Ward

by C Bilici

“You’re the filth, you traitor.”

  “I was almost there. I could have made it, you fucking stupid cunts!”

  “The only place you’re going is hell, bitch!”

  Tammy screamed and lurched forward, raising her club fist.

  Stacey shouted and brought her own hands up. She fired shot after shot into Tammy, rocking her torso, tearing her eye free, but she still came.

  Tammy lunged and brought her arm down. Injured and unable to shapeshift, she was too slow.

  Armoured and heavy, hand struck stone with a crack and, with no target to soften her momentum, Tammy stumbled.

  Stacey appeared behind Tammy, and kicked her misshapen rear as hard as she could.

  Tammy sailed over the edge with a howl of frustration.

  Stepping to the very edge, Stacey looked down at the thing she’d once called a friend.

  Tammy sailed away, fighting desperately to form some part of herself into a serviceable limb. Malformed limbs, eyes, a mouth, a twitching tentacle popped feebly from her flesh, but to no use. She couldn’t shift her body enough. Her tense form went limp, almost calm. As she was gradually swallowed into the darkness, she rolled around, faced Stacey, and smiled. Her good hand lifted and extended its middle finger.

  Stacey lifted her hand and pointed her palm at Tammy’s head.

  Then she lowered it.

  “Yeah, fuck you too,” she said, and turned away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  GODFREY WAS GONE. The worm, decimated. Backlit by the flames, a naked figure kneeled, but whether it was the thing or Fenton, Stacey couldn’t tell from the dancing light.

  She approached with caution, speeding up when she saw human flesh.

  “Whoa there, cowboy.” She jumped forward and grabbed him by the shoulders as he started to topple, darkness washing over them.

  “Gay—“

  “Huh?” Her scowled glance was as furious as it was confused.

  “Game over, man. Game over,” he muttered, and gave a delirious, exhaust chuckle.

  A snort of a laugh escaped through her nose. “So you have actually watched some fucking movies, huh?” Her head shook. “You do realise, of course, that the way to the Nexus is clear, right?” She pointed up as the light failed.

  He followed her finger with bleary eyes. “I hadn’t noticed, actually. I was rather absent and preoccupied, as it were.”

  “That—” Stacey said as she picked him up.

  “Is an understatement?”

  “I was actually going to say, would make a decent name for a band.”

  The Nexus burned brightly in her eyes as Stacey carried Fenton into it. Godfrey’s eyes stared down at them, dull at their cores, his demeanour speaking of confusion.

  “I’ll explain later, my friend,” Fenton said.

  Stacey’s avatar gave her a thumbs up, which she responded to with a tip of her head.

  They appeared on the Enclave core, Stacey figuring the temple might be crowded. As they did, the split in the Enclave closed with a boom and rumble. The now sealed space was a blank canvas and stuck out. Whatever workings created the thing, it obviously didn’t include buildings.

  Wards disappeared around them, bringing her out of her reverie. They were, she assumed, heading back to the Enclave. Others still appeared, presumably from the discarded section, crying their relief and joy at being alive.

  The cheer was shattered by death cries as someone appeared half within another person, and they both fell to the ground, kicking and twitching in agony. Stacey tore her eyes from the horror as something moving rapidly toward them.

  “Disperse!” Despina called through the commotion, as she jogged through the crowd. She didn’t have to tell them again.

  Several people went to the conjoined couple to kneel at their side, and then all of them vanished.

  “Where will they take them?” Stacey asked.

  “Where we take all our dead,” Despina answered. “The Nexus.” She turned and inspected the empty curve of the Enclave. “Is it done? Did you kill the creature?”

  “Yes,” Stacey said. “And, we’re fine, thanks for asking,” Stacey said bitterly.

  “More or less,” Fenton said weakly.

  “At least that fucking worm Tammy is fucking dead.”

  “As well as many of our brothers and sisters,” Despina answered sombrely.

  “Something like this was bound to happen one day,” Fenton offered, to which all she could do was nod.

