Property of a Lady Faire (A Secret Histories Novel) (34 page)

“Why didn’t they come after us?” said Molly, hugging herself tightly to try to stop shaking from the cold. “Not that I’m complaining, you understand . . .”

“Maybe they’re not equipped to survive in the wild,” I said. “Or maybe their orders didn’t cover leaving the train.”

“Maybe they know something about this place that we don’t,” said Molly darkly.

“Wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” I said, looking around. “Desolate bloody location.”

“I’ll bet there are wolves,” said Molly.

The more I looked, the more appallingly empty and deserted the snowy landscape seemed. Like a desert, covered with the perfect disguise. No trees or shrubs anywhere, no landmarks, nothing that stood out against the gently rising and falling snow, stretching off in all directions as far as I could see. And I could see pretty damned far through my mask. The sky was perfectly clear, just a pale blue, pale grey, cloudless cover. The sunlight was fierce and unrelenting, but gave no warmth at all. I could see Molly trying to summon her protections, to keep out the cold, but they were little more than a faint shimmer in the air around her. I considered armouring down, to join her, and then quickly pushed the thought aside. One of us had to be properly insulated from this appalling environment if we were to keep moving.

“How long do the days last up here?” Molly said suddenly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not like my armour comes with built-in Google. Or even a compass. Since we’re in Siberia . . . that means we’re inside the Arctic Circle. Daylight could last for ages. Or, the sun could just go down and not come up again for weeks. I suggest we think positive, and get a move on.”

Molly started to say something, and then stopped. Her head snapped around, to stare out across the snowy wastes. We both stood very still, and listened. And from off in the distance came the howling of wolves. A whole lot of wolves.

“Told you,” said Molly.

“What the hell are wolves doing all the way out here, in this wilderness?” I said.

“Looking for food, probably,” said Molly. “Let them come. I am so cold I’m fully prepared to rip the fur right off a wolf and wrap myself up in it.”

I stared off in the direction of the Gateway, concentrating my Sight through my mask. I could feel the presence of the Gate stronger than ever, peering back at me. And suddenly I could See it—a great light, fierce and brilliant, blasting up into the sky like a spotlight, right on the edge of the far horizon. Like a beacon, calling us on.

“We’re a lot closer to the Gate than I thought,” I said. “Easy walking distance. Can you See it?”

Molly looked where I was pointing, and then scowled and shook her head. “My magics are all but flatlined. I used them all up, fighting on the train. I can’t even feel the Gate’s presence any more. Though that’s no great loss. Made my skin crawl. Let’s get moving, Eddie. I am freezing my tits off just standing here.”

“How much longer will what’s left of your protections last?” I said carefully.

“Long enough. Let’s go!”

I thought about Ultima Thule, the winter of the world, on the other side of the Gateway, where the conditions were bound to be so much worse . . . but I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t be saying anything Molly didn’t already know.

• • •

We started off through the thick snow. I went first, slamming through the snow with my armour, sending it flying to either side. I ended up blasting out a trench for Molly to trudge along in, behind me. It saved time, and made life easier for her. The sheer weight of the packed snow fought against me, but it was no match for my armour. Molly slogged along, not complaining at all, which worried me. That wasn’t like her. When I finally glanced back over my shoulder, there wasn’t a trace of her protections showing. She was shivering and shuddering, arms folded tightly to preserve what warmth she had, her mouth clamped shut to keep her teeth from chattering. Her breath leaked out in short bursts, steaming on the cold air, and there wasn’t a trace of colour left in her face.

“I’ve been thinking about the blood-red men,” I said, to try to keep her mind off things. “The way they all looked the same, moved the same . . . I think they were clones.”

“Could be homunculi,” said Molly, forcing the words out past her pale lips. Even half frozen, she still had to be contrary.

“No one makes those any more,” I said. “Too time-consuming, too expensive, and you just can’t get the proper ingredients these days. But it seems like everyone’s into cloning now. I blame Dolly the sheep. She made it look easy, even though it wasn’t. Why clone a sheep, anyway? It’s not like there’s a shortage . . . Why not clone a giant panda, or something else we’re in danger of losing?”

