The Last City

by Nina D'Aleo

‘Books?’ Swifty yawned. ‘You bore the life out of me, man, you’re no fun at all. Fine though, come through.’

  He led Eli behind the counter and through the black sheet. Swifty made a few gestures in the darkness and a chain appeared in the air. He dragged down on it and the dusty floor peeled back to expose a set of stairs.

  ‘All yours, man,’ Swifty said.

  Eli headed down the steps, grasping the rickety rail and blinking his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He reached the last step and stopped, breathing in the dry, musty scent of old papers. The room was crowded with bookcases stuffed to bursting with written word of all shapes and sizes. Eli spotted an ancient, crooked-back Greer, Mr Beatlebee Bellbeater, sitting at the back of the room at a low desk reading from a book by candlelight.

  As he stepped down off the last step Mr Bellbeater spoke.

  ‘Eli Anklebiter,’ the old man said without turning, his voice very high and quavering. ‘Enter.’

  Eli walked over to the man and stood beside him. The Greer looked up under bushy purple eyebrows, his glasses perched on the end of an extremely crooked nose.

  ‘How is your gran’ma?’ Mr Bellbeater started the conversation the same way he always did.

  ‘Fine,’ Eli gave the standard answer.

  ‘You never visit her – how do you know she’s fine?’

  ‘I don’t visit her because she always tells me what’s wrong with me.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Beatlebee squeaked. ‘She’s your gran’ma – it’s her right to point out all your many faults. You should be grateful. Your gran’ma is a fine woman – a very fine woman if you know what I mean.’ The old imp winked and gave a gap-toothed grin.

  ‘Ewww.’ Eli recoiled at the horrendous images of Mr Bellbeater and his gran’ma that popped into his head.

  ‘Did you kill those soldiers, Eli?’ Bellbeater’s face snapped instantly to seriousness.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Pity,’ the old Greer turned back to his book, ‘that you have to lie to me. Must be the Glee in you.’

  Eli sighed. ‘They weren’t really soldiers. They were Skreaf.’

  Mr Bellbeater raised his eyes, searching for a lie in Eli’s face, but finding only truth. ‘Well then, the apocalypse is on us,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘And there is no point trying to fight it. It is already written in the future history, the present past. It has and will happen – no matter what you do.’

  ‘I don’t happen to share that belief,’ Eli said.

  ‘No you don’t. I hear you’ve abandoned all your beliefs.’

  ‘No, just the ones fabricated by people.’

  ‘Their faith led them, boy.’

  ‘And my faith leads me!’ Eli yelled, reaching a point of sheer exhaustion. ‘Why don’t you just help me? Can’t you see I’m trying to save our world?’

  The ancient Greer stared at him for several moments, eyes wide behind his thick glasses. Then, with effort and grunting, he slid off his chair and hobbled, leaning on a knobbly walking stick, to one of the bookcases. He tapped the shelf with the stick and a book shot out. With incredible agility, he leapt up and snatched the book down. He blew a storm of dust off its front cover and handed it to Eli. Eli read the title: ‘Bellbeater’s Complete Encyclopaedia of Dark Magical Sects by Beatlebee Bellbeater.’ He glanced at the old man. ‘You wrote this?’

  ‘Of course I wrote it,’ he snapped. ‘You didn’t think I got this old doing nothing, did you?’ The ancient Greer put his hand over the cover of the book and said, ‘Knowledge is power, Eli.’

  ‘Only if you use it,’ Eli replied. He slipped the book into his jacket. ‘And I need something on the Ravien.’

  Bellbeater’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What kind of something?’

  ‘Anything – information about the way they live, what’s in their poison . . . how to stop someone from turning after being bitten.’

  Mr Bellbeater shook his head. ‘Once bitten, nothing stops a person from turning.’

  ‘Do you have any information or not?’ Eli asked.

  The old Greer hobbled back to the shelves. muttering to himself. He produced another book and handed it over.

  ‘That’s everything I have on them, which isn’t much.’

  ‘I have no money to pay for these,’ Eli admitted.

  ‘And you have no time either – the soldiers are above us,’ Bellbeater said, as dust rained down on their heads.

  ‘Trutt!’ Eli cursed. ‘Swifty ratted. What’s wrong with you people?’

