by Roy Gill
“He keeps saying he wants to expand,” said Cameron thoughtfully. “We’ve gotta make him shrink somehow. Cut him back…”
“That’s not all,” said Morgan. “It’s the pack that’s the key to it somehow. We’re gonna need their help. That’s what Cutler the Augur told me, before scooting me back out onto the hill. You and me, mate, we’ve gotta go see them. We’re gonna have to take trip together – right into the heart of Daemonic.”
CHAPTER 16
Into the Woods
“I’ve never been to Daemonic, only the Parallel. I don’t even know if I could world-shift that far.” Cameron frowned. “That’s a big ask.”
“Don’t worry about it. I reckon I can get us a lift, make the transition easier.” Morgan looked Cameron up and down, like he was assessing him. “You be more concerned about the pack. I wouldn’t take you within sniffing distance of them if I had a choice.”
“Oh come on. I’ve met Weres before. I survived.”
“Not like these you’ve not. The ones that hang out on the Parallel – Lola, Eddy, Half-Tail… Grant, even – they’re just kids. When Weres get old, they change. They get big and mean… Stop coming up to the Human World so much. It’s like it just doesn’t interest them any more. They start thinking more animal, less person. More pack.” Morgan rubbed the back of his neck. “They’ll see you, decide if or how you fit in, and then they’ll stick to it. They don’t change their minds without a fight.”
“Well, they sound charming,” said Eve, attempting to lighten the mood. “You’re certain I can’t come along, maybe offer some instruction on manners?”
“Not if you have any ambition of getting back intact.” Morgan’s green eyes regarded her humourlessly. “You may be his sister, but that doesn’t make you wolf.”
“No, I see that.” Eve nodded briskly. “I’ve got things to find out anyway. I missed my chance to ask the Augur about Dr Black, and I want to make up for that. I can do research, and see what I find about him – and anything about the World Engine too.”
“Good plan.” Cameron patted his jacket, and drew out the compact shape of Montmorency’s netbook. “All of my browser tabs should still be open. That’ll give you a headstart.”
“Thanks.” Eve took the computer. She gave Cameron a shrewd look. “You haven’t told us, you know. About your ordeal.”
“I asked what’s gonna happen to me. With my wolf-side, you know? I’m not sure I fully understood the answer. But it looks like I don’t have it forever. I can only win by giving it up.”
Morgan’s mouth opened, like he wanted to say something then thought the better of it. His brow furrowed. “Doesn’t work like that, mate. You don’t get a choice. You just are. Trust me on this. There isn’t a cure.”
Cameron looked away. He shrugged, trying to appear as if he didn’t care about the loss of the wolf, when really it was almost all he could think about. “Hey, I’m not the Mystic All-Seeing Augur. It’s not my stupid prediction.”
“But that’s good, isn’t it?” Eve interjected in a soothing tone. “That means you’d be human again.”
“Thanks,” Morgan rumbled. “So much.”
Eve shot him an exasperated glance. “I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant Cameron doesn’t have to go running about mad and furry once a month for the rest of his life.”
“Why not? If that’s what I want?”
“You get to be normal.”
“What makes you think,” Cameron said quietly, “I’d ever want that?”
They glared at each other for a moment, then Eve threw up her hands. “Maybe you don’t. But you didn’t grow up living with a daemon. You had thirteen years before it all turned freaky. Thirteen years with your dad – my dad too, it turns out – to look out for you. Remember that.”
“Eve… normal’s not all that great. I miss Dad, sure, but you still get problems in the human world, and hard times, and bad people, and things going wrong, and –”
“Grey blobs trying to absorb you?” Eve shook her head. “Maybe it isn’t that brilliant, but maybe I’d like my own chance to find out.” She turned and started to walk down the hill. “I’ll meet you two back at the house.”
Cameron ran after her. “What about the wards? It’s not secure back there.”
