City Of Ruin

by Mark Charan Newton

‘Maybe this area is rougher than we thought,’ Beami said uneasily.

  He moved to the bed, slung the quiver over his shoulder, picked up his bow, then checked there was still a backup knife in his boot. He handed his short-sword to Beami. Wordlessly she accepted it and nodded, before turning to the corner, to her leather satchel full of relics.

  There was an immense thud.

  ‘The door of the building,’ Beami gasped.

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s trying to get in,’ Lupus confirmed. ‘Shit.’

  The door was struck again, and she heard it give way.

  Beami pulled out a set of Logi chains from her satchel, and began to swirl the ultra-light metal artefact around until it began to emit light, and soon she was carving out shapes that separated from nothingness, bordered with a bright lilac light at first, but then becoming more solid.

  A lumbering noise approaching up the stairs.

  Lupus nocked an arrow and aimed it at the doorway, stepping instinctively in front of Beami.

  Oh, please. Men!

  Something threw its full weight against the door, making the wood shudder, and immediately it tried again, sending a thick splinter to cough back and rattle around their feet. Through the gap exposed, something with fur could be seen moving.

  Lupus loosed an arrow.

  It screamed – no, howled. He nocked another, fired, nocked again, fired and eventually whatever it was moved away, leaving a deep silence.

  Then the door burst completely as the creature came exploding through it, and three grotesque heads were biting at everything, saliva slopping to the floor in pools. Blood seeped from the arrow wounds, but they didn’t seem to impede the thing’s movements.

  ‘Get out of the way,’ Beami ordered, but Lupus ignored her.

  He drew his blade and assumed a fighting stance, crouching and ready, relaxing back his vision to concentrate on all three heads, and when two of them attacked simultaneously he sliced his weapon horizontally, cutting one in the cheek, then ducked beneath the other set of jaws and punched one of the creature’s throats. It reeled back, winded.

  Using the Logi, Beami whipped and cracked three bright liquid-lines out to one side of Lupus, where they slapped into the monster repeatedly, leaving a staggered row of burning light-scars in its hide.

  The floorboards almost buckled as it collapsed on them, dust motes drifting around it. There was now an overwhelming stillness.

  ‘I think I’m going to lose my deposit on this place,’ Beami said eventually.

  Lupus stared breathlessly at his lover, at the thin metal rods in each of her hands, and the two trailing chains that had now lost their light. ‘What the hell did you do to it?’

  ‘These things shoot concentrated energy, distilled elements – a bit like lightning. I just stunned the brute, that’s all.’

  ‘Couldn’t you put enough whatever energy in it to kill the damn thing?’

  ‘No, it came after us specifically, so I wanted to get a better look at it. You can slash its throats afterwards if you want. Anyway, do it outside. I’ve only just got everything unpacked here and I’m pissed off that I already need to clean up.’

  Together they extended the heap of fallen body out till it nearly covered the length of the room. The light-line wounds were still glowing, between the parted fur, and there was a stench of burnt flesh as if it had been branded with a red-hot iron. This was clearly some form of dog, although Beami observed that no cultist had produced this. It was too perfect a specimen – cultists could only splice, creating awkward and macabre hybrids. She felt sorry for it, realizing it wasn’t its fault that it had been sent here to hunt them down. The thing began to regain consciousness slowly, and Lupus was forced to kill it.

  With all three of its throats slit, it bled slowly to death.

  *

  And in a distant, unremarkable house, far from the scene of the carnage, an old woman sat staring at her runes, screeching a torrent of abuse against the beast’s destroyers.

  ‘Fat lot of good your magic is, if the damn thing’s dead,’ Malum complained.

  ‘She is evil, with her relics!’

  ‘I suppose I’ll get the lads to hunt her down after all, if there’s no quicker option.’

  ‘How will you know where to find her? Magic is the best—’

  ‘You’ve tried and failed, so leave this to my lot.’

  ‘You didn’t see what I saw, through its eyes!’

  ‘And what, dare I ask, did you see?’ As if it could possibly be anything either natural or sane.

