by Tim Lebbon
On the ground, the screams and panic are recorded by a thousand phones and sent onto the web.
In the sky, that delirious cry of joy echoes once more as the creature called Asher Vain glides out over the Hudson.
* * *
In Kansas City, a homeless man who has been begging outside a shopping mall for sixteen years pulls off his holed coat, shirt and trousers, then does the same with his long, knotted black hair and skin. His hairy chest makes a ripping sound as it parts from his body, and with several hard tugs he pulls the rest of the skin from his torso, arms and legs. He throws the wet coverings towards a cowering group of shoppers, who shout and flee in terror. Sweeping pale pink fluid from his glistening hide, he hops along the street on one large leg, shrieking at pedestrians, leaping into the road and causing multiple crashes, and finally disappearing into a side street from where witnesses later claim to hear insane, endless laughter.
* * *
In Idaho Falls, three children who people claimed to have seen living in the city’s sewer system over the years come to the surface. They are filthy and blind, feeling their way along the ground until they reach a seating area outside a coffee shop. Here they ransack bins and steal bags and rucksacks, ripping them apart and chewing on leather and suede. As they chew, two police officers approach, hands held out and their voices calm and soft. The children fall to the ground and scream as wings extrude from their backs. They take flight, then circle around as one and attack one of the police officers. He suffers severe lacerations to his face and hands from their curled, filthy claws. His body-cam captures the entire event.
Several other strange incidents and sightings take place across the north-east United States, resulting in a dozen deaths and more disappearances. Social media catches fire with footage and eyewitness accounts. Theories range from terrorist incidents to meteor strikes, animal attacks to mass hallucinations.
As the Kin slowly begin to reveal themselves to a world much smaller than the one they hid away from so long ago, a shimmer of quiet panic is seeded amongst the human population.
* * *
Thorn washes himself in the restroom of a Greyhound station. His blood is still high, but he’s already admonishing himself for his foolish display. He’s not sure how many people he killed—three? four?—but he knows for sure he’ll feature on the TV and internet news for his antics. And it’s not as if he isn’t easy to recognise.
Outside in the depot he practises the skills he’s become used to for many years. He wisps through the waiting area like a ghost, moving from shadow to shadow, slipping a child’s jacket from the back of a chair and pulling it on, picking up a baseball cap from atop a suitcase, and by the time he’s sat on the floor with his back against the wall, close to a family but not so close that they’ll question him, he is a child waiting for a bus. He is used to travelling, but usually does so only by night, and often trusting his own feet over human transport. Now, he is carried by an urgency that pulses at the back of his mind, sharpening his senses and preparing him for his journey. There isn’t far to go. He’s already looked up Longford on a map, and he reckons he can make it there within eight hours.
On the way he will contact and collect more Kin, and they will reach Mallian as a small army ready to fight. Others will prepare to rise and reveal themselves where they are, all in concert with Mallian and his plans. Some, he knows, have already jumped the gun and let their enthusiasm get the better of them. He cannot be angry with them, because he has made that same mistake. It has been so long coming that Ascent feels like a giant lake behind the flimsiest of dams. The leaks have already begun.
Thorn has made some calls, left messages on social media, and used more arcane methods of spreading his word. The seed of Ascent was planted many years ago, and over the past two years he has made it his duty to ensure it is nurtured and ready to bloom. He has been Mallian’s silent general, a commander in the shadows travelling the country and ensuring that those already committed to the cause will be ready should the time come. He’s also been recruiting, and Mallian will be surprised at how many more Kin he has found and talked around to their ideas. Thorn spent most of the past few centuries in Britain, and this larger, wider world came as something of a shock to him. The Kin here are different too, more independent and less reliant on support networks to survive.
But Thorn is nothing if not adaptable, and he has come to understand the American Kin. Their independence does not gloss over their past, nor their origins. If anything it makes them better placed to rise up and fight.
He has also met Kin who do not believe in Ascent, and he left them on their own. They will all have a second chance. When they witness the rise, some of them will change their minds. The others will find themselves more lonely and isolated than ever before.
What a glorious time.
Thorn looks forward to being reunited with his old friend.
24
Sammi had always wondered what it would be like to die. Now, she thought she was finding out.
When her mom died she had found it hard to quantify the loss and understand what had happened. Her dad had talked of her going to heaven, though he’d never really believed that and neither did Sammi. It was just a thing adults said to kids. It wasn’t that strange explanation that had confused her, however, but the suddenness of absence. One day her mom was there, the next she was gone, she would never see, touch, or speak to her again. That had been a strange concept for her to grasp. Her mom had always been there for her, a presence in her life even when she was not in the immediate vicinity. She was a very personal gravity, a star around which Sammi orbited. Her death had taken that star away and negated the weight of her presence, sending Sammi into free-fall.
Her dad had saved her from falling too far, even though his own grief had been crippling. Now he was gone too. Sammi had been made to grow up quickly, and while her entire safety net had been ripped away, she’d then been opened to the world of the Kin.
