SIX
The Occulator
Blackwater Blaze never let the gates out of his sight for the next two hours. Like any great hunter, the Wolfen was patient, infinitely so, but it didn't matter how long he kept up his lonely vigil, the traitor was not coming out. Other sheep poured out of the school, streaming into the streets surrounded by laughter and raucous shouting that set his teeth on edge, but not her.
He sniffed at the air.
All he could smell was the newly mown grass in the park behind him, which was overpoweringly strong, and the rotting carcass of the heron he had fed on to sate his hunger. The bird was rotting in the boating lake now. Its blood had warmed his body for a while, but the transformation had caused his metabolism to rage. He had already burned through all the goodness the bird offered and now he was left pitifully weak and shaking like some pathetic wretch. He curled up against the side of the footbridge, shivering.
He was going to have to feed properly soon.
Blaze was many things, but a fool was not one of them. Between the stench and the interference of the wards woven into the metalwork surrounding the building he had lost the girl's scent. But she could not get far. In this city of stenches she was one of the only pure aromas out there. They couldn't hide her beneath a mask of corruption forever. The city would offer up its secrets to him. He would find her. He would kill her.
And then he would return home, a hero.
Blaze doubled up as a fresh wave of agony cramped through his gut. It took forever to pass. He could not stay here indefinitely—not on the bridge and not in this city—he felt the push and pull of this foreign land on his body. The tides from the single moon, the glaring orbit around this huge sun bringing day and night and day so close together. His body couldn't possibly take the strain of constant change. He needed to go home. He needed to become the master of his own flesh again. But he would suffer this place and the shift it forced on his body for as long as it took for him to finish the job he had been sent here to do.
He would not fail.
He had never failed.
He rose unsteadily from his hiding place.
He wore a pair of faded blue jeans, white tee-shirt and black leather jacket he had taken from a motorcycle messenger. The man had no need for them now. He had not put up much of a struggle, truth be told.
The clothes were maddening.
They confined his body, pulling tight against his skin. It was unnatural to be covered. The constant brush of the material against his bare flesh set his nerves on fire. And as if that wasn't enough, they were an artificial layer between Blaze and the world around him. He had never felt more isolated from nature in his life. They were like chains hanging heavily on his body.
He prowled across the footbridge, his upper lip curling to bare his teeth at anyone who dared look his way. Those that did quickly scuttled away from the mad-eyed stranger. That was something Blaze quickly came to understand and appreciate about this foreign land; unlike where he came from there was no true sense of community here. These people did not act like pack mates despite the fact that they had pack markings. There was a sense of isolation about them all. The young might dress the same way, or in variants of the same fashion, showing some form of allegiance to one and other, but in truth, the moment the bell had sounded they had scattered, fleeing the building, each to their own and for themselves. And just like that they were alone. There was a lesson there. When it came to the kill, the child could not expect help from her new brood. That was good to know.
And this was not an isolated observation.
It was the same everywhere.
This city was a place of solitude.
There were no true packs here, which, Blaze knew, only served to make the hunt easier.
Blackwater Blaze left the school gates.
It had been almost twenty-four hours since he'd stepped through the Moongate with his pack. He had a duty to the fallen to get word back to their mates. They needed to be told. It was a part of any mission he dreaded, but he could not put it off. He needed to report back to the Occulator.
He was not the first of his kind to come over. There had been others over the centuries. Footholds had been established. Safe houses. Blaze had committed them to memory, though the names themselves meant nothing to him as yet: St Alphage Gardens, Wormwood Street, Bleeding Heart Yard, Cross Bones Graveyard, Hanging Sword Alley, Clink Street and Crowcross Street. He had been promised by Redhart Jax that any of these places would offer refuge. Redhart Jax was King Sabras' Occulator. A glass mage. A Wolfen capable of bending light across great distances with mirrors and other contraptions Blaze didn't care for, capturing lives inside the glass, replaying them, altering them. Blaze was a creature of actions. Mirrors were things of lies. As far as Blaze was concerned Redhart Jax was the reflection of his tools, and worthy of suspicion, but here, alone, he was going to have to trust the Occulator.
Should the worst happen, Jax had told him to seek out the Nightgaunt, a carrion beast bound together by enchantment, incapable of speech. It exuded silence, existing merely to kill. It was the ultimate assassin, and had been here in this place for over a century, a sleeper agent hidden in these strange streets by the old king's grandfather. Blackwater Blaze had always thought the Nightgaunt a fabrication, or at best, long dead. But, again he had been made to learn an address. He did not know these streets. He could have wandered for days upon days trying to find the Nightgaunt without his nose to follow. He had been assured by Jax that the Nightgaunt had its own unique fragrance and that he would not be able to miss it: while the rest of the city reeked of entropy, the Nightgaunt stank purely and completely of death. It would not take him long to pick up the Nightgaunt's scent, no matter how wretched this place was, because death was nothing, an absence of life. It wasn't an intensifying of rot or decay, a festering of flesh, on the contrary, it was an absence of all of the sweats and pheromones and natural secretions that made the living smell alive. It was like hunting for a black hole within the infinite odours of the city, making the Nightgaunt's lack of scent every bit as unique as the liar's sweet fragrance, albeit in a very different manner.
