Jack of Ravens (65 page)

‘You are raving, Veitch. I do not understand you.’

‘You will, matey. You will. That bigger thing … well, that’s here now. All around you. In every bit of this world. It rules it. But at the moment it’s like …’ he struggled for words ‘… the mist. We’re going to give it a shape. We’re going to bring the King of all the World back for some fun and games.’

‘Does it have a name?’

‘Call him the Void, or Anti-Life. The golden-skins call him the Devourer of All Things.’

‘That does not sound good, Veitch.’

Veitch laughed bitterly. ‘Tell you what, mate, the world he’s built is a damn sight better than the one that was on the cards before. The one where I got fucked over by my friend, and then murdered for my troubles.’

‘What about Ruth? Have you killed her, too?’

There was a long pause before Veitch answered. ‘She’s gone.’ He locked the front door and pocketed the key before going to the bathroom.

Shavi ran to the window, but it was locked and he couldn’t see where Ruth kept the key. As he turned back to the room he noticed an overpowering odour, like burned iron. The air pressure dropped a degree, and then a doorway of shimmering Blue Fire appeared.

At first it was like a blue mirror reflecting his own blood-spattered features, but then it shifted and became a window on another place. In it, Shavi saw a man with a troubled but strong face; he too was stained with blood. Behind him was another man dressed in red robes.

‘Shavi?’ the bloodstained man said. ‘I’m Jack Churchill … Church.’

Shavi glanced past the doorway. Veitch had still not emerged from the bathroom. Church?’ he said quietly. ‘You must come quickly. You are the only one who can help—’

‘I’m coming.’ Church took a step forward.

‘Laura is dead,’ Shavi continued. ‘Ruth, too. They are going to bring him back, Church. They are—’

‘Ruth’s dead?’ The shadow of devastation crossed Church’s face, and a second later the burning doorway winked out.

Before Shavi could consider what he had seen, the bathroom door crashed open. ‘Oi. Come here,’ Veitch called.

Shavi found Laura submerged in the bath, the knife still embedded in her chest. Grief and horror twisted in his heart to see her that way.

‘Watch this,’ Veitch said. ‘Beats any party trick you’ve got.’

After a moment, Laura’s eyes flickered open. She looked at Veitch and Shavi through the water, and then became aware of her situation. She jackknifed upwards, gasping for air, before coming to a sudden halt when she saw the knife protruding from her chest. ‘Shit—’

Veitch yanked out the knife.

Laura recoiled and crashed back against the taps. ‘Oww!’

‘So you can still feel something,’ Veitch said. He grabbed her shirt and dragged her out of the bath and into the lounge where he flung her on the sofa.

‘Please, don’t hurt her,’ Shavi pleaded.

Laura jumped to her feet, eyes blazing. ‘Yes, you cunt. Come near me and I’ll tear your bollocks off.’ Her gaze was drawn back to her chest. She searched the wound for the blood that had not materialised.

‘You can’t hurt a bleedin’ plant,’ Veitch said.

‘What do you mean?’ Shavi was as stunned as Laura by her survival.

Veitch grabbed Laura’s hand and pointed to the tattoo of interlocking leaves. ‘See this?’

‘The mark of the god Cernunnos,’ Shavi said.

‘No one told you the price she had to pay to get it?’ Veitch laughed. ‘You’re not human any more, love. To get all those weird nature powers you had to cross over – from animal to vegetable.’ He laughed again. ‘Or something like that. Lop off an arm, you grow another. Stabbing, drowning – no good. Weedkiller … not so sure.’ He laughed at his joke until tears came.

Laura slumped onto the sofa in shock. ‘I think I remember … something—’

‘You did not have to reveal the information so cruelly,’ Shavi said. ‘You could simply have told us.’

Veitch wiped his eyes. ‘Yeah, well, me and her didn’t really get on.’

‘I wonder why,’ Laura said sourly.

