by James Bennet
Once again in his long life, Ben was staring death in the face.
Death grinned back like he always did, a pale, long-suffering friend.
Ben looked up, took his last shot.
“Fulk, listen. Listen to me, you prick. The CROWS are obviously using you. Whatever you gave them in return for my head, trust me, it’ll never be enough.” He caught his breath, tasting oil and concrete. “This isn’t what your family had in mind. This isn’t what they meant by honour. I’ve fought enough of you over the years to know that’s the truth. This isn’t vengeance. It’s a cakewalk. Where is the honour in killing a helpless captive?”
Fulk frowned, the claymore drooping.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Unchain me, Fulk. Fight me fair and square.”
“Shut up, I said.”
“Fight me like the first Fulk would have fought me.”
Fulk licked his lips. He swung the sword, weighing the pros and cons. The thought was obviously tempting.
But not that tempting.
“Nice try, snake. You think I’m gonna go up against a seven-ton freak?”
“Then leave these cuffs on.” Ben shook his bonds, the restrictive glyphs flashing in gold. “I’ll face you mano a mano. In human guise. No scales. No tricks. What do you say?” He softened his voice, took a wild guess. “Imagine your father’s pride…”
A smile twitched at the corners of Fulk’s mouth, informing Ben he’d hit the mark.
“You swear?”
What a moron. “On Maud’s name. I swear.”
Fulk hesitated, a child about to open the cookie jar. Then he stepped forward and reached up, grabbing a length of chain. Whether he meant to slip it off the hook, and what the outcome might have been if he had, Ben would never find out. White light washed over the walls, the vaporous ghosts scuttling backwards, the dank surface regaining solidity.
A car was coming down the ramp into the car park. A Rolls-Royce Phantom IV. The sleek vehicle looked out of place in the dingy surroundings. The smoked-glass windows reflected nothing, blank squares leading into void. The long bonnet distorted the strip light, the two men warping across the fenders as the car rolled silently down the ramp. The silver figurehead, a bare-breasted hag on a broom, drew to a halt, hovered twinkling in the gloom.
Fulk looked at Ben and then at the Rolls. His hand fell limply to his side and he tipped his broadsword over one shoulder, his stance conspicuously casual.
The Phantom faced them side-on across the cold grey space. Then the back door opened and wolves loped out. Ben counted six of the creatures, spilling out of the dense dark comprising the depths of the cab. Muzzles trailing steam, the scrawny, black-furred beasts padded across the concrete floor. The Phantom’s headlights shone like coins in their hungry eyes. Claws clacked softly on the ground as the pack formed a loose corral around Ben, snarls rumbling in their throats. The wolves had caught his animal scent, the blood dripping from him, soured by sweat. They had smelled his otherness, too, and bared their fangs at the threat.
Ben swallowed and looked beyond his savage audience. The wolves were the least of his worries. They were merely familiars, spellbound pets. Their owner worried him more.
A stockinged leg emerged from the cab, a spider testing the strand of a web. Then the grande dame of the Coven Royal stepped out into the car park.
It was Miss Macha, a sovereign sister of the triumvirate. The Three Who Are One.
The cold didn’t seem to bother her. She was only wearing a leather bikini, shiny black patches drawn so tight that they looked painted on over her curves. Silver studs covered the material. Her stilettos went up to the moon and her sunglasses threw Ben’s anguish back at him, a prisoner in fisheye depths. A pentagram adorned her upper left arm, the tattoo faded with time. A wild flood fell about her shoulders and she wore a hat as black as her hair, tall, conical and pointed, a cynical nod to her calling. Ben judged the witch to be in her mid to late twenties. It was hard to tell under all her make-up. The lipstick smeared across one cheek. The tears of mascara that dripped to her chin. Under the mess, her skin was as pale as a glacier.
Miss Macha was a fading star. A walking cabaret. The cabaret of death.
One of her breasts was bare. A wolf cub suckled at her nipple, a furry ball that she cradled in one arm. Milk stained pink with blood dribbled down her stomach and leg, but she showed no pain at this mockery of motherhood. Like Babe Cathy, the crone, the CROWS got a kick from these kinds of jokes. The witch took a drag on her Cuban cigar and smoke coiled up to the ceiling. Ben bet that it was from the same box as the one Babe had puffed on the Brooklyn Bridge. In essence, this was the same woman, and she greeted him as such.
