Ghost Electricity

by Sean Cunningham

  Always, he pushed towards the creature in the centre of the room.

  He saw Julian was keeping up. A creature tried to get around Rob and come at him from behind. Julian fried him with lightning from his glove. Another followed it and with a gesture he sent it flying through the air. It landed in the cooker in one of the shops and burst into flames as the cooker began noisily devouring it. Julian’s face was streaked with sweat and the filth in the air.

  A table whipped around and hammered into Rob’s side. It threw him off balance and the chairs swarmed him. Their wooden legs punched hard into his ribs. He tried to bite one and it shattered into splinters. He grabbed another, picked it up and used it to smash the rest.

  Wailing magazines flapped against his face, blinding him. The creatures fastened themselves to him in growing numbers and Rob felt himself being dragged to the floor. Then fire rolled through the air. He felt it crisp the fur on his shoulders. The magazines exploded into flame and spun up towards the ceiling.

  Rob bit and clawed his way upright. The few creatures left threw themselves at him without any fear of injury or death. He tore a writhing table from the floor and used it to bludgeon them into paste.

  And then there were no more of them. Rob pulled himself to his full height. He was covered in revolting, inhuman gore and streaked with his own blood. His limbs shook with exertion. Julian had a cut on his brow that had him wiping his eye on his sleeve, but he was still on his feet. The gem on his glove was dark.

  Everything went black.

  Terror poured down on Rob in a thunder storm. His insides turned to ice and his muscles went rigid. He howled in fear.

  Blue light flashed in the darkness and returned Rob to the twisted reflection of the restaurant. The fear drained out of him. He looked up, blinking.

  Julian stood with his fists clenched at his sides and his eyes fixed on the monster in the centre of the room. “I can hold its mind back from us,” he said. “Kill it quick.”

  Rob swung around. The human face on the last remaining creature twisted in fury and then came apart into a mass of grey, rippling flesh. It didn’t tear apart like the others, it simply lost its shape and became another.

  Yellow mist poured out of it. A dozen star-pupiled eyes rolled and fixed on Rob. The creature flexed its mass of tentacles and lunged forward.

  Rob leapt at it and crashed into its trunk.

  Tentacles lashed around him, fixed themselves in place and pulled. Rob drew on all his strength to keep from being pulled apart. He felt the ligaments in his shoulders start to stretch.

  He became hyper-aware of his body. He could feel the weave of his muscles and the structure of his bones. Every nerve in his body pulsed with pain. A shudder ran through him from head to toe.

  It felt the same as it had the first time he changed into a werewolf. The same physical self-awareness. The same inferno of pain.

  His skin shifted as fur gave way to slick scales. The tentacles lost their grip. His fingers tingled as his claws extended. His jaw lengthened and widened. He dropped to the ground, fell to a crouch and hurled himself upwards.

  Tentacles coiled around him again. He grabbed and yanked and pulled himself higher. He bit, an unfamiliar snapping motion. Glands around his jaw pumped poison into the creature’s alien flesh. He plunged one claw-tipped hand deep into the pus-yellow pool of its nearest eye.

  The creature shrieked and bucked. Rob was nearly thrown clear. He stabbed his other hand into its flesh and ignored the tentacles flailing against the scales on his back. Elbow-deep in the thing, he found something to grab. He hissed and ripped the creature apart.

  Rob had nothing left to hold onto. The ruptured creature tossed him through the air and he changed again, into the heavy familiar werewolf shape. The hard collision with the floor barely bothered him. Standing, he saw the creature collapse in a mass of writhing tentacles, gushing black and yellow fluids from its torn trunk.

  “Burn it!” he snarled.

  Julian lifted his right hand. His whole body shook, as if an electric current surged through him. A flash lit the creature up with blue flame. Julian staggered backwards.

  The entire nightmare place shuddered and twisted. The floor became a starry gulf beneath Rob’s feet with the vast, bulging eye rolling towards him. He felt the floor getting spongier. He knew he was about to fall through.

