Wolf in Shadow-eARC

by John Lambshead

  “Um, Frankie,” Rhian said, touching the woman’s shoulder.

  Frankie pushed her off, placing little heaps of some herbal mix in between the candles. She set alight each pile, not with the gas lighter but with her finger. They burned with steady green flames without the herbs being consumed.

  She raised her arms and head to the ceiling and spun clockwise, “Orbis.”

  The green flames from the herbs and yellow from the candles shot upwards to knee height, swirling around the chalk circle clockwise in green and yellow rings.

  “I say, the special effects at these shows are getting better,” said a wargamer holding handfuls of carrier bags.

  “Nah, seen better,” said his mate, who was clutching a box full of plastic battleships.

  “I’ve bought us some time,” Frankie said. “The circle I’ve cast won’t hold for ever but, I hope, long enough for me to raise my own cone of power. Make sure you stay within the ring.”

  The air inside the roped-off encampment thickened, forming into translucent grey tendrils that drifted clockwise, linking and amalgamating to form bubbles like the wax in a lava lamp. Reenactors shambled and grunted, swinging their swords at some invisible barrier around the encampment. It rang like a bell with each strike.

  Frankie stood with her eyes closed. She posed with her arms out to the side and her elbows bent at ninety degrees. Her hands were open and flat, palms up. She reminded Rhian of pictures of princesses and queens in Egyptian tombs. Frankie had often said that all Western religious and magical ritual traced back to Egypt, the ultimate source of arcane knowledge. She chanted something in a fluid language that sounded Romantic. It was full of words ending in “o” and “a.” No linguist, for all Rhian knew it could be Spanish, Italian, or even Romanian itself.

  The floating blobs and tendrils solidified and pinkened. Rhian felt a subsonic snap in her chest. The floaters rushed together into a tiny pulsating ball in a pink color too rich to exist naturally. Then it exploded with a pop like the cork from a champagne bottle.

  Hundreds of chittering, leaping things appeared from nowhere at the edge of the rope. They scuttled outwards into the hall like an upended basin of cockroaches. Mischievous rather than dangerous, they jumped on the display tables, kicking over the models. They ripped up books and magazines, throwing the pieces into the air to create an artificial snowstorm. They flipped up women’s skirts to make them scream.

  One flung itself at the flame barrier around Frankie’s magic circle. The humanoid thing hung there, gibbering angrily, scrabbling with clawed hands and feet. Bright red eyes glared at Rhian from a pink face and body. Pointy ears waggled and it poked its tongue out at her in a manner that was decidedly obscene.

  “Um, Frankie,” Rhian said, patting the witch’s shoulder.

  Frankie shook her off without opening her eyes.

  “Don’t distract me. The portal only links to superficial layers of the Otherworld at the moment, but someone is trying to drive it deeper.”

  The pink goblin burst into green flames. It leapt off the magic circle, screaming in a fluting voice. It fled across the hall seeking the security of fellows, managing to set light to others in its panic-stricken flight. When it was consumed, it left nothing but pink ash drifting in the air. The green flames spread quickly and lethally amongst the goblins without anything else catching fire. The goblinoids never seemed to learn, clustering together in their terror. They were all destroyed, leaving chaos as their epitaph.

  “Now you have to admit that was good,” said the wargamer with the carrier bags.

  “Seen better in 1970s Doctor Who episodes,” said his hard-to-please mate with the plastic battleships. “And they had wobbly scenery to boot.”

  “Be fair, it would wobble if you booted it.”

  Rhian filtered out the inane conversation and focused on the encampment. Grey tendrils and blobs were reforming and rotating clockwise, slowly turning rust red. The color pulled into the center. It thickened, spinning faster and faster, like when an ice dancer pulls in her arms. A vortex of seething energy formed. The funnel continued to squeeze and wriggle until it spat out a monster.

  And what a monster—Five meters long, it looked like a flattened ice-cream cone. The ice cream end, the head, was smooth and the color of old bones, but the segmented body was rust red. Lateral deep purple projections that were as long as the body was wide, stuck out from each segment.

