She crashed into the snow, shrieking. Her legs and torso were aflame. Her clothes were on fire, her skin was on fire. It was agony beyond endurance. She was incoherent with it, all thought lost in the blaze.
Men screamed nearby, flailing torches in the snow, trailing black smoke and the reek of cooking flesh. She thrashed wildly among them. Someone was firing a gun, shooting at anyone and anything.
The flamethrower operator spotted her, pointed the nozzle at her again. She saw him, and instinct made her turn away and cover herself. He squeezed the trigger and hit her full on.
Fire consumed her, roaring in her ears. Her hair burned. Her back blackened and bubbled. She tried to scream but drew scorching air into her lungs instead. The pain was everywhere, inside and out, an infinity of suffering, incomprehensible in scope.
Her body gave up control. She fell to her knees and tipped into the snow, which hissed and steamed as she hit it.
The jet of flame turned away from her, and there was Pelaru, beloved Pelaru, in his true form at last. He seized the flamethrower operator’s head and tore it from his body. And as her sight died she saw him, the light within, the symphony of colours that he was. Even through the pain, her heart hurt with the beauty of it.
The headless man toppled, his finger still pressed on the trigger. The jet of fire swung through the air and licked across the skin of the generator, and the fuel tanks that powered it.
Pelaru’s eyes met hers, and in that moment she knew him totally.
Then the fuel tanks exploded, and there was no more.
Thirty-Two
Crake held his breath in the gloom of the darkened mansion. A bead of sweat inched its icy way across his scalp.
A floorboard creaked.
‘Now!’
Kyne’s gloved hand slapped down on a button on the metal sphere he was holding. Plome’s palm came down on a sphere of his own. A screamer and a damper, activated together. The silence was shattered by a high-pitched screech and a dull throb, a non-noise that sucked the echoes from the air.
In the next room, the Imperator let out a cry, a daemonic howl fit to freeze bones. Crake hurried in, lumbering beneath the weight on his back. The others were close on his heels. Crashing among the furniture, a black-clad figure flailed wildly in the half-light.
‘Thirty seconds!’ Plome squeaked.
Crake swallowed down his fear and applied himself to the dials on the portable control panel he held. Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds till the batteries gave out, eaten up by the voracious devices that kept the Imperator disorientated and choked off its power. Thirty seconds to nail its frequencies with the sonic flux emitter.
Plome’s eyes were wide, shining with terror behind his pince-nez. He held up the damper, knuckles white, a pocket watch in his free hand. Kyne had found him hiding in a cupboard. He was fortunate the Imperator hadn’t found him first.
How long had passed? How long?
The Imperator staggered to his feet. Kyne kicked his knee, knocking him back down. He had his gun drawn and aimed, but if the devices gave out, he might not get the chance to use it. The Imperator’s influence could crush a man instantly, pull all the strength from him, drive him to the floor.
Concentrate!
Crake turned the dials as slowly as he dared. He didn’t need haste here, he needed precision. As he altered the frequency he kept half an eye on the shadowy figure in the centre of the room, watching for a reaction.
‘Twenty!’
Had it been ten seconds already? Time was running too fast. The Imperator tried to stand and Kyne knocked him down again. He was tangled in its cloak and his hood had come off. His head was covered in black fabric, hiding the white maggot-like skin beneath. Crake stood back, turning the dials. Nothing.
‘Ten!’ Plome cried.
‘Hurry it up, Crake!’ Kyne warned.
Crake twisted too fast, swallowed, went back to his previous position and resumed scanning from there.
‘Five! Four! Three!’
‘Plome!’ Kyne cried.
Plome fumbled at his belt and hit the screamer there. Kyne dropped the sphere he was holding and hit his damper. ‘Thirty!’ Plome cried again.
Each of them had been carrying a screamer and a damper. Crake had used his earlier. These were the last of them. When the batteries went dead, there would be nothing between them and the Imperator. They would die or Kyne would fire his weapon, but either way their struggle would have been meaningless.
The Imperator shrieked as if struck, spun away, clattered into a table which collapsed under him. Crake’s eyes widened. He tuned his dials, watching to see which made the subject writhe. The Imperator’s back arched.
Crake’s hand jerked away from the dial. He hadn’t realised how much it would seem like torture. Tormenting a daemon was so much easier when they weren’t wearing a human form.
‘Twenty!’ Plome called.
Crake’s misgivings were forgotten. He had the daemon speared through one of its primary frequencies; now he had to anchor it. He tuned more dials.
‘Ten!’
The Imperator began to squeal and buck. Now he couldn’t even get to his feet; he rolled and spasmed as if suffering some awful grand mal seizure.
‘I’ve got it!’ Crake said. ‘I think I’ve got it! Go! Go!’
They pulled off the spheres they were carrying and tossed them aside. From their packs, each drew a metal cylinder with a pinecone-like set of rods on the end. The cylinders were connected by cables to the harmonic arc generators in their packs.
‘Kyne! Two-twenty-four hundred in the mid-bass range!’ Crake called, reading off his dial. ‘Plome! Eight-eighty in the subsonic!’
With their free hands, they set the dials at their belts. Crake concentrated on the Imperator. He lashed and twisted like a landed fish, slithering through the darkened room. Without Kyne to keep watch, he was wary, as if he might lunge at any moment. But the sonic flux emitter was working, it was working the way it was supposed to work, and gradually Crake’s fear was replaced by triumph. He was looking at the proof of his theory right here!
The first time he’d tried the harmonic arc generators, on the Iron Jackal, he’d been in possession of the daemon’s frequencies. He’d been forearmed. Not this time. And yet he had the Imperator on a hook nonetheless. He was bruised and battered and he’d come way too close to death, but he had him!
‘Ready!’ Kyne said.
‘Ready!’ Plome agreed.
They’d moved round to either side of the prone Imperator. They held out their cylinders towards it.
‘On my mark. .’ said Crake. ‘Now!’
He hit the switch and deactivated the sonic flux emitter just as the others activated their own devices. The Imperator jumped to its feet and threw himself at Crake. He flinched away — he couldn’t help it — but the Imperator never reached him. He froze before he got there, trapped in an invisible cage of frequencies.
Crake took a moment for a few gasping breaths. The Imperator raged against its confinement, but it couldn’t break free. Plome and Kyne struggled to hold it. ‘Together,’ Crake reminded them. ‘Move together. One on each side to maintain the cage. Go.’
He stepped out of the way. Kyne and Plome shuffled through the doorway, Kyne backing off and Plome following. As they moved, the cage between them moved too, and the Imperator was forced that way.
Crake went after them, his hand ready on the switch of the control panel in his hand. He wasn’t sure how much juice his pack had left in it, but he’d need it if the Imperator broke out. He could see the effort it took Plome and Kyne to keep it where it was. Even the Iron Jackal hadn’t fought that hard.
Then it struck him. Something he hadn’t considered in his theory. The Iron Jackal was a pure daemon. It couldn’t pass through the barrier that the harmonic arc generator set up. But an Imperator was a daemon sheathed in physical form. The sonics had no effect on the physical body, just the daemon inside.