He woke in confusion and pain, his face raw and his chest and limbs throbbing with an insistent bone-deep ache. Bright sunlight was trying to force its way underneath his eyelids. As they were briefly prised open and the brightness of the room assaulted his vision, he grimaced. And that felt painful, too.
But he couldn't scream. He couldn't cry or shriek or wail or even whimper.
Gustav Marko Fenter had not been able to do any of those things since the day a rogue cult of the Adeptus Mechanicum had selected him for experimentation.
Since the day they had taken away his voice.
He squinted as he raised his head, trying to focus on his surroundings. Trying to remember…
The air was thick and heavy with an oppressive aroma: the ozone stink of discharging lightning, the crackling of crawling power on skin, the charred meat stench of smouldering flesh… and the delicate overlapping scents of an abundance of flowers?
Where was he? He slumped forward onto the bed on which he was lying, eyes focussing gradually. He caught sight of the blistered skin of the hand that gripped the soft cotton coverlet and felt a shiver of fear crawl down his spine.
Now he remembered.
Vollex was slumped against the far wall of the under-governor's daughter's bedroom. Even from across the room Fenter could see the smoke rising from his ruined body. Standing over the under-hiver was the woman – the burning woman with lightning in her hands and death in her eyes.
The woman who had plunged him into darkness with a flick of her finger.
Involuntarily he gripped the control unit inside his greatcoat. And paused. There was a reason Brecht sent him into the field with another operative. Sometimes it was one of the interrogators. Sometimes, like today, it was Vollex. Sometimes it was Bex. Fenter liked Bex. She had a pretty smile and she also had the decency to look at least slightly concerned when she activated the augmented and officially heretical vox unit implanted in his throat. But, he never operated the unit himself. There was a reason.
It hurt.
He had tried to explain it to Vollex using gestures and whatever happened to be lying around at the time. The closest he got was that it was like voluntarily sticking your hand in an open fire. Somehow, having someone else activate the unit and select the settings was more bearable. It was as if he could endure the pain, knowing that it originated in the will of someone else.
He reached for the buttons recessed into the bulky control unit. His fingers were shaking.
Lightning snaked across the exposed skin of the burning woman's forearms and fingers. Her hair streamed out behind her, like tendrils of shadow. Vollex moaned softly, his head lolling to one side, the smoke rising in thick curlicues in the softly scented air.
The metal of the control unit was cool beneath the dry tormented heat of his fingers. The highest setting might be enough.
He couldn't do this.
He saw the lightning building again. She was hissing something, something soft and hateful, on the other side of the room. He saw Vollex's eyes glint in the flickering light. He saw the shadows uncoiling in the corner. He felt terror wash over him in ice cold waves.
He couldn't do this.
Half-stumbling, half-falling, he got up off the bed. His legs buckled beneath him and he almost crashed to the floor, but somehow he managed to stand shakily, his hand still clutching the hard metal control unit tucked into his greatcoat like a precious treasure, like a bar of gold.
The woman was a witch, a powerful psyker. He had seen them before, but always from the sidelines. Always watching Brecht or Banacek or one of the others. Always amazed and grateful that his unique abilities qualified him only for the relatively specialised area of counter-surveillance.
He couldn't do this. There was no way.
Power was building again, its taste sharp on the thickening air. And very soon, the burning woman would unleash it again and Vollex would die and the shadows would swell and the darkness would grow and…
He couldn't do this.
He pressed the button. Pain lanced into his throat and downwards towards, but not quite reaching, his heart and lungs. His mouth jerked open – wide, wider, lips stretching and cracking, skin taut, jaws almost dislocating.
And then he screamed.
The sonic vibrations hit the burning woman and she brought her hands instinctively to her head. Lightning dripped from her fingers and she doubled up, bending down towards the scorched fabric of the desecrated carpet.
Behind her, Vollex moved, as if released from some invisible chain. Slowly, he began to crawl towards the door, the little book clutched in a red raw hand.
Fenter kept on screaming. Somewhere in the other room, a light fitting popped and fizzed. The burning woman was shaking now, her crooked body quivering uncontrollably.
Vollex was still crawling towards the door, his eyes narrowed in pain, his mouth set in a grimly determined line.
The pain was intense – a growling, spiky presence in his throat, lashing at his mind. He didn't know how long he could keep this up for. He watched, his body held rigid, as the woman slowly turned, her eyes flashing hatred and her bile-flecked lips twisted in a savage parody of a smile. Lightning was cascading from her skin like water. Or a shell. Slowly and quite deliberately, she got to her feet and stood in the path of the sound waves. After a moment or two, she smiled.
Behind her, Vollex was almost at the threshold separating the two rooms. Fenter tried not to look at him, tried not to give him away. He kept his gaze fixed on the burning woman, as she rode on the jagged forks of flickering light, gliding towards him across the scorching floor.
When she spoke, it was as if her words had been hollowed out and now an ancient evil, implacable and utterly malignant, sat in their centre.
"Were you the one?" the burning woman asked. "I heard her death shriek in the prison of my mind. Such a bright young flame." For a moment, the woman's eyes seemed normal again, almost pleading and replete with sorrow.
Fenter was in agony, tears streaming from his eyes, running in the tracks that had etched themselves around his rigid mouth. It was no good. It had all been for nothing. He had failed.