Unaccustomed as he was to running on two legs instead of four, Blaze still covered the ground fast, sniffing the air at every turn.
He didn't care about the city's inhabitants.
A few of them eyed him curiously, but most were far too preoccupied with getting to where they needed to be to worry about the strange behaviour of yet another of London's freaks.
As Blackwater Blaze was coming to understand, that was the joy of a diverse metropolis like London. Anything was possible, and any sort of behaviour—even the sight of a black leather clad biker running and sniffing at the air left and right on street corners before pushing his way across the road, dodging cars and black cabs—was just one of those things.
At first he found himself chasing in ever-decreasing circles, running in rings around streets and buildings in search of nothing. There were lures everywhere, huge great soul-sucking concrete and steel buildings that seemed to be void of anything, only for closer inspection to reveal they were merely soulless, not truly nothing.
And then, after what felt like hours of running, he stood at the arch of an old-fashioned shopping arcade a little removed from the riches of Piccadilly. His nose had brought him here. Now it itched violently, repulsed by the lack of fragrances for it to inhale. The floor was a tiled mosaic, though most of the tiles were chipped and cracked and had long since seen better days. The arches were coated in a dull brown ceramic and painted with flecks of green to look like trees supporting the vaulted ceiling. There were a dozen shops inside the ill-lit and dusty passageway. A sign hung outside the one he was looking for. There was a picture of a bookcase and books with wings, and in gold the words: Gaunt's Librarium.
Blaze entered the arcade, moving cautiously at first, until he reached the closed door. A roller blind had been pulled down, meaning he couldn't see inside. He tried the brass han
dle. It was locked. Blaze banged on the wooden frame, causing the door to rattle against the lock.
He tried to think what he had been told to say.
It came to him after a moment. "I come seeking the night's black agent."
Blaze rapped against the doorframe thrice, slowly.
A moment later it opened to reveal a tall, skeletally thin man without a face.
His skin had a greasy, oleaginous quality in the dim half-light.
Blaze didn't care.
He was completely overwhelmed by the lack of even a single fragrance. It was so unnatural to him to be stripped of his most powerful sense. It was akin to anyone else being blind.
The Nightgaunt said nothing.
It simply stood there, implacable.
Oil dripped slowly down the smooth emptiness of its face. The play of light made the creature look almost rubbery as it slowly inclined its head. Nostrils opened in the centre of its featureless face, flaring wide. It took Blaze a moment to realise the Nightgaunt was absorbing his scent, keeping his chamber free of any odour.
The assassin moved aside without a sound, allowing Blaze to enter the bookstore.
He glanced around the dusty racks, taking in all of the neatly arranged lines, the pristine spines and marvelled at the lack of old-book smell. There were no windows. Gaslights burned with small blue flames around the room. Heavy red velvet curtains covered the furthest wall. As well as the bookcases around the walls there were tables in the middle of the shop, each covered with a selection of antique titles. There wasn't a book in the place that was less than a century old. A thought occurred to Blaze as he moved through them, trailing fingers across each title in turn. This close to the Nightgaunt they possessed no smells, but taken out of this place, into the light of the day, would he be able to smell their dead owners on the pages still? He thought perhaps he would, that somehow this shop in the dusty old arcade just off Piccadilly preserved them like olfactory ghosts.
As the Nightgaunt moved up behind him a second thought occurred to Blackwater Blaze: were these books trophies taken from the assassin's victims? The thought sent a shiver through him.
He felt the creature's breath on the nape of his neck. It caused his skin to prickle and his hackles to rise.
Blackwater Blaze was not given to fear, but he knew the Nightgaunt was a thing worthy of fear. There was no question of that.
It moved deeper into the shop, still clothed in utter silence.
He noticed relics of the Moonlands everywhere on the shelves and cabinets, trophies and keepsakes. The Nightgaunt had amassed a hoard of treasures quite unlike anything that could be found anywhere else in the Kingdom of the Sun. There was so much power in this old shop it defied measure, but, Blaze realised, there was not a weapon in sight. The Wolfen growled. He had hoped he might find something he could use... something to level the playing field between them. The Fae had her sonispheres, after all. What he wouldn't have given for a real honest weapon to wield: a fang blade, perhaps, or a poisoned claw. Something with real bite.
But ever since that damned Grimm had woven his Concord to divide the realms weapons couldn't be transported between worlds. He could have sort out the Concord and destroyed it if he had even the slightest clue what device Jacob Grimm had woven his magic into, but without knowing what it was there was no way of knowing where to look for it.
His hope, however foolish, was that something from before the Concord might have found its way here. Something he could use.
It wasn't just a pact between the Moonlands. Grimm hadn't acted alone in raising the barrier. The thirteen kings themselves had joined with him and the King Under the Moon's magicker, Stitch, giving their blood to strengthen his magic—there was no enchantment stronger than blood magic. Stitch. Now there was an enemy you didn't want to make, Blaze thought, his mind racing with all of the implications this strange curiosity shop offered up.
