by Mick Fraser
Angela unhooked the rig. It landed at her feet with a muffled thud.
“Any other weapons?” Varo demanded.
“Just me,” she told him levelly.
He laughed cruelly. “A lost little girl in a borrowed hypersuit! Forgive me if I don’t soil myself in fear. Put her in clamps.”
Two Exethan approached, one of them producing a pair of black metal rings. It slapped them on Angela’s wrists and they snapped together like magnets. Her arms felt immediately heavy, as though she’d been struck with pins and needles.
Varo smiled at Drenno. “The Machine, if you please?”
Defiance. “My daughter first.”
A mocking smile. “I don’t believe you understand the concept of leverage. I currently hold all the dice. You’re lucky you have fingers at all. The Machine.”
Drenno tapped his ear. “Dizzy, you read?”
“I read.”
“Load the Machine on a conveyor. Both boxes. Send it to my location.”
“But—”
“Now, Zera! He’s got Gaelan. Do as I say.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as the conveyor, loaded with the two heavy, black cases slowly hovered across the sand towards the opposing parties. When it finally beeped to a halt, Varo ordered his men to load it into the ship.
“Now go,” he ordered Drenno. “Your daughter will follow.”
Drenno snapped. “Not a chance. Let her go, you fucking toad, or I will put a new hole in you, I swear to the Goddess. You know I’m fast enough. Run on back to her Ladyship with your balls strapped up and beg for a treat. Go, while you’re still upright.”
For a terrifying moment Varo tensed both gun-arms, then relaxed. He kicked Gaelan forward and she stumbled in the sand. Angela caught the look of mortifying sorrow on her face as their eyes met for a heartbeat before Varo’s men yanked her away. Drenno scooped up his daughter and turned away without another word. Only Illith lingered.
“I’m sorry, mystraal,” she said softly, before following the others. Angela watched them leave. For a moment she considered arcing away, but realise with horror that the restraints were stopping her, sapping at whatever energy fuelled her gift. She felt sick as she stood there, helpless, inert, wondering why Varo wasn’t turning away. Then, in a single, gut-wrenching instant, she knew why. As the Firebrands reached the Shadowstar’s cargo ramp, she heard Varo’s voice:
“Do you have the shot? Take it.”
An Exethan sniper, hidden atop the troop ship, squeezed his trigger – and the world slowed down so much that Angela watched the caseless slug through every second of its journey. It tore the air in two, dragging a coil of hot, shimmering wind behind it, neither a poisoned arrow nor a cruise missile, but as devastating as either. It punched through leather, flesh, and bone with a sound like a thunderbolt and Drenno staggered, falling to his knees, catching his daughter’s body as she fell, lifeless, to the ground behind him.
Angela screamed, and in the scream she felt again the pain of everyone she had ever lost. Her crack-addict “guardian” Emma, found in a pool of drool and urine with a needle in her arm; Wacko, lying in the gutter pumping hot red blood that mixed with the swirling rain like crude oil; the Stranges, her parents not by birth but by circumstance and by love; Rathe, who had put himself in harm’s way so that Angela could live; and Gaelan… beautiful, tortured Gaelan, who she loved. Who she knew, now, at the end, when it was too late, that she loved.
Angela screamed.
Varo grabbed her by the hair. “Come, ‘Earth-born’. It’s time to meet the Sceptress.”
PART FIVE
~THE RESONANCE ENGINE~
It is said that they came from the Great Wide Dark. From out of the black fires of the First Sun, at the birthing of the Galaxy, they came, and showed us the meaning of fear.
We knew nothing of their living world, neither its name nor its desires; only that it hungered and hated with equal fervour. We named them Xyr, but some called them Devourers, Plaguebearers, the Grim. What they were or where they went may never be known.
We only pray that they do not return.
From The Book of the Dark, ancient Iniiran scripture
CHAPTER 42
~REGRESSION~
NUMB.
SHE WAS numb. Not like the numb from anaesthetic, but rather numb from a lack of circulation, as though her entire body had pins and needles, as though she was unable to feel anything but pain.