"Such a bright young flame," the woman said, almost wistfully. And then she snarled. "Was it you? Were you the one?"
Lightning as thick as his arms lashed out against him, melting his skin and charring his flesh, reducing the control unit to hot slag, setting the greatcoat on fire. He felt it snake around him, coiling around his body like a thick crackling rope. He felt it lift him off the floor, even as it was searing his tortured flesh.
He was dead. He knew that. So much agony. He wanted to pray. He wanted to ask the Emperor for forgiveness, for mercy, for release.
But he couldn't do it.
The woman drew him to her till he could see the madness and the thundering, raging darkness in her eyes. He could smell her perfume, festering and decaying underneath the ozone stink of the warp unleashed.
"I offer you to the night and the hunger," she said, and he could feel the unbearable heat of her breath on his blistered face.
And, with a casual flick of her mind, she threw him into the corner, where the darkness waited and the shadows swallowed him whole.
"Bravo, bravo."
She thought she could hear Querin's sardonic tones, muffled by the roar of the bolter. She had aimed past the looming shape of the combat servitor, pumping a burst of automatic fire into the ceiling – just where she judged the under-governor to be moving on the first floor landing. The wolfish curve of his smile had imprinted itself on her mind. She imagined that smile crumpling into agony and terror. As victories went, it was small and spiteful, but it would have to do.
"Omega-alpha-pi."
Now there would be pain. She had seen combat servitors in action before. The longsword would strike her armour with enough force that its keen edge would break it open, piercing the flesh beneath. But she kept firing, the bolts chewing up the elaborate plasterwork of the ceiling and piercing the wooden joists and floorboards above.
The sword swept down. And glanced off her armour, the force behind it no more than if it had been wielded by a child. She stopped firing and stared at the servitor. The motion of the downward stroke had brought its face mere inches from her own. It was staring back at her, its augmetic eye glowing dully, its bloodshot one weeping steadily. The sword trembled slightly at the end of its arm.
Hastily Elinore scrambled away from it and groped for a wall, by which she could haul herself to her feet. Dust choked her momentarily and she coughed, hoarsely. Shakily, heart pounding, she brought the bolter up once more. She had no idea what had caused the servitor to pause in its attack, but she was determined to take the opportunity presented to her.
Then, she realised she was not alone. A figure, tall and menacing, loomed out of a fog of wood chips and plaster dust. Heart thudding an irregular tattoo in her chest, she whipped the bolter round to cover it, finger tightening on the trigger.
"Nice shooting," said Inquisitor Brecht, glancing up at the ruined ceiling.
He looked faintly ridiculous, coated in a thin layer of dust, hair speckled with fragments of plaster. With slow deliberate steps, he moved to the servitor and seemed to admire it, circling it slowly and brushing some dust off its bronze breastplate.
"I was wondering when you'd turn up," he murmured, apparently addressing the motionless machine-creature. He straightened abruptly. "Alpha-delta-alpha. Desist and stand down."
With a steadily decreasing whine, the servitor stood to attention and then seemed to deactivate, its augmetic eye growing dim.
Elinore stared at it and then at Brecht, finally lowering her bolter, as she realised the danger had passed – at least for the moment. The last phrases Brecht had uttered had been in Querin's silky tones.
"How… how did you…" She coughed again, the grit in the air catching in her throat. She tried to wave away the dust with her free hand and almost fell, as pain lanced through her leg. Her heart continued to thump strangely; a horrible image of it breaking free of her body rose unbidden to her mind.
"You die."
Such a simple statement. How long did she have left?
Pain spasmed in her thigh again and she reached for a pouch on her belt, fingers fumbling with the clasp. She kept her eyes fixed on it steadily, trying to avoid looking at the red raw gouge in her ceramite-encased thigh. Or at least keep its glistening edges out of focus.
"Voice pattern recognition." Brecht was talking again, walking – almost strolling, it seemed – across to her. "Very expensive. Very difficult to subvert." He smiled at her. "Unless you're me."
Elinore stared at him for a moment. He was standing in front of her, smiling his boyish smile, but she wasn't fooled for an instant. It seemed to her that she was finally beginning to understand what he really was. She saw his power, a power that, up till now, he had taken great pains to hide. But, she saw it now in the set of his shoulders and the thin lines about his twinkling eyes and smiling mouth. She felt a strange sense of understanding starting to dawn on her, its feeble rays creeping up over the horizon of her ignorance. She glimpsed in his face a fleeting impression of…
"Allow me."
Brecht reached for the pouch on her belt, unclasping it with a swift, economical motion and, still smiling, withdrew its contents. Their fingers brushed briefly as he placed the two small pills into Elinore's hand. He nodded.
"Good idea. That las wound looks deep."
She nodded ruefully. "It certainly feels it." How long do I have left? She refused to ask the question her mind was screaming.
She was about to bring the painkillers to her mouth, when a spot of red fell from the ruined ceiling, a solitary crimson rain drop that splashed on Brecht's hand.
The Inquisitor looked up and then back at Elinore, one eyebrow raised.
"Very nice shooting."
He turned and raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
"Come on, Sister! Let's have a word with the under-governor while he's still with us."
How long do I have left?
The words caught in her throat, choked by the dust and something else, perhaps. A simple resignation to the fate the Emperor had decreed for her? Or something else?
Popping the pills in her mouth, Elinore pushed herself away from the wall and limped determinedly after him.