Church took one last, deep breath of the smoky, dreamy air. Overhead, a cloud was blotting out the stars.
34
The sun was coming up in the Far Lands, the sky a glorious pink and fiery red. But in the Forest of the Night, beneath the thick canopy of leaves it was still and dark and cool.
Far from the path that wound through the forest was a casket of gold and ivory with a heavy lid of frosted glass. On the side was the legend: Here lies Jack Churchill, Brother of Dragons – his final battle fought.
‘A nice touch, do you not agree?’ the Libertarian said.
Church examined what was supposed to be his final resting place. He struggled to swallow a rising feeling of dread.
Veitch watched from the nearby trees with his dead brothers and sisters.
‘You finally get your revenge,’ Church said to him.
‘It’s not enough.’
Church climbed into the casket, desperately focusing on the tiny flame of hope that still flickered in his heart. He was doing this for Ruth, Shavi and Laura. If they were alive, there was a chance they could find a way to oppose the Enemy’s plans. His sacrifice would be worth it.
The Libertarian took out a small green bottle and a goblet. ‘Apologies,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been marked with the skull and crossbones in the traditional style.’ He poured the fizzing liquid into the goblet and offered it to Church.
It smelled of sour fruit. Church held it for a moment, still gripped with uncertainty. Finally, he swilled it down in one go. The liquid burned like acid, but then left a freezing cold as it passed.
The Libertarian nodded appreciatively. ‘Enjoy your long, untroubled sleep. If it’s any consolation, your name and reputation will undoubtedly live on in mythology. There’s little we can do about that, sadly.’
Church lay down in the casket. His limbs were already growing leaden, his heart beating slower. Yet his thoughts remained active, and he could see, hear and feel everything. He wondered if he would eventually go insane as the days turned into months and years, with him conscious but unable to move a muscle.
The Libertarian loomed into his field of vision. He removed his sunglasses so those hellish eyes would be the last thing of the world Church would see.
‘I imagine the most devastating part of this will be the unending loneliness,’ the Libertarian said. ‘I am not without compassion, so I have arranged for you to have company.’
From the forest floor, Church could hear rustling. It rose up the foot of the casket. It felt like pebbles were being dropped on to his legs, rustling rapidly up to his chest. And then the spiders crossed his face and his eyes and he realised what the Libertarian intended.
The spiders flooded into the casket until it was brimming, every piece of his body alive with the movement of tiny legs and writhing bodies apart from one small circle of his face.
The Libertarian leaned in again, smiled and nodded farewell and then closed the casket lid.
Chapter Twelve
TEN BILLION SPIDERS IN EDEN
1
Suffocating darkness enveloped Ruth. Something pressed against her then moved away, a rustling up her spine, a sour, cold breath against her neck. Filled with such a deep dread she could barely think straight, she had forgotten her flat, the giant who beckoned outside. She had forgotten being pulled into her wardrobe.
All she knew was the malign presence biding its time only a whisper away.
2
The procession moved through the Forest of the Night at dawn. As the birdsong began, and the butterflies fluttered amongst the trees, the king and queen led the Seelie Court at a measured pace. There were scores of them, stumbling and shambling, slithering and flying, but the mood was sombre and respectful. None spoke. Heads were bowed. It was the first time the Seelie Court had ever come together to share their grief and respect for a Fragile Creature.
With them were Niamh and Tom, still adrift, uncomprehending of what had come to pass. The procession stopped at the casket of gold and ivory, and the court formed a circle amongst the trees.
Niamh could contain her grief no longer. She began to cry silently.
‘Do not hide your tears, sister, for this Brother of Dragons is worthy of the sorrow of all creatures under Existence, though he did not recognise that himself,’ the queen said gently.
‘I do not understand how this could be,’ Niamh said. ‘If the Enemy attacked at the festival we would have known.’
‘He went willingly, as a sacrifice to save the lives of others.’ Tom spoke with the authority of someone who had glimpsed the truth.
