I look around at the others, dazed by the speed with which things have been decided. Dervish is hugging Grubbs, squeezing him tightly, the way I wish he would have squeezed me all these long months.
“Are you OK with this?” Meera asks. “You don’t want to stay?”
“I’ll do what I must,” I sigh.
“Take care of Dervish,” Meera whispers.
“I will,” I laugh, wishing I could remain with Meera instead of Dervish.
“Be wary,” she croaks, dropping her voice even lower. “Beranabus has always been strongly driven, but he’s almost insanely focused now. He says this Shadow he’s been hunting is a massive threat to mankind and he’s determined to defeat it at all costs. But he’s old and fuzzy-headed. He makes mistakes. Don’t let him lead you astray.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” I promise.
Dervish and Grubbs complete their farewells and the elder Grady stumbles through the window, rubbing the flesh around his chest, fighting back tears.
“Sorry we couldn’t have more of a chat,” Grubbs says to me.
“Next time,” I smile.
“Yeah,” he grunts sceptically. I can tell he thinks there will never be a time for simple chat. We belong to the world of pitched battle and Grubbs believes we’ll never escape it. I think he’s right.
As Grubbs and Meera work their way across the roof to tell Shark about their new mission, I face Kernel Fleck. He’s grinning at me sympathetically. “The world moves quickly when Beranabus is around,” he says.
“What’s it like through there?” I ask, nodding at the window.
“Bad.” His grin slips. “The Shadow’s promising the eradication of mankind and a new dawn of demon rule. Others have threatened that before, but it’s convinced an army of demons—even powerful masters like Lord Loss—that it can make good on its vow. We could be looking at the end this time.” Kernel puts one foot into the panel of green light bridging two universes and beckons half-heartedly. “Let’s go.”
I take one last look at the human world—the night is bright with fires from the crashed helicopter and police searchlights—then wearily follow Kernel into the den of all things demonic.
CHASING SHADOWS
We’re at an oasis in the middle of a desert. The trees are made out of bones, flaps of skin instead of leaves, and the well at the centre is filled with a dark, sulphurous liquid. The liquid’s alive and can suck in and kill passers-by, but it only has a reach of two or three metres, so as long as we don’t stray too close to it, we’re safe.
The oasis was designed by a demon master a long time ago, based on something he’d seen on Earth. As much as demons hate humans and our world, they envy our forms and shapes. That’s why many of them base their bodies on animals from our planet. They lack our imagination or the skills of Mother Nature.
We’ve been here for a week, although it’s hard to judge the passage of time. There’s one sun and moon above the oasis, like on Earth, but they never move. The sun shines for hours on end, holding its position in the sky, then abruptly dims to be replaced by the light of a three-quarters full moon.
I haven’t had to eat or drink since I came, and I’ve only slept twice, a couple of hours each time. The magic in the air is far thicker than it was on my world sixteen hundred years ago. I could perform amazing feats here, turn a mountain upside-down if I wanted. The trouble is, if I can do that much, so can the demons.
We haven’t seen any of the Demonata yet. This is an abandoned region. Its master moved on or died, leaving only the skeletal trees and cannibalistic well. Individual demons wander through occasionally—some are picked off by the well—but incursions are rare. Beranabus has used it as a bolthole on several occasions.
Sharmila is still recovering, but we haven’t been able to restore her lower legs. Magic works differently in each person. Kernel was able to replace his eyes when he lost them, but Sharmila can’t grow new legs. You never know for sure what you can or can’t do with your power until you test it.
Beranabus and I have used some of the bones and fleshy leaves from the trees to create artificial legs. We’ve attached them to Sharmila’s thighs and she’s spent the last couple of days adjusting, using magic to operate the limbs and keep her balance. She moves clumsily when she walks, and with great discomfort, but at least she’s mobile. I don’t know what will happen when she returns to the human world—the legs we’ve created won’t work in a place without magic—but for now she’s coping.
Dervish looks healthier too. I’ve taught him ways to direct magic into his heart, to strengthen and protect it. He should be fine as long as he stays here, but if he returns home the situation will rapidly change. His heart won’t hold up long over there.
Dervish wove the material of his hospital dressing-gown in with scraps of flesh from the trees to create a costume. He’s also given himself a full head of silver hair and stuck it up in six long, purple-tipped spikes. I was startled when I first saw it.
“I had spikes like this the last time I fought alongside Beranabus,” he explained, blushing slightly. “I walked away alive then, so maybe they were good luck. We’ll need all the luck we can muster when we fight again.”
There’s no doubt we’ll have to fight, either the Shadow or its army. The first battles have already been waged. Before Meera and Shark tracked them down, Beranabus, Kernel and Grubbs were flitting from realm to realm, hunting demons and challenging them, trying to find out more about the mysterious Shadow.
We saw the Shadow the night Bill-E was killed. A huge, nebulous cloud of a monster, darker than any night, almost as black as the cave when I was sealed up there. Immensely powerful even by demonic standards.
Lord Loss said the creature would destroy humanity. The maudlin demon master craves human misery, feeding on it like a cat slurping milk. In my time he slyly helped me close a tunnel, to stop a demon invasion. He needs humans the way a fish needs water.
But he’s afraid of the Shadow. He doesn’t believe mankind can defeat this new threat. He sided with the creature, served as if he was an ordinary demon, not a powerful master. He did the Shadow’s bidding, even though that might mean the end of the human suffering he cherishes.
Lord Loss’s fear of the Shadow fills Beranabus with unease. He believes the war between humanity and the Demonata can’t last forever. In the distant past, the powerful Old Creatures ruled the Earth and demons couldn’t cross. By my time their power had waned. That led to the current war between humans and demons. Beranabus thinks we must find a way to block their passage between universes or they’ll wipe us out completely.
The Kah-Gash has been Beranabus’s only real hope. According to the ancient legends, the weapon can destroy a universe—ours or the Demonata’s. He’d love to do that. It doesn’t bother him that he’d be eradicating an entire life form. He sees this as a blood-drenched fight to the finish. The universes are colliding and only the victors will survive.
Beranabus has the Kah-Gash now—in the shape of Grubbs, Kernel and me—but he doesn’t trust it. The weapon has a will of its own. It worked through us when the world was last threatened by a demon breakthrough but it’s been silent since. We don’t know what its plans or desires are.
Beranabus hoped to experiment, unlock the Kah-Gash’s secrets, find out how to direct its great power. But so far he hasn’t learnt anything new.
Unwilling to unleash the Kah-Gash, Beranabus instead hunted for the shadowy monster we’d glimpsed in the cave. Having no name for it, he dubbed it the Shadow. The more he chased it, the more apt that name became.
Beranabus has interrogated many demons who know about the Shadow, but not one knows its real name. It’s rumoured to be more powerful than any other demon. They say it’s been working in secrecy for hundreds of years. That it recently made itself known to a number of demon masters, recruiting them to help it achieve its ultimate aim—the removal of the human stain.
That’s how demons see us, as a stain on the universes. They were here long before us and consider themselves superior. They hated the Old Creatures but respected them. They have nothing but contempt for our weak, mortal kind.
The Shadow has promised to kill every human and make the Demonata more powerful than ever. A few demons told Beranabus that it had even promised a return to the original state of the universes and the elimination
