The Chosen Seed: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Three

  On the way to the pub they called David Fletcher. He too had been dragged over the coals, but at least he still had his job – the Commander of the ATD couldn’t be suspended with the same ease as a humble DI. Hask thought it might just work in their favour; he couldn’t believe Fletcher cared much for being told to back off from something so suspicious. He hadn’t said outright that he’d continue his own investigation, but he had insisted he wanted to be kept in the loop.

  Hask sipped his vodka and tonic as Ramsey half-drained his first pint. ‘So, what now?’ the profiler asked. He didn’t suppose for one second that Charles Ramsey was about to go home and sit about watching daytime TV until he was allowed back into the fold. They had still to find out the truth about Mr Bright, but that fact didn’t need to be spoken.

  How could either of them walk away after seeing the transformation that Craven had undergone just before he died? Hask still hadn’t really processed those few brief moments, the way he hadn’t been able to breathe; the light and sound that had been so sharp and exquisite that it had hurt. Caroline Hurke had not been suffering from delusions – or if she was, then so too were Tim Hask and Charles Ramsey.

  ‘I’m going to call a few friends in the media.’ Ramsey took a long swallow of his beer, but his eyes were narrowed and focused, and somewhere completely different entirely. ‘I want to make sure that the whole world knows I’m off the case.’ He glanced at Hask. ‘You too, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘My reputation can take it.’

  ‘Good. You cost a lot of money, so you being dismissed by the Met will get a few headlines, especially if we make it clear that your contract was cancelled because you now think that Jones was set up by an unknown, very powerful man.’

  Hask smiled. ‘The Commissioner will then deny it, and that will make the story run for longer, yes?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  A flutter of excitement buzzed in his stomach. This could be fun. ‘So talk me through your plan, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘The way I see it, we need to find one of two people if we are ever to understand what the hell is going on here. And I also know that we’re highly unlikely to find either Mr Bright or Cass Jones: Bright’s a virtual ghost, and Jones isn’t leaving any tracks behind him. However, there’s a chance, that one of them might come looking for us if we play it right.’

  ‘Cass Jones?’

  ‘Exactly. He’s out there on his own, and we know he’s watching the news because otherwise he wouldn’t have got to the hospital so fast. If he realises that we’re on his side, then he might get in touch, especially if he needs us.’

  ‘Or,’ Hask said, leaning forward and resting his heavy arms on the table, ‘he might think it’s a trap.’

  ‘He might do if it was just me,’ Ramsey said, ‘but not you: you’re a civilian. Using you to trap him would give the Commissioner a huge headache – and on top of that I don’t think you’d agree to something like that; it’s not part of your normal observational and assessment role. I’ve looked at your file and you’re always impartial, and this wouldn’t be. Cass knows that as much as I do.’

  ‘How nice that you think so highly of me.’ Hask smiled. ‘Do you want to make the calls now, or shall we have another drink first?’

  ‘Let’s have another drink.’ Ramsey grinned. ‘After all, it’s your shout. And then after that, let’s start this ball rolling.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Not just cold, but freezing black cold … His soul ached with loneliness as he flew forward, stretching further and further into the empty darkness. He had no sense of time passing; there was no before the black, or if there was, it was simply the fragment of a dream he chased, but couldn’t cling to. He had been here for ever, propelling himself endlessly across or through or around. He wasn’t breathing, but his throat was raw. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, a strip of bright life tumbling through space, he wondered if he should be afraid. He was lost, and he would be here for ever, and yet he didn’t feel afraid. There was something familiar about the darkness. He’d been here before, a long time ago, he was sure of it.

  After aeons drifting in the depths he gasped as swirls of light and colour and terrible beauty filled the void ahead. He ached just looking at the glory, and he cried at his smallness in its presence. It was Chaos. There was Chaos in the darkness, and it tugged at something inside him, pulling him closer, and awe and fear threatened to rip his soul apart. The Chaos was shrieking, and it made him frown – the Chaos hadn’t screamed before, and he wondered how he knew about before, and as he spun towards the hues that made his eyes bleed he no longer knew what was before and what was after. There was only now.

