Ghost of a Chance

TEN WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF?

Back on the southbound platform, Natasha was making herself useful. A quick spell (muttered under her breath in what sounded very like debased Coptic), and all the blood disappeared from everyone’s clothes, leaving them still battered and torn but comfortably dry and clean. And smelling not entirely unlike a country meadow. The blood basically leapt out of the clothing and ended up scattered in puddles all around them, steaming quietly. Everyone made polite, thankful sounds, while Natasha preened prettily.

“Oh, that old thing. I’ve had that spell in my repertory for years. Never leave home without it.”

Erik sniggered. “Now tell them what you had to do to acquire that spell. And what you did with the blood afterwards.”

“They don’t need to know that!” snapped Natasha. “It would only upset them. Why do you always have to spoil everything?”

Erik shrugged. “Stick to what you’re best at, that’s what I always say.”

Melody ignored them all. She didn’t approve of magic. She busied herself with her equipment, checking the most recent displays and frowning intently at the long-range sensor readings. All her instrument panels were lit up, blazing fiercely as new information flooded in. Melody stabbed fiercely at one keyboard after another, scowling at each monitor screen in turn, reluctant to admit she didn’t understand half of what her machines were telling her. Energy readings everywhere were off the scale, spiking and changing and disappearing even as she looked at them. Some of what she was seeing made no sense at all, as though the very laws of reality were becoming slippery and unreliable under the influence of some monstrous Outside will.

Tunnels, platforms, corridors—the whole station was crawling with unnatural manifestations. Ghosts, demons, other-dimensional creatures; some of them so strange, so alien, they barely qualified as life-forms at all. Life and Death weren’t as separate as they used to be, down in the Underground.

“Stop frowning like that, Melody,” said JC. “You’ll give yourself wrinkles. What’s up?”

“Do you want the bad news, the really bad news, or the Oh we are truly fucked this time news?” said Melody. “If I’m interpreting these readings correctly, and I am, we’re in enemy territory now. Something from way beyond the fields we know or even guess at, has come among us, and is reworking the most basic laws of our reality. Writing over the world, to make it more like where the Intruder originally came from.”

“All right,” said Happy, “you’ve got my attention. Are you sure about this, Melody? The sheer power involved would . . .”

“Of course I’m not sure!” snapped Melody. “I’ve never seen readings like this! I doubt anyone has. But I am definitely seeing massive displays of other-dimensional energy, more than enough to transmute matter. Something from the afterworlds has forced open a door into our reality, settled in, and established a beachhead. Part of this Intruder has manifested in our world, taken shape and form, and rooted itself here; and more is coming through all the time. Or, if you prefer, downloading its information into our material plane, and just its presence is enough to mould the world around it. The Intruder is more . . . real, than us. And it’s not hiding any more. As though it wants us to know where it is, and what it’s doing. As though it wants us to come and find it.”

“As if we’d fall for an obvious trap like that,” said Happy. “We’re not going to fall for an obvious trap like that, are we? Oh shit, we are. I want to go home.”

He fumbled a bottle of pills out of an inside pocket, but his hands were trembling so much he spilled most of them on the floor. He got down on his knees and scrabbled for the scattered pills. He was shaking all over, and his mouth trembled as though he might burst into tears at any moment. Natasha looked down her nose at him, and Erik giggled, embarrassed. JC got down on one knee beside Happy but made no move to help or hinder him.

“Happy, don’t do this. I need you sharp and focused.”

“What if I don’t want to be sharp and focused?” said Happy, looking only at the pills in front of him. “What if I don’t want to see something that’s more real than we are?”

“It’s the job,” said JC. “Look at you; you’re a mess from what you’ve taken so far.”

“It’s only the come-down,” muttered Happy. “I’ll be fine. But I need a little taste. Something to put me right.”

“No you don’t,” said JC.

“You don’t know what I need! We can’t all be big and brave and heroic, like you! Some of us are ordinary mortals, doing the best we can!” He looked at the pills he’d collected in his hand. “If you were me, you’d be knocking back the meds, too. So you wouldn’t have to be like me.”

“Happy . . .”

“I can’t do the job without them, JC. I just can’t.”

“Want to try some of mine?” said Natasha. Happy looked up, to find her standing over him offering a slim bottle of pills. Happy rose slowly to his feet, staring at the bottle as though hypnotised. JC stood up beside Happy but made no move to interfere.

“Only the very best, for the Crowley Project’s most favoured agents,” said Natasha. “Something to make you feel like a man, or a god, or whatever else it takes to get the job done. Want a little taste?”

“Tell you what,” said Happy, licking his dry lips.

“You try one of mine . . . and I’ll try one of yours. No? Didn’t think so. Did you really think I’d take sweeties from a stranger? Typical Project agent. Even now, you can’t resist manoeuvring for advantage. We’re facing the end of the world, and we still can’t trust each other.”

“Trust is fine,” said Natasha, making the slim bottle disappear about her person. “But always count your change. This . . . is only a marriage of convenience. And you can’t blame a girl for trying.”

“You were never a girl,” said Erik. “You were born fully mature, and nasty with it. Probably shot out of the womb demanding a gin and tonic and a ciggie, and a gun that fired real bullets.”

Natasha smiled on him. “How well you know me.”

Erik sniffed loudly, and moved away to peer closely at Kim. He walked round and round her, studying her from all angles, careful always to maintain a safe distance. Kim let him do it, studying him coolly. Erik finally stopped in front of her, looking thoughtfully into her ghostly face, so close their noses were almost touching.

“Boo!”

Kim laughed delightedly as Erik fell back several steps. He pulled his dignity back about him, doing his utmost to look like a scientist again.

“Remarkable phenomenon,” he said, in his best lecturer’s voice. “Very lifelike. Astonishing level of interaction with the living. Almost human.”

“More human than you,” Kim said sweetly. “Nasty little man.”

