Shadows Fall

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Sheriff,” said Lewis carefully. “You go back and get some more rest. We’ll take care of things here.”

  Erikson nodded, and then turned and went back into his inner sanctum, shutting the door behind him. They didn’t trust him. He didn’t blame them. He’d been the Wild Childe once, and presumably could be again, though his mind felt clearer now than it had been for months. He remembered the murders he’d committed as a series of murky dreams, where he was just a silent, helpless observer. They still didn’t seem real to him, though he had no doubt he’d done the things they said he had. He was the murderer he’d tried so hard to find.

  He sat down behind his desk, and knew what he had to do. He felt calm and sure and not at all frightened. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let the Wild Childe take hold of him again. It wasn’t going to be easy, without a gun. He looked about him, and his eye fell on the letter spike. Yes; that would do. He picked it up and placed it carefully before him, and removed the letters. He didn’t look to see what they were. They didn’t matter any more. The metal spike was eight or nine inches long. Long enough. He placed his hands flat on the desk on either side of the letter spike, and bent forward so that he was looking down at it. He wasn’t scared at all.

  I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.

  He slammed his face down on to the spike with all his strength. The last thing he saw was the metal point flying up to fill his left eye.

  Out in the reception office, the defenders listened to the Wild Childe clambering up the stairs, throwing aside the blocking furniture as though it was weightless. It wasn’t long before they were banging on the door till it shuddered in its frame. The Sea Goat fired a shot through the door, but it didn’t seem to bother them. Collins and Lewis stood together, guns trained on the door. Their breathing was fast and hurried, but their hands were steady. Bruin Bear and the Sea Goat took it in turns to drink from the vodka bottle. It was almost empty. Peter Caulder sat quietly behind them, thinking about the many strange changes his life had taken recently, and smiled as he realized he wouldn’t have changed any of them. Scottie glared at the shuddering door, and growled deep in his throat. Suzanne and Polly held hands, and tried to hold their guns professionally.

  The door burst open, and the Wild Childe swarmed in, sweeping aside the heavy desk as though it was nothing. The defenders opened up with a withering fire, and the possessed men and women were thrown aside like dolls. The thunder of the guns was deafening in the confined space, but the Wild Childe only laughed and pressed forward, scrambling over the bodies of the fallen to get at the defenders. More of the possessed appeared through the doorway, and some of them had guns too. Blood splashed the walls and pooled on the floor, but the Wild Childe just kept coming.

  Scottie was the first to die. A burst of machine pistol fire picked him up and threw him aside like a toy. He died still trying to snap at the ankles of those treading around him. Collins and Lewis went down under a crowd of the possessed, still firing their guns. The Wild Childe tore them apart with its unnatural strength. Peter Caulder tried to rescue them, and a slim young woman with mad eyes and a wide smile stuck a knife in his throat before he even knew she was there. He fell to his knees, his mouth suddenly full of blood.

  Bruin Bear was quickly at his side, trying to pull him back to cover. A bullet hit him square in the forehead, and he was thrown backwards to lie helpless on the floor, blood filling his eyes as his life ebbed away. The Sea Goat screamed with fury and loss, threw his empty bottle into the face of the crowd, and jumped out to stand over his two friends. He fired his gun till it ran out of ammunition, and then he fought with his hands and his horns, until finally they dragged him down.

  Suzanne shot Polly in the back of the head, one last act of friendship, and then put the gun in her own mouth and pulled the trigger. They died still holding hands, and the Wild Childe screamed in thwarted rage.

  —

  In a back room in the Gallery of Bone, they stood around Time’s bed, watching numbly, as though expecting him to start breathing again at any moment, or sit up and laugh and say he was just fooling. But Old Father Time lay motionless in his bed, a withered, shrunken mummy of a man. He looked like he’d been dead for centuries, only recently disinterred from some ancient pyramid. All around them, the room was dark and quiet. There were no walls or ceiling any more, the only light a pale golden glow from an old-fashioned lamp on the bed’s high headboard. Outside the pool of light there was a feeling of emptiness, as though they were afloat in a sea of darkness.