  He could get lost in the colours that burned so brightly and rolled him around and pushed him from one thread to another, but even among their fierce beauty he could see patches of golden Glow sparking here and there. Unlike the dancing Chaos, the bursts of Glow didn’t move, and an image filled his head: of flies, stuck in a spider’s web. He trembled as he passed the golden haze, and it screamed, tormented. The scream didn’t stop. He wondered if the scream would ever stop—

  He tried to propel himself forward, looking for a path, but the Chaos moved him this way and that, trapping him in its maze. Colour was everywhere, confusing him and always peppered with the awful screams of the Glow. He paused and forced himself to be still. There had been a path here once, all white and glorious – he knew that, although he had no idea how he knew, or even who he was; all he knew was that there had once been a path, that they had built. Where was it now, hidden somewhere in the blinding, dancing colours? And who were they? Where did the path lead?

  A strand of purple and blue and pink slid free from the mass and he gasped as it slithered stickily around him. He found himself screaming, an awful sound that grew louder as he shook it away. It was a trap; the Chaos would hold him here if it could, just like it held the patches of shrieking golden light now embedded within its colours. He fought the energy that propelled him forwards, instead floating free. He needed to get out. He needed to go back.

  A distant sound teased him, music, just out of reach. The notes were pure and powerful, and he tried to look beyond the Chaos, to see through the colours, to find the source, but he thought the effort might drive him mad so instead he listened. It was the sound of trumpets, clear bursts of impatient music, and now it terrified him more than the Chaos did. Some part of him remembered the music, just like it had remembered the Chaos in the darkness, and more colours stretched towards him and now he found he was too tired to fight them. He thought he might be crying. He thought perhaps he was here, and perhaps he might be here for ever, and the sudden endlessness of eternity was shards of icy pain in his head.

  The colours were coming for him. The Chaos was—

  —and he gasped, sucking air into his raw chest, and the world spun in a mass of nausea and confusion and heat. Someone pulled off the eye mask and he found himself blinking rapidly – and for a moment he was purely sensory, his body reacting to his surroundings while his consciousness pulled back from the void. He was here and there at the same time— He wanted to puke.

  ‘Get him out of there – quickly.’

  ‘He looks terrible.’ The hushed voice sounded shocked.

  Confused and barely conscious, Cass turned and through the haze he saw a young man, a stranger, and he was yanking him free from the various monitors. He didn’t recognise him – but he’d known the first voice; he would recognise that one anywhere. And in this moment he knew it better than he knew himself. Mr Bright.

  And as the name registered, so his world fell back into place: Cass Jones. Luke. The Bank. The dead—

  He groaned.

  ‘That will pass,’ Mr Bright said. ‘We may have to carry him out of here.’

  The straps on his arms came free and Cass struggled to haul himself up. He blinked through the black patches at the corner of his vision and his mouth moved with the ghosts of a thousand questions, but noth
ing recognisable came out.

  Leaning heavily on the stranger, Cass turned his head to see Mr Bright crouched by the body of a swarthy, well-built man. He was removing something from around his neck. When he stood up, Cass could see he’d been in a battle of his own; there were streaks of dried blood on his cheeks and his normally impeccable clothing was rumpled and stained. What had happened in here? And more importantly, what had happened to him? The room was baking, but he shivered. Cold had settled into his bones and his feet were numb – the cold from the void. He wondered if he’d ever be warm again.

  ‘There are no Walkways,’ he rasped, finally finding his voice. ‘It’s a trap.’ Mr Bright and the stranger paused and looked at each other.

  ‘We can talk about that later,’ Mr Bright said. ‘For now, let’s get you out of here. We haven’t got much time.’

