by Nick Cook
Hammond, with Williams, loomed out of the fog and stared at me, before nodding towards Captain Jacobs. ‘It’s Jake Stevens, head of the Awoken unit.’
‘I hadn’t been briefed that he’d be turning up,’ Jacobs replied.
‘Neither had I. I certainly didn’t receive any request from Captain Ericsson about Awoken joining us on the mission tonight.’ Hammond turned to me. ‘You’re not even meant to know about this mission.’
‘There isn’t time to discuss that. Right now the only thing you need to know is that the Shade are already preparing for your attack. You’re not going to manage to survive this alone.’
Hammond scowled at me. ‘Well, I guess you’re bloody here now, but we’re going to have words about this.’
‘Whatever. Let’s get the important stuff done first.’
A squall of wind beside us spiralled up gravel into the air. It had to be the first of the others teleporting in. But rather than Chloe, Ethan or Gem appearing, it was Melissa who materialised in a burst of light.
I stared at her. ‘I thought I told you to stay at Eaglehurst.’
Melissa shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I’ve always had a problem with others telling me what to do.’
I sighed. ‘So what about the others? Are they coming?’
‘I asked Sentinel to let them know.’
Hammond’s expression darkened as Williams gave Melissa an disapproving look.
‘Look, you might not think you need backup, but maybe this will help convince you that I can bring something extra to this fight,’ Melissa said. She raised a clenched fist towards the sky and a rumble of thunder boomed down, accompanied by storm clouds, just visible through the fog. ‘Bring it on,’ she said.
Despite myself, I gave Melissa a slow smile. ‘You really need to learn to follow orders.’
‘Yeah, you can lecture me about it later.’
Captain Jacobs nodded towards her. ‘Well, I for one am happy to have you guys on board.’
A chorus of howls came from the direction of the house, followed by a scramble of paws over the gravel.
Jacobs spun back to his squad. ‘Open fire on my order,’ he shouted. The SAS soldiers ran to defensive positions around their vehicles and lowered their night-vision goggles into place. It was a trick that had been learnt from Inspector Clarke as a way to detect the Shade’s presence.
I slowed my breathing, separated my hands and lit a blue spark as I shifted into the swirling blacks of the Shadowlands.
‘Let’s do this,’ Melissa said. She squeezed her fist and sheet lightning bloomed in the sky above us with another deafening crack of thunder.
Chapter Six
In the Shadowlands I could see three wolves pounding towards us, jaws gaping wide for a death bite. I grew the spark hovering over the palm of my hand into a fireball that crackled and hissed with energy, its warmth fighting the growing chill in the air.
‘Fire at will, men,’ Captain Jacobs shouted.
The SAS soldiers around us dropped to their knees by their vehicles and levelled their weapons at the wolves rushing towards them. Flashes of light erupted from the guns’ barrels and large silver projectiles sped straight into the closely bunched pack. Energy crackled over every wolf and they each evaporated to leave a human body twitching on the ground.
Hammond gestured towards me as the SAS soldiers reloaded their weapons. ‘As you can see, this squad are more than well enough equipped to deal with the Shade.’
‘You think?’ Melissa said, arms still raised as her lightning storm continued to build above us. She gestured with a chin towards the windows of the house. ‘So what about the rest of them, General Hammond?’
I looked and saw Shade agents staring down at us from each window of the manor house. Their mouths opened wide and smoke started to flow out, followed by their bodies disintegrating as they dissolved into shadow crows. They hammered themselves against the windows, which soon cracked and splintered under their assault.
‘Are you still so certain, General Hammond?’ I asked.
He gave me a frown as he withdrew his Voletar handgun from its holster.
With a crash of glass, the shadow crows erupted through the broken windows in a torrent of darkness that swept down towards us. We hunkered behind a Land Rover with Hammond and the others as the flock swirled around in blurs of darkness.
I kept my heart rate steady as the air grew rapidly putrid with the stench of our approaching enemy and I let my fireball grow into a small sun.
