It was difficult to make out the face, which seemed to be shadowed even though there should have been a light shining right on him. He was tall with broad shoulders and a muscular frame. His shadowed features were framed by long hair, probably blonde, and falling around his shoulders. As Ceri came into view he smiled; she could tell by the gleam of light on white teeth with long canines. Distantly, Ceri heard Alec letting out a low growl made more audible by the sudden hush which fell upon the club.
‘Do you know him?’ Carter asked, his voice low. ‘He seems to know you.’
‘I may know who he is,’ Ceri replied.
‘Raynor,’ Alec growled and the figure’s head shifted slightly toward the werewolf.
Ceri did not like the reaction. She raised her hand almost casually, fingers cupped, and a ball of light began to grow in her palm. The vampire, or whatever he was, shifted again. Ceri saw red sparks light up where his eyes should have been, and then he moved, vanishing from the doorway in a sudden burst of unnatural speed. Ceri closed her hand, the light breaking out briefly from between her fingers before it died.
Suddenly the room was full of noise again, as though nothing had happened. Ceri turned to the others, putting on a smile. ‘Raynor,’ she said. ‘At least we’re sure of the name now.’
‘I’ve never seen the wards react like that to anyone,’ Carter commented. He looked across the bar at Alec, his expression thoughtful. ‘I think, my friend, that Cheryl and I would enjoy your company in Winchester this weekend.’
The werewolf raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think…’
‘Don’t argue, idiot,’ Lily told him. She pointed at Cheryl and raised an eyebrow questioningly. ‘You are so not dumb enough to miss out on this. And it’s your birthday on Monday…’
‘What about you two?’ Alec said, not quite ready to allow his libido to overcome his chivalry.
Ceri shook her head. ‘He’s not going to come straight at us. He’s powerful, but he knows I am too. And Lily’s always with me and enough of a match for him that he knows he can’t surprise me and get away with it. No, we’re safe enough from physical attack.’
Alec’s expression was shrewd. ‘Be careful, kid. If he’s been around since before the Shattering he’s probably got good at being sneaky.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Ceri replied, ‘and I’m good at research. I need to pay a visit to the library.’
Beneath Somers Town, May 28th
The room was clinical, sealed, watched by cameras in every corner, and buried deep under the British Library. Ceri sat at one of the tables wearing lint-free gloves. The documents she was going through were not particularly old, but the protocols about handling anything in the special collections were very strict.
Raynor had been the subject of no less than three attempts by the wartime intelligence agencies, the SOE and the American OSS, to learn more about him. None of them had found very much and what they had discovered had been rejected as outlandish.
Intelligence gathered from an operative within the SS suggested that Raynor was involved with an aborted “super-soldier” project. Plans to produce men with heightened strength and speed had been phased out when they also developed an inability to see properly in daylight and what was described as “unsustainable dietary requirements.” Ceri read the report knowing they were talking about vampires, but to the wartime analysts it must have seemed like fantasy.
The reports on Raynor were no less fantastic. No one had ever seen him sleep, but he never left his rooms during daylight hours and only travelled at night. He was described as a tall, muscular man with blonde hair and blue eyes, a perfect Aryan specimen as far as the Nazis were concerned. His involvement with the Thule Society was documented in official reports, but at the time the Thules had been considered cranks and it had been ignored.
One letter caught Ceri’s attention however. It seemed to have been written by one Wilhelm Blatt to Heinrich Himmler in nineteen-forty-three. Oberführer Raynor’s expertise in runic inscription has been invaluable in our research into implosive systems. We have achieved a sixty per cent increase in efficiency following his suggested rewrites. Not everything was perfect, however. Raynor’s constant requirement for blood has necessitated us moving a contingent of undesirables into the facility. This I consider a security risk.
Clearly Raynor was a vampire, but not any kind Ceri was aware of from the descriptions of him. He seemed to be more affected by sunlight. Or perhaps he played up the legendary weakness. It almost seemed like he wanted those he worked with to believe he was a vampire rather than hiding his nature as most vampires did prior to the Shattering.