The Concord ought to have destroyed any weapon of war even as the wielder tried to bring it across.
Ought to.
And yet the juggler had kept her spheres.
And those spheres had murdered his pack, so there was no denying their nature. They were weapons in any world.
It was bad enough that she was here, but that she had weapons?
It was impossible.
Unless, the Wolfen thought suddenly, she had brought them across before the Concord was erected?
The implications of that shook him.
The Concord still held. He knew that. He hadn't been able to bring a weapon through the Moongate. That single fact meant the Wardens treachery dated back decades, not years.
Was it possible the traitors had been planning this for so long?
Not only was it possible, he realised, it was the only answer that made a lick of sense to the Wolfen. And as a warrior it made a special kind of sense. It meant the traitors had made preparations, knowing the barrier was going up, and with that foreknowledge they had brought weapons across and stashed them away.
They were armed, and any force looking to fight them here was going to have to go up against them unarmed.
It was suicide to face them.
That made this world the perfect site for their last stand.
Blackwater Blaze tried to think.
It was all coming clear to him.
The Wolfen shuddered.
Blackwater Blaze noticed a tingle at the edge of his fingertips as they brushed over one of the books on the table beside him, and then the absence of that tingle before his touch had moved on. No. It wasn't just an absence of that tingle. It spread all the way up his arm. He couldn't feel anything. Nothing at all.
He pulled his hand back as though burned, grasping the true horror of what was happening here. One by one each of his five senses was slowly being leeched out of him by the Nightgaunt's presence. He could sense the changes happening throughout his body. If he lingered he would be blind, deaf, dumb, and unable to interact with the world around him in any meaningful way. He understood now what made the carrion creature such a lethal foe and it chilled him to the bone. It didn't just kill its victims; it reduced them to nothing.
Why hadn't they just loosed the Nightgaunt and left the creature to deal with the girl? What he was really thinking when he thought that was that there had been no need for Jax to force open a Moongate for his pack, not when they had such an efficient way of killing the girl already in place. It added unnecessary risk.
Unless the sole aim was to bring him to this world…
Or take him away from his own?
The chain of thoughts chilled Blaze, because they hinted at a greater hunt afoot, one of which he had no knowledge but was somehow caught up in.
He felt the cold hand of dread close around his heart.
Nothing good could come of him being here.
It was no wonder the creature hid itself away amid these old books, unable to experience them in any meaningful way. At least the side effects of its presence were contained. He could only assume that the Nightgaunt hunted down these things and brought them into this place for safekeeping, where its very presence neutralised them.
It was only a pity the creature hadn't found some of the Wardens' weapons.
The creature had been here too long, utterly alone. This place, this arcade, was its prison, not its home. It could leave the arcade, Blaze didn't doubt that for a moment, but in doing so it would leech away sensations and vibrations and emotions from the world beyond these walls. Here, inside the arcade, the range of its leech-like curse was contained. That was why the arcade had seemed so melancholic. And then Blaze understood the final and greatest horror of the Nightgaunt's existence. It could not join a pack of its own. It would always leech the senses out of its mates, reducing them to husks, empty of feeling. So instead it hid away like this, alone. Forever.
The creature pulled back the velvet curtain and nodded for him to go through.
Blaze followed.
The room beyond the curtain was
every bit as dark and dusty as the rest of the bookstore. There was a table in the centre, set for a single diner, and beside the place setting, a single chair. The wooden back was scratched with deep scores. Claw marks. Blaze wondered what their presence meant. Save for a mirror there was no ornamentation in this austere chamber. It was the Nightgaunt's cell. This was where it hid away from the sun and the moon, waiting for instructions from the man in the mirror.
The Nightgaunt left a snail-like trail of oil as is glided across the ground.
Blaze was careful to avoid stepping in it.
The Nightgaunt pressed its palm flat on the mirror, and opened its face in a silent scream. That was the only way Blaze's mind could comprehend what it was he was witnessing. A black oily cavity opened up in the middle of the Nightgaunt's flat face, like a sinkhole collapsing all the way into the back of its head, and a harrowing lament howled out. There were no words, but none were needed to summon the man in the mirror.
The reflection in the glass, Blaze saw, was not of the room they were in.
It was somewhere else entirely.
A long, long way away.
As the Nightgaunt's cry rattled the silvered glass a thick mist began to swirl and churn filling the mirror world. The mist thickened, wisps of white trailing and broiling and coiling until slowly he recognised Redhart Jax's face taking shape within it.
The Occulator did not look pleased to see the Alpha.
No, Blaze realised. Jax did not recognise him.
He hadn't expected the shift. That makes two of us, Blaze thought bitterly.
The white curls of mist solidified into the grizzled white of the ancient Wolfen's muzzle.
He opened his mouth to howl back.
Blaze covered his ears before the pair of them deafened him, or robbed him of the ability to absorb sound or whatever it was they were doing to him. "JAX! IT'S ME! BLACKWATER BLAZE!"
The mirror man's eyes narrowed, then widened with understanding.
Moonlands Page 5