by C Bilici
CHAPTER THIRTY
DESPINA BARKED ORDERS, trying to bring a semblance of order to the panicked retreat at one of the transport flagstones leading to the Enclave core. The Wards were in a state of panic, powerless and dying. At least at the core they would have some relative safety. Anyone left in the southern sector though…
Though she couldn’t take time to think about the consequences, the thought spurred her on.
“Come on, we have to hurry! Get moving!”
The mesh blocking their power had kept the other Cardinals away from the temple, at least that was her hope. She didn’t want to think that they too could fall victim to the creature or another like it. Regular cursory scans above her head showed no signs of the same destruction in the other sectors about her, and seemed to be concentrated here as the creature made its way almost leisurely toward the temple. They didn’t have long left.
“Move your arses people!”
None of the Wards she had sent to the core had come back to report on whether they could use their powers from there and escape via the Nexus. Hopefully that was because the return path was blocked much in the same way as their route to the Nexus. She prayed that was the case.
She looked around at the faces.
“Where are you Fenton?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
BLACK VEINS RAN from both the creatures pant legs. A trail from one led to Fenton, bound about his body where he was held, on the ground, upside down for some reason. The other to Stacey. There were pulsing dark tubes above her that formed some kind of cage, she thought. As sense returned, she could feel multiple cords wrapped about her ankles and calves.
“You’ve proven to be less of an adversary than I’d hoped,” the Shadow Man said to the man at his feet, sounding disappointed as he inspected an apple he pulled from his pocket. He seemed to be upside down also.
As Stacey wondered where he’d gotten the apple, some part of her brain made the connection that the two were not in fact the wrong way around.
“Allow me to rectify that,” Fenton croaked, giving the creature a small smile.
Although he seemed to be in bad shape, he still had his spirit. That was good, Stacey thought. He looked like he’d been worked over while she was out. At least he wasn’t hanging by his feet, like her.
“You were with us quite some time, weren’t you?” the thing said, ignoring him as it shaped its hand into an apple peeling device, forefinger becoming a blade, the fruit held between thumb and mid-finger. The remaining digits worked like spider legs and turned the apple. The peel snaked to the floor.
“Whas he talknbout?” They didn’t seem to hear her mumbled question.
Fenton leant to one side and spat blood, or attempted to. The red streaked dribble stained his lips and chin to fall by his prone hand. “I must have been in the Void for weeks,” he finally answered the creature.
“Really? Weeks?” The Shadow Man chuckled. “Time used to be so meaningless to me. Before that would have meant nothing. You taught us the meaning of time.” Fenton raised his eyebrows casually. “Oh yes, we have you to thank. Not you personally, you understand, although your time with us was as educational as it was enjoyable. I for one took great pleasure in your pain.”
Fenton frowned at the Shadow Man.
Stacey frowned along with him. What were they talking about? Fenton had been a prisoner in the Void, too?
Something slithered up and across her thigh, caressing it in an almost loving manner. The sensation and revulsion made her shudder both physically and mentally, lifting some of the fog on her mind. With a sharp intake she filled her lungs.
The thing at her thigh rushed under her clothing and from the neck of her top. Spikes sprung so intensely close to here eyes that she could feel them.
The Shadow Man silently tutted at her, wagging his blade-finger.
Femton rolled his eyes, ignoring what was happening between Stacey and the creature. “I don’t really care what you—”
“You’re not listening, Fenton.” He cut himself a wedge of apple and slid it into his mouth, closing his eyes almost orgasmically. Opening his eyes, he looked at the remainder of the apple, then tossed it aside to roll lopsidedly across the floor. “Don’t want to spoil my appetite,” he said, grinning while removing a handkerchief from a pocket to wipe his lips then fingers.
“I assure you, I’m all ears.”