Around us, Hammond, Williams and Jacobs, along with rest of the SAS squad, began to shoot into the flock. But while their weapons had been so effective against single wolves, they could only take out a few shadow crows as they swooped past.
The air filled with static that made my skin tingle. I took deep breaths to centre myself to fight.
Captain Jacobs shouted across to me. ‘That help you were mentioning, Jake?’
I raised my eyebrows at Melissa. ‘Let’s help kick the Shade’s arses.’
She grinned back at me and drew her clenched fist downwards.
With an ear-splitting rumble, the whole sky above us roared as a massive thunderbolt blasted straight into the flock. In an instant, at least a hundred shadow crows turned into embers that floated down through the air, the charred smell of cinders even overpowering the smell of rotting flesh.
A deep sense of calm filled me as I centred myself, months of training and battle experience kicking in. I felt no fear, just certainty we would win this. I flicked my wrist forward and let my fireball fly, vaporising another group of shadow crows that had been swooping straight at Hammond.
Hammond glanced across at me and frowned. I would accept his thanks later.
But despite our initial success, the flock was still very large and already another group had tightened into a knot around one of the soldiers at the edge of the squad. With a rustle of wings that sounded like the crunch of dry leaves in a forest, the crows lifted the soldier screaming into the air. As he struggled, their talons slashed his flesh away in great chunks, leaving bleeding cuts that criss-crossed his face as he went limp.
My initial calm evaporated into hot fury as I aimed and released another plasma ball. It sped up into the knot of crows, vaporising them, and the broken remains of the soldier’s body dropped to the ground with a sickening thud just a few metres away from us. His comrades didn’t even glance across at him as they kept reloading and firing again and again. Professional and cool under action, it was little wonder they’d been drafted into the most elite group of soldiers in the British military. I could have learnt a lot from them.
Melissa’s storm over our heads was intensifying again as sweat beaded across her forehead. Further out in the dark fog, more wolves started to howl. Their vague shapes darted left and right as they massed for another attack. Yipping to each other, at least thirty shadow wolves charged out of the bank of boiling fog, heading straight towards us in bounding strides. The fog surged with and then ahead of them, rolling over us with a suffocating pressure that made my lungs burn. Wolf shapes steamed past as shouts and cries came from the thickening gloom around us.
General Hammond grabbed my arm as shadow crows continued to attack. ‘Do something!’
I nodded and turned to Melissa. ‘We need to blast this fog away so the soldiers can see their attackers.’
‘On it,’ she replied.
She drew her clenched fist down once again and lightning bolts blazed in a ring around us, instantly evaporating the fog to reveal the shadow wolves.
The soldiers opened fire, the Voletar bolts shattering wolf after wolf.
I felt a vibration through the balls of my feet and then a second, this time much stronger.
‘Is that anything to do with you?’ Hammond asked.
Melissa and I shook our heads.
With another tremor, the ground began to bounce around, making the ornamental trees and bushes whip about. As the Land Rovers rocked on their suspensions and the alarms of t
he supercars screamed at the front of the house, we each fought to keep our balance. With a groan the house started to visibly tremble and stonework began breaking away from the walls and shattering on the gravel driveway below.
Sentinel’s voice burst from my eBud. ‘Jake, I’m detecting considerable seismic activity centred directly within the manor house.’
‘No shit!’
A whole balcony section tore away as the brickwork behind it detonated, sending it arching outwards and down towards us.
I took a breath and threw a mental TK push outwards, deflecting the balcony that was plummeting towards us. I clenched my mind round the disintegrating structure, at its atoms of brick and mortar, and shoved. The balcony swerved away and crashed onto a Bentley that crumpled beneath it as if it had been made from cardboard.
Melissa stared at the crushed vehicle. ‘Nicely done, Jake.’
‘I can’t let you grab all the glory, can I?’
She grinned at me as the tremor beneath our feet calmed.
