The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

by Chris Wooding

  “Ah said shut up, limey!” shouted the American. “Where ah come from, a man does what a man has to do, you got that? It’s the law of William Kidd; you ain’t the best until you’ve beaten the best. Well ah’m the best, and ah’m here to prove it right now! Do we got a deal, Mister Thaniel Fox?”

  “Not guns,” said Thaniel. “Blades.”

  “Blades it is,” grinned Blake. “Ah knew you’d say that. Ain’t nobody stupid enough to go up against a Kentucky man on the draw. Lets clear us some space.”

  Hodge switched his gun to Cathaline while Blake patted down Thaniel and disarmed him of everything but his chosen knife, a long-bladed dagger with an ornamental crossguard, inscribed with Wards and runes. Blake and Thaniel pulled the tables out of the way of the centre of the room, cleared the bodies of the wych-dogs and the Devil-boy, making a small, bloodstained arena for themselves. Hodge took Cathaline and Alaizabel over to the side of the room, out of the way, and sweated uneasily while he watched the manic Yankee about his work.

  “Ah hope you’ll forgive this indulgence,” Blake said, drawing his blade. “Wanting to fight with you ’n’ all. Just have to know; are you your fathers son or ain’cha?”

  “We shall see,” Thaniel said.

  Then his blade was drawn, and the two faced each other, settling their weight so that it was evenly spread, ready to fight. They circled for a time, making tiny feints, testing their enemy’s reflexes. Blake was fast, no doubt about that; probably faster than Thaniel, but Thaniel knew a trick or two, and he had something of an idea forming behind that impassive visage.

  “Ah’m curious,” said Blake, who evidently loved the sound of his own voice. “Ah’d heard stories about your father, that he killed his first ever wych-kin with one o’ them Warded knives, and he preferred ’em over guns ever since. That true?”

  “He killed it with this knife,” said Thaniel, holding up his blade. “He gave it to me when I was eight. It has never let me down yet.”

  Blake was impressed. “Well, don’t that just take the biscuit?”

  He sent a quick slash towards Thaniel’s cheek, parried away with a sharp ring of steel. Thaniel counter-thrust, jabbing up towards the American’s chin, but Blake turned it away and shoved his boot into Thaniel’s chest. Thaniel was faster than that, though; he rode the force of the push and slashed across Blake’s shin, and regained his balance as Blake retreated.

  “Hmm,” Blake said, their eyes locked once more. “The good God bless Yankee leather, ah say.” The cut had only scratched him, for most of what Thaniel had sliced was Blake’s boot.

  Cathaline wanted to shout encouragement, but she kept her mouth shut and watched. She was conscious of Hodge standing next to her, his gun at her head; she was conscious also that his aim was drifting as he paid less and less attention to his prisoner and more to the fight. Still, it would have to drift a lot more before she dared try anything. So she watched Thaniel, and willed him to win. Alaizabel, on the other side of Hodge, was absorbed in the fight, her face a picture of terror.

  Thaniel attacked now, a high thrust to mid-slash and then one across the eyes. Blake tapped them all away, then returned in kind, a three-strike combination that Thaniel handled easily. They were testing each other, probing for weaknesses. Neither of them were fighting to their full potential yet, and Thaniel wanted to delay that moment as long as possible; for if Blake came at him with everything he had, he doubted he could hold out for long. It would only take a slip to let Blake win; but he could not allow that to happen. He had come to a decision, and he knew what he had to do. But it all relied on perfect timing.

  And with that thought, he lunged and swiped. Blake was taken aback by the sudden savagery, and his parry was sloppy; he got scored across the back of his hand for his trouble. He cursed, pulling back, but the cut had not been deep enough to sever any nerves and his hand was still in working order. Thaniel pressed the advantage, the short blades blurring between them, chiming and clashing as they riposted and dodged and lunged.

  “You ain’t bad, Mister Thaniel Fox,” said Blake. “Ain’t bad at all. Ah’m enjoying mahself now.”

  “How nice for you,” said Thaniel, and struck again, this time knocking Blake’s blade aside and punching him square in the nose. Blake swore and staggered back, his hand flying to his face.

