by David Hair
Tupu roared, and came after him.
Wiri landed amidst the glass as it cracked, but it was shatter-proof, and he wasn’t cut as he rolled clear. An instant later Tupu’s massive patu slammed down where his head had been. Wiri came up in a fighting crouch, stepped in and hammered a flurry of blows with the torch and his fist into Tupu’s midriff, driving Tupu back until the giant simply straightened and threw a punch that smacked Wiri against a desk. He spun clear as the desk tilted and its contents slid to the floor. Tupu’s patu lashed out and Wiri swayed away. The club smashed a computer monitor and sent it flying in a spray of shattered perspex and plastic. The giant came on, as Wiri frantically put more desks between them, moving with all his speed. A trail of destruction spread through the office, as Tupu wrecked a path toward him.
I was always faster than you, Tupu.
But he wasn’t stronger. Their final battle at Te Reinga had been unresolved, ended by the actions of others. Tupu had never been defeated, by mortals or immortals. He was a force of Nature. The giant ploughed towards him, bellowing furiously, and all Wiri could do was give ground, hurling obstructions in his path, trying to reach the doors and find a way to escape. He feinted one way, flashed the torch in Tupu’s eyes, then went the other as Tupu bought the dummy. Launching himself at the door, Wiri snatched it open and darted through, the giant warrior a heartbeat behind. He slammed the door shut a moment before a blow crunched into the plywood instead of his face.
The door shook and splintered, as Wiri backed away.
He shouted aloud: ‘EVIE!!! FITZY!!!’
No-one replied. He was in more offices, filled with copiers and filing cabinets. There were more doors, leading towards the public display at the far end. He turned and ran for them, as Tupu battered his way through the splintering door, roaring inchoately.
From above came a piercing, unearthly shriek, a woman’s scream born of terror and hatred, amidst a crashing sound like a thousand windows shattering on stone.
The turn of a friendly card
‘You belong to me now, Granddaughter.’
Not while I’m still breathing.
Kiki’s rotting flesh smell was nauseating and the touch of his hands revolting, as he cupped Evie’s chin and purred into her face. She couldn’t keep him out, his awareness seeping into her skull, ghastly in its intimacy. She fought to keep him out, while clinging to the unknown card she’d drawn in her sweating palm, but she didn’t know how to fight him, was left helplessly flailing as he groped through her brain, pulling out knowledge like strands of thread. He was momentarily alarmed at her conversation with Mat about the Treaty and its re-creation, then he dismissed it as though it were nothing he couldn’t deal with.
‘A pretty plan, but the Treaty will be irrelevant in the end.’ He leered. ‘Why are we in conflict, Granddaughter? You are of my line. You have your father’s jaw and mouth, and your mother’s colouring. The family traits run deep in you, too: power and ambition.’
‘I’m not like you at all,’ she retorted defiantly.
Kiki’s eyes drank her in. ‘Are you not? Look inside yourself, Granddaughter. Self-delusion is weakness. Admit it: you glory in your powers. Who wouldn’t, when they can see the future, and shape it? It is everything to you: your career, your recreation. It consumes every moment of your life.’
It was true. Even when she wasn’t at her stall, reading fortunes for strangers, she was rarely without a deck of cards in her hands, feverishly working at questions about people, and life, and fortune and love. It was like an itch that couldn’t be eased, no matter how she scratched at it.
‘And what about the boy? What about Matiu Douglas? You want him so badly, don’t you? What wouldn’t you do, to win his heart? Yet he turns you away … How does that feel?’
I hate it. It eats at me. I try to pretend I don’t care, but I do … But that’s normal, isn’t it?
Kiki’s face split into an awful smile. ‘If you were the man and he was the woman, wouldn’t you want to pin him down and take what you want? Wouldn’t you want to make him love you?’ He said the word ‘love’ as though it were a sickness.
It was as though he were attuned to her darkest fantasies, as though he had been reading the secret unwritten diary in her head. His laughter shook her very bones.
