by Tim Lebbon
“I’m not what you think I am,” the pombero said.
Vince stood. The pombero allowed it, but it was also very clear that this pursuit was over. If Vince made to flee, he’d be brought down again, and harder this time. Any doubts in his attacker’s words were not reflected in his appearance. He was strong, solid, and ready.
“I don’t think you’re anything,” Vince said. “And I’m no threat to you. Not like her.” He nodded down at the man’s leg.
“The backpack.”
“I don’t know—”
The punch was so fast that Vince didn’t see it coming. A powerhouse blow to the face, it crunched his nose and sent him reeling, tripping over his own feet to fall onto his back. His eyes watered, nose cold and filled with white-hot pain.
“I’ll torture you,” the man said.
Vince could only gasp.
“I’ll peel you. Hands first, then arms. I’ll wear your skin as a coat.”
“You don’t know what you’re—”
“Human,” the pombero growled, and in that sound Vince heard no trace of humanity. This was a Kin through and through, whether he’d once been a denier or not.
“Even if Mallian gets that rucksack, it’s no use to him.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know. I lost it when I was first shut in here. I’ve been looking for it ever since.”
“I don’t believe you,” the pombero said. “I always know when a human is lying.”
“How?”
“Their lips move. Now take me to it, or I start peeling.”
Vince considered his options. It didn’t take very long, because there were none. “This way,” he said. They’d reach his cave in ten minutes. In that time, he had to come up with a plan.
* * *
Close to the cave, Vince ran. He put on a sprint, skidded past the narrow cave entrance, and snapped up one of the sharpened sticks he kept tucked against the rock. He’d known the time would come when he had to defend himself, but still it shocked him.
He spun on his heels and crouched down, spear held before him. The pombero—he’d refused to tell Vince his name, whether human or Kin—had come to a standstill on the other side of the cave entrance. He looked angry, his forehead wrinkled into a scowl, his jaw hanging open. His teeth seemed larger than before, sharper, or perhaps it was just that they were on show.
He glanced at the spear, then at the cave.
“Stay away from what’s mine,” Vince said. He tried to sound confident and threatening, but the edge of fear in his voice was obvious.
“Nothing here is yours.” That voice, those words, sent a chill through Vince, and he gripped the spear harder. He’d taken hours sharpening this and several other weapons, rubbing them against a chunk of rough stone to wear down the tips, hardening them in his fire, smoothing a couple of hand grips along the lengths. He’d hoped he would never have to use them. He remembered the feel of a blade in his hand parting skin and flesh, grating against bone, and he was desperate not to experience the same sensation ever again.
The pombero came at him. Vince drew in a sharp breath and held it, bracing his feet and jabbing forward with the spear.
At the last second the man dodged sideways and ran into the cave.
“It’s not in there!” Vince shouted, but he heard the man scrabbling around in the shadows, and he knew that he’d find it. I should have hidden it better. I should have buried the relics, destroyed them.
As he took his first step towards the cave, the pombero emerged carrying the rucksack. It was Gregor the Kin-killer’s, and it had travelled the world growing heavier with parts of the Kin he had murdered and cut apart.
Now this man-Kin had it, and Vince knew who had sent him here, and he wasn’t sure there was anything he could do about it.
“That’s mine!” Vince said, gesturing with the spear.
The man moved faster than he’d ever thought possible. He took a couple of steps and leapt, landing inside the spear’s arc, lashing out with his left fist and connecting with Vince’s cheek.
Vince grunted and staggered back, feeling the spear ripped from his hands as he did so. He stumbled over a rock, pinwheeled his arms—
—if I fall I’ll be a sitting duck, spear through my stomach, pinned to the floor just as surely as Mallian and bleeding into the dust of this fucking place—
—and then fell. He went to roll aside to avoid the inevitable strike from the spear, but then he saw the pombero standing still, staring down at him.
“They’re no use to him,” Vince said.
The pombero shrugged his big shoulders. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Vince looked at the spear in his hand, ready to roll, kick out, fight if it came down towards him.
“You don’t know what he is,” Vince said. “You don’t know—”
“Shut up, human.” The man threw the spear away, looked down at Vince again, then turned and ran. In seconds he was out of sight, and moments later his footfalls echoed away to nothing.
Silence hung over the clearing, and then birdsong came in again, and the scratching of insects and the buzzing of flies filled the air. It was as if the Fold had seen nothing amiss.
Vince stood and retrieved the spear. His heart beat fast, his nose smarted, eyes watered. He was confused. He’d had the thirteen relics since Mallian had attempted to control Grace, and the fourteenth required for the spell—the one that Vince had stolen and hidden away back in the real world—meant the other thirteen were useless.
He had not been able to identify what it was. A small, dark, knotted lump of petrified flesh, it could have been any body part from any dead Kin. He’d buried it deep in the woods, and even if he could get back to his own world he would never, ever find the relic again. It was lost to the world, and lost to Mallian.
Vince shivered. A cool breeze came from nowhere. He imagined he could hear Mallian’s sarcastic laughter on the wind, smell his rotting breath. He’d believed the Nephilim was dying, trapped against the earth of this place by the fairy’s own powerful glamours. He thought the Kin had given up and was resigned to fade away.
