Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (40 page)

She looked up to the unnaturally black sky, and then back down to the physical form of darkness below her feet.

“
The altar of Hades,” she breathed. “Eternal darkness in stone. That’s why…”

Footsteps. The harsh sound of worn boot heels running up the hill from the causeway. More than one pair.

“
We’ve got company,” he hissed. He picked up the carbine from the first soldier, checked the magazine, grunting in satisfaction to find it full.

Three figures raced past the left side of the Portara, automatic weapons held at waist height. In the daylight cast from the Portara, Julie saw that they were dressed in shapeless grey trousers and ragged fishing jumpers. Heavy stubble coated their olive-skinned features.

“
Stephen!”
The first one barked in a harsh, guttural voice that sounded familiar. Julie stared in disbelief as the partisan came closer, his Thompson sub-machine gun pointed unwaveringly towards the couple.

He was younger, his mane of hair had yet to turn grey but there was no mistaking his commanding presence and the cold steel of his eyes

“
Manos!”
she breathed. Steve tore his eyes from the advancing partisans and gaped at her.

“
You know him? How?”

“
He tried to stop me coming…oh, my God.”

Console yourself knowing it was his destiny…like Ariadne abandoned by Theseus, it is for greater purpose.

“
No further, Manos! You’re not offering me!” Steve raised the German carbine.

Manos halted, his weapon held at the same height as Steve’s. He turned to his comrades and whispered a few words in Greek. They nodded, and retreated. They glared at Steve before turning in wonder – and horror – at the sight within the Portara.

“
It is destiny, Stephen. What you were born for. Why else would the Gods have chosen you to come from your own time?”

“
Gods!” Steve laughed mirthlessly. He gestured towards the Portara. “Apollo, Dionysus…
nothing about Hades, though!
The real reason Lygdamis built the temple – and why he was overthrown.”

“
For good reason,” Manos growled, his eyes flickering over the excavation trench. “If he had succeeded in completing the temple, Hades would be triumphant. His realm would no longer be confined to the underworld. Night would be eternal on this plane also.” The fingers on the Thompson trembled as he saw the unnatural darkness that had settled on the islet.

“
As below, so above. And now, history repeats itself. The madman in Berlin wishes to rebuild the temple, to dedicate it to Hades as the tyrant Lygdamis once did. To bring eternal night to the world in exchange for power. With the unearthing of the altar stone, it has already begun. Only one thing can prevent this…”

Manos became aware of Julie’s presence. He cocked his head and eyed her quizzically. He took in her twenty-first century clothing and pale skin, and then glared at Steve.

“
She is your woman, yes? She came for you? She should not be here. Send her back.” There was alarm in his voice. “Send her back
now!”

“
I’ll go when I’m ready.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at the partisan. “And Steve’s coming with me.”

Manos shook his head. “You think you are doing good? Stephen’s destiny is here and now. One life for many. It is the will of the Gods. You would change that – and damn us all!”

On the other side of the Portara, the sun had risen fully, disappearing behind the lintel and out of the picture frame. It was at that moment that Julie realised the other two partisans had gone.

She felt a heavy blow to her back and the ground reached up for her. The breath left her lungs in an explosive gasp and the shards of marble cut into her face.

“
Stay down,” a thickly accented voice whispered in her ear. “Please. It is for greater good. He must be offered to bring back the light - ”

His words were cut off by a short, controlled burst of gunfire. She felt something moist and sticky drench her scalp and the force that pinned her to the ground was gone. She twisted away from the dying partisan, fighting to regain her breath. She saw what was coming, but couldn’t speak. She raised an arm and pointed frantically at the man running towards her fiancée.

Steve spun on his heels. His machine gun thundered again and sent the second partisan sprawling into the corpses of the German soldiers.

More gunfire broke the stillness of the unnatural midsummer night. A short, measured burst from Manos’ Thompson ripped into the back of Steve’s right leg. The bullets passed through his thigh and kneecap and sent up small puffs of dust and sand as they buried themselves in the blood-soaked ground.

His shrill scream of pain shattered the thickening atmosphere. He collapsed and fell heavily, the machine gun spinning from his hands.

Manos raced towards him. Tossing his gun to one side he delivered a devastating punch to the back of his head, just underneath his ear. Steve stiffened, paralysed by the blow. Manos reached under his shoulders with both hands and dragged him across the ground.

Towards the Portara.

Julie struggled to get to her feet. Still badly winded, each movement was agony. Red mist clouded her vision, but through it she could see two figures framed in the fading sunlight of the Portara. The blood that dribbled from Steve’s shattered knee turned a liquid crimson by the light on the other side as Manos hauled him over to the bisected base of the doorway.

Manos knelt on Steve’s belly, one hand clasped on Steve’s chin and thrusting it back, fully exposing the neck.

The other hand raised a knife skywards. A knife that Julie’s archaeologically trained eyes recognised as a sacrificial dagger.

Manos held the blade aloft while he spoke to the sun on the other side of the Portara. The edge of the blade glinted in the fading light.

Julie dragged herself upwards. She picked up the gun, amazed at how heavy it was and how alien it felt in her hands. Her breathing slowly returned to normal, but her heart still hammered in her chest.

Slowly, take it easy
,
she told herself.
Manos is praying, invoking one of his precious Gods. He won’t kill Steve yet.

She knew she had to get close to them both before she trusted herself to pull the trigger. Nothing less than point blank range, or Steve would undoubtedly be shot as well.

