Authors: George Mann
“See what I mean, sir?” said Mullins apologetically. “He doesn’t seem to be doing so well.”
“Nor would you if one of those things had tossed you across the rooftop,” said Donovan, and immediately regretted it. He altered his tone. “All right, but we’re going to have to try something. Fetch one of the nurses, would you?”
Mullins went out into the corridor and told one of the uniformed men they had on guard to track down a nurse. She appeared in the doorway a few moments later, looking flustered. “Look, this isn’t the only patient I have to deal with, you know,” she said haughtily.
“No, but I bet he’s the only one who might have information on the whereabouts of a kidnapped woman,” said Donovan. “So if you don’t mind, we’d appreciate your help in trying to save her life.”
The nurse looked suitably taken aback. “Well, yes, of course,” she said. “What do you need?”
“I need to bring him round.”
“He’s dying… Inspector?” He nodded. “He’s in excruciating pain, even with the medication. If we turn off the drip, he’s going to suffer.”
“Remember what I said—there’s an innocent woman’s life at stake. This man—he’s a killer. A cold-blooded murderer. Now, I know you have a job to do, and no one should have to die in pain, but we just need a minute to question him, that’s all. Then as far as I’m concerned you can pump him full of whatever you like.”
“Lead, preferably,” muttered Mullins.
The nurse nodded. She walked over to the drip and turned a little red tap. “There. I’ll be back in five minutes to turn it back on. He’ll probably start screaming in two.” She glanced at her watch, and left.
Donovan watched the cultist writhing on the bed, lost in the throes of his opiate dream. Whatever the drugs were doing for him, they didn’t appear to be offering much comfort.
“Did we pull a name for him?” said Donovan.
“John Doe,” said Mullins. “The boys are working on it, but his prints don’t seem to be on record, and obviously no one’s coming forward.”
Donovan nodded. He’d expected as much.
The cultist had stopped writhing now, and his face had creased in a confused frown. His fists opened, his fingers flexing, and then he suddenly sat bolt upright, thrashing against his bonds. His eyes were wide and staring, and fixed on Donovan. He opened his mouth, as if trying to scream, but nothing came out. It was one of the most horrendous things Donovan had ever seen.
“Who are you?” said Donovan, his voice level.
The man’s eyes widened. He leaned forward. Then he started whimpering. His wrists thrashed against his bonds again. Donovan reached forward, grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him back down onto the bed.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
The man’s eyes finally seemed to register something, flicking back and forth across Donovan’s face. He made a noise that started like a rasping cough, and as Donovan watched the cultist’s face crack into a pained smile, it became a dreadful, hissing laugh.
“Where is she?” said Donovan. “Where are they holding her?”
“You’re too late,” said the cultist. There were speckles of blood flecking his lips.
“Too late for what?” said Donovan. “The Circle is moving against the Reaper?”
“Sekhmet’s army awaits her. She will rise and clear the way for Thoth. Too late…” He trailed off, still laughing. “Too late…” He started to fit beneath Donovan’s grip, and Donovan released him, stepping back from the bed.
Mullins was at the door, calling for the nurse. She came running, pushing Donovan aside. She tried to clear the man’s airway, but it was bubbling with blood. “I hope you got what you wanted,” she said, with scorn, “because it’s the last thing he’ll ever say.”
“Then it’ll have to do,” said Donovan, standing aside as an army of doctors poured into the room.
He beckoned to Mullins, and they left.
They didn’t speak until they were in the car and Mullins had started the engine. “The ravings of a madman?” he said.
“I don’t think so,” said Donovan. “I think it’s about to start. Last night was a warm-up act. Tonight they’re going to show their hand.”
“Then where to?”
“There’s an apartment on Fifth Avenue, Mullins. I think you can imagine who lives there. We need to go and fetch him. We need to go and get the Ghost.”
“Very good, sir,” said Mullins. “I was hoping you were going to say that.”
He turned the wheel, and they pulled away from the curb, slipping out into the mid-afternoon traffic.
Save for the trees, Central Park was perfectly silent and still. They whispered to one another in the breeze, sharing secrets, singing a gentle lament. The Ghost didn’t know if the thought was comforting, or unsettling.
