Kate waved her arm to the disdain of two maiden aunts sitting nearby. Charlotte’s face lit up and she waved back eagerly. Hogarth noticed too and a look of relief washed over him at the sight of Kate and Simon.
Hogarth pulled Charlotte back to the pew. They whispered to one another. Simon and Kate continued to scan the congregation, searching for a sign of Barnes or any of his women. It was difficult to see faces in the gloom below.
“I hope Malcolm and Penny can get here,” Kate said.
Simon grunted quietly. “They’re a long distance away.”
The organ roared to life and a procession emerged from a door beside the altar and began to circle the church. A curate with a smoking censer led the way, followed by young robed boys with massive candles. A churchman carried a tall silver cross and another a large Bible. And finally the rector came in his white cassock with purple surplice. His hands were clasped before him. They made their way around the church, then moved back up the center aisle. The incense wafted up and filled the air. The boys lit the candles on the altar. Then the rector kissed the Bible and placed it open on the purple frontal. The other churchmen withdrew as the reverend stood with his back to the congregation, arms outstretched, robe draping like wings.
“You, Christ, are the king of glory, the eternal son of the Father. When you took our flesh to set us free, you humbly chose the virgin’s womb. You overcame the sting of death and opened the kingdom of Heaven to all believers. You are seated at God’s right hand in glory. Let us pray.”
All heads bowed.
Simon’s line of sight was invaded by a small figure on the floor beneath him. A tall woman in a long cloak with a prim bonnet emerged from underneath the gallery where he sat. She walked quickly toward the altar and shrugged off her mantle to reveal her nude body. She tossed her bonnet to one side, revealing long red hair cascading down her back. In her right hand was a glinting serrated dagger.
The congregation stirred in shock and surprise.
Simon leapt from the gallery. He landed lightly onto the back of a pew amidst a crowd who were already rising and jostling one another. Far ahead of him, the woman shoved the unprepared rector aside and began to climb onto the altar. The congregation flooded into the aisles in confusion, streaming for the main door in a crush.
Simon jumped into the air, rising above the growing sea of chaos. Several struggling parishioners knocked him aside as he came down again onto another pew. He tried to keep his feet, watching the woman on the altar lie flat on her back. Her knife caught the candlelight.
As Simon began to spring forward again, he was held fast. The wound over Simon’s heart roared like he’d been shot with a musket ball. The spell on Simon’s lips faltered and he fell hard onto the wooden bench. Pain racked his body, causing his vision to blur. Doubling over, through the haze he saw Rowan Barnes grasping his ankle.
“I am sick to death of you!” Barnes snarled. “Britain is depending on me. Albion must rise.”
Simon tasted bile and fought to push himself up. He tried in vain to focus. If Barnes was close enough to touch him, he could be struck. If only Simon could fight through the pain. His limbs grew numb and empty noise roared in his ears.
Then the pain vanished, leaving him sweating and facedown on the wooden pew. A slight turn of his head revealed Barnes above him, wide-eyed with shock. A shining blade protruded from Barnes’s chest. Simon caught a glimpse of Kate behind the necromancer with an expression set in ferocious anger.
Simon whispered a spell and reached to where Barnes still held his ankle. He wrenched the fingers free and proceeded to crush the man’s hand. The snapping bones sounded like dry twigs.
Simon looked at the altar. The woman held a serrated as if waiting for an order from Barnes. Simon searched for Charlotte who was crawling along the edge of the gallery with her shoes kicked off. “Charlotte! Stop her!”
The girl smiled and threw her head back. She loped down the gallery rail passing through patches of light and dark until the flashes of shadow on her body were permanent because of sprouting fur. Her arms and back tore free of her dress. Her face grew dark and savage, no longer human. Screams pierced the melee of the fleeing crowd, pointing up at the creature that leapt for the altar in a long lunge through empty space, suspended in midair, stretched out like an animal going for the kill. Girlish fingers turned long and gnarled and clawed.
