Plot - Sing Me a Prayer: Chapter V
Aug. 18th, 2011 10:21 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsWherein Our Story Ends
The high summer in Israel had lived up to the stereotype, as the sun
beat down mercilessly on the heads of those denizens of Haifa unlucky
enough to be out of the safe and comforting embrace of central air.
The heat was almost a living, pulsating thing, malevolent and
all-encompassing.
Alternatively it could just have been the topic of conversation.
Either way, Kane suddenly and with sincere, genuine longing thought of
the that long ago hellish week in Yellowknife, the Beta Flight land
navigation and survival exam suddenly giving way to exhaustion; and
the simple purity of the northern wilderness slamming down on him and
stealing his breath.
He thought of Toronto, the summer heat and smell of the warm asphalt
probably rivaling Haifa. But still and yet.
Suddenly and with sincere, genuine longing Kane missed home.
Unfortunately, thanks to the Professor's capture, he was in what Stick
had referred to as the asshole of the world, waiting for the sign to
attack and challenge their mysterious foe. Virtually anything would
have been preferable.
"We do have a plan, right?"
"Have we had one at all during this whole wild goose chase?" Amanda
replied from where she was checking his bandage. Thanks to his healing
factor, the wound was doing much better. She glanced across at where
Stick was sitting with his eyes half-closed. "I have a feeling our
friend here will be able to fill in the gaps."
"Only if God is merciful." Wanda's voice preceded her; she was
carrying a small, stupidly expensive bottle of water and some aspirin
her doctor friend had shoved at her. Her brains still felt like
jelly. "What little we know ... this ritual that they are attempting
needs two components. The first being Farouk, a man with two souls.
The problem is is that it also requires someone, perhaps something,
with no souls. And while we can hunt for Farouk, I have a feeling
that we need to be hunting this other part or we will not be able to
stop this in time."
She tossed back the pills and then the water, stopping before it was
completely emptied so she could share; she passed the bottle to Amanda
as she turned her gaze towards Stick.
The Vatican's witchfinder sat quietly with a preternatural, inhuman
stillness, the impassive face still showing the results of his
encounter with the Deathbird. He's been seemingly loath to talk even
when he was lucid, contributing only occasionally to the feverish
council of war that has been raging in the ratty motel room currently
housing the party. The milky, unseeing eyes shifted slightly toward
Wanda as a the leader of the Chosen visibly considered the situation.
When he did speak his voice had a rusty and jarring sound to it,
broken glass and grinding iron, the voice of a man unused to speaking.
"The beast without soul was born Alexander Jamison, in the city of
London, the Year of Our Lord 1543. He was a son of an impoverished
noble family that was educated as a doctor and looked for his fortune
on the waves, as was the custom of the time. he sailed with Hawkins wh
recommended him to Drake - just in time for the latter to take Jamison
with him on the Golden Hind, to raid the Spanish holdings and to
circumnavigate the globe. The two, by all accounts, became fast
friends. Jamison, who had from an early age was prone to savagery
remarkable even for that time, saw in Drake a man to whom he could
look for guidance and control.
Stick paused, a savage coughing fit shuddering through his deceptively
slight frame. "To put it blandly - he was a sociopath with a gift for
murder. Sword, gun, knife - he took to killing like he was born to it.
And perhaps he was. Drake gave him a cause, a purpose and a leash. And
then Drake was gravely wounded, a Spanish musket ball during the sack
of Valparaiso. Jamison went berserk. And after cutting his way though
the Spaniards disappeared with the body of his wounded captain. None
know where he went, or what bargain he made, nor with whom. All that
is known that it was unholy. Within a week Drake was hale and in
command again. And Jamison became... something new in the annals of
men and monsters. Not quite a vampire, not quite a revenant. Something
new and vile released upon the world. He does not age, he refuses to
die, he lives through centuries and his madness grows ever on. He
kills without a second thought or a glimmer of compunction. The Church
has been hunting him for generations, mostly without luck - sometimes
coming close. We almost cornered him in London, in 1888. And again in
Prussia in 1945. Since then no one has come close until two weeks ago,
when we found him in Damascus. Three teams of the Chosen were sent, I was
on my way to join them but I came to late. Most of the men were dead.
