Chasing Embers

by James Bennet

  Rose ran. She didn’t know where she was going. Stupidly, all she could think was I’m done with waiting tables as her adrenalin chose a narrow street ahead and yanked her in that direction. Gasping, stumbling, her hair in her face, she turned corner after corner, losing herself in the maze. Twice she tried to speak to strangers, petition them for help, but her tongue lay thick in her mouth and her dishevelled appearance didn’t help to bridge the language barrier. Men and women shoved her aside, going about their business. The sky slipped by overhead, a river between the rooftops like an inverted Nile, leading her God knew where.

  Twenty minutes later found her crossing Saleh Salem Street, bursting from the labyrinth of buildings in a weary jog. Cars spluttered past, ignoring her waving arms or rewarding them with honks.

  “Please,” she managed. “Please…”

  She fought to get herself under control. What did people do in situations like these? She stifled a laugh, reluctant to hear her own panic, high and shrill, a whistle on a derailing steam train. How many people were kidnapped by witches in this day and age? The thought was almost hilarious. Almost as hilarious as how quickly she’d accepted the impossible, these strange creatures with the talents at their disposal…But then she had dated Ben Garston. Her nails bit into her palms again, trying to prevent her thoughts from freewheeling into shock. She made her way over a bridge, spanning the unruly lanes of traffic, calling her wits back to herself. Focus on the practical. She needed the police, but typically, she could see no police. That she was heading into the outskirts of the city seemed obvious, the houses thinning out, the stretches of desiccated palms and flat yellow land growing wider, and she couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing. I’m just a waitress, she told herself. Just…Then the inner voice snapped in, bold and fiercely Brooklynite. No. You’re a survivor. And you must survive this.

  She hugged herself, sheltering arms sliding around her belly and waist, warmth to calm her fluttering nerves. Practicality told her that she should hail a passing taxi and make her way to the US Embassy, beg for sanctuary at the gates. In the dusty road ahead, however, no taxi was apparent. She was heading into some kind of slum, set in the shadow of a low range of hills. A filthy grid of streets and tiny houses opened up before her, but it was only as she began to stumble down the first one that Rose realised that the buildings weren’t houses at all. They were tombs. The whole area was some kind of graveyard, a dense maze of mausoleums set on the edge of the city. In amongst the graves, the arabesque domes and towers, the narrow gated crypts, more recent hovels rose to the sky, flaked, crumbling and sand-pocked, their walls scrabbling from hallowed ground.

  But the place was far from empty. Rose stumbled on, refusing to let the fact slow her. Ragged people, men, women and children, were scurrying everywhere. Most of them appeared to be concerned with the trash littering the place, great heaps stacked against walls or collected in the beds of rusted trucks, engines rumbling as they waited to move on. Women in scarves sat in the shadow of the tombs sorting through the stuff, picking through aluminium, cardboard and plastic like scrawny, busy vultures. Children clambered up and down the stacks, tossing bottles, tyres and cans to one another. Rose found herself witness to a bizarre production line.

  What are they doing, here among the bones? Recycling? It looks like recycling…

  A hand climbed to her throat as she noticed the eyes peeping out from some of the tombs, flat, indifferent, merely marking this strange blonde woman staggering down the street. In turn, Rose took in the washing hanging outside some of the tombs, the crockery waiting to be washed, and she had never felt so far away from her apartment in Vinegar Hill. These people actually lived here? She had seen many homeless people on the streets of New York, and worse deprivations among the children cared for by the charity where she sometimes volunteered, but she had never seen poverty like this. The scene before her was like a punch in the guts, and for a moment she forgot about her own predicament. The reeking ghetto, well accustomed to its dereliction, went on about its daily business, rickety donkey-pulled carts loaded down with old newspaper, cardboard boxes, shattered glass, discarded clothes and broken toys creaking around her as if she wasn’t there. The men and children collected, and the women sorted, in what Rose imagined must be an ongoing daily scavenger hunt.

