by Tim Lebbon
The old woman came close, standing beside Mallian and looking down on Gregor with a sneer. He was far beneath her, a fly to a spider, shivering beneath her gaze. Sharp fingers probed and explored across his skin, scratching here, pinching there.
“He’s worse than human,” Jilaria Bran said.
“He’s a friend,” Mallian said, “and his purpose is important. You know that.”
“As is mine,” she said.
“As is ours!” Mallian said, his loud voice sending a vibration through the ground.
Gregor blinked and imagined himself as a small boy, back on that marsh island, ignorant of all the things the world contained and wishing to know more. Mallian had given him a purpose back then, a great destiny, to become Kin and bridge between worlds. He had a feeling he was about to have his perceptions widened once again.
“But I’ve lived so long,” Jilaria Bran said, voice quieter.
“You’ll be remembered as one of the greatest,” Mallian said. He placed his free hand across her back and pulled her in close, crouching down and hugging her to him. She was half his height. He pressed his forehead to hers and they whispered to each other, words Gregor could not hear.
Engines sounded in the distance. Dust clouds rose around a bend in the road, and Gregor tensed, expecting the harsh blare of sirens at any moment. He would run into the fields. Mallian and the Kin would do the same, and he would lose the girl, this strange girl who he’d thought was Kin but might not be at all.
The vehicles that came around the bend weren’t police cars. One was a small car, the other a truck with piles of raw timber in the back. They slowed as they approached the scene in the road, then stopped a hundred yards away.
A short fat man stepped from the car.
Mallian stood to his full, incredible height once more and turned to face the new arrivals. Gregor didn’t hear, but he saw the man mouth the words, Oh my God.
“Jeremiah,” Mallian said. The hairy man disappeared into the fruit trees beside the road, and seconds later he leapt from the field closer to the two vehicles. Another man was leaving the truck. Jeremiah punched him to the ground, and Gregor heard the meaty impact as his fists connected. The fat man standing beside the lead car backed away, and a shape in the passenger seat slid down as if to hide.
“Bring them,” Mallian called.
Jeremiah did as he was told, dragging the floored man behind him, clawing open the car door and dragging out a woman, nodding at the fat man to lead the way. The kooshdakhaa woman and the pixie went to help.
There was unbridled terror in the eyes of the newcomers. It was a look he had seen before, but never directed at him, because he was just a man with body modifications, a faux-Kin who dreamed that he was more. An oddity, a madman with a blade.
But soon I will be Kin, he thought, and he smiled at Jilaria Bran.
A witch’s third ear and eye.
23
As they swept around the bend in the road and Angela saw the scene before them, her shock was echoed by Lilou’s single breathed, disbelieving word.
“Mallian.”
No one else spoke. The surprise was too intense, a palpable thickening of the atmosphere inside the Jeep.
Mallian turned and looked their way, and Angela saw the small shape in his left hand.
“Sammi!” she cried. “He’s got Sammi!”
Vince powered along the road, skidding to a halt twenty yards from the car that was nose-down in a ditch.
“Angela,” Lilou said, holding her arm. “Be careful.”
“Careful?” All she cared about was Sammi. The girl seemed slumped in Mallian’s grasp, held up off the ground by the giant Nephilim.
“Mallian has his ambitions,” Lilou said.
“And aren’t they yours as well?” Vince snapped.
Angela was confused, but she brushed it all aside. She and Meloy opened their doors at the same time, and as she jumped from the vehicle, Angela tried to assess the situation. They had arrived in the middle of something. It was a standoff of some sort, and Lilou’s words rang back.
“Be careful.”
A bloodied man stood close to the crashed car. Most likely that was Gregor, and she caught the glint of a blade in his left hand. Beside Mallian stood the witch Jilaria Bran, and behind them along the road was the pixie Thorn. She had last seen all three of them outside Mary Rock’s burning house, that night in London, and finding them here in broad daylight was surreal, so much so that she blinked to clear her vision, doubting herself.
How the hell did they get here? And why?
There were two vehicles further along the road, both standing abandoned with their doors open. A man and woman walked in front of a big, hairy man. The hairy man dragged someone along the road behind him.
