by Alan Baxter
Faith laughed. ‘Looks like somebody did some exercise on your head.’
Jake and Chris both growled, sitting forward.
‘Leave it!’ Frank’s voice from the front was powerful as he backed the car out onto the road and pulled away. ‘Don’t let her wind you up. She’s just a smart-mouthed kid.’
Chris leaned forward a bit more. ‘You need to learn to show respect to your superiors, girl,’ he hissed. ‘You don’t know a thing and what you learn will scare you.’
Jake sat back, letting out a heavy breath. ‘Don’t worry about it, Chris. It’s not like it really matters in the long run, eh?’
Chris sat back too, throwing a quick smile at Jake. ‘True enough.’
Faith didn’t like that exchange. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’ll see, love. You’ll see.’
Faith didn’t like these guys. Lars was special, he really did care about her, but these guys were animals. Then again, she had to remind herself that Lars had made a special case out of her. Most people served their time and worked their way up in the ONC. She had to remember she was skipping stages and that was the sort of thing that could easily make enemies of people who should be your allies. She should calm down a bit and be nice to these wankers, even if she didn’t like the idea. ‘It must have been quite a fight,’ she said. ‘Are you all okay?’
‘We’re fine,’ Jake said sarcastically. ‘Thanks for asking.’ He raised his voice. ‘We’d be a bit better off if Frank didn’t move like an old grandma!’
Frank laughed. ‘Fuck you. You know I couldn’t risk blowing that job. I had to get it right first time or we would have all been fucked. Come on, think about it. He was going through you guys like hot piss through snow.’
‘It’s true,’ Chris said in a low tone. ‘If he’d felt Frank I don’t think one more of us would have mattered to him.’
‘He could have flattened an army.’ It was the first time Dieter had spoken. It sounded like he had a mouth full of marbles. There was a grudging respect in his voice.
Faith looked around the car. ‘One guy did this?’ she asked. ‘To you guys? What kind of man was that?’
Jake shrugged. ‘That’s the million pound question, love. What kind of man indeed. I’ve never seen or felt anything like him before. I hope to fuck I never do again.’
‘He’s dead,’ said Frank without taking his eyes off the road. ‘He had skills, no doubt. He was one powerful son of a bitch. But the Ordo Novus Cruor does not care for powerful sons of bitches. He’s dead. Gone. Fuck him. And forget him.’
Jake slumped down in his chair. ‘I’ll find it easier to forget him when the aches and bruises have gone away.’
Faith turned in her seat, sinking low and staring out the window. The urban landscape began to give way to farmland and bush. She wasn’t exactly sure where they were heading, but it felt like they were going inland. There was little hope that they would cross the Mountains. She couldn’t believe that she was missing the Mountains already. The urge to go home was strong. But they seemed to have left the city heading south. If they were going bush, they would probably turn west at some point, but nowhere near her home town.
Her thoughts turned back to the bruised men around her. She felt disturbed by this story that one man that had done all this damage to these powerful Optimates. He must have been some kind of weapon. The part of her mind that kept thinking she’d left a bag somewhere was bothered by this turn of events too. She could not help thinking that she ought to know who they were talking about. And she had a sense of dread somewhere deep inside that them killing this guy meant something really bad was going to happen. ‘How far are we going?’ she asked, trying to take her mind away from the worries and negative trains of thought.
‘You might as well settle down, sweetheart,’ Frank said over his shoulder. ‘We’ll be driving for quite a few hours yet.’
Faith rolled her eyes and dug around in her bag for her MP3 player. She didn’t like the way her excitement seemed to be giving way to apprehension with each passing mile. Especially if there were still a lot of those miles to go.
In a valley hidden in the vastness of the Australian outback, the camp got busier by the hour. As more people arrived the sense of excitement grew, a buzz hovering all over the site. There were fires dotted throughout the tents, people talking, laughing, some practising their skills. It was like a macabre festival without a stage. Just the brooding presence of the large shed at the head of the valley, standing tall against the low tents and scrub, embraced by high sandstone walls.