But we tracked him and tried again in Jerusalem."
For the first time a flicker of emotion passed through Stick's face.
"We had him. Not without cost but he was ours. And then the golems
came. And her."
"Calysee Neramani." Kane said flatly, the ache in his ribs from the
wound still fresh and keen. "What was done to her, Stick? I saw her
before she was taken by the Templars and whatever she is now was
nothing like what she was. How did she get a hold of, what, ancient
golems."
Stick shrugged, a tired disgusted jerk of shoulders. "I don't know.
We were completely blindsided. The Chosen took an interest in the
entire Neramani family after Baghdad. Nothing of her current
capabilities was even hinted at. It must have been Farouk's
'Ozymandias'. If your Professor's theories were even half sane, he
would certainly have the means to underwrite genetic manipulation. And
we both can attest to the fact that he has transportation capability.
Golems..."
Stick's unseeing eyes narrowed in an almost unconscious
moue of vague contempt. "Who hasn't got them? Every would be sorcerer
tries a spell of animation almost as quickly as they try to bake a
philosopher's stone."
The grimace slid off Stick's face as if wiped clean by a wash cloth.
"Not like these, however. I'll grant you that.... "
"Completely fascinating," Wanda interjected, looking more impatient
and frayed than she normally allowed herself. But the whole thing was
messy and she'd had her fill of the Neramani family to last her a life
time already. "But does anyone else see the problem? Neramani and
her incredibly disturbing boss already have all the pieces they need
and we have no idea where to even start looking." She glanced around
the room at the others. "I sincerely hope now is our sharing of the
brilliant ideas moment."
"Yes, we do. Hampshire might be a pain in the ass, but she's got some
serious research sources. And I have a few of my own. A few days ago,
the only functioning Antikthryia device that the London HFC ever got
its hands on was stolen. She thinks she's got the general area they
took it pinpointed." He dropped a map with a wide circle marked on it.
On top of the map he tossed in a black tarnished coin. "All of the
artifacts has a tiny magical code pressed into it; just a little wax
blob with a few slivers of metal that have been specially enchanted.
If you have the right - what did she call it - oh, right, fetish. She
practically licked the phone saying that word. With that coin and a
magically inclined person, you can track it to the bottom of the ocean
if you need to."
Amanda shrugged as all eyes turned to her. "And to think they told me
magic was a dead-end career choice," she joked as she took a mouthful
or two from Wanda's water bottle and then handed it to Garrison. She
got up, dusting off the back of her khakis. "All right then."
Her fingertips tingled as she laid them against the coin, not unlike
she was using an ouija board and she lightly closed her eyes, letting
the energy of the city run through her. 'Eeeny, meeny, miny, mo,
tell us where the fuck to go...' she chanted mentally, not daring
to risk the ridicule she'd face if she actually said it out loud.
Under her fingers, the coin vibrated, then shuddered, dragging itself
over the map and Amanda's hands with it. It paused above an
almost-empty section of Djibouti, marked in writing almost too small
to see: Akkaba.
The witch opened her eyes, the coin falling still, although it was
almost hot to the touch. "I should have known," she said, peering down
at the map. "Farouk mentioned somewhere called Akkaba when he was
pestering me for magic info. It's never pinged much on the magical
network, so I just thought it was another one of his crazy ideas.
Looks like it's coming back to bite me."
Peering unashamedly over Amanda's shoulder, Wanda's eyes narrowed
slightly at the map. "I suppose this means we will actually have to
start paying attention to him and his rants," she remarked. Though,
to be fair, if they managed to get him back in one piece without the
end of the world, Wanda would be willing to sit through hours upon
hours of Farouk's "interesting" rants. An idea struck her and she
very carefully shut her eyes. "Oh bloody fucking hell. I think I
know of someone who might be able to get us there under the radar."
Amanda visibly blanched. "Are you sure there's no other way?" But she
already knew the answer to the question and her shoulders slumped.
"Fuck."
***
"No," said Colonel Cecil Walkerton-Smythe. "Absolutely not. Under no
circumstances whatsoever." The aging bush pilot crossed his arms over
his chest and glared at Wanda, his walrus mustache bristling. "You
broke my plane the last time I took you anywhere. I am categorically
not risking it again."
