The pace of events accelerated. Great cities arose, blackening the skies with smoke. Forests were felled or burned, rivers poisoned, great fleets set forth to conquer the oceans. The world grew senile, sick with the blight of civilization. Nature withered. Far beneath the surface of the world, a thwarted deity writhed, its powers depleted, almost forgotten. But then Ouroboros was rediscovered. Brad saw Jonathan Clay exploring a prehistoric site in Ireland, discovering a dormant Old One. Brad witnessed the transformation of Clay's student, Olivia, into the first of the new breed of lamia.
Brad was back in the dream-glade, and Ouroboros was smiling again.
“It cannot endure, this machine-world you have made. If it must end, why not today?”
“No!” he said. “What you offer is sterile perfection, an unchanging world. All those thousands of years worshipping you, achieving nothing, going nowhere.”
“People were happy,” she insisted, her expression hardening.
“People were zombies, slaves, just pets!” he shouted. “And when you got bored with your pets, they escaped. It happens.”
“Remember all those little bugs, Brad,” she said, all her former sweetness gone. “I don't require their worship because I cannot help them. They do not fear death as your kind does.”
The sunlight faded, shadows spread. At the same time, Ouroboros grew until she towered over Brad. Looking down at him, she raised a vast leg and made to step on him as he ran for the edge of the clearing.
***
“Stop it! Stop it!” shouted Kelly as she circled the combatants, trying to focus on the battle between Lisa and Cleo. Kelly's mind was awash with confused, violent images as the joint entity that was Ouroboros reacted to the combined attack upon it. Several times, she tried to slash at the Insane One with her machete, only to be confused by a surge of emotion from the great being that enveloped them.
Everything's falling into chaos, she thought in despair. They're ruining it all!
Andreas was trying to grabble with Lisa, now, only to be brutally knocked aside by Cleo. In a fit of rage, the larger of the lamias had become obsessed with killing Lisa herself and would brook no interference. Lisa, for her part, seemed to be enjoying the fight, even though her snake-body was oozing blood from bites, and one arm hung limp. Despite her efforts to block Lisa out, Kelly was almost overwhelmed by the creature's wild enthusiasm.
“You should be on our side!” she screamed, taking another swing at Lisa. The machete connected with the stone surface of the crannog and sent a jarring shock up Kelly's arm. She retreated, looking over to where her father lay writhing at the edge of the round platform. For a moment, she considered using the machete on him, removing one more complication from an over-complex problem.
I should kill him, for the greater good.
“Here,” said Andreas, “give it to me. I will kill the mad beast!”
Kelly let the German take the weapon as her mental turmoil grew greater. She sat down heavily, clutching her head, as the battle between Ouroboros and her puny mortal enemies grew more intense.
***
Brad looked up. He had instinctively curled into a fetal ball when Ouroboros made to tread on him, but the crushing impact had not come.
Where did she go?
He realized he was looking up into the sky when his antagonist was down near ground level again. The giantess had shrunk to almost human size. Ouroboros was frowning, her eyes no longer focused on Brad. She gave a jerk of the head, like a nervous tic, and ran a slender hand through her hair.
“Got problems?” he asked, standing up. “Are things not going according to plan?”
Brad had no idea why he had been spared, but clearly, something was wrong. It made sense to distract this facet of the monster as much as possible. He started to run toward Ouroboros, arms outstretched, ready to make a flying tackle.
“You try my patience!” she said, but her voice did not have the same confidence as before. “I will deal with you later!”
The sunlit glade, the trees, the blue summer sky all began to fade.
She's switching off her virtual paradise, he thought. But what if I keep her in it?
He hurled himself at Ouroboros, felt what seemed like the very real flesh and bone of a human body as they collided. She even gave a realistic cry of dismay, which confirmed Brad's suspicion. If they were entangled in this fantasy world, it would keep her from business elsewhere.
“Let me go!” she yelled, all composure gone. She was still taller and stronger than Brad, and she began to pummel his back with her fists. The blows were brutal, and all he could do was try to hang on, wincing from the pain.
Her world, her rules, he thought. But if time is the critical factor, I must keep her occupied.
“True,” she said, suddenly growing still beneath him. “I have much to do. And one of your friends is proving a little troublesome. But it is no great matter.”
Brad opened his eyes, himself looking into the face of Ouroboros just a few inches away from his own. She smiled, and her hands began to caress him.
“I can be a benevolent deity, Brad,” she whispered. “Just give me a chance to show you.”
“Somebody really has got you worried,” he replied. “Must be Denny, right?”
Ouroboros smiled, tightening her embrace.
“She is young, passionate, full of noble ideals,” said the goddess. “A natural follower. No, let us rest here a while and I will deal with a few minor problems.”
And if I can't move I can't bother her, he thought.
Brad tried to wriggle free but realized that she was too strong for him.
“Hush, stay quiet while I deal with this,” she said, patting him like a mother trying to calm a fractious toddler.
Well, this little boy's gonna have one hell of a tantrum.