  ‘Another man. A soldier. You have seen him, maybe? One of the Night Guard.’

  He stormed out of the room. Fuck this, it was bad enough being abandoned by your wife, but to find she was running around with another man . . . He had never felt so humiliated. They both had to die, immediately.

  He grabbed the relic he’d given to the witch, determined to sell all Beami’s crap in the market tomorrow.

  ‘He looks like a wolf!’ the witch wailed after him, as he strode out into the cold. Her words followed him down the street, either as an echo, or in his head, he couldn’t tell which.

  But on his way back, he did something unexpected. With the relic – that extension of Beami – in his hands, he meandered along the lanes where he had once gone walking with her. He headed past the boarded-up stores where he had bought her presents, past bars and bistros where they had shared intimate conversations. Whenever one of his gang members approached, he ignored them, keeping his head down and his hands in his pockets, and tried to identify the moment where he had let things reach the point of no return.

  Most of all he was bothered at why he had become so concerned over someone else. How was it that he, a leader of men, a half-vampyr, who could get anything he wanted, now found himself with his wife walking out of his life, and with only emptiness in her place?

  Tonight he was a hollow man.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Jeryd drank tea, chatted with the waitress as she came to the end of her shift, but mostly he made some ephemeral notes that quickly became doodles. He watched her talking to another old rumel, and wondered if this was all she ever had to do, and if it got boring.

  He sat waiting at a table by the window of the bistro, biding his time and thinking about all the things he had seen so far in this intense city.

  The street door opened, a little bell rang, and Jeryd peeked up, still fractionally on edge. As if a giant spider would come waltzing in through the front door . . .

  Bellis, Abaris and Ramon strolled in. ‘Come along with us, Jeryd,’ Bellis called out. ‘Tonight, we converse in higher places.’

  ‘Don’t you fancy a drink?’

  Bellis patted the inside of her tweeds. ‘My own supply. But something warming first, to help it along my system, would be delightful.’

  *

  Up on the flat roof, Jeryd handed over his gift of maps one by one in the darkness, so Ramon and Abaris had to tilt them this way and that to catch some of the dim light from one of the street lamps below. They whispered swift and private matters, which merely heightened Jeryd’s curiosity as to what hell they were up to in this city. After some curt discussion, each map was pocketed.

  The completion of the exchange prompted Bellis into motion, and she bounded forward keenly to produce her relic. ‘Now then, what we have here is a wonderful device designed to attract spiders.’

  ‘That it?’ If Jeryd was being honest, it didn’t look like much, merely a narrow obsidian rod with a glowing bulb at the top. It seemed even less impressive given that the weather had turned even more sour, and he was freezing.

  ‘Of course it is, you silly man,’ Bellis added. ‘Its structure is made from tektites, a mineral originating from another world – ha, we always say that, don’t we? – since it’s found mostly in meteorites, but whatever the stuff contains, it has tested superbly in sucking up dozens of our little arachnid friends. We’ve augmented – you know the word? – augmented the frequencies of the inn
er circuitry and so, according to the theory, we should have this giant arachnid of yours bagged in no time.’

  ‘And when it gets here?’ Jeryd enquired.

  ‘Ah yes, the boys have been working on that. Ramon?’

  The sinister-looking bald man leaned down to pick up a small bag. From it he retrieved a small brass tripod, which he then lowered to the rooftop, several feet away.

  ‘Best move back,’ Abaris warned, arms wide, steering them back another several feet at least. He pulled an ordinary stick from his pocket, and threw it in the direction of the tripod.

  The relic remained inert, not reacting.

  ‘It wasn’t actually meant to do anything because it was too small,’ Bellis whispered to Jeryd. ‘Now, watch this.’

  Ramon moved towards the relic, hands held behind his back. As soon as he was within two feet, light stuttered into being, aggregating into the glowing bars of a cage. Light continued to spit and stutter, and Ramon was totally imprisoned within it. Grinning, he made a flamboyant bow so that the light reflected off his bald head.

  ‘So you see,’ Bellis explained, ‘when your spider arrives, it will be catered for very well indeed.’