The great beast landed hard on the altar, crouching atop the nude woman. Charlotte’s massive hand slapped the dagger aside, sending it spiraling against the Ten Commandments. The woman lying beneath the werewolf was undisturbed by the slavering thing over her. She was nearly catatonic; her eyelids quivering. Hogarth dropped from the gallery and fought to Charlotte’s side at the altar.
Simon heard Kate cry out. Barnes had driven an elbow into her face and she toppled out of sight. Simon’s strength was still with him and he landed the handle of his walking stick against the side of the necromancer’s head. The man went spinning to the ground, dark blood spurting from his nose and mouth. The necromancer turned back to Simon and cursed. The word delivered a burst of searing pain, which slammed Simon against the seat.
Kate brought her sword up into the light, but Barnes knocked it aside, and called out a word in a strained voice. She fell back, screaming as if engulfed in flames.
Simon was on him, brutal fingers around the man’s throat, digging in so hard that Barnes’s face began to turn purple. “Release her! Remove your influence from her, or I’ll tear your head off!”
Barnes stared fearfully at Simon and waved a quivering hand at Kate. She gasped with relief and shook her head to clear it. Simon yanked Barnes to his feet. The necromancer was surprisingly spry for a man recently stabbed through the chest, but Simon saw very little blood on the man’s shirt. Barnes was no doubt struggling to use his powers to hold back the damage and pain.
Charlotte and Hogarth stood before the altar, preparing to come to Simon and Kate’s defense. The prospective bride dropped off the back of the altar and crawled toward the reredos to retrieve her knife. The manservant spun and seized the hopeful sacrifice by the wrist. The naked woman struggled and screamed. Hogarth wrenched the dagger away and held her tight around the waist.
“No! No! Don’t stop me! It’s not fair!” She looked up at Hogarth with a tear-streaked face and mewled like a child begging for a toy. “Give me my knife. Give it to me!” She dissolved into a shuddering wreck, with fingers outstretched to her dagger. As Hogarth started to slip off his coat to cover the woman, she cried, “Please don’t take this from me.”
“Hogarth! Get her out!” Simon called. “Charlotte! Close the doors, please, and block them. No one comes back inside.”
The beast dashed down the aisle and the last few stragglers screamed and thrashed their way outside as she came toward them. Charlotte waited for Hogarth to carry the woman to the main door. He set her on her feet and spoke to a panicked elderly woman trying to get out. The matron listened and looked at the shocked young woman in a disarrayed state of dress. The well-dressed older woman put an arm around the stunned victim and led her out, whispering sympathetic words as they went. The booming sound of Charlotte and the manservant shutting the great doors silenced the commotion outside.
Simon shook Barnes like a hound with a rabbit. “After all the horrors you’ve perpetrated, nothing I could do to you is too much.”
“You’ve done all you can now, you idiot. If you don’t allow that woman to sacrifice herself, you are damning every man, woman, and child in Britain.”
Simon snarled sarcastically, “I’m not disposed to allow murder.”
“It isn’t murder, as you can see. It’s sacrifice in its purest form. A soldier for their crown. A parent for their child. A love true enough to give your life for the life of others. Something you will never understand.”
Kate rounded on the smug necromancer. “If your goal is so noble, why aren’t you man enough to take part? If you need a final sacrifice to finish your ritua
l, why not kill yourself? It’s easier to slaughter helpless young women? You’re a coward.”
“Shut up!” Barnes screeched with surprising venom. “I won’t have you above all questioning me. Your father knew what Gaios was all about. He even tried to uncover Gaios’s scheme himself. He sacrificed enough of his comrades hunting down allies of Gaios. He had the knowledge and ability, and I begged him to help me, but he was too good to sully himself with me. And you notice he isn’t here in Britain now that madman is coming back to destroy us all. The great Sir Roland!” Barnes gave a wet, derisive cackle, blood bubbling in his mouth. “If he had done his duty, none of this would have been necessary.”
Kate felt her rage building. “How do you have the temerity to speak of my father, you murderous troll?”
“I knew your father long before you were born. He was vain and selfish, but you’re worse. You live among his greatness, and you can manage nothing but to stand in his shadow.” He nodded toward Simon. “Or in his.”
