by Tim Lebbon
“The fairy took Sammi,” Vince confirmed, and stating the truth out loud made it awful. He turned to Jay. “How do we get her back? How do we go through there and bring Sammi back?”
Gregor was raging, dashing back and forth where they’d seen the split open and close. He clawed at trees, kicked at the ground, swung his hands at the air.
“How the fuck should I know?” Jay asked. She raised the rifle again and aimed it at Gregor, but her urge to kill him seemed to have abated. “I don’t really know anything,” she said, voice quieter.
Vince rushed across to Gregor. The man was in a panic, unaware of his approach. Vince grabbed him, punched him in the face, hard, and he stumbled and fell back.
“Where were you taking her?” Vince shouted.
Gregor blinked up at him. He wasn’t there.
Vince circled around from the fallen man’s feet and kicked him in the ribs. Breath hushed from him and he rolled onto his side. Vince kicked him between the shoulders, knelt, and started tugging the backpack from his back.
That brought Gregor around to reality. He fought, swinging around to punch Vince in the leg. The fallen man paused, looking in surprise at his hand, as if something should be there.
“Bastard!” Vince hissed, kneeing him in the back and pushing him face down. “Jay! Get that rifle in his face!” She was already there, pressing the gun’s barrel down against Gregor’s cheek. She leaned on the weapon and Gregor groaned as his cheek was forced inward against his teeth.
“It’ll blast your lower jaw off,” Jay said, “but you’ll still be alive. Give me the smallest excuse, you murderous shit.”
Vince dragged the backpack from the man’s back.
“Mine!” Gregor said, a hopeless wail through pain.
“Mine now,” Vince said. “Let’s see what’s so precious to you.” He ripped open the top flap and upended it on the ground.
A dozen wrapped objects tumbled out, maybe more. They varied in size and weight, but all were packaged in fine gray cloth. Vince knew what he might find. Gregor’s reputation, the reason he was here, told him everything he needed to know. It made unwrapping even one of them even harder.
“That’s mine!” Gregor hissed, his words twisted by the rifle pressing into his face.
“None of these are yours,” Vince said. He plucked the cloth away from the object and opened it up to the sunlight, then gasped. It was something that should have never seen light, because it belonged inside a body, not outside.
Jay saw it and pressed her lips together, leaning more weight on the rifle. Gregor groaned and squirmed against the pain.
Vince couldn’t tell exactly what the object was or what it came from, but one thing was obvious. It had come from a living creature. Gregor had killed to acquire it, as he had for every other wrapped item in his bag.
“Where were you going with Sammi?” Vince asked. “Where were you going with this?”
Jay eased back so that the Kin-killer could talk.
“Across the ridge, up on the escarpment,” he said. “Look. Just look.”
Vince left the backpack and its objects, left Jay pressing the rifle against the killer’s face, and climbed a steep outcropping to try and see past the trees. He looked up the slope to a ridge that curved around to the right, forming a lip around a steep-sided ravine.
And he saw.
Whatever it was, it didn’t belong in the world. This had to be the Fold. It had to be where Sammi had been taken.
He jumped down from the rock just as a gunshot rang out from below.
36
As soon as Angela heard the gunshot she knew what it meant.
Ahara glanced back, knowing that her deception had been revealed. She grinned at Angela and Lilou and flitted away to nothing, a point of light quickly swallowed away in the sunlight.
“Never can trust a wisp,” Mallian growled.
“That way,” Thorn the pixie said. He pointed to their left, toward a sheer climb and the forest slopes above.
“The Fold,” Angela said. Ahead of them, higher up at the head of the ravine, the strange area of woodland blurred and pulsed, drawing her in. If Gregor still had Sammi, that was where he’d be taking her.
“What I want is there,” Mallian said, nodding in the direction from which the gunshot had come. “We climb.”
“What if we don’t?” Lilou asked.
Mallian shrugged. “You do, you don’t, it doesn’t matter to me anymore. But you either come with me, or I’ll leave you here dead.”
