by Mike Wild
"Tried a few more contacts," the priest said. "Still no sign of Ravne."
Brand nodded. Though he was sure that after their escape the rippers would have returned to the middle plane from which they came, Ravne had not reappeared, dashing the small hope he'd had that the man had somehow gone into hiding. But he had thought that a long shot, anyway. Frankly, given the sheer chaos of their final flight from the City, Ravne could have been slaughtered in front of their eyes and they might not have known it, and he didn't hold out much hope for the man's return. But, Ravne was Ravne, blessed, it seemed, with an innate gift for survival, and as far as he knew he could even now be working his way back to Exham Priory.
"I found something on the net," Brand informed the others. "Something-"
"Shh!" Hannah said suddenly, interrupting him. Like Jenny Simmons before her, the American had been staring out into the dark, reflecting on the day's events, when something had caught her eye. Or to be more accurate, didn't quite catch her eye. She frowned. "Verse," she called quietly, motioning him to her side.
"Is it Ravne?" Brand asked.
"Quiet, Brainiac!"
The big man joined her at the window.
"Expecting the unexpected, babe?"
"Maybe," she said slowly. "Is it me, or is the horizon turning hazy?"
Verse squinted out into the dark. The halogen whiteness of the security lights that lit the distant hedgerows did seem to be diffusing somewhat. "You're not thinkin'...?"
"Uh-huh."
"It's been a helluva day and that firefight made us all a bit jumpy," Verse said. "It's probably just fog. Besides, you know what the doc said. The rippers don't - can't, in fact - operate outside the heart of London."
Hannah bit her lip. "Sure. But humour me."
"I don't see what I can-" Verse said, and then stopped. "Hang on," he added. He turned and positioned himself at a laptop on the table. A little key clattering later he had accessed Siddhi. The clandestine surveillance chip that Ethan Kostabi had embedded in a Drax Industries communications satellite and had made available to them since the Boswell incident was proving to be a handy piece of electrickery. Within seconds he brought up a satcam image of southern England. He located their position then zoomed, zoomed and zoomed again, until Exham Priory was clearly visible in the centre of the image. A fog did indeed appear to be closing in, hanging over the Priory like a shroud.
The problem was that beyond Exham Priory's walls the countryside was as clear as day.
"Nope, you're not being paranoid, babe," Verse informed his partner calmly. "These bastards really are out to get us." He rose and began to run towards the small anteroom that served as their security office. "Ness!"
The Scotsman cursed as the door to what he considered to be his personal sanctum was flung open, a small puff of popcorn dust escaping his mouth along with the invective. The DVD he'd started to play on one of the monitors had barely started and the Duke hadn't even had time to ask directions to...
"Whaff?" he demanded.
"Trouble. Think our friends are back."
Ness's eyes narrowed. He took a hasty slug from a can of Carlsberg and then rode his chair across the small room, away from the DVD monitor and to the main security screens. Now his fingers clattered on keys and a series of tactical views of the Exham estate sprang into life on the screens. A great number of pulsing red blips dotted the overlay, like a sudden and dramatic outbreak of electronic acne. "Multiple contacts," he reported in his thick Glaswegian brogue. "South perimeter... west... north... east... Shite, the fookers are all around us."
"It is them?"
Ness zoomed a security cam into the centre of a patch of roiling fog, saw a flash of angular figures and glints of blade. "Unless there's an Edward Scissorhands convention we didnae get invited to, ah think aye, pretty much."
Jonathan Brand glanced in at the monitors and dropped the papers he was holding to the floor. "That isn't possible. They shouldn't be able to leave-"
"Yeah, you already explained that, Brainiac," Hannah Chapter shouted, already throwing herself to the side of a window where she could best defend. Swinging into action, Verse was busy snapping the lock on one of the many arms cabinets positioned around the priory and revealing a rack of assorted weapons. He tossed a semi-automatic to Hannah, who caught it neatly in one hand, and for himself he took a chainsaw that he'd had specially adapted for melee combat and had kept for emergencies such as this.
