Relics--The Edge

by Tim Lebbon

  As the cave opened out into a wider cavern, the stream flowing through it became more obvious. It cut through several feet of silt on the floor, running a twisting course through the cave and back down towards the entrance. There, it must disperse into the mud he’d waded through, or perhaps disappear into cracks in the land to re-emerge further down the valley side. It formed a distinct barrier through the cave, and if he wanted to reach the other side he would have to jump.

  Bone scanned the light around the larger cavern. Rock protruded through the caked silt in places, mostly high up on the ceiling, where a narrow fault chimneyed up so high that the torch could not penetrate that far. Maybe it even emerged onto the valley side above the reach of the old reservoir.

  They might have escaped, Bone thought. If they knew these caves so well, maybe they retreated here from those hunting them, then burrowed and crawled their way to freedom?

  It seemed an unlikely idea. Though he remembered the chaos of that night, the violence, the fear in his father’s eyes and the blood on his face, he also recalled the sense that his father gave him his last breath to save his life.

  But what if I was wrong?

  If they had escaped, infected with whatever the military had exposed the town to, they would not have gone to ground. They’d have stalked, hunted and killed, many times over. He would have heard about them. The world would have known. He was here to ensure there was not even the smallest possibility of that happening now.

  As he prepared to leap across the dip carved into the solidifying silt by the stream, Bone shone his torch down and saw something beneath him. A hand. It protruded from the mud, and seemed to claw at it, as if still seeking a way out even after all this time.

  He froze and changed position slightly, shifting the torch so that its beam landed on the object from a different direction. He jumped into the pit and landed with both feet in the stream. The cold was a shock, but seeing his boots washed clean was somehow satisfying.

  The hand was thin, skin leathery and hard, and still attached to an arm which disappeared into the soil. He reached out to touch it, then held back. He didn’t think it was his father’s hand. He wasn’t sure why, but there would have been a familiarity if this was his father, a sense of closeness after so long apart.

  Bone reached out again and touched the hand. Cold. Hard. It might have been a stone sculpture, not the remains of a living thing.

  He drew a knife from his belt, flicked it open, and started digging around the arm. The silt fell away and disintegrated into the stream. Great clumps dropped aside, and Bone was worried that the whole bank might collapse and crush him down into the water.

  He dug, scraped, and realised how hard his heart was beating, how sweaty he was even though it was cool in the cave.

  No, not cool. It was cold. Maybe the stream sucked in any warmth and swept it away.

  The arm was connected to a torso. It appeared to be naked, covered in a fine down which was not caked and stuck to the skin. He worked upwards from the shoulder towards where the head should be.

  No, this was not Mohserran. This was one of those two other creatures who had shared the cave with him, and shared their time in Longford, too. Francine the werewolf, perhaps, or the other creature. Both vaguely human, they were also utterly different from any normal person in ways his child’s mind had found difficult to understand. They kept to themselves, and to the families they had attached to—in the same way, he had come to understand, that Mohserran had fallen in close with his mother—so he’d never had much cause to speak to either of them, nor to ask who or what they were.

  Now he was looking at the remains of one, and he saw its pelt, the curve of its head, the teeth almost too large for its mouth, and one closed eye. Burial had darkened its skin and fur, hardening it almost to the consistency of a fossil. The werewolf.

  The gentle movement of torchlight across its skin gave the body a strange semblance of life.

  “It’s not you,” Bone said. The reason he’d asked to come to Longford was somewhere else in these caves, and he knew that on the way back out he’d bury this body again. It had spent its life living cautiously amongst humans, and avoiding most of them. He would ensure it had a restful death.

  As he turned to climb from the stream he flicked the torch away from the exposed arm, and the hand closed into a claw.

  Bone gasped and fell back, stumbling across the stream until his back was pressed against the opposite wall. Sand tumbled across his shoulders, head, and the back of his neck, like fingers playing across his skin, as he aimed the light directly at the corpse.

