Axrillax picked up the car separating them and threw it aside. It smashed into the restaurant building. Julian couldn’t hear the screams from inside over the clashing sound the daemon’s flesh made.
He thrust out his gauntlet and a burst of energy bounced off Axrillax’s automotive armour.
The daemon’s next blow caught his shoulder and Julian tumbled behind another car. His whole arm went dead. He couldn’t lift the glove. He couldn’t will it to fire. He staggered around a tall shrub as Axrillax reduced another car to metal and plastic shrapnel.
Sweat ran down his face and his breath came in ragged gasps. He tried to think. What’s left?
Jacob took the empty vial out of the syringe, tucked both back in their leather case and tossed it on the passenger seat. He got out of his car, which he’d parked over near the entrance road into the service station. Hands in the pockets of his trousers, he prepared to watch Rob and Julian die.
The Bainbridge cargo could wait until after that.
A vampire was at his side so fast he didn’t have time to react. Alice had her hand at his throat, her nails pressing lightly to his skin. Jacob breathed carefully.
She let her hand fall away. “I thought you were more cautious.”
Jacob rubbed his throat. “You and yours were the vampires that hit them earlier tonight? You do look battered and filthy.”
Her eyes were bright in the moonlight, though he couldn’t tell what emotion ruled her. “You know about that?”
“I have good sources of information, remember?”
She tilted her head towards the car park. Rob’s bestial voice roared with rage and pain. Axrillax tore vehicles apart with thunderous explosions. The daemon’s anger hummed through every nerve in Jacob’s body.
“Can you win?” she asked.
“You bet your cold little arse I can.” His grin was knowing. “But do you want me to?”
She hissed at him, but that only made him grin harder.
Rob couldn’t touch her. Miss Koh was as fast as a snake. Her fists and feet were pounding his flesh into mincemeat. He had lost count of the number of cars and trucks he’d bounced off. His head had gone through windows twice and glass had torn his bruised muzzle and ringing ears.
He lashed his claws across a car tyre just as she landed on the car. The small shift in the level of the car bonnet was enough to throw her, ever so slightly. Rob grabbed her ankle, swung her through the air and smashed her against the side of a van.
The impact didn’t slow her at all. She bent double in mid-air, grabbed and twisted his wrist and, when she was free, kicked him in the knee before even reaching the ground. Rob fell back against a car and took another kick to the ribs.
He got angrier.
Rob felt a rush go through him, a big jolt of adrenalin, like when he changed but as intense as the first time. He felt a sharp pain in every thread of his being that flashed him back to that first night, locked in a cage in an isolated house in Outback Australia.
And then he was different. He felt lighter and quicker. His sense of smell dimmed a little but his vision sharpened. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fur on his arm was now pale and dappled with black spots.
Miss Koh barely hesitated.
Rob dodged her next kick, ducked the following spinning back-kick and blocked a fist aimed at his solar plexus. Frustration creased Miss Koh’s brow. She lashed out at him, strike after strike, and not a single blow landed.
It wasn’t that she appeared to move slower. It was more like her every move was telegraphed. He knew where her fists and feet were going to be and he made himself not there.
She let loose a bubbling scream and struck out wildly. Rob dodged, saw his opening and extended his claws. With an easy flick of his arm, he ripped her throat out.
Miss Koh staggered. She clutched her neck and black fluid oozed over her fingers. She still tried to attack him, but Rob stepped out of her way with disdainful ease.
She collapsed to the ground next to a grey land rover, convulsed and then was still.
Rob was about to go find Julian when he saw dark green blotches spreading across her skin. Curiosity drew him closer. Though not what it was before, his sense of smell was still very good. What he sensed was putrefaction. What he saw was fungal decay.
Her body jerked and a cloud of spores spurted across Rob’s chest.
Fibrous dark green spread over his torso. It wriggled roots into his skin, trying to leech his body of vitality. He raked his claws through it but it kept growing.
He saw the flickering daemon nearby. Without even thinking, he sprinted at it.
Julian ran for cover as Axrillax picked up the car he’d been hiding behind. He heard the vehicle’s car alarm go off, its sound Doppler-shifting away as the daemon threw it and cutting off completely in a crash of metal and glass.
Axrillax had shrugged off what little Julian could do. He had briefly considered trying to find Jacob Mandellan, who had to be close, but he had no idea which way to go and lacked the strength to protect himself while he searched.
He circled around, sticking to cover when he could, trying to punch life back into his dead left arm, doing his best to ignore the trembling in his legs. He drew closer to the battered Odd’s Transport van.
Axrillax wrenched a small tree out of a strip of garden at the end of a row of parking spaces. He threw it like a javelin. Julian ducked, but a branch hit him in the lower back and he sprawled on the ground. He scrambled upwards, shutting out pain and exhaustion. Axrillax’s hand slammed against the ground where he’d lain and a bolt of electricity hit him in the leg.
Julian almost fell again. He managed to hobble to the side of the van. The cold metal was half a heartbeat’s relief against his sweat-slick skin.
In one long stride, Axrillax came to stand in front of Julian, towering over him. One crackling hand opened and swung down towards him.
