He had said: ‘I knew that Zeus and all that lot weren’t real, but I knew that Hecaté was because I’d seen her. But why had their statues been hammered to bits?’
Who knew which way round it had happened? Had the belief faded and the images crumbled because of that? Or had the images been destroyed first? Cause and effect – effect and cause. In this place, Tamar did not think it actually mattered.
‘Because,’ as she finished explaining, ‘it works either way. Without their images, they will never have existed. And all the things they have done will never have happened.’
She turned to Stiles. ‘Where is the statue of the Fates?’ she asked.
As it turned out, destroying the statue was not as easy as just hitting it with a hammer. They even tried explosives, which Denny had “popped out”, as it were, to get. But the statue remained intact. Only Jamie, who had not quite followed all of Tamar’s reasoning, was uneasy about the situation, saying that it was either property damage or murder they were committing, and he was not happy about either.
‘Attempting to commit,’ corrected Tamar grumpily. It just wasn’t fair. She had reasoned it all out so beautifully and now, they couldn’t do anything about it. The damn thing did not have so much as a scratch.
‘Maybe it only works the other way around after all,’ said Denny, taking out the Athame and dangling it idly from his fingers.
Tamar’s eyes followed the gleaming blade, back and forth, back and forth. Denny looked down at his hand and then at Tamar. Their eyes met; Denny nodded and flung the Athame – a blade so sharp it can cut through dimensional space – straight at the heart of the middle Fate. There was a thin, high scream from somewhere, and the statue crumbled.
‘One down.’ This was Tamar.
As the last high-pitched wail died away, the world rocked on its axis and then began to fall away from them.
Only Jamie was unaffected. He watched in bewilderment as they all fell onto their knees. To them, everything was spinning. They had all been having this feeling recently, but in smaller doses, one memory at a time as it were. Now they were under deluge.
Then, just as suddenly, the world returned to normal and stood still like a good world should. Feeling sick and dizzy, they stumbled to their feet and met each other’s eyes and knew.
Tamar looked at Denny. ‘Askphrit,’ she said. Her fists were clenched, her face white with rage.
Denny nodded. ‘He’s gone too far this time,’ he said.
‘He always goes too far,’ said Stiles. ‘Remember when he killed me?’
‘I remember everything,’ said Tamar grimly. ‘And I do mean everything.’
They all did.
‘Which memories are real?’ said Cindy.
Tamar manifested a spoon. ‘Everyone’s except mine,’ she said. ‘I’m the only one whose memory was actually tampered with. Because it had to be. I see it now. The rest of you just led different lives from the point history was changed. But, before that point, my memory had to be changed, because I’ve been around for so long. I became a Djinn over 5000 years ago. But I wasn’t able to remember that.’
‘Why not just change your past right back then?’
‘Ha, Askphrit’s consistent you have to give him that. He was protecting his own back there.’
‘He couldn’t afford to risk tampering with his and Tamar’s shared past,’ explained Denny. ‘Otherwise, he might change his own destiny.’
‘It’s the same mistake he made before,’ said Tamar. ‘He couldn’t prevent my becoming a Djinn, because that would have meant that he never tricked me into freeing him. If he had, he might have won; I’d have lived and died centuries ago. Although, he’d also have lost.’
‘Actually, I meant which set of memories are real?’ said Cindy.
‘Both,’ said Tamar. ‘They both happened.
‘But,’ she continued, we are now back in the reality where the Fates never changed our destinies, because they never existed. But we can still remember that other reality that they created because, as far as we’re concerned, that happened too.
‘It only took one event to change all our lives,’ she mused. ‘I can see it now. It was about ten years ago. I was freed by one of my former masters, before I ever met Denny, and I can tell you, that couldn’t have been easy to arrange. I took on another life and other memories and forgot all about who I really was. I even had a new family, although I suppose they’re not really my family. It was all part of the wish. You were right about that Cindy. I did do this, in a way. At least it was my magic that did it.’