Wanda was going to hurt someone - either the Colonel or herself,
simply to get this meeting over and done with. Instead, though, she
behaved properly, fully aware that time was running away from them.
She also resisted rubbing at her temples as there was nothing on the
planet that would vanish her growing headache.
The Colonel, an old friend if not more of Agatha Harkness', had gotten
them out of that mess of an operation ages ago. They'd also ended up
crash landing in his beloved plane. If she could have avoided doing
so, Wanda would have gone elsewhere. But despite her wide variety of
contacts, brush pilot / airplane smuggler or whatever the hell he
actually was, generally tended to not be one of them. She made a vow
to get to know more air pirates simply to avoid this issue again.
"Triple your asking price, Colonel, we will pay it. We simply need to
get to Akkaba, or as close to it, without attracting any unwanted
attention." Again. She sighed and started to dig out her wallet.
"Besides, took a look at my gentleman friend here. He looks perfectly
reputable, does he not, even if you do not believe that the rest of us
are?"
"Colonial." He sniffed, and Kane's eyes narrowed.
"Colonel, we haven't been introduced. My named is Garrison Kane. You
might be aware of my father, Christian, from your time in the
service." Garrison said as the man blanched. It wasn't a card he liked
to play very often, but if Walkerton-Smythe had spent as long as he
said in Africa, it was almost certain that at some point he'd run
across and been used by Christian Kane. "My friend here is willing to
pay you handsomely to take us where we need to go, but I'm afraid that
price is the only thing negotiable. Because at the other end of this
journey is a friend of mine that is in trouble and if I'm too late to
help him because of you, I swear to God that anything my father ever
threatened you with will be just where I start." Kane leaned in, nose
to nose with the old man. "Do we have an understanding, sir?"
The Colonel blinked and then took a step back and breaking into
laughter. It went on as the group gave each other confused looks,
before trailling away into a series of wheezes and coughs. "Well
played, sir, well played," he replied, reaching out to shake
Garrison's hand vigorously. "A veritable chip off the old block! Your
father couldn't have threatened me better." He turned to Wanda. "All
right, but if anything happens to my plane, I'll be taking it
out in collateral. Something of equal sentimental value, perhaps?" He
glanced over at where Amanda was standing and hastened to add. "That
isn't that gel of yours. Her you can most certainly keep."
Her lips twitched, just slightly, at that and she could only imagine
the look that was crossing Amanda's face at the moment. "As much
sentimental value as Amanda has for me," Wanda said, dryly, "I think I
value my own life a little too much to even consider such a
suggestion." Her fingers skipped over the wad of currency she'd been
about to pull out and instead went for a picture without a second
thought. Pulling it out, she handed it over to the Colonel to look
at.
"That motorcycle was customize built for me from the ground up by
what I consider a genius when it comes to building such machines.
There is no other one like her around and it took me years to be able
to afford her. If anything happens to your precious plane, Colonel, I
will - as soon as I am able to return home in one piece - make
arrangements to ship her over to you. Is that sufficient?"
That motorcycle meant the world to Wanda. It represented financial
stability, creativity and all the blood, sweat and tears it had taken
her to get to the point in her life that she could afford to spend
money on such a creation instead of scraping by just enough to afford
to eat for the week. But if it meant safe and quick passage for them
to reach Farouk in time, she'd sell it to the Devil himself if she had
to.
The Colonel nodded, tucking the picture into the pocket of his khaki
shirt. "Sounds capital to me," he said. "Next stop, Akkaba."
***
The machine fed. A grinding whine, a noise reverberating through the very bones and teeth, reaching into himself rose and sharpened ever on as the the entire building seemed to shake. Something was happening. Pain and wonder mixed, the universe expanded beneath him and reached out for Farouk, not comforting but hungry and vengeful, the spiral bloomed and something too big, too strange... too much, looked back at him.
He would have screamed then, but that was for the men who knew not the machine.
The machine fed, taking everything with steady pitiless consistency. The laughter of the other and, in time, his sobbing. Farouk's pride and, in time, his strength to plead yet more for mercy and release. It took tears and prayers, memories and hopes, past and future.
