“Wait,” Beranabus stops her. “He’s close to the lodestone. If we kill him, his blood will drench it.”
“Will that make a difference?” Sharmila asks.
Beranabus grimaces. “I doubt he’s there for show.”
“Astute as always,” Lord Loss murmurs through the unfortunate Cadaver. “You would have made a fine demon, Beranabus. You have wasted your talent on a far inferior species. But it’s not too late to change. Join us. Live forever as one of the rulers of the universes.”
“Live forever?” Beranabus laughs. “Nonsense! All things die. That’s the nature of existence.”
“Nature is about to be reversed,” Lord Loss says.
“By whom?” Beranabus asks. “Your shadowy master? What’s his name? I can’t serve him if I don’t even know his name.”
Lord Loss tuts. “No names, not unless you join us.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Beranabus sniffs. “And I don’t think you really expected me to switch sides. So why are we here? Do you want to gloat before your master kills us?”
“No,” Lord Loss says. Cadaver’s head swivels and his eyes fix on me. “We want Bec.”
Beranabus, Dervish, and Sharmila shuffle towards me, forming a protective barrier. I’m touched by their show of support.
“What do you want with me?” I ask in a small, trembling voice.
“Your piece of the Kah-Gash, of course,” Lord Loss says.
Beranabus puts a hand on the nape of my neck. His fingers are shaking. By reading his thoughts, I understand why. Though I’m afraid, I place my hand over his and squeeze, giving my assent.
“You can’t have her,” Beranabus croaks. “I won’t let a piece of the Kah-Gash fall into your foul hands. I’ll kill her first.”
“But you love her,” Lord Loss gasps with mock shock.
“Aye,” Beranabus says. “But I’ll kill her anyway.”
Kirilli is gaping at us, confused and dismayed. Dervish and Sharmila look distraught but resigned.
“Then kill her,” Lord Loss purrs, and I catch a glimpse of his wicked leer in Cadaver’s terror-stricken eyes. “It makes no difference. If she dies, the piece will be set free and faithful Juni will capture and deliver it to our new master. Death isn’t an obstacle to us, not any longer.”
Beranabus squints at Cadaver, not sure if this is a bluff.
“The piece was originally mine,” Lord Loss says petulantly. “It lay dormant within me for hundreds of thousands of years. But when I shared my magic with Bec, back when I wished to preserve humanity, it slipped from my body into hers.” Cadaver shakes a hairy finger at me.
“It can move from one being to another?” Beranabus frowns and his thoughts move quickly. He uses a spell to communicate directly with me. Give it to me, he whispers silently. Pass it on.
I can’t, I reply. I don’t know how.
“Master,” Juni interrupts. “This window will close soon. If I am to return to your side, we must act now.”
“Of course,” Lord Loss says. “Wait a few moments more, my dear. Then you can come home.”
Cadaver bends forward over the lodestone, but his eyes remain rooted on us. “I must say farewell, old friends,” Lord Loss murmurs. “I don’t think any of you will survive the coming battle. You have caused me much displeasure over the years, but I shall miss you.”
His eyes settle on Dervish and he smiles. “Don’t worry about how Grubitsch will cope without you. He walked into a trap, just as you did. He will be dead soon if he isn’t already.”
Dervish hisses and starts to respond, but Lord Loss is looking at Sharmila now. “There will be much chaos before the end,” he tells her. “Humanity will be given time to scream before we cleanse the universe of its miserable stain. I will track down those you love and execute them personally. I will lavish extra attention on the children and babies.”
Sharmila is close to tears, but she holds them back and curses Lord Loss foully. He chuckles and his gaze flickers to Kirilli. The stage magician braces himself. “Go on,” he snarls manfully. “I can take any threat you dish out.”
“I don’t know who you are and I have no interest in you,” Lord Loss says dismissively, and Kirilli deflates.
“Bec,” the demon master hums, staring at me directly. “It has been such a long time since our paths —”
“Let’s get out of here,” I snap, backing away from the lodestone and the mound of dead bodies, having no desire to listen to more of his rhetoric.
