In the moments of panic and devastation after the coming of the Shadow, Vespesian has long, bitter minutes to reconsider his position. Standing in his camouflage constructed from crowds of fearful, tear-stricken commoners, he curses the Mother and her damnable whimsy. The Shadow is untrustworthy and should not be in the hands of such a creature. It changes the game. Too many unstable elements, too great a chance for failure on all sides, but that’s how the Mother plays. She stacks the cards both ways.

The bottle in his hand vibrates its agitation and he cradles it against his chest. ‘You will enter our chosen vessel, my love. Nothing has changed. In the meantime I will see if a temporary home can be arranged.’

With vicious whips of his mind, he rescans each member of the vessel’s menagerie. The soldiers are human, therefore useless, and he dismisses them all. The Seraphim would repel his gift. The female with it–oh such disobedience that, the Seraphim will join Solomon if he’s not careful­–hoards a stolen matrix of power in the thin shell of her body. Her power and the Radiance would fight for precedence, and destroy her.

The chocolate-eyed lover of his chosen vessel is…interesting. He has unusual depths, untapped abilities. He could be used. Vespesian could take him now and use him to find the vessel. What marvellous cruelty that would be, hope replaced by horror as the radiance pours out, transforming his vessel’s beloved to an empty shell before his very eyes. Delightful. But the vessel’s lover is too protected to plunder. The creature who shouldn’t exist has an impregnable shield around him. Smart, she is, as smart as she’s dangerous. As for her, he wouldn’t dare allow her a chance to contain the Radiance. She would make it her own.

His only recourse is to align with what will no doubt be the first course of action for this meagre collection of freaks and outcasts, and achieve it before them. He will find his vessel, take him back, and house the Radiance within him. Then, when they come to rescue him, they will find him re-made, face the agony of having lost him all over again. That will satisfy almost as much as using the lover to find him.

Vespesian fades back away from Margo and her friends, into the crowd. He follows the scent of Shadow. He has some idea where it might have gone. He mustn’t tarry. The Shadow are lonely, and cruel. They will keep his vessel alive only as long as his agony entertains them. And his love, the Radiance, is impatient. It wouldn’t do for it to become impatient enough to try and take him for a vessel; he has too much still left to do in this world and his power is not like the Seraphim’s. He is Azrael. Death. He can only take, he cannot give, and he could not fight such light as the Radiance.

//

Margo, her arm welded around Moe’s shoulder, holding him together, stands staring at the castle rearing proud above the skyline. She can sense the old bitch up there. Smell her satisfaction. Her palms itch to tear her limb from limb, but that won’t kill the bitch, nor even teach her a lesson. The Mother Immortal faced worse than death and survived. Margo will need to be clever to find a way to properly punish her for what she’s done. But that will come later. She can be patient. Patience plans.

Turning her attention to the streets, she searches for signs of the angel Azrael. She knows he was here, hiding. She’s not quite sure how or where. He’s older than her, older than the Seraphim, and he has tricks up his sleeve neither can emulate. She knew only one thing; he was coming for Rolf, and he would not have delayed. She’s certain he must have been here, as there’s little doubt the Mother sent the Shadow to take Rolf to frustrate him. And to hurt her. That’s how the Mother operates. Pain, destruction, ruin. They are her calling cards.

‘Is Azrael’s scent here?’ she asks Kitty, unable to scent him herself, and becoming furious with this lack of control over her newest gifts. In many ways her first gifts, though nowhere near as great, were far better. More obedient, less unpredictable.

Kitty lifts his face and sniffs. Grimaces. His golden eyes glitter. ‘He was. Hiding. Do you think he came for Rolf here, right out in the open?’

‘Yes.’

‘But the Mother intervened.’

‘I am going to hurt her so badly,’ she grits out through clenched teeth.

‘She’s resilient,’ he warns, though his eyes gleam approval.

‘I’m persistent,’ she replies, offering him her most beautiful smile.

‘What was it she sent?’ asks Moe. His tone is stoic, but it’s obvious he’s asking a question he can hardly bear to hear answered.

Knowing he needs to hear, Margo nods at Kitty when he looks to her for guidance, and Kitty responds. ‘It’s called Shadow. It was locked away for a very long time. Less time than it thinks. Part of its punishment was to believe it had been locked away forever. It’s the residue of something else, an unpleasant remnant.’

