Wolf in Shadow-eARC

by John Lambshead

  She slipped into a semi-quiescent state when unstimulated by events. In this condition she was taciturn and remote, almost machinelike. But danger and the hunt brought her alive. When Karla was up, she burned with an emotional intensity greater than any human being. Jameson was one of the few people ever to see her in this state—and live.

  Suckers were only immortal by human standards of time. Over centuries, they became increasingly powerful, but their minds decayed until they were little more than vicious monsters motivated by only hunger. Commission operatives called ancient suckers Grendels, after the mythical monster slain by the hero Beowulf. Mythical? Perhaps? Except that Grendel has a very good description of a degenerate sucker, something humanoid but not human, something terrible that feeds on men, something of the dark.

  The Commission never used the word vampire. Vampires were creatures from mythology, but suckers were all too real. The vampires of myth shared some of their characteristics but not all. Crosses held no fear for Karla, and people she fed on did not turn into vampires.

  In truth, the Commission had never really established what a sucker was. They didn’t reproduce, but new ones turned up from time to time. The Library favoured the explanation that they were some form of alien information pattern from outside our universe imprinted over a human mind. The Coven agreed more or less but employed words like possession and evil spirit.

  It was possible that they were physical manifestations from outside, but suckers seemed to be too much part of our world to be wholly alien. It was no use interrogating them about their origins as they either wouldn’t or couldn’t answer.

  Karla was old when they captured her; she didn’t know how old, and they couldn’t tell. She had forgotten many things as her mind decayed and had lost context to much of what she retained, but she was still semi-rational.

  That was the combination the Commission needed: Karla was an old, powerful sucker who could still respond to verbal commands. She would be a very useful weapon—if she could be controlled.

  The method they chose to bind her was a love geas. It had to be attached to a person; suckers have no ideology and have trouble comprehending loyalty to anything, let alone abstracts such as The Commission or the human race. Jameson volunteered to be that person.

  Up to a point the experiment was a roaring success, until Karla started recovering her mind and personality. That was the first sign that the geas had unexpected side effects. The most important of which was that it did not just bind Karla to Jameson but was reciprocal, binding him to her. That created problems when the experiment ended and the time came to terminate Karla. Jameson gave the Commission a choice, back off or kill him as well. It was uncertain which option they would select, but Jameson was past caring. Either choice worked for him, albeit in different ways. In the event, Randolph opted to continue the experiment.

  Jameson knew that the problem had only been kicked down the road a bit, a stay of execution rather than a reprieve. One day Jameson would die and then what would Karla do? Stay loyal to The Commission or revert to type? But that was a problem for another day as Jameson had no immediate interest in dying.

  Karla claimed to have been Shakespeare’s lover, not an impossible scenario. She had lived in London a long time. At least Karla seemed to remember The Bard, and she recalled a lover who was a poet, but it was all jumbled in her head. Jameson read English Lit. at Cambridge, and some lines in the Dark Lady Sonnet haunted him because they described Karla so well.

  “Then will I swear beauty herself is black, and all they foul that thy complexion lack.”

  “So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, and death once dead, there’s no more dying then.”

  “For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”

  Jameson would never know for sure but he always thought of Karla as the Dark Lady.

  “Come on,” he said, “business first, pleasure later.”

  She sighed theatrically, “I might not be in the mood later.”

  Sometimes she behaved just like a woman.

  Karla and Jameson picked their way across the swamp, heading for drier land. Karla led the way, tracking the daemon by smell. It had entered the real world, so it left a whiff of reality behind. Reality was a stain that stood out in the Otherworld. Dry going did not make the journey any easier. The jumble of smashed trees was denser, and they often had to detour around barricades. Eventually there was no way round and they had to climb.

  A hiss made Jameson jump, and he looked anxiously round for a snake. A flat piece of wood moved and two antennae waved. The “wood” was a camouflaged insectoid about a foot long and shaped like a cockroach. It compressed its thorax, making the hissing noise again. Jameson bunged a piece of bark in its direction and it scuttled off, slipping between two tree trunks. Karla scrambled to the top of the jumbled pile of wood and reached down to pull Jameson up.

