The spear had left. It was no longer present in this place. At the last moment it had veered away from Crom Dhubh’s vessel. The blue glow died. As water shifted violently beneath it, more cracks appeared in the frozen surface of the lake. Cracks ran up the cavern wall. More stalactites fell through the ice. Bress’s head was white agony. His body felt like it was on fire. White light shot out from Crom Dhubh’s vessel, its proximity setting Bress’s skin on fire. The light turned stone to slag, burning and cutting through rock.
He had expected his master to kill him. He had outbid the Dark Man’s control with the ancient power of long-forgotten gods, but Crom Dhubh had something else in mind. His erstwhile master’s vessel moved into the hole it had carved, causing yet more damage to the structural integrity of the cavern.
Bress managed to roll onto his back just in time to see the roof collapse.
32
Now
Everything smelled of fuel or burning, everything sounded like gunfire. There were flames under all the letters on the Hollywood sign. This time when they came back into Laurel Canyon they came quietly. The streets of the canyon were empty except for dogs. Not the wild packs of street dogs in the city below, these looked more like spoilt pets who had no idea what to do now. They kept trying to make friends with Grace and du Bois as they walked ahead of the ECV. They were travelling slowly, the lights off. Beth was in the turret watching the two ex-Circle operatives. She was pretty sure that Grace wasn’t a dog person. Du Bois, on the other hand, was struggling to shoo them away. She smiled. The smile disappeared when she remembered that while he might like dogs, he had no compunction about killing people.
Suddenly the dogs scattered. Du Bois held up his hand. Alexia brought the ECV to a halt. Du Bois and Grace crouched down, carbines at the ready. The dogs had been spooked by the presence of a bigger predator. The tiger stalked out of the undergrowth at the bottom of the built-up canyon wall. Its eyes glowed with reflected moonlight. It must have escaped, or been released, from a zoo or private menagerie. Du Bois and Grace brought their carbines up to bear on the beautiful animal.
‘No,’ Beth said simply from the turret. The big cat turned to look in their direction.
‘You’re not out here with it,’ Grace said quietly through gritted teeth. The tiger let out a low throaty growl. Beth found herself wishing she had a camera. This beautiful predator out of place in the suburbs of a city she knew only from film. The tiger looked away from du Bois, Grace, the vehicle, and stalked into the undergrowth on the other side of the road. Grace kept the area covered as they moved slowly by.
Behind them were the lights of the LA basin and the distant flames burning in and around what had been LAX. It looked like the sea was on fire. Up here it should have been peaceful, but she could still hear the heavy beat of the rap and heavy metal played aggressively loudly from La Calavera’s castle further up the canyon.
They had picked the house because the driveway was big enough to park the ECV around the back, out of view of the road. It was on one of the streets that branched off from Laurel Canyon Boulevard, high on the canyon wall, and it provided them a distant view of La Calavera’s castle. Beth had come to welcome the sound of the music now. It was preferable to the occasional screams they heard. The castle was lit up. SUVs and pickups, sporting armour and weapons, done up as technicals, or improvised fighting vehicles, were patrolling the neighbourhood, accompanied by motorcycle outriders.
Beth was watching this from the steep driveway while Grace broke in, quietly, through a side door, du Bois covering her. Alexia was leaning against the wall. Grace pushed open the door, drew one of her knives, and clutched the blade. The cut across her palm didn’t bleed. She sheathed the fighting knife and concentrated.
‘There’s people in there,’ she finally said.
‘Find another house?’ Alexia whispered.
‘They already know we’re here,’ du Bois said, nodding at the dark shape of the ECV. He had wanted to recce the area on foot first but the ECV had been too exposed. Beth heard the sound of metal on metal. She glanced back and saw Grace and du Bois changing magazines on their carbines, and then screwing suppressors onto the barrels. It seemed they had chosen expedience.
‘Perhaps another way?’ Alexia suggested. She pushed past them both without a weapon drawn. Beth was already walking back up the hill. Du Bois went to follow his sister, but Beth’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
‘Keep watch,’ she told him. He looked like he was about to argue but thought the better of it.