But all this time he had been scheming.
* * *
As he approached the glade where Mallian was imprisoned by invisible bonds, a small part of Vince hoped he would see the Nephilim back on his feet. He’d be weak, unsettled, and needing to feed, but a Mallian that had escaped the fairy’s bonds might be a Mallian who could get him home.
It was a terrifying notion. If the Nephilim took control of the fairy, his long-held desires would come to fruition. A return to the real world, exposure of the Kin, Ascent. Myth against military might, Lilou had once said, and her words had seared themselves onto Vince’s mind. He could hardly imagine such a conflict, and the misery and death it could cause.
Yet a selfish part of him—one he could not control, but which he knew was a foolish dream—only wanted to see and hold Angela again. To hell with the rest of the world.
When he reached the glade, Mallian was where he always was. Arms outstretched, legs splayed, he seemed to be asleep. Yet as Vince approached the Nephilim opened his eyes.
“Hunting rabbit for me after all,” he said.
“This is for protection.” Vince carried the spear in one hand, ready to swing it up and forward if anything threatened him. He hadn’t been fast enough back at the cave, but he was more ready now. He stayed back from Mallian, watching for any tricks. The big Nephilim’s limbs had not moved, and he could see the indentations in flesh and skin where the fairy’s invisible bonds still held him tight to the land.
“Protection from me?”
“Or from anything you’d send against me.”
“Me? Send? Why would I do that?”
“Because I foiled your plans for total world domination.”
“You’re the only one who’ll talk to me.”
“Don’t try to make me believe you care about having someone to chat with.”
Mallian sighed, a deep r
attling sound that Vince felt through the ground. He looked around, cautious. He’d have to keep his wits about him. Mallian doesn’t care about me. I’m a human, and he hates humans.
“Anyway, it failed,” Vince said.
“What failed?”
“The pombero you sent to steal from me. I saw it off.”
Mallian’s expression did not change.
“You’re desperate,” Vince said. “Flailing in the dark. Can’t you accept that you’ve lost?”
“I accept nothing,” Mallian said.
Vince froze, then took a couple of steps closer. Mallian’s eyes flickered his way, but he still did not move his head. He looked so weak, so old. Vince had no idea how the Nephilim was even still alive, nor how long Grace would allow him to remain so.
“So you did send—”
“Talk if you want to talk. I’ll admit I enjoy our occasional exchanges. But don’t challenge me, and don’t assume anything about what might or might not have happened to you. Your mind’s too small to understand.”
Vince thought of saying more, but instead he took four steps forward until he was standing close to Mallian’s right shoulder. It was from this position that he sometimes dropped food into the Nephilim’s mouth, always from a height so that he could avoid those teeth should Mallian manage to lift his head from the ground. This time he offered no food.
He pressed the point of the stick against Mallian’s throat and leaned against it.
“I’m not afraid of you,” he said.
“Of course you are,” Mallian growled, and he projected every dark, terrifying aspect of himself into those words. His teeth clacked, his eyes narrowed and reflected all the dreadful things he had done, and his voice might have scared both angels and demons.
Vince stared right back. “I’m really not,” he said. “Not anymore. Even if you were up and walking around, I wouldn’t fear you. Every bad thing that can happen to me has already happened. Pain, torture, death, that would be a mercy.”
“Perhaps I just won’t take you when I return to the world,” Mallian said.
Vince leaned on the spear. It puckered the Nephilim’s skin and he drew in a sharp breath, and held it.
“I could kill you now.”
“It’ll take a lot more than a sliver of wood to kill me.”
Vince eased back and stepped away. Mallian smiled.
“Whatever you’re trying to do won’t work,” Vince said.
“I’m looking at the sky. Relaxing here. Waiting for the darkness to fall. That’s work enough for now.”
Vince left the Nephilim and returned along the river to his cave. Since his first day trapped in the Fold it had felt progressively more alien to him, that he was the odd one here, the being that didn’t belong. The whole landscape was observing him, and hidden away across the meadows and hillsides, and in the forests, were Kin watching his every move.
9
In the darkness he returns, and Mallian welcomes him with a smile.
“It’s a good thing you’ve done,” Mallian says. He can see the rucksack slung over Markus’s left shoulder. “And there’s plenty more to do. I knew you wouldn’t fail me.”
“I’ve had it for a while,” Markus says, dropping the rucksack beside the Nephilim. “I’ve looked in there. I know what some of these things are. Others, I’m not so sure.”
“They’re tools,” Mallian says. “They’re a way out of here.”
“How can bits and pieces of dead things offer a way out of this place?” The pombero sounds like a human, his mind closed and admitting no entry to wonder. Mallian feels the urge to reach out and snap his neck, tear it from his head, and feel the weak mongrel blood spatter across his hand. If he could have, he would have. But if he could do that, he would not have required the half-Kin’s help in the first place.
“There’s so much you don’t know,” Mallian says. “How old are you?”
“Fifty-seven.”