  That was when it hit Karla from behind.

  Jameson had a glimpse of grey, batlike wings which lifted her off the ground with powerful downbeats. He drew his gun and sighted on the creature. It rocked from side to side, clearly having trouble supporting Karla’s weight despite its four-meter wingspan. Long, scaly legs ended in impressive claws that dug cruelly into her shoulders. It swung a vulturelike neck and head from side to side, cawing like a giant crow. The rear of the wings joined the body at the hips, an anatomy more like a bird than a bat.

  Karla reached up and grabbed its legs, tearing her body free from its claws. She swung up like an athlete on the parallel bars and kicked it in the chest. The monster screamed like shearing metal. It opened its beak to reveal rows of pointed teeth. Karla let go, falling several meters to the ground.

  It wheeled in the sky, wings beating to gain height as it maneuvered to attack her again. Jameson yelled and waved his arms to attract its attention. The thing turned its head, yellow eyes locking on his. It half folded its wings and zoomed down towards him. He held his pistol outstretched at head height. At the last moment the monster spread its wings, checking its forward motion with a crack like the opening of a parachute. Two sets of triple claws reached for him.

  Jameson fired a double tap at the center of the beast, using the SOE’s technique. The heavy bolt projectiles imparted a powerful recoil on the gun, lifting the barrel. He dragged it down and gave the monster another double tap, exhausting the four-round clip.

  Blue light flickered around the rail gun’s nozzle, and the sharp tang of ionized air drove the swamp stink from his nostrils. The monster shrieked and flapped, a wing knocking Jameson over. He fell awkwardly. He managed to keep a firm grip on his pistol, although the impact drove the breath from his body. He groped in a pocket for a new clip of bolts and reloaded while still lying on his back gasping for breath. Gun extended, he searched the sky, but it was empty.

  Karla was sitting on a branch when he found her, shoulders so badly ripped that he could see bone through the bloody wounds. It must have hurt like hell, but she waited stoically. Karla healed quickly, but this was bad. Fortunately he had the means to speed up the process. He took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeve. Her fangs extruded and she lowered her head like a lover. It did not hurt at all when she bit into his wrist.

  Suckers needed human blood to survive the way people need water. No one knew quite how it worked. Calories were not the issue. Blood was a powerful catalyst to power magic, human blood the most powerful of all. Daemons like Karla fed on that energy.

  The ancients used blood-powered necromantic spells to open gates to the Otherworld. The Odyssey describes Odysseus entering Hades, the underworld, using a spell powered by the blood of a sacrificial ram. Homer sanitized the story for the benefit of a civilized Classical Greek audience. The Bronze Age necromancers of Mycenae would have used human blood. In the Greek myths, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia for a magical wind to carry the Achaean fleet to Troy. All successful religions and societies ban blood magic, especially hu
man sacrifice. It is too powerful, too uncontrollable, just too damned evil.

  Jameson’s blood had an especially powerful effect of Karla because on their connection. Her flesh writhed and healed as she drank. New tissue flowed over exposed bones and ligaments. She reluctantly lifted her head from his wrist. Her body shuddered. Her eyes gleamed like chips of burning barium.

  He gazed at her affectionately. It took tremendous willpower for her to stop feeding while blood was still available. Doubly so if the blood was his, because it was core to the magic that connected them. Something else the Coven had failed to grasp when they bound a daemon to a human being. She watched him with total concentration, green eyes lighting up the gloom.

  Gloom? Jameson looked around to find the swamp gone. He still sat on a fallen tree trunk but was surrounded by tall pines that were definitely not there when he last looked. The air carried a distinct chill, and he couldn’t see the Sun for dark clouds that tumbled quickly across the sky.

  “What the hell?” Jameson asked.

  “The hunter carried us with it when it fled. You must have given it one almighty scare my love.” She gazed at him fondly, like a woman who knew her man would be a success if given the right guidance.

