Heaven's Gate

by Toby Bennett

“Shut up, you!” Kurt snaps, “the only thing that you need to know ‘my lady’”, Kurt puts a scornful emphasis on those words, “is that the master wants you so you are here. I want you here till tomorrow night and you will not leave until the master releases you.”

  With that Lillian’s strange jailer pulls the door closed.

  “You’ll get some sleep if you know what’s good for you and keep quiet, neither of us wants Dale to know you’re awake, do we?” Kurt’s voice comes through the door. Lillian can hear a muted series of sounds, then:

  “I don’t care what you think. You slept through the last eight years, why bother me again now? There’s no need to see her again.” A brief pause, then “No that isn’t Sue-Anne! I knew you’d gone senile, we’ve never met her before…”

  The sound of Kurt and Al’s argument fades as they move down the corridor outside, leaving Lillian staring at the crack of red light under the door. In spite of Kurt’s warning, she cannot resist a lunge at the door but the chain at her ankle brings her up short so that instead of hitting the door, she merely scrapes the tips of her fingers down the rough wood. Her eyes are watering with pain and frustration but she blinks back tears, tugs repeatedly at the chain, which remains taut and unyielding only exasperating her further. Her sole reality now is that thin line of light and she cannot reach it; there is a world beyond it but it is one she cannot enter. At last, she succumbs to her exhaustion and closes her eyes. As soon as she loses sight of her goal she falls, exhausted, to the earthen floor, new blood from her fingertips leaking into the damp soil. She lets those drops fall unheeded, there is no way she can know, no way that anyone in Eden can know, that far beneath her, a grotesque creature tastes the blood on the earth and draws that small nourishment, as it draws and feeds on all death in its overgrown garden and smiles.

  Chapter 7:

  “An Audience in Eden”

  “She’s moved since yesterday. That’s good isn’t it?” Dale asks, prodding Lillian’s prone body with a sleek black claw.

  “She’s good enough to show to the master, at least. You can thank me for that,” Kurt says, bustling into the doorway, “but I should think the last thing she wants to see is you.”

  “I don’t care. The last thing I want to do is move while there is still a sun in the sky, but the master will no doubt be impatient and you know he does not sleep as long as the rest of us. In any case, I caught her, I brought her and it’s me who will be presenting her to Pellan.”

  “The master would not approve of such familiarity.”

  “Are you going to tell the fat old slob?” Dale’s obscene face creases into a threatening scowl, framed by plates of dark horn.

  “No, I would not presume, I was merely saying that, the girl would probably be less than happy to see you, it requires a delicate touch, that is if the last day was for anything and you would not want the master to be kept waiting for a damaged prize, I’m sure.”

  “Very well, do what you think needs to be done, but hurry, I kept a low profile last night but he’ll definitely know I’m back by now. I need her ready to go in the next five minutes.”

  “Miss, wake up now.”

  Lillian keeps her eyes shut, as she has done for the last several minutes, petty as it seems, she cannot resist using what little power she has to cause distress. With any luck they might even come to blows, it’s hardly like Kurt can tell Dale that she was talking last night. Her enjoyment of the game evaporates, however, when Kurt leans over her and whispers into her ear.

  “If you keep causing trouble, girl, I’ll see if Al can’t find a way to stir you.”

  Even the thought of what that desiccated second head might have planned for her, causes Lillian to sit up fast enough that she bangs her head against Kurt’s chest. To her disgust the flesh beneath the threadbare cloth of his shirt is just as cold as Dale’s had been but whereas Dale’s skin was taut, Kurt’s is moist and pulpy. She recoils but before she can scurry from beneath him, Kurt grasps her shoulders with lifeless, clammy hands. She feels the skin mash like old chewing tobacco, but beneath the bones tighten in an irresistible grip, holding her like thin clamps.

  “There you are, Dale, gentle touch needed, I think.” Kurt says, leaving unseen welts on Lillian’s shoulder as he drags her onto her feet by main force.

