by James Bennet
Shielding his eyes, Ben craned his neck to follow the priest’s unblinking gaze. The air grew chill, the moon dousing the desert heat. Blood streaked the horizon, congealing into an ugly purple, the dam of day broken by the encroaching penumbra, the night flooding in. In minutes, the moon had swallowed half of the sun. It was a black eye bordered by gold, scouring the sands with ominous portent. A minute more and it had obscured the sun completely, the sight a blazing ring in the sky, a flaring golden corona.
The witch, Nan, clapped her hands, a child’s delight. This was what the CROWS had been waiting for. Syzygy. Eclipse. Abandonment. Downfall. A moment for magic of the foulest kind, a moment to shatter the peace of centuries and hurl the world into chaos and war…
The moment stretched on. The stars described lines, faint silver ribbons arcing through the blue like mercury on glass. The air took on a soupy quality, holding the patterns high in the firmament, the light dripping down to touch the earth. Ben recognised no constellations, no symbols that he knew. The map above him was alien and strange. An equation, perhaps, behind the material. Minutes could have passed, or hours. The moon and the sun did not move, hanging frozen in the sky, an eclipse suspended.
With great effort, he wrenched his gaze from the sight. The priest stood muttering some foreign incantation under his breath. His lips shaped a prayer for silence and time, and the world obliged him. Satisfied with the dark and the still, the halt of the heavenly bodies, he turned and regarded Ben.
“There we go,” he said. “A knot in time. A makeshift temple for our rites.”
Ben caught his meaning. The world hadn’t bent to the priest’s command; rather he had removed them all from it, displacing the refinery and its surrounds from the everyday continuum. The soupy quality, the pressure of the air, was all too familiar. Ben had felt the same thing in the underground car park and in the confines of Club Zauber. Magic. Intoxicating. Addictive. In its own uncanny lacuna. He stood here on the borderland, the narrow fringe between the earth and the nether. Sweat rimed his skin. Did he imagine the faint rustling in the sky, the slither of tentacles, the clicking of claws? He glanced over his shoulder, seeing only the tanks below, the soldiers milling at the entrance to the car park. The jets had disappeared, flown outside the ambit of the bubble.
“You’re crazy. The Lurkers will come. No one will survive.”
“Hence the importance of protection,” Kamenwati said, an arm sweeping out to indicate the unseen dome that shone a gentle blue in the gloom. “You didn’t think I created this shield simply to withstand you? Heavens, no. As I said, you’re too late. The hour has come. The revolution is assured. Like a scrap from my plate, you will tempt the appetite of ghosts. Long enough for me to end this world.”
“End?” Ben was looking around anxiously, searching for signs of the grey ghosts, the Walkers between the Worlds. This build-up of magic on the edge of their territory must smell like a fucking feast to them. His heart thumped like footsteps towards a gallows. “I thought you said you wanted to rule. You won’t make much of a king as a corpse.”
“You haven’t been listening. I have lived my life and gone to my tomb, only to rise again renewed, reborn. I watched the flesh rot from my bones, the ages pass in the darkness, and yet, I endure. I am Death. Death Incarnate.”
“You sure about that? Sure you’re not just a piece of maggot-ridden shit?”
Insults. The old play-for-time tactic. Except now there was no time and the priest had no heart to hurt.
“Death, Mr Garston. The only certainty. The only true immortality. I will release this world from its physical bounds, its people from their prison of flesh and decay. Their crude, sweaty couplings. Their brief, pointless lives.”
Ben faced Kamenwati, his panicked survey of the tank forgotten. The priest’s words gripped him like a fist around a snake’s neck.
“Think of it,” Kamenwati said. “Everything born must die. Flowers, animals and people. Stars. Worlds. Even galaxies. Death is the constant, the power that binds, the force that rules them all. Look around you. Death is everywhere. On the TV screen. In the papers. Death is under our feet. Don’t tell me you’re blind to the age. Don’t tell me you can’t see it. Corrupt politicians and rising crime rates. Countless wars and drug abuse. Corporations milking the earth, pumping filth into the atmosphere. Glaciers melting. Rainforests burning. Famine and flood sweeping the land…This world wants death. Its people long for an ending.” He raised a hand, offering damnation. “And I am going to give it to them.”