  The hand was mostly closed. Unmoving. It must have been like that before. Hadn’t it?

  “Fuck’s sake,” he muttered, and this time he kept the light directed onto the buried body as he edged up the stream until he could climb out.

  He moved deeper into the cavern, heading towards a darker space at the rear which appeared to be a low route into further caves. He had no idea how deep or extensive this cave system was, but it was constantly edging upwards, the levels of silt thinning the further inside he went.

  Pausing to adjust his belt and jacket, Bone heard movement behind him.

  He spun around and cast the light back the way he’d come. Shadows dashed for corners, crevasses, and behind rocks. Nothing else moved, no more sounds echoed from the walls.

  “Fuck’s sake!” He was spooking himself.

  He ducked down and started crawling through the narrow gap towards the next cavern. He remained alert for any sign that the gap was growing too narrow to navigate, and was conscious that he didn’t know what lay ahead. If this was just a crack that led nowhere he did not want to trap himself, or become wedged, or find himself slipping down a slope into a narrowing space, unable to turn around, stuck forever until—

  He heard something ahead of him. He paused, head tilted as he listened. The sound came again. It sounded like something moving against stone, scraping and shushing.

  Having come so far, he wanted nothing more than to flee.

  He carried on, and soon the light disappeared into a larger chamber ahead of him. He crawled out into it, kneeling up and stretching the stiffness from his back.

  As he stretched, the light landed on a corpse.

  It was propped against one wall. Shreds of material hanging from its bony form were moving, swinging, although the body was motionless. Still, and staring right at him.

  It was little more than a skeleton, head wrapped in loose skin, teeth exposed. Long, sharp teeth. Its arms were fixed out to either side, but other limbs hung free. Wings. They were leathery and thin, tipped with claws that opened and closed, opened and closed, clasping at the air as if trying to gain purchase on nothing.

  Bone stared at the creature’s dead, dark eyes, and it started to scream.

  The sound was shocking, and horrible. Bone screamed back. The creature thrashed its wings and they stirred up clouds of dust, flicking wet silt across the cavern. It was buried up to its waist, and must have been there for decades since the valley was flooded, hibernating in this dark cave and submerged beneath mud and water.

  Decades.

  It screeched again, twisting against the confining mud, its shrivelled body displaying amazing strength.

  Not my father, Bone thought, and he turned and started pushing his way back through to the first cavern. The screeching followed him. The noise carried a promise of pain. The corpse looked hungry.

  One of those others Mohserran shared its space with had wings, always kept tight to its body, almost as if it was ashamed of them. I never asked the gargoyle’s name.

  The gargoyle was here, and the werewolf was buried down by the stream. So where was his father?

  He burst back into the first cavern and slipped, tumbling down into the channel worn by the stream, the thing’s screaming following him down as if sound itself could clasp hold of him and squeeze, claw through his flesh, crunch his bones.

  Sometimes he was afraid of the Kin, bu
t mostly he saw them as the gentle, frightened creatures most of them were.

  He had never been this terrified.

  As he crawled, trying to stand, something grabbed hold of his left leg. He shouted out in surprise and aimed the torch down. The buried corpse had its hand around his ankle. It was shaking, shivering where it was buried, and silt was falling away from it, uncovering more of its body and face as it turned its head—a creak, a crumple—to look at him with black, oily eyes.

  Bone screamed, long and loud, and tugged his leg out of its grasp. He ran along the stream, climbing from the channel and following the footsteps he’d left on his way in. He wished more than ever before to be out in the sunlight, a Grey Man seeking the colour of the world.

  As he ran, he saw a shape slip away from deeper shadows ahead of him. It moved in a jerky, uncertain fashion, an ambiguous form given sharp edges.

  Just before its pained, mad growls joined the screaming coming from behind him, Bone thought, Father.

