“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.