He ignored Brand. From past experience he knew there was nothing worse than an armed academic. And as for Jenny Simmons, "I'm presuming that now you're rested you'll manage without," he said.
Brand's ex fiancée simply smiled and in a flare of light transformed into Baarish-Shammon. She flexed razor talons as the smile grew into her familiar grinning gash, whisps of unholy smoke leaking slowly from its edges. [I'll manage,] she hissed.
Brand threw his hands in the air. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked the others. "You already know the best thing to do with these things is run, especially in close quarters such as these."
"Understood, Brainiac," Hannah countered. And as she spoke the first of the encroaching rippers appeared at the window beside her. She spun out and fired a burst, shattering the glass and blasting the dark figure back onto the grass. "But we can't run forever and I for one don't intend to turn tail without first truly pissing them off."
In the security room Mikey Ness reacted to her shots with a slow shake of the head. He leaned down and swept up the pump-action he kept by the side of the chair for emergencies, racking it with a kerchak. On the screen the pulsing red dots had begun to amalgamate into a corpuscle-like shape that all but obliterated the priory. At the same time there was a sound of more windows shattering, only now from the outside in.
"Ah bollocks," he muttered to himself. "All ah wanted was a bi' o' The Quiet Man an' instead ah get the fookin' Alamo."
Chapter Six
All hell broke loose. Or to be precise, all hell broke in. One ripper, then two, then suddenly three more came crashing through the glass into the main lounge of Exham Priory, bringing with them thick banks of fog, blades that glinted in the artificial light of the room and a shrieking that filled the air.
It soon became obvious to the others that what Brand had said was right after all - that in such a confined space against such foes they were at a major disadvantage with no chance of keeping up a sustained defence for long. What they had to do was fight their way out of there before more of their friends arrived - forge a path of retreat, and do it fast, before the fog reduced them to slo-mo sacrificial lambs and they began repainting their lounge with a thick coat of their own blood.
The question was, could they?
They had to try.
The lounge of Exham Priory became a surreal war zone, the air thick with bullets, infernal energy and the ceaseless flashing of blades. Rippers thudded into walls and over furniture as Ness unleashed his pump-action at them at point blank range. Baarish-Shammon countered ripper slashes with slashes of her own razored talons before slicing back at their throats, and Hannah spat long bursts of machine gun fire into any space not occupied by her own people... space that seemed not, even for the smallest moment, ever empty of threat. Verse, meanwhile, wielded his chainsaw like a machete as he moved across the room, hacking down and across at any ripper in his path and forcing the things away in screeching dances of dismemberment.
By some miracle, or perhaps by sheer bloody-mindedness, between them they managed to put four of the rippers down before the fog took full effect. And, only mildly groggy, they began to back towards the door to the hallway.
Hannah paused. The rest of them had made it to the door, but Verse wasn't with them. She saw the priest locked in combat with the sole surviving ripper in front of the giant portrait of the Satanist Malcolm Critchley - the priory's previous owner - that hung above the room's open fireplace. Her partner had been struggling to tackle the ripper alone, but had now managed to lock his chainsaw
blade into the abdomen of his opponent, had lifted it from the floor, and was forcing it up against the canvas. His teeth clenched, face dripping sweat and with every sinew taut, the priest rammed the flailing ripper up against the oils until the saw finally bit through its flesh, slewing repulsive innards left and right and then out in all directions. Finally both ripper and portrait began to judder as one, each of them weakening on their respective mounts.
Go for it, Verse, Hannah thought, and she didn't mean the ripper. It was funny, but not so long after moving in, they'd tried to take that bloody portrait down, only to find that its strangely organic support bolts threatened to bring half the wall with it, almost as if it - as if Critchley - were still an integral part of the priory's structure. They could have asked Kostabi to get the builders in, of course, but in the end it hadn't seemed worth the possible hassle, and they'd let Critchley be. Not so much rats in the walls as a rat on the wall. Hannah, particularly, hated it. One night after eight or so jack n' blacks, when everyone else had gone to bed, she'd even gotten round to staggering around the room throwing darts at it, but every single one of her arrows had bounced back out. She'd convinced herself it was because she was pissed, but even now she wasn't really sure.
