‘You brought him back?’ Grímnir roared from where he was bound against the wall.
‘And you too, you great ape,’ Creachmhaoil shouted back. ‘Show some gratitude.’ His voice settled. ‘Damballah has gone to get him now; with a living template, it should be a simple thing to understand where I went wrong last time.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Cam said. ‘Let them go.’
‘Or what? You and your human will attack me? You are nothing compared to me, Camhlaidh Ó Gríobhtha. Your father could have beaten me, but a wretch like you can do nothing.’
‘A lot’s changed,’ Cam said. He lifted his arm and pointed it towards his old Master.
‘What? And what’s that? A pretty tattoo?’ Creachmhaoil laughed. ‘Even if it has some quality I am not aware of – and I think you’re bluffing – you are inside the Blind Room!’
Cam looked down at his feet, which were just over the threshold. He looked back up at Creachmhaoil. ‘Of course, you’re right.’ Cam backed out. The cries of dying Ifrit came from far away. He faced the old Elf through the open door. ‘Is that better?’
A flash of blinding white fire spun from his arm and cut Creachmhaoil’s left leg off at the knee. Creachmhaoil screamed and fell to the floor. Cam ran to Grímnir and quickly untied him. Rowan freed the Maiden.
‘It is good to see you, Camhlaidh Ó Gríobhtha.’
‘You too, Grímnir. Come on, let’s get out of here.’ The howling was getting louder. Closer. ‘It won’t be long until the zombie apocalypse stumbles into this place.’
‘You cannot leave me here,’ Creachmhaoil said desperately, his face twisted in pain, his hands clamped over the cauterised stump of his thigh.
‘Why not?’ Cam asked bluntly.
‘I am the only one who can save the races!’
‘Listen to that noise,’ Cam shouted at him. ‘Listen to the howling madness outside! That’s all you have done. You killed us, turned us into things of nightmare. Zombies, for Christ’s sake!’
‘If you don’t take me, that noise will consume everything: The Tower and the races will be destroyed; the immortals will die. That howling will be our death song! Don’t you understand? Without me there is no future, and we will all die with that horror in our ears. I can save us! The Seed – The Seed is in Grímnir …’
‘No, it is not.’ The Maiden’s voice was calm. Cam looked at her. She stood in her filthy clothes, bruised and beaten, rubbing her wrists, yet she still looked like a goddess. ‘You were wrong about that, just as you were wrong about so much, Creachmhaoil. The Seed is not here.’
‘You lie!’ Creachmhaoil screamed. ‘You lie! Camhlaidh Ó Gríobhtha, can you not hear the lie in her voice? She is a deceiver; only I can save you. Only I can give you the immortality you crave. Help me – you must let me save us! You will die without me!’
‘I’ll take my chances, you lunatic. Maybe you can explain your theories to the zombies – they’ll be here any minute to talk to you about them.’
‘We’re the same, you and I! We both didn’t trust The Tower to do the right thing. The only difference is you left while I stayed and acted. Don’t you understand? It was the only way!’
‘I am nothing like you.’
‘You must help me!’ Creachmhaoil whined. Cam snapped. He stalked over to the prostrate Elf and kicked him in the face with the toe of his boot. Creachmhaoil’s nose burst, and blood went everywhere as he fell backwards.
‘Help you? Like you helped Dow? Like you helped my father!’ Cam bellowed. He kicked him again and again until Rowan’s gentle hand drew him away. Panting, Cam looked down at the traitor. Creachmhaoil groaned and then rolled over. One eye was swollen shut, but the other stared at him desperately.
‘Please,’ the old Elf begged. Cam turned and walked away. He sensed the others following him. Creachmhaoil began to cry. Cam ignored the pathetic noises and left him to the Twisted.
There was a huge misconception within Britain about what the police did. Television and books, and memories of what ‘Bobbies’ used to be like, had created a myth. Jessica Homes had been a police officer since 2003. Over the last five years, she had experienced first-hand the reality of modern-day policing.
By and large it was rewarding work. Oh, it was difficult, dangerous on occasion, and the abuse she received as a matter of course was, when she thought about it rationally, quite disgusting: she couldn’t remember how many times someone had threatened to track her down and rape her to death. The hours could be incredibly long, she was constantly tired, and any thoughts of settling down and having a family seemed to have evaporated into the murky depths of ‘maybe next year’.