The machine fed and Farouk understood distantly and with something that once would have been been relief that he was dying had gone too far, lost too much. The mind broken and jagged turning over he might have smiled. But the entire ideas was alien now, strange, futile, impossible.
And the noise changed again. Climbing yet another octave, its rhythm matching Farouk's heartbeat, or perhaps the other way around. Pain, the term had long become too pale and laughable to describe his existence but to think of alternatives was inane, climbed along with it and Amahl Farouk reached deep inside, the last hidden reserve of will and strength, reached deeper than he ever thought he could. He grasped the last remnants of what he had been and could have been, the last shred of everything that made him what he was and shrieked. His agony piercing the gloomy chamber like a rapier, cutting through the quiet contemplation surrounding Him, the man in the shadow who stood behind Deathbird, long graceful fingers of a pianist or strangler resting easily on her shoulder as he watched the machine.
Farouk could not see him, would not have understood anymore what it was to see, to think, to want. He simply screamed, feeling himself die, the tattered wreck of his soul pulled and pushed, fed into the machine, his eyes mindlessly locked on the only sane thing in the room - the blue, pain-maddened eyes of the other man in the machine. They screamed, the machine uniting them into something closer than brothers, the unthinkable agony mingling into an unholy chorus. They screamed, because there was nothing else left, because the machine was singing now, still feeding, still painting that impossible spiral into their mind, the immense pressure growing within them, suffocating them with weight and emptiness.
Farouk was screaming, the sound choking and wet as it turned into blood, the black-red liquid shriek fountaining out of somebody else's throat, the world tilting and turning alien through someone else's eyes.
And then the machine stopped.
The last note of its unholy symphony hanging in the air like a poisoned drop of wine. The man beside Deathbird moved forward and the last thing that Amahl Farouk saw in his life were the sad, ancient eyes of En Sabeh Nur.
And then he fell into the night, oblivion embracing him.
***
The complex was dank and cool, surprising compared to the heat outside. But it was tunneled downward from under a hundred feet of rock; a hold over from the days when the Romans were the modern enemy. Kane moved in the lead, a handgun at ready and slowly scanning the rooms as they came into view. Finally, it opened to a large cavern, which was remarkable for being a massive dome, with carvings worked into the walls and the overhead.
It was also completely and totally empty.
Amanda shivered, not just from the chill of underground, and the werelight bobbing faintly around her head drew closer, as if afraid. "I don't like this," she murmured, looking from where Kane was leading them down the hallway to Wanda, behind her. "This is the place, I can feel it. So where are they?"
Having paused for a moment to investigate the ground they were passing, Wanda hurried to catch up. "There are signs of life - disturbances in the dust along the wall, faint footprints and maybe where some equipment had been resting." She wiped the dust from her hands off on her pants and shook her head. "There is no easy way, of course, to tell how long ago those marks were made."
Not without an actual tracker. The faint footprints she had made out could have been made that day or weeks ago, if not longer.
"Wait." Kane played his flashlight over the wall, and walked over to kneel down next to it. A complex symbol had been etched into the stone. "The cut marks on the rock are fresh." He pulled out his phone and took a picture, uploading it to Hampshire, who was sitting with Stick in his hospital room.
"Any idea what this is, Stick?"
The silence stretched for a time, and Kane could almost imagine Stick and Hampshire exchanging one of their looks. Eventually, however, witchfinder's scraggly voice could once again be heard over the phone. "It's a date. We are too late. The Machine had played."
***
"It is unwise."
Nur shrugged. "Possibly. Probably, in fact. But one simple truth that I have learned over the long, long years, my dear girl, is that death is very final. This - " he gestured vaguely at the creature squatting at his feet, " - was born in blood and screaming. A universal experience, of humanity - whatever they are gene configuration may be. But it was also born in magic, and machinery so old that it may as well be. Old and new. Primal and yet unknown. I don't know what we have here yet. But it may prove useful. And with what's coming..."
The mien of the man sometimes called Ozymandias grew grim and unforbidding. "No. With what's coming, we will not be discarding any tools just yet." He reached down down, almost gently, and ruffled the hair of the once-Jamison, out of whose eyes the once-Farouk looked up at him, pleadingly and eagerly, glorying in the absence of pain. "Besides. He will be good and loyal puppy now. Isn't that right?"