  “Broke my damn nose!” he cried. Thaniel was breaking through his defences by sheer recklessness. A knife fighter was supposed to be cagey and defensive, striking only when the opportunity was there. To do otherwise was to lose fingers. But every so often Thaniel threw an attack for which Blake wasn’t prepared, one that was simply inviting a knife to the throat, and purely because of its audacity it overwhelmed the American. He was fighting like a man who didn’t care for his life.

  Not anymore, though. Next time, Blake would be ready. He had Thaniel’s measure now. One more mistake, and he was in.

  Thaniel glanced over at Cathaline, and something in his gaze made her tense; she saw the resolve therein. He was about to do something, but what? Hodge was hardly even pointing the gun at her any more, but she would still be killed if she moved. She was fast, but not that fast.

  “That was a dirty trick, boy,” Blake said, not quite so cheery now. His nose was squashed and his eyes were bruising in a dark domino-mask. Blake raised his knife, and his expression of anger was made evil by the foul red light that smothered the room through the tall windows. He lunged at Thaniel. “Ah’m through playing now.”

  “So am I,” said Thaniel, and with a swift movement, he dodged aside and pushed Blake past him like a bullfighter, spun and flung his knife into Hodges forehead. Blake’s blade scored his side, but the American was too surprised by Thaniel’s move to lend it much force and it tore from his grip. Cathaline twisted, pulling the gun from Hodge’s hands even as he stood with an expression of dumb amazement on his face and the hilt of Thaniel’s knife between his eyes. Blake regained his balance in a second and pulled his pistol from its holster, bringing it to bear on Cathaline.

  Too slow. Left-handed, Cathaline levelled and fired, and Blake’s shot went high as he was thrown backwards and fell to the ground, dead.

  Cathaline stood for a moment, her brain catching up to her reactions. Alaizabel was open-mouthed. Thaniel stood there, his hand held to his side.

  Then: realization.

  “Thaniel!” Alaizabel cried, rushing over to where the wych-hunter stood. He grinned, and she hugged herself to him. He sucked in his breath in pain, and she drew back, sudden concern on her face.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, moving his coat aside so that she could examine the wound he had been dealt.

  “Do not trouble yourself,” he said. “Just a scratch.”

  Cathaline stepped up behind Alaizabel. “Well, Thaniel Fox,” she said with a grin, surveying the scene around them. “I suppose you are your father’s son, after all.” She stopped suddenly, her grin fading.

  “What is it?” Thaniel asked.

  “Over there,” she said. “Something moved.” And she was there in a moment, dodging between the tables to the source of the disturbance.

  “Ah,” said Carver, smiling through lips flecked with blood from where he lay among the clutter. “Miss Bennett. I do apologize. It seems I got myself shot.”

  THE GALLERY

  GREGOR GAINS HIS FREEDOM

  THE TIDE COMES IN 27

  There were running footsteps, voices approaching them.

  They were in a narrow stone corridor, one of the many that ran between the great chambers of the cathedral, and they were lost. Devil-boy Jack had told them that the ceremony had to be in a hall, one large enough to accommodate many people. They would not have thought it hard to find, except that the insides of this awful place seemed to twist around on themselves, a nightmare maze of red and gold and black, and now they had no idea where they were.

  Alaizabel shoved open a blank oak door that led off the corridor and hurried them inside, closing it behind them. It was some kind
of book repository, a small room piled with old tomes kept in no particular order and with no apparent care. The footsteps came closer, louder, and then passed by and receded.

  “The whole place must be after us now,” Cathaline said.

  Thaniel was reloading his pistol distractedly “Just let me get within sight of Thatch and I will put a bullet in her brain,” he muttered to himself.

  “You do not know what she looks like,” Alaizabel pointed out.

  “ You do,” he retorted.

  “I think I will recognize her,” she replied, not half so sure as Thaniel seemed to be.

  “We must be close,” Thaniel said. “The ceremony must be nearby.”

  “It is a big cathedral,” Alaizabel said.

  “It is a big ceremony,” he answered.

  They had left Carver behind, bandaged and treated as best they could. He would live, as far as Cathaline could guess, but he was in no state to move. They hid him as best they could in a room off to the side of the hall where they had fought the wych-dogs, promising to be back for him. He told them to go, and quickly. There were more important things than his life at stake.