Erik flushed darkly. “Why did you destroy my computer?”

“Because it offended me,” said Kim. “Better be careful, Erik; you offend me, too.”

Erik actually looked a little hurt. “You don’t even know me . . .”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” said Kim. She drifted forward, and Erik backed away before her. Kim fixed him with a hard, critical gaze. “The dead see many things that are hidden from the living. I know why you had to leave Vienna University in such a hurry. I know why Interpol chased you across half of France. Shall I mention the dog with two heads, the monkey that aged backwards, the pig with the added human brains that could say seventeen words in Portuguese? And you really shouldn’t have surgically reworked that homeless girl’s circulatory system, to make it more efficient. Such a mess . . .”

“Shut up!” said Erik. “Shut up! Get out of my head!”

“Wouldn’t go in there on a bet,” said Kim. “It’s not my fault you wear your sins so openly.”

“They weren’t all failures! I achieved things, important things! I did!” Erik was breathing hard, almost on the edge of tears. “Don’t think I can’t hurt you because you’re dead!”

His left hand dived inside his coat, but JC was immediately there, putting himself between Kim and Erik.

“Don’t even think about it,” said JC.

Erik swallowed hard and looked away, unable to meet JC’s gaze, even muffled behind sunglasses. He nodded quickly to JC, and to Kim, then hurried away to hide behind Natasha, who ignored him.

“If you’ve all finished butting your heads together, perhaps we could concentrate on the extremely imminent end of the bloody world!” said Melody. “We are running out of time, people. Quite possibly literally.”

“Sorry,” said JC.

He moved over to join Melody at her instruments and made a show of studying the displays thoughtfully, as though they meant something to him. If Melody wasn’t entirely fooled, she was kind enough to keep it to herself.

“Any clues as to who or what our Intruder might be?” said JC, after a while.

“Nothing definitive,” said Melody. “But it’s not just . . . something from the afterworlds. This is Big, really quite unbelievably Big. One of the Great Beasts, perhaps. The Hogge, or the Serpent . . . Bad news on every level you can think of. If I really understood what these displays are telling me, I think I’d be very upset.”

“One of the Great Beasts?” said Happy, incredulously. “That is way out of our league!”

“Speak for yourself,” Natasha said immediately.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” Happy said viciously. “I can feel your fear from here.”

“You feel me again without my permission, and I’ll slap your face off,” said Natasha.

“Children, children . . .” JC murmured. “Play nice, or there will be spankings. Melody, could the presence of the Intruder in our world explain why I was touched by the Light? Was I granted this new strength to . . . even things out? Give us a fighting chance?”

“Who knows why the gods do anything?” said Erik.

“They are not gods!” Happy said immediately. “Don’t use that word. Never use that word. Just because they’re so much more than us, it doesn’t mean they’re gods.”

“What difference does it make?” said Kim, puzzled.

“Because you can’t fight gods,” said Happy.

“We can fight things that think they’re gods,” JC said cheerfully. “Remember that being we encountered in the supermarket car park? Worshipped by generations of early Humanity; and we still kicked its arse and sent it home crying. Melody, could our Intruder be anything like that?”

“No. That was a much more basic, even elemental, force. Not coherent enough even to have a name or identity. We’re faced with something far more sophisticated. A single entity, or presence, that can change our world simply by existing in it.” She looked at Happy. “Spell the word god with a lower case, and it’s a good enough term for what’s down here in the darkness with us.”

Everyone looked at each other. No-one wanted to be the first to say anything.

“We are not equipped to deal with a Great Beast,” Happy said finally. “Let’s be real here, people. Outer Forces like that are so far out of our league we couldn’t even see the league from where we are. We’re ghost finders, not god killers.”

“What we need are better weapons,” said Natasha.

“Bigger weapons. First rule of the Crowley Project: there’s nothing in supernature that can’t be taken down with a big enough stick. Maybe if we combined our resources . . .”

“You’re seriously contemplating throwing down with a god?” said Melody.

“We’ve been known to kill gods, at the Project,” said Erik airily. “Sometimes we eat them, too.”

“You couldn’t even stand up to me,” said Kim. “And I’m only dead.”

“Confidence is fun,” said JC. “Sanity is better. We need a plan.”

“We need weapons!” said Natasha.

“You can’t fight the Great Beasts!” said Happy. “They’re as much conceptual as anything, a horrible Idea from a higher plane, downloaded into physical form in our dimension. You can’t kill an Idea. The best we can hope for is to pry it loose from our plane and send it home with a flea in its ear.” He frowned, considering. “And we might be able to do that. So far, all the signs suggest our Intruder is following the standard pattern of any haunting, building everything from and around a single focal point.”

“You’re talking about me,” said Kim.

“We don’t know that for sure,” said JC.

Happy ignored him, looking at Melody. “How far away from us is the Intruder, and please say lots.”

“Hard to tell,” said Melody. “If I’m interpreting these readings correctly, and I’d be the first to admit that there’s a whole lot of guesswork involved . . . it seems our Intruder has added a whole new platform to this station. A half-way place, where its world butts up against ours. This new platform comes and goes, not always there, or at least, not always connected to our reality. It’s the Beast’s lair. Home for its new physical form. For whatever shape it’s taken in our world. We can only access this new station with the Intruder’s permission.”

“Is it there now?” said JC.

“Oh yes,” said Melody. “It’s driving my long-range sensors crazy. They don’t like the taste of it at all.”

Kim looked round suddenly. “JC, something’s coming.”

Everyone turned to look at her. JC moved over to stand beside her, but her gaze was elsewhere.

“Are you sure?” said Melody. “There’s nothing on the monitors.”

“Something’s coming,” said Kim, in a dreamy voice. “Something bad.”

JC studied Kim, who was floating in mid air with her head cocked slightly on one side, as though listening to something only she could hear.

