Always Forever (14 page)

The storm, too, was increasing in intensity. The lightning struck all around,
freezing the conflict in bursts of white, the faces of those near him just skulls
with black, terrified eyes. A tentacle swept by with the force of a boom. It narrowly missed crushing his head.

A cry drove through the howling wind. Baccharus had been pinned to the
mast, the monstrous arm coiling gradually around him. Pain fanned out across
his face as the pressure increased. Church was shocked to see the other Tuatha
De Danann look on obliquely, then continue their tasks without any attempt to
help; nor did Baccharus call out to them.

Church threw himself across the heaving deck, grappling the tentacle in an
attempt to prise it free. The skin had the sickening consistency of decaying
rubber, and it smelled like a compost heap with a few fish heads thrown in. But
it was too strong for him to budge it even an inch.

Then the strangest thing happened: in the middle of the creeping pain, Baccharus's eyes locked on his. At first Church saw confusion in them, then
curiosity and finally something he couldn't understand at all, but it appeared to
drive the pain back. A second later a scurrying sensation moved over Church's
waist and quickly up his chest. He jumped back in shock as Baccharus's Caraprix scuttled on to the tentacle and clung on with spider legs, the silver orb of
its body glowing in the gloom.

"Take it," Baccharus yelled.

Church fought back his natural distaste and held out a hand towards the
symbiotic creature. It instantly moved and changed, so quickly his stomach knotted in shock, slipping perfectly into his grip as it transformed into a cruelbladed short sword, still brilliant silver. Church had seen the things' wild
shapeshifting before, but it never failed to astound him.

At the moment before impact, the sword grew a row of serrated teeth that
became a snapping jaw tearing into the rubbery flesh with remarkable ease. A
shudder ran through the tentacle. Church struck again, this time with more
force, then again and again until the air was filled with the flayed flesh of the
G'a'naran. Finally the tentacle unfurled sharply, catching him in the chest.
Winded, he slumped to the deck, but still found it within him to catch Baccharus as the god fell forward. Gratitude flooded his face.

"How are you?" Church asked.

"Not well, but well enough to recover. The Golden Ones are nothing if not
resilient." He smiled, and once again Church was surprised to see none of the
usual arrogance of the Tuatha De Danann.

At that moment Church became aware of a change in the atmosphere,
subtle at first, but becoming more apparent. It took him a second or two to
realise what it was: the storm was gradually moving away, the lightning flashes
becoming less intense, the winds dying down, the thunder no longer hurting his
ears. Subsequently, the waves dropped and the inches-deep water on the deck
flowed away. Within a minute the storm had gone completely; the sea lay saucer
flat, the night sky clear and sparkling with stars. The only wrenching motion
came from the still-flailing tentacles of the G'a'naran.

Church peered along the deck to the aft where Ruth leaned against the rails,
exhaustion hunching her shoulders. There was a faint nimbus of energy around her
that disappeared so rapidly Church couldn't tell if it had truly been there or if it
had been his imagination. He looked up at the clear skies, still not truly believing,
but the rapidity with which the storm had receded had not been natural.

Baccharus levered himself up on his elbow. He was healing before Church's
eyes, muscle and bone knitting, energy levels rising. "Look." He motioned
towards the poop deck. "Your intervention has swayed the battle."

Manannan had doubled his attack, his attention no longer diverted by
keeping the ship afloat in the face of the storm. There was a sound like silver foil
rustling, then ripping. A smell of hot engines and baked potatoes. The air folded
in, then ballooned out, a translucent rainbow rippling like oil in a roadside
puddle. With a thunderous whip crack, the light ripped towards the G'a'naran.
Church anticipated some coruscating display of energy, but there was only the
noise of the G'a'naran's flesh rending as a furrow opened up across the rubbery
side of the creature.

Church saw no mouth, and there was no real sound, but suddenly he was driven to his knees by a high-pitched noise stabbing into his ears. When he was
finally able to raise his head, there was only a sucking section of the sea where
the G'a'naran had plunged beneath the waves.

Church dragged himself to his feet, shaky, and then Ruth was at his side,
smiling wearily.

"You did it," he said. He held out an arm and she slipped into it, coming
to rest hard against his body.

"I wasn't sure I could, even at the last. But then when I opened myself up to
it, it all came rushing out. It's like it's all battened down inside, things I've only
half-heard but somehow fully formed. Fully remembered. Understood even." Her
eyes had grown wide and wondrous. "The things I can do!" She caught herself,
looked down modestly. "I think. I mean, I feel I have a lot of potential."

"What was it? A spell?"

She didn't seem quite sure herself. "Remember when we were talking about
magic being the cheat code for reality? It was like that, like I could suddenly
focus to peel a layer back and move things around behind the scenes."

Church kissed her on the forehead; that surprised them both. "Maybe you
can conjure up sausage, bacon and eggs for breakfast."

They both felt the temperature drop a degree or two, and when they looked
up Manannan was there. "Sister of Dragons," he said in his sea-tossed voice, "you
are true to your heritage." He gave a little bow that, in his restrained manner,
looked as if he was proclaiming her greatness to the heavens.

"Thank you," she said shyly.

"And you, Brother of Dragons," he continued to Church, "you aided this
Golden One in his moment of need. Wave Sweeper is the better for your presence."
He paused for a moment, then added, "We must talk about great things-"

Whatever he was about to say was snapped off by a cry of alarm from the
other end of the boat. There was a note of terror to it that shocked them all into
immediate action. Church and Ruth sprinted until they reached the raised area
where Church had earlier sat with Niamh. At the top of the steps one of the
younger Tuatha De Danann was rigid, his normally plastic features shifting like
smoke. Church pushed past him to get a better look.

