Acolyte (41 page)

The hands of the man spasmed, then released. Jonah pushed him off, trembling.

Then he could feel the body under him giving way to one side, in a slow betrayal. He was suddenly aware of how heavy the belt of ordnance felt, how heavy his boots and clothing were.

The lights pulsed on again, momentarily; just enough for him to see that the side of the pool was well beyond his reach. Just enough for him to see what it was he was slipping into. ‘No,' he said aloud, reaching out and trying to grip hold of the dead surrounding him, but he felt the bloody water soak through his clothes, the gap he was slipping into widening until the inevitable happened.

He went under.

His descent was rapid. With the tainted water and the bodies covering the surface, no light could reach him. He was in absolute darkness. He had a momentary image of the bottom of the pool vanishing, an unlimited fall into the vast depths of a blood-drowned hell.

Then his feet touched the bottom. There was still a part of his mind able to think, and it told him to step towards the side, arms outstretched, hoping his disorientation wasn't leaving him striding out into the centre of the pool. The moment his fingers touched tile he crouched and kicked hard, sending himself back up; his arms collided with one of the corpses above him and stole most of his impetus. He managed to push it aside and scrabble for the edge of the pool, but his weight took him back down without his head emerging for even one desperate breath.

His lungs were agony. He waited for the bottom again, for another chance, and as he sank he looked up. He saw the blood-dimmed beam of a flashlight on the surface and kicked hard again, seeing the gap to aim for and bursting from the water, getting a firm hold on the side this time, taking air into his lungs. Hands were pulling at him, helping him out of the water until he was lying at the side, coughing, the bright beam of a flashlight in his face.

It was Sly, groggy and out of breath. ‘The thing just vanished,' she said. ‘It just
vanished.
Where's Kendrick?'

Jonah sat up. ‘Across there,' he managed, indicating the other side of the pool area. Sly swept the light along, but there was no sign of him. They shared a look. She shone the light over the corpses on the surface of the pool as they slowly bobbed in the disturbed water.

‘I don't think he went in,' said Jonah, but Sly was running along the pool edge. Jonah followed.

‘No
,
'
said Sly, trying to see where Kendrick might have fallen in, just in case there was …

Jonah heard a groan from nearby, behind the rolled-up pool cover. ‘He's over there,' he said. Sly hurried across, kneeling beside the fallen man. ‘Boss?' Sly said. ‘Come on! Wake up!' She slapped Kendrick's cheek with her palm. ‘Hey!'

Kendrick moaned. ‘Quit hitting me,' he said, dazed.

‘Damn,' said Sly. ‘Don't scare me like that.'

Jonah heard a noise from across the pool, and flinched before he realized what it was. ‘One of the radios,' he said.

The lights flickered into brief life again and Jonah got his bearings. ‘I see it,' he said. ‘And Kendrick's flashlight. I'll fetch them.' He started walking.

‘Watch your step,' said Sly.

The dropped flashlight was on the way to where he'd seen the radio; he picked up the light, and as he walked he took in the full scene of butchery. He thought of the man who'd unleashed his shadow on them and wondered if he'd been left as a guard here. It didn't seem likely; there was supposedly nothing to guard against. Maybe the man had simply been asleep here when they'd entered.
And who could blame him?
thought Jonah. He'd had a busy day, after all.

He reached the radio and started to head back to Sly. ‘
For Christ's sake
, somebody tell us what's happening,' said Annabel. There was considerable interference to the signal, but he could still make her out.

‘We were attacked,' said Jonah. ‘One of Andreas's people. We,
uh, dealt with him.' In the light of the torch he was holding, Jonah saw that the water dripping from him was leaving a red stream draining back into the pool. He knew that some of that blood could have come from the head of the man he'd just killed.

‘You all OK?' asked Annabel.

‘Yes,' said Jonah. ‘Sly and Kendrick – you two are virtually indestructible, right?' He shone the flashlight across the pool. Sly was working on what seemed like a deep cut on Kendrick's forearm, but Kendrick was opening and closing the fingers of his hand to test function.

‘Cracked my skull some when it threw me that last time,' Kendrick said. ‘But I think I'll be fine.'