  ‘Go down the corridor into the bathroom and climb through the window, take the fire escape up to the street,’ Bellbeater instructed.

  ‘Come with me. They’re not soldiers, they’re Skreaf. They’ll kill you!’

  ‘I can take care of myself, thank you very much,’ the old Greer said indignantly. ‘Unlike my useless, brain-dead great-great-great grandson, who I can hear clearly needs my help.’ Mr Bellbeater’s big ears twitched. He shuffled for the stairs, muttering.

  Eli took off in the opposite direction. He ran down the corridor and barged through the door into the bathroom. There he wrenched up the window frame, stubborn with dampness and age, and dragged himself through onto the subterranean fire escape. He clutched the books to his chest with one arm and used the other to climb up the rails. They took him up through a hole in the side street beside the building. Eli ducked low in the shadows as United Regiment soldiers swarmed the front of the shop. How many of them were Skreaf he couldn’t tell – maybe even all of them. It was a terrible thought. He took off running, unsure if the Skreaf were behind him or if his imagination was supplying the sound of pounding boots. Whirring his wings, he lifted up into the air, flying until he recognised the open space and grand mansions of Elio D’An Square, home of the Galleria Majora. He dived down above the giant domed building and landed on one of the ledges, where he squatted down beside a gargoyle hoping to blend in. The lantern lights surrounding the square cut eerie shapes in the darkness. Eli held his breath and surveyed the square and the air for any twitch of movement, but didn’t see anything. Boots marching in unison sounded directly beneath him and he gazed down at the entrance landing of the Galleria. A group of red-cloaked enforcers were patrolling the area. He shrank further into the shadows and whispered a prayer not to be seen or smelt. His stomach rumbled deeply and he grabbed at his skin and pinched hard. Now was not the right time to get gas. When the tapping boots headed in the opposite direction and faded Eli released a shaky breath.

  He lowered the heavy books onto the ledge and Bellbeater’s encyclopaedia of dark magics flipped open by itself to the chapter on the Skreaf demons. Eli gulped and stared, nerves prickling along his skin. Nelly slipped out of his pocket and scurried up his arm. She peeked over his shoulder and chattered in his ear. He forced himself to lean forward and read.

  The Skreaf is the most ancient and unarguably dangerous of the dark sects. Members of the sect allow their bodies to be inhabited by Skreaf demons, who gain control over their actions and thoughts. The Skreaf pay homage to a mythical figure, the Morsmalus, who was imprisoned in the Envirious Realm by a band of brother warriors – believed to be machine-breeds . . .

  Eli felt a murmur of surprise inside him. He re-read the line to make sure he was seeing it correctly, then continued.

  Their resistance to the dark magics of the Skreaf gave them victory over the demon-god. Though the Morsmalus had been banished, his followers continued to haunt Aquais, trying many times to resurrect their leader. In order to rid the land of the ever-living demons, the machine-breed warriors summoned from their sister realm, Omar Montanya, Skreaf hunters known as Omarians. Only the male of this race was equipped with skill to fight the Skreaf, and the demons’ one weakness was their secret alone. Though the Omarian numbers were few, their skills were powerful and they spread out into the land, culling the Skreaf.

  Eli flipped the page and stared at the picture of a great dragon exhaling a blast of fire.

  But even they could
not destroy all the demons, who will never rest until they have succeeded in freeing their banished god from his prison. It is believed that portals can be forged into the gateway land that lies between our realm and the Envirious Realm where the Morsmalus is imprisoned. This gateway land is known as Woulghast. It is a miscreation fallen from the afterlife, a grey hell-land where pain was first discovered and let loose on mortality like a disease without a cure. It is a place of fears where nightmares come to life.

  Memories filled Eli’s mind of childhood horror stories of a place with blacked-out canvases, gateways into lands of nothing, where people could enter but never escape. He shivered and continued reading.

  To pass through the gateway land one must survive a number of challenges. Firstly, the Carnival of the Damned and then the three chambers of the sorcerer Megotenor – the chamber of dead dreams, the chamber of hate and the chamber of lust. If one makes it through these tests alive they will find the sealed entrance to the Envirious Realm.

