Immortal Make

by Sean Cunningham

  Through the light burning the air between them, he saw Zoe’s grin. “You sneered at Astra. I remember it. All that power, you said, no knowledge of what to do with it.”

  Julian’s legs buckled. He let himself fall to his knees before he toppled over. The concrete directly in front of him vibrated into grey powder. Vertigo twisted in his ears.

  He raised his voice one last time. Pointed his sword. A lance of purple light sped from the tip. It cut through the storm of power between them.

  Bounced harmlessly off Zoe’s shield.

  Julian slumped back on his heels. His sword rang as it struck the concrete. But he managed to make a gesture to anyone who was still behind him, telling them to stay where they were.

  Zoe shone with her triumph. Above her, Savraith’s features twisted to match hers. “Not so clever now, are you?”

  He managed to lift his head. “It’s too bad you didn’t take to heart what I said to Astra. You’ve relied on nothing but brute force. On the raw strength in that ghost of yours.”

  “I’ve beaten you with it, haven’t I?” She raised her hand towards him. Savraith’s ghost mimicked the gesture.

  Julian smiled. “Oh Zoe. Don’t you know what happens to ghosts in London?”

  The lions came through the walls. They were immaterial things, drawn in faint, flickering lines of ghost light. Julian had called all four of them from their bronze casings around Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. They followed his call through the shading spell around the old hangar. Once they could see it, they veered towards Savraith’s ghost.

  Zoe lashed out. She struck two of the lions. They absorbed everything she threw at them and glowed brighter.

  As one, the lions leapt. They plunged into the corona blazing around Savraith’s ghost.

  Thunder hammered the air. Three quick blows and then a fourth that shook the building and deafened everyone in it.

  The lions burned bright with their feast. They lifted their heads and roared, mouths wide, teeth bared. As one, they turned and bounded away, through the walls and back towards the Trafalgar facility.

  Fiona dared to take her hands from her ears. She felt like she had cotton buds stuffed against her eardrums. “There, he’s gone. You’ve got what you came here for.”

  Sorcha turned just her head. Her body hung slack beneath her neck. “You haven’t been paying attention.”

  Alice was already at Julian’s side, her talons carefully drawn as she steadied him. Rob wandered to where Zoe had been. Fiona saw a crumpled form sprawled face-down on the old concrete floor.

  She wondered if Zoe was dead. She wondered if Rob meant to kill her if she wasn’t.

  “Julian?”

  He leaned against Alice. “That’s the wizard’s ghost done.”

  “And Zoe?”

  “Running a ghost like that is a lot like running a daemon.” Jacob hung back, the features of his face tight. “Her mind was linked to it. When the lions took it, it would have given her a nasty shock. She’ll be unconscious. Or in a coma.”

  “Yeah,” said Rob, crouching beside her.

  A howl split the air. At first it was a human scream of pain, but it rapidly dropped in pitch to a harsher beast’s cry. A second howl joined the first, then more. The ghost machine rattled as the men strapped into its ring of chairs tore their way free.

  “Ah yes,” Julian said. “Small complication. When I blocked the ritual, there was a chance it would briefly reflect back on the ones casting it.”

  Fiona checked to make sure Jessica was close by. “Meaning?”

  Julian spoke to Alice. “I may have left you rather a lot of werewolves to kill.”

  She bared her fangs as her monstrous face twisted into a smile. “You really do know how to make me happy.”

  The men tore their way out of their clothes. One of the dentist chairs fell over. Another clattered away as it was kicked. The six men fighting free were all still twisting through the agony of their first change.

  “Julian,” Fiona said, “can you stand?”

  “I rather think not just yet.”

  “Right. I–” She stopped as Jessica tugged on her sleeve. “What?”

  “The guy who face-planted into the big coffin,” Jessica said. “Are we worried about him?”

  Across the hangar floor, Crispin had pulled himself upright. He held both his hands up in front of him and studied them, awed, as though he could see through them.