  “They call them the Zabbaleen, the ‘garbage people’.” Rose was so shocked, she hadn’t heard the footsteps approaching behind her, becoming aware of the shadow’s presence only as his hand, cold and firm, settled upon her shoulder. “Thousands of years ago, slaves quarried the stone from the Mokattam Hills for pyramids and temples,” he told her, in his usual measured tones. “The poorest still live here, forced into poverty and filth by urbanisation, the 1992 earthquake or other unhappy circumstances. Cairo dumps her trash here and the Zabbaleen scratch out a living from whatever they can find. Wonderful, isn’t it? Disease in the area is, of course, rife. Tourists seldom come here. Nor do the police, except on the most pressing business, which makes the slum fitting for my purpose.”

  Rose, who could see nothing wonderful about it, endured this unasked-for lecture with a stiff spine and empty lungs, a frozen scream that had nothing to do with the witch’s spell. The cold crept from the shadow’s hand and down toward her heart as he concluded cheerfully, “They call the slum El-Arafa. The City of the Dead.”

  This was enough for Rose. Adrenalin kicked her into violence, her foot shooting back to connect with his shin. With a grunt of surprise, he released her, and his pain was music to her ears. Before he could recover himself, she swung out with her fist – her left one, because for all her father’s drinking, she had picked up a thing or two – and felt a savage kind of joy as it smashed into his jaw. Blood flew and she rejoiced again in the knowledge that her captor was human after all. Talents aside, he was human and therefore fallible. She could escape him. She could.

  Her elation shrivelled up in her breast as the shadow straightened, granting her a ruddy smile. She had a second or two as he reached out, his vice-like grip closing once more – this time on air. Nursing her knuckles, watched by the impassive tomb dwellers, Rose went scurrying across the street and dived into a gap between the small buildings. Her elbows scraped on stone and she turned, seeking another path around a shattered statue and scrabbling up a gravelly incline towards another row of tombs, these ones standing dark and empty. Abandoned. Was the shadow behind her? She couldn’t tell, her gaze desperately fixed on her hiding place. Hands trembling, breaths coming hard, she pushed back the creaky copper gate, green with age, and crawled into the tomb, a twelve-foot-square musty space that let in none of the sunlight.

  In the middle of the room was a raised stone slab, grey, chipped and worn, a grave for some unknown, nameless soul. Someone had recently used it as a dining table, broken crockery and scattered cutlery lying around its base. Her knees crunched through grit and bone as she made it to the far wall, her back against it, eyes wide and set on the open gate.

  Instinct urged her to scream for help, but she covered her mouth with both hands, suppressing its danger.

  Footsteps on gravel. A shadow passed over the gate. Then it was gone and she let out a long, slow breath of relief. Closing her eyes, she tipped her head back against the stone, letting the coolness of the wall calm her.

  When she opened her eyes again, the man in the tuxedo was standing in the doorway. His tall frame blotted out the sun.

  “You’re so full of life, my dear,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s why you are here.”

  “Fuck you,” she replied, out of breath and no longer caring.

  “That’s the spirit.” He smiled, all red teeth. “You have no idea what you’re going to face come Sunday. I imagine you’ll remember my company fondly.”

  “Just get it over with.” Her skin shone in the flickering light, glistening with exertion. She could feel strands of hair sticky on her brow, and her eyes roved around the room, taking in the carvings on the walls, worn prayers to a soul
long gone.

  The shadow, observing her dismay, said, “I know, I know. Hardly a five-star hotel. Content yourself that you’re getting to see the real city, none of that Four Seasons fakery, canapés at dusk, excursions in air-conditioned coaches.” He affected a shudder. “Cairo is a place of struggle. Always was, always will be, from the siege of Memphis to the Ottoman War to the unrest of today. You see? Struggle. Pharaohs, Fatimid and film stars have died here. And, indeed, so will you. A little.”

  Rose moaned, muttering a weary imprecation. She wasn’t going to beg.

  “Oh, it’s nothing personal. Blame fate if you must.” He shrugged. “Now where was I? Oh yes. Protection. Eyes and snakes and flowering reeds. Ankhs and falcons and birds. You won’t face this struggle alone, oh no. The dark will surely come for you, but I will be waiting…”

  The shadow set down his bag. It was heavy, stirring up dust, clouds begriming his jacket. He spoke a word – or a symbol representing one – and Rose felt the air congealing around her again, the noose tightening, the yoke restored.

