The Blood Line (4 page)

CHAPTER two

Somewhere in Mu

The future: date unknown

T
he sight before him was just one more thing to add to the long list which had convinced Sam Hain that the Riven needed to be stopped. Sam stared miserably at the ruins of a small village. The place was deserted. Not even a single bird perched atop the wreckage. The aura of the twisted presence which had caused this was too fresh. It leeched from the remains of the village like a bad smell. The timbers still smoked and the odd flame flickered here and there. This was not the first time that Sam had seen such destruction caused by the Riven. The smouldering ruins reminded him of his own home where he had lived his whole life with his grandfather, Adam Hain, before the Riven had come to kill Sam, attracted by his own potential for presence, setting into motion a chain of events which now found him lost and alone in the distant future in a land known as Mu.

Here, far from the normality of Sam’s old life Allende, the Riven King, ruled with an iron fist. He was capable of incredible telekinetic power and possessed a cruelty which was surely born out of madness. As well as sending out his black-cloaked Riven followers to track down and either recruit or kill those with presence he also sent them to collect taxes from the down-trodden and impoverished people of Mu. Sometimes, if the taxes were not sufficient to please the Riven, the village was made an example of. Sometimes they just killed anyway.

Sam studied the sky for a moment. It would be getting dark soon. He would have to shelter here. The lingering evil presence made him shudder but he would not find anywhere else before nightfall and the grassy plains of Mu were not a good place to be after dark. The danger was ever present but once the sun had set strange beasts stalked the land.

At the edge of the village he found a large barn which, standing apart from the other buildings, had not been touched by the flames. Inside he found it had a high loft which looked like a sort of balcony at one end, accessible via a tall sturdy ladder. Praising his luck he climbed up to find a good quantity of hay. He pulled the ladder up after him, tucked himself down in the hay and settled down to wait for the dawn.

The barn, already dim, darkened further as night fell and the sun’s light, which had sent golden, pink and then red lines across the floor through the cracks in the wooden planks of the walls, withdrew completely. Sam found one gap in the wood near him which was large enough for him to squint through and get a pretty good view of the world beyond the village. He looked out onto the grassy plains of Mu and distant mountains. Sam watched colour withdraw from the land.

Sam wanted desperately to sleep but he hadn’t been able to switch off his brain since he had left Kya and Weewalk. He couldn’t be sure exactly how long ago that had been. It might have been three weeks ago. It might have been more. But those weeks had felt like the longest of his life. Sleep, whenever it did come, had been fitful and full of nightmares. He reckoned he never slept for more than an hour or two before waking in a cold sweat.

In some ways he supposed it was to be expected. After all he had very recently had to deal with some terrible information. The knowledge that he was capable of using a telekinetic force called presence was difficult enough to wrap his head around but he had then taken a long journey to save a man called Tarak, who had turned out to be Kya’s father and a man whom Sam now considered to be an enemy, or at least not an ally. He was dangerous. Along the way Sam had watched his parents die after he had taken a line, one of the weird doorways which crossed time and space, to a night in the past when Sam was a baby. He had seen a powerful member of the Riven, Ferus, try to kill him in the apparently mistaken belief that Sam was in some way special. Ferus had tried to kill Sam because of a lie which Tarak had publicised about Sam’s potential and Sam’s parents had been killed in the process. All because Tarak had gambled that Ferus would destroy himself by attacking Sam. Sam had been a pawn in a game he hadn’t even known he was playing and even now did not fully understand. And in the madness that had ensued Sam had learned the most terrible truth of all. The world that he knew, that he had grown up in, was doomed to be torn apart. It was like Sam had seen the evidence of the end of the era of the dinosaurs but this time he was T-Rex. Mu, the world in which he now shivered in a barn would, in some unknowable number of years, be the product. And this world was horrible. The Riven King had ensured that. Sam had heard whispers of other lands, across strange seas. Perhaps these other places would be different. Perhaps they were not under the terrible rule of the mad King. But nobody seemed to know much, it was all rumour. Perhaps, if he kept moving, Sam would eventually find out.

It was a lot to deal with. And with the trauma of it all Sam seemed to be losing his presence, the one thing which kept him safe in this cursed world. It came in fits and starts. Sometimes it worked fine and Sam felt strong and powerful, but more often than not he felt weak and fuzzy, like his head was full of cotton wool. He went for long periods where he couldn’t think clearly and he hadn’t been able to find his way to a line of any sort, let alone one back to his own world. He hoped it was just a symptom of him not having enough sleep. He was also not getting enough food or water.  It was no wonder he was not feeling well. He had become even skinnier and his untidy brown hair was even messier.

After perhaps an hour of tossing and turning in the hay Sam sat up again and put his eye to the thin crack between the boards. It was dark now. The night was cloudless and the moon, somewhere out of sight, gave the long grass that covered the rolling hills a silvery shimmery quality. The plains were featureless, unbroken as far as his eye could see. Then, suddenly, movement caught his attention in the far distance. Great humped shapes which he hadn’t seen at first emerged from a small fold in the landscape, moving on top of a low rise. They were quite some way away and Sam could see little detail through the narrow crack. Half a dozen shapes lumbered slowly into view, following each other in a line like a family of elephants might. Sam held his breath even though, whatever they were, were far away and had no chance of realising he was there. The last in the line, the smallest, seemed to stop and stretch a long neck and small head towards the sky for a moment, before moving on again. There was a sudden puff of flame and in the strobe of light Sam saw then that the beasts were followed by other much smaller shapes scurrying around their feet. Within a few moments the strange group had shifted out of sight and Sam let out the breath he was holding. No doubt about it, Mu was not a place to spend the night outdoors.