Ben wanted to protest, to deny the claim, but he’d thought the same thing himself: humanity was shaping its own destruction. You get to wondering who the monsters are. The Queen, chained and comatose, certainly agreed. In death, the priest would unite them all, warp the natural order of things and rule over an undead world, an empire of enslaved souls.
And the tools for his ambition? They lay before him, buried in Atiya’s flesh. The Star with its voracious power. The Crook and the Pschent the means to control it. The priest had devised the Queen’s awakening for this very purpose, to come to him on vengeful wings at the hour of eclipse, the moment when change was possible. To bring him the rekindled relics.
But…
“You can’t control her regalia,” Ben said, the challenge raw in his throat. “You said so yourself. The Star, Crook and Pschent. They only answer to the Queen.”
Kamenwati tapped his lips. Lit by the corona above, he was a candle in the dark, affecting contemplation.
“No,” he said, and he did not smile. “But I can control a little girl.”
He ignored Ben’s expression and turned to the Queen. Atiya snorted, restless. Perhaps her dreams warned her of the priest’s presence. She shifted a little, the chains clanking, and Ben saw the wound in her side, a long, gaping gash where her scales met her smooth underbelly. A skirmish had obviously taken place, a bewitched barrage piercing her flanks and bringing her crashing to the surface of the tank. Blood and smoke issued from the wound, spilling on to steel. Nan Nemain went to it now and stuck her hand into the mess with a relish that turned Ben’s stomach, adding further splashes to the front of her dress. She withdrew her fingers and licked them, sighing in pleasure, then plunged in for more. Fist dripping, the witch returned to Kamenwati’s side and knelt to paint the ground at his feet, smearing a circle around him.
Dragon blood. A potent ingredient. Some claimed that a serpent’s juices granted the user brief invincibility. Others said that the earth itself could not absorb it, but Ben had bled enough in his time to know that that was bullshit. The stuff in his veins was neither poison nor acid. Nevertheless, it held the residue of the long-lost science and spells responsible for his birth. In the wrong hands, it was trouble.
No, it’s goddess blood, he corrected himself. The witch has drawn a circle of protection. A circle within a circle…
Nan retreated, pigtails bobbing. Kamenwati raised his arms.
“Grant power to my ba,” he said, offending the silence. “Grant me power over invocations and blood offerings. Grant me power over the air, the waters and all riverside lands. Grant me power over those who dwell upon the earth and those in the realm of the dead.”
The air grew colder. A clicking and slithering stirred at the edges of Ben’s hearing, a softly approaching babble. Lurkers. But he could not tear his eyes from Kamenwati and the Queen.
“Oh you doorkeepers, you holy guards, who swallow souls in the House of Destruction, open your caverns and halls. I offer Anubis the blood of the dragon. I offer you, Lord, a celestial soul. I offer you this world as a throne.”
Breath plumed from Ben’s nose. He was so close to the unseen barrier, his claws pressed against it, that the atmosphere crackled and fizzed, sparks bouncing off his scales. The chains strained and groaned as Atiya shifted again, her huge eyelids fluttering. Her talons opened and closed, opened and closed. A low growl rumbled across the tank, shuddering under Ben’s feet.
“Hear me! I am Death! By my wor
ds and my sacrifice, I demand an audience!”
This got a response. The Queen’s eyes snapped open. Caught in their glare, Ben staggered backwards, the hate of millennia scouring his soul. Atiya roared, electricity spewing across the space between them, hitting the shield and refracting into a thousand bolts. None of the discharge touched the priest, merely jagged around the circle in which he stood, trembling with spell-fuelled ecstasy. Ben and the witch looked on as Atiya struggled to rise, forcing her bulk against the chains, her horns goring the air. The railings around the tank squealed and twisted, but did not break. Nor did the chains, golden, glyph-etched and charmed. Further entwined by her efforts to free herself, the Queen snarled and rolled on her side, the feed tank booming. Her scorn hit Ben like a truck.
Mas. Snake.
Nacas. Fool.
And then another mental breath. In their shared understanding, a link forged in lightning and fire, Ben grasped her unmistakable despair.
