by James Bennet
The room smelled of medicine and soap. The window was slightly ajar, the Thames wafting brackishness in. The night wheezed through the enervated curtains. None of these scents disguised the one under them. Sweat, sickness and grief.
The shadow stepped out of the corner, the place where the moonlight shone weakest. He regarded the room and the man in the bed, the bedside table empty apart from a jug of water and a small plastic cup. No cards. No flowers. Big Ben had just chimed the hour of midnight, so it was much too late for well-wishers.
Another smell filled the room now, one that hadn’t been there a moment before. The smell was dry and faintly sweet: herbs, wine and salt, a trace of arid mud. It mingled with the room’s pervasive reek, joining it like a lover.
The shadow stood at the end of the bed and waited for the man to wake up.
Perhaps it was the smell that roused him. Perhaps the shadow’s presence alone. The man’s eyes flickered open and a hand fluttered to his face, tracing the length of tube taped to his nose. Then his gaze fell on the shadow, the outline of a man standing there. He tried to sit up, but bandages and braces held him fast, the traction apparatus rattling. He lay trapped in plaster and borrowed pyjamas.
“Please,” the shadow said. “Don’t get up.”
The man frowned. His blonde horseshoe moustache twitched. Familiarity, vague, uncertain, rose to the surface of his face from an abyss of drugs.
“Good Lord…Is that you?”
The shadow shook his head. “No.”
“Then…” The old man squinted in the gloom, uncertain. Along with several broken bones, Winlock had taken quite a blow to the head, and the drugs in his veins would only add to his confusion. “Who are you? How did you get in here?” He went to rub his hairless head, but thick white plaster made it impossible. “Come to think of it, how did I?”
“I’m afraid you had an accident, Professor.” The shadow placed a hand on his breast. “We both have, it seems. I am…disappointed. Still, things change, don’t they say? We are both old enough to understand that. Nothing is certain. Nowhere is safe. Nobody gets their own way all of the time.” The smile on the shadow’s face could have frozen Medusa in her tracks. “As to how I got in here, well…sometimes the dark is a doorway. There are many paths open to one such as me.”
“What the devil are you on about? Something happened at the museum? I…remember…”
Winlock’s bleary eyes told the shadow that he didn’t remember much.
“Good job I’ve had time to prepare,” the shadow went on. “Time to foresee this eventuality. My associates will clean up the mess. After all, they made it! Disastrous as it was, I should’ve known better. Birds of a feather and all that. Or in this case, dragons.”
“I don’t follow you.”
The heart monitor bleeped a little faster.
“A shame,” the shadow said, “how quickly you people like to forget. You made the acquaintance of a queen tonight. I’m sorry that she took your speech so personally.”
“Ghosts…” Winlock fumbled towards memory. “Ghosts from the Sands…”
“Quite.”
The shadow moved to the window, the large doctor’s bag he carried bumping against one leg. He stood looking out in silence for a moment, down at the car park where police cars surrounded a gaggle of press vans, presumably barring the journalists from the hospital after the evening’s shocking events. The coffee machine down in reception must be rattling like a one-armed bandit. Both the police and the press would have to wait until morning to grill the professor, not that he could tell them anything useful. The shadow wrinkled his nose.
“Christ,” he said. “I hate this city. So much noise. So much stink. Who do they think they are? Worms wriggling in the bottom of a bucket that like to think themselves gods. Someone ought to remind them.” He turned back to Winlock, noticed his eyes resting on the bag clutched in his spotless white gloves. He held it up. “This, Theo? Just some of your…personal effects. I hope you don’t mind. I took the liberty of retrieving them from the museum, once the fuss had died down. You see, I require them for a certain equation. Protection, if you will. I wish I had more time to explain. Besides, one could argue that they’re not really yours, couldn’t one?”
“What? My relics? I don’t understand…”
“No? Never mind. I suppose it’s all part of the pattern.”
“P…pattern?”
“Indeed, my good fellow. Them out there with their cranes and drills, building up and tearing down, one civilisation replacing the last. Us in here, discussing ghosts and doorways. Doorways, I might add, that some intended never to open. When they do,” the shadow clicked his fingers, “things change.”
Winlock blustered. “I’m going to call the nurse!”
