Dark Seduction (17 page)

A trap.

Movement in a doorway caught her attention and a figure with bulbous eyes and spindly appendages detached itself from the shadows. It wove eerie balls of blue fire out of thin air and threw them into the fray, leaving incandescent flares in their wake.

Melantha started towards the figure, but the flying creatures barred her way, circling her like a black whirlwind. She tried to exert her power, tried to influence the monster from afar, but the creatures disrupted her spell. She couldn't concentrate.

One of the flaming balls hit a man in the face and melted his features on impact, his skin rolling down his cheeks like thick custard.

Another figure appeared, insubstantial as it shimmered like sunlight on water. It hopped among the warriors, almost unseen, delivering death with savage claws: Melantha saw a throat torn open, blood scattered like seeds to blossom on the ground.

A woman ran from around the corner of a building, her body decorated with vicious looking spikes that skewered her flesh. She charged into the fight, spearing anyone in her path.

Frantic to help her people, Melantha started hacking at the winged creatures, but there were too many of them. She tried to influence them, exerting her power, but they seemed unresponsive.

She glimpsed the albino man through the melee, had seen him from afar many times while living in this godforsaken place. Multiple blades spun around his fingers, incandescent whorls of steel that appeared to be connected to him in an unnatural symbiosis of metal and flesh. His two cohorts stood at his side. The fat man wove his fingers and conjured wind from nothing, sending screaming banshees into battle, while the bald man opened his mouth impossibly wide and shrieked loud enough to pop blood vessels.

The screams of Melantha's people competed with the bald man's vocal attack, but theirs were screams of pain. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Behind her, she heard the roar of a shotgun and the resultant squeals as the pellets struck their target.

She felt a momentary glimmer of hope. Her people were fighting back, the initial surprise and fear replaced by the resolve to win; to survive.

A bloody figure stumbled through the winged birds. A woman, her face shredded like tissue paper, her clothes little more than rags. Her missing lower jaw left a gruesome set of upper teeth that gnashed uselessly at thin air. She collapsed to the ground, food for the strange little toad-like creatures that scurried out of the shadows.

Blood and feathers coated Melantha's face and hands. Her arms ached, but she couldn't rest.

Movement caught her attention, and she dived aside as the horse ploughed through the birds, towing the caravan in its wake. As the caravan came to a stop, the faces in its facade looked impatient.

Without hesitating, Melantha climbed into the driving seat and took hold of the reins, urging the horse towards the melee.

Something bloody fell from the sky and landed in front of the caravan, mewling in pain. Melantha put it out of its misery by steering the caravan over it.

The buildings that crowded the streets were old and lichen covered. Perverse statues of fantastic beasts adorned the high parapets. The sky, where visible, was an indiscernible grey. Wan light filtered from dirty windows, seeping onto the slick cobbled street like a cancerous growth. The air smelled fetid, contaminated by the inhabitants.

She heard Barrabas emit a roar of triumph and she looked across to see he’d stabbed the spiked woman.

Flames engulfed one of the buildings. Windows broke and tongues of flame tentatively licked the air before committing themselves to an all out inferno.

A hunched grey figure ran in front of the caravan, and Melantha mowed it down; skin burst and bones cracked beneath the wheels. She looked across at the albino man, hoping to exert her power to influence, but he was gone. And so were his cohorts.

Sporadic gunfire filled the air.

 That’s when Melantha realised it had been foolish to come back here. Anxious to make up for lost years, she’d thought she could exact revenge quicker by arming her clan with dark powers. Now she wasn’t so sure.

She pulled on the reins to turn the horse around and spied the lighthouse towering high above. The jet-black door looked like a huge vortex. Melantha felt that if she looked at it for long enough, she would be sucked inside, but she jumped down and approached it anyway, choosing to enter of her own volition to show that she was the one in control.
She grabbed the door’s large metal handle and pushed. The door, high at one end yet lower at the other, swung inwards on oiled hinges.

Without hesitating, she entered. The quicker she could bewitch some inhabitants to help her clan, the better. Then they could leave this foul place and lay siege to the real world.

She found herself in a large hallway. Staircases lined the walls. Some of them seemed to lead nowhere while others led to doors and passageways. A macabre chandelier of severed hands holding candles hung from the ceiling. Melting wax trickled over the fingers and dripped onto the parquet floor where it formed little stalagmites. The flickering flames emitted a pale light that failed to penetrate the dark passageways, but she headed for the nearest one. She knew the Shadowland was never what it appeared to be. Things changed.

And not always for the better.

CHAPTER 25

Verity stared down from a window near the top of the lighthouse, and shivered.

The view across the strange tableau of the Shadowland reminded her of the panorama she had once seen from the top of the 15th-century Clock Tower in Saint Mark's Square, Venice: a warren of alleys between slanting rooftops, but this was higher, much higher ... and much stranger, like looking down on a surreal oil painting.

