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75. Together
76. Barba and the King
77. The End of Everything
78. Light and Dark
79. Presents
80. Mr Fox
81. George and the Jungle
82. Toys
83. Everywhere
Acknowledgements
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About the Author
Books by Justin Fisher
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE (#uc1f749b4-f233-588e-a487-0535e1c19130)
he vast forests of the East Siberian taiga cover more than a million square miles, from impenetrable marshlands to unending carpets of ancient woodland teeming with bears, reindeer and other more secretive creatures not often seen by man. Of all of its villages, few are more forgotten or remote than Kazimir.
Captain Nikolai Volkov and his men had travelled all the way from Irkutsk. The city was home to the 24th Spetsnaz Brigade and the young captain had long been counted in their ranks as the man to “get things done”. He was not in a good mood. The stories he’d heard were not untypical for such remote parts of the region. Superstitions and old wives’ tales about “magic and monsters”, silly stories to keep their children from straying into the woods and a complete waste of Volkov and his specialist task force’s time. The cramped cabin of his DT-30 mobile base was at least warm, though its powerful diesel engine was interminably loud and smelt even worse than it sounded. Outside, the twenty-five-strong squad of men travelled on sledges behind harnessed reindeer. Each one carried GPRS tracking devices, night-vision goggles, grenade launchers, specialist automatic rifles and every other gadget and technological advancement that the mighty Russian Army provided. But their most valuable asset was the Siberian reindeer. Reindeer did not break down and a reindeer could travel through a forest’s thickest region where a twenty-tonne troop carrier could not.
The villagers of Kazimir had greeted them with teary eyes. Salvation had finally come after months of begging. It was only when officials from the local district had ventured into the woods and subsequently disappeared that the high-ups from Irkutsk had ordered Volkov to the area.
“Go, Nikolai, put these poor villagers’ minds at rest,” they had said. “We know it’s a bear, you know it’s a bear, but the denizens of Kazimir need proof.”
That had been days ago and here he was now, in the middle of a forest with the most highly trained pest control unit in the world.
“Magic and monsters,” he muttered, as the DT-30’s caterpillar tracks ground to an icy halt.
Bang, bang! came the pounding on the cabin’s hatch. “Captain Volkov, the transport can go no further.”
Volkov stepped out into an impossibly cold night. Even his gruelling training could not stop him from pausing to catch breath. It must have been -55°C at least. Surely not even a bear could withstand this cold? And anyway, didn’t bears hibernate in the winter months? In front and behind the forest lay black; their DT-30 had taken them as far as its tracks would allow.
“A curse on this cold, a curse on Siberia and a curse on this blasted mission!”
“Your orders, captain?”
His number two, though covered in extreme snow gear, was easy enough to recognise for the simple fact that he was the size of a bull. Galkin was younger by almost a decade but in Volkov’s opinion as able a leader as he was and Volkov was always glad of it.
“Take three men and scout the way forward; we’ll follow with the supplies.”
The bull saluted and paced on ahead.
Volkov never liked to walk through a forest at night. It made him feel as though the stars had been sucked out of the sky. After more than an hour, even the deep winter snow could no longer find its way through the taiga’s wooded canopy. There were no stars above and no snow below, just the ice-cold embrace of a pitch-black wood. As they trudged through the frozen mud and pines, Volkov’s gut started to twitch. His gut had never let him down. Like a dog sensing danger long before it arrives, Volkov’s gut always told him when trouble was brewing and the reindeer clearly agreed. The beasts came to a complete standstill, honking in their throats nervously, their hooves skittish on the ground.
“What’s got into them?” seethed the captain.
As a born and bred Siberian, no one knew more about reindeer than Volkov’s handler, not even the actual reindeer.
“I wish I knew, captain. I’ve never seen them like this, never.”
Volkov’s gut began to rumble more steadily. A quick gesture of his hand and his column of men pulled down their night-vision goggles. Everything turned to electric green and the reindeer stopped. As Yenotov and the other handlers pushed and prodded their now immobile animals, something through the trees moved with a flicker of dark green over black. Volkov raised his weapon and those not tending to the herd followed suit. The targeting dot from his laser slowed by a tree and something behind it moved.
“Six o’clock.”
“Eight.”
“Eleven.”
One by one his men called out movement in the trees, and seemingly from everywhere.
“Brace!” ordered Volkov.
The Spetsnaz dropped to one knee and prepared to fire.
