Coldfall Wood

by Steven Savile

  “How so?”

  “They aren’t going anywhere.”

  “We can’t—”

  “Kirmani’s dead, guv. The other two are out of it.”

  “How credible are we talking?”

  “One of our own,” Mel told him.

  She looked at the dozens of red lines looping from one name to the next to the next across the incident boards, until those red lines tangled in a violent web.

  Dead changed everything.

  57

  Julie held the bone in his clenched fist.

  It was still warm.

  He didn’t want to think about where it had been.

  Seth was with him, clutching the charred stump of his ruined right arm. Damiola had done something with it to stop the bleeding. He didn’t want to know what. Frankly, he’d have been more than happy if the gangster had shuffled off their shared mortal coil before he’d passed Josh’s finger bone, but such were the disappointments of life. Like the song said, you really couldn’t always get what you wanted. The only consolation was that Seth looked like shit. The old man walked two steps behind him, keeping an eye on the East End gangster. Alex and Ellie brought up the rear.

  “Bet you never thought you’d see this place again, did you?” Julie asked as they approached the outskirts of the Rothery. So much had changed since they’d last been here. They walked toward the house that had once been Taff Carter’s, and a few streets away where Seth had murdered, not one, but two people that the woman he loved had loved. The whole situation was utterly fucked up.

  “I never gave up hope,” he said, the words laced with heavy irony. “But if we’re talking about doing things we never thought we’d do, butchering your girlfriend’s brother with a sword has to be right up there. You think you can handle it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I could do it for you, you know,” Seth offered, “if you’re having second thoughts?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You sure? I really wouldn’t mind. I’ve fantasized about killing Cousin Josh for quite a while. I think I’d enjoy it.”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  A new forest spilled out into the streets, rich and full of life. Julie had walked the beat here for most of his professional life, working with community outreach, running the youth club out of the back of the old church hall, getting involved with sports clubs and even the boxing and martial arts stuff being run out of the old gym over by the railway arches, but the place was unrecognizable. He heard movement all around them—scurrying, tiny paws and claws—but the trees hid their followers from sight.

  “You ever feel like you’re in trouble?” Seth asked, offering a wry smile. “I mean, given what you told me, you’re about to get your ass handed to you on a plate by a fucking god. This isn’t going to end well for you, Julie. I could conjure up some help, if you wanted, a little backup? I’m sure you didn’t destroy the carousel and all of the cutouts, did you? Or did you?” Julie said nothing. “Ah, that would be such a waste. There was some real power there, those conjurations. Hell, if I were going to go up against a god, I’d want to send the Reels in first, to soften it up. Not that I’d even then stand a chance. I’m not an idiot. You can’t fight a god, even with a fucking greatsword. How does it feel to know you’re going to die in a couple of minutes?”

  “You tell me?”

  “Ah, Julie, it’s a shame you’re not going to be around much longer. The more time I spend with you, the more I think I could really grow to like you.”

  “Shut up,” Alex said from behind them.

  “I’m just saying, he’s my kinda guy.”

  “Julie?” she said.

  “Yes, my love,” he said.

  “We don’t need him anymore. If you want to practice on him before you face my brother, I won’t cry about it. We’re not a close-knit family.”

  Julie smiled. “Anything for you,” he said, milking the moment by raising the sword to his lips and kissing the curls engraved into the blade.

  “Less of that, thank you very much,” Seth said, but she was right, they didn’t need him anymore. “You’ve got to start changing the way you think of me. I’m one of the good guys now. Didn’t you get the message? You couldn’t do this without me. You save Cousin Josh; it’s down to me. I showed you the way out of the darkness; I gave you the bone in return. That wasn’t out of the good of my heart, I did it for my freedom.”

  “I think you should shut the fuck up,” Julie said softly. “Because in case you forgot, you murdered my partner and no matter what else has happened between then and now, I still haven’t forgiven you for that.”