“I’ll make the biggest pot of coffee you’ve ever seen. Nothing is creeping up on me while I doze. And besides,” Eve ran a hand through her hair, “I’m not afraid of spider-daemons any more.”
“Glad to hear it.”
She stopped and gave him an apologetic smile. “Be careful, won’t you?”
“Me, be careful? I thought you were my little sister?”
“Your big little sister.” She drew herself up to her full height. “And don’t you forget it.” She walked away without a glance back.
“When did Miss Sensible get so grown up?” Morgan said over Cameron’s shoulder. They watched Eve continue on the path towards town, a newly confident spring in her step.
“I dunno. It just sort of happened.” Cameron squinted and gave a rueful grin. “Now, about this lift?”
Morgan gestured towards the streaming blur of lights that indicated the distant traffic of Princes Street. “We go that way… We’re gonna let the train take the strain.”
Beneath the girders of Waverley Station’s expansive glass roof, a hustle of evening commuters made their way home. No one seemed to notice the two boys fighting the flow of the crowds. They neither boarded a train, bought a ticket, nor stopped to look for friends – but instead appeared fascinated by the station’s grand Victorian architecture.
“This is all a bit Potter, isn’t it?” said Cameron as they headed down the concourse. He noticed Morgan’s blank expression. “Platform 9¾? Magic train to Hogwarts?”
“Huh?”
“Seriously? How can you not know Harry Potter?”
Morgan curled his lip in a mock snarl and jabbed a thumb at his incisors. “Werewolf. Remember?”
“You used to live in a cinema.”
“Which fell out of the Human World and into the Parallel fifty years ago. We weren’t exactly on trend. Now would you shut up and help me find this tunnel?” Morgan lifted his nose. “This place stinks of coffee cups and electricity.”
“Not steam and devious Roman deities?” said Cameron. “Remind me precisely why you think Janus is going to help?”
“Said he’d be seeing me again, didn’t he? Before he dropped me splat in the snow.”
“And Janus doesn’t say anything without a reason…”
“Exactly.” Morgan stopped and glared. “The Parallel Line climbs up from Scotland Street, and it’s meant to terminate here… But this is all too new.” He tapped a diminutive station attendant on the shoulder, drawing her attention. “All your trains go in and out – not up and down. What’s wrong with them?”
“That’s novel. People usually complain about times, not direction.” The woman gave him a kindly smile, as if humouring a lost child. “Are you all right, love?”
“Morgan, leave the lady alone.” Cameron grabbed his arm and dragged the glowering teenager away. “Over here!”
At the far end of the opposite side of the platform, fenced off from passengers and standing at right angles to the existing train track, was a small iron gate. A metal sign set into the wall indicated it marked the site of ‘the original Edinburgh – Leith – Newhaven Railway’.
“Huh… how d’you spot that?”
Cameron tapped the corner of his eye. “Can’t always be about the nose. Let’s world-shift and check it out.”
He focussed on the Parallel Tune and watched the world reassemble…
The commuters faded, leaving the station empty of people. The glass roof above now revealed the ragged, tangled landscape of the Parallel, the buildings’ windows dark and empty. Here too, the Greys’ intimidation tactics seemed to have taken hold.
The iron gate vanished, the opening behind stretching into a tunnel mouth, which disgorged a rollin
g nimbus of smoke tinged with reddish light. The distant thunder of pistons betrayed the approach of The January Express.
“How’s that gonna work? It’s not coming in sideways, is –” Cameron lurched as the ground beneath his feet shifted. The platform – and the rails alongside it – were rotating through 90 degrees. It was like they were standing on the arm of a giant clock that had decided to swing abruptly from quarter to half past the hour.
Morgan hooked one arm around a pillar and deftly grabbed Cameron’s collar with the other, catching him before he stumbled toward the tracks. “Hold up! Wait for the train, eh?”
“Oh, you know…” Cameron shot him a grateful glance. “Thought I’d get in early doors.”
The rails were now aligned with the Parallel tunnel. They locked into place just as The January Express hove into sight.