  “The bastard gave me one almighty scare,” Jameson said, ruefully.

  He checked the safety on his pistol and put it away. He had a special holster cut into the inside of his jacket. The bulky rail gun was difficult to conceal, but its wood-and-iron bolts had a devastating impact on magical beings. A single bolt to the head or chest could kill daemons who shrugged off lead bullets like flea bites. Alternative weapons of similar effectiveness, such as crossbows or longbows, were even more difficult to carry inconspicuously. Better to be confused with armed police or even a gangster than be thought a nutter with a William Tell fixation.

  “Can you still smell the bastard?” Jameson asked.

  “He’s nearby,” she said happily. “This is his home.”

  “Then let’s get him,” Jameson said.

  They moved through the pine forest, Karla leading once again. They followed a stream flowing sluggishly, waters dark and viscous. The clouds parted and sunlight sparkled down, illuminating the forest and causing Jameson to look up at a surprisingly bright blue sky. The Moon was visible. It was way too big, hanging in the sky like a hot-air balloon. Even more curiously, a small second Moon trailed behind.

  Jameson had a vague memory of an article in the Times claiming that Earth had once had two moons. He couldn’t remember when they were supposed to have collided, other than it was a long time ago. He looked around suspiciously for the next surprise, expecting bloody dinosaurs. The pines looked modern, but when did pine trees evolve? Were they contemporary with dinosaurs? He was a bloody literature graduate, for God’s sake, and Cambridge unaccountably failed to include basic palaeontology in its literary degrees.

  The clouds boiled and recovered the sky, plunging the forest back into gloom. The disappearance of the moons made it easier to put the whole thing out of his mind. That was good, he told himself. Concentrate on the daemon. That was real. Do not get distracted by vague fears of the unknown. He took out his pistol and checked the power level again. Karla looked at him quizzically but said nothing.

  They went downhill to the edge of a natural bowl in the forest. Heavy, ruined walls filled it. So much for dinosaurs, Jameson thought. The ruins reminded him of one of the great monastery complexes after Henry the Eighth had done his worst. The roofs had gone and the wooden floors rotted from the multi-story buildings, leaving only stone stairs and galleries. The site was overgrown and partly hidden by deciduous trees, bushes, and climbing plants.

  Karla sniffed the air like a hunting dog.

  “It’s down there,” she said.

  He drew his pistol.

  The going was much more difficult than in the pine forest. Brambles formed entanglements like barbed wire on the Western Front. Yew trees, witching trees, were everywhere among the oaks and sycamores. They followed the path cut by the stream to where it emptied into a large dark pool. The edges were suspiciously regular for a natural structure.

  “The black gowns liked to eat fish,” Karla said. “A tribute to their risen dead god. I never understand your religions.”

  “A medieval eel pond,” Jameson said. He looked up at the ruined walls. “So it is a monastery. It should be surrounded by fields, or at least their overgrown remains.”

  “The black gowns left a long time ago,” Karla said.

  “I suppose so,” Jameson said.

  The ruins were depressing, a reminder of the futility of human endeavor. They were silent witness that in the long run we are all dead and all is ruin.

  “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” Jameson said.

  “What?” Karla asked.

  “Nothing,” Jameson replied. “Just a poem.”

  “I like poets,” Karla said.

  “Yes, I know,” Jameson replied, hiding a sharp pang of jealously.

  Karla smiled, sensitive to his moods. He examined the nearest wall. It was made of some hard grey stone and still stood four meters high.

  “This probably encloses the whole compound for defense,” Jameson said. “But there will be a gate. Come on.”

  He followed the wall around, but progress was depressingly slow. Eventually they came to a high Gothic archway with a stone gargoyle perched on top. It had claws on folded bat-like wings. Jameson observed it suspiciously, not liking its resemblance to the daemon, but it was just a statue.

  The wooden gates, had long gone. Not that it helped, because the gateway was choked with brambles.

  “We would need a bloody flame-thrower to get through that lot,” Jameson said. He turned to Karla. “You’re sure it’s in there?”

