Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness (21 page)

“Dad, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Oh, God, Ashoka. I failed. I failed so badly. I couldn’t protect them, Mum and Lucky. I couldn’t do the one thing a father, a husband, should do: protect his family. How can I look at them, be happy with them, knowing how useless I was? How impotent. I failed so badly.”

What could he say?

There was a huge splash and they both turned around. Parvati and the others were looking over the edge.

“What was that?” Ashoka asked. “Where’s Dr Wells?”

He ran to the side. The water lapped and a few bubbles popped on the surface. But not many.

Parvati widened her eyes to imply surprise. “Dr Wells, overcome with remorse, decided that he couldn’t live with himself a moment longer.”

Ti Fun nodded and gave a melodramatic sigh. “Such a waste. But the guilt was too much.” He looked to his men. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

The gangsters, all lined up, nodded in unison.

“Most tragic,” said one.

“We tried to stop him but he overpowered us,” said another solemnly. “Much stronger than he looked.”

Ashoka looked at them. “So the six of you, and you, Parvati, and you, Mr Dragon, could not stop a feeble old man from diving overboard?”

Parvati smiled.

Ashoka looked into the black depths. Nothing stirred. Dr Wells was, if not sleeping with the fishes, certainly having a serious lie-down. “Fair enough.”

A
sh fought. He didn’t need to see – they were all around him. He swung the manacles, the chains clanged and struck flesh and bone. Screams choked the air and the stench suffocated him as much as the press of the bodies. He was torn and bloody from claws and tusks and fangs, but he couldn’t fall, there wasn’t any room, and Ash’s cries joined the chorus of pain. Hands wrapped around his wrists and ankles and threatened to tear him apart but, soaked and slimy with blood and gore, he slipped from their grasp and rammed the now-splintered bone shard deep into the massive worm. A multitude of cries burst out and Ash twisted.

He fought, he bled, he retreated and fought and bled again. He kicked and smashed and stabbed, even as he wearied beyond exhaustion, and yet the Carnival of Flesh came on relentlessly, abandoning bits of its body to thrash and slither over the blood-soaked ground.

The rest of it, the immense single mass of amalgamated flesh, beat and pushed, squeezing itself through the narrow passageway, heaving against the rocks, cracking deeper crevasses into the fractured stone. Broken fragments fell, cutting Ash’s shoulders, but what were they compared to the tears and rips that covered him already?

The ground buckled and Ash tripped as a thin chasm opened up along the floor. He winced as his foot caught in the crack, but it barely stopped him. Any second now the entire tunnel was going to come down.

Ash crawled backwards as the Carnival pushed itself through the thin gap, hissing furiously while Ash caught a few seconds’ rest. The noxious fumes from the hundreds of twisted bodies covered him like a poisonous cloud. What he’d give for a lungful of fresh air.

The Carnival struggled and heaved, stone split, the cracks shattered in a web pattern across the surface and a deep rut opened in the crumbling floor, as loud and as sharp as a gunshot. A shower of dust and small stones fell.

Ash didn’t need Marma Adi to know what was about to happen. He just needed to give it a little help.

A cluster of eyes stared at him and the pulsing mass of flesh and bile and foulness hesitated. Perhaps in one of the heads there was a glimmer of something other than madness. Caution.

The rumbling stopped and the walls settled down.

Ash ran up and swung the manacles into the monstrosity. It screamed as he hit it again and again. He kicked one of the faces and rammed his fist into a bulbous belly that quivered from the blow. He needed it angry.

“Come on, I’m right here,” he said. “Yummy yummy.”

The Carnival thrashed and Ash dashed back as a forest of hands and claws reached out for him.

Fresh air. A narrow, crooked slit had opened up during the battle and a breeze blew in. He couldn’t see it, but the coldness of the air was delicious relief from the cloying damp heat. Goosebumps rose over his bare arms and Ash threw the manacles and bone aside and ran. Head down and left hand against the wall, he stumbled and tripped, but kept his face towards the wind.

And behind him, around him, the mountain shook. Boulders crashed down and thunder boomed as vast chasms splintered the rock. The yells and screams of the Carnival turned to cries of fear and terror. Feet and hands and slithering meat slapped the ground behind him as bits of the Carnival tore off and gave chase. But even as the stone rained down on to him, Ash didn’t pause or look back. His heart pounded and he was gasping, but the air was cold and sharp and clean.

