Darkest hour aom-2

by Mark Chadbourn

  That brought another wave of panic which almost sent her fleeing into the tumult, but she'd used enough drugs in her shady past to know how to calm herself a little. She focused on one of the flashing lights and did deep breathing to clear her mind. When the wave had passed, she peeked above the lip of the table to get her bearings.

  What she saw filled her with dread. The walls, floor and ceiling shimmered with ice, reflecting the flashing lights in a breathtaking manner that was amplified by the drugs coursing through her system: it was the ultimate light show. But the wonder was corrupted by the grisly piles of frozen bodies heaped across the floor, faces locked in final expressions of terror, hands clawed, legs bent ready to thrust forward, taken by the cold in seconds. Laura instantly flashed back to sickening images of World War I battlefields she had seen in a history lesson.

  And moving through the scene slowly was the Cailleach Bheur, her face as dark as nature. The cold came off her in waves, metamorphosing at the tips into snaky tendrils which reached out to anything not yet touched by the icy blast of eternal winter. The speakers fizzed and sparks flew off the decks. A second later the ear-splitting music ended in a shriek of feedback. That only revealed the awful screams of the surviving clubbers huddled in one corner of the room. Laura covered her ears, but couldn't drive out the sound. She couldn't even tear her eyes away as one of the tendrils wound its way along the floor like autumn mist before wrapping itself around the ankle of a young man who was futilely trying to kick it away. It was followed instantly by an odd effect which, in her state, she found both fascinating and horrible: ice crystals danced in the air before forming around his leg, moving rapidly up to his waist. Yelling, he tore at it, but it simply transferred to his hands where he touched the crystals, turning the skin blue, then forming a film of ice over it.

  A second later he fell to the floor with the same rictus, catching the light like a gruesome ice sculpture.

  Laura was convinced she was going insane from the magnified panic and terror. Irrationally, and with desperation, she threw herself over the table and ran to the men's toilets. The door slammed behind her just as a rapidly pursuing wave of cold crashed against it. She heard the familiar cracking sound as the wood froze, but when it didn't burst in she guessed the Cailleach Bheur had turned her attention back to the remaining clubbers.

  Frantically she tore around the small room and was overjoyed when she discovered a tiny window over one of the cubicles. She wrenched it open gleefully, oblivious to the breaking of a fingernail and the spurt of blood as it ripped into her skin. When she saw the solid bars that lay on the other side she burst into a bout of uncontrollable sobs.

  "I can't think straight!" she yelled at herself between the tears. "Why was I so stupid? I'm a loser! A fucking loser!"

  The screams echoing dimly through the walls were bad enough, but when they finally faded away, the silence that followed was infinitely worse. Laura collapsed into a corner of the cubicle and hugged her knees, realising how pathetic her whimpers sounded, unable to do anything about it.

  The silence didn't last long. The telltale sounds of forming ice and cracking wood gradually made their way towards the toilet door. Laura pressed her back hard into the wall as if, just by wishing, it would open up and swallow her. Her cheeks stung from the tears which had soaked her top. She was already making desperate deals with God: no more drugs, no more stupidity, if He whisked her out of there to safety, turned the Hag away from the door, did anything, anything-when she suddenly noticed a curious sight which broke through the panic. The blood which dripped from her cut finger was green. It wasn't a trick of the light or a vague visual hallucination; an emerald stain had formed on her top. Cautiously she touched the tip of her tongue to it; it didn't even taste like blood. It reminded her, oddly, of lettuce.

  "Jesus Christ, what's going on?" It seemed like the final straw of madness. And an instant later she heard the toilet door begin to break open. Her breath clouded around her; the temperature was plummeting.

  Clarity crept back into her mind as the drug entered one of its cyclical recessions, and with it came a decision not to die screwed up on the floor of a toilet like some pathetic junkie. She jumped up on to the toilet seat and began to wrench at the bars on the window in the hope that they were looser than they appeared.

  By now she was shivering uncontrollably. The door groaned and began to give way.

  "Come on," she pleaded, but the bars held fast. Then another strange thing happened. Where her blood splashed on to the bars it appeared to move with a life of its own, spreading over the metal, changing into something which, in the gloom, she couldn't quite make out; all she could see through the shadows was movement and growth. Instantly the bars began to protest and a few seconds later they burst out of the brick.

  The sound of the toilet door bursting inwards and the wave of intense cold that followed drove all questions from her mind. She pulled herself through the opening and fell awkwardly into a dark, litter-strewn alley that smelled of urine. Pain drove through her shoulder where she hit the ground. Ignoring it, she forced herself to her feet and hurried away just as a white bizzard erupted out of the window above her.

  The relief that hit her was so overwhelming she burst into tears again, but by the time she stumbled out on to a main road her head was spinning; there was no point trying to make sense of what had happened until the trip was over. Yet she couldn't resist one last look at the green smears across her hands. An involuntary shudder ran through her that did not come from the cold.