  Cass almost laughed. Go with Mr Bright? He’d rather take his chances here. He got to his feet. He’d rather—

  —and the world spun and stars flashed in his vision—

  —and a million miles away Mr Bright said calmly, ‘Catch him. He’s passing out.’ The words sounded like trumpet music, and then blackness took him again.

  The old man was like an excited child as they left the small attic apartment for the last time and headed towards the car she’d procured for them. He leaned on her quite heavily and their progress was slow, but his eyes were alive and his weakness was, at least temporarily, leaving him.

  ‘I can’t wait to see him,’ he said, for the hundredth time. ‘It’s been so long – I can’t wait to see him, and I can’t wait to get home.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said, smiling. Her hair was shining, and a bright titian red again: as the First got stronger, so did they. She hadn’t realised how much she had lost hope that they would ever get home again, until she got it back. Her nose stung and began to run in the biting cold. She’d be glad to be back in the endless warmth. She’d be glad to be herself again.

  ‘And you think you know where Jarrod Pretorius is?’ he asked as they turned off the main road and down a side-street. She didn’t look at him as she pulled the car keys out of her pocket.

  ‘I think so,’ she said. He hadn’t asked her about Jarrod Pretorius before, and for that she was grateful. In the end, she’d had to look for him in the old ways, and her abilities were so weakened that it had taken days before she got even the faintest of images. But since then, more and more had come to her – faces, places, buildings, names – until she had been left exhausted, and last night the old man had had to look after her instead of the other way round.

  She wondered how much of the tiredness came from the search itself, and how much from the heartache it produced. She wondered if those who had marched off so long ago without a backwards look ever missed those they had left behind as they themselves were missed. Perhaps forgetting was easier if you were far from home … She had never forgotten, though. He had always been a strange one, but she had loved him, even when they had taken different sides as they were duty-bound to do. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, of that she was sure, even after all this time, but he’d done it anyway.

  Inside the car, she turned the engine on and cold air hit her face from the vents, but she didn’t close them; she needed the cold. She needed to be as strong as possible. Her strange new heart thumped loudly and she told herself it was the excitement of seeing the First, which wasn’t entirely a lie. Now that their meeting was so close, her heart was leaping for it: it had been so long, and he had always shone so brightly – and she, like all the rest, had missed him.

  But it was Jarrod Pretorius she needed her steel for.

  She pulled away from the kerb and out into the traffic, then turned the volume up on the radio. She needed the festive good cheer. She found herself enjoying seeing the old man’s foot tapping along as the singer screeched ‘Merry Christmas!’ at them, and then it was replaced with something older and mellower, but still full of warmth and love, and it made her think of Jarrod Pretorius again; it made her think of love. Perhaps they were right in that – perhaps true love never did really die.

  She thought of the Architect, and all the others. She wondered if they would ever understand that he was so bent on the destruction of them and all they had achieved because he had loved them and he had missed them, and he would not ever forgive them for that.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ‘I took it from the one who was guarding Cassius Jones in the Experiment.’ Mr Bright held up the silver datastick.

  ‘We have this one.’ Brian Freeman held up a matching item. ‘It came from your friend Mr Craven. He’s dead now.’ He delivered the last line with a smile, but it didn’t appear to bother Mr Bright.

  ‘That was inevitable given his condition. And colleagues we may have been, but I have never counted Mr Craven among my friends.’ He returned Freeman’s smile with more warmth than the one he’d received. ‘I am glad you have it.’

  The two men held the items up as if they were cowboys brandishing Colts in a duel. All Cass wanted was to sit down and wait for his terrible headache to fade. He was exhausted. The journey here had been a blur, and he had no recollection of giving the address to either Mr Bright or Mr Vine, as the stranger turned out to be, but at some point he must have done. He could remember seeing their faces, looming over him as he drifted in and out of consciousness, but the rest was a blank.

  As reunions went, it had been a strange one. Cass had stumbled through the door supported by Messrs Bright and Vine, and the ensuing silence had been almost palpable. Dr Cornell had broken it: he’d crept up to within two or three inches of Mr Bright and then raised a trembling hand and touched his face.

