The Last Line Series One Read online

  Killing them was the only option. Unseelie had no interest in meeting around the negotiating table. They had only one objective, the absolute and utter downfall of the human race so they could leave the realm of thorns and shadows they had always occupied.

  Worst of all, over the centuries a secretive human religious cult had formed around worship of the Unseelie Court. Facilitating their crossover into the world, their primary job was to develop and maintain Thin Spots around the globe, using human sacrifice of their own to bind the rituals that brought the Unseelie into our world. In Usher’s eyes they were almost worse than the monsters themselves and with less honour.

  After centuries of missions by the Unseelie Court and its human followers, elegant top hatted Diplomacy was reduced to a shambling hobo, muttering into the gutter that he used to have a job.

  The Unseelie was there in the background in modern times. Two World Wars had hidden much of their twentieth century activity. They were there in the Nazi camps, a veritable smorgasbord for corpse-hungry Ghouls, fattening themselves on mass graves. They were the worst. Whatever agent of the Court was encountered, no one wanted it to be a Ghoul.

  Like Isaiah Argent.

  Usher knew the name well but they had never come close to catching him. In the rarefied military circles that Usher and his team moved in, the name Isaiah Argent was akin to a boogeyman.

  Usher had often asked the boffins at Hereford one question. Why do only the monsters seem to appear in our world? Where were the angels, the unicorns, the good fairies and the benevolent old wizards that also filled the books he used to read to his son? Where were the good guys? The dreams to balance out the nightmares?

  The boffins had the theory that there were many other realms all stacked up close to each other like the layers of an onion. They told him about strings vibrating at different frequencies, extra dimensions cleverly folded into the ones we can see, quantum this and quantum that, but Usher being a simple soldier had zoned out after ten minutes of that. The main bit he remembered was being told that as far as they could tell, there were probably many different realms and other dimensions out there, it was just pure coincidence that the once stacked tightest right next to ours was the dark and violent realm of the Unseelie Court.

  Usher sighed and lit up a cigarette. Monsters for neighbours, and a human cult desperate to invite them all in.

  Just our luck.

  4

  HELMAND PROVINCE

  AFGHANISTAN.

  The townsfolk watched the Chinook sweep low over the desert sands. Their fear rose as it slowly turned from a small black speck to a large ominous presence, the low thrum of its twin rotors drifting across the hot midday desert wind to rattle through their hearts.

  They were trapped. Behind them stood the armed Taliban soldiers, sweat-reeking and battle hardened. They had come down from the caves above the village to seek safety amongst the population. From experience they knew that the system of caves they had favoured for so long was no longer the protection from UN forces that they once were. Human shields were a tried and tested tactic.

  One of the Taliban fighters, a scraggy looking man with a weasel face, raised an RPG-7 rocket launcher to his shoulder, flipped open the cap, and looked at his commander for permission.

  Adil, the leader of this group of thirty men, stroked his long beard and considered his options. He raised his hand and was about to signal his lieutenant to fire upon the aircraft, when he noticed several figures rappelling rapidly down onto the dunes.

  He shook his head. A ground attack, on a heavily protected position, what were they thinking?

  He was too curious to allow his lieutenant to fire at the helo, which rapidly spun and took off in a cloud of sand.

  The townspeople huddled together. They were used to living in fear and had learned to adapt and assimilate well to whatever thugs were trying to dictate their lives that week.

  The Taliban commander Adil peered past the small irrigated fields outside the village, across the undulating dunes beyond. He squinted in concentration as the adrenalin started to rise in his blood. So they wanted an old fashioned stand up fight. He could do that. He had been fighting and dealing with brutal realities all his life, all his men had. Russians, Americans, apostates, his own government, he had battled against them all since he had been strong enough to hold a gun at twelve. Let them come. What Allah wills, He wills.

  Behind him, his men readied their type -56 Chinese Kalashnikov copy rifles.