  Rhea and Ash stood together at the foot of the bed, holding hands and drawing what comfort they could from each other. Time’s death struck at the heart of everything they believed in. He was the single constant in a changing world, the glue that held Shadows Fall together; with him gone, there was no way the town could survive. Ash looked at the wizened body and felt a twinge of mortality. If even Time could die, and pass through the Door from which no one returns, then he had to accept his almost-life must have an end too. He’d always known that, but it had never really bothered him before. He’d had no right to a second chance at life. Only now Rhea loved him again, and he had so much to lose he couldn’t bear it. He smiled briefly. That’s love for you.

  Ash’s hand tightened on Rhea’s and she squeezed it comfortingly in return. Her own thoughts were racing wildly, searching desperately for some way out of the corner they’d been backed into. They couldn’t have come through so much, survived so much, only to fail now. It wasn’t fair. They’d beaten the Warriors without Time’s help, but the Wild Childe was different. His origin and power lay in the subtle magics that made Shadows Fall, and only Old Father Time had the power to understand and manipulate those forces. Without his help, there was no way to stop the Wild Childe running amok until no living thing remained in the town… and without Time to oversee Shadows Fall, the town itself would cease to exist. The end of everything. Rhea’s hand tightened on Ash’s. There had to be a way out of this. There had to be.

  Sean Morrison sat on the end of the bed, his feet dangling, staring at nothing. He tried to think of something he could play, some song to sing to mark Time’s passing, but the music wouldn’t come. Music had died for him along with the Faerie. Without them the world had lost its flavour, life had lost its purpose. The Faerie had embodied everything he’d ever believed in. Now they were gone, the splendour and the majesty, the laughter in the woods, dead by their own hand. How could there be music, in such a world?

  Madeleine Kresh, Mad to most, sat on the edge of the bed and held Time’s dead hand in both of hers. He’d been her world, her love, her meaning for existence. He’d cared for her when no one else had, protected her when no one else could. He let her stay, though he didn’t need her, let her love him, though he knew nothing could ever come of it. She would have given her life for him, but he’d gone on without her, and now her life had no meaning or purpose. She’d dedicated her life to looking after Time, and she’d failed. She wanted to end her own life in some suitably dramatic way, and follow wherever he had gone, but she knew he wouldn’t have wanted that. He believed in life, and hope and possibilities. Mad didn’t know what she believed in any more. All she knew for sure was that she was alone again.

  And James Hart stood at the foot of the bed, staring exasperatedly at his dead grandfather, and wondered what the hell he was supposed to do now. Old Father Time had been the only one with all the answers, and now he was gone, leaving his poor confused grandson to muddle on alone and unadvised. He was the one on the spot now, the one everyone would be looking to for answers, and he hadn’t a clue what he was going to tell them. He’d have to think of something. There was nowhere left to run to, nowhere left to hide. Either he found an answer to the Wild Childe, or he and his friends and the whole damned town of Shadows Fall were dead.

  The answer was in him somewhere. He could feel his grandfather’s power bubbling and simmering within him, pressing and probing and looking for
a way out. He didn’t understand the power yet, its possibilities and limitations, and he wasn’t sure he trusted it either. He felt there were all kinds of things he could do, that the power wanted him to do, but caution held him back. He had a strong feeling the power had its own agenda, that might or might not have anything to do with what he wanted or needed.

  But the temptation nagged at him always, like a quiet insistent voice he couldn’t ignore.

  He glared at the withered remains of his grandfather, and his hands curled into fists. If the man hadn’t been already dead, he’d have killed the infuriating old bastard for landing him in such a mess. And then he stopped and looked again, certain he couldn’t have seen what he thought he had. He leaned forward over the bed to get a better look. Time was definitely dead, no breath of air moving through his slack mouth, but his chest was moving. Not the steady movement of heartbeat or regular breathing, but sudden jerky movements, as though something within was trying to break out. He stepped back instinctively, his imagination supplying nightmare images of some horrid parasite that had somehow worked its way into Time’s immortal body and killed it.

  Everyone looked round at his sudden movement, and then followed his gaze. Mad cried out in shock and surprise, dropping Time’s hand, and then leant over to press her ear against Time’s twitching chest. She laughed suddenly and straightened up, grinning all over her face. Her flick-knife was suddenly in her hand, the blade snapping out with a flat, functional sound. She slid it carefully into Time’s gut, just under the breastbone, and then jerked it up sharply. The chest split open, cracking apart like a nutshell. Dust sprayed from the crack, and in the narrow gap they could all just make out something pale, moving feebly. Mad put her knife away, and eased both her hands into the opening. She took a firm hold and jerked the two sides apart, and the chest opened like a book, filling the air with sharp cracking sounds. And in the chest cavity, small and pink and perfect, lay a new-born baby, staring calmly up at Mad. She reached in and carefully lifted him out, cradling him in her arms.