The hand paused.
Come on, Julian thought. Come on you stupid thing. Grab me!
At his back, within the van, Julian could feel the black whirlpool of the Bainbridge cargo.
Axrillax drew its hand back. It stared at him with vacant eyes, then reached down and picked up the small tree it had hit him with. It raised it like a club.
Julian tried to think of something else to attempt, but he knew he was dead. He tried to lift his arm. Pins and needles shot from his wrist to his shoulder. Energy flickered in his palm. It wasn’t enough.
He saw a pale blur, too big to be a man, what had to be Rob but was wrong in some way. Rob threw himself at Axrillax’s leg, sank his claws into its electro-flesh and bit hard and deep into what, on a human, would have been the calf muscle.
Axrillax shrieked.
Electricity blasted Rob. He held on for a few seconds, then went flying across the car park, trailing smoke.
The demon stumbled on its ripped-up leg. It tried to find this new foe, all its weight on one leg.
Julian bared his teeth, threw all his will into raising his arm and sent a blast of energy into the back of Axrillax’s knee.
The daemon fell backwards.
Julian dived out of the way. Lying on his back, Julian tried to cover himself with his arms and saw Axrillax land on the van.
There was a sound like a transformer overloading.
Axrillax, with one last cry, was sucked inside the van. The metal that had served as its armour clanged into the side and top of the vehicle and was held there, magnetised.
Julian limped over to Rob.
He had changed back into his human shape. He was burned across his torso, arms and face and he was barely breathing. The last of some charred substance on what remained of Rob’s chest turned to smoke as Julian watched. He fell to his knees beside Rob and tried to find a pulse in his scorched neck.
There was a heartbeat, but irregular.
It took more than that to kill a werewolf. Rob would recover, slowly and painfully, but they didn’t have that kind of time. Jacob could still be ou
t there and he always had more than one plan.
Julian knew he didn’t have much of a gift for healing. He could manage enough battlefield triage to keep himself or another alive until they reached someone with real talent in that area. But he was too tired to manage even that and Rob needed much more.
He tried to think. He scanned the car park, the smashed and burning cars and the dark service station where people hid from the monsters battling outside.
He looked up.
The moon rode serenely on a bed of thin clouds. Its light cast a pearly radiance across the car park battlefield. Electricity was too much for him, but he thought he could still handle light.
Julian reached up towards the moon.
Alice bent down next to Jacob and peeled back one of his eyelids. His eyes rolled in their sockets. He was breathing and his heart was beating. The death of his daemon, if death was what had happened to it, had fed back and left him catatonic.
It would be easy to pierce his flesh and drink his blood. The thirst rose in her, urgent, demanding after the night’s excursions and her injuries from hitting that road sign.
But she had promised, long ago, that she never would.
Across the car park Julian was still on his feet, though not by much to look at him. He knelt down beside his friend, the one Alice had seen with her own eyes was not merely a werewolf. She had not thought she was wrong, but it was nice to be proven right.
Julian had claimed not to have a talent for healing. Had he discovered one in the four years he’d been missing?
But then he raised his hand to the night and pulled the moon down.
Alice’s mouth fell open. Pale light, brighter than daylight to her vampire eyes, streamed down from the night. It shone like a diamond in the palm of his hand, spiralled around him and flowed into Robert Cromwell.
Alice smiled in girlish wonder.
Chapter 22 – Rob and Julian, Friday
After speaking to his cousin Jacob from Dusseldorf airport, Richard – never Rich – Mandellan followed the directions of the seer Catherine to Paris. In a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, he found a venture in disarray.
He talked his way past the guards on the gate with the help of a little flash of light from the green gemstone on his warlock’s ring. In a small, dusty office from which he couldn’t see what was happening in the rest of the warehouse, he was interrogated by a man named Bastien.
Richard had heard of Bastien, always as someone unconventional and brilliant. He was a portly, middle-aged man in a turtle-neck sweater, who leaned towards Richard when speaking to him. A tall blonde woman in three-inch heels followed Bastien into the room and took up station behind him. Now and then during Richard’s interrogation, she tapped at the tablet computer in the crook of her arm.
Bastien had heard of Richard’s family. As the Mandellans were the most prominent of the British magician families, Richard would have been surprised if he had not. Bastien perched on the corner of the office’s wooden desk. “And you say a seer sent you to me?”
“A woman named Catherine, in Cardiff,” Richard said in perfect French. He sat in a cheap plastic chair with metal legs. “Wales,” he added. Sometimes these continental types had only a vague idea of British geography.
Bastien drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk. “Tell me, Richard, how quickly could you source four mystics?”
At last, Richard thought. The business opportunity Catherine had promised him. “I have my resources.”
A smile pulled at the corners of Bastien’s mouth. “Are you familiar with the one they call the spider of London? You are British, of course you know him.” He leaned further forward, so much so that Richard worried he would tip himself onto the floor. “Have you ever wanted the spider’s power?”
“I’m listening.”
