Sergei stood at the shallow pool and examined a strange sculpture that emerged from it. Nine crooked and conical pillars reached up towards the ceiling. Made of white burnished stone, they were different shapes and sizes, the largest only around half a foot tall. Sergei had no idea what they were supposed to represent. To him, they looked like the probing tentacles of a Barghest. He turned his attention to the more traditional piece set in the corner of the pool in front of the window. It was made of the same material. A human-sized blob with a couple of organic-looking holes rendered through it. It looked like a dismembered torso that had been ripped open.
Sergei grimaced and turned his back on the art. It should have been a peaceful place. All he could see were monsters and death. A kitchen and dining area led from the olive grove through to the other side of the building. On this side there were glass doors that were open. On the opposite side of the room there weren’t even walls; it led out onto another gallery and more windows. It was gloomy in the kitchen. A long, dark wooden kitchen island extended to his left. A large rosewood dining table with eight matching chairs stood atop a dark blue rug. Some white pottery jugs decorated its centre. To the right, an expensive-looking sideboard, also rosewood, took up most of the wall, flanked by other bits and pieces of furniture. A big painting hung above it with smaller pieces to its left and right. There were more ornaments on top of the sideboard including, incongruously, a set of ceramic penguins.
Cú Roí sat at the head of the table facing Sergei and the olive grove. Annalise stood, still naked, at his right hand. Blood streaked her jaw and breasts, grime and dirt were ingrained into her pale skin, and her wild hair matched the wildness of her stare.
A couple of Barghest lounged on the tiled floor behind the Master, their bodies relaxed and without shape, just piles of twitching tentacles in a jellyfish mess. Sergei tried to ignore their acrid stink as he stood and waited. The day had been spent consolidating their position. The rooms below them were filled with women snatched from the streets; easy pickings after the police had withdrawn to the city limits. They were all pregnant with the Master’s get now. Others had been bitten and were locked away whilst they turned. Sergei had enjoyed himself, stalking the streets, taking his pleasure anywhere he liked with anybody he liked, until the Master had called him back.
Leach is dead. I felt his passing. He stood at my side for centuries, and awaited my return for millennia. It saddens me that he is gone.
‘What must we do, Master?’ Annalise asked. Sergei despised the sound of worship in her voice, not because he found her a lickspittle, but because she was a competitor for the Master’s attention. Sergei knew the bitch – she was the same slut Autumn had been fucking on Saturday, only a few floors below where they were stood.
‘Tell us,’ Sergei said quickly, eager to be heard. He ignored the flash of hatred Annalise sent his way.
Samuel Autumn has also passed, the giant said as if he hadn’t heard them. He was the first to join my army when I came to this time. He was your sire, my dear, he said patting Annalise’s hand. Sergei felt a spasm of jealousy at the gesture. I sympathise with you.
‘He was a small man. He did not understand or appreciate what you gave him, Master,’ Annalise said with a sneer.
Nevertheless, he tried to do his duty by me. He is another casualty in our war. I do not want there to be any more. The magic energy required to create a Barghest is substantial. It takes time to grow them. I cannot afford to squander any more power until we have secured this city and I can begin to drain the humans. You are now my senior lieutenants. It will be hours yet before the freshly bitten come properly into their power.
If you can hold this building while the new Barghest are spawned, you will be rewarded. If you fail me, then you will die.
‘Yes, Master,’ Sergei said, flashing a snide grin at Annalise for getting in there first. ‘Whatever you command.’
Yes, I command it. The humans are weak and stupid, but the Courts have a hand in this, too. We must be wary of them. The threat is a man called Mark Jones – you know him, Sergei Constantine.
‘Yes, Master. He once employed me.’
He is special. I do not know why. He carries a sword. It must be returned to me. That is your main concern. Mark Jones must not pass through this building while the sword is in his hands. This is your mission, Sergei. Wait … Cú Roí sat straight in his chair. The two Barghest behind him trembled and writhed. Sergei thought that they looked like a heap of spilled intestines twitching and contorting on unseen strings. Low growls rumbled from their boneless, fang-lined mouths.
