Red Rain (The Circle Book 3)

by Lee Isserow

  Faith redirected the scrying pools to see the operatives at each of the scenes. None of them were willing to go through with the order―some of them looked as though they were ready to quit right then and there. He was commanding them to burn their friends alive, use them as a means to an end to kill the bugs, and there was no way to know whether that would even work―let alone whether they would have enough people when this was all done, to bring them back to life. . . And even if they could, the bugs were inside them, to bring back the operatives might bring them back too.

  “I said, light them up!” He shouted over the call, sending them every iota of his anxiety at the notion, telling them without words that he felt exactly as they did―that he wasn't taking this action lightly. There was a very real possibility that none of them would survive this, and right now the people they weren't willing to burn were in agony, being eaten alive from the inside out. . .

  A fire exploded into life on one of the scrying pools, but none of the magickians had moved a muscle. None, but the one who had the swarm inside her.

  Another burst into flames, then another. They were immolating themselves, rather than force their friends to take their lives.

  Faith felt weak. If he weren't already sitting down, he might well have collapsed to the floor in that moment. He had never seen so much heroism and self-sacrifice from anyone, let alone the tens of operatives that chose to take their own lives rather than let the Natural World fall.

  He watched with an unblinking stare, to be certain that there was no further movement from the swarms at each of the locations. If they were going to continue to feed in that fashion, then there might well be a way they could contain this new threat. . .

  Gripping the arms of the chair with all his might, he forced himself upright, and turned to Tali.

  “I want corpses. Hundreds of them. All imbued with life and magick, and sent down to where these gods-damn bastards are swarming. If they want to eat magickians. . . we'll bloody give them magickians to eat. . .”

  45

  Some unspoken language

  SPANISH WELLS, BAHAMAS

  More swarms had joined the tiny puffs of darkness that were dancing around the corpse. It grew larger and larger, thicker and darker, as if the first small grouping had been interrupted during its gestation, and required the others to bolster its size and strength.

  The boat and the crew had long since departed, but the man they had rescued did not even seem to notice they had gone, let alone hear their inquiries before they did so, asking as to whether he would be joining them. So transfixed he was in the movement of the creatures. He still couldn't understand why he found it so enthralling, but did not want to question it. The movement, and the buzzing that accompanied it, felt as thought it were some unspoken language that he once knew. A tongue spoken without a tongue, uttered through vibrations on the air, as if it was attempting to communicate.

  Or perhaps, it was not the creatures of the cloud that were communicating, but something that was communicating through it. And when it realised he could not understand it, they appeared to take to observing him, flying wildly round and round his body, studying him as he watched their movement with a perplexed joy. They seemed as intrigued by him as he was with them, and yet more swarms were coming to join the ones that circled him.

  He reached out with his hand, and the darkness landed on his skin. It felt so curious, as if millions of tiny feet were walking upon his palm. They coated his hand, his wrist, his arm, and started making their way up his chest. These bugs, whatever they were, seemed to want to get to know him intimately, crawling under his clothes and covering every inch of his skin. He kept his mouth firmly shut, reached to hold his nostrils closed. As much as he was enjoying the strange occurrence, he couldn't imagine anything worse than having millions of tiny things crawling deep inside his guts.

  Yet more swarms came, from down the roads and through the woods from other parts of the island, and within a half hour of the first creatures landing on his skin, he was completely encased in darkness.

  And for the first time since he had woken up, since he found himself in a strange place, with strange people, and no memories of who he was. . . He didn't feel alone any more. It was as if, in some bizarre way, these creatures were home. Family. Freedom from the fear of never regaining his memory.

  He closed his eyes and let a smile come to his lips as his skin tickled with activity. Until he realised that the tickle wasn't just on his skin. It was in his ears, under his eyes, and it was no longer just a tickle. The swarm was trying to burrow into his skull.

  46

  Once and for all

  EPICENTRE, THE CIRCLE

  Faith continued to take the reins of the mission, as Tali dispatched the re-animated bodies across the Natural World. They had been filled with the blood of magickians, their hearts pumping via enchantments, their skin warmed by the clothes they wore. They were mindless in their motions, but Three had expert control of their bodies, puppeteering them as if they were living, breathing men and women.

  Operatives teleported to the new locations with them, but the reanimated corpses took the lead, all of them casting bolts of fire at the swarms to get their attention. As soon as the swarms engaged, the magickians put barriers up, leaving the corpses as the only unprotected people on the battlefields.

  The darkness swirled towards each of them, just as they had done with the operatives that sacrificed themselves for the greater good. But as they came within striking distance, the shadowy clouds stopped in mid-air, and pulled away sharply.

  At three sites, the other magickians set the corpses alight as the swarms fled―but it seemed as though no harm was done to the mass of bugs.

  “How?!” Faith barked. He slammed his fist into a scrying pool and sent it flying across the main floor of the Epicentre. “How could they tell they weren't alive?! How could they sense it was a bloody trap! They're just bloody bugs!”

