“Does he suspect?”
“The man is a fool and would barely notice the passage of time, let alone anything else.”
Two half-formed shapes drifted on the edge of the physical world in the darkened corridors of the Natural History Museum. Thin moonlight from the small windows in the ceiling barely offered enough light to see those that cared to be seen – and was certainly not enough for those whose main desire was to remain hidden. Both held themselves in a state of weakened substance, ready to Disperse at a second’s notice. Two voices hoarsely whispering seemed to gather like the memory of a conversation in the air.
“Nevertheless you must be more cautious. This reallocation may prove problematical for us,” one rasped at the other.
“Stop fretting, nothing has changed. I will still do my duty as I have sworn to you many times. Do you doubt my devotion?”
“I do not, but the time draws near and we cannot allow the natural evolution of the Brotherhood to be hindered.”
“We are not alone in our mission, are we? Your servants are ready and waiting for the beginning of the end. It cannot be stopped now, surely?”
“It does not matter how many of us there are; the facts still remain the same. If we do not have the tools for the job, we cannot prevent a successful Trial. And if the Sentinel is found, then our time is lost. That ridiculous Vision could prevent us from achieving our aims. It seems that he has found another who may fit the Vision, and that would make two of the three.”
“But the Vision is a farce; surely no one still takes it seriously?”
“Many on the Council do; belief is still strong and that could cause us some problems.”
“Not when we have the artefacts. When we have them, even the Council will not have the power to stand in our way. Are you sure you can get them?”
“I told you last night, I know where the artefacts are and I know where the Text will be moved to. You have to get me into the building and then leave the rest to me.”
“I will get you in; have no fear on that count.”
“To the future?”
“To the future.”
A slight breeze created a disturbance in the corridor and the shapes were gone round the corner and Dispersed out of sight, leaving only the indigo darkness to fill the space where they had been. Marcus, making a careful note of all he had overheard, slipped further back into the shadows and Dispersed in total silence.
“I’m sorry, did you say demon?” Adam gulped. “Now wait just a minute, let me get this straight. You want me to do some kind of trial and fight a demon so that I can save the living people of the Earth – is that right?”
“Basically,” D’Scover replied.
“And are we talking a total horns, flames, hooves and foul stink and long pronged fork kind of demon – the real deal?” Adam paced the room nervously as he talked.
“Possibly. It is not known exactly which demon will manifest; that is why you must be prepared.”
“Whoa, just hold on. Why the hell didn’t you mention this tiny detail about a demon before?”
“The time was not right.”
“And now it is?” Adam slumped down on the couch.
“You must start to prepare so, yes, the time is now right.”
“And what if I don’t go along with this mad idea?”
“If you are the Sentinel, the world will be lost for the living and the dead shall walk the Earth.”
“Man, you sure know how to put a chill up a spirit,” Adam sighed. “But that’s insane, it can’t be right. What if I’m not the Sentinel?”
“You will fail and the time is not right and we will once more wait for the Vision to be fulfilled.”
“Oh well, that’s just fine for you, isn’t it?” Adam said angrily, pacing the room. “Your Brotherhood has nothing to lose from this, do they? If I fail, I’m not the right one, and if I succeed, then everything is cool and everyone can get on with being dead and stuff and wait for the next idiot to come along.”
“A crude summary but accurate,” D’Scover said.
“What’ll happen to me if I’m not the Sentinel and I take this Trial?”
D’Scover turned away from Adam towards the picture of the Virgin on the wall. “That is uncertain,” he replied, “but this is bigger than your personal safety.”
“Will I die?”
“You are already dead.”
“You know what I mean; will I just Disperse for ever? Will I go to heaven or hell or, well, anywhere?”
D’Scover sighed and remained silent for a moment before answering. “I cannot lie to you, Adam; those who have taken the Trial before have not fared well. They have been forcibly Dispersed by the event and we do not know of their fate. Only one has remained afterwards to tell of it.”
“ONE! And just how many Trials have there been?”
“Twenty-two,” D’Scover said. “Fourteen in fairly quick succession in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century.”