  12

  It was the first dead Kin Vince had seen since being trapped in the Fold. He’d witnessed plenty before, and the memories of them would stay with him always. Ballus the mad satyr had murdered so many, and Vince still had nightmares about the old enclosed swimming pool where he’d kept their rotting bodies. His legs were scarred from where Ballus had attacked him with the broken parts of dead creatures, their exotic, unknowable corpses broken down into sad remnants, relics of things that should not be.

  The pombero sat propped against a tree, head tilted to one shoulder, his arms splayed to either side with hands on the ground and palms facing upward. He looked more human in death, not less. His eyes were open and staring past Vince at the sky, as if seeking some sort of saviour from the heavens, or perhaps a form of escape. Vince suspected he had found it.

  His mouth hung open and his tongue was missing, bitten clean through. The stump was a bloodied, clotted thing, and blood had dried in globules against his teeth and around the outside of his mouth. Deep purple bruising stained his neck and throat. His hands were also covered in dried blood, and his fingers were thick with it.

  It looked like he had bitten out his tongue, and then worked at the wound to prevent the blood from clotting. He had either bled to death or drowned in his own blood. Whichever, he had been determined to die.

  There was no sign of the missing tongue.

  Vince crouched before the pombero’s sad corpse, waving away the flies, flicking off beetles and ants that had gone to work on the drying blood. The small woodland was almost silent, as if in respect, or perhaps in shock at the death. The older wounds on his body were obvious, places where Grace’s fairy teeth had bitten in and taken chunks out of his flesh. Perhaps that was the reason he had chosen to end things.

  But where’s his tongue?

  It seemed like a difficult way to commit suicide. There were several places in the Fold where a drop from a cliff would be enough to kill yourself, a river to drown in, sharpened quartz shale to slice skin and vein. Biting out your own tongue and ensuring the blood kept flowing must have been an incredibly painful, wretched way to die.

  “And where is the tongue?” Vince muttered. He looked around the corpse, stretched to see behind him, lifted his hands to make sure it wasn’t hidden beneath them. A carrion creature could have made away with it, he supposed, snatching a free warm meal moments after the poor creature had bitten it off and spat it out. Maybe he’d performed the bite somewhere else and stumbled here, choosing this peaceful glade as a good place to die.

  Vince froze. It was so obvious. He muttered a curse and stood, staring down at the dead man and wondering who he had left behind. He’d spat the word human at Vince like it was something dirty, but until recently the pombero had lived as a human, perhaps aware of his strangeness, perhaps not. There might be a partner, children, friends, all missing him now that he had been struck by lightning and vanished. They would never see him again, and never know what had happened to him.

  But if what Vince suspected was true, the terrible results of his sacrifice might become known to them all.

  He started walking down towards the river, turning things over in his mind. The pombero had stolen the rucksack for Mallian, of that much he was sure. He also knew that the Nephilim still did not have every relic required to perform the spell that might give him a hold over Grace. That was because Vince had stolen one of them back in the world and buried it where no one would ever find it again.

  A small relic, like a knot of dried flesh.

  Like a tongue.

  * * *

  “Your slave is dead,” Vince said.

  “I have no slaves. Come here, scratch my nose, would you?”

  “And have you bite my hand off?”

  “I told you. Human flesh tastes of shit.”

  It was growing dark, one of the Fold’s intermittent nights drawing close. It had been some time since the last one. Vince slept when he was tired, not according to the time of day or night it might be. He did not feel tired now. He felt afraid.

  “You killed him,” Vince said.

  “Me?” Mallian sounded almost convincing. “I haven’t moved from here in many months, maybe years. How do you think I could kill someone?”

  “You talked him into it. Told him what you wanted.”

  “Are you on about that rucksack again?”

  Vince didn’t answer. The more information he gave, the less chance he’d have of easing the truth out of the Nephilim.

  “You’re dangerous,” he said instead. “You always have been, and I’d be a fool if I thought otherwise.”