  “Too bad that prick Shadow Man was never here so we could stop it from ever happening again.”

  Despina looked up with a curious shine in her eye. “But he was. And, we have him in custody.”

  “You fucking what?” Stacey couldn’t believe it.

  “How?” Fenton asked.

  “He all but gave himself up. Once our powers were restored, we cornered him. He’s being held in the Nexus by enforcers, well away from the Enclave.”

  Fenton grunted as he rose, Stacey holding him up. “Take me to him.”

  “You’re not in any condition to—”

  “I don’t really care, Despina.”

  She seemed to take offence at his tone. “No, the enforcers will handle this.”

  Fenton disappeared in frustration leaving Stacey stumbling where he had stood moments before.

  “A little warning would be nice,” Stacey mumbled.

  “You should go after him.”

  “Gee, you think?” Stacey rolled her eyes, leaving before Despina could react.

  She went to the only place she could think of, his home.

  When she arrived at the destroyed farmhouse, he was pulling on a shirt he’d found somewhere, boots and shorts already on. He began rooting around in the debris without doing the shirt up.

  Stacey sat on the grass and watched him as he angrily crashed through the wreckage. He knew she was there, but she left him be and he didn’t say a word.

  He eventually climbed out of the pile clutching an old biscuit tin and a lock box with a key still in its lid. He dropped down beside her and ripped the lid off the tin, pulling out tobacco and papers and began to roll, hands trembling from anger.

  “Emergency cache,” he said, thrusting the first of the finished smokes at Stacey and then quickly rolled another.

  The cigarette was wonky but serviceable. She patted a gap in hers closed and placed it between her lips, ignoring the fact it was still wet with his saliva. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already rubbed the stuff on her face. He pulled a cheap plastic lighter out of the tin, lit up after shaking tobacco from its workings, then passed it over. Stacey realised he’d probably lost the Nazi lighter along with the clothes on his back in the attack.

  “Sorry about your dad’s lighter.”

  He shook his head, inhaling. “Don’t be. I hated the thing and the bastard. The only reason I kept it was as a reminder of the past I’d lost and because my brother gave it to me.” He opened the lock box, tipped out the contents. Old photos, newspaper articles, and what looked like a necklace and ring fell to the grass. He sifted through them and pulled one of the photos out. “Got that from my brother’s things after he passed away.” He held his cigarette up before she could ask. “Lung cancer.” He prodded a face in the photo. “That was him. Dear old dad.”

  He pointed out a thin, sour faced man in uniform with thinning hair and pencil moustache, hat and stick wedged in his armpit. He looked like Fenton, or enough like him to see the family resemblance. The photo was black and white, but she could see the man had dark hair. Next to him stood a sweet looking attractive blond woman, smiling with a sadness that seemed to reach her eyes.

  “You’ve got your mum’s hair”

  “What’s left of it. And her eyes, so I was told.”

  “She was pretty.”

  “That she was. Didn’t stay that way, though. The old man sucked it out of her. That was from when I was young.”

  He spoke with such bitterness and anger. Stacey gingerly handed the photo back. He t
ossed it down on the pile as if it were inconsequential, shuffled through, found another and offered it in its place. It was Fenton, younger and with more hair, standing next to a young woman. Both were dressed in their wedding attire and had loving expressions.

  Stacey smiled. She couldn’t see herself ever doing it, but when she saw people that took the plunge and were happy about it, it made her happy. Part of her thought it was an idyllic picture in her head of what she was sure she would never have.

  It was hard to imagine this young man in the picture was the same one beside her.

  “She was beautiful. You both looked so happy.”

  “I was. I think she was too.” The bitterness was still there but sadness over-toned it. “She looked much the same in her later photos. Still happy. I’m glad that she could find happiness again. Essentially, for her, I dropped off the ace of the planet.”

  “Some people couldn’t after something like that. Especially, you know, in ‘the olden days’.”

