Chapter 10

In a complete contrast to the previous days glorious sun, this day started dull, cloudy, the air oppressive...a storm was coming. I kept looking over my shoulder for the guys who broke into my room last night, then realized I didn't know what they looked like. I gave up and headed straight to the tower.

The entrance fee took most of the last of my cash, I didn't care, I wasn't going to need it soon. The base of this tower was built into a large building, 7, 8 floors, above and below ground, an entire leisure complex with various activities. I felt like none of them. I stopped for a coffee at one of the towers cafes, using a few more of the tiny coin pile. I sat and watched a group of children excitedly chatting and fidgeting, waiting to go down to the basement and to the full sized circus down there. I've seen circuses, they have too many failed Others, below level 8 after initiation, working for them for my current comfort, clowns especially. Listen to a young child who tells you there is something scarey about clowns....they know far more than adults do, like most animals, the very young can see through the twilight and all levels at once, they just don't know it.

There's nothing more bitter than an Other that can never use power, they can forever see it and feel it, but always beyond there grasp.....better they were never initiated in the first place.

I knew time was advancing, so I quickly finished the coffee and headed through the complex to the elevator that takes people up to the top of the tower. The doors were barred, a sign hanging from them. 'Tower lifts close due to weather conditions'.

I punched the doors, raising a few surprised stares from around me. I knew doing that again would bring the security guards down on me. I tried to slip into the twilight, it was like trying to wade through toffee, I've never known level 1 so difficult to enter. Eventually I pushed through, and passed like a ghost into the lift, I almost fell back out of the gloom, it was so difficult to maintain now. I looked at the buttons, I tried to press the 'Up' but of course it didn't work, the system had been shut down to prevent someone doing exactly I was trying to do.

Somewhere there had to be a switch. I had to force my way back into the twilight to try and find it, no where on this floor, it was above me somewhere in the maintainence area. But no matter how I tried, I couldn't use it, no matter how I tried to manipulate the switch through the twilight, my grip was too ephemeral, too weak, to operate it.

I wept with frustration, I couldn't do it....but I HAD to get to the top, I needed answers, even if I didn't initiate Egor to the dark, and that was looking less and less likely now as I could even enter the twilight myself without a struggle. A Ladder, some sort of access area, there had to be some other way up for maitainance crews when the lifts weren't working. White still in the twilight, I sought, and found, a locked door and staircase up to the maintainence bay, in the roof of the complex. The key was still in the lock....or I would have been stuck before I started.

I still had enough power to divert eyes from my passing, the bay was busy, I wasn't in the mood for questions....I had no answers to give.

The roof hatch was open, a thin drizzle filtering through the massive ironwork rising above my head. I blanched, it looked tall from the ground, but from this point of view it looked like Mount Everest. I could clearly see the ladder up, it had a safety cage around it, definitely added long after this tower was built. I had to climb it, over 400 feet......great.

I tied my mackintosh around my waist, it would be really wet up there, and reached for the first rung. The metal was slick with rain, and light was poor, the sky was turning black, with purple and green tinged clouds building rapidly. This was going to be a hard climb even fully fit, I was only 7 rungs up and already my head was swimming. But I had to climb, I had to get there, I knew Egor was up there, he would be hiding but he was there.....I could feel it.

I smirked...no way would I be there for noon, but the closed lifts would at least ensure Egor waited for me, there was nowhere else for him to go.

Step by step, I dragged myself up the ladder. I could feel my breathing catching in my throat, a rattle that wasn't good. my vision was blurred, partly for the rain, getting heavier now, partly from the pressure behind my eyes. My whole head felt like it would explode. I felt a warm trickle down my lips, my nose was bleeding. I stopped to wipe it with the back of my hand and my feet slipped. Desperately I hung on with one hand, spinning wildly and slamming into the safety cage. My mackintosh slipped from around my waist and flapped back down, slipping through the bars of the safety cage and, being caught by a gust of wind, floated out and down towards the sea. Strangely I hoped it would make it.

I scrabbled for a foothold, while clinging desperately to the rail above me. Jagged knives in my lungs as I drew in gasps of damp air. My eyes felt wet but I was too scared to let go to see if they were bleeding to, or just tears of relief I was still alive.

Climb, climb....the only word left in my mind, all other thoughts were blocked out, all feeling, all emotion. I was totally numb inside and out except for the beating of my own heart, erratic, arrhythmical, like fingers beating a syncopated drum beat on a table. It was bizarrely familiar, but I didn't know, or care, why.

I didn't realise I was at the top until my head brushed against something. I looked up, it was the wire hatch at the apex of the climb. I pushed with my left hand, gripping on for grim death with my right.

Locked.

I started battering against it, howling in frustration. I forced my fingers between the mesh, shredding the skin from them, I couldn't feel it, I couldn't feel anything. The blood poured down my arm, my nose continued to ooze, the corner of my eyes were defiantly bleeding. I tried to reach the lock through the twilight but I couldn't even enter, I had no strength left. The rain increased, battering my upturned face, a low rumble of thunder echoed in the distance. Carried in its overtones was a word...failed, failed...

