Chasing Embers Read online

  A hush washed over the bridge, a murmuring tide carrying prayers.

  Ben groaned and swore – his annoyance aimed at the tears in his jacket rather than his wounds, which faded to scars even as he stood, a swaying figure in the road. He spared the woman in the Buick a brief, helpless shrug, and turned to where the Phantom sat idling twenty feet away. Fog wreathed its wheels, chugging from its silver exhaust. Its windows reflected the draping bridge lights, stars lost in a void.

  The Phantom’s rear door swung wide, revealing nothing but darkness. Cold, lifeless, watchful darkness. In the past, Ben had seen bats fly out of that dark, born from whatever spellbound depths comprised the inside of the vehicle. Each weird manifestation preceded the appearance of the passenger, and that passenger was always the same: the Three Who Are One. The Coven Royal of Witches Subdued functioned as a triumvirate, existing on the edges of the Guild’s regime, an underground, breakaway cult reluctantly heeding the Lore.

  Tonight they were deliberately flouting it.

  The passenger emerged, climbing from the silent car and stabbing the air with her Cuban cigar.

  “Good evening, Benjurigan.”

  Ben pulled a face, wiped blood off his lips.

  “It was when it was me, my thoughts and a bottle of Jack.”

  Babe Cathy was a dwarf, her body hunched and shrunken. Up close, she would’ve barely come up to Ben’s waist, and she must have procured the tux she wore, complete with bow tie and tails, from some specialist tailor or other. The snappy attire failed to soften the blow of her face, a face so lined he couldn’t make out a clear patch of skin, her features like a mouldy prune under her purple perm. Rings glittered on her stubby fingers, emeralds and rubies catching the headlights. She took a long drag on the Cuban and shuffled a few steps towards him.

  “Ignorance is bliss.” Expensive smoke seethed through her smile. “How do you like our Black Knight?”

  “I’d like him more on a leash,” Ben said. “What’s this about? What do you want? You and your brute are breaking the Lore.”

  “Are we?” Her Texan accent snickered and snapped. “Things change.”

  He found it hard to argue with this. Change was the theme of the night, and Babe Cathy wasn’t untouched by it. With the drafting of the Pact and foundation of the Lore, the Guild had officially outlawed magic, and three of the most powerful witches had banded together in paradoxical union, a dark and deathless trinity. It had been the same way for eight hundred years. Rumour had always surrounded the CROWS. Some said that the grande dame of the Coven Royal liked to move among humans as one of them, seducing and manipulating those poor curious souls who were drawn to the blackest kind of witchcraft, never quite grasping that witches – these kind of witches – had never been anything close to human, despite their similar appearance. Witches, real witches, were what Ben tended to think of as ambitious elementals, evolving from the servile magic of their creation and climbing, green-fingered and black-nailed, into their own twisted, quarrelsome future, where they prolonged their lives with stolen spells. Perhaps that was why the CROWS so loved to draw ordinary men and women into their fold, naïve acolytes that they could poison and pervert in turn. Together, the Three had formed a clandestine cult. The Guild could never prove it, of course, and was notoriously reluctant to confront the witches outright, face one of their supernatural facets, the withered aspect of Babe Cathy the oldest and wisest of all. As long as the witches remained in the shadows, appearing to honour and heed the Lore, the Guild, typically, turned a blind eye. Ben believed it was around the Battle of the Somme that he’d heard about the CROWS’ relocation to the States, the grapevine that snaked between his few remaining friends whispering with unease. The witches’ current appellations were just a modern affectation, he thought, a reverent nod to Irish mythology and an age long gone.

  That aside, babe was not a word he would use to describe her.

  “We made the Pact to protect us all,” Ben said. “Every Remnant from the Old Lands. Don’t know what ditch you signed yours in, but I signed mine at Uffington in 1215. Until the Guild says otherwise, I reckon I’ll abide by it.”

  “The Old Lands. Bleurgh!” Babe’s contempt was ugly in her throat. “You mean the world gone the way of the dodo. And here we are: endangered species. Refugees. Fugitives from our own power, subjugated by the rules of men.”

