Lisa stood on tiptoe to kiss him, then turned away to walk down the shingle towards the fog-bound water. As she went, she started to shed her clothes, first kicking off her shoes, then stripping off her clothes with polished ease. Someone wolf-whistled, there were catcalls.
“Yeah, enjoy it while it lasts, guys,” she shouted, wading into the shallows. The water was icy and she shivered. Then she leaned forward and started to swim. As she began to move through the water, her form changed. She powered forward, porpoising through the dark waves far faster than any mere human.
“Did you see that?” someone asked Pavel. “She grew a tail! What's going on?”
Pavel looked at the man talking to him.
“That was my girl,” he said. “She left me. I have no one now.”
The stranger looked at Pavel for a moment, then gave an uncertain laugh and walked off up the beach. There was another tremor, greeted by a chorus of screams. Pavel continued to stare after Lisa, watching her white wake vanish.
“What's happening now?” shouted someone.
Pavel frowned, half-understanding what he was seeing. The fog above the loch was starting to clear a little. Or rather, he realized, it was clumping together, losing its even blankness. A shape began to form, a vast form many miles long and hundreds of feet high.
“Snake,” said Pavel in Polish, pointing down the loch. But nobody who heard him understood.
Chapter 12: Gods and Monsters
Norton had found both Denny and Brad gone. Of the hotel guests and staff, all the young had already gone, while the old were paralyzed with pain. Norton at first tried to help the afflicted, but it soon became apparent that there was nothing worthwhile he could do. So long as the field endured, it would inflict agony on those deemed worthless by Ouroboros.
The academic was in the hotel lobby when it occurred to him to turn around and set off back up the stairs. He was not in good condition and it made for a hard climb, but he would not risk the elevator. The lights were flickering and the computer screens at the reception were blank. Eventually he reached the exit to the flat room, which was luckily unfastened.
“Let's get some perspective on this,” he muttered.
Looking up Loch Ness, he saw a great sea of fog. He was just above it here, and the fog had begun to retreat. Or maybe regroup. It was no longer the featureless shroud of silver-white that had enveloped the town at dawn. Now, nearly an hour later, it had begun to clump into denser clouds and thin out elsewhere. It was hard to get a clear impression of what was happening, but a coherent form was definitely starting to appear. The shape was so vast it was hard to take it all in, but it reminded him of something. A diagram, or perhaps something from a school textbook.
Of course, he thought. Internal organs, a skeletal structure, sensory apparatus. All cohering out of air and water.
Norton recalled one of his colleagues, a biologist, explaining in the pub that all living beings are made of a handful common elements plus traces of a dozen others. “We're all just air and water, plus energy and very detailed organization,” the scientist had said. The truth of that was now being demonstrated in front of Norton as a being twenty miles long created a body for itself. He made out the shadowy forms of a vast, tapering skull, beyond it a spinal column snaking up the loch towards Inverness. Below the slowly cohering backbone were masses. One, dimly-red and vastly pulsing, must be a heart the size of a mountain.
“No,” he said, unable to take it all in.
Nothing that size could live, breathe, move.
Then Norton thought of the nightmares Brad had described, of a mile-high wall of scaly flesh smashing down the puny skyscrapers of London. No natural being so immense could function, but this was the supernatural at work. Another quake shook the building and he almost tumbled into the street below. A crack appeared between his feet. From somewhere below in the fog there was a crash, a tinkle of falling glass, a scream cut short with horrible suddenness.
Nothing could stop that, once it starts to move.
Despair almost overwhelmed Norton. But he forced himself to think. Ouroboros had not become flesh yet, and judging by the slow rate at which the fog was cohering, it might take another hour at least. The sheer scale of the process was in his favor if he could just think of something.
Internal organs, energy fields, iron is the Devil's enemy.
An idea formed in his mind with lightning swiftness, a notion so crazy that it might have sprung from the pages of the ballads and sagas he knew so well. Heroes of legend had slain monsters in many ways. This one was probably the most extreme.