“You won’t be able to kill me,” the nymph said. It was almost a challenge.
“I think I could,” Mallian said, and Angela believed him. “If I really had to. Her, though? Easily.”
Angela felt ice in her spine when Mallian looked at her and said that. She was nothing in his eyes, just another human, no matter that she’d helped rescue the fairy in London. Humans were beneath him. It was Kin prejudice, and she couldn’t imagine him ever changing. The Nephilim displayed a very human stubbornness.
They headed for the cliff, and as they approached Angela saw the diminutive figure of Thorn dashing back and forth across the shale slopes at the cliff’s base. By the time they reached him he was already climbing a narrow trail he’d found on the cliff face, a natural fault that was scattered with dried animal crap and shreds of fur snagged on the sharp rocky surface.
Angela and Lilou started up, and she glanced behind to see if the Nephilim was following. Maybe once he might have flown, she thought, and not for the first time she wondered at his story, his history. The immediate truth of him was there before her, a tactile thing she could smell, touch, fear. The implications of his existence, the wider story implied, terrified her.
Mallian found the cliff path easy going. Though he was almost twice her height and four times as heavy, he walked the path with an easy grace, clasping onto the cliff with his big hands, bare feet treading in her footsteps. Despite everything he wanted to achieve, and the awful things she had seen him do, he was magnificent.
Thorn reached the cliff top first, dashing back and forth as he waited for them to complete the climb.
Angela felt a heaviness in her guts. Her hands were sweating. She’d never liked heights, and sometimes Vince sent her YouTube links of idiots scaling tall buildings and standing on the tops of cranes or aerial masts, defying gravity and death for a selfie that would make them famous if they fell. She never liked looking, but always had to. It was a similar thrill she felt riding the biggest roller coasters.
By comparison, her climb up the steep slope was terrifying. She faced the rock wall and walked sideways, looking down at her feet and trying not to see past them to the drop into the woods below. They’d only just passed the highest of the trees, but it was still a long enough fall to make jelly of her when she hit the ground.
“I’d catch you,” Mallian said, and the sudden rumble of his voice almost sent her tumbling.
“I didn’t think you cared,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t. If you die here, it’ll be on my terms.”
“Thanks. Nice. Good to know. Prick.”
“You humans are weird.”
Taken by a fit of giggles she carried on climbing, and soon Lilou grabbed her hand and pulled her up from the rough path and onto the cliff top. Laughter might have turned to desperate tears, but Angela bit her lip. Crying wouldn’t help Sammi.
“Through there,” Mallian said, stepping past them and pointing into the trees.
“I don’t hear anything,” Thorn said.
“Nor do I. But I smell blood.”
* * *
“He moved, he went for me, I had to,” the woman said, and although Gregor knew that she was lying he could say nothing, do nothing. The shock and pain was all-consuming. Everything felt wrong. Sickness threatened, but he knew that if he threw up, his body might finish the bullet’s job.
He was on his feet, walking in a tight circle and trying not to touch his face. On the ground where he’d been l
ying a spatter of blood glimmered in sunlight that filtered through the tree canopy. Too much blood. There were other things there too. He didn’t want to see but couldn’t help looking, and he saw teeth, and shards of bone, and gristly shreds of flesh that were already attracting flies.
I’m not dead yet and they’re eating me already, he thought, and he fought back a hysterical shout.
He couldn’t see the damage that had been done to his face, but the expressions of those around him provided the perfect mirror.
Despite her protestations, the woman looked pleased. The man, Vince, stared at him in shock. The centaur had averted his gaze, and the man resting on his back, head against the centaur’s thick neck, had a strange smile on his face, despite his own deformative and still-bleeding injuries.
“Ugh…” Gregor said, and agony pulsed through his face, head, and neck. Everything above his chest felt wrong. When he moved his head swayed back and forth, a weight swinging at its base and driving spears of blazing pain through his scalp and skull. He didn’t think the woman had blown off his lower jaw, but it felt close.
