by Tim O'Rourke
Annora followed Potter’s stare. On the monitor, the Bot, who still looked identical to her, was carrying Karl toward a bar with the words, Night Diner written above the door in neon lettering. Noah had told Annora to head for the Night Diner when she reached Outpost 71. But instead of the robot carrying Karl toward the entrance of the Night Diner, she carried him around the side of the building.
As Annora continued to watch, she spoke to Potter again. “So how else have you used the Bot to protect Karl?”
“I got it to give him an umbrella. Just like the one you are carrying,” Potter said. “I also tried to give him subtle warnings about the dangers in Outpost 71. But it’s hard for him to see because Karl never knew what me and Kiera truly are. He has no idea what he is or might be.”
“Why did you never tell him that you and Kiera are Vampyrus?”
“Because we’d already lost our daughter Cara. She hadn’t survived because of what she was,” Potter started to explain. “So perhaps Kiera and I were hoping that if we didn’t tell Karl what he was, or might be, then perhaps he wouldn’t be, if that makes sense.”
“I think so,” Annora said. Then, looking at Potter again, she added, “You really care about him, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Potter said, “He’s my son. You can’t even begin to imagine how painful it was for Kiera and me to keep our distance from him—to try and protect him from afar. But I hope that when Karl realises how painful it was for us to let him go, he’ll know how much Kiera and I really love him.” Then, glancing at Annora, Potter added, “That’s how I know my son will forgive us for what we’ve done.” He looked once more up at the monitor.
Annora could see that the Bot had carried Karl into a shabby-looking room, which she guessed was above the Night Diner. She watched the Bot lay Karl down on the bed. He appeared to be unconscious. The Bot undressed Karl until he was wearing nothing more than his shorts. Annora could see that Karl had a muscular body, just like his father.
The Bot then crossed the room and sat in a chair by the window. Potter pressed a couple of the keys on the keypad once more. It was as if they were looking through the Bot’s eyes and across the room where Karl lay on the bed. Through the speakers attached to the monitors, Annora and Potter heard Karl groan as he rolled over onto his side. He then opened his eyes and looked directly at the Bot as if staring into the camera hidden behind the Bot’s eyes.
“Annora?” Karl whispered. His voice was little more than a broken whisper.
Annora turned to look at Potter. “Is Karl talking to me?”
“He thinks he is,” Potter said.
Annora turned her attention back to the monitor.
“Is that really you?” Karl asked, eyelids flickering as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
Potter passed a headset with microphone attached to Annora. She looked at it. “What’s this for?”
“Speak to him,” Potter said. He then flipped a switch on the desk before him.
“What did you just turn off?”
“The voice manipulator,” Potter explained. “It’s what I’ve been using when I’ve been speaking to him. It would have been a bit fucked up if it had been my voice that came out of the Bot. I took a snippet of your voice from the previous recording you saw and I used that to lay down a track. So when I spoke, I sounded just like you.”
Potter pushed back his chair and stood up. He headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Annora called after him.
He looked back at her. “I’m giving you a moment. I know how you girls like to have one.” He pointed to a joystick next to the keyboard on the desk. “You should use that if you want to move the Bot about. I use the keyboard but you’ll probably find the joystick easier.” Without saying anything more, Potter left the room.
Annora faced the monitor again. Karl was still lying on the bed. Moments ago, he had asked the Bot whether it was really her—Annora Snow.
Placing the headset over her head and positioning the small mic in front of her lips, Annora spoke into it and said, “Yes, it’s really me.”
Very slowly, Karl raised one hand and beckoned her toward the bed. “Then come and lay with me,” he whispered. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
Annora closed her fingers around the joystick. She pushed it forward and the Bot got up out of the chair. Annora guided it across the room where it stopped beside the bed. Karl reached out and closed his fingers around the Bot’s hand. Using the joystick again, Annora got the Bot to lie on the bed next to him.
