The Demi-Monde: Summer (22 page)

Despite his professed insouciance, it was a very reluctant Billy who followed de Sade into the Temple. The Demi-Monde might
be a very trippy place, but as trippy places went, the Temple of Lilith was up there in a class of uno.

Fuck, it was scary. Big – nah, cancel big and substitute fucking
enormous
– and empty. In fact, it was so big and so empty that every sound ricocheted off the walls and ceiling in a really spooky way, the slap of his sandals on the stone floor reverberating around the immense hall that opened before him. It even stank scary, having that musty, dusty smell you could taste, the sort of smell that lodged at the back of your throat as though it was intent on choking you.

‘The roof of the Temple is remarkable, is it not, Your Grace?’

Looking up, Billy had to admit de Sade had a point. The roof seemed to have been made from glass, though this PINC gizmo Bole had shoved into his head was telling him it was actually one unbroken and unbreakable sheet of transparent Mantle-ite – MantlePlex – which stretched the full length and width of the Temple and which allowed sunlight to stream in, making it as bright inside as it had been in the open air.

The problem Billy had was that as the light struck the MantlePlex roof, it caused images to be cast around the Temple – images of snakes – so wherever he looked, he saw the fucking things wriggling and squirming around the floor and the walls. Snakes like the ones he had embroidered on his robes. All this IMmanualism crap Sis kept mouthing off about seemed to be really big on snakes.

The Temple gave him the jumps.

De Sade seemed to sense his concern. ‘Don’t be afraid, Your Grace, there is nothing to be frightened of.’

Billy bridled. ‘Yo’ dissing me, bro? Yo’ saying that I’m a coward? This is Billy Thomas yo’ talking to, and Billy Thomas ain’t scared of nuffing.’

Obviously shocked by the boy’s reaction, de Sade gabbled an
apology. ‘I am sorry, Your Grace, I did not mean to imply—’

‘Okay, I’m good. But just remember that Billy Thomas ain’t no bitch.’

‘Of course, Your Grace,’ and a nervous de Sade bustled Billy up to a huge slab of red stone.

‘This, Your Grace, is the Altar of Lilith, once the most sacred place in the whole of the Demi-Monde.’

‘Yeah, great.’

‘It is indeed “great”, Your Grace,’ agreed de Sade, obviously not hip to Billy’s indifference. ‘Unfortunately, the Altar is incomplete: the Column that once stood to its side on that hexagonal base,’ and here he pointed to the six-sided platform a couple of yards behind the stone slab, ‘is missing. But now the Column has been discovered. It was the one we visited in the Galerie des Anciens …’

Yeah, and what a drag of a day that had been
. Billy fucking hated museums.

‘… and once it is returned to its rightful resting place, the Temple will be reborn.’

De Sade’s explanation was interrupted when a trumpet note echoed through the Temple. ‘The Ceremony of the Leaping is about to commence, Your Grace. If you would come this way?’

The courtyard that de Sade led Billy into was vast, but what really caught his attention was that there seemed to be some form of athletics contest taking place there.

‘This is the Ceremony of the Leaping,’ explained de Sade. ‘It is an ancient tradition performed on the tenth day of Summer, a tradition last performed when the Demi-Monde was young. It is a ceremony in which the priestesses demonstrate their prowess by pitting their strength and agility against one of the most fearsome of all creatures, the aurochs.’

Billy felt PINC telling him that the aurochs was a huge species of wild bull – extinct in the Real World – that had been one of
the most dangerous creatures ever to roam the earth. In fact, looking across to the far side of the Temple, he decided he didn’t need PINC to tell him that, he could see for himself.

At one end of the courtyard a group of men were attempting to control what looked like an oversized bull. The animal was fucking immense. It had a shoulder height of way over eight feet with a huge head that sported a pair of long and savagely sharp horns. Jet black in colour – except for a white stripe running down its spine – the beast looked big and powerful and really, really pissed, tossing its head around and bellowing like billy-o as steam rose from its flanks. Instinctively Billy edged back: if that mother went on the rampage, it would crush and gore a lot of people before it was grounded and he wasn’t of a mind to be one of them.