  Seth stared at him; he couldn’t quite believe he was still being blamed for Taff’s corrupt soul getting him killed by that demonic Hollywood heartbreaker. “You cut my fucking hand off, I’d say that makes us more than even!”

  “Let me explain something to you, Seth,” Julie said, far more reasonably than he felt, “I am going to kill you. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But I am going to kill you. I’m going to do it for Taff, and for Eleanor, for Isaiah and Boone and Josh and everyone else you’ve fucked with during your life. It’s going to happen. Believe me. And here’s something you might appreciate, I’m going to enjoy doing it.”

  “Okay, I’ll shut up now,” Seth said.

  “Wise decision,” Julie said.

  “But one last thing before I do. I just wanted to let you know that instead of frightening me, that little speech of yours just convinced me that you and me, we could have had something, Julie. I’m talking a friendship for the ages. The kind of thing they write songs about.”

  “Murder ballads,” he said, bluntly. “No, thanks.”

  “Between us we could have ruled this town.”

  “London doesn’t need rulers,” he said, ending the conversation.

  Up ahead he saw the familiar signpost that offered a welcome to the Rothery.

  It was completely tangled up in green shoots that curled up around the sign’s metal legs in a corkscrew of verdant vines. Purple blossoms had opened up to obscure the bottom curl of the e and the tail of the y. Beyond it, the first row of houses looked like they marked the edge of a kill zone. Julie saw the black smears of burns on the red brick, and the twisted wire frames of mattresses and other junk that had been dragged out into the open and set alight. There were six houses in a row, each one of them gutted.

  They crossed over the imaginary line into the Rothery.

  Julie could feel the tension in the air.

  Contact with the blade heightened his senses. The thrill of the old earth magic prickled the fine hairs along his arms and nape of his neck. “He’s here,” he said.

  “I should hope so,” Seth said, then looked wounded when the others turned on him. He shrugged, opening his remaining hand and turning it palm up. “I mean, seriously, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? For the big showdown. It’d be a bit anticlimactic if he wasn’t here, that’s all I’m saying.”

  The walked on in silence, crossing the wasteland that had been the car park between the single-story line of shops and the pub, making their way toward the green and the lightning-struck tree outside The Hunter’s Horns.

  Up above, city birds congregated into one huge flock that cawed and cried as they circled endlessly—banking and rising, banking and falling—around the perimeter of the ancient woodland beyond the estate.

  They could hear movement in the new trees that spilled out around them, too. Animals prowling. The effect was eerie: the constant rush of sound; the whisper of small bodies up against the long grass and through the thickening hedgerows. It was all-pervasive.

  And utterly natural.

  But that was the problem: the Rothery was a concrete jungle; it wasn’t some equatorial rain forest.

  He saw Josh standing beside the twisted tree, bodies at his feet.

  He seemed to be lost; listening to a voice none of them could hear.

&nbs
p; He held a wooden staff in his hand, and had his face tilted up to the sky.

  He was watching the birds.

  He didn’t turn as they approached.

  From the back, he didn’t look any different, so for just a moment Julie allowed himself to believe that somehow nothing had changed, that Josh was still Josh and that he’d turn around at any moment and smile that infuriating wry grin of his and shrug as though to say, Hey everything’s fine, I don’t know what all the fuss was about.

  But when he finally turned around it was obvious nothing was fine.

  “So this was his plan?” Josh said, looking down at the sword in Julie’s hand. “How utterly tragic.” With a flick of the wrist, Manannan’s blade was wrenched out of Julie’s grasp and sent skidding across the grass toward the ancient god dressed in his friend’s body.

  It stopped spinning at his feet.

  He looked past Julie at the magus behind him. “Ah, have you come to die again, old man? I would have thought you’d learned your lesson the last time, having your ties that bound your soul broken.”

  “I’m a stubborn bastard,” Cadmus Damiola said, moving forward. He held out his hand. A small blue flame danced across his fingertips.