‘The residue of what?’

Kitty tries to stare Moe down, but he’s not budging. His response is reluctant. ‘The Absence. When it’s loose, it goes through things and takes their essence. That essence, such as it is, whatever remains of it, twisted, malign, utterly without conscience, is Shadow. It is the Shadow cast by The Absence.’

‘What will it do to Rolf?’

Here Kitty finds he cannot respond. He shakes his head and turns away. It’s left to Margo to squeeze Moe’s shoulder and whisper in his ear. ‘Rolf will survive. He’ll be thinking of you. It can do what it likes to him, it won’t win.’

‘Tell me we’re going to destroy it.’

Margo turns to face Moe. ‘Darling,’ she says to him, her voice almost gentle, almost pleasant, ‘we’re going to obliterate it.’

© Ren warom 2013

The vault is empty bar his body, shrunken somehow even in these claustrophobic confines, but there is a sound running ceaselessly beneath the hoarse stutter of his breathing. A hissing. Low and continuous it ebbs and rises as though breathing itself, flows around the walls and down again, seethes across the floor, seeming to sweep across his body like an invisible tide.

Rolf stirs. His eyelashes flutter. He twitches and a low moan filled with hurt escapes his mouth. One eye cracks open. Rolf moans again, feeling each individual injury yelling for attention. His body is a chorus, a requiem of tenderised nerves.

‘Fuck.’ He sounds parched. Voice guttering like a candle. ‘Oh fuck me.’

One of his hands fumbles upward to clutch at his skull, leaps away again when the contact proves to be far more agonising than expected.

‘Ahhhh.’

Moving in tiny, wincing increments, Rolf levers his head up, clenching his teeth as his hair rips from the floor, leaving a tarry stain behind. Eyes at half-mast, he surveys the room. It’s a blank cube lit by an array of dazzling led lights in the ceiling. There are no windows, no doors. No way out. Rolf knows enough to know this doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but he’s trapped either way. Just because there’s a way in somewhere, doesn’t mean he can use it to get out.

‘Oh, Margo hon, I’m in a pickle,’ he whispers.

Nursing his body, his head, and his spine every inch of the way, his arms wobbly and uncertain, Rolf pushes upwards, moving his legs in cautious increments until he’s sitting, swallowing hard against nausea, and swaying. He’s too tired and worn to hold his own weight but determined not to lie down again. He’s not a quitter. He groans, the sound half laughing, half despairing.

‘If you could see me now, Moe baby,’ he says, closing his eyes. ‘Bet I look a picture.’

In the four corners, silent and stealthy, shadows gather against the light, as if they were waiting for him to be off guard. Thick and gluey, they expand in waves, filling the room like water, surrounding him. Rolf stiffens, sensing their presence too late. Slowly, as if he knows he won’t want to see this, he opens his eyes. The darkness surrounding him is obsidian and unreflective, absorbing the gaudy led light as if it’s simply not there. Rolf licks his lips and tries for casual.

‘Well, hello there. What do you want?’

One of his arms jerks upward, straight ahead of him. He stares at it in fascinated horror, then screams, high as a child, as his index finger snaps up and back. Gasping for air, Rolf tries to speak; only to scream again as his middle finger, with a crack of sound so loud it resonates like a gunshot, joins the first. Rolf leans back, trying to pull his arm away, but it won’t move, and the fierce pain in his shoulder forces him to quit fighting and he shouts.

‘What the fuck do you want?’ Though he’s yelling loud as he can, his voice is too hoarse for volume and comes out a whisper. His next scream too is almost silent, as the shadow’s only response is the brutal snapping of his ring finger and Rolf’s driven beyond speech, trembling violently, his breath hitching in sharp gasps. He hopes silence is what it wants, but his little finger wrenches to join the other three standing to grotesque attention above the back of his hand and he’s trying to scream again, trying not to, trying to think of what to say to make it stop. His thumb lifts then, rising higher and higher until it strains near to breaking point.

Rolf breaks first.

‘Please, please stop. I don’t know what you want. Talk to me!’

