Hunters: A Trilogy (119 page)

Seemingly satisfied with the angle of the ships, Michael raised his hands up, and then with a movement so rapid that it was hard for the eyes to see, he clapped his hands together.

As his palms met, clashing the metal ships together, there was a terrific flash of light, so bright that it made the others appear as though they were under a strobe light, one that has just fired its powerful bulbs in the most bizarre disco ever known to man. Tori and her onrushing son and husband seemed to move forward a frame at a time, racing to engage in a dance with the Demon, embrace him in their unworldly disco, where together they would dance their final dance of death.

Ken and his wife stared at the boy, half-blinded by the flaring candles the flash of light had left burning in their eyes. They saw Michael rise to his feet and open his hands, cupping them as if to catch some unseen trickle of water. The ships had gone and in their place there now lay a strange, lily-shaped object. It was a deep purple, almost black, shimmering flower-head. It was shaped just like a half-opened lily and was the size and shape of a pear, albeit a rather large one.

Michael looked away from the object, and then standing there with it held in steady hands, he screamed: ‘Kill him, tear him apart, I’m ready for him – kill him!’

In perfect synchronicity to Michael’s command, Red and the others reached the Demon, as one they leapt upon him. In a few seconds of unbridled ferocity, the three powerful Hunters destroyed the earthly remains of Henry. They literally pulled him to pieces, tore him from limb to limb. Sickening sounds of tearing flesh and snapping tendons filled the air. Blood flew in wild arcs – the sound of the Hunters’ screams and curses was only beaten by the wailing screeches of the Dark One as his final dwelling was dismantled around him.

Red had done something indescribable, an act far too awful to dwell upon, but it is suffice to say that it was he who held the dripping head of the Demon’s host aloft, wiping the blood from his lips and roaring at the sky like the terrible, red lion that he truly was. The black dust spewed like a geyser, pumping through Henry’s gaping neck into the air above them. The unutterable metallic sound of the Demon’s voice, that rusty bag of nails, filled the air.

‘Ooooh, you cunts…’ it screamed. ‘You fucking gereshhk pig’s-fuk, I curse yoo, whore bitches, pathetic little fuks, garrggghhh, you pigs, you fukpigs – now you will all die, bastards!’

The rancid gibberish rose into a crescendo and they watched as the sound matched the gathering rise of his composition, his blackness. The Demon was the blackness. His departing particles reached their zenith, flaring above them in the shape of that giant bird, the uncountable zillions of its black particles shimmering and twisting in that hideous, oily fashion.

Just as it appeared to Ken as though they had failed in their task and that the black thing, the devilish kite, was about to flee, he heard Michael scream.

The boy’s loud cry easily cut through the shrieking of the blackness.

‘Get down, down everyone, get down!’

Whether Michael had spoken the words, or he had thought them, was irrelevant. As one, the whole team of Hunters hit the deck on their bellies, dropping to the ground in an instant and craning their necks upwards to try and see what was going on. Ken looked sideways at the young Hunter.

Michael had remained on his feet, and now that the others had fallen flat, the eye of the Demon fell upon him. As the blackness saw him, sensed the power within the young man, it flared outwards, almost seeming to spread those impossible, dusty black, liquid wings. The screeching sound stopped, the cessation of which brought an immensely satisfying silence to their surroundings. The previous noise had been like tinnitus, and not until it was gone did the listeners realise how bad the sound had been. Now there was silence, even the moaning wind, which still gusted in a freezing embrace across the face of the cave, seemed to have held its breath. For a few seconds, the silence was total.

Then the Demon cried out, that familiar sound of fear, the one Mary had heard as she saw it trying to leave Jack’s plummeting body, cascaded upon them. It cried out in childish anguish, wailing at Michael.

‘You, you’re the one! Oh, you have it, don’t you? I see it, I see it! Give it to me, give me the thing – give it to me!’

Michael laughed and raised his hands.

The Darkness rippled, a vicious fluttering that made its giant form seem to spread even further through the air above them, its dark shadow filling their vision. It shrieked in anger, and within that awful sound they also recognised another noise, the echo of terror, the petrified sound of recognition – the realisation of the fact it had been trapped, that this moment was to be its final one. The last remnants of this particular Dragon knew they were doomed, but it didn’t stop them from trying to gain the upper hand one last time.

