Drinking Midnight Wine

  “By design,” said Hob. “In those days, my mother lived in Mysterie and Veritie, occasionally playing at being human with her sister. They were closer, then. The Serpent raped her in Mysterie, the only place where they could meet, knowing she would choose to give birth to the child in Veritie, to limit its power. And so it would be as little like its father as possible. The Serpent wanted a human agent in the real world, and didn’t give a damn how many lives he ruined in the process. Any more questions, dear Angel?”

  “Yes. How is it that you’re able to raise the dead?”

  Hob smiled sourly. “Technically speaking, I don’t. Only one man was ever able to give life to the dead, and I’m very definitely not Him. I just raise dead bodies and move them with my will. You don’t live as long as I have, and move in the circles I’ve known, without picking up a few useful tricks along the way.” He leaned back in his chair, eyes hooded, suddenly reflective. “I’ve done a lot of things, down the many years; wonderful, terrible things. I tried so hard to build something that mattered, so I’d have something to call my own. But nothing ever lasted. And besides, destroying things was always so much more fun. Nothing really lasts, anyway, except reputation. Everyone knows who Nicholas Hob is.”

  Angel raised a perfect eyebrow. “Everyone?”

  Hob smiled easily. “Everyone who matters.”

  “And a lot of them live in Bradford-on-Avon,” said Angel. “Aren’t you afraid someone in authority here will try to stop you?”

  “Not really,” said Hob. “In the magical world there is no authority, as such. The powers that be pursue law and chaos, light and dark, good and evil as their natures and functions suggest and compel. The more powerful people are in Mysterie, the more they tend to cancel each other out.”

  “What about the Waking Beauty, and the thunder godling?”

  “For every meddling would-be hero, there are any number of villains ready to stand in their way, in return for vague promises of vast rewards, once my plan is complete. Villains are always suckers for inside information. And they all know better than to argue with the Serpent’s Son.”

  “How does that feel?” said Angel, leaning forward. “To know people are frightened of you?”

  “It feels … safe, secure. Anyway; I have spoken with the Painted Ghoul, the Bedlam Boys, the Murder Waltz; even Nasty Jack Starlight. From a distance. Between them they’ll cause more than enough trouble to distract any interfering busybodies who might develop an interest in what I’m up to. In the end, most people will quite sensibly choose just to keep their heads down, and hope not to be noticed till it’s all over. With the Serpent at one end and her at the other, no one wants to get caught up in an Apocalypse.” He grinned suddenly again. “By the time everyone realises that’s exactly what it is, it’ll be too late. And afterwards … I have been promised complete dominion over Mysterie. Pity about what’s going to happen to Veritie, but I never liked the place anyway. Far too many people in the world today. Get rid of most of them, and maybe I’ll be able to hear myself think at last.”

  Angel looked at him thoughtfully. “And what will you do with the world, once it is yours?”

  “Punish it, for not loving me.”

  Angel smiled. It was an unpleasant sight. “I like the way you think, Serpent’s Son. Maybe I won’t kill you, after all.”

  Hob’s mouth was dry again. He made himself smile easily. “We must stick together, Angel. Who else would have us?”

  SEVEN

  THE DEATH-WALKERS

  Toby Dexter and Gayle strode down an almost empty Church Street, side by side, neither of them talking to each other. Toby vaguely noted that they were back in the middle of town again, but just at that moment he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn. He had a lot on his mind, very little of it positive, most of it to do with Luna—enigmatic and powerful, undeniably beautiful, disturbingly sexy and quite clearly as crazy as a loon. All along he’d been following Gayle because he assumed she knew what she was doing, but having seen the state of her sister, for all her power, Toby had to wonder whether he should be trusting Gayle so completely. He really knew very little about the real her; who she was, what made her tick and what her motives might be. He still loved her, but … she’d said more than once that she didn’t love him. And she’d done nothing at all to indicate that she had his best interests at heart. (He remembered the ley lines, and shuddered briefly despite himself.) He wanted to believe that she knew what she was doing, but he had to consider the possibility that she was just as lost in all this craziness as he was.