He shrinks back, expecting his thumb to snap, but nothing happens. It remains where it is, vibrating against the resistance of joint, muscle and tendon. If his hand weren’t baptised in agony it would probably be unbearable. Then the darkness responds. All around him. One voice made of thousands of voices speaking in concert and so heartless. So utterly without emotion.

‘You are an inadequate plaything.’

Rolf’s thumb bends further, the bone creaking ominously. He struggles to relieve the pressure, leaning in toward his hand to try and push the force away. Panics when nothing happens and tries to pull away again, so afraid of how much the breaking will hurt he’s forgotten to care about damaging his shoulder, but he can’t affect it either way. None of this shadow touches him yet it nonetheless holds his arm firm and will not let it go.

‘Why the fuck are you doing this?’ He’s sobbing now, hating himself for this capitulation to fear. He’s not weak; he’s never been weak. This though, this is more than he can stand. Everything hurts. Head, limbs, torso, heart, especially heart, and his hand is on fire with the pain from his fingers. He can’t bear it. Just wants it to be over. Wants to be home. To be in Moe’s arm. ‘Let me go.’

‘Why.’ It’s not a question. Or it could be. Rolf can’t tell. There’s no inflection, no change in tone. He decides to answer anyway.

‘I…You don’t need me.’

‘Yet you are here.’

Each word is enunciated separately, casually, as if they were gloves thrown to the floor by a bored gentleman. And the thumb snaps back, viciously, with a tearing of tendons that can be heard beneath the brittle cadence of bone splintering. A shard of blue-white bone pops out of the pad at the base of his thumb and Rolf shrieks, his eyes rolling back in his head. He collapses to the floor in an awkward pile, bodyweight yanking at his shoulder.

Almost distastefully, his arm is dropped. He’s swept off his feet, dangled like a newborn baby, upside down, his arms hanging limply. The shadow speaks again in that voice of many voices. Expressionless, colourless, empty.

‘Disappointing. Such an inadequate plaything.’

© Ren Warom 2013

to discover that mine interwebz had been severed! My reaction may have been similar to this:

Given no option but to be without the succour of my interwebz mother until such time as I had time to reattach to the broadband umbilical, I was forced to quench the Umwelt from rising at great personal risk…

I didn’t forget you all. I promise. There was none of this:

Now I am returned and Umwelt will be back in session as usual. I’m sure you’re delighted!

I said I’m sure you’re delighted… *coff*

Thank you for your patience during this trying time. Here’s a strange dog…

Ceasing their restless wandering they line the streets, faces dull with anger under layers of grime. There’s an air of withheld violence, as though they blame these returning soldiers for the war being fought on Great Brittania’s shores. They cannot see the hand of their Queen in the woes they face daily; they are too distant and too resentful of her wealth to see beyond it to her machinations.

Margo walks at ease amongst it all. She’d never harm these people, but she’d remove them in a heartbeat if it became necessary. Understanding though she is of their anger, their confusion, and their fears, she needs these men for what comes. Not necessarily the fight with Imalia–that she will face alone–but for the fight that comes before that. The darkness flowing.

She will need them to face what the darkness creates.

//

From her vantage point on the apex of her castle, Imalia watches the chaos afflicting the streets of Londinium with unparalleled delight. Cruelty is her natural state of being, malice her personal indulgence. If she had time to spare she would play it out down there in all that delicious mayhem, stoking terror and feeding on it. Gorging herself. Such wicked indulgence.

The whimpering of her twin daughters continues. This also amuses her. They have seen her face many times, yet it never ceases to horrify them. In part, it is because the damage truly is appalling, but there is also the fact of their horror in becoming the same. They are the only daughters she has who remain the way they were when she found them in a time and place beyond this tiresome prison of a world, countless decades ago. She’s aware they live lives steeped in terror for the moment she tires of their unchanging perfection.

Little do they know how ugly she finds them, her vain little twins. To Imalia such damage as found upon her face is the definition of beauty, yet she understands and exploits the horror others derive from it, and if she were inclined to beautify her twins, she would do so, but she has no need for beauty in these two. They are her well. Her fountain. Her vessels. And how she loves that ability in them. Beauty would despoil it. For what resides in them would not live within such beauty as she can lay claim to.