Brad began to grope in the foliage around them, wondering just how realistic this fantasy was. He touched something hard, rough – a tree branch. Acting swiftly so that she could not read his intentions before the deed was done, he aimed a clumsy blow at his captor's head. The beautiful face contorted with rage, her grip relaxed momentarily, and Brad broke free. Ouroboros snarled, and began to transform, eyes turning golden-green, naked legs fusing into a scaly tail.
“Oh, shit,” he said, hefting his improvised weapon and slowly retreating. The lamia sprang toward him, jaws agape. He swung the branch again, but she easily deflected it with one hand, then bore him to the ground.
“This,” she said as her muscular coils entrapped him, “is a privilege. You will be the first heretic to be sacrificed to me.”
Ouroboros began to grow again, and as she did so, she lost all human characteristics. Brad struggled vainly as the vast maw of the serpent opened and began to engulf his head. Visions of the world transformed again, flooded his mind. He saw cities devastated by earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. He saw the vast body Ouroboros was creating for itself in the loch.
Then he saw something else, a tiny shape like an arrowhead of silver and blue. It was moving with painful slowness, heading into the flank of the miles-long monster.
“They've still got a chance!” he exclaimed. “They're coming for you!”
Brad felt himself being swallowed by the ancient serpent. Determined not to go gently, he began to kick and punch the quivering innards of the beast.
***
“There it is!” said Angus.
It was a superfluous remark. They had hugged the coast for a third of the way up the loch, and now they were opposite Invercraig. Between them and the village, the fog had almost cleared, to be replaced by a huge, complex structure. The first hints of gleaming scales could be seen as Ouroboros continued to cohere. But the inner workings of the gargantuan body were still visible. Most conspicuous was the heart, a slowly pulsating mass like an iceberg, half submerged.
“This can't work,” said Denny. “You should turn back, you'll only get us killed.”
“What?” demanded Norton. “No, we've
come this far.”
Denny turned away from the view of the monstrous heart and grasped Norton by the arms. Her strength startled him.
“No, James,” she said, “Brad will pull it off at the last moment, like he always does. Turn back, Angus.”
“Denny, let go–” Norton began, but then he saw the first gleam of golden-yellow in her eyes.
“Angus! Help me, she's still one of them,” he shouted, struggling impotently to free himself. His arms were pinned to his sides so he tried to kick Denny in the knees, but he might as well have been kicking the boat's steel hull. The young woman threw Norton backwards against the back wall of the small cabin, then turned to the Scotsman. Angus let go of the wheel and swung a clumsy punch at Denny, who dodged most of the force but was still knocked sideways. She kicked out at Angus's groin and he doubled up. Then with his head down, he charged at her so that the two of them smashed through the door out and over the rail of the trawler.
Norton stared after them, hearing the splash but taking several long seconds to grasp what had just happened. Then he saw that the boat was in a hard turn and grabbed the wheel to steer back towards the heart of the beast.
“Not quite a silver bullet,” he said wryly as the crimson mountain grew nearer. “But it will have to do.”
The timing had been good. The tissue was just dense enough to tear apart as the bows of the boat ripped into the heart. There was a silent blast of energy as the trawler was flung up and backwards, and Norton felt himself suspended weightless for a moment in the tiny cabin. The line from Kipling's poem ran through his head.
Iron, cold iron, is master of them all.
A scream rang out, not just in the air around Norton, but also in the depths of his mind. It was a cry of rage, pain, and despair from a being that had lived so long that it had forgotten that it could perish.
Even gods can know hubris, thought Norton. Pride cometh before a fall.
There was a moment of terrible pain, then merciful nothingness.
***
Brad woke to find himself lying on the edge of the crannog, one arm trailing in the loch's cold water. His head was throbbing, but only with the pain of a regular headache. He sat up and saw Andreas hacking with the machete at a pale shape that was now criss-crossed with gaping red welts. Brad staggered upright and ran over, shoving the young man clumsily aside. The machete clattered across the stone platform then plopped over the side. The effort needed to make his attack exhausted Brad and he fell down on all fours. But Andreas, too, was in no state to fight on.
Cleo was dead. She, too, had reverted to humanity, and her body was a pathetic sight, broken and twisted. Kelly was sitting by her former leader, rocking back and forth. Jonathan Clay lay on the other side of Cleo, gasping painfully. Brad crawled over to him. The man's chest had been crushed by a blow requiring more than human strength.
“I tried to stop them, in the end,” said Clay. “I was wrong. Too much has changed in the world. The time of the old gods is long past. We need to be free, to grow–”
He coughed up a gout of blood, speckling Brad's face. Clay's eyes rolled up and he slumped back.
“He's no longer in pain,” whispered Lisa. “I think we might have been friends. He reminds me of Marcus.”
They were her last words.
“Kelly?” said Brad, moving painfully over to his daughter.
She looked at him with her old eyes, the eyes of childhood, wonderfully brown and full of reproach.
“Oh, Daddy,” she said. “You and your dumb friends. You ruined everything.”
A trickle of drool ran down her chin.
Epilogue: The Heart of the World
“They haven't found James's body,” said Denny. “Just the remains of the boat. The fuel tank exploded, they said. But according to my sources that doesn't explain the way the hull was melted. It's as if about a million volts had gone through it.”