  “It’s how we survive. It’s how we go on.”

  “Is it? When those steel-clad fools put down their swords and took up their quills, did they really think they could scribble their way out of reality? With what? Promises on parchment?” She spat between her shiny black shoes. “It’s how they survive. Them and their machines. Them and their progress. We were in the way and so they had us removed.”

  Ben wanted to argue that the Pact had come without resistance, without compromise, but he couldn’t. Only the Remnant leaders, cornered, coerced and, ultimately, conned, had agreed to the magically binding agreement. The rest of the Remnants had found themselves lured and lulled into the Long Sleep, mesmerised – anaesthetised – by a powerful enchantment.

  He could only utter the reason. His reasons, sour as they sat in his mouth in these late times.

  “The war had to end. We chose peace.”

  “And now they’re just killing each other.”

  “But we endure. The Lore—”

  “The Lore is an ass. A means to an end. A bard’s song to bind the bestiary. It could never contain the likes of us.”

  Ben wanted to shake his head, but again he heard some truth in her remark. The words written down on that scroll all those years ago, had been translated many times, but were nevertheless imprinted on his soul.

  John, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine and Count of Anjou, doth decree and grant this day, by common counsel of our kingdom, this Pact devised by the Curia Occultus and witnessed by those guardians of our realm. Those Remnants of the Old Lands, which yet linger amongst us, shall forthwith succumb to the Long Sleep, their ancient liberties henceforth annulled throughout all counties, hundreds, wapentakes, trithings and demesne manors of England, Scotland and all lands beyond the sea. With the goodwill of His Majesty and all future monarchs, and to secure the peace, but one of each Remnant may endure, awake and unfettered under the Lore, governed, protected and guided by the Guild of the Broken Lance, hereby appointed wardship of this bond for all the time to come. And all the ill will, hatred and bitterness that has arisen between our people and Remnants, from the date of the quarrel to this of our truce, we have completely remitted and pardoned to all. Those few bodies learned of this treaty shall henceforth never hunt Remnants or otherwise seek to do them harm…

  For centuries, the latter stipulation had kept the Fitzwarren family at bay, although of course they had never stopped looking for loopholes and orchestrating all manner of “happy accidents”, from unexplained explosions on cruise ships to untraceable poison in food. They wanted Whittington back and they wanted it bad. In the past, there had been several stand-offs, the old family claymore swinging at Ben’s neck on more than one occasion, but without proof (and with a whole heap of human bias), the Guild had never summoned the Fitzwarrens to court to probe the matter further.

  Ben made it a habit to survive these attacks. But this latest attempt on his life was different, taking place in public and assisted by forbidden witchcraft. He didn’t need the wide round eyes behind the wheels of the stalled traffic to tell him this. Or the sirens of the approaching police cars, the officers waking from a spell. This latest attempt on his life was a bold and brazen breach of the Lore. In short, it was unheard of.

  But he wasn’t about to show Babe Cathy just how shaken he was.

  “It’s late, Babe. Maybe we should do this over sushi some time.”

  Babe Cathy actually cackled. “It is late. You’ve got that right. Too late for you.”

  Ben snorted. “Maniacal laughter. Footlights fade. Exit stage left.”


  “She’s not going to stop at the Star, you know,” the witch said. The wind wreathed cigar smoke through her purple hair. “This is just the beginning. She’ll track down every last one of her gifts and kill anyone who gets in her way.”

  “Who? You’re talking about the Javits heist, aren’t you?”

  “Star, Crook and Pschent. Star, Crook and Pschent.” Babe Cathy started to sway, her chant sailing across the space between them, a lullaby on ill winds. “A new flame will scour the sky, heaven-sent and hell-bent. Hope called her forth, but revenge drives her on. We shall rely on the latter.”

  What was she babbling about? What the fuck was a pschent?

  Christ. Witches.

