17

THE GREAT AND DANGEROUS

he doctor’s name was Rosewood. He was an old friend of Tom’s. They’d settled me on a sofa before a crackling fire in a large, dim living space. A mirror brightened above the fireplace when Tom opened a shutter to give his friend more light.

The doctor slipped a thermometer into my mouth and checked my glands and blood pressure, burbling in a mellow voice that nearly lulled me into a doze.

‘Stand by, this may sting a little,’ he said. A needle prickled the crook of my arm. ‘Just a wee something to bring down your temperature.’

‘Brave boy,’ Mum said as Dr Rosewood packed away his stethoscope.

‘Not brave, just sick,’ I said. Being brave was something you had a choice about.

They moved to an adjacent room. From the tones of their voices behind the closed door I guessed the prognosis wasn’t bad. Mum sounded reassured and even laughed at some remark Tom made before his doctor friend left.

I rested there until I felt brighter, more able to stand, and then crossed to the door and opened it a crack. In the next room Mum and Tom sat at a small dining table overlooking the misty garden. There were vases of fresh flowers all around the room and a spread of cakes, scones and sandwiches on the table.

They seemed unaware of me standing there and looked content and at ease in each other’s company. Were they meant to be together, and would I have to get used to this? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Hearing the door creak, they both looked up and smiled.

‘Ah, the warrior returns,’ Tom said. ‘Here, Ben, can you face a bite to eat?’

Mum patted the chair seat next to hers. ‘Sit down, hon. Dig in.’

‘If this doesn’t appeal I’ll have the kitchen drum up something else,’ Tom said. ‘The chef’s very good. Ran two of the best restaurants in town before I headhunted him.’

I wasn’t hungry, but a glass of iced water from the table eased the parched and bitter taste in my mouth.

‘Suppose I must’ve fainted,’ I said.

Mum nodded. ‘So you did. Good thing Tom saw it coming and caught you in time. We were just saying, weren’t we Tom, we were wrong to bring you out so soon. We’ll do this another time when you’re well.’

Tom poured steaming tea into china cups. ‘Dr Rosewood reckons it’s the same thing he’s been seeing all month, a three- or four-day bug at worst. Says you’ll be fighting fit by tomorrow.’

‘We’ll get you home after this,’ Mum said. ‘That’s where you should be when you’re out of sorts.’

‘Or Ben could rest here,’ Tom said. ‘There are plenty of guest rooms.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I can get home by myself.’

Mum was having none of it. ‘Fat chance. You need mollycoddling.’

‘I only need rest. There’s nothing you can do at home, anyway, except sit around while I sleep.’

‘Suppose I have Hector take him?’ Tom suggested. ‘Would that ease your mind? And if it’s what Ben wants. . .’

‘Sounds good to me,’ I said.

Mum wagged a finger at me. ‘Then be sure to call if you need anything and if you feel any worse you must let us know. I don’t want to spend the day worrying.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I said. ‘You heard the doctor.’

‘All right, you win. Have it your own way.’

Later, kissing me goodbye on the steps outside, she said, ‘I wouldn’t let you go if I didn’t think you looked so much better. And he does look better, doesn’t he, Tom?’

‘Five times better, ten times.’ Tom shook my hand with both of his and leaned close to speak confidentially, man to man. ‘And you shouldn’t worry either. Your mum’s where she wants to be and I couldn’t be happier to have her here. You do trust me to look after her, Ben, don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ I replied, watching her, not him.

‘Terrific. Here, in case you need to ring.’

He pressed a business card into my hand and I pocketed it without looking at it. As I did, I noticed a distinctive smell about him, probably aftershave, similar to the miniature cactus’s sweet-sour scent in my room.

‘Don’t forget your comic,’ he said. ‘I think you left it in the car.’

It was still on the seat when I climbed in. Hector turned the Cadillac around on the forecourt and Mum and Tom waved us off from the steps before turning indoors.

