‘Sweet risen Christ,’ he said when Cam had finished. ‘We’re both going to die.’
‘I really don’t know what I can do, Mr. Jones,’ Dr. Reed said in a querulous voice. ‘I have never seen anything like this before. Even if I had, I’m not an Obstetrician – I’m a surgeon.’
Dr. Reed was one of Jason’s contacts: a man who, due to a gambling addiction, was happy to patch up those of Jason’s acquaintances who suffered the occasional bullet wound or knifing, off the books and cash in hand.
‘Surely there’s something you can do. Abort it, for Christ’s sake. It’s killing her.’
‘Nobody’s touching my baby,’ Tabitha hissed from where she lay, pinned beneath her belly on Mark’s bed. Since they got back, Tabitha had become more and more unreasonable regarding the thing in her womb.
‘Of course not, Tabitha – your baby is going to be fine.’ A huge lump pushed itself out of her stomach, stretching the skin and splitting it. Rancid-smelling pus flowed out of the wound.
‘Look, he’s kicking,’ Tabitha said happily. Mark and Dr. Reed shared a look.
‘Doctor, can you step outside with me please?’
‘Gladly,’ the doctor muttered, pushing his glasses up his nose.
Once they were safely out on the landing, Mark leant against a wall and put his head in his hands. ‘It’s all falling apart again.’
‘Again?’
Mark looked up at him. ‘We need to get that thing out of her.’
‘What is it?’
‘A monster from Hell, Doctor. A monster. What’s our best bet?’
‘It’s huge, whatever it is. I really don’t know …’
‘You’re a surgeon – cut it out.’
‘A caesarean might kill her – you saw the size of it. Opening her up wide enough to get the baby out … well, it will be difficult to sew her back up.’
‘You saw the size of her stomach. What do you think will happen if she tries to give birth naturally?’
The doctor blanched. ‘Point taken. We will have to sedate her.’
‘Do it. And do it quickly. These things grow fast.’
The doctor muttered something and turned to go back into the bedroom. Mark couldn’t bring himself to return just yet. He went to his study and ordered the television to switch on. The news was dedicated to the evacuation of Manchester. A concurrent piece was running about a massacre that had occurred in a flat in the city, earlier in the morning. The press were tentatively linking the two. He tried Jason’s phone again. So far, he had been unable to get hold of the man. This time, somebody picked up.
‘Hello,’ asked a strange voice on the other end of the line.
‘Who is this?’ Mark demanded.
‘This is Detective Inspector Hildemare. Who’s this?’
Mark felt his stomach sink. ‘I’m a friend of a man called Jason Leadman. You’re on his phone. Is he in some sort of trouble?’
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, Sir, but Jason is dead. He was murdered.’
‘Was he at the apartment in Manchester that’s all over the news?’
‘Yes, he was. What’s your name, Sir?’
Mark hung up. Things were spiralling out of control. Accessing his computer, he brought up the security footage from when he and Tabitha were taken from the garage.
It was a very good system; it caught Sergei letting Autumn and Leach in, very clearly indeed. Idly, Mark stroked the hilt of Camulus, which was lying on his desk. Of the three kidnappers, he knew one was dead. The other two would follow very soon.
There were roughly twenty conventional exits to Kilmanoi’s Hall. Their entrances were situated between the buildings set into the walls that encircled it. They were distinct from the subsidiary staircases – like the one Cam and Rowan had climbed earlier – because they ran all the way up to the higher Tower without exiting into any of the domicile levels. The main stairways were built into the outer skin of The Tower, hidden in the great walls behind the dwellings.
These wide, steeply spiralling staircases rose five-and-a-half thousand feet until they cleared the roof of the massive room and came out in The Tower proper. It was a slogging, time-consuming journey, so the Courts tended to use the Fairy-Rings to traverse the giant place.
During The Transmogrification, and over a period of years afterwards, the twenty main staircases had given the Twisted the means to migrate to the higher levels. Closer to fresh, living meat. The Ifrit defence against the Twisted was both simple and effective: to prevent them coming back down, they set massive blazes at the bottom of each stairwell, effectively shutting the ORCs out. Not that the creatures seemed aware that anybody was in Kilmanoi’s Hall. Beyond the flames, the wide stairway was empty.