I keened, quietly at first, but raising to an ear-shattering crescendo. Everything that had happened to me was in that scream, the metamorphosis, the deaths, the hate, the sex ,everything. I rattled the hatch violently as the scream climbed and as it peaked, a huge flash of lightning streaked across the sky, a deafening roar followed, and the hatch lock gave way.

I clung to it for a moment, not understanding it was loose, then I shoved, swinging it open and dragging myself through. I lay on the metal gangway, the rain pressing me down into it almost as though it wanted to leave my imprint there. I crawled over to the meagre shelter of the overhang above me. I looked up. Above me were a pair of feet. At first I thought they were floating in mid air, then I realised it was a glass floor, a floor that stretched out over the edge, giving a spectacular view. And the feet only meant one thing....Egor.

I wobbled to my feet and found the stair up to the next level, an easy climb, but I had to almost crawl up, I couldn't trust my legs. The rain eased up a little as I opened the door and stepped out onto the glass floor, my stomach turned over, this was more scary than the 400 plus foot climb to get to it. The illusion was only spoiled by the rain drops blurring the view below. I looked up, over the far side of the tower top stood Egor. He was stood with his back to me, but I knew it was him.

Tentatively I shuffled across the glass floor, drops of blood splashing into the rain covered surface and dissipating into the varying deluge. Drops of my life washing away. I carried on until I was about 10 paces away from Egors still form when he spoke, his voice cracking with emotion.

"No closer Anton, please. I know why you are here. I know what your suppose to do."

"Who told you?" I tried to say...but all that came out was "........you?"

"It doesn't matter who, it doesn't take a genius to work out why you are here, I only have to look at you to know something is seriously wrong."

I raised my head and swallowed some of the rain to wet my throat, then tried to talk again.

"Why did you send Tasha to find me, why did you make me wait till now to see me?" Then it clicked. "You waited until I could no longer have the strength to initiate you."

He finally turned to me, the look of deep pain clear in his eyes...I knew then what I should have know before. "Egor...I couldn't have done it....no matter what or does happen to me, I could never force you to be what your not. Look what its done to me, I'm dying, I know that now, and I'm glad. When I'm gone, the balance will be addressed, Nadya will be safe again...and my work done."

The short speech took the last of my will power, I slumped to the floor, face pressed against the glass, and looking down at the top of the complex far below. At that moment if I could have shattered the glass without endangering Egor I would have. But I didn't even have the strength to move. I couldn't understand then, why Egor was laughing. With a great effort I lifted my head

"You fool, Anton, you still think this is all about you don't you? There's things going on all around you that you have no idea about. And most of them are around me."

He climbed up to the railings surrounding the walkway and lifted out a piece of the meshing.... precut?

"Egor, what are you doing?" I tried to use my most reasonable tone.

"I want a better view." His voice was flat, unemotional, dead. He began to climb up onto the waist high rail and held onto the meshing either side of the hole, leaning out over the drop below. The rain and increasing wind lashed at his face, he was swaying in time to the wet eddies swirling around him.

More lightning then thunder, almost directly overhead now, the sky dark, appropriate in the circumstances. The tower shuddered under the violent rumbling of the sky. Egor slipped slightly before regaining his grip. I found the strength to sit up and crawl closer to him.

"Egor, come down, its not safe, not in this weather."

"Not safe, not safe? Where is safe?!" A hint of hysteria was creeping into his voice. "You don't know the half of it Anton, not what I have seen and discovered this past few months. Not what I left Essa for, the reason to keep her safe. Keep away Anton, stay back." I had crept a little more forward. I stopped.

"I told you Egor, I cant now, even if I have wanted to I wouldn't anyway, not after what its doing to me."

"You would have, you really would have though, I can see it in you still. But you cant initiate me you know, you really cant. You never could."

"Oh?" my arrogance was being provoked, what little strength I had was being channelled into indigence. "I could have as well, I could."

"No, never." Suddenly there was a huge flash and a sound like a thousand cannons firing all at once, the heavenly hosts all in battle at the same time. Lightning struck the tower at the apex above us, shaking the whole structure. Egor slipped and without a sound, fell.

"Eeeeggggooorrrr!" I screamed, the last of my breath wheezing out. I crawled towards the edge, sometimes high places have nets lower down to catch people, and I also knew I saw none from the ground. Id just reach about 2 feet from the edge when Egor came floating back up and hovered by the gap in the meshing. I had never felt such relief in my life, but it was rapidly replaced by confusion. Floating, levitation was not something a uninitiated other can do, his aura was still the same so what..........

Egor reached into his pocket slowly, and pulled out a small thin object. I recognised it just as I heard a 'snick' as Egor snapped it into between his fingers.

Slow horror crept across what was left of my mind as I saw his true aura appear.

"You see..." said Egor "...you could never convert me Anton. You could never convert me to a Dark One.....I already am."