Fading Light

by Nick Cook

  Mathews squatted by us, examining his handiwork, the stone chains.

  A slow smile filled his face. ‘Excellent, that should stop you being able to throw any plasma balls around now, although I can see by your startled expressions you are somewhat confused by what just happened.’

  Chloe hissed between her teeth. ‘How?’

  ‘At this proximity to the Void, your reality becomes more pliable. More interestingly, this is where the full extent of my own powers kicks in. Powers that I, one of the Shade Immortals, have studied for millions of years.’

  ‘The Immortals?’ Chloe asked.

  ‘We are a Shade sect set up after the original war with the Angelus. We have intensely studied how to stop them thwarting our plans ever again. After Archios’s previous encounter with you both, we realised that one of their annoying AIs had unlocked your human psychic ability in an effort to stop us. I was brought to your world to deal with you personally. Unfortunately, you escaped my first trap in Big Ben.’

  ‘But how did you know about the remote viewing?’ Chloe asked.

  ‘As one of your Americans might say, this isn’t our first rodeo with an Angelus AI. We were reasonably certain that the next stage of his planning would be a Summoning of some sort to create an army to fight us. So what better way to capture you, but with a honeytrap of an Awoken? Especially one with such an interesting and useful ability to us.’

  So this guy was the equivalent of Shade special forces, sent to take us out. ‘Just let me out of these stone handcuffs and we’ll see how our powers match up to yours,’ I said.

  Mathews smiled. ‘I have to admire your spirit.’

  The scroll bar was already halfway across the screen.

  Maybe if I could keep him distracted, it’d give us the chance to come up with a plan. ‘So where’s Archios then? I would have thought he’d be here for the grand finale.’

  ‘Let us just say, this isn’t our only plan in play. We have allowed for a certain level of redundancy – in case we weren’t successful here. Archios has been somewhat busy with another project. Of course, much to my delight, that fallback plan will no longer be needed. Within minutes, London, and then eventually the rest of your world, will be destroyed.’

  ‘We’ll still bloody stop you,’ Chloe said.

  Mathews spread his hands wide. ‘Then be my guest. Show me what feat you can perform that—’

  A long howl interrupted him as a large wolf charged towards us, the creature transforming into Gavin as it ran. He stared back over his shoulder towards the entrance. ‘Lock the doors!’

  Mathews raised his hand and made a reaching movement. At once the main cathedral doors slammed shut and a pile of benches flew over to block them.

  ‘They followed me here,’ Gavin said.

  Mathews narrowed his eyes on him. ‘Who did exactly?’

  A great shuddering blow shook the doors. With a huge bang, they broke into shards of wood.

  Gavin raised a shaking hand and pointed. ‘The men made from clay!’

  A cloud of debris exploded outwards from the doors.

  I stared at Chloe. ‘The Terracotta Army…but how? There was hardly anything left of them when we left.’

  ‘God knows,’ she replied.

  Indistinct shapes moved through the expanding cloud of debris and into the cathedral. As they drew closer, I started to make out the clay warriors silhouetted in billowing dust. My breath stuck in my chest as they drew closer – the statues themselves were almost transparent, the only clue to their existence the odd bit of clay still stuck to their invisible forms. A breastplate here, a gauntlet there, a half-shattered helmet…

  Chloe stared at me. ‘Your terracotta soldiers have turned into a ghost army.’

  ‘But how can that be possible?’

  She gave me a blank look before her eyes widened. ‘Of course! The Terracotta Army were made to protect the emperor in the afterlife. That’s what the people who created them thought they were making. You must have somehow tapped into their original programming when you brought them to life.’

  ‘And what – they now see me as their emperor and are doing everything they can to protect me?’

  ‘Who knows, but I’m not going to complain about mistaken identity in our current situation.’

  The tiny spark of hope inside me grew stronger as the terracotta commander, more intact than most of his men and still on his horse, charged into the cathedral.

  Mathews stared at us. ‘These are your creations, Awoken?’

  Chloe gestured to me with her head. ‘Jake has to take all the credit for this particular magic trick. And what were you saying about it being too late?’