  ‘You lot really are a bunch of wise old geniuses, you realize,’ Jeryd said.

  ‘It takes one individual of wisdom to notice another,’ Bellis declared.

  ‘Nah, I’ve done nothing yet,’ Jeryd protested. ‘I won’t consider myself as having achieved a single thing until that monster is locked away.’ He waited as the cage was deactivated, the light collapsing into blackness, and there was a noticeable absence, some void left by the relic’s trickery, even the faint smell of burning. Jeryd was mightily impressed.

  ‘Let’s give it a go then,’ Bellis said, and the others set up the two devices next to each other on the rooftop. And they waited, shivering, in the cold winds.

  Jeryd regarded the cityscape in anticipation, wondering how his own deepest fears would manifest after his experiences with Bellis’s orb.

  *

  Nanzi felt something deep within, a summoning in her very core. She shuddered, leapt up from her bed, glanced furtively around the room. The black cat peeked up in surprise from the foot of the bed.

  ‘Is everything all right, my love?’ Voland asked, glancing up from his book as he lay beside her.

  ‘I don’t feel all that well. I might make a drink and take some fresh air outside.’

  ‘Would you like me to get it for you?’

  ‘No, I’ll go.’ She pushed aside the sheets and clambered off the bed. Her spider appendages rooted out her skirt and boots, and within the minute she was heading downstairs. At the front door, she rested her hand on the frame, staring across the street, hoping to find something. The darkened buildings were defined by starlight, while a couple of tramps huddled by a small pit fire.

  What was this strange sensation that had seduced her out here? It was like a thirst. All her emotions had condensed. A need for some long-lost lover. A lament for a dead friend. But this was rare – this was calling for her . . . other state. She felt intoxicated by her urges and, within the minute, she began to collapse inwards, then fold out again into her spider form.

  With one limb she pulled the door shut, then crawled up along the surface of the wall to the roof of the abattoir. There, she could read the world in a different manner, decipher these gentle vibrations of activity. The city always appeared thronging to her in this form, but some way in the distance she could sense something so alluring, so delicious, so essential that she could not prevent herself from scuttling as quickly as she could across the deserted nightscape.

  *

  Jeryd watched in slack-jawed awe as hundreds of tiny spiders bled from the city’s architecture.

  Out of habit he felt the need to jump on something to avoid them, but there was no way of escape up here. And this time . . . he felt no fear.

  Black streams of arachnids centred on the Grey Hairs’ relic, countless trickles and trails of tiny legs and bulbous torsos. As he gazed across the nearby rooftops he could see their massed progress gliding across the slick slate-crowned buildings, and they were coming from all directions. By now Jeryd had retreated well out of the way for fear of being smothered by them, but he did not feel anything like as petrified as he used to be.

  Jeryd’s nerves jittered from simply being present in this intensely surreal scene, from being surrounded by what seemed like all of the spiders in the Boreal Archipelago. Creatures that normally inhabited the dead regions of the city were gathering in one place – but he did not tremble, and felt only a fraction of that familiar tightness in his heart. All the time, though, he kept a lookout for the one monster, stealing glances between the buildings and wherever the moonlight failed to penetrate.

  He untucked a blade from his boot and clutched it uncertainly; of what possible use could it be against this immense arachnid abomination? The Grey Hairs, by contrast, seemed thoroughly relaxed, as they slouched about in casual postures. Bellis turned to focus on him now and then with her hands resting on her hips. Jeryd simply nodded the answer for her unspoken question, Are you all right?

  Ramon was sitting at the edge of the roof, while Abaris seemed preoccupied with the workings of some other relic. It was as if they found themselves in crazy situations like this every day of their lives.

  Bellis suddenly called out, ‘Good heavens, I think it’s coming!’

  Jeryd clambered to her side, his vision following the direction she was pointing in. About forty feet away, to the east, a large shape could be seen lumbering closer, moving with a fluid gait across and down in between the architecture, now and then spitting out a slick gossamer rope of silk to aid its progress.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jeryd breathed. This was all right in theory, but now the thing was actually on its way, he had no idea how to cope with it.