“The gunfire will bring them,” Vince said.
“Good,” the woman said. She turned her back on the man she had shot and aimed the rifle into the forest.
“Just…” Vince said to him, but it was clear he didn’t know what else to say, what advice to offer.
“Uhhh,” Gregor said. He reached up at last and touched the ruin of his face. His fingers found parts of it before they should have. Shreds were hanging too low. They were wet and meaty, warm.
“Something!” Baylor said, and as the horse-man stomped his hooves, Gregor sensed a shape coming at them through the trees. The clarity of his vision shocked him but he grasped onto it, because for a second or two it diverted him from the pain.
A shape, a shadow, a smear of pale light danced from tree to tree as it came closer, shaking leaves and branches, startling birds that had only just landed again following the gunshot.
Jay raised her gun but something knocked it from her grasp, sending her flying through the air as if punched by a train. She hit the ground and rolled, winded, hugging her knees up toward her chest.
The attacker became motionless, a woman or an otter, an otter or a woman. Between blinks she changed from one to the other, before manifesting into a tall, naked woman, sleek and shining, her auburn hair hanging down across her shoulders.
She picked up the dropped gun and bent the barrel into a question mark over her raised leg.
“Mallian is here,” she said. Her voice sounded strained, as if she was more used to growling or howling.
And then Mallian was there, along with the small man who had accompanied him down on the road. Angela and Lilou were there also.
They all looked at Gregor with a mixture of disgust and shock.
And now he’ll save me, Gregor thought. My Mallian, my angel, I’ve done everything he’s asked, and he can steal the blood from the fairy’s second heart and save me. Make me more than I ever was before.
Mallian walked to Gregor and stood before him, huge and proud and devastating in his sheer presence.
“Poor Gregor,” he said. “Where is it?”
Gregor tried to speak but pain throbbed through him, lava in his veins, acid in his muscles. He stumbled and fell, and Mallian’s arm was there to hold him up.
He killed the witch for me to dig out her inner eye. He’ll kill the fairy and squeeze her second heart. For me. Always for me, because he sees how special I can be.
“Where?” Mallian asked, and his big hand squeezed. Too hard. It hurt.
“Uhh!” Gregor grunted, and blood hazed the air before his face.
“It’s here,” Vince said. He held up the backpack, straps retied.
“Ahh,” Mallian said. He lunged forward and snatched the bag away. Then he looked down at Gregor, and Gregor looked up into the face of his angel.
He didn’t see what he had been hoping to see.
There was cruelty in Mallian’s eyes.
“And now your story is done,” the Nephilim said.
Gregor shook his head, feeling his shattered lower jaw swinging on shreds of gristle.
“You’ve done well.”
But my change! Gregor thought. I was always destined to be Kin. It was all for me, for the change, for the spell you promised to cast. I was going to be the bridge between species. He wished he could say these things, but the bullet had stolen his voice.
Mallian reached up with his free hand and closed it around Gregor’s head.
Careful, it hurts, it hurts!
And then he realized that Mallian did not care, and never had. He had only ever cared about himself.
Gregor felt the initial exertion of immense pressure, heard the first crunch of bone, and then he felt and heard no more.
37
He drops the body and turns away, shakes his hand, spattering brains and gore across the ground. He splays his fingers and examines the bloody, jellyfish gloop strung between them.
Human waste, he thinks. Nothing like the Kin he dreamed of becoming. He feels no pity for Gregor, and he never has. Some small gratitude, perhaps. Even respect that the sad, deluded human managed to achieve so much.
“Watch them,” he says. Thorn giggles and skitters around the small group. The kooshdakhaa hangs back, a naked woman in the shadows, a beast in the sun. He has seen her killing before, and knows that she regards humans as even less than he. She has lived in the wild for so long that they intrude into her world, not the other way around. He knows that he can trust her.
Perhaps he should kill them all now. But he is afraid that such violence will urge Lilou to act, to protect those human friends she has made.