“Please tell me you haven’t shat yourself, Theo. That would be unseemly, even for a grave robber.” The shadow waved a hand. “By all means, go ahead. I believe there’s a girl asleep at her station just at the end of this wing. She’ll get here in five minutes or so.”
The shadow watched the professor wrestle with the traction apparatus. Cables snickered. The bed squeaked. The jug on the table sloshed on the floor. Winlock winced. Age, pain and plaster prevented further movement. He lay back on the pillows, his moustache shaking.
“Well, what the hell do you want?”
Through his stupor, his anaesthetised haze, a sharper awareness gleamed. Was he taking in his visitor’s clothes? The tuxedo, gloves and black bow tie would look out of place in the sanitised surroundings. As the shadow approached, Winlock’s eyes lingered on the patch of fur at his shoulder, and awareness curdled into fear.
“I am merely fulfilling my destiny. That, I’m afraid, requires special tools. Your magic bricks,” he made a jest from the words, “are now in my possession, ready for a new-found use. The rest is…shall we say, tradition? Doorways and all that. I’m sure you’d do the same, were you in my place.”
At the edge of the bed, the shadow dropped the bag. Winlock cried out at the sudden pressure, the weight of its contents punching his guts.
“Please,” he said, spittle spraying his chin. He tried to disappear into the bedclothes, hide from this thing leaning over him. “Please. Don’t—”
Spotless white gloves cut off his words, fingers closing around his throat.
“Come now, Theo. Let’s pay our respects. After all, one opened tomb deserves another. And what is death but a door?”
The gloves tensed, squeezing tighter.
“Ghk!” said Winlock. His hands scrabbled at the vice around his neck, but they might as well have been paper bags flapping at steel bars.
The shadow hadn’t stopped smiling. He watched the network of fine red lines appear in Winlock’s eyes, a map of asphyxiation. The old man’s tongue popped from his mouth, a fat blue toad. Gristle crackled, the professor’s larynx caving in. His Adam’s apple bobbed to a standstill. His eyeballs bulged. Then he stiffened, a joyless climax, before falling back limp on the bed.
The shadow wiped his hands on his jacket and picked up his leather bag.
“Terribly sorry, old boy,” he said. “Perhaps you should have given more thought to curses.”
The shadow walked back to the dark in the corner of the room. He spoke a single word under his breath – more of a symbol, really, floating in the air – and left the hospital and the corpse to the night.
Somewhere, Death was laughing.
NINE
In dreams, Ben saw her. That golden night. The first time he knew.
Naked, they lay on the bed in her cramped room on the LIU campus, over on Rockwell Place. The goldfish bowl. The sheets were a crumpled tapestry, describing a secret history. Bergamot and sweat coiled under the ceiling like invisible smoke, the sweet and sour of recent arousal. Outside, the summer night hushed in the trees of downtown Brooklyn and even the traffic on Flatbush Avenue sounded like a lullaby. Distantly, through the walls, Ben heard the murmur of chat, other students talking. Probably about Ros
e and her silver-spoon boyfriend. He could also hear the thump of dance music, echoing his heartbeat.
Catching her breath, she moved towards him, pulling herself up on his chest like a mermaid on a rocky shore. Her skin, flawless, a land of cream, pressed warmly against his side. Up close, he could see the tiny scar on her forehead, half hidden by her tousled fringe. He wanted to ask her about it, but didn’t, sensing the sleepy weight of her gaze.
“I wonder where this story is headed,” she said. “I’ve never felt this way before.”
Ben smiled. Murmured to express his pleasure.
A gentle slap. “Tell me you’ve never felt this way before!”
He squirmed a little. “Every time is different.”
“So there was…someone?”
“Rose…”
“Tell me.”
“Yeah, there was someone. Ages ago now. Centuries.”
She sighed. “Sure feels like that sometimes.”
He said nothing. Then, to change the subject, “This story ends with a happy-ever-after.” He kissed her forehead. “Here, I got you something.”
He reached under the bed, his fingers searching for the little black box he’d placed there a couple of hours back. Finding it, he shuffled his bulk up on the pillows and Rose sat back as he presented it to her. When she opened the box, the light from the bedside lamp sparkled on diamonds, playing across her breasts. Moonlight on forbidden fruit.