The Shadow man laughed madly. “I could arrange that, you know.” The handkerchief fell to the floor, melted, and oozed to join the veins around it. “Before you lot, I was just a mindless lump. You,” he wagged his finger at Fenton, “were my personal trigger. Our time together taught me the wondrous nature of human free thought. You set me free. One might even say you’re my father.” The Shadow Man leered at Fenton knowingly.
Fenton had missed that opportunity, to father children. It had been snatched away from him while Jennifer went on to have several with her new husband. Somehow the creature knew all that and, Stacey could see, was using it to try and break him.
“Why don’t you help your old man up then, son, and we’ll catch up with a pint down the pub?”
“Perhaps another time, dad.” The creature squatted with a smile. “Now, how long was it you said you were with me? Weeks did you say?” He leered again, then pursed his lips in thought. “Actually, now that I can tell the time, I think it was more like a matter of hours.”
Fenton’s fist clenched against the floor. “That’s not possible.”
“It couldn’t have been more than a day in fact. Time might have been of no consequence then, but I’m certain of it now.”
“Why? Why do this?”
“Why?” the creature repeated, as if it were the stupidest question in the world. “We feed off life, but have none. We’ve been insinuating ourselves into your world over countless millennia as nothing more than vermin. Then all of a sudden humans came crawling out of the mud and we found a far greater feeding source, but you became smarter while we stayed as amoeba.”
“So you want to join the humanoid club, is that it?”
The Shadow Man snorted a laugh. “Well, once I had a taste of those delicious emotions that sung such a sweet melody, I knew it had to be replicated. But we cannot. It needs to be seeded. I learnt that the first time I heard the tune on our fateful meeting. I could hear the song, but not understand it. But now? Oh, how I’m going to make you sing again!”
As the Shadow Man thrilled, the spikes in front of Stacey’s eyes jerked with excitement.
“Do you really expect me to believe this? You’ve probably taken thousands of people long before I came along.”
“Yes, but you were my evolutionary magnum opus, if you will. I learnt the secrets of humans in the shortest of time all from you.”
“Shut up,” Fenton said, hand tensing against the old floorboards, his fingers moving in agitation.
“I broke you, dear Fenton, and in the quickest amount of time I have ever experienced.”
“I said, shut up,” Fenton growled.
“The rest of the time was mere play.”
The jagged fingers of darkness threatening Stacey vibrated and shivered with excitement, and for the moment forgot their purpose as they softened.
“I broke you, over and over. And you cried. Oh, how you cried.” The Shadow Man, in his excitement, released more of his mass and his eyes were now black orbs, his pants billowing and rustling as his skin shifted. “Crying out for your mummy and your daddy. And for Jennifer.”
“I warned you,” Fenton said in a low tone.
The man-thing laughed loudly, madly.
The barbs before her eyes all but melted away. As he laughed, she could see dark worms in the back of his throat vibrating rapidly, changing his voice.
“What will you do, Ward? Your threats are empty. I have you and your apprentice. You cannot escape to your precious Nexus, nor can you use your sigils. Your friends are all dead by now. What use to make threats?” He leant forward, dark eyes an
d lips wide. “Answer me! What will you do?”
Fenton answered.
He lifted his injured hand with a cry of pain, uncovering the bloody saliva on the dusty floorboards.
The Shadow Man’s eyes went wide. He pulled away, but the extensions of his body wrapped around them didn’t retract fast enough to make a hasty retreat.
Stacey slumped to the floor, catching herself on her arms and quickly rose, and stared.
The tattooed lines running down Fenton’s good arm were visible from his elbow to his hand. In the spittle on the floor was a sigil that he must have drawn while keeping the Shadow man engaged. He slapped his hand on it.
Power lashed out and Stacey felt it like a shockwave. What she saw next made no sense, had to be a hallucination.
The lines across Fenton’s body all lit up, then dissolved. His injured arm sprang up and he thrust his had at the Shadow Man.
A black spike erupted from his palm so fast that it was almost like it appeared out of thin air. One moment nothing, and the next, a dark spear pierced the Shadow Man through the chest to jut out his back.