  Mathews struck Gavin hard across the face, sending him sprawling to the ground. ‘You damned fool! You have led these Awoken golems back to us.’

  Gavin shrank away. ‘I tried to lose them, but they wouldn’t give up. They even took out the rest of my pack.’

  The terracotta horseman reared up and thumped his chest. His soldiers raised the remnants of their weapons and charged towards Mathews.

  ‘Defend us!’ Mathews shouted to the wolves around us. He turned back to the control console as the wolves swarmed towards the phantom soldiers.

  Chloe gripped my hand as the two groups crashed into each other. The cathedral rang with the sound of swords and spears smashing into the Shade creatures.

  Fresh movement from the cathedral doorway caught my eyes. A group of people had appeared behind the attacking soldiers.

  ‘I’m not hallucinating this, right?’ Chloe said.

  I shook my head as Hammond and Williams scrambled over the shattered doors. Behind them came Dad, Ethan, Kelly and Claire, carrying two large crates between them, with Domino trotting at the rear.

  The DEC charge bar had at least a third of the way to go when Mathews flicked a switch. Auto-ignition enabled flashed up on the screen. With a roar, he transformed into a shadow bear and bellowing, he charged straight for the clay commander on horseback.

  Gavin turned to follow, but paused for a moment to stare at us.

  I yanked at my chains. ‘You don’t have to follow his orders, Gavin.’

  His grey eyes lingered on mine. ‘But I do, Jake…’

  With a flicker, he dissolved into a wolf and padded, head down, after the shadow bear. The bar had now reached sixty-five per cent.

  ‘Over here!’ I shouted to the others as the bear reared up in front of the horseman.

  They circled round the wolves in combat with the terracotta soldiers and raced towards us.

  Hammond took out a pistol from beneath his jacket and pointed it at the shadow bear. ‘Halt, or I’ll fire!’ he shouted as the bar reached ninety per cent.

  The bear opened its mouth. A disembodied voice echoed through the cathedral. ‘You can’t stop me with a bullet, human!’

  The bar reached the end of the screen. Ignition sequencing commencing…

  There was nothing we could do. We were out of time. I tried to ignite an energy pulse from my palms, but the chains meant they were too far apart for it to work. I stared at Gem, still unconscious, then at Chloe, at Dad, at the others – all about to be swept away when the portal fully opened.

  No fucking way! I threw everything I had into concentrating. Suddenly there was no battle raging around me, no creeping portal behind my back, no thrumming of fear within my chest. I ignored all of it and reached out…

  The shadow bear reared up and beat its chest with primeval, raw power. Hammond dropped to one knee, took aim and fired. The bullet punched straight through the creature’s chest and shadows swirled immediately to fill the hole.

  Breathe… I told myself.

  My mind locked around the speeding bullet and everything went into slow motion. During that last second for our world, I saw the bullet crawl towards the far wall of the cathedral. Then, as I had with Clarke, with Allan, with a hundred stupid pebbles, I pulled at the projectile with my mind. I felt air flowing over it… I was the bullet, curvi
ng it round and back towards the control panel. I hung on to the projectile as it burst the metal panelling, steering it towards a computer control board at the heart of the machine…

  With a shriek of sparks, the DEC burst into flames and my eyes tore back to the screen.

  Fire— flashed up on the screen.

  Time froze…

  The breath locked in my chest as the screen flickered and died.

  ‘No, no, no!’ Mathews’s disembodied voice roared throughout St Paul’s.

  In the chaos, it was Ethan who reached Chloe and me first. ‘Did somebody order the cavalry?’

  Chloe shook her head. ‘Do me a favour? Next time please don’t cut it quite so fine.’

  He made a small bow. ‘I’ll do my best, ma’am.’

  Dad, Claire and Kelly lowered the crate to the floor next to us.

  Ethan gestured at the horsed commander who’d thrown himself at the shadow bear to protect Hammond and was matching the creature blow for blow. ‘For a guy made out of clay, he really has some moves.’ Ethan grabbed on to Domino’s collar as the dog tried to lurch forward into the middle of three shadow wolves as they spun past, locked in combat with four ghost soldiers. ‘And this time you can sit out the fight.’

