Ghosts of Empire

by George Mann

  She moved, her instincts taking over. With a sudden guttural roar, she dived at the man, lurching forward and catching him by the shoulders, throwing her whole weight into him, so that—caught off-balance—he went over backwards, crashing to the ground. She went down on top of him, slamming her elbow against the floor and feeling the muzzle of his weapon jab her hard beneath her ribs. The wind went out of her lungs, and she rolled, gasping for breath. She had no sense of where they were, or what might be happening around them. All she knew was that she had to stop the man from powering up his gun.

  He was fumbling now, trying to untangle himself from beneath her, hands straying for the whorls and symbols on the barrel of the weapon. He mumbled something in Russian that sounded like a curse.

  Suddenly, she was breathing again. She dragged the air into her lungs. She’d lost her wrench in the fall, and she could see it now, about three feet away across the other side of the room. She cast around, but there was nothing she could use as a weapon. Nothing but her fists.

  The Russian had managed to get one of the whorls on his gun glowing, and was dragging himself away from her, using his heels to push himself across the carpeted floor while he traced his finger around a second set of symbols.

  Regina wasn’t about to let it end like this. With a gargantuan effort, she threw herself at the man, trying to grab him by the head. He squirmed, unwilling to release his grip on the weapon, as she caught hold of his beard in her left fist, while bringing the right around in a roundhouse blow that caught him hard in the left temple.

  He groaned, trying to shake her off, jabbing the muzzle of the gun at her like a baton. She absorbed the blow to her gut, gripping harder, forcing his head down by yanking on his beard. She came at him with another blow, and then a third, hammering as hard as she could across the side of his head.

  He rocked, groggily, and his hood slipped back, revealing a young man in his early twenties. His cheeks were scarred with crude circular patterns that echoed those on the doors and the barrel of his gun—the strange language of his order.

  He was determined, though, still trying desperately to activate his weapon, clutching it as if it were a sort of talisman; the only thing that might protect him against this terrible, relentless onslaught.

  As she pulled back for another blow, his fingers slipped across the barrel, completing the orbit of the second whorl. Arcane light fizzed, and, emboldened, he swung out his elbow, catching her hard in the chest.

  He rocked, trying to bring the gun around to bear, but she grabbed for the barrel, forcing it up and away from her, so that the muzzle was pointing to the ceiling. The Russian grunted as he fought against her, one hand on the trigger, the other on the top of the barrel, trying to force it back down. He met her gaze, his eyes filled with hatred and fury.

  She knew then that he was never going to give in. Pure, unadulterated hatred was driving him, lending him strength. And her muscles were already starting to burn with the strain. Unless she could think of something, she had only moments left to live.

  Behind her, through the still-open door, she could hear the barking report of gunshots being fired. Hargreaves wasn’t coming to save her.

  She fixed the man with a glare, gritting her teeth. And then, without warning, she stopped pushing.

  The man, caught off guard by the sudden lack of resistance, rocked forward, dipping the muzzle of the gun. She saw his eyes widen in realization—the gun was pointing directly at her belly—and his finger began to tighten on the trigger.

  The moment seemed to stretch. Regina knew she was playing a dangerous gambit. As the trigger slowly depressed, she threw all of her strength into pushing the gun back up again, away from her, and toward him.

  This time, the man wasn’t expecting it, and his arms were forced up and back with the sudden violence of her action, until the muzzle was pointing directly at his face.

  He screamed, but it was too late.

  Crackling, silvery flame burst from the end of the gun in a brilliant stream of twisting, liquid light, fizzing and popping with ethereal energy. All she could hear was the whoosh of the escaping energy, the burbling end of his scream, and the vague notion of whispering voices somewhere far off in the distance.

  The stream caught the man directly beneath his chin, and as Regina held on desperately to the gun, she watched with horror as his face began to dissolve before her. His flesh seemed to wither and crumble, decaying before her eyes; first the skin and muscles of his cheeks bubbled away from the skull, billowing away like so much dust, and then his eyes, too, putrefied and sloughed away. Within seconds his jaw had utterly disintegrated, and then even the uppermost half of the skull began to cave in and collapse, until all that was left was a horrific, ragged stump of flesh and bone where his head had once been.

  The body twitched, and the finger released the trigger. The stream from the gun ceased, and the room was plunged into an awful, deafening silence. Slowly, the remains of the man toppled backwards, thudding to the floor, dust spilling from the headless stump across the pale blue carpet.

  Regina was still holding the gun. She wanted to scream, to somehow exorcise the horrific thing she had just witnessed—that she had just done—but her body was running on pure adrenaline now, her training taking over, and she lurched to her feet, finally taking in her surroundings.

  She was standing in a small, rectangular room, in what appeared to be another house. There were no furnishings, aside from drapes at the window. A further, unmarked door led out into what she assumed would be a hallway.

  Behind her, through the open portal, she could still hear shouting and the rapid report of gunshots. That meant Hargreaves was still alive.