  They opened the door and continued down the passageway, listening. Their way ahead appeared clear; it was evident that the Fraternity’s forces were depleted by the need to attend the ceremony.

  The sudden force of Thaniel’s wych-sense battering at his mind took him completely by surprise, and drove him to one knee in mid-stride. He could hear Alaizabel saying something, but her voice was thin and tinny and hard to hear. She was leaning over him, fearful concern written on her doll-features. Cathaline was similarly affected nearby.

  By God’ what was it?

  Terrible visions flashed before his eyes, swept him up and consumed him. Darkness, terrible cold darkness, the salty depths of the deepest oceans where no light warmed the rocks and the weight of the black water would crush a man like a grape. And he saw then the result of the Fraternity’s meddling, what would happen if the ceremony came to pass. Oceans would rise, and their beds would split, disgorging the foulness long buried there; London would be drowned by the sea, and the things that came with the water from the abysses of the Atlantic and the Arctic Circle; wych-kin would run amok, screaming and howling, across what land remained. In his mind, vast loping things a kilometre high or more lumbered half-seen through billows of fog; things that should not exist rose from the ocean and sent tidal waves to destroy mans cities; babies would be born with gills, their little digits webbed and atrocious.

  The land would be swallowed by the sea, and when it retreated, all would be in ruins. And then the new breed would come, the creatures from the deep, the servants of the dark gods known by humans as the Glau Meska. They would erect great temples, and cities built of bone and sinew, and their foulness would spread like a cancer until finally, a hundred years from now, Mother Earth would be theirs.

  The vision ceased abruptly, leaving Thaniel panting and sweating and clutching his arms tight to his body. His wych-sense had ceased pounding him, but it still throbbed. He spent a few moments just breathing, regaining control.

  “Thaniel, are you all right? What is it?”

  “The ceremony proper has begun,” he said, suddenly certain of his own words. “Thatch has started the process of guiding the Glau Meska to us. Can you not feel them coming?”

  “I... I feel nothing,” said Alaizabel, uncertainly.

  “I do,” Cathaline said. “And it is coming from that way.” She pointed up the corridor.

  The sensation they felt had a definite epicentre. The gateway, where Thatch stood and called like a beacon to the Glau Meska. Thaniel could feel the dread gaze of those immense entities, creatures beyond the span of human imagination. And at that moment, he desired above all else to close that gate, to blind those eyes so that his soul did not have to crawl under their stare.

  Footsteps again, but Thaniel and Cathaline did not even try to hide. They strode on up the corridor, through the jarringly rich interior of the cathedral, and when the two cowled and robed cultists ran around the door, they were shot dead before they had a chance to raise their weapons.

  Thaniel stepped over their bodies without another thought. He had never killed a man before, except once, a long time ago, when the man was possessed by wych-kin. He felt no remorse now. The Fraternity helped bring the wych-kin. They had murdered hundreds, perhaps thousands more on the streets of London. And now they sought to bring an evil into the world that could swallow it whole.

  Against all that, their lives paled into nothing, and for the first time Thaniel truly understood how his father must have felt, all those years ago, when the only thing he had truly loved had been savaged and slaughtered in a graveyard. He understood now how Jedriah could close himself up. Because he had felt a pain like Thaniel felt now, and after that, all else was merely a shadow of a care.

  Thaniel’s route took them up a set of stairs, then deeper into the heart of the cathedral. On the way, three more Fraternity cultists opposed them, and he shot them all with such calm that he might have been shooting at tin cans on a wall. The journey was short, for they had been close to the ceremony hall when the vision struck. Finally, Thaniel halted them at the base of another set of stone stairs, these ones narrow and unobtrusive. He held his finger over his lips, then peered around the corner, looking up. Cathaline watched him pull back swiftly; then a moment later, he darted out with his gun raised and fired thrice. There was a slump, and he stepped back to allow the Fraternity guard to slide and roll limply down to the bottom.

  “They cannot oppose us,” he said. “There are not enough of them, and they need their members for their ceremony.”

  “Thaniel,” said Cathaline, laying a hand on his arm. “Be careful.”

  He gazed at her, stone-faced.