The Shadowland seemed to steal a little bit of all the worlds it intersected, the glue that binds, and then rearranged them in a bizarre mishmash. The combined hell of a thousand worlds.

Almost in the clouds that held dominion over the sky, she felt dizzy. Wondered whether it was more to do with the pain than the height.

Moments later, she turned away, walked to the middle of the room, and sat at a table covered in what might have been flesh, the faint subcutaneous image of a tattoo still visible like a stain.
Indifferent to the horror, she studied the tattoo, a crude representation of Christ on the cross.
Verity laughed. Most of the people here were beyond redemption, and if they weren't, then they soon would be. They lived by their own creed and their own religion, and if there wasn't one befitting, they created one. This was Sodom and Gomorrah.

Both physical and mental pain assailed her and she took deep breaths to try to quell the anguish.

The albino man told her pain was part of the process; part of the magical spell they cast, but Verity felt they just liked administering torture, and hearing her scream.

She winced as a fresh wave of agony rolled over her; absently wondered whether some of her lesions would go septic, glad that the wounds were all where they couldn't be seen. She couldn't bear for people to see her like this, butchered. Her dress adhered to some of the wounds, and she pulled it away, flinching as the action elicited another wave of pain. She must have been mad to agree to this. And for what? 

The albino man had talked to her throughout the process, said the gift was one more of mind than body; a small spell.

Verity didn't understand what he meant. The only thing she knew was that while under the knife, she experienced a sort of epiphany. The pain opened doors she never knew existed, and despite the distress, she could –
almost
– understand why people wanted to put themselves through it. Pain could be as addictive as any drug; it was just a matter of controlling it, and not letting
it
control you.

She stood up, and fighting the waves of agony that crashed through her, she gripped the hem of the dress and lifted it to see what price she had paid.

She cringed, horrified by the disfigurement.

Small flaps of flesh had been cut away to leave a strange, uniform pattern that resembled hieroglyphics. During the ceremony, the albino man said, 'you have to experience pain before you can transcend it', and in some warped way, she began to understand. Mastery of the self began with the body, but to influence it, you needed to conquer the mind.

Without any more hesitation, she let her dress fall back into place, left the room, walked across a parapet and started to descend the lighthouse, taking in sights of majesty and cruelty in equal measure. It didn't seem to matter where the people came from; they all seemed to be searching for the same thing, a collective desire; even if they didn't understand what they wanted, they knew they wanted something ...

Like the habitual drug user, they were searching for their own little piece of heaven.

This, the Garden of Gethsemane, where betrayal and mistrust were skills to be honed, and then unleashed. To master life, they learned to experience all of its avenues, however dark they may be.

Now Verity felt as one with the monsters.

CHAPTER 26

Bodies littered the streets, their features wrought with pain. Strange birds buzzed overhead, flying expertly between the narrow spaces between the buildings.

Some of the bodies were too gruesome to look at, and turned Zen's stomach. A couple of buildings were ablaze, but no one seemed to be putting out the flames. Around one such building, people danced as though in celebration. Reflected firelight bathed their faces, giving them a rosy glow. At least that's what Zen thought until he realised it was blood on their cheeks.

Some of the figures dancing around the flames looked like prehistoric Pterodactyls, leathery wings scraping the ground with a papery, dry cadence. Others looked like demons with horns sprouting from their misshapen heads. Zen had never seen anything like it. And he hoped he never would again. Even his imagination couldn't conjure up things so grotesque, the reality enough to induce madness.

 Keeping to the shadows as best they could, Zen and Leo crept past.

“Hurry,” Leo said when they were clear of the crowd. “We haven't got much time.”

It already looked too late to Zen, and he felt in mortal fear for his life. He experienced a similar emotion when debt collectors chased him for the money he owed, but it wasn't as acute as this. Perhaps you would lose a finger or a toe to them, but here, you risked losing your soul. His arm still throbbed, his right hand now next to useless. The knife protruded from the waistband of his trousers, and as he walked, the point of the blade occasionally stabbed him in the leg. But he didn't mind as it took his attention away from the more serious pain.

“Leo, I don't think I can do this. Let's just leave them to it.”

Leo scowled and pushed his teeth out slightly. “Look, you stupid fool. We can't go back now.” His face flushed red and he gesticulated with the walking stick. “Do you want Melantha and her people to start a war in our world? They may never know it, but people are counting on us.”

Zen wasn't convinced. He wasn't a hero. He was a gambling man in too deep. As far as he was concerned, all bets were off. Hopefully, Melantha might solve the problem for him; her campaign seemed to have produced enough casualties so far, so perhaps she might take out the albino man and his cohorts. And if she didn't, then the fire might get them.

“Have you got a coin?” Zen asked.

“What do you want a blasted coin for?”

“Well, have you or not?”

Leo rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a pound coin and passed it over.

Zen tossed it into the air. “Call,” he said, letting the coin fall to the ground and covering it with his foot.