Dawn of the Demontide

by William Hussey

He stepped into the light.

  Chapter 26

  Dawn

  Standing in the old graveyard at the top of the hill, Simon Lydgate looked down on Hobarron’s Hollow. He saw roofs with missing tiles, streets clogged with rainwater, the stark branches of trees stripped naked by the gale. Power lines had fallen and the streetlights flickered on and off, as if reflecting the lightning that flashed overhead.

  Simon turned his back on the Hollow and walked towards the Witchfinder’s tomb. He stared at the frescoes that covered the walls, his eyes skipping between paintings of angels and demons. A bright stab of pain seared through his body. It had nothing to do with the injuries he had sustained after the Steerpike Bridge explosion. Thrown back into the forest, he had been knocked unconscious by the blast, but had suffered only minor cuts and bruises. No, this pain was deeper than anything physical. It went straight down into his soul. It had drawn him to the tomb, and now it spoke to him—

  Hear me …

  In an untouched corner of Simon’s mind, a shape moved.

  Soon I shall burst into this world and bring with me all the dark majesty of our kind. You must be there to greet me …

  A great shudder racked Simon’s body.

  Simon …

  The shape reached out—

  My son.

  Without knowing it, Simon had moved to the door of the mausoleum. He grasped the handle and pulled. His touch was light and yet the old door, sturdy, solid, its lock rusted over, was torn from its hinges. A cold power surged out from Simon’s heart. He tossed the door aside and stepped into the tomb.

  He had expected to find a stately coffin carved out of finest marble. Instead, the interior was just a dusty, cobwebbed shell. A large rectangle of granite, about the size of the mausoleum door, occupied the middle of the room. Simon knelt beside it and ran his fingers over the smooth surface.

  At his touch, a long crack appeared in the stone. Wherever his fingers moved, splinters followed, until a dozen had etched their way across the slab. A great rumble echoed inside the mausoleum and the ground quaked underfoot. Simon jumped up and pressed his back against the wall. Dust puffed out from the cracks and, in one smooth motion, the entire slab disappeared into the earth.

  The voice spoke again.

  Follow the Door, my child. I await you, in the darkness.

  As the words faded, a blade of brilliant sunshine cut through the mausoleum door.

  Dawn.

  Jake and Adam dragged themselves out of the pool. They rolled onto the bank, panting hard and soaked to the skin. Jake stared up at the rocky ceiling. It took a moment for him to realize that he was now in one of the cavern’s little side chambers—the one in which he had found Simon Lydgate. It made sense. Simon must have been plunged through a portal on the Yaga Passage side and come out at this same gateway. Simon. In all the terror and excitement he had hardly thought of his friend. Had he survived the explosion? Again, there was no time to give it much thought. Adam was already on his feet. His back to Jake, he peered out into the main chamber.

  Jake was about to join his father at the chamber entrance when he stopped dead. His eye had fallen on the block of ice and the figure sealed within. He walked slowly across the chamber and placed his hand on the frozen surface. Wiping an oval in the condensation he stared at the hazy outline of the man. The Witchfinder’s face remained obscured by glinting, crystalline layers.

  Jake’s hand moved across the ice and found the hole from which the Witchfinder’s DNA had been taken—scraps of skin that had been used to create a new life. Palm down, his hand retraced the path back to the level of the man’s face. A sudden fiery sensation coursed down his arm and into his fingers. At the tips, a blue flame flickered. Stronger than any torch, its light pierced the dimness of the ice.

  It was like looking into a mirror. The face of the Witchfinder may have appeared a little older, but the features were identical to Jake’s. The blue light sparked in the dead man’s eyes.

  Their gaze met …

  ‘We are the Witchfinder … ’

  Slowly, Jake turned, and left his other self.

  He had reached the chamber entrance when an invisible force lashed out and struck him like a hammer blow. He slumped back against the wall.

  Evil.

  ‘The strongest I have ever known. Yes, I have felt this malice once before.’

  His voice sounded deeper than before, the patterns of speech those of a distant time. Adam looked from his son to the frozen man and back again.

  Jake smiled.

  ‘I am him. He is me. Is that not what you wanted?’