At any rate, she wouldn't be doing that again. Couldn't, because there wasn't much to throw them at any more. The death throes of the ripper had sent the thing into overdrive, and Critchley's blade-slashed face hung in its now dangling frame in peeling shreds, looking like a leper. As the ripper's screeching finally ended and he let its body drop, Verse stood exhausted at the picture's base, panting heavily, sweat pouring from every pore. Blood was seeping from maybe a hundred different lacerations and the chainsaw hung limp in his hand, smoke pouring out of its motor vent, the whole tool smelling acrid and burned. Even had it not irreparably overheated, it would still have been completely unusable - the teeth of the saw itself were either twisted utterly out of shape or snapped away completely, forming a lopsided ridge that was as malformed as a witch's grin.
Verse let the useless machine tool drop to the ground with a thud and wiped the sweat from his eyes with a sleeve. Behind him, the body of the ripper twitched once and lay still.
"There's a free confession," Verse gasped, "for the first person to tell me that was the last of 'em."
"I'll buy into that," Hannah said, supporting her exhausted partner by the arm. "But hey, big fellah, how long you got?"
"No time at all," Brand said heavily. Like Hannah had done earlier - the only difference being that he was now looking through a window that was no longer there - he was staring out into the darkness beyond the priory. Brand's hair ruffled in the breeze and he swallowed hard. There was movement. The rippers still outside were approaching the priory in solid, dark lines, almost as if the hedgerows themselves were closing in. Though it was difficult to distinguish one from the other at this distance, it appeared that Ness's blips had not done their number justice. They had just given their all against what had been nothing more than an advance guard. Countless more rippers were coming in a second, much bigger, wave.
The others gathered next to him.
"Jesus... fookin'... wept," Mikey Ness exhaled slowly.
"Great God, Brand, how many of them are there?" Verse breathed heavily.
"As many as have been punished by the Accord, potentially," Hannah answered. She turned to Brand with a challenging gaze. "Because that's what they are, aren't they, Brainiac? Condemned souls who once upon a time transgressed one of their goddammed laws. People just like us." She turned away with a look of disgust. "They're what we'll become if they take us down."
Brand nodded. "They're self-perpetuating, yes, the poor bastards."
"Aye, well, fookin' army of 'em or not they can forget tha' for a game o' soldiers, 'cause there's no way ah'm spendin' eternity in hell wi' this bint." He turned to Hannah. "Ha' ye got any idea jus' how annoyin' yer yatterin' Yank voice is?"
Verse stared hard at the Scotsman. "So just how, Mr. Ness, do you suggest you avoid that particular fate?"
"Make for the trees while we ha' the chance... go ta ground separately. If we're lucky we'll manage ta lose the bastards jus' like we did in the Smoke."
"Those of us who are good enough, you mean," Hannah commented. "You might have been trained for jungle warfare, but what about Brand? You know he wouldn't stand a chance." She turned to the academic. "No offence, Brainiac."
"Oohh... none taken."
"Besides," Verse added, "you've seen how fast they are, and your monitors showed they're all around us. You wouldn't make it halfway through the grounds before they brought you down."
Ness loomed his face in and growled, "Then wha' do yer suggest we do, priest?"
Unfazed, Verse stared him in the eye, having already thought of a possible solution. "Exham Priory is - was - a priory, I believe. The clue is in the name. It is also old. In terms of its history, that would likely have made it a target for persecution at certain points in its existence. Tthe Church has always been used to such things, and knows how to protect its own. In short, I don't know of any such place worth its salt that doesn't come equipped with an inbuilt-"
"Bolthole," Brand finished. "If we're lucky, a fully-fledged underground escape tunnel, probably leading to the edge of the grounds."
"An underground escape tunnel?" Ness repeated dubiously. "Ooh aye sure, an' jus' where der yer suppose-"
"Kinda think the clue's in the name, dickhead," Hannah reiterated. "But how about we search the cellars and you search the attics?"
"Don't push it, girly."