‘She was always having a go, always making me feel like I was nothin’… ’ Veitch shrugged. ‘Thought I’d get it out of my system here and now.’

Veitch was clearly unbalanced, but Shavi couldn’t tell whether Veitch planned to kill them both or if he had something else in mind. He decided the best course of action was to keep Veitch calm. ‘There is a great deal I do not understand,’ Shavi said. ‘Why have our memories been altered, but yours have not? If we were once friends, why do this?’

Veitch wandered to the window and looked out across the city, his mood suddenly pensive. ‘All right. The first thing you’ve got to get your head around is that nothing out there is what it appears. The world we grew up with is just a cover for what’s going on behind the scenes. Which is basically a big bleedin’ street fight with knives and bottles and chains and no rules. Humans, we think we’re top of the pile here, but out there in the real place, no chance. We’re scrapping with every other species just to stay in the game. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were designed to give us a chance. Five people, better together than they were on their own. And on our own we really were a bunch of losers.’ He turned back to Shavi and Laura and smiled sadly. As you probably remember.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Laura snapped, but it was clear she accepted the truth.

‘So the five of us were brought together when everything went pear-shaped,’ Veitch continued. ‘Technology started failing. Weird supernatural stuff was breaking out all over the place. The golden-skinned bastards decided they were going to set up camp here. And to top if off, their old enemies the Nightwalkers invaded.’

Laura glanced at Shavi, wondering how much of Veitch’s commentary they could believe.

‘In the old myths, they were called the Fomorii. Shape-shifting fuckers. The Tuatha Dé Danann defeated them thousands of years ago, thought
they’d driven them off for good. But they came back with their leader, Balor. The God of Death.’

‘And this Balor is part of the bigger thing … the Void?’ Shavi said.

‘Look, a lot of this stuff goes right over my head. The way I see it, there’s an ongoing battle between two sides – Life and Anti-Life, light and dark, whatever. It shifts back and forth all the time, but Anti-Life has the upper hand because it decided the way the world should be, and what all the rules were, right back at the start. But then we came along … us …’ Veitch said, bemused, ‘… and we started to tip the balance the other way. We defeated the Fomorii, we destroyed Balor – it could have been a new Golden Age—’

‘So what happened?’ Laura said.

‘Human nature.’ Veitch toyed with the knife he had pulled out of Laura. ‘Church and me were both in love with Ruth. She couldn’t decide between the two of us. So right at the point when we’d won, Church thought he’d get rid of the competition. He killed me and Balor at the same time. Everything got fucked up by Balor’s death … time and space and all that shit … and Church ended up getting thrown back in time two thousand years or so.’

‘You’re not looking too bad for a dead man,’ Laura sneered.

‘I got better.’

‘That was handy.’

He looked from Laura to Shavi. ‘You’d be surprised how often it happens. I was given a second chance—’

By the Void,’ Shavi said.

‘What the five of us did shook things up. It got us noticed, and not in a good way. The Void couldn’t have us turning the world over to Life so it came back – or part of it did – and it made sure that the world stayed the way it was supposed to be. There was another group of Brothers and Sisters of Dragons after us, and the Void put paid to them.’

‘And it wiped our memories so we would not fight back,’ Shavi said.

‘It didn’t just make you forget – it changed everything. It can do that. Like I said, all the stuff outside the window is just scenery. And the Void moved it all around—’

‘To create the illusion,’ Shavi finished. ‘No one is aware of the possibilities any more. There is no hope. No wonder. This is simply the way things are meant to be, so we have to make the best of it. And the Blue Fire drains away because the people who kept it alive do not believe in anything any longer. A dead world—’

‘And you helped this happen?’ Laura said in disbelief.

‘Blame Church. He made sure I couldn’t stay on the other side.’ Veitch wouldn’t meet their eyes. He gripped the knife tightly.

‘So now you’re getting your revenge. Feel good?’ Laura’s eyes blazed.

‘Yeah, it does.’ Veitch stared back unflinchingly.

