The Jo Fletcher Books Anthology Page 3

  The mystique of the night was shattered – reality returned, dazzlingly bright and mercilessly brutal. Yet the opened portal remained. It defied human laws and by its very presence drove rationality and physics ad absurdum.

  ‘Police!’ The cry echoed through the night air. ‘Stay where you are!’

  Loud bangs rang through the undergrowth as a SWAT team, decked out in helmets and bulletproof vests, stormed the ruins on three sides. The sect had been betrayed.

  Elaine remained unfazed by proceedings – she only cared about one thing. She fired at the closest officer sending him to the ground with three precise hits to the neck.

  Cursing, Gedeon picked up the prepared canister and followed her, laying down cover fire, and forcing the helicopter to retreat. He killed two more police officers after they managed to land hits several times. He felt the impacts to his body, but took no further notice of them. He could easily survive a few bullets. He dropped the gun and his dagger jumped into his hand of its own accord.

  The portal was getting closer, but it was also shrinking, whoever controlled it evidently sensing that danger was approaching. Great danger. The shadowy tentacles darted quickly forwards once more, snatching four of the distraught devil-worshippers, and then the portal closed further.

  Elaine cried out in disappointment and rage. ‘Throw it!’ she ordered. ‘Now!’ Gedeon threw, the duct tape remaining in his right hand.

  The perforated container with the holy water, transubstantiated wine and hosts flew through the air, tracing an arc and disappearing into the darkness. The blackness dispersed immediately, smudging like liquid ink until it was gone.

  Silence fell on the hillside convent once more. Only the whimpering of the bound girl and the groans of the wounded and dying police officers disturbed the peace. The faint sound of helicopter blades faded as it disappeared into the distance.

  *

  ‘Shit!’ Elaine screamed in frustration. At the sound of her voice everything green in the vicinity shrivelled and died. She threw the assault rifle away. ‘So close!’ she growled, her voice full of hatred.

  Gedeon took a deep breath. If anything he was more disappointed than she was. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that the portal would close before they could reach their enemy and deliver the deathblow. But it looked like they would be denied revenge again – at least for today.

  He contemplated his dagger. It didn’t look anything special, but appearances could be deceiving. It had been crafted from the spearhead that had pierced Jesus of Nazareth’s side, consecrating itself in the blood of the most holy. It had wounded the Redeemer, been burdened with the gravest guilt and yet was blessed. A terrible weapon.

  He had tracked it down after they’d been banished and had used it in their quest to annihilate their former master and the other spirits that had betrayed them ever since.

  Gedeon was convinced it was possible. Andras might have been the Great Marquis of Hell, the Infernal Angel, the Sower of Discord, the Grand Duke of the Underworld in the form of an angel with the head of a tawny owl, but Gedeon knew his weaknesses and was not afraid to exploit them.

  Andras had taught them to kill; he had taught them strife and hate; he had appointed them Chief Commanders of his sixty-three legions . . . and then he had disowned them, robbed them of most of their powers and flung them to the earth.

  Because of one small mistake! And nobody had done anything about it. Not even Vagares, Asmoday, Samigina or Vassago. They had just sat back and watched. That’s why the fires of hell had to go out.

  Gedeon stroked the blade with reverence, as he had done so often before, before sheathing it once more. This was his secret weapon. A single stab to Andras’ heart would be enough. Gedeon possessed the only weapon that could hurt him, and yet they had no way to reach him. They couldn’t get home. Not without help anyway. The ability to create portals to those levels was one of the powers Andras had stolen, and so they needed gullible people to do it for them. Gullible people who had no idea that the ritual they had stumbled across online would actually work.

  So far so good.

  Haures, Duke of Hell, and Senior General of the Underworld with a hideous face and fiery eyes, no longer existed.

  Marax, an earl who appeared as a large bull with a human face, had been killed by the holy blade, his thirty legions of spirits unable to protect him.