‘So what the hell caused that earthquake?’ General Hammond asked as he shot a Shade that had been plummeting towards Williams’s back with his Voletar handgun. His assistant gave him a grateful nod.
‘Something that just happened inside that house,’ I called back.
‘Whatever it was, I need you to secure the Lodestone you discovered earlier,’ Sentinel said into my ear. ‘If I can manage to decrypt it, it could give us a way of listening into the Shade’s communications.’
‘In other words, our very own version of the Enigma machine that the Allies cracked during the Second World War?’ Melissa replied.
‘An excellent analogy,’ Sentinel replied.
‘Right, leave it to me,’ I said.
A squall of wind was followed by three pulses of lights erupting next to us as Gem, Chloe and Ethan materialised out of the fog. Each of them was wearing a headband with a camera strapped to it, devices that would allow Sentinel to monitor a live feed of what was happening here – something that in my haste I’d forgotten to put on.
‘Whoa!’ Ethan said, as his gaze took in one of Melissa’s lightning bolts frying three shadow wolves bounding towards us.
Chloe shook her head. ‘Hey, not fair – you two started without us.’ She spread her hands wide to create two glowing energy spheres and let them fly.
The corners of Gem’s mouth curled upwards. ‘It still looks as though you could do with some backup.’
‘Not so much us, but General Hammond, since we’re trying to haul him out of the hole he got himself and his soldiers into,’ I replied.
‘Same old,’ Ethan said with a shrug.
‘So let me even up the odds a bit then,’ Gem said.
The air rippled around her and light flickered over her body, becoming strands of golden energy that slowly created an angel and gave her an ethereal glowing exoskeleton. Gem spread her wings wide and with several powerful air-swishing beats she rose upwards her human body within it. Like a swallow dancing, she began to carve through the crows, her wings dissolving them instantly to dust.
‘Can you guys mop up the Shade out here and try to keep General Hammond and these soldiers alive?’ I asked. ‘I need to get into that manor house to grab something.’
‘Sure, no problem,’ Ethan said. ‘But you’re not thinking of going in there alone, are you?’
‘I’m going with him,’ Melissa said.
‘Once again, about that training you haven’t had…’ I said.
She waved around at the cinders drifting down from the sky. ‘I think I’ve more than proved myself out here, Jake, so maybe cut me a little bit of slack, hey?’
‘Way to go, sister,’ Chloe said. The two women fist-bumped before Chloe took out another shadow wolf that had been racing towards us.
‘Sounds to me as if you’ve already lost the argument,’ Ethan said with a smile as he vaporised a flock of crows that had been about to attack Jacobs. The captain gave Ethan a nod in the way of thanks.
‘Please let me do this, Jake. I want to make a difference,’ Melissa said.
I could tell by the determined expression on her face that she was desperate to do this – to step up. And really, this was exactly what we were training the Awoken for.
I sighed and nodded. ‘Come on then, before I change my mind.’
Melissa beamed at me as I turned to the others. ‘Guys, we could do with some covering fire as we head for the entrance.’
‘No problemo,’ Ethan replied.
‘My squad can give you some assistance there too,’ Captain Jacobs said.
‘Great, I’ll take all the help that we can get,’ I replied.
‘Suppressing fire on my order,’ Jacobs called out to his soldiers.
‘Ready?’ I asked Melissa.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ she replied.
Together we raced for the doors.
Chapter Seven
As Melissa and I sprinted towards the entrance, a fresh group of shadow wolves appeared. Plasma shots from Gem and Ethan, along with Voletar charges from Captain Jacobs and his soldiers, sped over our heads to blast them aside.
As we hurtled up the now clear steps I caught a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye. A flock of shadow crows came racing round the building and straight at us. Before Melissa or I could react, Gem’s angel hurtled down through the swarm of crows like a golden comet and vaporised them to a snowstorm of grey ash that floated down onto our heads.
I raised my hand in thanks but Gem was already speeding back up into the sky, cartwheeling on the tips of her wings through the flock like an angelic scythe.