“Do you remember anything about it?” asked Brad gently.
Denny shook her head.
“I just remember almost drowning, and that Angus fellow holding my head above water. He tried to explain to me what had happened. I didn't believe him at first.”
“I'm not surprised,” said Brad. “It sounds crazy. But everything about this was crazy from the start.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes, crossing the park that lay opposite the North London Psychiatric Hospital. They had two patients to visit now, though one, Marcus Valentine, was showing signs of improvement since the so-called 'Loch Ness Incident.’ Kelly, by contrast, had been almost totally unresponsive since a police boat had taken her and Brad off Cherry Island.
“Why do you think James did it?” asked Denny finally. “I mean, he wasn't exactly a man of action, was he?”
“You don't have to be macho to do the right thing,” Brad pointed out. “And in James's case, it was really his brain that mattered. He grasped a pattern that we missed.”
“And he saw a powerful weapon in a rusty old fishing boat,” added Denny. “That was his magic sword, his Excalibur.”
“In the end, the expert on legendary heroes turned out to be one,” said Brad. “Kind of makes sense. I misjudged the guy, that's for sure. I screw up, he saves the day. And nobody would believe it if you told them.”
“He might not have planned on a suicide attack,” said Denny gently, putting a hand on his arm. “Perhaps that was my fault.”
“None of it was your fault,” retorted Brad. “I know what it feels like to be a slave, too. James saved the world and nobody will ever know, right? Instead they're just making all sorts of shit up, I suppose.”
“Take your pick of crazy theories,” said Denny, with a wry smile. “Officially, people went a bit crazy during an unprecedented earthquake, and all the clips of weird stuff online are fake. Unofficially, it's even more ridiculous. One conspiracy theory blames the Russians.”
“Well, that's half right,” he pointed out.
“Another claims it was a CIA mind-control experiment,” Denny want on. “And then there's the ever-popular 'I'm not saying it's aliens–”
“But it's aliens,” completed Brad. They both managed to smile at that.
“Scientists have talked about a quantum singularity at the earth's core,” Denny added. “That super-dense object that breaks known physical laws.”
“Again, half right.”
“Are they going to deport her over her visa?” asked Denny.
“No,” said Brad. “They told me they'll hold off on that as air travel would be difficult. Kind of civilized of them. Besides, these bureaucrats have got a lot on their plates now.”
“What was it like for you?” Denny blurted out. “I can only vaguely remember. Like a dream.”
“Same here,” he lied. “Best forget it. Sooner the better.”
He could not tell her the truth because he hoped it would soon stop being true. Since his encounter with the woman in the clearing, he had had flashes of perception, sudden visions that he hoped were merely symptoms of mental disorder. He saw a world beyond and beneath this world.
The Great Old One, for all its titanic size, was a mere reflection of Ouroboros. The one true, original being had become dormant again, and slept fitfully. It had sustained a temporary setback, no great defeat for an immortal. Vast beyond comprehension and a thousand miles deep, Brad saw Ouroboros lying coiled around the heart of the world.
That was not all. For a split second, just after he looked into Kelly's eyes, he had shared her mind again, for the last time.
Did I imagine it?
Brad could not be sure. Perhaps he would never know. But he wanted desperately to believe it. Just when he had almost lost hope, had he seen a tiny flicker of love for him, like a faint star just visible on a winter's night. He clung to the conviction that it had been real, that remote glow so briefly glimpsed.
It would have to be enough.
***
“I still don't think we should have come back here,” said Paul qu
ietly.
“The therapist said it would be cathartic for them,” retorted Julie. “Besides, it's been a whole year. And look at them, they're having a whale of a time.”
Paul could not disagree. Cressida was splashing about in the shallows and Will was searching the beach for fossils, his latest obsession. Other families were scattered about, and the sails of small boats dotted the loch. The B&B in Invercraig was pleasant and the locals were keen to revitalize the tourist trade.
So why do I feel this is a big mistake?
Suddenly there was a piercing, childish shriek, and Cressida came splashing ashore.
“Daddy, daddy!” she shouted.
Paul felt his heart leap to his mouth as he and Julie ran down the beach. The little girl was emerging from the water, obviously upset, but at least she did not appear to be in danger. Paul scooped Cressida up in his arms.
“What's wrong, sweetheart?” he asked. She did not seem to be quivering with fear, which was something. He and Julie had had to cope with many nightmares that had left his children screaming in terror, rigid with fright.
“It bit me!” said Cressida, holding up her left arm. “I just wanted to play with it and it bit me.”
“Let me see,” said Julie, examining her daughter's left arm. “Well, that doesn't look too bad, but we'd better put something on it.”
“Let's go to the car,” said Paul, putting Cressida down, “and we'll dab some disinfectant on it, all right?”
“What was it anyway?” asked Julie as they led their daughter up the beach. “Great white shark? Rogue lobster?”
“I thought she was an eel at first,” replied Cressida. “Because she was all brown and wriggly. Then it looked up at me and I saw it was a little mermaid. But she wasn't as nice as the one I saw last time. Maybe they're not so nice when they're little.”
Day of the Serpent (Ouroboros Book 3) Page 16