They were hunkered down amongst the boughs—he, Astrid and Donovan—watching the museum entrance, while Mullins waited around the corner with a select force of armed police officers. They’d been hand-picked by Donovan, who’d chosen only those men he thought wouldn’t balk at the first sign of anything… unexpected. This time, Donovan assured him, they’d been warned not to open fire on the Ghost if he put in an appearance, but to focus their attentions on the cultists. He hoped they’d been paying attention.
Of course, they had no real idea if they were correct in their assumption about the museum—that it would form a sort of nexus point for Sekhmet’s attack—but Astrid had argued that the tomb was the seat of her power, and that the “army” the dying cultist had spoken of was most likely comprised of ancient statues, shipped in from Egypt along with the exhibit and awaiting the call to arms. It made sense, and so here they were, camped out amongst the trees, waiting to see if anything would happen.
Donovan had found him at his apartment earlier that afternoon, having returned with Astrid to make preparations for the evening. He’d been in his workshop, constructing a pouch of explosive rounds for his flechette gun—the same kind he’d used against the Roman’s “moss men” over a year earlier, to devastating effect. He hoped they’d make a difference if they did encounter any further statues—or Enforcers—that night.
The appearance of Mullins had been something of a surprise; for well over a year now, the Ghost had strived to keep the identity of his alter ego secret from the man. Mullins had initially taken a dim view of the Ghost and his activities—often citing him a criminal, as dangerous in his own way as the enemies he fought to protect the city against—but in recent months his attitude seemed to have softened, and he’d even come to see the Ghost as something of an ally. He’d barely batted an eye as Donovan had shown him into the Ghost’s apartment and the nature of the Ghost’s true identity had become apparent. He’d simply shaken Gabriel by the hand, taken one of Donovan’s cigarettes, and joined in with the ensuing conference.
Their stories, of course, had dovetailed, and whilst Astrid and Gabriel had remained sketchy on the details of their morning’s activity, it was clear both parties had come to the same conclusion—that the Circle of Thoth were about to escalate matters, and that the Reaper’s mob were not the only target.
Following the previous night’s attacks at the precinct, the police had already cracked open their vaults and gathered a number of hand grenades, which they’d issued to the armed officers, instructing them to be deployed only in the direst circumstances, and only then against enemies such as the Enforcers. The Ghost hoped they’d be enough—if Astrid’s fears were realized, handguns and batons weren’t going to stand any of them in much stead.
He sensed movement out of the corner of his eye, and squinted, focusing in on the museum steps. A single blue dot was wavering, skipping back and forth in a nervous fashion, like an errant fairy. He adjusted his goggles, increasing the magnification and boosting the sensitivity of the night vision. It was the baboon, scuttling about in the shadows, its electric eye gleaming.
“They’re coming,” he said, just as the museum doors blew out from the inside, and the blazing light of the goddess brought a false dawn to the street outside.
She slid out into the night, gliding on her ancient, mysterious winds, trailing ribbons of tattered bandages and wrapped in a halo of ethereal sunlight. She raised herself higher, arms outstretched by her sides, a warrior queen at the head of her army.
Behind her marched upwards of ten ebon statues, dragging themselves through the splintered remnants of the doors. They stormed out onto the steps, implacable faces upturned to their goddess in the sky. Black-robed cultists swarmed around them, numerous and deadly, their curved blades drawn and glinting in the reflected light.
“Ready?” said the Ghost, turning to Donovan.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Then give them hell.”
He leapt from the cover of the trees, barreling forward, flechette gun erupting. The explosive rounds showered the first wave of statues as they reached the foot of the steps, detonating with a sound like machine-gun fire and flensing hunks of stone from their heads and upper torsos.
One of them hissed as it saw him coming, its jackal-shaped jaws hinging wide, before the upper half of its head exploded and it crashed to the ground, still and lifeless.
The police officers had heard the opening salvo and were now emerging from the other side of the museum, effectively pinning the cultists from behind. Their handguns barked, and black-robed men went down, showering the sidewalk with splashes of crimson blood.