For every person she helped, there were a hundred drunk, obnoxious morons who were just wasting her time. More often than not, when she tried to bring an investigation to court, she would be frustrated by the criminal justice system.
Then again, for all the frustrations, that one person whose life she could make better … well, it made it all worthwhile.
That had all changed today. She had seen things today that rather put everything else in perspective. The police service had come up against something that possessed no respect for law and order, and did not stop when it saw a uniform. Today, she faced monsters that had torn most of her friends to shreds. She only survived because an Elf – an Elf! – had rescued her and got her out of the city. That was a very strange experience, not least because he was so beautiful, she found herself quite infatuated.
After they got back to the police station, the Elf disappeared. She wandered around in a daze for a while until a panicked sergeant grabbed her and asked her what she was doing.
Quite honestly, she replied ‘nothing’. The sergeant took her to a briefing room that was filled with a rag-tag group of cops. There were some officers from her shift, an MIT detective called Chris who looked like he couldn’t quite work out how he’d ended up there, some dishevelled PCSOs, and a scattering of specialist operations types. She was pushed towards an armed police officer – who she now knew was called Dave – and they were told to set up a roadblock on Great Street. Nobody was to go in, and Dave was authorised to use lethal force to stop anything coming out.
Jessica pointed out that she had seen one of these things, and she knew bullets weren’t much good. Everybody glared at her and she shrugged. She knew Great Street – it was quiet and out of the way, and she figured it was as good a place as any to see in the apocalypse. They had all run through the station and out to their vehicles. It had felt very gung-ho for a bit.
Now here they were, hours later, standing either side of a parked police Range Rover in uncomfortable silence. It was starting to get dark. Dave had lost his partner to a huge monster outside the Beetham Tower. Jessica could see dents and scrapes along one side of the Range Rover and could imagine the terror Dave must have felt when the thing threw itself at his car. She hadn’t asked, though: she didn’t really want to know.
What she did know was that she was in shock. She was far too calm not to be. Still, it allowed her to think clearly about the last five years of her life, and she realised she had done her bit. She had helped where she could. She had done some good, but now it was time for her to move on. After what she had seen today, she realised that next year might never come. She wanted to live. She wanted a child. She didn’t want to be stood on this street, a stone’s throw from Judgement Day. She didn’t want to be a police officer anymore.
An enormous sense of relief washed through her, and she relaxed for what felt like the first time in half a decade. She was going to quit. She was about to turn to Dave and tell him so, when a car entered Great Street from Great Ancoats. It slowly drove towards them, heading into the city.
It was a black Lamborghini Reventón: a monster of a car. The engine growled at them. Dave pulled his gun and pointed it at the driver’s window.
‘Get out of the car!’ he shouted. His voice seemed strangely high-pitched.
For a moment, there was no movement. Jes
sica watched, horrified, as Dave’s index finger began to tighten. Then the driver’s door opened and a man got out. He was tanned, possibly of Mediterranean descent, tall and slim, with very dark eyes. He looked to be around twenty-five and had short-cropped black hair. Handsome, in a cold sort of way, Jessica thought idly. He was also covered in blood. His hands and shirt were stained red.
‘Get on your knees,’ Dave shouted. ‘Do it now.’
‘I have to pass,’ the blood-soaked man said in a voice without an accent.
‘On your knees!’
‘I have to pass!’ the man shouted back, his face contorted with anger. Jessica had a sudden, uncontrollable urge to shout ‘you … shall not … pass!’ back at him, but before she could even start to form the words there was a crack, so loud and unexpected, it made her jump. Her ears began to ring, and she couldn’t hear anything else. The smell of cordite wafted over to her. She saw the blood-soaked man jerk backwards, his head exploding as the bullet passed through it, tossing him to the ground like a rag doll.
‘Jesus wept,’ she whispered. She looked at Dave. He was very pale. He looked back at her.
‘He came at us,’ he said forcibly. ‘He was coming right for us!’
‘What? You just shot him!’