  Then the attackers came, appearing over the top of the closest dunes. Adil instantly knew something was wrong.

  At first he thought it was the heat of the mid-day sun causing his vision to blur. He glanced at his men and saw that they carried the same confused expression .

  The villagers were starting to panic, a low murmur of fear as they desperately sought an exit, like penned in sheep due for slaughter. The Taliban were all around them, hemming them in and pushing them roughly with the butts of their rifles.

  Adil raised his own rifle, flicked the selector lever to automatic. He shook his head again. There were only a handful of soldiers attacking the village, huge graceful figures moving down the dunes towards the irrigated fields of the village. Perhaps only six men at most.

  That was not the thing that was disturbing him. These soldiers moved wrong.

  Despite being clearly laden down with many kilograms of kit, these figures glided across the sand with impossible speed. The figures were moving so fast that they seemed to skim across it like lizards, leaving trails of indentations in their wakes. He could not figure out their strange gait at first, but as they got closer, he could have sworn that the soldiers were approaching them on all fours.

  Adil signalled his men to stand fast, shoulder their weapons, and adopt hard cover positions.

  “Do not worry, there are enough explosives in those fields to blow them to Hell twice over.”

  The patchy green irrigated fields that surrounded the village were the ideal concealment for the improvised explosive devices the Taliban soldiers had buried there. Adil smiled as the attacking soldiers approached the edge of the first irrigation ditch.

  What happened next seemed to happen in slow motion. As the first explosive device was triggered, two of the attackers seemed to sense it and leapt free of the blast radius. Their bodies twisted as they sprung fifteen feet into the air to land like spider monkeys in the lower bows of the peach trees that were planted in the fields.

  Some of the Taliban fighters began to back off, murmuring superstitious words of warding against what they now knew were devils.

  “They are not men sir. They are the corpses of the dead, raised and set against us!”

  Adil raised his rifle as the first attacker leapt down into the village square and sat there on his haunches, a Sig 9mm pistol in each hand and his head cocked to one side like a curious monkey. Close up Adil realized how big these soldiers were, twice the size of normal men. Their eyes shone out as red as blood.

  The rest of this soldier’s team dropped down beside him as agile as tree frogs.

  Adil could see their faces now and a sour sweat broke out on his forehead. These soldiers wore the desert fatigues, the boots and the webbing of western forces. They carried the SA80 assault rifle, the Sig pistol, but also long knives, like kukris. At first he thought they were Special Forces, SAS or Delta force. Now that they were closer, they just looked sick and insane. They were not men at all.

  Thick ropey muscled necks bulging with veins, eyes so bloodshot they appeared bright red, muscles so pumped these men looked as if they would tear from their uniforms. There huge chests rose and fell with fevered breath, their teeth ground and rabid spittle hung from their chins.

  They looked like elementals of pure rage.

  Adil needed to show his men that these were not devils, only men with bloodlust in their hearts. He shouldered his rifle, took aim, and squeezed off a single shot. It caught the squatting man in his left shoulder, knocking him back
into the dust with a guttural choking sound. His leg twitched once then was still.

  Adil turned to his men, shrugged and smiled. “Whatever they are, they bleed.”

  Turning back, Adil watched in horror as the man he had just shot flipped himself back up onto his haunches like a gymnast, flexed out his shoulder as if awaking from a deep sleep, and raised his head to the sky.

  The noise that came from his throat sounded more like baboon than man. A deep feral war cry that made Adil’s blood run cold.

  The Taliban fighters took whatever cover they could find, spraying automatic fire in all directions. The townspeople scattered and ran, trying to get back to their homes. The attacking forces, despite their savagery, shot with the kind of precision only possible on a firing range. Whereas the Taliban fighters lost all accuracy in their fear, the attackers went for headshots every time. Each Taliban head that rose above the cover of a wall was jerked back with a mortal snap as 5.56mm rounds punched through their skulls.