A head wearing a driver’s cap popped out of the cab. Janus lifted a set of goggles with four darkened lenses, and propped them onto his smoke-blackened forehead. “Hello, wolf-boys… Fancy a ride?”
“We’re heading to the wolven forest of the Black Hills – in Daemonic,” Morgan shouted over the scream of brakes. “You’d need to turn this lump of metal round, go back through the Parallel Interchange… That ok for you?”
“I am always happy to go both directions,” said Janus’s left face.
His right face raised an eyebrow. “The replacement governor valve needs a run-in anyway. It is a challenge to source proper Makaris-built parts…”
“Such a bore the Makaris all died out,” interjected left. “Spares are so hard to find.”
A ruthless grin spread across right’s face. “Although we did have the foresight to set a spare valve by, some years before their unfortunate demise.”
“Is it too late to walk?” Cameron hissed out the side of his mouth to Morgan. “He’s unhinged.”
Morgan biffed him lightly on the arm. “It’ll be fine.” He raised his voice. “Lift would be appreciated, mighty Janus.”
Janus swung himself down from the cab, nodding to a marble statue of a toga-wearing man to take his place. The statue, which seemed to Cameron to have a rather feline set to its features, inclined its head, moved over and stepped behind the controls.
Janus marched along the length of the red and gold train, eyeing the steaming, clicking mechanism with approval. “The garden room is closed for repairs, but we’ll make do in here.” He threw open a door on the first carriage, revealing the impossibly large space of the Temple of the Door. “After you!”
They stepped aboard. Cameron felt the vibration of the engine increase and the sensation of motion as the rails began to rotate, swinging round to re-orientate the front of the train with the tunnel from which it had emerged.
“Next stop: Daemonic.” Janus drew a salver of water and began to scrub the oil and grease from his twin faces.
The engine took on a laboured note as it descended the steep incline of the tunnel. The yellow illumination of Waverley station receded, replaced by a reddish radiance that steadily increased, bathing the carriage in hellish light.
The Song of the Parallel sprang unbidden into Cameron’s mind. He clutched his head in pain, his fingers pushing hard into the bones behind his ears.
If the tune he usually heard was a stripped down live performance, then this felt like a full-volume rocked-out album version with feedback and distortion.
“It’s – happening. We’re – shifting – through.”
“Relax, mate,” said Morgan. “It won’t last.”
“Easy for you to say.” In the background of the song, the wolf howl that had come to haunt Cameron seemed to have been replaced with an excited chorus of yips and whines. He groaned. “It’s absolutely barking stars in my head right now!”
The intensity of the music built. It reached a single immense crashing chord, then all at once – like the moment when pressure finally equalises in a climbing aircraft – it was over.
Cameron stretched his jaw and sighed with relief.
“Cheer up,” said Morgan. “That was the easy part.”
Janus shook water from his hands, the droplets falling blood-like to the salver in the red interior glow. “And how have you been faring with the Omniclavis?” He looked up into the murky air at the drifting portal outlines. For a moment, the compact shape of an office door with frosted-glass flickered into existence, followed by the image of a feather caught floating between two tall stone columns. “Hogg’s chambers, I see, and then the Augury… One more to go! You’ll get to the heart of the problem yet.”
“Was that another hint?” Cameron muttered darkly.
“More a suggestion. It would suit me to see Grey and Black’s plans fall apart,” said left face.
“Watt’s too. I would have him brought to a halt,” right added pointedly.
“Oh, I’m getting sick of all this,” said Cameron. Morgan shot him a warning glance but he continued unabashed. “You and the Augur both! I bet you know all about what me and Morgan and Eve have had to face – the Court, the lump, the ordeals…”
“Of course.”
“Then why –”
“Why did I make you go through it? Why? Why?” Janus’s left face lifted his voice into a nasal whine, parodying Cameron’s. For a moment, the train seemed to stutter and skip a beat on the tracks.