The strange power she felt growing inside her was staggering, and yet she could not help feeling that it was gradually scorching away whatever it was that made her Sammi. Her life was bleeding away, sucked down by that power and let loose into the vast open space surrounding it. There was nothing she could do to hold it back. She could only make the most of things while she was still here.
I never wanted to be a fairy, she thought, and she chuckled, because what little girl could honestly say that?
“You okay?” Angela asked. Her aunt had stepped forward to help her when everything seemed lost, and in her eyes Sammi often saw a reflection of the woman her mom had been. Even though the sisters had not been close, and had spent long periods not communicating, the childhood they’d spent together meant that they’d had more in common than either of them would have admitted.
“I’m fine,” Sammi said. They both knew that she was not.
“There’s something coming,” Angela said. “A Kin. Vince says he knows it, and he doesn’t think it’ll hurt us.”
“I sensed it a while ago,” Sammi said. “I don’t know if it means harm. I don’t know everything.”
“I’m sorry,” Angela said.
Sammi hadn’t meant to sound harsh. The more she felt her senses expanding with the fairy magic settling around her, the more they would ask of her. She wasn’t bitter about that, and she understood, but it hurt. It hurt all the time.
“You should go to meet it with Vince,” Sammi said. “Maybe it’ll help us. I think I’m going to need more time. Too much more time. I don’t know if I can do this at all.”
“I believe in you,” Angela said.
“In fairies?”
“Yes. You know I do.”
“You’ve been made to believe. Just like I have.” Sammi heard what she was saying and sensed the hurt it caused in Angela, but she could not hold back. It was almost as if someone else was using her voice. They were her words, her thoughts, but something harsher spoke them. The something I’m becoming. She didn
’t look up at Angela, and when she moved away Sammi let out a sad, relieved sigh.
Sammi closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, catching hold of herself and maintaining her grip on the person she knew she was. Her mom and dad would want that, and she was desperate to hold on to reality.
For as long as I can.
She remembered shopping with her mom, her easy, kind laughter and willingness to talk to strangers. Why wouldn’t you want to talk to strangers? she would say if anyone asked. You never know what they’re going to say, and mysteries are important.
Sammi wished her mom could see the mystery she had become. She would likely never know why such a talent had not manifested in her mom, or even if she’d known what miraculous powers she carried in her blood, dormant and waiting. Perhaps Sammi’s heritage had come to the fore because of the situation she found herself in. Exposure to the Kin might have awakened their trace within her, and Grace’s lightning bolts had been well targeted. It was since the fairy’s touch that Sammi had begun to really appreciate the differences she carried within her.
She remembered vacationing with her dad at the beach house. There had always been an empty space there with them, a hollowness where her mom should have been. Whether they were eating breakfast together, sunning on the dock or playing frisbee in the garden, that space had always been with them, making the house seem too large for just two people but too small to contain their grief. It had usually gone unspoken, but sometimes—in the evening when they sat on the patio and her dad had a glass of wine—they’d spoken about her mom, and sadness glittered in their eyes like reflected stars.
When she thought of the lightning strikes that had brought her into the world of the Kin, Sammi opened her eyes and focused on the relics laid out before her.
She felt, but did not understand, that they were held together by the arcane glamour Mallian had cast upon them. They were sad objects, each of them exuding the pain, fear and sorrow of the creatures they had been taken from. Gregor the Kin-killer had taken them, and in the end he had been betrayed by the one Kin he worshipped above all, Mallian the Nephilim. That was one death that Sammi did not mourn. The sum of Gregor’s evil deeds were here, and she felt an overwhelming wave of sadness for those poor dead things.
The past was gone, and the future was uncertain. If she was to help she had to concentrate on that, forming her burgeoning skills and talents into a plan that might help them against Mallian. She had seen how powerful and strong he was even without Grace as his unwilling general. With the fairy on his side he might well be unbeatable.
Sammi understood that fighting Mallian was not the way to stop him, to begin with at least. Weakening him, taking away his advantage, was the first thing to do, and to achieve that she had to strip away his hold over the fairy.
Restrained within this rough circle of sad relics was a portion of Grace’s soul. Mallian had stolen part of her and made it his own, and if Sammi could find a way of setting that fragment free—giving Grace’s soul flight so that it could find its way back and recombine with her powerful, primeval self—she would break his hold over the fairy.
What Grace might do then, none of them knew.
Sammi glanced up after Angela and Vince. Angela remained close by, her back turned to Sammi but always aware of where she was. Vince had gone to meet the approaching Kin. They understood even less of what was happening to her than she did, but their presence was a comfort.
Seeking to embrace the frightening, growing power inside, rather than pull away from it, Sammi concentrated on the relics and let her energies flow.
* * *
Vince saw movement through the rain. It was darker than when they’d arrived—day and night had also been thrown into even more chaos by Grace’s absence—and the rain caught errant light and cast flickering shapes across the landscape. The movement he saw was definite and determined, and as it came closer a form began to coalesce from the shadows.
“It’s Dastion,” Vince said.
Angela was behind him, still close to Sammi and the relics.
“Who?”