"Yes, Lord."
The high summer in Israel had lived up to the stereotype, as the sun
beat down mercilessly on the heads of those denizens of Haifa unlucky
enough to be out of the safe and comforting embrace of central air.
The heat was almost a living, pulsating thing, malevolent and
all-encompassing.
Alternatively it could just have been the topic of conversation.
Either way, Kane suddenly and with sincere, genuine longing thought of
the that long ago hellish week in Yellowknife, the Beta Flight land
navigation and survival exam suddenly giving way to exhaustion; and
the simple purity of the northern wilderness slamming down on him and
stealing his breath.
He thought of Toronto, the summer heat and smell of the warm asphalt
probably rivaling Haifa. But still and yet.
Suddenly and with sincere, genuine longing Kane missed home.
Unfortunately, thanks to the Professor's capture, he was in what Stick
had referred to as the asshole of the world, waiting for the sign to
attack and challenge their mysterious foe. Virtually anything would
have been preferable.
"We do have a plan, right?"
"Have we had one at all during this whole wild goose chase?" Amanda
replied from where she was checking his bandage. Thanks to his healing
factor, the wound was doing much better. She glanced across at where
Stick was sitting with his eyes half-closed. "I have a feeling our
friend here will be able to fill in the gaps."
"Only if God is merciful." Wanda's voice preceded her; she was
carrying a small, stupidly expensive bottle of water and some aspirin
her doctor friend had shoved at her. Her brains still felt like
jelly. "What little we know ... this ritual that they are attempting
needs two components. The first being Farouk, a man with two souls.
The problem is is that it also requires someone, perhaps something,
with no souls. And while we can hunt for Farouk, I have a feeling
that we need to be hunting this other part or we will not be able to
stop this in time."
She tossed back the pills and then the water, stopping before it was
completely emptied so she could share; she passed the bottle to Amanda
as she turned her gaze towards Stick.
The Vatican's witchfinder sat quietly with a preternatural, inhuman
stillness, the impassive face still showing the results of his
encounter with the Deathbird. He's been seemingly loath to talk even
when he was lucid, contributing only occasionally to the feverish
council of war that has been raging in the ratty motel room currently
housing the party. The milky, unseeing eyes shifted slightly toward
Wanda as a the leader of the Chosen visibly considered the situation.
When he did speak his voice had a rusty and jarring sound to it,
broken glass and grinding iron, the voice of a man unused to speaking.
"The beast without soul was born Alexander Jamison, in the city of
London, the Year of Our Lord 1543. He was a son of an impoverished
noble family that was educated as a doctor and looked for his fortune
on the waves, as was the custom of the time. he sailed with Hawkins wh
recommended him to Drake - just in time for the latter to take Jamison
with him on the Golden Hind, to raid the Spanish holdings and to
circumnavigate the globe. The two, by all accounts, became fast
friends. Jamison, who had from an early age was prone to savagery
remarkable even for that time, saw in Drake a man to whom he could
look for guidance and control.
Stick paused, a savage coughing fit shuddering through his deceptively
slight frame. "To put it blandly - he was a sociopath with a gift for
murder. Sword, gun, knife - he took to killing like he was born to it.
And perhaps he was. Drake gave him a cause, a purpose and a leash. And
then Drake was gravely wounded, a Spanish musket ball during the sack
of Valparaiso. Jamison went berserk. And after cutting his way though
the Spaniards disappeared with the body of his wounded captain. None
know where he went, or what bargain he made, nor with whom. All that
is known that it was unholy. Within a week Drake was hale and in
command again. And Jamison became... something new in the annals of
men and monsters. Not quite a vampire, not quite a revenant. Something
new and vile released upon the world. He does not age, he refuses to
die, he lives through centuries and his madness grows ever on. He
kills without a second thought or a glimmer of compunction. The Church
has been hunting him for generations, mostly without luck - sometimes
coming close. We almost cornered him in London, in 1888. And again in
Prussia in 1945. Since then no one has come close until two weeks ago,
when we found him in Damascus. Three teams of the Chosen were sent, I was
on my way to join them but I came to late. Most of the men were dead.
But we tracked him and tried again in Jerusalem."