With a sickening wail, the huge cloud launched itself at Mikey. Screaming out its last words, the Darkness made a final attack. ‘You cannot ever defeat me, I win, I always win – you are too late, the flowers will bloom, the flowers will bloom!’

Accompanied by an ear-splitting rumble, it launched itself downwards.

Waiting until the onrushing storm of darkness was only a few feet away, the unflinching son of Jack Wildeman calmly raised his hands to point the shimmering purple lily straight into the face of his fearsome attacker. The others watched as Michael stared into the eye of the storm, he was smiling.

A deeply serene expression lay upon his face. They saw him mouth the final words the Demon would hear in this parallel.

‘Come then, come to me – you belong to us!’

Abruptly, the Demon’s rush came to a halt – it simply froze, exactly as though time had been paused. Ken saw the tiny specks of darkness, the ones scattered around the edges of its central bulk, a million tiny specks of evil, they too were just hanging in the air, and although it seemed to be impossible, Ken knew that he saw them, they were there, vibrating within the unrelenting grasp of whatever force it was that Mikey had unleashed. The sound of the Demon had also stopped, and stopped completely. There were no sounds at all.

Michael turned, smiled coolly at them, and then turned back to face the frozen dagger of blackness as it hung just feet from his face.

‘Come to me!’ he commanded.

Then, as though into a vacuum cleaner, the frozen black cloud was sucked into the mouth of the beautiful, metallic flower that Michael held aloft. The only thing they heard was a short ‘Swiiippp’ sound. The noise was similar to the sound of someone licking a drop of blood from the tip of their finger, a soft, ripping suck of a sound. In a microsecond, the dust had been incarcerated within the bowels of Michael’s iridescent device.

He turned back and spoke to his friends, and this time they quite clearly heard his words as there was no other sound to disrupt the perfect silence.

Michael said, ‘It’s done – we have conquered this Demon for once and for all! It’s time for him to leave us…’ Turning around, he drew back his arm.

Like a baseball pitcher, the young Hunter hurled the Demon’s prison into the abyss beyond. The device left his hand in a blur of light, racing away faster than the eye was able to see. Leaving a thin trail of sparkling blue light behind, the glowing flower head rocketed into the far horizon. The only noise to accompany this amazing event was a gentle ripping sound, which they heard rolling back down to them from the heavens above.

Ken sat up and swivelled his hips to see if Jane was okay. His wife grabbed his forearm and used it to pull herself into a similar position as her husband’s. Sitting together with their arms around each other’s waists, the stunned couple sat and looked over to where the others stood.

Michael had run over into the cave, where he remained for some five minutes. Then he burst from the entrance and ran across to Tori, quickly helping the dark-haired woman to her feet. After also extending a hand to Red and Junior, he stood huddled together with them for a few moments. To Ken it looked like as though they were conferring, but it didn’t seem as though this particular conference was one in which they were planning some wonderful event to celebrate the demise of their enemy. By the looks on their faces, Tori, Red and the two young men were doing anything but planning a party.

Red looked across and Ken quite clearly saw the tears running down his face. Junior, who had glanced over at the seated couple, also seemed to be somewhat less than happy. Ken saw him walk away from his family, he shot one more glance across in Ken’s direction and then began walking in a confused circle, meandering around and shaking his head. After a short while, Junior returned to the others and squatted next to them, where he remained with his head lowered and eyes staring morosely at the ground under his thighs.

Wondering what the hell was going on, Ken rose to his feet and made as if to walk across to join the worried-looking band of fellow Hunters. Tori saw him, lowering her head, she murmured something to the others, whereupon they all turned and jogged over to where Ken and Jane were. Junior, rising to his feet, took up the rear, walking with his head down and angrily kicking at some loose pebbles, the frozen stones clattering like glass as they bounced away from his boots.

Seeing the dark looks upon their faces, Jane rose to her feet and waited with Ken until Tori’s son had finally joined them. Once they were all present, she looked at Tori and said, ‘Right, come on then, give it to us. What’s happening, why aren’t we running around, shouting and screaming, we’ve won, haven’t we? Tori, what’s the matter?’