  Fiona quickly reshuffled the impromptu plan in her head. “Alice, Rob, deal with those werewolves. Jacob, when Julian can get up, you two secure that sarcophagus. I don’t care what you do, just make sure no one touches it. Jess, you’re with me.”

  “What are we doing?” Jessica asked.

  “You are watching my back,” Fiona said. “While I am going to give Crispin a piece of my mind.”

  As she moved towards Crispin, maintaining a pace that Mr Shell could match, because she didn’t want Jessica fighting on her own, she didn’t see Rob bend down and scoop Zoe into his arms.

  Chapter 32 – The Fire that Burned the World

  Pavel lifted the table off Konstantin. “Grandfather? Grandfather, are you all right?”

  He helped Konstantin rise, groaning, to his knees. Pavel gave him a moment to collect himself, though they surely didn’t have a second to spare.

  The blast had knocked them a dozen feet away and had turned the table with its laptops over on them. Konstantin squinted and took everything in. “We’re under attack.”

  “They have already defeated Zoe,” Pavel said. “Grandfather, I think the ghost is gone.”

  Crispin’s men freed themselves from the damaged ghost machine. They bayed at the high roof, exulting in the fierce power released within them.

  Those cries were cut short as a pale blur shattered a werewolf skull.

  “What is that?” Pavel asked, horrified.

  Konstantin ignored it. “Do you feel different?”

  “I – I don’t know. Yes, but I don’t know in what way.”

  “I do too. Help me up.”

  Pavel gripped Konstantin’s hands and pulled him to his feet. He thought his grandfather felt stronger, but he wasn’t sure.

  The werewolves, Crispin’s men, roared in fury. They attacked the hideous pale creature in their midst. The creature met them – with relish, Pavel thought.

  The sarcophagus was still there. It thrummed with a power that felt akin to nostalgia to Pavel, like that which he felt when he thought of home in Russia. Crispin Chalk stood crookedly at the far end. He snapped around to face a young woman who approached from the vehicles by the hangar door.

  “Who are they?” Pavel asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Konstantin said. “We must leave.”

  “But–”

  Konstantin gripped him arm. “We must survive. I feel different too. We must measure the changes within us. Then we will know what we must do next.”

  Pavel and Konstantin picked up their few belongings from the office where they’d slept. They left the hangar through a back door and ran into the night.

  Fiona flicked through the pages of her notepad until she found what she wanted. This one. Simplest is best.

  “Want me to zap him?” Jessica asked, brandishing her electro-gauntlet.

  “Just watch my back,” Fiona replied. “In case any of those werewolves get past Alice and Rob.”

  Jessica squinted. “Looks like it’s just Alice. I can’t see Rob.”

  Fiona remembered Rob hunching over Zoe and a premonition shivered through her. But she resisted the distraction.

  Crispin still examined his hands with the astonished stare of the stoned. But the sound of Fiona’s boots snapped him out of his daze.

  “Hi,” Fiona said. “We haven’t met. I’m Fiona.”

  Three or four different expressions chased each other across Crispin’s face, all of them unreadable. “What the fuck are you?”

  Fiona blinked, taken aback. But she didn’t let him turn her a
side from her purpose. “I’m the one who’s here to settle everything down. How do you feel, Crispin?”

  He grinned. “Magnificent.” He stretched his hand towards her, palm out. “Can you see? It’s barely even a shape. It’s full of so many other shapes.”

  “I’m somewhat concerned we aren’t dealing with a rational individual,” Mr Shell said, in the tone of one sharing that you were standing in front of your boss with your shoelaces untied.

  “Me too,” Jessica said. “I really think you should let me zap him, Fiona.”

  “Shush. We’re not voting. Crispin, this can end now. You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?”

  “Let’s see, shall we?” Crispin said. He threw back his arms.

  She’d seen Rob change. She’d seen him bulge upwards and outwards, gaining height and breadth and muscle and fur. She’d seen his clothes split along the seams like they were made of tissue paper, seen his face break and reform in a way that could turn her stomach if she let it.