  Dad lowered the crate he and Claire were carrying and rushed forward to grab me by the shoulders. ‘You’re alive, Jake.’

  ‘And, more importantly, so are you. When we got back to the harbour and you weren’t there…’

  He hugged me hard. ‘I’m so sorry. We waited as long as we could, but what with the Genesis patrol – we couldn’t risk Waverider falling into their hands…’ He hung his head. ‘Forgive me, son.’

  ‘Nothing to forgive. You did what you had to do, as always, and it was exactly the right thing.’

  He met my eyes. ‘Thank you for that.’

  Kelly knelt by Chloe and examined the shackles that Mathews had conjured up. ‘These look interesting…’

  I nodded towards the bear as it circled back towards the horseman, ready to charge him yet again. ‘A little bit of Immortal Shade magic apparently.’

  ‘The Shade’s powers directly increase as this reality starts to break down, thinning the barriers to the Void,’ Sentinel’s voice said from my phone that Hammond was holding.

  ‘Your friend became rather talkative since you disappeared,’ Hammond said. ‘He gave us instructions to turn on my laptop and, once that was up and running, Sentinel started talking and hasn’t stopped since.’

  I held up my bound hands. ‘So is there a way to break Chloe and me out of these things, Sentinel?’

  ‘They are made from physical manipulated matter into the form that is binding you now. With training, you’ll be able to break them yourselves, but for now, a hammer blow should suffice.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Kelly replied. She ducked back to one of the crates and returned with a toolbox.

  Two sharp blows from a hammer later, Chloe and I were free and rubbing our wrists. Hammond handed me my phone.

  ‘But how did you find us?’ I asked.

  ‘A ghostly army of clay soldiers chasing Gavin through the streets is pretty hard to miss,’ Kelly said. ‘We guessed it would be wrapped up with the Shade and yourselves. We ran into the others as soon as we arrived here at St Paul’s.’

  Dad started flicking switches on Waverider, all the time frowning at the portal. ‘Damn, it’s grown bigger than I’d estimated.’

  ‘But Jake destroyed the DEC control – it should have stopped growing now,’ Chloe said.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s already reached its rapid-expansion phase, which means it’s become safe-sustaining. Unless Waverider can collapse this portal, the chain reaction will keep growing bigger until all of London has been sucked into it. That’s just for starters.’

  The orb rippled and lurched, now less than a few metres away from the still unconscious Gem.

  ‘We’ve got to help her,’ I said.

  ‘You do that, while we get Waverider up and running,’ Claire said. ‘Everyone else who isn’t an Awoken, we’ll need your help setting up.’

  Chloe and I raised our hands and blasted a hole straight through the shadow crow wall. Together with Ethan and Domino, we ran through the opening before it closed again.

  As we reached Gem, her eyes flickered open. I unbuckled the leather straps holding her into the chair, but she could barely focus on me.

  Behind us, a roar echoed through the cathedral. We turned to see the shadow bear launch a lunging attack at the terracotta horseman. Although the attack missed the commander, it was enough to distract him from the four wolves who’d circled behind him. Before I could throw out any sort of mental warning, they had leapt and were on top of him, their combined momentum shoving him through the shadow-crow wall and into the portal beyond. At the last moment, the wolves leapt away and the commander and his horse dissolved into the black abyss with a shower of sparks.

  A clattering noise echoed throughout St Paul’s as all the terracotta figures dissolved to nothing. The few pieces of clay left between them fell to the floor.

  The energy and the purpose binding the Terracotta Army together had finally been broken.

  There was a moment’s silence and then the wolves’ victory howls bounced around the cathedral.

  The shadow bear whipped round to face us and the wolves streamed out in a phalanx behind him. Mathews’s shadow bear drew back its lips over its black teeth.

  ‘I think the odds just got a lot worse,’ Chloe said as the bear and wolves started towards us.

  Gem stood and stared at the dark creature, her eyes brimming. ‘No!’

