The Age of Scorpio (56 page)

Orange flame blossomed to the east where they knew the main gate was. There were shouts of victory and cries from the wounded. The air was rent with the sound of bellowing. Britha recognised the sound. It was the roaring of an angry and pained bear, a large one by the sound of it.

‘The Crown falls!’ Teardrop cried.

Britha grabbed him. ‘Come on!’ Pulling him with her, she started running towards the gate.

They killed any who got too close as they ran, but now all the Corpse People knew they were not friends. Britha had taken an arrow in her arm, but after snapping off the haft she found she was able to ignore the pain. Fachtna was running and killing with a spearhead in his leg and an arrow sticking out of his shoulder. More and more Corpse People, eerily quiet, were turning to attack them, charging down into the ditch. As they ran around a bend they could see the flames from the burning gate. It seemed the fort was about to fall. The defenders and attackers were frenetic violent shadows against the orange glow.

The four skidded to a halt as one of the largest shadows rose up onto its hind legs and roared in pain and fury. Fachtna spat and made the sign against evil. The others just stood and stared. It was the largest bear that Britha had ever seen, fully twenty-five feet tall. Its Otherworldly heritage was obvious in the white of its fur and the red of its eyes, which seemed to glow in the firelight. The red on its paws and maw were more likely from the blood of its victims than signs of Otherworld origins. Parts of its flesh were covered in a crusty, almost spiked, stone-like material, but the most terrifying thing about it were the six animated tendrils that grew out of its back. As they watched, the tendrils dragged screaming defenders from the wall and crushed them, or brought them to the bear’s paws for the creature to tear apart, or offered them to the bear’s maw for its huge teeth to shred. Britha was both frightened and offended by this violation of nature.

Arrows, sling stones and casting spears filled the air, studding the creature’s white fur, but it ignored them as it lumbered on its rear legs towards the gate. Britha was running, a cold anger controlling her movements. She sprinted up to the top of the bank closest to the wooden wall. The track that led to the gate zigzagged between the defensive banks along the ditches that divided them to make it more difficult for attacking forces. The bear was on that track. But on its hind legs it towered about ten feet above the bank that Britha was sprinting along. She was oblivious to the arrows and casting spears from both defenders and attackers flying past her. She was unaware of Fachtna running after her, killing anyone who got close. She was unaware of Tangwen putting arrows into those that Fachtna could not deal with. She was focused on running and whispering to the demon that lived in her spear, feeling its heat through the haft.

Britha leaped with a power she had never known she had. She curled her legs up underneath her as she sailed though the night air and the pouring rain, almost untouched by the hail of spears and arrows. She didn’t even feel the defender’s arrow as it pierced her leg. The bear turned ponderously, some instinct warning it. She screamed as she stabbed the spear two-handed through the creature’s skull. The weapon bit, cracked armoured skull and was forced by nearly inhuman strength into the creature’s brain, where unseen branches of metal shot out from the spearhead. Britha stood for a moment on the creature’s shoulder, then twisted the spear and tore it out in an explosion of gore that spattered her frenzied features. The head of the spear was still waving tendrils of metal, the spearhead slowly reforming to a point. Britha turned and leaped off the bear as it started to topple.

The Corpse People ran as the massive malformed creature toppled to the ground with a resounding
thud
in an explosion of mud. Britha landed easily on the soft ground, knees bent to take the impact. Teardrop stalked to the top of the second ridge in the knowledge that he had a role to play now. He sent the magic of fear ahead of him through the air despite the cost. The Corpse People recoiled, though he felt the protection that had been given to them by Crom Dhubh.

‘All those who oppose the will of the true gods will die!’ he screamed. Then, steeling himself, almost weeping with expectation of the pain, he closed his eyes. Inside, more of him died as he felt the other burrow deep into what was him and consume it. He saw the other, watched it reach out through places that shouldn’t be, and he watched the changes it made. Too long, too much, too soon. There was too little left of him now. Teardrop hit the ground. In a large semicircle around him the warriors of the Corpse People went down like wheat mown with a sickle. Reshaped bones had burst through flesh, killing them before they’d even had the chance to scream.

Fachtna strode out of the ditch and onto the track. He was heading straight towards the remaining Corpse People.