Donovan, too, was striding from the tree line, weapon raised, snapping out shots at cultists, dropping them like dead weights where they stood.
A grenade went off close to the Ghost, and he boosted off the ground to avoid the shower of shrapnel caused by two more exploding statues. Flames guttered, the asphalt melting into sticky puddles.
Above, the avatar of Sekhmet watched events unfolding, her face contorted in fury. Shapes were beginning to gather in the light beneath her outstretched hands. The lions were coming.
The Ghost came down again, loosing another barrage of flechettes, one of which ricocheted off a baboon-headed statue and struck a cultist in the shoulder. He winced, his hand going to the wound just as the flechette blew, taking his head and shoulders with it.
The cultists had now dispersed, trying to close the gap with Mullins and his band of police officers. The police were holding their own, however, shots still ringing out as the cultists charged, their guns proving far more effective than the enemy’s swords at this range.
The crump of a second grenade reduced another lumbering statue to a shower of dust, leaving a crater in the museum steps in the process.
Arthur was
not
going to be happy.
The Ghost looked round, searching for Astrid. She was standing beneath the cover of the trees, hurling little fragments of bone into the fray, which she’d painstakingly inscribed with runes that afternoon in his apartment. He had no idea what they were supposed to do, but they appeared to be having some sort of effect on the remaining statues, causing them to stumble unsteadily, as if dizzy or confused. He guessed they must be somehow disrupting the control being exerted over them by the goddess, but whatever the case, it was making them easier targets, and he took another two of them out with his explosive rounds.
The Ghost fell back, looking to the skies.
Sekhmet faced him, glaring down at him with burning eyes. He could feel the power radiating from her; feel the searing hate, as if the light of her was causing him to shrivel in her presence. The ghostly lions had now fully formed beneath her palms, straining against their phantasmal leash, and she flicked her wrists, setting them free. They roared, and the Ghost fought the urge to run.
He planted his feet, standing his ground as they rushed him, their jaws widening as they swooped in for the kill. Simultaneously, they burst across his chest, the force of them causing him to stagger back, dropping to one knee. He clenched his jaw, resisting the urge to cry out. The light radiated
around
him, hot and angry, as if his body itself was a shield and he was trying to hold back a gale.
After a moment, they dispersed, dissolving away into the night. He stood, trembling but alive. The runes that Astrid had scrawled across his body in her workshop that afternoon—carefully removing and replacing the strapping over his ribs—had worked, protecting him from whatever life-stealing magic the goddess had employed.
He could see now that a handful of police officers had fallen to the cultists’ blades, but that they still had the upper hand, and the cultists’ numbers were thinning. Only one remaining statue lumbered at the base of the museum steps, too, already missing one of its arms and a hunk of its hip.
It was time to take the fight to the goddess. Astrid had assured him that the same runes that would protect him from her magic would allow him to land a solid blow upon her ghostly form. Now was his chance to put it to the test.
He fired his boosters, surging up on a plume of flame, heading directly for Sekhmet. She saw him coming and tried to swing out of the way, but he was too fast, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, sending them both spinning skywards.
She felt warm and solid beneath his hands, despite her ghostly aspect, and as she struggled in his grip, thrashing at him with her ankh, he twisted, looking her properly in the face for the first time. Their eyes met.
A cold sensation spread through his gut. He felt bile rising, panic stirring. He froze, unable to act, surging higher and higher into the sky. The face that was now staring back at him had been etched into his mind a thousand times; he’d cupped it lovingly in the bedroom, watched its lingering smile from across the room, traced it in his dreams as he’d longed for her to return.
“Ginny?” he said, in disbelief. “
Ginny
!”
It was
her
, right there in his arms, spinning through the air, glowing with the caustic light of her possession. She’d tried to kill him only moments earlier, and even now, this close, there was no hint of recognition.
Ginny had become the vessel of Sekhmet. It explained everything, of course it did, and the realization hit him like a lead weight. If he was honest with himself, he’d suspected it from the very first moment Astrid had explained her theory, but had refused to admit it, even to himself.