  Valefor, a spirit with the body of a lion and a mule’s head, died too, as did the arrogant Agares, Duke of the eastern part of the underworld, known as the Demon of Courage.

  After the murders, he and Elaine had returned to the human world to gather their strength. The Dukes’ powers were weaker on earth and so they were forced to send their earthly servants instead. As if a human could ever pose a threat to the siblings.

  They had caused such a stir that even God had taken notice – they made him ‘uneasy’, or so the priest had said. He didn’t like that they were carrying out their Armageddon with his son’s blood, polluting the holy relic and endangering the balance between light and shadow.

  Since then, they had been hunted. Disguised angels and masked demonic knights alike were desperately trying to stop them from getting revenge.

  He and Elaine killed their pursuers indiscriminately. The only thing they thought about was vengeance – they didn’t care about the Redeemer’s blood, or about the balance between good and evil, and they cared least of all about what would happen when their campaign was over. If hell was empty, that left more room for them.

  *

  ‘Let’s go, Elaine,’ he said softly. ‘The police are coming with reinforcements and I’m not in the mood for a shoot-out.’ His wounds were still healing. His body would soon be flawless again, attractive, appealing to both sexes, but for now he was exhausted.

  Elaine staggered. ‘I knew it,’ she whispered in despair, her black tears sizzling as they touched the earth and left scorch marks. ‘I knew we’d fail. Andras is winning. He is watching us and laughing. There’s no hope. We’re doomed to chase him forever . . . ’

  ‘No! No, we are not!’ he interrupted her and took her soothingly in his arms. ‘We will get him, just like the others. He will feel the pain he inflicted on us. Revenge will be ours!’

  They kissed deeply. He desired his sister, as he always did, but he kept himself under control. There was no time for sex on the forest floor.

  Instead, he threw the tied up girl over his shoulder and Elaine snatched up their 20,000-euro captive’s clothes, and they took off at a run, leaving the ruins behind. The few remaining devil-worshippers gazed after them, dazed. Maybe next time they’d be more careful what they wished for.

  *

  ‘They’re gone,’ reported the SWAT team member, his voice muffled by his helmet and balaclava. ‘The couple. We lost their tracks near the farmyard. They must have stolen the farmer’s car. We’ll keep looking.’

  He nodded and the officer went back to his colleagues.

  ‘What a mess,’ said Superintendent Wendlandt. Around forty and unremarkable-looking, he pointed at the corpses of the people who had bled to death. ‘That makes another of them and three more of our people. All because of some obscure mysticism. How daft do you have to be to believe in the devil, Schmidt?’

  The handsome Detective Chief Inspector turned to his colleague. Recently, they’d been working together in the special investigative team ‘Hel’. Given he was at most thirty, he was doing well. Tailored suit, glittering career, unbeatable. His dark blue eyes bored through everything and everyone, which gave some people the creeps. ‘Surely you’re not an atheist though. Don’t you believe in God?’

  Wendlandt’s brow creased and he hesitated. ‘Of course I do. Just not that nonsense about an old man with a beard.’

  ‘Exactly. So, do you think the devil has cloven hoofs, a tail and horns?’

  ‘Um . . . No?’

 
‘Do you go to church and pray, and things like that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you think that you are listened to by God?’

  ‘Sure . . .’

  Schmidt had a triumphant smile on his lips, ‘So why should the devil’s disciples expect any less?’ His mobile went off: the apartment belonging to the two suspects they had been chasing had been searched and suspicious traces had been found in the bathtub. Acid and organic remains. A woman had been found in their bed, but she was suffering from extreme exhaustion and it was unlikely she’d had anything to do with what had happened here. He told Wendlandt this.

  ‘Well, then we can assume that this is our devil couple. They’ve struck yet again. Damn it, we almost had them,’ the superintendent spat. ‘How were we supposed to know they had a bloody arsenal of weapons with them?’ He watched as a dead SWAT team member was taken away; his lips pressed into two thin lines. ‘I swear we’ll get them, even if I have to slaughter them myself.’

  ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t just hear that.’ Schmidt ordered him to arrest the devil-worshippers and ensure that they received both medical attention and a psychiatric evaluation. A proper interrogation would have to wait until they stopped babbling. Rubbing his face, he looked at the crime scene again. His eyes narrowed.

  *

  He knew the symbol on the grave slabs well. It belonged to Andras, who was getting on very well with his master at the moment. Fear united them.

  When he considered the crime scene again, exhibits 217 and 218 caught his attention: blood traces. He knelt in front of them and examined them closely. The splatters were darker than usual, almost black.

  Looking around to ensure nobody was watching him, he dipped his little finger in the clotting fluid, licked the tip and closed his eyes with relish.

  A special taste spread across his tongue. Hot, sweet, rich, full of power and sex, with nuances of bitter rage and insatiable hatred.

  Gedeon, he smiled calmly. He was finally on the right track.

  Markus Heitz was born in 1971; he studied history and German language and literature. His debut novel, Schatten über Ulldart (the first in a series of epic fantasy novels), won the Deutscher Phantastik Preis (German Fantasy Award) in 2003. His bestselling Dwarves trilogy has earned him a place among Germany’s most successful fantasy authors. His Legends of the Älfar series, Aera: The Return of Ancient Gods series and other standalone novels are published by Jo Fletcher Books in the UK. He currently lives in Zweibrücken, Germany.

  All Aboard • by Christopher Golden

  All Aboard

  by Christopher Golden

  That dreadful autumn, Sarah Cooper woke in the small hours of the morning nearly every night and lay in the dark, back toward her husband, the memory of their dead son filling the space between them.

  During the day the tension did not weigh so heavily. Sarah and Paul wandered the house only dimly aware of one another, ghosts haunting their own marriage. Resentment and blame hung in the air like static building before a thunderstorm. Sarah knew that she ought to try to comfort her husband, but Paul did not seek her out, nor did she look for solace in his arms. Cruel and capricious happenstance had taken Jonah from them – a bacterial infection, a spiked fever, an ambulance too slow to arrive – but they had to hold someone responsible, and each found fault with the other, and guilt in the mirror.

  They couldn’t stay in this house much longer. Sarah would never survive it. 57 Brook Street existed now as a museum of sorrow. Jonah had bounced on the sofa, bumped his head on the coffee table, marched his walker across the kitchen tiles as a baby, and slept in his parents’ bed almost as many nights as his own. The toys had all been packed away, but his room remained with its books and stuffed polar bear and the dinosaur border that ran along the top of the bedroom walls. Sarah kept that door closed, but could not bring herself to take down the pictures in the living room and the downstairs hall and from the bureau in her bedroom. Her hairbrush had brushed Jonah’s hair. His Spider-Man cup hid at the back of a kitchen cabinet, waiting to be remembered; waiting to remind her.

  How did Paul stand it? Sarah didn’t know. They avoided the conversation most of the time. That seemed even worse because it felt like they were trying to pretend Jonah had never been there – that they did not grieve. But Paul made an effort to talk around the absence of their son, just as he usually avoided meeting her eyes.

  By October, they spoke only when absolutely necessary.

  When Sarah found the fuzzy Scooby-Doo costume she had bought Jonah over the summer, unable to resist even though Halloween had been months away, she crushed it against her chest and wept into the costume, brown fabric soaking up her tears. Then she put it into a box of Jonah’s things that she planned to donate to the Salvation Army. She never mentioned it to Paul, and as Halloween approached, he never asked.

  In the second week of October, she woke in the night with only the glow of a distant streetlamp filtering through the window. It must have been two or three o’clock in the morning. After so many weeks of such awakenings, she knew sleep would not be in any hurry to return, so she lay and listened to Paul’s rhythmic breathing.

  The gulf between them had grown over the weeks since Jonah’s death, expanding a little at bedtime every night. They hadn’t had sex in all that time, though there had been times in the small hours of the morning when she had needed so badly to be held, to be touched, to be loved. But night after night they lay back-to-back, shoulder and neck muscles bunched with tension and expectation, and they edged further away, widening the gap between them.