“Aye,” Beranabus says, retreating beside me. He thrusts a hand in Juni’s direction, but she darts through the window before he can strike. A crazy, lingering cackle is her only parting shot at us.
“Very well,” Lord Loss sighs. “Let the slaughter commence.”
Cadaver’s head explodes and the demon’s blood soaks the lodestone. It glows beneath the stack of corpses, sucking the blood as it pumps from Cadaver’s neck. A bolt of light shoots from the base of the stone, down through the watery layers of the sea, disappearing a second later into the murky depths below.
We should run. It’s crazy to linger. But we’re held, captivated, curious to see what will happen. This is new even to Beranabus, who’s seen virtually everything in his time.
For a few seconds — nothing. Then a ball of light rises from the darkness of the ocean floor. It’s larger than the ball that shot downwards, and expands the closer it comes. There’s a dark glob at the center, almost like a pupil in an eye. It’s a long way off, but I’m certain it’s the Shadow. A strange, tingling energy washes into the ship, saturating the air around us. I’ve never felt any magic quite like it.
“Enough!” Beranabus shouts. “Let’s get out before it tears through the hold and rips us apart.”
We surge towards the door, a terrified Kirilli leading the way, Sharmila behind him, then me. Dervish and Beranabus bring up the rear, preparing themselves to fight off the Shadow.
Just before we get to the door, something moves nearby. It’s one of the humans. A woman. Her arms are twitching and her head is rising slowly. The demons must have mistakenly left her for dead.
“Wait!” I yell, breaking left. “There’s a survivor.” I bend over the woman, grab her arms and haul her to her feet. “Come on. We have to get out. I’ll help. . . .”
I come to a sickening halt. The woman’s face is missing from the nose down. As she gets to her feet, scraps of her brain trickle through the gap where her jaw should be and down her chest. She can’t be alive, yet she’s looking at me. But not with warmth or gratitude — only with hunger.
My mind whirrs and I realize what’s happening. But before I can yell a warning, dozens of corpses around us thrash, slither, then rise like dreadful ghouls. The dead are coming back to life!
SHIP OF THE LIVING DEAD
BILL-E loved zombie films. He thought there was nothing cooler than corpses coming back to life and eating the brains of the living. But I don’t think he’d have been thrilled if it happened to him in real life, like it’s happening to us now.
The revived dead throw themselves at us slavishly, mindlessly, silently. They move as fluidly as in life, not in the shambling manner of movie zombies. Some are hampered by the loss of limbs and stumble sluggishly. But most are as quick on their feet as any living person.
They look more like living people too. They’re not rotting, misshapen monsters. It’s easy to rip the head off an inhuman beast from another dimension, but doing that to someone who looks human feels like murder. It’s horrible.
The woman I picked off the floor tries to claw my throat open. I shove her away and turn to kick a man in the head before he bites my thigh. Ahead of me, a girl throws herself down the stairs and knocks Kirilli over. She snaps at his left hand and chews off his two smallest fingers. He screams, then sets her aflame, instinct lending him the magical fighting impulse that he previously lacked.
“Zombies!” Dervish snorts with disgust, scattering a handful with a ball of energy. “First w
erewolves, then demons, now zombies. What will they throw at us next?”
“There might not be a next,” Sharmila says, helping Kirilli to his feet and shooting a bolt of fire up the stairs. There are shrieks from the zombies above us, and the stench of burning flesh and hair fills the air. Sharmila grimaces, but sends another burst of flames after the first.
“You’re not worried about this lot, are you?” Dervish says, sending more of the living corpses flying across the hold. “We can handle them. We’ve faced a hell of a lot stronger in our time.”
“You miss the point,” Sharmila replies with forced calm. “The dead are meant only to delay us. There is our true foe.” She points to the center of the hold. The ball of light is almost level with the ship. As we watch, it breaks around the hull and disintegrates. A black hissing ball of nightmares explodes through the shield of energy and gathers around the lodestone.