“What is it, Kim? What’s coming for us? Where is it coming from?”

Her left hand rose slowly to point at the far tunnel-mouth. Everyone looked into the darkness, but there was no roar of an approaching train, no pressure wave of disturbed air. Even the rail tracks were free of any vibration. Natasha and Erik stood close together. JC and Happy stared silently at the tunnel-mouth, considering their options. And Melody stood protectively between her machines and whatever was coming, her machine-pistol at the ready. Happy surreptitiously dry swallowed a couple of pills. He took a deep breath, and sweat popped out across his face. His heart was beating dangerously fast.

A Tube train emerged from the tunnel-mouth, moving smoothly and silently, an ordinary train, with ordinary empty cars. Except the engine made no sound at all, and the brightly lit cars didn’t rock or clatter in the slightest. The train pulled slowly, steadily, into the station, with barely a breath of disturbed air, and came easily to a halt. The five agents braced themselves, ready for any kind of attack; but nothing happened. After a while, one set of car doors slid silently open and waited, invitingly. No-one moved. None of them liked the look of this train. There was nothing obviously unnatural about it, apart from its quiet, but if anything, it was too ordinary, too perfect, as though it was newly made, never used before.

“All right,” said JC. “This is an invitation. The Intruder sent this train to bring us to it. No more games, no more attacks . . . But why? Because we’ve proved we can handle anything it can throw at us? Because we’ve proved ourselves worthy? Or because it’s so much stronger on its home ground . . . Could it be that it’s afraid there’s something we could do, to drive it from our plane, if it doesn’t deal with us first? Is it because the Light reached down and touched me, or because we have Kim now?”

“Questions, questions,” said Natasha. “At the Project, we prefer direct action.”

“Shoot first and ask questions later,” said Erik. “Preferably through a medium.”

“We can’t answer questions without new data,” said Melody. “And we have to do something, while we still can. This thing’s power levels are already off the scale. I think it’s getting ready to spread its influence beyond this station.”

“You mean through the rest of the Underground?” said JC.

“I mean through the rest of the city,” said Melody. “And then across the worlds. Rewriting the rules of our reality to make a new world, more like its home dimension. I don’t think there’d be much room for Humanity in a world like that.”

“We have to warn people,” said Happy. “Contact the Boss, call for help . . . Get some of the A teams down here, with serious firepower. This has got way too big for us.”

“You heard the Boss,” said JC. “None of the A teams can get here in time. There is no-one else. Just us.” He looked at Natasha and Erik. “I hate to ask, but I think at this point I’d even welcome help from the Project. Is there any chance . . .”

“No,” Natasha said reluctantly. “By the time we convinced the Project, it would be too late. Our current Head, Vivienne MacAbre, isn’t as trusting as we are.”

“I’ve heard of her,” said Happy, unexpectedly. “Does she really eat white mice for breakfast?”

“So they say,” said Erik. “Baby mice, stuffed with hummingbirds’ tongues. On little toast soldiers. Of course, that’s only when she isn’t feasting on the hearts of our enemies. Vivienne’s always been a traditionalist at heart.”

JC looked at Melody. “What do your machines make of this train? Is it real or something created by the Intruder?”

“I can’t tell,” Melody said helplessly. “With the power levels the Intruder’s generating, the question’s pretty much meaningless. It can make things real just by thinking about them.”

Happy strode up to the car and kicked the open doors. “Feels real.”

“Oh hell,” said JC. “You’ve taken some of mother’s little helpers, haven’t you?”

“Oh yes!” said Happy. “And I feel great!”

“Wonderful,” said JC. He considered the train for a long moment. “It’s real enough. It’ll get us there. Because the Intruder wants to meet us in person. Well, I want to meet the Intruder. So let’s go.”

He stepped into the car through the waiting doors and looked quickly around to assure himself it really was as empty as it appeared. Kim floated in after him, comforting him with her presence as best she could. She knew he was remembering another train, and another car, and what had happened to him there. JC took off his sunglasses and looked up and down the length of the car; but even his new eyes couldn’t detect any booby-traps or hidden evils. He glanced briefly at Kim.

“I’m fine. You?”

“I’m fine, JC.”

“Can you see anything? Sense anything? Anything the Intruder wouldn’t want us to know about?”

“This isn’t a train,” said Kim. “It’s the Intruder’s idea of a train. A new-made thing, based on the hell trains it used to abduct the commuters earlier. There’s no driver in the engine; the train knows where it needs to go. The Intruder’s becoming stronger all the time . . . its thoughts and intentions can take on shape and form now.”

“All the more reason to brace it in its lair now,” said JC. “Before it becomes so strong it can bring us to it just by thinking about it.”

He gestured sharply to the others still hesitating on the platform, and one by one they entered the car. Natasha made a point of striding fearlessly through the open doors. Erik scurried in after her, trying to look in every direction at once. Happy positively bounded on board, smiling foolishly. Melody gave her machines a last farewell pat and stepped through the doors as though it were just another train. Happy slipped his arm through hers and beamed at her chummily. Melody pulled her arm free and slapped him round the head. The doors slammed together abruptly, and the train moved off, leaving the platform behind.

The train ride was unnaturally smooth and easy. The engine was utterly silent, the car didn’t rock in the least, and once it entered the tunnel-mouth, the train never once deviated from its path. No jolts or turns, no corners, no other platforms; only a straight line through an endless, impenetrable darkness. Not one trace of light outside the car windows, and with no stations or landmarks to judge the train’s progress, it was hard to tell if it was moving at all. Or even if they were still underground rather than moving through some great night-dark sea.