  In which case, he was in even more trouble than he’d thought.

  He realised that they were almost at the end of Church Street, presumably heading back to the new bridge. Most of the light seemed to have gone out of the day, and there were hardly any people around. Toby looked up at the sky, and was shocked to find it was now early evening. How long had they spent at Luna’s endlessly changing residence? Did Time move differently there too? As he looked around, his gaze fell upon the cash machine on the other side of the street, and he quickly looked away. He didn’t think he could stand being serenaded again. At least the machine’s showering him with money made a little more sense now. Presumably it knew a focal point when it saw one, and wanted to be remembered kindly. Unless it really had liked his lace … Toby walked a little faster, and had actually got a few yards ahead of Gayle before he realised he didn’t know where they were going. He slowed and fell back beside Gayle and cleared his throat politely.

  “Sacred Heart,” Gayle said briskly. “Twelfth-century, Norman architecture, built over an old Saxon place of worship.”

  “Ah,” said Toby. He wasn’t much of a churchgoer usually. “Feel in need of a little spiritual guidance, do we?”

  “Churches are for mortals,” said Gayle. “We are more interested in the cemetery.”

  “We are, are we?” said Toby. “Any particular reason, or are we just looking for interesting rubbings and tombstones with funny inscriptions?”

  “You can be very irritating sometimes, Toby.”

  “Good. I like to think I’m contributing something to this little mystery tour. Why the hell do we have to visit a cemetery?”

  Gayle sighed, not particularly patiently. “It’s not so much the cemetery, as what lies beneath it. I want you to meet the death-walkers.”

  She pushed the pace again, to make it clear that she’d said all she was going to, for the moment. Toby gave her a deep sigh of his own, just to show he could do moody too, and then scowled thoughtfully as he strode along beside her. The Sacred Heart cemetery was one of the largest and oldest graveyards in an old town, and the source of a great many spooky stories, including one very down-to-earth one from his childhood. Following the narrow path through the cemetery and out the other side was a well-known short cut, but when Toby was very young his mother warned him sternly that there were old, sunken graves on either side of the path, often overgrown and impossible to see, so if he ever did take the short cut, he had to promise to stay on the path, because otherwise you never knew what you might be treading on.

  All the kids got that warning, and it was much discussed at school, with exaggerated tales of brave or careless children who walked on the grass and crashed right through rotting coffin lids. And there were other, darker stories, of mouldering arms that burst up out of the ground to grab children who’d strayed too far from the path, and drag them down to keep the corpses company in their ancient, lightless caskets. And, of course, they were never seen again. Kids loved to tell these stories over and over again, in the safety of brightly lit playgrounds, adding and inventing all kinds of grisly new details until it became a generally acknowledged dare to walk all the way through the graveyard after the sun had gone down, and see how close to the edge of the path you could get … or even how far onto the grass … Toby had never worked up the courage to leave the path, or even go all the way through the cemetery. He’d never been particularly brave, as a child.

&nbsp
; And now here he was, stopping with Gayle before the open metal gates, with the last of the sun already sliding down the sky. It was very quiet. There was no one else around, not even a bird singing. This was the point in horror movies when the audience started shouting, Don’t go in there, you idiots! Beyond the open gates the neatly cropped grass looked very green, as though well nourished by underground sources, and the hundreds of well-tended graves made it seem a very peaceful place. Not many fresh flowers, though. And yet the sounds of the town seemed far away, and an old fear curled around Toby’s heart. He could feel the hackles on the back of his neck rising, just at the thought of entering those open gates.

  “You’re thinking about the old cautionary tales,” said Gayle, and Toby jumped despite himself. She smiled briefly. “Don’t. They’re just a cover story that got out of hand, to protect the secret of what goes on beneath the cemetery.”

  “All right,” said Toby, a little sharply. “What does go on, down among the dead men? But bear in mind that if your explanation involves the words ghosts or ghouls or zombies, you are going in there on your own, and I am heading for the nearest horizon, at speed.”