  Julian grabbed his arm and in a voice taut with strain said, “Not that way, Rob.”

  The eye in the void fell away and Rob felt himself going up.

  “Damon says they’re still on the M1,” Billy said over the phone. “They’re moving again.”

  Alice perched in the back seat of Zarina’s convertible. Zarina was at the wheel and one of her pets sat in the passenger seat, ready to take over when the time came. Vivien and Rooster rode in the car ahead, though one of Vivien’s human flunkies drove. They thundered out of central London, heading north.

  Alice held her phone to her ear, on a conference call with Billy back at the residence. He had remained behind with Alice’s most recent plaything, the warlock who went by the name Damon.

  “Does Damon know why they stopped for so long?” Vivien asked. “Why did he lose them?”

  “The fool isn’t making much sense.” Billy sounded unusually tense. “He keeps muttering about a whirlpool whenever he tries to look at Rob and Julian. He looks half out of it.”

  “Keep at him,” Vivien said. “We’re relying on you to guide us in.”

  “There’s blood coming out of his nose,” Billy said and Alice understood why he sounded on edge. “Alice, should there be blood coming out of his nose?”

  Rooster’s laughter crackled over the connection. “Just lick it off, Billy.”

  “Don’t touch him, Billy,” Vivien said. “Stay focused.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “If he’s bleeding out his nose, he’s pushing himself to breaking,” Alice said. “If it starts coming out his ears, he’s done.”

  “Back off then, for now,” Vivien said. “We’ll get another fix once we reach the M25.”

  Alice lifted her head and let the wind race through her hair. What are you doing to my little pet, Julian?

  Chapter 18 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  “What?” Julian asked.

  “Huh?” Rob said.

  “I thought … Nothing.”

  “Good. Let me get back to trying to pass out.”

  They were back on the M1 and Julian had taken the driver’s seat. He felt weak and drained. Every muscle in his body ached and he was grimy with dried sweat and abomination ooze. Though the poison injected into his system had been neutralised, he had not had time to fully heal the stab wounds from the stingers and they throbbed with every tiny movement of his arms. There had been no ambient power for the aetheric flux crystal in his gauntlet to draw upon in that nightmare place. He’d had to spend his own strength for the last push against the abominations.

  He’d really come back to London to get away from that sort of thing.

  Rob was a mess, but in no danger. Though the light of the moon didn’t fall directly on him where he slouched in the passenger seat, he was still very near his strongest on this first night of the full moon. The cuts, gashes, bruises and scrapes he’d received as he ripped his way through the abominations were all healing. With a feast-sized meal and a rest he’d be back to his usual self within a day. Julian had provided Rob with a t-shirt from his satchel to replace the few soggy remnants of his business shirt.

  “What were they?” Rob asked.

  Julian had been waiting for the question for a while, though he had at the same time wondered if Rob would ask it at all. He must have been curious to set out to travel the world after finishing high school, but in many ways Rob struck Julian as hunkered down and wilfully shutting out the noise of the world around him. He supposed Rob was too busy just trying to make life work as a werewolf to think much beyond that.

  “For simplicity’s sake, they’re r
eferred to as abominations or outsiders,” Julian said. “The staff and customers there at the service station were all serving as incubators for newborn ones. They were growing fast too. It usually takes weeks or months for them to develop like that. The other one, I think he was a human being who merged with one.”

  Rob pulled a face. “Who would want that?”

  “Easy power and secret knowledge of the universe. It appeals to some.”

  “What about the big thing underneath it all?” Rob asked.

  “Timeless, powerful and utterly incomprehensible,” Julian said. “The hybrid we fought, we might have vaguely understood his motivations and purposes, but not the beast below. If you ever come close to contact with one of them, you run. It’s all you can do.”

  Rob grunted. “Learned that at magician school, did you?”

  Julian considered his answer. “A little. Mostly elsewhere.”