‘Do you see it, my daughters?’ she asks them, looking down at them and holding them hostage with her gaze, delighting in their cowering. ‘Can you see the wonderful madness we have orchestrated?’

They nod, one movement of two heads, Evangelista and Angeline, two bodies and yet it would seem only one soul, which uses Evangelista to communicate. They fascinate her. She’s often wanted to damage one, just a very little, perhaps a limb, or a single eye, to see if the wound would be reflected in the other, but they are too valuable as they are, these twins of hers, more valuable than they know, more valuable even than her other daughters. It is why she took them.

She’d been in a London similar to this but so very different and so very long ago. She’d sensed them from the other side of the city and tracked them down, following the ripe stench of their potential to the bright window of a clothes emporium, to two small girls, so neat in matching dress coats and straw hats, their faces so perfectly identical they could be the selfsame face drawn meticulously on two separate canvasses.

The wail of their mother’s grief when she found them gone Imalia locked away in her heart to savour. It still remains, echoing through empty chambers, feeding her, giving her joy. She touches Evangelista’s head, smiling as the girl flinches.

‘Look,’ she urges. ‘Delight in our victory, my daughter.’

Evangelista nods dutifully. ‘It is glorious, mother.’ She turns to her sister. ‘Do you see it, Angeline?’

Angeline turns her empty gaze from the streets to her sister’s face. Through her connection to them, Imalia feels what she has come to recognise as Angeline, a sort of cool breeze running through the colour of Evangelista. Something like a memory of life. She would not be surprised if Angeline had been fated to die in the womb and her sister, afraid to be alone, had somehow kept her alive.

‘Angeline says there is a man coming. A man who is an angel.’

‘Vespesian.’ Imalia hisses. ‘What does he want?’

Evangelista looks at her sister, leaning in to study her eyes as though rather than asking she is simply recording what her sister has seen direct from the source.

‘He is not here for us. Not yet. He has something with him. Something powerful. He’s after the woman and her companions.’

‘I know what he has and I know what he’s after.’ Imalia smiles, and it is a terrible thing, more terrible to gaze upon than her face in repose. ‘Perhaps I shall enjoy more sport after all, my daughters. Let us unleash the Shadow upon them.’

//

Gliding through the crowds, immersed deep in the music of the mobs’ anger, Vespesian stalks the company of vagabond soldiers, fools and empowered human filth. One human in particular is caught in his crosshairs, the perfect vessel for the Radiance. Just as its equal and opposite power the Absence, or any lesser power forged from either source, the Radiance covets beauty, and this human is as beautiful a thing as mere humanity is capable of producing, both inside and out. And so very powerful. So very vulnerable.

Vespesian feels the eager hunger of the Radiance as it senses their prey and cups it to his face. ‘Patience, my love. We must not gain the attention of the woman. She is dangerous to us yet. Until you are settled within your new shell.’

He moves closer, sliding toward them with deadly grace. Closer. Closer yet. The ebony curls passing before him mere meters away. Then feet. Then his fingers, outstretched, stroke through the hair at the nape of Rolf’s neck, and Vespesian is forced to withhold a laugh at the stutter in that beautiful creature’s stride, the shiver that travels visibly up his spine. He reaches out again, fingers twitching…

So immersed is he in his game of cat and mouse, he catches the warning too late. Hears the Radiance scream only once in his mind, before the sound is drowned by roaring, as if water, unleashed all at once from a dam, were raging down the street. Darkness surges into view, slamming through from a street adjacent to the line of marching men. In its wake lies carnage. Bodies rent asunder. Houses reduced to rubble. Cobbles torn and flung like missiles.

He has only a moment to realise its direction before his victim of choice is gone, snatched from the very tips of his fingers. Rearing up, a tower of black standing tall against vicious blue sky, the shadow slams into the ground and disappears as suddenly as it arrived, leaving behind it blood and ruin and the roar of grief too close to agony that comes from the man with eyes like drops of melted chocolate.

© Ren warom 2013

The fabulous, dark Anne Michaud has a deliciously morbid collection of novellas entitled

My love for monsters

I’ve always cheered for them, felt they were misunderstood, that something really bad must have happened for them to get this way. Whether they hid under the bed or creeped behind a closet door, monsters scared me just enough to lure me to them. Therapy, much? Writing is the most inexpensive one, I must admit.

