Conflagration

by Mick Farren

  Falconetti shook her head. “No, that’s no city, and it’s certainly not Paris. That’s our detour.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Just be patient, Cordelia. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

  They continued down the road for a few more minutes, and then Jacques and Falconetti exchanged glances. A turning was coming up on the right and Jacques slowed and spun the steering wheel. The ride was now really bumpy, over a scarcely paved country back road. They also seemed to be ascending a low wooded rise, and, all the time, moving closer to the unexplained luminescence. The car moved through trees, and Jacques cut the headlights, easing forward very carefully. Falconetti reached into a door pocket and produced a pair of shiny steel handcuffs, and indicated that Cordelia should take them. “It’s highly unlikely that we’ll be stopped again, but, if we do run into a patrol, they may check us out somewhat more carefully than they did at that routine roadblock. We are now in a highly restricted area, and it will be hard to talk our way out, no matter how flashy our letter of transit may look. It would be best if you put these on. It will make the story that you are our prisoner a great deal more plausible.”

  Cordelia took the cuffs, but simply held them with an expression of doubt and unwillingness. “Do I have to?”

  Falconetti’s face hardened. “It’s not negotiable.”

  With a reluctant trepidation, Cordelia clipped the manacles loosely onto her wrists. The blacked-out car crested the rise and Cordelia could finally see the source of the illumination. Falconetti, Cordelia, and the two men stepped down from the automobile and stood looking. A vast expanse of the flat land below them was lit up by row after row of electrical floodlights. Two huge objects dominated the area, and Cordelia recognized both of them from schoolroom picture books. The perfectly equilateral Amiens Pyramid was so much larger than she had ever imagined it. The mighty earthwork reared into the night so its apex was just a dark shape against the sky, beyond the uppermost reach of the floodlights. The story of the Amiens Pyramid was known all over the world; how it marked the battlefield on which the Frankish Grand Army had been defeated by the Mosul, beaten into surrender by human wave after human wave, and then, after two days of unrelenting combat, the survivors had been systematically slaughtered until not a man, woman, boy, or horse had been left alive. Some estimates put the numbers of the dead on both sides as high as a quarter of a million, and they had all been buried together, Mosul and Frank alike, piled side by side, layer after layer, in a single huge pit. The story was that the pyramid had been shaped from the earth that had been excavated to create the vast mass grave, but it scarcely seemed possible. Looking up at the towering monument to war and death, Cordelia could only think that more dirt must have been added. Even the most gigantic grave could hardly have produced such a vast tonnage of building material.

  On the far side of the pyramid stood the Paris Gun, the monstrous field piece, the crowning achievement of the Aschenbach Foundries in the Ruhr, with its twenty-four-inch barrel, the massive system of pistons that raised and lowered its elevation and absorbed its fearsome recoil, and the immense gun carriage that ran on steel wheels taller than a man, and double sets of railroad tracks. Again, the thing itself was much bigger than any picture had led her to believe. All those years ago, before Cordelia had even been born, it had fired on Paris for four ceaseless days and nights, raining down shells containing high explosives, poisoned gas, and incendiaries on the helpless population, until there was nothing left of the ancient city. The Paris Gun had, in fact, launched its barrage from a firing position some miles to the east, but, after the fall of the Franks, it had been hauled on specially laid tracks to its present position beside the Amiens Pyramid, as permanent monument to superior Mosul cruelty, and as a perpetual reminder of Frankish humiliation.

  Something, however, was being done to the old and infamous memorial. Alterations or improvements were in progress. Much of the pyramid was cloaked in a spiderweb of scaffolding, with ladders and walkways, and, all around the base, excavations were being dug and concrete was being laid. It looked to Cordelia as though a circular perimeter track or outer road was under construction, with the pyramid at its exact geometric center, and, inside the circle, more pathways, or whatever, were being built. As far as Cordelia could tell, these would ultimately form an eight-pointed star, acres across, and she was well aware that the eight-pointed star was a powerfully protective configuration. Beyond the pyramid, the gun, and all of the work in progress, lines of long wooden huts had been constructed, and these were enclosed by high barbed-wire fences and guarded by watchtowers. Cordelia did not like the look of this part one bit. “What is that? A concentration camp?”

  “It’s the compound where they house the slave laborers.”

  Cordelia could feel panic edging up on her. “Why did you bring me to this place? You never intended to take me to Paris, did you? This is the end of the road, isn’t it?”

  Falconetti turned impatiently. “Get a grip, woman. Of course we’re taking you to Paris. We’ve stopped here because it was part of our mission, and we also wanted, with your experience and sensitivity, to get your reactions to it.”

  “So why the handcuffs?”

  “I already explained that.”

  Cordelia’s resolve was falling away fast. She felt as though she was about to suffocate. “I want to get back in the car.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “I feel I want to get back in the car. Now!”