‘Know this, sister,’ the king said. ‘The Brother of Dragons is not dead. Nor is he alive. He hovers on the brink between the dark and the light until a way is found to break the Enemy’s spell.’
Niamh smiled sadly. ‘Then there is hope. But it is not something I will see. Or True Thomas.’
‘Sister?’ the king asked, puzzled.
‘We have both seen the patterns that lie ahead. Our own lives will be sacrificed in the coming conflict. I had dared to believe that path might change, but now I see it cannot. I am resigned to my fate, as is True Thomas.’
A murmur of appreciation ran through the assembly.
‘The Seelie Court recognises your great sacrifice, sister, and yours, True Thomas. You will never be forgotten in the stories of the Golden Ones. May we all learn from them.’ The king offered Niamh a candle that burned with a blue flame. ‘This light shall never go out as long as the Brother of Dragons lives. Take it, sister, and keep it by you in remembrance for whatever time remains you.’
As Niamh accepted the candle, Tom was deep in thought. ‘I wish to leave a gift in the casket,’ he said.
‘As do I,’ Niamh added.
‘Then do it,’ the king said. ‘The spiders will not attack unless you attempt to move them or the Brother of Dragons.’
One of the attendants opened the frosted glass lid. Niamh recoiled from the seething mass of spiders, but steeled herself to lean in. Church’s face remained uncovered and he looked as though he were sleeping.
Into the casket she slipped the pack of Tarot cards. ‘Take these with my love,’ she said softly. ‘If the gods would contact you, or you the gods, the ravens shall fly swiftly.’ She kissed him on his cold lips before turning away in grief.
Tom stepped up and pressed something between Church’s lips that the others couldn’t see. ‘A present from Doctor Leary,’ he whispered. ‘Use the sacrament wisely.’
The attendant closed the lid, and then they stood in silence, listening to the birds and the breeze rustling through the trees, thinking of times past and yet to come.
3
‘You shouldn’t have tried to run, you idiot. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ Veitch thrust Shavi roughly onto the sofa in Ruth’s flat. Blood splashed from the wound on Shavi’s head, ran down his face and puddled in his good eye. Veitch tossed him a towel to stanch the wound.
‘How can you say that? You killed Laura.’
‘She was always a bitch. She deserved it.’ Veitch laughed quietly to himself.
Shavi was disoriented. After Veitch had met them outside the care home, he had led them to Ruth’s flat. It had felt as if they had turned a corner: three of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons together, with a fourth, Ruth, soon to join them. The mysterious Church was the only one still missing.
But the moment they had stepped through Ruth’s door, Veitch had turned on them with breathtaking brutality, clubbing the Bone Inspector unconscious and plunging a knife into Laura’s chest when she had gone to the old man’s aid. Veitch had dumped her in the bath and filled it with water. Stunned, Shavi had tried to get out to raise the alarm, and in the struggle that followed had received the gash to his head for his troubles.
‘You’re wasting your time here,’Veitch said. ‘There’s nothing you can do. We’re bringing him back.’
‘Who are you bringing back?’ Shavi said.
Veitch laughed, shook his he
ad. ‘You always were a smart bastard, Shavi. And you were a good friend. You were.’ Veitch grew disturbed. He stalked across the room and kicked over the coffee table. ‘The five of us fought hard, and we won, in a way. We thought we were lining up against some big old devil, the enemy of those golden-skinned bastards – which we were. But it turned out he was just one aspect of something bigger … something immense.’
‘You are raving, Veitch. I do not understand you.’
‘You will, matey. You will. That bigger thing … well, that’s here now. All around you. In every bit of this world. It rules it. But at the moment it’s like …’ he struggled for words ‘… the mist. We’re going to give it a shape. We’re going to bring the King of all the World back for some fun and games.’
‘Does it have a name?’
‘Call him the Void, or Anti-Life. The golden-skins call him the Devourer of All Things.’
‘That does not sound good, Veitch.’
Veitch laughed bitterly. ‘Tell you what, mate, the world he’s built is a damn sight better than the one that was on the cards before. The one where I got fucked over by my friend, and then murdered for my troubles.’