  Tali watched the swarms flit through the air, slamming against the barriers around the magickians.

  “They're not just bugs. . .”

  Faith glared at her. “Now is not the time to be bloody cryptic. . . I get enough of that from Three. . .”

  “When we assembled the Circle, we tried to find the prime. . . the mind that all the creatures are connected to. What if it's not just a mind they're connected to, what if it's connected to them. . . We didn't put glamours on the corpses, didn't try to make them look human. We sent them in on the assumption that a warm body and a beating heart was enough to make them into a meal―and if they were just dumb bugs they would have fallen for it. . . But―”

  “There's a queen. . . “ Faith muttered, as he took in everything that Tali was hypothesising. “Controlling these damn things behind the scenes.”

  “The mother, the one who birthed them. . . she's been pulling the strings, telling them where to go, making sure they learned from their mistakes.”

  “But it ain't showing up on the map. . .”

  “Well, we're tracking the blood of its children, and while we've got three different strains with similar enough DNA to be interchangeable, the mother's only a fraction of those strands.”

  Faith looked out over the map, and snarled to himself. “So we follow that signal. . . Can you do that, Three?”

  Three voices spoke as one in their periphery. “We most likely can, yes. But not from one that is deceased. . . You will need to capture a living specimen, and bring them to us, and we shall attempt to determine the location of that which is behind this attack on the Natural World.”

  Faith nodded to the voices, and shot a look over to Tali. “Call everyone that's still kicking. We're gonna need all hands on deck to drag one of these bastards in while they're still breathing. . . And then, we're gonna bloody end this clusterfuck, once and for all.”

  47

  What needed to be done

  SPANISH WELLS, BAHAMAS

  The thick layer of darkness undulated across his skin. It
crawled up his nose and in his ears, slid through his lips and down his throat, it forced its way between his eyelids and into his skull.

  It was exploring him, trying to understand him, and he allowed it to do so in the hope that some bare modicum of knowledge might be gifted to him in return―that he might finally be able to recall who he was, and why he felt so connected to this swarm that had chosen to come together upon his being.

  The experience was uncomfortable, as millions of tiny tentacles slithered back and forth, and millions of wings bat with a concentrated intensity. But if it was going to bring him answers, he did not mind discomfort. He could feel them as they journeyed around his head, a tingle that coursed through each of his cavities, and the familiarity grew all the more, the deeper they dived into his core.

  These creatures had a will of their own, he could sense that, they each operated independently―and yet they also operated as a group, they could sense the others' intent, and reacted accordingly. And there was another force, one that was not present in that time or place, and yet was so powerful that they might well have been standing right next to him.

  The more he tried to connect with the bugs that had encased him, the more it felt that whatever force bound them together was there, not in spirit, but physically, and he found himself opening his eyes without wanting to, turning without meaning to, and found himself looking upon a face that he knew―and yet also one he did not know. It was female, or at least presented as female in form. Whether that was the case beneath the skin, he could not say. She was slender, her skin a shade that looked as though it might have been a blend of a myriad ethnicities. She had a wild and striking ebony mane, that slicked around as if she were underwater, and her eyes glowed a bright and vibrant yellow.

  He stared at her, begging with his gaze for her to speak, to her to explain herself, how she came to be there―and begged all the more for her to reveal who he was. For there was recognition in her eyes.

  Recognition, and also scorn.

  It was as if his presence had wounded her somehow, and was an insult to everything she stood for. He opened his lips, an apology already on them, but the words were muted by the torrent of bugs that cascaded down his throat as he inadvertently gave them a wider entry point into his core.

  A smile came to her lips, but it was not one of friendliness, her eyes told him that much. They glowed all the more and although he could not hear her, she cackled long and hard.

  Pain shot through him. Not the once, but a million times over, throughout the length and breadth of his body. The bugs had been given their orders, they were to attack, and each of their minute jaws had latched on to his meat, each attempting to gorge themselves on his flesh. Devouring him from the inside and out.

  He gasped at their bites, gagged as the darkness continued to pour down his gullet and chew away at his oesophagus. The pain was intense, and yet he suddenly knew that it was nothing compared to the pain he had already experienced. That pain, the one that had come and gone―in now what seemed as though it had been just a blink of an eye―was true agony. And whatever pain he was experiencing from these small creatures was nothing but a nuisance in comparison.

  And It was not just the pain that he could recall. He knew himself, his body, and could feel something change deep within him as he had that revelation. At the site of the first wounds that had been made, there was a vibration that rocketed through his body―and with that vibration came an almighty light that shone out from under the cloud of shadows that had enveloped him. It ripped through every single one of the creatures, searing them inside and out, tearing them apart at the molecular level. The gleaming rays shone out from every part of his body, and felt as though it was pouring out of him not just there, but somehow it was shooting across the world.