  Chapter Five

  Storm Warning

  There was never-ending darkness, and pain, more than she thought she could bear. How long had it gone on for now? Months? Ruth's head swam, every fibre of her body infused with agony. At least the sharp lances that had been stabbing through her hand where her finger had been severed had subsided, a little. She didn't dare think how the wound had healed in the dirty confines of her tiny cell.

  Since she had been snatched from the hotel in Callander she had cried so many tears of pain and anger and frustration she didn't feel she had any more left in her. Through all the hours of meaningless torture, it was the hope that kept her going: that she would find a way out, however futile that seemed; that the others would rescue her. But it had been so long- She drove the thought from her mind. Stay strong, she told herself. Be resilient.

  It would have helped if all the suffering had been for a reason, something she could have drawn strength from by resisting, but the Fomorii holding her captive seemed merely to want to impose hurt on her in their grimly equipped torture chambers. They had held back from inflicting serious damage-they always stopped when Ruth blacked out-but she felt it was only a matter of time before they lost interest in their sport.

  Feeling like an old woman, she shuffled into a sitting position. Her straw bedding dug into the bare flesh of her legs. She'd mapped the cell out in her mind long ago: a bare cube carved out of the bedrock, not big enough to allow her to lie fully out, smelling of damp, scattered with dirty straw, a roughly made wooden door that had resisted all attempts to kick it open.

  There's still hope. It was her mantra now, repeated every time the despair threatened to close in.

  She couldn't remember anything about her capture, who did it, how it happened, where she had been brought. Her recent memory began with the shock and dismay when she discovered her missing finger and she wondered if it was the upheaval of that discovery which had driven out all the other thoughts.

  Somewhere distant the deep, funereal tolling of a bell began. Soon they would come for her again. Tears sprang to her eyes unbidden and she hastily wiped them away with the back of her hand. She wasn't weak, she would survive.

  There's still hope.

  Afterwards, with the pain still fresh in her mind and her limbs, she enjoyed the cool, anonymous embrace of the darkness, where thoughts were all; this was the place she could live the life she wanted to live. But, as had happened so many times, the balm was
soon disrupted by the familiar voice which made her think of the serrated teeth of a saw being drawn across a window pane.

  "Does the light still burn?"

  "It burns," she replied. "Not brightly, but it's there. You're a good teacher." She caught herself. "Teacher. I still haven't worked out what our relationship is. Are you a teacher, aide, confidant-?" She wanted to add master, but a frightened part of her made her hold back.

  "All of those, and more. I have been entrusted with your well-being." The sound of his words made her think he was smiling darkly, wherever it was in the gloom he existed. Though he had been helpful and supportive, she had an abiding sense that buried within him was a contempt for her powerlessness.

  "What are you?" she asked, as she always did in their conversations.

  And he replied as he always did: "I am who you want me to be." It had almost become their little joke.

  But she didn't know, and that unnerved her. She remembered all she had read throughout her life about familiars being demons or sprites doing the Devil's bidding, and however much she had grown to realise that was propaganda put out by the early Church, she still couldn't shake the irrational fears it had set in her. Whatever, she knew she would have to stay measured and protective in her dealings with him.

  "I think I prefer you as an owl," she noted. When the Goddess had gifted her the familiar in the dark countryside outside Bristol, she hadn't realised what she was taking on; certainly with regard to what the Goddess had planned for her, but she had grown into it, reluctantly. And after her meeting with the woman who practised the Craft in the Lake District, she had seen its benefits. But still, she was scared. There was so much she didn't know, so many repercussions she couldn't begin to grasp. And she was afraid that when they did happen they would be terrible; and it would be too late to go back. "So what's the lesson for today?" she continued hesitantly.

  The voice began, telling her dark, troubling secrets: about the way the world worked, about nature, some things she didn't feel comfortable hearing at all, for they hinted at greater, darker mysteries which underpinned every aspect of existence. But her body of knowledge about the Craft was growing. There in the dark she had learned how to use thorn apples and white waterlilies to make flying ointments, how Christmas roses could convey invisibility, how periwinkles could spark passion in the right potion and how henbane could be used to conjure spirits and intensify clairvoyance. She had discovered which plants could be used for healing and which for protection. And she knew the release of sexual energy was the core of all magick, linked directly to the blue fire that bound together the spirit of the world. Amazingly, she seemed to understand it all on first hearing and forgot none of it.

  Time passed. There was a brief discussion about the raising of storms and communication with animals, enough to pique her interest and to make her realise how much there still was to learn.

  "And all of this works as you say?" she asked.

  "All works if applied in the correct manner by the right strength of will."

  "If I don't get out of here all this information is going to be a complete waste, isn't it?"

  He ignored her question. "This secret knowledge exists to be put into practice and it will be meaningless to you until you do so. Do you understand the message that underpins this gift I give you?"

  She thought for a moment. "No, I don't. I don't understand anything."

  "Listen, well. There is no reality. There is no shape to anything, except the shape you give it. In these matters, your will is all-powerful. If you learn to apply it-"

  "I can do anything." She weighed his words carefully. "If you're to be believed…" Her voice faded. Then: "There's always hope. That's what it means. It's down to me."