“If you’re trying to keep up a cheerful chatter to take my mind off the desperate situation you landed us in, please stop,” said Molly. “As for the blood-red men, I’m sure I sensed some kind of outside control, back on the train. A single will, working through all the blood-red men at once. Which could mean we have a single enemy after us.”

“I suppose that helps,” I said, smashing through a tall snowbank with one sweep of my golden arm. Small pieces of snow pattered down all around. “A single enemy, who can command a murderous army of things that don’t know how to die. I don’t suppose you have any idea who that might be?”

“Someone who wants the Lazarus Stone,” said Molly. “Damn, my hands are screaming at me . . . Whoever it was, they’re responsible for killing the Regent and his people. No wonder the place was such a mess. A whole army of unstoppable, inhumanly strong killers . . . The poor bastards at Uncanny never stood a chance.”

“Not after a traitor opened the door for them,” I said. “Somebody planned all this . . . Almost certainly the Voice who took my parents. But who? Why?”

“There you go again,” Molly said grimly. “Asking questions you know I don’t have any answers for. Once upon a time, when it came to enemies with good reason to want us dead, I could have provided you with a really long list . . . But it seems to me that we wiped most of them out, these last few years.”

“We have been busy,” I said, checking the distance still to go, to the Gateway. The bright pulsing pillar of light on the horizon didn’t seem any closer. “Seems to me the only way to identify our enemy is to discover as much as we can about the Lazarus Stone. That’s the driving force behind everything that’s happening. We need to know what it really is, what it really does . . . And maybe that will tell us why the Voice wants it so badly.”

“A Stone that can snatch people out of Time, before History says they’re dead,” said Molly. Her voice was growing quieter, the words less distinct as her lips grew numb. “If you could do that, Eddie, if you could save someone, who would you choose?”

“My uncle James,” I said immediately. “He was like a father to me for so many years, after my parents disappeared. He did so much for me, and did his best to protect me from the worst sides of my family.”

“He would have killed you, at the end,” said Molly. “We had to kill him.”

“I know,” I said. “He had to die. For the family to survive. But I do miss him. How about you, Molly? Who would you bring back?”

Before she could answer, we were interrupted. A great pack of wolves came running across the snow towards us. They moved at incredible speed, seeming to barely touch the surface of the snow. As though their sheer speed kept them from sinking in. Huge animals, twice the size of the average dog, long and lean with pale grey fur and mouths dropped open to reveal large, jagged teeth. They ran in silence, dozens of them, in perfect formation. Their eyes glowed red, fixed on Molly and me.

The pack split suddenly in two as it drew nearer, the wolves swinging out and around us, closing in from all sides, until they were running in a great circle around us. Molly and I moved to stand back to back. The wolves kept moving, speeding across the snow, endlessly circling. Watching us with unblinking crimson eyes, searching for some sign of weakness.

“They look . . . hungry,” I said.

“Much as I hate to admit it,” said Molly, “I am seriously low on magic, and running on fumes. I have a few useful items about my person, but that’s pretty much it. And there are an awful lot of them . . .”

“Maybe if I kill a few, the others will get the message and leave us alone,” I said.

“Worth a try,” said Molly.

“Okay,” I said. “Leave this to me . . .”

“Hell with that!” Molly said immediately. “I can handle a few wolves!”

“Wouldn’t doubt it for a minute,” I said. “But it’s not just a few wolves. And you need to hang on to your remaining magics. Never know when you might need them.”

I was thinking of Ultima Thule, and I knew she was too. When she spoke again, her voice was worryingly quiet.

“It’s nice you’re still assuming we’ll both get that far, Eddie. But those are really big, really vicious-looking wolves, and you’re the only one with armour. I’m not feeling as . . . dangerous as I usually do. I’m just . . . tired.”

I’d never heard her say that before. Never heard her sound like that before. A chill ran down my spine.

“It’s just the cold getting to you,” I said. “Stay put, while I go teach these wolves a few manners.”

