Hooded Man (113 page)

And the colour of the hood had nothing to do with the red smoke that plumed around the figure, because the material was red to begin with.
Morningstar Servitors!

Tanek recognised this, he’d spent long enough working with them when they’d allied themselves with the Tsar. They’d thought the Russian was their chosen leader on earth or something, but had abandoned him soon after the fight for the castle.

Here and there, Gwen saw snatches of what was happening out in the crimson smog: a German soldier firing into the mist, but hitting nothing, only for a machete blade to appear in the centre of his chest; another German firing a pistol off to one side, arm outstretched, and then the next moment a blade coming out of nowhere, hacking his arm off at the elbow. It was a similar story everywhere you looked: a leg here, a hand there. The Servitors – and yes, there were definitely more than one – were everywhere and nowhere at once. Finally, Gwen saw one German staggering through the smoke, his rifle held close, eyes darting left and right – when a hooded figure materialized behind him and planted his machete deep into the man’s head, practically slicing it in two.

It was clear the Germans didn’t know quite what had hit them, and they were rapidly losing the battle. Tanek shot a couple of bolts at the approaching men, but in spite of his precision they didn’t end up anywhere near the targets. As they moved forwards, holding their machetes in one hand, they removed their cowls with the others, revealing those skull faces Gwen knew so well. Tanek shot again, but found he was out of bolts. To change the magazine, he had to drop Clive Jr. Her son began crying even louder as he was dumped unceremoniously on the ground. Tanek reloaded quickly, loosing a couple of bolts – hitting nothing. But when he reached down to retrieve the child, Clive Jr had disappeared. Gwen hadn’t seen him vanish, either; perhaps he’d got up and toddled off into the smoke?

Whatever the case, Tanek had other matters to deal with. The Servitors were closing in, and no matter where he shot, Tanek didn’t seem to be able to land a hit. It was like he was attacking the fog itself.

Slinging the weapon over his shoulder, he brought out his knife and prepared for hand-to-hand. The Servitors rushed him as one, machete blades swishing. Tanek avoided the first of the blows, grabbing one Servitor – not so insubstantial now – and throwing him into three of his brethren, who tumbled to the ground like bowling skittles. But one of the machetes caught Tanek a glancing blow across the forearm and he roared.

Gwen attempted to move, to crawl forward and search for her son, but her whole body cried out in agony. She tried to call his name, but doubted whether he could hear her. “C-Clive, sweetheart, where are you? It’s... it’s Mummy.”

She gritted her teeth, severely hampered by her wounds but desperate to find her son. Suddenly, in front of her, was a set of feet. Gwen looked slowly up, and there he was, hood removed.

It was the man who’d saved her once from the castle, this time without his skull make-up. He was here again to save her. And he was holding Clive Jr in his arms, safely returned to her. Gwen couldn’t help herself; she began to cry. “Th-thank you,” she whispered. She didn’t know what else to say, there weren’t the words to express how she felt. Gwen held up a trembling hand to take her child. But the man she’d once known only as Skullface cocked his head, frowning. It was then that she saw it: the tears tracking down his face, the humanity she’d sensed in him before. Yet still he held on to her child...

The smoke was clearing a little. The circle of Servitors remained, but there was no sign of Tanek, and there were more new arrivals. At first Gwen thought they were Servitor reinforcements, but these people in hoods were on horseback, and were armed with bows and arrows. Karen was with them, riding with a shocked-looking Reverend Tate, who immediately ordered the Rangers to shoot at the Servitors. “No, wait!” Gwen wanted to shout, but didn’t have the voice anymore. It came out as a croak.

Tate had dismounted and was leading a team across the square. A couple of the Rangers had engaged the Servitors in swordplay. The Reverend was limping towards Gwen and her saviour, calling for the man to release his hostages. Gwen wanted to explain, to tell him he’d got it all wrong, but even if she had the strength Tate probably wouldn’t have believed her. The man who’d come to her aid looked from Gwen to the Reverend, and finally let Clive Jr down to be with his mother.

