Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

‘That sounds like no way to be. I think you should go now,’ she told him through the pain.

‘Would that I could.’ He turned and walked away.

Britha was surprised that she was still alive. She did not think she had the strength left to fight anyone, let alone someone with his power.

‘This must seem like a victory to you, but I am eternal. The parasite in your head will consume you. You are already dead,’ he said, answering her thoughts.

‘Why?’ she asked.

He stopped but did not turn around. ‘The pain.’ He sounded sad.

She was being consumed. Joining. Going back, becoming one. The comfort of something else’s flesh all around you. Her Mother wanting her to hide something deep inside. A secret that the Hungry Nothingness could never know again. Her Mother had to sleep before her insane sisters found her. Already they were reaching for her.

The coldness and the weight of the sea again. It felt like death after where she had been.

She had washed up on a beach in the company of twisted monstrosities that crawled, slithered and flew and recognised her as kin.

She had no idea how long she had been wandering. It seemed like an age. Her throat was bloody from screaming due to the pain in her skull. She did not understand how there could be so much pain when there was so little of her left.

The crystal grew from her skull in a way that no other could see, to places that could not exist. The paths to these places only made her hurt more when she looked at them.

The circle of stones was far vaster than any cairn she had seen. Some part of her which used to be Britha recognised it as the time between times, either dusk or dawn, she wasn’t sure which. The time when the borders between this world and the Otherworld were at their weakest. The southrons had not inscribed symbols of power on the stones to protect against the influence of the gods.

Shapes all around the stones. People? No, the dead. Spirits. Her people. She sank to her knees in the centre and somehow found it in herself to scream with her ruined voice.

Something moved deep in the earth.

Britha was more aware of, than actually saw, a star going out in the sky.

Pulsing blue and white light.

The light faded. The stones again. More people. Shouting, running, readying weapons. All of them like Fachtna, well made and richly appointed with armour and fine weapons. No, they were different stones. Teardrop had told the truth. The earth was the sky and the sky was the earth.

In the Otherworld they showed their power. They caged her in light and destroyed her with fire. Just before the fire consumed her, she saw the dead. Fachtna was watching her from beyond the circle of stones.

Beth sat in the Range Rover at the bottom of Alhambra Road, picking dried blood off herself and looking at the wreckage of South Parade Pier. Knowing what she knew now, it was difficult not to think that this was the apocalypse – but happening here in Portsmouth? A back-alley apocalypse largely unnoticed maybe, seen out of the corner of the eye. The helicopters in the sky, the light and the sirens meant that people knew something was happening, but they talked a little louder, the laughter was more forced and they pretended it wasn’t. Or maybe this wasn’t the apocalypse. Maybe this happened all the time in the secret world Beth seemed to have been inducted into. Perhaps every terrorist atrocity or disaster was actually brought about by this hidden conflict of monsters, strange technology and madmen.

‘There’s a house down there with its windows painted black and it smells bad,’ the chief madman said. Beth looked over at du Bois. He wasn’t looking at her; he was glancing over at the partially destroyed pier. Another piece of collateral damage in this hidden war. She wondered if she was on the right side. She would think about that once she got her sister back.

Beth felt something wet coming out of her ear. She touched it and her fingers came away bloody. Indescribable pain lanced through her head and her vision went red. Beth found herself in the passenger foot-well of the Range Rover, curled up as if trying to hide from the pain. It had lessened, but her head still felt white hot and was throbbing. Du Bois was looking at her with a degree of sympathy, though no surprise.

‘What’s happening?’ she managed before screaming again. There were very few people on the streets. The city had been told that it had been the target of multiple terrorist attacks. Home might not feel safe at the moment but it felt safer than outside. However, Beth’s screams, the badly damaged Range Rover and their ragged and bloodstained clothing were drawing attention. Du Bois watched people get out their phones and press one button three times. That didn’t matter. They were covered on that front. They were supposed to be special forces combating a particularly bloody group of terrorists. The local police were kicking up a storm but were holding off. Du Bois knew that helicopters filled with Special Boat Service commandos were en route to Portsmouth.

‘I dumped a lot of information into your head at once.’

‘All the gun stuff?’ Beth said and then suddenly looked out to the choppy Solent under the bright blue sky.

Why did she do that? he wondered. ‘Small-unit tactics and… yes, all the gun stuff. Normally the information would be assimilated in a much more careful manner, but there wasn’t time. Whatever you have inside you coped admirably but there was always going to be bleeding and pain. I’m sorry.’

‘I almost certainly wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t.’ Assuming I believe you , Beth thought. ‘I would have been trying to fight those things with a bayonet.’

‘You have a bayonet?’ du Bois asked, a little confused.

‘That’s it? That’s what we’re going on? Blacked-out windows and a bad smell?’ Beth asked, holding her head, the pain having subsided a little.

‘The smell’s really bad. And it seems to have its own naturally occurring blood-screen.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘They have access to technology like… It means it’s the people who took your sister, okay?’ du Bois said, sounding exasperated.

Beth looked up the Alhambra Road. It was a road of white-painted terraced houses which had seen better days, like much of the seafront in Southsea. Most of the houses were four or five storeys high.

‘What’s the plan?’ she asked.

‘I do this, and you sit here and try to cope with the pain.’ Beth stared at him. She didn’t realise her eyes were full of blood. ‘No? That’s what I thought. Has it occurred to you that if the pain distracts you, it could get us both killed? Not to mention, I don’t have anything that could even kill hybrids. The best I can hope for is to debilitate them for a while. When they heal they’ll also be very angry about having just been shot.’

‘Really?’ Beth glanced towards the gun compartment in the back of the Range Rover. ‘With all the guns you’ve got?’

‘It’s not about the guns; it’s about how quickly their internal nanites can knit them back together again. I don’t have anything that can stop that from happening, I’ve used them all, and all the guns have a different purpose,’ he said somewhat defensively.

‘Look, I won’t let you down, but if I have to I’m going in there on my own,’ Beth said. Du Bois sighed. ‘So, what’s the plan?’

‘Well, when I was having a look at the house I just happened to attach some frame charges to the bay window…’

Du Bois backed the Range Rover up the narrow road at speed, clipping more than one car. He then yanked the wheel and reversed the four-by-four up against the wall of the house with the blacked-out windows, not quite braking in time, letting the wall of the house stop the car.