“Just a child. You came here as a denier, and you’ve grown since then, but there’s still so much you don’t understand about the Kin. And for someone like you, so much you’ll never know.”
“I want to learn!” he says. “I’m one of you now, I always have been, and coming here opened my eyes.”
Mallian closes his own eyes in response and breathes in deeply to compose himself. His anger is rising. It is simmering just below the surface—it always has been, because that is the nature of who he was—but he is in no position to submit to his anger now. He has to rule it, rather than the other way around.
“Tell me!” Markus says. “Teach me!”
“I’ll teach you what you need,” Mallian says, opening his eyes again. He sees the same skies, the same view. He is striving to change that, and to do so he has to maintain self-control. Fury has its place, but that is not here, not now.
Soon, though.
“It’s a glamour, both ancient and powerful. I’d do it myself but...” Mallian tenses his arms and legs for the ten thousandth time since being trapped in the Fold.
“Anything to get away from here,” Markus says. “I never thought it would be like this. When I arrived here I was angry and scared. But when the Fold closed I experienced such a sense of... freedom. As if the bonds that had held me to the world—home and wife, children and work, my friends and dreams and aspirations—had all been snipped, and for a while I was flying, and alone. I was soaring. And then she... the first time she...”
“She started eating you.”
“Yes.”
“She’s a monster,” Mallian says.
“A monster.”
Mallian nods, gesturing the pombero closer. “I can put her down.”
“I’m here to help. Only to help.”
“I know. But can you help enough?”
“What do you mean?” Markus kneels by his side, so close that Mallian could lunge and grab his arm or leg in his mouth, if he so desired. But that would be the last resort.
“I need your tongue.”
Markus blinks, then smiles. “Anything. Tell me what to say, where and when to say it. Do I speak it over these?” He picks up the rucksack again, and Mallian is struck with a sudden, rich memory. It’s been happening more and more lately, as if his mind is retreating to better times—memories sharp in sense and sound, so clear and precise that he could almost be there.
Gregor the Kin-killer holds the rucksack, proud of what he has achieved through his long years of hunting and mutilating, and ready to claim his reward. Though growing old in human terms he also retains a childlike innocence, a belief that everything he has been doing has been to elevate himself and make something new. Mallian experiences a brief but surprising pang of guilt, even regret, because he lied to Gregor. All that awaited him was a quick, bloody death at the Nephilim’s hands.
Mallian shakes his head slowly.
“The words of the glamour are ancient and very particular, spoken in a language long lost to the world. It could be that I am the only Kin sane enough to still speak these words. Your human mouth wouldn’t wrap around them.”
The pombero looks surprised, then offended.
“Your young Kin mouth,” Mallian says, correcting himself, outside at least.
“Then... my tongue.”
“Your tongue,” Mallian says.
Markus holds up the rucksack and looks back and forth between it and Mallian.
“Most of them had to die to give what was required,” Mallian says.
“You’re saying I’m lucky.”
“I’m saying you’re honoured. You’ll become legend,” Mallian says.
The pombero drops the rucksack close to Mallian’s side, but not too close. Wide-eyed, he stares the Nephilim up and down, gaze lingering on his arms and legs where they are held close to the ground by the fairy’s invisible glamours.
Then he turns and runs, not once looking back.
Mallian sighs. The long haul, then. He closes his eyes and considers what he might do next.
*
* *
He’s surprised that he fell asleep.
When he wakes the pombero is sitting a few metres away. Close enough to smell, but not so close that Mallian can clasp him, or bite him. The mongrel is cautious, afraid. Yet Mallian hopes that his presence is a good sign, because it could mean that he is thinking things over.
Mallian does not speak. He’s said all that needs to be said. He will not beg. Instead he lies there and looks up at the sky. He wonders whether, if he could extend his vision and travel along its lines, he would eventually meet the gaze of some unknowable alien creature staring back at him. Such a thought would make any human and most Kin feel small and insignificant, but not Mallian. He feels more in charge, more in control. He is at the centre of everything.
“What will I get in return?” Markus asks at last. The pombero has sat in silence for so long that the sun has moved partway across the sky, and the light has changed towards dusk. Mallian can feel a chill on the air. There are no real seasons here, but he senses a cooler spell approaching.
“I’ve told you,” Mallian replies, “you will become legend. Songs will be written about you. Everyone will know your name as the Kin who enabled Ascent to commence.”
“I don’t mean in the future when I’m dead. What fucking use is being talked about when I won’t be there to hear? I mean here and now. I mean today and tomorrow, if your plan works and you get the fairy to open the Fold again. What’s my payment? What’s my reward?”
Fucking humans, Mallian thinks. He blinks slowly, keeping his eyes closed for a few seconds as he reins in the rage. Such selfish thoughts reveal him. He’ll never be Kin.
“My commander,” Mallian says. “My right hand.”
“But I’ll be unable to issue orders.”
“You think a Kin only speaks with its tongue?” It’s a strange question with no real answer, but the pombero does not wish to appear ignorant. He does not question what Mallian has said. His doubts are still obvious, but so is his thirst for reward, and now his desire for power.