"If it's here, it can't be that hard to find," Brand said. He glanced in the direction of various noises. "But we have to move now, more of them are already in the house."
Verse cursed. "What I want to know is, how the hell did they track us here in the first place?"
[Maybe they didn't,] Baarish-Shammon said matter-of-factly. [Maybe whoever set us up simply told them where we were.]
"Or if they did track us...?" Brand mused. He suddenly turned to the demoness. "You have to transform back, now," he said urgently. "I think it's you."
[Me?]
Brand nodded rapidly. "Residual fingerprints from the apocalypse magic. You're probably still emanating faint traces. The effect will still be there in human form, but weaker. It might buy us some time."
Baarish-Shammon snarled, but transformed. She did not like being without her main weapon: herself. "I want it on record that I did that under protest."
"Dinnae worry, bitch," Ness commented. "Ah'm sure yer can still dazzle 'em with yer dead Jenny smile."
The five of them moved out into the expansive hallway and towards the cellar door next to the stairs. But before they were halfway across, a wave of rippers came at them from adjoining rooms in a pincer movement that suddenly split the group in two.
"Sneaky bastards," Hannah said.
Sneaky it might have been, but the manoeuvre nonetheless worked. Ness and Jenny Simmons found themselves trapped by the stairs, while Brand and the others were cut off halfway to the door to the cellar, with no way, other than another firefight, through to it.
There wasn't time for another firefight. There were too many rippers waiting in the metaphorical - and possibly literal - wings. Plan A had fallen at the first hurdle, and it looked as if they'd have to split up and find alternative escape routes.
Ironically Ness was heading for the attics after all.
"Hey, moron!" Hannah shouted as he and Jenny headed up, and she and the others did an about turn. "If you do find yer wee tunnel, gizza shout, Jimmy."
Together with Verse and Brand she raced for the only corridor that looked still to be clear, and half of the rippers moved in pursuit. But then they tried to take a left towards the kitchens and found the route blocked. Ditto, right.
"We're stuffed," Verse announced. A firefight apparently inevitable, he drew his reserve weapon - the shotgun - from his pocket.
"Wait, wait," Brand said, thinking rapidly. "Ther
e's one other possibility."
"There is?" Verse queried, using both barrels to blow an encroaching ripper off its feet and back along the hallway. He reloaded rapidly as, inevitably, it picked itself back up. "Because I'm sure I speak for us all when I say that we're just dying to hear it."
"The west wing. We should be able to access the cellars from there."
"He's right!" Hannah shouted. Her Uzi spent, her twin Colts bucked in her hands as she gave her partner a helping hand in despatching the resurgent ripper, and the one that came behind. Black matter and broken blades splattered and clunked once again against the walls, but still the bastards didn't stay down. "Rambling old heap like this is bound to have more than one way down to its stores... n' they'da probably wanted easy access to the wine cellars, particularly. Brainiac, you get the cigar."
"The west wing," Verse repeated to himself. "Now why didn't I think of that?"
"For the same reason I didn't," Hannah countered. "We kinda blank it out."
What Hannah said was true. The fact was, the west wing was Solomon Ravne's domain, a part of the priory that none of them - with the exception of Jenny Simmons - had set foot in since the day they'd all arrived at Exham. Whereas each of the others had plumped for their own modest quarters that day, Ravne's demands had been a little more far-reaching. The conversation between him and Howard Slater, Ethan Kostabi's now departed right hand man, had been brief and pre-emptive.
"I've inspected the house, Slater. The west wing will be adequate for my purposes."
"Excellent. Which room in the west wing?"
"I said the west wing. All of it."
Precisely why Ravne had demanded so much space or what his exact purposes were, remained for the most part a mystery. Sure, maybe he'd needed a little extra room for his then supposed research assistants Gustav and Gretchen, but all who'd laid eyes on those two that day seriously doubted there'd be much research going on outside the bedroom. No, as far as the business side of Ravne's needs went, only Jenny Simmons had entered the inner sanctum and seen whatever he did in there, and what secrets she'd found she was keeping to herself.