Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) (36 page)

The thought had barely registered when he was stealthily slipping out from behind the chairs. As the guard brought the radio up, Witch pulled a stout short sword silently from a baize-covered display table and began to creep across the floor. He could catch it unawares, drive the sword into the base of its skull before it had a chance to raise the alarm. He’d seen how powerful the things were; he didn’t want to risk a face-to-face confrontation.

He slid quickly across the room, raising the sword as he moved. He was almost ready to put his shoulder behind the plunge when the radio suddenly let out an ear-piercing shriek. In a split second it had changed form, like mercury being dropped on to the floor. A silver sheen flooded over it as it sprouted legs like a spider before scurrying up the guard’s arm, where it proceeded to shriek.

Veitch only had the barest instant to realise the thing was a Caraprix-one of the symbiotic shape-shifting creatures which both the Tuatha De Danann and Fomorii carried with them-before the guard was whirling. In the same fluid motion his human face began to melt away like candle-wax, rolling, pluming, becoming something so hideous it made Veitch’s gorge rise. He tried not to look as he continued with his sword stroke, driving it towards the creature’s head. But the Fomor had shifted enough for the blade to glance off its shoulderbone or whatever the unpleasant ridge was that was materialising under the guard’s shirt, splitting it open.

The creature swung something that had been an arm but now resembled a scorpion’s tail, still changing, catching him hard on the side of the head. He flew sideways, hitting the floor hard as purple stars burst in his brain.

He rolled on to his back as the Fomor advanced like a reptile, indistinct and dark and sickening, smelling of raw meat. Veitch gave himself wholly over to instinct, that strange fighting prowess that had gradually emerged from deep within him. He propelled himself forward, tangling himself in the creature’s legs. Its momentum carried it forward and over him. As it fell, he held up the sword, then rolled out of the way at the last moment. The Fomor’s own weight drove the sword through its neck and into its skull. It lay on the floor twitching and shrieking, leaking a substance that smelled so bad Veitch had to fight back the nausea.

The Caraprix, too, was wailing. It leapt from the fallen guard and scuttled across the floor. Veitch reacted instantly. He jumped forward and stamped down hard with one heavy boot, splattering it in a burst of grey ichor; its wail of alarm was cut off midnote.

Witch allowed himself one moment of relief, scarcely able to believe he had killed one of the creatures, though he still didn’t fancy his chances in a direct fight. Then he hurried over to the wall display, selected another short sword and a dagger which he tucked into his jacket, then a crossbow and some bolts, which he hung on a strap over his shoulder. And then he headed hastily to the door to see if anything had responded to the creature’s dying cries.

The square was as quiet and deserted as when he had first seen it. The only tracks were the guard’s and his own. Quickly he ran to the west exit from the square. He could hear the patrol still moving around the Middle Ward, but there was nothing between him and the Castle Vaults.

He kept close to the walls until he reached the entrance, still amazed he had made it so far. The vaults were dark and dank and smelled of wet stone and earth. The first section consisted of a long arched corridor; there were two rooms leading off it. After the wide open spaces, the place felt claustrophobic. Water was dripping from the ceiling in a constant rhythm and echoes bounced wildly off the stone.

His teeth went on edge when he heard the Fomorii dialect reverberating from the furthest room. Guardedly, he crept to the corner and peered round. Two more Royal Scots Dragoon guards stood talking next to an enormous cannon, which he knew from his reading was the mediaeval siege gun, Mons Meg. Beyond it was a ragged hole in the stone floor from which cold air currents drifted. He had been right. Here was the entrance to the Fomorii’s subterranean lair. But how was he going to get past the guards?

He noticed the room had a door near the far wall, which he guessed connected with the other chamber that led off the corridor. He returned to the first room, where there was a tourist display detailing the vault’s history as a prison, a bakehouse and barracks. Steeling himself, he used the haft of the sword to smash the glass, then hurried back to his original position outside the second room. As he had guessed, the guards took the back route to investigate the disturbance, allowing him a free run to the hole in the floor. Rough steps led down into the dark.

There was no time to deliberate. It had been a gamble to do anything which might alert the Fomorii to his presence, but it had been the only option; he would deal with the consequences later. Fighting back his anxiety, he put his foot on the top step.

Seconds later he was in dark, freezing tunnels only occasionally lit by a barely flickering torch. Branches broke off on either side from which drifted foul smells like the cooking of rotted meat; from the distance he could hear odd sounds of indiscernible origin which made him strangely fearful. It was a maze. The chances of finding Ruth were slim, of returning alive even slimmer.

ight had fallen by the time Shavi and Laura made it back to Edinburgh on the back of a lorry delivering builders’ supplies to Leith. The Bone Inspector had long since abandoned them, loping across the fields in the direction of the city, one backward glance of contempt and horror showing them what he felt of their actions.

From more than five miles from the city centre it was obvious something terrible was happening in the Old Town. The sky was filled with flashes and rumbles and as they drew closer they could see the wintry clouds that obscured the area were churning as if violent winds were gusting in that one spot.

“What do you reckon?” Laura said as they stood on the pavement where the driver had dropped them off.

Shavi could tell from her voice she feared the worst. “We will see when we get closer.”

“We’re going in there, then?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Do you think the others will be all right?”

“I do not know.”

“That’s him, isn’t it? That freak?”

Shavi said nothing. He felt complicit in the awful things that were happening, were bound to happen. If he had listened to Laura’s doubts, if he had not been so driven in his desire to accomplish their mission, the mad god might not now be loose. Perhaps Maponus had been subtly influencing him, drawing him in until his free will was compromised, but that was not enough of an excuse. His mind was strong; he could have resisted.