  He stood between Seth and Julie.

  “Well, I’ll just have to be sure to kill you more thoroughly this time; make sure death sticks,” the god said.

  In the distance, they heard sirens. The police. The station house was no more than a minute or two away. They needed this done before Melissa Banks and the others turned up with riot shields and batons and got themselves killed. They couldn’t let more die at the hand of the ancient one than already had; the price was high enough.

  “You can’t win this,” Damiola told Arawn. He didn’t sound like he believed it. The blue flame along his fingertips flickered as he spoke, flaring until it surrounded his whole hand. “Not in the long run. Kill us, more will come.”

  “No they won’t,” the god disagreed. He sounded like Josh. He looked like Josh. Even the half-wry twist of the lips was so familiar, and yet so wrong. “Not until the veil comes down and the Bain Shee find their way here. And by that time the land will be rich with blood, and magic will have returned. I can live with that. Shed enough, and there might just be enough power left in this blasted place to survive the fall. No promises.”

  The old magician held out his hand, and to Julie it seemed as though his soul stepped out of his body—the blue flame spread, growing, doubling in size between heartbeats and doubling again and again, until it was the old man’s ethereal doppelganger. It moved to meet the god.

  Josh raised the elaborately carved staff and spoke a single word, which called down the birds.

  Starlings swept in fast in a flurry of wings, beating and battering them in a vortex of feathers as more and more of the birds churned through the air.

  Julie couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of his face except for wings and small-feathered bodies, and never for more than a fraction of a second as more and more of the god’s creatures flew at them.

  He threw his hands up to shield his eyes as more wings flapped and beat against his face.

  Through the ever-shifting gaps, he saw the ghostly blue shadow of Damiola’s spirit charge the god.

  And lose.

  It seemed to tear apart, shredding, then blew away with the wind.

  But it bought him precious seconds of distraction.

  Julie forced his way forward, only thinking about the sword.

  He’d promised Josh.

  He wouldn’t fail him.

  All he had to do was put one foot in front of the other, and again, and again, forcing his way through the pelting wings and the frenzy of caws and clawing talons.

  He caught flashes of blue as the tendrils of Damiola’s doppelganger smoked, writhing and twisting and coiling as they tried to find the god’s flesh to anchor on. They simply melted away, no more solid than the stuff of illusion.

  Smoke and mirrors, without the mirrors.

  The old man was showing the god what he wanted to see, but none of it was real.

  The birds kept coming and coming in a fury of wings and feathers.

  Julie kept his head down and kept on walking one step at a time.

  And then there was a sudden moment of peace, with no avian assault. It lasted one, two, three seconds, and then he dared look up.

  All the birds in the sky were in the agonizing process of fusing into a single tortured shape. It was so much greater than their tiny parts of brittle wings and beady eyes. Julie wrestled with the enormity of it; the thing’s wingspan stretched all the way across the green, from the lightning-struck tree to The Hunter’s Horns. It was huge. It reared back in the air, holding position; wings creating massive downdrafts as they beat slowly, and loosed a deafening shriek from its thousands of beaks.

  He was still ten feet from his fallen blade.

  It felt like ten miles with that thing hovering over it.

  He risked a glance to his left and saw the magician, the blue tendrils of his soul light crackling and sparking, sizzling and reeking, with the most awful odor as they lashed against the rowan staff the god used to defend himself.

  Then came the moment—the realization that the tendrils were nothing more than paper-thin trickeries.

  Beyond them, Julie saw the sleek bodies of the rats circling. They weren’t alone. More of the city’s wildlife had converged on the tree, drawn here by the rebirth of the ancient god, finally in skin that could survive in this place and ready to reclaim his kingdom.

  Josh whipped the staff around, changing his stance so that he could sweep the rowan weapon around in a vicious semicircle to drive Julie back.

  Julie didn’t flinch.