‘He came at us!’ Dave cried and turned the gun on Jessica. She stared down the muzzle. It was still smoking slightly. In that moment, she knew that Dave was going to kill her. He had lost it. His eyes were wide and fever-filled, his lips were twitching uncontrollably.
‘Don’t do it,’ she said as calmly as she could. Her bladder was suddenly very full. Her waist-high police-issue trousers conspired with her body armour and utility belt to push her insides to bursting point.
‘He came at us,’ Dave whispered. There was a noise to their right, and they both turned to face it. The blood-soaked man was climbing to his feet, his face covered in his own gore and brain matter, though the skull beneath it seemed perfectly formed.
Slowly, he wiped a pool of sticky bone shards from his right eye and stared at the two police officers disapprovingly. He reached into his car and pulled out a long silver sword that appeared to have rainbows forged into its blade. Dave screamed and unloaded the rest of his clip at the man.
Most of them missed, slamming into the Lamborghini, smashing its windscreen and ricocheting off its angular front. Some hit the blood-soaked man who took a couple of steps backwards until he was sitting over the bumper of the low car. The bullets only seemed to annoy him. Jessica watched as the bullet holes quickly healed over. Then Dave’s gun was empty. He clicked the trigger a few more times and stopped.
‘I don’t like being shot. It itches,’ the man said. ‘Get out of here before I make you eat that gun.’ Dave stared at him for a second, and then he turned and ran for the Range Rover. Jessica watched him go. The car did a quick U-turn and disappeared. Jessica remembered her radio. She moved a hand towards it, then let it drop. She simply didn’t care anymore.
‘Are you one of them?’ she asked the man. ‘An Elf?’
He looked at her curiously. ‘What do you know of Elves?’
‘One saved my life earlier today. He killed one of those things.’
‘Really? And where are those things now?’
Jessica weighed up her options. She had heard that the monsters had vanished into the Beetham Tower. She looked at the Lamborghini again. It was beautiful, even without a windscreen. She looked at her watch. It was half-past three.
She thought about safety, she thought about children, she thought about quitting … she thought she could do all those things after she had taken this strange man to the Beetham Tower.
Whatever else he might be, he was bulletproof and obviously really pissed with the monsters. Perhaps he could fight them. Kill them. Perhaps this man could bring sanity back to the world. Jessica wanted to run – she really did – but she had not quit yet. She had sworn an oath, and as silly as it was, she still believed in it. She still had a duty. If there was anything she could do to fix this, she had to.
Besides, all she needed to do was drop him outside. It wasn’t like she had to go into the building with him … and the car was fast … really fast. It would be safe enough.
‘What the hell,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you to them if you’ll let me drive.’
Grímnir led them away from the walls of the hall into the shanty town. He headed for the nearest Ring. It was too dangerous to do anything except escape as soon as possible. Fires burned everywhere, the combusting bodies of the Ifrit guard overwhelmed and ripped to pieces by the rending claws and tearing teeth of the ORCs. In their death throes, the Ifrit set their killers alight, and the burning Twisted floundered chaotic and screeching through the hall. The fires spread.
Cam watched as an Ifrit, its arm leaking smoke and fire from a deep gash, was knocked to the floor nearby. The ORC that attacked the Ifrit burrowed its face into the exposed neck and fire surged out of the wound. The dead creature’s eyes were seared away in an instant, its flesh blackening and peeling back to reveal the bone beneath. The hapless creature began running in circles, lashing out at anything that came close to it. Some of the other Twisted were gouged by its flailing fingers and set upon it, one holding it down while two more pulled its head from its shoulders. The three began tearing at its rotting flesh as soon as it stopped struggling.
Around Cam and his companions were a series of running battles between the remaining Ifrit and the horde. Flames shot from the eyes and hands of the fleeing Ifrit and cut blistering swathes through the mob of monsters. Yet everywhere Cam looked, he saw Ifrit overwhelmed and dragged to the floor. Fortunately, Ifrit ignited when they died. If they had been Elves, those killed outright would have been turning in the grip of The Transmogrification by now. As it was, they self-cremated, the perfect soldiers to fight the infection. Unfortunately, their deaths had set the wooden shanty town in a hellish conflagration. In the dancing heat, the Twisted hunted for new victims.