  Ben moved in her direction, fist raised, demanding answers. Babe Cathy’s lips were a fishbone, rattling out an incantation, and he stumbled to a halt, watching her. What he’d told Fulk in the bar was true: magic used directly against him could do him little harm. Folks like the CROWS drew their power from the nether, a seemingly endless gulf that surrounded the physical world. The nether wasn’t space, nor the ambient cosmos, but a place that lay beyond, or between, as inner as it was outer. Perhaps it was the raw, empyreal stuff of Creation, for all Ben knew. Things lurked in that astral sea, creatures hungry for life, and all magic had its price. When a person drew on the nether – drew on it like a thread in a carpet – they risked unravelling the world entire. But that same magic was in Ben’s blood, its warp and weft responsible for his very existence. The triangles, squares and arcane symbols tumbling from Babe Cathy’s mouth, a riddle colouring the air, would only bounce off his charmed flesh like meteors burning up in the atmosphere. All the same, he knew that she could hurt him. Indirect spells still held clout if they affected another target, animate or otherwise. If the witch’s weaving cigar bobbed over some mundane object – a sword say, investing it with power – then by God, she could hurt him.

  In this case, her muttered symbols wrapped around the Phantom IV. The bodywork bubbled like boiling tar, the bonnet growing short even as the roof grew longer. The grille reared liquidly upwards and the car started forward, its increase in size not just due to its approach. The wheels deliquesced, branching out into thin strands, a host of scuttling legs. The windscreen split, amoeba-like, into several compound eyes, each pale orb reflecting Ben’s alarm. Mandibles quivered and dripped where moments before headlights had shone. In no time at all, the vehicle resolved into a behemoth, a hybrid of darkness and warped dreams, its horns a razor-sharp curl of silver, its shoulders brushing the girders above.

  Screams rose from the nearby cars. Engines revved as drivers tried to force their way out of the gridlock. Those who could opened their doors and tumbled into the road, fleeing for Manhattan or Brooklyn. Ben watched them go. At least they had earned a tale for their grandkids. The CROWS could magically influence the area, affecting matter and human minds, but it was a scattershot and temporary art. They couldn’t drop a curtain over the bridge. Sooner or later, people would talk about what they’d seen: cars that moved of their own volition, a man who rose unscathed from a bike crash and a giant bug that appeared from nowhere. They’d hold up their camera phones to show others strange clips, smeared, shaky images that could’ve been anything, the audience gasping and shaking their heads. Some would call helplines, others seek counselling. Tomorrow, the National Enquirer would see a surge of new material. Hell, it might even trend on Twitter. And nothing at all would change. In a world immunised by Hollywood movies, miracles were often confused with madness. No one accepted the truth any more.

  The bug was shaped from shadow and steel; an illusion spurred by the witch’s spell and lent substance by dread. The sweat prickling on Ben’s brow, his thudding heart and widening eyes, these were its ingredients, allowing the bug time and space in the real world. They told him that the bridge trembled under his feet as the creature came on. They told him that a stench filled his nostrils, blown from papery flanks. They told him he flapped like a matador’s cape as he stood in the road. Red Ben Garston. Red, red, red…

  Only the most skilled of conjurors could withstand and dispel such hostile impressions, having trained themselves to assert reality, or at least to retaliate with visions of their own. With few exceptions, most people were slaves to their instincts, perception comprising what they thought of as real, their reaction based on that acceptance. Facts had nothing to do with it. If you thought the beast was coming to get you, then you ran regardless.

  Ben could still meet the bug on its own terms. He could leap forward and grab those horns, draw on his prodigious strength and try to rip the summoning to shreds. On the other hand, Babe Cathy could prove too potent, and he too spent, the bug sucking weight from his doubt and trampling him to death in the road.

  He wasn’t about to stay and find out.

  Rose was in danger and he would be no good to her dead. Plus he had questions that needed answers. He couldn’t pursue them as a corpse. Sometimes, discretion was the better part of valour.

  As the bug’s shadow fell across him, eclipsing the mangled traffic, Ben spun to the railings. His torn jacket flailed about him, new rips rippling up his sleeves as his forearms bulged, his sinews mercurial with rapidly swelling flesh. His outstretched hands blossomed into three-pronged claws, hubcap-sized on this occasion, reaching for the barricade. Babe Cathy howled as metal twisted under his grip. Pincers snatched at his neck but he dived forwards into the night, tumbling over the edge of the bridge.