  “Nothing so commonplace,” said Gayle. “This is much more scientific in nature. The death-walkers are great believers in technology, these days. And recent advances in computer science have given them a whole new lease of life, if that’s the right phrase. They’ve been here a long time, in one form or another.”

  “How long?”

  “Oh, centuries. The town has always attracted and encouraged freethinkers, and those of an … experimental disposition. Sacred Heart has long been a centre for spiritual power in the town. There used to be an old town ceremony, very old, called the Clipping of the Church. Once a year the townspeople would come and form a circle around the church and cemetery, and hand in hand, sing holy songs. It was a ritual, to harness the sacred power of the church, to drive the Devil and his influence out of the town. And this is Veritie we’re talking about, not Mysterie. No one knows how far back the ceremony started, but it only came to a halt in 1905, after it was mistakenly reported that Nicholas Hob was finally dead. Word was the Walking Man got him; but Hob’s always been hard to kill.”

  “What are death-walkers?” said Toby, firmly refusing to be distracted. “And why do I just know I’m not going to like the answer?”

  “Death-walkers are explorers, travellers in the lands of the dead,” said Gayle. “As astronauts investigate the planets, death-walkers travel to the afterworlds, the territories beyond life. Crazy bastards, one and all, but occasionally very useful. They have access to sources of information that even I don’t. They know things no one else knows, or would want to know.”

  “Oh wonderful,” said Toby, annoyed but unable to keep a certain amount of relief from surfacing in his voice. “It’s sit-around-a-Ouija-board time, is it? Knee to knee with broody spinsters and tweedy pensioners, translating messages from dyslexic ghosts? Or are we going to be holding hands at a séance, hoping you won’t fart just when the medium asks, Is there anybody there? in their best spooky voice? One knock for yes, two for no, three for Sorry the line is busy right now. I can’t believe you’re a believer in this voices-from-beyond shit, Gayle. It’s all self-delusion and confidence tricks, preying on the gullible and the bereaved. I’m warning you; it’s only a short step from this to crystals, aromatherapy and using the tarot to choose your lottery numbers. Surely there must be something more profitable we could be doing with our time.”

  “Are you in for a surprise, o sceptical one,” said Gayle. “This is Mysterie. Things are different here.”

  She led the way through the metal gates, striding off down the narrow path, apparently entirely unconcerned. Toby hurried after her, still troubled by old childhood memories, but the cemetery turned out to be much less impressive than he remembered, and nowhere near as threatening. And then Gayle suddenly left the path, walking quickly across the uneven ground. Toby hesitated for a long moment before following her. His heart was beating faster, and his mouth was dry. In the end he finally stepped off the path and onto the grass like a swimmer off the edge of a pool, not at all sure how deep or how cold the water was going to be. He took one step, and then another, the ground entirely normal and supportive beneath him, and he let out his breath in a long sigh of relief. He hurried after Gayle, who was some distance away now, moving confidently among the standing headstones. She finally stopped by one, and waited for Toby to catch up with her. The old grey stone was pocked with moss and lichen, and was leaning slightly to one side, as the earth beneath had slowly subsided over the years. Toby moved in beside Gayle and studied the carved lettering, its details softened by the ravages of time and weather.

  Death Is Not The End.

  Toby sniffed loudly. “He’s not fooling anyone but himself. What’s so special about this grave, Gayle?”

  She put one hand on the stone and pushed hard. The headstone tilted smoothly backwards, there was a loud click and the whole grave suddenly slid sideways, disappearing under the grass, revealing itself to be a shallow fake. Where the grave had been there was now a set of wooden steps, leading steeply down into darkness. A light came on somewhere below; quite a long way below. Toby swallowed hard.

  “All right, I’m impressed. But I don’t like this, Gayle, I really don’t like this.”

  “You’ll like what’s to come even less,” said Gayle. “Even I feel uncomfortable around the death-walkers. But they’re the only ones who might be able to point us where to go next. They know things, usually disturbing, unsettling things. Stick close to me, Toby.”

  “Give me one good reason why I should go down there, into God knows what?” Toby said hotly. “Hell, give me one bad reason.”

  Gayle looked at him directly for the first time. “You said you’d follow me anywhere.”