“Riiiight,” Adam responded with a calm but sarcastic tone, “twenty-two have tried and only one has made it through? The odds aren’t good, are they? Can I at least talk to the person who made it and hear what they’ve got to say about it?”
D’Scover turned back to face him. “You already have. I survived a Demon Trial. I was the first,” he said.
“You?” Adam gasped.
“It was thought that I fulfilled some of the more obvious elements of the Vision; after all I was a child when I died, and so I was sent for the Trial. I failed but the demon was weakened and thankfully did not have the strength to pursue its aims,” D’Scover explained. “Now I realise that my continuation after the Trial was important. I am convinced it is no coincidence that your death was close to me. I think I am here to help you.”
“What was it like – your Trial, I mean? What happened? What was the demon? How the hell do you fight a demon anyway?” Adam’s head was spinning.
“I can explain, but for detail and full understanding, I will have to show you. Do you feel you can handle the Hypnagogia once more?”
“Oh no! Isn’t there another way?” Adam groaned. “I still haven’t quite got the last time out of my mind. Can’t you just tell me?”
“I am afraid not. To grasp the details fully you must see it for yourself.”
Adam looked out at the snow-heavy February clouds and thought hard before answering. “OK,” he said reluctantly. “Knock me out, I can take it. I mean, if I’m going to face a real demon, I’d better be able to handle a dream one.”
“Very well, lean back and relax. This will need to be a more complex illusion than the previous one you experienced and so I am afraid that I cannot pull you out of this deeper state once we have started. This Hynpogogia will need to run to its conclusion, but rest assured you cannot be physically harmed in the Hypnagogic state. As you may recall, no one could see you and you could not interact with people; you are just a spectator.”
D’Scover wheeled the desk chair up and sat next to the couch – as though he was a doctor about to talk to his patient – and began.
“The summer of 1666 dragged on for far longer than it should have. The city had been baked by months of heat and even disease seemed to begin to slow down under the relentless temperatures. From my viewpoint, high in Southwark Cathedral, I could watch the busiest section of the city over the river suffer in its steaming mire of death and filth.”
D’Scover’s soft voice slowed and began to fill Adam’s head as he felt his body grow heavy with the suffocating initial effect of the Hypnagogia. He became aware that the temperature was rising and that he was having difficulty in breathing as the air became thin and full of the stench of overcrowded living. Looking down, he watched the raw sewage drift past his feet before jumping to one side to avoid it. A few people had appeared around him and they wandered past as if in a drugged state and, as no one could see him, Adam did nothing to hide his revulsion. Grey faces pocked with the marks of old disease rested upon bodies so frail that Adam was amazed they could walk at all.
The streets were closed in around him and the buildings seemed stacked upon each other in perilous piles of wood and flaking plaster. The air was full of the groans of the sick and dying and the heat seemed to drag the sound out around him. He knew that D’Scover must be here somewhere, but as he could not see him, he started to walk. After walking for what seemed like an eternity he reached the city gates and watched the crowds of people there waiting to get out of the city and into the fields beyond.
Adam stood back, realising he had no idea where he was going, and turned around, hoping for a clue as to what to do next. He slumped down by a bare section of wall to catch his breath, trying to convince himself that he was not tired and this was all an illusion. While he attempted to force the sweltering atmosphere from his mind, he thought he saw a familiar face making its way through the heaving crowds, but he lost it. Jumping to his feet once more, he wove through the throng and tried to see if he was correct. He dodged people and jumped over the filthy ditch that ran like a brown vein through the streets and was brought up short as he ran straight through someone standing stock-still in the moving mass of bodies.
“Sorry,” Adam offered instinctively. He stood back and looked up at the man he had just run into – and stared into D’Scover’s eyes. Facially D’Scover looked the same as the man Adam knew, tall and thin with the same unkempt tousle of glossy black hair, but his clothes were different. He was dressed from head to foot in soft shades of brown as if he had tried his best not to be noticed. From his waist hung the sword Adam had seen him carry from the abbey.