Kate saw the necromancer’s eyes flick toward her with a bitter coldness. It wasn’t just that Barnes was a murderer or that he was mad; Kate saw now that he was truly a monster. There was an odd hesitation in his movements, not in the general actions of his limbs, but she noted a peculiarity in the way his features altered with emotion. When he spoke angrily, his mouth moved with an odd sluggishness, as if he was laboring. His skin was slightly waxy. But more, Kate felt a flitting consciousness looking out from his eyes that was not part of him. She got an overwhelming sense of watching a puppet. She whispered in a sharp breath. “You aren’t Rowan Barnes. You’re Ash.”
Barnes sneered. “I may have underestimated you. You’re right, Miss Anstruther. Rowan Barnes has been dead for nearly three months. It has been getting more difficult to preserve the illusion of life, even for me. I’ve had to keep him just this side of death with some breath and some pulse. Fortunately, I won’t need him after tonight.” Barnes, or Ash, turned slightly in the scribe’s death grip. “I implore you, Archer. The need for this ritual is greater than you could imagine, and the risks of its failure are apocalyptic. Grace North told you this. I am doing the work of Byron Pendragon.”
Simon stared into the dead eyes of the necromancer. “What power is hidden here?”
“Four ancients: Luvah, Thamas, Urizon, Urthona. They are the shattered life force of the great god Albion from a time before. Pendragon called them from their banishment and bound them here, to wait his call. Their power is so great, Blake sensed it although he didn’t fully understand it.” Ash’s eyes were ablaze with righteous surety. “Still, even that doddering old poet knew that Albion was the savior of this land, of the world. This ritual must be completed. You understand the way of things. The path of magic is not always black-and-white. This is no longer an issue for mortals. I am dicing with the power of gods because that is what is needed to stop Gaios. You have no idea what that fiend might do.”
Simon could barely speak due to his rage. “Your game comes to an end tonight.”
“You are destroying your own world!” the necromancer screamed.
“Pity.”
Ash dropped her head in apparent defeat, but Simon felt a sudden lance of pain. His chest flared with agony and he doubled over, hearing himself scream. Kate shouted something as he was slammed over the low wooden barrier into the pews. He saw Ash racing for the front of the church.
The necromancer jumped onto the altar in full stride, sank her puppet to its knees, and grasped the sacrificial dagger lying there. She fell back against the altar and plunged the blade into Barnes’s chest, driving it in up to the hilt. She curled over the wound and gave a final deep push of the knife. Barnes’s body then sank flat as his last breath finally escaped.
Simon and Kate reached the altar. Thick blood welled around the knife’s guard, spreading out over Barnes’s unmoving torso. The necromancer’s eyes were frozen wide. Simon carefully placed a hand on the chest of Barnes’s body, then the throat. He probed with his fingers. “If he wasn’t before, he’s dead now.”
A drop of black blood dripped onto the altar. A geyser of white erupted and Simon found himself skidding across the floor to smash against the pews. Papers and candles were tossed everywhere. The church filled with the sound of glass from shattered windows dropping to the floor.
Simon felt strong hands under his arms and flinched in shock at the hairy, clawed fingers he saw. Charlotte lifted him to his feet like a doll. He pulled himself from the unnerving grip of the werewolf. “Thank you, Charlotte.”
The altar was surrounded in light like a waterfall flowing up. Simon tried to approach, but he felt enormous pressure pushing him back. His head ached from the sheer force of it. Kate was crouched where she had been tossed, her arm thrown before her face as if weathering a gale. Hogarth fought his way up beside his mistress to protect her from the deluge.
In addition to the strange eldritch power flowing out of the altar, Simon could see the aether gathering in the air. The greenish wisps were thickening into streams. The mystical event was pulling aether across space to this spot in London.
On top of the altar, Ash stirred with palsied wildness like a marionette. Eyes seemed unfocused, but the body still looked around at the torrent of power. “Blood enough at least.”