  The book snapped shut. Eli tried to prise it open again, and when he finally succeeded, the pages were blank. He lifted the book up to his face. The encyclopaedia squirmed, stretched and morphed into a crow. The black bird pecked him on the nose, flapped free and flew away. Nelly scolded it in her squeaky chattering voice from her place on his shoulder. Eli held his nose and stared at the vanishing shadow.

  ‘Well, now we know where they are – but not how to get there,’ he said. He had never heard of any portals leading out of their realm, nor of how to make them.

  He grabbed the other book, fearing it might grow feet and scurry away as well. When it didn’t flip open by itself, he searched the index for mention of the Ravien and found the page number. There was little more than a paragraph on the strange race, the information possible to be summarised in one sentence. Their poison was derived from the plants they ingested, and was stored in glands in their mouths, and if a person from another race was bitten by a Ravien, there was no hope whatsoever in the entire universe of preventing that person from changing into a Ravien. Eli chose to pay attention only to the first part of the sentence: plant-derived.

  ‘If it’s plant-derived, then maybe it can be plant-cured,’ he said to Nelly. She sat up on her back legs and tilted her head to one side. ‘What is the strongest medicinal plant in Aquais? The Venus Lily, right? So we need to find a Lily.’ The only problem with that was there was only one place the Lily was believed to grow – Venus, the lowest level of the city, the place Commander Oren Harvey had entered and returned from so traumatised that she was unable to speak of it for all her living days.

  ‘There’s no other option,’ Eli said as Nelly eyed him accusingly. ‘We promised we’d help Ev’r. We can’t leave her to die – or worse, change.’

  He knew he had to concentrate on their fight against the Skreaf, but his heart told him that Ev’r was an important part of that fight. The commander had always said he needed to believe in himself. Eli checked Ev’r’s location on his communicator. The location spot was holding stable. Hopefully she was managing to reason with Kry. The hedge he was running in-system between his and the commander’s communicators was still processing, so he decided to leave a message in the lines that the commander could play back when the hedge had cleared. It might be his only chance. Shaking the idea away, he entered the number Copernicus had used earlier and left a detailed message of everything that had happened and everything he had read. Then he said goodbye and disconnected. Eli found himself shaking, with tears streaming down his face. Nelly burrowed back into his pocket and he sniffed.

  ‘Keep it together,’ he whispered to himself. He just felt so tired. His arms and legs were lead. His eyes closed for a moment. Something tapped his shoulder and he gasped and toppled off the ledge. He buzzed his wings and spun in the air. The Midnight Man cross-breed, Luther, stood on the ledge, his face even more hollow and emaciated than before. He looked fearsome, but he was wringing his hands and Eli saw how scared the strange man really was. Eli fluttered towards him. Luther shuddered and vanished into shadows.

  ‘Luther, I know you’re Copernicus’ friend. I want to help you,’ Eli whispered into the darkness, unsure if he was still there and listening. ‘I think I know how, but first I have to go to Venus. Then I’ll be back. I promise. Find me and I’ll help you.’ He wasn’t sure if Luther had heard, but he couldn’t stop to search for him. With time running out all around him, he had to stick with his plan – hot-wire a transflyer, point it straight down, and fly into an unknown hell.

  Eli leapt off the building and took off, not sensing the shadow shape of the Midnight Man following him.

  31

  An earthquake tremor dredged Silho from deep unconsciousness. She found herself splayed on her stomach in the middle of a muddy construction site. Just the skeleton of the building stood, providing no shelter from the storm. Rain pelted her back and each flash of electricity was blinding. With effort, she lifted her head. Her dripping hair hung in her eyes and she tasted the sour metal of blood streaming down her face from a cut in her forehead. She remembered running through the building site with Shawe. She saw herself tripping. Silho’s breath caught in her throat as a tortured scream strangled the air close to where she lay. Her skin prickled and she struggled to her feet, staggering. The scream came again and she drew her electrifier and moved towards the sound, picking her way over scattered offcuts and forgotten tools. At the front of the building site she hid behind a pile of stone bricks.