In this confusion of a crowd D’Scover stood, looking around, apparently unaware of the chaos that spread about him. Adam did his best to follow as D’Scover wove his way through the masses and out on to the bridge over the Thames. The bridge was as crowded as the streets and Adam had trouble staying with him. He paused for a moment and looked ahead as D’Scover disappeared into the tightly packed streets.
“I can do this,” he told himself. “None of these people are real. I can just walk through them. Just gotta concentrate.”
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and ran forward. After a few seconds at this pace he opened his eyes and the blur of the streets around him made his stomach turn upside down. Shaking his head, he again careened through someone who had stopped directly in front of him – it was D’Scover again. He walked towards a large building that looked like a church. Adam followed him inside.
Here it was cooler and the noise of the city seemed to suddenly dissipate within the thick walls. D’Scover nodded a greeting to the nuns wandering the huge main hall and continued through into a small door at the far end, his soft shoes making no sound on the elaborate gravestones that flagged the floor. Adam followed and trotted up the narrow winding staircase behind D’Scover. The stairs wound a tortuous path upwards on steps worn smooth by time, until they reached another even smaller door, low and dark brown in the brick. This door opened to a small square room at the top of a tower with windows in each wall overlooking the city, the Thames on one side and the streets of Southwark and the countryside beyond on the other three. The windows had no glass, but D’Scover had no need for warmth – and no need for a bed either.
Adam looked from the windows and puzzled over the fact that the view looked almost familiar and he realised why. This building must have been practically on the site of the new one, certainly less than a mile away from the office D’Scover used today. He had said the site had been reused many times and his office had been here for over three hundred years. The view was certainly lower than from D’Scover’s modern office, and London had changed considerably, but it was familiar enough.
Adam stared hard at it, trying to put his finger on the main differences, while D’Scover busied himself at a table, rifling through sheaves of creamy paper covered with the black scrawl of handwriting. St Paul’s Cathedral was changed; it was there all right but a different shape – no dome just a square tower not unlike the one he stood in but much larger. Many of the buildings further out of the city seemed recognisable, but the crowded area they had just left looked totally unfamiliar. The bridge was nothing like the modern bridge Adam was used to; this one was as cluttered with houses as the streets were and the river that crawled underneath it was slow and foul with sewage.
A thick cloud began to gather round the tower room and after less than a minute Adam’s eyes could no longer see to the ground below. Turning back towards D’Scover, he realised that the cloud was now inside the room too, eddies of it reaching into every corner. He stumbled back towards the desk as it spiralled round D’Scover who now rested on one knee in the middle of the room with his forehead on the hilt of his sword.
The spiralling cloud began to settle into human shapes, twelve of them. D’Scover waited in his supplicant stance until the shapes were fully formed and surrounded him.
“RISE, KEEPER OF THE TEXTS.” A deep voice boomed around them. It seemed to come from no one and everyone at the same time, a cold intonation that echoed inside Adam’s skull.
D’Scover stood up, sheathed his sword and kept his head low.
“What is your bidding, masters?” he asked softly.
“YOUR TIME OF TRIAL HAS COME,” the voice said. “A DEMON WILL ATTEMPT TO TAKE THIS CITY. YOU ARE TO STOP HER.”
“I will do your bidding. What form will she take?”
“SHE IS A FIRE DEMON. WE KNOW ONLY THAT. DO NOT FAIL US.”
D’Scover dropped again to one knee as the figures began to break up and the cloud swirled around the room and was gone. Outside the sky cleared and Adam could see the people in the streets below.
“Fire.”
Suddenly D’Scover turned and walked briskly from the room with Adam scuttling behind. Halfway down the stairs he stopped and took a key from a strip of leather around his waist and thrust it into a small crack in the brickwork. A hollow sound of metal against stone crunched within the wall and dust fell as D’Scover pushed open a low door. Inside Adam recognised many of the books now still under D’Scover’s protection. They stood on thick oak shelves around every bit of wall. Each book was held securely with a strong dark chain that hung from their spines – each chain just long enough to reach the table in the middle of the room. The chains clanked as D’Scover pulled them out one at a time to consult different texts.