As Stacey watched, wide eyes and open mouthed, the tip of that spike diverged into a mass of wire thin Umbra lashing about wildly. The Shadow Man’s body vibrated violently as the split quickened toward his body, the wires lengthening. As it did, The Shadow Man’s expression shifted to agony, but also shifted in appearance.
“Wait!” Stacey yelled.
Fenton turned to her with a sneer. His eyes as utterly black, just like the Shadow Man’s had been. Dark veins pulsing out from them, throbbing with his panted rage. But, there was also recognition in them. He knew who she was. He turned back to the Shadow Man and saw what she saw.
“Paul?” Stacey said.
“Hurry,” Fenton gasped. “I can’t hold it back much longer.”
Stacey stepped carefully forward, warily eyeing the trembling black wires. She stepped close enough to looked into Paul’s eyes, both of them now intact.
“Is— Is that really you?” she asked, unsure.
Paul smiled, black blood dripping from his lips. “I’m sorry, Stace.”
Her hand flew to her lips as a sob escaped them. “Are you Umbra?”
He nodded jerkily in response.
“When? How long?”
“After you rescued me. He… had put a tiny seed in before.”
The cords at his back surged, seemed to cause him great discomfort. Whatever Fenton was doing to him must be similar to what the Shadow Man had done to the power of the Wards, stopping him from transforming and escaping, pinning him to the spot.
“Motherfucker! He turned you into a bomb!” Her hands wavered and shook in the air, unsure what to do.
“No, babe. It wasn’t like that. He offered me a position by his side.”
She could only shake her head before the implication set in. “You and Tammy. You both knew. All this time. You ratted out Jasper and Charlie.”
“I’m sorry.”
Stacey stepped back, fists shaking at her sides. “Why?”
“He promised.” Paul grinned, eyes wide like an addict. “You have no idea what this feels like, Stace. It’s intoxicating. He said it would be but I never imagined—”
“But, how?”
“He came to Tammy and me. He knew there was something about Jasper and Charlie, but he wasn’t sure. He offered us all this. Showed us. The two of us had already been—” The trembled and he winced.
Stacey thought Fenton had done it on purpose to spare her, but she needed to know the truth. “And all that stuff in my vision about torturing you?”
“Real, but an act to draw the Wards in, and a test for me. He knew you would join them to come looking for us.”
“Did you infect me?” She yelled. “You couldn’t have infected Jas because she was already a Ward. But me? Was that his plan the whole time? Use you as bait for me, and me as bait to draw out Jas and Charlie.”
“No. I never infected you. I just—”
Stacey sneered at him in anger, her lips wrinkling as they tightened and turned down, tears running around them. “You fucking used me, Paul! And for what?”
“I—” He looked about in desperation and fixed his eyes on her. “I just want us to be together forever. I love you, babe!”
“And Tammy? Do you fucking love her too?”
“That’s different! But we can all be together. It’s not too late, Stace. All you have to do is kill Fenton and—”
Stacey shook her head uncontrollably, her fingers locked in her hair. She heard Fenton say something and looked to him. He was struggling to control whatever he’d released and he didn’t seem to be able to speak, but his eyes spoke the question.
“Do it!”
“Stacey, no!”
The tendrils exploded in a frenzy and ripped the man she’d once loved, that she had fought to save, apart. The last thing she saw of him was the still shocked O of his mouth, and his eyes, before he became a rain of black, liquifying meat.
The Umbra spike still lashed about as if looking for a fresh target. Fenton’s fingers were a tensed claw about the root of the shaft, the tendons in the back of his hand standing out as he fought the thing, struggling with it before it was pulled back into his palm and he fell to the floor. But she barely registered any of that.
“What… the… fuck!” Stacey said in a daze and fell to her knees, wailing in pain. “What the fuck, what the fuck!” She fell to her side, screaming it out.