“Ben…” For a moment, she was silent. Then, slowly, “I…Thank you. I don’t know where all this is coming from, but the restaurants, the flowers, the—”
“I told you,” he said. “It’s just my inheritance.”
She gave him a look. Then nodded, non-committal. He thought he knew why. Since that day outside the library on Atlantic Avenue, and after she had called him on the phone, breathlessly demanding an explanation that he’d somehow turned into dinner and drinks, her discomfort over his wealth was obvious. It didn’t surprise him. She worked part time as a waitress downtown. She survived in the city on a scholarship and tips. And as she often reminded him, her father, a marine engineer, had raised her in Queens single-handedly (and Ben had reason to believe that those hands had sometimes been rough), on no more than nickels and dimes. She’d be damned if she’d dishonour his memory by letting Ben turn her into a kept woman. For the most part, this went unspoken. For the most part.
“Look,” she said, “I’m not looking for some knight in shining armour…”
He snorted. “You haven’t found one.”
But she pushed the necklace back at him – how could she know that the gems had once belonged to Marie Antoinette? – and closed his hand around it.
“You don’t need all this,” she said. “I’ll be with you whatever.”
The months they’d been together had proceeded on awe. Perhaps a little shock at her luck. Now she was rejecting it. She wanted the real him. Or what she thought was the real him. A little uneasy, he fumbled to save the moment.
“We should have a drink to celebrate.”
He couldn’t ignore the subtle frown that crossed her face. Almost a wince. A memory of a scar.
“You go ahead. You know I don’t. My dad…”
He did know. It was why he was drinking orange juice these days. Drinking juice and not minding one bit. He was drunk on her. Intoxicated. High. It didn’t matter if they didn’t talk about the scar. They didn’t talk about his, either, though she liked to trace them with her fingers.
She was looking away, out the window at the stars hanging in the trees. He sat up and tipped her chin towards his. They kissed for a very long time.
“OK,” he said, a whisper in her ear, and he dropped the diamonds over the side of the bed. “But one thing you’re gonna have to accept. I bought us a place. An apartment over in Vinegar Hill. A place where we can be…” Normal. “Together.”
“Ben…”
“Is it wrong I want to look after my treasure?”
“Oh? Is that what I am now?” But she was laughing. This was before obelisks. Before doubt.
“As long as we’re together,” he said, and he told his second lie, “nothing and no one can hurt us.”
Pain nibbled at Ben’s wrists, rousing him from unconsciousness. His skull ached, feeling too small for its addled contents. Groaning, he struggled to get his bearings, his mind wheeling like a North Pole compass. How long had he been out of it? The blurred surroundings suggested hours. What had happened? Arcane symbols taunted his memory, swirling in slow, nonsensical patterns. Where the fuck was he? It felt like a cold-storage room in Hell…
Wherever he was, it was dim and dank, the air clammy, the light weak. He heard a soft ripping noise and moisture dripping somewhere nearby. Scrape. Clink. Splash. Someone digging? A burst pipe? The echoes were an ode to confusion. The place stank of concrete and oil, his nose questing for info. Far off, an engine growled and faded. Craning his neck, he made out a flat grey smear overhead. He blinked, his vision growing clearer, and the low ceiling filled in the blanks.
A car park. An underground car park.
He tried to move, a jolt of pain down his right side making him wince. His bare feet danced across stone, his toes barely touching the ground. His trousers, reduced to a pair of ragged shorts, flapped wetly with the motion. Damp prickled across his skin. He was bare-chested, exposed to the cold. Chains rattled an ominous song, the Ballad of the Awakening Prisoner. He looked up, muscles burning, and saw the golden manacles around his wrists, his arms stretched to the ceiling, the chains strung on a metal hook.
This was not good.
Scrape. Clink. Splash.
What were those symbols etched on his bonds? Hieroglyphs? Yes, he thought so. A hand. A lizard. An illegible scrawl. The ancient characters belonged to a land he was starting to hate. The glyphs shone in the hung-over light, emitting some inner potency. This was magic. Old magic. Magick. No, even older than that. This kind of magic pre-dated the Middle Ages, Ben’s original era. It pre-dated the Romans and Saxons. It was stronger than anything he’d previously encountered, whisking him away from the British Museum and binding him here like a choice side of beef. Binding him as if he was just an ordinary man, unable to shift into true form, beat his wings and roar…
He closed his eyes, but his will met a blank white wall, confirming his restraint. Like it or not, he was trapped here. Josh Homme in chains.
