Engines of the Apocalypse

are creatures of refinement, and the pain we shall inflict upon you will be exquisite. Think of it, child — as the darkness comes and the screams of your race echo across the land, we shall thrive.'

'Not if I can help it…'

Kali roared and leaped for Redigor, unsheathing her gutting knife as she did, but her hand was caught in a vice-like grip and Redigor's eyes stared down at her, wide and wild.

'What is it you are trying to do?' He said, almost compassionately.

'You said it yourself, Redigor,' Kali gasped as she twisted in his grip. 'There's an order to these things and you've had your turn. The Ur'Raney don't belong here any more.'

'And you intend to stop me how? By scratching me with your knife?'

'I'll stop you, you bastard.'

Redigor released his grip, but Kali found herself frozen before him. The Pale Lord gazed at the pillar of souls and took a deep, satisfied breath. 'This isn't a time for weapons, child, this is a time for celebration. Dance for me.'

'What?'

'Dance for me!'

Kali didn't do dance, she didn't like dance, she didn't understand dance, but she danced. Danced for the Pale Lord. Spasming and twitching at first, trying to resist, her feet began to tap the floor, and then she began to spin, moving away from the Pale Lord, down the aisle, her body whipping around again, and as much as she wanted to, she couldn't stop — couldn't stop, didn't stop, until she reached the far end of the Chapel of Screams. She slammed into the wall beneath Slowhand with numbing force and, her dance done, slumped to the floor.

'Did you really think you would be able to make a difference?' Redigor asked.

Kali shook her head and wiped a slick of blood from her face. She realised it was dripping on her from the archer suspended helplessly above her. Oh gods, Slowhand, she thought as her head spun. What was it she had gotten her lover into? What had she gotten them all into?

Kali struggled to rise, staggered, retched, intending to go for the Pale Lord again. It was only as she began to weave between the tombs that a whisper from the helpless Slowhand halted her in her tracks.

'No, Hooper… no, it's too late…'

Kali turned to look up at him, but focused again on the pillar of souls spearing the Chapel roof. It was impossible from where she stood to see the top, but she didn't need to see Kerberos to know that it had at last been reached. The pillar of souls suddenly pulsed brightly, its helpless captives rushing up, and a second later pulsed again, this time downwards. The pillar of souls darkened as if flooded by a rush of arterial blood. Not so dark that Kali couldn't see what was within, though, and she drew back as the base of the pillar struggled to contain a miasmic wave of grasping, clutching, spectral forms, tearing at their own and screaming so loudly it seemed to pierce the very fabric of her ears.

One triumphant cry could be heard above the screaming; Redigor, his hands held high.

'They come!' He declared, laughing. 'They come!'

Chapter Seventeen

Kali had wondered how exactly the final exchange might take place — how Redigor's delivery of the Ur'Raney back to Twilight would occur — and as she staggered back she got her answer.

The expansive, seething, screaming base of the pillar of souls filled and bloated, and exploded, dazzling those present. As Kali watched it through her fingers it blasted harmlessly through her and the wall of the Chapel behind her, towards the tombs. It wasn't harmless, though, was it? It was deadly, conjured across the millennia to be as insidious as anything could be. At least to those who had been chosen to be the recipients of what it contained. Kali could not help be awed by the sight, but knew full well that, within the next few seconds, it was going to end the existence of countless innocents who, through no fault of their own, had become caught up in the schemes of a madman who had plotted against them almost since before the human race had been born.

How would they end, though?

Despite herself, Kali couldn't help but ask the question. She pictured the soul wave expanding rapidly through the tombs, individual tendrils of it darting into each of the thousands of ancient resting places like snakes before snapping back out, carrying within each of them the physical essence that had been preserved in the remains of the Ur'Raney. Then, perhaps with a violent spasm from each of the soul-stripped assembled before the tombs, these snakes would strike, darting into necks, eyes, mouths, preparing to infuse themselves into the horrible emptiness from which the true inhabitants of these bodies had been so cruelly torn.

It sickened Kali — the awareness that somehow these things had to know which tomb to seek out, which body to violate, and they would move to them as unerringly as salmon returning to their spawning ground.

This, though, was all her imagining, and by the time she could see the Chapel once more, she realised she might never know.

Those souls belonging to Redigor's Ur'Raney Court had already found their homes, slipping into the bodies of Katherine Makennon and the other dignitaries as easily as worms into soft soil, and the effects on their hosts was immediate. Soft groans escaped each of them. Their eyes widened in response to the intrusion, then took on a peculiar blankness. This faded away, to be replaced by new eyes that took in their surroundings first with an almost childlike innocence, then a growing curiosity, and then a hunger unlike any Kali had ever seen.

They began to metamorphosise — ever so slightly but enough — taking on the slightest sharpening of their physiognomy, a subtle elongation of the ears, and the lightest of green tints to their skin. Kali could also have sworn — but this may only have been because of the manner in which they carried themselves — that they grew taller.

With almost reptilian twitches of their necks, each of the Ur'Raney rannaat sighed and, as one, turned to face Bastian Redigor. Their Lord stood smiling at them, a welcoming smile, his mu'sah'rin already draping herself languorously about his neck.

'Hooper…' Slowhand's voice said weakly from above Kali. 'This might be the time for that 'long shot' you mentioned to Freel.'

Kali said nothing.

'Hooper, the long shot?'

This time, Kali bit her lip.

'Hooper, you do have a long shot, right?'

Don't ask me that, Liam, don't ask, Kali thought.

What was it she had said to Freel, back in the Sardenne — I tend to work on the hoof? Well, she wasn't on the hoof now, was she, she was on her backside, collapsed helpless against a wall, and it didn't look like her long shot was going to be materialising at all.

'Sure, Liam. I'll ask Baz to stop, shall I? Get him to send his people home to Kerberos?'

A drop of blood fell from the archer, and he spoke slowly, quietly. 'They have no home other than the hells, you know that. They don't belong on Kerberos and they don't belong here. Hooper, come on, you always have something up your sleeve…'

'Not this time. I'm sorry.'

'Kali…'

'Not this time!'

Shocked, Slowhand stared down at her. But Kali was not looking up and all he saw was the top of her head.

'Kal,' he said. 'We've all lost people close to us, and we know how much that hurt. Now that's about to happen again, only on a massive scale. As I see it, as soon as that pillar disappears, they've lost their loved ones