Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) (38 page)

“No one,” Tom replied. “Unless we were followed.”

Church looked around hastily; the tunnel was the only way out. “This isn’t the best place to get caught. I wish Veitch was here.”

Tom surveyed the thin ledge. “We could edge around to the shadows on the other side.” His voice was barely audible.

Church glanced into the deep dark of the well and felt his head spin again. “Or we could greet them here with open arms. It might be nothing … it might be somebody …” His voice faded; he was being stupid. The chances were, in that place, at that time, whatever was coming was a threat. He looked at the ledge and winced. °I don’t know if I can do it.”

“And the alternative is?” Tom said, irritatedly. He grabbed Church’s arm to try to drag him, but Church shook him off so violently they both almost fell into the well.

“Jesus!” Church hissed. “Leave me alone! You’re going to kill us both!”

“You are if you make us stay here.” Tom forced himself to stay calm. “Face the wall. Feel with your feet and don’t look down.”

“That’s easy for you to say!” But Tom was already inching his way along the ledge. Church froze. The path seemed unbearably thin; the tip of Tom’s heels hung over the drop. Sweat grew chill down his back and on his forehead.

Then he glanced up the tunnel and saw something which cut through his fear with a greater terror. A glint of yellow, gone, then yellow again, something small and insignificant, but he knew instinctively what it was. The thing he had glimpsed earlier in the cavern that had the shape of a great wolf, but was not a wolf; the terrible cutter of fingers that had taken Ruth. He had thought it another hallucination, or a glimpse across time and space caused by the bizarre rules of the whirlpool cavern, but it had really been there. And now it was coming for them.

And still he hesitated. The magnetic pull of the well’s vertiginous depths was almost unbearable. The more visceral danger of what was approaching down the tunnel stabbed him with sharp knives. But if he could find his rational mind somewhere among his primal fears, he knew what the only route could be.

Feeling he was saying goodbye to his life, he put his first foot on the ledge. Slowly he edged round the lip of the immense hole, feeling his heart beat so loudly in his ears he thought he was going to go deaf. His view alternated between the backs of his eyelids and the cold, dark rock of the cavern wall which repeatedly brushed the tip of his nose. Every sensation was heightened, almost too painful to bear. He felt sick. Every few seconds his mind told him he was going to die; he couldn’t shake the feeling he was going to flip over backwards.

More than anything he wanted to glance back to the tunnel mouth; he could hear the rough breathing of the thing approaching, the scraping of its feet on the rock; it was making no attempt to hide itself now. But he couldn’t bring himself to look, so all he was left with was the approaching noise and the feeling that he wasn’t moving fast enough, that it would follow him on to the ledge, and then he truly would be trapped.

Suddenly his left shoulder hit a body. It was Tom, who had stopped, but the shock of it when he was lost in his thoughts broke his concentration and he made a startled sound. And then he was moving slowly away from the rock wall, and although he held his muscles rigid, it was not enough to drive him back. He strained to grip the wall, but it was moving away. He was going over.

Tom’s arm came from nowhere and slammed between his shoulder blades, propelling him back upright. The strangled gasp that rushed from his throat was a mixture of relief and terror.

“Hush.” Tom’s voice was so low it was almost a faint exhalation, which Church had to strain to hear.

“Why did you stop?” he responded in kind.

“If you could tear your eyes away from the rock you’d realise we can’t see the tunnel any more. Which means it can’t see us. Did you see what it was?”

Church swallowed, composed himself, repeated the mantra in his head: Don’t look down! But there they were, hanging over an abyss, trying to have a normal conversation; it was madness. “I got a glimpse … the eyes …” His mouth was too dry; he swallowed again. “It’s whatever took Ruth, what Laura thought was a giant wolf. And I saw it that way too, in the big cavern. But it’s not. I know … somehow, I know … that it’s human.”