‘Ten years?’ said Stiles, something was bothering him. ‘But that can’t be right, because I remember meeting you two years ago,’
‘Right, in this reality. Who knows when Askphrit set this up, it may have only been last week for all we know, it can’t have been long ago anyway.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because he must have set it up from the Underworld, that’s where the Fates are – were –weren’t … bah, whatever! Anyway, we only sent him to Hell about a year ago. Besides, now I think about it, I have only one set of memories for the last year. That must have been when he actually did it.’
‘So, round about the time that the war started then,’ said Stiles.
There was quite a long silence after this.
Eventually Denny said. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘Where’s home?’ said Tamar. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t our house currently full of American soldiers?’
They looked at Jamie. ‘I guess it is,’ said Denny. ‘He’s still here.’
‘Of course he is,’
~ Chapter Twenty ~
They all trooped back to the library. It not being possible to teleport from within the hall. They had decided that the best thing to do would be to go back to Denny and Tamar’s flat in London. There being nowhere else they could think of, at the moment, that they could go.
‘It’s a nice place, isn’t it?’ said Cindy as they made their way into the living room.
‘Thank you,’ said a voice from the high backed armchair that was facing the fireplace. ‘I try, although I think it might be a little old fashioned nowadays.’ The chair turned to face them, and the body in the chair rose up from the seat like a pantomime demon.
‘Clive!’ Tamar exclaimed.
‘That’s Clive?’ said Stiles, who had never seen him, only heard about him.
Denny nodded. He was not all that surprised to see him. The little tit was always interfering.
‘Yes, of course,’ Clive answered. ‘So, nice to meet you Mr. Stiles.’ And Stiles could have sworn there was a very slight emphasis on the Mister.
‘And you my dear,’ he turned to Cindy. ‘Charmed.’ He gave a slight bow. Cindy just looked at him with her mouth open. ‘So nice of you to admire my humble home,’ he said to her, ignoring her uncouth stance. ‘Too kind indeed.’
‘Your house?’ said Tamar. ‘This is your house?’
Clive gave a little shrug.
‘You live on Earth?’ said Denny.
‘No, no, not exactly, this place is – wherever I want it to be. So handy for getting to work in the morning, and always on time too.’
‘What about …? Stiles pointed vaguely back toward the library.
‘The Hall of Idols?’ said Clive. ‘Ah, that’s just a file that I opened. Not for you – that was just a coincidence. I was actually looking for – er something else. I usually use that tunnel for getting to work, but I thought, well, you kids seemed to need some help.’ He turned to Tamar. ‘I knew you would work it out eventually,’ he said. ‘You just needed a little push.’
Denny groaned. ‘Now I know we’re back,’ he said.
Clive smiled nervously; Denny had always made him a little edgy. Denny made everyone (except Tamar) edgy. You never knew what he might take it into his head to do next.
‘What were you looking for?’ asked Tamar.
‘All in good time,’ said Clive. He looke
d around them expansively. ‘I am glad that you are all back to normal,’ he told them.
‘Why,’ said Denny. ‘What do you want us to do?’
Clive scowled at Denny. He was too quick with his tongue, that one. ‘Oh, nothing much,’ he said airily. ‘Just stop the Apocalypse.’
‘About a year ago,’ Clive told them. ‘Satan was overthrown.’
‘Askphrit?’ said Tamar – who always caught on fast.
‘Quite,’ agreed Clive. ‘Anyway that was the signal for the Apocalypse to begin. The Horsemen are ready and, as you know, the world is at war.’
‘I knew there was something funny about this war,’ interrupted Denny.
‘Indeed. Contrary to evidence, this war was not begun by humanity. I needn’t go into specifics. You know how this sort of thing works. Anyway, they’ve made a mistake up there. Par for the course, quite frankly, but in this case …’ he shrugged expressively. ‘You see, it’s like this, they’ve lost Pandora’s Box.’
Denny winced. He had been there when the box had been opened, and it was not something he was ever likely to forget – at least not again.