Then she found the second letter with Himmler’s name at the bottom. Raynor’s proximity to the Führer must be curtailed. He has promised to “turn” the Führer if we are successful and this must be prevented at all costs. It would make Raynor the default leader of the Third Reich. Keep him in Hamburg at all costs. If necessary, seal him in one of the bunkers and let him starve. His purpose has been fulfilled.
So Raynor had been planning to turn Hitler and become ruler of the world? Well that had been a near miss. Instead he had assisted in blowing the world apart. Had Raynor known what the bombs would do? It had always been assumed, at least by most historians, that the Nazis had not known what they were doing when they created the thaumic bombs Hitler had detonated. Perhaps they had. Perhaps Raynor had known and had said nothing, knowing it would bring about another age of magic. Somehow she doubted that.
The heavy sound of the locks disengaging on the door brought Ceri back to reality with a jolt and she looked around to see one of the librarians enter with a new, brushed aluminium case. ‘We managed to track down one older piece,’ the woman said. ‘How’s your Greek?’
Ceri stroked her bracelet; an enchantment her father had made allowed her to read most human languages. It had worked on everything she had tried so far. ‘Theoretically, fully fluent,’ Ceri replied. ‘How secret is this one?’
‘Actually, this is just obscure and delicate. It’s out of the normal Library’s collection, but it came up in a full-text search so we thought we’d bring it down for you.’
Ceri nodded, raising her eyebrows a little to suggest the thought had impressed her, and took the case. ‘What about that other book I asked to see?’
The woman’s face went a little pale. ‘They’re still putting through the necessary clearances.’
‘Will they bring it…’
‘No,’ the woman said abruptly. ‘That book never leaves its cell. You have to go to it. I’ll be back when we’re ready for you.’
Ceri frowned. The other thing she had asked for had been something unrelated to Raynor. She had run the search on a whim and almost binned the results when she saw them, but her eyes had caught on one entry in the list and she had submitted a request for the book. The work was far older than all the others she had found and might reveal something interesting, but she had not expected viewing it to be so difficult. She turned her attention to the contents of the case.
It was actually a scroll. Ceri rolled it out carefully on one of the spotlessly clean tables, her eyes scanning the words for what she wanted and finding more than she had expected. I have spoken to a number of the creatures in my time in the mountains. The locals consider them evil, creatures of night and blood and terror, but I find them as much tragic victim as unnatural predator. The writer was a Byzantine monk travelling in the more northern states, or what passed for states at the time, during the ninth century. He seemed to have been primarily involved in the lands of the Bulgars and Magyars, but he had travelled into Frankish lands as well. It seemed that he had met more than one vampire in his journeys, and perhaps they had been more tragic then.
It seems they are mostly weak, hardly the horrifying creatures the local legends speak of. They feed from cattle and animals they catch. They seem to fear the light of the sun for it burns their eyes. Some claim a fear of the cross, others deny it. One of the older ones, a ravaged, ghoulish fig
ure who seemed barely able to stand, much less molest me, claimed that religious symbols were useless, but in older times those who wielded them had had power against the undead which they had learned to fear.
He was writing in the period after the flare of magical activity which archaeologists said had accompanied what was known as the Dark Ages. For most of the fifth century the world’s thaumic field had been on a high and it had died away during the second decade of the sixth century. By the ninth it had fallen to a bare minimum making magic very hard to perform. It would have weakened vampires back then, Ceri was sure, just as the larger fae had found it impossible to survive for long periods, and the dragons had vanished or gone dormant.