“Well if it ain’t the Sola Ignis.” She rolled her Latin in a Texan drawl, tasting the obsolete echoes. “We simply must stop meeting like this.”
“If we just stop meeting…that’s fine by me.”
“Oh Ben. You’re such a drag.” She took a deep one on the cigar. “Always pissing on our parade.”
“And always a pleasure, ma’am.”
Her hips slinked towards him. The car park didn’t make much of a catwalk. The air leapt out of the way of her heels as she moved through the circle of wolves, patting one of them on the head. Its tongue lolled, lapping up her presence. The cub at her breast wriggled and whined.
Fulk didn’t look so casual now. The slayer cleared his throat. “The spell worked, as you can see. Everything is going according to plan.”
The witch removed her sunglasses, hooking them into her bra, a deft one-handed motion. Her eyes glinted, stoat-like, as she took in the pile of scales and the discarded storybook, its tattered leaves spread across the ground. Then she looked up at Fulk.
“Seems like we arrived just in time. We thought you said you wanted his head.”
“I…I do, my lady. I was…”
“We know what you were doing. We’ve seen golems with more brains than you. How long were you going to stand there gloating, giving him time to escape?”
“With those hieroglyphs?” Fulk glared at Ben’s manacles, colour rising in his cheeks. “I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”
“Oh, is that so? Fulk, you’re a goddamned delivery boy. Leave the thinking to us.”
Fulk looked at his feet, silenced.
Miss Macha pursed her lips. Then she turned back to Ben in smoke-wreathed appraisal.
“I’m afraid this ain’t a social call. We were hoping to find a corpse.”
“You know, you say the nicest things.”
“Time and tide, Ben. Time and tide. We girls have a schedule to keep.”
“And I’m just getting in the way.”
This earned him a flash of teeth. “Brains as well as brawn.”
“Care to tell me why?”
Miss Macha raised an eyebrow. “We already did. Things change, we said.” She moved in close and slipped an arm around his neck, swinging with him in a slow waltz, the wolf cub warbling between them. She smelled like roses and shit. “You shouldn’t have run out on us before. This would all be over with by now.”
“Excuse me for taking a rain check. There was something I needed to know.”
“Ah yes, the Dark Queen. This town ain’t big enough for the both of you, Ben.”
“So I noticed. She’s collecting those relics, isn’t she? Your Star, Crook and Pschent. Why? What does she want?”
“The same thing we all want. Power. Glory. Revenge.”
“Speak for yourself. I just want a glass of Jack.”
Miss Macha barked laughter. “You never did have ambition. You’re a milk drinker, for fuck’s sake. An embarrassment to your kind.”
“And you’re a cold-hearted bitch. A perfect example of yours.”
The witch didn’t take this well. She stopped swinging, the waltz at an end. Her smile melted into a thin red line.
Then she plunged her cigar into Ben’s eye.
Ben’s scream hit the car park walls. The car park walls scr
eamed back. A hot poker wound through his brain, chargrilling his thoughts. Serpente arrosto. Molten tears dripped down his cheek, the magma of flesh and blood. Scales burgeoned, thinned and faded. Hieroglyphs gleamed in gold.
The wolves yapped, roused by the smell. The witch hooked a leg around Ben’s hip, pressing her body against him.
“You dreamt you were a dragon, flying across the sky. Now you wake up and wonder: are you a man who dreamt you were a dragon or a dragon dreaming that you are a man?” Her breath was an ill wind, frosting his cheek. “You’ve sleepwalked through this world too long, Benjurigan. Its limits have dulled you, made you grey. You signed the Pact just like we all did, but you actually respect it. You uphold and defend it. Bow to human rule. Doesn’t the compromise stick in your craw?”
Ben’s eye was already cooling, vitreous humour bubbling anew. Lens and retina reforming. Lashes curling out.
The pain lingered, making him sharp.