  “Time is dead,” she said softly. “Long live Time.”

  The others crowded round Mad as she hugged the baby to her in a surprisingly maternal way. It looked much like any other baby, tiny and harmless, but it didn’t take them long to realize that one, he didn’t have a navel, and two, his eyes were clear and calm. He waved a chubby hand at them, and then yawned widely.

  Morrison looked at Mad reproachfully. “You might have told us what you were doing. I nearly had a coronary.”

  Mad shrugged. “I wasn’t sure. He usually goes off on his own and takes care of this himself. I only ever saw him after a couple of days had passed, and he was old enough to take charge again. Cute little thing, isn’t he?”

  She made cootchie-coo noises at the baby, who looked back at her with knowing eyes.

  Ash looked at Rhea. “You’re the Mayor. Didn’t you know about this?”

  “I don’t think anybody did,” said Rhea. “Time was a very private person. I never pushed.”

  Morrison sniffed. “I suppose we should be grateful she didn’t try and open him up with that bloody big sword she’s got hanging from her hip. Where did that come from, anyway?”

  “Time gave it to me,” said Mad, and then pointedly gave all her attention to the baby.

  “He must be very weak now,” Rhea said thoughtfully. “I never saw him this young. I don’t think anyone did. Presumably his powers don’t kick in till he’s old enough to think and talk coherently.”

  “And how long’s that going to take?” said Hart.

  Rhea shrugged. “Like Mad said, a couple of days. Normally that wouldn’t affect the town or the Galleries; their own momentum would be enough to keep things going till Time was ready to take control again. But now, after everything that’s happened… I don’t know.”

  “We can’t wait two days,” said Hart. “We don’t have that long. The town doesn’t have that long. The Wild Childe will have killed everyone by then.”

  “If you’ve another suggestion, I’m sure we’d all be happy to hear it,” snapped Rhea. “I don’t like the idea of him being this helpless. Jack Fetch should be here to protect him. Why isn’t he here?”

  “Oh please,” said Morrison. “Things are complicated enough without turnip-head interfering.”

  Hart frowned. “Time thought some outside force was interfering with the proper flow of events,” he said slowly. “Maybe it deliberately brought on Time’s death early, so that his younger self would be helpless and open to attack.”

  “Cootchie, cootchie-coo,” said Mad. “Who’s a special little baby, then?”

  “I didn’t think anybody could interfere with Jack Fetch,” said Ash diffidently. “If he was meant to be here, I think he’d be here by now.”

  “You know,” said Hart. “This really doesn’t make sense, when you think about it. I mean, why would someone as important and powerful as Time have such a vulnerable spot in his life cycle?”

  Rhea shrugged. “Maybe… in case he ever got out of control, and had to be stopped or replaced.”

  “Who could replace Time?” said Morrison.

  “Oh, very deep,” said Rhea.

  “Something’s coming,” said Ash suddenly. Everyone looked at him. His gaze was far away, as though fixed on something only he could see.

  “What is it, Leonard?” said Rhea, putting a hand on his arm. He didn’t react.

  “Something’s coming. Something bad.”

  “Form a circle round the bed,” snapped Mad, laying the baby carefully on the rumpled blankets. She drew the sword on her hip, and it settled into her hand as though it belonged there. The others made a ring around the bed, glaring out at the impenetrable gloom beyond the lamplight. For a long moment there was only silence and the dark.

  “Who’s coming?” said Hart finally. “And from where? I can’t see a damn thing.”

  “It’s close now,” said Ash. “Very close. It’s almost here.”

  There was a sudden drop in temperature, as though someone had opened a door to the cold outside, and then Jack Fetch was suddenly in the room with them. Everyone relaxed a little, and let out the breath they’d been holding. Jack stood quietly before them, smiling his turnip smile.

  “About time you got here,” growled Rhea, stepping out of his way as he started towards the bed.