I am…lost…
Atiya’s anguish thundered through him, but a deeper shock lay beyond it, hurling all else aside. The Queen had rolled on to her side, and with the motion revealed the far side of the tank. Ben saw Rose. Saw what they had done to her.
Tied with rope atop the pyramid of barrels, the perforated cylinders thick with sludge, Rose slumped in the pink medieval gown. Her hair hung lank in her face, dull, dirty gold. The veil of her hennin hat fluttered like a rag. Frantically he searched her body, seeking the rise and fall of her breasts, a twitch of muscle, anything. Long draping sleeves covered her arms, but he could see her face, her neck and an exposed length of leg, the latter peeking through a rip in the silk. Her countless scars, red-raw welts, sent him the bitter truth like a gun blast. Even from a distance, he could see that they were symbols, sigils and whorls carved into her flesh, some maniacal, mutilating spell. Her head lolled on her chest, insensate.
Rose McBriar, who had told him that she hated him, that he was ruining her life. Who had kissed him goodbye in a Brooklyn subway never knowing its finality. Who had given him everything and only asked for one thing in return. Rose, his favourite damsel. Rose McBriar was dead.
The Black Knight sniggered in his mind.
You never had much luck with women, did you?
The Queen whispered.
Your woman will die…
No!
Shock forced Ben backwards, away from the shimmering shield. He shook his head, unable to accept what the hole in his breast had already told him was true. Sinking to his knees, he pressed his hands to his skull, trying to contain the eruption inside, a bubbling maelstrom of memories and loss, threatening madness.
Kamenwati said, “Oh you who guard the Doors of the Duat, I know you and I know your names.” Fervour drenched his appeal, his voice thick with need. “Come, Anubis! Come! I offer you this world ripe for the reaping. I have bound human flesh in the sacred charms and preserved the seed inside. I offer you the seed of the dragon. I offer you life for unending death!”
Ben looked up.
Seed? Tears streaked his face, hot on his cheeks. Life?
The words pierced his stricken mind. In his blurred and smouldering vision, Kamenwati was a black cross, his arms spread wide in his elegant tux, his hair a sketch of snowfall. The priest’s attention stayed fixed on Atiya, who grunted and growled, heaving sluggishly against her bonds. The witch, however, was staring at Ben. Nan Nemain, grande dame of the Coven Royal, had seen the bullet shot through him, the fact of Rose’s demise. He had escaped the Three twice, once in New York and once in London, and yet here she was, drinking in the sight of him. Revelling in her triumph. With a grin to cut steel, she held up her little doll. Its lashes fluttered, the sockets behind them empty and blank.
“Things change,” she said.
She tossed the doll over her shoulder. It hit the ground and bounced, its chubby plastic head popping off and rolling, rolling, to rest against the priest’s leather bag.
It was a simple act of childish petulance, but the message was plain. Ben grimaced at Rose, forcing himself to look up at her dead, disfigured body. That was all it took to spin him back across the days of the week, back across the desert and the Med and the Alps. Back from Berlin and the British Museum and Paladin’s Court and his lair under Barrow Hill Road. Back across the Atlantic Ocean to a penthouse rooftop in Vinegar Hill six weeks ago. He’d told Rose that what she wanted wasn’t simple. He’d told her they were different, denied her, and then, just like he always had, he had hit the road. For eight hundred years, since he’d signed that damn scroll in an Uffington meadow, he had been running away…
Know that before God and the King and the knights of this realm, no Remnant spared the Sleep and bestowed the freedom of these Lands shall beget issue of like kind, nor influence, adopt or otherwise endow others into their fold. Since we have granted all these things, for the better order of our kingdom and to allay the discord between us, any Remnant found in breach of this clause shall face swift and lawful execution…
Down through the generations, the Guild had translated the Pact many times, but never revised its codes. The Lore that had bound the exiles from the Old Lands in the early thirteenth century was the same Lore now. Ben had signed the damn scroll in the Manger (and how bitterly ironic that seemed now – irony to choke him like a cherry stone), the deep green dell under White Horse Hill, but even then, he’d been running. He had run from Maud and the burning canopy over his head, the memory of poison on tragic lips. He’d run from countless damsels over the ages – half of whom he could scarcely recall – escaping vows and wedlock and the risk of reproduction. Had he sired another in the past? He did not, could not know. Under the watchful eye of the Guild, it seemed unlikely. These things happened differently for his kind. Precaution was as much a matter of will as it was the use of prophylactics, from pig bladders to linen sheaths and, in these times, rubbers. Conception was quick and gestation long. He had no way of knowing how a woman might bear it or whether she would survive. The matter was unheard of – unnatural, forbidden among dragons, let alone by the Guild. No woman had ever come to him, however, claiming that he was a father, requesting, begging or demanding support, financial, emotional or otherwise. The thought shamed him in his grief; his lack of knowledge or care, his faith in the Pact and loyalty to the Lore blinding him to the possibility of parentage. Blinding him to the hurt of those he had left behind, all of them dead and gone, beyond his amends and explanation. He saw it now, his cowardice. Things changed and things could have been so different. He had run across time and met Rose, the love of his long and spineless life, a treasure he could not own, and here, at the end, he finally understood. The last night they had spent together before he’d gone out and got so drunk, before he’d told her that he didn’t love her and then left for Spain. That night. Yes. So crazy. So final. So sweet…A spark had leapt from his flesh to hers, igniting inside her womb.