  In the dark, he concurred. "There is always hope."

  Church paced around the hotel room before coming to rest at the window, as he had done repeatedly over the last three hours. The sun was just beginning to tint the sky pink and pale purple away to the east.

  "You are worried about her," Shavi stated.

  "She can look after herself." The words sounded hollow the moment he uttered them. He knew Laura was resilient enough to cope in almost any situation, but the danger she always carried with her was the dark, self-destructive demon buried in her heart. And after their argument he feared she had been prepared to give full vent to that side of her nature, to punish both herself and him.

  He turned back to Shavi, whose face was still bloodless an hour after he had returned to the hotel. Church knew that there was much more to his experiences in St. Mary's Close than the bare bones of information he had told them. But Shavi was defined by his decency and he wouldn't tell them anything that might burden them; his suffering was his own. Church couldn't resist clapping a supportive hand on his shoulder as he passed. When everything else seemed to be falling apart, he was glad for the people he had around him. It was more than he could have hoped for; he was surprised by the warmth of the feeling.

  "Look, forget all the bollocks the spooks spouted," Veitch said with a grin. "Ruth's alive and kicking. That's the good thing, right? That's the important thing." He grew irritated when he looked around the room to see only gloomy expressions. "What's wrong with the lot of you?"

  "The spirits implied her situation was dire," Shavi began. "We should not get our hopes-"

  "Why should we believe them? All they do is talk in bleedin' riddles anyway-

  "She's with the Fomorii, Ryan," Church cautioned. "We've both been there."

  Veitch fell silent.

  Shavi ran his fingers through his long hair. "What could they possibly want with her? I was under the impression we were beneath their notice since we failed to win over the Tuatha De Danann."

  Tom waved a hand dismissively. "Her situation is not paramount-'

  Church stepped in before Veitch could jump to his feet angrily. The South Londoner's eyes were blazing with the barely controllable rage he always carried close to the surface. "What's wrong with you? She's a friend, you bastard."

  "This is about more than any of us. We're all dispensable." The coldness in Tom's eyes made Church shiver; the emotional detachment was so great he wondered how apart from them Tom really was.

  "I thought you were supposed to be the big mythic hero," Veitch sneered. "Turning your back on a girl in trouble isn't very heroic, is it? You weasel."

  Tom turned to Church. "Tell him. You understand."

  Of course he understood, but he could barely put it into words because it was the antithesis of everything he felt: they were all disposable, their petty little human concerns, hopes and fears meaningless against the end of everything. He felt like he was trading off his humanity little by little. If they succeeded, would it be worth it if there was nothing of him left to appreciate it?

  Before Church could open his mouth, Veitch saw in his face what he was about to say. With a contemptuous shake of his head, Veitch stalked over to the other side of the room where he stood with his back to them.

  Tom pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "Now that's out of the way-

  "Have a little heart, for God's sake," Church snapped. "Just because you're right doesn't mean you have to stamp all over people's feelings."

  Tom eyed him coolly. "Keep a level head," he cautioned.

  "Let us examine the evidence," Shavi said diplomatically; his smile was calm and assured. "Do we have enough to move forward?"

  Church sighed wearily. "Every time we try to get some information from anything supernatural it always ends up as mysteries wrapped in smoke and mirrors, so vague you can never be sure you've deciphered it correctly."

  "They do it on purpose," Tom said. "They want to see us misinterpret their words and fail or suffer. It's a power thing. Good sport. But they have given us enough." He nodded to Shavi. "You did well." Coming from Tom, it was like a cheer.

  Shavi looked down shyly. "`Seek out the stone from the place that gave succour to the plague victims.' Do you have any idea what th
at means?"

  "Something particularly relevant to the residents of St. Mary's Close. A little research should turn it up."

  "Then that will lead us to the Well of Fire," Church said. "And if we can find some way to bring that back to life, then we stand a chance of disrupting the Fomorii stronghold which we now know is somewhere beneath the castle."

  "Destroy that," Tom said, "and we will prevent Balor returning. They would not have guarded the place with something as terrifying as the Cailleach Bheur if this was not the location for the ritual of rebirth."

  Since they had been in Edinburgh they had all felt a darkness pressing heavily at their backs. It was something more than a premonition, almost as if the threat of Balor were reaching out from whatever terrible place his essence inhabited; as if he were aware of them. It left them desperate to win the struggle ahead, and dreading what would happen if they failed.

  "And then we get Ruth," Veitch chipped in pointedly without turning from his investigation of the mini-bar. He pulled out a bottle of lager.

  "But the spirits said the blue fire was not enough," Shavi noted. He stretched out his legs and rested his head on the back of the chair. "They said we should call for the Good Son, whatever that means."

  Out of the corner of his eye Church saw a flicker cross Tom's face; it was like a cloud obscuring the sun. "What is it?" he said to Tom.

  "Nothing." Tom looked at his feet. "A story I heard once long ago."