Always Forever (43 page)

"If only you'd done something before." Church caught the negativity before
it spread. "The first thing we have to do is get out of here." He looked over at
Callow, who was performing a mad little dance around the Malignos. "Before
that bastard slits my throat. Or worse."

"Then you are fortunate to have friends in low places."

The voice was barely audible, but Church recognised it instantly. It felt as
if a mouse was scurrying around his hands. Marik Bocat was hard at work severing his bonds with a tiny implement that occasionally pricked his flesh. A
surge of hope rose in his chest, but he kept it from reaching his face.

After a few moments, Callow returned, loping like a wolf. "The arrangements have been made." His eyes slithered from side to side while he rubbed his
hands oleaginously. "Once this filthy little skiff has fallen, then it's the turn of
your happy little palace of dreams."

Church felt Baccharus stiffen beside him at the news that the Fomorii had
not yet moved on the High Court of the Tuatha De Danann. Still hope. Always
hope. "What now, Callow?" he said. "Is this where you get your kicks?"

Callow slipped his hand into his threadbare jacket and pulled out a knife
whose blade was smeared with dried, brown blood. Church tried not to look at it,
but he knew it was the blood of his friends. Callow weighed it in his hand, smiled.

His bonds gave suddenly. He kept his face emotionless, his arm muscles taut.
Pace yourself, he thought. Wait until he bends forward. His eyes flickered towards the
Malignos; they were too far away to stop him if he was quick enough.

Callow struck like a snake. Church didn't even see the blow, but he felt his
forehead rip open and hot blood bubble down into his eyes. He cursed, threw
his head back, but Callow, in his crazed state, was sweeping in with eager blows.
Church dodged one, but another took his cheek open. The next one might hit
his jugular.

He threw himself forward at the same time as did Baccharus, whose own
bonds had been sliced. They piled into Callow, who folded up like a sheet on a
line, and then their impetus carried him with them as they drove towards the
door. The Malignos exploded into a frenzied activity of snapping jaws and
flashing limbs. One of their talons caught Church's other cheek and it burst open as cleanly as if it had been sliced with Callow's knife. Their speed was
frightening. With reptilian sinuousness they had swept round to attack
Church's and Baccharus's exposed backs, but by that time the two of them had
reached the door. Baccharus shouted a word, twisted his left hand and the wall
shimmered into the waterfall.

They rolled into the corridor with Callow screaming before them, his face
contorted with rage. Church silenced him with a sharp headbutt; not wholly
necessary, but it made him feel good. Then he grabbed Callow by the collar and
hurled him into the path of the approaching Malignos. They fell backwards in
time for Baccharus to seal the door.

"That will not keep them for long," he said.

"Doesn't matter." Church fingered the sword that Callow, in his arrogance
had failed to remove. "We need to raise the alarm-"

The words died in his throat as the ship came to a sudden, lurching stop.
Baccharus's expression told him all he needed to know. The Fomorii had seized
control.

t was a graveyard, though why there should be a graveyard in the land of the
dead made no sense to Veitch at all. It stretched as far as the eye could see:
stone crosses, gleaming white like fresh-picked bones, or chipped and mildewed,
some standing proud, others bowed and broken as if they had been forced from the
earth; single standing stones and ancient cairns; mausoleums styled with fine carvings of angels; rough built stone tombs. Mist drifted languorously at knee height.
The sheer weight of the monuments brought an air of severe melancholy.

As he emerged from the tunnel into the city of the dead, the view triggered
all his primal fear of death. His more immediate fears were more prosaic: what
if each of those graves and tombs and mausoleums contained one of the dead,
ready to rise up the moment he walked amongst them? His heart beat faster.

There was no alternative. He placed a foot next to the first grave and waited
for a hand to grab his ankle. Nothing. He proceeded to the next one.

After several minutes the tension was starting to tell. It felt like walking
through a minefield. He couldn't let his concentration slide for a moment: if the
dead were present, they would choose the moment he least expected to strike,
when he was in the midst of the graves with nowhere to turn. He looked around
slowly; there was nowhere to run. A million graves, packed so tight he could
barely move amongst them.

The direction he had chosen-from the view presented to him by the eggproceeded past one of the largest mausoleums in the vicinity. It haunted the
edges of his vision and he found himself drawn back to it continually. Its size
made it out of place in the surroundings, but there was another aspect that did
not feel right. As he approached it, his gaze snapped back, and back again, on
the heavy, marbled door, waiting for a crack to appear, on the way the mist
appeared to be drawn towards it. A few feet away he was convinced he could hear
something dimly scrabbling within, like an animal, but not.

When he was parallel with it, a small droplet of sweat trickled down his
back, like water off a glacier. Even when he had passed by, his anxiety did not
diminish, and he could feel it on his back for many moments after.

Eventually, his attention was drawn by what appeared to be a giant crow,
sitting on a low, stone box. Shavi had his eyes fixed on the horizon, as Veitch had
seen him in the vision presented by the egg. It didn't seem right that he was so
still. He wanted to call out to his friend, but the thought of his voice, loud and
hard in that place of whispers, filled him with dread.

And so he hurried on, his heart beginning to soar, hardly daring to raise his
expectations. His mate, his pal, his buddy, his best friend; alive.

As he neared the unmoving form, he finally found the courage to speak. Shavi's
name drifted across the final feet between them, as dry and insubstantial as the
spindly trees that poked up amongst the graves. At first there was no response.
Veitch's heart started to beat faster: it was all another stupid game, dangle the
prize, then snatch it away at the last minute, laughing at how foolish the Fragile
Creatures were.