“The Pact was…the only choice left.” And he thought this was true. The push and pull of the war between Remnants and humans had resulted in the Anarchy, a stalemate that saw chaos, fire and plague spread across the land. Villages were robbed and burned. Crops failed and the people starved. Law and order had broken down into sharp and bloody fragments. While king and pretender wrestled over the crown, most Remnants – abandoned, turning feral, unmindful of their leaders – had revelled in the confusion, feasting on nobles cast out in the muck, stealing castles and keeps, enchanting the clergy into profane acts and generally stirring England’s troubled cauldron to boiling point. As progress faltered, mired in the mud, the Remnants themselves were dwindling, felled by sword and lance in ever greater numbers…Eventually, when Henry II ascended the throne, commencing the Plantagenet reign and restoring peace to the land, the scars and the echoes of the war lingered. Ben exhaled, remembering the destruction. The fires. The screams. Giants hurling boulders at ships in the Wash. Goblins riddling the nurseries, pulling children’s hair until they were forced to flee into the street. Ghouls gnawing on the sainted bones in the crypt of Old St Paul’s. And then, in 1212, an old and cantankerous dragon had taken to the skies over the city and burnt London Bridge to the ground…
It fell to Henry’s son and heir, the notorious King John, to draw a line under the matter. Pressure from Rome aside, his disagreements with the barons had already threatened to bring about civil war, and once again the kingdom teetered on the brink of anarchy. Bowing to the will of the Church and the people, King John spoke to the Remnants’ fear of extinction and offered them his truce.
“It wasn’t perfect. What is?” Ben could only speak the truth as he saw it. “At least this way we get to live in hope, that the Fay will one day return. That we can make a lasting peace with humans, have some kind of future. Otherwise, neither of us would be standing here bitching about it. It was compromise or die.”
“Yes. The Pact was enough for you, wasn’t it? The Pact was precisely where you gave up. You shrugged on this form like an ill-fitting suit and joined the shuffling ranks of the tamed. You became like an unloved pet, mewling outside the doors of the world. Your fire fading to embers.”
“The Lore protects us.” And it had, for a while. Before the modern age came crashing in, promises turned out to be lies and the Fay had never returned. “Protected us. The Lore was—”
“Tyranny,” Miss Macha said. “It was always tyranny. Who are they to herd us like sheep, make us graze on the scraps of human tolerance? We are the primal children of the earth, the foundations on which all else rests. Were we born to crawl in the shadow of industry, servile to an impotent God? No. And no more. The Pact is null and void. The Lore broken. Neither should have ever existed. Too long have we been subdued, shackled by our inferiors. Now we will rise and fulfil our destiny. Now we will rise and rule!”
Ben had heard this song before, up on the Brooklyn Bridge. It had sounded overblown then and it sounded overblown now.
“Drums roll. Lightning flashes. Stage blacks out…”
His bravado rang false. Her words had chilled him to the core.
“Why now?” he asked. “For eight hundred years you’ve suffered the Lore. Yeah, I know that the CROWS have hardly been saints, but outright rebellion? Why now? What’s rattled your cage?”
“Cage is right,” she snapped, but then she sighed and loosened her grip on him. A look that was almost beatific stole over the mess of her face. “We heard a voice calling in the dark. Calling, calling for a way back. Calling us to arms…” She glared at him, the malice returned. “And the CROWS answered.”
“You want to cause a war?” He had no idea what she was on about.
“Not a war. A conquest.”
“Someone will stop you. Someone always does.”
“Then they’d better hurry.” The witch released him, tottering away on her high heels. “Three days from now, everything changes. The chains of our oppression will break and the usurpers will pay for their crimes. Anarchy. Bloodshed. Revolution. These are the true cogs of progress, Ben. These are our guns and our bombs. With them we will reclaim the world.”
“You’re insane, you know that? You’ve always been fucking insane.”
Miss Macha twirled a hand. “Sweet nothings, sweet nothings.” Like a deathly ballerina in a concrete jewellery box, she spun on her heel to face Fulk, who stood sullen and brooding among the wolves. “Kill this fool,” she said. “Cut off his head. Let’s see how quickly it grows back.”