Let them be together, I thought, as long as I don’t have to see them together.

On the journey to Hackney I held the comic on my lap without opening it while Hector negotiated traffic. In Camden we moved slowly through a stop-start jam under the fiery gaze of the demons and Chinese dragons that clung to the walls above the shops.

‘So how long have you worked for Mr Sutherland?’ I asked.

‘A very long time,’ Hector answered.

It was our only exchange of the journey.

Twenty minutes later he pulled up outside my block on Middleton Road and waited while I unhooked my belt and slid out. The air was bracing, my breath jetting steamy trails as I leaned to the driver’s door to thank him.

‘Don’t mention it, young sir,’ Hector said. ‘It’s what I’m employed for.’

As he turned back to face the street, the light falling across his eyes turned his irises to vertical slits. It was only a flash, a brief impression, and Hector drove away without another word. Shuddering, trying to shake off what I thought I’d seen, I headed indoors. Now I really was seeing things.

I washed and put on clean jeans and my I SURVIVED BAD SATURDAY T-shirt. In the bathroom mirror I looked more like myself, pink rather than grey-skinned. It was strange how the sickness came and went. Even stranger, the scar Nathan Synister had etched across my cheek had faded almost completely. I could barely feel the marks with my fingers. I took a breath and let it out slowly. The world was steadying, at least for now.

I’d call Becky soon. We’d lost touch since midweek, and I was sure we had lots to catch up on. First, though, I wanted another closer look at the comic. As I took it to the bed and opened it, the sweet-sour cactus scent filled my nose, the smell I’d caught in the air around Tom. It still clung to the palm of my hand he’d shaken even though I’d only just washed it. The scent seemed ingrained, trapped in my pores, and remembering that handshake I stopped at the thought of something he’d said.

You do trust me to look after her, Ben, don’t you?

And why exactly had he needed to ask that?

I looked at the comic. It lay open to the last page of Batman’s Chemical Syndicate adventure and the first page of the second story. It wasn’t the story I expected to come next. It wasn’t the story that should have come next. I stared at it in bemusement until, piece by piece, everything fell into place.

Until today I’d never actually seen an issue 27 up close, but I’d read enough about it to know what to expect, and this wasn’t it. The second story should be ‘Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator: The Killers of Kurdistan’. Instead, leaping off the page in bold reds and blacks was something called ‘The Great and Dangerous Adventures of The Lords of Sundown’.

The story, which ran to eleven pages, began with two demons sitting on rocks on a beach, watching the midnight tide. Far above them, above the headland, twin crimson moons coloured the sky, turning the sea blood red.

Tonight had been a travesty for their side in the eternal war. The fallout would soon begin. An hour ago in a hidden London alleyway a great battle had been lost at Pandemonium House. More than three hundred of their number had taken part, demons of every size and kind, and only a handful had returned safely home.

The senior demon, Nathan Synister, let out a deflated sigh, found a smooth flat fragment of bone on the ground and skimmed it across the water. It bounced two hundred and eighty six times before sinking. His red eyes, one of which never blinked since it lacked an eyelid, were troubled and far away.

‘Someone must pay for this debacle,’ he said. ‘The Lords of Sundown have suffered setbacks before, but few as catastrophic as this.’

His companion, a junior entity named Luther Vileheart, looked up at the sound of his leader’s voice.

‘There’ll be weeping and moaning tonight,’ he agreed. ‘Grieving on an almighty scale.’

‘And that’s just for starters,’ Synister said.

‘Yes, sir.’

In contrast to his leader, Vileheart had a smart, nearly-human appearance, dark featured, strong-boned and handsome, at least, handsome for a human. Under his robes he wore a black single-breasted suit and polished black Oxford shoes. A talented Shifter – like all Shifters he could transform at will – he specialised in undercover work among mortals. Only the diamond pupils of his snake eyes marked him out as a friend in these parts.

‘At least we didn’t leave empty-handed,’ he said. ‘At least we brought back a handful of souls to replace those we lost. We could’ve fared worse.’