For the first time a flicker of emotion passed through Stick's face.
"We had him. Not without cost but he was ours. And then the golems
came. And her."
"Calysee Neramani." Kane said flatly, the ache in his ribs from the
wound still fresh and keen. "What was done to her, Stick? I saw her
before she was taken by the Templars and whatever she is now was
nothing like what she was. How did she get a hold of, what, ancient
golems."
Stick shrugged, a tired disgusted jerk of shoulders. "I don't know.
We were completely blindsided. The Chosen took an interest in the
entire Neramani family after Baghdad. Nothing of her current
capabilities was even hinted at. It must have been Farouk's
'Ozymandias'. If your Professor's theories were even half sane, he
would certainly have the means to underwrite genetic manipulation. And
we both can attest to the fact that he has transportation capability.
Golems..."
Stick's unseeing eyes narrowed in an almost unconscious
moue of vague contempt. "Who hasn't got them? Every would be sorcerer
tries a spell of animation almost as quickly as they try to bake a
philosopher's stone."
The grimace slid off Stick's face as if wiped clean by a wash cloth.
"Not like these, however. I'll grant you that.... "
"Completely fascinating," Wanda interjected, looking more impatient
and frayed than she normally allowed herself. But the whole thing was
messy and she'd had her fill of the Neramani family to last her a life
time already. "But does anyone else see the problem? Neramani and
her incredibly disturbing boss already have all the pieces they need
and we have no idea where to even start looking." She glanced around
the room at the others. "I sincerely hope now is our sharing of the
brilliant ideas moment."
"Yes, we do. Hampshire might be a pain in the ass, but she's got some
serious research sources. And I have a few of my own. A few days ago,
the only functioning Antikthryia device that the London HFC ever got
its hands on was stolen. She thinks she's got the general area they
took it pinpointed." He dropped a map with a wide circle marked on it.
On top of the map he tossed in a black tarnished coin. "All of the
artifacts has a tiny magical code pressed into it; just a little wax
blob with a few slivers of metal that have been specially enchanted.
If you have the right - what did she call it - oh, right, fetish. She
practically licked the phone saying that word. With that coin and a
magically inclined person, you can track it to the bottom of the ocean
if you need to."
Amanda shrugged as all eyes turned to her. "And to think they told me
magic was a dead-end career choice," she joked as she took a mouthful
or two from Wanda's water bottle and then handed it to Garrison. She
got up, dusting off the back of her khakis. "All right then."
Her fingertips tingled as she laid them against the coin, not unlike
she was using an ouija board and she lightly closed her eyes, letting
the energy of the city run through her. 'Eeeny, meeny, miny, mo,
tell us where the fuck to go...' she chanted mentally, not daring
to risk the ridicule she'd face if she actually said it out loud.
Under her fingers, the coin vibrated, then shuddered, dragging itself
over the map and Amanda's hands with it. It paused above an
almost-empty section of Djibouti, marked in writing almost too small
to see: Akkaba.
The witch opened her eyes, the coin falling still, although it was
almost hot to the touch. "I should have known," she said, peering down
at the map. "Farouk mentioned somewhere called Akkaba when he was
pestering me for magic info. It's never pinged much on the magical
network, so I just thought it was another one of his crazy ideas.
Looks like it's coming back to bite me."
Peering unashamedly over Amanda's shoulder, Wanda's eyes narrowed
slightly at the map. "I suppose this means we will actually have to
start paying attention to him and his rants," she remarked. Though,
to be fair, if they managed to get him back in one piece without the
end of the world, Wanda would be willing to sit through hours upon
hours of Farouk's "interesting" rants. An idea struck her and she
very carefully shut her eyes. "Oh bloody fucking hell. I think I
know of someone who might be able to get us there under the radar."
Amanda visibly blanched. "Are you sure there's no other way?" But she
already knew the answer to the question and her shoulders slumped.
"Fuck."
***
"No," said Colonel Cecil Walkerton-Smythe. "Absolutely not. Under no
circumstances whatsoever." The aging bush pilot crossed his arms over
his chest and glared at Wanda, his walrus mustache bristling. "You
broke my plane the last time I took you anywhere. I am categorically
not risking it again."