  “With us again are you, beloved?” Dale’s blue eyes move over her, in much the same way that a butcher might examine a prime cut of meat. Lillian retreats as far as the iron grip on her shoulder will allow.

  “Now I warned you, Dale, the girl doesn’t need any more upsets.”

  “My apologies, beloved,” the demon says, seeming to shrink into himself. The corridor fills with the sound of cracking bones and popping joints and within the space of a minute, Dale has shifted into a man of middle height with an open face and a pleasing smile, just a few features remain the same, to remind Lillian of the monstrosity that had stood there only moments before. Dale’s skin is still dark, his teeth have lost none of their sharpness and his groin, despite having lost its chitinous plates, is still devoid of any sexual organs. What is by far the most noticeable feature for Lillian is that he still stares at her with the same luminous blue eyes.

  “Will this suit better, beloved?” The smiling man mocks. “Now will you walk with me or must you be carried?”

  Lillian feels the bile rise in her throat at the thought of her experience under the demon’s skin.

  “I’ll walk,” she manages, ‘into hell if I have to, rather than touch you again!’ she adds privately.

  “Good! In that case we are already late and we are expected.”

  Kurt’s grip loosens on her shoulder and Lillian steps into the passageway.

  While the cell had seemed damp, now the earth squelching between her toes was somehow also slimy and seemed to suck her down with each step. Lillian is panting by the time they reach the fourth twist in the winding passage, so that the effort of lifting her feet from the mud and the lack of oxygen in the smoky torch lit passages, conspire to sap what little strength she has a managed to regain. Only Dale’s constant nudging and the implicit threat that if she doesn’t keep moving, he will carry her keeps her putting one foot in front of the other. The pair follow the passage, as it winds down deeper into the dank earth, for what seems like hours but Lillian knows, can only have been minutes. Every so often she catches a glimpse of eyes watching her, with feral hunger, from the darkness and she guesses, correctly, that Dale and Kurt are two of the less disturbing of Pellan’s twisted offspring.

  The great chamber takes her by surprise. They round a corner, indistinguishable from any other that they have passed and Lillian suddenly finds herself in a huge open chamber, lit not by torches or lanterns but with a strange purple light, that seems to emanate from the walls themselves. At one end of the chamber sits a huge man, immensely fat, with skin pale to the point of transparency. The purulent folds of his body are networked with veins of black and blue in which the blood has long congealed, the rolling skin has more in common with marble than any mortal flesh. Short digits radiating from a palm the size of a ham, grip the arms of a heavily built chair, which creaks ominously beneath Pellan’s extraordinary weight.

  “Siphon, at last, I was beginning to think you had forgotten the business I sent you out on.”

  “No, master.” Dale grovels, bowing low and resuming his normal shape as he does so. Let this overblown bag of meat see how beautiful his child could be and know envy.

  “Don’t you mean, ‘no you old slob’?” The grotesque Elder asks quietly. “Wasn’t that what you called me?”

  “No I…”

  “No you what? Don’t blame Kurt, I have no need of his help,” Pellan adds, easily reading his subordinate’s expression despite the hard plates of horn and bone, “do you think that I do not know everything that transpires in my own domain? Between the two of you, you kept me waiting a whole day and that may yet cost us.”

  “But Kalip and Zacurius could not have acted so fast.
He is nothing; his retainers are merchants and bloated mayors, what threat could he possibly be? Fool’s probably still awaiting her at her father’s estate and as for the Tinker, he’s probably still waiting for the announcement of the wedding.”

  “I do not refer to them, though I am sure they would chastise me for the foolishness of my servants, if they saw how you have dealt with this and how freely you invoke the names of your Elders. Kalip is clever, he will no doubt have already been brought news of the girl’s disappearance by one of his clever little toys. As for Zacurius, I do not know why he has expressed an interest in the Gate, certainly not for any spiritual reasons but who could have deeper pockets than the master of merchants?”

  “I merely said that I do not think such a small delay…”

  “Silence! Do you imagine that, just because I cannot break your bones, you are immune from chastisement?” Pellan rumbles.

  “No but how have I displeased you so? The girl is here, as ordered and in good time.”