Ash seized the hilt of the dagger and pulled it from her own chest. Barnes’s body sloughed off a tattered jacket and tore open the shirt, baring the muscular torso. She shoved aside a thin chain around her neck and plunged the dagger into her side, betraying no pain or feeling. With both hands working the knife, she sliced through the heavy muscle of the chest, cutting a long incision from the side of the rib cage to the breastbone. With almost disinterested precision, she began to cut up between pectoral muscles.
Simon spoke a word and a rune glowed on his arm. Bracing against the solid form of Charlotte behind him, he slapped his palm to the floor and unleashed a colossal shock wave up the aisle. It smashed tiles into the air along its path until it reached the roaring altar, where as he watched in disbelief, it dissipated into nothing.
Simon rose with another whispered word, sending runic strength into his limbs. He tried to force his way toward the white flood covering the altar. Charlotte was at his side, on all fours, gripping the flagstones with her claws, dragging her powerful frame along with him. Her head twisted from side to side, growling. The ancient wind blasted into them felt like a Harmattan from the desert, driving sharp pricks of unseen sand into both man and monster. Slowly they inched into the maelstrom.
Ash dug fingers into the gash in the body’s flesh and began to pull open the chest. Pinkish muscles and yellowish connective tissue showed clearly under the separating skin. There were hints of white bone from the ribs. In the midst of the exposed gore, the knot of Barnes’s heart was visible, but still as the grave.
Ash struggled to get some view of her unprotected heart. She ripped the chain free of her neck and took the gold signet ring in her hand. She pressed it into the heart. There was a small curl of smoke. With a faint wet voice, she said, “Rise.”
Ash looked toward Simon. A pleased smile forced itself onto the slack face. The necromancer pulled the ring away from the dead heart and the rush of power around the altar instantly vanished. Simon and Charlotte both toppled forward onto the floor as if a wall had disappeared.
Simon gained his feet and he heard Kate’s voice shout in the sudden silence. Behind the altar, a ghostly figure stood in the darkness.
Simon saw another specter pass through the south wall behind Kate. Then a third walked shimmering between the columns on the north side. Charlotte touched Simon’s arm and he saw the wolf girl staring toward their rear. A final spirit passed through the main doors and began to drift up the aisle. All four specters then converged on the altar where Ash sat with Barnes’s chest cut open and branded heart exposed. The necromancer waited.
Chapter Twenty-seven
There was something ominous about the four specters that told one to step
aside. Simon, Kate, Hogarth, and Charlotte gathered at the corner of the front pew box. They watched in curious awe as the uncanny figures walked purposefully toward the altar.
There was nothing clearly male or female about the four spirits. One second they were old and wise, the next young and fierce. The hard features of a man or the soft curves of a woman. They were all things at all times. The spirits glowed as if the light that glimmered around them was a slit into heaven.
“Who are they?” Hogarth asked in a hushed whisper.
“They are pieces of the god Albion,” Kate replied.
Charlotte asked, “Are they good or bad?”
“Good or bad doesn’t enter into it. They are beyond such frivolities.” Simon grimaced from the pain thudding in his chest. “That’s why it’s unwise to summon such things.”
Kate asked, “What should we do?”
All faces turned to Simon. He stared at the fiery godlings, now only yards from the altar, where Ash sat motionless, with Barnes’s face blank and dead. Simon’s jaw was set. “We stop them.”
The specter on the main aisle looked at him without turning its head. One of Simon’s tattoos flared and he found himself frozen in his stone form. His own spell had activated at the figure’s glance. The shallow breath in his lungs was hardly enough to hold on to consciousness.
Kate went for a vial when suddenly one of the specters glanced her way and a glass container shattered in its place on her bandolier. She saw orange mist swirl around her and tried to back away, but her feet grew heavy. She took one hard step and found her legs trapped in her own amber.
Charlotte roared and bounded onto the glowing spirit. And then she was gone.
“Charlotte!” Kate screamed.
A solid thump alerted them to the large form of the werewolf hitting the floor near the main doors as if dropped from a great height. Dust bloomed around her and flagstones cracked. The hairy body bounced once and lay still.
The Undying Legion Page 24