  For a moment, there was only a man, falling, falling, the night air screaming in his skull. The river stung his nostrils, clawing at his eyes, a tugboat down there rushing up to meet him. The water was a flat black sheet, as unforgiving as iron. Manhattan a psychedelic blur.

  A sharp report echoed off the water, the snap of unfurled sails caught by the wind. The tugboat cringed on the tide, the surrounding waves washing outward and catching the sudden, pummelling downdraught.

  A shadow swept eastward under the bridge, a vast red oddity spearing through the night.

  Duul

  Far to the north, on wings of darkness out over the greater ocean, an essence that had once been a girl curled against a thunderous heart and remembered. She remembered the girl as if she, within the darkness, was not herself. In a sense, she was no longer. She remembered how a girl had crossed the desert, hoping to wake a god.

  The girl had set out from the African village she had always called home, leaving behind the filthy old tumbledown shack, a shambles of scavenged wood, crooked nails and spit. Frowning over the map her mother had given her, sketched in charcoal on a little ragged cloth, Khadra had clutched her bag – a shabby thing of stitched grey fur – and struck out into the sands.

  Alone.

  At first, she had followed the highway north, occasional cars charging past like warthogs through the rippling mirage. In her grimy T-shirt and football shorts, her hair precisely plaited in cornrows, she coughed in their billowing, fume-black wake. This skinny child with skinned knees sipped sparingly from a plastic one-litre Coke bottle and stuck out a trembling thumb.

  A truck took her as far as Qardho, a city in the Nugaal Valley. There she begged for food and water. Later, an old woman took her in, calling to the girl as she wandered in a daze through the marketplace. The woman’s toothless smile and offer of meat was enough to draw Khadra into her hovel, even if her drooping, deformed left ear made the girl hesitate and shudder. Inside, the animal skulls hung on the walls and the jars of eyeballs lining the shelves revealed that the old woman was in touch with sixir, the old magic. Khadra’s mother had told her that magic was forbidden, had been since long ago, and that there were no witches left but one, far away across the western sea. Still Khadra took no comfort from the fact. The girl ate her stew and fell asleep by the fire.

  She woke with a start past midnight, the stars peering through the single window. The old woman crouched beside her, her hand halfway through her inspection. Khadra’s arm was a snake, striking out. In her grip, the hag�
�s wrist felt like a twig. A twig she wanted to snap.

  “Old woman, what are you doing?”

  Shamefaced, the hag drew her fingers away from where they’d been busy pinching her thigh, in the same way a farmer might pinch a fatted pig.

  “Your mother chose well, sending her daughter, the lone fruit of her womb. The Queen will be pleased. No point sending some dhillo, eh? No point sending some whore.”

  For a moment or two, both of them were just eyes in the dark, four watchful orbs.

  Then, “Get away from me, hag! What do you know about my mother? What do you know about the Queen?”

  A soft cackle troubled the gloom.

  “Poor girl. Who do you think gave your mother that map? And do you think that the shard in your bag fell from the sky? Nothing falls from the sky these days.”

  The shock of this, the shared wisdom and strange acquaintance, did nothing to calm Khadra’s heart. No wonder the hag had called to her in the marketplace. Wise women spoke to wise women, she supposed, but unlike her mother, the old woman’s gaze was far from kindly.

  “Your mother fears greatly and the Queen sleeps deep. Yes, sleeps the sleep of three thousand years.” The hag sucked her gums, then grinned, a toothless, grey and slimy enticement. “Come, girl. The fire is low and the road lonely. Let us take comfort. We can still eat and leave you more or less intact…”

  Khadra ran. She raced with the dawn into the city. Disgust drove her onwards, away from the desperate, grasping herd, the crowds that swarmed around the big green trucks in the marketplace. To her, the bright red crosses on their canvas flanks looked like the markers on a grave. That the famine, the curse, should reach even here, blowing on evil winds from the south, from Mogadishu and Abudwak – the knowledge gripped her like clammy hands. Horror drove her north and east, in the back of a bus to the Port of Boosaaso and the mocking, roaring laughter of the Gulf.