  Rhian couldn’t get her head around the physics of the thing. How did something so bulky float in the air like a zeppelin? She tapped Frankie on the shoulder.

  “What! I told you not to bother . . . Ye gods!” said Frankie on noticing the beast.

  “What in the name of Hell is that?” Rhian asked.

  “A monster from the Otherworld,” said Frankie, helpfully.

  The tentacles rippled in sequence, like a series of Mexican waves. The monster slid through the air, picking up speed.

  “That is impossible,” Rhian said. “Those tentacles . . .”

  “Parapodia,” Frankie interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Parapodia, like on the side of segmented worms,” Frankie said.

  “These parapodia things cannot possibly move enough air to generate motion,” Rhian said.

  “Not according to the rules of our world,” Frankie said, “but who knows how things work where it comes from. The portal opening has moved deep within the Otherworld.”

  “What are we going to do about it?” Rhian asked.

  “Close the hole,” Frankie replied. “Cut off the energy from the portal, and the monster can’t exist here. Nothing that far away from our physics could. The more you distract me, the longer it will take.”

  Frankie readopted her ancient Egyptian princess stance. She closed her eyes and resumed chanting. The monster circled the display hall, ten or twenty meters up.

  “Now that is cool,” said the wargamer with the carrier bags.

  “It’s just a radio-controlled balloon,” said his mate. “I was at the Riddlington Riflemen Show when they flew a twenty-foot zeppelin round the room. Silly sods couldn’t afford helium, so they filled it with hydrogen that they made themselves. A spark from the electric motors ignited the gas. The whole venue burned down. The Sea Scouts were pretty miffed.”

  “The Sea Scouts, why?”

  “The show was in their Scout Hut.”

  On the second pass, Rhian noticed that the monster had five bright red eyes wiggling on little stalks at the front. The slit under the chin was presumably the mouth. It circled a third time, watched by the admiring crowd, and seemed to come to a decision. The pattern of parapodia oscillation changed and the nose dipped. It picked up speed.

  The monster leveled out at about two meters height and turned to head for a group of wargamers watching from an open area. The slit under its head opened and a long, segmented cable as thick as a man’s thigh snaked out. On the end was a hinged claw like a serrated beak. The spectators scattered and the monster changed direction to follow one individual. The claw turned sideways and opened.

  Rhian jumped over the flames and out of the magic circle to find the very air fizzing with magical energy. She recalled the subway where she met Max—and the elves. By the time she hit the floor, she landed on four feet and the world was monochrome.

  There was a moment of disorientation, then the wolf howled. She gave it her all, a special howl, a challenge. She screamed the cry of an alpha female detecting an interloper in her hunting grounds, “a get out of my face or else” sort of howl. She ran after the floating monster. Pushing between the wargamers, she sent them flying. Plastic battleships sailed through the air, but the wolf was gone by the time they crunched on the floor.

  “Well, really,” a voice said.

  The monster left a pervasive scent, like rotten seaweed spiced with nitric acid. The youth targeted by the floater ducked under the claw and fled. It snapped shut on thin air. The floater lifted its nose and climbed hard, killing speed by translati
ng it into height. It then stalled, rotating as it dived to change direction, and reorientated on the youth.

  “Well, I’ll be damned, an Immelman Turn!” somebody yelled.

  What struck Rhian was how little panic the audience showed. One or two people were backing away nervously, mostly women. They demonstrated yet again the superior intellect of the female of the species. Most of the wargamers gawped as if at a strip show.

  The monster had plenty of other potential targets but seemed incapable of flexibility once committed to a particular prey. As a predator it was very, very dumb, albeit big and dangerous. Unlike the wolf, who was very, very smart, as well as dangerous. She changed direction at full speed, claws digging into the plastic, proving the superiority of ground traction. She cut across the angle of turn rapidly, closing on the floater.