A dazzling line lit the passageway.

I’m almost there.

A hand grabbed his heel and he tripped. A legless creature hauled itself over him, red eyes as wide as its mouth. It wrapped its arms around Ash’s waist, trying to hold him down as others came up behind it to feast. They were bony, slick with blood and purple with bruises and built out of different parts so that some ran on mismatched arms and their legs waved out of their shoulders.

“No!” cried Ash.

Not when he was almost there …

But they were upon him, and Ash roared as they trapped his arms and snapped at his body and nails raked his face and—

The tunnel collapsed. It fell away, tilting down towards the widening opening. The light erupted as the mountain face broke, and Ash and Savage’s mutants rolled and slid down. Ash heaved one off him and twisted another so that it slammed the wall as they tumbled past.

The tunnel continued to tip and Ash slid faster and there was sunlight ahead. A distant ridge of mountains, pink with dawn, lined up on the far horizon, and Ash yelled as he fell out of the cave mouth. He rolled in the air and his stomach jumped to his mouth as he went into freefall. A second of air time and then he crunched down into snow.

Down and down he tumbled. Snow was shoved into his mouth and ears and blinded him and went down his neck and he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to. As the world turned, sky, snow and mountain, he saw the entire mountainside collapse in on itself. Thousands of tons of rock fell and bounced down the slope, any piece of which could totally splat him.

“Ash!”

The slope shallowed and Ash’s fall turned into a surfing slide.

Rishi stood upon a large, settled boulder, waving. “I’m here, boy!”

They’d made it!

Ash spat snow out and managed to get up; not easy as it was like lying in a sea of feathers.

He’d come to a stop on a short ledge. To the left and right the slope continued down for a good two hundred metres, maybe more. Behind him was the black wall of the mountain, continuing up to the clouds. A few last boulders rolled past them, but the worst seemed to be over. Of the creatures that had attacked him, there was no sign.
They must have fallen all the way down
, thought Ash. The joy of victory rose within him.

“Come, we must be quick,” said Rishi.

“Why? I totally and utterly kicked its butt!”

As if in answer, a deep, long moan rumbled from within the mountain. Dust and pebbles blew from the cracks and holes, a vast exhale.

“No, Ash,” said Rishi. “You just made it angry.”

F
ingers tore open the mountain. Fingers ten metres long and each built from a dozen people. The thing did not care that limbs broke and bodies were ripped apart as it beat its way free. Blood sprinkled the rock and snow above them as another pair of hands, ten-fingered, eleven, pushed its way out of the mountain prison.

“Go, Ash. Quickly.”

Ash stared in horrified awe. How big was it? Five arms now were ripping their way through the jagged cave mouth. The stone crumbled as massive fists pounded the walls from the inside, and the thunder was deafening. Ash took Rishi’s arm. “Come on then.”

The old man didn’t move. He smiled and shook his dreadlocks, savouring the elements around him. “It is good to feel the wind and sun upon my face. To bury my toes within fresh snow. To be free at last. Thank you, Ash.”

“Thank me later. Come on.”

“Listen to me, Ash, this is important.”

Ash took Rishi’s hand and tried to pull him along. “If it’s more philosophy, it can wait. A long time.”

“No. It’s about the Kali-aastra.”

“What?”

The wind rose, whipping Rishi’s dreadlocks all around him. “Savage found it in Rajasthan. He used it to kill Ravana.”

“Yeah, I know that. Come on.”

“I stole it from him,” said Rishi. “There was a lot of confusion when Ravana died. Some of the rakshasas wanted Savage dead, others accepted his rule as long as Rani was there. I was being held in the catacombs below the Savage Fortress, but in the chaos I managed to get out, and get the Kali-aastra. I got as far as the old city before Savage caught me.”

“What about the Kali-aastra?” asked Ash. “Did Savage get it back?”

“No. I gave it to someone for safekeeping. Someone who knew all about Kali.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think? Ujba.” Rishi twisted his hand free. “Now go.”