“Why not?” he asked himself. “Nothing to lose. A world to save.”
He was already running back to the stairway, clinging to the slimmest of slender hopes. A line from a television show he had been urged to watch by a younger colleague kept running through his mind.
'Time for some thrilling heroics!'
***
Brad sat beside Kelly in the stern of the Talisman, watching as the crannog came into view. Andreas was at the wheel, with Cleo and Clay standing at the bow of the boat. Around them the vast reptilian head of Ouroboros was becoming clearer, the boat tiny as it sailed beneath shimmering fangs of mist.
“You were almost right, Dad, seeing Cherry Island as the eye of the Great Old One,” said Kelly. “But you didn't really think big enough.”
Brad tried to speak, but was unable to form words.
“You're keeping him on too tight a leash, honey,” shouted Cleo, before jumping gracefully onto the crannog. “You've got to ease up a little.”
“I'll get the hang of it eventually,” Kelly called back cheerfully.
Brad felt the pressure on his mind ease a little. He was still unable to move his limbs, but when he tried to speak, he formed words.
“Not – too – late.”
“Is that it?” asked Kelly, standing up and looking down at her father. “The last minute plea for the bad guys to have a change of heart?”
She bent down until her yellow slit eyes were inches from Brad's.
“We're not the bad guys. That's something you'll never get. We're saving the world. Saving if from people like you, the regular guys who let everything slide because it was good for business, let the forests and oceans start to die. Now come on.”
Kelly took him by the arm and guided him along the boat rail so that they could join the others on the artificial island. Cleo, Andreas, and Clay were standing in a rough triangle round the edge of the crannog. Kelly stood Brad near the water facing inwards, then took her place a few yards away. Cleo began to chant in her deep, resonant voice.
'From out of the mist and the water, from out of the air and the earth, comes our one true mother, goddess of death and birth ...'
It went on, mystical and strange, but oddly compelling. Without being told, Brad knew that this was a modern rendition of an ancient chant. The gestalt he had been forced to join showed him the minds of the cultist, diverse within the greater whole. He sensed Clay's intellectual pride in having unearthed the ritual, Cleo's steely determination to remake the world in her image, and Andreas's hopeless devotion to the queen lamia.
And above them all, forming a mind as it formed a body, the enormous serpent was gradually awakening. Brad understood, too late for it to be any use to him, that all the previous sightings of the so-called monster had been pale foreshadowing of this moment. After Crowley unwisely called to it, the Great Old One had stirred in its centuries-long sleep. People had glimpsed its shadow, its pale reflection. But now the true beast was emerging into the world in all its prodigious power. This final ritual, the uniting of five followers, would complete the final union of deity and followers. The Great Old One would be incarnate, blending with its followers. After the vast serpent head solidified around them, worshippers and worshipped would be of one mind in a literal sense.
And I'm necessary to that, he thought. Cleo embodies the power, Kelly the idealism, Clay the knowledge, Andreas the obedience, so
my role is that of the defeated rebel. All human life is here.
Suddenly, Cleo's chanting stopped. There was a splash like an explosion and a white shape hurled itself onto the big woman. Pale coils wrapped around golden-bronze scales. Cleo, screaming in fury, fell backwards onto the crannog's stony surface. The lamia that had tackled her was familiar to Brad.
“The Insane One!” gasped Kelly, running past the fighters towards the boat. “Keep clear, Dad, there's a machete in the cabin.”
Brad found himself free to move as Kelly's concentration dissipated, but he could think of nothing to do. Clay, too, looked on as the lamias grappled and bit. Cleo, Brad realized, might be at a disadvantage because she was still in human form. She could hardly transform in battle. But Lisa Valentine was by far the smaller of the two, and the outcome seemed uncertain. Then Andreas lunged forward and tried to tear the pale attacker from his mistress, only to be hurled aside by a whiplash tail-flick.
Brad felt another tremor shake the island, sensed a disturbance in the field of energy around them. There was uncertainty and mounting anger in the Great Old One's mind.