  “You went to an actual school for magicians? I was kind of kidding.”

  “I left as soon as I was able. I didn’t think they had much to teach me. They’ve spent one hundred and fifty years doing things a particular way and they won’t consider any other methods.” His voice picked up speed. “Matter and energy, time and space, thought and will – these things are all much more closely linked than most people think. The divide between the modern world and the shadow world is an illusion. Science and magic can be one, but no one there could see it.”

  Rob looked at him slantwise. “Got a bug up your arse about that, have you?”

  Julian snorted. “I suppose so. I used to have a lot to say on the subject and I said it often. Anyway, I wasn’t the only one who saw things that way.”

  “So you do know other magicians,” Rob said. “Looked them up since you got to London?”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” Julian hesitated. “We didn’t part on good terms.”

  Rob chuckled. “You really do play it close to the chest, don’t you?”

  The words stung. “There are things I have to keep secret forever, no matter what. It feels so hard to work out what I can and can’t say to people.”

  “So you don’t say anything. Yeah, I’m like that with my family. What could I tell my Mum that she could handle?” Rob sighed. “It was like that with my last girl too. Ellie put up with my disappearing act for the first couple of months, but she kicked up a right stink after the third full moon and I couldn’t blame her. It didn’t end well.”

  Julian was silent, unsure what to say. Rob made himself as comfortable as he could again and tried to rest.

  “We’re called warlocks, by the way,” Julian said as the thought popped into his head. “Modern British magicians are called warlocks and witches. On the continent, they usually call themselves mystics and in America they call themselves sorcerers and sorceresses.”

  “Yeah? I guess you don’t really want to go around calling yourself a witch in America, what with all the history.”

  “There were witch trials in Europe too,” Julian said. “The name didn’t come back into use until in the twentieth century though. We were all magicians in the nineteenth century.”

  “What about before that?”

  “Nothing, in essence. There were so few of us it that there wasn’t any need for a coherent identity.”

  “What, really?” Rob frowned. “I just thought it was always like now, with us lot hidden away from the rest.”

  “No, not at all,” Julian said. “Earth is, well, it’s dead in certain ways. The magic here was burned up long ago in a war between great civilisations.” He indicated the cargo in the back. “Assuming that’s an inert material in the back and I desperately hope it is, elements like it used to exist on Earth too. They were either mined out or went cold. The Earth must have been healing for the thousands of years since, but about two hundred years ago it reached a tipping point. The world’s magic could be called upon by more than just those few born with a great deal of talent for it. The shadow world became much more tangible.”

  “Would one of these ‘great civilisations’ have spoken that language you said the other ones come from?” Rob asked. Julian nodded. “You weren’t lying when you said you studied history then.”

  “It was in there, amongst all the other things.”

  Rob leaned back against the head-rest. “When we were in that other place, did you see Laurie?”

  Julian wasn’t any good at reading people, but there was a catch in Rob’s voice. “I didn’t look for her.”

  “Oh. Speaking of that weird place, when we were fighting those squid fuckers, did you see me change near the end?”

  “What do you mean?”

  There was a loud impact on the roof of the van. For the first time Julian noticed the car that had drawn up on their right and when he checked the van’s mirrors he saw the headlights of another right behind him.

  “We’re being boarded,” Julian said.

  Another loud impact, this one against the side. Rob shoved his door open and swung out. Julian saw his hand on the frame of the door and heard him land on the roof just as he let go.

  The two cars were low and fast. The van wouldn’t outrun them. Julian grabbed for his bag just as the door opened again and a white blur darted in at him.

  Vivien kicked off from the top of his car’s windscreen, rode the night air streaming past him and landed on top of the Odd’s Transport van. A ripple of cold shot through his shoes, up his legs and upwards through his spine. His vision clouded.

  Then it was past and Vivien shook himself. Wariness gave pause to the bloodlust he had called up within himself. He had not felt cold in centuries.