Through the eyes of the Bot, Annora watched Karl close his eyes once more. He then pulled the Bot into his arms. He gently kissed her, believing that he was kissing Annora Snow. And why wouldn’t he believe that it was her? They looked identical.
“I love you, Snow,” she heard Karl whisper.
“I love you, too, Karl Potter,” Annora whispered into the microphone as he slipped into unconsciousness once more.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The year 2067
Karl glanced sideways at Annora. As if being able to read his mind, she punched a series of buttons and switches on the dashboard. The emergency lights fixed to the roof of the patrol car began to pulsate blue and red. The siren began to wail as Karl pulled back on the joystick and the car lifted at speed into the air. They listened intently to the garbled messages which were coming through the headsets they wore. As far as Karl could make out, it sounded like there had been a shooting in the East District of London City. His thoughts immediately turned to that of his parents, Kiera Hudson and Sean Potter. Every time details of a fatal shooting were reported over the airwaves, he thought of them. Each time he and his partner, Annora Snow, were sent to such an incident, there was a part of Karl that wondered if the shooter wasn’t the person who had shot down his parents—who, like he and Annora, had been Temporal Officers. Since becoming a Temporal Officer, Karl had always been the first to respond to active shooter incidents in the hope that he would find the person responsible for his parents’ deaths.
With the stick pushed forward, Karl drove the patrol vehicle at speed through the air. The vertical thrusters beneath the car whined and hummed as he pushed them to the max. Annora reached up with one hand and grabbed hold of the handle above the door. The nose of the car dipped as Karl manoeuvred the patrol car between the towering skyscrapers that loomed large on either side. The holographic advertisements that filled the airspace gleamed like living and breathing creatures all around them.
Annora glanced out the side window and could see London City way below, twinkling like a sea of stars. She pressed a free hand to the side of her helmet and cocked her head to one side. Annora listened to the garbled messages that were coming through the earpiece fixed inside her helmet. Over the sound of screeching sirens, she concentrated on what was being said by the dispatch operator.
Annora glanced through her visor at Karl. “Two suspects have made off from the scene of the shooting. Both suspects are white males, mid-to-late twenties. Last seen driving an upgraded 1980’s Ford Granada, silver in colour, vehicle registration to follow…”
“What’s the direction of travel?” Karl cut in.
“Eastbound,” Annora said, bringing up a holographic display of the east side of the city.
Karl banked the vehicle sharply to the right, and once more, Annora gripped the handrail above her head. Her stomach dropped like a stone toward her feet. Her side of the patrol vehicle scratched against the exterior of a nearby skyscraper. Sparks showered up into the air as metal scraped against metal. Undeterred, Karl pushed forward on the joystick once more, punching the patrol car through a floating advertisement. The model smiling on the advertisement, who was promoting toothpaste, rippled like the surface of a pond that had had a stone thrown into it.
With engines whining, the patrol vehicle snaked between the towering glass buildings and headed east. The radio continued to squawk in Annora’s ear. Karl stared front, a grim look of determinat
ion etched across his face as he waited for Annora to provide him with the registration number of the vehicle the suspects had escaped in. When the information wasn’t forthcoming, Karl glanced sideways at her. As he did so, the interior of the car lit up in strobes of blue and mauve light. It was as if the car had been struck by lightning. But through his visor, it looked as if the coils of blue twisting light were coming from Annora’s hands. So shocked and stunned was he that instead of concentrating on the airspace ahead, Karl remained looking at his partner.
With streams of bright blue light leaking from her fingertips, Annora turned to face Karl. “What’s happening to me?” she cried from behind her visor. “My fingers are burning! My hands feel like they are melting!”
Unable to make sense of what was happening, Karl faced front. The corner of a skyscraper loomed up before the windscreen. The front of the patrol vehicle grazed it as Karl yanked the joystick to the left. But his reaction was too slow and the patrol car began to spin out of control. Warning alarms sounded over the cry of the sirens.