All of a sudden, their supply column of reindeer broke free and fled from their handlers, all twelve animals with their heavy packs and Volkov’s much-needed supplies bolting as a feathered storm flew at the squad, a flapping of a hundred wings, magpies, pigeons, sparrows and hawks, swallows, barn owls, finches and crows, filling the air in a living squall, then just as suddenly parting.
Nothing.
Volkov and his bemused men got back to their feet and were trying to understand what had just happened when the first scream called through the darkness ahead of them.
Without a word, his men fanned out wide, running as best as they could through the undergrowth and straight to the sound of their screaming comrades. A little way forward something big was running towards them, crashing through branches with all the violent force of a crazed animal. It was Galkin, Volkov’s number two.
His helmet and scarf had come away, lost somewhere in his flight, and his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. The man was crazed with terror. Volkov had seen this before with new recruits, young soldiers that had no place with the Spetsnaz, but Galkin? The man was unbreakable, or at least had been until now.
“Galkin, calm yourself. What happened?”
“M-mmm–”
Volkov grabbed the man by the shoulders and shook him hard.
“What, man? What are you saying?”
“M-magic and … and m-monsters,” Galkin finally managed.
Two of the squadron stayed with their sobbing second in command, as Volkov led the others forward. Some way through the forest the trees began to thin till they came to a vast clearing. At its centre firepits bellowed and a great iron structure jutted out of the ground like an angry tooth. To Volkov it looked very much like the beginnings of some fortress. The Spetsnaz had grade one clearance – they would know of such a thing, surely? Why had he not been informed? And what had happened to the sky? At first he thought he was looking at a mirror, or that the world had turned upside down. The air was black with smoke from the firepits, and the stars – every one of them had fallen to the ground. They lay along the clearing, too many to count. A great wondrous carpet of yellow and white in all its shimmering glory. Volkov and his men removed their goggles.
And the stars roared.
What had looked like heaven quickly became hell. The stars were not stars at all but the eyes of a great horde, monsters from old wives’ tales suddenly made real. From the lick of orange light spewing out of the firepits, the Spetsnaz saw row upon row of hideous creatures, fanged, clawed, hoofed and winged, edging their way closer and preparing to strike.
Captain Nikolai Volkov let his rifle drop to the floor. As his end approached, he could think of only one thing to say. It fell from his lips with no particular recipient in mind and it was to be the last three words that he would ever speak.
“Magic and monsters.”
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Godshill (#uc1f749b4-f233-588e-a487-0535e1c19130)
odshill on the Isle of Wight was as pretty a village as the Armstrongs could ever hope to find. Spring was finally rearing its head, bees buzzed along the thatched roofs of its ancient cottages, and a large medieval church at its centre could not have drawn a prettier picture. Ned and his little family had never found the time to go on holiday. He thought, as they walked down the road, how nice it might be to come back here one day, when they actually could. But here and now, like always, there was only the hunt, and the Armstrongs were in the unique position of being both predator and prey.
He’d lost count of the hotels and motels they’d stayed in. Never staying for more than a day at a time because of what they were searching for, and what – or rather who – was searching for them. As far as Ned could tell, everyone was looking for the Armstrongs, and on both sides of the Veil.
Backpacks, T-shirts, jeans and jumpers – holiday gear for the perfect “happy family”. Only, the Armstrongs hadn’t been truly happy for quite some time. “Happy” was for families that weren’t on the world’s most wanted list. “Happy” was for people who had the time to buy an ice cream and sit in the sun. And herein lay the problem – the Armstrongs and the world that they lived in had run out of time.
The Darkening King was on the brink of rising.
They now stood on a street corner outside Mavis’s Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, est. 2012. It was the sort you find dotted about the villages of England, particularly ones frequented by tourists. What was not known was that Mavis’s Tea Shoppe was in fact a safe house for the Hidden, especially those who had run out of places to hide. It was one of her rarer and more nocturnal patrons that the Armstrongs had arranged to come and see.
“Whiskers?” called out Ned’s dad.
There was a muffled squeak from somewhere in Ned’s backpack.
“Remember everyone on the other side knows about Ned and his mouse – that means you, furball. Not a squeak out of you till we get back to the caravan park, or you’ll blow our cover.”
The backpack remained deathly quiet.
“What’s he doing?”
“Err, I think he’s following orders, Dad.”
“Right. Good. Now, son, wait here. Me and your mum need to check the place out first.”
“Just a tick, darling, and don’t talk to any strangers,” added his mum.