“Come on.” He walked away from Lothian Road into Bread Street. Shivering in their light summer clothes, they hadn’t gone far through the shadowed, twisty-tunny streets before they noticed a building which had crumbled into a pile of rubble, as if it had been hit by a bomb.

Shavi ran forward to inspect the wreckage, then noticed a curious sight. It took a second or two before it dawned on him what he was seeing. “Look here,” he said as Laura joined him.

She followed his pointing finger over the debris and saw another crumpled building beyond it, and more beyond that. A swathe had been cut through the city to the outskirts. She turned a hundred and eighty degrees and realised the path continued in the opposite direction to the heart of the Old Town. They looked at each other, but couldn’t think of any way to express the thoughts that were colliding in their heads. After a moment of silent contemplation they scrambled across the bricks, stone and tiles towards the Royal Mile.

In the next street they found the body of an old man who had obviously refused to abandon his home during the great evacuation. It wasn’t simply crushed by the housefall; it had been lovingly rendered into its component parts. The head was missing, but there was a fine red dew across an arc of virginal snow. Shavi and Laura both blanched.

“We’re going to burn for this,” she said.

They could see the battle raging through the gap in the buildings long before they clambered up on to the Royal Mile. It was furious in its intensity: a clattering of light and dark, summer and winter, two different aspects of hell; Shavi and Laura could barely look at it. Maponus’ beautiful face was contorted by an expression of such overwhelming hatred it made their blood run cold. His eyes were ranging wild, his fingers flexing, unflexing, as the energy or whatever it was rolled off him. Sometimes his attention wavered and he would let off a venomous blast at one of the abandoned buildings nearby, as if his pent-up hatred was for everything in existence. But then the Cailleach Bheur would strike again in her coldly emotionless way and his skittering attention would return to her.

At that moment the crone seemed less human than ever; her features had dissolved into the sucking darkness of the void, her limbs were black and angular like the branches of a wind-blasted tree on a wintry heath. Her power was awesome to experience; even at a distance they could feel the cold like knives in their skin. The way the blue illumination shimmered drove Laura’s mind back to the club, as the flashing lights had been refracted then obscured by the hag’s relentless ice. For the first time she truly realised how close to death she had come. Before the power of these old gods, they were nothing. She wiped a stray tear away hurriedly before Shavi had a chance to see it.

They scurried for cover behind a tumbled-down wall, their breath clouding in the cold air. “What’s going to happen if he gets by her?” she asked.

“At the moment they seem fairly well matched-“

“But sooner or later-“

“We put our faith in the others. In Church and the blue fire.” It was the first time she had heard an edge to his voice.

“What about Veitch?” They both looked into the depths of the thick mist that shrouded the castle.

“We should head to the rendezvous point. Just in case.”

Laura snorted derisively. “Is it me, or is this a head in the sand situation? You know, I hope one of us bastards has a Plan B. Otherwise I’d say, in our fine tradition, we’ve made things even worse.” Shavi was already departing. “Don’t walk away, you bastard! If that thing we set free gets away from here, we’re going to be knee-deep in killing fields.”

He turned slowly; his eyes were brimming. “I know,” he said quietly. And then he was moving away into the night once more and she had no option but to follow him.

Veitch could barely control his shivering as he progressed along the freezing, gloomy tunnels. The torches on the walls were too far apart to give him any comfort, but at least he didn’t encounter any Fomorii guards. That unnerved him even more, because he knew it was only a matter of time-he would have expected the place to be swarming with them. Were they all hiding to lure him in there so they could sweep down to tear him apart? He drove that thought out quickly.

The entire place was a maze. All the tunnels looked the same, all were filled with the foul stench of spoiled meat cooking. Roughly constructed wooden doors were occasionally spaced on both sides. He had tried some of them tentatively, but they had all been locked. In the end he had been forced to hiss Ruth’s name, expecting to be answered by a Fomorii roar, but there had been no response from any.

In a way he almost wished he would be confronted by something; that would be better than the unbearable tension of expecting an encounter around every corner, of constantly straining to hear footsteps approaching from behind.

When the side tunnel loomed out of the dark it came as a shock. Its surround was ornately carved with writhing things and disturbing twisted shapes; over the top there was a stone face so unbearably hideous Veitch had to look away. The cold air currents which swept from its depths suggested it opened on to a large space. As he took a few steps in, trailing one hand along the wall for support, he picked up a strange, deep bass rumble like heavy trucks rolling; it made his stomach curdle. A few paces later and he recognised voices, scores, perhaps hundreds of Fomorii, but instead of the chaotic jumble of their usual dialect, it was controlled, two conflicted notes repeated over and over again. They were singing.

In a strange way, that was worse than anything he could have anticipated. There was something about that sound that made him want to flee back to the lights of the New Town, but he forced himself to press on. By the time he emerged from the tunnel, he was shaking uncontrollably, his body once again covered in sweat. He was at the top of a flight of rudely carved stairs leading down into a large chamber. And the room was filled with Fomorii. He had been right: hundreds of them. The sum of their presence was so terrible the bile surged into his mouth and he had to shuffle back to retch where he would not be seen. When he looked down into the chamber again, his vision became liquid; he couldn’t fix on their forms and for an instant he was convinced there was just one beast down there, enormous and black and filthy with all the evil of existence.

He averted his gaze as his eyes swam, then they fell on what appeared to be a raised dais at the far end, flanked by two flaming braziers. On the centre was Calatin; the corrupt half-breed had his arms raised in some act of worship. When he dropped them, the intolerable singing stopped on one drawn-out note which slowly faded into the dark. Then he began to speak animatedly in the barks and shrieks of the Fomorii dialect. Veitch couldn’t bear any more, but just as he began to retreat he glimpsed something in the shadows beyond Calatin: an enormous Fomorii dressed in black battle armour and resembling some giant insect.