  “Then be a fool, Vince. I’m finished. Look at me. Have you really looked at me, since you’ve been coming here to talk with me? I’m weakening, fading. I’m nothing like I was. My age is catching up with me.”

  “And everything you’ve done.”

  “Yes, everything I’ve done. It all comes home to roost. I’ve led a life longer than you can possibly comprehend, seen things you could never understand. Done things that would make you rejoice, and other things that would make you vomit and faint. But I’m close to the end. Near enough that I can sense the darkness when I close my eyes. It’s gathering around me, ready to close in and take me when I’m tired enough, or starving enough. Or when I give in.”

  “You’ll never give in,” Vince said. “Don’t try to persuade me otherwise.”

  “And don’t pretend to know my mind,” Mallian said, his voice low and quiet. Vince shivered. It was like hearing a rumble through the ground, the threat of doom approaching. Of all the Kin he had met, he must never pretend that Mallian was anything approaching human.

  “What do you want?” Mallian asked. His tone gave the question added weight. He wasn’t asking why Vince had returned to him now, as dusk fell and a Kin lay dead against a tree. This was something deeper.

  “I want to see Angela again,” he said. “I don’t want to carry on living without her.”

  “I can take care of that.”

  “What, so you’ll kill me too?”

  “No. I can ensure you’ll see her again.”

  “By taking control of Grace.” The words hung heavy in the air. Mallian did not respond, and Vince went a little closer so that he could see him in the failing light. Night always fell quickly here, as if Grace made the decision to welcome in darkness for a spell, and the land obeyed her will. Vince wondered where she was, who she was hunting, what she would be eating that night.

  Mallian was staring up at the sky. A spread of new stars was reflected in his eyes, and Vince wished he knew the stars and constellations better, so that he could tell whether these were familiar or unknown. Mallian probably knew. He seemed to know everything.

  “I can’t allow that,” Vince said. “Angela and me, that’s nothing compared to Ascent.”

  “You really think I can still do that?” Mallian asked.

  Yes, Vince thought, but he said nothing.

  “Look at me. I’m weak. I’m dying, Vince.
If you can’t see that, then you’re a fool.”

  I’m no fool and I don’t see that at all. Still he said nothing. Vince knew that sometimes silence was the greatest weapon.

  “I’ll die here soon. Or I’ll die elsewhere if I manage to escape. And that’s all I want. To die on my own terms, not hers. If I use the spell and have Grace open a way back into the world, that’s good enough. I’ll go through, find somewhere quiet that means something to me, and live out my days.”

  “Where?” Vince asked.

  Mallian managed the semblance of a shrug. “Perhaps Istanbul. I met a succubus there once, and she fell in love with me. For a while she was happy. Maybe I’ll walk the night-time streets until I feel some echo of her. Or the Scottish Highlands. The witch Jilaria Bran and I fought there together for a while. We won great victories. Maybe I’ll find the cave where we went to lick our wounds, bury myself deep.”

  “She sacrificed herself for you,” Vince said.

  “She loved me.”

  “She loved your cause. Would you betray her sacrifice now and give up Ascent?”

  “I gave it up many moons ago,” Mallian said quietly, and Vince was shocked to see a tear escape the corner of his eye. The Nephilim would never show such weakness. Not on purpose. This was an unconscious tear, and perhaps the only way he knew he was crying was a blurring of the stars. “Even if I hadn’t, I’m too weak to make it work now. I need to be a figurehead for Kin to follow, not a... a walking corpse.”

  For just a few seconds Vince had doubts. Only a few. He could not afford them. He only hoped he had judged Mallian’s opinion of him correctly.

  “What do you need?” he asked. He glanced around at the shadows. He didn’t have to feign concern that they were being watched. Darkness brought new fears to the Fold.

  “I have what I need,” Mallian said. “I simply need you... I don’t have the strength. I need you to arrange them for me, and perhaps to say the words.”

  “What words?”