  Stunned, Adam could not bring himself to answer.

  ‘No time for a regretful heart, Dr Harker. The Door has come. Now we shall see what magic I have left in me.’

  He stepped into the large chamber.

  Transfixed by the rumble from above, Crowden, Mother Inglethorpe, and Mr Grype all had their backs turned to the Witchfinder. Most of the prisoners were looking in the same direction, their eyes focused on the shower of dust that rained down from the hole in the roof. Only one among them turned and looked at Jake, as if she felt his presence.

  Jake whispered a few words. Both familiar and strange, they were accompanied by the swish of his hand through the air. Rachel’s mouth dropped open in surprise as she saw the pale blue light streak out from Jake’s fingers. It whipped around the group, touched each of them in turn, and then returned to the hand of the conjuror.

  ‘Sleep,’ Jake instructed.

  The prisoners obeyed. Crowden’s ring of light which had bound them to the wall fizzled twice and vanished. Jake held out his hand, cushioning their fall. With the thunder of cracking rock coming from above, the Master and his underlings had noticed nothing.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Adam whispered.

  ‘Be ready,’ came the answer.

  Adam Harker stepped away. This fifteen-year-old boy, pale, lanky, brown hair falling over his eyes, certainly looked like his son. And yet a change had come over him. It was exactly the transformation that Adam had worked for all these years. Through hypnosis he had tried to get at those hidden memories and talents buried in the child’s DNA. In cold, scientific terms, the Hobarron Weapon was fully functional at last. And now that Adam beheld what he had achieved, his soul shivered at the sight of it. He had moved beyond all natural laws and brought a dead man back to life. For the greater good, his mind insisted, and yet, deep down, he knew that what he had done was wrong.

  Too late for second thoughts.

  The Door was coming.

  A final crack, like the splitting of a mountain, boomed through the chamber. Adam covered his ears and made a dash for the unconscious form of Dr Malcolm Saxby. With an eye on the witches, he searched through the doctor’s pockets. He found what he was looking for in the holster strapped across Saxby’s chest. As he reached for the gun, the air seemed to freeze around him. A large shadow swept across the chamber. Adam looked up and fear clutched at his heart.

  The Door.

  The slab of ancient granite fell to earth with an earsplitting thud. Fine cracks splintered the rocky ground and aftershocks rumbled through the cavern. Embedded in the earth, the Door now faced the Master of the Crowden Coven. The stars and moons, the figures and faces that had been carved thousands of years ago by an unknown hand glowed with fiery light. This light also burned between the fresh cracks that ran all across the Door. A whiff of sulphur stung the air and lava began to sizzle between the fissures and splash across the cavern floor. Despite the volcanic flow the temperature in the chamber grew colder by the second.

  Adam shivered, and not just because of the cold.

  Slight, boyish, vulnerable, the figure of Jake stood in the presence of the demon Door, his hand outstretched …

  ‘Four hundred years I have waited,’ Master Crowden roared. ‘Sixteen generations and more, locked inside a realm of nothingness.’ Crowden’s cabinet whirled behind him, mirroring its master’s excitement. ‘Centuries
have passed, and I have felt each year, each day, each hour creep by. But now my patience will be rewarded.’

  Mother Inglethorpe and Grype watched their master, the old woman jubilant, the librarian’s face fixed into a wary smile.

  ‘With a thousand demons at my command, I shall rule this world … ’

  ‘You are deceived.’

  At Jake’s words the witches spun round. Crowden pointed a shaking finger at the boy.

  ‘Your voice, it has changed … ’ He squared his shoulders and shrieked. ‘You cannot deny me now! The Door will be opened!’

  ‘I believe you’re right,’ Jake said.

  His gaze flickered between the witches and the great granite slab. The Door shuddered. A spill of lava frothed between the cracks. Any minute now the flood of demonkind would break through and a new age of darkness would dawn across the world.

  And HE would be at the forefront of the swarm …

  The Demon Father.

  The trident symbol in the centre of the Door glowed a deep, boiling red.