  Ahead of her, Shawe lay slumped against a partially constructed wall. The High Skreaf, Bellum, stood over him, torturing him with curses that convulsed his whole body. Silho witnessed Shawe, with his eyes squeezed shut, drag one of the rings out of his pocket and give it to the witch. Bellum clenched the metal band in her fist. Her lips twitched into a smug smile and the demon leered through her eyes. She began drawing the shadows for a death-curse to finish Shawe. Silho repeated the Illusionist enchant and all the sounds inside her mind and outside around her silenced, except for the rhythmic thud of her heart. She stepped out from her hiding place and called to the witch.

  ‘Bellum.’

  The High Witch turned. She regarded Silho with her cadaverous stare.

  ‘Well, my dear, it seems I underestimated your father,’ she finally said, her voice sly and whispery. ‘He led me to believe your mother died as you were born. It was wise of him to keep Oren Harvey a secret – very wise – and yet . . .’ Bellum stepped closer, ‘it didn’t save them, did it?’

  ‘No, but it saved me,’ Silho said. ‘Stay back!’

  Bellum took another step forward, and Silho could smell the rank stench of her rotting scent and see the demon moving behind her skin. She avoided the Skreaf’s horrible gaze.

  ‘Your father . . . he cried a lot in that cell before his execution,’ Bellum continued.

  ‘My father was strong. He never cried.’

  ‘He did when I told him what we were going to do to you if he didn’t cooperate with us.’ Bloodlust gleamed in the witch’s eyes.

  ‘He would never have helped you,’ Silho said.

  ‘All of our planning would have been for nothing if it hadn’t been for your father,’ Bellum told her. ‘From his prison cell, he painted a portal into the realm where our master awaits his freedom. When he had finished, I told him you were already dead. He knew it was true. The look on his face . . . I’ll never forget it.’ The witch gave a cruel grin and Silho struggled to contain her hatred. It filled every space of her body and mind and made it impossible for her even to remember the words of the enchant. She turned the full force of the hatred on Bellum.

  ‘My father showed you what he wanted you to see so that I could escape. You didn’t kill him, he sacrificed himself so that I could live, so that I could stop you.’

  Bellum’s face twitched and the demon growled through her mouth, ‘You talk too much, just like your father.’

  ‘And I can kill you, just like he could,’ Silho said.

  ‘Let’
s see it then!’ Bellum screamed, her hair twisting into snakes.

  Silho snarled and blinked into light-form. She raised her gloved hands and power surged from Bellum’s body-lights into her. Silho trembled from the build-up. Her hands burned then ignited into flames, forcing her to cut the connection. As she did, she saw a flash in her mind of her Pyron mother walking unharmed through the fire in the detention centre the night she’d saved her. Silho shook off her melting gloves and Bellum shrieked a curse and launched herself forward. She hit Silho across the face and grabbed her by the neck, lifting her into the air. Silho coughed up a spray of sparks and gasped. She kneed the witch hard, but Bellum’s grip only tightened. The witch summoned her terrible power and a death-curse formed on her maggot lips. Silho’s body froze rigid. Behind Bellum, the red-eyed he-Wraith, Amateus, appeared in a flash of electricity. He used a Cos enchant to lift a discarded steel post and ram it into Bellum’s back. The Skreaf dropped Silho and turned on him. She hit him with the death-curse meant for Silho. It threw him backward and out of sight and his terrible, agonised scream faded to silence.

  ‘Not this time,’ Bellum croaked, turning back to Silho. ‘No one can save you now.’

  Copernicus lunged out of the shadows. He stabbed a blade through the witch’s chest and spat venom into her eyes. She screeched horribly, ripping at her face. While she was reeling, Shawe stepped up with a plank of wood. He swung it like a club and sent her flying. The darkness formed a net to catch her. Silho’s breath shunted out as the commander grabbed her up and threw her over his shoulder. She clutched his shirt as he sprinted through the dark streets. Shawe crashed behind them and Bellum walked the wind right at their heels, her cloak whipping around her. Curses ricocheted off buildings, crumbling their bricks, bringing them crashing to the ground. Copernicus swerved to avoid the falling giants. The dying memories of the collapsing walls yelled to Silho. She fought against the ravenous desire to reach out to them, trying to take back control of her mind. Copernicus halted suddenly and dropped down behind a parked transflyer. He dragged Shawe in beside them and snarled, ‘Don’t move a muscle.’