Tori, with the tears brimming against her lower eyelids, sniffed loudly, and then took a long breath inwards, which she expelled softly. Looking first from Jane and then to Ken, she said, ‘I’m afraid that we haven’t won, if only we had – we’re too late, I’m afraid to say, far too late!’ The tears burst their banks and dripped down her face, she shook her head in anger and desperation, the movement sending the drops of water flying off her face like glittering gems.

Sniffing back her misery the tall woman said, ‘We should have been here two days ago, that’s why he sent the storm, that’s all he wanted – just a little time, that’s all he needed!’ With her face grimacing in pure distress, Tori spat out the final words. ‘We’re too late, the device will explode within eight minutes, there’s nothing we can do to prevent it!’

Ken reeled in shock – eight minutes! Looking at the others with a stunned expression on his face, he said, ‘Eight minutes, a nuke! Come on, we need to get out of here and we need to get out right now!’ Seeing the terribly sad looks upon the faces of Tori and her family, Ken began to feel a rising sense of doom lifting into his chest. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘No, no, no! Get hold of George, get hold of anyone you can, get hold of ‘em and tell them to get us the fuck out of here – do it now, come on, people, come on!’

Jane, with an almost unbelievable calmness in her voice, said, quietly: ‘Mikey, couldn’t you stop it, is there nothing you can do?’

Michael looked at her and shook his head. He reached out for her hand. Taking his hand within hers, Jane felt the soft tremble flowing down his sinuous arm. She looked down at his hand, back up into his face and then smiled gently at him, Mikey opened his mouth to speak but she stopped him.

Placing the first two fingers of her free hand across his lips, Jane said, ‘Ssshhh…there is no need for explanations. If you say it can’t be stopped, well…then we’re happy to take your word about that, aren’t we, Ken?’ She turned and looked at her husband, brown eyes glowing with that inner calmness that he had become so used to, which he so needed.

Ken gulped. ‘Yeah, yeah, sure we are…’ he whispered.

If anyone had ever needed to hear the sound of a singularly unconvinced man, then they need not look any further than a certain Kenneth Robinson, a man who was currently standing on the top of a mountain, in the middle of, to use his own words, ‘fuck-knows-where’, and was now being told that it was all okay to be standing above a nuclear device, one that was now considerably less than eight minutes away from exploding – exploding and setting fire to the biggest underground reserve of natural gas that this particular dimension had ever seen.

Oh yes, Ken was totally and utterly unconvinced that everything was all hunky-dory. No, all he wanted to do was run, and run like hell! The only problem being, where exactly was it they should they run to? Nobody, as far as he knew, had ever outrun one of those things. He looked at Tori and hoped that she was able to see the terrible fear and helplessness in his eyes.

Taking a deep breath, Ken said, ‘Tori, what can we do, should I go into the cave and take a look? I’m pretty good at things like that, detonators and stuff…’ He turned and nodded towards the place where the Demon’s flowers were about to do their thing.

Tori smiled at him, looking first from Ken, then to Jane, and then back again.

‘Oh dear, how very much I am going to miss you!’ she said. ‘Once more, right in the midst of a disaster, you two have come up trumps yet again. Jane has steadied the beating of our hearts with her calmness – her unfathomable love for us is as plain to see as is the nose on her face.’ She turned to Jane, reached across and kissed her forehead. It was a gesture of an unspeakably deep gratitude.

Turning once more to Ken, Tori looked into his face, smiling softly as she spoke to him. ‘And you, you crazy old man…you, with the fear burning a hole in your chest and a million unspeakable things flooding through your head, you immediately volunteer to try and stop the unstoppable, you are as crazy as can be – but, oh, how we adore you!’

She knelt down, and as one, they all followed her lead.

All the Hunters knelt, forming a circle as they did so. They stayed in silence for a moment, one last, precious moment where they were together as a group, one last moment within the cradle of their abounding friendship and love. Kneeling on the frozen earth with their arms draped across each other’s shoulders, looking at each other with a thousand things rushing through their minds, a million words to say, so many things to say, and no time whatsoever to say them in.