  Karla nodded. “I’m sure.”

  Jameson thought hard. It could take hours to circumnavigate the walls, and there was no certainty of finding an entry anywhere, as the damned monster could fly in and out. Then it occurred to him that monasteries were forts by another name. The monks stored food, but what about water? They might have a well inside the cloister, the courtyard, but they might have obtained drinking water from the stream.

  He retraced his steps back to the pool and found where the stream flowed out. They followed it to where it ran close to the wall. Jameson searched in the tangled vegetation but found nothing.

  “What are you looking for?” Karla asked.

  “I hoped there was a door, so the monks could fetch water.” Jameson shrugged.

  “I see.”

  Karla walked along the stream and poked around a jumble of boulders where a large tree grew. She flashed Jameson a smile, braced her back against the tree and pushed at one of the boulders with her legs. The tree swayed but the boulder pivoted sideways. Karla wriggled inside the resulting hole.

  “Hey, wait for me!” Jameson followed.

  He struggled to slip through the gap between the stone and the tree. Karla was noticeably slimmer than him, ridiculously petite for something that could out-wrestle a polar bear. Fortunately, it opened out inside and he could almost stand upright. Light filtered in from somewhere, confirming that the cave was artificial. The roof was a corbelled structure of rough stone, each block overlapping the lower to form an arch.

  “It’s a sally port,” Karla said, proudly.

  “I thought they were just small doors in castle walls for making quick sorties,” Jameson said.

  “Much better to have a tunnel with a hidden exit,” Karla said.

  “Yes, I see that,” Jameson replied. “How do you know about sally ports?”

  Karla shrugged, either unable or unwilling to tell him. She had probably seen one used at some point in her long life.

  The tunnel made a sharp right-hand turn—to hinder a right-handed man with a sword trying to force the passage, and opened into the cloister. Rust flakes and corroded iron rods from what had been a gate were scattered around the exit.

  A loud caw and th
e beat of wings echoed around the walls. Jameson tracked his gun around the ruins, but nothing moved. The cloister was rectangular, the short walls to their right and left lined with the low, broken walls of one-story buildings.

  In front of them an impressive ruin reached up three stories. On the end was a massive stone keep. Parts of it had fallen, littering the ground with rubble. A headless torso of a broken statue was half buried amongst the broken shards. The remainder was a confusing mass of masonry and shadows. Jameson approached it with his pistol ready and Karla flanking.

  The building was lined with giant Gothic archway windows that reached right down to the ground. Some still joined at the top, forming the classic Gothic point, but many were broken. Up close, they could see that the building was an empty shell, so they turned their attention to the keep. A stone ramp, largely intact, gave access to the first floor. A wooden drawbridge must once have spanned the two-meter gap from the top of the ramp to the entrance to the keep but it had long since rotted away.

  Karla went first, jumping easily across from a standing start. She disappeared inside for a few moments before reappearing and signaling for Jameson to follow. Two meters is not a great distance to jump. Athletes confidently expect to achieve at least four times as much, but they are not fully dressed, carrying a bolt pistol, and three meters up. Then there was the matter of the blood-crazed monster. So Jameson felt comfortable about his decision to take a decent run up. In the event, he cleared the gap easily. He would have pitched head first into the keep had Karla not caught him.

  Inside was a small, empty stone room remarkable only for the purple-veined ivy that climbed the walls. The only way out was a spiral stone staircase that wound through the room. Jameson signaled to Karla that she should descend while he would go up. Her night vision was considerably better than his.

  He climbed the clockwise spiral with his pistol in his left hand. That way he could get a quick shot off around the curve of the staircase in the event of meeting something unpleasant. This was not natural for a right hander, but needs must when you’re expecting to meet a devil. He reached a landing, where a corridor branched off the stair deeper into the building. Jameson tossed a mental coin and went into the corridor, holding his pistol in a more comfortable two-handed grip. He rounded a corner and found himself standing on the lip of a sheer drop.