“Sometimes, when the old gods have tampered with someone, it’s hard to get a handle on them,” Tom mused. “It screws up the mind’s perceptions. It’s like they’ve changed in some fundamental way and the mind is struggling to make sense of all the confusing signals so it imposes an image on it. The closest one that seems to fit. But it’s a lie, a desperate lie, to preserve sanity.”

“Then what does it really look like?” Tom’s use of the word tampered made Church shiver. He remembered the age-old man’s account of his suffering at the hands of the Tuatha De Danann Queen, when he had been taken apart and put back together again, for little more than sport. Fragile Creatures the Danann called them. Frail. Easily broken. Never put back quite right again.

The conversation died in the face of the threat. And so they listened to sounds that really did seem to issue from an animal, but then, eerily, intermingled with a guttural, warped human voice. It was muttering to itself. For a second they thought it might retreat up the tunnel, but after a moment’s lull the breathing began to draw closer and they heard the scrape of a foot on the ledge, the click of nails on the cavern wall.

And then Church did tear his eyes away from the wall to stare wide-eyed into Tom’s face. Tom moved off with the fast, supple movements of a man who had already experienced things worse than death. Church tried to keep up, but every muscle ached from forcing to keep himself close to the wall, and with movement his head had started spinning again. His throat seemed pencil-thin; he couldn’t suck in enough air. And behind them the pursuer was drawing closer. He wondered if they could travel all around the well and head back up the tunnel to lose their pursuer in the cavern.

His foot slipped off the ledge and he had to grip on to the wall so tightly he was sure the delicate skin under the tips of his nails was bleeding. He was moving too fast, making stupid mistakes. But whatever was behind was relentless. He moved on.

And the well sucked at him again, sucked and inhaled and wished him off the ledge. And only a gossamer-thin wish was holding him on.

How much further? he wondered. It was impossible to tell how far around the arc they had travelled.

And then he heard the sound behind him, just a heavy breath, but in it a dark, malevolent triumph. He glanced to his right and saw, suspended in the black, the cold, yellow eyes, staring at him.

Their awful pull was destabilising. He tried to move away faster, but his foot slipped again and this time he went down on one knee. Off-balance, he was scrambling at the wall, shifting his weight wildly, trying to throw himself forward, shifting to the side, having to overcompensate, and then his knee was slipping off the ledge too, and the weight of the well was dragging him down.

For an instant time seemed to hang, pictures dropped from a hand, caught in midair. He looked up, saw Tom’s face ahead of him frozen in horror. Realised some noise was coming from his mouth that made no sense. Felt his weight go completely over the edge. Looked down, saw nothing but dark, dark, dark, pulling him in. Falling.

At the last moment he reached out and slammed both hands on the ledge; his body swung hard against the wall, winding him. Tendons strained. His shoulders felt like they were going to explode. His fingers blazed with fire, seemed to be snapping. And his heels kicked wildly over nothing at all.

“Tom,” he croaked.

Tom looked at him, then slowly up at their pursuer. The ragged breath was so close now, Church swore it was almost above him.

“Tom,” he said again. Then: “Go on. You can’t help me.”

There was a look in Tom’s eye as if all the repressed emotion in his body had come rushing to the surface, of more than tears, more than despair. But he remained, caught.

Church closed his eyes, knew he didn’t have long. If the drop didn’t get him, the Big Bad Wolf would. This was it. The end. He thought of Marianne and Marianne and Laura and Ruth and Niamh and all his new friends and his old ones and his family, and then he removed one hand from the ledge and somehow, through force of will, managed to keep hanging. For just an instant longer, his mind sparked.

The free hand swept into his pocket and pulled out the locket.

“I wish, I wish …” he whispered, but there were too many tears in his eyes.

And then he let it go, and it went spiralling down, the last star disappearing into the inky void.

A second later he joined it. His stomach shot up to his neck, his brain felt like it was twisting in his skull, and the air was rushing around him and somewhere Tom was yelling and …

Ruth had tried not to weep throughout all her ordeal and she had survived until that moment when she remembered the meal she had had with Church at Wodka in London before the whole mess had truly started. For some reason that triggered the tears and she hadn’t been able to stop for a good quarter of an hour.