  ‘The demons have played you false, Crowden,’ Jake shouted. ‘All these years, you have believed that they served you, gave you your magic. Lies. All magic comes from the ancient spirit of this world. From Oldcraft. How we wield it? That is our choice.’

  ‘It is you who are deceived, little man,’ Crowden laughed. ‘Soon enough I shall teach you the depths of your folly. I shall pay you back tenfold for every year of my imprisonment. See now, the hour has come!’

  The trident symbol cracked into tiny pieces and exploded out from the Door. An infernal wind rushed through the hole and threw the witches and Adam Harker onto their backs. Only Jake stood against it. Legs braced, eyes screwed shut, hands thrust out before him, he leaned into the blast. Above the wind a deep, throaty chuckle rang through the chamber.

  ‘Hear my proclamation: the Father of Demons shall lead his children through the Door.’

  Images rose up in Jake’s mind: Eddie Rice, his father, his mother, Simon Lydgate …

  ‘We shall lay waste to the world of Man.’

  Rachel …

  ‘All shall perish at our hand.’

  A deeper memory stirred. The picture of a beautiful woman with cornflower blue eyes and golden hair swam before him. The love of his life. His soulmate from long ago. His Eleanor …

  ‘Kneel before me, Witchfinder! ’

  ‘NO!’

  Anger sparked in Jake’s heart. It caught like a flame in the barrel of his chest and raged through his body. He released it in a river of molten magic, more powerful than he had ever known. At his fingertips, the pulse crackled into life.

  Mother Inglethorpe saw it first. She staggered to her feet, pointed at Jake and began her spell. She never finished it. Adam aimed the weapon he had taken from Dr Saxby and squeezed the trigger. Fire whipped out of the barrel. Esther Inglethorpe jolted backwards, teetered, and collapsed to the ground. Wreathed in flame, the demonic Miss Creekley burst out of her mistress’s dress. Her life force had been bound to the witch and now she was returning to the fire from which she had been conjured. Her spider legs ticked across the frozen ground as she careered about, her beautiful face screwed up with pain. Then, with a final crackle, the demon was gone.

  The death of witch and demon had gone unnoticed by Jake.

  He directed his magic at the Door.

  The stream of light hit the granite slab and immediately started knitting the cracks back together. The stink of sulphur vanished from the air and, within a few seconds, every crack had been closed. The Door was almost sealed. All that remained was the hole where the trident symbol had been. Jake concentrated his gaze …

  Again, Adam saw the movement of a hand, the mutter of a spell, but this time the gun jammed. He could not save Jake from Crowden’s hex. The bolt paralysed the fingers that Jake had been using to work the binding magic. The light stream died.

  ‘You will not rob me of my victory, Witchfinder!’ Crowden shouted. ‘I will rule this world!’

  That deep voice rumbled through the hole again.

  ‘Pathetic creature.’

  Wide-eyed, Crowden turned back to the Door.

  Following his master’s gaze, Mr Grype shrieked. The librarian ran towards the chamber entrance, abandoning his master without a second thought.

  ‘W-what … ’ the Master faltered. ‘What are you?’

  A huge, blood-soaked eye with a dark slit for its pupil stared through the hole.

  ‘I am the Demon Father. I am YOU.’

  Crowden screamed as the great eye dissolved into a thick, black smoke and poured out of the Door. Jake shifted his body, channelling the magic into his good hand, but it was too late.

  Like a giant snake’s head, the smoke reared up in front of Crowden. In one jack-knife motion, it lashed out and struck its helpless victim. For a moment, the Coven Master’s head became encased in the oily vapour. Then the smoke began to clear, and Jake could see that it was flooding into Crowden’s eyes. The shape of the man’s pupils sharpened into slits, the hue changed from black to blood-red.

  The man who had once been Marcus Crowden touched his handsome face. He smiled, and the nightmare box swirled around its true master.

  ‘My new life begins.’ A warm voice, like Crowden’s, but now with that deep, demonic edge. He gestured to the hole in the Door. ‘Join me, my children.’

  Thousands of demons answered his call. They teemed at the cavity, laughing, ready to break through.

  Jake focused every scrap of energy into his good hand. The name of the unknown woman left his lips …

  ‘Eleanor.’

