Finally we arrive at Albert Square, right in front of the town hall, the cobbled ground dotted with statues gazing down at us from their plinths. Merlin stops to let us catch up with. There doesn’t seem to be anything remotely resembling a doorway nearby. Then he looks down and I see what he is standing on. A manhole cover.
‘Normally this is just an entrance to Manchester’s extensive Victorian sewer system,’ he says. ‘But when the alignments of the spheres are just so, it briefly becomes a portal to the alternative city you must reach. Time is short, you have to jump down now.’
I look down at the grid. It is old and worn, and has the words Manchester – Non Rocking just visible, cast into its design. I have to smile.
‘Is there any possibility you have things wrong?’ I ask. ‘Are you absolutely sure this grid isn’t just going to land us at the bottom of an ancient sewer in the middle of the night?’
Merlin looks annoyed.
‘Of course, of course. Now hurry, there is no time. This gateway will close at any moment.’
I wonder to myself – even as I and Sarah struggle to lever the grid cover up – how it can be that the old man can understand all the multidimensional magicking stuff he does, whilst completely failing to get sarcasm.
Somewhere nearby the siren of an emergency-vehicle wails, echoing off the buildings. Sarah says nothing as we work. She still looks worried. Perhaps she is thinking about what lies ahead. Or perhaps she is thinking about Green. Perhaps, like me, she is wondering what sort of a power-trio we’re going to make with only two of us.
Then we have the grid up and heaved aside, leaving a black, oblong hole in the ground that looks as though it could lead anywhere.
It certainly smells like a sewer. We look at each other and jump.
And then, suddenly, we aren’t in Kansas anymore. At least, not our Kansas.
The square we land in is similar to the one we've left, the size and orientation of the buildings identical. But everything has changed too. The buildings are taller; they have a distinct loom to them. The gothic town hall has way more spires and gargoyles. In the sky, things with bat-shaped wings cruise and flit.
I look at Sarah. She has changed, of course, become The Grey Witch, The Morrigan, the Screaming Sorceress. She’s taller, a little stooped. She wears a simple grey cloak, belted at the waist. The look of pained concentration is the same though. As it always is when she's working up to some powerful magic. A painful process, worse the more potent the spell, as if something vile, evil, live is growing inside her. I need to find the bad guy quickly and let her get at him.
‘I’ll get some height and see where we need to go,’ I say. ‘You OK here?’
She nods, says nothing. I hold one of her arms as we walk over to the town hall. Ornately-decorated granite steps, iron-banisters worked in an interweaved ivy design, lead up to a large pair of barred, wooden doors, shut now against the night.
She sits down and dips her head, as if already exhausted. I set off up the building: gargoyles, window-arches and finials for handholds, reaching the top of the high spire, maybe five-hundred feet up, in about a minute. Back home, I do well just to climb into bed at night.
Around the city, fires are burning. Their pattern soon becomes clear enough. The layout of the city is a little different, but nevertheless it is clear. One fire on each node of the giant rune, each mirroring one of the crime-scenes back in safe old Manchester. Which means that, according to Merlin’s map, the centre of the circle, the focus of the spell must be over there ...
Buildings block my view; I need to move closer. The jump across the square to the opposite rooftop is a long one, a couple of hundred feet. I drop down into a gutter I can use for a run-up. Even then there is a brief, B-Movie moment as I only make it by my fingertips and have to haul myself up.
I peer down at the square. No-one has seen me; all is quiet. The huddled figure of Sarah could be a sack dumped on the steps far below and across from me.
I walk across the rooftop and the scene down there on the ground on the other side of the building is slowly revealed to me, scrolling into view as if a stage-curtain is being lifted. The updraft breathes smells of fire and decay into my face.
And what I see is basically an army. It looks like something from a festival: a vast hoard of creatures, tens of thousands of them, spreading thickly out from a well-lit central stage.
Except it isn't really a stage, more of an altar. A raised, square, ornately-decorated platform. Vine-like pillars wind up from each of the four corners to meet in gothic arches.