With the appearance of the lines such strangeness had occasionally been able to find its way back into what Sam thought of as the real world, his own world, although in truth the worlds were one and the same place, merely separated by unknowable years. Sam had learned that countless unexplained phenomena, strange beasts and paranormal events were simply a product of these other-worldly visitors finding their way back in time. In his rucksack he still kept his grandfather’s journal which detailed many of them. Sam’s world was full of mystery, myth, legend and conspiracy theory. Now he knew that many of these stories had an element of truth. Sam lay down again and eventually managed to fall asleep.

He woke suddenly. It took a moment to remember where he was. The barn seemed darker than before. Perhaps the moon had set whilst he had slept, yet still a little light filtered in. He lay still for a moment, letting whatever had been hammering in his head during sleep ebb away. It was as though the inside of his brain had been shouting at itself and the echoes still sounded, although indistinct and unintelligible. Then, there came a noise from below the loft.

Sam froze, his whole body tensing. His breath suddenly held in his nose. Very carefully and slowly he moved to the edge of the balcony, very grateful that he had had the foresight to pull the ladder up with him. He slowly and silently moved to where he could look down into the barn. There, with its eyes fixed on him, sat a garoul, one of the deadly man-wolf like beasts which had entered Sam’s world as the legend of the werewolf. It was staring directly at him, sitting to attention. Its eyes reflected a little of the light. It didn’t move, or make a sound; it just stared right at Sam.

Sam slid quickly back into the loft, away from the edge. He had fought the garoul before. But never alone and never when he couldn’t rely on being able to use his power of presence. How high could they jump? Was it about to land up here with him?

He would have to try presence to see if he could scare it off. He took a deep breath and moved quickly back to the edge, ready to blast it. But the ground below was empty. There was nothing there. Sam looked about, checking and double-checking the darker corners of the barn. He was alone. He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes, stifling a small sob. Had it even been there? He was so tired. He couldn’t tell when he was awake or asleep. Maybe it was just paranoia. He looked again, cautiously. There was no sign that anything had been there.

Sam slept no further that night. When the first blush of day began to light the cracks in the barn Sam cautiously and quietly replaced the ladder and climbed down. He crept from the barn like a hunting cat but there was no sign of trouble. He slunk past a set of freshly dug graves he had not noticed the night before, the bodies of those who had displeased the visiting Riven. Getting his bearings he set off once again across the plains.

CHAPTER THREE

Pennsylvania, USA

Sometime around the end of the 20
th
Century

A
llende. That was how he thought of himself now. He often couldn’t remember his original name. But they had used to call him Bub. Many years ago when he was just an ordinary man. Yes, he still liked that name. He had tried to cultivate new nicknames when he had come here after the accident, the experiment that had gone wrong. He had tried other devil references. But nobody at the secret American base known as Site R had adopted them. That was a long time ago and now they had moved on or died and had forgotten about him down here. He seldom saw anyone down in the dark tunnels and no-one ever saw him.

Site R was now his home and he rarely left it. Why would he want to go anywhere else? This was where they had bought the chair,
his
chair, after the experiment which had awakened his telekinetic power. They had called the experiment a disaster, a tragedy. It had all been hushed up. But how could it be thought of as wrong when he had gained the power he had? And he was getting stronger. He hadn’t told them that back when they had still come to see him. But the chair,
his throne
as he sometimes thought of it, was making him still stronger and he sat in it as often as he could.

The chair, something which had apparently been made at the same time as the equipment which had caused the USS Eldridge to be transported to another place, was hidden away in a room deep underground and, just like Allende, it seemed to have been forgotten about. Site R was more properly known as the Raven Rock Complex. It was a kind of underground Pentagon, one of the places where the US Government could scurry to like rats should anyone ever press the nuclear button. Impenetrable. Eternal.

And here Allende was finally becoming something, someone important, like the hero he had always wanted to be. The chair made him feel strong and seemed to be keeping him young. He had outlived everyone else in the experiment. Hidden away in the depths of the mountain he could feel that he was developing into something more. Superhuman. How long had he been here now? He couldn’t remember, his mind was often a bit cloudy in some ways even as it was frighteningly clear in others. But the power, the beautiful telekinetic power, was growing and he didn’t look any older than when he had first come here in the early 50s.

One day. One day he would take the whole building for himself and rule from here. He had once been creeping along the corridors when he had heard that something had happened above ground. Some big terrorist attack. The Vice-President had come to hide away and Allende had seen him from his hiding place, strutting around like he owned the place. When Allende had that kind of power, that kind of authority, he wouldn’t hide. He would use the strange doorways he now knew about, the lines, to travel to the ends of the earth and the far reaches of time. He’d go back to the very beginning when men feared gods and demons and set up a chain of events which would give him even more power. He’d create the possibility of it all, his own country, no, a whole world where people like him were noticed, admired, even feared. One day, when he had absorbed enough of the chair’s power, he might even destroy it so that no-one would ever be able to compare to him. One day he would bring the world to its knees around him. He would make it look like an accident, something unstoppable, so no-one would think to travel through the lines to change it. He would start a new world, right here. With him at the head. As President. No, as a King. But not yet, not for a long time, not while he had so much still to gain from his beloved Raven Rock Complex throne.