  “No, not in good time! Not it good time at all, since you have been followed.”

  “By who? No one came after me, I am sure of it.” Dale protests.

  The many jowls beneath Pellan’s hideous face compress as he moves his head to regard a shadow in the corner of the great chamber. “I don’t know who you are, but I know where you are so you might as well come out. Don’t worry I intend to trade fairly for the girl, so whoever your master is, they need only meet my terms.”

  Lillian starts as the shadows abruptly coalesce into a white haired man, burnt almost brown by the desert sun.

  “I have no master,” Blake states simply.

  “That remains to be seen, Samuel,” Pellan appears to be looking at the Pilgrim with indifference, through eyes like two dark pinpricks in his rotund face. “I had never thought to see you here, Samuel but of course, I have brought one of the few things that could draw you right to the heart of my domain have I not? Do you even have any idea how she can be used to open the Gate?”

  “You have only just confirmed that she can but even if it were not so, I would not let an innocent stand alone against a perversion such as yourself.”

  “How noble! But tell me, am I threatening her? Do I intend to drain her or turn her into one of my picturesque children? There is no need for conflict or do you imagine that you can drain my blood, as you have others’, under the guise of such morality? Do you not fear my malady might be transferred even to the living? Bodies like mine do not fit through the eye of God’s needle.” Pellan chuckles briefly at his own joke.

  “I do not have to taste your blood to spill it.” The Pilgrim answers, calmly.

  “Why spill blood at all? I wait only to hear offers on my prize. I know Zacurius wants her, it was he who first approached me about the matter. I refused his coin then, of course, it’s never good to take a merchant’s first offer. Perhaps Kalip will tempt me with one of his clever creations; the Tinker never ceases to out do himself in matters of craft.”

  The mention of Zacurius conjours a picture of a thin, dark skinned man, who had once seemed close enough to his mistress to raise jealousy in Blake’s heart. Few people ever met Zacurius and fewer still had ever met the legendary Kalip, the name was only vaguely familiar but it was no surprise that these quieter powers were operating behind the scenes of Leedon’s new Union. Tarkis, Harmek and any of the other bloody Elders had had no chance of surviving in this new world. Pellan, Zaurious and Kalip were a different breed, rarely seen, like spiders waiting in their far-flung web, they had become the invisible enemy in the new order. Blake shudders inwardly at how apt the analogy of a spider is for the monster in front of him. Then he tenses as the grotesque’s minion begins to move.

  Leaving his position beside Lillian, Dale begins a slow crab walk towards the intruder. He has not taken two steps, when a heavy cavalry sabre appears in the Pilgrim’s hand. The hiss of steel sounds through the artificial cavern.

  “Warn your dog, Pellan, or are we done speaking?”

  “Wait, Dale! We can afford to be patient a while yet, after all I let you keep me waiting. I’d be interested to know how Samuel became involved in our business so quickly. Tell me, Samuel, is there another party involved in this? And could they pay me well for her return?”

  Dale stops as his master has ordered but he stiffens as he sniffs the air.

  “Master, he is only human,” the dark hunter complains, “why even talk to him?”

  “Because he might know something of interest. Besides you need to make a better nose if you can’t tell that he is more than human! Samuel Blake is as different from his own kind as I am from ours. Do you think that could be it, Samuel? Do we have a kinship?”

  “We are both damned, if that is your meaning.”

  “He knows nothing, master,” Dale says, taking another step, “it would be the work of seconds.”

  “Any more of your insolence and I will let you try! Samuel was Julia’s daylight assassin many years ago and from what I have heard, he has only grown stronger having to survive on his own.”

  “I heard that bitch was dead and there is no daylight to save him here.” Dale complains

  “DO as I say, Siphon and wait! You will have your chance soon enough, I think; from what I’ve heard of Samuel recently, I doubt if there’s any chance of this ending without violence.”

  Pellan sighs, dramatically, causing a ripple through several layers of fat.

  “What about it, Samuel? Can you introduce me to an eager buyer or are you here to dispense your own self-righteous brand of justice.”