But then a shiver ran through the hunched, dark form, as subtle as wind on
long grass.

"Shavi?" Veitch repeated hopefully.

Another tremor. Slowly Shavi's head began to turn. Veitch caught his
breath. Would he see something terrible in that face? The eyes of someone
driven insane by the experience of dying?

Shavi's limbs moved with the gradual adjustment of a man waking from a
deep sleep, and when he did look round, Veitch was relieved to see his old friend
as he had always looked. Shavi blinked long and slowly, squinting slightly as he
focused on Veitch.

"I was having the strangest dream." His voice was strained, as if he hadn't
spoken for a long time.

Veitch ran forward, beating down his surging emotions, and awkwardly put
a celebratory arm round Shavi's shoulders before quickly pulling back. "You're
all right, mate. It's all going to be all right now."

Shavi smiled faintly, brushed a lock of hair from Veitch's forehead. Veitch
didn't flinch. As his waking became sharper, his attention was drawn to his surroundings. "Where are we?"

"Don't worry about it," Veitch said hastily. "I know it looks like the biggest
bleedin' graveyard you've ever seen, but you're not dead, all right?"

Shavi's brow furrowed. "A graveyard? Is that what you are seeing?"

Now it was Witch's turn to be puzzled. "Don't you?"

Shavi covered his eyes, then slowly ran his fingers through his long, black
hair before letting them drop cautiously to his chest. He tentatively probed the
area around his heart. "Callow. He stabbed me." He examined his fingers for any sign of blood. "The pain was ... intense. Like needles being forced through my
veins." He looked up at Veitch with panic flaring in his eyes. "He killed me."

"Calm down, mate-"

"Lee was here." He looked around wildly. "He brought me into the land of
the dead-"

Veitch took his shoulders roughly. "Pull yourself together, pal. You're not dead.
One of the freaks-the big, horny-headed bastard-he saved you. Well, not quite,
but he kept you sort of half alive and half dead. I'm here to take you back."

"This is not still a dream?"

"I'm here. Hit me if you want. But I'll hit you back, you dim bastard."

Shavi smiled, calmed. "Just a different kind of dream, then."

"You can't wait to start talking bollocks, can you?" He helped Shavi to his
feet. "We've got to get you back to your body-" Shavi stiffened. "Your body's
not here."

Shavi thought about this for a moment, then nodded in understanding. "My
essence has created this form to house it. There is so much to assimilate. You
need to rejoin my essence to my body."

"We don't know how much longer you can carry on like this before you
really do peg out."

Shavi took a few shaky steps, his legs quickly regaining their poise. "The
others?"

"Tom's with me. Don't know where the others are exactly. I think they're fine."

"Ruth?"

"She's okay."

They looked at each other for a moment, then broke out in broad grins, the
telepathy of old friends replacing the need for talk.

"Then," Shavi mused, "the question is, how do we return?"

Unsure, Veitch surveyed the cluttered landscape of cold stone. "I reckon we
head back to the place where I came in, if we can find it. We'll find it," he added
positively.

They had to walk single file to pick their way amongst the grave markers, but
Veitch could still tell Shavi was distracted. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"I was thinking about Lee."

"Your boyfriend."

"When he died that night in Clapham, I thought I had seen the last of him.
My heart was broken, but also I was consumed with guilt because I was sure I
could have done something to save his life. When the spirits in Edinburgh sent
him back to haunt me as the price I had to pay for gaining their secret knowl edge ... I was almost pleased." Veitch turned to stare at him, surprised by this
new information. "It was terrible-psychologically, emotionally-but I felt I
deserved it. And even at the point of my death, he was there, ushering me across
the boundary for more suffering."

"So where is he now?"

"That is exactly what I was thinking. I do not really know what happened to
me in the period that followed my death, but I do know that in some way I have
come to terms with Lee's death, and my involvement in it. And now he is not here.
It is almost as if the way I felt about myself turned him sour." He paused thoughtfully. "We make our own Hell, Ryan. In many ways, many times a day."

Veitch continued his measured pace. "You just be thankful you're shot of
him."

The hand closed round his ankle with the speed of a striking snake. It took
him a second or two to realise what was happening, his gaze running up and
down the pale limb protruding from the rough, pebbly soil of the grave, and by
then movement had erupted all around.

"Shavi!" he yelled, but the word choked in his throat at the shock of what
he was seeing.

The ground was opening up in a million small upheavals, mini volcanoes of
showering earth and stone. Across the vast graveyard, bodies were thrusting out
on locked elbows, alien trees growing in time-lapse photography. Witch, as
brave as any man alive, felt his blood run cold.

In sickening silence they surged from every side. Hands clutched his arms,
his hair, pulled at his jaw, slipped into his mouth. Odourless, stiff and dry, they
dragged him down to the hard ground. He tried to see Shavi, but his friend had
already been washed away in the tidal wave of bodies.

Even that thought was eradicated when he saw where they were dragging
him: to the mausoleum that had haunted him from the moment he saw it.

It loomed up among the mists, only now its door hung agape and the interior was darker than anything he had ever seen before.

Tom smoked a joint as he watched the sun come up over Wandlebury Camp, but
even the drugs couldn't take the edge off his anxiety. Veitch was sharp, a strategist, a warrior: there was no one else he could have despatched into the Grim
Lands. Yet the decision was still a crushing weight on his heart. Despite his constant ferocity, Veitch was, to all intents and purposes, a child and the Grim
Lands was the worst battlefield in the worst war in the history of the world. Tom
winced at how he had fooled himself that his protege was operating under free
will. Veitch had no capacity to make a rational choice.