She couldn’t cry. Earlier, she had tried to force the tears because she knew she should be crying, weeping, pushing out great, wracking sobs of anguish, crying so hard that everything she wore became wet with salty tears. But she couldn’t. There was nothing in her heart but frostbite, piercing her veins and driving needles through her flesh.
Frank knelt beside her, his huge, round hands clasped together before him. Perhaps, she suspected, so that he wasn’t tempted to lay one on her shoulder to comfort her. He was crying; he had wept such rivers for the last hour that his shirt and cuffs were still mottled with dark stains. His skin was pale, haggard, in contrast with his silver-red beard.
“Aren’t you going to say something, honey?” he asked her softly in his gentle Irish brogue. “Don’t you have a word to utter?”
He almost recoiled from the glare she turned on him. Forty years behind the badge, and she still had the power to chill his blood when her moods were at their darkest.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he told her, reading her like he always did. “It’s just… one of those things beyond our control.”
She looked away from him without replying, turning her gaze on the open window. It was December, and the sky outside was the grey and white and charcoal of old ashes. There would be rain soon. A cold wind slid inside, breathed a chill against her neck, but she didn’t feel it. Frank did, and shuddered. He rose to shut the window.
“Leave it,” she told him. It was all she had said for the last thirty minutes.
Frank let go of the brass handle. “You’re in there then? It’s not just a shell that looks like my granddaughter.”
“Not just a shell, no” she said. “There’s poison in it, too.”
He moved to her but she leaned away from his touch. “Don’t talk like that,” he snapped. “Don’t you dare. It was an accident.”
She continued to stare at the sky. Her throat was dry, sore. She realised she hadn’t moved, hadn’t swallowed, since he told her. “You’ll be next,” she said quietly. “Everyone I love dies. Everyone who loves me, dies. You’ll be next. Safer to move on now.”
“People have tried to kill me before, Angie. I’ve been shot at, stabbed, beaten and half-drowned. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m more worried about you.”
“Don’t be,” she said quickly. “I’m used to this. I’ll cope. I always cope.”
“You’re eighteen, sweetheart. It’s okay to cry.”
But she couldn’t. Couldn’t cry. Didn’t cry then, when she heard the news. Didn’t cry later when she lay in bed with sleep beyond her grasp and that horrible, ice-cold pain seeping into her bones, boring into her marrow.
She still didn’t cry a week later, at college, when Tom Sanders made a joke. It was a silly joke, not even funny. No one laughed. Not his friends Sam and Mark; not Helen Rembrandt with her perfect hair and bright blue eyes; certainly not Miss Richards, who admonished him quietly for being insensitive. But Tom did. Tom laughed. Tom made fun of her suffering, poked at her because he could, because he perceived her the way they all did: a quiet little Asian girl with no friends, who was raised by a crack-head prostitute and slept under a cardboard box until she bewitched a rich family who had lost their own child. She probably killed their biological daughter, Tom had said, and then she’d had a taste of it and killed them, too. It wasn’t a funny joke, not funny at all. Certainly it wasn’t funny when she leapt across her desk like some kind of beast and dragged him to the ground in front of everyone and punched him and punched him and punched him, until Miss Richards ov
ercame her shock and finally jumped up, pulling Angela off the screaming boy with a face like a melting ice cream. She might have hit him ten times or twenty. She wasn’t counting because it didn’t matter; she’d had no intention of ever stopping.
Her knuckles were hot and slick and sore as they marched her to the headmaster’s office, but they were cold and sticky and throbbing by the time Frank arrived with the police to take her home. He didn’t berate her, didn’t seem angry at all. He just walked her to the car, then walked her to her bed, and drew the covers up over her uniform and laid a hand on her dark hair and then closed her curtains and closed the door.
“We need to get you help,” he said to her, eleven days later, when she sat at the kitchen table with a bruised eye and a split lip and knuckles that burned like she’d dragged them over hot coals. “You can’t go on like this. It’s a miracle the parents of that boy at college aren’t pressing charges. You can’t fight the world.”