‘Come and die!’ he screamed. ‘Come and die with me!’ Steam poured off him. He seemed to glow from within. A haze surrounded him, and where he stepped the mud hissed and more steam rose. Britha followed Fachtna, but only as close as the waves of heat would allow her to get. The two of them marched at the transfixed Corpse People backlit by the burning gate. As one the Corpse People took a step back. Any who raised a casting spear or a bow found themself with an arrow sticking out of somewhere vital as Tangwen covered Fachtna and Britha from the shadows.

The Corpse People decided that they were not as ready for death as they thought. They found that there were still things to be afraid of. They turned and ran.

Ysgawyn watched his army, with victory in its grasp, break and run. He could see perfectly in the night from where he stood before the other besieged hill fort. He could see what the two men and the two women had done.

He turned to his second, Gwydyon. The older man was massively built, balding and wore a sheepskin cloak over his limed skin. His body was a patchwork of scar tissue earned from hundreds of hard-won battles and one-to-one challenges. He had been a tribal champion before he had become a leader.

‘I want examples made. We are dead. The dead do not fear the living. If they choose to be afraid again then let them fear me.’ Gwydyon nodded. Ysgawyn knew that Gwydyon would turn enough of the cowards over to the tribe’s most talented torturers to make his point.

‘This is good,’ he said. ‘I had thought all the heroes and those blessed by the gods gone, that we had killed them all, but these are powerful. We will feast on their flesh and steal that power.’

Gwydyon did not answer.

Du Bois opened the door to the interrogation room.

‘I’ve got your—’ Then he saw Beth sprawled on the floor. He dropped her brass knuckles and the Balisong knife on the table and knelt by her. Working quickly, he checked for signs of life. Satisfied that she was just unconscious, he rolled her onto her back. His nano-screen was picking up trace signs of something else just having been in the room, but its attempts to find out more were being frustrated.

Consciousness returned to Beth with an immediacy she had never felt before when waking up. She was not surprised to find herself lying with du Bois kneeling over her. She was aware of her surroundings with a new totality. She was also conscious of the pain from her injuries receding, aware of the wounds healing. Something was very different about her. Her hand reaching up to her face was a reflex action, nothing more. She knew that the blood the strange earth-smelling figure had spat at her was gone.

‘What happened?’ du Bois asked, looking at her strangely.

‘I think I must have passed out,’ Beth answered, her hard-earned suspicion of authority figures kicking in. ‘Bit embarrassing really. I guess I took more of a kicking than I thought I did.’ She stood up. She felt better than she had in a long time, but there was something strange, a heat under her skin. It didn’t feel wrong but it was certainly different. Du Bois was watching her carefully. Beth noticed her knife and knuckles on the table. ‘You’re giving me them back?’

Du Bois seemed lost in thought for a moment before answering. ‘Everyone should be able to defend themselves.’ He took his wallet out of his pocket and removed a handful of twenty-pound notes. ‘Go home, Beth, before this city kills you.’
Because it’ll be time soon enough
, he added silently. Beth would have loved to be able to refuse the money but she didn’t. She needed to look her father in the eyes one more time.

‘Am I free to go?’ she asked. Du Bois nodded.

The noise that Inflictor Doorstep was making with the corpse of the dead dealer was beginning to get on King Jeremy’s nerves. As well as turning his body into grey armoured flesh inscribed with spirals, Inflictor had also rewired his own brain to mimic the more bestial of his favourite villains from various media sources. Even Jeremy was wondering if he’d gone too far.

‘Well?’ Baron Albedo asked.

King Jeremy was looking at what seemed to be a tab of acid, a little red stain on a piece of blotting paper. He touched a lost-tech-modified glove against the stain. The molecule-sized machinery that infused the glove took a sample of the red smear and the result of the diagnostic appeared in Jeremy’s vision.

‘It’s blood.’

‘Nanites?’

Jeremy just nodded, trying to ignore the wet ripping noises. He would leave part of his nano-screen behind to replicate itself and then seek out any forensic evidence they had left and destroy it.

‘Biological or machine?’

There were thought to be two distinct forms of the lost tech. Jeremy believed they were from two disparate, ancient and probably long-dead alien civilisations. One technology was biological, the other seemed to be machine-based.

‘Biological,’ King Jeremy said. ‘It’s her blood. Some fucking simpleton can’t see beyond their own petty drug dealing.’