“Because I’m a God of Journeys, aren’t I, you little fool?” roared right.
“And this is your journey.”
“You should be grateful,” left smirked. “You get to travel this part in style.”
“Oh yeah?” Cameron blasted back. “Well think about this – if Grey and Black run their World Engine, there isn’t going to be a Parallel any more – let alone a route between Daemonic and the Human World. One trashed carriage will be the least of your problems. You’re not going to get to run around playing trains much longer.”
Janus stalked towards the window, spread his arms and pressed his fingers against the glass. Outside, the gloom of the Parallel tunnel had given way to the Daemon World. Unknown things wheeled and swooped in a burnt umber sky, below which rolled a dark landscape of wooded hills and valleys, covered in thick snow.
“For as long as humans and daemons can stack stone and wood and build shelter, I will exist: the Guardian of all Portals. Do not doubt it! My power pre-dates the Parallel, and will outlast it too…” He paused for a moment then added in quieter tones, “But I don’t take kindly to those who would derail me.”
“Then tell us,” Cameron urged. “Tell us what I need to do to beat them.”
“It is tempting… But you must know every prophecy has a price.” Janus’s fingers rapped contemplatively on the glass. “Very well! This is what I’ll do. I’ll tell one of you.” He turned back to face Cameron and Morgan, all four eyes sparkling with malicious amusement.
“One of us?” Cameron frowned. “But what’s to stop him immediately telling the other?”
“Nothing.” A grin unfurled across Janus’s two faces. “Nothing at all. If that’s what he wants.”
“Then –”
“No deal.” Morgan stepped forward, moving closer to Cameron. “We don’t work like that.”
“But Morgan… What if this is the chance we need? To stop Black and Grey and save my wolf-side?”
“There’s a catch – don’t you see?” Morgan’s eyes blazed bright and green. “Secrets won’t work out for us. It’s gotta be both – or nothing.”
“No. I remember…” Cameron nodded and turned back to Janus. “No deal, Janus. We’ll have to solve this for ourselves.”
“What an excellent partnership! It’d be sad to see it split apart.” Janus clapped a hand to either face. “Oh dear! Sometimes my mouth just runs away with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Morgan stubbornly. “So don’t pretend I am.”
“No?”
“Me neither,” said Cameron. “We’re a team.”
“How touching! Well, that accounts for two of you,” s
aid Janus. “What about the third?”
“Eve will stick by us too,” said Morgan. “She’s a good kid. She’s sound.”
“I’m not speaking of her.” Janus threw back his head and laughed. “Times they are a changing, boys. Even a wolf month can’t last forever. You have very few howls left, and then it’s over.” He snapped his fingers. “Understand?”
The train dropped them by a frozen pond at the base of a hill. Janus conjured a doorway and hustled them out into the snow.
“Off you go, into the woods,” he said with wry amusement. “Come see me again. I may have a ‘reward’ for you, if you punish those who tried to hijack my Express… A new ward, even. Wouldn’t that be apt?”
“I saw the price you asked for that last time.” Cameron shivered as he stepped into the cold air. “It wasn’t one I’m willing to pay.”
“Prices change. By then a sacrifice will have been made.”
As the train pulled away, Cameron stared at the tracks running in straight black lines into the distance.
“I’ve had it up to here with predictions.” He liked to think he was making his own choices, but it felt like he kept being dragged back, forced onto someone else’s path… “Everyone’s saying I have to lose the wolf, that the Parallel’s gonna take it back somehow. What if I don’t want that? What if I still want to be me?”
Morgan took off his prized army greatcoat, bundled it up, and stashed it behind a tree. “You’ll be you.”
“You mean I can change things? I don’t have to go back to being normal?”
“Didn’t say that. I just meant…” He paused in the process of removing his sweater and t-shirt, checking the Omniclavis was cinched tight on the cord around his neck. “Why do you think you’d be normal without the wolf? I knew you before, and you were all kinds of weird.”
“Remind me why we’re friends again?”