Oh, but why didn’t you tell me, Rose?
Then, with ice in his veins, he realised she had, or almost had, when he had returned…
And you should’ve known better. Better than to get involved. Better than to make me…
Fall for you. That was what he’d thought she was going to say. In his arrogance, he had failed to miss the obvious truth, the real reason for the dark circles under her eyes and the bottle of wine in her hand…
The CROWS had not been so blind. The CROWS had foreseen it. Perhaps the bastard priest had told them. Either way, it was clear to him now why the coven had snatched her and why Fulk had sneered in the underground car park, reducing her to the level of a useful ingredient.
She was so much more than that. She was his reason to be, to carry on. The ingredient that Fulk had mentioned could only be life. His baby. His seed. Somehow, that seed still lived, if he credited the priest’s prayer, sustained by the spells they had etched so cruelly, so precisely on to Rose’s body. And Ben thought he knew why. Hadn’t Professor Winlock told him? Infants in the flames. Innocent hearts o
n altars of stone. Hadn’t Fulk referred to Rose as bait? Think of her as a fish on a line. Hadn’t Kamenwati laughed in his face only minutes ago, taunting him with the means of his undoing? One cannot summon the Lord of Death by anointing statues and burning incense. We required the purest essence of life…
Life for death. Living death.
Ben howled. After all his excuses and all his running away, he had failed her, just like he’d failed every woman in the past unlucky enough to cross his path. Rose was dead, and the Three watched him, basking in his pain. The Three watched him and laughed…
No flicker of will crossed his mind. Transformation wasn’t a thought. It was simply a surge of blind fury. With a roar that shook the sky, he burst into bestial form, a great red wall rising from its crouched and weeping state to rival the unseen dome. His wings flared, pennants of war. Heartsick, crazed, he rammed his bulk against the shield, his tail lashing the top of the tank. The tank shuddered, reverberations travelling through the barrier, but they weren’t strong enough to throw the witch from her feet or hinder the chanting priest. Nan Nemain continued to laugh, a child teasing bears at the zoo. With blood in his eyes and fire in his skull, Ben plunged his claws into steel, ripping up sheets and rivets, sculpting metal into jagged waves. He tried again, his shoulder bulling into the wall, his forearms punching into the breach and attempting to dig his way under. The syzygy regarded his efforts with bright disdain. The shield travelled downwards as well as up. The priest’s armour was solid and sound, the force from the magic bricks encircling the scene entire. Even if Ben spent the last of his strength reducing the feed tank to scrap, he would only find a transparent sphere, its circumference afloat in the darkness. Furious, he took to the sky, fanning sand and fumes, and tore at the pipework, his fangs locked in exertion. Wrenching a section free, he turned and flung it at the dome, a truck-sized gnarl of metal clanging into the barricade. The wreckage bounced off, clattering in all directions. Bellowing, he pumped his wings and thrust higher, heading for the nearest distillation tower, meaning to tear it from its foundations and bring the structure down on Kamenwati and the witch.