Sergei felt it too – something was watching him. Annalise changed, her body swelling and sprouting golden fur. Sergei barely paid attention as her jaw cracked and swelled, her forehead flattened, her arms elongated, and savage talons burst from her fingertips. With a series of snaps, her bone structure altered beneath the new musculature of the beast. She roared.
Laughter came from the shadows behind the kitchen island. Something flickered within them, though there was nothing there. Confused, Sergei took a step backwards. ‘Cú Roí … do you know what I am?’
You are a Svartálfar, yes?
‘Yes. I am the Prince of Rattlesnakes.’ Motes of dust and darkness coalesced near the oven. A man-shaped ghost appeared. He had no features. His body was black light, and a cloak of nothingness swirled around him. The blank oval of his face turned to Cú Roí. ‘I am here for you, Therian.’
You think you can kill me?
The Prince of Rattlesnakes laughed again, this time uproariously. A woman, young and innocent-looking with perfect skin and a wide, welcoming mouth, stepped into the room from behind Cú Roí. The windows on the other side of the building framed her like another piece of art. Long black hair fell in folds of silken sparkle to her ankles. Like Annalise, she was naked and like Annalise, she was beautiful. Unlike with Annalise, Sergei felt a surge of violent desire. He felt his teeth lengthen in anticipation of what he would do to this young waif.
As lust settled back, Sergei noticed other features: the dead, white eyes; the cold smile, which displayed two long, razor-sharp incisors; and the way her hair twitched and swayed around her, under its own impetus.
Something else lurched into view behind her. It blocked out the light. A black spider thing that squatted above the other two intruders like a malignant scion of Death.
The Barghest shuddered upright as thumb-thick tendrils wove and wrapped into sinewy legs. The blind worm mouths opened, and they hissed menacingly at the globular wraith.
‘I do not want to kill you, Cú Roí. I am Damballah, leader of the Unseelie Court and The Tower at Dusk. I want you to help us. I need your power.’
As you can see, I, too, am the Master of a tower. I do not need your help and I do not share power.
‘Come now … there is no reason that we cannot work together. My sister and I are quite taken with what you have done here in Miðgarðr. We admire your methods. Your philosophy. The chaos you sow is our religion. We quite lost ourselves when we arrived here. We have stalked these streets for hours, just as we were born to do. We have fed well today, have we not, sister?’
‘Yes brother,’ said the waif.
‘Yes, we have. Dare I even admit that I have had fun! All thanks to you, Cú Roí. I see no reason that this can’t last forever.’
You are welcome to the scraps from my table … it seems that you have already availed yourselves of them. But you have nothing to offer me. Leave.
‘You are wrong. We can offer each other much. We are the same, you and I.’
If we are alike as you say, then I know that you will use me and then destroy me, for that is what I would do. No pacts. No deals. No compromise. Children, go to your duties. I will deal with the Svartálfar.
‘Master, we can help,’ Sergei said loyally. He was ignored.
Cú Roí stood up. His form began to swell. Sergei watched raptly as his Master finally revealed his true shape.
Groaning
, Mark dragged Camulus from the Barghest’s corpse. It had appeared from nowhere, leaping through the already smashed windscreen of the car as they had approached the Beetham Tower. The Barghest’s weight had crushed the front of the Lamborghini, collapsing the wheel arches onto the tyres and effectively stopping it.
Deadly tentacles had speared through the body and face of the young police officer who had insisted on driving. Her skull was malformed and one eye had popped out of its socket. It dangled onto her cheek. Mark leant over and checked for a pulse anyway. There was nothing. The girl was dead.
He extricated himself slowly from the ruin of the Lamborghini. Suddenly angry, he used the sword to hack the creature’s makeshift head from the nest of its body. He threw it to the ground and kicked it. So much death, he thought. He dropped Camulus beside it in disgust.