  “I will not fail,” he said, and with that he ascended the stairs, and they came with him. At the top was a door of lacquered black wood, heavy with carvings and symbols.

  He pushed his way in, and the sound swelled. A chanting, a deep monotone full of harsh, guttural consonants and throaty vowels. It was the ceremony hall, all right. A high, short balcony, gilded with gold; an ornate banister standing between deep red curtains that were bunched on either side. It was wide enough to be intended as a viewing gallery, but there were no benches here; instead, it was a platform where people could stand to watch the proceedings below. No light was lit, and the corners where the curtains gathered were black with shadow; but the glow of the hall below spread up and over the black stone tiles, the vile red luminescence from outside staining the candlelight with blood.

  The hall was as vast as Jack had promised. Thin windows, fifteen metres high and only half a metre across, raked down the wall like claw-scratches, descending from a massive, diamondshaped piece of stained glass at the same height as the balcony where Thaniel, Alaizabel and Cathaline now stood. Below them, a huge summoning-circle of gold had been made, set in black obsidian and surrounded by gold alloy braziers that glittered and flamed. A fire-trench ran from the summoning-circle and down the central aisle, lined with Fraternity cultists in their crimson robes and their mirrored masks. On one side of the room, several wooden podiums stood with ancient books resting on the backs of carven demons and gargoyles; one cultist was reading aloud now, above the chant of the others. Another side was devoted to an altar of stone, with blood-gullies carved into it and running in a circle around it. Even in the already red light, it was obvious that those gullies had not long ago run with gore.

  And there, in the summoning-circle, was a young girl who was hunched like an old woman, her claw-hands outstretched and raised, her head hanging down and her eyes closed as if in sleep or deepest concentration.

  “It is her,” Cathaline said.

  “So it is,” replied a voice from the shadows, and the cool barrel of a gun pressed itself to the nape of Alaizabel’s neck.

  Gregor peered nervously through the windows of the cockpit and prayed that they would
come back. He had been sitting there, terrified, for almost an hour, holding the airship aloft at anchor. The rain had stopped, and the lightning flashed only intermittently now. He could see over the cathedrals outer wall, to where awful things howled and scratched and fought to get in. The wych-kin desired whatever power was building inside, drawn to it as iron filings to a magnet. The wall held them out, yet at any moment he expected something to come for him, something to crawl up the primary line that tethered him to the great bar across the front gate. Something evil.

  He never wanted this. He most certainly had not intended to do more than drop Carver and his companions down to the cathedral and then escape.

  Where will you go? he thought to himself in Russian. The airstrip is overrun by now, the soldiers dead or evacuating. You cannot get out of London, just as the Army cannot get in. You will get lost, and find yourself heading back towards the centre. If you’re lucky.

  He was trapped. He was unable to free himself without assistance from the ropes that secured the airship, for it would float away as he unknotted the final one. Surrounded by death and with nowhere to go. Where he was was the safest place he could think of in the hell beneath him, yet he was helpless.

  Blessed Mother, I want to leave, Gregor thought.

  But where were the others? Probably dead, he thought. Well, he did not mean to join them.

  Enough. He could bear it no longer. He engaged the engines and began to rise. He had got no more than five metres when the airship shuddered, and he was wrenched forward on to the controls. The anchor ropes that were attached to the great bar across the cathedrals gate went taut and held.

  He thought of the wych-kin massed outside and pushed the airship still harder, praying that the ropes would break before the engines overheated.

  Inspector Maycraft was losing his nerve. Why, he could not have said. He had attended dozens of Fraternity gatherings; he had seen Thatch called and put into the body of Alaizabel Cray; he had been present as they summoned Rawhead to carry out the Green Tack murders; he had been there when poor Chastity Blaine—she who now stood in the summoning-circle of the ceremony room—was poisoned and Thatch was transferred from Alaizabel into her. He knew the power of the Fraternity and what they could do. He knew that they had been heading towards this moment for nearly thirty years now, when their gods would be brought into the world, born screaming into cataclysm. So why, now that the moment was at hand, did he fear it? Was it possible that he liked the world the way it was? Was it possible that he harboured a little doubt about Pyke’s promises that the Fraternity would be spared the destruction to come? Did he really believe that entities so massive that they defied human sight would care about the insects that brought them?