  He retrieved the knife from the bag, the strange hook-ended one he’d recently haggled from Abbas in the bazaar. He held it out before him, the light spilling through the copper gate glinting on the blade.

  “I dedicate your sacrifice to Thoth,” he said. “Thoth was the god of writing and magic. Topical, I think you’ll agree. Think of yourself as papyrus, a scroll for hieratic script. You have no idea how special you are.”

  Rose said nothing as he took a step towards her.

  The shadow paused, tipping his head in an afterthought.

  “What do you think, my dear? Do you think he is still coming for you?”

  Of course he meant Ben. Who else? Whatever was going on here, whatever trouble she was in, centred on her ex. In the end, after everything, Ben had managed to win the argument. Either by accident or by design, he had put her in the position of needing to be saved.

  She hated him a little for that.

  You’re a survivor, she told herself.

  She gritted her teeth as the knife moved in.

  Outside, Ra sailed over the City of the Dead, chasing shadows across the land.

  FIFTEEN

  Wings shredding the morning mist, Red Ben Garston, Sola Ignis, took his bearings from the sun and sped into the south.

  Up here, he was almost invisible. Aeroplanes didn’t fly so high and winked far below him, criss-crossing the European sky. Below the planes, birds and the occasional hot-air balloon. Through gaps in the clouds, the world peeked in, a green-brown mosaic of cultivated fields and bald hills, ribboned by grey and winding roads. The fields surrendered to the spider web of cities, the roads converging, looping and once again forking, the ever-expanding maze of conurbation. Now and then, Ben looked down and shook ice from his snout, crystals sparkling over his neck, his huge nostrils flaring. After the confines of Club Zauber (not to mention the underground car park), it felt good to spread his wings, but the height was both a blessing and a curse, as liberating as it was depressing. He marvelled at the scale of human progress and mourned the loss of trees. He sighed at the mirror-like Senftenberg Lakes, frowned at the smog rising from Dresden. Civilisation was a double-edged sword, and his hope that it might one day free itself from waste and pollution seemed as thin as the air he breathed. Civilisation came at a price. As one who lived hidden in its heart, he could never forget that.

  These heights were perhaps the last true wilderness, a lofty prairie where Ben roamed free. Almost invisible, but not quite, not nearly enough. Where the ancients had descried astrological lines, heliocentric charts and Flammarion wheels, their modern counterparts dissected the sky with time zones and strict meridians, weather systems and airline routes. Degrees of latitude and longitude. Imaginary borders. Where the ancients had sent shrill prayers, woodsmoke and arrows, Ben’s contemporaries sent a barrage of satellites, planes, missiles and radiation. The world roared with technology, the noise echoing deep into space. Somewhere, on some radar, in some telescope, Ben knew he was an unexplained presence, a bestial UFO, a winged optical illusion, an impossibly large ghost signal.

  Unseen, he slipped above the world, cloaked by distance as much as disbelief. Nevertheless, these transformations were mounting up – both his and the Queen’s – and only a fool would think they’d go unnoticed for ever. That blip on the screen, that speck on the lens, when related to others from credible tongues, could well lead to serious trouble. More trouble. Trouble that took him from the pages of Paranormal Magazine and into the news headlines. Sooner or later, the world would look up and see, and history would repeat itself. And this time not with pitchforks and torches. This time with rockets and guns…

  No one wanted that. Another good reason to find the Queen, send her packing into the Long Sleep, rescue Rose and resume his covert existence. At a hundred and fifty thousand feet, Europe a shrouded map below and the sun spearing the bitter blue, it almost sounded easy.

  As easy as dying, bonehead…

  Midday found him west of Prague – or what he guessed was Prague – the curve of the Vltava river edged by far-off bridges and buildings. A century had passed since he’d flown this way on some half-remembered journey to the sea, and despite his recent travels, his wings still ached from years of disuse. The hearty breakfast provided by the envoy before his departure – bread, eggs and a fresh pint of milk – was rapidly wearing off with his efforts, and as he sailed over Old Bohemia, he eyed cows grazing on a hillside with a hunger long suppressed. Remembering his vow, he drew deeper on his reserves, flexed his slab-like muscles and descended to ride a brisk thermal toward the Austrian Alps.

