The Marriage of the Living Dark

That had been ten minutes back

Li Yuan pushed through the doors, then stopped, facing a scene of carnage. The guard behind the reception desk had been pulled right over his desk, garrotted. Two more security men had been knifed and left for dead. A cleaner, taken by surprise as he came through the far door, had been throttled. And here, at the foot of the stairs that led up to the glass doors of the company’s inner sanctum, lay another guard, a look of shock in his eyes, his hands locked about the knife that was embedded deep in his throat. Unsteady now, he walked across to the desk. The guard wore a holster. Gritting his teeth, he reached in and removed the weapon, then turned. The gun felt strange, unwieldy, in his hand. A dead man’s gun. Unused to such violence, he found himself trembling as he climbed the central steps. The gun was loaded, but he did not know whether he could use it He had never fired a gun in anger, nor did he know if he could now. He would be justified in shooting the bastard, but whether he could actually do it was another matter. He felt sick to the pit of his stomach. Sick and afraid. I should have stayed in the lobby, he thought, wondering what in the gods’ names had made him follow DeVore. Or better yet made a run for it. Coming out onto the level he paused. There was no sign of anyone beyond the open doors. And then he saw them, on the far side of the open-plan office, the woman crouched over a communicator while DeVore held a gun to the back of her head. He felt his nerve give. His legs wanted to buckle.

No, he told himself, closing his eyes. Face it. Conquer it. Li Yuan swallowed silently, then took another step, fearing that at any moment DeVore would turn and see him.

He could barely hold the gun now, he was shaking so much. You have to do this, he told himself, reminding himself why he’d come, or hell just go on. Hell Ml you if you don’t. And the girl. The thought of DeVore harming the girl, more than any thought for himself, gave him strength. He could do this.

He took another step, and then another. He was inside the inner sanctum now, nothing between him and DeVore but thin air. A single shot would end it Li Yuan raised his left hand up to steady his right, to try to keep the damn thing still, yet even as he did, DeVore yelled and stepped back, aiming a mighty backhander at the woman that sent her sprawling. “Can’t you do a single fucking thing right!”

He kicked her aside, then began to operate the keyboard himself. “Come on, you bastard! Come on!”

He saw the woman begin to climb up, something in her hand, and at that moment something strange happened, for DeVore’s arm seemed to grow into a spike that transfixed the woman clean through the chest.

Li Yuan blinked, unable to believe what he had seen. The woman had been lifted into the air and seemed to dance on the long, steel-like pole that now extended from DeVore’s expanding body. Even as Li Yuan watched, wide-eyed, the man’s clothes tore apart, a dark, rotund shape emerging from within. He dropped the gun and took a backward step. And then his legs did give. Before his eyes DeVore was changing ... becoming a great, leathery black bubble that swelled grotesquely to fill that whole side of the office, pressing up into the ceiling and bursting through, eight huge, steely limbs now extending from his twin abdomen.

Li Yuan pressed his face into the carpet, not wanting to see; afraid to see. And then some ancient instinct overtook him and, inch by inch, he began to crawl away from there, back to the stairs and out.

Away. Anywhere but away from the nightmare that was unfolding up ahead of him.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE LIVING DARK

A security guard, watching idly at his desk, was the only one to see the huge thing burst through the mesh that covered the top of the building and climb out, its long, thin legs taking it quickly, gracefully to the edge of that massive construction.

The man leaned forward, brushing at the screen. “What the ...?” On the screen, the giant spider paused, then seemed to throw itself up into the air, swimming against gravity, ascending as if upon an invisible thread, its long legs spinning a web of force beneath it as it went. For a moment the man simply gaped, stupefied. Then, instinct taking over, he brought his hand down hard upon the pad, sounding the alarm.

DeVore steered the craft down onto the roof of the storage warehouse, then killed the engine, smiling as he unstrapped himself. He had all of the necessary documentation. Now he only had to present it and the machine would be his.

There had always been a part of him that had known, but not until his twin arrived and spelled it out for him had he understood. This was why he was as he was. This was why he felt the black wind blowing at his back. He felt the spider shape flex inside his puny human frame and grinned. Downstairs, on storage level nine, was the no-space ship. He had only to go and retrieve it and he could be out of here. Safe. Ready to fight another day. Things had gone wrong. Things had gone badly wrong, and no amount of tinkering could put that right. But next time...

He walked through, staring at the two women a moment, seeing the fear in their eyes. For a moment he thought of finishing them, but he was beyond such pettiness right now. Turning from them, he pressed his hand against the pad on the hull and the hatch hissed open.