‘There’s a hunger . . .’ Dracimus said. He was lying in a pool of blood on the filthy floor next to the corpse Inflictor was shredding. He had adopted a different diagnostic approach and just taken some of the Red Rapture. Given that it might open gates, that had been a bit rash, Jeremy thought. ‘. . . behind the sky . . . waiting for us.’

‘Inflictor?’

The demon-headed boy swung round to face Jeremy, his face and arms red. Hard to believe that he had once been a weedy kid from Iowa with an off-the-chart IQ and a distinct lack of empathy.
Still, now he could be more than the next school shooter
, Jeremy thought. ‘I hope you’ve left the brain, mouth and larynx attached.’

Inflictor nodded.

Albedo pulled a syringe from a hardened case on his belt. The blue glow from the material inside the syringe was nothing more than an affectation. Dracimus leaned down and pushed the syringe into the dead dealer’s eye.

‘Run a current through him,’ Jeremy said.

It felt like a static shock, only more so. Then it was constant. Something wasn’t right. Was he being electrocuted? Then there was the feeling of drifting away from himself. Like good ketamine. Dissociation.

The previous few moments came back to him as a red memory. The knock on the door. The four guys in hoodies. American accents. One of them had been a demon. Jaime panicked. His instinct was to flail about, but he couldn’t feel his body.

Jaime opened his eyes. They were still there. There were two guys leaning over him. Both with handsome chiselled features. Crossbreeds of American high-school alpha males and Greek gods, Jaime decided.

Jaime opened his mouth.

‘I don’t care,’ the one on the left said. ‘You’ll try to reason, bargain and then beg. I don’t care. I just need to know who gave you the Red Rapture and where I can find them.’

‘Look, you don’t understand. I’m scared of you, I really fucking am. I think you’ve put some horrible shit in me, but this guy . . . this guy . . . he does things, y’know?’ Jaime didn’t like the way his voice sounded. It seemed to lack depth, resonance.

The one on the left looked saddened. It was mockery.

‘Albedo, can you provide some perspective, please?’

The one on the right reached down and Jaime felt fingers grab his hair.

‘Hey, what the fuck!’ He felt himself being lifted, very light. There was something wrong with his neck, as if there was something hanging from it. Jaime looked down on his decapitated body. He started to scream. He screamed until they unplugged him.

Du Bois pushed open the door to the coroner’s examination room.

‘Out,’ he told the assembled people gawping at the corpse of the creature he’d shot in the old dog stadium. One older man, presumably the coroner, opened his mouth to complain. ‘Either get out or I’ll have you arrested under the anti-terrorism laws and hold you indefinitely just to prove what a dick I am.’

Something in his tone, or the rumours which had been flying around Kingston Crescent about who he was and what he did, must have convinced them that he was serious. They left with as much dignity as they could manage. Du Bois didn’t fully understand democracy. It seemed pointless to give people the right to self-determination when so few had any interest in it. Now that humanity had reached a certain level of comfort and people didn’t really seem to want to think for themselves, he believed it was better that they just did what they were told. Then everyone would be happy. Hence he saw the far-reaching powers of the anti-terrorism laws as a step in the right direction, though why they had to be dressed up with the excuse of terrorism he had no idea.

The sheets had already been pulled back from the corpse. It had definitely been human once and probably not that long ago. The changes would have been brought on by thousands of tiny machines capable of reproducing and then rewriting the basic building blocks of life.

Du Bois held his phone over the body and shot footage of it from every conceivable angle. The base human had been modified to be aquatic by the look of it, and then overdesigned with claw-like nails, shark-like teeth and retractable spurs of bone to be someone’s idea of a weapon.

He took out a small leather case, unzipped it and pulled out a small vial. He neurally transmitted an order to the smart matter the vial was made from, and a needle grew out of its base. Du Bois stabbed the needle into the body with some force to break through the overlapping plates of exoskeleton. The blood that filled the vial looked normal enough. The needle retracted as du Bois attached the vial to the bottom of his phone. The screen of the phone showed the results of the blood analysis. It was filled with tiny nanites – an ancient design, the biotech of the Seeders. The worrying thing was that this particular strain of nanites was very rare. They had not come from the Pacific Source. He had only seen this type once before.