‘What about us?’ Shavi said in an attempt to calm the rising tension. ‘You said we used to be friends. Are you going to kill us, too?’

Veitch gnawed on a knuckle. ‘Ruth and Church are out of the picture. The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons who came after you can’t remember a thing about who they are. But you know how things can be changed, so you’re a threat. I know what you’re like … the two of you could still screw everything up. That’s not going to be allowed.’ He weighed the knife in the palm of his hand. ‘I’m sorry, mate, I really am, but I haven’t got a choice.’

4

The constant churning of the spiders all around him was becoming a distant memory. Church was falling backwards down a long, dark tunnel, occasionally punctuated by starbursts of Blue Fire. It was a place of refuge, and he knew the deeper he could go the more he could escape the thinking and the feeling and the guilt and the sorrow.

Falling, falling, and then standing. He’d done it, broken the shackles, got away scot-free, and wherever his mind was telling him he was, it was better than where he had been before.

Everywhere was dark. He wandered around for an age, listening to distant voices come and go, louder and softer, like the sound of the blood in his head. He became aware of rock underfoot, a cavern of some kind. And then, across the dark, he glimpsed himself, although this was a younger Church, clean-shaven, shorter hair, face so surprisingly innocent and free of worry that he could barely remember being that way.

He convinced himself that he’d made his way to his own past, and he was taken by the urge to warn himself away from all the terrible things that lay ahead, that at the very least he could make sure he could take the one step that would change his current predicament.

His past self was staring at him, confused.

‘Is this it? Is this the right time?’ the modern Church said to his past-self. ‘You have to listen to me. This is a warning.’ He looked around, confused himself. ‘Is this the right place? Am I too late?’

‘Tell me what you have to say,’ his past-self said.

‘When you’re in Otherworld and they call, heed it right away. They’re going to bring him back. They’re—’

‘Calm down. You’re babbling,’ his past-self yelled.
‘Who
is going to bring
who
back?’

Church had the unnerving sensation of a presence behind him. An irrational fear gripped him. In panic, he yelled, ‘Too late!’

And then he was running from himself and into the dark.

5

Church didn’t know how long it took for the blind panic to fade, but eventually he realised he could see a faint blue light ahead. He continued to run towards it until he saw it was a lantern with a blue flame flickering inside.

‘The Wayfinder guides your path as ever, Brother of Dragons.’ The lantern was being held aloft by a giant at least eight feet tall, with a thick beard and glowering eyes beneath overhanging brows. He wore a shift made of sackcloth fastened with a leather belt.

‘Who are you?’ Church asked.

‘I am the Caretaker. I keep a light burning in the darkest night. I serve all who come to me, whether their hearts are filled with hope or tainted by despair.’

‘Do you know me?’

‘We all know you, Brother of Dragons.’ The Caretaker stepped to one side and motioned for Church to pass by. Beyond was an entrance to a cave.

Inside a cauldron bubbled over a small fire. Two figures stood around it. One was a man in old, tattered clothes, one hand clutching a long staff that had been subtly worked into a particular shape. His grey hair formed a wild halo around his head. Beside him was a woman who could have been his sister. She was painfully thin and wore a long black dress stained with treebark green and white dust. Her skin was almost grey and barely hung on her bones. Her hair was also grey and wild. But her face was smeared black with dirt or grease so that her grey eyes stared out of it with terrifying intensity.

Church realised he had seen her before, when he lay close to death on the journey to Boskawen-Un. She had come to him in what he had thought was a dream or hallucination, while Etain and the others talked nearby.

While the Caretaker felt benign, these two unsettled him. He felt they would turn on him at any moment if he said the wrong thing.

‘Draw closer.’ The woman beckoned, cackling.

‘Who are you?’ Church asked. ‘Gods, like the Tuatha Dé Danann?’

‘We are intermediaries,’ the Caretaker said. ‘A conduit to higher powers.’

‘What higher powers?’ Church asked.