Cormorel was slumped half over the railings, his eyes staring, blank. His body
appeared to be breaking up like a cracked mirror. Where the fracture lines spread
out across him, a brilliant white light shone through, taking consistency, shape,
becoming something like moths that fluttered wildly around the body before
rising up and up to become lost in the night sky. Hunched over Cormorel was the
shadowy form of the Walpurgis, his bony hands clutching at the god's shirt, his
hot coal eyes growing brighter than ever. His mouth was stretched wide, the jaws distended inches away from the body so he could suck up some of the flapping
moths. They swirled around frantically before disappearing into that black maw.

Church felt sick to his stomach. He knew exactly what the Walpurgis was
doing; Cormorel himself had said it: the Walpurgis eats the souls of the dying.

Manannan and the other Tuatha De Danann surged up the stairs. Church
moved aside, fearful of the transformation he saw come over them. Their bodies
were like knives, like light, like a maelstrom of howling faces. And the sound
they made was terrifying: a screech filled with desolation and elemental fury. As
they rushed towards the Walpurgis, the creature broke off its feeding, looked
around briefly like a cornered animal, then ran towards the rails. He vaulted over
them to the lower deck, hanging briefly like a sheet billowing in the wind.
Within seconds he had disappeared through the door that led down into the
bowels of Wave Sweeper.

Instead of pursuing him, the Tuatha De Danann gathered around Cormorel,
his body now little more than fragments in a pool of white light. Church and
Ruth couldn't bear to hear their howling grief, if that was what it was, and hurried back down the stairs to the far side of the deck.

Ruth had a disturbed, queasy expression. "How could that thing kill him?"
She looked around, grasping for understanding. "I thought they couldn't die."

Church shook his head, still trying to come to terms with what he had seen.
He had witnessed Calatin's death and knew what a monumental thing it was; to
all intents and purposes the gods went on forever, their vital energy unquenchable even if their forms were destroyed. It took something special to wipe them
from existence.

"It doesn't make any sense," he said. "Why would the Walpurgis murder
Cormorel? He would know he wouldn't get away with it."

"Maybe he couldn't control himself. Driven by hunger ... ?"

He turned and rested on the rails, looking at the reflected starlight glittering on the waves, thinking how much it reminded him of that disappearing
essence of Cormorel.

"How's this going to affect things?" he said. "At least we know we're going
to die, even if we don't want to face up to it. It's no great shock. The Tuatha De
Danann think they're going on forever. Seeing something like that, it's a blow
we can't even begin to comprehend. What will it do to them?"

The question hung in the air, but after all they had been through it was too
much to consider. Ruth stepped in next to him and again he slipped an arm
around her shoulders. They both felt like they were huddling together for
warmth in a world grown cold and dark.

he noises echoing around the ship that night were terrifying to hear: shrieks
and howls, grunts and roars; at times it was as if a pack of wild animals
roamed the cramped corridors, things not even remotely human loose on board.
Church and Ruth chose to stay together in the same room for security, but they
did not feel safe, even with a huge chest pulled across the door.

Although the sounds were impossible to track, they knew the Tuatha De
Danann were hunting the Walpurgis into the depths of Wave Sweeper. But
Ruth knew how futile that exercise was, even if the gods understood the twisted
confines of their ship. And so the questing continued into the small hours until
it eventually died away. The silence was bitter and they knew the quarry had not
been located.

They woke in a beam of sunlight breaking through the bottle-glass windows, entangled like lovers, although they had only held each other for comfort. Their position
brought embarrassment and they quickly hurried to opposite ends of the bed. Eventually, though, in the warmth of the morning sun and their relief that all was calm
without, their legs were soon draping over each other as they chatted lazily.

"You don't think he did it, then?" Ruth asked as she brushed with crooked
fingers at the tangles in her hair.

Church threw open the windows so they could look out across the foamtopped waves. "There's something about it that's troubling me. When the
Walpurgis was poking around in my head I got a sense of him. It wasn't quite
a reciprocal thing-he had all my mind laid out before him-but I felt ..." He
fumbled for words. "I don't think he kills, however black Cormorel painted him.
He certainly feeds on souls-"

"So you think he found Cormorel dying?"

"I don't know."

"Then who killed Cormorel? Who would have the power to kill him? What
possible motivation could there be?"

Church held up his hand to stop her questions. "You've seen all the wild,
freakish things travelling on this ship with us. God knows what's lurking down
there in the darkest depths."

"The Malignos," Ruth mused.

"There was plenty of opportunity in all the chaos for something predatory
to attack. Perhaps whatever did it thought we were going down and it had
nothing to lose."

"I hope it's not going to deflect us from what we've got to achieve." Ruth
leaned on the windowsill, filling her lungs with the salty air. "There's so much
at risk, we can't afford any-"

"You don't have to tell me."

The dark tone in his voice made her look round. "What is it?"

"There's something else. When the Walpurgis was in my mind he pulled
something out."

"That's right he said he had a message." Her eyes narrowed as she scanned
his face for clues. "Something bad?"

"He kept replaying the scene just before Marianne's murder in our flat, the
one I stumbled across in that time-warping cavern under Arthur's Seat. The
same thing over and over again. Someone entering the flat, a shadow on the wall.
It wasn't just images-I could smell it too, hear, feel. He knew exactly what he
wanted to show me, but I think he felt it was important I found it out for
myself."