Authors: Jonathan Wood
Kayla reels back as a kick catches her in the stomach. Another grazes her lips. Enough to draw blood. She catches the third blow but the monk twists away. She barely ducks the fourth.
“Say it!” Tabitha does grab Clyde by his collar.
“I think I could hack one.”
Tabitha and I exchange a genuine look of astonishment.
Kayla lands a blow. A monk staggers into another. She lands a kick. Then a monk has her leg and the dance begins again.
“Say again?” I say to Clyde.
“Well,” he says, “with Tabby’s laptop, the wireless stuff, I could perhaps... it’s a form of, erm, well in layman’s terms it’s sort of astral projection, spirit leaving the body sort of stuff. Never really tried it before. Read about it. Get my, you know, mind, soul, spirit thing out of the old flesh and bones—” he taps his chest “—and into the mask. Then I just overwrite what’s written there with my own personality, which, I have to concede is a little short on the ninja monk training. Probably obvious really. Good on French composers of the twenties to be certain, but again, a little lacking in ninjujitsu and so forth. So then, while that masked chappy has his posterior handed to him by Kayla, hopefully breaking the deadlock, I hoof it back to the old body thing and hope I haven’t made a really bad mistake.”
“Mistake?” I say. “What sort of mistake.”
Kayla goes down for a moment. Four savage punches later she’s on her feet but one side of her head is caked in blood.
“Oh.” Clyde shrugs. “You know, usual. Completely failing to overwrite the mask, and having the monk dump his personality into my body as well. Which is pretty much sayonara for me and throws another monk into the mix. Standard we-all-die-horribly sort of stuff.”
Kayla is against a wall. She looks tired. The monks don’t.
“Anybody able to come up with a better plan in the next ten seconds?” I count to five and then just abandon that one. “You want to go for this, Clyde?”
“Not particularly”
Kayla dances against the wall, blows chasing her.
Of course he doesn’t. Who would. “Can I—” I start.
“I’ll do it,” Clyde says. “Has to be me. Specialization and copper wiring and all that. Tabby,” he turns to her, “I don’t suppose you could pass me the laptop, and then catch me when I fall over?”
“I’ll catch the laptop,” she says.
With it in hand, Clyde pulls out two thin strips of copper from a pocket. He jams one in on either side of the battery. He sits cross-legged with it on his lap. “Once I start,” he says, “I can’t let go. Otherwise the circuit breaks, inter-reality friction, and kablammo for everyone.”
I remember the explosion that took apart the student in Cowley Road. “Duly noted,” I say
Clyde starts muttering, one incomprehensible word, then another. Then he grabs the strips and immediately keels over.
The four monks press Kayla harder. I can see her sword blows now. Slower. They’re wearing her down. Each time she slices with the blade a forearm, or a palm, or a calf, or heel strikes the flat of the blade knocking it off course. They constantly circle, two monks working high, raining down blows, while two strike low. She’s pinned in and she knows it. She tries to spin free but is forced to break into a series of parries and thrusts that the masked monks twist around.
Clyde’s body convulses, once, twice. I see Tabitha biting her lip.
Kayla jumps, a fist lands on the side of her head and she crashes down. She spins like a dancer. One monk jumps the kick, another, another.
The fourth monk falls.
He stands there staring dazedly at Kayla and then her legs smash into his. A jagged extra angle appears in his legs as the bone shatters. And then he falls, like someone pulled the plug from him. He crashes to the ground and her sword finds his throat as the mask rolls free.
The other three monks pause. And that’s all Kayla seems to need.
Suddenly her sword blade is through the mask of one, protruding from the back of his skull. The front of the wound spits sparks, the back blood.
The other two monks start moving, but Kayla is levering off the sword even as the speared man falls, arching up into the air. She catches her initial attacker with the same trick she first used, catching the mask behind her knees, crushing down. There is a splintering sound, a burst of electricity, and then the third monk goes limp.
The fourth and final monk leaps at Kayla as she lands on her knees. She whips her legs out from under her so fast I can hear the wind cracking behind them. Her feet go into the man’s chest, keep going. She lifts him over her head, rolling onto her back, pivoting on her shoulders as she grasps his hands, swinging him down to earth in a vast curve. And still she holds him as his face plows into the rock. She holds on, rising up, flying over him. She lands between his flailing legs. Steps onto his back. Puts a foot onto his spine. She pulls his arms hard. The joints pop loudly and the shoulders dislocate.