As more senior members of the Order arrived, the Sorcerer had more people whose abilities and loyalty he could trust. He sent these members out to hunt in surrounding towns and settlements, even though they were hundreds of kilometres away. They returned sporadically with terrified children and young adults, bound and gagged. Occasional hapless backpackers were dragged in. These people were all delivered to the large shed and not seen again.
In a Realm that grew ever closer to the mundane world, an entity stretched and flexed, pressing at the walls of its pit, aching to be free.
16
‘It feels almost pointless now.’
Cai Wu looked at his disciple with a mixture of sorrow and regret. And perhaps annoyance. ‘Nothing is pointless, child.’
‘If our prophecies are to be considered correct, then all of the prophecy must be accounted for. We’ve lost Isiah. That means one of two things. Either our cause is lost or our prophecies are wrong. Whichever it is, why do we bother now?’ Petra looked deep into her master’s eyes, beseeching, searching. She wanted to be told that she was wrong.
Cai Wu sighed. ‘Who’s to say we were ever right in the first place? Perhaps Isiah was just someone that could have been a great help to us. Perhaps he never was the immortal our prophecies speak of.’
Petra opened her mouth to say something, closed it again. After a moment she simply shook her head and looked at the ground, gravel and weeds. They had moved back into position in the car park behind the seedy hotel, waiting.
Cai Wu reached out a powerful old hand and smoothed the hair at the back of her neck. ‘You know, we don’t know what the prophecies mean by immortal. You and I are very old by human standards. We’re not mortal by the usual definition of the word. Perhaps one of us is the immortal spoken of in the prophecies.’ He laughed a small, humourless laugh. ‘And perhaps Isiah is not the one as he is dead. That’s hardly a good endorsement of his immortality.’
Petra looked up sharply, eyes flashing anger. Cai Wu smiled. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘That’s the fire I need to see. I know you cared for this man that exploded into our lives. I know you very well and I can tell how deeply you two connected, and how quickly. The best you can do right now is to honour his memory. Don’t give up. Fight his fight, our fight, to the bitter end, whatever that may be.’
Without any recognisable acknowledgment both Cai Wu and Petra pulled coverings over their heads and locked down their presence, sinking into the shadows. The conversation was over for now and instinct ruled again. Across the littered car park, beer cans and fast food wrappers, a small group walked towards a mini-bus. The vehicle was rented, the company logo splashed across the side. The group was seven people, one obviously older and in charge. The other six ranged from late teens to early thirties by the look of them and had about them an air of nervousness and excitement. They all guarded their presence, but not very well. They seemed to be taking only the most cursory of care for who they were. There was a sense of superiority about them. Without a word they climbed into the mini-bus and the older man started the engine, revving once, and pulled away.
Petra and Cai Wu emerged like shadows shifting as a light moves. They skirted the edge of the car park, barely visible still and parted ways at the street. For his sake and for ours. Cai Wu’s voice was soft in Petra’s mind.
She simply nodded and slipped into a car parked at the kerb and pulled away, the mini-bus receding bef
ore her. Cai Wu slipped into shadow again and was gone. As she drove, Petra contacted her fellow Magi, her voice slipping into their minds across the miles. We’ve got a group on the move. I think they’re heading to their final destination. Third time lucky hopefully. I’ll try to stay on them, you guys converge on me when I call. She got various words of affirmation from several colleagues and felt their gentle presence with her as she drove along. It was easy enough to tail someone and she had plenty of experience, but caution was the watchword. She couldn’t risk getting too close and blowing her cover. From the reports coming in from around the country, pretty much every group of the ONC that the Magi had identified was on the move. Several had been followed, observed. Master Cai had instructed his people to only ever get so close, to avoid detection at all costs. They had the likely location of this Gather down to about a hundred square kilometres and that was good enough for him. He had called everyone else back. If Petra lost this group, they would be hard pressed to find another in time to follow them. It seemed as though events were fast approaching their culmination. She knew that Master Cai was gathering with all the other Magi near the suspected area. It was up to her to home in on the ONC and give her people the final destination. She was going to follow them until there was only one road left to drive along. In Australia that could still mean a drive of thousands of kilometres, but no matter. Magi were surrounding an area now that was very much finite. Like a net slowly closing, they were homing in on their quarry.