This was definitely not good.
Scrape. Clink. Splash.
Events juddered back to him. Professor Winlock talking on stage. The storm in the lecture theatre. The Dark Queen rising. Shadows in the sky…
“Rose…”
He groaned again. Sardonic laughter echoed in reply.
“You think this is a date? Your girlfriend isn’t here.” A gruff, faintly Welsh burr, horribly familiar. “Now what did I say about your kind and hers?”
Chains jangled. Rage shuddered through Ben’s dangling body. The blur at his side, tall and broad-shouldered, touched him with the blade in its hand – fifty-five inches of Scottish steel rekindling the pain in Ben’s side, a hot, wet fire.
“Fulk.” He struggled for breath, seething through his gritted teeth. “If you touch so much as a hair on her head…I’ll ram that sword so far up your arse you’ll see the hilt in front of your nose.”
“Shucks. Stop flirting with me. If you’d had the good sense to die, you wouldn’t be in this mess now. Not that I’m complaining. Like I told you in New York, we have unfinished business.” The blur moved closer, leaning into the blade. “No Lore stands between us now, snake.” He cupped a mocking hand to his ear. “What’s that you say? Beg to differ?”
“Go…fuck yourself.”
Fulk twisted the blade. Nerve endings shrieked from hip to armpit and Ben bit down hard on his tongue, grunting through his agony. Sweat and snot dribbled over his lips. The sword withdrew, Ben feeling it tug at his side. Again he heard that ripping sound, a soft squelch, too close to home.
Scrape. Clink. S
plash.
Pain sharpened his senses. He was in an underground car park like any other underground car park, a cold concrete hole stinking of countless exhausts. He made out a ramp leading upwards. Thick grey pillars. A sign for the lifts. Worn yellow arrows ran around the walls, street directions in blotched paint. They were hard to decipher from a distance, but he reckoned they looked English enough. He was probably still in London, bundled away under the Smoke. Not that it made much difference. He was going to die regardless.
Movement nearby distracted him from the thought. A neon strip provided the only light, but it wasn’t strong enough to throw shadows like the ones on the walls. The dark, spiny shapes fluttered like moths trapped in a lampshade. Somehow they moved under the concrete, shifting beneath a grey stone sea. The shadows, Ben realised, were creatures from the nether.
Some believed that the creatures were half-formed nightmares, the phantom leavings of Creation. Raw, embryonic forms that never quite made the cut for the real world and roamed the wastes between reality and dream, the gulf that bordered the earthly plane like a spectral void. The great ghost-beasts lurked and hunted, sniffing out those who dared to bridge the divide, whose incantations, rituals and charms siphoned the eldritch fuel of the nether, invoking power to alter reality. Magic, as most people called it, did not come easy or cheap. The greater the usage, the greater the attention of the Lurkers, who had been known to pierce the skein of the world and pluck a conjuring soul out of existence…
Witches and wizards were rare for a reason. Both had been rare even before the Lore had restricted them to a single officially functioning Remnant. Magic was dangerous. The most dangerous force in the universe. Only the strongest of minds, the strongest of wills – human or otherwise – could handle it with skill. It was like a drug, corrupting and addictive. The more one used it, the more one wanted to, until it began to change the wielder, creeping insidiously into their soul.
The Lurkers, the Walkers between the Worlds, were necessary watchdogs. The threat of their presence ensured that nobody got too greedy. No one could say where they had come from or who had set them in place. Were they fallen angels? Demons pressed into service? Or merely amoebae, unformed life, a phantom inverse mirror to Creation? The magic responsible for Ben’s origin was inherent, seeded and less active; the existence of the spell-born Remnants was either innately protected or immune to the Lurkers’ attentions, which led some to suppose that the Fay had created the Lurkers too, back in the earliest days of the world. Who could say? Ben would be the last to know, but he did know a bit about magic. Magic was neither good nor evil, only a wild, fathomless force, but its long-term effects were rarely healthy. In essence – as a matter of survival – all witches and wizards, whatever their moral inclination, only used magic in three ways: carefully, sparingly and with one beady eye on the nether.