Then he ran, calling for the other Morningstars to retreat as well. Tate attempted to stop him, swinging his stick, but the man easily dodged it. In moments, the robed figures were gone.

Though it was agony to do so, Gwen put her free arm around Clive Jr, growing weaker by the minute. That final bolt had done something to her, torn something vital inside, she realised, and part of her wondered if that was why the Servitor was crying? She couldn’t help looking at the bodies of the fallen all around, clearly visible now the smoke was gone, and thinking that soon she would be joining them. Gwen cried again, not because she’d been reunited with her son, but because she’d have to say goodbye to him shortly.

As Tate came over – concern etched on his face and calling for medical assistance – she also wondered if Clive Jr would have been better off with the man who’d
really
saved them? It was clearly what the Servitor himself had been considering right at the end.

But one thing comforted her as she lay there, bleeding out from her wounds.

At least she knew her boy wasn’t with that bastard Tanek.

T
ANEK WONDERED WHAT
exactly had happened.

One minute everything had been going brilliantly, according to plan. The villagers were being worn down, they had pretty much been removed as any kind of real threat. The woman Gwen was on her knees in front of him, where she belonged, and De Falaise’s child was his for the taking.

Then...
they’d
arrived, out of nowhere. The Morningstars. Tanek simply couldn’t get his head around it. He’d not seen a single one of those freaks since the battle at Nottingham Castle; they’d fucked off and left the rest of them to it, abandoning the Tsar to die at Hood’s hands. Now this. Why had they stepped in? What was their argument with him? Or the Germans, for that matter?

It just didn’t make sense.

But Tanek believed in the evidence of his own eyes. Back there, with those Servitors all around him, machete wounds in at least half a dozen places, he hadn’t questioned the fact that they were there; that they were attacking for no reason. He’d fled, ensuring his own survival. If he lived, then there was always another chance to capture the boy. A good job he had, too, because he’d only narrowly avoided a run in with some Rangers on horseback, riding in like the fucking cavalry. It was definitely time to beat a hasty retreat, put some distance between him and the Morningstars,
and
the Rangers. Once, he might have actually stayed and slugged it out with both, despite the superior numbers, but Tanek was on to a good thing with the Germans. And he’d figure out another way to get to De Falaise’s child at some point.

His way had been blocked to the jeep, so he’d had to escape on foot, losing himself in the woodland around the village. Tanek kept looking over his shoulder as he went, nursing the cuts on his arms and torso, trying to stem the bleeding for fear of leaving a trail.

Tanek didn’t like being the hunted, didn’t even think of himself that way now. He wasn’t some vulnerable prey, and even if they caught up with him they’d wish they hadn’t –

There, in the trees: a noise. Tanek stopped, bringing the knife up and shrugging his crossbow off his shoulder.

There was definitely someone... Yes, movement.
There!
Tanek loosed a bolt, then set off in the opposite direction. There was a rustling from behind, the sound of someone coming after him. One or several? He couldn’t tell. Tanek was a good distance from New Hope; they must have been determined, to follow him this far. But who was it, the cultists or the Rangers? Maybe he should just make a stand, get this over with, use the cover the woods afforded him to turn the tables on his –

The ground suddenly fell away, and Tanek found himself tumbling. Down into a deep hole; concealed, like the secret entrance to New Hope. Whoever had created that must have made this one, he thought as he hit the bottom, hard. It wasn’t the Morningstars’ style to do something like this.

It was more like Hood’s.

Tanek shook his head, attempted to get up, but found he couldn’t. He touched the base of his skull and his fingers came away wet. He didn’t have long before he blacked out.

A lone figure appeared at the edge of the pit he’d fallen into. Tanek made to raise his crossbow, but both that and his knife must have slipped out of his grasp during the fall. It didn’t matter, he couldn’t focus properly on the man anyway. What he could see, though, was that he wasn’t wearing red or green. He was wearing black, from head to toe. In fact, as Tanek gazed up, it looked to him very much like a shadow was standing there.