Several times I have asked of the oldest ones I can find where they come from. What form of demon gave rise to these creatures who live without life? How is it that they can walk God’s Earth despite their obvious decay? Well, that confirmed one thing Ceri suspected; the vamps back then had had more trouble concealing their nature. They speak of being bitten in the night and awaking a monstrosity, but none seem to understand the nature of their condition. One withered cadaver I discovered in the mountains claimed that she had been turned by what she called an Ancient. The Ancients, she said, were the first of vampires, cursed by God for consuming blood and cast out from their fellow men. Certainly the Bible speaks of such a punishment, but to make such an outcast immortal seems strange. The old hag said that she had met her vampire lover in the lands of the Franks perhaps a century earlier. I may seek this “Raynor” out when I journey into that region.
From the dates on the document, he had gone into the East Frankish Kingdom, which had eventually turned into Germany for the most part, around five years later. He had not found Raynor, but he had found someone who claimed to have known him. Lord Gottschalk claims that he has seen the monster several times, but never done battle with him. Raynor, he says, is tricky. He never leaves his lair in daylight and when he goes abroad to hunt, It is said that he can dampen the light of fires and candles around him to hide himself. Gottschalk claims that his family have been trying to destroy Raynor for four generations, though I find that unlikely. When I mention the decay I have seen in other vampires, Gottschalk scoffs. “Raynor is no petty undead. He was the first. His nature is different and his curse cannot end.”
That was encouraging. Raynor, assuming it was the same vampire, seemed to have been around longer than anything Ceri had ever heard of. She knew there were supposed to be a few vampires who had been around for five or six centuries, but they were very much the exception. Vampires as a race had survived through the low magic years, but the individuals had not lasted so well. The majority of vampires alive today had been turned since the Shattering. It was starting to seem as though Raynor had been around since the Dark Ages.
The door opened without warning and Ceri’s attendant librarian poked her head through. ‘We’re ready for you. Please come with me.’
Pulling off her gloves, Ceri stood up, winced, cracked her back, and set off after the woman. They walked in the opposite direction from the way out, down the row of reading rooms to a lift at the end. The attendant started talking again once they were going down.
‘Normally we would require you to wear full protective gear, but we’ve been told you can stand up to very high thaumic levels. Do not touch the book with unprotected hands, however. There are disposable gloves, use them. Whatever you see in the room with you, it’s not real. Ignore it. Seriously, we’ve lost several readers that way.’
Ceri swallowed. ‘What the Hell did I ask to read?’
The lift doors slid open revealing a long, white corridor with lights every ten yards or so. ‘That’s a very aptly put question,’ the librarian said and set off down the corridor.
After about five hundred yards, the corridor branched into a T-shape and they took the right branch. ‘What’s on the other side?’ Ceri asked.
‘Above my pay grade.’
‘It’s worse than the book I’m going to see?’
‘Reputedly not, just more secret.’ The librarian stopped in front of a blank, metal door which blocked the corridor. ‘This is as far as I go.’ She waved her hand at a box of disposable latex gloves on the wall and Ceri grabbed a couple, starting to pull them on. ‘Beyond this door the thaumic level rises pretty steeply. You’re walking into a concrete bubble embedded with silver-iron mesh. You’ll go through this door and then another. The second will not open until this one closes. There’s a camera in the antechamber, but they tend to fuse in the reading room, so you’re on your own’ She looked pointedly into Ceri’s eyes. ‘You’ll be checked on the way out. If there is any sign of possession or anything with you, they’ll flood the chamber with nerve gas.’
Ceri swallowed again. ‘O-okay.’
The librarian nodded and pushed a button to open the door. ‘Good reading,’ she said as she turned and marched down the corridor the way they had come.
Feeling as though she might be jumped by a demon horde at any moment, Ceri walked into the antechamber. Her skull tightened as she felt the thaumic energy level rise around her; not dangerous, but higher than average by a fair way. The door slid closed behind her and she heard heavy bolts slide into place with a noise suggesting of the Gates of Hell slamming shut. There was a button beside the inner door and she walked up and pressed it, not really sure what to expect. A wave of energy flowed over her and the air sparkled. Ceri let out a gasp; there was a vast amount of power in the room beyond. Hesitantly, she stepped through the door.