Wanda was going to hurt someone - either the Colonel or herself,
simply to get this meeting over and done with. Instead, though, she
behaved properly, fully aware that time was running away from them.
She also resisted rubbing at her temples as there was nothing on the
planet that would vanish her growing headache.
The Colonel, an old friend if not more of Agatha Harkness', had gotten
them out of that mess of an operation ages ago. They'd also ended up
crash landing in his beloved plane. If she could have avoided doing
so, Wanda would have gone elsewhere. But despite her wide variety of
contacts, brush pilot / airplane smuggler or whatever the hell he
actually was, generally tended to not be one of them. She made a vow
to get to know more air pirates simply to avoid this issue again.
"Triple your asking price, Colonel, we will pay it. We simply need to
get to Akkaba, or as close to it, without attracting any unwanted
attention." Again. She sighed and started to dig out her wallet.
"Besides, took a look at my gentleman friend here. He looks perfectly
reputable, does he not, even if you do not believe that the rest of us
are?"
"Colonial." He sniffed, and Kane's eyes narrowed.
"Colonel, we haven't been introduced. My named is Garrison Kane. You
might be aware of my father, Christian, from your time in the
service." Garrison said as the man blanched. It wasn't a card he liked
to play very often, but if Walkerton-Smythe had spent as long as he
said in Africa, it was almost certain that at some point he'd run
across and been used by Christian Kane. "My friend here is willing to
pay you handsomely to take us where we need to go, but I'm afraid that
price is the only thing negotiable. Because at the other end of this
journey is a friend of mine that is in trouble and if I'm too late to
help him because of you, I swear to God that anything my father ever
threatened you with will be just where I start." Kane leaned in, nose
to nose with the old man. "Do we have an understanding, sir?"
The Colonel blinked and then took a step back and breaking into
laughter. It went on as the group gave each other confused looks,
before trailling away into a series of wheezes and coughs. "Well
played, sir, well played," he replied, reaching out to shake
Garrison's hand vigorously. "A veritable chip off the old block! Your
father couldn't have threatened me better." He turned to Wanda. "All
right, but if anything happens to my plane, I'll be taking it
out in collateral. Something of equal sentimental value, perhaps?" He
glanced over at where Amanda was standing and hastened to add. "That
isn't that gel of yours. Her you can most certainly keep."
Her lips twitched, just slightly, at that and she could only imagine
the look that was crossing Amanda's face at the moment. "As much
sentimental value as Amanda has for me," Wanda said, dryly, "I think I
value my own life a little too much to even consider such a
suggestion." Her fingers skipped over the wad of currency she'd been
about to pull out and instead went for a picture without a second
thought. Pulling it out, she handed it over to the Colonel to look
at.
"That motorcycle was customize built for me from the ground up by
what I consider a genius when it comes to building such machines.
There is no other one like her around and it took me years to be able
to afford her. If anything happens to your precious plane, Colonel, I
will - as soon as I am able to return home in one piece - make
arrangements to ship her over to you. Is that sufficient?"
That motorcycle meant the world to Wanda. It represented financial
stability, creativity and all the blood, sweat and tears it had taken
her to get to the point in her life that she could afford to spend
money on such a creation instead of scraping by just enough to afford
to eat for the week. But if it meant safe and quick passage for them
to reach Farouk in time, she'd sell it to the Devil himself if she had
to.
The Colonel nodded, tucking the picture into the pocket of his khaki
shirt. "Sounds capital to me," he said. "Next stop, Akkaba."
***
The machine fed. A grinding whine, a noise reverberating through the very bones and teeth, reaching into himself rose and sharpened ever on as the the entire building seemed to shake. Something was happening. Pain and wonder mixed, the universe expanded beneath him and reached out for Farouk, not comforting but hungry and vengeful, the spiral bloomed and something too big, too strange... too much, looked back at him.
He would have screamed then, but that was for the men who knew not the machine.
The machine fed, taking everything with steady pitiless consistency. The laughter of the other and, in time, his sobbing. Farouk's pride and, in time, his strength to plead yet more for mercy and release. It took tears and prayers, memories and hopes, past and future.
The machine fed and Farouk understood distantly and with something that once would have been been relief that he was dying had gone too far, lost too much. The mind broken and jagged turning over he might have smiled. But the entire ideas was alien now, strange, futile, impossible.