  … and he released the full force of his magic.

  The Door was no match for such primal Oldcraft. The magic hit the ancient slab with the force of a five tonne wrecking ball. The portal to the demon world shattered on impact, leaving nothing behind—not a splinter nor a crumb of stone—just a cloud of grey dust that spiralled to the earth in a lazy cyclone.

  The Demon Father cried out and fell to his knees. His mouth gaping, he seemed to be frozen by the enormity of what had just happened. Before the echo of the cry had faded away, Adam reloaded the gun and was at his son’s side.

  ‘The demon will soon tune into the magical abilities of his new body,’ Adam whispered. ‘But for the moment, he is weak, helpless.’

  ‘Won’t he have to return to the Veil?’ Jake asked.

  Adam glanced at his son. ‘Don’t you know the answer to that?’

  Jake shook his head. ‘I feel him fading. The power, the magic, the memories … ’

  There was no time to discuss the overlapping souls of Josiah Jacob Hobarron and Jacob Josiah Harker. The danger that now faced them came from another kind of possession.

  ‘Marcus Crowden is gone,’ Adam said. ‘A new soul has taken his body. As such, the spell binding him to the Veil is broken. You have stopped the Demontide and shut off the portal to the demon dimension, but this creature will not rest until he has condemned all to darkness.’ Adam aimed the gun at the back of the Demon Father’s head. ‘Now, bind him.’

  Without thinking, Jake obeyed. A rope of blue light lashed itself around the Demon Father. Adam stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of the gun against the creature’s head.

  Jake shuddered. ‘Dad. You’re sure about this?’

  A bead of sweat trickled down Adam’s temple. He tightened his grip on the gun.

  ‘What else can we do?’ he asked. ‘This is the Father of Demons, Jake. Can’t you feel his evil?’

  Though the instinct was fading, Jake reached out with his mind and sensed the malevolence of the creature. He tasted it like a bitter poison at the back of his throat, felt it burn his eyes and freeze his flesh. Evil, a thousand times stronger than the kind he had experienced on the night of his mother’s death. Evil beyond that of Tobias Quilp and Mother Inglethorpe and Marcus Crowden. A primal force, cold and calculating, bent on the destruction of mankind. His dad was right. This was the only way. He took the gun from Ad
am’s hand.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘This is my duty and mine alone,’ Jake said, a trace of Hobarron still in his voice.

  Adam looked for a moment as if he was about to argue. Finally, he nodded and turned away.

  ‘This isn’t over, boy,’ the Demon Father murmured. ‘You may have stopped the Demontide but I shall not rest until this world is overrun by my children. Darkness and death will follow in my wake. We will meet again, Witchfinder. That I promise.’

  Jake tried not to listen. His finger slipped on the trigger.

  A roar as loud as the thunder that had raged across Hobarron’s Hollow throughout the night now rang from wall to wall. Jake looked up in time to see a form bounding down the stone staircase. It ran at such a speed that it was impossible to make out exactly what it was. An animal perhaps, the size of a wolf but moving like an ape. What happened next passed in a blur. The creature took the last dozen steps in a single leap and landed in front of Jake and the Demon Father. The first blow knocked the gun out of Jake’s hand. The second sent him sprawling across the ground. A third swept Adam Harker off his feet.

  ‘The first of my children.’

  The Demon Father’s laughter sounded very distant in Jake’s ears. He had hit his head as he fell and now he watched helplessly as the scene unfolded around him. The dark stranger swept the Demon Father up in his arms, as if he weighed no more than a newborn. A pair of catlike eyes, just like the demon’s, blazed at Jake. Then the roar boomed through the cavern again—a cry that was somewhere between animalistic rage and the sound of a human being in utter despair. The creature turned and bounded back up the stone staircase, Crowden’s nightmare box swirling behind it.

  The roar faded as both figures disappeared into the light of an unsuspecting world.

  Chapter 27

  End of the Road

  Jake woke to the sound of seagulls squalling overhead, to the hush of the sea and the chirrup of insects in the long grass. He could smell the dusty scent of warm stone, the freshness of rain-pummelled earth. Each sensation seemed like a celebration of the new day.