‘So how do we get rid of the fire?’ Rowan asked.
‘They’re natural,’ Cam said. ‘Not magical. Even the Ifrit are running out of power. They’ll have to refuel them eventually.’
Rowan and Cam were looking through the flames into one of the stairways, though they were forced to stand well back due to the fierceness of the blaze. The steps looked standard, rising at about forty-five-degrees, but they were also very wide. Twenty people could easily hike their way up them, shoulder to shoulder, Rowan thought glumly. The crackling that came from the burning wood in front of it was loud and quick and angry. The fire burned orange and yellow, and it danced and spat at them like it was young and alive. Smoke billowed towards the distant ceiling in thick columns.
‘It won’t burn down for a while, by the looks of things. At least it isn’t guarded. How are we going to get through?’ They were lurking amongst head-high stacks of broken wood. All the nearby stalls and shacks had been levelled and heaped up ready to be used as fuel.
‘I’m not sure,’ Cam said.
‘What about your arm?’
‘It sets fires – it doesn’t take them away.’
‘Could an Ifrit put it out?’
‘Even if it could, how would we control it? A gun won’t kill one of them, neither will fire. No, we have to find another way of dousing it.’
‘I don’t see any fire extinguishers around here.’
‘What about if we take away the fuel?’
‘What?’
‘At the moment, it’s burning at a normal temperature but …’ Cam pointed his dragon arm at the fire and Rowan opened his mouth to protest. He didn’t get chance.
White-hot light flashed out of Cam’s palm. Rowan’s eyes closed automatically as the orange glow suddenly went supernova. He felt the short hairs of his eyebrows crinkling, and his face began to tingle alarmingly. He dropped to his knees and turned his face away, hunching his shoulders against the sudden heat. The air was sucked from his lungs, and he felt himself go light-headed as asphyxiation suddenly and unexpectedly set in.
Then it was over. Rowan gulped in as much air as he could, and slowly his senses returned. His skin felt sore and hot. His neck and back ached even worse than before. The atmosphere was hot and suffocating. He blinked for a few seconds, trying to get rid of the flashes and sparks that seemed intent on blinding him. Finally, he staggered to his feet.
Cam’s clothes were burned, and his face was blackened with soot; the twin cuts on his cheeks were red welts that seemed to glow from the filth. His hair hung limp and grimy, its golden colour completely hidden by clinging smoke. Cam coughed.
Rowan peered around him. The fire was gone. A thick mantle of ash covered the floor. The stone walls around the stairs glowed red hot and looked soft and runny. Cam coughed again. ‘Well that worked,’ he wheezed through a mouthful of soot.
‘Yep,’ Rowan said. He blinked a few more times to try and clear out the floaters.
‘We’ll give it a few moments for the stone to cool down.’
‘That’s a good idea, yes,’ Rowan said.
As they waited, Rowan peered up the stairs. They ran anticlockwise and with the fire gone, he could see faint light creeping down towards them. He mentioned it to Cam. ‘We’re at the edge of T
he Tower at Dawn,’ the Elf said. ‘There’ll be windows. It’s one thing less to worry about.’
‘What is?’
‘The dark.’ Cam paused. Then he said, ‘It's a lot of stairs. Can you make it?'
'They're going to be a bugger to climb,' Rowan replied miserably. 'But I’ll be okay. It’s coming down that’s worrying me. At that angle, considering … well, you know?'
'Yes, I know.’ Cam frowned.
‘What are you thinking?'
'I’m thinking that we'll just have to figure it out when we get there.'
'Great plan. There's nothing like being prepared,' Rowan said sarcastically.
Cam slapped him on the back and said, 'That's the spirit!’ He began to jog up the stairs. ‘Try to keep up,’ he called over his shoulder.
Rowan took a deep breath, and then started at a steady pace over the hot, malleable floor after him. The walls and floor were coated in thick black ash, and the whole place smelled like a bonfire. Rowan found it close and difficult to breathe; he thought it might take him the rest of his life to get the smell of smoke out of his nostrils. ‘Not that long then,’ he muttered to himself dejectedly.