Ned’s eyes rolled and his parents opened the door to the welcoming ding of a bell. “Don’t talk to strangers” was what you told a six-year-old – not someone who had saved the world. Twice. But it was always the same now, wherever they went. And the truth was – they had every right to worry. Ned’s ring no longer listened to him when he tried to use his powers, and his mum and dad had become so protective that he was barely allowed to do anything any more, except sit and wait with his shadow and his wind-up mouse.
He slumped on to the steps of the tea shop. Across the street he saw an old man in a tweed jacket, huffing and puffing with a Zimmer frame to steady his balance. He was tall and spider-leg thin, with barely any remaining white hair and a long reddish nose that seemed to be attached to the rest of his face with a criss-cross pattern of wrinkles.
He was struggling across the road towards Mavis’s and when he looked towards Ned he smiled between great rasping breaths. The poor old dear either thought that he knew Ned, or that Ned might be able to help him on his way, which of course Ned would. Stranger or not, the man needed help.
“Hello. Are you all right?” Ned asked.
Now almost on the other side, the old man grinned at Ned, revealing quite the most extraordinary set of teeth. They all pointed in different directions. Some were grey or brown, others chipped or missing, and one looked as though it would have been more at home in the mouth of a dog.
“I will be, young man, with a little assistance,” he rasped.
But Ned couldn’t take his eyes off the man’s teeth.
“Might I bend your ear for a moment?”
As he spoke, a small device in Ned’s pocket began to shake. It was the perometer that his great friend George had given him a few months earlier, when the Armstrongs had had to leave the Circus of Marvels and go on the run. The device could sense danger, and as it began to shake, Ned stumbled to his feet. The old man let go of his Zimmer frame, his bony fingers instead reaching into his jacket pocket. When they came out again he was holding a thin-bladed dagger, and his eyes shone black.
“Gor-balin!” spat Ned.
“Yes, boy! Been watching Mavis’s for weeks, I have. End of the road for you, my friend.”
Gor-balins were not uncommon amongst Darklings and were often sent on missions across the Veil’s borders, due to their more human size and shape. But as the creature’s glamour began to fade, Ned was reminded that that was where the similarities ended. The creature walked upright and easily now, the whites of his eyes turned black and his skin darkened to a wet, mottled grey. His nose grew more crooked, the tips of his ears longer, and his bony fingers now ended with claws.
“I wouldn’t come any closer if I were you,” stammered Ned.
“Why, what you gonna do about it?” jeered the gor-balin. “Not much, is what I heard …”
Ned raised his hand and focused on the band of metal at his finger – the same band of metal that had flattened a whole host of the creatures on the rooftops of St Clotilde’s. But that had been a different time and a very different Ned. He thought of ice and the air around his finger shimmered with intent. As he pictured the atoms in his mind coming together and growing still, he could feel the ring’s tendrils hum under the pores of his skin. And for a moment, just a fraction of a moment, he thought his powers had finally returned.
“Please,” he whispered.
The air crackled with the brief sparking of atoms and then, just as it had a hundred times before, his ring grew quiet and the air stilled.
“I said, don’t come any closer!” said Ned, trying to sound braver than he felt.
The dark hollows of the gob’s eyes shone and his lips broke into a smile. He walked forward, slowly now, relishing every second as Ned backed away further down the alleyway that ran alongside Mavis’s tea shop.
“So it’s true … Not the boy you was then, are you? You ain’t nothin’ without your mum and dad.”
The creature was right. But even now, powerless as he was, Ned wasn’t alone, not quite.
“To be fair, I did try and warn you. Gorrn?” he breathed.
Ned’s shadow – his slovenly familiar – did not make tea, or do the dishes. In fact, there were relatively few things the creature did well, except for fighting and biting.
“Arr,” said the shadow, and the smug grin on the gor-balin’s face was promptly removed as the darker recesses of the alley began to shift.
The shadow that was Gorrn raised himself up from the ground as a wall of toothy darkness, thickening and darkening as he stretched to fill the width of the alleyway between Ned and his assailant.
“Grak!” spat the gob.
And in a violent and silent second, Gorrn lunged, enveloping the Darkling in his folds before spitting him out like a mouthful of chewed food and into one of Mavis’s green recycling bins.
A shaken Ned closed the lid on the unconscious assassin, quickly and quietly.
“Thanks, Gorrn.”
His familiar oozed back to the ground before blending into the shadows.
“You there, Whiskers?”
