Ketty Jay 04 - The Ace of Skulls (12 page)

Pelaru returned, dragging the lower half of Osger. He dumped it next to the rest of him, and his expression killed their laughter. Pinn opened his mouth to ask what he’d missed, then didn’t bother.

‘We’re going on,’ Frey told Pelaru.

‘Alright,’ said Pelaru.

‘We’ll talk later about payment,’ said Frey. Crake saw the look that passed between them, the hidden meaning there. Then Pelaru nodded. He seemed defeated.

Some private matter of the Cap’n’s, no doubt. Crake wasn’t too curious. He had private matters of his own, namely the Shacklemores he’d seen roaming round the camp earlier.

Come the mornin’, this’ll all be over
.
So you just keep yourself safe till then, you hear?

Yes. Once they were done, he’d go to Samandra. The thought of it made him thrill with anticipation.

Come the morning. Until then, he had work to do.

Pelaru led them up the corridor, where they found more bodies. These were human and, unlike Osger, they’d bled. The corridor was thick with the stench of them, and dismembered parts were everywhere. Crake wanted to be sick, but he’d already brought up everything he had in the sewer.

What a glamorous life I lead,
he thought to himself, and retched.

‘You’d think he’d seen enough bodies by now,’ Frey said to Silo, as they stepped over the dead.

‘Oh, I’m quite alright with the ones that still have their skin on the outside,’ Crake replied.

A set of steps joined the corridor, heading upward. Pelaru took them. At the top they found an arched doorway that had previously been blocked by a heavy wooden door. It had been smashed long ago, and only rotted chunks remained. Above the door, their lanterns revealed a symbol etched into the stone. The interlocking lines and spheres of the Cipher.

‘Huh,’ Frey said. ‘Maybe that explorer was on to something.’

They stepped into the shrine and raised their gas lanterns to get a better look. A ruined hall was revealed. There were hints of the grim grandeur it might have once possessed – a section of cornice here, the groin of a vault there – but calamity had spoiled it. The building above had fallen through the ceiling in places. Huge pieces of masonry had tumbled in and smashed the floor where they hit. Piles of rubble were heaped up higher than their heads. One wall had burst and the bedrock had thrust in from the side. It smelt of must and decay and something else, something subtle and insidious that made Crake’s senses prickle.

Crake had never been inside an Awakener shrine. None but Awakeners were allowed in. Only they were privy to the inner mysteries of their order, sole keepers of the secret knowledge. Only they could interpret the will of the Allsoul. That way, their believers always needed them.

He hated them. Hated everything they stood for. Daemonism was a science – poorly understood and dangerous, but a science nonetheless – and the purpose of science, in Crake’s view, was to further the knowledge of all mankind, not just a select few. The Awakeners hoarded knowledge for their own gain, jealously exterminating their rivals. Perhaps they feared what would happen if people saw what was behind the veil. There was no better example than the Imperators of that.

‘This isn’t exactly the wealth of riches I was hoping for,’ Ashua said, surveying the chamber.

‘Split up, dig about a bit,’ said Frey. ‘Damned if I’m leaving empty-handed now.’

They made their way between the rubble piles, brandishing guns and lanterns. Restless shadows slid among the stones as they passed. Crake saw his companions pulling things from the rubble: once-fine cloth now dusty and ripped; broken icons; a battered gold cup that was still good enough to salvage.

They found bones too, and pieces of skeletons. Some were buried under rubble. Others weren’t, but they were broken nonetheless. Crake wondered what had happened to them, and whether it was the same thing that happened to Osger many decades later.

He didn’t trouble to search. He wasn’t interested in riches. He’d been born with them, and they hadn’t done him much good in the end. He was after something else, something he could use against his enemies. Something that would damage them.

What he found was a machine.

It was huge, occupying one end of the hall, where it had been hidden by the dark. Half of it was destroyed, crushed by a cave-in from above, but what was left was enough to get a sense of it. It was a great apparatus of pipes and wires and diodes, of valved tanks and banks of gauges and dials. The stark design and the bulk of its parts told him it was old, perhaps thirty or forty years older than the quake that had destroyed it.

