Sarwat Chadda - Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness

Parvati stood by a small electrical panel beside the door. A schematic of the building showed all the alarm locations, now all green. She double-checked and sighed. “The entire building is alarmed.”

“Which means no one’s at home,” said Ashoka. “What are we going to do?”

Ash knew Ashoka was gutted, and he was too. But then did he really believe it would have been that easy? This was Savage they were dealing with. The Englishman would have backup plans to his backup plans.

But they were here. In his house. Who knew what they might find?

“We need to have a good look around,” he said. “Maybe we’ll find a clue as to where they’ve gone. We know they were here recently.”

Parvati didn’t look happy. “It’s a big house.”

“We should split up.”

Ashoka shook his head. “Nope. No way. I’ve seen too many movies where that happens and the loser in the party …” he looked to Parvati, then Ash, “… which, under these circumstances, would be me, comes to a bloody and awful end.”

“Which is why you’ll be staying with Parvati,” said Ash.

“How come I get stuck with him?” replied Parvati.

“Hey!” said Ashoka.

“You have him,” she continued.

“No. Hanging out with him, it’s just too … freaky.” Ash smiled. “And look, you dealt with me when I was young and useless, so—”

“Who says I’m useless?”

Parvati put up a finger. “Shh.” She turned to Ash. “OK, then what are we looking for?”

“The house is huge, and I don’t want to stay here a moment longer than necessary, but we need to try to find out where they’ve gone, and we need to work fast, and that means splitting. I don’t like it any more than you do, Ashoka, but otherwise we have no leads. I’ll start at the top, you two start down here, and we’ll meet in the middle. All right?” Ash turned to Ashoka. Yes, it was still odd, staring at himself. “You do exactly as she says. Got it?”

“I am not useless.”

“Whatever.” Ash checked his watch. “We’ll meet in fifteen minutes.”

Parvati nodded, then took the left corridor, Ashoka close behind her.

Ash went directly to the wrought-iron staircase and climbed, moving quickly and keeping to the shadows. A clock chimed somewhere in the house, but all else was silence. He paused at the first floor to listen, gazing down the corridor. There was no one around. He continued on up.

Clues. I’m looking for clues. Now which door leads to clues?

He was at the top of the house. A skylight illuminated a large square patch of the corridor in a silvery blue. The space was mean compared to the rest of the house. The ceiling was low and the doors were plain, without the ornate panelling of the floors below. It smelled musty and a cold breeze sank through the old frame around the skylight.

He peered into the first room, opening the door slowly to minimise the squeak of the hinges. Linen sat in neat white stacks upon a row of shelves and there was the stuffy odour of mothballs. Ash moved on.

He went quickly from room to room, finding nothing of interest. He saw the stairs at the opposite end. One more room to check, then he’d make his way down to the floor below and search there.

The door was oak and the handle a brass curl, different from the rest. Ash opened it and entered.

A study. Savage’s home from home. It had to be. Small, cramped and with a row of windows overlooking the street, but there was a tiger skin on the floor and a large desk by a window. The desk was bare but for an old-fashioned telephone. Most of the wall was covered with shelves overstuffed with books, mainly old, worn and leather-bound. Alongside these were some glass cabinets, each filled with archaeological artefacts from around the world. There were ancient bronze arrowheads, clay statues, feather headdresses and gold coins, rusty swords and urns. Animal heads decorated the walls, everything from tigers to boars with massive tusks.

A chill breeze caressed Ash’s nape.

He’d been in a room a lot like this once, in the Savage Fortress. It had been the night he’d learned his world was stranger than he’d imagined, when he’d discovered monsters – demons – were very real.

A photograph caught his attention. Age had turned it yellow and the black had given way to a metallic sheen.

Savage wore an officer’s uniform. His legs were in puttees, long strips of cloth wound round for protection, and he had an old-fashioned tin hat, a Brodie, on his lap. The soldiers around him looked at the camera, cigarettes or pipes loose in their mouths, weary, with muddy shovels and picks lying around a half-dug trench. One man rested his arm across a large machine gun.

The First World War.

It had to be. The style of the uniforms and the weapons were consistent with the Great War. Ash had studied it and read about the terrible slaughters of the first mechanical war and how thousands of men would march across no-man’s-land to be decimated by machine-gun fire and poison gas.

Only Savage looked relaxed. He knew that he was going to get out of this alive. He knew the bullets and the gas and the bombs couldn’t hurt him.

One of the men was gazing across at Savage. Ash looked at his face – just some nameless private. Forgotten in history. Was there anyone alive now who knew his name? What sort of life he’d led? What sort of death he’d had? Whether or not he’d made it out of the Normandy mud alive?

If only I could slip into the picture , thought Ash. Stop Savage then, before he became too powerful.

But that might only make it worse. He’d be changing Time himself then, and who knew what the effects would be? The further back you went, the bigger the ripples.

He came to the desk and checked the drawers. Then he grinned.

Got it.

A notebook, the electronic variety. He ran his palm over it. There might be some useful info on it, and if Ashoka could bypass all this security then surely he’d have no problem hacking something like this. He put it in its plastic case and zipped it closed. Too big for his pocket, he tucked it inside his shirt. Ash closed the drawer, had a last look around to see if there was anything else of use – nope. He had what he wanted.

He was out a moment later, the door clicking as he closed it behind him.

He jumped as Parvati appeared in front of him. She was just a silhouette at the top of the stairs, but he knew it was her by her stance and her shape. Even in the darkness he could see the faint shimmer of her scales.

“I’ve got Savage’s notebook.” He patted his chest as he approached her. “It could be useful. You find anything?”

Parvati hissed and Ash stopped.

“Parvati? What’s up?”

Her front foot slid forward and her fingers flexed.

Now, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Ash noticed something different about the rakshasa princess. “What happened to your hair?”

Her hair was always long, down to her waist and as glossy black as oil on water. Now it was cropped short and spiky.

“Parvati?” Ash stepped nearer and reached out. “What’s wrong?”

Her fist rammed into his jaw, propelling Ash into the wall. Stars blazed in his eyes. He blinked and dived as her boot swung towards his head. Her heel smashed the wall lamp, sprinkling Ash with glass.

He blocked the next kick, but couldn’t stop the flurry of punches that came from all directions. It was as if Parvati had six arms. One blow rattled the teeth in his mouth and suddenly he was spitting blood.

“Parvati!” he shouted. “Stop!” What the hell was going on? She had gone mad. But there wasn’t a chance to ask. Parvati reached over her shoulders and there was the ominous sound of steel against steel. Two curved blades shone in the darkness.