Natasha and Erik sat side by side, not looking at each other. She seemed entirely calm and in control; he was keeping a watchful eye on every part of the car, in case something should jump out at him. Melody stood with her back to the car doors, arms tightly folded across her chest, glaring about her as though daring anything to try anything. Happy was too full of nervous energy to stay in any one place for long. He tried half a dozen seats, couldn’t settle, and finally skipped up and down the central aisle, humming tunelessly and occasionally breaking into a surprisingly accomplished soft-shoe routine. JC sat quietly, thinking and planning, and Kim did her best to sit beside him though she had a tendency to rise and fall in place when her concentration wandered. She studied JC with real concern, but he didn’t notice. He was working.

And then all their heads came up sharply as the darkness outside began to seep through the windows and into the car. Slowly and inexorably, it poured in like thick, dark syrup, as though the window-glass weren’t even there. The five agents moved quickly to stand together in the central aisle, as the darkness poured in from every side and dripped from the ceiling. None of them wanted to touch the stuff, and none of them wanted it to touch them. The darkness filled up both ends of the car, then spilled forward along the rows of seats. It was utterly dark, more like an absence than a presence, as though the agents and the slowly shrinking pool of light were the only remaining life in an endless, dark nothingness.

Natasha produced something small and round from a pocket and shook it hard. A soft, yellow organic light blazed from the ball in her hand, and where it touched the approaching dark, the light stopped the darkness dead in its tracks. Natasha waved the glowing ball back and forth, reinforcing the circle of light’s boundaries.

“Salamander ball,” she said succinctly.

“Bit small,” said Happy.

“Hell,” said Erik. “You only get two to a salamander.”

The yellow light sputtered, then faded quickly away to nothing. Natasha shook the ball hard, swore briefly, and threw the thing away.

“I think it was frightened,” said Happy. “Does anyone have anything else, and someone please say yes.”

Melody produced a chemical stick and waved it. A dull green light flared up.

“Oh wow!” said Happy. “We’re going to a rave!”

“You want a slap?” said JC. “You’re the telepath; is this darkness real, or a broadcast illusion?”

“It’s the dark,” said Happy. His voice was suddenly serious, and his face was like the melancholy clown whose eyes are always sad above the painted smile. “This is the real dark, the real thing, far more than just the absence of light. This is the living dark; and it’s hungry.”

“All right,” said JC. “Not as helpful as I’d hoped, but that’s Happy for you. Natasha?”

“It’s real,” she said flatly. “Real enough to kill us all. Or perhaps remake us in its image.”

The green light from the chemical stick was already guttering. Melody shook the stick savagely and said terrible things to it, but it died anyway. The darkness crept remorselessly in, from every side at once. Some of it had already crawled up the sides of the car and joined together on the ceiling, over their heads. There was a distinct chill on the air, as though the darkness was soaking up all the warmth in the car.

“This is not a natural darkness,” said Erik, his voice high and unsteady.

“Oh, you think?” Melody said harshly. She threw her useless chemical stick at the darkness, which swallowed it up in a moment. “What was your first clue? When it oozed right through the bloody windows? Of course it’s not natural!”

The five agents huddled together as the circle of light slowly contracted around them. Kim hovered beside them, glancing nervously at the dark ceiling. JC glared around him, his eyes glowing very brightly behind his sunglasses.

“Erik’s right,” he said abruptly. “This darkness may be real, in the sense that the Intruder created it and imposed it on our world; but it’s not a natural darkness. This is all more of the Intruder’s mind games to soften us up. Right, Happy, Natasha?”

“I don’t know,” said Happy. “I can’t tell. Maybe.”

“So help me, you take one more pill without my permission, and I will knock you down and stamp on your head,” said JC. “Concentrate! Is this darkness something the Intruder created?”

“Yes!” said Happy. “Has to be. Darkness doesn’t behave like this in the normal world.”

“Natasha?” said JC.

“If the Intruder made it, then it’s real enough to kill us,” said Natasha. “But that doesn’t make it real.”

“Make a circle,” said JC. “Everyone hold hands. Kim, fake it. This is symbolic. We’re going to work together, join together, and repudiate this darkness through sheer will-power.”

“What makes you think that’ll work?” said Erik.

JC grinned. “Because I already did it once.”

They made a circle, standing very close together, hand in hand in hand. Kim stood inside the circle, both her ghostly hands on top of JC’s. The darkness was very close. There was no car left outside the circle of light. They stood alone, the living and the dead, surrounded by darkness. JC took off his shades, and his eyes were very bright.

“Be strong,” he said, and his voice was calm and comforting and very sure. “The darkness is not real, but we are. See the world as I see it, through my eyes.”

His eyes blazed up, as some last trace of the given Light shone through them. The darkness stopped, and even recoiled a little. A sudden charge went through the circle, racing through their joined hands. They all gasped and cried out, even Kim. And in that moment, the Light shone in all their eyes, bright and sharp and irrevocable; and the darkness could not stand against it. Fuelled by their joined strength of will, by their simple and brutal act of disbelief, the energy shot round and round the circle, growing stronger all the time. The six of them turned their heads and looked at the dark, and the darkness could not bear the Light that burned in their eyes. It fell back, rushed back, down the car and out through the windows; and suddenly the car was back again, just as it had been, and the only darkness was outside.

JC gently tugged his hands free from Natasha and Happy, and everyone else let go. The energy was gone, the circle broken, and everyone’s eyes were back to normal again. Except for JC, who calmly replaced his shades. Happy shook his head uncertainly as the others slowly resumed their seats.

“Wow—what a rush. Tell me that’s not how you feel all the time, JC; I’d be killingly jealous.”

“That was . . . incredible,” said Natasha.

“It’s all to do with will-power,” JC said easily. “One of the first things they teach you at the Carnacki Institute.”

“I must have been off sick that day,” said Happy. “The only lesson that stuck with me was Don’t go up against the Great Beasts on your own. Along with how to fill in next-of-kin forms.”

“The Project believes in encouraging individual effort,” said Erik. “Along with basic and advanced treachery, back-stabbing, and general unpleasantness. Survival of the fittest. Trample on the weakest, glory in their plight.”