We only got a glimpse of the Shadow that night in the cave. Here, in the lights of the hull, it’s revealed in all its furious glory. The creature is the general shape of a giant octopus, about fifty feet broad, thirty feet tall, covered in a mass of countless long writhing tendrils, which whip around the lodestone, tightening and loosening as the creature saps strength from the ancient stone. A few of the living dead wander too close to the lodestone and are beheaded by some of the knifelike tentacles — the Shadow doesn’t suffer fools gladly. The beast doesn’t seem to have a face, but I’m sure it sees us and is focused upon us.
As I gaze with horror at the massive pulsing creature of shadows, a fat man trailing guts hurls himself at me, gnashing his teeth. I flick him away with the wave of a hand and shuffle closer to Beranabus. He’s eyeing the Shadow warily.
“It doesn’t feel like a demon,” I note.
“I know,” he mutters.
“Can we outrun it?”
“We can try.”
“The stairs are free,” Sharmila calls. “But more of the dead are coming. If we are to flee, we must do so now.”
“What are we waiting for?” Kirilli yells. He hasn’t managed to cauterise his wound. Blood spurts from the jagged stumps where his fingers used to be.
“You think we can fight it?” Dervish asks, stepping up beside Beranabus.
“I don’t know.”
The window Juni escaped through blinks out of existence. That seems to decide for Beranabus. “Let’s test it,” he grunts, moving away from the door, back towards the lodestone. “Maybe it’s not as powerful as it thinks.”
He unleashes a ball of bright blue magic at the Shadow. The ball strikes the creature directly and crackles around it. Its tendrils thrash wildly, then return to their almost tender caressing of the lodestone. Its body continues to throb. A high piercing sound fills the hold — I think the Shadow’s laughing at us.
Sharmila bends, touches the invisible barrier where the floor should be, and creates a pillar of fire. It streaks towards the lodestone, slicing through several zombies on the way. When it reaches the Shadow, Sharmila barks a command and it billows upwards, forming a curtain of flames. The Shadow’s consumed, its tendrils retracting like a spider’s legs shriveling up. But when the flames die away, it emerges unharmed, oozes over the lodestone, and slides towards us.
Dervish leaps through the air and chops at a thick tendril. He cuts clean through it, severing the tip. The amputated piece dissolves before it hits the floor, crumbling away to ash.
The Shadow catches Dervish with another tentacle, roughly shakes him, then flings him across the hold. Beranabus halts Dervish’s flight, and the spiky-haired mage drops to the floor a few feet in front of the magician, gasping with pain, his skin burnt a bright pink where the tendril touched him.
“Stuff this!” Kirilli pants, and darts up the stairs. I let him run. No point trying to make him fight if he doesn’t want to. Besides, I doubt he could make much of a difference.
About a dozen walking corpses converge on me. I work a quick blinding spell, then plow through them as they mill around. I squat by Dervish as Beranabus and Sharmila engage the Shadow, and swiftly cool his burnt flesh.
“Are you OK?” I ask as he sits up, dazed.
“Three,” he mutters. When I frown, he smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. I thought you asked how many fingers you were holding up.”
I help him to his feet. He gulps when he looks at the Shadow, but advances to try again.
“What can I do?” I shout at Beranabus.
“Get out,” he roars. “You’re the one it’s after.”
“But I can’t —”
“Go!”
Cursing, I turn and run. Before I’m even halfway to the door, I feel a whoosh of hot air on my back. Glancing over my shoulder, I see the Shadow directly behind me. It’s swept past Beranabus and his Disciples, barreling them aside. They lie sprawled on the invisible floor. They’re picking themselves up, turning to help me — but too late.
The Shadow seizes me with several tentacles and lifts me high into the air. I scream, pain filling all parts of my body at once. It’s like being on fire, except the agony cuts deeper than any natural flame, burning through flesh and bone, turning my blood to vapor.
I somehow hold myself together. It takes every last bit of magic that I possess, but I fight the terrible, fiery clutch of the Shadow and wildly restore blood, bones and flesh as it grips me tighter and tries to fry me again. I’m absorbing memories from the beast, mostly garbled, but what I comprehend is more terrifying than I would have considered possible.
