by Tim Lebbon
“Everything would change,” Angela said. “Every religion, every belief system, it would all be challenged if the Kin really come to the fore. You can’t just throw magic and myth into the world without expecting upheaval. It’ll be chaos.”
“Worse than chaos,” Meloy said. “There’s no way Ascent could be peaceful. Humans don’t work like that. We strike out against what we don’t know and what confuses or scares us. We don’t welcome it. It won’t be chaos, it’ll be war.”
“That’s why he wants Grace,” Lilou said. “With the fairy and her magic on his side, humanity wouldn’t have any choice.”
“Even though she’s made it clear she just wants to vanish into this Fold,” Angela said.
“For a long time that confused me,” Lilou said. “I always thought Mallian was full of grand plans that would never see fruition. Before we knew Mary Rock was holding Grace, finding and joining with her was just a dream. And even after we knew, and were planning to rescue her, I never thought he’d get Grace on his side. But I think Gregor has something to do with that. Gregor and the relics he’s been hunting, stealing from the Kin all these years.”
“For what purpose?” Meloy asked.
“For a spell,” Lilou said. “Mallian still has a touch of magic himself, and his is stronger than most. I think he set Gregor on this course long ago, and the relics he’s gathering will form part of a spell that will control Grace.”
“Gregor’s being duped.”
“Of course. He’s a gullible human. Mallian is using him, and lying to him.”
“But what if the fairy gets into her Fold?” Angela asked.
“Mallian and Gregor will follow. Until she closes it off, it’s still part of this world, though hidden away. There will still be connections, a few narrow, ill-defined routes.”
“Why here?” Meloy asked.
Lilou shrugged. She could offer no answer, and she was glad to see that they accepted her lack of knowledge.
“But if Mallian does manage to draw Grace to him, using whatever spell he might be conceiving… everything will change,” she said. “The whole world as it is now will change. Meloy’s right, it could be catastrophic. Ascent…” She shook her head, feeling the pressure of forbidden knowledge striving for escape. These are only humans, she thought, but at the same time she realized a solid, comforting truth. They were also her friends.
“We cannot allow Mallian to control Grace,” she said. “It’s all happened before.”
“What has?” Angela asked.
“Ascent,” Lilou said. “A form of it, at least. There are stories. It was a long time ago, before I was born, and it didn’t end well for anyone.”
“What about Sammi?” Meloy asked.
“She’s Gregor’s route to Grace,” Angela said, “and Mallian will follow. So tell us the stories, Lilou. Tell us everything you know. Until Vince gets back, we’ve got time.”
Not much, I fear, Lilou thought.
* * *
Vince edged his way behind a large red barn. The area was used to store old and broken farm machinery, and he had to work his way over and around rusting equipment, trying not to make a noise, alert for movement. He’d spied on the farmstead for a couple of minutes before moving in, and made sure no one was home. Or if they were, they were in the big house, and not outside working.
They’ll have heard the sirens, he thought. They’ll be wondering what’s happened, and if they come out to see they might spot me. And like most farmers and a lot of other Americans, they’ll have guns.
The thought froze him to the spot, leaning against a car-sized machine that looked like a cross between a thresher and a baler. He was already trespassing on their land. If they had heard about the incident on the road they’d shoot first and ask questions later. Which made it even more important for him to find a car and leave, quickly and quietly.
Moving around the end of the barn and into a wider yard, he kept another smaller building between him and the main farmhouse. The ground here was scorched grass, dusty and dry, and he trod carefully to avoid making too much noise.
Three vehicles were parked across the yard, two trucks and a big car. The car was a Ford, decades old, so it would be easier to hot-wire. It was also furthest away from the farmhouse. He glanced around, then hurried forward, trying to look as though he belonged here.
Something growled.
Vince stopped, hands in his pockets, acting casual, but he thought of Mallian and the hairy man who had eaten human flesh, and his skin crawled. There was movement to his left. He glanced that way and saw a dog, a scruffy retriever with gray around its snout and a round body testament to a lifetime of treats.
“Good boy,” he said, holding out his hand, palm up. He liked dogs, and generally they liked him. He knew that farm dogs could be very different, workers rather than pets. This one might bite off his hand as soon as look at him.
It growled again, crouching a little on its outstretched front paws.
If he ran, the dog would bark and run after him. It might have been old, but it would still catch him within a few steps. If the barking didn’t bring the farm owner, his own shouts would as the dog attacked him.
“Good boy, good lad. Come and see, eh?” Vince took a risk and went to one knee, hoping to present a less threatening figure.
The dog tilted its head and started panting, its big tongue drooping from one side of its mouth. Then it trotted over to him and sniffed his hand.
Vince tickled the dog beneath the chin and breathed a sigh of relief. It grumbled as he scratched, turning its head and licking at his hand.
“No time to waste here, mate,” he said. “Come on then. You coming?” He stood and walked away, afraid to move too quickly in case the dog thought he was playing and started to bark.
Ten steps from the Ford the dog scampered after him. It stayed by his side as he tried the driver’s door and found it open, reached beneath the steering column. Locating the nest of wires, he prepared to tug them out and rip out the connectors. Then he saw the key fob hanging in the ignition.
