Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (39 page)

“
After the solstice, the nights grow shorter - light giving way to darkness! But in that intervening period, the two powers are equal. That’s when the magic can happen.

“
That’s
why I’m back, Manos. Not to commemorate the first anniversary of my fiancée’s death. I’m going back to
prevent
it. He’s coming back with me.”

“
You do not understand, Julie. It does not work that way - ” A third rumble of thunder cut him off. She ignored his beseeching eyes.

Through the archway she could no longer see the blue sky and sparkling waters of the Aegean that filled the Portara.

While the morning sun warmed her back, in front of her a second Greek sun sank rapidly below the seaward horizon. The bronze waters were tinged with crimson that bled from the dying sun and the rocks of the islet glowed malevolently.

Two men in grey army uniform flanked a violently struggling man. The setting sun cast a chilling red glow to their steel coal scuttle helmets and the barrels of their sub-machine guns.

Despite his muscular build, his biceps bulging through his dirty grey shirt as he fought against the steel grip of the soldiers, they were stronger. One of the soldiers raised his weapon and brought the stock crashing down on his head.

The captive’s eyes glazed and he sank to the ground. His eyes remained open, staring at Julie. Recognition flickered in them, and his mouth opened to shout a warning.

“
Steve!” she screamed. Another rumble of thunder echoed around the Portara and the golden marble shimmered again. Still the scene remained, perfectly clear and unsullied by the shimmering. She ran past Manos, nimbly jumping over the walking stick he thrust at her feet, her trainers sending up clouds of dry sand and marble dust as she pounded up the remaining few metres to the doorway that led to nowhere.

“
Julie!
No!”
Manos’ cry was as loud as the thunder, and mirrored the words mouthed silently by her boyfriend, now hauled roughly to his feet by his captors. The sight didn’t deter her. If the German soldiers mowed her down, so be it. At least she and Steve would be together.

The Portara was only five metres away. Manos’ cries faded as her running grew faster and more determined. She gritted her teeth, ignoring the sharp digging of the shale and marble rubble into her feet, running for the gap in the bisected base of the pillars. The glaring skies of the Greek daylight drew back from her, now nothing more than patches of blue in her peripheral vision. As the twilight scene filled her immediate vision, the Portara towered above her, seemingly greater than its eight metre height as she made her wish. Then it was behind her.

There was a sizzling sound, like that of
gyros
meat frying on a kebab shop’s hotplate, but the smell was different. Something her racing mind couldn’t take in fully. The scent of freshly spilled blood and burning flesh.

The chill of the twilight air was a shock to her system after the heat of the Greek sunrise that made her gasp. Her breath misted and icy fingers caressed her bare legs. Through her thin vest top her nipples stiffened in protest at the sudden cold, a chill that had not been present the last time she had visited the Portara at night.

She didn’t have time to ponder this. The two soldiers were frozen in shock by the vision of this statuesque blonde woman tearing from the Portara, her blonde tresses flying through the chill night air like the snakes of Medusa’s hair. An avenging Fury, tearing through the doors of time and destiny to take back the man who had been stolen from her.

She was less than twenty metres from them.

The one on Steve’s left was taller but more slightly built than his comrade. He released Steve and side-stepped to the left, giving him ample room to raise his firearm. His rotund partner was still frozen in shock.

Fifteen metres. She could see the marble dust on their uniform tunics and jackboots, the blonde stubble on the tall soldier’s cheeks, his heavy lidded eyes narrowing in professional appraisal of the threat. She saw the greasy sweat on the fat soldier’s cheeks, beading the thick lips that quivered in fear.

She saw the blood dripping from the gash on Steve’s forehead, the bruises on his arms where the Nazi soldiers had dragged him upright and she snarled in fury.

The taller soldier raised his sub-machine gun to waist height. Ten metres, and he would not miss at this distance. She would be cut in half. The trigger finger curled inwards.

The muzzle flash lit up the darkening sky, a blaze of fire that echoed deafeningly around the western side of the islet. Bullets thudded into the uprights of the Portara, sending shards of marble flying into the night. Others flew into the daylight scene framed by the doorway, disappearing into the sunlight.

Julie felt angry hornets whip past her head as she hit the ground and advanced in a perfect forward roll. She crashed into the soldier who still had his finger on the trigger. Ignoring the pain of gravel and marble chips digging into her back she reached upwards to wrench the weapon from him.

More gunfire, this time travelling straight upwards to the heavens
. A challenge to the Gods,
she thought to herself with a wry smile. The soldier’s blue-eyed glare was unflinching and hate-filled. His breath was rank, reeking of stale beer, tobacco and rancid meat.

She smiled again as she brought her knee up into his crotch. He howled in pain and his grip on the weapon loosened slightly. Just enough for her to push his arms away, downwards. Just as the trigger finger curled again.

The sub-machine gun spat more fire, and this time it drew blood and cries of pain. The soldier to Steve’s right jerked in a spasmodic dance as the bullets punched holes in his fat torso. He collapsed in a heaving pile of blood, his twitching boot heels beating a violent tattoo on the rubble strewn ground.

Her opponent snarled in fury, turning his head briefly to see the fate of his comrade. A dispassionate glance and then he turned back to her.

That brief moment was all she needed. Her fist flashed forwards, aiming for his eye. The power of the blow was insufficient to cause much damage. But the stone on her engagement ring more than made up for it.

She felt something burst and dribble gelatinously down her knuckles. The cry he made was inhuman, a cross between a mewling cat and a newborn baby. He staggered backwards, both hands clutching his ruined face. His weapon fell to the ground.