The monk lies insensible at Kayla’s feet, legs kicking. She flips him over, raises a foot, buries it in his face. The mask caves inward and he goes limp. Blood pools around his head.
“There,” she says, “that’s you in your feckin’ place.”
Still Clyde just lies there. A low babble emerges from him, like the muttering of a mad man. Tabitha and I kneel, looking at his twitching lips, the hands clenched spastically around the copper strips attached to the laptop. The muscles of his arms are convulsing slightly. Drool is beginning to trickle down his cheek.
It doesn’t look particularly good.
“Come on,” Tabitha says. She puts a hand in his hair. A tender gesture. Not Tabitha’s style at all. “Come on, Clyde,” she says again.
“What the feck’s up with him?” Kayla hasn’t approached, still stands over the collapsed body of the last monk.
Tabitha stands. “Don’t fucking start. I don’t give a shit what you can fucking do. I’ll fucking neuter you. You fucking understand? Not the time for your fucking shit right now.”
“Any time.” Kayla barely breathes the words, but Tabitha catches them all the same. She lunges.
I grab Tabitha’s arm, haul her back. She fights against me. “Not now,” I hiss. “Any time but now. Clyde needs help now.” Tabitha strains once more then gives up, goes to stalk away then kneels next to Clyde again.
“You,” I say to Kayla, then lose my nerve. “Just... Jesus.” I shake my head. “He saved your arse from getting kicked. All of our arses.”
“Not what I was feckin’ asking.” Kayla shrugs, stays where she is, stares at me, as if daring me to disagree. I’m not about to. Kayla genuinely pissed off seems even more homicidal than she does in her usual bad mood.
I turn my back on her, kneel down next to Tabitha and Clyde. He has the laptop on his chest, like a knight laid to rest still gripping his sword.
Tabitha looks at me. Underneath the make-up she looks small and scared. “I don’t know what to do,” she says.
I don’t either. “Maybe the sound of your voice,” I say It’s the best thing I can think of. Because if Clyde would come back for anything, I think, it would be Tabitha. “Maybe that could ground him.”
“Yes,” says a weak voice, “I think that would be lovely.”
We both stare down at Clyde. He has one eye half cracked. With a grunt he lets go of the copper strips. “Ow,” he says.
Tabitha lets out a very un-Tabitha-like squeal and bounces on her knees. She dips her head down for an instant as if about to plant a kiss on his forehead, or cheek, or... well, that’s when she seems to remember herself. She pulls up sharply, sneers at Clyde. “Gormless prat,” she says.
Clyde cracks a tired smile. “I missed you too,” he says.
She smiles at that. I think of Devon, look at the two of them, and think maybe it wouldn’t be such a downgrade after all if Clyde decided to make the trade.
“If he’s all feckin’ right,” Kayla says, “can we get moving, grab this book and get the feck out of here?”
“What?” I ask. I’m so elated I even find that I momentarily have the balls to ask, “This place giving you the creeps?”
“Feck off.”
Together Tabitha and I get Clyde to his feet. Tabitha reclaims her laptop.
“That seemed to work,” I say to him.
“More or less.”
“More or less?” That doesn’t sound as reassuring as maybe I’d like from a man who just violated the rules of pretty much all the sciences I can think of.
“Well,” Clyde shrugs, “I do seem inexplicably to know fifteen ways to kill you with my little finger now.”
“Bloody hell,” I say, as I try to grapple with the concept of someone with Kayla’s skills and Clyde’s disposition.
Clyde cracks a grin. “Having you on, I’m afraid. Absolutely fine, actually. Bugger of a headache, but that seems to be it on the side effects front. Plus...” He bends and lifts up the mask that rolled free from the first man to fall. It is the only one left still in one piece. “Now we have an extra copy of me.”
“Oh fan-fucking-tastic,” says Tabitha, but she’s still smiling.
Using the straps of the thing, Clyde slips the mask up his arm until it’s on his shoulder. “Armor,” he says. “Never know when I’m going to get smacked on the shoulder. Could happen at any instant.” He’s grinning like a fool.
“So, you’re telling us,” I say, “that your copy is even thicker-headed than you.”
Clyde thinks about that one. “Hmm,” he says. “Yes. Bugger.”