Heroes never did it for me, even in my teens I dreamed of Freddy Krueger’s jokes and having a conversation through the TV with The Poltergeist. While other girls talked about boys with big cars and great hair, I wondered what Jason looked like underneath that mask and if he’d be cute as Sandman. I’ve always loved the dark, always preferred trying to figure out how someone’s intentions rather than having them served on a plate.

Because what makes me connect with monsters is not something bad and mean hiding inside of me, but rather what are their own flaws: monsters have them too – or at least one – and it’s through their demise that I can identify with them. Freddy was a talker; so am I. Jason liked to be left alone; me too. Would Edward and his scissorhands count as a monster? By majority’s standards, probably. But not me, just like Jack and his Nightmare and Beetlejuice, three of my most adored Burton monsters.

Then Dracula came into my life and made me want to live forever, by his side only. Lestat would have made a nice substitute, depending on his band’s music, obviously. Dark, powerful, I never wanted them to die. Does that make me a weirdo? I do hope so, because being normal – and rooting for the hero – doesn’t attract me as much as the dark side.

So I write about them, about the creatures of the night that scare most of us. They are my favorite characters, because some of them are impossible to predict and most of them don’t exist in real life. But I fear not, because I’m not alone as I write them in the day, and they never leave my side at night, either.

Who is Anne Michaud?

The power she took from Solomon is such a burden, like the darkness she borrowed from the Mother, who is as much a receptacle as Margo. Her price was beauty. Margo’s is peace. To carry this double burden is to never know peace again, and the voices within, whose sole purpose is to drown her, to make her doubt her own ability to survive, shout so loud she can barely hear the world for their clamour.

In a life that seems distant, unreal to her now, she’d devised so many defences against her voices, so many means of blocking them out. The pound and pump of music, the bottom of a bottle, the halo of forgetfulness found in pills and powders, the all-consuming hunger of sex, leaving little room for anything else. Shouting the voices down with sweat, the heat of another body, the flex of muscles and organs, the pulse of orgasm. Such futile weapons even then.

But ignorance was her true bliss, her one true weapon. When Solomon made her into a creature like himself she lost it, because she could no longer hide from the truth. She wasn’t meant to be this. She wasn’t meant to be anything she’s been. That’s the centre of her lack of peace. Finally knowing. A life of questions, a life in question, leading to this one point, wherein the answer comes too late, causing only unbearable pain. And her old escape routes are closed to her. No hiding these truths, no hiding from them.

There was a Margo who could have been, a Margo who might. Lost so many years ago, before the voices came. And the voices came because it was she who turned away from herself, rejecting the Margo she could have been. All unknowing she kept fighting herself, giving the voices all they needed to grow loud and strong, to drown her out. All those years trying to hide from voices born from her own stupidity. Such a waste. Such a horrible waste. Her life has been nothing but an endless round of chasing mirages in the desert.

When the monsters first came and she learned of her gift, Margo thought that, much like everything else, it was a game. She wasn’t the only one. All her beautiful misfits gradually gathered together as though magnetised from across the city, and all of them delighted in their new game. Treated it like just another crazy night out that didn’t stop. Mere months they’ve all known one another in truth, all but she and Rolf, who’ve known each other forever, and yet it seems she’s known them all for a lifetime. Such horror holds them together, binding them with scar tissues that can never heal.

After her first encounter with the Mother, newly burdened by darkness so profound it was as though her soul were buried in the spaces between stars, the dark matter of the universe, hidden from light, denied it, she felt unspeakably lost. Not as one who has strayed from the path, more like a child taken from home and comfort and stranded in the depths of the forest, alone, and helpless. Abandoned. That was the first time she wondered whether they’d sacrificed too much, whether it was worth it.

How she would have laughed at such navel-gazing, such sentimental bullshit, in her lifeless life before this one. How little she knew. Now, burdened not once but twice, altered to something she should not be, and armoured on the inside by darkness, Margo travels once again to face the Mother. But she isn’t afraid of her anymore. Nor is she afraid of what’s inside her as she was after that first time they battled, because there’s worse than what’s inside that old bitch loose in this world.

