“Do you see Melissa here anywhere?” I said, keeping my voice low.
“No. She’s not here.” Sister Josephine looked quickly back and forth, her machine pistols tracking with her, desperate for a target.
“Who else could get in here?”
“No-one. Just me. That’s the point.” Sister Josephine made a visible effort to calm herself. “Only I know how to operate the Hand of Glory, to open the door between dimensions.”
“So, to track Melissa here, and then force a way in and do…all this, means whoever beat us here has to be someone of considerable power.” I thought about that, and the more I considered it the less I liked it. If this was the same Someone who’d been interfering with my gift, that meant they’d been one step ahead of me right from the beginning.
“If all they wanted was Melissa, why take the time to do this?” said Sister Josephine, her voice tight and strained. “Why mutilate these Sisters and desecrate the altar?”
“Has to be someone who takes the Christian faith seriously, to hate it this much,” I said.
Sister Josephine looked at me seriously. “I smell brimstone.”
“So do I.”
“Do you think Melissa is dead?”
“No,” I said immediately. “Or they’d have left her body here for us to find, looking like the rest. No, she was taken away from here so I couldn’t have her. Someone who didn’t want me involved from the very beginning. I hate to say it, but all of this could be Jeremiah’s work. If he didn’t trust me to bring his grand-daughter back to him. The man made a deal with the Devil, and this looks like the Devil’s work to me.”
I broke off as something in the chapel changed. The stench was suddenly almost overpowering, and I could hear the buzzing of flies. All the flowers in the chapel burst into flames, burning fiercely in their vases. It felt like there was Someone else in the place with us…and then Sister Josephine and I moved quickly to stand back-to-back, as one by one the dead nuns in the pews came slowly, horribly, to life again. Limbless torsos lurched out into the aisle, while hands pulled severed arms along the floor towards us. Lengths of purple intestines curled slowly on the floor like meaty snakes. Blood pattered down from the ceiling. And all the severed heads spiked on the wooden guard began to speak as one.
Sister Josephine, John Taylor. Come on down! There’s a special place in Hell reserved just for you, and all the heroes who failed to protect those they swore to save! You’ll like it in Hell, John. All your friends and family are here…
I laughed right back in their faces. “Save your mind games for someone who gives a damn. What were you planning to do with all these bits and pieces? Nudge us to death?” I looked at Sister Josephine. “Don’t let the bastard get to you. He’s only messing with us, hoping to break our spirit. I can deal with this.”
I fired up my gift, and straightaway found the very basic magic that was reanimating the dead nuns. We’d triggered the spell by entering the chapel, and it was the easiest thing in the world to push the switch back into the off position. The spell shut itself down, and the dead bits and pieces were still again, their dignity restored. Sister Josephine put her machine pistols away. She was breathing hard, but otherwise seemed unmoved.
“Who could have done this?” she said, sounding very dangerous indeed. “And where do I have to go to find him and make him pay?”
“Griffin Hall’s probably your best bet,” I said. “But since my gift seems to operate fine here, why don’t I make sure?”
I forced my inner eye all the way open, and my Sight showed me a vision of the recent past. I saw who it was who had come here, and done all this, and taken Melissa Griffin away…and just like that, a whole lot of things suddenly made sense.
ELEVEN - Hell to Pay
It’s never easy arguing with a nun, but it’s harder than usual when she’s waving a machine pistol around to emphasize her point. Sister Josephine was mad as hell because I wouldn’t tell her what I’d seen in my Vision, but I couldn’t tell her. Not until I had proof to back it up. Some things are just too weird to say out loud, even for the Nightside. Sister Josephine finally settled for insisting on coming back to Griffin Hall with me, and I couldn’t find it in me to say no. Not while we were surrounded by the dismembered bodies of her fellow Sisters. Besides, she had the Hand of Glory, the only way of getting us all the way across the Nightside to Griffin Hall in a single moment. So I agreed, and Sister Josephine made me wait while she loaded herself up with extra guns, grenades, and incendiaries, just in case. I had to smile.
“I really must introduce you to my girl-friend. You have so much in common.”
The nun snorted loudly. “I seriously doubt it. Right, that’s it. I’m ready. Time to go.”
She looked around the deserted chapel one last time, making herself look at every dead and mutilated body so that she’d be in a proper frame of mind when she arrived at Griffin Hall. And then she lit the candles on the Hand’s waxy fingers, and stabbed them at the door before her. The heavy wood bulged and rippled, shaking in its frame as though scared of what was being asked of it, and it swung open abruptly, revealing only darkness beyond. I walked through with Sister Josephine close on my heels.
But when I reappeared, I was still a long way short of Griffin Hall. I was right in the middle of the jungle surrounding the Hall, and there was no sign of Sister Josephine anywhere. My first instinct was to retreat back through the door, but when I looked behind me it was gone, too. Thin shafts of shimmering moonlight drifted down through the thick overhead canopy, painting silvery highlights on the trembling leaves and slowly stirring vegetation. There were strange lights in between the trees, and slow, heavy sounds deep in the earth. And all around me, slow, malevolent movement in the jungle, as it realised who it had at its mercy.
The Hall’s defences must be working overtime. They couldn’t stop a powerful working like the Hand of Glory, but they could keep me out of the Hall itself, by dumping me here. In the jungle. Where the plants are always hungry…
The vegetation was rising up all around me now, flowers opening out to reveal sharp teeth and spiny maws, barbed branches reaching towards me, lianas uncurling like strangling ropes. Even the trees were wrenching their roots up out of the wet earth in their eagerness to get at me. The jungle remembered me and hated me with all of its parts in a slow, cold rage.
I was surrounded by enemies and a long way from help. Situation normal in my line of business. I fished a couple of basic incendiaries out of my coat-pockets, primed them quickly, and tossed them where I thought they’d do the most good. Explosions rocked the jungle and lit up the night, and rustling vegetation everywhere flared up into wildly burning shapes. They shook back and forth, trying to throw off the flames that were consuming them, but only succeeded in spreading the fires further. The rising light pushed back the night, giving me a better look at my surroundings. Griffin Hall was just visible through the trees, right up at the top of the hill. It wasn’t that far. I could make it.
The jungle heaved all around me, the trees beating at the flames with heavy branches, while everything else withdrew out of the fire’s reach. Thin reedy screams filled the night as unnatural plants were consumed by artificial fires. But the flames were already dying down, and soon there would be nothing left to keep the jungle at bay. Except…the plants seemed as much afraid of the fire’s light as the heat. I raised my gift and found a place outside the Nightside where the sun was shining bright; and I reached out and brought the sunlight to me. A great circle of blindingly bright light stabbed down from above, surrounding me with warm, healthy daylight.