  The youth began jinking from side to side, hollering in terror, or perhaps excitement. The floater quickly caught him up. He finally did something sensible and tried to dive under a stall, but left it too late. The claw on the cable snaked in after him and pulled him out, screaming, by his ankle. Blood splattered across the floor where the deeply serrated claw bit into his flesh, and the monster lifted the youth. The extra weight badly affected the floater. It made heavy weather of climbing, giving the wolf a near stationary target.

  She reached the monster and jumped. She snapped at a parapodium near the rear, but her teeth closed on spongy flesh that tore easily. The wolf dropped back to the ground. The floater ignored the attack. It continued to pull the struggling youth into the air until only his arms touched the ground.

  Their combined flight path crashed the pair into a display, and the youth had the gumption to grab the leg of the table, which Rhian thought was impressive, as his foot must be agony. The floater took the strain and pulled, upsetting the table and spilling plastic star marines and alien predators all over the floor. Its claw scraped along the youth’s leg like a wire stripper, peeling back flesh to the bone. The youth fainted from shock, losing his grip on the table, and the floater began to climb again. It reeled in the cable like an electrical extension lead on a drum, pulling the youth towards the gaping maw.

  The wolf leapt onto the floater’s back and tried to bite into one of the ridges along a segment. The monster’s body was heavily armored, like a crab, so her teeth failed to penetrate. Giving up, the wolf ran along the back to the head and tore off one of the stalked eyes. Sour ichor filled her mouth. She spat the monster’s flesh out in disgust and savaged another eye.

  The monster let go of the youth, who hit the floor with a nasty thud. The loss of weight caused it to buck, throwing off the wolf, who turned in mid-air to land on her paws. The floater climbed to about ten meters and slowly circled.

  Rhian felt the wolf’s excitement and lust for the kill. She was swept along with its fierce emotions and uncluttered motivations. She forgot the youth as if he had never existed. The floater was out of reach for the moment, but if it came down—when it came down—the wolf snarled viciously. She would have the bugger. Nothing hunted her territory without her permission, not while she was alive. All the thing had to do was keep high and go after easier prey, but it was stupid. Its little pea brain clicked to a decision and it angled down.

  The wolf stood her ground, muscles so tense that she quivered. Her senses fixed on her target, watching and tracking its flight path. She listened for the faintest change in air turbulence over the parapodia that might indicate a maneuver. She smelled not just rotten seaweed but also the acrid ichor that ran down the monster’s armored head from its torn eye stalks.

  Down it came and the wolf didn’t move, not even when its underslung mouth gaped wide, showing the tip of the claw. She waited, until Rhian was almost screaming, wanting her to dodge or attack or something, anything, to relieve the tension.

  The claw shot out on the end of its cable so lightning-fast it must have been a blur to the humans. Still the wolf waited until the large clumsy monster was utterly committed to the strike. Then she made her move.

  She skipped sideways at the last moment. She moved aside mere centimeters. The horizontal claw raked down the side of her flank. The serrated edge ripped out fur, drawing blood. The wolf whipped around and sank her teeth into the cable behind the claw. She shook her head, ripping out flesh. It tasted like engine oil and had the consistency of power cables.

  The floater flexed its segmented body in pain but failed to utter a sound. Perhaps it couldn’t. It vented gallons of oily liquid that smelt of diesel from hidden spouts under the parapodia and shot towards the ceiling. As well as upward-facing aluminium pylons on the outside of the building, the roof was supported by downward-facing equivalents on the inside. The rapidly rising floater impaled itself on one. The aluminium point punched through its armor like a warrior’s spear.

  The monster thrashed its parapodia in random sequences as it tried to escape. The pylon pinned it like an insect on an entomological display. It shrank, folding in on itself like a concertina until only tattered remnants remained. These dropped from the pylon and disintegrated into fine dust that dissipated before reaching the ground.

  The wolf howled again, the triumphant howl after a successful hunt to call the junior members of the pack to feed. There was no pack, and nothing to feed on, but it was the principle that mattered. Some rites are so important that they must be observed, irrespective of trivial details.

  The wargamers started to clap, to the wolf’s satisfaction. She strutted, enjoying the tribute rightfully hers. Rhian reminded her that their packmate, Frankie, was still fighting and that worse monsters stood poised to invade her realm. The wolf acknowledged the latter point by bounding back to the center display.