  The woman was no longer standing next to him, he could feel her withdraw back into the ether as soon as her children were vanquished. But he did not need her presence to remember her.

  He knew who he was.

  He knew where he had been.

  And he knew where he had to go to do what needed to be done.

  “It is good to know you have finally returned,” Three said in his periphery.

  He rose to his feet and gave them a small nod in agreement. “It is good to hear your voice, old friend. . . Although, I could have done with it when I first washed up. . .”

  “We apologise for not contacting you sooner, there was. . . for lack of a better term. . . a field of ignorance that blocked our communiques.”

  “Travel from the Outer Realms is not without its down-sides. . .”

  “That is true. Are you. . . well?”

  He glanced at the corpse that had birthed the swarm, then around to the death and destruction that had befallen the street he stood on, and finally he looked at his own skin, which had only moments earlier been shining with an intense incandescence.

  “I am. . . different.”

  He felt their nods. They knew more of his return to life than they would ever say, but he would never dream of insulting them by asking them for an explanation.

  “I need to return to the depths,to Mariana, to put a stop to the scourge that has washed unto the world of man.”

  “That, you must.”

  In an instant, light poured across his skin once again. But this was not a light that came from within. It was that of Three. They knew where he had to be, and were sending him directly to the source of the incursion upon the land. The time of death had to end, and all Shaman Kahgo could do was hope that it would not take violence of his own to end the violence that was occurring around the world.

  48

  Self-destruct

  EPICENTRE, THE CIRCLE

  Reports were coming in from across the Natural World. From Cuba and Florida, then the rest of the Americas and Africa, then Europe and Asia. The swarms were no more.

  One by one they exploded in bursts of light, as if some self-destruct sequence had been set off and it was rocketing around the globe. And yet, none of the operatives knew what was happening. It was all so sudden, there was no action on their part that had been responsible, and none of them had the hubris to take credit.

  Tali cast over the map, following the incidents back to their source point, narrowing it down to where the bugs first began to burst into puffs of light. Small, brown patches began to burn into the paper, and she traced it back to the origin of the first case.

  The Bahamas.

  They didn't have any troops on the ground there, they hadn't even thought about sending operatives to the islands, because the population was so small compared to the cities and towns that had been invaded.

  There was another player involved in their fight. But she couldn't for the life of her imagine who that might be.

  “Quit wasting time,” Faith grunted, “still got the full size and king size bastards to deal with. . . not to mention trying to wrangle one of these damn things in alive. . .”

  Despite his gruff demeanour, Tali caught sight of a slim smile on his lips before he stomped over to a door and re-joined his people out in the fray. Now that the swarm had apparently been dealt with, they could make the beasts bleed all they wanted. And that was going to make the final surge of their battle a hell of a lot easier.

  49

  An unexpected occurrence

  MARIANA TRENCH, PACIFIC OCEAN

  It started as a subtle undulation contrary to the current, some ten thousand metres below sea level. The water swirled with an ever-increasing intensity as it tore from the laws of nature and whirled at a frantic pace, a cyclone that torrented round and round, with no natural source. Magick was the source, as Three created a place amidst the depths at which Shaman Kahgo could teleport without being fused to the base elements of the water that surrounded him.

  The whirlpool siphoned the oxygen out of the molecules of the ocean, creating a clear bubble of air in which he could translocate. Once it was formed, light flashed out across the darkness for barely a blink of
an eye. When the light dissipated, the bubble did too, more gently than it had the previous time he was sent to these depths. But Kahgo needed no hand-holding on this voyage into the trench―he had experienced the intense conditions of the Outer Realms, he had been through a myriad hells to return, and the pressure of the water, of being so deep, could in no way contend with the agony that had been inflicted upon him during that time.

  Kahgo altered the density of the skin he wore, making it more porous to absorb water and allow him to sink deeper into the darkness below. The ground that he met with was as it had been upon his last visit, a rocky base of smooth volcanic expunges that had long since become solid. But this time, there was no muddy silt that washed upon the surface, and there was no movement of dark, tenticular creatures. They had all fled from their home, dispatched around the world to take the land for their master―their mistress. His sister.

  “Dam'i-Ka!” he shouted, speaking her name with three tongues that forked out from deep within his throat.

  Ahead of him, the murky depths became all the murkier, as darkness coalesced to portent her arrival. The shadows parted, and she stepped through, looking just as she did when he saw her in the Bahamas. She had adopted a human guise long ago, and had maintained it for thousands of years, never returning to her natural form as far as he knew. It was a protest, aimed solely at him and him alone

  “Brother. . .” she growled. “This is an unexpected occurrence. I had thought you long dead. . .”

  “Some deaths are not as permanent as others. You know why I have come to your domain, the attack upon the world of man must come to an end.”

  She snarled at his attempt to order her around. “You stole from me, brother, time and time over. . . And now you wish to steal from me yet again? To simply take the life of those I have birthed? Lives that have barely had a chance to be lived?”