It was evening now and the sun was slowly setting. He stepped out, looking about him briefly at the bleak cityscape, then stepped down onto the roof.With any luck they’d kill his twin. Deal with him for him. And maybe that would satisfy them. Whatever, it would be good for him. Because he didn’t like competition. Not even from himself.

He turned, taking one last look at the world, glowering at the sun, then walked across and pulled open the door, going down into the building.

The two craft fell silently from the upper air, slowing as the great cityscape unfolded before them. Tientsin was directly beneath them now, the sea to their right Ahead, beyond the city, the mountains lifted into the blue. As they levelled out at ten thousand feet, Joseph gestured to Karr in the other craft.

“Gregor ... you go after the shuttle. We’ll wait at the Temple.” Karr gave a wave of acknowledgement as his craft peeled away, like a great chair gliding on the air.

Joseph turned to look at Jelka, smiling awkwardly at her. He was still not used

to the way she looked at him, nor was he sure that he could even imagine what

she was thinking, let alone feeling, only that he reminded her of what she had

lost

“Why the Temple?” she asked.

“Because it is the centre of all things.”

“And you think DeVore will go there?”

“He will be drawn to it, if only because we are there.”

She narrowed her eyes, then looked away.

“Jelka?”

She looked back. “Yes?”

“I wish Td known them.”

“Yes ...” She paused, a small motion in her face showing how she fought briefly to control what she felt, then she smiled. “If we come through, I’ll tell you of them. Or what I know, anyway. I didn’t know K. long.” He nodded, then looked back at the landscape below them. The Temple of Heaven was not far now. If one looked hard one could see it, just there beyond the southern city, in the great open space between the southern sprawl and the towers of the financial district. The centre. Where it all began, if Master Tuan is right. And where it now must end.

“Dcuro?”

“Yes, Joseph?”

“Are you ready?”

Dcuro laughed. “Let him show me the whites of his eyes and I’ll drill two holes in them!”

Wisps of black smoke, drifting out of nowhere, gusted in a wind that never ceased, blowing from the dark heart of nothingness. The great spider crouched on the mound, overlooking the ancient Temple, gnawing at the bones of its latest victim as it waited. The darkness between the stars called to it, making it ache to leap high, away from the pull of this tiny rock, away from the irritating heat of this paltry, insignificant star, out until it could drift, free of all forces, in the silent coldness where it had first begun.

Yet something kept it here. Some dark residual thing.

It looked up, frowning, its huge eyes focusing, and then it remembered.

The game. I have not finished the game.

They were standing between the pillars of the temple. Three of them. Jelka, the one who called himself Joseph, and one other, a Han by the look of him. He laughed, the noise issuing from his huge, beaked mouth like the raucous cry of a crow. Yet his voice, when it came, was still DeVore’s voice. “The last stone,” it said, casting the bones aside then stretching on its legs, so that it towered above both them and the Temple itself. “I have come to place the last stone on the board.”

The Joseph one nodded, then stepped forward. He held something in his palm.

Something small and round and white.

A stone ...

“How quaint,” it said, smiling ferociously.

It took a step towards them, then stopped, seeing the man’s arm go back, to heft the stone into the air.

The explosion took off two of its legs. It staggered, keeping itself upright, then, furious, twisted its abdomen round to face them, ready to pierce the barrier and release the darkness that would annihilate them. Yet, even as it turned, it froze, as the air surrounding it shimmered and went solid. Jelka looked to Joseph, but he was staring, as if he did not understand what had happened. And then the air before them parted.

Jelka cried out; a sound both of pain and happiness.

“Kim!”

Joseph felt a ripple of pure fear run through him. It was Kim, and K. too, just behind him. But they were dead. He could see from the paleness of their skin, from the marks upon their flesh, that they were dead. “What have you done?” he asked.

The voice that answered him was an echo that sounded from their empty mouths as if they spoke with a single voice.

“Master Tuan has given us this hour, to set things right and unify the universes.”

Jelka took a step towards them, but Joseph reached out and held her arm.

“No,” he said quietly.

And now she too saw the small red mark upon Kim’s forehead, and groaned. And Joseph felt the sorrow that lay behind that noise, as much as if he himself had uttered it, and finally understood what she had lost “What has happened to it?” he asked, pointing to the frozen creature. Kim and K. turned as one, their eyes impassive, then looked back at Joseph. “I have placed it in a temporary space.”

“Will it be destroyed?”

But Kim, if he heard the question, did not answer it directly. “The snake,” he said, even as his form shimmered and disappeared from sight, “the snake must swallow its tail.”