At least she had been provided with a rough bed of sacking and straw. Things seemed to be moving within it, but after the cold floor it seemed like paradise. That small piece of special treatment from creatures without even the slightest shred of humanity disturbed her more than anything; it was as if they were giving her a brief respite to build up her strength before something even more terrible. That brought another flood of tears. The black pearl had almost destroyed her. What could be worse than that? How much more could she take? Sometimes, although she dreaded to consider it, suicide almost seemed an option.

As if in answer to her thoughts, she heard a noise beyond the distant cell door, lost in the overpowering gloom. It was a Fomorii voice, insane and bestial. There were notes in it she had never heard before, so terrifying she clutched at her ears to drive it out, but the tumult continued until it ended in sudden silence. They were coming for her again.

“No more,” she pleaded in a broken voice. “There’s nothing left in me. I can’t take anything else.”

She blinked away the tears, felt her head spin with the nauseating noises, waited, waited. There was a sound of metal on stone, some terrible torture instrument being dragged in. Blades, growing slicker, cogs turning, sparking pain that would consume her. The sounds grew closer, right outside the door now.

“Please,” she whimpered.

The lock turning. Click; a note of finality. Then slowly, slowly, swinging open. The light flooding in from outside, burning her eyes. And then the unbearable wait. She battened down her emotions, tried to think and feel nothing.

A figure was silhouetted in the flickering torchlight at the top of the flight of stone steps that led from her cell. It didn’t make sense. Her head spun, her heart leapt with the rush of a hope she hardly dared accept.

The figure shifted, the torchlight sweeping over its torso, illuminating its face; a disbelieving grin of triumph. Words coming to her across the void between them.

“And the crowd went wild.”

Tears, no longer despairing, burned her cheeks. It was Veitch.

“Jesus Christ!” The jubilation on Veitch’s face turned to horror when his eyes finally adjusted to the gloom enough to see Ruth huddled on the other side of the cell. It took a second for him to take in her filthy, matted hair, the dirt smeared across her skin, the unclean rag tied around her hand across the stump of her finger, but it was her face that affected him the most; it carried the weight of punishment and suffering to a degree that was painful to see. Yet despite that, at its core there was the defiance and strength he had recognised the first time he met her; diminished certainly, restrained, but still there. She had not been broken.

“Thank you.” Her voice sounded delirious.

Veitch threw himself down the stairs and sprinted across the cell, scrubbing at the spots of foul black ichor on his bare skin that burned like nettle sting.

“What’s that?” Ruth said weakly, watching his actions; she seemed so detached she was barely conscious.

“Shit that came out of one of the Bastards. Blood, I suppose. Burns like fuck.” He knelt down and gripped her shoulders. “Look, I know it’s been a nightmare for you, but you’ve got to pull yourself together till we get out of here. I got in, but I don’t know if I can get out again, and we’re going to have every Bastard in here on our heels soon.”

“You came for me?” She couldn’t seem to make sense of what he was saying.

“Couldn’t leave you down here, could we?” The way she held her face up to him, slightly puzzled, slightly relieved, filled him with emotions he had never experienced in such an acute form before; there was a sharpness to them that almost made him wince, but a warmth too, and he knew at that moment that this was what he had been searching for all his life. He couldn’t bear it if those feelings slipped away from him. “Come on, girl,” he said softly. “You and me against the world.”

At first he was afraid she wouldn’t be able to walk and he’d have to carry her, but after he helped her to her feet she quickly grew steadier and soon she was moving across the cell without any aid. Outside the door she wrinkled her nose at the gruesome mess that smeared the corridor. Black and green slime was everywhere, along with chunks of matter and what looked like the horned, twisted remains of a Fomor; it appeared to have been hacked to pieces. Three crossbow bolts protruded from one part of it she couldn’t recognise. Veitch retrieved them quickly and held them in the flame of one of the wall torches to burn the ichor off them.