‘At least five people in the left-hand side back bedroom upstairs,’ Grace told her. Beth nodded and followed Alexia. She slung the LMG down her front but drew her Colt OHWS, screwed the suppressor into the barrel, and changed the magazine for her only clip of subsonic ammo. She moved quickly, catching up with Alexia.
‘I am so sick of this soldier girl bullshit,’ the statuesque woman muttered. Beth suppressed a smile, but gestured towards the room that Grace had indicated. She tried to cover Alexia without making it too obvious she was covering her. If everything hadn’t been so incredibly horrible she had to admit that she would have been enjoying all the soldier stuff. Alexia at least had the sense to stand to one side of the door when she tapped on it.
‘Hello? If you’re psychos there will probably be a horrible fight, but if not can we come in?’
On a whim Beth pushed open the door to the nearest room to her. There was a body in it. A teenaged boy. Blunt force trauma. It looked like someone had caved his head in with his own computer. The bloodstained tower was lying next to him.
‘Alexia,’ she whispered. Alexia turned to look at her, and Beth just pushed the door open further. Suddenly Beth wished she had cleared the house, instead of just relying on Grace’s blood-screen, but Alexia had been moving too quickly. Strange new military instincts were screaming at her that she was doing this wrong. She could hear movement in the room that Alexia had just knocked on. Beth signalled that she was going to check the other rooms. Alexia nodded and drew both her katana-like long knifes. Her sidearm didn’t have a suppressor. Beth went from bedroom to bedroom, quickly checking. She saw signs of habitation. In what she assumed was the master bedroom, she found bloodstains and signs of a struggle, but nobody else. She went back out into the hall and covered Alexia.
‘Okay, I’m going to open the door now,’ Alexia said. ‘Broadly speaking I’m a nice lady, so please don’t shoot me.’ She turned the handle on the door and pushed. It opened a little way and then stuck. Beth heard a sob from inside. If they were infected with the insanity then they were really milking the tension. Alexia finally managed to push the door open. There were six of them: an old woman, two younger women, a man, a boy and a girl. They looked terrified. They obviously hadn’t answered phones, watched TV, or been online. The old woman was pointing an archaic-looking shotgun at them.
‘We’re not mad,’ Alexia told them. ‘We’re not here to hurt you, and while we’re here nobody else will hurt you either.’
The woman who owned the house was called Eileen; the old lady with a shotgun, Dora, was her mother-in-law. Eileen had no idea where her husband or her other son were. All things considered she was holding it together pretty well. She had killed her youngest son when he had attacked her daughter, the little girl.
The man was called Ralph, and he was frantic about his partner who was a big-time Century City lawyer. The other woman was named Celia, and she was a neighbour. The boy hadn’t spoken. They had no idea who he was, or where he was from, but he clearly wasn’t insane so they had taken him in. They had pretty much been living in the back bedroom, staying away from the road to avoid the patrols from the castle. They were, of course, terrified of the heavily armed intruders in their home/hiding place.
Du Bois had joined them. Grace had remained on watch outside. It was clear from her body language that she didn’t want to be anywhere near du Bois, which was understandable. It was also clear that her presence made du Bois very uncomfortabl
e. False memory or not, Beth had less sympathy for him.
‘After …’ Eileen stopped and looked towards the bedroom with the dead boy in it.
‘It wasn’t him,’ Alexia told her.
The woman looked away. She had the look of a modern hippy. Someone who made her living doing something creative, Beth guessed. It made sense. Her understanding was that Laurel Canyon had been that kind of place.
‘Well, everything just went mad, people we’d known …’
‘You’ll find another body downstairs,’ Dora, the old lady, said grimly.
‘I hadn’t wanted the gun in the house, Pete and I had a blazing row about it, but thank god,’ Eileen continued, fighting tears. ‘Mr Macintyre, we’ve known him since we moved here.’
‘Lived on a farm,’ Dora said matter-of-factly.
‘We hid in the loft,’ Eileen told the three of them.
‘When did the people at the castle arrive?’ du Bois asked softly.
