Always Forever (47 page)

"What is it?" Baccharus obviously saw something in Church's face for he
rested a steadying hand on his friend's shoulder.

"I'm afraid I could get lost in there. Somehow ... it's like their minds are
all linked. Lots of different bodies, but one being. I've only had the briefest hint
of what's inside them, but even then it felt like a rushing river. Of oil, black and
so cold. It was tugging at me even then."

Baccharus nodded. "I understand. You must do what you feel you have to
do. No one will judge you."

Somehow that made things even worse for Church. "I've got to stop being
such a wimp. What would Tom say?" He grinned defiantly. "Come on, then.
Let's get us a guinea pig."

They crept back to the foot of the stairs that led to the deck, constantly checking
for any sound of Callow and the Malignos. A cold, heavy wind buffeted them
and through the doorway they could see swirling clouds occasionally lit up by
flashes of white lightning. In the storm, the ship pitched so much that Church
had to clutch at the wall to remain upright. At least the pounding thunder
would hide any noise they made, Church thought.

The view through the doorway was occasionally obscured by a large shape
lumbering slowly by. A guard, Church guessed, to prevent any of Wave
Sweeper's passengers interfering with whatever was happening on deck. Even
though they had discussed the plan-and it was a simple one-tension still
tugged at his neck muscles. One mistake and they would bring the whole of the
Fomorii force down on them.

"Are you ready?" he whispered.

"Yes." Baccharus's voice was characteristically cool.

Church held the throwing star gently, keeping his fingers well away from
the razor-sharp barbs. "You sure you wouldn't be better off using this?"

"You have the ability. And I am faster than you."

"Okay," Church said. "I'm set. Go carefully."

Baccharus smiled shyly, then loped towards the stairs. Church backed off
along the corridor and round a bend. His breath was fast, his heart beating hard.
With nervous hands he loaded the star in the thong and held it at his side,
rolling on the balls of his feet, ready to move in an instant. Despite Baccharus's
vote of confidence, he still doubted his ability, even though he'd had several
practice attempts with the star. It responded to his thoughts remarkably easily,
almost as if it were a part of him, but the Fomorii were fast when they had to
be. Were his reactions sharp enough to build up the velocity and release the star
before the beast was on him? Before it could raise the alarm?

Don't think, he told himself. Just act.

In his mind's eye, he saw Baccharus sneaking to the foot of the stairs, sliding up them sinuously on his belly, waiting for the guard to pass to the furthest
reaches of his path, hoping there were no other Fomorii anywhere near. Tossing
one of the coals from the furnace so it rattled on the wet boards just beyond the
doorway. Sliding quickly back down the stairs and retreating to the shadows while
the guard investigated the sound easily discerned by its magnified perceptions.

Church held his breath and listened: nothing but the wind.

And now Baccharus would be hurling another coal to the foot of the stairs
and retreating again. This time Church thought he heard the rattle of the coal.
The guard would be advancing down the stairs like the onset of a winter night.

Church couldn't breathe. He shifted from foot to foot as the adrenalin made his
body shake with repressed anxiety. Slowly he began to twirl the thong around him,
taking care not to clatter the weapon against the walls. Swish. Swish. A gentle breeze.

Another coal tossed from the security of the shadows. This one rolling
almost to the guard's feet. Now it had a suspicion of what was happening. But
it was not scared. It created fear, it did not know it.

Events happened like a house of cards collapsing. Baccharus appeared round
the corner, a blur of gold, not slowing as he approached Church, ducking
beneath the whirl of the weapon in one fluid moment. Church suddenly spinning like an Olympic discus thrower, faster and faster until he feared his vision
would be too blurred to see the Fomorii approaching. The star singing to him,
a plaintive tune. And then the shadows at the bend becoming filled with something even darker than shadows; that sickening stink, the roar of a jet taking off
punctuated by a monkey shriek. Something so huge it filled the entire corridor,
moving with the speed of a racehorse; a shape that had tentacles, then teeth,
then silver knives, fur then scales, then nothing but an absence of everything.