She tried not to think about Isiah as she drove, but it was impossible. Every time her mind emptied of other thoughts his image would swim back in, her breath catching, pain in her chest. She had felt him go, ripped away from everything in an instant. She had felt enormous pain and sudden terror, confusion and bewilderment, then nothing. He was gone. Tears blurred the street lamps in her vision for a moment. It was not fair. It was simply not fair. She had never felt this way before, in all her long years, and now it was torn rudely and suddenly away almost before it was started. And poor Isiah, his power, his knowledge, his ability. All of it for nothing in the blink of an eye.
Perhaps Master Cai was right. Perhaps he was just an intriguing and powerful man that had wandered into her life at a particularly opportune moment. Coincidence. Then again, no one had ever beaten her in a fight before, so it wasn’t as if she was imagining that he was some kind of superhero. His strength, physical, mental, magical, was supreme, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Even Master Cai’s, though his abilities seemed somehow more refined. Isiah’s power had been raw and electric, like a storm barely held back against its will. She couldn’t help but imagine that Isiah had had some deep and overwhelming sense of anger or frustration that he had only just managed to keep in check. It was scary to imagine what he might have done, what he might have become, if that internal struggle had ever got the better of him. He had seemed to carry an enormous burden, a weight of expectation that bore down on him incessantly. Perhaps now there was some relief from that at least.
The tears came again, slow and quiet, as she drove along dark streets. The pools of light from streetlamps began to get further apart and eventually stopped altogether. She dropped back further still, letting the mini-bus disappear out of sight ahead of her. The carelessness of its occupants made her job easier. Their astral presence, their glow, stood out faintly and she could feel them up there. She could follow them like a dog could follow a scent. She had no idea why this particular group were being less vigilant than the others. At some point they might take more care, lock themselves down, but for now it was one of the few lucky breaks she had had recently and she was grateful for it. Towns grew further and further apart as farmland and grassland took up more of the landscape either side of the narrow highway. She regularly reported in to her colleagues and they watched maps, marking progress, making estimates. The net drew tighter. The Umbra Magi gathered in the Australian outback, waiting for their final orders and wondering what exactly it was they were gathering for.
Faith stared in bemusement. This was truly greater than she had imagined, a sea of tents spreading out across the valley floor. The drive had been long and boring, eventually becoming quite uncomfortable as they bounced along a rough and broken unsealed road. Then they had to walk for ages through the dark across rocky, scrubby ground. But arriving here had wiped out all memory of the horrible journey.
Camp fires burned all over the place between tents, camping torches like those at the beach in summertime stuck out of the red earth at jaunty angles, flames dancing atop them. People milled about or sat in groups, talking, laughing. A creek ran along not too far away and people had set up stations of trestle tables there and made hand-written signs, Don’t Piss Here – It’s For Drinking, Wash Your Stuff Downstream, No Soap Ya Poofters. That last one had to be an Australian effort. She smiled as she looked around, impressed.
‘Quite something, ain’t it.’
Faith looked up at Frank, grinning beside her. ‘The first time you’ve seen it too?’
Frank nodded. ‘Yep. I’ve been busy. You should be proud of your boyfriend. This is all his doing.’
‘Lars?’
‘Yeah. This was his job. Get this place set up and get everybody here. Looks like he did all right.’
Faith smiled again. She found it hard to be annoyed with all the time he had spent away now that she saw what he had achieved. She still had her apprehensions, her concerns and that nagging feeling that she should be doing something or that she was forgetting something, but this made all that less of an issue. There was a party atmosphere here, a kind of festival vibe and it felt good. This was something she was a part of, something that she could be proud to be a part of.
