Michael Scott - The Necromancer

“So you can come quietly with us…,” the cucubuth suggested.

“Or we can carry you out of here,” the larger creature added.

Dr. John Dee sighed and glanced at his watch. He was running out of time.

“In a hurry, Doctor?” the cucubuth asked with a toothy grin.

Dee’s right hand moved. It started low on his hip, palm up, rising at an angle, twisting in midair, so that the palm caught the creature under the chin. The tattooed cucubuth’s teeth snapped together, and the force of the blow lifted him off his feet and sent him sprawling across the cobblestones. Dee’s right leg shot out, catching the biggest creature high on the inside of the thigh, numbing his entire leg, dropping him to the ground into a puddle of dirty water, a look of shocked surprise on his broad brutish face.

The third cucubuth darted away from Dee. “Mistake, Doctor,” he snarled, “big mistake.”

“I’m not the one who made the mistake,” Dee whispered. He took a step closer, hands loose at his sides. The Magician had survived for centuries because people always underestimated him. They looked and saw a slight gray-haired man. Even those who knew his reputation imagined him to be nothing more than a scholar. But Dee was more-much, much more. He had been a warrior. When he had still been fully human, and later when he had become immortal, Dee had traveled across Europe. It was a lawless time, when brigands and outlaws roamed the roads, and even the cities themselves were not safe. If a man was to survive, he had to be able to protect himself. Many people had made the mistake of underestimating the English doctor. It was a mistake he never allowed them to repeat. “I don’t need to use my aura to hurt you,” the Magician said softly.

“I am cucubuth,” the creature said arrogantly. “You may have surprised my brothers, but you will not be able to use the same trick on me.”

The Magician heard groaning behind him and glanced over his shoulder to find the cucubuth leader scrambling to his feet. He was holding his jaw in both hands and his eyes looked unfocused.

“You have injured my little brother.”

“I’m sure he’ll make a full recovery,” Dee said. Cucubuths were almost impossible to kill, and even possessed the vampire ability to regenerate injured limbs.

The largest of the three came slowly and painfully to his feet. He stood awkwardly balanced on his left leg, rubbing his right furiously, trying to bring feeling back into it. “And you’ve ruined my jeans,” he growled. The seat and legs of his jeans were black with water.

“What are you going to do now, Doctor?” the unharmed skinhead asked.

“Come a little closer and I’ll show you.” Dee’s smile was as ugly and inhuman as the cucubuth’s.

The creature suddenly threw back his head and his mouth formed a sound that could never have come from a human throat. It was a cross between a bark and a howl. All the pigeons gathered on the Covent Garden roofs took to the air in an explosion of flapping wings. From somewhere nearby, what sounded like a wolf howl echoed across London’s rooftops. It was joined by another, and then another until the air trembled with the terrifying primeval sounds. All traces of humanity left the cucubuth’s face as he laughed. “This is our city, Doctor. We have ruled Trinovantum since before the Romans claimed it as their own. Have you any idea how many of us are here now?”

“I’m guessing it’s more than a few.”

“Many, many more,” the creature snarled. “And they’re coming. All of them.”

From the corner of his eye, Dee saw movement. Glancing up, he saw a shape move on the triangular roof of St. Paul’s Church opposite. A skinhead appeared, silhouetted against the evening sky, then another, and another. There was a commotion on the other side of the square as six skinheads appeared, and then, at the opposite entrance, another three appeared.

The human tourists, seeing the sudden influx of skinheads and fearing a brawl, began to scatter. Shops hastily closed. Within moments, only the ugly shaven-headed cucubuths were left in Covent Garden’s cobbled square.

“So what are you going to do now, Dr. Dee?”

The noise echoing across the London rooftops and up into the skies alerted the ravens: the primeval howling of cucubuths that had once terrified primitive humani huddling in caves.

Huginn and Muninn dipped toward the sounds.

Blackbirds and crows streamed past them, the simple creatures radiating raw fear. Doves whirled in the air almost directly below; frightened, but incapable of doing anything about their fear, they settled back onto the rooftops around a broad cobbled square, only to immediately rise into the air again as another howl broke through the night.

The ravens flew low across the Thames River, over Victoria Embankment and the Royal Opera House. They spotted the first of the cucubuths in the streets below, seeing through its almost-human guise to reveal the beast-man beneath, with its tusks and ragged claws. Each cucubuth was swathed in a dark aura. And there were hundreds of them, running, loping, jogging, singly and in pairs, converging on the enclosed space of Covent Garden.

Instantly, the ravens knew that they must have found the English Magician. As one, their beaks worked to form a single word: “Dee.”

And in a place beyond time, in an isolated Shadowrealm, Odin awoke.

The Elder’s huge gray eye opened, but he did not see the bitter snowfields and towering ice crystals that surrounded him. He found he was looking down on a scene in shifting monochrome and without sound: a single human surrounded by three cucubuths. More and more of the creatures swarmed closer. And even though there was no sign of Dee’s distinctive aura, Odin knew the human was the English Magician.

The Elder bared his teeth in a ferocious grin: those to whom Dee owed allegiance wanted him brought before them for sentencing and punishment, but Odin had other plans. The huge figure pushed away from the only living thing in his world-a puny and twisted version of the Yggdrasill-and prepared to cross the Shadowrealms.

He’d found the rear door to the bookstore open.

Josh Newman shrugged off his backpack as he stepped into the gloomy hallway and then waited, allowing his eyes to adjust. The stink was incredible-a mixture of rot and mildew, a sickly mustiness overlain with the noxious stench of bad eggs. He tried to breathe only through his mouth. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on his hearing. Since Mars Ultor had Awakened him, he’d become extremely conscious of just how important the senses of hearing, taste and smell were. Modern humans tended to rely heavily on sight; Josh had come to realize that his Awakened senses were really the same heightened senses that primitive man had possessed and needed to survive.

But there were no sounds in the building: it even felt deserted.

Less than a week ago, he’d run up and down this corridor unloading a delivery of books from the back of a van. Now all the boxes he had so carefully piled on top of each other were black with mildew, the sides burst open, the books swollen like rotten fruit, almost unrecognizable.

Less than a week ago.

The realization suddenly brought home to Josh how much had changed in the past few days, how much he had discovered and how little he-and the rest of the world-knew about the truth.

Taking a deep breath, the fetid air catching at the back of his throat, Josh then opened his eyes and crept down the corridor, pushed open the door and stepped out into the bookshop.

And stopped in shock.

The shop was an unrecognizable ruin, lost beneath a thick layer of dust and furry mold-it was decaying right before his eyes. The sunlight shafting through the filthy streaked windows showed that the air was thick with drifting spores. Josh clamped his lips shut; he didn’t want to risk getting any of them in his mouth. He took a step forward and felt the creaking floorboards shift beneath his weight. A bubble of foul black liquid formed on the wood, and his foot began to sink. Jerking back, he pressed himself against the wall, only to discover that it too was slimy with decay. The plaster was so soft his fingers sank into it.