‘Let’s call it what it is, Granddaughter. Let’s call it — lust.’ His face pressed close to hers, his dusty graveyard stench washing over her. ‘Greed … Ambition … Lies … Lust … How many deadly sins have you committed, Everalda, my dear?’ He pawed at her face as she tried to squirm away. ‘Stop pretending you are what you’re not, girl! Think instead of what you could be, a fine mate for Byron when he descends from on high, immortal and all-powerful. You and I will greet him, riding the taniwha out of chaos, and he will take you as I took Aroha. What a magnificent bloodline you and he could forge.’ His fingers slid over the curve of her breasts, his palm pressing through her clothing as if it wasn’t there. ‘It would be much easier on you if you were willing.’
Her internal scream rose to a crescendo. It fuelled the smallest movement.
She uncovered the card in her hand, praying it might help her …
The Sun.
Brilliant, blazing light burst from the card’s face, right into the tohunga makutu’s eyes. It struck him like a blow, a blaze of radiance that hurled him from her. His face, lit in pain, was etched onto her retina as he recoiled. She slipped down the wall and landed hard on her tailbone, the impact jarring her spine, leaving her in agony. The card fell from numb fingers, crumbled to ash and winked out. The room was plunged back into darkness.
Kiki also fell, howling and clutching at his eyes, rolling away into the darkness. It bought her a few moments, as the pain subsided and a little control returned to her limbs, enough to let her twist onto her belly and crawl. She peeled back her eyepatch, and let her blind eye see.
The sight she gained was not visual. Instead, it revealed trails of possibilities, as different versions of herself crawled off in all directions. The ones that went towards Kiki all died; withered and broken by his makutu. She went the other way, followed a trail of premonitions through the blackness, towards the archway where she had entered the display. Another crash of thunder and lightning revealed an open space, imprinted over the after-image of Kiki’s agonized face. She could still hear him, snarling and cursing in the darkness.
Crawling out into the lobby again, Evie followed a trail of her own image as it went before her. Then she caught up, as all possibilities had become one, her reactions too late to change the future.
A blow smashed down on her back, hammering her face first into the polished-granite floor. Her nose crunched into stone and blood gushed, while her head reeled. She rolled onto her side, dazed. From below she heard something smash, and a male voice bellowing in triumph. She lifted her head, trying desperately to see a way out of this. But even her blind eye could see none.
Kiki was hobbling toward her, clutching his staff in one hand, the other wagging an admonishing finger, as though she had played some childish prank. ‘Unwilling, then. What a pity.’
In a few seconds he was standing over her, shadows gathering in his hands, and all she could do was stare upwards, helpless. No cards in play, too stunned to react.
Then the plate-glass window smashed inwards as a pale blur burst through, soaring through the air and flinging the tohunga away in one motion. The blur became a woman with a narrow white face, close-cropped blonde hair and bared teeth, screaming with all the ferocity of the vengeful dead. Her hands were skeletal, long-nailed and vicious as they gripped Evie’s front and sent her skidding uncontrollably across the slippery floor, away from the fight. Evie struck a wall and lay there, panting and disoriented. The newcomer, clad in prison overalls and caught up in feral hunger, interposed herself between Evie and the tohunga.
‘Get away from my daughter,’ snarled Donna Kyle.
As she spoke, Fitzy crept from the shadows on wobbly legs and bared hi
s teeth, facing the tohunga.
For the first time, Evie saw uncertainty on the tohunga’s face.
With the distant woman’s scream in his ears feeding the worst of his fears, Wiri leapt into motion. He darted toward the door, but a glance behind made him hurl himself sideways instead. A photocopier flew past him and smashed into the wall where he’d have been. An instant later he was on his feet, casting about for another way to go, Tupu almost on him. He darted under a desk, blocked another thrown piece of machinery — a fax machine — with a snatched-up chair, then threw the chair at Tupu. It missed, but bought him the chance to go again for the door, hurdling the thrown copier and hammering into the barrier.
It was locked.