  Zarina leapt from her own car and caught the side of the van. Her jump was everything both graceful and terrifying about their kind, but he saw the strangeness of the van suck at her too and the wind almost dragged her away.

  A young man in a t-shirt and torn trousers somersaulted onto the roof of the van from the passenger side door. He had to be Robert Cromwell, the creature Alice claimed was not actually a werewolf. The wind tore away his scent but merely the sight of him was enough to rouse the bloodlust within Vivien again. He felt his fangs and nails elongating.

  Alice jumped out of Zarina’s car and arced high overhead, over the van, riding the wind with a speed and skill even Vivien couldn’t match. Cromwell looked up and Vivien used the distraction to leap forward.

  Alice vanished in through the passenger side door and the van lurched sideways. Vivien almost lost his balance. Cromwell, still crouched low, grinned at him and changed.

  He burst out of his t-shirt as his flesh swelled and his bones lengthened. His face became the face of a beast, his body bristling with grey fur over heavy muscle. Vivien’s anger wavered again.

  Cromwell had changed into the biggest werewolf he had ever seen.

  Alice swept in through the passenger side door. Julian was there, right before her. His head had barely begun to turn. One hand was on the wheel while the other reached into the bag on the seat beside him.

  She pounced, hissing, teeth bared. His hand started to rise from the bag, but too slowly. His other hand pulled hard on the wheel and the van jerked sideways. She went for his neck.

  Vivien took a step back as the werewolf howled at him. Then Zarina launched herself up from the side of the van and crashed into Cromwell’s hip. As he staggered and grabbed for her, Vivien swept in and drove his talons deep into Cromwell’s side.

  A fist crashed down on Vivien’s shoulder and drove him to one knee. The roof of the van dented deeply beneath him. Cromwell wrenched Zarina off his leg just as Rooster slammed down on the rear end of the van. He threw the screeching Zarina straight at Rooster and they both tumbled off the back.

  Vivien’s fist caught Cromwell hard under the jaw. They grabbed at each other and spun in a ragged circle. Cromwell pulled a hand free and lifted it high, but Vivien was faster and bit hard on Cromwell’s shoulder near the neck. Vivien’s mouth filled with hot blood and Cromwell bellow
ed in pain. They toppled and fell together off the front of the van.

  Alice breathed in Julian’s scent. She brushed her lips against his neck and the artery that pulsed so invitingly there. “I could have tasted you then. I could be draining you dry right now.”

  Julian held very still. “You promised you never would.”

  He didn’t smell afraid, not quite. “You expect me to keep my word after the way you left?”

  “I could burn you right now.” His hand was tight on her wrist.

  “I don’t think you will. You would have already done so.”

  He said nothing.

  She laughed. “Silly, silly boy. I have you now.”

  She caught a glimpse of two large shapes in the corner of her vision and had time to flash back towards the passenger side door just before Vivien and Cromwell smashed into her side of the windscreen.

  Behind the van, Zarina and Rooster snarled and swore at each other as they untangled themselves. Rooster had dug his fingers into the grille of Vivien’s car and lay across the bonnet, his feet kicking the windscreen. Zarina had landed on top of him, hard enough that they’d dented the bonnet. She had caught his leg and was bent over the top of the windscreen, half in and half out of the convertible.

  Rooster kicked her off. Screeching, she tumbled into the back seat of Vivien’s car, nearly knocking out the mortal driver as she went. Rooster got his feet under him and launched himself through the air towards the back of the van.

  But at that moment, Vivien and Rob smashed the van’s windscreen and Julian swerved hard to the right.

  Rooster missed and landed on the road. The driver of Vivien’s car didn’t have time to try and avoid him. The car bucked hard as the left-hand tyres burned over him, crushing one leg, his spine and one shoulder. It was more pain than Rooster had ever known.

  It was only the first car to hit him.

  Zarina, almost upright, fell into the back seat again. She saw Alice fly out of the passenger side of the van, shatter a large metal road sign and vanish into the darkness beside the road.