Ghost of a Chance (28 page)

They all looked around, but there was no-one else to be seen. The darkness was back beyond the windows, where it belonged, and the car seemed perfectly normal.

“Are you sure?” said Melody. “It isn’t just . . .”

“No it isn’t just!” snapped Happy, up on his feet and glaring about him. “I am, unfortunately, entirely clear-headed again, and I am telling you. There’s a presence in this car. Not a ghost, not as such. But I can feel it, like a background noise, like a flickering light, or a voice calling from another room . . .
It’s here, and it’s alive . . .
”

“Yes!” Kim said suddenly. “It’s a man! I can sense him if I concentrate hard enough. Over there, by the end doors.”

And again everyone looked, but even when Kim pointed, they still couldn’t see anything. JC even lowered his shades for a moment, but it didn’t help. He looked at Happy.

“Not a ghost. A presence. Alive, not dead. So who is it?”

“I think . . . it’s the man who killed me,” said Kim. “Or what’s left of him.”

JC leaned in close beside her. “Are you sure?”

“He’s not entirely dead, but pretty close,” said Kim. “This is part of him. His mind, his spirit . . . driven out of his body by some terrible trauma.”

“Oh good,” said Natasha. “I was starting to feel peckish. Don’t look at me like that, it was just a joke!”

“Well, what’s it doing here?” said Melody.

“I think he’s trying to warn us about something,” said Kim. Her gaze had softened, and her voice was no longer angry. “He feels so sad, so hurt, and so very afraid.”

“Warn us?” said Happy. “Warn us about what?”

“About what’s waiting for us,” said Kim, her head cocked slightly to one side, listening. “He desperately wants to warn us about what he saw and what happened to him. He says he has a name for us.”

“What name?” said JC.

“Fenris Tenebrae,”
said Kim.

“Oh shit,” said JC.

“What?” said Natasha.
“What?”

“Fenris Tenebrae,” said JC, and his voice was very cold and very grim. “The Wolf In Darkness. The Devourer. One of the really old Great Beasts, and the most terrible.”

“What’s so bad about a wolf?” said Natasha.

“You eat ghosts,” said JC. “Fenris Tenebrae eats civilisations, and worlds. It is the end of all things, given shape and form and appetite.”

“Oh shit,” said Erik.

“We never stood a chance,” said Happy, softly, bitterly. “Right from the beginning, we never stood a chance. It’s been playing with us . . .”

“More fool it,” JC said steadily. “We can do this, people. There’s always a chance.”

“Of course,” said Kim. “We’ve got you.”

The train slammed into a station, and a cold, characterless light shone through the car windows. The train slowed smoothly to a halt and stopped. The five living agents and the dead woman stared out the windows. The station had no name and no markings, no destinations map, and nothing at all on the bare stone walls. No-one moved on the empty platform. The car doors opened silently and waited. JC looked at the doors, then at the station beyond.

“So this is the station the Beast made for itself. Bit basic. Not big on details, our Beast.”

“It’s not playing games any more,” said Melody.

“It doesn’t have to,” said Happy. “I think the Beast brought us here to show us its true face.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Natasha.

“To look into the eyes of a Great Beast is enough to destroy a human mind,” said Happy.

“You really do have self-confidence issues, don’t you?” said Natasha. “Grow a pair, dammit. We’re trained agents! We can do this!”

“Yeah,” said Erik, giggling. “Man up. What’s the matter with you? It’s only a big bad wolf.”

“Okay,” said Happy. “You crazy people can go out first. I’ll be somewhere else. Hiding.”

Natasha sniffed loudly, shouldered JC aside, and strode out through the waiting car doors and onto the deserted platform. JC hurried after her, not wanting to be left out of anything. Erik and Melody went next, and Happy brought up the rear, dragging his feet so much that Kim actually floated right through him to join up with JC.

The station was so cold it hit them all like a blow and stopped them dead in their tracks. The freezing air cut at their exposed flesh like a knife, and breathing in the bitter air was enough to burn their lungs. The five living agents huddled together instinctively, crowding close to share their body warmth. Kim looked at them blankly. She didn’t feel the cold at all. Both ends of the platform had disappeared, swallowed up by darkness, and the only source of light spilled out from the car behind them. Only now it was a harsh yellow light, as though it had somehow gone off, gone rotten, become . . . spoiled.

“This is what it will feel like at the end of the world,” said Happy. “When the sun has gone out, and Fenris Tenebrae has eaten the moon. When all the living things are gone, and nothing remains but the dark and the cold and the endless night.”

They looked around, but nothing looked back. They were alone on what remained of the platform, in what remained of the light. Dust seemed to be falling, softly and silently, in endless grey curtains.

And then Kim drifted slowly forward, untouched by the cold or the dark or the terrible foreboding of the place, and pointed out a small dark shape tucked away beneath the exit arch. JC made himself move forward to join Kim. There was someone sitting there, half-hidden in the shadows. A man, small and anonymous, curled into a foetal ball, staring straight ahead with fixed, unblinking eyes. His clothes were covered with a thick layer of frost, hard and unyielding to the touch, and he was locked so tightly into his state it was hard to see how he would ever rise from it again. He was still breathing. Small puffs of shallow breath steamed on the chill air. But his wide, staring eyeballs were covered over with fine misty patterns of frost.

“He doesn’t even know we’re here,” said Kim. “But I know him.”

“Is this the presence from the train?” JC said quietly. “The man who killed you?”

“I never saw his face,” said Kim. “Just felt the sudden pain in my back. But yes; this is what’s left of him. The body his mind was driven out of.” She looked at JC. “I think the Beast showed him its true face; and this is what it did to him.”