“No, I’m pretty sure that last bit is only you,” said Natasha. “Nasty little man.”

“Heh-heh,” said Erik.

“I think I’m going to go and sit by somebody else,” said Happy. And he got up and moved away from Erik to sit down beside Melody. Who immediately punched him hard in the arm.

“Ow!” said Happy. “What was that for?”

“For sneaking pills when you were expressly told not to. I’ll think of other things to hit you for later.”

Happy nodded unhappily. “I suppose a pain-killer is out of the question?” And then he broke off and looked round sharply. “Hold everything, go previous . . . I think the charge running through that circle flushed most of the chemical goodness out of my system. I haven’t felt this sober in years. I don’t like it. But I am definitely feeling things. Heads up, people; there’s someone else here.”

They all looked around, but there was no-one else to be seen. The darkness was back beyond the windows, where it belonged, and the car seemed perfectly normal.

“Are you sure?” said Melody. “It isn’t just . . .”

“No it isn’t just!” snapped Happy, up on his feet and glaring about him. “I am, unfortunately, entirely clear-headed again, and I am telling you. There’s a presence in this car. Not a ghost, not as such. But I can feel it, like a background noise, like a flickering light, or a voice calling from another room . . . It’s here, and it’s alive . . .”

“Yes!” Kim said suddenly. “It’s a man! I can sense him if I concentrate hard enough. Over there, by the end doors.”

And again everyone looked, but even when Kim pointed, they still couldn’t see anything. JC even lowered his shades for a moment, but it didn’t help. He looked at Happy.

“Not a ghost. A presence. Alive, not dead. So who is it?”

“I think . . . it’s the man who killed me,” said Kim. “Or what’s left of him.”

JC leaned in close beside her. “Are you sure?”

“He’s not entirely dead, but pretty close,” said Kim. “This is part of him. His mind, his spirit . . . driven out of his body by some terrible trauma.”

“Oh good,” said Natasha. “I was starting to feel peckish. Don’t look at me like that, it was just a joke!”

“Well, what’s it doing here?” said Melody.

“I think he’s trying to warn us about something,” said Kim. Her gaze had softened, and her voice was no longer angry. “He feels so sad, so hurt, and so very afraid.”

“Warn us?” said Happy. “Warn us about what?”

“About what’s waiting for us,” said Kim, her head cocked slightly to one side, listening. “He desperately wants to warn us about what he saw and what happened to him. He says he has a name for us.”

“What name?” said JC.

“Fenris Tenebrae,” said Kim.

“Oh shit,” said JC.

“What?” said Natasha. “What?”

“Fenris Tenebrae,” said JC, and his voice was very cold and very grim. “The Wolf In Darkness. The Devourer. One of the really old Great Beasts, and the most terrible.”

“What’s so bad about a wolf?” said Natasha.

“You eat ghosts,” said JC. “Fenris Tenebrae eats civilisations, and worlds. It is the end of all things, given shape and form and appetite.”

“Oh shit,” said Erik.

“We never stood a chance,” said Happy, softly, bitterly. “Right from the beginning, we never stood a chance. It’s been playing with us . . .”

“More fool it,” JC said steadily. “We can do this, people. There’s always a chance.”

“Of course,” said Kim. “We’ve got you.”

The train slammed into a station, and a cold, characterless light shone through the car windows. The train slowed smoothly to a halt and stopped. The five living agents and the dead woman stared out the windows. The station had no name and no markings, no destinations map, and nothing at all on the bare stone walls. No-one moved on the empty platform. The car doors opened silently and waited. JC looked at the doors, then at the station beyond.

“So this is the station the Beast made for itself. Bit basic. Not big on details, our Beast.”

“It’s not playing games any more,” said Melody.

“It doesn’t have to,” said Happy. “I think the Beast brought us here to show us its true face.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Natasha.

“To look into the eyes of a Great Beast is enough to destroy a human mind,” said Happy.

“You really do have self-confidence issues, don’t you?” said Natasha. “Grow a pair, dammit. We’re trained agents! We can do this!”

“Yeah,” said Erik, giggling. “Man up. What’s the matter with you? It’s only a big bad wolf.”

“Okay,” said Happy. “You crazy people can go out first. I’ll be somewhere else. Hiding.”

Natasha sniffed loudly, shouldered JC aside, and strode out through the waiting car doors and onto the deserted platform. JC hurried after her, not wanting to be left out of anything. Erik and Melody went next, and Happy brought up the rear, dragging his feet so much that Kim actually floated right through him to join up with JC.

The station was so cold it hit them all like a blow and stopped them dead in their tracks. The freezing air cut at their exposed flesh like a knife, and breathing in the bitter air was enough to burn their lungs. The five living agents huddled together instinctively, crowding close to share their body warmth. Kim looked at them blankly. She didn’t feel the cold at all. Both ends of the platform had disappeared, swallowed up by darkness, and the only source of light spilled out from the car behind them. Only now it was a harsh yellow light, as though it had somehow gone off, gone rotten, become . . . spoiled.

“This is what it will feel like at the end of the world,” said Happy. “When the sun has gone out, and Fenris Tenebrae has eaten the moon. When all the living things are gone, and nothing remains but the dark and the cold and the endless night.”

They looked around, but nothing looked back. They were alone on what remained of the platform, in what remained of the light. Dust seemed to be falling, softly and silently, in endless grey curtains.

And then Kim drifted slowly forward, untouched by the cold or the dark or the terrible foreboding of the place, and pointed out a small dark shape tucked away beneath the exit arch. JC made himself move forward to join Kim. There was someone sitting there, half-hidden in the shadows. A man, small and anonymous, curled into a foetal ball, staring straight ahead with fixed, unblinking eyes. His clothes were covered with a thick layer of frost, hard and unyielding to the touch, and he was locked so tightly into his state it was hard to see how he would ever rise from it again. He was still breathing. Small puffs of shallow breath steamed on the chill air. But his wide, staring eyeballs were covered over with fine misty patterns of frost.