“He squats beneath the earth and dispenses his gifts as he pleases. He reaches out and controls the minds of others to shape the course of events. You know he does, whatever he claims. He can extend life, enhance the mind, many more things we barely know of – and yet what does he do with these things? Think of what you or I could do with such resources.” He stood and put a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Do you possess the will to reach out and take what you deserve, Richard? Or will you leave it to a man who does nothing but hide in the ground?”
Richard tried to keep the excitement from his face. Because he was a Mandellan, he had some idea of the effort it had taken to build the Trafalgar facility. “Then you know what lies inside the black sarcophagus?”
Bastien shrugged. “I have found something that will serve as well. What do you say, Richard? The power to shape the affairs of the world, wealth to live a life beyond consequences and the means to extend that life for, well, who knows?” He squeezed Richard’s shoulder. “If you can bring me the mystics I need.”
He allowed himself to smile. “Let me make two phone calls.”
The venture was one of the most multinational projects in which he’d ever been involved. In the business world that happened all the time, but the same principles were rarely applied in the shadow world of magic. Once he’d seen what Bastien’s venture was up to in the main part of the warehouse, he had to admit his cousin Jacob might be on to something when he spoke of new ways of doing things.
The astrologers were Swiss. They had spent the night outside with their charts and instruments, checking and rechecking their calculations, only coming inside when the sun began to rise. Astrology was part of Richard’s education, but when he had been shown their charts he had not recognised anything on two of them, as if they portrayed different skies to the one above.
The engineers were German. They had been on location for a week, shipping in and installing generators, running rivers of bundled cables across the warehouse floor and assembling a device near the ceiling that looked to Richard’s eye much like a giant Tesla coil.
Finally there was the sarcophagus builder, an Englishman named Gordon Bainbridge. He was a keg-shaped, completely bald man whose large hands were used to working with tools. He and his crew had spent the night assembling the support structure for the sarcophagus in the centre of the warehouse.
From the way Bainbridge had shouted on his phone yesterday afternoon and the uncomfortable way he spoke to Bastien afterwards, some problem had occurred in the supply of materials for the sarcophagus. No emergency meetings were held and the venture was not put on hold, but the tension in the air made it clear the matter had not been resolved one way or the other.
Bastien came over to Richard where he stood out of the way to one side of the warehouse. His assistant was close behind.
“The mystics, Richard?” Bastien asked. “Where do we stand?”
“Their flight is on time,” Richard replied. He had sourced four Algerian warlocks who wanted out of Algeria and didn’t care what they’d have to do in return. “They will arrive at Charles De Gaulle in just under an hour. I have a driver there to meet them and they will be brought directly to the site.”
“The good fortune of your timing may have saved this venture, Richard,” Bastien said. “You have raised my opinion of English sorcery which, I will say, was not high.”
Bastien went to speak to Gordon Bainbridge, leaving Richard to contemplate the ironwork being put together in the warehouse.
Richard had asked around to find out why the venture was short four warlocks. He learned the original mystics Bastien had hired had been killed by rivals before they could leave Moscow. The full story wasn’t known, but magic in Russia was played hard and bloody. It might have been just chance, unrelated to Bastien’s venture.
His phone vibrated: he recognised Catherine’s number on the screen. “Hello again. I’m surprised to hear from you. I thought you were using me as a stepping stone to Jacob.”
“I was,” she said, “but you were also my backup plan. Jacob failed to stop the Bainbridge cargo from getting through. It’s in France now and it should be with you soon.”
Ri
chard’s eyes narrowed. Inflated ego and unruly ambition aside, Jacob knew how to get things done. Whoever was bringing Bainbridge’s materials must have had a bad night. “I don’t like where this is going.”
“Richard, if they go through with this, many people will die. You’re my last chance. You have to sabotage the project.”
“I stand to make a lot from this venture,” Richard said. “You must know you’re talking to the wrong person.”
She sounded tired, as if she’d been up all night, casting her mind into the future again and again. “You’re the only one there who stands a chance of stopping this catastrophe.”
“I saved this venture,” Richard said. “It will happen because I’m here.”
“If you hadn’t come along, they’d have turned to an Austrian group,” Catherine said. “That was a dead certainty. Harald Plattner, the leader of the German engineers, he knows them. Instead I made sure you were there and you control the warlocks who will run the ritual. The power to stop this is directly in your hands.
“You like the world as it is, Richard. It’s made for ruthless people like you. If you don’t stop what’s about to happen, that world you like to pick over like a vulture won’t exist any more.”
Richard laughed. “The end of the world? That’s what you’re selling?”
“The end of many things,” she said. “You have no place in what will rise from its ashes. I’ll work for you, Richard. I’ll guide you to wealth and power beyond anything you’ve dreamed. Just stop Bastien.”
He swept his gaze across the room. He thought about what they were hoping to achieve and weighed its chances of success against the service of a seer of Catherine’s ability.
But to believe her was to believe the world itself was at stake. Bastien’s plan was audacious, but really, apocalyptic? Easier to believe Catherine was just another seer losing her mind to burnout.
“I’m going to take a page from Jacob’s book and do this my way,” he said. “Don’t contact me again, Catherine.” He ended the call.
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