Simon Green - Daemons Are Forever

His voice was getting querulous. Rafe brought forward a chair and William sank gratefully into it. He rubbed tiredly at his forehead. He looked suddenly older, distracted, and worryingly vague about the eyes. When he lowered his hand it was shaking visibly.

“I meant to go to the funeral,” he said suddenly. “Rafe?”

“We missed it,” said Rafe. “I did tell you…but you said the work was more important.”

“And so it is! I did mean to go, but…What was I saying?”

“Perhaps you should go to your room and have a little lie down,” I said. “Get your strength back.”

“No!” William said immediately. “Nothing wrong with me! And there’s no time, no time! Besides … I like it here. I’m not really…ready, to meet people yet.”

“But you’re home now,” I said. “Among family.”

“Especially not family,” William said firmly. “I don’t want any of them to see me like this. I’m not… all the way back, yet. I wore Oddly John as my cover for a long time, and he’s very hard to put down. Sometimes I wonder if he’s the real me now, and William is just a memory of someone I used to be, long ago … I don’t want to go to my room. I like it here. I find the books…comforting. And Rafe. You’re a good boy, Rafe. Make a fine librarian, one day.”

“You’ll be fine, William,” I said reassuringly. “You just need a little time, to adjust.”

He didn’t seem to hear me, looking around him in a vague, troubled way. “I hear things. See things. Always off to one side, where I can’t pin them down. I thought that would stop once I left Happy Daze. Maybe they followed me here.” He put his hands together in his lap, to stop them trembling, and then he looked at me. “I think the Heart did something, to my mind. To keep me from telling what I knew. And I think…whatever it did…it’s still happening.”

“The Heart is gone,” I said firmly. “Gone and destroyed. It can’t hurt you anymore.”

He just shook his head slowly, wringing his hands together and muttering under his breath. I started to get up. Whatever information William had found, or thought he’d found, clearly couldn’t be relied on. Maybe Rafe could dig some sense out of it later. And then I stopped short as William rose abruptly to his feet and glared right into my face.

“And where do you think you’re going, boy? Just because I have a bad moment? You wanted to know about the Kandarians, and the Invaders, and I know everything you need to know. Everything the family needs to know. So you just sit back down, and listen.”

His eyes were clear and sharp again, and his presence was almost overwhelming. As though some inner switch had been thrown, and the old William had woken up again and resurfaced. I sat back down, and William took up a lecturer’s stance.

“The Kandarians made themselves powerful by voluntarily giving themselves over to temporary possession by forces from Outside,” he said crisply. “As a result their warriors were inhumanly strong, and fast, and incredibly resistant to pain or injury. Remind you of anything? Yes, just like our family, the Kandarians made a deal with a greater power, but they were never satisfied. Always wanting more, always making new deals with new hosts… As they conquered all the lands and civilisations around them, and spread their vicious empire of slaughter and torture and terror over wider and wider territories, the stronger they needed to be, to hang on to what they’d taken. In the end, their enemies banded together to put a stop to Kandarian expansion. The Kandarians found that unacceptable. They were having far too much fun. And so they determined to become even stronger and more powerful. Whatever the cost. They wanted to be gods on earth. So they made one more deal, with what we now know as the Loathly Ones, who in turn introduced the Kandarians to the Invaders. Very powerful Beings, from outside space and time. And that was the Kandarians’ first mistake. Contact with the Invaders drove the Kandarians insane. All of them. They turned on each other, and wiped out their entire race and civilisation in one terrible night of death and destruction. Doing to themselves what they had spent so many years doing to everyone else.

“Not one of them survived.

“They didn’t know what we know now. That there aren’t really any Loathly Ones, as such. Not as separate entities. They’re just the protrusions into our reality of much bigger entities. The fingertips, as it were, of the Invaders. Think of the Loathly Ones as Trojan horses, through which the Invaders can gain a foothold in other realities. The Invaders have many names, in many cultures, and are feared by everyone with two brain cells to rub together. The Many-Angled Ones, the Horror From Beyond, the Hungry Gods. Beings from a higher reality than our own, who descend into lesser realities like ours in order to feed, to consume us. They feed on life, on every living thing, from the biggest to the tiniest. They eat worlds, wipe out whole realities, always moving on to the next, like cosmic locusts.

“When our family first made a deal with the Loathly Ones, bringing them through into our world as a weapon to use against the Nazis, we unknowingly brought our world, our reality, to the attention of the Invaders. And though we were careful to bring through only a small number of Loathly Ones, small enough to control, we thought… still, we opened a door that was never properly closed. And of course the Loathly Ones did break free from our control, and down the years have grown in numbers and power, until finally they’re ready to summon the Invaders through. So they can feed on us. On everything. All life, all creation. We have to stop this, Edwin, because we started it.”

William finally stopped, standing straight and tall, looking at me expectantly. I looked at Rafe.

“He’s not exaggerating,” said Rafe. His voice was steady, though his face was pale and sweating. “I’ve checked all the references. It’s all there, in the books. It’s just that no one ever put it all together, before William.”

“All right,” I said, just a bit unsteadily. “This is much bigger than we thought. How do we fight these… Invaders?”

“You don’t,” William said flatly. “If they ever break through, it’s all over. You have to prevent the Loathly Ones from building their towers. Wipe them out, down to the last one. Or we’ll never be safe.”

“And…there are some books missing,” said Rafe. “Important books. I’m assuming the Zero Tolerance fanatics removed them, maybe to hand them over to Truman and Manifest Destiny. Or maybe they destroyed them, so no one would know the truth. You see, these books described the original deal the family made with the Loathly Ones. What we promised them, and they promised us. And just maybe, some knowledge on how to undo the deal.”

“How many books are missing?” I said.

“We’re still compiling a list,” said Rafe. “One whole section of family history is missing. Including, not all that surprisingly, all those volumes that might have told us who originally suggested we contact the Loathly Ones, and why.”

“I always assumed that was down to the previous Matriarch,” I said slowly. “Great-grandmother Sarah.”

“I think it was more complicated than that,” said Rafe. “I’ve been ploughing through some of the associational texts, unofficial family history, personal diaries, and the like, and it does seem that other, more sensible, alternate choices were put aside in favour of the Loathly Ones.”

“Like who?” I said.

“The Kindly Ones,” said William. “The Infinity Brigade, the Time Masters. All the usual suspects, all far more friendly to humanity than a bunch of degenerate soul-eaters. But someone high up in the family insisted on the Loathly Ones, against all reason. I have to wonder…if perhaps there was a traitor in the family. Perhaps someone already infected by the Loathly Ones.”