She crept forward, the machine gun heavier with each tentative step. It stank of oil and cordite, the stench of war and death, but not as foul as the smell of the dead partisan’s blood on her clothes and hair. She gagged and forced the bile in her throat downwards.

Manos’ invocation was louder and more beseeching. She made out the name
Apollo
more than twice.

Apollo?
she wondered.
Since when did the sun god demand a human sacrifice?
She’d studied other religions that had sacrificed humans, but this was something else – and flew in the face of everything she knew about Greek history. They’d never offered humans as sacrifices, and certainly not to Apollo, the god of reason, harmony and order.

But Manos seemed to know what he was doing. He’d kept Steve here, waiting for a full year to pass so that he could offer up Steve on this day. Not just because it was the longest day of sunshine in the year – but because it was the first anniversary of her betrothal to Steve. The first anniversary of his being taken from her.

…
like Ariadne abandoned by Theseus, it is for greater purpose.

No,
she told herself when she was less than ten metres from the pair.
Whatever power brought Steve here brought me as well. Whatever destiny or purpose Manos thinks Steve has waiting for him, it won’t involve being sliced to pieces on a two and a half thousand year old marble ruin. No bloody way.

Five metres. Although Manos had his back to her, she saw tears fall from him and land on Steve’s exposed throat. Manos’ voice wavered with each word he cried out. The offering he was about to perform was tearing him apart, but she felt no sympathy.

“
Fuck Apollo. Fuck Dionysus, Hades…and fuck
you
, Manos.” She pulled the trigger.

The machine gun bucked and writhed in her inexperienced hands. Bullets scoured the pillars of the Portara, chunks of marble torn from the doorway rained down in a painful shower.  She finally got the weapon under some control, and kept the smoking barrel pointed firmly at Manos’ back until the magazine was empty.

The marble frame shimmered like a heat haze, just as it had done on the other side before the time portal opened. She knew time was short.

She tossed the spent weapon over her shoulder, crouched down and pulled Steve’s arm over her shoulder.

“
Grit your teeth, darling. This is going to hurt.”

Steve grinned in response. He let out a sharp cry of pain as he accidentally put weight on his shattered leg. He bit his lip and grinned again.

“
Not as much as that bloody knife would…”

“
There’s my tough guy,” she laughed. “Partisan fighter. War hero and time traveller. The man who defied the Gods.”

The sunlight seemed less bright than before as they stepped through the Portara. Perhaps that was due to the red haze that still misted in front of her eyes. Or the shimmering and vibration of the pale marble pillars. She briefly looked back, took in the dead bodies on the blood-drenched ground. The thick, oppressive blackness of the starless night. The stillness of the treacle-like sea.

The scaffolding and archaeological equipment surrounding the excavation site and the altar stone of Hades.

She shuddered as she helped Steve over the still-twitching body of Manos. She almost felt pity for the dead partisan. Whatever madness had affected him, it had led him to believe that he was doing the right thing.

Yeah, well. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, isn’t it? And the blood of innocents…

Still, it was over now. Just one more step…

“
That’s odd,” Steve muttered hoarsely. “Have we gone through?”

She froze. No sizzling sound. No strange smell of blood and burning. But the Portara was definitely behind them. They faced the causeway that led to the Chora of Naxos.

Or what used to be the Chora. She couldn’t make out too much detail in the unnaturally black night, but she could just make out the ruins of the Venetian
Kastro.
The sugar-cube houses of marble had vanished. There were no tell-tale signs of candles or neon lights that formerly illuminated the courtyards of the tavernas and bars.

There
were
no tavernas or bars. Just endless rows of uniform, grey brick, one-storey buildings in military-precision rows. Barracks.

No, not barracks. The flames from the furnace reflected on the windows, showing clearly the vertical iron bars and the gaunt, hopeless faces of the prisoners within.

The water in the harbour was as still and lifeless as that seen on the other side of the Portara. Black, treacly fluid that clung sickeningly to the hulls of the gunboats moored on the jetty like clotting blood.

The stench hit her then. Where the pizzeria had once stood, scenting the evening air with appetising aromas of stone-baked pizza and
souvlaki
kebabs, there was a different set of ovens. The fumes belching from the tall chimney reeked of burning meat.

“
Oh, Jesus…”

She turned around, unable to face the sight of the naked human corpses loaded onto the crematorium’s conveyor, a never-ending stream of dead humanity waiting to be sent to the fires. Some of them weren’t completely dead, twitching or in some cases flailing their wasted limbs frantically at the soldiers who mercilessly battered them with the butts of their rifles.

Staring at the Portara, she expected to see the nocturnal scene they had just left – or maybe, in some bizarre twist, the opposite. A bright blue sky under a scorching Greek sun. She saw neither.

The Portara was no longer a doorway leading to nowhere, acting as a picture frame to the magnificent vista of rocky headland and blue sea. It was what Lygdamis had always intended it to be – a doorway to a temple.

A temple that now stood, fully formed and completed. A temple that dwarfed the doorway leading into it, a temple that reached high into the unnaturally black sky, even taller than the hundred feet the ancient tyrant had originally planned.

With the smoothness and brilliant white of the marble blocks, the temple had obviously been constructed recently – perhaps within the last sixty years. Just after the war ended.

The temple was of Ionic style, as the original tyrant had desired. The torches set in regularly placed alcoves flickered menacingly in the thick black air, burning like the crematorium fires on the Chora below. Massive red banners centred with white circles and black swastikas moved slowly, heavily, like funeral shrouds for the world. Manos’ words came back to haunt her.