'When I go in, you stay far enough behind so you won't get hurt in any crossfire.'
'Don't worry about that — I'll be a speck on the horizon. You're mad, you know.' He took a step away in case she lashed out.
'That's what they say.' One hand went to her quiver to check her supply. 'I'm going to have to reclaim arrows as I go… don't have many left.'
'Right, right. You're sure you don't want to try to get a gun first? It would be-'
'Let's go.' She pushed past him towards the entrance. A firm hand between the shoulder blades propelled Thackeray into the room and the door closed behind him. At first, all he was aware of was the thunder of his heart in his head and the shortness of his breath. Then he became aware of the most foul stink, like rotting meat.
The room appeared pitch black until his eyes grew used to a thin light coming through small holes punched in the walls. It was just enough for him to see where the occupant of the room lay. Initially it looked like a shadow denser than any of the surrounding gloom, as though it were sucking the light into it like a mini-black hole. But then it began to move, rising up in the corner where it had been gnawing on something, and its skin glinted like oil. There were eyes, bestial and lethal, and a mouth, and mandibles, and a carapace of interlocking plates, and bony ridges, but every time he focused on a detail it changed before his eyes, so that all he had was a perception of something monstrous and deadly.
'They called themselves Fomorii,' Buckland had told him before he entered the room. 'The Fall came after a war between them and some others… some kind of gods. The Fomorii lost, and then they were gone, just like that. Except this one. This one couldn't get away because I had him.'
Thackeray had no idea how Buckland knew all this, or if he was just making it all up. He couldn't understand how Buckland could keep something like that constrained, working to his will. It didn't matter. The Fomor rose up nine feet or more, its shape flowing, becoming more terrifying with each incarnation until Thackeray thought he might go mad simply from looking at it.
He backed slowly into a corner. Caitlin came down the escalator so stealthily her feet never made a sound. The contrast between the blazing torches and the heavy darkness all around would have been distracting for some people, but Caitlin's vision now operated on a different level. It was as if she was staring through a scarlet filter. Every thing hidden in the shadows was available to her, and distance fell away so that she could pick out the finest detail across the length of the concourse.
She saw the razor-wire wall across the ticket barrier and the door in the centre of it. There was a slot halfway up the door.
Caitlin coughed loudly. The slot slid back and she saw a pair of piggy eyes glinting inside it. Raising the bow and loosing the arrow was a fluid blur. It sped across the concourse, slipped perfectly through the slot and rammed dead centre between the eyes with a sticky thud. A cry of shock rose up from her victim's colleague.
She only expected stupidity and she was easily rewarded. Another pair of eyes appeared at the slot, only this time she didn't loose an arrow. She was already standing a foot away from it, smiling innocently, her bow out of sight. She could almost hear the slow turning of the guard's mind.
'Quick,' she said breathlessly, 'let me in… before he gets me.' The guard acted on instinct; the door eased open a little. Caitlin was through it in an instant. The guard was stunned by her speed, but only had a second to register surprise before her stiffened hand rammed into his throat, bursting through his windpipe. She curled her fingers and ripped, tearing across until she ruptured his carotid artery. Blood sprayed all over, gouting up the door, across the floor. The guard fell down, clutching at his throat, still not quite believing what had happened. It was a woman; only a woman.
After reclaiming her first arrow, Caitlin continued down the corridor, turning briefly when she heard Harvey exclaim behind her. For a second she was caught in the glare of a torch, stained red, droplets falling from her nose, her eyelashes, the ends of her hair.
'Jesus Christ!' Harvey said. 'It's like… Carrie!'
Plague wardens and other guards began to emerge from rooms on every side. Caitlin, her eyes wide, emotionless, turned to meet them. Inside, the Morrigan's whispering reached a crescendo, laced with glee and threat. Caitlin raised her bow.