‘Not much worse,’ said Synister. ‘Look around you.’

Luther Vileheart looked.

Fires blazed across the land, and as far as the eye could see the shoreline was littered with skulls and other bodily parts, a carpet of dead, dry bones. The demons stared in silence, overwhelmed by the scale of the defeat.

Something was stirring in the far distance, close to the headland. Vileheart noticed it first, a movement so slight it might have been a death’s head moth twirling inside the murk.

‘See that, sir?’ he said. ‘It comes our way. It could be a messenger, don’t you agree?’

‘More than that,’ Synister said as the figure slowly emerged from the darkest furthest corner of the beach. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, that’s our master Lord Randall Cadaverus.’

Vileheart drew breath. The horseback rider was suddenly clearer to see, black robes swirling around it as it crossed the shore. He had never met the master face to face. In fact, he’d heard that very few had looked his malevolence in the eye and survived.

As the rider drew nearer, another shape came into view alongside it. A short distance out to sea, a gilded cage kept pace with the horse, gliding just above the churning water. Inside the cage were three wraiths, scrawny and scraggy with tormented faces and trailing white hair, tendril fingers gripping the bars of their prison. All three wailed for mercy in an unsettling cat-like chorus.

‘Attention,’ said Synister. ‘Get off that rock and stand to meet your master. And whatever you do, remember not to look at him directly.’

The rider was nearly upon them. They heard the splinter of bones under the great black stallion’s hooves. They saw the steam from its nostrils tinted red against the sundown sky.

The prisoners trembled in their cage, looking down on the lapping water. It wasn’t the cold, dark sea they feared but what lived inside it, the many excitable fast-moving shapes flickering under its surface.

The horse drew up before the two demons, crushing a grinning skull to dust underfoot. Its robed passenger dismounted, carrying a dark bundle under one arm, which he now set carefully on the ground. The bundle, which appeared to be composed of shadows, squirmed and twisted.

‘Your maleficence,’ said Synister. ‘To what do we owe this honour?’

‘There’s no honour in defeat,’ Cadaverus said. ‘There’s nothing but everlasting shame. The whole of Abhorra mourns tonight.’

With long tapering fingers he pushed back the hood from his face, the sight of which caused the caged beings to sob and the two demons to draw breath and avert their eyes.

‘This should have been a great victory,’ Cadaverus said. ‘Instead we’re left licking our wounds. How many losses, Synister?’

‘Hundreds we know of,’ Synister said. ‘Many more still unaccounted for.’

Cadaverus watched the horizon, where an army of servants were digging a hole the size of a meteorite crater in the land. It would take countless nights of hard labour to fill that hole with the defeated. The fatalities were piled high as a hill.

The dark bundle stirred at its master’s feet, emitting a slow hiss as it began to work itself into a shape.

‘This will not stand,’ Cadaverus said. ‘Tonight Pandemonium House opened its defences, gifting us a chance we’ve waited decades for, and we let it slip away. We should’ve taken at least a hundred and ninety-six souls, and how many did we win in the end?’

‘About seventeen,’ said Synister, embarrassed.

‘Yes, and those were virtually worthless too – security staff, drones, minions. What happened to those I sent you for? The ones with gifts of hearing and sight?’

‘We failed,’ Synister was forced to admit.

‘I’d say so.’ Cadaverus’s aura darkened. ‘The question now is, who answers for this? Who pays the price?’

Nathan Synister fell to his knees. ‘Not me, your miserableness. It’s true I planned the siege, but my duties elsewhere kept me away until late. By the time I arrived, matters were already out of hand. I’d delegated staff, but they were unequal to the task.’

‘Excuses, excuses.’ Lord Cadaverus turned next to the junior demon Vileheart. ‘And what was your role in this fiasco?’

‘None, sir.’

‘None?’