  But there was something in the way the scarecrow moved, something in the way he held himself, that set off alarm bells in Hart’s head. He reached out and grabbed the scarecrow by the arm, his hand closing easily around the heavy stick that was all that filled the scarecrow’s sleeve. Fetch threw him off violently, without even looking round, and his gloved hands reached out to take the baby from the bed.

  “Get the baby away from him!” said Hart. “Something’s wrong; I can feel it.”

  Rhea snatched up the baby and backed away from the bed. Jack Fetch went after her. Ash stepped between them and pulled his death around him like a shield. The others paled and fell back, but the scarecrow didn’t even slow his advance. He had never been born, and so had no fear of death. Rhea kept backing away, holding the baby protectively. Ash grabbed the scarecrow’s arms with all his unnatural strength. For a moment they stood face to face, the dead man struggling with something that had never lived, and then Fetch threw Ash to one side. Morrison called his guitar out of nowhere and began a song, but his voice was uncertain, and the scarecrow might have been deaf for all the attention it paid him.

  Mad jumped forward and cut at Fetch with her sword, the blade seeming to guide her hand. Excalibur had been wielded by many great swordsmen, and the sword remembered. It punched through Fetch’s shirt front and out his back, stopping him short. He looked down, grabbed the blade with his gloved hands, and pulled it out of his body inch by inch, despite everything Mad could do to keep it there. She stepped back and jerked the blade out of the scarecrow’s hands, slicing open the gloves as she did so. Fetch reached out to grab the blade again, and Mad swept the sword a
cross in a savage cut that sliced clean through the bundle of twigs that made up the scarecrow’s wrist. The gloved hand fell to the floor. The fingers twitched and scrabbled on the floor like a huge leathery spider. Mad kicked out at it, and it jumped up, avoiding her foot, and reattached itself to Jack Fetch’s wrist. Mad blinked, and then cut at the scarecrow again and again. Sawdust flew from his chest as the blade ripped open his shirt, but still he advanced on her, and she was forced to back away step by step. Rhea stayed behind her, holding the baby almost painfully tightly, though he never once made a sound.

  Mad’s arms grew tired as she swung the heavy blade. No matter what she did she couldn’t hurt Jack Fetch; when all was said and done he was only a collection of wood and twigs and old clothes, topped by a turnip head. And even as she whittled him away, piece by piece, the magic that made him Jack Fetch put him back together again. In the end the sword grew too heavy or she grew too tired, and one wild stroke missed the scarecrow completely. Fetch seized her arm while she was off balance, and threw her to the ground. Her elbow hit the floor hard, and the sword flew from her hand. Jack Fetch bent over her, his gloved hands reaching for her remorselessly.

  “No,” said Hart. “Stop that.”

  The scarecrow hesitated, and then turned his turnip head to look at Hart. The tension within him was almost palpable, as he struggled between the power of what drove him and the authority in Hart’s voice. The tension grew, an almost physical presence in the room, and then the scarecrow turned its head away as it stepped over Mad and reached for the baby in Rhea’s arms. Hart reached inside himself, and let loose his grandfather’s power. It was very close to the surface in him now, and at his acceptance it leapt free like an unchained beast. Power surged through him, wild and awful and very potent. He lashed out with it, and the scarecrow exploded.

  The others cried out as they were hit by flying pieces. Bits of twig and tatters of cloth fell to the floor like ugly snowflakes, and Hart began to relax again. He’d done it. The threat was over. And he’d finally let the power run loose within him, and it hadn’t been so bad after all. He smiled at the others, preparing a few modest remarks for when they thanked him, and then realized they weren’t looking at him. He looked behind him, and there in midair, the thousands of pieces of Jack Fetch were knitting themselves together again. The scarecrow rebuilt himself in a matter of moments, whole and intact once more. His turnip mouth grinned mockingly, and Hart’s temper snapped. He dug deep into his power, called it all up in a moment, and used it to rip the life force right out of the scarecrow. All the old and subtle magics that made Jack Fetch what he was were cancelled in an instant, and everything that made him unique and individual was sucked out of him and channelled into Hart. It felt good going down, like a fiery brandy, warm and tingling, and it was only when the empty husk of the scarecrow fell stiff and lifeless to the floor that he realized what he’d done.