  Adil took cover behind an old farm truck, securing himself behind the front wheel arch for protection. Unlike his men, he was made of sterner stuff, and resting his rifle across the bonnet, took careful aimed shots at these frenzied attackers. Several times his rounds found their mark, and the attacking soldiers dropped to the ground. Adil saw the pink mist rise around them as they fell, knew his shots were true, yet he shook in despair as he watched each man he shot shake himself awake and pick up his gun. He turned to shout at his men.

  “They cannot be stopped. Fall back, back to the caves!”

  There was no time to fall back. The frenzied attackers closed in to within hand-to-hand combat distance. Not because they had to, but because they wanted to. They slung their SA80’s across their backs and drew the long machetes they carried strapped to their thighs. Then the knife work began.

  Adil felt his stomach churn cold as the last pull of his trigger produced nothing but a click. Turning his rifle he saw the working parts were back. Empty.

  He looked around him at the carnage. It was a scene of medieval butchery. His men were screaming as the attackers hacked and bludgeoned them with skill somewhere between mindless fury and dancer’s grace. Some fought bravely, using the stocks of their rifles to fend off the flurry of knives, but the attackers seemed to move at twice the speed of mortal men.

  Adil looked behind and saw the alleyway between two buildings that led out of the village to the mountain paths and the refuge of the caves. It was a thirty metre sprint over open ground. For a moment he started to run, and then he heard the rattle of machine gun fire as it blew up chunks of earth at his feet. His heart hardened and he turned to face his death.

  The leader of the attackers was standing ten feet from him, wiping gore from his kukri across his trousers. He was grinning from ear to ear, and thick drool was dripping in long strands from his bottom lip. His reddened eyes were filled with bloodlust and madness, and Adil knew he could not outrun this thing. It was a beast not a man.

  Adil began a prayer to Allah under his breath, asking for paradise and a good warrior’s death.

  Then he drew his Pesh-kabz from his belt. A long thrusting knife with finely tapered, reinforced tip, it had been his grandfather’s.

  The red-eyed man spun his kukri casually in his hand. They squared up to one another, sweat and blood making gripping their blades a challenge. Then they both charged at one another.

  “From this satellite footage, initial strike seems to have been successful Mr Argent. All X-rays have been neutralized with zero permanent casualties to team Fury One. Shock and awe as expected sir. As an initial test against armed subjects in a fortified position this has turned out just as expected. They are proceeding to phase two, to recover the artefact as directed. However there has been a previously unseen turn to their behaviour.”

  “And what is that unseen turn Dr Carver?”

  “They’ve gone comms- dark sir. Non responsive and more feral than before. From the satellite feed I’m watching now, the team are proceeding to annihilate the civilian population of the village.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Every man woman and child sir. Whether as a gesture of victory or an effect of the drug, they are also cannibalizing the dead and dying. We haven’t seen this before, their aggression levels are spiking. In my professional opinion, they are becoming more difficult to control and direct. The dosage we’ve given them, I don’t think they can come back from it. There’s not much human left in there I’m afraid. I think we need to initiate phase three immediately, to ensure maximum efficiency.”

  “They’ve cut their teeth Carver, let them enjoy their trophies. Boys will be boys.”

  “Yes sir. Are they ready for the main event?”

  “Not quite. Give them a higher dosage. Then get them prepared.”

  “A higher dosage sir? We don’t know what effect that will have. I don’t think they will ever revert from their current state as it is.”

  “We need more of the Bjorn’s blood to get them prepared. I want this annihilation decisive. Do they have any memory of who they were?”

  “No sir, they have no memory of their formal lives at all.”

  “Good. Once they have recovered what they have been sent for, initiate the scorched earth protocol. I don’t want a single trace left of that village or those corpses.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Many miles below the satellite that monitored them in the scorching heat of Afghanistan, the leader of Fury One trudged purposefully up the rocky path behind the burning Afghan village, towards the deep cave where the Taliban soldiers had been hiding for months.