“He doesn’t even know we’re here,” said Kim. “But I know him.”

“Is this the presence from the train?” JC said quietly. “The man who killed you?”

“I never saw his face,” said Kim. “Just felt the sudden pain in my back. But yes; this is what’s left of him. The body his mind was driven out of.” She looked at JC. “I think the Beast showed him its true face; and this is what it did to him.”

“But what’s he doing here?” said Natasha. She’d finally found the strength to move forward to join them. The others were coming, too, each at their own pace. Natasha prodded the unmoving body with the toe of her pink leather boot, and the small man rocked slightly in place, for a moment.

“I think the Beast called him here,” said Melody. “Because it had no more use for him. It didn’t want one of its agents ending up in the Institute’s hands, or the Project’s. We might have got some answers out of him.”

Erik crouched before the frozen figure, studying him with ghoulish fascination. “Fascinating . . . Almost cryogenically preserved. I really must send someone back for him when this is all over. I could have endless fun defrosting and dissecting him.”

“He’s ours,” Melody said automatically. “Hands off.”

“You wouldn’t even know what to do with him,” said Erik.

“We’d do our best to treat him, restore him,” said Melody.

“Exactly,” said Erik. “Look at his face. The despair, the horror. You think he ever wants to wake up and remember what he’s been through? If Kim is right, he’s half-way to being a ghost already. So let him go. At least I could have some fun with what’s left.”

“You’re still assuming there’s going to be an afterwards,” said Happy. “There’s a Great Beast here, remember? Let us put all our efforts into surviving the next few moments.”

He pushed Erik aside so he could crouch before the frost-covered figure and peer into its frozen face. Erik reached for a weapon. Natasha grabbed his arm and glared at him. None of the others noticed, intent on the still body.

And then there was a sound, and they all turned to look. It was an abnormally low and unnatural growl. It resonated in their bones and in their souls, triggering a strangely familiar atavistic fear. It was a sound from the Past, out of the Deep Past, out of the ancient shared past of the human species. From when we all lived in the forest, and we all lived in fear of the wild. It was the sound of the Beast, of all the wild things that ever were. Full of hate and contempt and brute bloodlust.

JC moved slowly forward, through the archway, and the others went after him. Because they’d come this far, and they had to see, had to know, for themselves. And because something in that terrible sound compelled them. And once they were through the archway, the light blazed up, and they all saw what poor little Billy Hartman had seen.

Huge and vast and intense beyond bearing, big as a house and more imposing, cruel and vicious and utterly wild, a great Wolf’s head. It had manifested on the earthly plane by manufacturing a shape out of its surroundings, using stone and cement and steel for its bones, then covering them with the wet red flesh and blood of the commuters it had abducted in its hell trains. Its great sharp teeth were made from human bone, and its huge shining eyes were formed from hundreds of human eyes. There was no fur, only wet crimson meat, to give shape to the Wolf’s head, all of it held in place by an implacable, inhuman will. It even had great pointed ears made of human flesh. It growled, and its breath stank of dead things.

For all its makeshift form, it was still Fenris Tenebrae, one of the Great Beasts, and its sheer presence was overwhelming. To look on it was like staring into the sun. It was all teeth and snarl and malevolent eyes, every wild wolf that ever was, embodied in a single brutal avatar—ancient and primordial, almost abstract, blazing with hate and hunger and cunning. Hatred especially for all the small running things that had dared to prosper in this world, dared to get above themselves and forget their true place as prey. The Wolf, the Great Wolf, Destroyer of Civilisations, and of Worlds.

Fenris Tenebrae.

Nature red in tooth and claw and loving it, all in one terrible face. No wonder poor little Billy had been driven out of his mind. Most people aren’t equipped to deal with monsters. But JC and Happy and Melody had been trained and hardened and refined by the Carnacki Institute, and Natasha and Erik had been beaten into shape by the harsh masters of the Crowley Project. So that they could track down monsters and stare them in the face, and not be broken or disturbed. So they could go face-to-face with things that were so much bigger than them, more real than them . . . and not look away.

They were agents. And Kim was dead. And not one of them was prey.

In the end, JC laughed in the Wolf’s face. It took everything he had, and it was only a small, brief sound, but it was enough to break the mood. Natasha and Erik shook their heads, as though coming out of a bad dream. Melody shuddered, and Happy put his arm round her shoulders and held her close, comforting, and she let him, glaring defiantly back into the Wolf’s huge eyes. Kim moved in close beside JC, and he laughed again—a real, hearty, dismissive sound. It hung on the air, refusing to go away. Natasha laughed, too, and Erik sniggered. Happy gave Melody a comforting squeeze and managed a breathy laugh of his own. Melody smiled coldly.

The Wolf growled again, a great roar of a sound, loud enough to shake the surroundings and rock the floor under their feet. A hateful sound, to fill all the world with cruelty. The stench of blood and carrion from the gaping jaws was sickening. Happy sneered at the Wolf.

“I have to say, as projections of the infinite into the material plane go . . . this really is pathetic. Only a head? What happened to the rest of you? Get stuck in the hole you opened because you couldn’t make it big enough to crawl through? Is your rear end hanging out on the higher plane? Maybe somebody’s hanging their washing on it, like they did with Pooh’s behind when he got stuck in Rabbit’s hole. All the other Great Beasts must be laughing their socks off. I mean, yes . . . the head’s pretty good. I’ll give you that. All big and nasty and wild; but when all’s said and done, it’s still only a head. My old Gran’s got a stuffed fox head on the wall; and I can’t help thinking you’d look really good as a trophy in the Boss’s office. Make a hell of a conversation piece. Your time is past, Beast. No-one worships or fears you any more. We’ve moved on.”