Eileen shook her head, and looked down at her hands folded in her lap. ‘I don’t know. It felt like days after. It could have been hours. We stayed in the loft.’ The tears came now. ‘The things we heard.’
‘I saw them,’ Celia said. She was a middle-aged woman with laughter lines around her eyes. She looked like she smiled a lot. Beth suspected there was little cause for that now. ‘They shot everyone who gave them trouble, took the rest with them. I’m not sure what for but we hear cheering and …’ She finished with a sob.
‘They patrol the neighbourhood, looking for other people,’ Ralph said. ‘Are you people British military? Special forces or something? Is this only happening here?’
‘We’re a private concern,’ du Bois told them.
‘Mercenaries?’ Dora asked. The tone of disapproval somehow made Beth like the old woman more. Du Bois opened his mouth to answer the question.
‘This is happening everywhere,’ Beth told them. ‘I think you need to prepare yourself for the worst.’
‘Your best bet is the desert, or the mountains, get as far away from everyone else as you can,’ du Bois told them.
‘Can you help us?’ Ralph asked. The desperation in his voice was difficult to hear. She wondered if she would have been this helpless without all the augmentation. Not quite, she reckoned, but it wouldn’t have been far off.
‘I’m sorry.’ Du Bois stood up and left the back bedroom.
Beth found him later in the garden. He had taken Eileen’s son from his bedroom, and the body of the neighbour from the kitchen, and was digging graves for them.
‘What we’re doing now …’ Beth wasn’t quite sure how to say what she was trying to say. ‘We only have revenge or running away left, right?’ Du Bois didn’t answer her. ‘Would it be so bad to help them, others like them, maybe find a place we could all stay? Rather than just killing all the people we’re pissed off with?’
Du Bois threw down the spade and turned on her. ‘What’s the point?’ he demanded.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Beth hissed.
‘It only gets worse from here on, until there’s nothing left. We’re not even insects to these things. We’re bits of dust.’
‘So we keep killing, following your vision, sent by those insane things?’ Beth asked. She wasn’t sure who she was angry with.
‘You want to stay and help these people, stay and help these people,’ du Bois said. ‘Be a good person.’ He stormed past her and stopped suddenly. Beth turned to see Grace standing by the corner of the house; du Bois was staring at her, and then he continued on his way down the steep drive. Grace lit a cigarette.
‘Revenge seems like a pretty good motivation to me,’ the punk girl said. Beth leaned her LMG against the ECV, and picked up the spade.
‘Do you want to help?’ Beth asked.
‘Can’t, I’m on guard.’ Beth got the feeling that she probably wouldn’t have helped even if she hadn’t been on guard. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that on edge.’
‘It’s a pretty extreme situation,’ Beth said. The blade of the shovel bit into the earth as she started to dig. Above her she could hear faint piano music. Her neuralware told her it was Debussy. Her newfound military instincts wanted to go and tell whoever was playing to shut up, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Beth had finally managed to divest herself of all her weaponry, webbing and ammunition, though she was still carrying her pistol. She felt so much lighter. She’d even had a shower. Self-cleaning skin or not, she felt much better afterwards.
Alexia was sitting in the dark in the master bedroom playing an electric keyboard. The volume was turned down quite low. There were towels over the bloodstains. Beth leant on the doorframe and listened.
‘Did we even ask them if we could stay?’ Beth asked when Alexia had finished. She was aware of the other people in the house moving around quietly. Doors had been left open so they could hear Alexia play.
‘Yes,’ Alexia said. ‘Of all the things I’m going to miss, dirty martinis, having my hair and nails done, breakfast at the Waldorf, music is the only thing I can’t live without. I said that and Andrea, the little girl, went and got me the keyboard. This brave new world will be the poorer without music.’
In the distance they could hear the thump of the bass-heavy music from the castle.
‘That first piece you played?’ Beth asked.
‘“Clair de lune”, but then you’ll know that. I think it’s my brother’s favourite.’
‘You think?’