At the top, three-and-a-half-hours later, Rowan was wheezing. Although he was in peak physical condition and could run forever, the charge up the stairwell had nearly defeated him. After an hour, he’d begun to make sporadic stops to regain his breath. These breaks had become more and more regular as they went. He’d been forced to rest every fifteen minutes or so for the last forty-five minutes. In comparison, Cam breathed evenly and easily. ‘I’ve got to wait for a few minutes,’ Rowan gasped. ‘I’m knackered.’
‘You stay here,’ Cam said. ‘I’ll go and have a quick scout around.’
Rowan looked around the wide, empty gallery. On their left, huge windows with stone frames let in the dawn light every fifteen feet or so. It was clean and quiet, and seemed to stretch out ahead of them forever. It felt forlorn and haunted, and it made Rowan’s hackles rise. ‘Do you know what – I think I feel better,’ he coughed.
‘Come on then.’
Rowan followed Cam along the main corridor. They did not detour left or right, nor were they tempted to explore any of the smaller rooms and corridors that disappeared in a maze of twists and turns. They stuck to a straight line and followed the windows.
While they walked, Cam shouted. ‘Come on you ugly zombie bastards! Fresh meat, get your fresh meat here!’
‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ Rowan asked.
‘Nope,’ Cam replied. He began to sing ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ by Fine Young Cannibals. Rowan barked a laugh and then joined in raucously, his growl completely out of sync with Cam’s pure, harmonious voice. They sang until they heard the first blood-chilling howl echo back through The Tower towards them.
‘What was that?’ Rowan asked. The howl had come from the other side of a bright archway at the end of the gallery.
‘What we came to find,’ Cam replied quietly. ‘Come on, we’ve got to make sure there are enough.’ He began to talk loudly, and Rowan understood that he wasn’t speaking to him – Cam was speaking for his own benefit.
‘I’m supposed to be immortal: I’m supposed to live forever, and here I am walking into a mass of zombies to try and save the world. I’m going to die. I know I am. I’ve been too lucky – the vampires, the zombies, the werewolves … I feel like I’m working at a carnival house of horror.
‘Four days ago, I was happy to live out my remaining years drunk as a skunk, but it’s not enough now; I want to live.’ Cam began to shout. ‘Do you hear me, you evil little shits? I want to live!’
Another howl came from the archway ahead, this one joined by a cacophony of others. ‘They’re close,’ Rowan said.
‘As soon as we've got their attention, we get out of there. Okay? If any cut us off on the way back, shoot them in the head. For God’s sake, don’t get any blood in your mouth or eyes.’
They stepped through the archway together, and Rowan gasped. There was a waist-high balustrade to his left. Above it, for eight or nine storeys, there was nothing but empty space. There was no wall here: it opened into the infinite sky outside The Tower, and the dawn sun was bright and strong. They were stood on a wide concourse, which ended at another wide archway three or four hundred feet ahead of them. There was a second balustrade to his right. Rowan stepped over, lost in wonder, the Twisted momentarily forgotten. Beyond the barrier, the floor fell away.
It was a garden room. With his back to the dawn light, Rowan could see a thick tropical jungle spread out below him. The top of a palm tree reared over the balustrade, curving towards the light, and he reached out and pulled a coconut from near the trunk. He laughed in delight and tossed it to Cam, who was grinning just as stupidly.
Twenty feet below, the floor was dead. The concourse cast a shadow for several feet, but where the sun began, so did the plants. They tumbled and tangled and rolled in dense profusion, each plant lost within the next, their flowers spotting the foliage like a child’s glitter painting.
A hundred feet away a round, stepped pyramid was stacked up to the ceiling. Rowan counted ten levels, each crammed with trees and plants. Openings led into it, dark and overgrown. Vines that dripped with huge red flowers hung down the sides, so only the occasional flash of white gave away the colour of the stone beneath. Every second level had a cantilevered viaduct projecting out from it. Each viaduct stopped once it was past the base of the pyramid, and clear waterfalls glittered to the jungle below. Rainbows shimmered in their vapour. The viaducts at the top of the pyramid were impossibly long and looked like they would snap away at the faintest touch.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Rowan said.
‘This is what we used to be. Now it’s theirs. Look.’
