Denny looked dazed as he tore off the page and handed her the list.
“You mean you're going to make a bomb?”
“Got any better ideas?” he asked. “We've got no superpowers to fight them, but we've got brains. We know bullets can hurt them but not kill them. Let's see if blowing them apart can do the job better.”
Denny looked from the list to Brad, open-mouthed.
“Hey,” he said, kissing her quickly on the tip of the nose, “don't crack. Tough investigative reporters get the job done, right?”
“Right,” she said, trying to smile as she stood up. “I'll go and see if the all-night supermarket has some of these.”
“Maybe put some clothes on first?” he suggested. “Our decadent civilization is still around for now.”
At that, she did manage a brief smile. She dressed, kissed him again, and left. He watched her leave the hotel. The fog was now so dense that she vanished from view after less than ten yards.
Can I make a bomb? And how the hell can I use it on the crannog without blowing myself up?
“I can try,” he said to the empty room. “Maybe I can blackmail them with it, make them stop.”
He threw himself into his new task and tried not to think about how desperate his improved half-plan was. Denny had been gone an hour and Brad was tinkering with what he hoped would be a trigger mechanism when his phone rang. It was Katie Fox. He had totally forgotten their interview, which now seemed utterly irrelevant.
“Sorry,” he said brusquely. “I have to bail. Something much more important has come up and–”
“Oh, that's a pity,” said the reporter. “I have someone here who really would like to discuss things with you.”
Brad was about to end the call when a familiar voice said, “Hi, Dad! Whatcha doin'?”
Chapter 11: The Day of the Serpent
“What is it, Cressida?” asked Julie, trying to keep the worry out of her voice.
Ever since their experience at Culloden, the family had been trying to get back to normal and enjoy their holiday. Julie thought things had more or less returned to normal until this morning, when they had woken to find Inverness wreathed in dense fog. Paul had at first played up the spookiness of this until Julie had given him one of her special looks. Now he was trying to cheer up Will and Cressida with a promise of a trip to a castle, then to McDonald’s. But, while Will was already spelling out just what burger he wanted, Cressida was gazing vacantly out of the breakfast room window.
“It's just fog, darling,” Julie said. “Nothing to be scared of.”
“I'm not scared,” said the little girl, still looking towards the loch. “I'm waiting.”
“Waiting for a mermaid,” jeered Will.
“We've talked about that, son,” put in Paul quickly. “It's all in the past. We move on.”
Cressida shook her head.
“No, it's in the future,” she said softly.
Julie leaned closer to her daughter, tidied her hair.
“What do you mean?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
“The mermaids,” said Cressida. “They're coming. Which sounds nice when you say it like that. But I'm not sure I want them to come. It feels … funny.”
Julie was wondering if a stricter approach might work when she saw a child's face reflected in the window. It was a little boy at the table behind them. He, too, was looking out at nothing. Looking around the guests at other tables, Julie saw three more young children also staring intently into the cotton-wool wall of fog.
“Eat something, dear,” Julie urged, touching Cressida lightly on her arm. The girl turned round and looked into her mother's eyes.
“All right,” said Cressida. “I'll have some toast.”
When they finished breakfast, Julie corralled her children and took them upstairs to put on their coats. The weather, she explained, was unseasonable. She then had to explain the word to Will. Cressida was still distracted, and Julie began to wonder if her daughter was suffering post-traumatic shock.
Then she, too, started to feel the influence emanating from the loch.
At first, it was vague, slightly irritating, the sensation of something that needed attending to. Julie even looked down to see if she had a trailing shoelace. But then she realized that it was something like a call, a kind of mental dog-whistle that could not be ignored. She found herself standing beside Cressida at the window, gazing into the silver-gray murk.
“Who is coming? What is coming?” she murmured.
“You all right, love?” asked Paul, coming to stand beside her. “Bloody hell,” he went on, “it's a real pea-souper, as my old dad used to say. Still, that's the Highlands for you. At least it's not bucketing down with rain, eh?”
“No,” said Julie, only half-hearing him.
“We ready for the off?” Paul asked. “This museum opens at ten. I hear there's some kind of animatronic dinosaur.”
“Yay!” shouted Will, his loud enthusiasm piercing Julie's reverie. She blinked, shook her head.
“Yeah, right,” she said, smiling at Paul. “All ready to go. Today's adventure may begin!”
***
Denny had managed to find every item on Brad's list, after searching for British brand names online. It had taken her just over an hour and she was on her way back to the hotel when an obvious point occurred to her. She stopped dead in the street.
How is he going to plant this bomb on a flat stone platform surrounded by water?
None of the possible answers were reassuring. She set off again, walking just as fast, but now confused and conflicted. The thought of Brad going on a suicide mission was abhorrent to her. Her feelings for him had grown, ripened, over the last few months.
But if the world's in peril, the feeling of two people doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
She was so preoccupied that it took her a few minutes to notice how oddly people around her were behaving. A steady stream of pedestrians was emerging from the fog, passing by, and disappearing again. What was strange about this was that almost all of them were heading in the same direction. They were heading for the quayside.