‘That is, I wasn’t directly involved. I’d done some reconnaissance beforehand, and I had a minor role in guarding the children known as the Willows, the ones who perished in a house fire before we captured them.’

‘And you failed at that too. The children escaped.’

‘We were overpowered.’

‘You outnumbered our enemy fifty-to-one,’ Cadaverus seethed. ‘Thank your stars, you two, I’m in a lenient mood, and be glad these three buffoons –’ He gestured at the cage. ‘– made an even worse mess than you.’

Lord Cadaverus glared at the prisoners. Two looked up with the timid faces of woodland creatures caught in a hunter’s crosshairs. The third nervously eyed the choppy water.

‘Who was in charge of the conference room triptych?’ Cadaverus asked. ‘The stained glass windows we used to enter their headquarters?’

‘We were,’ the prisoners answered faintly.

‘And when the appointed time came to unlock the windows and let loose our forces, who gave the order?’

‘He did,’ said one.

‘Him,’ said another.

‘They did,’ said the third, not daring to look.

‘Your timing was abysmal,’ Cadaverus said. ‘Not only did you let a precious lost soul, Jim Harvester, slip through your paws, you delayed long enough to give the Ministry every chance to regroup. Gross incompetence. Where do we find these fools?’

‘One simple little task and they couldn’t even do that,’ Nathan Synister gloated.

‘Be quiet.’ Cadaverus spat on a rock. His acid spittle fizzed and burned a hole straight through it. ‘If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Don’t think passing the blame will lighten your own burden.’

‘Apologies, my Lord.’

Cadaverus refocused on the wraiths in the cage. ‘This should have been our night of nights – Samhain, a time when darkness rises and the balance of power swings in our favour. How in the name of all that’s unholy did you manage to mess that up?’

The wraiths cowered behind the bars, shaking and mewling.

‘Out of my sight, the lot of you,’ Cadaverus said, clapping his hands, and the cage descended into the sea, slowly enough to allow him the pleasure of hearing the prisoners beg for forgiveness one last time before they were eaten alive.

Their screams travelled the length of the shoreline, reaching as far as the gravediggers on the horizon, all of whom stopped to listen. The cage was now half-submerged, surrounded by thousands of frantic splashes. The feeding frenzy had begun.

The two demons looked on, well aware of what was taking place. This was, after all, the Carnivore Sea, the smallest but deadliest strip of coast in Abhorra, on the least populated, most northerly tip of the isle. There would be other punishments, some worse than this, before the night was over. This, they knew, was only the start.

The screaming stopped. The sea was a deeper red. Cadaverus waited until the water calmed and then with a motion of his hand brought the cage back above the surface and across to dry land. The cage floated in space for a moment, then tilted sharply aside, spilling its cargo of bones through the bars and onto the beach.

‘A fair and just punishment, eminence,’ said Nathan Synister. ‘Those wraiths undermined everything we did tonight.’

‘I don’t need to be told what is and is not fair punishment,’ Cadaverus growled.

‘Indeed not, my Lord.’

‘Do you seriously believe those three half-wits are the only reason our plans went belly-up?’

Cadaverus’s robes flowed around him in the airless breeze. The horse grew restless, shuffling its hooves over brittle skulls and collarbones.

‘The plan was flawed,’ said the junior demon, but immediately fell silent, realising he’d spoken out of turn.

Synister stared at him contemptuously.

‘A curious observation,’ Cadaverus said. ‘Your name is Vileheart, correct?’

‘Yes, my Lord. Luther Vileheart.’

‘The same Vileheart who took the life of the Harvester man among others?’

‘The very same.’

‘Would you care to explain the statement you just made?’

Vileheart swallowed, feeling the heat of Synister’s gaze. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the scarecrow any more than he dared meet the master’s eye. Instead he stared at the bundle of darkness writhing at Cadaverus’s feet.

‘Well?’ Cadaverus said. ‘Where was the flaw in your leader’s plan?’