‘We're OK here, Annabel,' said Jonah. He paused before adding: ‘What about you two?'

‘Peachy,' croaked Never's voice. There was a distance to it, though. One that was more than just physical.

‘Yeah,' said Annabel, far from convincing. ‘We're good.'

‘I'll get back to you in a minute or so, OK?' said Jonah. ‘We need to regroup a little.'

‘OK.'

As Jonah approached them, Kendrick began to stand, helped by Sly. ‘So, Jonah,' Kendrick said. ‘While we got distracted, you saved us all. Just how the hell did you pull that one off?'

Jonah shrugged, trying to be casual about it, trying not to think of the muzzle-flash lighting up the face of the man he shot; the lights around the pool flashed bright for a moment, as if to mock him. ‘The creatures need a host. Take away the host, and—' He stopped, staring; Kendrick's face took on a look of utter horror, reflecting the one that was written all over his own.

Sly looked from Jonah to Kendrick and back again. ‘
What
, Jonah?' she said.
‘Jesus Christ, what is it?'

Kendrick had every right to be scared, because it was his shoulder that Jonah was staring at. His shoulder, and the dark glistening shape clinging to it.

It needs a host
, Jonah thought,
and it used the nearest person.

‘It's impossible,' said Kendrick, pale and terrified, looking at his own shoulder but seeing nothing. ‘When the host dies,
they
die.'

Sly was holding the flashlight for him, the bright flickering from the lights in the pool area still coming every ten seconds or so.

On Kendrick's shoulder the shadow was writhing. One of its fingers seemed to have gained purchase, and the others were testing the flesh. As Jonah watched, a second seemed to seek out a vulnerable place and sink down.

‘You're sure it's there?' Sly said to Jonah, unable to see it for herself.

‘Trust me,' said Jonah. ‘It's there.'

‘Tell me what it's doing,' said Kendrick.

It's managed to attach
, thought Jonah.
And now it's working its way in.
‘I don't know,' he said.

‘How can we get it off him?' said Sly.

‘I don't
know
.' He moved his hand a little closer to it and observed the creature back away slightly. It was wary of him, just as all the shadows he'd encountered had been. He couldn't bring himself to move his hand much closer, though, the vision of glinting teeth clear in his mind.

Then he recalled what Kendrick had said. ‘When the host dies,
they
die? What made you think that? You'd seen it vanish when the host fell unconscious, but if …'

Jonah stopped. Kendrick said nothing. Jonah saw an ill mix of evasion and defiance written on his sweat-slicked face. ‘Jesus,' said Jonah. ‘Silva. Your team killed Silva.'

‘We had to know,' said Kendrick, but he didn't meet Jonah's eyes.

‘You
ordered
them to kill him.' It fell into place in Jonah's mind. ‘You lied to me.'

‘Of
course
I lied,' sneered Kendrick. ‘We had to
know.
We couldn't risk keeping him much longer, and nothing they did to him was making him talk.'

‘They killed him, and thought it had died?'

‘Every time it came loose from Silva it was visible,' said Kendrick. ‘So they expected to see it once Silva was dead, and see what happened to it. It didn't appear. They assumed it had died with the host.'

‘But it hadn't,' said Jonah.

‘Oh God,' said Sly. ‘Was that how they were traced? Did it take one of the team?'

Kendrick glared at her, stunned. ‘I don't believe that. Every one of them was committed,
fearless.
They'd
die
before that.'

The implications were ominous. ‘Don't you get it?' said Jonah. ‘That was how they found
us
. It wasn't Tess's presence that gave away the safe house. Silva's shadow took one of your team. It took one as a new host. Resistance to torture didn't matter a damn because there was no need to torture the information out of them. They
volunteered
it.'

From the fear on Sly's face Jonah thought she knew where this was going. She nodded, and picked up the line of reasoning. ‘Sure, whichever one of them it was, they knew the decoy addresses they could give if they were under pressure, but instead they gave the real locations they knew. Andreas's people just worked through them until they found us.'