He has no wish to harm Lilou.
When his plan achieves fruition, she might appreciate the sense of Ascent. With the fairy in his thrall, the power he wields will be endless. Then she will understand.
“Mallian,” Lilou says, “this isn’t the way.”
“Is there any other?” he asks.
Lilou goes to reply, but she has nothing to say. She understands that she cannot change his mind.
That makes her dangerous.
“Don’t let them follow me,” he says. “We’re almost done. Everything changes today.”
“Everything!” Thorn says.
The kooshdakhaa says nothing, but she, it, smiles.
Mallian turns and lopes away, the rucksack safe in one hand. He hears raised voices behind him as Lilou and the humans appeal to him one last time. Even if he heard the words they would mean nothing. Everything he has lived for over the past few decades has been edging toward this moment. The human Gregor has gathered everything he needs for the spell, and soon the fairy will be under his control.
It doesn’t take him long to climb the hill and reach the escarpment. The entrance to the Fold is there, a shifting haze on reality. A wafting breeze washes over him from that strange phenomenon, and for a moment it startles him. He gasps and breathes in again. The scent inspires such memories.
Then with one great step he passes out of the human world, and into another.
* * *
With a crushing sense of failure, Angela watched Mallian leave. She had failed Sammi, and all the people who would suffer if Ascent came to pass. She had achieved nothing by coming here, dragging Vince with her, apart from getting people killed. It was becoming the story of her life.
As the Nephilim disappeared uphill into the forest, Thorn circled them warily, and the woman-beast hung back in the trees ready to strike. Though sometimes she was a naked woman, she was one of the least human-looking Kin Angela had ever seen. It was as much about her aura as her appearance. She exuded strangeness.
Vince sat down and leaned back against a tree. Angela was shocked at his apparent submission, but then she saw the look in his eyes, and knew. He was feigning it to try and gain an advantage. He didn’t have to say anything. It reminded her of how well they knew each other. Not only did they s
ometimes finish each other’s sentences, they shared the same thoughts.
We look as though we’ve given in and they’ll lower their guard.
She walked to Baylor, who still carried the injured Meloy on his back.
“How you feeling?” she asked.
“Like Godzilla stood on me,” Meloy said, but he was sitting up. He was astride Baylor, leaning against the centaur’s thick neck and holding onto his flowing mane. Meloy had bled onto the Kin’s pelt. The blood was drying now.
“We’ll get help,” Angela said. “A hospital. Or something.” It sounded ridiculous and she knew it. They were miles from anywhere, and unless they airlifted him out he’d likely never survive a journey through the forest.
Meloy smiled. Baylor shifted, and it turned into a grimace.
“Watching you!” Thorn said. “We’re watching, both of us.”
Angela glanced back at Vince. He was leaning against the tree, eyes closed. Lilou was sitting beside him now, and she caught Angela’s eye. She was in on their charade. She knew this couldn’t be the end of it. But how to fight back when Thorn and the woman were there?
“I’ll help,” Meloy whispered. “I’ve got a surprise or two in me yet.” He spoke as if something was broken within him, but the passion in his voice was palpable. Everything he’d been was changed, everything he had become was determined to help the Kin. Even injured like this he was a formidable man.
“What about Jay?” Baylor asked.
“I don’t think she’s good,” Angela said. Jay was sitting up a little way from them, hugging herself around the stomach. She didn’t seem able to move, nor was she paying them any attention. She stared at her feet as if willing them to carry her away from here.
“What do we do?” Angela asked.
“We wait,” Baylor said.
“What?”
“Not long. Don’t worry. I suspect a minute, maybe less.”
“I don’t—”
“The more we talk about it,” the man-horse said, “the more likely they’ll hear. Go and sit with your husband. Be ready.”
“They’re not married,” Meloy said, and Angela held back a laugh. It was such a mundane comment, something that held no relevance at all. Turning away, she hoped it wasn’t the last thing she would ever hear Meloy say.