  She tried to turn and run, but Falconetti gripped her by the shoulders. Her tone was one of well-drilled command and control. “Get a hold of yourself, Cordelia. You are perfectly safe while you’re with us. Just concentrate. It’s vital to know as much as we can about what’s going on here.”

  Cordelia took a deep breath and fought down the irrational panic. “Okay, okay.”

  “Concentrate.”

  She began breathing more normally. “I’m concentrating.”

  “And what do you feel?”

  Cordelia shook her head. “I don’t know. I mean, I already know there’s a quarter of a million long-buried dead men under this place.”

  “Nothing more than that?”

  At that moment, an invisible wave of raw evil swept over her like a toxic and threatening eddy. Cordelia stiffened with revulsion as it hit, and then gasped as it subsided. Falconetti gave her a moment and then looked at her questioningly. “Something?”

  Cordelia nodded. “Definitely. Something powerful but half-formed. Something still under construction, like the place itself. I really think we should get out of here.”

  “There’s nothing else?”

  “Except that the whole setup smells of Jeakqual-Ahrach at her most grandiose.”

  “We have information that she’s elsewhere.”

  Cordelia looked around uneasily. “Geography has never been one of her limitations.”

  As she spoke, a second wave of evil hit. The black bulk of the pyramid seemed to be pulling at her, wanting her to go to it. The great mass was changing its shape, extending and wrapping around her like the huge leather wing of some gargantuan mythic beast, blacker than the night behind it, and with a flickering, dark red tracery, like veins pulsing with contaminated ruby blood, and yet the beast was not mythic, it was fear metamorphosed, a creature somehow being created, maybe spawned was the better word, right there on the bloody historic battlefield. Cordelia backed away as the venomous and unwholesome vision threatened to enfold her. “We have to get out of here. We have to leave here right now.”

  Falconetti glanced urgently at Jacques. “Get the car started.”

  At the sound of her voice the malignance faded slightly, but it was then that she heard the voices, childish and chilling. “Cordelia.”

  “Cordelia.”

  “We see you, Cordelia.”

  “She doesn’t see you, Cordelia. She doesn’t know you’re there.”

  “But we see you.”

  “We know you’r
e there.”

  “Shall we tell her, Cordelia?”

  “Shall we tell her where you are?”

  Somewhere in dark of the vision she momentarily saw the two pale and tiny figures. Lit briefly by the ruby glow, the White Twins laughed, showing their sharp baby teeth. Cordelia raised her cuffed hands to her head and screamed. “The car! Get me into the car!”

  SEVEN

  CORDELIA

  “Drink this.”

  Cordelia took a grateful pull on the flask of cognac and gasped. “Oh fuck. I’m sorry. Was I screaming?”

  The black car was bumping down the hill as fast as Jacques could drive with headlights extinguished. Sera Falconetti cradled Cordelia’s head in her lap. The handcuffs had been removed, but Cordelia couldn’t recall it happening. She could hardly remember being half carried, half dragged back to the car. Jacques glanced back. “We’ll be on the paved road in a couple of minutes. If there’s no pursuit by then we can assume we’re out of trouble.”

  Falconetti brushed Cordelia’s hair out of her eyes. “You screamed loud enough to wake every guard in the camp.”

  “I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t the worst I’ve ever faced, but I’ve always had the others with me. It was more than I could handle on my own.”

  “Exactly what did you see?”

  “Exactly, I don’t know. It was like the pyramid changed into a living thing and tried to take hold of me.”

  “You mean for real or as part of some assault vision?”

  Cordelia took a second hit of cognac. “I guess it was a hallucination or a grab from the Other Place. I mean, the pyramid didn’t come alive, did it?”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  The brandy was making Cordelia feel considerably better, and, despite everything she had been through, more than a little sleepy. She leaned more comfortably against Sera Falconetti’s thigh, but then the car lurched as Jacques spun it back onto the paved highway and she and Falconetti were tossed against each other. Again Jacques looked back. “There’s nothing behind us. It seems like we got away clean, and you can safely assume we’ll be in Paris inside of an hour.”

  Falconetti nodded. “Good.” She turned back to Cordelia. “So you actually saw the White Twins?”

  Cordelia sighed. She had not intended to talk about that. “I said that?”

  “You were babbling about the bloodless little bastards.”

  “You know about the White Twins in Paris?”

  “We’ve known about them since they were just the breeding program.”

  Now Falconetti had the better of Cordelia. What the hell was the “breeding program?” Cordelia was not about to betray her ignorance by asking. “I don’t think they were there at the site. They seemed to be watching from a long distance.”

  “Anything else?”

  Cordelia again made herself comfortable against Falconetti. “Yes. There was.”

  “What?”

  “I got the impression that they had their own secrets and they might not be in full accord with their … mother.”

  Cordelia didn’t know why she had used that particular word. It had simply presented itself, served right up from her subconscious, and totally apt.