Tupu came at him again, patu again in hand, stepping over the copier and hemming Wiri against the door. With seconds to spare, Wiri turned and aimed a savage kick at the lock, just beneath the handle. Had it not broken, he would have been trapped, but it did break, enough that he could hurl his weight against it, even as the stone club lashed out. It caught his left shoulder, in the meat of his deltoid muscle, the big fleshy one that protected the joint. The muscle absorbed the worst of the blow, but such was the power of it that his whole arm went numb as he was thrown out into the open, beside the lifts again, off-balance and skidding across the stone. Tupu followed, seeming to expand in size as he came, as if the low office ceilings had somehow cramped him. Wiri groaned, his left arm hanging numb and air rushing from his lungs.
I used to be immortal. I used to be like him.
He wasn’t anymore, and his body couldn’t take much more punishment. Superheroes in the movies might be able to hit walls and bounce back up, ready for more, but he could feel the effect of every impact right now. Grazes and bruises from the frantic scramble through the administration section that he’d barely noticed were now stinging or throbbing. He felt like he’d come off a mountain bike at high speed.
Tupu sensed his weakness. Something like a smile crept over his face, and he slowed, savouring the moment. They’d always hated each other, of course: the old champion and the warrior created to supplant him. The brutal primitive and the new man. Only mutual invulnerability, and Puarata’s stern commands, had kept them from tearing each other apart. To Tupu, this moment must have been the fulfilment of his greatest longing.
I refuse to give him the pleasure.
Fitzy was in here somewhere. The girl Everalda, too. He had to get them out if he could. And himself also: he owed it to Kelly and Nikau and the unborn child.
He turned and ran for the stairs, but his body rebelled. As he spun and tried to accelerate, his knee twisted and gave way. Roaring in pain he fell, as Tupu appeared above him, as fresh as if none of the past few minutes had happened — and as savage as a hungry beast.
For a long time the moment seemed to stretch, and then the massive patu descended.
Evie climbed to her knees, reaching inside her pocket for more cards, seeking some wayto help. Donna shielded her, her mouth filling up with teeth. Beside her, Fitzy was changing also, becoming something that was halfway between a dog and a leathery-skinned gargoyle from the walls of a European cathedral. So he really is some kind of fairy creature, Evie noted without surprise.
Kiki lifted his staff, muttering beneath his breath as he confronted Donna. Momentarily forgotten, Evie pulled out the Queen of Swords, the card of her sharp-minded, lonely mother. She sent strength into it by touching it to the tarot card Strength, depicting a woman with a lion, summoned to her other hand as she regained contact with her powers. Donna seemed to sense it, because she stalked forward with greater confidence, Fitzy beside her.
A flurry of half-seen, half-formed images flooded the air between Kiki and Donna, so swift that Evie could barely follow them. Spell and counter-spell, spilling from murmuring lips as the distance between them closed. She saw fire and darkness, spectral shapes of beaked and winged things form and then dissolve back into air. All through the exchange, Donna waded forward, and though she seemed to have the worst of the conflict she pressed onward, her flesh bubbling and blistering as phantom fire burned her. But she was no longer fully human, and mere pain barely slowed her. Fitzy circled to one flank, seeking a way in, then with a snarl began to flow forward.
Kiki backed up and grasped something hung around his neck. He shouted aloud, real alarm in his voice, an instant before Donna and Fitzy would reach him. Darkness bloomed in front of Donna, just as she launched herself at the tohunga.
That darkness became a man, a massive man with a huge stone club in his fist. He seemed momentarily disoriented, and Donna, snarling in fury and surprise, raked him with her clawed nails. Bloody rents opened in his face and chest, and he staggered. Fitzy launched himself at the tohunga. Teeth and claws scrabbled and tore, Kiki shrieking in fury, and something white was torn from around his neck and clattered to the floor, spinning towards Evie.
She shimmied forwards, as Kiki regained his balance and with a gesture hurled Fitzy away over the ledge to the floor below. He vanished, yowling as he plummeted into the darkness, just as Evie’s fist closed about the thing Kiki had dropped: a tiki, made from bone. She looked up, raised the tiki, as the giant warrior snatched Kiki’s staff from the tohunga’s grasp and slammed it through Donna’s chest.
Mother and daughter screamed, as Donna clutched the staff, her mouth and eyes wide. The warrior grunted with relish as he hurled the stricken women to the ground. She thrashed like a speared fish, agony gushing like the blood from her mouth. His eyes locked on Evie, while Donna writhed and screamed away her final seconds. His muscles bunched, and he charged.