‘Gem’s quite something, isn’t she?’ Melissa said, watching.
‘She certainly is,’ I replied, avoiding her eyes. It seemed everyone knew about the two of us.
We entered the hallway and I put my finger to my lips as we slowed to a creep. ‘Stay alert. Something from inside this place caused that earthquake.’
‘Got it,’ Melissa replied.
I shifted into the X-ray spectrum and glanced up towards the meeting room. It was now empty – and the Lodestone had vanished.
‘Damn it, they’ve moved the Lodestone.’
‘In that case, we’ll have to find it. I’ve always loved treasure hunts,’ Melissa replied, trying to force a smile.
For the first time I noticed the tremble in her hands. Of course she was scared sick – who wouldn’t have been?
‘It’s not too late to back out of this,’ I said.
‘And miss all the fun, no way.’ Her smile became less forced and more genuine.
‘OK then…’
The deeper we crept into the sprawling building, the more the noise of battle outside receded. Despite my cool exterior bravado, my pulse was now pounding in my ears. It was too quiet.
Melissa cast her head around, no doubt shifting through every electromagnetic wavelength as she tried to locate any opposition waiting to ambush us behind the walls of the manor house.
As we rounded a corridor, the door at the far end opened and a woman’s eyes locked on to us. She began to immediately dissolve into shadow crows. Before I could throw an energy sphere at her, Melissa splayed her fingers and arcs of electricity erupted from a socket in the wall next to the woman. The Shade agent crumpled to the ground, sparks dancing over her skin and blistering it with red pustules.
Melissa lowered her hands. ‘Oh god, what have I done?’
I gently took her hands in mine as I shifted back into the Real. ‘What you had to, Melissa. I’ve been exactly where you are now and I know it’s hard not to see that woman as a person, but I promise you whoever she was is long dead inside that body. If you hadn’t dealt with her, I would have taken her out.’
‘At least I’m helping and not holding you back.’
‘You’ve more than proved yourself. I just like to worry about other people, OK?’
‘OK.’ Melissa’s expression lifted a fraction.
‘But I thought summoning storms wa
s your speciality. Where did the electrocution come from?’
‘Manipulating electricity in all its forms is just an extension of that.’
‘And now you tell me.’
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
We headed past the charred remains of the agent, Melissa averting her gaze, and turned the corner towards the heart of the building.
Not so long ago, like Melissa, I would have been scared sick at the prospect of what might lie ahead. But with all our training, I felt my confidence growing with each step. After all, this was the first real test of trained Awoken going up against the Shade – and already the results were speaking for themselves. We were doing better than holding our own. And something else was promising too. General Hammond may have been wrong to launch an attack without talking it through with us first, but their Voletar weapons certainly seemed to have worked on the Shade to some extent.
‘Hey, is that what we’re looking for?’ Melissa said, interrupting my thoughts. She pointed ahead to a panelled wall in the T-junction in the corridor we’d just reached.
I dialled into the X-ray again to peer through the wood and bricks of the wall. Sure enough, I spotted the skeleton of a person on the other side of the wall and it looked as if they were drawing something onto it. Behind the person sat a cuboid shape on the floor, but I couldn’t see through that – I guessed it had been encased in something like lead.
‘Someone’s in there with the Lodestone,’ I said. ‘We need to secure it and then teleport it back to Eaglehurst.’
Melissa gestured to the wall. ‘One major problem: I can’t see any obvious way into or out of that room. There must be a secret entrance somewhere.’
‘If there is, we don’t have time to find it. Stand back a bit.’
Melissa stepped away as I rolled up my sleeves and extended both hands on the wall. I concentrated my mind on the brickwork beneath the wood panelling and with each breath I began to expand space between the atoms. The wall started to vibrate as the sensation grew in my mind. I kept going, spreading the atoms further and further apart like planets in a solar system. With a rumble followed by a massive bang, the wall detonated into the room beyond. As the mortar flew into it in an expanding cloud, I caught a brief glimpse of the man behind it being hurled away.