This is screwing it up, he thought. She might be insane, but she's got the right idea.
Andreas, having almost been hurled into the loch by Lisa, picked himself up to rejoin the fray. Brad leaped forward and swung at the German, but Andreas was younger and faster. He punched Brad on the side of the head, stunning him temporarily, and then turned to help Cleo again. Brad jumped onto Andreas's back, bearing him down and hearing a satisfying crack as the young man's skull struck rock.
“Dad!”
Kelly's furious yell coincided with a sudden paralysis, and Brad sprawled onto his back. The mental agony he had felt when the fog closed in returned, but this time it was ten times worse. The wrath of Ouroboros focused on him, and beneath that onslaught he was a like a worm under a burning glass. Andreas got up, gave Brad a perfunctory kick in the ribs, and started to pummel Lisa with his fists. Kelly circled the embattled lamias, a hefty machete in her hand, afraid to hack at Lisa in case she harmed Cleo.
What a fucking mess, thought Brad as his vision began to darken. He was being killed by a torrent of inhuman hatred, and could do nothing about it.
***
“Denny? Denny!”
Norton grabbed the young reporter, spun her around, but she showed no sign of recognition.
“Denny, what are you doing here?”
But he already knew the answer. She was within the age range, and the right sex, to become one of the slaves of Ouroboros. When he had arrived on the quayside, Norton had tried asking for help from the assembled youngsters, but none had responded with more than a vacuous smile. Seeing Denny, he had foolishly jumped to the conclusion that she was still on his side.
Perhaps she still could be.
“Denny, Ms. Pollard, think!” he urged. “Remember who you are! You are a freelance reporter, a career woman, your own woman, beholden to no one! You are free!”
“Free?” she said, sounding puzzled, as if the word was unfamiliar.
“Yes, free!” He shook her by the shoulders. “Think, I need your help! I need a boat! Do you remember you hired a boat? From Angus?”
“Angus?” Again the child-like enunciation.
Moaning in despair, Norton let go of Denny and looked around desperately. There were several boats tied up at the quayside, but he needed one of reasonable size for what he planned. He began to push through the crowd so he could get a clearer look at what was available.
Do boats have ignition keys like cars? If so, I won't be able to steal one. If only there was a sane person I could talk to.
“What in the name of God is happening?”
The speaker was a huge old Scotsman in fisherman's garb. He was clambering onto the quayside from a battered boat.
That fishing boat's far too small, thought Norton, but he must be immune or he couldn't be complaining like that.
“Hey there, I need help!” he shouted, then gestured at the vessels moored nearby. “Do you know how to drive one of those big boats?”
Five minutes later, Angus was on board with Norton's plan, figuratively speaking. It had not been difficult to persuade the Scotsman that desperate measures were needed. Not with the malign mass of Ouroboros growing more substantial by the minute.
“But I'm buggered if I'm going to stay to the bitter end,” Angus rumbled, as he helped the Englishman onto a large trawler. “I'll take my chances in the loch.”
“What will you do, then?” asked Norton, stumbling over nets and bright-painted marker buoys.
“Life jacket,” replied Angus simply. “I'll jump overboard before you start your kamikaze run.”
“I think we might find a more optimistic term for my plan,” began Norton, but Angus had already opened the cabin door and was gesturing to the boat's bow.
“Untie the bloody thing, man, or we'll never get anywhere.”
The trawler was tied to a bollard on the quayside, and Norton had to stretch to untie the line.
“Let me help, James.”
Denny appeared, hunkered down, and began to unwind the heavy mooring rope.
“You're all right?” asked Norton, startled by the new turn of events.
“Yeah, it took a minute, but what you said sunk in,” she said, throwing the line onto the boat. Then she jumped down with surprising agility, before Norton could even think of helping her aboard.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Perhaps help me steer for the last mile or so,” said Norton, and explained his plan as Angus started the boat's diesels and reversed her slowly out of the harbor. Once on the loch, they swung wide around Cherry Island, steering as close to the shore as possible to avoid going inside the serpentine cloud.