‘Well, he’s not exactly forthcoming, is he? You know, although I am a much better poly-musician, singer, lyricist and composer, and despite having devoted my life to music … well, a little bit to hedonism and decadence … well, okay, perhaps equal measures … he’s actually a better pianist than I am. I know! Heartbreaking, isn’t it? Where is he anyway?’
‘I think I upset him.’
Alexia brought her knees up to her chest, hugging her legs. ‘You wouldn’t have upset him, darling. This has upset him. He doesn’t know what to do.’
Beth stared at her. ‘He doesn’t know … ?’
‘He likes taking orders. We all do. It’s hard thinking for yourself. I think he would just shut down except …’
‘Except?’ Beth prompted.
‘I think you might struggle to believe this from your perspective, but he is driven to do the right thing.’
Beth felt her face harden. ‘Yes, you’re right, that is difficult for me to believe.’
Alexia looked up her. ‘He killed your father for what he thought was the right reason. Now he knows it’s wrong. If he’s off sulking then he’s probably gone looking for a church to ask forgiveness of a god he, probably more than most on this planet, knows doesn’t exist. Perhaps he’s even self-flagellating again.’
‘Doesn’t help my father, does it?’
Alexia let go of her legs and leant against the headboard.
‘Blame him, if you want, he has broad shoulders, but if you’re not with us then you’ll need to think of something else to do.’ Alexia just watched her for a while. ‘Everybody believes they think for themselves, don’t they?’
Beth looked down, not saying anything. Alexia got off the bed.
‘Get some rest, actual rest. I’m going to see if the other Patty Hearst wannabe will give me a fag.’
Beth stepped out of the doorway as Alexia passed. ‘Do you mind me asking something?’
Alexia stopped.
‘This is going to be one of those awkward conversations about the nature of my genitalia, isn’t it?’ Alexia turned and looked up at Beth. ‘Darling, I can be whatever you want.’
Beth felt herself start to colour.
‘No wait, I’m not …’
‘Not what, darling?’
‘I wasn’t …’ Beth tried again. Alexia was just smiling at her. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s my fault you know, that he’s the way he is, that he does what he does. God, I was so innocent, suicidally naive like you wouldn’t belie
ve. I couldn’t see the harm in it. Dressing like a girl, I looked so pretty, wanting to catch the eye of all the young men.’
‘Du Bois told me that he had been alive for centuries,’ Beth said. Alexia nodded.
‘Oh yes, horrible men capable of much worse than anything I could dream of would have burned me; somehow I couldn’t understand that. As for Malcolm, I was an abomination, against everything he stood for, but he never stopped protecting me. He was a proper knight, you see. We were both so naive. Do you know what he was doing when he first found the tech?’ she asked. Beth shook her head. ‘He was looking for the Holy Grail, I shit you not.’
Beth burst out laughing. Alexia smiled.
‘Like in Monty Python?’ Beth asked. Alexia nodded again.
‘He wanted to cure me,’ Alexia told her. Beth stopped laughing. ‘But here’s the thing. He didn’t want me to turn into the younger brother he had always wanted, so I could become a soldier, or maybe a priest. Though I rather fancied the life of a wandering troubadour – as I said, I was hopelessly romantic. I didn’t have a practical bone in my body, unless a nice young man put it there. He was going to turn me into a woman. He said it was because he wanted me to be happy, and I believe that, but on some level I think he knew that I was born in the wrong body.’ Beth wasn’t quite sure what to say. Suddenly the conversation seemed very serious. ‘I think my brother has been horribly led astray, and I’m sorry about your father, but cut Malcolm some slack or just fuck off.’ Alexia turned and walked down the stairs. ‘Now I need to tell that to the other one, though I suspect she’ll be less receptive.’
Beth was lying on the double bed in the master bedroom. Eileen hadn’t wanted to sleep there because of the bloodstains. It was for the best, leave the unaugmented civilians in the back of the house, away from the road.
When did I start thinking of them as civilians? she wondered. She was drifting off to sleep when she heard movement. She opened her eyes to see Grace standing in the doorway, watching her. Beth sat up. It was the first time she had seen the punk girl look unsure of herself.
The Beauty of Destruction Page 47