‘Quite,’ said Clive. ‘But it now contains only one thing, the hope of mankind. It’s an integral part of the Apocalypse you see. As long as the box remains closed, hope remains for humanity and as long as they have hope, they will never destroy the world. So, we have a chance. If we, and by that of course, I mean you, find it first …’ he looked expectantly at them.
‘Okay, I’ll buy it,’ said Denny. He sighed. ‘I don’t suppose we have much choice do we?’
‘Of course you do,’ said Clive, ‘You could let them find it and open it.’
‘What makes you think we can find it first?’ asked Tamar.
‘They don’t know how to look.’ He smiled at them. ‘I have every faith in you.’
‘Why do you care so much whether we stop the Apocalypse or not?’ said Denny.
Clive spread his hands theatrically. ‘I’m hurt,’ he said. ‘Really hurt, that you could even ask me a question like that.’
Which was not an answer of course, but Denny recognised a brick wall when he saw one. It was the only answer he was going to get.
‘Please consider my house as yours for the duration. I am sure you will find its – features an advantage.’ said Clive. ‘I have a small ‘pied a terre’ in the outer rings that will do me very well in the meantime.’
Cindy bobbed forward. ‘Um please Mr. – er – Clive, I was just wondering, um where is Eugene, you know …’
‘Ah,’ Clive looked evasive. ‘Well, I can’t really tell you that.’
‘Why not?’ Denny swooped on him.
‘Well, it’s just that …’
‘Is he all right, at least?’ said Cindy plaintively.
‘Oh, yes, he’s fine, absolutely fine, nothing to worry about. But I can’t tell you where he is. You’ll probably find out soon enough anyway.’
‘So, why can’t you tell us then?’ Denny persisted.
‘Because – oh all right then, because he asked me not to! There, satisfied? Now you’ve made her cry.’
‘I’m not crying,’ protested Cindy in the face of the evidence, which everyone tactfully ignored.
Denny did not know what to say, he felt as if he had somehow been put in the wrong, and he was not quite sure how.
It was Stiles who brought the conversation back to business. ‘What can you tell us about this box then?’ he asked.
* * *
Before he left Clive filled them in on the history of Pandora’s Box and the details of the search that had already been made for it. What was known for certain was that Zeus had reclaimed the box after Pandora had opened it, and then later both Zeus and box had disappeared. They had tried backtracking through the historical files to no effect.
Tamar snorted when she heard this. ‘Whose stupid idea was that?’ she scoffed.
‘Exactly what I thought, but I’m afraid that’s how these people think,’ Clive had said. ‘I knew you were the right people for the job. But they might get lucky. You never know. Although,’ he had laughed here, ‘they actually re-opened the mythology files and went to ask Zeus where he might hide an important box, if he should have such a thing. I think they thought they were being cunning.’
‘What did Zeus say?’ asked Tamar, laughing herself.
‘He said, he said, oh dear, forgive me.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘He said, “I wouldn’t tell you where I was going to hide it, otherwise what would be the point of hiding it?” You should have seen their faces when they reported back. I had to go outside’
‘And these are the idiots we’ve got to beat to the punch?’ said Tamar. ‘No problem.’
But later, after Clive had gone, it seemed that Tamar had other things on her mind.
Askphrit.
She was sitting alone in the corner of the room while the others discussed the box situation, each coming up with ever more ridiculous ideas about where it might be found.
These ranged from: ‘I ’spect the US government has it in a secret underground bunker somewhere.’ From Stiles, the conspiracy theorist and all round suspicious bastard, to: ‘It’s probably on top of somebody’s wardrobe.’ (Clive really didn’t give himself enough credit sometimes for the humanity of his thought processes) This one from Denny – the pragmatist. And all this was right, of course. You always had to go through every wrong answer before you came to the right one, and Tamar did not intend to interfere.
But as far as she was concerned, the box could wait. The clowns that Clive had described to them would never find it in a million years. There was a far more immediate problem to be dealt with.