And the noise changed again. Climbing yet another octave, its rhythm matching Farouk's heartbeat, or perhaps the other way around. Pain, the term had long become too pale and laughable to describe his existence but to think of alternatives was inane, climbed along with it and Amahl Farouk reached deep inside, the last hidden reserve of will and strength, reached deeper than he ever thought he could. He grasped the last remnants of what he had been and could have been, the last shred of everything that made him what he was and shrieked. His agony piercing the gloomy chamber like a rapier, cutting through the quiet contemplation surrounding Him, the man in the shadow who stood behind Deathbird, long graceful fingers of a pianist or strangler resting easily on her shoulder as he watched the machine.
Farouk could not see him, would not have understood anymore what it was to see, to think, to want. He simply screamed, feeling himself die, the tattered wreck of his soul pulled and pushed, fed into the machine, his eyes mindlessly locked on the only sane thing in the room - the blue, pain-maddened eyes of the other man in the machine. They screamed, the machine uniting them into something closer than brothers, the unthinkable agony mingling into an unholy chorus. They screamed, because there was nothing else left, because the machine was singing now, still feeding, still painting that impossible spiral into their mind, the immense pressure growing within them, suffocating them with weight and emptiness.
Farouk was screaming, the sound choking and wet as it turned into blood, the black-red liquid shriek fountaining out of somebody else's throat, the world tilting and turning alien through someone else's eyes.
And then the machine stopped.
The last note of its unholy symphony hanging in the air like a poisoned drop of wine. The man beside Deathbird moved forward and the last thing that Amahl Farouk saw in his life were the sad, ancient eyes of En Sabeh Nur.
And then he fell into the night, oblivion embracing him.
***
The complex was dank and cool, surprising compared to the heat outside. But it was tunneled downward from under a hundred feet of rock; a hold over from the days when the Romans were the modern enemy. Kane moved in the lead, a handgun at ready and slowly scanning the rooms as they came into view. Finally, it opened to a large cavern, which was remarkable for being a massive dome, with carvings worked into the walls and the overhead.
It was also completely and totally empty.
Amanda shivered, not just from the chill of underground, and the werelight bobbing faintly around her head drew closer, as if afraid. "I don't like this," she murmured, looking from where Kane was leading them down the hallway to Wanda, behind her. "This is the place, I can feel it. So where are they?"
Having paused for a moment to investigate the ground they were passing, Wanda hurried to catch up. "There are signs of life - disturbances in the dust along the wall, faint footprints and maybe where some equipment had been resting." She wiped the dust from her hands off on her pants and shook her head. "There is no easy way, of course, to tell how long ago those marks were made."
Not without an actual tracker. The faint footprints she had made out could have been made that day or weeks ago, if not longer.
"Wait." Kane played his flashlight over the wall, and walked over to kneel down next to it. A complex symbol had been etched into the stone. "The cut marks on the rock are fresh." He pulled out his phone and took a picture, uploading it to Hampshire, who was sitting with Stick in his hospital room.
"Any idea what this is, Stick?"
The silence stretched for a time, and Kane could almost imagine Stick and Hampshire exchanging one of their looks. Eventually, however, witchfinder's scraggly voice could once again be heard over the phone. "It's a date. We are too late. The Machine had played."
***
"It is unwise."
Nur shrugged. "Possibly. Probably, in fact. But one simple truth that I have learned over the long, long years, my dear girl, is that death is very final. This - " he gestured vaguely at the creature squatting at his feet, " - was born in blood and screaming. A universal experience, of humanity - whatever they are gene configuration may be. But it was also born in magic, and machinery so old that it may as well be. Old and new. Primal and yet unknown. I don't know what we have here yet. But it may prove useful. And with what's coming..."
The mien of the man sometimes called Ozymandias grew grim and unforbidding. "No. With what's coming, we will not be discarding any tools just yet." He reached down down, almost gently, and ruffled the hair of the once-Jamison, out of whose eyes the once-Farouk looked up at him, pleadingly and eagerly, glorying in the absence of pain. "Besides. He will be good and loyal puppy now. Isn't that right?"
"Yes, Lord."
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