‘What about Ruth? Have you killed her, too?’
There was a long pause before Veitch answered. ‘She’s gone.’ He locked the front door and pocketed the key before going to the bathroom.
Shavi ran to the window, but it was locked and he couldn’t see where Ruth kept the key. As he turned back to the room he noticed an overpowering odour, like burned iron. The air pressure dropped a degree, and then a doorway of shimmering Blue Fire appeared.
At first it was like a blue mirror reflecting his own blood-spattered features, but then it shifted and became a window on another place. In it, Shavi saw a man with a troubled but strong face; he too was stained with blood. Behind him was another man dressed in red robes.
‘Shavi?’ the bloodstained man said. ‘I’m Jack Churchill … Church.’
Shavi glanced past the doorway. Veitch had still not emerged from the bathroom. Church?’ he said quietly. ‘You must come quickly. You are the only one who can help—’
‘I’m coming.’ Church took a step forward.
‘Laura is dead,’ Shavi continued. ‘Ruth, too. They are going to bring him back, Church. They are—’
‘Ruth’s dead?’ The shadow of devastation crossed Church’s face, and a second later the burning doorway winked out.
Before Shavi could consider what he had seen, the bathroom door crashed open. ‘Oi. Come here,’ Veitch called.
Shavi found Laura submerged in the bath, the knife still embedded in her chest. Grief and horror twisted in his heart to see her that way.
‘Watch this,’ Veitch said. ‘Beats any party trick you’ve got.’
After a moment, Laura’s eyes flickered open. She looked at Veitch and Shavi through the water, and then became aware of her situation. She jackknifed upwards, gasping for air, before coming to a sudden halt when she saw the knife protruding from her chest. ‘Shit—’
Veitch yanked out the knife.
Laura recoiled and crashed back against the taps. ‘Oww!’
‘So you can still feel something,’ Veitch said. He grabbed her shirt and dragged her out of the bath and into the lounge where he flung her on the sofa.
‘Please, don’t hurt her,’ Shavi pleaded.
Laura jumped to her feet, eyes blazing. ‘Yes, you cunt. Come near me and I’ll tear your bollocks off.’ Her gaze was drawn back to her chest. She searched the wound for the blood that had not materialised.
‘You can’t hurt a bleedin’ plant,’ Veitch said.
‘What do you mean?’ Shavi was as stunned as Laura by her survival.
Veitch grabbed Laura’s hand and pointed to the tattoo of interlocking leaves. ‘See this?’
‘The mark of the god Cernunnos,’ Shavi said.
‘No one told you the price she had to pay to get it?’ Veitch laughed. ‘You’re not human any more, love. To get all those weird nature powers you had to cross over – from animal to vegetable.’ He laughed again. ‘Or something like that. Lop off an arm, you grow another. Stabbing, drowning – no good. Weedkiller … not so sure.’ He laughed at his joke until tears came.
Laura slumped onto the sofa in shock. ‘I think I remember … something—’
‘You did not have to reveal the information so cruelly,’ Shavi said. ‘You could simply have told us.’
Veitch wiped his eyes. ‘Yeah, well, me and her didn’t really get on.’
‘I wonder why,’ Laura said sourly.
‘She was always having a go, always making me feel like I was nothin’… ’ Veitch shrugged. ‘Thought I’d get it out of my system here and now.’
Veitch was clearly unbalanced, but Shavi couldn’t tell whether Veitch planned to kill them both or if he had something else in mind. He decided the best course of action was to keep Veitch calm. ‘There is a great deal I do not understand,’ Shavi said. ‘Why have our memories been altered, but yours have not? If we were once friends, why do this?’
Veitch wandered to the window and looked out across the city, his mood suddenly pensive. ‘All right. The first thing you’ve got to get your head around is that nothing out there is what it appears. The world we grew up with is just a cover for what’s going on behind the scenes. Which is basically a big bleedin’ street fight with knives and bottles and chains and no rules. Humans, we think we’re top of the pile here, but out there in the real place, no chance. We’re scrapping with every other species just to stay in the game. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were designed to give us a chance. Five people, better together than they were on their own. And on our own we really were a bunch of losers.’ He turned back to Shavi and Laura and smiled sadly. As you probably remember.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Laura snapped, but it was clear she accepted the truth.