The Shadow’s surprised I’m still alive. It meant to slaughter me and absorb the freed piece of the Kah-Gash. But it’s not dismayed by my resistance. The beast is much stronger than me and knows it simply has to keep applying pressure. I can last a matter of seconds, no more. Then . . .
Beranabus is suddenly beside me, bellowing like a madman. He slashes at the tentacles, slicing through them as easily as Dervish did. The Shadow is more of a menace than any demon I’ve ever faced, but it’s insubstantial. It’s not by nature a physical creature. It can easily and quickly replace what we destroy, but it can’t harden itself against our blows.
I fall free, and Beranabus drags me away. Sharmila and Dervish dart into the gap we’ve left and attack the Shadow with bolts of energy and fire. It makes a squealing noise and lashes at them with its tentacles. They duck and dodge the blows, punching and kicking at the tendrils.
“Go!” Beranabus gasps, and tries to throw me ahead of him.
“Wait,” I cry, holding on. “I know what it is.”
“Tell me later,” he roars. “There’s no time now.”
He’s right. I won’t have the chance to explain, not with words. But I have to let him know. He thinks he can defeat this beast, that if they keep working on the tendrils, they’ll eventually chop their way through to the body. He believes they can kill it, like any other demon.
He’s wrong.
I clutch his small clean hands and use the same spell he used earlier to bypass the need for words. He gasps as I force-feed him the information. Then his eyes widen and a look of shocked desperation crosses his face.
“How?” he croaks.
“I don’t know,” I sob.
Sharmila screams. The Shadow has ripped one of her legs loose. It rains to the floor in a shower of bones and flesh. A few of the zombies fall on the remains with vicious delight.
Beranabus is thinking hard and fast, trying to turn this in our favor. He’s always been able to outwit demons who were certain they’d gotten the better of him. Even in recent years, ancient, battered, befuddled, his cunning gave him a crucial advantage. He can’t believe it will fail him now, but he’s never had to deal with anything like the Shadow.
The lines of his face go smooth. He half-nods, and his lips twitch at the corners. My heart leaps with hope. He’s seen something. He has a plan!
“Tell Kernel,” he wheezes, standing straight and scattering a horde of zombies as if swatting flies. “Tell him to find me.”
“You
want me to send Kernel down?” I frown. “But he’s not a fighter. He —”
“Just tell him to find me,” Beranabus sighs, then bends and kisses my forehead. “I loved you as a child, Bec, and I love you still. I always will.”
Through the brief contact, I catch a glimpse of what he’s planning. It’s perilous. He probably won’t make it out alive. But it’s the only way. Our only hope.
“Don’t watch,” he says, and his voice is guttural, unnatural, as his vocal cords begin to thicken and change. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
He whirls away and bellows at the Shadow, an inhuman challenge. Dervish and Sharmila glance back, astonished by the ferocity of the roar. Their faces crumple when they see what Beranabus is becoming.
I back away slowly, but I can’t obey Beranabus’s final command. I have to look. Besides, he thought my feelings would alter if I saw him in his other form, but they won’t. If you truly love someone, you don’t care what they look like.
Beranabus is transforming. He outgrows his suit, which falls away from him like a banana peel. His skin splits and unravels. Bones snap out of his head, then lengthen, fresh flesh forming around them. Muscles bulge on his arms and legs like pustulant sores. They burst, then reform, even larger than before. Tough, dark skin replaces his natural covering. Only it’s not really skin — more like scales.
A tail forces its way out through the small of Beranabus’s back. It grows to six feet . . . ten . . . fifteen. Spikes poke out of it, as well as several mouths full of sharp teeth and forked tongues.
I catch sight of his face. Purplish, scaly skin. Dark grey eyes, round like a fly’s, utterly demonic. His mouth is three times the size of my head, filled with fangs that look more like stalactites and stalagmites than teeth. Yellowish blood streams from his nose, but he takes no notice. Raising his massive arms, he pushes through the undulating nest of tentacles and hammers a fist at the Shadow, driving it back.
“What the hell is that?” Dervish croaks, backing up beside me, helping the one-legged Sharmila along.