  She hefted the gun warily. It was like no weapon she’d ever seen. There was no fuel tank or ammunition housing; no moving parts at all, aside from the trigger. Just a long, fluted barrel engraved with swirling patterns and symbols, and a stubby handle, still slick with the sweat of the previous owner.

  Cautiously, she ran the tip of her finger around the sigils, just as she had with the doors. As expected, the symbols sprang to vivid life, imbued with the same twisting, fizzing energy. She could feel the weapon humming in her grip, demanding to be fired.

  She had two options: make a run for it and try to get word to Rutherford and Absalom, or step back through the portal to assist Hargreaves. Protocol demanded the former, but today, she was done with protocol. Besides, no one would believe her story if she didn’t have Hargreaves to back her up.

  Steeling herself, she hurried through the door.

  The scene on the other side was utter carnage. Hargreaves was crouched behind the door in the small chamber, hurriedly attempting to reload his gun. Four hooded figures were slumped dead in the doorway, and as she ran for cover on the other side of the door, she glimpsed at least two more in the hallway outside, bleeding out onto the flagstones.

  The air crackled with the discharge of the Russian’s bizarre magic. Gouts of translucent flame, in the form of small, swooping birds, dived through the opening, splashing across the stone floor like puddles of burning oil.

  She slammed her back against the wall. Hargreaves shot her a look.

  “I guess they saw you, then,” she said.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Busy,” she said.

  He slammed his pistol shut, now fully reloaded.

  “So…?”

  “So cover me,” she said.

  Hargreaves gave a brief nod, braced himself, and then ducked into the mouth of the opening, his gun spitting round after round into the gathered crowd of Russians. As he strafed across the opening, the elemental bombardment temporarily ceased, as the enemy either ducked for cover, or collapsed to the flagstones, clutching their wounds.

  Regina saw her opportunity, and took it. She lurched out of Hargreaves’s way, coming around behind him to stand fully in the opening, facing the surviving Russians. She didn’t have time to count them—didn’t want to know how many of them
were still standing—as she squeezed the trigger of the flame gun, unleashing a cone of broiling death into their midst.

  Her ears filled with the roar of chattering voices—not, she realized, from the dying Russians, but from someplace else; somewhere unseen, and unknowable.

  The Russians caught in the blast began to wither and crumble, aged obscenely to dust, while those unaffected dived for cover, rolling behind the altar, or the font, or a wooden pew. She adjusted the angle of her attack, searching them out, wracked with nausea as she watched them crumble to nothing, caught in the searing light of their own diabolical weapon. She couldn’t allow any of them to survive. Their bodies—or what remained of them—would be discovered soon enough, of course, but Regina hoped that would give her and Hargreaves time to get away, to spread word of what they were planning.

  She sensed Hargreaves by her side.

  “They’re all dead now,” he called. It took a moment for his words to register. “Regina? I said, they’re all dead. You can stop now.”

  She released the trigger, allowing the stream of death to peter out to nothing.

  Where there had once been a heap of bodies, there was now nothing but swirling dust, stirred by the air currents to spiral through the air, picked out in the light streaming in through the church windows. All that remained of eighteen men and women. She felt sick.

  “Where did you get that thing?” said Hargreaves. He was leaning against the wall, breathing heavily. There was a burn across his left temple, and blood was trickling down his lower lip.

  “Through there,” she said, indicating the still-open portal with a nod of her head.

  “Well, thanks for coming back for me.” He was grinning, happy to be alive. She supposed she might feel the same, later, but for now, she didn’t feel very much like celebrating. “We make a good team.”

  She nodded. “Come on. There’s another house through there. Maybe we can find a way out.”

  On the other side of the door, the corpse of the young Russian was just where she’d left it, decayed skull spread like fine powder across the carpet where it had fallen.

  She glanced quickly through the window, down at the street below. They were on the first floor of a large house, and the street outside looked vaguely familiar. “We’re in London,” she said. “Close to St. Paul’s. We need to find a way out of here.”

  “You won’t hear any argument from me,” said Hargreaves. He crossed to the unmarked door, opened it a fraction—wincing as the hinges squealed—and peered out. “I think we’re clear.”

  “Let’s go. Straight onto the landing, down the stairs, and out the front door,” she said. “Then we split up, in case they come after us. You go to Absalom, I’ll find Rutherford.”

  Hargreaves frowned. “How are you going to do that?”

  “Start with the American,” she said.

  “Alright.” He opened the door a little wider, ready to step through.

  “And if you see anyone,” she said, “shoot them and keep moving. We have to get word out about what they’re planning, and the location of this and any other buildings linked to their network.”

  Hargreaves nodded, and slipped out. Cautiously, she followed behind.

  The landing was nondescript—just like the upper hallway of any number of high-end residential properties in London with a series of bedroom doors, all unmarked, stemming off from it. There was no one else in evidence.

  They hurried to the top of the stairs. Here, too, it was mercifully quiet, and together they crept down to the entrance hall, Hargreaves covering the front, Regina the rear.

  “Regina,” said Hargreaves, just as he reached the bottom few steps. “Have you seen this?”