I charged forward through the packed snow, sending it flying in all directions. Every single wolf stopped dead in its tracks to look at me, but I was bearing down on the nearest wolf before it had time to do more than bare its nasty teeth at me. I grabbed it by the tail, jerked it up off the ground, and swung it round and round my head. It howled miserably as I put some muscle into it, until it was just a grey blur on the air. And then I let go of the tail, and the wolf flew off into the distance. It travelled quite a way before it finally crashed back to earth, burying itself in the snow. All the other wolves turned their heads to watch it fly and land and not move again, and then they all turned their shaggy grey heads back to look at me. They held themselves perfectly still, as though communing on some deep level, and then they all moved purposefully forward, heading straight for me.

“Now, you see?” I said, my voice hard and flat on the quiet. “Any rational creature would have taken the hint. It’s no wonder you guys are nearly extinct.”

Half a dozen wolves surged forward, crossing the intervening snow with incredible speed. I stood my ground, waiting. They all hit me at once, each going for a different target. Their jaws snapped closed on arms and wrists, legs and groin, and one went straight for my throat. Their teeth clattered harmlessly against my armour, and they all fell back, yelping in a hurt and confused sort of way. I smashed their skulls, one at a time in swift succession, with brutal efficiency. I wasn’t in the mood to mess around. Molly needed me.

More wolves hit me, from behind this time, scrambling all over me as they tried to force a way through my armour with their teeth and claws. I grabbed them, one at a time, snapped their necks, and threw the limp bodies away from me. Dead wolves lay broken in the snow all around. And still the rest of the pack held their ground, watching me with cold, implacable crimson eyes.

Two wolves shot in from the side, ignoring me and going straight for Molly. She threw something at them. There was a sudden explosion, and both wolves were blown apart. Bits of bloody meat and smouldering fur rained down across the snow, staining it in ugly scarlet Rorschach blots. Molly grinned at me.

“Incendiaries are our friends. Never leave home without them.”

The wolf pack fell back on two sides, presenting us with an opening in the circle, a way out. I went back to Molly and offered her my hand, pulling her up out of the trench I’d made. I led the way slowly forward, heading for the opening, looking quickly back and forth, ready for any movement by the wolves. Molly trudged along through the snow, sticking close to me. The wolves let us pass, but we’d hardly made a dozen paces beyond the circle before they came stalking after us. Moving slowly, silently, maintaining a respectful distance but still following.

“They’re not giving up,” I said quietly to Molly. “Why aren’t they giving up?”

“Why do you keep asking me questions you know I don’t know the answers to?” said Molly.

“Just to annoy you,” I said.

“Then it’s working. They must be really hungry . . . Wait a minute—can you feel something?”

“Like what?”

“Hold up a moment.”

We both stopped and looked around us. I couldn’t see a damned thing anywhere in the whole snowy landscape, apart from the wolves behind us and the Gateway up ahead. But the wolves all had their heads up, looking nervously about them, ignoring Molly and me. They looked disturbed, and frightened, making darting little runs this way and that, as though not sure where to go for the best.

“Come on, you have to feel that!” said Molly. “Vibrations, deep in the ground, under the snow.”

“Yes . . . ,” I said. “Like an underground train . . . But there’s no subway system all the way out here. Is there?”

“There you go with the questions again,” said Molly. “The vibrations are getting stronger! Whatever’s down below, it must be pretty damned big. And heading straight for us.”

“You know,” I said, “for a deserted Siberian tundra, there’s a hell of a lot going on here.”

The ground exploded before us, snow and earth and rocks blasting up into the air and falling back again. The wolves scattered and ran, as something huge and nasty burst up out of the broken earth to tower over us. Twenty feet tall and still rising, covered in dark brown scales, a living column four to five feet in diameter, a terrible creature from the depths of the earth, still rising up and up into the air before us. The great blunt head unfolded suddenly, blossoming like some fleshy flower, revealing flapping pink petals of dark-veined flesh, surrounding great circular jaws packed with teeth, swirling round and round like a meat grinder.

The creature made an insanely loud sound, like some awful factory siren in Hell. The thing had no eyes, or any other sensory organs, but it was obvious it could sense its prey. The great flowering head slammed down, the body bending in an arch, and the grinding teeth fell upon a running wolf, picking it off with flawless accuracy. The creature snapped up the wolf and swallowed it whole as it straightened up again, leaving just a few spatters of blood on the snow where the wolf had been, its paw-prints just suddenly stopping.