I try to turn my head, but my neck doesn’t want to work. It’s very strange—I can’t feel my body. I don’t seem to be breathing, or blinking, and I can’t feel my heartbeat—but I’m not afraid. Maybe I’m dead?
In the distance, so far away that I can barely see it, low down and close to the horizon, the landscape takes a rectilinear turn. A shallow pyramid or volcanic mound as symmetrical as Mount Fuji reaches for the sky. I’ve got no way of telling how high it is, but instinct tells me it’s vast, rising kilometers from the center of the flatlands. Something about it creeps me out, almost as much as the murdered sky. I’ve got a feeling about it, a sense of dreadful immanence. There’s something inside the pyramid, something that has no right to exist in this or any other universe. I shouldn’t be here, but the thing in the pyramid is even more out of its place and time. It’s contained, that I know, but why it might need to be contained—
“—Told you not to overdo the ether! Can’t you get anything right? If he’s dead—”
The words buzz around my ears like meaningless insects, distracting me from the watch on the sleeper. The sleeper needs watching, demands witnesses who will collapse its quantum states and render it inert, incarnate in bosonic mass. I’m here because I’m part of the watch. They’re scattered to either side of me, the White Baron’s victims, impaled on stainless steel spikes, dead and yet undead, watching the sleeper. A massive sacrifice planned by the architect of terror to keep—
“—Got the smelling salts? Good—”
I can feel the pain gnawing at my abdomen, a deep and terrible burning pressure, and I’m on the edge of understanding that something awful has been done to me just as a horrible stench of cat piss steals up my nostrils and I feel a twitching in my eyelids.
“Is he responding?”
I understood that.
Abruptly, the dead plateau and the nightmare watchers and the sleeper in the pyramid are a million lightyears away from the headache that’s stabbing at the back of my eyes, and the stench of ammoniacal smelling salts tickles my nose harshly, evoking a sneeze.
“Ah, that looks promising. Hello, Mr. Howard? Can you hear me?”
Fuck.
Suddenly wisps of memory slot into place. I find myself wishing I was back on the plateau, just another mummified corpse, another upright fencepost in the necromantic wall that hems in the pyramid. “Yuuuuh . . .” My mouth isn’t working right; I’m slobbering like an out-of-control drunk, drooling incontinently. I blink, and the buzzing I’ve only just noticed recedes as I sense light and movement and chaos and an outside world that is acquiring color again.
“He’s awake.” The woman’s voice is heavy with satisfaction. “All-Highest will be most pleased.” As words to wake to, those leave something to be desired; but beggars can’t be choosers. A boot nudges me in the vicinity of my right kidney. “You. Say something.”
“S-s-something.”
It’s not as classy as you’ll never get away with this or if it wasn’t for you interfering kids . . . but I have an idea that I wouldn’t enjoy Ms. Boot renewing her acquaintance with Mr. Kidney, and if there’s one thing extreme god-botherers of every stripe have in common, it’s that they don’t have any sense of humor at all where their beliefs are concerned.
“Ow.” That’s for my head, which is now telling me in no uncertain terms that I’m nursing a ten-vodka hangover. Oh, and my wrists are handcuffed in front of me. I blink again, trying to see where I am.
I’m lying on my side on a thin foam mattress that’s seen better days, in a small room with walls painted in that peculiar rotted cream color that landlords like to call Magnolia. They’ve removed my jacket while I was out for the count. There’s a cheap IKEA chest of drawers and wardrobe, and a sash window half-masked by thin cotton curtains. Apart from the lack of a bed it could be just about any anonymous rented room in a shared flat—that and the two B-Team goons. Mr. Headless-Shotgun—who has left his trench broom somewhere else—nudges me in the back; another guy (young, blond, probably the friend with the handcuffs) is watching from the far side of the room, while the woman from the cycle path the other night squats in front of me, peering at my face. She’s a twenty-something rosy-cheeked embryonic Sloane Ranger—the anti-goth incarnate—with bouncy ponytail and plumped-up lips quirking with humor beneath eyes utterly devoid of anything resembling pity. She probably shops in Harvey Nicks and dotes on her pony.
“It speaks,” she declares, in a home-counties accent so sharp you could cut glass with it. “Pharaoh be praised.”
Pharaoh? Bollocks. She’s an initiate. Inner circle, then, which means I am potentially in a tanker-load of trouble. I try to clear my throat, but my head’s throbbing and I still don’t have full muscle control back. (Ether is vile stuff, as Hunter Thompson noted.) “W-w-water.”
“Do you want some water?” Her face is instantly concerned. I try to nod. She gets the message. “Julian, fetch Mr. Howard some water.” She doesn’t look at Mr. Headless-Shotgun as she issues the order: she’s focusing on me, with a strangely concerned look. “We wouldn’t want him to get dehydrated.”
“Yah. Er, Jonquil, should I fetch . . . ?”
His hesitant question brings a smile to her face. “Yes, a little aperitif would be good. Bring it.”
Aperitif? I clear my throat as Julian Headless-Shotgun leaves through a door I can’t see. “Drinking before you take me to the All-Highest? Isn’t that a bit unwise?” It’s a calculated risk, but her pink court shoes are a bit less likely to do Mr. Kidney an injury than Julian’s size-twelve DMs.
“Oh, I’m not going to get drunk.” She gives a little giggle.
Mr. Blond clears his throat: “You’re the one who’s going to be drunk.”
“Oh do shut up, Gareth,” Jonquil says tiredly.
“I’m just trying to explain—”
“Yes, you’re very trying.” Her world-weary tone suggests to me that Mr. Blond is definitely from the B-Team—unlike Jonquil, who has proven frighteningly competent, so far. “Why don’t you go through Mr. Howard’s jacket pockets instead, in case he’s carrying any nasty surprises for us?”
“Yes, Dark Mistress. I live only to obey.”
I must be slow today because it takes several seconds for the coin to drop. “You’re not vampires, are you?” I ask, trying to stay calm; the prospect of falling into the clutches of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh is quite bad enough without accidentally crossing the streams with a bunch of live-action Vampire: The Masquerade fans—and you can never be too sure. (Cultists aren’t usually noted for their tight grip on reality.)
“No!” She giggles again. “Vampires don’t exist! We’re just going to drink your blood and eat a teeny-tiny bit of your flesh, silly.”
I can’t help myself: I try and wriggle away from her. Which is fine as far as it goes, but as there’s a wall about half a meter behind my back I don’t get very far. “Why?” I manage to ask as Julian the Blood-Drinking Shotgun-Toting Cultist reappears with a bottle of Perrier, a scalpel, and a pair of unpleasantly fat syringes.