  A glow of moonlight draped across the shadows of their bedroom and the gauzy curtains billowed with the crisp autumn breeze. Sarah lay on her side and stared at the windows, at the curtains, and at nothing. The windows rattled with powerful gusts – the weather changing, winter drawing nearer – and she heard the skittering of dry leaves across the driveway and the front walk.

  Then, off in the distance, the lonely whistle of a train.

  Sarah had heard the sound every night for nearly two weeks. At first it had been barely audible, so that she had trouble determining its origin. Each night it seemed to become louder, though of course the train tracks couldn’t be any nearer. In all the years she had lived in Dunston, she could not recall ever having heard the sound before, never mind seen a train. It must, she told herself, only run late at night when the town slept, when only insomniacs and grieving mothers might hear it.

  She listened as the whistle faded and felt a terrible longing, wished she were on board that train, bound for destinations unknown.

  When her tears came, she let them slide down to dampen her pillow. Her husband did not stir, but Sarah was not surprised. Paul had long since stopped being stirred by her tears, even in the light of day.

  She slid nearer the edge of the bed and watched the moonlight and the billowing curtains and listened to the shush of the autumn leaves blowing across the lawn. In time, sleep would claim her again, tears drying on her face.

  Sarah would hear the whistle of the train in her dreams, where she held her tiny son in her arms and rocked him, singing him softly to sleep on the way to his own extinguished dreams.

  *

  The new offices of Sterling Software had been built just at the edge of town, near a narrow metal bridge across the Kenyon River. Window glass winked in the morning light as Sarah drove over the bridge, her travel mug rattling in the cup holder on the dash, spurting up a dollop of coffee.

  The Kenyon River meandered southward under the bridge. In the spring it roared, but in autumn it remained a gentle whisper. She followed the road northeast on the other side, coming around a corner, all the while keeping the Sterling building in sight. It stood at the top of a hill that had been transformed into a mini industrial park, complete with a Comfort Inn and a TGI Friday’s restaurant. Sarah barely saw any of those buildings. In truth, she ba
rely saw the road or the rich, harvest-hued foliage of the trees around her. Her focus was on driving to work, and she could do that with her mind on autopilot.

  The dashboard clock read 9:12 a.m. Late again, and she felt badly about it. A tremor of discontent passed through her. Exhausted, she’d rushed to get ready, and the mirror had reflected both her tiredness – in the dark crescents beneath her eyes – and her haphazard attempt at fixing her hair and putting on makeup. Get your life together, Sarah. You’re dropping the ball. But the advice sounded hollow. She couldn’t convince herself that any of it mattered. Work. Sleep. Face. Life.

  The car jittered over train tracks, causing her coffee to burble again.

  Sarah frowned and tapped the brake, slowing down and glancing in her rear-view mirror. She’d been over those tracks twice a day every day for more than a year, ever since Sterling had moved to the new location. There were no railroad crossing signs, no flashing lights, nothing.

  Another few minutes won’t matter.

  She put the car in reverse and backed up, checking to make sure no other cars were approaching. At the tracks she braked again, pausing to peer both ways along the line. Grass grew up between the wooden ties. The rails themselves were dark with rust. In either direction the tracks curved away into trees and undergrowth that had begun to encroach over the years.

  Sarah shook her head. No trains on this line. Not for years.

  As she drove on, she could not help but glance at the mirror. The memory of the whistle from the late night train lingered, and led her to thoughts of Jonah and her dreams.

  No. Work.

  If she thought about Jonah, she would be useless at work. They had been more than kind, had offered her as much time as she needed to mourn. When Sarah had announced, after six weeks, that she was ready to return to her receptionist position, the office manager – Ellie Poole – had asked if she was really ready. Sarah had thought it a foolish question. How could she ever be ready to go to work, to put her loss behind her?