And there was someone else. A woman, or a creature, or both. The woman was naked and sleek, pale-skinned and with auburn hair and damp skin. The creature she might have been had brown fur and graceful lines. She changed constantly between blinks, and only when Angela caught her from the corner of her eye did her image settle into one or the other.
Somehow, for some reason, Mallian had come, and he had gathered North American Kin to his cause.
Angela picked up her pace and ran forward, Meloy close behind her. She heard Vince clamber from the Jeep and call her name, but she wouldn’t stop, not even for him. She wouldn’t stop for anyone.
Pausing by the crashed car, she circled around its rear end, keeping Gregor in view.
“Angela,” Mallian said.
“That’s my niece,” she said. Her heart was thumping. She had never seen the Nephilim so clearly, so exposed to the daylight, and she could not help feeling that a line had been crossed. He wore only a scrap of clothing, but nothing could hide his size and inhumanity. He was a monster, his shadow cast across them all.
“This?” he asked, lifting Sammi in one hand. She stirred, but only a little. “She’s well.”
“Put her down.”
Mallian stood taller. “You’d dare order me—”
“Put her the fuck down, Mallian!” Angela shouted. She heard gasps around her, and she didn’t care if they were human or Kin. “Put her down and get out of my life!”
“I’m not in your life,” he said. “You’re in mine, and for now I need to keep hold of this girl.” The figure in his grip squirmed.
“Sammi?” Angela said. “It’s Aunt Angela, I’m here. I’m here to help.”
The hairy man pushed a fat man and a woman to the ground behind Mallian, and then heaved the groggy person he’d been dragging so that he landed beside them.
“Keep watch on them, Jeremiah,” Mallian said.
“Mallian, why are you here?” Lilou asked. “How are you here?”
“You didn’t know he was coming?” Vince asked.
“Of course not.”
“Well, if he wanted exposure, this is the way to do it,” Meloy said. The awe in his voice was obvious. The fear, too. Angela didn’t think she’d ever heard the London gang boss sounding so afraid.
She stepped forward. Vince held her arm but she tugged, and when he gripped tighter she turned and slapped his arm away, glaring at him.
“It’s dangerous,” he whispered.
“It’s always dangerous,” she said. Turning again, walking toward Mallian and the innocent orphaned girl in his grasp, she kept one eye on Gregor to her left.
“Jilaria Bran,” Mallian said. “You have been my friend.”
Still holding Sammi in his left hand, Mallian brought the witch to his side with his right. Angela saw a strange look in the old woman’s eyes. Terror, and then a calm acceptance. Her expression softened, and she looked up at the Nephilim she might have known for five hundred years.
Mallian closed his huge hand around the back of the witch’s neck, fingers meeting at her throat. She did not blink.
The scene froze, all movement ceased, and a gentle breeze brushing through the fields of fruit bushes dropped, as if the land itself was payi
ng attention to this scene that should never be.
With one sharp twist and tug, Mallian ripped the witch’s head from her body. She made a single sharp squeal as her neck stretched, then bones snapped and flesh ripped, and her body dropped to the ground at his feet.
Angela made a sound, something between a sob and a scream.
Mallian held the head in his hand and looked at it for a while, as if possessed of a deep, silent sadness. For that moment Angela believed the Nephilim to be on his own. Perhaps he was remembering old times, reliving old memories he had shared with the witch. Or maybe he was thinking only of the future.
“He’s gone mad,” Vince said. “He’s insane.”
“More than before?” Meloy asked.
“No,” Lilou said, quietly so that Mallian could not hear. “He’s moving on. This is Ascent.”
“Gregor!” Mallian said, and he held out his hand. The man stepped forward and grasped the head by the hair, lowering it to the ground and kneeling beside it, knife poised.
“Stomp him!” Lilou shouted. “Mallian, that’s the Kin-killer. Crush him!”
Mallian barely glanced at her.
As Gregor started carving into the head, Angela began to move again. She walked toward Mallian and her niece. This time Vince didn’t try to stop her, but came with her. She was grateful to him for that. They had lived together, and when the time came she was sure that they would die together. Even if that time were now.
