Black Hand Gang (27 page)

The gas cloud enveloped him. Sick and green and heavy it shifted sinuously around his body. His breathing was hard and laboured. He clawed at his gas helmet only to find the mask had become one with his face, his eyepieces become round dark eyes, the breathing tube a proboscis, his tunic a shiny carapace. His insistent buzz was lost amid the continual thunderous rumbling drum of the artillery barrage that modulated to become the slow sonorous chant of unseen male voices gradually becoming more urgent, more abandoned.

The gas drew back like an outrushing tide leaving him beached at the door of the London Presbytery. The heavy ornate oak door stood ajar. The sound of a rich, sardonic laugh drew him inside. He knew that laugh, knew the supercilious grin and the piercing eyes. He made his way across the tiled floor of the entrance hall toward the door to the inner sanctum. There he was, 'The Great Beast' himself, Crowley, fornicating with his mistress within his ritual circle. His mundane angelic transcriptions served him no purpose. Magickally impotent he could not take the leap that was needed to broach the spheres. Sex was not the answer. And now Jeffries knew it. Red Magick was the answer, the way...

"
You were wrong!" he cried. "Wrong, you horny old bastard!" his voice shattering the vision in front of him He found himself in a woodland and saw a great beast, slavering, its phallus protruding lasciviously from its sheath. He watched as a large snake writhed through the grass beneath the soft underbelly of the beast, where it struck, sinking its fangs into the flesh. The beast howled in pain and fear and bolted, unaware that the venom would nevertheless do its work. First blood to the Great Snake. The snake began to shed it skin and a naked man crawled out wet with viscera, clutching an onyx stone carved with a sigil. The sigil began to glow red and expand.

Jeffries stepped through it onto the cool moonlit lawns of Lambton Grange that rang with thrill-seeking drunken giggles. He looked up at the once familiar stars that augured such a propitious moment, felt again the adrenaline surge, the confluence of fear and excitement. He recognised the ritually inscribed circle, the fug of incense, the lost Enochian codex in his hands, the drug-addled groans of the two barely conscious sacrificial virgins - no chance of an Abrahamic reprieve for them here. He stepped inside the moment to relive it again.

The words, the words he had spent months learning tumbling now out of his lips. Their blood, their life force, charging the cone of energy, powering the evocation. Once again, he felt the penumbra of Croatoan's shadow creep towards him before the very little power he had harnessed waned. He howled, both in frustration and triumph. He felt the power, proof that his Grand Working was sound.

Betrayal. The sound of barking pushed him on as he found himself running, a wanted man. Shedding skin after skin, the Great Snake changed and grew. The outbreak of the Great War galvanised his purpose. What greater cauldron of blood sacrifice could there be? Wholesale slaughter, the extinguished lives going to waste. If only one could channel it. And so his great working took shape. On the field of battle, charged by the blood of thousands, he would evoke the Old One once more. He looked up to see the shells and Very lights and saw, instead, the eyes of the arachnid being he intuited to be GarSuleth, at the centre of a star-bejewelled web. He began to relax and feel calm, then content as he accepted the being above him, welcoming it.

A mine went up, blasting thousands of tons of dirt and soil into the air, ripping apart the web and banishing its occupant to the cold dark shadows of space. The giant earthen plume took the form of a huge, terrible being, squatting on its haunches, skin like onyx, the surface of which cracked and split to reveal a burning core from which rivulets of blood flowed, hissing and steaming like lava as it oozed out across the foreign world on which he now stood.

"
Croatoan," he gasped.

Jeffries came round to the sound of retching across the chamber as the Padre vomited. Feeling light-headed and nauseous, Jeffries levered himself upright. His eyes met those of the Padre. They were wide with fear and doubt. Jeffries watched him snivel. Whatever he had seen had shaken him. Wiping the snot from his nose and the drool from his mouth he grinned at the broken Padre, whose chest was now heaving spasmodically, wracked with sobs.

The burner had been extinguished and Chandar stood over them, studying their faces expectantly. "The Kirijjandat is complete," the creature said. "How do you feel?"