It calls itself the friend of angels. But it is a friend to no one. It stole the Mother’s beauty and her sanity, and only the seed of darkness rested within her, sleeping in the bower of her innermost self, kept her alive, brought her back to some form of sanity. The Mother thinks that seed makes her powerful and it does, oh it does indeed. But it is only the shadow of what comes. A shadow cast by light. A shadow that light will swallow whole. And Margo has learned something new, something too terrible to bear. A burden that steals her peace more than any other burden she carries.

Sometimes it’s the light that you need to be afraid of.

© Ren Warom 2013

Art: Lost in Light by Susanne Bettina Armberger / Austria (2011)

Imalia, mother, Mother. She has always known there were daughters. Nine daughters once. Only eight now. An even number. So inauspicious. Oh what she would do to have the ninth returned. But the ninth remembered her name, slipped her chains, and joined forces with an angel. Imalia will have to be satisfied with killing her, but what satisfaction it will be.

Mother, Imalia, Immortal. Immortal Imalia, who always knew that she was a mother. For what mother can forget her daughters? They beat the pulse of her heart; stir the blackened char of her bones, live within the fragile walls of her skin. Without them she is not Mother. And mother she assuredly is.

She lifts her hands to smear black rain into the ravage of her face. Hungry flesh swallows it, sucking every last drop into parched pores and wasted muscle, the pocked remains of denuded bone. Beneath bone and muscle the rain becomes sensual rivulets of ice and fire weaving within her, reaching down toward the black tear residing within her soul.

Like daughters to mother, it returns to its maker.

//

Margo scans the horizon, tasting the air, her senses hungry, searching, all consuming as the sky. The landscape beyond unfurls within her like a living portrait, the valleys, the glistening bowls of deep lakes, the swell of rivers, the cacophonous bustle of folk in countless townships across the breadth of south Great Britannia, their panic like riptides under restless waters.

Beyond them sounds the roar of Londinium, loud as blood through an artery. A clamouring. But in it she hears such variety. The call of market sellers, the cry of children, the rhetoric of parliament, all these sights, these sounds and a thousand more, a hundred thousand more. She seeks through them, through the whole varied tapestry as far as her senses reach, for the angel who calls himself Vespesian.

A moment ago, she had him, locked on and lasered in. But he’s gone, and all she can sense is the world at work, at play, at war. She’s afraid. She knows what he is. Death walking. He comes for her Rolf. In the single moment she had him in her sights she knew it, like she knows her own heart. She will do anything to stop him.

Withdrawing slowly from the madness of Londinium, she stops to touch the thoughts of Imalia. The Mother. Such darkness. Dark as the rain, as the storm within her own soul. Margo shifts her attention to the rain. Such strange rain. It had forgotten itself, thought itself something it was not. Now it’s remembering.

Whilst it makes no sound to the naked ear, to the unknowing ear, unschooled and deaf to things beyond, her ear is too clever by half, and she hears the rain. Screaming.

//

Vespesian waits, silent and still, clutching his prize. She had him, mind to mind, only moments ago. That thing, that creature who should be human and is not. How long has he been gone from the world he once knew to have missed this new twist in the war? Humans as weapons. Left wide open, soaking in the veils, becoming more than they should ever be.

What can he do? She’s a match to him, that one. Appalling depths in her. He smells Solomon’s hand in that. Good old Solomon, still laying waste to the rules. Doubtless she traded something precious for the power he poured into her fragile shell. Oh but she should have broken. Cracked apart and shattered to the four corners of this putrid cancer of a world. How did she not?

‘That one is tricky, a little thief,’ he murmurs to himself, quite unaware he speaks also to his companion, contained within the bottle. ‘I should like to grind her to powder, to dust. Hear her bones snap and crackle, her innards pop. Eat her whilst she’s warm, that little human thing. That flaw. But I dare not. I have not the sum of her.’

The bottle in his hand shudders and heats. He curls long fingers about its belly and croons.

‘Be still my love, be still. You will have your vessel. Fear not. I do not renege on my promises.’ He tilts his head and listens to the world, allowing it to resonate through him, and smiles. ‘Here it is, my love. Our hiding place. In plain sight. We’ll walk in plain sight cloaking ourselves in all the world. She’ll not see us until it’s too late.’