  Frankie hadn’t moved. She sang, eyes closed, hands on fire with green flames like the ones delineating her magic circle. Rhian was alarmed to see a new vortex spinning over the orc encampment.

  Misty shapes slowly coalesced around the edge of the circle, shadows of humanoid figures. There must have been a dozen or more. They flickered like distant images in the desert, solidifying like the picture on an old analog television when you adjusted the fine tune.

  Rhian had hoped for another monster: monsters could be fought and killed. With monsters, she and the wolf had a chance, but she knew she wouldn’t stand an earthly chance against a dozen elves. It had taken the combined strength of Max and the wolf to overcome a couple. What could a dozen do?

  The wolf felt her fear and laughed—well, snarled, but it was the equivalent of a laugh. Had she expected to live forever? What better way to die than in the company of a packmate, fighting for your lands? New strength fortified Rhian’s resolve. She would do all she could for Frankie and her fellow humans. She could do no more.

  When it came right down to it, what else was there in life? It was a far better way to go than the drooling decay of old age in a care home for the senile, so sedated that she couldn’t remember her name. Assuming a car crash or cancer didn’t get her first. She would fight, she would die, and she would join James with her head held high.

  The figures were almost stable, almost fully in phase with the world. They were definitely elves, with perfect scent and elegant bodies. Their beautiful eyes gazed at the wolf with latent cruelty.

  “Be gone!” Frankie yelled in English, attracting Rhian’s attention.

  The witch was wreathed in flames that twisted around her head in a cone of magical force. When she stepped from the circle, the magic went with her. The Siths’ heads snapped around as if noticing Frankie for the first time. She thrust both hands out towards the orc encampment. Streams of fire ran down her arms. They poured off her fingers like a flamethrower, striking and engulfing the vortex.

  An elf made a sign, and a pulse of black nothingness flicked out to strike at Frankie. The darkness knocked her back, bending her double in agony. The woman screamed, but straightened. She kept the flow of magical flames going, never hesitating no matter how they hurt her. Fire tightened on the vortex, compressin
g it down. The elves shrank as if they were being pushed away into the distance on a plane outside of the normal three dimensions.

  Another symbol and another pulse of blackness, but this one was so weak that the wolf could see right through it. The attack barely rocked Frankie. She gripped with both hands.

  A violent but soundless explosion threw the wolf off her paws. The world flared and compressed into a small green ball surrounded by blackness. Rhian’s last image was of Frankie lying sprawled on the floor, blood flowing from her scalp.

  CHAPTER 19

  FRATERNAL RITUALS

  “I think we might take a run out to Essex,” Jameson said, getting into the car. “To see a lodge about a man.”

  “Essex is boring,” Karla replied. “Wet, flat, and full of chavs.”

  “The north is quite pleasant,” Jameson protested, “around the old Roman capital at Colchester.”

  “Are we going to Colchester?” Karla asked.

  “Ah, no, Badford.”

  Jameson turned his phone off and checked the satnav was in receive only mode so that Randolph could not track him. He wanted a purely private enterprise after the last fiasco. What The Commission didn’t know couldn’t be held against him. He checked the new Glock that he had wheedled out of Stores before starting the car and heading east, and put a spare magazine in his pocket. He wasn’t expecting to use the pistol anytime soon, let alone start a major firefight, but hard-won experience had taught him that the best time to check one’s weapon was before one needed it.

  It was midnight before the Jag crossed under the M25, the largest ring road in the world. The Jag powered out into the flat countryside. One knew one was in Essex when one passed the first burned out old Ford decorating the center of a roundabout like an obscure piece of modern sculpture.

  Their running counterparts filled the road, especially Ford STs, the hot hatches that were Essex-man’s answer to Ferrari. Jaguars had a peculiar effect on ST drivers. The mere sight of a Jag in a rearview mirror caused them to downshift and push the throttle to the floor. If ST drivers had a motto, it was “they shall not pass—especially in a bloody Jaguar.”