Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"We’re born drafted into a war that never ends," I said, meeting his gaze squarely. "And most of us die fighting that war, far from home and family. Some of us never get to know our parents, and some parents never get to know their sons. I know: it’s an honour to serve. But I would have liked to be asked."

And that was when the general alarm sounded, like every bell and siren in the world going off at once. James and I turned as one and ran back through the library. We charged out into the corridor and almost ran over the Sarjeant-at-Arms as he ran past, a gun in each hand. James grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him to a halt as family members came running from every direction.

"It’s the Heart!" yelled the Sarjeant, pulling away and racing off down the corridor. "It’s an attack on the Sanctity!"

He didn’t need to say any more. James and I were already running full pelt after him. James had a gun in each hand too now. And all I had was my needle gun. I didn’t draw it. I was pretty sure frozen holy water wasn’t going to be enough this time. The Heart was the source of the family’s power. Its stored energies made all our magics and super-sciences possible, including the living armour we all depended on. But the Sanctity, the great chamber that holds the Heart, was the single most heavily defended and protected part of the Hall. It’s supposed to be invulnerable, inviolate. A direct attack on the Hall was rare enough; an attack on the Heart was unprecedented, unthinkable.

James and I ran on, plunging through corridor after corridor at breakneck speed, both of us breathing steadily to conserve our wind, as we’d been trained. More and more members of the family came running from everywhere to join us, men and women with shocked, strained faces and all kinds of weapons in their hands. Young and old, fighters and researchers and even duty staff; people who should never have been needed, given the guaranteed safety of the Hall.

We were closing in on the Sanctity now, at the very centre of the Hall. I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck. There was a pressure, a presence, on the air, like the cold shadow of a place where bad things had happened. Something Big is coming, that’s what old Jacob had said. Something Big…Something Bad. And it was close now. Very close.

Uncle James and I caught up with the Sarjeant-at-Arms just as he slammed through the great double doors into the Sanctity, and there was the Heart: a single huge diamond shining like the sun, so big it filled the massive chamber the family had built to contain and protect it. A diamond bigger than a bus, a million facets blazing and shimmering so brightly none of us could bear to look at it directly. The room was full of its light, and entering the Sanctity was like diving into ice-cold water. It took your breath away, like a shock to the soul. The Heart blazed with an otherworldly light, holding and harnessing the power that made our family’s job possible. A light or an energy, a science or a magic; even after all the centuries it had been with us, we were no nearer to understanding it.

The Heart was surrounded by powerful protections. I could feel them even as I edged into the Sanctity, hammering on the shimmering air. Some of the family couldn’t even bring themselves to enter the room. But still the bells and sirens were shrieking, summoning the family to defend the Heart from an attack by someone or something unbelievably powerful. Only the most terrible of our enemies would dare launch so blatant an assault. I circled slowly around the gigantic diamond, one arm raised before my eyes to shield me from its overwhelming glare. The light seemed to blaze right through my fragile flesh, like an X-ray. James was there with me, and the Sarjeant-at-Arms, and I sensed as much as saw other members of the family moving slowly around the Heart, searching desperately for some sign of the enemy.

I had my needle gun in my hand. I didn’t have a lot of faith in it, but just its presence made me feel better. I hadn’t armoured up. None of us had. We were all still thinking in terms of threats to the safety of the Heart. It never even occurred to us that we might be in danger. This was the Hall, and we had always been safe here.

I felt something approaching from a direction I could sense but not name. It was a Presence, something so vast and alien and utterly other that its terrible nature actually eclipsed and overwhelmed the Heart. It drew closer and closer, straining to materialise inside the Sanctity, trying to force its way in from some other dimension of reality. It seemed to be closing in on us from every direction at once, and just the sense of it was like shit smeared across my soul. Like a mountain of maggots, or the smile the razor blade leaves as it slices through a suicide’s wrists. It was almost upon us, and it hated us, just for being human.

The wood-panelled wall to my left groaned loudly as it bulged inwards, the old wood stretching impossibly, forced out of shape by some unnameable pressure from Outside our three-dimensional reality. The floor rose up at its centre like some monstrous boil, and the ceiling bulged down. All the walls were crying out now, straining inwards towards the Heart. Something was forcing its way into the Sanctity, from some higher or lower dimension, from some place we couldn’t even hope to comprehend. And one by one, all the many layers of protection the family had set in place around the Heart shattered and blew apart, like so many cheap firecrackers.

Family magicians were in the room now, crowding around the Heart, chanting spells and brandishing ancient talismans, trying to set up new defensive parameters. Family scientists worked right there beside them, operating esoteric constructions of weird technology, some of which looked like they’d dragged right in from the testing labs. All kinds of energy fields crackled on the air, but still the awful Presence surrounded us, descending on us from everywhere at once.

And finally, it broke through. Something was just suddenly there in the room with us; or rather, Nothing was. There was a Gap, an Absence, a horrible Void just hanging on the air before the Heart. I couldn’t see or hear it, but I could feel it on a level that had nothing to do with senses. It was as though some terribly old, perhaps even prehuman part of me recognised it. A great sucking pit of the spirit; a hole in reality itself. It pulsed, like some great malignant heart, and then it reached out and sucked the flesh right off those members of the family nearest it.

We lost a dozen men and women in a moment, meat and blood torn from their bones, whole organs flying through the air and into the Void to make it a body, to give it shape and form in this world. The bloody pulp of organs and muscles slammed together, flesh slapping upon flesh, building a body whose shape made no sense, to house and hold the awful thing that had forced its way in from Outside. Bloody bones lay scattered across the floor, unwanted, along with a dozen golden torcs. People were puking and retching everywhere, even as they backed away.

"Armour up!" James yelled. "Everyone! Now!"

We all subvocalised the Words, and living armour encased us, glorious and golden, sealing us off from the pull of the Void. For the first time I felt sane and human again, able to think clearly, my spirit no longer soiled by the presence of the thing before us. Where the Void had been, a huge new thing had taken shape. It looked like it was made out of cancers, like sickness and death made solid and vicious. It was scarlet and purple with bulging dark veins, and it glistened wetly. Uneven rows of human eyes stared unblinkingly out of a pulpy mass that might have been meant as a face. It rose up to the bowed ceiling, big as ten men, limbs of a sort radiating from its central mass, but its shape and dimensions and attributes made no sense at all. I felt its attention turn away from the family, towards the Heart, and I sensed a terrible emotion in the shape that might have been rage, or hunger, or a need to violate. It moved towards the Heart, surging forward like a snail, and the great diamond’s light seemed to flicker and diminish, just from the thing’s proximity.