  ‘You,’ he’d breathed eventually. Cass had thought he might have a heart attack with the shock, but instead he scuttled to safety behind Brian Freeman.

  ‘You bastard,’ Freeman had said.

  ‘I’ve been called worse, and I suppose I’ve earned that,’ Mr Bright answered quite cheerfully, ‘but we did a deal, Mr Freeman. You took my offer. You can’t blame me if for some reason you feel sour about it so many years later.’

  Freeman had gone for Bright, but Cass forced himself between them, though his head almost exploded in agony at the sudden movement. The situation was fucked up enough without them fighting each other – right now, at least. Before anything else he needed to know why Mr Bright had rescued him.

  ‘I have all the answers,’ Mr Bright said, pulling the datastick from his pocket. ‘I can tell you everything you want to know.’

  And here they were, Cass thought, datasticks drawn at dawn. He let himself flop into an armchair as Mr Bright peered around the room at the photographs and documents that covered every flat surface. ‘Although you seem to be doing a remarkably good job of trying to find them yourselves,’ he finished, sounding almost impressed.

  ‘Your friend Solomon killed my niece,’ Brian Freeman spat, and Mr Bright’s eyes widened slightly and then, after a moment, twinkled.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘and now this change of heart makes sense. I should have researched his victims more thoroughly.’ He trod carefully over the piles of papers until he reached the large board of photographs and newspaper cuttings propped up against a wall. ‘I’m sorry he did that to you.’ His voice was soft as he studied the pictures. ‘Although I can’t help but be pleased that even at the last, when he’d gone quite, quite mad, Mr Solomon didn’t entirely lose his mastery of the game. I’m not afraid to say I miss having him by my side.’ He turned back to Freeman. ‘As things have turned out, your re-involvement might not have been the negative that Mr Solomon intended.’

  ‘How do you see that?’ Freeman growled.

  ‘Because right now, and whether you like it or not, we’re all on the same side.’ Mr Bright came closer to Freeman. ‘I’m sure you would like to kill me – or at least try to kill me – but I am also sure that you are a pragmatic man, Mr Freeman, and one who would not carelessly lose an ally with my knowledge and in my po
sition.’

  ‘What do the datasticks do?’ Dr Cornell was oblivious to the tension between the two men standing on either side of him. His eyes glittered with obsession tinged with madness.

  ‘What do you mean, we’re on the same side?’ Freeman didn’t even glance at Dr Cornell, and neither did Mr Bright.

  ‘Our own petty quarrels have been somewhat dwarfed by impending events,’ Mr Bright said softly, ‘and for now I suggest we put aside our differences and work together.’

  ‘What impending events?’ Cass asked.

  ‘The small matter of Armageddon.’

  Brian Freeman snorted a laugh. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Yes. Right.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Mr Vine cut in, speaking for the first time since his introduction. ‘The House of Intervention saw it.’

  ‘And I bet you have only his word for this?’ Freeman sneered.

  ‘I trust his word – I always have.’

  ‘Interventionists,’ Cass whispered, ‘that’s what Hayley Porter was becoming, wasn’t it?’ He rubbed his aching head and swallowed down another rush of nausea. Whatever that machine had done to him, it wasn’t good. No wonder the students had killed themselves after being repeatedly plugged into it. Whenever he closed his eyes he could still see the universe of colours.

  ‘Fucking Armageddon, my arse.’ Freeman stepped in closer to Mr Bright.

  ‘Charming as that expression is, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s coming.’

  ‘There is something coming,’ Cass said, suddenly, ‘there was something there, on the other side. I heard trumpets.’

  Mr Vine visibly paled.

  ‘What the fuck are you on about, Charlie?’ Brian Freeman said, unconsciously slipping back to the old name.

  ‘I don’t exactly know,’ he whispered miserably. And that was true, partly because his brain recoiled in horror whenever he tried to think clearly about what he’d been put through and focus on what he’d experienced. ‘But something’s coming.’