“But what’s he doing here?” said Natasha. She’d finally found the strength to move forward to join them. The others were coming, too, each at their own pace. Natasha prodded the unmoving body with the toe of her pink leather boot, and the small man rocked slightly in place, for a moment.

“I think the Beast called him here,” said Melody. “Because it had no more use for him. It didn’t want one of its agents ending up in the Institute’s hands, or the Project’s. We might have got some answers out of him.”

Erik crouched before the frozen figure, studying him with ghoulish fascination. “Fascinating . . . Almost cryogenically preserved. I really must send someone back for him when this is all over. I could have endless fun defrosting and dissecting him.”

“He’s ours,” Melody said automatically. “Hands off.”

“You wouldn’t even know what to do with him,” said Erik.

“We’d do our best to treat him, restore him,” said Melody.

“Exactly,” said Erik. “Look at his face. The despair, the horror. You think he ever wants to wake up and remember what he’s been through? If Kim is right, he’s half-way to being a ghost already. So let him go. At least I could have some fun with what’s left.”

“You’re still assuming there’s going to be an afterwards,” said Happy. “There’s a Great Beast here, remember? Let us put all our efforts into surviving the next few moments.”

He pushed Erik aside so he could crouch before the frost-covered figure and peer into its frozen face. Erik reached for a weapon. Natasha grabbed his arm and glared at him. None of the others noticed, intent on the still body.

And then there was a sound, and they all turned to look. It was an abnormally low and unnatural growl. It resonated in their bones and in their souls, triggering a strangely familiar atavistic fear. It was a sound from the Past, out of the Deep Past, out of the ancient shared past of the human species. From when we all lived in the forest, and we all lived in fear of the wild. It was the sound of the Beast, of all the wild things that ever were. Full of hate and contempt and brute bloodlust.

JC moved slowly forward, through the archway, and the others went after him. Because they’d come this far, and they had to see, had to know, for themselves. And because something in that terrible sound compelled them. And once they were through the archway, the light blazed up, and they all saw what poor little Billy Hartman had seen.

Huge and vast and intense beyond bearing, big as a house and more imposing, cruel and vicious and utterly wild, a great Wolf’s head. It had manifested on the earthly plane by manufacturing a shape out of its surroundings, using stone and cement and steel for its bones, then covering them with the wet red flesh and blood of the commuters it had abducted in its hell trains. Its great sharp teeth were made from human bone, and its huge shining eyes were formed from hundreds of human eyes. There was no fur, only wet crimson meat, to give shape to the Wolf’s head, all of it held in place by an implacable, inhuman will. It even had great pointed ears made of human flesh. It growled, and its breath stank of dead things.

For all its makeshift form, it was still Fenris Tenebrae, one of the Great Beasts, and its sheer presence was overwhelming. To look on it was like staring into the sun. It was all teeth and snarl and malevolent eyes, every wild wolf that ever was, embodied in a single brutal avatar—ancient and primordial, almost abstract, blazing with hate and hunger and cunning. Hatred especially for all the small running things that had dared to prosper in this world, dared to get above themselves and forget their true place as prey. The Wolf, the Great Wolf, Destroyer of Civilisations, and of Worlds.

Nature red in tooth and claw and loving it, all in one terrible face. No wonder poor little Billy had been driven out of his mind. Most people aren’t equipped to deal with monsters. But JC and Happy and Melody had been trained and hardened and refined by the Carnacki Institute, and Natasha and Erik had been beaten into shape by the harsh masters of the Crowley Project. So that they could track down monsters and stare them in the face, and not be broken or disturbed. So they could go face-to-face with things that were so much bigger than them, more real than them . . . and not look away.

They were agents. And Kim was dead. And not one of them was prey.

In the end, JC laughed in the Wolf’s face. It took everything he had, and it was only a small, brief sound, but it was enough to break the mood. Natasha and Erik shook their heads, as though coming out of a bad dream. Melody shuddered, and Happy put his arm round her shoulders and held her close, comforting, and she let him, glaring defiantly back into the Wolf’s huge eyes. Kim moved in close beside JC, and he laughed again—a real, hearty, dismissive sound. It hung on the air, refusing to go away. Natasha laughed, too, and Erik sniggered. Happy gave Melody a comforting squeeze and managed a breathy laugh of his own. Melody smiled coldly.

The Wolf growled again, a great roar of a sound, loud enough to shake the surroundings and rock the floor under their feet. A hateful sound, to fill all the world with cruelty. The stench of blood and carrion from the gaping jaws was sickening. Happy sneered at the Wolf.

“I have to say, as projections of the infinite into the material plane go . . . this really is pathetic. Only a head? What happened to the rest of you? Get stuck in the hole you opened because you couldn’t make it big enough to crawl through? Is your rear end hanging out on the higher plane? Maybe somebody’s hanging their washing on it, like they did with Pooh’s behind when he got stuck in Rabbit’s hole. All the other Great Beasts must be laughing their socks off. I mean, yes . . . the head’s pretty good. I’ll give you that. All big and nasty and wild; but when all’s said and done, it’s still only a head. My old Gran’s got a stuffed fox head on the wall; and I can’t help thinking you’d look really good as a trophy in the Boss’s office. Make a hell of a conversation piece. Your time is past, Beast. No-one worships or fears you any more. We’ve moved on.”

“I will make them fear me,” said the Wolf. “I will give them reason to worship me again.”

It had a voice like tearing flesh and spilled blood, and howling in the night. All the cruel joy of the chase and the slaughter.

“Nice speech,” JC said quietly to Happy. “But I think you’ve annoyed it enough now. Try and bear in mind that the Wolf is currently powerful enough to change our reality just by thinking about it.”

“Trust me, that thought is never far from my mind,” said Happy. “Our only hope is to keep the thing occupied, hold its attention, while we think of something to do. Right?”