“I don’t care about any of this,” Angela said. “Just give me my niece and we’ll go. Do whatever it is you have to do, Mallian. I don’t give a shit.”
“Oh my God!” someone shouted. “My God, help me Lord, my God!” It was the fat man from the car, grasping onto the woman he’d been traveling with. Behind him the other man was sitting up, dazed, face bloodied, and he froze in place when he saw what was happening. None of them could understand. The creatures, the headless woman, the terror.
“Mallian?” the hairy man standing over them asked. There was an eagerness in his voice.
“Of course, Jeremiah,” Mallian said.
The violence that erupted then was brutal and shocking. Angela had seen its like before, in the house where Mary Rock and her sick group of diners had died. Vince and Meloy had seen it, too, and perhaps Meloy had perpetrated such acts, even if some of the stories about him were untrue. Out here in the rich dawn light on a wide country road cutting through the heart of America, it seemed so much more shocking and unreal.
The blood looked much redder.
The hairy man fell on the fat man and his companion, pummeling them with his fists, stomping on them when they fell, and he seemed to have the strength of an ape, heavy fists swinging with dizzying speed, dull wet thuds interspersed with the sharp crunch of bone. He laughed as he worked, a high-pitched giggle that verged on hysterical.
The fat man was soon motionless, but the woman managed to crawl across the road and tumble into the ditch at the roadside. She left a trail of blood behind her. Jeremiah went after her on hands and feet, following the gory trail and jumping on her in the ditch, ripping and thumping. His giggle rose even higher. Angela was glad she could not see, but the sounds were awful.
The other man who’d been stirring on the road stood and ran back toward the vehicles at the sight of such horrific violence. He staggered as he went, still dizzied from whatever had put him down in the first place. He didn’t get very far.
The shape that darted at him looked almost comical, but Angela knew that Thorn was anything but. The pixie tackled the man’s legs and brought him down, then scrambled up his back and grabbed hold of his hair. Three heavy impacts on the road and the man was still, but the creature kept slamming his face into the ground. Blood splashed Thorn’s clothing. He didn’t care. If anything, he seemed to welcome its warm wet kiss.
“Give her to me,” Angela said. Her heart hammered even harder as she looked at Sammi in the Nephilim’s grasp. Her niece seemed limp and unconscious, but Angela saw what the Kin leader could not. She was feigning. The girl was looking right at her. Angela offered a vague smile, and Sammi closed her eyes.
She thinks Vince and I are killers, Angela thought. Maybe she thinks we’re with them. But she couldn’t let that affect her now. Whatever Sammi had heard about them, on the news or from family and friends, it was a lie. Angela would do everything in her power to make her understand that.
“Only I say what happens here,” Mallian said. He gestured behind him at the murdered people. “You’ve seen that.”
Jeremiah crawled from the ditch, and he had blood on his face. He was carrying something. At first Angela couldn’t make out what it was, but when he lifted it to his mouth and took a gaping bite, muffling his mad laughter at last, she recognized a forearm and hand.
She gagged, turned away, and saw Vince staring pale-faced at what was happening.
Mallian looked, as well. “Oh, Jeremiah, that’s disgusting.” He sounded amused.
Jeremiah shrugged, swallowed. “I am what I am.”
Mallian turned back to Gregor. “Time is short. There’ll be more along soon, so you should hurry.”
“Kill him!” Lilou shouted. She stepped toward the Kin-killer, Meloy with her. Gregor crouched above the witch’s head like a dog with a bone, jabbing his knife at the air between them. Mallian put himself in the way.
“He’s doing something for me,” the Nephilim said. The nymph and the gangster stopped as he stared them down.
“Mallian…” Lilou said. “You could have trusted me.”
“Should I have?” he asked. “You consort with humans.”
“He’s a human!” She gestured at Gregor.
“Not for long,” Gregor said. He dug, cut, sawed at the head, and with a crack he opened up the dead Kin’s skull, reaching inside and removing a slippery black object the size of a plum.