Wiri hurled himself through the air, head low and arms spread, striking Tupu in mid-flight, an instant before the giant reached Evie. They rolled together, then Wiri was borne under, like a surfer swept from his feet by a giant breaker. The floor hammered into his already numbed left shoulder, and something cracked. Tupu came up on top, his weight crushing the air from Wiri’s lungs and leaving him winded and unable to breathe. He looked up, his body failing to respond, hope gone as Tupu’s patu reappeared in his fist.
He’d been in this very position a few seconds before, until Tupu was snatched away. For a second he’d been mystified, and then he’d heard the spirit-warrior’s baffled roar in the dark above, and had hurtled up the stairs as fast as he could, his damaged knee ligaments screaming and thoughts of escape not even entering his mind. The stairs were a guessed-at blur in the lightning flashes, then he almost flew across the floor, launching himself like a rugby winger trying to prevent his marker scoring in the corner. He’d had no plan beyond that. A moment more life for Everalda, purchased for no reason other than he would not go down without fighting to the last.
All he’d achieved, he realized as he lay beneath his foe, was the same tableau, on a different floor.
Tupu swung.
But as he did, Everalda smashed something she held into the polished granite floor, with a ferocity beyond anything he’d seen in her. There was a dry, crisp snap, and a flash of vivid light.
Tupu froze, his eyes widening and his mouth going round in dread and agony, then bolts of white light shot from his mouth and eye-sockets. For a split second, the glow-burst inside him made his bones and his organs luminous, shining through transparent skin. Then with a disbelieving, enraged howl, Tupu was gone, his death-cry echoing in the vast space.
For a few seconds, no-one moved. Evie’s eyes — both of them, one glowing faintly, the other dark — locked on his. Then they both spun towards Kiki.
The tohunga makutu backed away, for a moment baffled. Then he muttered a guttural phrase and the shadows rose and swallowed him, sucking him away.
He vanished.
Wiri sucked down a glorious swallow of cold air. He’s fled into Aotearoa … We’re still alive!
He lay on the stone, panting helplessly, every part of his body throbbing. He looked at Evie, met her gaze, her naked relief palpable, and for long moments they just stared at each other, grateful f
or the mere fact that they could.
His eyes went to Donna Kyle. His enemy for so long, and now something else.
She’d stopped struggling, or her body could no longer put up a fight. The staff jutted from her chest as she lay there, clutching it with bloodied hands. She was so still that at first Wiri thought she had already died. Evie crawled to her, tears streaming down her cheeks, luminous and glowing droplets from her blind orb, dark and wet tears from the other.
The witch’s eyes flickered open, and she tried to speak, blood bubbling from her mouth. Her eyes flickered about frantically. ‘Evie …’
‘I’m here, Mother, I’m here,’ the girl whispered. She sounded wretched, and Wiri himself felt torn in two. Although Donna Kyle had been a cold, cruel, murderous creature even before being infected with patupaiarehe blood, she’d come to her daughter’s rescue, selling her own existence to keep her safe. ‘Stay with me, please,’ Evie begged. ‘I need you, Mother.’
Donna gave a faint, almost arch smile. ‘No-one needs me. No-one ever did.’ Evie burst into fresh tears, collapsing against her mother’s pierced chest, shaking. Donna’s expression tightened, to something regretful, resigned. Her head fell sideways, and her eyes met Wiri’s. ‘Oh,’ she breathed. ‘It’s you.’
He put a hand on hers. It was as cold as ice. ‘Donna.’
‘I loved you,’ she told him in a thin, husky voice, blood running from the corner of her mouth. ‘I wanted you so much that it turned to hate.’
‘Be still,’ he told her. ‘Save your strength.’
‘I would have crawled to you on hands and knees, but you knew what kind of beast I really was.’ A convulsion ran through her. ‘We’re all … dying out … Wiremu. All Puarata’s servants … We’re all … going down.’ Her pupils burned into him. ‘You’ll be next. I’ll be waiting for you in Hell.’
The bleak hopelessness in her voice chilled him.