It warms again, a little flash of heat.

‘Don’t worry about the Mother,’ he says, reassuring. ‘She will run from you. She will remember what happened to her face, and run.’

© Ren Warom 2013

Alongside the wavering line of soldiers skips Margo, wearing something ridiculous in satin with hob nails boots so large they make her feet look like tanks. Her hair’s a banner of scarlet in the sunlight and she’s humming a little ditty that every now and then bursts into words so foul and unseemly they stain the cheeks of all who hear them scarlet as her hair.

‘She enjoys herself too much,’ Wade says to Moe, striding beside him in the line, cool and relaxed in a uniform borrowed from the 37^th Hussars. ‘It’s unseemly.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know what she is, and you know where we’re going. She has to face Imalia alone. We can’t help her. Don’t you think she’s earned a bit of fun?’

Wade shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I forget. Why do I forget?’

‘Because,’ says Rolf, coming up behind and flinging an arm across Moe’s shoulders, ‘you’re not from here. In one way this world becomes more real by the second, in another it’s slipping away, and in yet a third way, it never was at all. Is, isn’t, never was. You’re a daydream. We all are.’

Frowning, Wade insists hotly, ‘But I’m right here. I’m real!’

‘Yes, and you’re also not real and also never were. That’s why this world is so dangerous. It’s everything all at once, a paradox of possibility.’

Moe pokes Rolf in the stomach. ‘You’re bewildering him again.’

Rolf nips at Moe’s ear. ‘Spoilsport.’

‘The poor man is going to explode if you carry on.’

Rolf’s unmoved. ‘I can’t help it, he looks so cute when he’s bewildered.’

Catching Rolf’s chin, Moe steals a long, rather filthy kiss and the subject is done and dusted, Rolf being more concerned with how long he can keep Moe doing exactly what he’s doing, and maybe, if he can find a convenient patch of trees, a little more besides.

Accustomed to the romances between men at war, Wade pays them no attention, his eyes still on the frolicking Margo. Which is why he notices when her dance begins to change. He nudges Moe, first softy, then urgently, but the two are lost in each other and he couldn’t grab their attention now with a full display of cannon fire, so he moves out of the line and makes his way down to Margo to find out what’s wrong. Because something very definitely is.

‘What is it?’ he asks without formalities as he catches up with her.

Margo stops dancing and turns to face him, her expression so odd and distant that he steps back from it, unnerved. ‘Can’t you feel it?’ she murmurs. ‘Darkness is falling on Londinium. Black rain from blue skies.’

‘I can’t feel anything.’

Margo looks up then, into the blue of the sky. ‘You will now,’ she says softly, and smiles as fat drops of rain black as India Ink land on the ivory curve of her throat.

As the rain begins to fall more heavily, a deluge, and then a monsoon, the men break formation, stirring to panic, their cries of alarm filling the quiet air.

‘What is it,’ calls Rolf, running over hand in hand with Moe.

‘Black rain from blue skies,’ says Wade, when Margo fails to answer. ‘Darkness is falling.’

Margo opens her mouth and catches the drops on her tongue, her eyes shining with that eerie angelic light. ‘The Absence draws near,’ she croons. ‘We are nearing the meridian. The fall of all the worlds. The veils torn down and bleeding.’ Her head snaps forward and she stares at Rolf, her face stricken. ‘He’s coming,’ she whispers.

‘Who?’ Rolf leans in, nose to nose. ‘Who’s coming?’

A tear drops from Margo’s eyes. ‘Oh I’m sorry, my poor baby,’ she murmurs to him. ‘But there’s nothing I can do. He’s coming for you.’

‘Who?’ demands Moe, stepping between them, a protective shield, his chocolate eyes fierce enough to catch fire.

Margo places her hand on his cheek, she’s still crying, her tears mixing with black rain and diluting it to shades of grey. ‘He calls himself Vespesian,’ she tells him, almost tenderly. ‘But his name is Azrael.’

© Ren Warom 2013

Death Song Excerpt

Something catches in the back of my throat. I

hide my face in my hands to quiet the sobs. But then,

something ain’t right. Air moves around me and I

stop. I look between my fingers, but the blur of my

tears thickens everything: the bathtub, the towels,

and someone on the floor.