  “This is very definitely not what I had in mind.” Toby frowned unhappily under Gayle’s unwavering gaze, and then shrugged angrily. “All right! You lead, and I’ll follow. But this had better be worth the strain this is putting on my nerves.”

  “Trust me,” said Gayle, starting down the wooden steps. “If nothing else, I guarantee you won’t be bored.”

  “Isn’t that what General Custer said to the Seventh Cavalry?”

  Gayle’s dry chuckle floated back up from the gloom she was fast disappearing into, and Toby reluctantly went after her. He had to believe she knew what she was doing. She was all he had.

  There were no railings, nothing to hold onto, just the bare wooden steps falling away before him. Gayle was just a dark figure some distance below. The stairway had been cut directly into the earth, with nothing shoring it up, and Toby couldn’t help wondering how safe it was. And whether, if he put out one hand to steady himself against the wall, he’d feel worms wriggling in the damp soil. He kept his arms firmly at his sides and his eyes straight ahead, and eventually he reached the end of the steps and the beginning of a tunnel.

  There was a bare light bulb hanging from the low ceiling, giving the scene an eerie blue cast Toby could very definitely have done without. It was utterly quiet, and very cold. Gayle fumbled at the earth wall and found a hidden switch. There were faint grinding sounds from up the stairs, and Toby realised it was the false grave sliding back into place. They were sealed in down here now, with whatever they’d come to find. Toby glared about him, ready to jump right out of his skin at the first hint of an excuse. The narrow tunnel leading off before him was barely seven feet high, and not much wider, and it didn’t go far before it branched off into several new tunnels. There were signs on the various walls, but they were all in Latin. Toby decided he wouldn’t ask Gayle if she could translate them, just in case one of them said Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here. Gayle set off confidently down a side tunnel, and Toby hurried after her, not wanting to be left on his own.

  The tunnel branched again and again, until Toby was quickly lost and totally disorientated. He visualised a subterranean maze of tunnels, criss-c
rossing endlessly under the unsuspecting visitors to the cemetery. He tried hard not to think about the coffins and bodies that were presumably interred somewhere above the tunnel’s earth roof, making himself concentrate on what was before him. Everywhere he looked there were long trails of wiring, stapled into place along the earth walls in a bewildering rainbow of colour codings, enough to run all kinds of technology. Presumably there was a generator down here somewhere, but Toby couldn’t hear it running. In fact, the whole place was eerily quiet. Adding to the deserted feel of the tunnels were the piles of rubbish strewn across the tunnel floor. It was pretty recent stuff too; takeaway pizza boxes, fast-food wrappings and all kinds of crumpled paper. There were also a large number of primed, oversized mousetraps, which Toby preferred not to think about. Gayle sniffed loudly as she kicked something out of her way.

  “This whole place could use a woman’s touch. I suppose when you’re preoccupied with solving the mysteries of existence and eternity, you can’t be bothered with clearing up after yourself.”

  The tunnel suddenly opened out into a wide cavern that was again cut directly from the earth, easily thirty feet across but with the same uncomfortably low ceiling. All around the walls stood banks of very much state-of-the-art computer systems, with monitors and terminals piled up and pushed together on rows of wooden tables. There were three different coffee percolators going, and any number of abandoned plastic cups on every available surface. There was a pervading smell of ozone and cheap air freshener. The whole room had an improvised feel to it, as though the many and varied items of equipment had been compiled piece by piece over the years, as required, to no particular plan or order. Gayle stopped, so suddenly Toby almost crashed into her from behind. He looked quickly past her, and found that a man was standing directly before them, even though Toby hadn’t seen or heard anyone enter the chamber.

  Given the setting, and Toby’s growing fears of what the death-walkers might turn out to be, the newcomer was something of a disappointment. He was of average height, average-looking, and wore the scientist’s traditional white lab coat, complete with pens and pocket protector, over slacks and a shirt that had clearly gone too long between washes. His face was wide and open, his manner calm and pleasant. He was just the kind of person Toby always imagined working on nuclear bombs and germ warfare.