It was Denny naturally who noticed her preoccupation. He wandered over to her.
‘Wotcher thinking about?’ he said.
‘Hell.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘Remember the vampires under the sewers?’
‘Yes,’
‘And all the demons?’
‘Of course.’
‘Remember what we found down there?’
Denny smacked his head. ‘Oh Christ,’ he said. ‘How the hell could I have forgotten?’
‘I only remembered it because I went down there again recently,’ she said.
‘You did?’
‘Only I couldn’t remember then what was so important about it, I know now.’
‘Hey guys,’ Denny called over. ‘You remember what we found in the sewers right?’
‘Crap?’ said Jamie. Who naturally did not know anything about the vampires, and was, in any case, convinced that he was trapped inside a very persistent nightmare.
‘We found that under the sewers were caverns, which are full of what we thought were feral vampires and demons,’ explained Tamar. ‘And we noticed that the more we got rid of, the more seemed to come. And we wondered where they were all coming from. Then we found out.’ She looked at Stiles to see if he remembered.
‘A doorway from Hell,’ he supplied on cue.
‘That’s right. Those are not ordinary feral vampires. They’re coming from hell – the demons too. And who’s in charge down there now?’
Stiles put his head in his hands. ‘Oh shit!’ he groaned.
‘He must have opened it up from below. It’s probably always been a weak spot. There have always been vampires down there anyway, attracted to the evil no doubt.’ said Tamar. ‘It leaks through in certain places,’ she explained. ‘There’s a weak spot under the Houses of Parliament. It must have been Askphrit who broke through. He’s trying to take over the world again, he probably doesn’t even know about the Apocalypse.’
‘That’s probably why he got the Fates to interfere,’ said Denny, ‘when he realised we’d found the doorway. I mean it was only a matter of time before we figured it out. We knew he was down there, and the vampires, of course, were a big clue.’
‘Well, we have to stop him,’ said Tamar. ‘He could send an army through there. Legions of demons and vampires and all the damned. And there
may be other doorways too. The men upstairs would get their Apocalypse then, all right.’
Jamie was listening to all this with increasing horror. ‘You guys are all crazy,’ he said. ‘I’m outta here, and anyone who tries to stop me – well, just don’t try to stop me okay!’ He got up and backed nervously toward the door, his eyes darting apprehensively from one to the other of them. He reached the door and scrambled behind him with one hand to find the doorknob. ‘Okay, I’m going now,’ he said shakily. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right, and I won’t tell anyone about you, ha, ha, I mean, who the hell would believe me, right?’ Denny made to rise from his seat, but Tamar stopped him. This was the crisis that she had been expecting.
Jamie swallowed once or twice. ‘This is a trick, right?’ he said. ‘A trap, I mean you’re never just going to let me outta here, are you?’
‘If you want to go,’ said Tamar. ‘We won’t stop you. – Make your mind up time,’ she added softly, under her breath.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ snapped Jamie. ‘Oh hoh no, I’m not falling for that one. Don’t think you can get rid of me that easily. I reckon that’s what you want. Well, it ain’t going to work, see? I’m staying right here. Vampires my ass!’
And with that, he sat back down on the rug in front of the fire and affected an air of indifference to the whole proceeding. The others continued their discussion as if nothing had happened. But now, Jamie was one of them, like it or not. And gradually, as if he had never had any doubts about them at all, he joined the conversation.
‘Well, I say we go back down there and do a little recon,’ said Stiles. ‘See what we’re up against.’
‘That sounds sensible,’ agreed Denny. ‘That’s probably what he’s doing. Otherwise he’d have struck by now.’
‘He’s not been in any hurry – yet,’ said Tamar. ‘But he must know by now, that we’ll be on to him. We can’t assume anything. It may have already started. We have to be ready.’
‘It may be that I speak as a fool,’ said Jamie, tentatively, ‘but why can’t you all just do that Star Trek thing straight into Hell and finish this guy off?’
The Day Before Tomorrow Page 10