Fulk, keen to prove his worth after her previous rebuke, hefted his sword from over his shoulder and shifted towards Ben. The witch drew back and the wolves moved with her, a furry skirt swirling around her legs. Face a portrait of spite, she cupped the cub firmly to her breast, almost smothering the thing. Studs glittered under the strip light. Blood and milk speckled the ground.
A touch theatrically, Fulk adopted a headsman’s stance. He slipped the blade over Ben’s shoulder, into the gap between arm and neck. The notched edge bit into Ben’s skin, its charmed length vibrating against his jugular vein, which twitched like a frog in a net, his heart pumping with dread. Fulk’s grin could have filled the car park. His heavy breaths, stinking of beer and cigarettes, betrayed his mounting excitement. Without doubt, the Black Knight was getting off on the thought of sawing the Enemy’s head off.
Fulk’s beard parted wider. Perhaps he wanted to give a farewell speech, a grand address rehearsed since birth in some ramshackle Shropshire mansion.
“Make it quick.” Witchy echoes snapped around the car park, dashing any hope of ceremony. “The boss expects us in Cairo tonight.”
Fulk obeyed. The old family claymore, this jagged, familiar foe, began slicing back and forth, iron teeth chewing into flesh. Ben screamed. Blood washed over his chest, a crimson robe spilling to the floor. His scream hit the walls and intensified in pitch, an eldritch thrum resounding in his skull. The humming grew louder and the vibrations stronger, a pneumatic drill skewering the air, the chains rattling over his head.
“What in Hecate’s name—”
Fulk withdrew the blade and wheeled toward the source of the disturbance. Ben sucked in another scream, stale fumes filling his lungs. Even as his blood clotted and his skin started to mend itself, the car park was trembling around him, dust trickling from cracks in the roof. The strip light stuttered. Insectile shadows wove across the walls, a silhouette theatre racing through concrete. The wolves whimpered and yapped, their agitated mass carrying Miss Macha back towards the Rolls, where she clung to the open passenger door, her eyes darting over the walls. A blast of air rushed through the car park. Her hat fell off, lost to the pack. She cried out, her mouth a blotchy circle of shock.
The ground lurched, hurling Fulk on to his hands and knees, his sword clanging away from him. Scales scattered. The story-book pages flipped and flapped. The Triumph crashed to the ground, oil oozing from the motorbike’s tank and forming a pool around the fallen knight.
Ben hung in chains. He looked at the walls, wa
tching the way they throbbed and bulged, a thin skein filling with smoke. The pressure was building, stirring the Lurkers into a frenzy. But where was the pressure coming from? There. A larger shadow on the far wall, swelling like a cloud as it drew closer, thundering from the depths of the nether…And then there were no walls, the boundaries dissolving between the worlds, dispelled by the conjured quake. The barriers fell, the zoo set loose. Greasy tentacles reached out, drawn towards the heat and substance of reality.
Here they were, witch, slayer and dragon, thrown into the shark pool at feeding time…
A cry scaled through the chaos. Ben squinted into the writhing mass and made out a horse and rider charging towards him. The odd perspective clawed at his guts, as if he gazed into the back of a spoon. The stallion, its white mane flowing in the wind, came galloping forth regardless. The rider sat proud, a thin and determined form, red silk sweeping from limbs untouched by sun. A mask covered his face, a grinning Punchinello, long nose levelled like a lance at the people in the car park. As the two worlds joined, nether to real, the car park shuddered. Space curved. The pillars leant impossibly outward, supporting a bevelled roof. The place became a grey glass prism.
The rider yelled and raised a hand. Fluorescent spears sprang from his palm, spraying colour across the car park, a refracting mess of colliding planes. The spears hit the jostling facets and exploded, red, orange, violet and green, a blinding rainbow of attack.
The car park ballooned and shrank, and then reasserted itself, the prism breaking, the skein reforming, a wobbling meniscus dividing the worlds. The Lurkers drew back, hissing and flailing, into their nowhere realm. The white stallion whinnied and reared, the Punch in the saddle grinning down at Ben. Another rainbow flash. The golden manacles burst apart, the binding spell undone. Ben fell to his knees, the severed chains spooling around him.