‘So the five of us were brought together when everything went pear-shaped,’ Veitch continued. ‘Technology started failing. Weird supernatural stuff was breaking out all over the place. The golden-skinned bastards decided they were going to set up camp here. And to top if off, their old enemies the Nightwalkers invaded.’
Laura glanced at Shavi, wondering how much of Veitch’s commentary they could believe.
‘In the old myths, they were called the Fomorii. Shape-shifting fuckers. The Tuatha Dé Danann defeated them thousands of years ago, thought they’d driven them off for good. But they came back with their leader, Balor. The God of Death.’
‘And this Balor is part of the bigger thing … the Void?’ Shavi said.
‘Look, a lot of this stuff goes right over my head. The way I see it, there’s an ongoing battle between two sides – Life and Anti-Life, light and dark, whatever. It shifts back and forth all the time, but Anti-Life has the upper hand because it decided the way the world should be, and what all the rules were, right back at the start. But then we came along … us …’ Veitch said, bemused, ‘… and we started to tip the balance the other way. We defeated the Fomorii, we destroyed Balor – it could have been a new Golden Age—’
‘So what happened?’ Laura said.
‘Human nature.’ Veitch toyed with the knife he had pulled out of Laura. ‘Church and me were both in love with Ruth. She couldn’t decide between the two of us. So right at the point when we’d won, Church thought he’d get rid of the competition. He killed me and Balor at the same time. Everything got fucked up by Balor’s death … time and space and all that shit … and Church ended up getting thrown back in time two thousand years or so.’
‘You’re not looking too bad for a dead man,’ Laura sneered.
‘I got better.’
‘That was handy.’
He looked from Laura to Shavi. ‘You’d be surprised how often it happens. I was given a second chance—’
By the Void,’ Shavi said.
‘What the five of us did shook things up. It got us noticed, and not in a good way. The Void couldn�
��t have us turning the world over to Life so it came back – or part of it did – and it made sure that the world stayed the way it was supposed to be. There was another group of Brothers and Sisters of Dragons after us, and the Void put paid to them.’
‘And it wiped our memories so we would not fight back,’ Shavi said.
‘It didn’t just make you forget – it changed everything. It can do that. Like I said, all the stuff outside the window is just scenery. And the Void moved it all around—’
‘To create the illusion,’ Shavi finished. ‘No one is aware of the possibilities any more. There is no hope. No wonder. This is simply the way things are meant to be, so we have to make the best of it. And the Blue Fire drains away because the people who kept it alive do not believe in anything any longer. A dead world—’
‘And you helped this happen?’ Laura said in disbelief.
‘Blame Church. He made sure I couldn’t stay on the other side.’ Veitch wouldn’t meet their eyes. He gripped the knife tightly.
‘So now you’re getting your revenge. Feel good?’ Laura’s eyes blazed.
‘Yeah, it does.’ Veitch stared back unflinchingly.
‘What about us?’ Shavi said in an attempt to calm the rising tension. ‘You said we used to be friends. Are you going to kill us, too?’
Veitch gnawed on a knuckle. ‘Ruth and Church are out of the picture. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons who came after you can’t remember a thing about who they are. But you know how things can be changed, so you’re a threat. I know what you’re like … the two of you could still screw everything up. That’s not going to be allowed.’ He weighed the knife in the palm of his hand. ‘I’m sorry, mate, I really am, but I haven’t got a choice.’
4
The constant churning of the spiders all around him was becoming a distant memory. Church was falling backwards down a long, dark tunnel, occasionally punctuated by starbursts of Blue Fire. It was a place of refuge, and he knew the deeper he could go the more he could escape the thinking and the feeling and the guilt and the sorrow.
Jack of Ravens Page 47