  He took the hit on the ankle.

  Their best hope—their only hope—was to do this together, all of them.

  “Josh!” he yelled. “Josh! Can you hear me?” It didn’t matter if he could or couldn’t, what mattered was the fraction of a second’s distraction his cry caused, and the slightest turn of the god’s head toward the sound.

  Damiola understood.

  He seemed to draw deeper on the reserves of his spirit to launch, doubling the intensity of the illusion, dividing the soul light into a thousand smaller flames, and battering the god with them. His body collapsed under the debilitating strain as the ties that bound flesh to spirit stretched to breaking point; but this time he was ready, this time as the god loosed his own spirit animal, the mighty King Stag, to take Damiola head-on, the old magician scattered the shreds of his soul and gave them wing, like the birds that had battered at him only moments before. The effect was such that as King Stag’s great blazing halo launched with its horns down, the birds of Damiola’s soul simply fluttered around it, breaking up only to reform, enveloping the mythical beast rather than taking the brunt of its brutal assault head-on.

  It wasn’t a fight he could ever win, not for more than a few seconds, but it wasn’t one he was trying to win. He’d already died; he was more than prepared to die again if it bought Julie the few precious seconds he needed to get to the sword.

  They had to be enough for Julie to make a difference.

  He couldn’t stand there watching to see if the stag shredded Damiola’s soul birds, or suffocated beneath their blanket of smoke and translucent feathers as they closed around the radiant creature, or if the whole illusion just burned out to nothing.

  Julie ran for the sword, skidding across the grass like a baseball player sliding in for home plate.

  The god wore his friend’s face. He couldn’t think about that. It wasn’t Josh. Josh was dead. He had to keep his word. His word was everything. Fail now and he would damn Josh to an eternity masquerading as a god’s meat suit.

  His hand closed around the hilt of the ancient blade, and in one fluid motion lunged upward, ramming the unwieldy sword into Josh’s gut and forcing it home against the sickening resistance of bone.

  The knotwork of runes along th
e length of the blade reacted to the god’s blood as it spilled into their runnels, shimmering as the slick redness sizzled and burned away. What remained were the blood-red scars of writing cut deep into the steel.

  And he pushed deeper, harder, until the cross guard dug into the god’s stolen stomach, and he felt the torn flaps of skin brush wetly against his knuckles. In that moment, with the blood on the blade and the blood on his hand, he was connected with Arawn and the Underworld. He could feel it pulsing through his body, surging with electric intensity down the length of the blade into his arm, into his blood, into every ounce of his being. He was joined with the earth. He was joined with the Annwyn. He was joined with the soul of the land. It was a great, powerful, unknowable entity: a force that surrounded all things; infused them. It was the magic of Danu, the Earth’s mother. It was the essence of all things. There was no beginning; there was no end. He felt the soul of the land burn bright inside him, and it was glorious.

  He was filled with the energy of life.

  It was nothing more magical than that.

  And yet it was the most magical of all things.

  This is why the boatman returned us from that other place, the voice of the ancient blade chimed in his head, savoring the moment every bit as much as Julie was.

  Arawn’s hand closed around the cutting edges of Freagarthach, breaking the moment.

  Julie looked up at the blade, seeing where it cut deep into Arawn’s palm as his grip tightened.

  More blood spilled between his fingers, making the steel slick.

  And up above, the great conglomeration of feathers came undone, each and every one of the starlings, pigeons, and other city birds scattering from the gigantic gestalt to take wing. Some settled on the rooftops nearby, others on the tree limbs, watching. The last of them landed on the gable of the Lockwoods’ old pub across the way, close enough to see everything.

  “You dare?” The god drew the sword slowly out of his stomach, shaking his head with disappointment that they would try something so utterly pointless as stabbing him with a mortal blade. He cast it aside contemptuously, and turned the full force of his rage on Julie, who was on his knees at the god’s feet.