  She turned on the spot, half expecting to see an array of hooded figures awaiting them, but instead, she found herself utterly surrounded by doors.

  She blinked, disorientated, trying to take it all in. It was almost as if her eyes were having difficulty focusing. They were standing in a large, open hallway, roughly square, of the relative size and shape she’d expect to find in a large terraced property in this area of London.

  The walls, however, were covered in doors.

  Doors where there should never have been any doors, regimented lines of them, covering every available inch of wall, defying all sense of geometry. Just looking at them left her feeling giddy. Even more bizarre was the fact that many of them also appeared to be freestanding; doorways into nothingness, hanging suspended in thin air. It was as if she could have wound her way between them all, circling them each in turn. There must have been fifty or more, each of them marked with the now-familiar sigils. Every single one of them was a portal.

  All save for one: directly across the hall from them was the main entrance to the house, and beyond that, the relative safety of London.

  “It’s some kind of central hub,” she said, hurrying down the last few stairs. “This must be the heart of their network.”

  “Can we destroy it?” said Hargreaves. “If we can disrupt their network, we might be able to prevent them from carrying out their plans. Maybe there’s a way.”

  Regina shook her head. “Not alone. Look at this place. Think about the power needed to sustain it. And besides, we know they have designs on the Underground. We have to go for help.”

  “Okay, you’re right,” said Hargreaves. “Come on.”

  They crossed the hall, wary of any emergent threat from the doors. Thankfully, though, none was forthcoming.

  Hargreaves turned the latch on the door, and suddenly they were standing outside in the fading afternoon light. Around them, London bustled as it always had—as if everything they’d seen, everything they’d done, was simply some bizarre dream from which they’d now woken. But Hargreaves still wore the scorch across his face, and Regina’s ribs still ached from the battering she’d taken during the fight with the young Russian. It had all been terrifyingly real.

  She tucked the flame gun into the back of her culottes—now filthy with grime and dust—and pulled the door shut behind them. “You’ll go directly to Absalom, right? Tell him everything.”

  Hargreaves nodded. “Of course. I’ll tell him to get word to the police, have them man all the Underground stations.”

  “Good.”

  “And you’re still going after Rutherford and the American?”

  “Yes. He needs to know what we’ve found. We can compare notes; try to figure out a plan to stop them. He’s been working this case for months. He knows it better than any of us.”

  Hargreaves put a hand on her shoulder. “Just make sure you look after yourself,” he said.

  “And you.”

  She watched as he turned away and hurried off down the street. Then, deciding the Savoy was as good a place as any to make a start in her search for the American, she set off at a run, keen to put as much distance between herself and the Russians as possible.

  FIFTEEN

  Roland Harwood sat bolt upright on his bed, startled by the sudden thudding sound from below. The bed sheets were in disarray, the back of his head damp with perspiration.

  He swallowed. His mouth was thick and dry, filled with the stale aftertaste of cheap wine.

  There. The thudding sounded again, like someone trying to break out from the inside of his skull with a mallet. His thoughts stirred slowly, questions blooming. Was there something wrong? What was the noise all about? What had happened?

  He wondered for a moment if there was something wrong with the avatar. Had it broken loose again? Was it banging on the window like it had the other night?

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his cupped hands over his face. He felt dreadful. He’d drunk too much again, and passed out on his bed. What time was it? He glanced at the wall clock. It was approaching four in the afternoon.

  He’d been asleep for hours. It hadn’t been restful—he’d been plagued by the same recurrent nightmares again: images of searing lights describing whorls and geometric patterns in the air;
an endless cycle of them, dancing through his dreams. No matter what he tried to banish them—booze, pills or rituals—they kept on coming back, haunting him, even in his waking hours. It was as if someone had etched them on the inside of his eyelids, as if they wouldn’t leave him alone. The worst thing was, he had no real notion of what they meant.

  Unsteadily, he got to his feet, stretching his weary limbs.

  There it was again. The banging, even more insistent this time. He decided he’d better go and check. He was halfway down the stairs before he realized what it was: someone was banging on the door.

  He reached the bottom step and stumbled into the porch, reaching for the door handle. Who could be visiting him now? He so rarely had visitors that he’d forgotten the last time someone called. It had probably been Newbury, bringing another little problem to his door. In fact, it was most likely Newbury now…

  He opened the door and peered out blearily into the waning afternoon sunlight.

  There were three people standing in the driveway, a woman and two men. He blinked at them warily. The woman was pretty—short, blonde and slim, with a heart-shaped face and full lips.

  The man on the left was tall and dapper, despite the rather crumpled appearance of his suit. He wore a tie, although his top button had been loosened, and had a neat parting of short, sand-colored hair, falling in a loose comma across his forehead. The bulge of an underarm holster was visible in the line of his jacket.

  The second man was a little shorter, with a square jaw and startling blue eyes. He had a muscular build with a broad chest, but looked as if he’d recently been in a brawl, due to a long scratch on his left cheek and a slight hint of bruising around the orbit of his right eye.

  He didn’t recognize any of them.