'So should you.'
Denny stopped again, looking around. Of course, there was nobody close enough to whisper in her ear. But the insidious voice came again, more insistent this time.
'Come follow the crowd.'
Denny felt a pressure, now, an almost physical force trying to turn her towards the lochside. It grew, and at the same time, the whispering voice grew louder, and started to overwhelm her own thoughts. It began to repeat a kind of mantra, and the hypnotic rhythm of the phrase threatened to send her into a trance.
'Hurry, hurry to the water, come and greet the Great Old One!'
“No!” she shouted, and a couple of elderly passersby looked at her in alarm. Denny dropped her purchases and put her hands over her ears, but this did nothing to block out the command. It was not just powerful, but seductive. It promised wonderful things. Denny's mind began to fill with images of writhing forms. At first, these images were as insubstantial as the fog around her, but they rapidly grew clearer. They were terrifying at first, but then she felt some inner barrier, a final bastion of self-hood, collapse. And in through the gap rushed the spirit of Ouroboros.
***
“Almost ready, now,” said Clay. “The field is reaching full strength.”
Cleo gave no sign that she had heard. Instead, she continued to gaze out of the harbor, towards the crannog. Cherry Island was invisible thanks to the fog. But Clay, too, could feel the mesmeric pull of the Eye of Ouroboros. He had to struggle to go through the checks that would set the Talisman in motion on what would probably be the old boat's last voyage.
“Don't be so pessimistic, Jonathan,” said Cleo. “I think you'll live through this. The Great Old One will spare you. After all, you made it all possible.”
“By accident,” Clay could not help replying.
“You uncovered the truth,” said Cleo, turning from the a
ft rail to look down at him. “You wanted to know what came before the blight that was civilization, this shopworn machine-world, this Age of Iron. And now you know.”
“I never really believed that there were gods on earth,” he blurted out. “I was simply doing research, trying to make a name for myself.”
“And you still struggle with the implications,” she chided, reaching out to grasp his shoulders and shake him gently. “That what scientists call the laws of nature are provisional – that there are older laws. Laws that have been revived, along with the beings that employ them. Ironic, isn't it, that we exploit science only to abolish it?”
Clay said nothing, but looked at the throng on the quayside. More people were still crowding into the area. As expected, most were girls and young women, but there was also a number of young men.
“Yes,” said Cleo, now reading his thoughts as easily as she could hear his words, “the world will soon be a much younger place. The old are superfluous, after all, when all wisdom can be obtained directly from the gods.”
There was a sudden shock, and some people on the quayside cried out in alarm. Most, however, continued to stare past the Talisman into the great eye that had opened in their minds. An alarm started to sound, then another.
“The first tremor,” said Clay. “Sooner than I expected.”
“The Great Old One has slept for thousands of years,” Cleo retorted, then stretched out her arms towards the hidden expanse of the loch. “She is refreshed, renewed, and yearning to take her pleasure with the world.”
Somewhere in the fog-shrouded town, sirens began to wail.
***
James Norton awoke from a light doze, sure that something had happened, baffled as to what it was. Then he felt a slight vibration and saw the glass of water by his bedside start to move across the bureau. He reached out to stop it falling to the floor, but by then the tremor had passed.
Norton recalled everything that Brad had told him about his prophetic nightmares. He thought of the earth splitting open along lines of geological weakness, of earthquakes paralyzing global civilization.
It's started, he thought. We didn't beat them at all. They fooled us. It seemed too easy because it was.
Norton got up and rushed to the window. The fog was so dense that he could barely make out the crowds moving along the street, but he could see enough. The composition of the silent, expectant mass of humanity was clear.
“New disciples, my God!”
As he watched, a police car, lights flashing, swerved into the hotel's street and plowed into a group of walkers. One girl was flung into the air like a rag doll, another went under the wheels. But none of the advancing multitude stopped or even turned to look. The victim who had been hurled clear by the impact stood up with painful slowness, and started limping towards the quayside. The girl who had been run over lay still.
Norton gazed in horror as the car door opened and a uniformed officer fell out onto the sidewalk, hands pressed to the sides of his head. The academic could just make out another policeman, apparently unconscious, in the driver's seat. He studied the crowd again and now saw one or two people who were also in apparent agony. A stocky tattooed man was staggering blindly into the oblivious walkers, who ricocheted off him and kept going. An elderly woman in a shop-worker's overall was kneeling in the middle of the road. She, too, was clutching the sides of her head.
Some kind of psychic field, he thought. It harms those it doesn't control. Am I immune?
Norton was aware of a slight tingling sensation, a vague nausea, but nothing more.
“Evidently I am immune,” he said.
Which means others must be too. Free minds, undamaged brains. I wonder if the others are affected?
Norton felt a sudden unexpected concern for Brad and Denny. He looked around the room, wondering if there was anything he might need to face the end of the world as he knew it. He saw his phone, his watch, a hip flask of Scotch. He took the flask and left.