“What?” Angela asked. “What’s he doing? What have you told him, Mallian?”
Gregor stood with the object and showed it to Mallian, smiling with pride.
Mallian nodded. “Close,” he said. “You’re close.”
“Thank you,” Gregor said. He nodded down at the girl in the Nephilim’s grasp. “It would be much easier with her.”
“No!” Angela shouted. As she stepped forward her vision blurred and then the naked woman was in front of her, image flickering as if caught between two frames of a film. Woman, otter, part of both, her nudity was threatening, her animal teeth sharp and yellowed with age and use.
Angela lashed out. The woman must not have been expecting trouble from this human. Angela’s fist connected with her jaw and she went down, sharp teeth clashing, furred body striking the road. She grunted and was on her feet again, clawed hands raking the air as she came for Angela.
Angela ducked and punched again, but this time she missed as the otter woman twisted aside and kicked her legs out from beneath her. Then the creature was on her, smelling of sweat and stale water, and her mouth opened wide to display sharp teeth clotted with old meat.
The otter-woman screeched as she was shoved away from Angela, and then Vince was crouching at her side. He held a short knife in one hand, offered up to anyone who might attack them again.
Angela stood and brushed herself down.
“No more,” Mallian bellowed. The Nephilim’s thunderous voice was enough to halt the scuffle, freezing everyone in their place. No one could confront him and win. Tall, strong, proud, he had chanced the hazardous journey to North America for a reason, and Angela knew there was no talking him out of it.
Sammi was looking at her again, her eyes this time wider with recognition. Angela smiled and nodded, and the corner of Sammi’s mouth flickered. But she had seen so much, been through so much, and now she was in the hands of a creature she could have never imagined and would never understand. Angela wanted to sweep the girl into her arms and protect her, and to take comfort from the contact.
She had been away from her family for too long.
“W
hy kill them?” Lilou said.
“Jeremiah needs to fuel himself,” Mallian said. “Besides, it’s too early to be exposed. Ascent has a way to go, but only a short way. You’re still part of it, Lilou. Still my friend.”
Lilou did not reply.
Jeremiah chewed on something plucked from one of the other dead people now, and the wet chomping sounds were audible. Angela’s stomach heaved, but she swallowed down the bile. She wouldn’t demean herself in front of these monsters.
“And I’m still your friend, Lilou,” Mallian said. “Too many years to throw away.”
“Friends trust each other,” she said.
Mallian dropped Sammi at Gregor’s feet. The girl stood, unsteady, and Angela dashed for her, but Mallian was quick, and she ran into his heavy arm. She had never been this close to him. She could smell his breath, feel his heat, feel the weight of this huge creature. She feared him, but that didn’t stop her from hating him.
“You have no idea,” she said, looking up into his big face. “No idea about love or caring for anyone else.”
“I care for everyone who matters!”
“Like her?” Angela nodded past him at Jilaria Bran’s headless corpse.
Mallian shoved her to the ground. She didn’t even see it coming, and it was like being hit by a tree. Winded, dazed, Angela rolled onto her side and watched as the huge Kin waved to the others around him. Thorn and the cannibal Jeremiah vanished into the fields of fruit. The naked otter-woman was already gone.
Gregor grabbed Sammi’s arm and dragged her past Mallian toward the murdered people and their cars.
“Please!” Angela shouted.
“Don’t beg him,” Vince said, kneeling by her side. “Don’t plead. We’ll follow, and we’ll kill the bastard who has her.”
Angela could only watch. She was aware of Meloy and Lilou standing close behind her, and the sense of hopelessness was profound and shattering. Four of them could not take on Mallian and win. Eight couldn’t do it, nor sixteen. He held power over them, like a raised foot forever ready to fall on an ant. There was nothing they could do within his shadow.
Out of it, they might fare better.
Gregor pushed Sammi into the dead man’s truck and got in himself, pulling the door shut, performing a rapid turn in the road, and then driving away. Mallian watched him go, leaning against the dead couple’s car, tensing, and heaving it over onto its roof. He grabbed at the tires and ripped them into shreds, one of the wheels coming off in his hand.