  RAPHAEL

  Madame de Wynter delivered a stern warning. “You should not really be present at all, so it’s important that you remain completely out of sight. It is, by both tradition and necessity, an all-female ceremony.”

  Raphael looked at Argo, and then back to de Wynter. “We need to stay here for Jesamine, in case anything happens. We can’t pretend that she hasn’t been traumatized by the assassination.”

  De Wynter nodded. “We all realize that. All we ask is that you keep out of sight.”

  Raphael sighed. Both he and Argo were dog-tired and had also not expected to see Anastasia de Wynter quite so soon after the games in her turret room, if indeed they had been games. “We understand. We’ll confine ourselves strictly to the shadows.”

  They were in the same ballroom at Deerpark where, just one night earlier, the loud band had played for the wildly dancing crowd. Little trace of the festivities remained aside from a number of large garbage hoppers awaiting collection at the end to the driveway where the cars had been parked. Even the floor in the ballroom had changed. The wooden dance floor had been taken up, revealing an expanse of highly polished white marble with a huge inscribed symbol, a red, eight-pointed star enclosed in a gold circle that was easily twenty feet in diameter. The star was geometrically formed, one square superimposed at an angle over another, and tall phallic candlesticks, with burning tallow candles, had been placed at each of the sixteen intersection points created by the figure. The room now had a magickal look, and, indeed, magick was about to be performed there, at the end of which, if de Wynter was to be believed, they would know what had happened to Cordelia, or, at the very least, where she was located.

  To consult Anastasia de Wynter, so soon after the party, and so soon after what had occurred between her, Argo, and Raphael, had been a matter of last resort. The first idea, mooted after Sir Harry Palmer, Tennyson, and Huntley had left the Bow Street Runner, leaving the three of them alone with Gideon Windermere, had been that they should employ their own powers to find Cordelia. They would attempt to venture into the Other Place and use their four-way mutual rapport to search for any trace of her. At first, Jesamine had flatly refused. The idea of entering the Other Place in the wake of all that had happened filled her with extreme trepidation. She had relented after considerable argument only brought them to the inevitable conclusion that Raphael and Argo simply could not manage a wide-ranging occult search on their own, and, even after declaring herself reluctantly willing to make the attempt, Jesamine had raised another objection. If the three of them ventured into the Other Place, asymmetrical and already under stress, they could be easily spotted by anyone or anything keeping watch.

  “Jeakqual-Ahrach and her Zhaithan will not only know where we are, but also that we’re missing a member and are out looking for her.”

  “We might as well hang out a sign telling anyone who’s interested that we’re crippled and vulnerable.”

  “Precisely.”

  “That’s if Jeakqual-Ahrach doesn’t know already.”

  “That’s if Jeakqual-Ahrach doesn’t already have Cordelia.”

  At that point, Argo had rolled his eyes. “Oh shit.”

  “Right.”

  Raphael tried to reason his way to some positive solution. “Suppose we gave it a very limited try?…”

  Jesamine had cut him off. “We tried functioning as a threesome in training. It never worked well without Cordelia being one of the three.”

  “So?”

  At that point, Windermere had made his suggestion. “De Wynter.”

  “What about de Wynter?”

  “Her Morgana girls don’t have the same experience and training as you do. Also they tend to work by ritual, which is time-consuming, but they can be pretty damned effective.”

  “What could they do?”

  “They might set up some kind of Other Place diversion, a cloak or smokescreen that could cover you while you looked for any trace of Cordelia.”

  Raphael had wanted to protest that they did not need Anastasia de Wynter, but he could hardly sacrifice Cordelia to fear of embarrassment. “Whatever you say.”

  With this less-than-heartfelt assent, Windermere had gone to work. Telephone calls were placed, and Argo and Raphael had found themselves in a London taxi with Windermere and Jesamine following in his Armstrong roadster. De Wynter had also risen quickly to the occasion. More telephone calls had been placed, and while the night was still comparatively young, de Wynter announced that a quorum had been assembled. “I have eight of our most adept members on their way here. More would have been better, but these are all very experienced acolytes.” It was only then that she had turned to Jesamine, and made plain the only drawback in what they were about to attempt. “This is a women’s ritual.”

  “Mea
ning?”

  “Meaning the men will not participate.”

  Jesamine suddenly understood. “No!”

  “It has to be.”

  “I’m not going into the Other Place alone.”

  “You have no real choice.”

  Jesamine edged towards a whine. “Don’t my feelings count for anything?”

  De Wynter sighed impatiently. “My dear, you are now unfortunately paying the price of your success. First you were a child, then a whore, then a concubine, but now you are famous, and the famous go on regardless.”

  “But…”

  The words were harsh but delivered with compassion. “We all mourn for Jack Kennedy. Our members have been sleeping with him for years.”

  Jesamine looked away, her face sullen. “I’m not one of your members.”

  De Wynter became brisk, indicating she was at the limit of her patience. “No … you’re not. You are something else. You may be something new. All we can offer you is our total support.”