  “What price do you want for her? Coin and toys are little use to you here, what do you really want?”

  “Oh, I will take all I can get to sweeten the pot but the answer should really be obvious.”

  “Then stop fencing and tell me what you really hope to get from all this.”

  “Blood, of course! Tribute! The swamp is stretched to its limit sustaining me. My children grow ever more disobedient; it is in their natures and I forgive them but I do not wish them to be hunted down nor to lead enemies back to me. They need more space, I want regular sacrifice and hunting rights for my tribe.”

  “You say the swamp sustains you?” Blake asks, sounding genuinely curious.

  “I am the swamp,” Pellan shifts again on his groaning chair, revealing a toothless mouth, “I no longer need to feed like the others, each death, even sunlight on the plants above us nourishes me.”

  Blake has no illusions as to why the obese Elder has told him this.

  “Then I imagine you will be hard to kill.”

  “Impossible would be closer to the mark. I have grown beyond anything this world understands as a vampire.” The swollen creature gloats, emphasing the warning with a sharp toothed smile.

  “Then it is a pity that I cannot meet your price.”

  “Indeed it is, but then I thought that might be the case. It could not be otherwise unless your old mistress were alive and I have heard nothing to make me think that might be true.”

  The Elder’s pale eyes look into the distance at some long gone memory.

  “Your old mistress was always ready to pay such a price, blood was a special passion for her, she’s even responsible for some of my own development you know. Of course, she was looking for a cure, so she said, but her meddling had unlooked for side effects.”

  While Pellan talks the moist earth in the ceiling behind the Pilgrim quietly parts, to reveal a pale worm-like strand, reminiscent of the tentacles that had bound Lillian on her journey through the marshes. Before Lillian can give the stranger warning, the tendril snakes out, in a whip like motion, its tip lashing towards the oblivious Pilgrim. Time dilates, as the slimy limb comes almost close enough to touch the back of the Pilgrim’s neck. The end of the tentacle bulges as its muscles tense and a long claw launches itself from the tip, an action so fast that it could be missed in a single blink but instead of finding its target and puncturing the Pilgrim’s skin and spine, the pisto
n-like claw thrusts itself through empty air. In the space between heartbeats the sabre sings a single note and hacks though the soft tissue higher up the gruesome limb leaving a long segment writhing on the ground, its retractable claw spasmodically gouging at the soft soil of the chamber’s floor.

  With a bark of rage, Pellan leaves his seat, the heavy body moves faster than Lillian could ever have imagined. As soon as the giant stands the source of the pale limb becomes obvious, thick strands of pale flesh dangle from almost every point of the Elder’s back. Hundreds of strands of varying thickness coil behind the chair and dig deep into the marsh soil, some are no thicker than hair or more accurately, nerves, the means by which he knows what passes in his domain; others are thick and gnarled cables that flex as they drive yet more clawed tentacles through the soft earth and out into the chamber.

  A gun shot echoes from those breached walls, as Blake sends the giant recalling back into his seat with a well-placed slug. Clear liquid and congealed blood explode from the wound as the grotesque Elder keels backwards, smashing his long tortured chair into splinters in his fall. Meanwhile, Dale throws himself towards the intruder, his head sprouting deadly horns and his hands curling with thick black talons. Lillian watches in amazement as the Pilgrim meets the charge head on. At the last possible moment the white haired man grasps either horn and allows his opponent’s momentum to throw him into the air, even as he lands the sabre blade flashes out again, drawing a line of dark blood down Dale’s spine, penetrating the protection of his thick skin.

  Two white tentacles pound into the ground where the Pilgrim had stood only nanoseconds before. Dale’s headlong momentum causes him to plough into the tendrils, drawing a gasp of frustration and pain from Pellan as he painfully tries to raise his bulk from the floor. Lillian notices with satisfaction that the collision has torn one of the claws from the tentacle and left it stuck in the earth. Another shot sounds and half of Dale’s head explodes. Unfazed by his wounds, the shapeshifter wheels about and sends tentacles of his own flying after his attacker.