  Behind him there were a few isolated screams as the last of the women and children were killed, and black smoke rose up into the sky. In one hand the Berserker held the corpse of the Taliban leader, dragging him along by one leg like a child’s teddy bear.

  He stopped outside the cave and peered inside, his nocturnal eyes easily penetrating the dark. He could feel a tingling inside his brain, like a fishing line pulling him towards whatever was inside. He took a bite of flesh from the man’s calf then dropped the ragdoll body of his kill at the entrance. With a low growl from his blood-stained mouth he stepped inside.

  The cave was stocked full with Kalashnikovs and explosives, as well as food supplies. The Taliban soldiers were well prepared for a long war. At the back of the cave was a long rough-hewn tunnel that led to a gloomy chamber lit with torches.

  Inside there were confiscated religious symbols and books. Jade Buddhas, Christian crucifix’s taken from captured UN soldiers, stolen artefacts taken from the Museum of Kabul that were considered heretical. The dark cave was a museum of the forbidden to the Taliban, false idols waiting to be destroyed. Although they did not know it, at the very back of the cave, hidden under a Persian rug and covered in sand and dust, was an artefact that had drawn the Taliban fighters to this cave in the first place.

  It was a box.

  For hundreds of years it had sent out a pulsing signal drawing the bloodthirsty towards it. The Taliban paid it no particular heed. They could not recall if it had been brought from the Museum of Kabul or whether it had been in this cave when they arrived. The box persuaded people not to ask questions about it. The huge Berserker knelt down in front of it, feeling the fire in his blood rise the closer he was to the artefact. He moved the rug aside and swept scattered papers from the box. His red eyes scanned one of the pieces of parchment and glimpsed a line of poetry that somewhere in the depth of his savage mind made him smile.

  Look to the hawk not to the nightingale.

  He blew dust from the box. It was oak bound with iron and did not look Asian in origin at all. It had been hidden here by a traveller from another place long ago.

  The Berserker’s huge blood-stained hands reached down and opened the heavy lid. When the seal was broken there was a hissing sound and a rush of stale air escaped. A pale green light emanated from inside. Once it dimmed, the Berserker could see nothing in the box except f
or what looked like around a dozen large acorns, perfectly preserved. The Berserker was ruled by fury and the urge to commit violence, but there was enough animal cunning left to know that the contents of this box was of the same kind of magic that fuelled his heart. Not like his Master’s power at all.

  This was the relic that his team had been sent to Afghanistan for, something that belonged to the beast that was the source of their berserker power.

  Something his master coveted greatly.

  5

  Sovereign Base Area Akrotiri, Cyprus.

  DEBRIEF: 0730hrs.

  Usher poured coffee into the tin cup, and sat down at a table strewn with photographs and files.

  In front of him a Smartboard fixed to the wall displayed satellite images of their extraction from the cave in Oman.

  He looked around at the tight faces of his crew and saw the clouds behind their eyes.

  Each of them was lost in their own thoughts, reviewing their every action during the operation from beginning to end, wondering if it was their mistake that cost a life, their missed step.

  They were still coated in a fine layer of desert dust stuck to their skin by nervous sweat. They had come straight here off the Hercules.

  Usher looked across the room at Isaac Marlowe, the one member of his team who had not been in Oman. He felt a pang of guilt but also relief to see his friend and comrade alive. He thought he had been sending Isaac on a paid jolly, hobnobbing with the business world to get some banker out of trouble. He never imagined he was sending one of his most trusted men into the middle of a terrorist attack.

  Marlowe sat stiffly in his chair, one arm in a sling, one knee wrapped in a support bandage, his face scored with drying scabs. He had sat there calmly in the corner since the meeting started, greeting his comrades with a firm handshake and a wince of pain.

  Usher inhaled the steam rising from the coffee. Wherever he was in the world, however jangled his nerves or bruised his body, coffee was coffee.