“Pull up! Pull up!” an automated voice blurted through the dashboard speakers. “Your descent is too rapid. You have ten seconds to pull up before a catastrophic accident occurs.”
With sirens and warning alarms hailing all around him, Karl gripped the joystick with two hands. But the stick rattled and shook with such ferocity, it was impossible for him to keep the car under control. It spun through the air like a coin that had been flipped in a game of chance. He looked once at Annora as streaks of blue and mauve light snaked about her fingertips. Her visor was now cracked in several places, and it looked as if she were peering back at him through a sheet of broken glass. But there was something else that seemed strange about her hands. It could have been a trick of the light, although Karl doubted it, but her fingers appeared to be stretched somehow. They looked like claws.
“What the fuck?” Karl breathed in shock and confusion.
“Help me, Karl!” Annora screamed in reply. Her eyes were wide and full with terror as she peered through the cracks in her visor and back at Karl.
He glanced once more through the windscreen to see the ground racing at speed toward them. Karl pulled back on the joystick once more, but his efforts were fruitless.
“Brace yourself!” Karl roared. “We’re gonna crash, An—”
“…nora!” Karl shouted, as he sat suddenly up in bed.
His skin felt clammy and feverish. With one trembling hand, he wiped sweat from his brow. His throat felt sore and dry. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Feeling bewildered and lost, Karl looked left and right, still momentarily believing that he was still in the patrol vehicle, which was falling out of the sky. He looked for any signs of Annora, but she was nowhere to be seen in the grey strip of morning light that leaked through the window.
And as the nightmare he had woken from began to retreat to the furthest corners of his mind, Karl threw his hands to his head. He made fists in his hair, as if trying to stop the nightmare from completely disappearing. He wanted to remember it. He wanted to hold on to it. Because he believed that it wasn’t just a nightmare he had woken from, but memories. Memories of what really had happened on that night he and Annora had been involved in a fatal car accident.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The year 1985
Jack followed Araghney and Roc across the courtyard. They came to a large black iron gate set into the wall. Beyond it, Jack could see the Talisman Institute. His first suspicions were right, it did look like some kind of medieval castle. The slabs of stone that had been used to construct it were grey and weatherworn. The black, pointed roofs were twisted and bent out of shape like witches’ hats. Candlelight flickered in stone archways and in the windows that speckled the towers. And he could see that Araghney had been right when she’d said that the witches and wizards in this layer had not become accustomed to using modern day technology like electricity, which was so widely available in 1985. It was like they had become trapped in the past and in time.
As they stood before the gate, Araghney turned to Roc. She cupped the side of his face with one hand. Although the withered young man still cowered in front of her, he turned his head slightly and his eyes met hers. She brushed her thumb over his cracked lips. The tip of his tongue darted out as he kissed her fingers. Jack could see that, despite the bedraggled young man being fearful of Araghney, there was a part of him that worshipped her, too.
“You know what you have to do,” Araghney whispered to Roc. She gave a gentle tug on the chain that was attached to the choker about his scrawny throat. He gave a slow nod of his head as if he understood. “Good boy,” Araghney smiled before leaning forward and kissing him gently on the mouth. She then stepped away, slackening the chain that she still held in her fist.
Roc dropped onto all fours and shook as if he was experiencing some kind of seizure. Jack knew what was going to happen next. The young man’s paper-thin skin began to split and tear as tufts of brown shaggy hair began to bleed through the gaps and openings. The front of his face stretched forward as his lips and nose peeled away to reveal a long, pointed snout. His teeth grew long and sharp and blood sprayed from his gums. Roc’s hands and feet began to change shape. Within mere moments, his toes and fingers no longer looked human, but had become giant, jagged paws. Roc raised his butt, as a long, brown, bushy tail began to protrude from the base of his spine. Jack stood and watched with Araghney as Roc shifted into a giant wolf. It was as big as a bear and as savage-looking as a jackal.