Jeffries felt a calmness and certainty. Whatever doubts he might have had had been assuaged. He looked up at Chandar and smiled contentedly. He eased himself to his feet and stretched his cramped limbs. If they thought, after this rite of passage, that he would be more compliant to the will of GarSuleth they were wrong. He had passed through and not only was his conscience unaffected by the visions that had assailed him, but his convictions remained steadfast and his faith in his own actions had been reaffirmed. Most importantly, he felt vindicated by his final vision of Croatoan and, unfortunately for the Khungarrii, gloriously unrepentant.

"How do I feel? Never better, old chap. Never better."

The party had been marching for several hours now. The air was thick with cloying forest scents and the acrid smell of exhaust fumes from the grumbling tank ahead. Atkins was sweating in the oppressive heat. His uniform was beginning to chafe and his boots rub so he was thankful when, at last, the trees thinned and opened out into a stretch of heath land. The forest, they found, was not continuous but here and there were changes in terrain. A large outcrop of rounded boulders, yellow-grey in colour, worn and pitted by the weather and stained with a peculiar indigo-coloured moss dominated the heath to the left of the trail. Either side was a mass of tangled tendrils some several feet high, looking like overgrown brambles.

They walked slowly along the trail. If this world had taught them anything, it was caution. Frequent use of the track had kept the indigo-hued vegetation cropped close but anything could be hidden within the rest. They reached the centre of the heath without incident, the outcrop of boulders to their left.

Atkins thought he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. But it was only the vibrations caused by the tank setting small pebbles skittering down the outcrop.

Or then again, maybe not. One of the large boulders shifted then began to unfold. Six legs extended from underneath and two great curved horns revealed themselves. The huge bulk of the boulder revealed itself as a giant beetle.

Moving quickly, it struck out at the line of men, mandibles scything the air snatching two up and severing them in half. Shouts went up and the Tommies scattered, some racing back the way they had come, others seeking cover among the brambles. Thinking it would afford them protection, some raced toward the tank. The rock beetle snapped angrily at them, catching up with a third man, his screams briefly echoing around the heath until it crushed him.

Gazette squeezed off several shots. He hit the beast squarely, but to no effect.

"Rapid fire!" the order came. A number of men, Atkins among them, opened fire, which only served to aggravate the creature. However, it did buy time for the tank to slowly, haltingly turn round to face the attacker.

Atkins heard the tank's engine rev above the shouts and screams as the boulder beetle snapped at the fleeing soldiers. Hearing the grating roar it turned its attention to the tank.

"It thinks the tank is some sort of rival!" said Pot Shot.

With a loud, venomous hiss, it ran towards the landship. The mechanised behemoth gunned its engine and lurched forward, two titanic beasts charging each other. They crashed together with the tortured squeal of stone on metal, the tank pushing inexorably forward, forcing the huge rock beetle back. Stunned, it retreated briefly as if considering its next move. It lowered its head and shoved forward trying to lodge its great horns under the vehicle and turn it.

The tank reversed away from the beetle which raised itself up on its legs and hissed, spitting a stream of fluid at the ironclad. It sizzled and smoked as it hit the tank between its front tracks. The tank reversed and the beetle scuttled forward, clearly thinking its challenger was retreating.

"Come on!" Atkins muttered under his breath. A movement on the trail distracted him. Hepton was running clumsily, carrying his camera on its folded tripod before finding himself a vantage point for the battle. Planting the tripod down and splaying its legs out, his eye to the box, he began cranking at a measured pace.

"What the hell's he doing?" said Gutsy. "Hasn't he seen what that thing has just done to the
Ivanhoe
?"

"Give me strength," sighed Atkins. As much as he wanted to leave Hepton to his fate, the weight of his brother's fate lay heavily on him. He'd like to think that nobody had left William behind. He hoped somebody might have done what he was about to do. "Gazette, cover me."

"What?"

He started running toward Hepton as the tank roared its defiance and lumbered forward, snorting smoke. The beetle lowered its head and charged, meeting the tank head-on with a clash of armours. Atkins shouted at the kinematographer, who continued to crank his camera as the titanic battle played out before him. "What the hell do you think you're doing you idiot! Get out of there!"