A thousand throats screamed in unison. The Carnival of Flesh, the thing he’d fought, had been the merest fraction of the creature. Up and up it rose, climbing out of the tears in the mountain, spewing from half a dozen different orifices, melding together like wax and assembling itself in an entity of hundreds of arms and legs, all different, all misjoined, all as long as trains and built of so many villagers, victims of Savage’s alchemy. Bodies tumbled free like sweat drops and fell screaming to be smashed upon rocks. Vast patches were bruised, purple fields of injured flesh that bled from a hundred wounds as the monster squeezed itself out of the holes and crevasses covering the mountain face, a lava flow of meat and bone.

“Go, Ash,” urged Rishi. “Hurry.”

Rishi was insane. There was no way he could beat that thing. Ash grabbed hold of his arm.

Sparks burst from the old man and Ash cried out, instantly letting go.

Steam rose from his stinging fingertips.

Lightning crackled across Rishi. Sparks and bolts jumped over the blue-glowing flesh. The air stank of ozone and Rishi pulled his lips back into a fierce snarl. His hair rose and tiny bursts of light shone within the strands. “Free at last …”

Ash wanted to say so much. He wanted to hug the old man. How many times he’d saved him, ever since he’d whacked that cow on the nose in Varanasi in a different world. Rishi was the same. Here and in the past and, no doubt, in the future. Ash fought back the tears. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

“It’s only death.” Rishi smiled. “Now run. Look to the living. They will need you.”

Ash swallowed a large, painful lump and nodded. “Until next time.”

Halos of light radiated from the sadhu. Freed from the iron-bound rock, all the magic he’d stored for a decade filled the frail flesh and even his pores sparkled. Every part of him hummed with energy – the power of the gods.

Blind and crippled, Rishi began to chant. Mantras to his god, Shiva. Lines glowed over his skin, the marks of his patron, and the sky shook. The clouds flashed with lightning, disturbed and angry. The Carnival of Flesh raised its many Hydra heads out of the mountain and cried out against the sky.

Ash ran as fast as he dared, wary of the uneven path and the sheer drop on either side. The snow clumped at his feet and he slipped on ice and had to brace himself, but he didn’t stop.

But he did look up.

Rishi stood on the ledge, a shimmering outline in a blinding haze of electric-blue light. Looming over him, covering the slope in shadow, came the Carnival, freed from the stone and hundreds of metres high. It swept a fist down upon the sadhu and Ash cried out. But the blow didn’t land. The fist exploded, sending bodies and limbs and burning flesh in all directions. The Carnival recoiled, then waved its appendage as it reformed. Ash stared as people seemed to flow into the burning stump, regrowing it out of themselves.

Rishi’s staff began to disintegrate, unable to contain any more power. It crumbled to dust and Rishi himself, bright as an exploding star, became a being of light.

Lightning burst down from the black clouds. Huge chunks of the Carnival were instantly incinerated. Even down where Ash stood, the stench of burning flesh filled his nostrils. Bolts struck the mountain and the peaks trembled.

Rishi was just a faint outline within a sphere of searing white light.

Then, silently, the sphere expanded. It grew outwards, slowly to begin with, then faster and faster, till it was ten metres wide, twenty, fifty. A hundred.

Rishi went supernova.

Ash covered his face with his arms as the light became unbearable. It seemed to shine straight through him, lighting his very heart. The heat didn’t come from the outside, but from within. Ash gasped and fell in the snow. He curled up and tried to hide from the blistering heat. He felt as if he was about to disintegrate, as if every atom was shaking apart.

Then it winked out.

Light spots danced and burst in his eyes as he opened them.

The clouds had gone. Sun, harsh and clean, shone down over the snow-blanketed plateau and lifted the mountain out of shadow.

The ledge was still there and so were the huge rents in the mountainside. But there was no Rishi, no Carnival of Flesh. There was no aftermath of carnage. No bodies or lingering smells. No marks at all. All had just ceased to exist.

Ash sank into the snow. Whatever had kept him going until now had finally run out. He was hungry, tired, bruised and bleeding, and a million miles from anywhere. He was not the Kali-aastra. He was just Ash.

Where could he go? As far as he knew, Parvati and Ashoka were still in London. Back home.

Home
. He could never go back home, and that hurt more than the bruises and the cuts. He shook. His body, pushed beyond all human endurance, rebelled and didn’t want to move. It wanted to give up and just collapse. Ash knelt in the snow.