  Fenton nodded, silent to her backhanded jibe.

  It couldn’t be easy, Stacey thought as she gently placed the photo on top of the pile. She wondered how she would be the first time she had to look at a photo of Paul, or anything that linked them. She realised that list now included Jasper, and all her, and his, belongings were still at the flat. Despite her silent vow to never return, she would have to one final time.

  “I owe that son of a bitch.”

  Stacey turned to Fenton, barely constrained rage etched deeply in the lines of his face.

  “You and me both,” she said angrily. “What can we do, though? I’ve seen wet paper bags full of shit hold it together more than we can at the moment. Besides, he’s in custody. I’m sure they won’t go easy on him. He just mass murdered how many Wards.”

  Fenton nodded, forced himself calm. She knew, because she had to drive down the rage inside herself just to be able to sit still.

  They sat in silence and finished their cigarettes in the chill night air.

  * * *

  A figure appeared on the farm property in the shade of a tree, standing still and blinking the dark back, they surveyed the area from where they were rooted, almost in hiding. They started as a light, held in a cupped hand, lit up their face.

  Despina nodded almost approvingly at Stacey, who led the Cardinal through the property without a word, her other arm laden with oranges. If she wondered why Stacey was dressed in nothing but a towel, she certainly made no mention of it.

  Stacey found she could see pretty well by the light cast by her sigils, Fenton having told her that she could use them in that manner if she controlled her power. She’d even practised brightening and dimming the light at her whim, though the more power she cranked, the quicker she’d have to re-ink.

  That had to be something she always considered from now on. Before all this, not recharging meant she couldn’t use her phone, or her car wouldn’t start.

  Now it meant death.

  They walked past the wreckage of the house, past the broken items that she and Fenton had laid out on the grass in a grid. It was hard not to think all the broken bodies, waiting to be interred to the Nexus, had been laid out like that.

  They arrived at their destination a short time later. Stacey banged open palmed on the corrugated iron door streaked with rust marks that looked like dried blood.

  “Who is it?” Fenton sounded out of breath.

  “Me,” Stacey said, her voice sounding tired even to her. “And Despina,” she added.

  The large door screeched aside and he stood in the dim rectangle in only his shorts and stared back at them.

  Stacey pushed past him.

  Despina stepped in with a raised eyebrow as she took both them and their new housing in. “There’s been a development,” she said drily.

  Fenton screwed his face up in frustration. “He got away.”

  Despina nodded before adding, “You understand why I couldn’t let you near him.”

  “And you understand, I’m sure, why I wanted to be there.”

  “All too well.”

  “Well, it’s a fucking moot point now.” Stacey dropped the oranges with a bruising thud atop a battered table that showed multiple layered colours through chips and cracks in its paint.

  “There’s more.” The chair clattered and creaked as Despina pulled it back and sat. “A short while ago, three enforcers arrived in the Nexus to relieve their comrades.”

  “Only three?” Stacey asked, her face a look of utter disbelief, saying the words she didn’t need to speak aloud: were they really that stupid?

  Despina continued, unabashed. “They arrived to find the half subsumed remains of those Wards embedded in the floor of the Nexus. No sign of their captive.”

  “And I suppose you came here without delay as soon as they reported it to you?” Fenton said, voice full of sarcasm.

  “They didn’t report it. The team that went to find them did.”

  “Why—” Stacey started to ask.

  “They had to be found, Stacey,” Despina said angrily, “because they, like all of their avatars, were in pieces too. Strewn about a blackened patch of the Nexus.”

  “Holy fuck. Their avatars too?”

  “Umbra?” asked Fenton.

  “That was the assumption at first. But as they investigated they found two very alarming things. Not all of their avatars were dead.”

  “That’s not possible,” Fenton said.

  “It shouldn’t be with their hosts dead, no. But they had been re-crafted into nightmares.”

  “What was the other alarming thing?” Stacey asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “Something was left behind in the Nexus. It was only revealed after the enforcers dealt with the remains.”