‘No,' said Kendrick.
‘No.'
He sounded even more desperate. He looked at Sly, pleading. The shadow writhed; the second finger to have gained a foothold suddenly flicked out, whipping around before returning to Kendrick's flesh and probing again. The man's demeanour scared Jonah. Here was someone who had stood face to face with the devil and chosen to fight, a man whose sense of outrage at Andreas's betrayal had allowed him to suffer through torture without capitulating. And now he'd been reduced to a shivering husk at the thought of this external taint, this
contaminant.

‘And it can't have taken long,' said Sly. She looked at Kendrick, distraught. ‘Between Silva's death and the team being compromised was what, five hours?'

‘Four and a half,' said Kendrick. ‘But Tess said the host had to be complicit, they had to
want
it …'

Jonah didn't comment. It had always just been a guess, an appealing idea. Less threatening. He thought about the shadows he'd seen on Silva's wife and child, and his instinct that they hadn't even known about what was attached to them.

Sly looked at Jonah. ‘You think they can just take anyone, given long enough? Maybe keep them out of sight until the process is complete?'

Jonah didn't know how to answer, but Kendrick spoke instead. ‘Would it die, Jonah? Without a host? Without anyone nearby it could attach to?'

‘Maybe,' he said. ‘It was desperate enough to use whoever was nearest, so perhaps it didn't have much time.'

‘Well, then,' said Kendrick to Sly. ‘You know what to do. Incapacitate me, leave me here.'

‘No,' said Sly.

‘Do it. We have no way of knowing how quickly this could happen. You can't kill me outright or it'd just try and take one of you instead. Make sure I'm unconscious, too. They can't detach if the host is unconscious. But I don't want it to take me, understand? It needs to be slow, but the wound has to be fatal.'

Sly was shaking her head, eyes wet. ‘With respect, boss, there's no fucking way I'm …'

‘Please,' he said. He put his hand on hers. ‘Sly, please.'

She closed her eyes for a moment; then, resolved, she opened them again. She pulled a thin knife from her harness. ‘Tell me how.'

Kendrick nodded and was immediately less agitated. Jonah saw the creature writhe again, its long dark fingers shifting, another of them finding a way in, digging deeper.

Jonah stared at it, knowing he was missing something crucial. He shook his head. ‘Wait. For Christ's sake, wait. There has to be more. If it was that easy, there'd be no reason for Andreas to be cautious. This one had no choice, and it's struggling. I can
see
it, it gets in deeper, then it loses ground …' And it was getting in deeper again, but what had changed? He could see another finger fix in place and start to worm its way in already.

‘Jonah,' said Kendrick, ‘it's too late. You have to go; you and Sly have to do what you can. I'm ready, just don't let me—'

Jonah clicked his fingers.
‘Exactly
,
'
he said. ‘The only complicity the host needs to have is
giving up
; let someone reassure them, believe everything will work out. Panic, terror – that repels it.' He looked at Kendrick, knowing the man had resigned himself to his fate purely to give
them
a chance. ‘Listen to me. Whoever it was in your team that Silva's shadow took, I think it got lucky. I think they have to be damn careful who they pick, because most will fight it tooth and nail. The only reason you're not fighting it now is because you think it'll save me and Sly.'

Kendrick looked at him, desperate to believe.

‘Then get it
off
him,' said Sly. ‘For God's sake.'

Jonah looked at the creature. It was weak, but holding on; he needed Kendrick's fear to ramp up again. ‘Can you feel it?' Jonah asked. ‘Can you feel it burrowing into you?' The hostile look Sly gave him was withering, but he looked back at her, hoping she would understand what he was trying to do. ‘It'll worm its way
inside, get its fingers deep into your flesh, into your
soul
, and you'll accept it soon enough. It will
have
you.' As he spoke Kendrick looked at him in disbelief. Jonah's hand was moving towards the creature, every part of him wanting to avoid touching it, but somehow knowing that this would be the only way. ‘It will have you, and there'll be
nothing
you can do about it. Then you'll be glad. You'll
welcome
it, and do whatever it tells you to do.'

As Kendrick's fear increased the creature suffered, squirming and writhing, a gap in its flesh opening like a mouth in pain, its dark fingers shifting. Jonah moved his hand ever closer, the creature writhing in distress. The thought of actually taking
hold
of the thing filled him with revulsion, but he had to try.