This went on for hours. D’Scover was trying in vain to trace a weakness in the demon. It went right on until the cry went up. The city was burning.
D’Scover ran back up to the tower windows and looked out over the darkening metropolis to where its heart now bore a red glow. He ran back towards the stairs and headed down them. Adam followed.
The journey to the fire was clearly difficult for D’Scover – by Adam’s reckoning, he had already held his shape for a number of hours. His strength could not possibly last much longer. Moving through the crowds was wasting valuable energy needed to confront the demon. People swarmed out of the city now in all directions and the heat had begun to grow fierce. From the bridge, flames could now be seen rising into the evening sky, carrying sparks high into the swirling smoke. All around him was panic. Many fled the tongues of flame that licked across the rooftops, catching building after building; some desperately pumped water in the street and carried bucket after bucket to douse their houses, foolishly hoping that a damp building would not burn.
D’Scover pushed on closer to the thunderous noise of the fire. The heat rose and the smoke soon became impossible to see through, but still he walked on until he stood alone in front of a wall of scarlet flames. Then he stepped through. Adam stood outside the ring of fire, and looked around. A few people scrambled to safety behind him, but as he walked forward, only one other figure remained. Adam squinted through the haze but the figure was gone. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that it was not real – and he too walked into the blaze.
Inside all was strangely still and quiet. The roar had died and was now replaced with a low murmur that sounded like anguished voices at a great distance. It was as though the voices had long since lost the strength to cry out and only moaned softly at their distress. All around rose the seething walls of fire, rippling like stormy waters.
“I know you are here!” D’Scover shouted in the empty space. “Show yourself, demon; your time has come.”
Adam looked at D’Scover’s face and saw the determination in it, but a tremble in his voice betrayed fear. He held the sword aloft and turned round, staring into the inferno. For a moment, behind D’Scover’s back, the flames darkened as if cooled from outside. A small tear appeared, widening bit by bit until Adam could see a pair of pale hands push through. For a brief moment he could see a face through the tear in the flames. It was the face of the girl in the last Hypnagogia, the witch girl. The wall of fire flared with a white heat and the girl was gone and Adam turned his attention back to D’Scover.
A little in front of D’Scover a thin trickle of ash began to fall from the air. Though it seemed to have no origin, it very quickly grew and angry red sparks danced over the surface. The pile increased and a flicker of fire began to appear from the floor, rising up the ash and cloaking it in a shimmering garment of crimson and yellow. With a final flourish of curling smoke and sparks, a stunningly beautiful woman appeared in front of them. She was tall with hair and clothes of flame that flowed out and around her in a furious halo. She stretched out long thin arms the colour of wood ash and a white sprinkle like grey rain fell to the floor as she moved. The skin of her face was the same ashen colour as her arms, but her lips and eyes glistened with the rich dark hue of the crimson sparks that had formed her.
“Does my shape please you?” She had a voice that sounded like hot syrup. It made the hair stand up on the back of Adam’s neck. An involuntary shudder ran up his spine and he felt captivated by her beauty. He wanted to look away from her and run, but was rooted to the spot and wondered if D’Scover felt the same.
“You cannot influence me, demon!” D’Scover shouted above the murmur of the flames. “I am here to dispatch you, not to listen to you.”
The woman walked round the circle and small tongues of flame licked out and jumped into her infernal clothing. She lifted an elegant hand as she walked and ran it delicately through the blaze as though trailing it in water.
“Why do you call me demon?” she asked softly, turning back towards him, her dress gleaming as she moved.
“I speak as I find. You are a demon and you cannot trick me with your words.” He held his sword defiantly, with the point towards her.
She smiled and, with a gesture from her, the wall roared and claws of fire leapt out towards D’Scover, stopping within a hair’s breadth of him.
“I am no mere demon, I am an Elemental. My sisters and I existed long before the time of humans. We shall be here long after you have gone.” Her voice was as smooth as liquid yet bubbled with fury like the flames around her. “You are a fool if you think that you can stop me. This world is already ours.”