Rowan peered towards where Cam was pointing. A mob of nightmarish figures had gathered on the edge of the highest level of the pyramid. There was a lone, eerie howl, and then they poured over it. They climbed down the face of the pyramid with incredible speed, swinging from vines or just jumping. Some were so eager to get to living flesh that they ran along the viaducts and dived headlong into oblivion. More and more came, an impossible mass appearing from within the pyramid until hundreds, thousands, were lost in the vegetation below them. Rowan stood spellbound. He could see the fronds and leaves whipping back and forth with the rush of their passing. ‘Oh shit,’ Rowan whispered. ‘Why are they all in there? What is it? A nest or something?’
‘I think that they’re everywhere. All over The Tower. These just happen to be here. There will be more … look,’ Cam pointed to the archway at the other end of the gallery. A throng of ORCs were charging from it and towards where they stood. ‘Get ready to run.’
A rotten hand gripped the balustrade a few feet away. Rowan took a step backwards. A broken, skeletal thing, most of the flesh of its shoulders and chest gone, its face a running nightmare of rotting flesh and bright, crazy eyes, dragged itself up and over the balustrade. It hissed at him, revealing blackened stumps of teeth. Flexing its swollen fingers, it threw itself at Rowan.
Rowan caught a withered wrist expertly and drove a powerful leg up into the thing’s abdomen. It buckled, and Rowan wrenched the arm up over its head and pulled back savagely, hearing the bone snap and pop.
He expected that. What he didn’t expect was for the whole arm to come free of its host like the leg of a roast chicken. He lost his balance and slipped to one knee. The one-armed thing gurgled with delight and rushed towards him, only to disappear in a flash of white fire.
Rowan blinked, wondering if the constant exposure to that sun-like brilliance would do him any lasting damage. Then his vision began to clear and he saw an army of monsters bearing down on him. He struggled back to his feet in a panic.
‘Run!’ Cam shouted. ‘Back to the stairs – back to the Hall. We’ll lead them right into the Ifrit guard!’ He whooped with glee and the ORCs howled their reply.
Rowan’s vision was still blurred; he stumbled
into a balustrade, losing his balance. Cam grabbed his arm and dragged him back before he could fall. The Elf pushed him in the right direction. The shove was all the encouragement he needed. Rowan ran for his life.
‘Hold her!’ Dr. Reed shouted.
The bedroom had been converted into a makeshift operating theatre. The doctor was dressed in a green surgical gown, and a mask covered his mouth. Mark was similarly dressed. Latex gloves pinched tightly across the backs of his hands, and his palms were sweating.
A metal tray sat on the bedside table. It held a large number of steel scalpels and various clinical-looking tongues and clamps. Dr. Reed had explained to Mark that this operation was a last gasp attempt. There was no anaesthetic, no suction pumps, and only Mark was on hand to help with putting Tabitha back together, because there were no nurses or other medical staff to help. The shock alone might kill her, Mark was informed.
Not that it mattered – without this Hail Mary pass, she was definitely going to die. With it, there was a chance the love of his many lives might survive. Unfortunately, Tabitha was not in agreement.
‘Get away from me! Get off me, you murdering scum! Get away from my baby!’ She thrashed around in the bed, her face so pale and drawn, her eyes so red-rimmed, and the spit at the corner of her mouth so frothy and rabid that Mark felt like he was in a scene from The Exorcist; a Priest trying to pull evil from a young woman. Only they were doing it physically rather than spiritually.
‘Hold her!’ Reed called again. Mark ran to the head of the bed and gripped the top of her arms to stop her lashing out at the doctor.
‘Get away from me, you fucking bastards – I’ll not let you take my baby!’ Tabitha began to cry: great choking sobs interspersed with hate-filled abuse.
‘Tabitha, it’s for your own good!’ Mark told her.
‘Get off me you pervert bastard! You’ve been following me around like some fucking rapist, and now you want to take my baby away from me. You scum!’ she spat at him. ‘You’re jealous because I’m pregnant and you want to take my baby away so you can have me for yourself. You delusional prick! Do you think I believed all that crap about following me through the years? Do you honestly think I’d believe that? You psycho! I know what you’re after, you sick fuck, and you aren’t going to get it. I’ll never let you touch me! I hate you! I hate you!’ She screeched that last so loud it hurt Mark’s ears.
Immortals' Requiem Page 38
