog, severing shadows with scalpel cuts in rainbow hues. The majority of the décor was glass and chrome, giving the walls and surfaces an almost liquid-like quality; the chrome was so polished that it looked like mercury, dripping and pooling on the strange angles and contours of the corners and curved surfaces.