The aurochs was such a handful that it was giving the guys trying to keep hold of the ropes they had tied around its neck one hell of a time; it needed ten of them to stop the thing stampeding free. As best Billy could make out, the bull handlers were trying to manoeuvre it towards a long, narrow corridor, the sides of which had been built from six-foot-high tree trunks.
Thick
tree trunks: they did, after all, have to contain two tons of angry bovine. The corridor – runway more like – ran straight as a rule for the one hundred yards that stretched from one side of the courtyard to the other, but what its purpose was, Billy had no idea. It wasn’t long before he found out.

After a lot of prodding with spears the handlers managed to edge the aurochs into the runway, where the evil-tempered bastard stood pawing the ground and giving off some seriously bad vibes.

Immediately this had been done, there was another blast of the trumpet and a very tall girl – a black like Billy – who was naked apart from a half-mask walked towards the end of the runway opposite to the one where the aurochs was making
waves. She was an imperious-looking piece who moved like a dancer.

Nice
.

A priestess bowed to the girl and then opened a gate giving access to the runway, girl and aurochs now facing each other along the length of the wooden corridor. Immediately it saw the girl, the bull’s attitude changed: whereas before it had been kicking up one hell of a ho-ha, now it quietened, eyeing the girl ominously, its breath coming in short sharp pants. It might have been quieter, but the beast seemed all the more dangerous because of it. All the aurochs’s anger was now focused on the girl.

Again the trumpet sounded, there were shouts from the handlers, the tethers were released and with a great roar the huge bull hurled itself towards the girl. The power of the aurochs was incredible; it charged down the runway like an express train, shaking the ground as it ran. Even standing fifty yards away, Billy could feel the vibrations shuddering up through the soles of his feet and could smell the hatred the bull gave off.

And then something fucking strange happened. Instead of standing there pissing herself, as Billy reckoned any sane person would do when a couple of tons of irate aurochs was heading at high speed in their direction, the girl began to run
towards
the aurochs.

Crazy fucking bitch
.

Fascinated by the prospect that in about five seconds a beautiful piece of black ass would be reduced to guacamole, Billy watched goggled-eyed as aurochs and girl tore at one another, amazed by how fast the girl could run. Seriously fast. But if her speed was amazing, what happened next was right outta DC comics. Girl and aurochs met midway along the runway but, rather than the truck wreck of a collision that Billy had been
expecting, the girl suddenly leapt at the aurochs and using its horns as a fulcrum, executed a full somersault, flying way over the bull’s back to land – fucking gracefully – at least ten yards beyond it.

Now Billy had seen Polly footage of Olympic gymnasts, but he was willing to lay good money that none of them –
none
of them – would have been able to do what that girl had just done. It wasn’t just the timing of the leap, which had been fucking amazing; it wasn’t just the height of the leap, which had been fucking amazing; and it hadn’t been the distance she’d covered, which had been fucking amazing. No, what had been
really
fucking amazing was how effortlessly she had done it. Shit, the girl had actually incorporated a double twist into her leap and that, as far as Billy was concerned, was just taking the rise.

And it wasn’t only him stunned by what the girl had done: the aurochs was pretty perplexed too. The thing slid to a halt – which, when you weighed close to two tons, were travelling at the thick end of twenty miles an hour and didn’t have the benefit of brakes, was no mean feat – and attempted to turn around. The thick wooden walls of the runway prevented it doing this which went down like the proverbial weighable inflatable. The aurochs went apeshit, leaping up and down and using its horns to rip the shit out of anything there was to rip the shit out of, which mainly consisted of the wooden walls of the runway.

But the aurochs’s humiliation wasn’t finished. Barely had the girl landed but she’d performed a pirouette and with a hop, a skip and a jump had landed gracefully square on the aurochs’s back, then tumbled forward and, once more using the horns as her barre, had sprung a dismount outside the runway.