“Hello, Mr Tanek,” said, with a strange, distinctive accent. “I have been waiting for you.”

Tanek attempted to reply, but found his grasp on language was about as good as his grasp on his weapons.

And now he was falling again, into another deep pit.

Filled with darkness.

Filled with shadows.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"C
AN’T THIS THING
go any faster?”

Jack’s driver – a Ranger called Doherty – shook his head. He was already coaxing all the speed he could out of the jeep, one of the few German vehicles that had survived their attack on the Dragon’s power base. Jack gritted his teeth, and slammed his fist on the dashboard. “Damn!”

“I’m sure he’ll be okay, sir,” Doherty told him.

Jack appreciated the sentiment, but there was no way of knowing. Nobody could see the future, except that mad bat up in Scotland that the others had just seen off, if the rumours about her were true. There wasn’t much to choose between her and the Welshman, by the sounds of things. Just thinking about it sent a shiver down Jack’s spine. In all their years of doing this, standing up to people like the Sheriff and the Tsar, Jack had never come across somebody as deranged as the Dragon. Someone so unbalanced he kept his family’s bones as some sort of puppet show, to convince himself they’d never died. There were so many horror movie references he could have made – the Dragon gave Norman Bates a run for his money, for starters – but seeing that in real life... Fact was stranger than celluloid.

Thankfully, they’d seen the last of him, and the rest of the operation had just been an exercise in clearing up. With a decent number of Rangers to hand, it hadn’t taken them long to seize control. And because the Dragon had deprived the Welsh Rangers of their HQ, it seemed only fitting that they should take over the Millennium Stadium now instead.

“Think of the training you could do on that pitch,” Dale had said, after commenting that he’d loved to have played there when it was still used as a concert venue. Dale had been a marvel throughout; not only during his undercover work, but afterwards, offering to stay and help with setting up the new Ranger base. How much of that was to do with Sian, Jack couldn’t say – or indeed whether they’d be seeing Dale back at their own HQ in Nottingham again anytime soon – but the lad deserved a break. Why shouldn’t he spend it with that pretty gal? Jack reckoned she’d been through just as much; maybe they could make each other happy.

“You know, I think Meghan’s taken quite a shine to you as well,” Dale told him.

“Hey, now –”

“All I’m saying is think about it, mate. She’s really nice.” And he had a point. She’d even come down to the entrance to see Jack off.

“I hope things work out okay,” she told him, then kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you and Dale for what you’ve done.”

Jack had felt his face reddening, just as it had once done when he’d helped rescue Adele from the Morningstars. It was those kinds of memories which held him back, forced him to keep Meghan at a distance. Not that he was saying she was a traitor or anything; she was far from that. But Jack still had trust issues and they weren’t going away anytime soon. “All in the line of duty, ma’am,” he told her, “nothing more.”

But he’d spent the first few miles regretting that cool response. Hoping maybe someday he’d get to put that right. Perhaps get to know Meghan better, become friends, then – No, he wasn’t about to jump in again. His poor heart couldn’t take another battering like the last one. But Jack was lonely, and had been for some time.

Not that any of this was a priority at the moment; just something to take his mind off his real concern of the day. It was funny; all that fighting, everything that had happened with the Dragon, and the disappearance of just one boy could send him into a tailspin. But then Mark was a very special young man.

They’d always had a connection, Jack and Mark. He remembered their first meeting, when Robert had mistaken Jack for an intruder in Sherwood. It had been Mark who’d recognised him as The Hammer, a former professional wrestler who the boy had followed on the circuits. Robert had taken Mark’s word when he vouched that Jack was one of the good guys, and a good fighter to have on board. Jack had returned the favour by teaching Mark, training him whenever Robert wasn’t able, taking him under his wing and showing him all his own moves, and a few more besides. Mark was family, like Sian was to Meghan. Jack had always thought of himself as an uncle to the boy. Which was why, when he’d heard about the kidnapping, he’d told Mary he was on his way back to the castle ASAP.