Eighty or ninety years ago, then. That’s when they built this machine.
He began to put the story together in his head, his scientist’s mind assembling and examining the evidence.
And later they sealed up the place with daemonic wards, until it was opened again by the quake. But there are still relics around; they didn’t take them when they left. That implies they left in a hurry.

He looked at the machine. There, at the centre, was a narrow cage somewhat like a gibbet, shaped to fit a person inside. The bars on one side had been bent and twisted by some enormous force.

And then he knew.

Spit and blood. Imperators. They were creating Imperators here.

It all fit. The timing, the secret location. Long ago, a group of daemonists, full of hubris, attempted a grand summoning and accidentally unleashed the Manes. The Awakeners heard what had been done, kidnapped the survivors, and learned how they’d managed it. They refined the technique, and soon after the first Imperators appeared.

They took their most faithful servants and put daemons inside them. And they did it using apparatus like this.

He studied the machine and did some calculations in his head. This wasn’t one of the original devices. It was too advanced for that. Imperators had been around for twenty or thirty years by the time this was built, though their powers were cruder then, by the accounts of the day. But this shrine must have been an important place, judging by its size and location. Perhaps they were up to something here, something more ambitious than simply creating more of their terrible enforcers.

He looked at the broken gibbet.

Something that went badly wrong
.

Encouraged, he went looking for more evidence, while keeping a wary eye on the darkness beyond his lantern. Whatever was in that cage had escaped, and he’d lay odds that it was the same thing they’d heard howling earlier. Perhaps it was nowhere nearby, or perhaps it was already watching them.

He rounded a huge stone, larger than he was, and caught sight of Pelaru. The whispermonger had found something in the debris, it seemed. He’d put down his lantern and was holding a large grey metal casket in his hands. There was a frown on his face as he examined it. As Crake watched him, the Thacian’s expression slackened in realisation. Then he turned his head, and saw that he was being observed. His features became a carefully composed mask again as he met Crake’s gaze.

He recognises it
, Crake thought.
Damned if he doesn’t recognise what he’s got
.

But the thought fled his mind as a new sensation crept over him. He recognised this feeling, this faint sense of detachment and unreality, this increasing paranoia and unease. He’d felt it many times before, in the presence of daemons.

He looked around frantically. ‘It’s here,’ he said, his voice echoing up to the roof of the hall.

‘You what?’ Frey called from elsewhere, loud enough to make Crake flinch. ‘You say something, Crake?’

‘It’s here!’ Crake yelled. ‘The daemon! It’s here!’

From the darkness, something screamed.

Nine

Gristle & Hide – Daemons – Crake to the Rescue – Running in the Dark

F
rey went cold at the sound of that scream. He dropped the relics he was carrying, pulled out his cutlass with one hand and a pistol with the other. Backing up, he scanned the hall, saw nothing.

Suddenly he wished they’d got out of here when they had the chance.

Ashua came hurrying towards him from another direction. ‘Cap’n,’ she murmured. ‘That doesn’t sound much like something I wanna meet.’

‘Me neither,’ said Frey. He raised his voice. ‘Time to leave, fellers! This junk’s not worth gettin’ killed over. Let’s leave the nice monster alone, shall we?’

The others were nowhere to be seen, lost amid the rubble. Frey was glad of Ashua by his side. The presence of a woman necessitated bravado, and it helped him to stand firm. Otherwise he might have just legged it. He bloody hated daemons.

That sound again: a tortured shriek, inhuman, possessed of some terrible quality that went across the nerves like a rusty saw. And the
fear
! Damn it, that was the worst. It was what they did to a man, these Manes and Imperators and daemons, that made them so hard to tackle. Just being near them inspired a feeling as unreasoning and primal as a child’s terror of a dark wardrobe.

Something moved, up on top of a rubble pile. He whirled and aimed.

Nothing but the skitter and bump of stones and rocks as they tumbled down the slope.

He thought of Osger, and the other bodies out in the corridor. Torn to pieces. Was that what awaited him and his crew?

You should never have brought them here, you selfish son of a bitch
.

Silo and Pinn came into view, weapons held ready, and joined them in their retreat towards the door. Silo exchanged a glance with Frey. They didn’t need words. They’d been in enough spots like this before. They knew how bad it was.