***
“What the hell is going on?” demanded Brad. “When you said let's meet up here I didn't realize the whole town would be coming too.”
The quayside was thronged with people, most of them standing quietly at the water's edge staring blankly. Katie Fox was standing on the edge of the crowd, camera in hand, though she was not filming at the moment.
“Something is happening, that's for sure,” said the reporter. “Maybe we should move away before it gets too crowded.”
“Where's Kelly?” he asked, following her as she wove her way past another surge of newcomers. Most of them were young women, he noticed. And they all had the same vacant expression, except for a few who seemed puzzled, as if trying to work out why they had come here.
The ideal age range for recruits, he thought. All the lamias started off as teens and people in their twenties.
“Where's Kelly?” he asked again. “She is coming, right?”
“Yes,” replied Katie over her shoulder. “She is very keen to meet you. There, see? Over by the lifeboat station.”
Brad looked over the heads of the crowd and saw his daughter leaning against the side of a boat-shed. When she caught sight of him, she stood upright and gave a wave. Her movements were languid, confident, seemingly uninfluenced by the strange atmosphere.
She knew this was coming, he thought. It's part of the plan, like the fog. They were ahead of us every step of the way.
He felt despair, and a sudden stab of pain struck between his eyes. Flinching, he collided with a group of girls, almost knocking one down.
“Sorry,” he said. “My bad.”
The girl he had collided with looked at him blankly then walked on. Again the stabbing pain came.
This must be caused by the energy field too, he thought. It’s like catnip to the right people, migraine to the wrong ones. Those who are past their sell-by date.
“You okay, Dad?” asked Kelly, coming up to him. She looked up into his eyes.
“It gets some people like that,” she went on. “It's usually because they're too old, their minds are no longer flexible enough to accept Ouroboros. And you've been against us from the start, so the Great Old One is not pleased with you. She knows her enemies, so you're getting the full treatment. But we can fix that.”
She took his arm and led him over to a bench. He could barely see, now, and she had to guide him when he sat down. He was vaguely aware of Katie Fox standing by, camera still dangling from her hand.
“No way can I do that interview,” he managed to say.
“That was never the idea, Dad,” said Kelly. “This is about the link we have. It's time to fix it in place. Time for you to stop fighting us.”
“We need people like you,” put in the journalist. “You understand the old system, and how to dismantle it effectively. We'll need that expertise for a while.”
“And besides, we're still family,” added Kelly brightly. “How could I leave my old dad behind while we build our brave new world?”
She came closer, and hugged Brad close as she had not done since she was a little girl. Her embrace was stronger than he expected, so tight that he couldn’t have broken free even if the pain in his head wasn’t almost crippling. He twisted his head around to look into her eyes, but they were not the eyes he remembered at all. She dipped her head and he felt a cold, stinging pain at the base of his throat. It was over as soon as it had begun, and with it went the pain in his head.
And suddenly Kelly's mind was in his mind, along with those of Cleo, Katie, Clay, and Andreas. All the cultists were merged in the greater whole that was Ouroboros. Some individuality persisted but as a trivial thing, a minor detail of a vast oneness that had existed for so long that it had forgotten its origins. Ouroboros was literally as old as the hills, if not older, and yet perpetually striving for renewal. Brad finally understood. He was almost converted to the cult in the first wave of shared perception. For the first time he saw Kelly's belief as something exhilarating, miraculous. But he also sa
w something else, and it stopped him from becoming submerged in Ouroboros. He recoiled from a truth that now, as he faced it, should have been apparent from the start. It was the true nature of his daughter's soul.
Everything that had gone before, all the dream revelations had been filtered through the prism of his love for her. Now there was no filter, and he could see that she did not love him at all. Kelly's soul burned with a flame of idealism that she would happily see consume the world. No sacrifice could be too great if it ushered in the new Age of Ouroboros.
She's never loved anyone at all, he thought coolly. His emotions had almost been burned away by the power of the gestalt. She likes me, maybe. Tolerates me, certainly. But there's no love here in this wilderness.
Brad wandered in a timeless no-place, lost in the colorless void of his only child's bleak idealism. He could find no direction home, nowhere to go at all.
“Come on, Dad,” he heard a familiar voice saying. Kelly seemed to be speaking from a vast distance, yet her words were very clear. He stood up, knowing that that was what Ouroboros wanted, and began to walk back to the quayside between the two women.
***
Lisa Valentine stood on the shore near Inverness, surrounded by panicking and confused people. There had been at least two tremors, and people were complaining that phones and computers had stopped working. There was a confusion, an edge in voices that suggested full-blown panic could break out at any moment.
“It has begun,” said Lisa in Polish, turning to Pavel. “And I have to go.”
She saw confusion in the big man's face as he struggled with the idea of separation. They had been together for every moment since she had enslaved him.
“Go?” he said, tentatively.
“Yes,” she replied, reaching up to touch his cheek. “I am sorry,” she went on. “I did many bad things. I will do a good thing now.”
Day of the Serpent (Ouroboros Book 3) Page 14