It was a confusing and frightening game of cat and mouse. The fires belched thick, choking smoke that blinded them. The flames cast shimmering shadows, concealing movement. Cam could never tell when a crowd of Twisted or a squad of Ifrit might stumble out from between the stalls. When they did, a vicious free-for-all would begin and end in moments. They slipped past huge melees where groups of Ifrit desperately fought off howling zombies. On one occasion, they saw hundreds of ORCs swarming a beleaguered phalanx of Ifrit making a slow retreat to nowhere.
Finally, they found a Ring. ‘Where will it take us?’ Rowan asked as they began to walk around it.
‘Who cares?’ Cam said as he unleashed a rolling wave of hellfire on twenty or so ORCs that were running towards them. For a moment they resembled candle flames, then their ashes were blasted away. ‘Keep going.’
Firelight faded, and the glowing spots appeared on the ground to guide them. They made their way around and around, and slowly the screams of the Twisted and their prey leached away. Muted light swelled about them, and they stood on a green hill beneath a cold sky and a biting wind. The hill ran down to a beach, and a choppy sea stretched out beyond it. On the horizon was a smudge of land.
‘Where are we?’ Cam asked, shivering. ‘Somewhere in the north?’
‘Possibly. It’s chilly enough,’ Rowan said. The hill was covered in wiry grass and little else. A bemused sheep stood twenty feet away. It bleated, then turned and ran from them. ‘What now?’
‘We keep going,’ the Maiden said. ‘Through to The Tower at Dusk. There, we should be able to find the Ring that brought you from Manchester – that is where Cú Roí is. That is where Grímnir and myself need to be.’
‘It’s nice here,’ Cam mumbled. He lay on the damp grass with his eyes closed, the shotgun at his side. The tattoo on his arm sparked in the weak light. ‘It’s cool and the air is fresh. If we go through to The Tower at Dusk, there is an unreasonably high chance that we’ll get caught by an Ifrit or a Svartálfar.’
‘Well,
we’re not going to be able to walk home from here,’ Rowan said. ‘I don’t even know where here is. If we want to get home, we need that other Ring. And it’s my understanding that if we don’t go to The Tower at Dusk, then we must go back to The Tower at Dawn. I think you’ll agree, that if we go back there right now, there’s an unreasonably high chance that we’ll get eaten.’
Cam conceded the point grumpily, then said, ‘Why don’t we just wait it out here?’
‘Our duty is not here,’ the Maiden said gently. ‘I am weak. Our races are weak. Soon we must perish, but I cannot allow Cú Roí to survive, for he will turn this land into a charnel house. My magic is spent, tied up in Grímnir and Camulus, the last of it hidden: a Seed of hope against the darkness that is coming.’
‘You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?’ Cam asked.
‘I have always had glimpses of the future. I foresaw that a great evil would return, and that the Courts would be too weak to fight it. I hid my power away where it could not be found … but the portents were vague, and I did not know when Cú Roí would return. I have waited a long time for this, and I have sacrificed more than you can know. It is time to reclaim my power – it is time to destroy Cú Roí.’
‘I am ready,’ Grímnir said and knelt in front of the bruised yet still beautiful girl. She smiled at him and laid a slim hand on his shaggy head.
‘Not more of that Lord of the Rings bullshit,’ Cam said, sitting up. ‘If we’re going to die, let’s try and do it with a bit of class, shall we?’
Eventide’s twilight crept into the penthouse apartment through huge floor to ceiling windows. It was a massive duplex, mostly open-plan, and the free-flowing rooms gave panoramic views over Manchester. It was luxurious, dotted with an eclectic selection of chairs and artwork that would have made a smaller space feel cramped. So far, Sergei had counted nine bathrooms in the duplex, and that was the least of it; Scandinavian paintings and mid-century Italian glassware were displayed in the corner living area. Colours popped against the sprawling white leather sofas and the diaphanous curtains. Glass doors led out into a twenty-foot-high gallery that ran the length of the building. It contained an olive grove. Sixteen-foot-tall trees thriving on the forty-seventh floor. Their leaves didn’t stir because there was no wind, but the illusion of movement was given by a serenity pool set halfway along the grove, which shimmered and glittered under electric lights and cast reflections on the ceiling and amongst the green foliage.
Immortals' Requiem Page 40