The room was circular, painted white, lit by overhead runes, and there was only one thing in it. In the centre of the room, chained to a lectern which Ceri suspected was cast from silver-iron, was a book. It was thick, perhaps eight inches cover to cover, but the paper bound into it seemed thicker than normal; vellum perhaps. As she walked closer she took in the cover; bound in what appeared to be purple leather, but it had an odd, iridescent quality to it. It took her a second to realise what she was looking at; the book had been bound in demon skin. Someone had skinned a demon, a Devim or maybe even a Devos, to cover a book.
There was no title on the cover and she opened it up to find the first page bore the book’s name, Of the Other Hells. There was no author, no date, nothing other than the four words which seemed to twist in Ceri’s mind as she looked at them. She caught a flicker of something runic replacing the writing and realised what was happening. The book was written in one of the demonic languages, which Ceri did not understand and her bracelet could not help her with, but the book was translating itself for her. This was a book which wanted to be read.
‘Oh, what the Hell are you?’ Ceri said, not expecting an answer.
‘The book was written by Gunt, a sorcerer.’ Ceri looked up at the sound of the voice and found herself looking at a man with a long, white beard and a bald head. Dressed in a shining, white robe, he looked every bit the Merlinesque teacher. ‘That would be around four thousand years ago. He did, indeed, flay a Devos for the cover. The skin for the vellum was taken from the backs of no less than five hundred Seelie Sidhe. For his crimes he was bound into rock for eternity, but his book could not be found.’
Ceri swallowed. Ignore the things you see in the room. She knew roughly the page she was looking for; suspecting that looking at as little of the book as possible might be a good idea, she guessed the right page and opened the book at it. She found herself looking at a carefully painted picture and frowned, trying to make out what she was seeing.
‘I’m sure they told you to ignore everything you see here, Ceridwyn,’ the old man went on, ‘but I’m here to assure you that it won’t be easy.’
The room around her vanished. The picture she had been looking at became suddenly quite clear. She was standing on a column of rock, the book still on its stand in front of her. The ground below was strewn with bodies, all kinds of bodies, but none of them human. They were burned, sliced, crushed. She could see intestines torn from bellies, skulls split ope
n and their contents smeared across the stone. Through the carnage, huge creatures stalked; tall with iridescent purple skin, horns, a long, powerful tail, and hooved feet. These were Devos demons and they had noticed her. One of them roared and charged toward her.
Ceri flipped the page and the room was suddenly back to normal. The old man was gone; Ceri was alone again with the book. She took a deep breath and looked down at the page. Of the Overlord Molech, his rise to power and his fall. That was the right section then. Lord Molech comes of the Devos line, as is readily apparent from his commonest form. He is as far in power from a common Devos, however, as a man is from a cockroach. Since his fall from power he has been easier to summon and speak with, but let none treat him lightly for he is still among the most powerful of demons.
She had asked about the book because Faran, Lily’s father, had once mentioned Molech and the name had been sitting in her head along with another matter for a while, slowly twisting into an idea she did not like. As she read, the idea was becoming more solid and her stomach was sinking.
In days past, Molech discovered an ancient rite which would allow him to draw power from worship. He set about a campaign on Earth, persuading a group of people in the eastern lands that he was a god. His worship spread by conquest as he gave his warriors armies of demons with which to take land. In return, he demanded constant worship and sacrifice. His followers, seeing his power, would do anything to placate him. Prisoners were sacrificed on his altars. At the height of the summer festival, parents would throw their children onto a bonfire while praising their Lord. Molech’s power swelled beyond any other demon since Gorefguhadget, the greatest of all Demon Lords.
Supposedly, Gorefguhdget had been this semi-legendary figure who had forged a crown giving him power over all demons. The demon might have passed into legend, but his crown was, according to Faran, still there, sitting on a throne in a castle in the demon realm.
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