“Grubbs! We can still…”
The rest of Beranabus’s words are lost to me. Lord Loss is right. We’re finished. There’s no way through. Everyone I knew — dead. Everyone I know who hasn’t already fallen to the Demonata — soon to be dead. And everybody else, the billions of men, women and children spread across the world, whom I’d never have known, even if I’d lived a thousand lifetimes — they’ll all die too.
I sink to my knees, the enormity of the moment overwhelming me. Beranabus grabs my right shoulder with one hand – still holding the wailing, thrashing Kernel with the other – and tries jerking me back to my feet. But I stay where I am, tears flowing, dread consuming me, hoping Lord Loss doesn’t drag the torment out too long, praying for him to take pity on me and kill me quickly.
I rock back and forth, moaning, glancing around, seeing demons in the throes of celebration, corpses of soldiers and Disciples being passed around like canapés at a party. Their howls, grunts and chattering start to sound like music to my ears or the chanting of a long, complicated spell. Then I realise — the sound isn’t of demonic origin. It’s coming from somewhere else… from the rocks beneath me.
I look down, expecting some new torment of Lord Loss’s. Instead I find the face of the girl – Bec – bulging out of the rock, eyes open, lips moving swiftly. Beranabus sees it too. His fingers go limp on my shoulder as he stares at the face, lost for words, forgetting all about the demons and our foolish quest.
“What’s this?” Lord Loss frowns. “Little Bec, present and alert after all these centuries? Impossible. How can her soul have…?” He smiles. “No matter. She is powerful, Beranabus, even more than you or Grubitsch. But she cannot save you. Trapped in the rocks, she can only mourn your sad passing.”
The girl speaks quicker than ever, her lips a blur. I feel the magic inside me pulse in time with her chanting. I can’t understand her, but the magic does and it swirls around inside me, excited, trying to reach out to her. Since I’ve nothing to lose, I let it have its way. I step back mentally and let the magic and the girl communicate freely. As the pair link in some unknowable way, I feel my own lips moving, the girl’s words becoming mine, like when I was relaying her previous outburst to Beranabus in his cave.
“Come now,” Lord Loss says, descending gracefully, signalling to the demons around us. “Enough of this childishness. Surrender, Grubitsch, and I will go easy on you. Well… easier than I planned to.”
“We’ll never surrender!” Beranabus roars, coming alive again, releasing me and Kernel, bringing up his hands to engage the demon master in battle.
“Take him,” Lord Loss says, yawning mockingly. The nearest demons howl and hurl themselves at the magician — then strike against an invisible boundary and bounce back off it.
“Impressive,” Lord Loss murmurs. “But how long do you think you can sustain such a barrier, old man?”
“This isn’t my work,” Beranabus says, staring at me uncertainly. The girl’s hands have formed now and stick stiffly out of the ground, grey and rocky. I take them, my fingers large and chunky in comparison to hers. We continue to babble, her, me and the magic.
Kernel screams as maggots chew their way deeper into his brain. He jerks aside wildly and the demons eagerly grab for him, but he rebounds against the barrier and is hurled to the ground, landing by my knees. Beranabus stoops and puts his fingers to the boy’s forehead. Magic flares. Maggots fall out of Kernel’s bleeding sockets and shrivel, dead before they hit the ground. Kernel moans and slumps unconscious.
Beranabus faces me, features alive with hope. “Let’s go!” He grasps my elbow. “If you can maintain this barrier, they can’t stop us getting into the cave. We–”
My head whips towards him and the girl barks something, using my lips. I don’t know what she says, but it brings a groan of desperation from Beranabus. “No! You can’t tell me that. Not now. Not after all this. Not when we’re so close.”
I’ve no time to ponder his words. My eyes refocus on the girl’s and lock on her peculiar stony pupils. We’re speaking faster, louder, a fierce magical energy building around us, causing all the hairs on my body to stand up, then burn down to their roots. My clothes also burn away. So do Beranabus’s and Kernel’s. Within seconds we’re naked and hairless, and still the energy builds.
Lord Loss senses danger. “Get them!” he bellows. “Destroy that barrier! Kill them all!”
The demons scurry to obey, but their efforts are wasted. The barrier repels them casually. The harder they throw themselves against it, the harder they rebound. Bolts of magic are returned with interest, tearing apart those who fired them. They try to claw it to pieces, rip it apart with their teeth, burrow underneath to attack from within the earth, all to no avail.
The energy is unbearable. It goes beyond all my notions of normal heat. I think this is what it would be like to hover within the heart of the sun. The rock is melting around the girl’s face, but she remains, more of her form becoming visible as the stone recedes.
Screams of panic. With an effort I raise my head. The demons are staring at the sky, horrified and bewildered. Looking up, I see something incomprehensible. The sky is pulsing. It’s like looking at the underside of a trampoline while somebody leaps up and down on top. In the centre, a funnel has formed, as if the universe is being pulled towards one point. As I watch, it throbs low, then pulls up high… low/high… low/high. And it might be my imagination, but it seems as if the tip of the funnel hangs directly over me, Kernel, Beranabus and the ghost girl, Bec.
Lights flicker across the distorted sky. Clouds burst into flame. The tip of the funnel pushes lower and lower, ever closer to us. The demons scatter, screeching and keening. Stuff like this happens every day in their own universe. They aren’t bothered by magical madness there. But they didn’t expect it in this universe of order and sanity. They don’t know what it means or how to respond.
“This will not save you!” Lord Loss shouts none too convincingly. “Stay, you scum!” he roars at the fleeing demons. “Fight! We can break through this barrier and kill them. You must not…”
I tune him out. My lips are my own again during a brief pause in the spell. “What’s happening?” I wheeze, directing the question at Beranabus. But he can only shake his head and stare at Bec and me. Then the spell starts again and I can’t ask any more questions. My lips are Bec’s. My magic and her magic — one. Our minds join. I get flashes of her life — a simple farming society, demons, a quest, warriors, a magician, closing the tunnel between worlds, sacrificing herself, trapped in a cave, her spirit somehow separating from her body, dying but not moving on, imprisoned, no way out, haunting the centuries, unable to escape the rocky confines of the cave.
Then I’m inside somebody else’s head. I see a small, modern village, thousands of patches of light in the sky around me, a baby that looks oddly familiar, a young punk who… no, surely that’s not Dervish! Yes, it is, a young and spiky-haired Dervish Grady, fighting alongside Shark, Sharmila, Beranabus, a dark-skinned man and…
Kernel sits up and groans. He shakes his head groggily. His empty sockets turn left and right as if he’s looking for something. They fix sightlessly on Bec and me. Trembling, moaning with pain, he reaches over and lays his hands on top of mine. My magic shoots out to him, then blasts back stronger than ever, drawing power from the blind teenager. His lips move along with mine and Bec’s, his magic mingling with ours.
Our voices rise. The sky turns black, red, white. Rocks are ripping out of the ground, shooting upwards, burning, turning into birds, cows, cars, people, then back into rocks. Now everything’s rising, the ruins of trees and buildings, corpses, the demons. Gravity loses its grip. Lord Loss tries clinging to the invisible barrier around us, but is ripped away and up. He hurls vile curses at us as he shoots off.
The world is coming apart. Everything’s being destroyed. I’m afraid now, even more than when I thought