The arrows swept along the corridor. Four men fell before the others even realised Caitlin was armed. Even though she was a woman, one of them was taking no chances. He pulled up a shotgun and fired. The blast echoed down the corridor, the shot passing through the spot where Caitlin had been. By then she had yanked the shotgun from his hands and brought the butt up hard to shatter his jaw. As he went down, she yanked the gun above her head and brought it down three times in quick succession, smashing his skull into pieces and bursting his brain across the grimy floor. The rest were caught in disarray. They were burly men, used to casual brutality, but they had no response to the woman who moved like mercury amongst them, savage and relentless as a storm. She appeared next to one, using the shotgun like a club, and before he had fallen she had taken his machete and slashed open the guts of another. Three more fell before the machete was knocked from her hands, and then she launched herself at another's throat to rend and tear with her teeth. She came up from him, spitting meat, blood and skin, to find herself alone. The Fomor was taking its time toying with its prey like a lion in the veld. Thackeray had managed to duck under two of its lunges and dart to another corner, but he knew he was only delaying the inevitable. And he had discovered what the inevitable was: bones, gnawed clean, lay in a pile in one corner and they were all clearly human.
Despite its size and power, the beast moved sinuously across the room while the array of changes to its form continued with a near-poetic grace, armour plates giving way to rows of cruel spikes, shifting to mighty bat-wings, all gleaming black.
Thackeray ducked beneath its sweeping hand, only for the hooked fingers to extend with razor-tipped talons, tearing through the back of his jacket to raise blood. As he rolled out of the way, cursing with the pain, a spike burst from the creature's thigh to miss his head by an inch and punch a hole in the wall.
You might as well give up, he told himself. But he couldn't.
A glancing blow almost took his head from his shoulders. He could taste blood in his mouth, feel it trickling down his back and into his eyes. The Fomor was tiring of its sport, growing faster, more vicious.
Thackeray jumped out of the way as a fist smashed down at him, raising a cloud of concrete dust from the floor. But in his rush to escape, he slammed his head against the wall, and slid down, dazed. His time was up.
Light flooded into the room. In his stunned state, it took him a second to realise that the door had been thrown open. Someone was standing there, silhouetted against the torchlight beyond, and as the figure shifted he saw that it was some hideous apparition, stained with blood from head to toe, white eyes staring furiously from the scarlet. It was armed with a machete, but Thackeray only had a second to take that in before the figure launched into action.
It threw itself at the Fomor, the blade a whirl, sparks flying in golden showers where it crashed off the armour. The beast made an inhuman howling noise that set Thackeray's teeth on edge, and then it became a whirlwind of mutating activity. It was impossible for Thackeray to get a handle on what was happening, so furious was the movement. All he could capture were brief snapshots of a struggle that was apocalyptic in its intensity.
Somehow the darting figure always managed to stay a fraction of an inch beneath the claws, spikes and fangs, thrusting with the machete in search of some chink in the creature's defences. Thackeray couldn't believe there was one — it was too much of a killing machine — but then a gout of black liquid burst across the room and splattered next to him, sizzling as it burned through the floor. The bass rumbles of the beast became a deafening high-pitched whine that made Thackeray want to vomit.
The black liquid spouted from somewhere beneath its head. It
stumbled back, but the scarlet figure didn't relent, hacking and chopping and thrusting in a crazed blood- lust, taking advantage of the Fomor's increasing inability to armour itself. Chunks of quivering black flesh fell to the floor, followed by wriggling digits and then limbs.
Even when the beast lay trembling on the floor, the figure continued to chop, and finally there was nothing left but unidentifiable lumps. Thackeray had to look away.
A moment later he realised the figure was standing over him, and he wondered if it was now his turn. With surprise, he saw a woman behind the bloodstained exterior. Gradually recognition dawned. It was too much of a shock, leaving him grasping for comprehension.
Finally she reached out a sticky hand and helped him to his feet. 'My name's Caitlin,' she said.
Despite everything he had seen, hearing her voice sent a shiver through him. 'What are you?' he asked.
She tossed the machete to one side and for a second he thought he saw tears in her eyes. Then she threw herself at him with the same passion with which she had attacked the Fomor, forcing her lips on to his, kissing so hard he saw stars, giving every fibre of her being.