“Then I will die in the attempt!” he shouted and swung out with his sword.
The Elemental moved backwards and partially merged with the flames which covered her like protective arms. The blade swept wide, missing her completely.
“Forgive me, child, but you are already dead.” She smiled with a look of pure malevolence and D’Scover stumbled backwards.
Stepping out from the protective flames, her face darkened and her eyes burned blood–red, shining with pure evil.
“I tire of this game,” she said angrily. “I give you one last chance before I Disperse you for a final time.”
“It is not your choice; my destiny is already marked.” D’Scover once more raised his sword aloft. “Come, demon, this dance is mine.”
For all of his brave words, Adam could see from the tremble running down the sword just how scared D’Scover really was and, with his hindsight, he knew that the battle was already lost.
The Elemental drew up her arms and the flames turned black around her and licked higher than Adam could see. Her face grew distorted with hatred as she turned and drew a blood-red ball of fire from the air above her head.
D’Scover spun round and the air filled with the song of swung metal as his weapon cast a silver circle around him. The blade this time made contact and swept through the Elemental at the waist, causing her to fold and crumple to the floor. As she fell, she screamed and the flames around her howled an ungodly wail as if they too had felt the cut of the blade. D’Scover took a few steps back, stunned by the sword’s effect. But the Elemental lifted her head and the twisted smile on her face chilled Adam to the bone.
“Strong words, boy.” Her words were thick with anger. “You almost believe that you can kill me, but you’ll need conviction stronger that the weak mind of a boy to defeat me. My patience with this farce has ended.”
She drew herself to her feet and, as she took a deep breath, grew taller until all that could be seen was a moving column of fire that seared Adam’s skin.
“This isn’t real, it can’t harm me.” He shouted the words out loud, trying to convince himself.
D’Scover had been pushed back by the flames and had his back to the firewall which reached out for him with a thousand tiny scorched hands. His own arms hung limp by his side and the now blackened blade of his sword trailed through the ash on the floor. Staring up, he was obviously transfixed by the movement of the flames. In his eyes Adam could only see the reflection of the roaring column and saw nothing of the man he had come to think of as a friend.
“D’Scover, you can do this, you’ve got to pull yourself together!” Adam screamed uselessly at him.
Far above them the Elemental laughed and her breath came down with the hellish smell of sulphur and brimstone. Adam looked up as a drop of hell fell towards them. The Elemental’s foot crushed them both. The world was snuffed out.
“The Senior Council stepped in. I was placed in Dispersal a second before she struck. That saved me from destruction. It was my mistake; I assumed that she was a demon, but she was worse than that. The Council placed a restriction spell on the city and, when the oxygen ran out, the flames subsided. The city burned at its heart for five days; all who saw her died. Today it is still remembered as the Great Fire of London. The Senior Council spent decades sorting out the scars she left on the city and erasing the memory of those who died. I, however, will never forget.”
D’Scover finished his tale and the Hypnagogia slipped from Adam like a thick blanket on an icy night, leaving him cold and shaking. He sat up and pulled his arms around his body.
“I saw her again,” Adam said through chattering teeth. “The witch girl, in the last Hypnagogia, the same one. How can that be? Is that just my imagination or did you put her there?”
“I did not put her there consciously,” D’Scover assured him, “but she must have been in my memories; she must be there for a reason.”
“So who is she then?”
“I am not sure, but it is clear that we must find out.”
“Do you think that she’s dead too?”
“No, I do not think so.” D’Scover shook his head. “The time between the two events you have seen was too great for her to have lived through both. I have a theory that she carries a timeless spirit; many witches do.”
“You seem to enjoy confusing me,” Adam grumbled. “Can’t you just speak plain English?”
“When her body dies, her spirit is reborn in another from her family,” he patiently explained. “This is why some people have more than just a family resemblance; some people actually carry the spirits of their ancestors. It does happen in powerful witch families, although because they are not usually aware of this, they lose the powers that their ancestors had.”
“What now?” Adam still shivered.
“Now,” D’Scover said, ripping the air apart for the library key once more, “we find out who this witch really is.”