Church whirled one final time, then snapped his wrist to release the star.
The weapon was like a glimmering light in the void as it tore through the air.
It ripped through where the creature's arm should have been and something
heavy fell to the floor. The monkey shriek grew more high pitched.

Church's mind was clear of everything but the star. Back and forth, up and
down, he chased the pin-prick of light, tearing the beast apart. Things fell; the
floor grew sticky beneath his feet. The smell was unbearable, part of it the odour
of his boots being corroded by the thing's essence. His heart zinged as relief
flooded in; he was actually doing it. But he had to be careful. Not too good. He
had to keep the thing alive, at least long enough for him to get into its head. A
pang of guilt hit him at the suffering he was inflicting on another living thing.

The shrieks were cut off and the beast crashed to the floor. This was the most
dangerous moment. It was still alive, but he didn't want it so alive it could still
kill him with its dying blow.

Baccharus brought up a torch so he had a better view of the sickening havoc
he had wreaked on the body. He tried to avert his eyes, but it was all around.

"It is time." Baccharus's words gave him a gentle push, but were at the same
time supportive. He steeled himself and stepped forward.

His sizzling boots slid in the grue. A tendril flapped wildly before curling
around his legs. In a moment of panic he kicked out wildly. The tendril flew off
and continued to judder aimlessly.

He had no choice but to climb on the body, which was sickeningly resilient
beneath his feet. His boot slipped into a hole that felt like a sucking bog. He
withdrew it with an unpleasant slurping sound.

Finally he reached the point where he guessed its head would be. There was
certainly a raised area with what appeared like eyes rolling back and forward in
its dying spasms, but they were as black as oil, glinting with an inner light which
was inexplicably black too, but of a different quality. Fighting the nausea, he bent
down and brushed his fingers against the skin. Although he couldn't begin to
describe the texture, it felt so unpleasant his stomach rolled and he truly thought
he was about to be sick. When the queasiness had passed, he placed his hands
near those shivering eyes, closed his own lids, and concentrated.

He was caught aback by the speed and severity of the reaction. One second he
was fighting back his disgust at his surroundings, the next he was sucked violently into a surging river of crude oil, immersed in a vile stench that was part
chemical, part excrement, feeling revulsion in every fibre of his being at what
his senses told him. It was such a totally overwhelming experience he felt he
was living it; the corridor, the Night Walker, Baccharus, all disappeared from
his mind.

He was swept along in the black stream, choking, not from a lack of oxygen,
but from the sensation that his body was being suffused with such Evil his very
spirit recoiled. The abstract was given form by his mind as a complex mix of
feelings, strangulation, a feeling that something vile, like human brains, was
being forced into his mouth, that his skin was being touched by the innards of
a loved one's corpse. The rush was amphetamine-fast, pulled this way and that
so dramatically he didn't have a second to think. He was fighting, for his life,
for his sanity, sure he would never get out again.

And then he felt the full force of what had only been hinted at before: the
awful, alien intelligence that linked the Fomorii. Spiders burrowed deep in his
brain. There were no words, no images that made any sense to him, but there
was an intense impression of that thing's thoughts. He was swamped with a soulshattering despair as it cruelly disseminated the point of view that there was no meaning to anything, no reason for anything to exist, that it would be better if
nothing existed at all.

He saw through multifaceted eyes London cast in negative: bodies piled in
the streets and the Thames running thickly, white shadows reaching into buildings and hearts. He glimpsed the world from a hundred thousand eyes, and
more, the Lake District, the Welsh borders, the South Coast, the Midlands,
moving out with the tramp of an infinite marching army ringing all around.

Even more sickening was that the longer he was in it, the more he could
control, picking eyes here, then there. And eventually he saw through eyes that
looked out over Wave Sweeper and soaked up the oily impression of intent.

His body prickled with cold sweat. He was Fomorii, and it would never,
ever let him go. The vibrations that convulsed him grew stronger and stronger,
until he thought he was beginning to shake apart ...