“I’m not waiting another feckin’ moment.” Kayla stalks off toward a tunnel.
Clyde looks at her, shrugs at us, and then scampers after her. Tabitha and I follow in their wake.
Whoever carved this place seemed to think the monks would be enough to deter most people, and we don’t have far to go before we hit the main chamber of the temple. If anything, it’s even more cavernous than the one the monks were in. The sense of grandeur is different, though. The architects dialed down the pomp, and turned the sinister up to eleven. The light that filters down from the fissures in the ceiling is thin, weak, as if reluctant to enter. I kind of regret teasing Kayla about the place giving her the creeps.
But the book is there. It stands on a plinth that rises from a circular platform in the center of the room. No moss grows there; no water has collected. Even the light seems thinner there. It is as if there is a slight pressure emanating from the center of the room, from the book itself, a subtle throbbing in the air. Clyde rubs his temples.
“Goes right down my wires, that does,” he says and shudders.
“That’s our book, for definite?” I ask.
“No,” Tabitha says. “Planted a book so powerful it disturbs the bloody ether as a distraction. Dumbarse.”
Nothing has changed in Tabitha’s disposition, but I think I’m beginning to understand how she works a little bit more. That insult almost sounded like a form of endearment.
The four of us approach the plinth. I feel the resistance in the air and have to push harder with my feet to step up onto the circular platform—a small stage in the round.
For a moment it seems as if the walls around us fluctuate. There is a rustling from a dangling clump of ivy, a cracking sound from the thick roots. Then nothing. Just silence. Just stillness.
“Well,” I say, “at least that wasn’t creepy.”
“Just take it,” Tabitha says.
I reach out a hand. The book has a cover so black it could be a tear in reality. The spine is exposed. Age-stained pages sprout rotted twists of thread. The thing is over four inches thick. My hand pauses, shaking. The book is pushing back, pushing against me.
“How sure are we that this isn’t a horrible trap?” I ask.
“About as sure as we were that those four guys were statues,” Tabitha supplies.
“Excellent.” I nod.
“Oh, I’ll take the feckin’ thing.” Kayla reaches for it.
“Wait,” I say. I catch her eye. And it’s... well...
She is not what I think.
Or... Just... What if she’s not? What if she’s not? I can’t take that risk. I can’t let her touch this book.
“No,” I say, with a certain amount of force.
She rolls her eyes and goes to take the book. I reach out and snatch the book, grabbing it off the plinth, from under her fingers.
She looks at me. She could have beaten me if she wanted. It’s in her expression. She’s indulging me.
“Children,” Tabitha starts.
And then something starts to hum. A building whine that sounds like—
“Tell me that doesn’t sound like a generator,” Tabitha says. “Tell me.”
But it does.
Sparks suddenly arc across the floor, blue light sputtering from puddle to puddle. They crackle and spit. And then the walls start to rumble. A deep, thundering bass that starts in my gut long before it makes it to my ears. The noise builds though, layers upon layers of sound—stone grinding on stone, water splashing, roots rustling and cracking. The noise builds and then it’s not just the noise that is making me shake, but the very floor of the place quivers like a live thing. Clyde drops to one knee.
I look down at the book. And I really did like it when magic was something cool, when it was something Egg Shen chucked at Lo Pan in
Big Trouble in Little China,
and not something that tried to pound on me like a meat tenderizer.
The shaking intensifies. I have to grab hold of the plinth with one hand, the other clutching the book to my chest. Clyde and Tabitha are on all fours. Only Kayla stands free, seems to ride the shivering floor like a surfer navigating rough seas.
And then silence. Absolute stillness. Nothing. We all stand perfectly still.
“Maybe it’s broken.” Clyde speaks into the settling dust. “An old mechanism. The whole place is old. Maybe it just stopped.”
“Do you really believe that?” I ask. And I rather hope he does.
“Not at all.” Clyde looks miserable.
And it’s at that point the stone plinth whips around like a spring sapling and hits me.
I stagger back. The plinth rears up like a snake. Then the broad flat top plunges into my midriff lifting me off the ground and slamming me off the platform and onto the ground.
The floor beneath me bucks like a bronco. I roll, head over heel, over arse and elbow. My head smacks into the floor. Then the floor smacks me back. A flagstone rises from the floor, catches me on the edge of my jaw. I sprawl back, fight for my feet, but there is no solid ground to gain purchase on.