Dark Seduction (14 page)

The door of the vehicle opened and a large man sporting a black moustache jumped down. “
Droboy tume Romale
,” he said, his jowls wobbling as he marched across the field towards the fire. Long, curly black hair bounced around his shoulders. “Is that really you, little Melantha?”

“
Nais Tuke
,” Melantha replied. “Barrabas. Yes it’s me.” She watched him settle himself by the fire, his eyes fixed on the flames. She liked the fear she commanded. Being a distant blood relative, Barrabas wouldn't be bewitched, and she wouldn’t be able to compel him to do anything, but he would still be awed, perhaps even a little afraid. She didn't know what he saw when he looked at her, but it seemed to scare him.

She noticed movement in the back of the Range Rover, another door opened, and a woman scurried around the side of the caravan and disappeared.

“My wife, she ...” Barrabas held his hands up.

“I understand,” Melantha said.

Barrabas nodded and pulled a pouch of tobacco out of his shirt pocket. He rolled himself a cigarette with the deftness of a magician and then he pulled a burning stick from the fire to light it.

As he sat puffing away, he said, “The others should arrive soon. Messages were left at the
vurmas
, the usual places.”

Melantha nodded. On the outside, she appeared calm, but her stomach churned. She couldn't let anything interfere with her plans, not now. Not after all those years acquiring her power.

 “Have you got everything planned?” Barrabas asked as he warmed his hands over the fire.

Melantha nodded. “Yes.” She hoped he couldn't tell by her voice that she was lying. The Shadowland inhabitants were the sort of people parents warned their children about. The stuff of nightmares; monsters that lurked beneath the bed, the noise with no visible source, the shadows that danced on the periphery. And you couldn't make absolute plans against such adversaries.

“Good, good,” Barrabas said, puffing on his cigarette. “I wouldn't like to think we weren’t prepared.” He stared at the flames for a moment, and then said, “When I saw your message at the
vurma
, it surprised me. I’d heard the stories, but I never believed. I thought you were dead!”

Melantha nodded and smiled. Her skin felt tight where the scars knitted her flesh. “As good as, Barrabas, as good as.”

The flames threw dancing shadows around the campsite, wraiths that caught the eye and danced to the crackle of burning wood. Melantha watched them; imagined it was the custodians of the Shadowland, taunting her and she shivered. The bravado she usually reflected started to waver. She wondered whether other great warriors felt the same before going into battle, because that's what this was: ground zero, the front line, apocalypse, and the final curtain.

As she settled back to await her people, Melantha knew one way or another, the end was nigh.

CHAPTER 19

Zen watched the wind shred the clouds, revealing the momentary glimpse of a Cheshire cat moon that looked down with a knowing grin. It didn't fill him with confidence. He tightened his grip on the carrier bag of money.
Now that he had it, he didn’t want to lose it.

The houses were in darkness, the high street deserted. Equidistant streetlights cast cones of light that struggled to keep the dark at bay. The wind roared, snuffling like a large predator as it chased the litter it liberated from a dustbin.

Zen pulled Leo's old jacket tighter around his torso, trying to keep warm. The coattails flapped around as though trying to conduct the wind.

Verity stood beside him, her short hair covered by a beret while the only thing holding her calf length skirt down seemed to be the tassels that whipped her legs. Bangles on her wrists jangled like tambourines. She wore a diaphanous white blouse beneath the green army coat.

“So where are we going?” Verity asked.

Zen looked along the high street, his eyes narrowed against the wind and rain. “I don't think it matters. They want to find us more than we want to find them.” He started walking along the road. Verity followed, head bent against the wind.

He could understand her scepticism. If he hadn’t seen the place, he imagined he would feel the same.

Leo had refused to help them, saying they should get out while they could, but Zen knew that for Verity and himself, there was no escape.

As he passed the undertakers, Zen inclined his head and looked towards the window. A face peered back, making him jump. Discovering it to be his own reflection, he felt stupid; having not expected it, he felt on edge, like someone coming down from a bad trip, only to find that the nightmares hadn't diminished.

Zen flinched as the resonance of the wind sounded like a growl, and he spun around, scanning the shadows beyond the streetlights. Hairs prickled on the nape of his neck. Movement caught his eye and he tried to trace the source, but the shadows concealed it. He walked on, vigilant.

The sound of voices drifted out of the Salvation public house. Zen wished he was inside, knocking back a few bottles of Budweiser, rather than standing outside haunted by the phantoms of his imagination. At least it would be dry in there.

At the end of the high street, a solitary streetlight flickered. They approached, and Zen watched their shadows foreshorten and then creep ahead; a dark path in the fabric of the night.

“What the hell’s that?” Verity shouted in his ear.

Zen looked where she indicated, just able to make out a lofty rotating light high in the clouds. The light pulsed with a sickly orange tinge. Momentarily illuminating them, it cast their shadows along the ground like elongated stick figures.