“I will make them fear me,” said the Wolf. “I will give them reason to worship me again.”

It had a voice like tearing flesh and spilled blood, and howling in the night. All the cruel joy of the chase and the slaughter.

“Nice speech,” JC said quietly to Happy. “But I think you’ve annoyed it enough now. Try and bear in mind that the Wolf is currently powerful enough to change our reality just by thinking about it.”

“Trust me, that thought is never far from my mind,” said Happy. “Our only hope is to keep the thing occupied, hold its attention, while we think of something to do. Right?”

“Good thinking, man,” said JC.

“And?” said Happy.

“I’m working on it,” said JC.

“Terrific,” said Happy.

“You know, you can let go of me now, Happy,” said Melody.

“Oh, sorry,” said Happy, quickly removing his arm from around her shoulders.

“That’s all right,” said Melody. “You knew how close I was to cracking. You held me together. And, you saved my life earlier. So, to say thank you, when all this nonsense is over, I am going to take you back to my place, throw you back onto the bed, and then do you and do you until you can’t stop smiling.”

“If we survive,” said Happy.

“Oh yes,” said Melody. “If we survive.”

“I knew there had to be a catch in it somewhere,” said Happy.

They grinned at each other.

“Who are you chattering creatures?” said the Wolf, and his voice was like thunder, like lightning, like the storm that breaks the greatest of trees. “What are you, that you can bear my terrible gaze, my awful presence?”

“We are the Carnacki Institute,” said JC.

“And the Crowley Project,” said Natasha.

“Agents trained and armed to stand between Humanity and all the Forces of the afterworlds,” said JC. “Now, are you going to leave quietly, or are we going to have to give you a good kicking, then boot your nasty arse out of here?”

“He hasn’t got an arse,” said Happy.

“Then we’ll improvise,” said JC.

“Yes, let’s,” Natasha said cheerfully. “I do so love to improvise.”

“Suddenly and violently and all over the place,” said Erik. “It’s an education just to watch her.”

The Wolf looked at them. Whatever opposition Fenris Tenebrae had expected to face on the material plane, this clearly wasn’t it. Open insolence and defiance were new things to the Wolf, and it didn’t know how to cope. It tried another growl, an even louder one, but no-one so much as flinched this time. Happy actually faked a yawn. The Wolf closed its bloody mouth with a snap and fixed JC with a crafty, spiteful gaze.

“You cannot make me leave this place, little thing. I have a hold on your world. I will not give it up, and you cannot make me. You cannot even hurt me, or you would have tried by now. You are nothing but a distraction, and I am done with you.”

“We have your hold on the world right here,” said Natasha, gesturing at Kim. “You used her death to open a portal into our world, which means as long as her ghost haunts this station, you can’t be thrown out. She’s the focal point of everything that’s happened here.”

“Natasha,” said JC. “Where, exactly, are you going with this?”

“I would have thought it was obvious,” said Natasha. “What’s the fate of one dead person, compared to the whole world?”

“No,” said JC. “There has to be another way.”

“But there isn’t,” said Kim. She smiled gently at JC. “I’m dead. My life is over anyway. I won’t fight this, JC, and I won’t let you fight it either. It’s necessary.”

“But I love you . . .”

“And I love you. But love is for the living.” She looked at Natasha. “What are you going to do, exorcise me?”

Natasha smiled. “No, dear. I eat ghosts.”

She moved forward, still smiling, and JC stepped forward to block her way, his face cold, and very determined. And Kim walked straight through him, to stand before Natasha. JC cried out and pulled the monkey’s paw from his pocket. Melody drew her machine-pistol, and Erik his pointing bone. And Happy threw both hands in the air and waved them vigorously as he yelled at the others.

“Hold it! Hold everything! Look at the Wolf!”

Everyone hesitated, then turned and looked at the Wolf’s head. It was grinning mockingly, its wet red mouth stretched wide. Dead men’s blood drooled and dripped.

“What about the Wolf?” snapped Natasha. “It isn’t doing anything.”

“Exactly!” said Happy. “You’re about to destroy the one thing that gives it a hold on our world, and it isn’t even worried? If Kim meant anything at all to the Wolf, it would have acted to defend her. Probably turned us all into frogs or something, and I do wish I hadn’t said that out loud.”

“He’s right,” said JC. “Kim isn’t the focal point.”

“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said Natasha.

“No,” Erik said reluctantly. “The telepath’s right. The Wolf isn’t worried. Kim was only ever a decoy, a distraction. We’ve missed something. Damn. Damn! We’ve missed something important!”

“Then why did he have me killed?” said Kim.

“Because it was fun,” said the Wolf. And it laughed at them all.

Melody stepped forward, trained her machine-pistol on the Wolf’s left eye, and emptied the whole magazine into it. The great manufactured head soaked up the bullets and took no damage at all. Erik stabbed his Aboriginal pointing bone at the huge Wolf face. The bone exploded in Erik’s hand, and he cried out in agony as jagged splinters were driven deep into his hand. He cradled the bloody mess against his chest and fell back, moaning.

Happy cried out to Natasha. She looked at him, nodded quickly, and grabbed his outstretched hand. Their minds slammed together, and the combined strength of their joined thoughts struck out at the Wolf like a single shining lance. The Wolf opened its mouth, swallowed the attack whole, and took no harm at all. The head surged forward, its great jaws snapping at Natasha and Happy. They scrabbled backwards, letting go of each other’s hands.

JC brandished his monkey’s paw and advanced on the Wolf’s head, holding the burning fingers of the modified claw out before him. It was a forbidden weapon because it could give a man the power of a god, for a while; but even it was no match for the Great Beast. It burst into flames, hot and fierce, and JC cried out and dropped it. He grabbed for it again, but already the paw was nothing but ashes smeared across the platform. The Wolf’s head surged forward again, pulling more of itself into the world, but JC stood his ground. He whipped off his sunglasses and stared right into the Beast’s huge eyes. The Wolf sneered at him.