The crowd isn't quite right either: it's far too quiet, too patient, as if waiting for some signal. And most of the individuals in it have far too many limbs.
Dotted around the crowd, and all around the central stage, torches burn brightly, illuminating the scene with a shadowy, wavering light. Shifting in and out of the shadows I see horse-sized cockroaches from the seventh circle of hell standing next to more familiar, massively-muscled horned bipeds. Here and there the sort of rotting zombie that is for ever shedding lumps of itself but never seems to get any smaller. I wouldn't like to be on a stage invaded by any of them.
Not that I generally have a problem with demons. Most of the ones I've known have been good fun in a robust kind of way. There was, after all, that Succubus, Euroclydon. But the creatures in this crowd are something different. The way they stand patiently in their ranks. Too quiet, too controlled, too regimented. Like machines waiting to be switched on. Summoned, conjured creatures, like Adam Ant back there in Manchester: brought forth and bent to the will of a controlling individual. And that's always genuinely scary.
I shift my gaze up to the central stage. A solitary figure is visible there, dressed in gold-trimmed, white robes, very striking in the light of the torches, as if embossed onto the darkness. The figure stands for a moment at a low table on my side of the dais, perhaps chanting, then moves across the platform to do the same facing the opposite way. He moves slowly, as if taking part in some solemn ceremony, occasionally lifting his arms upwards to proclaim to the skies.
OK. Now all I need to do is work out a way to get Sarah through the city, past the Demon army and up onto that stage.
I'm just starting to think about clever arrangements with ropes and swings when I hear the sound behind and above me.
I move quickly - I know I move quickly - twisting, jumping sideways, drawing Jagger from my boot and crouching defensively all in one deft motion. Still it isn't quick enough. I'm grabbed from above, a claw or talon clamping onto each shoulder, as unforgiving as iron. And about as sharp: I feel hard points of pain as my skin is pierced.
My arms are immobilised, both by the pain and by the physical restraint. Jagger dangles uselessly from my left hand. I feel myself being lifted upwards. Some sort of flying beast. If I'm going to escape its clutches without being dropped from a great height, I have to be quick.
I drop Jagger and catch it between the balls of my feet, then pivot sharply upwards at my waist like an acrobat on a trapeze, swinging my legs round in an arc to strike my raptor captor somewhere six feet or so above my head. There is a blur of scales and claws, a large grey bulk and great, flapping, leathery wings. The knife - deadly and fizzing with powerful incantations in this realm - hits with the full force of my roundhouse swing.
There is a noise like a pebble skittering off a window and my feet jar against the creature's body. I nearly lose the blade, but manage to hold on to it with my toes as my legs swing down again. There is no blood - of any colour - upon it. The creature makes no sound, simply carries on flying, its only reaction a cruel tightening of its claws in my shoulders.
I decide to stop struggling and see where I'm being taken.
The slow, powerful whoosh of the creature's wings, each stroke accompanied by a jolt of lift and an extra twist of the pain, are echoed by the quieter flapping of a second creature nearby. I pivot around by twisting my body with all my effort, like a parachutist desperately trying to work f
ree from a tangled canopy. The stabbing in my shoulders intensifies. I'm sure both wounds are bleeding freely.
On the third attempt I manage to catch a glimpse of Sarah, slung beneath a second pair of powerful, scaled claws just behind me. Her head is bowed; I don't see her face.
We rise up above the tower tops then shoot forwards into a fast, gliding dive, down towards the Demon army and the Necromancer at its centre. A chanted hum, rising and falling, gets slowly louder, accompanied by metallic clashes and the steady crackle of the burning torches.
There is nothing I can do. Sarah is saving herself, readying herself. Perhaps Green would have been able to fight his way out. But I - whose approach is generally to not get caught in the first place - am powerless.
We swoop quickly over the crowd, very low, my feet skimming a sea of horned and spiked heads. Towards the central altar, far too fast, the gothic columns looming up suddenly very large as if we are going to try and fly through.