  ‘Aye, I’ll second that,’ Abaris murmured, now beside them.

  They watched it come closer, accruing in size all the time. People peering out of windows began to scream, and in the streets below others avoided its path. It almost seemed drunk, staggering in and out of vision with ragged movements. The creature was mammoth, each leg probably longer than Jeryd himself, yet it hauled its bulk onto the stone parapet of their rooftop with a series of precise clicks, as thousands of its miniature kin swarmed around and underneath.

  With its myriad eyes, the monster observed the glow of the relic tentatively, but it simply could not resist its allure; a distilled, love-hate tension generated between them. It could not counter this enchantment. Very slowly, it edged closer, lowering its bulbous black head, and levering its thorax and abdomen forward. Then it stretched out its two front legs like a dog, tilting back up on the four hind ones.

  There, it quivered ecstatically.

  Light suddenly snapped itself free from the relic, lashing up to form a huge cage and trapped the spider within. The creature threw itself at the bars of light only to be stung savagely into retreat. It lunged repeatedly at its light-restraints, all the while emitting high-pitched screeches. Back and forth, the stinging inflicted by the bars was clearly audible, and after several attempts, the spider cowered into submission, its body rising and falling in spasms.

  ‘Splendid!’ Bellis declared, clapping her hands. ‘It was that simple, eh, Jeryd?’ The glow of the lure relic ceased, the torrent of smaller spiders hesitated, then began to move of their own volition, suddenly a million individuals once again. For a moment they milled about uncertainly, and it seemed an age until they had located tiny exits in the surrounding buildings.

  Approaching the cage, Jeryd stood and gawked at the beast contained within. He’d expected to be far more frightened than he now felt. Was this the thing that was snatching people off the streets? What the hell kind of case was he dealing with here? He was long used to dealing with monsters of the human or rumel kind, but this . . . this was something else completely.

  The three Grey Hair cultists approached from behind and studi
ed the monstrosity alongside him. Bellis had even begun making sketches in a notebook, while the others inspected it from all angles, Abaris muttering anatomical features and cladistic theory out loud.

  It seemed to possess innumerable eyes, all of them reflecting the light radiated by the cage. All staring back at him. Examining him. And whether or not this was his paranoia, he couldn’t tell, but it certainly seemed as if the giant spider knew exactly who Jeryd was.

  *

  Voland leapt out of bed as he heard the Phonoi make a screecownstairs.

  Where was Nanzi? In a panic, and sensing something wasn’t right, he scampered around the room hurriedly dressing himself. He darted away from the bedroom, still bleary-eyed, and called out for her. There was no reply. He stumbled downstairs.

  There was no sign of her throughout the entire house in fact, so he hastened even deeper through the darkness, feeling his way along the walls to the abattoir with its familiar stench of death. He was met only with silence.

  ‘Nanzi?!’ he shouted urgently. ‘Nanzi, are you there?’

  ‘She’s not here,’ one of the Phonoi replied. It quivered in and out of ghost-form, first the face of a screaming child, then an old woman, then blackness.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ another chimed. ‘We know she’s out. We sense her . . .’

  ‘She’s right across the city.’

  ‘We sense she’s trapped somewhere.’

  In the stillness of the room the Phonoi began to glow uniformly. They shifted through the air, as they always did, drifting about in sharp bursts only to skim away into nothing at all. He wished they would stay still so he could establish some clear answers.

  ‘Where is she?’ Voland pleaded.

  ‘Trapped is all we know,’ the Phonoi declared. ‘We simply feel it.’

  ‘I need to get to her,’ Voland ordered. ‘Help me, please.’

  ‘Anything for Doctor Voland,’ they called out soothingly. ‘Yes, anything at all.’

  After a brief silence, a number of them took form and became one mass, then began to circle the room in rapid motion. They tightened their circuit around Voland, a strangling wind that settled underneath him, and around his waist. He felt a sudden lightness, and realized he was being lifted into the air then moved backward along the route he had taken to the slaughterhouse.