Death's Shadow (The Demonata 7)

“Don’t forget about your heart,” Beranabus says. “Or Sharmila’s legs. You’re a pair of wrecks on that world. Let us check the situation and report back. We won’t engage her if we can avoid it.”

“What about me?” I ask. “I can survive there.”

“Aye, but I’m asking you to wait. Please. Until we know more about what we’re walking into.” I don’t like it, but I know Beranabus worries about me. Better to go along with his wishes, so he can operate free of any distractions.

Kernel opens a window within minutes. It’s a white panel of light. I think I can smell the real world through it, but that’s just my nose playing tricks. Without saying anything, Kernel steps through, Beranabus half a step behind him.

“We’ll give them five minutes,” Dervish rumbles. “If they’re not back by then, we—” Beranabus sticks his head through the window, catching us by surprise. “It’s an area of magic,” he says. “Sharmila and Dervish will be fine there. Come on.”

He disappears again. We glance at each other uneasily, then file through one by one, back to the human universe, in search of the semi-human Juni Swan and a host of shadowy answers.

PART THREE — ALL ABOARD

Snapshots of Beranabus III

Beranabus thought his world had ended when I died. He’d been developing while we were together, the disjointed fragments of his mind linking up, learning to think and reason as other humans did. My magic helped. Unknown to me, I smoothed out many of the creases inside his brain, opening channels which were blocked. Perhaps, deep down, I loved him as he loved me. I was certainly fond of the strange boy.

When the rocks closed, trapping me in the cave with Lord Loss and his familiars, Beranabus went wild with grief. He tried to carve through the wall, using small stones and his bare fingers. When that failed, he kept vigil for several months, drinking from the waterfall inside the cave, abandoning his post only to catch the occasional rabbit or fox.

He held long, garbled conversations with himself in the darkness. Time got confused inside his head and sometimes he thought he was in the Labyrinth and the Minotaur was hiding behind a stalagmite. He’d repeat my name over and over, along with his own—he managed to say “Beranabus” for the first time in the cave. He wept and howled, and sometimes tried to bash his head open on the rocks. Normally he stopped before damaging himself, but a few times he knocked himself unconscious, only to awake hours later, scalp bruised and bloody, his ears ringing.

He knew I was dead, the rock wouldn’t open, that I’d never step out and throw my arms around him. But for a long time he clung to the belief that a miracle would return me to the world. Then, one day, without warning, he kissed the rock, climbed to the surface and staggered away, with no intention of ever coming back.

Beranabus retraced our steps, following the route we’d covered from the shoreline to the cave. He hoped, by doing so, to recall any small memories of me that he might have forgotten. His vague plan was to march west to the shore, then back inland to the crannog where I’d first met Drust, finishing up at my village. After that… he didn’t know. Thinking ahead was a new experience for him and he found it hard to look very far into the future.

When he reached the shore and gazed down over the cliff where we’d sheltered, to the ever-angry sea below, his plan changed. Grief exploded within him and he saw only one way to escape it. He’d had enough of demons and humans, slaughter and love. He didn’t know much about death, but the many corpses he’d seen over the centuries had all looked peaceful and unthinking. Maybe he wouldn’t feel this terrible sense of loss if he put life and its complicated emotions behind him.

Beranabus smiled as he stepped off the cliff and fell. His thoughts were of me and the Minotaur. He knew nothing of the possibility of a life after death, so he had no hope of seeing us again. His only wish was that our faces were the last images in his thoughts when he died.

The water was colder than he expected and he shouted with alarm when he hit. But as he sank into the new subterranean world, he relaxed. The cold wasn’t so bad after a while, and though he didn’t like the way the salt water washed down his throat, he’d experienced more unpleasant sensations in the universe of the Demonata.

That should have been the end of him, an anonymous, pointless death as Theseus had predicted so many centuries before. But beings of ancient, mysterious magic dwelt nearby and they were watching. Known to humans as the Old Creatures, they’d once controlled the world. Now they were dying, or had moved on, and only a few were left.

Some of those lived in a cave beneath the cliff which Beranabus jumped off—they were the reason Drust had gone there in the first place. They sensed the boy’s peculiar brand of magic and curiously probed the corridors of his mind. The Old Creatures took an interest in the drowning boy and instead of letting him drift out to sea and a welcome death, they drew him to the cave against his will. He washed up on the floor, where he reluctantly spat out water and instinctively gasped for air, even though he would rather have suffocated.

When Beranabus could speak, he roared at the pillars of light (the Old Creatures had no physical bodies). He knew they’d saved him and he hated them for it. He cursed gibberishly, trying to make them explain why they hadn’t let him die.

“We Have Need Of You,” the Old Creatures answered, the words forming inside the boy’s brain. “You May Be Able To Help Us.”

Beranabus roared at them again, and although he couldn’t express his feelings verbally, the Old Creatures knew what he wanted to say.

“Yes, She Is Dead, But Her Soul Has Not Departed This World. She Can Return To You.” Beranabus squinted at the shifting lights. “If You Remain With Us, Let Us Teach And Direct You, And Serve As We Wish, You Will Meet Your Bec Again.”

The promise captivated Beranabus and filled his heart with warmth and hope. It didn’t cross his mind that the Old Creatures could be lying, and he never wondered what they might ask of him. They’d said he’d see his young love again—that was all that mattered. Putting dark thoughts and longings for death behind him, he presented himself to the formless Old Creatures and awaited their bidding, leaving them free to mould and do with him as they wished.

Beranabus could never remember much of his time with the Old Creatures, even though he spent more than a century in the cavern. They taught him to speak and reason, completing his evolution from confused child to intelligent young adult.

As his intellect developed, he came to believe that the Old Creatures had lied about my return. He didn’t blame them—he knew it was the only way they could have calmed and controlled him. He accepted my death and moved on. He was older and wiser, tougher than he’d been as a child, and although he still loved and mourned me, he had other issues to focus on. He had demons to kill.

Beranabus hated the Demonata—they’d slaughtered his beloved—and the Old Creatures encouraged this hatred. They showed him how to open windows to the demon universe and explained how he could channel magic to kill the beasts. They sent him on his first missions, directing him to specific spots, targeting vulnerable demons.

Beranabus never questioned their motives. He assumed that everyone on this world hated the demons as much as he did, even though the Old Creatures were not of the human realm and seemed to be under no threat. They were more powerful—in this universe at least—than the Demonata, so they had nothing to fear from them.

As he developed a taste for killing, Beranabus spent more and more time in the demon universe, using the cave of the Old Creatu

res as a base which he visited rarely, when he needed to sleep, treat his wounds and recover.

One night, after an especially long spell butchering demons, he returned to the cave and the Old Creatures were gone. He would have known it even if he was blind. The magic had faded from the air and it now felt like a cold, dead place.