He had come out of his fugue after two-and-a-half-hours, filled with despair and self-loathing, and with one overwhelming need – to find the monster that had raped Tabitha and destroy it utterly. He intended to test the limits of his immortality with a direct assault. He had no subtle plan. There were no inspired strategies or clever tactics: he was going to walk up to it and shove the rainbow blade down its obscene throat. One of them would die. Mark didn’t much care which of them it was.
In the quickening twilight, he could see that the Beetham Tower was a mess. Its windows were all broken, some put through, others sporting a spider web of cracks. Cars sat abandoned and burned out in front of the lobby.
Inside it was dark, the power off, still shapes in the gloom attesting to what had happened to most of the staff and guests. Sighing, Mark looked up. The tower was big. Not like the real skyscrapers that dominated Hong Kong and New York – it would be barely noticeable when compared to the megastructures in places like Dubai – but it was pretty big for England, and certainly the biggest place in Manchester.
‘Why are you here, monster?’ Mark asked under his breath. What did Cú Roí gain from coming to the tallest building in the city? It was barely defensible. Once at the top, there was nowhere to go. The army, if they ever arrived, could simply turn the place into smouldering wreckage, burying everything, including Cú Roí and his legion of horrors, beneath thousands and thousands of tonnes of rubble. So why here?
It didn’t matter. Not to Mark anyway. He was going up, and he was going to destroy the monster that had raped and killed Tabitha. Annaea. He had been to the Beetham Tower before and knew that there were two entrances. He stood in front of the Hilton Hotel, which went up twenty-three floors and was topped by a bar. The floors after that were private apartments. To get to them, it was necessary to go around the corner to a foyer with a concierge and two lifts.
Returning to the Lamborghini, Mark pulled the black sword from the storage compartment and slung it across his back. The hilt jutted up over his right shoulder. He had brought the sword with him on a whim – Camulus had proved itself deadly to the creatures that swarmed through Manchester, but the black sword had been forged a long time ago, its sole purpose his eternal hunt for the immortals he hated so much. He couldn’t just leave it behind.
He scooped up Camulus and realised the handle was sticky with blood. Casually, he swapped it to his other hand and wiped his palm against his shirt. He felt more wetness and glancing down, he realised for the first time that his shirt was torn and covered in blood. He felt his hair, and it was stiff and matted. His face was wet with the stuff too.
Looking back to the tower, he gathered himself and set off grimly around the side and into the foyer. A couple of corpses lay in bloody ruin, the stench of their open bowels hanging in the air. The lifts were both destroyed. A pair of doors with a sign above them indicated a stairwell was nearby. Doggedly, Mark walked to the stairs and began the long trek to the forty-seventh floor.
Fire raged through the apartment, and Sergei didn’t know whether to be terrified or elated. He cowered in the kitchen, protected from most of the maelstrom by the granite counter of the kitchen island unit. The cabinets below it had been ripped out by the fury of his Master. Consequently, the granite slab was propped up at a roughly forty-five-degree angle.
Every time he popped his head out to see what was going on, another gust of flame washed through the shattered window, further decimating the area where Damballah and his minions had stood. The olive grove was ablaze. The shallow pool had evaporated. Broken glass and charred rosewood splinters were everywhere. Sergei grinned. The bitch Annalise had run as soon as the Master changed.
Maybe she had seen what was coming, maybe she was obeying her orders, maybe she was just scared … she’d had the right idea. Sergei had honestly thought he could help. Now … well, the Master had proved his godhood once and for all. Sergei recalled the metamorphosis.
Cú Roí had hunched over and half screamed, half roared. Sergei moved towards him and then stopped. The Master’s face elongated, much like Annalise’s had. Then his back cleaved open like a rotten banana, and blood had sprayed everywhere. Something wriggled in the wound: something leathery and tipped with bone spikes.