  When Crispin changed, it was like that. Except he kept going.

  He was bigger. Much bigger. And darker, with longer arms and longer claws. His toes ripped up what was left of the concrete floor. His fingers left rippling trails in the air as he tore at it.

  “Bollocks,” Fiona said as Crispin towered over them.

  And he changed again. His fur hardened into obsidian scales. His ears became leathery fans. His tail thickened and sprouted barbs on the end that lashed the air behind him. He bared long, curved fangs no wolf had ever sported.

  “Better,” Crispin hissed. “This is so much better.”

  “I’d just like to reiterate my earlier point,” Fiona said. “You’ve got what you wanted, which was to become a giant humanoid lizard, apparently. So how about we all call it a night and go home?”

  Crispin laughed. “What? Now that I can finally get my revenge? Now that I can finally rule?” He lumbered closer to her. Fiona had to crane her head back further. “No more playing politics, compromising, having to put up with idiots like that Alistair Sacker. I can do whatever I want.”

  “No you can’t,” Fiona said. “Because I’m going to stop you if you try.”

  He rolled his shoulders, opened and closed his hands. “I haven’t killed anyone yet. Can you believe that? Never found the opportunity, somehow. You get to be my first.”

  Crispin lashed out with one clawed hand. A black arm shot up out of her shadow and grabbed his wrist.

  He grunted, then grinned again. “Oh, you’re the one with the funny arms. I heard about you.” He swung with his other hand. Her shadow caught his wrist with its second hand.

  Crispin and her shadow strained against each other. Fiona saw her shadow’s arms quivering. Crispin bent his elbows suddenly, lunging at her with his fangs. Her shadow snapped his arms wide and he pulled up short.

  “Fiona,” Jessica said, fidgeting with her electro-gauntlet.

  “I’ve got him.” She heard the strain in her voice. She’d never felt that struggle from the monster in her shadow before.

  Crispin braced his feet and pushed. His tail rose high behind him and changed. A scorpion’s sting formed on the end.

  “Is this all you’ve got?” Crispin said through clenched fangs.

  “Nope.” Fiona held up her notepad. The real world dissolved around them as they plunged into a dream.

  Crispin, still in his monstrous shape, loomed before her, no longer held by her shadow. Fiona appeared as she always did, in her black coat and boots, with the focusing mandala encircling her finger. All around them was the pearly whiteness of the dreamscape where she’d trained with Julian.

  Crispin’s head snapped from side to side. “What is this? Where are we?”

  Fiona held up her hand. “Here.” A ping-pong ball lay cupped in her palm.

  “What?” His scorpion tail rose behind him again.

  Fiona tipped her hand over.

  Nothing changed for her. Her feet remained fastened to the floor. But for Crispin, up and down inverted.

  He screamed as, from Fiona’s perspective, he plummeted upwards. He struck the far surface of the sphere with a loud thud.

  Fiona tipped her hand ninety degrees to the side.

  Crispin tumbled through the air again. His limbs flailed, crackling and groaning as they changed. He hit one side of the sphere, from Fiona’s point of view. She didn’t wait. She turned her hand over again and Crispin wailed as he somersaulted past her.

  She turned her hand one more time. Because it was her dream and she was in control of it, he crashed into the white surface directly in front of her.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this, you know. All this stupid pointless fighting. We could just stop.”

  Crispin flipped himself onto all fours. His face was red with anger. “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know plenty.” She caused a window to form beside them, a window that looked out into the waking world. “Here, let me show you how it could be.”

  You’re taking a big chance here, the worried voice in her mind said. This might not show you what you want him to see.

  She told the voice that she trusted Rob and crossed her fingers behind her back.

  Rob hunched over Zoe’s unconscious form.

  He had carried her into a locker room and laid her on a low bench. It smelled of the dust coating everything and the rust eating away at the thin metal of the lockers. Light trickled in through a filthy window, more strobed in from the battle in the main part of the hangar. Mostly it was just dark, but Rob could see fine.