Steve raced into action. He pushed the soldier out of his way and lunged for the machine gun. Hefting it in hands that looked disturbingly well-experienced in weaponry, he turned and faced his captor. There was a look of grim satisfaction on his face as he opened the soldier’s chest with a long burst that emptied the magazine.

The stench of cordite mingled with warm blood and torn flesh and hung sickeningly in the air. Steve threw the spent weapon down and turned to face Julie.

The smile that broke on his tanned features was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She ran to his arms and embraced him. The stubble on his cheeks scratched her face when she kissed him, and his hair reeked of sweat and cordite, but it was the most wonderful sensation. He was
alive!

“
Thavmassios!”
he said in a strangely accented voice.

She laughed. “Wonderful, indeed! I see you’ve finally learned the language…”

They parted slowly. Steve ran a hand through her thick mane of hair, beaming with happiness. That was when she saw the change in him. His arms were thickly muscled, his frame lean and taut, all trace of his former beer belly and flabbiness gone. There were flecks of grey in the temples, wrinkles on a face that had been tanned olive by the Greek sun. No trace of his former paleness from a year ago remained.

She was speechless. Surely she would have come back to the exact night he’d vanished? That was the wish she’d made to Apollo as she raced through the Portara.

Instead, a full twelve months passed, the time lines concurrent. She carrying on with her studies and her physical training, he living in a foreign country, under enemy occupation.

“
Yes, Jules,” he grinned. “Every archaeology student’s dream. I’ve been living history rather than studying it! Wonder what grades I’ll get for this…”

The scene within the pillars of the Portara showed the bright blue Aegean sky with the sun almost at its zenith, but the sunshine didn’t advance past its marble frame. Where she and Steve stood, night had fallen. The waters of the sea around the islet were ink-black and strangely lifeless. She had to strain to hear the sound of breakers on the headland, but that might have been due to the ringing in her ears from the machine gun fire. And yet…

The sky above was cloudless, yet she could see no stars, nor the moon. This wasn’t just night, this was something else. Something unnatural.

To the right of the Portara she saw white field tents, with arc lights and scaffolding surrounding a hole in the marbled floor. Scattered in the immediate area were pick axes, shovels and surveying equipment.

Her research was right after all. The Nazis
had
been performing an archaeological excavation here. And judging by the extreme blackness of the night, they had found what they were looking for.

She stared at the dead bodies on the ground. A shiver stroked the back of her neck as she remembered the practised ease with which Steve had despatched the second German. He had never held a firearm before, let alone fired one – and the grim satisfaction on his features told her that this was not the first life he had taken.

“
Partisans,” he said softly. “They saved me. Fed me, hid me from the Nazis…and trained me.”

That explained how he had survived, as well as the change in his physical appearance.

“
You fought with them?”

“
Yes. I fought. And the islanders paid the price for it. Koronos village…we wondered about the Nazi atrocity there, remember?”

She shuddered with the memory of Manos’ words.
Have you seen an entire village burned to the ground by the occupiers? Its women and children riddled with machine-gun fire as retaliation for the brave actions of the partisans?

“
So…where are they now? Why are you here on your own?”

Steve’s face was grim. “I found out why I was brought here. I’m no safer from the partisans than I am the Germans. I escaped from them earlier tonight, had to see the excavation and find out what the hell they were planning to do with me.”

“
I don’t understand. If they were going to kill you or hand you over, they’d have done it when you first arrived, surely? But they kept you for a year…”

“
Exactly.
Kept me
. Welcomed me, made me one of the ‘family’, involved me in everything…all to make sure I didn’t suspect until it was too late.” He pointed to the excavation site. “You came back for me – you know what the Nazis found here, don’t you?”

She nodded. “The altar stone. And the final answer as to why the temple was built – and what it was dedicated to.”

Steve looked at the excavation site and shuddered. “It’s terrifying, Jules. I’ve never seen anything like it – even the Nazis were scared shitless by what they found.”

“
Show me.” She watched him go off to the nearest tent and heard sounds of fumbling, crates and equipment shuffled around. She looked at the excavation trenches and thought back to her studies and what she had learned of the Temple of Apollo.

Two and a half thousand years ago the tyrant ruler of Naxos, Lygdamis, had desired to build the greatest Ionic temple in all Greece, to be over one hundred feet in height. The work was abandoned due to war between Naxos and Samos – and the mysterious, unexplained overthrow of Lygdamis himself less than thirty years later.

All that remained was the Portara and the walls. And under the Venetian and Turkish rule the walls disappeared, their marble purloined to construct the
Kastro.
The only reason the Portara remained was because the pillars were to heavy to be dismantled and transported.

That was the official history, anyway. The night Steve disappeared he’d claimed to have discovered another theory. A theory she had denounced as the product of too much ouzo and
kitron,
the lemon-flavoured local liquor with the strength of rocket-fuel.

A theory she knew now to be true. He emerged from the tent with a flashlight. She leant cautiously over the wooden barrier to watch what happened to the beam of light as it fell on the black altar stone unearthed by the Nazis.

The torchlight illuminated the dry earth in a sickly hue of yellow-brown. She saw pieces of shale and bones of long dead animals embedded in the surrounding walls. The hole looked like it stretched deep underground, as the rectangular pit of blackness in the centre was untouched by the light. Then she realised.

“
Jesus!” she breathed. The trench was only eight feet deep. The blackness was the altar stone, blackness that didn’t reflect the powerful searchlight beam. It absorbed it.