At the last moment the dragon-bat-thing carrying me stalls expertly, flips upwards to lose its forwards velocity, hangs for an instance above the open square of the dais, then drops me. The fall is perhaps thirty feet. I hit the ground legs bent, roll down onto my side, over my shoulders, then carry the motion onwards and around to regain my feet.
The injuries don't seem too bad. My arms still work at least. I pick up Jagger with a nonchalant flick of my foot and return it to my boot, then look upwards, worrying about Sarah. She falls like a sack of potatoes, as if barely aware what is happening to her. I manage to get beneath her, cushion the force of her fall, although we both end up sitting on the floor of the dais.
I wave cheerily upwards to the two disappearing shapes, but I don't think they get irony either.
I turn to Sarah.
‘See, I told you I'd find a way,’ I say. She doesn't reply. There is a look of intense concentration on her face, and also something like alarm, as if she fears the force she is about to unleash.
We sit roughly in the middle of the square, the floor an interlocking pattern of highly polished, marbled stones. Dr. Evil stands a couple of yards away, his back to us, performing the usual sort of ritual movements involving, no doubt, some sort of chalice. I'm intensely aware of being surrounded by tens of thousands of mind-controlled demons, each staring directly at us.
For a moment, nothing happens. Then, at some minor movement from the Necromancer, the army stirs, readying itself to move.
Time to get the first punch in. I spring up, grab Sarah's arm and haul her to her feet, then point her at the back of the robed figure as if she’s just some sort of huge, unwieldy gun. Sarah responds, lifts her head, ready now to release the terrible magical forces that coil and rage within her.
The Necromancer turns as if only then becoming aware of our presence. He performs a deft and complex series of movements with his right hand. Between his fingers, a small, coin-sized disk of some dull, grey metal appears, as if he is just some cheap magician from back home. He holds the disk in front of Sarah's eyes, where it stays when he lets it go, hovering a few inches from her face. Sarah is transfixed. She stares at the disk, completely absorbed in it, in what she sees there. The magical fury she was about to unleash plugged, trapped inside her.
I move to knock the device away but find that I can't. My feet have become rooted to the marbled stone of the dais floor, as if it has seeped up through my feet to petrify my whole body. Once again I’m immobile. I guess I should have known.
Only now does the bad guy speak.
‘Now we may complete the incantation. I will need just a little blood from each of you. I can kill you beforehand or afterwards, it is entirely up to you.’
He has evil written all over his face. I mean literally. A whole lexicon of symbols and sigils cover his visage, intricately painted in purples and dark reds. No doubt Merlin could have interpreted all of them. But I'd seen enough over the years to recognize a few. Fearsome runes of terrible violence, screaming nightmares, racking agonies.
‘Hmmm, afterwards I think.’
‘As you wish.’
Something in his voice, in his way of speaking, is familiar, reminding me of the ant-figure's cover version of our song back in Manchester. The ant-figure he must have been in control of. And now this blood thing. Clearly we have been manipulated all along, obediently playing our role in the Necromancer's plans for the despoliation of Manchester.
Damn, I hate it when that happens.
I try again to move, to do something, but I cannot.
Now he has a knife in his hand, slender and ornate, an intricately carved handle and a long, icicle of a blade with runes etched along it.
He puts the knife up to my neck, stroking it gently across my Adam's apple, then pulls it sharply back and stabs it hard into my stomach. It hurts like hell. I instinctively want to crumple in pain, hold the wound, scream, but I still cannot move. I can only stand there. Meanwhile he walks away, collects a chalice - I knew it - and holds it below the wound. Then he walks over to Sarah, stabs her in the same way, and collects more blood. A wince on Sarah's face is the only indication she’s noticed.
He returns to the altar and continues with his rite, screaming outlandishly now like a bad death-metal singer, sandpapering the air with his voice. I think the blood is burned. Or possibly drunk. It is hard to tell; everything seems increasingly vague, indistinct. Blood-loss bringing on a foggy unconsciousness. I notice that the Necromancer's tongue is slender and forked, that it occasionally flicks out and in as if he’s a lizard. Or should that be wizard? I’m finding it hard to recall what the words mean any more.