He hit the floor hard, driving the wind from his lungs. It took a second or two
for the black oil to drain from his mind, but daemonic voices still rang in his
ears, even when he saw Baccharus's face above him.

"Jesus." He choked; a mouthful of bile splattered on the sizzling ooze that
ran from the now-dead Fomor.

"Find peace, Brother of Dragons."

"I was one of them ... I couldn't get away ..."

"Your face told me what was happening. I thought I would never be able to
break the spell."

Church took several deep breaths, then put his head between his knees, but
he couldn't shake the squirming in his brain.

"I know what they're going to do," he gasped.

Baccharus helped him to his feet. "You saw?"

"Saw ... felt ... whatever." He heaved in another breath, trying to keep the
nausea at bay. "Are they really a part of me? Is that it? For the rest of my life?"

"We are all a part of everything, and everything is a part of us."

"That doesn't sound like one of the Tuatha De Danann." He rested on Baccharus as the god led him away from the corpse. "I saw something ... a structure ... a geometrical shape that seemed to disappear into other dimensions ...
glowing ruby, then emerald."

"The Wish-Hex." Baccharus's voice was suddenly so dismal, Church
snapped alert.

"But it wasn't just that," Church continued. "I got a hint of something
about disease ... a plague ..."

Baccharus turned away so Church couldn't see his face.

"What is it?"

"The Wish-Hex is a construct of unimaginable power. The Night Walkers
used it to break the pact and sever the bonds that chained them to the Far Lands.
It decimated my people. Some were contaminated by the essence of the Night
Walkers, some-"

"... were driven into exile and some fled. I know the story."

"The Night Walkers must have sacrificed much to focus it again." He
bowed his head and put a hand to his temple. "But to bind one of the great
plagues into the matrix ..."

"That's even worse?"

He looked up at Church with liquid eyes. "My people will not be exiled.
They will be destroyed, in the worst way imaginable. Eaten away from within."

"They're going to convince Manannan to take them to your high court, and
then they'll unleash it there."

Baccharus shook his head. Church thought he was going to break down in tears.

"It's not done yet, Baccharus. The ship is still stationary. They haven't
broken Manannan."

They were both disturbed by a scuttling across the wooden floor behind
them. They whirled to see a silver spider disappearing into the shadows: a Caraprix, one of the symbiotic creatures shared by the Fomorii and the Tuatha De
Danann. It had vacated the cooling body.

"Quick!" Baccharus said.

Church whirled the thong and loosed the star, but it simply raised a shower
of splinters from the floor. The Caraprix was already en route to the deck. They
both chased around the corner to see it disappearing out into the night.

Baccharus grabbed Church's arm forcibly. "We must flee. The alarm will
already have been raised. They will be on us in moments."

As if in answer to his words, a shocking outcry of animal noises tore through
the night. It was followed an instant later by the thunder of forms rushing to
the lower decks.

Church and Baccharus turned as one and sprinted away along the endless
corridors.

The cacophony of pursuit dogged them for fifteen minutes, but Baccharus took
them down hidden tunnels which, from the cobwebs that festooned them,
appeared not to have been used for years. After a while, the silence lay heavy
again and they could both rest against the wall to catch their breath.

"Now they've found their dead comrade they'll be fanning out across the
ship," Church noted. "There's no element of surprise any more."

"We cannot hide forever." Baccharus was unusually anxious.

"We're not going to be hiding."

"Then what do you suggest? Two of us, against an army ..."

"There're more than two of us, Baccharus." Church smiled at the god's
curious expression. "You seem to know the ship well."

"Very well."

"Good. Then there are some places I want you to take me."

Liquid echoes and dancing splashes of light reflected off the oily water below.
The stink of rotten fish and seaweed choked the air. Church and Baccharus hurried through the gloom along a wooden walkway that hung shakily over the
black, slopping contents of the bilge tanks. They were vast and deep, filled not
only with the buoyant seawater, but also the runoff from the kitchens. This was
only one of many, but Baccharus had convinced Church it was the correct one.