“Small mercies,” he said. With one last glance around he climbed into the car. The dog whined. He gave it a last stroke, then closed the door and started the car.
He drove quickly from the yard, looking in the mirrors and ready to duck down if a gun-toting farmer appeared from the house. But no one seemed to have noticed. All he saw in the rearview was the lonely old dog, watching him go with tail raised as though certain that his new friend would return.
* * *
Mallian told me about a previous attempt to rise. It was doomed to fail from the beginning, but he always took hope from the stories. He wasn’t there himself—he knew nothing about it until long after it was all over—but he met kin of Kin who were there, gathered their stories, became a collector of tales. He studied what happened and took from it what he could. He always told me it was like a Kin myth, handed down from old to new, but remembered by those like him who live long, long lives.
I think it’s more like a fairy tale.
It happened during the first of the Crusades. While Palestine was aflame and Jerusalem was under siege, a warrior king came out of the east and marched on the Crusaders with a small but powerful force of his own. His name was Eophorus, and he had been assembling the force for thirteen years.
Eophorus was a centaur, proud and strong, scarred from many conflicts with humans and carrying a dark memory. The love of his life had been staked to the ground and left to die in the sun, called a beast and a monster. He never got over his lover’s death, and his plan to rise up against humanity was as much about revenge as it was pride in being Kin.
The army he led were not all Kin. Eophorus had spent most of those thirteen years forming alliances and making promises. Warriors, mercenaries, lost armies looking for a new war, he brought them all and launched them into the greatest battle being fought at the time. His enemies were everyone else—the Turks, the Crusaders, and all parties allied to both side
s, bound by faith and the promise of riches.
Eophorus knew that if he defeated these warring armies and took Jerusalem for himself, his name would echo around Europe. He would become known the world over, and the city would be the base for the expansion of the new Kin, and their new Time.
At the head of his army marched a fairy.
No one knows her name. Lost in the mists of history, erased by failure. Eophorus brought her like a figurehead, mounted on the grandest horse his army possessed. He was proud and confident, and knew that no power could match the fairy’s magic. When she faced Jerusalem’s bloodstained walls and those wretched soldiers battling there, her smile would rip open the sky, and her whisper would sweep all enemies before it with cleansing fire.
The fairy did not whisper or smile.
All combat paused as Eophorus and his forces approached. For a moment there was disbelief, and the soldiers on both sides must have thought they were confronted by demons. Imagine… an army comprised of many Kin, facing people who only knew of them from stories, or local legends, or fleeting glimpses in distant forests and deserts. It should have been a moment of power and glory. It should have been the moment when the story of Eophorus and his ascent truly began. Instead, defeat was seeded in that silent pause on a vast battlefield.
The fairy fled. Vanished. No one saw her leave, and Eophorus was left at the head of an army without its greatest weapon. Shocked, confused, he did the only thing he could to maintain face. He ordered a charge.
Hooves and feet, wings and claws, two legs and four, human faced beast and the battle commenced.
Thus began three days of fighting and dying. It’s said that with every thrust of his pike and slash of his sword, Eophorus grinned through a mask of human blood, certain that his fairy was working her magic and would appear to take control close to the battle’s end.
The battle ended.
She did not appear.
Eophorus was captured. His surviving troops, Kin and human alike, were massacred, their corpses gathered and burned until their unbelievable faces and bodies were nothing but heat and dust. Then after the Crusaders completed their task and took Jerusalem, Eophorus was staked out in the sun and left to die.
26
The car Vince had stolen had no working air conditioning. With four of them inside, and Ahara sitting between Angela and Meloy in the back seat like some strange haze, they had to keep every window down just to try and stay cool.
“The way he had those people killed…” Angela said. “I had no idea he could be so brutal.”
“You saw him at Mary Rock’s place,” Vince said.
“Yes, but those people were eating the Kin,” she replied. “He hated them.”
“To Mallian, all humans are the same,” Lilou said. “He’ll crush any that get in his way. He wants to kill you, or rule you. There’s no in-between. That’s why he’s so dangerous.”
“Charming friend you have there,” Meloy said.
“He’s been my friend for hundreds of years,” Lilou said, and she sounded so sad that they fell silent.
Angela couldn’t shake the memory of Sammi, hanging there in Mallian’s hand, helpless and seemingly lifeless, her eyes lighting up only when she finally recognized Angela.
She didn’t think I was a murderer, she thought. Sammi must have thought I was there to save her. But I let her down again. I’ve been letting her down all my life.
Now she was in the hands of a human madman, being dragged toward some unknown fate, surrounded by monsters. Angela couldn’t bear to imagine what the girl must be going through.
“We’re going to need help,” she said. “They’ll be following Gregor, making sure he finishes whatever it is Mallian’s started. The Nephilim’s too powerful, especially with those new Kin he has with him. We can’t fight him.”
“Not on our own,” Ahara whispered.
“Can you still follow them?” Angela asked the wisp.