Frank slapped her on the shoulder, pushed her along. ‘Come on, sweetcheeks. Let’s get you delivered.’
‘What do mean, delivered?’
‘You’re expected, love. Dominus will want to see you right away.’
A sudden sense of dread fell over her again, a heavy cloak of concern. She hoped fervently that Lars would be there. Surely he wouldn’t let her be presented to this leader without being present. The other Optimates strode up to them and walked alongside, looking around themselves. A number of people in the camp stopped and gave small bows of respect as they passed, or raised their right fist, revealing their armband in a subtle salute. Others looked on in a kind of awe, aware that these must be important people even if they didn’t know why. Faith noticed some of them looking at her as she walked among these great Optimates. They looked at her with suspicion, confusion, sometimes a kind of annoyance. None of them seemed impressed. Or maybe that was just her perception, coloured by her doubts.
There was a large barn at the end of the valley with a broad open space in front before the tents started. The only other tent in that area was one larger than the rest, more like a small marquee, that stood to one side of the barn. As they approached she could see and feel all the protections that had been cast around the barn. And she could feel something inside that was simply wrong. It felt broken, twisted, but she couldn’t make it out through the wards, like an image distorted by frosted glass.
Frank tapped her shoulder again. ‘Stop being nosey, kid. All will be revealed in time.’ And there was that feral grin again.
When she was young, Faith’s family had a dog. He was a boisterous and friendly creature. Then one day a friend had brought around a kitten from an unexpected litter and insisted that Faith look after it. Faith had bugged her mother until she was eventually allowed to keep the tiny ball of fur and razors as long as she did everything herself to care for it. The dog was totally bemused by this tiny thing that had been introduced to the family. It looked like food and smelled like food. It moved like the sort of thing a dog was supposed to grab and shake around. But the dog was told time and again to leave it alone. He was a good dog and did as he was told, but Faith would often catch him looking at the kitten, staring at it, sometimes with a string of glittering drool hanging from one
doggy lip. On occasion she would catch the dog licking the cat, the tiny creature drenched in dog spit, and the dog would look at her as if to say, I’m not eating it! I’m just licking! The dog would spend hours looking at the kitten with hunger in its eyes. When Frank grinned at Faith he reminded her of the family dog back then. And she felt like the kitten.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Lars greeting them. Thank fuck for that. She looked up smiling and Lars strode over to her, smiling broadly. Walking a few paces behind him was a tall, rangy man in a heavy trench coat. He had deeply lined skin and a scruffy, grey beard. He reminded her of Gandalf from the Lord Of The Rings movies, only this was Gandalf the tramp rather than the proud medieval magician. Another Optimates as slimy and gross as Frank perhaps?
Lars kissed her warmly and slipped an arm around her shoulders, turning to stand beside her and face the approaching man. The other Optimates stopped beside them and bowed their heads. ‘Dominus,’ they said in unison. ‘Recolitus Cruor.’ Lars was bowing and speaking the words with them. This was the great leader? The Dominus? Faith dropped her eyes, staring at the sand between her feet, almost black in the darkness. She was uncomfortable in not knowing what to do, how she was supposed to be around this guy. They could have warned her.
The Dominus stood before Faith and the six Optimates and looked up and down the line of them. He smiled and it was a terrible sight. ‘Welcome, boys,’ he said. He reached out and shook each hand in turn. When he got to Lars and Faith he stopped and looked at Faith from head to toe and back again. Faith could think of nothing to say, so she said nothing. After a moment, the Dominus reached out a hand and put it on her forehead. Immediately his power was apparent, flooding through her in waves. She felt Lars give her shoulder a reassuring squeeze as she wobbled on her feet, weakened by the touch of this powerful blood mage. She managed to look up at him as he stood there and saw his eyes glazed as he held her in his mental grasp. She felt as though she was getting drunk, her vision starting to swim, nausea welling up in the pit of her stomach.