‘There!’ Ashua cried. They caught a glimpse of a dark shape dropping through the air. It landed with a heavy thump in front of the door, compressing to a crouch, blocking their path.

It raised itself to its feet. Frey’s mouth went dry.

He’d seen Manes, and he’d seen Imperators unmasked. He’d looked the Iron Jackal in the eye. But this was the most horrifying yet, this grotesque, malformed, swollen wreck of a thing. The very sight of it appalled him.

There was enough humanity in its form to see how it had started out, but it was far from human now. Piled cords of veined muscle bulged unevenly all over it, gathered into huge straining knots. One of its arms was three times as thick as the other. Its back was twisted beneath a lopsided hump of gristle and scaly hide. Tendons stood out stark on two-fingered hands.

He’d seen how daemons could change a person, but there had always been purpose and symmetry in it before. This one was a wild jumble of flesh and bone, as if its insides had grown unchecked and in all directions, barely contained by the stretched sack of its skin.

It opened its jaws and shrieked again. Its face had slumped. One eye faced forward; the other was a third of its size, and sat low on its cheek looking sideways. Half its mouth was toothed, the other was bare. Saliva dripped from its gums.

‘Cap’n?’ said Pinn quietly.

‘What?’ Frey croaked.

There was a pause. ‘Aren’t you gonna say hello to your mum?’

Ashua snorted with suppressed laughter. The tension dissipated. Leave it to Pinn to get a dig in at a time like this. He was too stupid to be afraid of death.

‘Hi, Mum,’ he said, and opened fire.

The daemon shuddered and jerked as a hail of bullets tore into it, sending it staggering back towards the doorway. The crew’s faces were lit up by muzzle flashes, teeth gritted, eyes hard. They emptied their chambers, and when they were done, the monstrous thing lay on the floor in a heap, tattered and torn.

Then it groaned and, slowly, it began to get up.

‘I bloody knew it was going to do that,’ said Frey, as the crew backed off and began to scatter. ‘Crake! Where are you?’

But the daemon was on its feet now. Its skin was ripped and its flesh full of holes but it didn’t bleed and it didn’t appear any the worse for wear. It fixed an eye on Frey and snarled.

‘Don’t come after
me
!’ Frey cried. ‘Eat Pinn, he’s fatter!’

His generous advice fell on deaf ears. The daemon came lumbering towards him, accelerating as its powerful legs drove it forward. Frey darted to the side, hoping to put a pile of rubble between him and his pursuer. It angled to intercept him, smashing through the edge of the pile and causing a landslide behind it. The impact barely hindered it; it bore down on him like an express train.

Frey vaulted a rock and hit the ground running, looking for an escape route in the broken maze that surrounded him. The rest of the crew were yelling, trying to distract the daemon. A shotgun blast tore away a chunk of its shoulder. None of it mattered. It was intent on him, and nothing was going to stop it.

He turned, switching his cutlass to his good hand. The blade sang faintly in his mind, the daemon in the blade responding to the presence of another daemon. It had killed daemons before, and was eager for another taste. But as the creature powered towards him, screeching, Frey felt his confidence waver. There was no way he was winning a fight with that thing, cutlass or no cutlass. It would swat him like a fly.

The creature was suddenly thrown sideways as a blurred figure crashed into its flank. It tumbled and skidded away in a dusty muddle of limbs, entangled with its attacker. The two of them came apart as they rolled. One of them landed catlike on her feet.

Jez, and yet not Jez.

This was the thing that lurked beneath the surface of his navigator. This was the thing they were all afraid of. The change was subtle but its effect was great. A shift in aspect, a look of naked savagery in her eye, the feral way she moved. The sense of unease she inspired had sharpened to a terrifying pitch. She might be wearing the shape of the woman he knew, but she had the feel of a nightmare. This was her Mane side, unleashed.

She launched at the daemon, crashing into it before it could get to its feet. The impact sent it flying away and into a wall of rubble. As she came at it again, it lashed out with its oversized arm. Jez seemed to flicker in Frey’s vision, as if there were three of her at once in three different positions, and suddenly she was half a metre to the left of the spot where she’d been, and the creature swiped through thin air.