‘The plan was unsubtle,’ Vileheart said. ‘We could have taken Pandemonium House unawares, but by staging a full-frontal attack we gave them time to adapt. Some of their operatives have considerable powers, powers we underestimated, and we played into their hands—’

‘Treasonable talk,’ Synister interrupted. ‘I’ll deal with you later, minnow.’

‘Quiet,’ Cadaverus said. ‘Let the entity speak. Continue, Vileheart.’

‘That’s all, your unworthiness,’ Vileheart said. ‘Except to say, it seems to me there are other ways to inflict maximum damage on the Ministry and its members.’

‘And they might be?’

‘This is nonsense,’ said Synister. ‘There was no flaw in the plan. This is a flagrant attempt to subvert—’

‘Silence!’

Cadaverus’s patience had run dry. He twitched a tapering finger at his second-in-command, sealing the scarecrow’s mouth. Synister’s eyes rolled back in shock. He tugged at his sewn-up lips with the talons of both hands, but the thread which held them was unbreakable. Then, recognising the futility of fighting the spell, he sank down onto a rock in a strop.

‘Now,’ Cadaverus said. ‘Your thoughts, Vileheart, please. . . You were saying?’

Luther Vileheart gathered himself to speak. ‘My Lord, I never meant to question the wisdom of my superiors. I have the highest regard for them, but I believe we need a different approach against the Harvester boy and his companions. Rather than bellow in their faces, we should insinuate and suggest . . . if you follow.’

The dark bundle rolled over and shuddered, sprouting four stalk-like limbs, which clawed and kicked at the air.

‘Fascinating,’ Cadaverus said. ‘An agent after my own black heart. So what do you suggest? What tack should we take?’

Seated on the rock, Synister let out a muted protest. Ignoring him, Vileheart continued.

‘First, your lowliness, identify our enemy’s weaknesses, their Achilles heels, if you will. Some months ago I recognised the boy Harvester’s mother as one such weakness, a heavy-hearted woman doted upon by her son. I approached her at her place of work, a rather drab dining establishment, posing as a customer and showing her an act of kindness.’

‘Kindness?’ Cadaverus was stunned. ‘A baffling human trait. So what form did this act of kindness take, and what was the reason for it?’

‘It was a simple gift, my Lord. Local currency, money, of which the woman had little. What mere mortals call “tipping”. I did this to give the woman some hope.’

‘Hope? Even more baffling. Why would you do that?’

‘I’ve spent many days under cover among the living, my Lord, and I’ve learnt that nothing hurts them more profoundly than hope first given and then snatched away. In extreme cases it can destroy a person’s faith.’

‘Ingenious, Vileheart.’ Cadaverus was greatly impressed.

With a shake of his misshapen head, Nathan Synister looked away in disdain.

‘And when a mortal loses hope and faith,’ Vileheart went on, ‘I’ve observed that it’s often because they’ve lost something else – something the species calls love.’

‘Love. . .’ The word lodged like a pebble in Cadaverus’s throat. ‘I’ve heard of it. And what then?’

‘Then, my Lord, without love, hope and faith, our enemy have nothing to fall back on but luck. And luck can never be relied upon. Without those qualities—’

‘I’d hardly call them qualities,’ Cadaverus said.

‘Indeed, malevolence. Without those . . . traits, it becomes much easier to capture their precious souls. Those who’ve lost the will to live offer little resistance.’

‘And this is how it will be with the Harvester woman?’

Vileheart nodded. ‘Yes. In fact I was on the verge of success some weeks ago, but then she was struck down by a sickness – a human condition. She’s since been harder to reach, but if I persist. . . She’s the key to breaking her son, the boy who’s causing us so many headaches. I hear she has plans for travel and a vacation, and away from her son’s influence it should be easy to arrange a chance meeting and enter her life with a view to destroying it.’

Cadaverus looked out at the crimson night, the twin moons bearing down on the water like furious eyes.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A subtle approach. Whispering, not shouting. I see how that might work. Very good.’