“If the world stayed out of my fucking business...”
“Watch your language, Angie. I’ll not have you spitting curses in this house.” He watched her for a moment but she ignored him. “You’ve had a rough go of it, I know that. Even before this. But you can’t go around fighting everyone who puts a word out of place.”
“I won, didn’t I?”
He banged his hand on the table, which made her tense up but not look his way. “You always win. That’s not the point. It’s easy to win a fight when you bring that kind of madness to it. Sweet Mary, you frightened me today. What if Ian hadn’t spotted you and called me? You can’t just start a fight with a street gang for fun.”
“They started it. The big one did. He made a comment about my arse. Fucking pervert’s lucky he only got a broken nose.”
“And you’re lucky you didn’t get a lot worse. You could have been killed, Angie.”
“Well, I wasn’t. Bruises heal.”
“Not all of them.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Watch your mouth. I’ve told you once already.” He sighed, and his demeanour softened. “It means that you’re hurting inside. I know you are. I am, too. I miss them every day. Now you’re all I’ve got, and I’m all you’ve got. We need to stick together, to work together. We need to get you some help.”
“Like a maid?”
“Like a therapist. This anger will eat you. I’ve seen it. I’ve watched good police officers destroyed by it. Men and women with ten, fifteen years experience, just destroyed. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
She stood up, her chair legs scraping against the kitchen floor. “No fucking way. I’m going out. I’ve got to meet some people.”
“No you’re not. Not tonight. Tonight we’re going out, just the two of us. To chill out for a bit. Maybe see a film.”
“No thanks,” she replied, spinning and heading for the door. He didn’t bother to call after her.
The next morning, he arrived at the hospital half out of his mind, beating a path to her room to find her barely conscious, head bandaged, being pumped full of fluid through a plastic tube.
“Angie,” he whispered as he reached her bedside. “What have you done?”
“She’s still a little out of it,” she heard another person say; the doctor. “She can hear you, but she might not respond.”
“What happened?”
“Well, we had to pump her stomach. We don’t know exactly what she took, Mr. Strange, but it wasn’t a suicide attempt, we’re quite sure.”
“Drugs?”
“Likely. And an awful lot of cognac. She took a plunge off the Eastchester Bridge. Landed on a passing ferry. She was lucky – she could have ended up in the Thames. The marks on her knuckles and chin, though, they’re from fighting.”
“She needs help.”
“Yes, she does. We can discuss that now, if you’d like to follow me?”
She felt his rough hands on her own for a second, but couldn’t open her eyes or her mouth to tell him she was sorry, to tell him he was right. She felt nothing, still. Just that terrible, ice-cold numbness. She thought, for the briefest of moments as she bobbed on the currents of sedation and sorrow, that she might finally cry, that the dam might finally break and something close to emotion might push its way through the pain. But as Frank released her hands and she felt his presence move away, her eyes were as dry as dust. And she felt nothing but numb.
CHAPTER 43
~TESS EVAYNE~
NUMB.
SHE WAS numb all over. Numb when Varo half-dragged her up the ramp of his last remaining transport, numb when they returned to the Broken Halo and she was fastened into some kind of full-body restraint that pulled her arms and legs out like a star-jump. She was numb when Varo spoke to her, his unheard words spitting from his scaly lips with a sneer.
She was buffeted against her strange prison but she barely registered the motion. Garbled orders, broken responses, as the warship approached its destination. Angela wanted to cry, but she couldn’t, even when she pictured Gaelan’s face, remembered the soft touch of her lips, the hot perfume of her flesh, the flash-fire heat of passion. Even when she thought of Drenno, burying a daughter as well as a wife. Would he seek revenge? Surely he would. It was a wonder the Halo wasn’t under attack already.
Angela felt the ship begin to shudder, heard the distant wailing of two different sirens that clashed together in teeth-chattering discord. She became vaguely aware of Varo’s proximity. He was in front of her, close enough to cut had her hands been free. He was talking again, smug words tumbling over one another in his curiously English accent. He was gloating, but she cared nothing for his words, or for his apparent ire that they could not stir a reaction.