"Are you mad?" cried Hepton, shrugging Atkins off. "This is money in the bank. People will pay through the nose to see this!"

Hepton had a point, Atkins thought. Gears grinding, engine screaming, the tank was holding its ground and edging forwards, pushing the boulder beetle back foot by foot. The beetle struggled to gain a purchase on the ground. It spat its acidic venom at the tank again. It splattered thickly against the plate armour, etching and pitting the metal.

The beetle braced itself against the tank's relentless advance and the landship's great tracks began slipping in the churned earth. Seizing the advantage the beetle's great mandibles sliced through the anti-grenade mesh roof before it turned its attentions to the upturned snout of a track horn, where the caterpillar tracks protruded forward from the body of the tank. The metal groaned in protest under the pressure. One tank track stopped and the other carried on running, rotating the tank clockwise before that track stopped and the other ground back into action, swinging the tank back the other way. Atkins realised that the tank was trying to shake off the giant beetle. The rear end of the creature slued round, its rear legs nearly taking out Hepton and his camera.

Atkins grabbed the cameraman by the collar and hauled him back. "God damn it, you've got your moving pictures, now let's go!"

The near loss of his equipment shocked Hepton into action. He gathered in the legs of his tripod, hoisted it onto his shoulder and ran.

By now, the rest of the company had made it across the heath, covered by a rapidly deployed Lewis gun on the far side.

The tank backed away from the creature, throwing it off balance so that it released its grip. Engines roaring, gears grinding, the valiant
Ivanhoe
threw itself forward once more, clashing with the giant beetle.

The tank stopped for a moment before pitching forward, catching the beetle off guard for a second before it began to push it back. The front of the tank rose up off the ground, forcing the beetle to rise with it. They looked like two primal beasts grappling chest to chest, locked in a titanic struggle.

Pushing the stumbling Hepton across the clearing towards the waiting company, Atkins glanced back over his shoulder and saw the
Ivanhoe's
right-hand sponson six-pounder swivel forward. It fired a shell point blank at the unprotected underbelly of the beetle. The force of the explosion threw it over onto its back, a huge gaping wound in its side. The front of the tank crashed down again and the machine lurched unsteadily forwards.

The beetle was struggling to right itself, its legs flailing in the air and squealing just within the threshold of human hearing. The tank drove purposefully up onto the fallen beast and came to a halt on its upturned belly. Then it shifted gears so that one of the tracks fed backward and the other forwards; it began to rotate, the metal tracks grinding the beast beneath it, disembowelling it. The squealing and the frantic leg waving ceased. The tank stopped, re-engaged its gears and rolled out of the pit it had gouged in the beast, its tracks leaving a trail of blue-green blood as it drove across the clearing. The company were cheering and whooping at its triumphant approach. As one, they rushed forward to mob it and slap its flanks as if it were a cup-winning thoroughbred.

"I missed it!" cried Hepton in disappointment as he turned to see the pulverised beetle lying slain.

"Well you got away with your life, and whatever film you did shoot, so count yourself lucky," said Atkins, delivering the kinematographer into the hands of Sergeant Hobson. Atkins nudged Hepton in the ribs and whispered confidentially, "If you ask him nicely he might do his Charlie Chaplin routine for you."

The company, jubilant and in high spirits after the
Ivanhoe's
victory, continued marching on through the forest. As the sun began to set the track widened into a tree-lined avenue.

"Holy mother of god!" gasped Porgy as, through breaks in the canopy, they caught their first glimpse of the edifice.

"They seal the edifice at night," Poilus told them. "Any Khungarrii or Urman outside will have to fend for themselves until dawn."

"Fine Christian attitude that is," said Porgy.

"I think we can say they're probably not Christians," said Pot Shot.

"I wouldn't be so sure. They've had the Padre for a while now. He'll be on a mission," said Mercy. "If he can convert 'em before we kill 'em at least he'll have saved their souls. That'll get him to the front of the queue at the pearly gates.

"That's if these Chatts have souls," said Atkins. "Which I doubt. I mean, not exactly made in His image are they?"