“Good boy, good boy,” Araghney sighed with delight as she approached the wolf. She lost one hand in the shaggy and wiry hair that now covered Roc. The creature yelped as if enjoying being stroked by Araghney. Roc lowered his haunches and Araghney climbed up onto his back. Once she was seated on him, she looked at Jack and said, “What are you waiting for?”
Without hesitation, the wolf that lived inside of him came racing to the fore. The wounds that covered his arms split open, revealing the black bristling fur that lay beneath. Jack dropped onto all fours, just like Roc had done moments before. He shook all over, as his skin and clothes dropped away in tatty strips to reveal the wolf beneath. Standing as large and ferocious-looking as Roc, Jack sauntered toward Araghney, his jagged claws scraping against the cobblestones. He licked his snout with a long, fleshy grey tongue.
“Oh my, Jack Seth, you really are a big boy,” Araghney beamed at him.
She’s fucking begging for it, I tell you, the wolf roared inside Jack’s head.
Jack pushed the wolf’s taunting voice to the back of his mind so he didn’t utter the words that he was thinking. But before he’d had a chance to say anything at all, Araghney was pulling back on the chain that was still attached to Roc’s throat. She now worked the chain as if it was a set of reins.
With Araghney sitting astride his back, Roc reared up before pouncing through the air at the gate. His giant paws smashed into it, tearing the gate from its hinges. Roc then bounded through the opening and toward the Talisman Institute, Araghney pulling on the chain that was wrapped tightly in one fist. Jack raced after them, his long, black tail swishing to and fro behind him.
The sound of the gate being torn from its hinges and clattering to the ground must have raised the alarm inside the Institute. As they neared it, several figures appeared on the top step, leading up to the main wooden doors. Each of the individuals wore tall, black pointed hats and long, dark flowing robes. In their hands they held long, wooden staffs. Seeing the two wolves bounding toward the Institute, one of them carrying a witch on its back, told the Talismen who were now gathered on the top steps, that they were under some kind of attack.
As Araghney, Roc, and Jack raced toward them, the Talismen took aim with their staffs. The pointed ends began to glow blue and white in the dark. But before the Talismen had a chance to release their magic, Araghney had cast another spell of her own.
“Blind,” she whispered, a grimace now spoiling her beautif
ul face.
No sooner had that one single word escaped her lips, the Talismen who had come to defend the Institute dropped their staffs. They threw their hands to their eyes.
As Jack raced forward, he could see thick streams of blood gushing between the Talismen’s fingers they had placed over their faces. They began to scream in panic and anguish. The Talismen’s eyes burst from their eye sockets and plopped down onto the ground at their feet. One of them dropped to his knees, and began blindly searching for his eyes.
“I can’t see!” one of them screamed in panic.
“Help me! Another cried. “My eyes are on fire—they’re burning!”
Now that they had been blinded and could no longer see their attackers, Jack Seth and Roc wasted no time in tearing them to pieces with their razor-sharp claws. They stripped the flesh from the Talismen’s bones in seconds.
“Forward!” Araghney ordered Roc, pulling on the metal chain.
Obediently, Roc lunged forward, smashing down the front doors of the Talisman Institute. He bounded inside. Jack licked blood and flesh from his snout and followed them.
They found themselves in a wide hall. Paintings of ancient Wicce hung in gold and silver frames on the walls that towered all around them. The floor was made of stone, and Jack’s and Roc’s claws scraped against it. Ornate candleholders had been placed around the hall, and they flickered with light in the breeze that now washed in through the smashed and open doorway.
Other Talismen, witches and wizards, heard the commotion outside and they rushed into the hall where they were confronted by two giant werewolves and a beautiful young witch. The witches and wizards had heard the screams coming from outside and knew the Institute was under attack. Just like the Talismen had done outside, they raised their staffs and took aim with them.
“Oh, my God,” Araghney sighed under her breath. “This is so predictable and boring. Let’s see if I can’t spice things up.”