  The sun arced across the sky, stretching his shadow out under him and into the fiery west. The mountains clawed higher and higher, a bleak, broken horizon, a jagged snow-capped wall. Clouds swelled above them billowing and black, a stacked cumulus fleet like ghostly men-of-war. Faint lightning flashed in their depths, painting the towering ice cliffs, illuminating chasms and crags already filling up with night. Darkness swallowed the sky ahead, stealing the last hour of day. Ben swept in under its cloak, intending to find shelter somewhere and rest for a while under his wings, wait for the storm to pass. Cloud enveloped him, shrouding his descent. Thunder rumbled in the distance like an oncoming train. He navigated peaks and saddles, coasting through an archipelago of rock, across a sea of fog. His prow of horns cut through the soup, his gills cycling the alpine air, propelling and pulling him on. Integral gases warmed his blood against the glacial cold. Steam trailed from him like a robe, ragged plumes puffing outward with every stroke of his wings. His superior senses couldn’t help him here, curbed and confounded by cloud as they were. The slough of snow and tumbling stone filtered muffled to his ears, offering no clear direction, and he had lost the compass of the sun. He slowed, veering down a sheer-walled canyon, gliding deeper into the gloom.

  The mountains boomed, disgruntled by his presence. Lightning flared, washing the rock. Ben made out shapes in the ebbing shadows, spectres from his troubled dreams. Skulls. Pyramids. Grasping hands. As he soared onward through the clouds, reducing them to swirling ignis fatuus, he projected his thoughts on the fulminations, the boiling banks reflecting memories. Here, the strata between two thunderheads became the grin in the Javits Center, taunting him for his ignorance. There, silver inside a bruised belly depicted the pillars of the British Museum, the great gate to knowledge that had led to his torment and pain. Lightning flashed, crystalline, the glint of stolen diamonds. Thunder cackled like Texan witches. Behind the sweeps of cloud, black wings soared and circled, stalking him in shadowy orbit.

  Static prickled along Ben’s spine, nipping at his nerves. Each salvo against the rock rang like a hammer blow inside his head, the storm closing around him. When one wingtip brushed the cliff face, scattering ice and scree, he pushed himself up to straddle the clouds. A white-hot bolt arrested him, forcing him back and down, fried air shrieking in his ears. The wind blustered, tossing him around like a
kite, and he skewed with the gust, changing course. Righting himself, he searched for a break in the clouds, and seeing one above him, rose towards it, seeking escape.

  Too late. He realised his mistake, the static tingling in his mind, a sharp, intuitive warning. The gap in the clouds slammed shut like a door, crackling with electrical discharge. Blinded, he rolled, his tail thrashing, a flag ripped free by the wind. He folded his wings, trying to drop out of the trap, the air a cushion beneath him. He looked up, blinking, to see a membranous shadow pass behind the clouds. Scales like glass caught the flash of lightning. A tiara of horns gored the haze. Black claws, glossy, outstretched, came darting toward him.

  Queen Atiya dived from the heights, her eyes promising death.

  SIXTEEN

  His shoulders in her iron grip, Atiya plunged Ben into the storm, trying to drown him under the clouds. Her talons tore through scales and into flesh, onyx knives that drew first blood, scattered gore like wine. Ben thrashed and roared, but her dive had caught him unawares; he was like a fish snatched from a lake. His wings snapped upward with the impact, yanked by the wind over his head. The Queen’s wings were everywhere. It was hard to differentiate between them and the clouds, black fading to grey as she forced him down into the canyon, into the last light of day. Her eyes, burning blue, impaled him with intention. The storm rumbled and spat around her, and Ben struggled in its folds, an evil heat scorching his flesh, prompting a cry of pain. He lashed out, raking her breast, his claws scoring her scales, as strong, as impenetrable as armour. The friction sprayed sparks, not blood, and Atiya folded her wings in tight, increasing their plummeting speed. Her snout was a blur above him, a grille of determined fangs.