He turns to face the centre of the dais and, pointing with outstretched hands, describes a rectangular shape in the air. Where he indicates, a few yards from where we stand, lines of smoky fire flare and burn. Two lines creep up from the floor, reach a height of maybe ten feet, then turn inwards to meet, forming the clear shape of a door.
When the rectangle is complete, the space within turns rapidly grey, like a giant eye blinking shut. Then it starts to writhe and swirl as if it is a pool of turbulent water we are looking down on. A vortex becomes clear, spiralling round like a galaxy, spinning faster and faster until it reaches some terminal velocity and, bang, its centre recedes away into infinity. The doorway becomes a tunnel that we are looking into.
It is all, I have to admit, a lot more impressive than Merlin's manhole-cover.
Now the Necromancer turns and gesticulates at the crowd, starting to orchestrate them, dividing them into sections as if he's going to try and get them to sing in competition. A phalanx of the cockroach-nightmares stirs, moves forwards, marching in concert towards us. There are about a thousand of them, huge and hideous, limbs clacking, their long antennae thrumming in the air. The first wave of the invasion.
Other sections of the vast crowd start to move too, brigades of demons moving as one. Manchester doesn't have a chance. I imagine Merlin standing back there, facing the onslaught on his own. He won't be enough, not nearly enough.
I look across at Sarah. She looks a lot paler than she should, and she shakes quite noticeably, perhaps from the suppressed fury, perhaps from the blood loss. She doesn't see me.
The Necromancer stops his grim screaming now and stands to watch as his army mobilises. Rank upon rank of the beasts move towards us, awaiting their turn to cross between the worlds. His soldiers finally on the move, his long plans complete.
Which means, what he doesn't see is a figure in the swirling grey of the portal, an individual crossing not into Manchester, but from Manchester back into this realm. A tall individual, hugely muscled, clad in silver armour, five-foot sword in one hand.
If I had the strength - that is if I was actually able to move - I'd have smiled at the sight. I'm just glad no-one in the demon hoard has the self-will to shout Behind you! to the Necromancer.
Green has never been one to agonize over the rights and wrongs of a given situation. A down-to-earth sort of person. I know what he'll be think
ing. It'll be something like, Here's a demon army: better attack it. Then, Ah but here's the person in charge of it: better kill him first ...
He steps out of the portal, his sword already swinging. The blow has all of his superhero strength behind it, but is also finely aimed. Straight for the neck.
The Necromancer never knows anything about it. There is a brief noise like something wooden being split apart. For a moment, a clear line of light is visible between the baddy's head and the rest of his body.
There is a quiet moment as everything pauses. Green stops to see what is going to happen. The army stops moving. The Necromancer, pretty clearly, stops doing anything.
The long instant of hush is broken by the gentle sound of a small, coin-sized piece of metal hitting the floor somewhere near my feet. It tinkles and spins quietly around before coming to a rest.
And then all hell breaks loose. The well-disciplined demon army becomes a chaotic rabble. As one they charge us, fighting viciously amongst themselves when they get in each other's way. I slump to the ground, finally able to nurse my wound. The Necromancer, in perfect formation with me, slumps also, although his head takes a little longer to reach the floor. Green readies his sword in his hand, quite prepared to take on the whole army.
And Sarah explodes.
Noise and light blast from her body, engulfing her, me, Green. An expanding ball of ferocious magical energy moves through and past us, leaving us, for the briefest moment alone, surrounded by a circular wall of terrible force.
Then the magical energies ignite, erupting into an inferno of power. The wall flashes outwards as if we are standing at ground-zero of a nuclear detonation, in the eye of a Finger-of-God hurricane. The force vaporises everything it flashes through.
The body of the Necromancer and the pillars of the dais cease to exist. The ranks of the army are next, demons and zombies obliterated where they sit or stand or fight, each one wiped out of existence.
The wall of wildfire energy crashes into the surrounding buildings with the force of an earthquake, bringing them down all around the square. The streets between funnel the force outwards, becoming huge gun-barrels that concentrate the explosion further out into the city. More distant buildings crash down, falling like dominoes, collapsing into smoke and rubble.