Stacey had stopped wailing at some point and had moved to sit silently in a corner, alternating between glaring at the dark mess on the floor and the man that had made it. In the distance, she heard a loud crash and screams. The worm was still on the rampage, the real Shadow Man possibly out there with it.
Fenton struggled to kneel and crawled beside her and attempted to scoop his good arm under her arm to lift her up.
“Don’t touch me!” She shoved him and he fell back onto the floor. “Don’t you fucking touch me! I don’t even know what you are!”
“I’m a man, Stacey. Human!”
“Human? Humans can’t do that. You’re just another fucking Umbra!”
“I am not Umbra!” he yelled. “I don’t know what this thing inside me is. And if we get out of this I promise I will tell you what I can. But for now—”
“No. You tell me now!”
“It’s too hard to—”
“Well you’d better fucking try, because I’m not in the mood for any more bullshit!”
He huffed. “I told you my father was in the war and it was true. I was born in England, September seventh, nineteen-thirty-one.”
“What are you—”
“You wanted to know so listen! Years after the war there were still unexploded bombs all across the country. UXB’s we called them then. I was not long married, working in a bank. There were some workers digging up the street. In the hole was… Something.”
Stacey looked at him. “Umbra?”
He nodded. “And a UXB. It went off. When I woke up I was in the Void. I have no idea how I survived either the blast or the Void, but I somehow made it out. And when I did it was nineteen ninety-three and I was in Australia. And I had this thing inside me.”
She searched his face, and she believed him. After all the crazy shit she’d seen, how could she not now? “What is it?”
“It’s Umbra, but some sort of symbiotic parasite. I don’t know. No one does. I can use it though, but at great risk of it taking me over.”
“And then, what? You become Umbra?”
“Maybe. I don’t know! All I know is that it’s our only hope to destroy that thing out there.”
Stacey was silent in thought. “You’re Despina’s fucking secret weapon, aren’t you?”
He nodded in response and his face turned to a bitter smile. “I’m their double-edged ace in the hole, so to speak. They contained it rather than killing both me and it. There’s every risk that something far worse will be unleashed.”
“So that’s why you’re a fucking hermit? Why you never took an apprentice in all those years?”
He nodded. “I didn’t want to risk anyone else’s life.”
“Why now, then? Why me?”
“You were so desperate for help, and when Despina pressed the matter, she reminded me that I’d never given back to the cause.”
“So she twisted your balls?” Stacey snorted. “What exactly do they think that that thing can do?”
“We don’t know fully. But it’s strong. Not even all four Cardinals of the time could drive it out.”
“So you’re what? A walking atom bomb?”
“Given the circumstances, we’d better hope so.”
There was another loud crash and screams. Stacey watched as Fenton looked nervously to the hole in the wall he’d made.
“That thing did that?” she said regarding the hole.
“I told you, it’s powerful.”
She looked at him now. “You’re going on a suicide mission, aren’t you?”
“Believe me, I’m in no hurry to die or become a backseat driver in my own body, so if you can think of a better plan I would love to hear it.”
Stacey thought but nothing came. The only thing that made sense was taking the Shadow Man out directly.
Fenton smiled to her kindly. “Thank you anyway.”
“Don’t thank me like that’s the end.”
“It is the end for me, but it doesn’t have to be for you!”
Fenton climbed through the hole and she followed.
“Hey! We’re not done here,” she shouted.
Fenton turned on her angrily. “We are!” He pointed to the chaos in the distance. “I’m going there.” He turned and pointed in the opposite direction. “You, there. End of discussion.”
“No! Not end of discussion.”
Fenton grabbed her arm and squeezed. She struggled to free it but his grip was iron tight in his anger.
“You are my responsibility, Stacey. The closest thing to a daughter or child I am ever going to get.” She stopped squirming and looked at him. “I am going to make sure that you get home to your mother just as I promised you would.”