There was a sudden shunt so violent that it pulled Angela’s restrained arms back savagely. She grunted. The physical pain was like a tincture on her wounds, a sadistic respite for her pins and needles heart. It disrupted the ache she felt in her soul, and when it passed she almost longed for it again.
She was moved.
Her restraints were released and cold, metallic hands took her. They kept her upright, and she was forced to march. Where, she neither knew nor cared. Evayne had won. She had Angela, she had the machine, and Drenno would never recover from this latest blow. She had won – nothing mattered any more.
Angela was led.
She became aware of brightness, sudden and invasive, like a doctor’s light shining in her eyes. The floor below her feet was ice white, smooth and impossibly clean. Their boots echoed in unison, tramp tramp tramp, and the noise was metronomic, clouding time and distance. They might have walked for five minutes or fifteen, but suddenly they halted. Voices: Varo’s, a woman’s, impatient, irritated, angry. Someone took hold of a fistful of Angela’s hair and yanked her head back. Defiantly she clamped shut her eyes, and someone – Varo, she guessed – hit her in the ribs. Pain like a cannonball doubled her over, forcing her to cough, almost choke, but she kept her eyes closed. She didn’t really know why, but it gave her some deranged satisfaction to defy them, even now. Especially now.
She felt a sharp tug as he moved to strike her again, but the woman’s voice, powerful but somehow maternal, edged with something haughty, aristocratic, stopped him with a single word.
“Open your eyes, child,” Evayne told her. “I wish you no further harm.”
Now she did open them, and saw through a haze of hate. “How could you possibly harm me further?”
For a queen – as she essentially was – Evayne was surprisingly unadorned, a far cry from the vision in the cavern on Nix. She wore dark leather leggings, knee-length boots, a blouse of desert silk. Her blood red hair framed her smooth face in a perfect bob, and her eyes, almond shaped and as green as the sea, shone with a purpose that Angela found both hypnotic and disconcerting.
She flicked her eyes around the room, taking stock. Beside her stood a towering white-haired Endrani. He watched her hungrily, like a starved lion watching a hunk of beef sizzling in the
sun. Angela turned away from his stare, and her gaze found Evayne’s dark eyes staring at her with a similar piercing intent.
“I gave no kill order, I assure you. The matter will be dealt with.” The Sceptress' gaze shifted to Varo, and Angela was sure the To’ecc winced. “There is... fire, in you. I saw it when I spoke to you through the resonance aperture. I see it again now.”
Angela chuffed. “You talked a lot then, too.”
“You’re addressing your Sovereign, Outsider,” Varo snarled.
She turned her eyes on him, and as she did so the past flashed up inside her like a firebomb. She was back in Soho, on the streets, sleeping under cardboard, going toe to toe whenever she had anything worth protecting. She had never been the one to back down. It had earned her beatings upon beatings, but in time it had woken something inside her, something she spent five years in therapy putting in a cage. As she gazed into Varo’s reptilian eyes, she felt it stirring again.
He moved closer. “You will show respect.”
“We’re going to have a talk later, you and me,” she told him. “And I already have a queen. She’s called Elizabeth.”
“How dare you—!?”
“Varo, close your mouth before it gets you into trouble.” Evayne’s voice was quiet and smooth, but her very tone was enough to silence the To’ecc. She descended a shallow flight of steps to approach Angela. They were in a large chamber with circular walls of unblemished white, upon which hung half a dozen tapestries spun in silk or something similar. A divan couch occupied one wall, and a great wide window opposite afforded a view of a recently torn Warren, its colours still swirling together like paint on the surface of water. It seemed that Tess Evayne almost glided to her, so soft were her footfalls. She stopped so close that Angela could smell the sweetness of her perfume. The Sceptress looked her up and down.
“You wear the raiment of a Harlequin. Your crew must value you highly.”