Luther Vileheart bowed his head. ‘I hope it wasn’t too bold of me to suggest it, sir.’

‘I would’ve been more concerned if you hadn’t.’

As Cadaverus spoke, the bundle he’d brought to the shore began to sit upright, flexing its limbs and growing a stumpy head and neck. There was a squelching and grinding of sinew and muscle, and from its mouth came a haunting, baby-like cry.

The horse drew back, snorting red-tinted clouds. Vileheart stared enchanted as the being remoulded itself first into one shape, then another, finally taking on the appearance of a human child of perhaps eleven or twelve years old. A knowing smile spread across its face as its features steadied.

‘Lord Cadaverus. . .’ it said in a scraping, whispery voice.

Cadaverus paced back and forth on the carpet of bones, filled with renewed inspiration.

‘Vileheart, here is our newest recruit,’ he said. ‘This entity is much like yourself, a Shifter well suited to undercover work. And that’s what you’ll do – you’ll re-enter the world of mere mortals and bring back souls that are worth a real price. A handful of Vigilants won’t fit the bill. Bring me the gifted and their loved ones.’

‘Yes, your unworthiness,’ Luther Vileheart said.

The child nodded, a determined look in its eye, but it didn’t speak again.

‘As for you,’ Cadaverus said, rounding on Nathan Synister. ‘This is your last chance. It’s all very well sending in the big guns, the Deathheads, the Mawbreed – you’re old school and that’s what you know. But these are new times. The war is changing. We don’t want the enemy to see us coming over the hill, do we?’

With a flick of his fingers, he removed the stitching from Synister’s mouth.

‘No, eminence,’ Synister said. ‘We’ll do better this time.’

‘You must.’

‘Yes, eminence.’

‘Excellent, then we’re set.’ Randall Cadaverus looked past the shoreline of bones to the dark horizon, a calm settling over him. ‘You know what’s to be done, so take your chance and don’t fail me again. This Halloween isn’t over yet.’

In the action-packed scenes that took up the next few pages, a titanic struggle played itself out – the heroic Lords of Sundown versus their dark adversary, the Ministry of Pandemonium, and the Ministry were on a hiding to nothing.

One artist’s plate showed a girl who resembled Becky Sanborne caught in a tornado inside her home, pinned to the ceiling by an all-conquering Nathan Synister, red eyes aglow.

‘I take it all back!’ Becky’s caricature screamed. ‘You were right all along!’

The scarecrow replied as all comic villains do. ‘Heh-heh-heh. If only all my opponents were so wise!’

Another illustration showed – and here I had to pause as the full horror of it dawned on me – a man and a woman, Tom Sutherland and Mum, Luther Vileheart and Mum, walking hand in hand into a tunnel. Against the muddy walls in a thought-bubble above Vileheart’s head were the words, ‘Now . . . my plan is complete. The boy will never recover from this. . .’

And here I was in the next plate, straining to keep hold of Mum’s wrists while an unseen force dragged her deeper inside the tunnel. ‘I was wrong, we were all wrong!’ I cried above Mum’s screams. ‘They lied! The Ministry is an abomination . . . but don’t blame her. Don’t take her, take me!’

I had to force myself to look at the last image. I already knew what it would be. In this one, Mum was gone, taken by the dark, and as I reached sobbing into empty space after her, the scarecrow’s silhouette stood over me, barking in triumph:

‘See what happens when you oppose the Great and Dangerous, taking sides in a war you can’t possibly win?’

In a small box caption below this last plate, black letters on a yellow background announced: More fantastic adventures from the Lords of Sundown next month!

Somehow I had to make it stop. I couldn’t let the story come true. If I stayed here much longer I wouldn’t stand a chance, because being in this room was the very thing making me sick.

The enemy had been weaving its web, spider-like, ever since Halloween, and now we – me, Mum, Becky, everyone I cared about – were tangled so deep inside it I couldn’t see any possible way out.

We were nothing but prey, and the spider was already home.