  The shadow bear slowed to halt to peer across at her. Mathews’s voice echoed through the vaulted space: ‘Listen to me, Gemma…’

  Ethan, Chloe and I closed in, forming a protective circle round her.

  ‘Nemesis,’ Mathews said. The word reverberated around the building, over and over, increasing in decibels until it was a shout.

  Gem clamped her hands over her ears. ‘No! I won’t let you use me any more.’

  The bear took another step towards us through the shadow wall. ‘Do not try to resist me.’

  ‘And let you continue to destroy my world?’ she shouted back at him. ‘All the Shade do is exist to kill. As you did with my parents, and as you will do with everyone else on this planet. I’m not going to let that happen.’ Her face twisted as she stood and pushed between us to confront the bear.

  I reached out to grab Gem, but the air had already thickened around her body as her demon materialised. The familiar punch of the mind-storm smashed into my head as Ethan and Chloe sprawled to the floor.

  I crumpled to my knees, but managed to clamp my hand on to her wrist. ‘Fight it, Gem, with all you’ve got.’

  She turned to me, her eyes filled with fear. ‘I can’t, Jake…’ Her skin shifted under my touch, growing as hard as granite. Where Gem had been a moment before, now stood a demon carved straight from the nightmares of her mind. And no longer a phantom either – this thing was as solid as stone.

  The creature extended its dark leathery wings and fixed its ruby eyes on the shadow bear. It let out a long, mournful cry as tears dripped down its scaled face.

  I ignored all of it and hung on to her wrist, fighting the hammering of my own fear and the thunder of the mind-storm.

  Hammond started to take aim at the demon from the other side of the shadow wall.

  ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘Just give me a chance.’

  He nodded and lowered his pistol.

  I concentrated on Gem. ‘I’m not going to abandon you. Not now. Not ever. You see, I think the problem is we may be meant for each other.’

  The demon glanced at me, uncertainty in its eyes.

  The shadow bear roared a challenge at the demon. But the wolves behind it started to back away, ears flattened to their heads.

  I felt Gem’s scaled arm shaking beneath my touch.

  ‘Gem, listen to me. I’m here for you – we all are.’
I tightened my grip.

  A sob broke from the demon’s lips. It fell to its knees and let out a cry of pure anguish.

  Chloe looked up at the demon. ‘I know the pain you’re in, Gem, we all do. But you’re not in this alone any more.’

  Ethan nodded and gazed into the creature’s red eyes. ‘You’re family now, Gem.’

  Domino crept forward and raised his head hesitantly to lick the demon’s hand.

  With tears beading its ebony cheeks, the demon gazed down at the dog. Oh so gently, it patted Domino’s head. And then the demon slowly nodded.

  The mind-storm stopped dead and I blinked as my head cleared.

  Warmth surged beneath my fingers still holding the demon’s wrists, as glowing amber threads laced through the creature’s skin.

  Light began to blaze from its whole body, so intense that we all had to back away.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Ethan said.

  Chloe smiled. ‘An actual miracle, look!’

  The demon’s horns withdrew as its wings became translucent, appearing to be constructed from threads of light. With a final shimmer, a golden angel-like creature stood where the demon had a moment before. It gazed at us with glowing white eyes, its skin sparkling with a million diamonds, its face undoubtedly Gem’s.

  ‘But this isn’t possible. Gem has taken on the form of an Angelus,’ Sentinel said from the phone in my pocket.

  ‘Angelus – you mean the ones that created you?’ I asked.

  ‘Precisely. They haven’t existed in this dimension for billions of years.’

  Every human and Shade inside the Cathedral stopped and stared at the golden creature before us.

  A sense of wonder filled me as I gazed into Gem’s dazzling eyes. ‘Are you OK in there?’

  She nodded and smiled at me.

  Ethan shook his head. ‘That’s quite a makeover, Gem.’

  The angel laughed, all fear gone from the eyes of the woman inside this beautiful being. She spread her wings, woven from Light Web energy threads, and the air shimmered around her. A summer-like breeze washed over us.

  Domino barked and wagged his tail.

  Gem raised her chin, her expression exultant, and began to sing.