  And it was all on the edge of his awareness anyway. All he really smelled and saw was her.

  That night in Mrs Prashad’s basement, she’d drawn him out, knowing what questions to ask. It had all spilled out of him, all the things he’d never been able to tell anyone else. Later she slept on the floor outside his cage, her head on his folded-up coat. He’d curled up beside her, the cage bars between them. Instead of prowling his cage all night as he usually did, he’d watched her sleep.

  That last kiss, the one where she’d made him change and driven him crazy, so crazy he’d tried to kill Julian, that was in his head too. But the anger that went with it was a tiny thing beside the sorrow he felt.

  She twitched and woke. Her lids were heavy as she surveyed the locker room. He guessed she could see in the dark too.

  “Rob.”

  Not asking. She recognised him right away. Made it all worse, of course.

  “Yeah.”

  Howls and screams reached them from the main hangar area. Zoe pushed up onto her elbows. “What’s happening?”

  Rob shrugged. “Alice is killing your buddies. Probably having a great old time doing it too.”

  She smelled afraid of him, which was daft. If she changed, he didn’t know if he was a match for her.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “You’ve got to get away.” He growled out the words. “The things Crispin and Astra have done, they’re going to blame you for them too.”

  Her sea-green eyes searched his wolfen face. “But I hurt you.”

  He wrinkled his nose, didn’t respond.

  Zoe slid off the bench. Her arms went wide, as though her balance was off, but it passed after a moment. She moved towards a side door like she expected him to spring onto her back and pull her down.

  “You’re not going to chase me?” she asked from the doorway.

  “I’ll chase you,” he said. “Might give you a head start though.”

  Zoe’s teeth flashed white in the dark. And then she was gone.

  Her clean sea-scent lingered. Rob breathed it in. When he breathed out, he let the coal of anger stoked in his chest ignite into a blaze.

  Out in the main section of the hangar, he saw Fiona and Crispin locked together, motionless. Jessica guarded her. Jacob made his way towards the black sarcophagus while Julian pushed himself upright and wobbled after him.

  A headless corpse spread a large pool of blood around
the base of the ghost machine. A werewolf, Rob’s nose told him, back in human shape in death. Alice stood on top of the van near the doorway. The other five werewolves had treed her.

  Rob shifted. His shape rippled and crackled, thinned and lengthened. He let out a leopard’s yowl and accelerated across the concrete floor on all fours.

  Alice saw him coming. She bared her fangs in welcome. The werewolves surrounding her, intent on their prey, did not notice.

  Claws out, a snarl in his throat, Rob let himself loose.

  “There,” Fiona said. “You see?”

  Crispin had changed again while he watched Rob and Zoe. His scales had paled, then given way to a heavy coat of fur. His reptilian face had become mammalian, poison fangs replaced by tearing incisors. To Fiona’s relief, his poison-barbed tail was gone.

  Though she’d noted the way the surface of the ping-pong ball cracked and rotted around his feet. That small loss of control of the dream bothered her.

  “See? He’s going to hunt her down and kill her – or he will if he survives tonight.”

  “He forgave her,” Fiona said. “Don’t you get it? He’s got all the reason in the world to hate her for what she did to him, but he doesn’t. We can all do better than trying to kill our way to some kind of peace. That doesn’t end until only the biggest monster is left alive, until all the rest are dead. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

  Crispin laughed. It was a low, hoarse sound coming from deep inside his barrel chest. “You think we can all just get along? Take a look at the two old friends you brought with you.”

  He slashed at the air with his claws. Fiona had to supress a gasp when a ragged hole appeared beside her window.

  Through the tear in her dream, she saw Julian. He was on his feet, gun in hand and murder written clear on his face.

  Over by the hangar door, on the other side of the parked van and car, Julian could make out two gory blurs he marked as Alice and Rob. They were back-to-back in a circle of werewolves. Their howls and roars sent primal shivers of fear down Julian’s spine.

  They could probably use his help.