“My, what big eyes you have . . .”

“And they help me see so clearly,” said JC. “Especially things that have been right under my nose all along. Kim isn’t the focal point of your haunting, and never was. There’s nothing of you in Kim. She’s a ghost, an unfortunate by-product of your actions. You’ve been waving her in front of me all along, to distract me. She isn’t the focus; her murderer is. That’s why you brought him here. By committing an act of murder in a certain place at a certain time, when the walls between the worlds were at their weakest, that act opened a door for you. Murder magic has always been a trait of your kind; you kill because you can’t create. In all the time you’ve been here, you haven’t made one new thing—only copies of existing things.”

He turned abruptly to Happy and Natasha. “I need the murderer’s spirit. Find it. Kim said he was still here, with us. Find him and put him back in his head.”

“He won’t stay long,” said Happy. “He’s too traumatised.”

“Put him back together for a while,” JC said urgently. “I need to talk to him.”

Happy and Natasha joined hands again, and concentrated. The Wolf cried out angrily, but no-one was listening to it. There was a sharp, cracking sound, and flecks of frost flew on the air as the frozen head turned slowly to look at Kim. The murderer blinked once, and his eyes cleared. He looked at Kim and tears started from his eyes, only to freeze before they were half-way down his cheeks. He worked his mouth, amid more harsh, cracking sounds, and Kim drifted forward to stand over him, to hear what he had to say.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice full of all the pain and tiredness in the world. “I’m so sorry.”

The thick layer of frost covering his body exploded out from him as he stretched suddenly and forced himself up onto his feet. Great cracks appeared, in his clothes and in his frozen flesh, but he ignored them, all his attention fixed on Kim.

“My name is Billy Hartman,” he said slowly. “I never meant to kill you. Never meant to kill anyone. It was like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.”

“I gave you what you wanted,” said the Wolf. “What you dreamed of. Don’t say you didn’t.”

“We don’t always want what we want in dreams,” said Billy. “They’re just dreams!”

“Humans are so complicated,” said the Wolf. “You can’t even tell the truth to yourselves.”

“You don’t understand us,” said JC. “You never did. You may be realer than us, but we’re still more than you are.”

Billy glared at the Wolf’s head, able to face it at last, in the last few moments of his life. “You lied to me. Used me!”

“That’s all you’re good for,” said the Wolf.

Billy turned his head away, dismissing the Wolf, and studied Kim with his sad, betrayed eyes. “What’s it like, being dead?”

“You’re closer to death than I am,” said Kim, not unkindly. “I’m stuck here. I was going to do so many things . . . and now I never will.”

“I know,” said Billy.

“It’s hard to know what I feel about you,” said Kim. “Finally having a name and a face to put to my murderer . . . doesn’t really make any difference. You were used by the Wolf, like me . . . but you, at least, had some choice in this. I can’t forgive you.”

“That’s all right,” said Billy. “I don’t forgive me either.”

JC stepped forward. “You want a way to get back at the Wolf? Make it pay, for everything it’s done to you and Kim and everyone else?”

“There’s a way for me to put things right?” said Billy.

“No,” said JC. “What’s done is done and can’t be undone. But I can give you a chance to defy the Wolf and save the world from what it wants to do to us.”

“I’d give anything for a chance like that,” said Billy.

“There’s only one way that works,” said JC. “One chance to pay all debts. Sacrifice.”

Billy looked at the Wolf and smiled slowly. His frozen cheeks tore as his mouth stretched. “I can do that.”

“Not on your own you can’t,” said JC. “Take my hand, Billy, and walk with me.”

The dying man put out his hand, and JC took it carefully in his. The frozen flesh burned his hand, but he didn’t let go. The two men strode towards the huge Wolf head, and it snarled warningly at them. Kim suddenly flew forward, putting herself between JC and the Wolf.

“No! JC, you can’t do this! You mustn’t! You’ll die, and leave me here alone! What debts do you have to sacrifice yourself for? What was your sin?”

“Loving the dead,” said JC.

And he walked straight through her, his living lips briefly coming up against her dead mouth, for one last kiss, as his face passed through hers. The Wolf growled at JC and Billy, watching them carefully, grinding its great bone teeth together. JC stared right back into the Wolf’s huge eyes, and the Wolf blinked first. JC’s gaze was burning so very brightly, and the Great Beast could not match it.

“You,” said JC. “You brought people to this place, in blood and horror and suffering, and killed them, to build your face. You turned the station into a bad place and infected it with your presence—a psychic stain that will last for generations. So you could make a place of your own. You destroyed two lives: Kim and Billy. To make your portal into our world. You came here to destroy us all . . . because you could. One of the Great Beasts, with no soul, no conscience, and not even the faintest trace of true greatness. Even the smallest human is bigger than you. Right, Billy?”

“Right,” said Billy.

Fenris Tenebrae howled horribly, and the great head surged forward again. The massive jaws opened, and started to snap closed on Billy and JC, because it couldn’t bear to hear what they were saying. To silence and punish and hurt them because that was what the Wolf did. And as the jaws were slamming together, at the very last moment, Billy pushed JC back, with all the strength remaining in his frozen arms. So that when the terrible jaws came together, only Billy was there. His frozen body exploded into a thousand jagged pieces . . . and with him finally dead and gone, with the focal point of the haunting destroyed, the Wolf no longer had a hold on the world. It had destroyed the very thing it had worked so hard to make. Fenris Tenebrae howled once, a wild, horrid, despairing sound, then it was gone. The manufactured head was left behind, all the stone and steel, bone and flesh of it; but nothing within it remained.

The world had been saved from the Great Destroyer, and not by the Carnacki Institute or the Crowley Project. By one little man, with a man’s courage.