Un-fucking-believable
.

All the priestesses and the handlers began to applaud, the
protests of the aurochs being ignored. And then, much to Billy’s surprise, the bull leaper turned to walk towards him.

Woh, this must be my lucky day
.

He tried to stand up straighter and to look more Dukely; the prospect of screwing this honey was really jingling his jangles. And as she came nearer, he had a chance to study this remarkable girl up close.

Looking at her, Billy could see there were subtle differences in her proportions that marked her out as someone – as
something
– different. The mouth that peeked out from under her mask was just a little larger than Billy would have expected and her neck was just a little thicker. Her chest – he noted
en passant
that she had really great tits – was much more barrel-shaped than was normal in a woman, and from what Billy could make out from a cursory examination of her arms, the configuration of the muscles was … wrong; a number of the muscles seemed to have been rearranged and emphasised at the expense of their colleagues. It was as though she had been remodelled … re-engineered … redesigned.

Yeah, she looked odd. Different.

The girl came to a halt just a pace in front of him and then with a flourish pulled the mask from her face. It was Ella.

Shit, my sister’s built!

He had to do a double take and for a moment wondered why he hadn’t recognised these physical oddities of hers before. It was only then that he remembered that Ella – back in the Real World – had had a peculiar reluctance to show off her body. He’d never seen her in a swimming costume and she had always worn dresses with sleeves. Sure she’d worn short skirts, but her legs, as best he could judge, were the only normal thing about her.

‘Well, what did you think?’ she asked.

For a moment Billy didn’t know what to say, stunned into
silence by the thought that it was his sister – his
sister
– who had done the bull leaping, that it was his sister who had just done what he judged to be impossible and that it was his sister who seemed to be physically so different. Shit, she didn’t even seem to be breathing hard.

‘Billy?’ she prompted.

‘Shit, Sis, yo’ the bomb, fo’ sure. That was awesome. Way I see it you’d have to be a fucking mutant or something to do what yo’ just done.’

Wasn’t that the fucking truth
.

Ella laughed and then, taking him by the arm, led him out of earshot of the others gathered in the Temple. ‘That’s a very insightful observation, Billy. Yeah, you really do have to be a mutant to perform in the bull run: no normal man or woman could ever move as quickly as I did or have the strength to perform the gymnastics you’ve just seen me perform.’

‘Oh yeah? Then how come you can do it? Way I see it you ain’t no mutant.’

‘You’re right, Billy, I’m not a mutant, but neither am I human. I am Lilithi. I am
Homo perfectus
.’

Fuck, where were the cats in white coats when you needed them?

A couple of Ella’s priestesses led Billy from the courtyard to an ante-room while Ella changed. And, boy, when she re-appeared, he knew he was gonna have real trouble getting used to her wandering around in an ankle-length robe that stuck to her body like glue and gave everybody and his father a great idea about the goodies hidden beneath. And with the horned crown she had perched on top of her shaven head she looked like she was dressed to attend a really loco Halloween party. The problem was that with such a serious, far-out look on her
face he guessed she wasn’t in the market for doing a lot of trick-or-treating.

But then Ella had never been one for the lighter side of life. Back in the Real World she had been a real nerdnik, a straight-A student who didn’t do drugs, didn’t mess with boys and was about as much fun as a kick in the nuts … pretty much the same as she was here in the Demi-Monde.

She ordered the servants out of the room and, when they were alone, turned her black, empty eyes towards him. When she spoke, her voice was misty, faraway. ‘Lammas Eve approaches, Billy, the time of the Awakening. And the reality is that I am not as I once was: Ella Thomas is gone and in her place stands Lilith, the first Goddess.’

‘Wha’? Ah, c’mon, Sis, keep it real. What yo’ laying on me? This is Billy yo’ talking to. Yo’ don’t have to play-act with me.’