A woman’s in here with me, door still closed and

locked. An exhale, like after a deep swim, and a smell,

like the swamp close to my empty home. A chill runs

down my back, I wipe my eyes, rub and scratch them

to see more clearly. And I do.

Two gray hands scratch the floor tiles, nails green

with algae, putrid flesh sagging on her legs, arms

and torso, hair so long and wet and heavy, it drags

her down. Diluted, impossible to focus on, like little

waves rippling over her body from head to foot, seaweed

in the water. Scales and fins, mermaidlike, little

knives, those are. And they scrape the floor, like a

fork on a plate. It’s her—Limnade.

She opens her mouth of scissor-teeth and the rotten

smell of fish wraps around my throat like two

hands trying to choke me.

“You can’t be…” I don’t finish my breathless

thought and jump backward, knocking over the dish

of decorative soaps. Blurry waves, vision impaired,

out of focus, unreal. She crawls toward me, eyes unblinking,

lethal, hands inches from me: my legs refuse

to move, as my body feels like stone. Frozen,

hypnotized, a statue. Then I hear something coming

from within her…

A melody, reminding me of something lost, tickles

my ears. It drags on until the sweetness turns sickly,

vibrating into a full-on super-scream, hyenalike,

enough to pop my ears and make them bleed. Her

large mouth deforms her face into one gap of black,

the cry so high and strident, I scream from the pain.

Limnade stares at me, everything but her fades

away—Jo’s nice bathroom, Jo’s new life, Jo himself—

none of it matters anymore. Her fingers brush my

forehead, they’re cold and sticky like clams. And I let

the darkness take me away.

Who is Anne Michaud?

She who likes dark things never grew up. She never stopped listening to gothic, industrial and alternative bands like when she was fifteen. She always loved to read horror and dystopia and fantasy, where doom and gloom drip from the pages.

She, who was supposed to make films, decided to write short stories, novelettes and novels instead. She, who’s had her films listed on festival programs, has been printed in a dozen anthologies and magazines since.

She who likes dark things prefers night to day, rain to sun, and reading to anything else.

She blogs http://annecmichaud.wordpress.com

She tweets @annecmichaud

Now, this puppy is pencilled in for a release on the 25th of March, but our generous publisher Anachron Press has unleashed a whole plague of awesome with a pre-order deal to make the tightest wallet wobble open. The first 50 lucky people to pre-order a print copy of ‘Urban Occult’ will also receive a free ebook of ‘Urban Occult’, a free ebook of the fabulous ‘Day of Demons’, also published by Anachron Press, not to mention these fortunate 50 will have their print copies delivered early, on the 4th of March, well before the release date and (oh yes, there’s an and) shipping for these pre-orders (and ONLY these) will the same to any part of the world. Marvellous!

If you think you’d like to be one of the 50 lucky blighters to snag this deal, then please click the link below and get on that shit, before 50 other lucky blighters get there first!

Urban Occult Limited Pre-Order

Limited to 50.

Behind urban life, weird and horrific things fester. 

The whispers and chills of things long gone… the promise of power from the darkness… the seduction of those that lie in the shadows… the occult is all around us: in town houses, in mansions, and in your very own street.

Editor Colin F. Barnes collected together fifteen stories by a cast of critically acclaimed authors from around the globe who look into the stygian gloom, explore the dark corners of our houses, and peer into the abyss of human temptation.

Featuring stories by: Gary McMahon, Ren Warom, Gary Fry, Mark West, K.T. Davies, Nerine Dorman, Alan Baxter, Adam Millard, Julie Travis, Jason Andrew, James Brogden, A.A Garrison, Jennifer Williams, Sarah Anne Langton, and Chris Barnham.

Special Pre-Order Edition Limited to 50.

This pre-order edition means you will get the book at least a week to two weeks ahead of general release and:

A FREE ebook version (for any eReader)

and A FREE ebook of Day of Demons. (eBooks will be emailed to you on the 4th of March).

Just £9.99 (+£2.99 shipping anywhere in the world).

Pre-Order here: http://www.anachronpress.com/product/anthologies/urban-occult-limited-pre-order/