“You really think you can do it?” asked Denny when Norton had finished.
“I've no idea,” he admitted. “But it makes sense. The whole cult of Ouroboros thrived when there was no technology more advanced than fire, woodworking, and flint tools. Such beings must have some vulnerabilities, after all. They're not really gods.”
Denny said nothing, but continued to stare into the vast spectral form.
“What's happening on the crannog? I can't see from that foul murk,” asked Norton.
“Conflict,” said Denny. “The rite has been interrupted.”
“That's a stroke of luck!” exclaimed the professor. Then he noticed that Denny's expression, which had been lively, was reverting to unnatural vacancy.
“Come inside the cabin with me,” he said, taking her arm. “We might even be insulated from the thing in there.”
“Who's this wee baggage?” grunted Angus.
“A friend,” said Norton shortly, closing the door behind him. “Can't this thing go any faster?”
***
There is no death.
The words rang in Brad's mind, tolling like a great bell. He believed them. It was a self-evident fact that nobody could die in Ouroboros. And that, he understood, was the key to the old religion that had dominated the earth for uncounted millenniums.
Was this where people got their belief in an afterlife, in immortality?
“Of course.”
The pain and darkness vanished, and Brad was in a forest glade, lit by beams of vertical sunlight. A woman sat on the moss-covered trunk of a fallen tree. She was naked, beautiful, with a heart-shaped face, a wide, humorous mouth. She looked something like Kelly, with a little of Cleo, and a hint of something else. He sensed that this being was ancient, yet permanently young, capable of renewing herself in perpetuity.
“There can be no death where nothing is lost,” she said. “Imagine that, if you can. A world where the memories of your ancestors, back to the dawn of time, are preserved. And you can speak to them, know them as you might know you neighbors.”
“And you provide that link?” he asked.
The woman smiled, and stood up.
“In all my facets, all my forms, I did. And will again. I
f you help me.”
Brad gestured at their surroundings, taking in the wild flowers underfoot and the blue sky above the dense foliage.
“This is an illusion. What you want is death and destruction. You are Ouroboros, with what looks like a fake ID. Is the burlesque thing supposed to win me over?”
The woman shook her head.
“I am your conception of what I might be, if I were bound by time and matter, as your kind is. You think of me as a nature goddess, so I am.”
She bent down and picked up a small branch that bore a few bright leaves.
“On this little world,” she said, turning the branch before her eyes, “empires might rise and fall. Ants and spiders and beetles, and creatures even small, all locked in their struggle for survival.”
“People are not bugs!” Brad pointed out.
“But they are mayflies to me,” she said. “So ephemeral, so fragile, so easily hurt. Which is why, when I found this world, I chose to help a stumbling, frightened being that was little more than a glorified ape. And I did, for so many years.”
“So what went wrong?” he asked. “That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question.”
Ouroboros frowned, dropping the branch. She looked past Brad, her eyes focused on a time unimaginably remote.
“There are greater seasons, cosmic cycles, that means my power ebbs and flows. I was weakened for a time, and distracted from human affairs. I admit, I took your kind for granted. And I paid a heavy price.”
She reached out a slim tanned hand and he flinched, then made himself be still. Smiling, she touched his forehead, and he saw a vision.
Tribes migrating across great plains against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains.
A priestess decked out in feathers and bright body paint denouncing a young man who stood proud, aloof, defiant. Around the antagonists, tribesmen and women stood, uncertain what to do. Some began to gather behind the young man, who raised a knife of gleaming bronze.
Worshipers of Ouroboros danced within a stone circle by night, their orgiastic worship illuminated by bonfires. Suddenly, out of the darkness, armed men appeared wielding gleaming swords and steel-tipped spears. The disciples fled only to be cut down by cavalry sweeping around their flank.
Day of the Serpent (Ouroboros Book 3) Page 15