As his back curved, his spine stretched with a series of awful cracking noises, and his arms and legs elongated and bulked out. He dropped to the floor and flesh began to slough away, exposing terracotta scales. The Master’s ribs spread and cracked to accommodate the newer, massive limbs, and his clothes were torn to shreds along with his skin.
In place of a human head, an equine thing appeared, its long face covered in scales. Two great horns jutted from its forehead, and jagged fangs speared from its gums. Two slits devoured his nose, and his crystal eyes sank beneath deep bony ridges. The things on Cú Roí’s back thrashed around, desperately trying to free themselves from the sticky pulp of his back.
Sergei stared at his Master in wonder. He looked like an old-fashioned devil, eight feet tall and bulging with muscles. Their eyes met for an instant. The man Mark Jones. Find him, and take the sword from him. Kill him if you can. Then the glittering, fractured eyes had turned to Damballah.
‘Your demon form does not alter anything, Cú Roí,’ the Prince of Rattlesnakes said with a yawn. Cú Roí seemed to smile, though it could have been a snarl or a twitch on that inhuman face. The spider thing moved towards Cú Roí. As if let off a leash, the two Barghest ran towards it, defending their Master. They hit it hard, their tentacles flashing out and lancing into its legs and body. Where they entered, nothing came out. Each writhing appendage was simply absorbed into the larger mass, but it seemed to hurt it. The larger monstrosity skittered backwards and raised two of its five thick legs. It tried to spear the two smaller creatures but the Barghest were too quick, and if they were hurt by the loss of their tentacles, they didn’t show it.
As they fought, Cú Roí shambled past Sergei and splashed ponderously towards the window, through the pool in the olive grove. Sergei watched, bewildered, and then fear rushed through him as he realised what was about to happen.
‘Master,’ he had called. ‘Do not leave me!’
It was too late – Cú Roí crashed through the thick glass and disappeared into the drop beyond. Cold wind rushed into the building. Sergei rushed to the window, his orders forgotten as he splashed through the pool. He stared out, ignoring his wet feet. Why had his Master done this? Why had he thrown himself into the abyss?
A rattling screech made him look back. The black spider had one of the Barghest pinned to the floor. It thrashed maniacally, losing all shape as it drove its barbed limbs into the featureless mass of the spider. Sergei stood at the window and watched. The other Barghest came in behind the spider, and a thick cable of coiled tentacles slammed into one of its remaining legs so hard that a few made it out the other side without being annihilated. The leg was sheared off and it collapsed to the floor and splashed into a million beads of shadow that faded away into nothing.
A wailing sigh came from the spider. To Sergei, it was the sound of endless screaming heard from a long way away. The spider spun around, pulling free the tapered arm
pinning the first Barghest. The other one tried to back away, but it was not fast enough. With a lurching jump, the spider fell on top of it. The Barghest vanished into its inky depths.
The remaining Barghest was crippled. Most of its tentacles had gone, seared away in the spider’s body. A few still thrashed around it, and it was using them to try and drag itself away. The long pink slug that was the core of its body was surrounded by quivering stumps. There was a hole through it from where it had been pinned. Steam rose from out of it but no blood. The Barghest’s worm mouth worked crazily, but it didn’t make a sound. The spider thing stepped towards it.
Sergei stood paralysed at the window. He thought that he should try and help, but there was nothing he could do. If only the Master had not abandoned them. There was a soft whomp from somewhere below, and the eddies and currents of the biting wind danced wildly. Another came, then another and another in quick succession.
Wings, Sergei realised in the second before the thing causing the disturbance appeared at the window. The massive beast – maybe a hundred feet long – had red scales and black talons. Its tail trailed behind it like a heavy streamer with a barbed tip. Its black, leather-like, thickly ridged and veined wings were almost as wide as they were long. The big, cruel head weaving at the end of its thick sinuous neck reminded Sergei of a tyrannosaur, though sleeker, more intelligent, and topped with curving horns.
Immortals' Requiem Page 41