  “Something?” Stacey stepped behind a sheet hanging on a rope to get dressed. Her washed clothes were still a little damp, but she’d be damned if she was going to sit around.

  “The Nexus has been stained. Corrupted.”

  Stacey stepped out from behind the sheet in her underwear, staring at Despina. “What the fuck?”

  “There’s a large patch of grey. Whatever it is we attempted to purge it, but—”

  “It’s still there,” Fenton said, his voice low.

  Despina nodded. “Added to that, the hole from the purge didn’t heal, and the greyness is spreading from its edges. We’re trying to figure it out. There’s nothing in the history of the Wards on record that compares to this.”

  “He knew.” Stacey and Despina both turned to Fenton. “He knew that you would try to release that part of the Nexus. It was a pre-planned move.”

  “I have to agree with you,” Despina said. “But to what end?”

  Stacey stopped the angry brushing of her hair and straightened her body, pushing her hair back over her shoulder. “So there’s a hole in the Nexus and a spreading something that that fucker put there?” She cut the air with the hairbrush. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “I wish we knew.” Despina sounded tired

  “Who is investigating the Nexus breach?” Fenton asked her.

  “We have a delegation from the five. One Cardinal from each world, the most senior, and their assistants will be arriving soon.”

  Stacey stopped dressing and looked up. “Is—”

  “Yes, the Mhyrr Cardinal, Vaya. And your friend will be with her. That’s the other reason why I came to see you. And to check on your… Condition” Despina looked at Fenton.

  “My condition is stable.”

  “For the moment,” Despina said. “We should discuss containment options.”

  “No offence,” Stacey said, “but we kinda need that thing inside him right now, don’t we? I mean, especially now that fucker is on the loose again.”

  “The other Cardinals and I agree.”

  “Glad to know my fate is once again being made for me,” Fenton said, a glum look on his face.

  “Since the breach of the Enclave and Nexus, I feel splitting
the Cardinals of the other realms up and keeping them outside of the Enclave would be wise. I’m tasking you with the Mhyrr delegation.”

  “Here?” Stacey looked about at the mess in the shed.

  “The Umbra have struck here already, and as far as they know it’s abandoned. And where better to keep the top target than with our secret weapon.”

  “Relegated to the status of a tool now,” Fenton snorted. “Charming.”

  “If it helps,” Stacey said, “I’ve always thought you were a tool.”

  Fenton gave her a wry smile that she had learnt amounted to him flipping her off.

  Jasper would be here. With her.

  Nervous excitement built up in her gut. She planned where she could set up their sleeping area so they would be out of the way and they could make lots of noise and a quick escape if it came to that. At the same time, she dreaded the moment that she had to tell her about Paul and Tammy, if Jasper didn’t already know. She voiced the question to Despina.

  Despina sighed through her nose. “Not that I’m aware of. We informed the Cardinals of the other realms, and Vaya thought you might wish to inform her yourself.”

  Stacey nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Just so you know, I’ll also be sending a contingent of Wards to set up a wide defensive barrier. Your other friend, Lunia, will be overseeing that. Not that I doubt the two of you, but she’s apparently quite adept with sigils and such things.”

  “She’s mean on the skins, too,” Stacey said, distracted. She looked up to see Despina’s odd stare. “Skins? The drums?”

  “I know what skins are,” Despina said, steely-eyed. She turned that assessing gaze on the shed. “Best make preparations.” With that, she walked outside, and looked back at them. “They’ll be arriving sometime in the afternoon tomorrow. Any questions?” There were none. She turned about and was gone.

  Fenton put his hands on his hips and looked around them at the mess, assessing it. He stopped when he saw Stacey looking around nervously. “What?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “It clearly is not ‘nothin’’, so tell me what’s wrong?”

  Stacey sighed. It’s just… Fuck! And then, you know, what the fuck? I’m all, aaah!” Stacey grunted in frustration, her nails digging into the balls of her hands.