The force of the kiss, and the crackling energy that lay behind it, drove him back down. He was too weak to resist, nor did he want to. She continued to kiss, and then bite at his face and neck, her hands feverishly running over his body, before she broke off and started to tear first at his clothes then her own. Her breasts and belly were white against the crimson stain of her face and hands. Her hair lashed the air as she ground her groin against his, showering droplets of blood on to his face, his chest. Her nails raked his skin, but she was oblivious to the occasional bursts of pain that she caused him, so lost was she to her sexual frenzy.
Thackeray was dragged along by her fire, gave himself up to her fully. She was like a drug; his blood thundered, his head spinning with hallucinogenic desire, transformative, sacramental. Connections blazed with energy, blue, blue fire that lay beyond the physical. She was all he could ever have wanted.
When she'd dragged his trousers down, she used her hands and her mouth to ensure he was fully erect, and then she raised herself to slide him inside her. She rode him furiously, ducking to kiss and bite, and there was blood everywhere, on his skin, in his vision.
When he came in a blazing burst of euphoria she refused to let him withdraw, her own orgasm coming a second or so later. Only then did she collapse on his chest, breathing hard, her heart pounding. It felt as if she had given him everything within her.
'I think I love you,' he said, stroking her sticky hair; and he meant it.
They dressed and ventured out into Buckland's office. The thug lay in one corner, moaning gently to himself. Both his kneecaps were shattered. He began to curse loudly when he saw Caitlin and Thackeray.
Harvey loitered in the doorway, both scared and overjoyed. 'Thought you were a dead dog,' he said to Thackeray obliquely.
'Nearly… a couple more minutes.'
'Glad you pulled through.'
'Yep. Looks like you're stuck with me for a bit longer.' They shuffled round for a moment, unable to face their emotions, and then Thackeray nodded at Caitlin. 'What about her, then?'
'Yeah. Who'da thought it?' Harvey eyed her warily. 'Like somebody out of The Matrix.'
'Red Sonja, more like. You remember Conan? The She-Devil with a Sword. Or in this case a machete.'
'They're all dead, you know.' Harvey jerked a thumb in the direction of the corridor leading to the concourse. 'All that bastard's men.'
Thackeray looked Caitlin in the eye; he couldn't quite understand what he was glimpsing there, though it certainly wasn't the blankness he had seen in the woman with whom he had first fallen in love. 'I'm not going to be able to take you back to mother, am I?'
'But why didn't you kill him?' Harvey nodded towards Buckland, who was increasingly delirious with the pain.
'He's facing his own punishment.' The new vision Caitlin had gained since the Morrigan had come to the fore was proving a revelation. As Caitlin watched Buckland, she could see the devils dancing over his form, teasing the plague along the meridians of his body where the chi flowed. She knew what it was now: a spirit-plague, a corruption of the soul that attacked the life-giving essence of reality. It wasn't just designed to kill people; it was there to destroy everything. The Blue Fire would be attacked first, and then physical matter would follow.
And while it could be a natural infestation, the presence of the devils and the malignant and modulated way in which they went about their terrible business made Caitlin sure there was an intelligence behind it. Something had loosed such an awful thing; something wanted Existence destroyed. And that made her think that it was all connected — the plague, the Lament-Brood, the attempt to eradicate her. But who or what could possibly want to wipe out everything that ever was?
'So, we getting out of here?' Thackeray said. 'Buckland's not going to be much of a threat any more. In a world with the flimsiest of health services, what you've done to him is pretty much a death sentence.'
'For what it's worth,' Caitlin said.
'Maybe we could take over from him,' Harvey mused. 'With an enforcer like her, nobody would mess with us.'
'Nah,' Thackeray said. 'Too much responsibility. I'd rather go on holiday.'
He looked at Caitlin hopefully, but her face told him all he needed to know. They stood on one of the station platforms, the intense darkness thrown back in one small arc by a lone torch held by Harvey.