“He’s a dwarf. I haven’t seen him for a long while. A year, or more. Last time we spoke was the first time. He was drunk and depressed. Then he disappeared underground. He must have been digging ever since.”
“How do you know?”
“Slag heaps all around the valley. Like giant mole hills. They’re covered in plant growth pretty quickly, but they’re easy to see if you know what to look for.”
“All that time in the dark.”
“Yeah.”
Dastion was shorter than Vince remembered, but also wider, stronger, like a boulder pulled out of the ground and now rolling across its surface. He heard the dwarf breathing as he paused ten steps away from them, a heavy sound like stones rolled in a bucket, but redolent of strength, not weakness. He wasn’t breathless, but drew air in and out with hungry heaves. His hair and beard had grown wild, forming a complete halo around his dirt-smeared face. His eyes were narrow against the weak light, and Vince wondered what it must be like to exist underground for so long, the way lit only with occasional torches and fires. He wore heavy leather clothing, cracked and thick with dust, and on his hands were surprisingly light, tight gloves. They were made of a material Vince could not identify.
The dwarf nodded once, and Vince and Angela nodded back.
“Raining,” Dastion said. He looked curiously at Angela, but asked no questions.
“It is,” Vince replied.
Dastion looked up at the sky, eyes squinting tighter as his mouth opened to catch raindrops. He spat the water out and wiped his mouth.
“Euch. Plain. Water I drink is full of minerals. Takes days to filter down below, longer. One place I found, the water takes ten years to permeate down through the rocks. Thirteen strata, seven impermeable, it has to run down them, forms channels and dissolves salts and minerals. Best damn water you’ll ever taste.” His eyes opened wider, his stare much further away, and Vince thought he already wished he was back in his mines.
He must have surfaced for something.
“You know what’s happened?” Vince asked.
“Why else do you think I came up? No other reason to come up here.”
“Food?” Angela asked. “Company?”
Dastion snorted. “Enough food down there for a lifetime, if you know where to look. And my own company is best.”
“Mallian controls her,” Vince said.
“Oh,” Dastion said. “Fuck.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I knew she was gone. There are cracks in the Fold, deep down in its foundations, and they’ve started growing wider. Tremors where there shouldn’t be. I guessed it could only be that crazy fairy bitch has left us alone.”
“She went of her own accord, but the Nephilim took control of her, back in the world.”
“The world,” Dastion said. “Haven’t thought about that place in a while.”
“So why come here, to us?” Vince asked.
“In the hope that we can go back,” Dastion said. He nodded behind him, and through the rain Vince saw other shapes hiding in the trees. “We’ve all been a meal for the fairy at one time or another.”
“Even you?”
“You thought me immune?” Dastion lifted his arm to display a pattern of deep, ragged indentations along his left underarm. “I believed I was safe down there, and it took her a long time to come after me. Maybe she’d grown tired of the hunt up here.” He frowned, eyes distant and haunted. “Foolish of me to believe I might ever be safe from her. So we’re here, all of us, in the hope that you can help us.”
“Me?” Vince asked.
“Sure. We help each other, right? You’ve talked to most of us over the past couple of years, helped some after she took bites out of us.”
“You know what Mallian plans?” Angela asked.
“I’ve heard whispers. We all have.”
“So?” Angela asked. It was such a loaded word that
Vince held his breath. If they sided with Mallian they’d instantly become enemies, and he didn’t like the idea of going up against Dastion.
“So, none of us has any love for the fairy. She drew us here, gave us our freedom, and most of us have embraced that, despite everything we left behind. But then she started eating us. That’s no saviour. We want freedom from the fairy, but freedom in the world too, not conflict and pain. We all left people behind.” He frowned and looked past Vince, as if searching for a way back to whoever he’d left when Grace had marked him and struck him down with lightning. “It’s strange, we’ve left them now, and moved on, and found the existence we were made for. But none of us wants harm to come to those we left behind. If Mallian has his way, they will come to harm.”
“So we all want the same thing,” Vince said.
“Peace for the ones we love,” Angela said.
Dastion nodded. Behind him the mermaid Shashahanna emerged from a copse of trees, seeming to flow with the rain and make it her own. A fox followed, walking on two feet and flickering behind the downpour, features blurring uncertainly between human and animal. Fer, the shapeshifter, was also with them.
“Good,” Vince said, although he wasn’t sure just how good any of this might be. Could he trust them? Did they really all want the same thing? He didn’t have the luxury of time in which to find out.
“So what’s the plan?” Dastion asked.
“That’s what we’ve got to come up with,” Vince said. He glanced at Angela, and she gave him a nervous look.
“My niece is... she has certain fledgling powers, and she might be able to break Mallian’s hold over the fairy,” Angela said.
“What powers? Where is she?”
“Just back past those trees,” Angela said. “She’s one of you, struck by lightning, marked and brought here by Grace, but we rescued her before the Fold closed.”
Dastion looked suspicious, then his expression softened. His more relaxed face crinkled, and streams of rainwater ran down into his massive beard. The water collected and dripped off like falling diamonds.