“Moving quickly, but I still have his scent.”
“Maybe I can help,” Meloy said.
“You?”
“I’m more than just a pretty face.”
“How can you help?” Vince asked from the driver’s seat.
“I’ve got contacts,” Meloy said. “From my days as a… you know, relic trader.” As he said it, he looked nervously at Lilou, but she didn’t respond.
“How reliable are they?” Angela asked.
He continued to look uncomfortable. “There’s one woman I dealt with for years. Never met her, but I’m pretty sure she still lives close by. We’re heading into a million acres of forest, and this region’s rich in relics. She also knows…” He didn’t finish.
“Knows what?” Lilou asked.
“She knows that you’re not just artifacts.”
Lilou twisted around in her seat, angry. “You told her?”
“She already knew. She also knows how to keep a secret. So that makes her reliable, right?”
“She might be another Mary Rock,” Lilou said, and there was a hint of menace in her voice. As subtle as it was, it sent a chill down Angela’s spine.
“No,” Meloy said. “She’d never do anything to hurt the Kin.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about her before?” Lilou asked.
“Because of the way you just reacted. I didn’t want to give her away, or put her in danger.”
“Right. You, worried about putting people in danger.”
“I have my loyalties,” Meloy said, voice low. “You know that.”
“How can she help us?” Angela asked.
“She offers protection to Kin,” he said. “She’s built a network. She has people.”
“And she told all this to you?” Angela asked. “A stranger?”
Meloy shrugged. “She hardly told me anything. You know as well as anyone that the information is out there, if you know how to get it and what you’re looking for.”
“What will her allegiances be?” Lilou asked.
“I can’t know that for sure.”
“You have to know before we ask her for help.”
“Ahara,” Angela said. “We can send Ahara, and if the woman proves dangerous, she can just…”
“Wisp away,” Ahara said. Angela had never been certain she could trust the wisp, but the more time she spent with them, the more Angela believed she was on their side.
“Where?” Lilou asked. “How close?” She turned to peer at Meloy. “While we drive there, we need to know everything you know about her.”
Meloy pulled out his phone and accessed the net. “We should probably swap cars, too,” he said. “Just saying.”
“Great,” Vince said. “I’m becoming a professional car thief.”
* * *
Lilou employed her charm to buy a used car from a dealership in a small town called Castanea. They left the stolen one in a sports center parking lot and headed out again.
Every minute they weren’t pursuing Sammi put Angela more on edge, but they had to be ready. Confident of success.
After three hours’ driving, they arrived at the agreed meeting place for Meloy’s contact just before dusk. He had contacted her by phone and filled her in on some of what was happening. Relayed on loudspeaker, to Angela the woman’s concern had sounded genuine. They were placing a lot of trust in a stranger, but they had little choice.
Ahara directed them into the hills of the Susquehannock State Forest in central Pennsylvania, first following well-kept roads, then narrower routes that headed up into dense forests and rugged countryside. Eventually these tapered down to single-lane roads, hacked into the landscape and fighting to retain their grip on the land. Trees edged into them, and branches met in places to form a foliage canopy. Grasses and weeds broke through the surface in a slowmotion assault from below.
“End of the line,” Vince said as they pulled into a large, open parking area. It followed the slope of the hillside, an expanse of gravel like a dull gray scab over a wound in the land. Theirs was the only veh
icle there. He parked and switched off the engine.
As they left the car, the relative quiet was startling. Birdsong was the only sound, a constant background chatter from the heavy forests surrounding the parking lot. Other than that there was nothing—no vehicle noise, no distant rumble of main roads, no sound of humanity. Angela wasn’t used to such peace, but if anything it set her more on edge. “Where is the Fold from here?” she asked Ahara. The wisp was a vague shape in the back seat, and as dusk faded to night, she was becoming more difficult to see. Soon they wouldn’t be able to tell whether she was with them at all.
“The Kin-killer is heading east,” she said. “A different road, a different route, but soon the roads will end for him too.”
“Then everyone’s on foot,” Vince said. He sounded on edge, and his nervousness was contagious. None of them was dressed or equipped for hiking. They had no food or water, no fresh clothing, and although Angela wore boots, they were only meant for casual walking.
“Yeah, either on foot, or on hoof or wing,” Meloy said. “We’ll be slower than most Kin in this landscape.”
“Let’s hope your friend can help with that, if she’s even here.” Angela turned a slow circle, scanning the shadows and watching for movement. Everything indicated that they were alone, yet at any moment she expected the hairy cannibal Jeremiah to burst from the trees ready to beat them to a pulp. They would put up a fight, but how could humans fight such a beast? Never a fan of firearms, she wished more than ever that they had brought some guns.
Something caught her eye. The sun was down, but dusk still hung over the hillsides, feeding deep shadows beneath the trees and silvering the open space. Close to its far end, a shadow parted from the darkness beneath the branches. It stood motionless, so still that Angela doubted it had moved at all.
“There?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Vince said. He stood close to her right, and as the shadow started walking toward them he held her hand.
“Which one of you’s Meloy?” The voice seemed small in such a vast landscape.