“That's it,” Zen said. “That's their beacon.” He shook his head. “We've jumped over our own shadows.” He looked back and saw the houses of Trinity had disappeared, replaced by gothic structures that hulked against the night. “Come on, there's no going back now.”

Verity didn’t move. She looked around, her face pale. “What’s happened?”

“Welcome to the Shadowland.”

“You mean … you mean, this place, it’s real!”

“Either that or we’re both having the same nightmare. Come on.”

The closer they got to the pulsing light, the sharper the towering edifice became. Buttresses became apparent, with what looked like people standing on them, looking out.

At his side, he noticed Verity look up at the lighthouse in awe.

Zen didn't know whether it was the same one he had seen before, or whether it was just a gateway, one of many that called the faithful to prayer at the alter of decadence. Either way he also couldn't help but be impressed.

The building must have been hundreds; perhaps thousands of feet in circumference and constructed at odd angles. At a distance, he thought the walls were straight, but as he got closer, he saw they distorted, sculpted into hundreds of thousands of bodies. The protuberance of a devilish countenance, the gargoyle grin of a stone facade, the hulk of a monster with fangs the size of an arm, a woman suckling imp-like creatures on her distended breasts. A figure with the body of a bear and the head of a man, smooth headed creatures that looked like birds of prey, a woman in a beseeching pose, her naked form in symbiosis with something tuberous and plant-like, figures with grotesque faces on their shoulders, bodies with four arms; a phantasmagoria of demons. The figures looked so real, it was hard to work out if they were just obscene carvings or the victims of a Medusa gaze, this their final resting place, a sarcophagus to the Shadowland.

Zen shook his head, his dreadlocks whipping his cheeks. High above, where the light pulsed, a bolt of lightning split the sky, animating the bodies like Frankenstein with his monster, a shadow play performing to a tumultuous clap of thunder.

At his side, he noticed Verity shaking, but he didn't know whether through fear or cold.

A large door at the foot of the building opened and a pale red light filtered out. Zen stepped through into a short passage and walked into the lighthouse and looked up, feeling dizzy as his eyes traced the spiral staircase that wound around the wall to the buildings perched high above.

“What the
hell
is this place?” Verity asked, surprising Zen as she took hold of his hand and squeezed.

“You've hit the nail on the head. This is hell.”

“No, really, where are we?”

“This is Alice through a dark looking glass, Dorothy in the land of osmosis; this is where the crazy people come.”

Verity squeezed his hand tighter, as though afraid he would disappear. “I never imagined it would look like this. It's ... it's ...”

“Beautiful,” the albino man offered as he appeared from the shadows.

“I was going to say, ugly,” Verity said, taking an involuntary step back.

The albino man laughed. “One man's beauty is another man's depravity. But enough about the aesthetics of my world.” He sniffed the air and stared at Verity. “You’ve got the bouquet of death about you.”

Verity swallowed.

The albino turned his attention to Zen, his red eyes glowing like coals. “Melantha’s still alive so you’ve lost the bet. Now it's time to pay up.” He grinned salaciously and Zen sensed movement in the shadows, like carrion waiting to feast.

“Hold on,” Zen said. “I haven't had a chance yet.” He took a step back, pulling Verity with him. A cold wind blew down from on high, bringing with it the aroma of decay.

“How many
chances
do you want,” the albino man spat.

“It's not that easy.”

The albino man chuckled and plucked an assortment of sharp, wicked implements from the air. He proceeded to spin them magically around his hands so they made a soft whirring sound.

Zen felt a trickle of sweat roll down his forehead. “Wait. I need more time.” He looked at the blades and bit his lip.

“You can't be serious about wanting him to kill his mother,” Verity said.

“Deadly.” The albino man advanced, his long coattails flapping.

“What if I help him?” Verity asked.

The albino man stopped advancing; looked suspicious. “I can tell from your expression that you’re bewitched. You can’t do anything to help.”

“She can if she wants to live,” Leo said, appearing in the doorway. He wiped his brow beneath the rim of the trilby. “Melantha’s on her way and it’s a war she’s after.”

CHAPTER 20

Zen looked at Leo in surprise. “I thought you weren’t coming, and how did you find us?”

Leo shrugged. “There’s a doorway if you know where to look, the same doorway Melantha will use. Call me stupid, but I came to warn you.”

Zen took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket
and lit it. He needed the nicotine now more than ever. Overhead, something flew between rooms, something dark and sinister with papery wings. Zen shivered and turned to the albino. “So why did you let Melantha get away with this power?”

“We had no choice. We don’t police what happens here. But the Glamour casts a powerful spell, a dark seduction, and the only way to stop her is to kill her.”

“There must be another way,” Zen said.

“No.”

Zen didn't know what to say. He was still reeling from finding out his parents were not really his parents, and that his
real
mother was a megalomaniac, never mind that he had to kill her to stop her unleashing hell on earth. Things couldn't get any worse, surely.