Thackeray had his arms around Caitlin's waist, pulling her close so he could feel her tenderness. 'You've really got to go?'
'Yes. People are counting on me.'
His sigh was supposed to be theatrical, but it carried the full weight of his feeling. 'It's understandable. You're getting out of Birmingham. Who wouldn't?'
'You could leave, too.'
'You'd think, wouldn't you?' He looked deep into her eyes, tried to appear blase. 'I'd go with you.'
She shook her head. 'I don't think I'll be coming back, Thackeray. What I've got to do… well… my instinct tells me the price is going to be my life. These things always end badly.'
'Yeah. You see, responsibility… I don't really get that word.'
She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips. It was subtle but as potent as the passion he had experienced from her earlier. A shiver ran down his spine. He knew in his heart that he would never find another who meant as much to him. Their time together could be counted in days, yet the connection he felt with her was as deep and abiding as the ocean. He wanted to tell her how much he needed her, how he could see, even though she hadn't examined it herself, that she loved him, too. But he could also tell it was pointless. She couldn't stay; obligation lay on her shoulders like a millstone.
'In this world we've ended up with,' he said, 'things are just too, too tragic.'
She smiled and electricity jumped between them, but the poignancy was almost too painful for him to bear. She pulled back and his hands fell from her waist. 'Bye, Harvey,' she said with a wave.
There was a hint of relief in his smile. 'You want to get some shampoo for that hair, Red Sonja.'
She laughed, dropped from the platform on to the tracks. They watched her as she moved along the lines, and only once did she look back before the darkness swallowed her up. At that moment Thackeray thought he was going to die.
Harvey slapped a hand on his shoulder. 'I'm sorry, mate. But look on the bright side… you'd never have been able to argue with her.' Thackeray tried to pierce the gloom, imagining her wending her way out into the night, fierce and beautiful and wild, like nature. 'I'd have jumped through fire for her, Harv. I'd have crossed the world.'
'You're a stupid romantic, Thackeray, and it's a wonder you've got any friends.' Harvey turned away and waved the torch towards the exit. 'Come on… let's nick Buckland's whisky stash.'
Chapter Thirteen
In the Court of the Dreaming Song
'O Liberty! What crimes ar
e committed in thy name!'
Madame Roland
Crowther was hot and irritable and the path appeared to go on for ever. The still air beneath the trees had grown oppressively muggy and even long drinks from the numerous cool streams that cut through the forest did little to ease his discomfort.
Mahalia, dealing with her grief, spoke little, but what worried him was that when she did talk, she was polite, thoughtful, almost good-natured. He was concerned that Carlton's death was an unbearable stress that could eventually destroy her.
'It might help to talk about him,' he said as he watched her kicking small stones into the thick undergrowth. 'The boy… uh, Carlton…'
'There's nothing to talk about.'
'You could tell me how you met him.'
She thought about this for a moment, then said, 'It was after I'd escaped… from the attic. I'd been living rough, trying to get food anywhere I could…' She grimaced. 'I ate some disgusting things, just to stay alive. That showed me you'd do anything to survive — anything.' She continued walking, not looking at him. 'I expect you can guess what it was like — a young girl on the street, easy target. One morning four men, four bastards…' She spat the word. '… tried to rape me. Broad daylight, on the footpath, in one of the main shopping areas. People were nearby. Nobody cared, however much I screamed. They just wanted to get on with their business. My problems were my problems.'
Crowther watched the back of her head, reading the unspoken emotions amongst her words.
'Carlton came out of nowhere,' she continued. 'Somehow he rounded up some of those people walking by — I don't know how he did it, he couldn't talk, but, you know, he had a way about him — people liked him, people followed him…' She stifled a sob in her throat, took a moment to wipe her eye, but still remained in control, still diamond-hard. 'They drove the men off… saved me. Carlton saved me. And when he came over and held out his hand to help me up, and just smiled, that way he always did, I knew I'd found a friend — someone who'd help me, someone I could help.'
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