Chapter 18
Merlin’s Wrath
Mal knew they were too late. He knew it on the way down the hill; he knew it in the, thankfully short, queue back to Dunwich; and he knew it as he rounded the corner onto the crossroads of Copperfield and Bow Street.
He knew it, but he could not admit it. Admitting it would mean that they had failed, and worse, that someone he cared about was doomed.
Mal had wrestled with his feelings about Walters for a while.
Walters was angry and abrupt but also seemed to care when he really didn’t need to.
The man had indulged their naivety and had gone to bat for them on more than one occasion.
He was, in Mal’s mind at least, a good man.
And he was almost certainly already dead.
Mal gave a thought for the rest of the Order.
This was going to be a disaster. He’d seen about sixty people there for his induction but even more had come out to help with the manhunt for whoever had attacked their headquarters.
Mal brought the others down into the recess at the crossroads and pushed his hand onto the little wooden door.
He’d never actually opened it before; he remembered only now what Kosh had said about losing that hand.
One, two, three …
For a moment, nothing happened. Then: click.
Mal pushed through and sprinted down the stairs with such speed he was sure he’d trip and tumble the rest of the way.
As he got to the final few steps, a hideous smell rose to meet him; an off-putting metallic smell that slapped at his senses.
As he got closer it mixed with a smell like burnt hair.
Something blue flickered through the entryway, accompanied by an eerie static.
Mal took the final few steps into the grand foyer and steeled himself.
His death sense hit like a speeding truck into a pileup; it took everything Mal had not to pass out. He had been right. He was too late. The light and warmth that had once rushed to embrace him was gone, replaced by a cold, persistent darkness that stared you in the eye and dared you to blink.
Mal saw a shadow near the marble statue at the center of the room.
Flickers of arcing lightning sparked and jumped from its silhouette, flashing a bloodied visage through the dark.
The frail old man that Mal had met but a week ago was gone, replaced now by this haunting specter.
Taran’s skeletal figure stood in a blue robe amid a floor strewn with still shapes.
As Mal’s eyes adjusted, the darkness revealed its horrors.
A glut of corpses coated the floor; everywhere Mal looked, the darkness gave shape to a crumpled figure that once held life.
Mal shuffled forward but felt something heavy push against his foot, but he couldn’t bring himself to look down.
Mal heard footsteps on the stairs behind him; the others had caught up.
Taran must have heard them, too, as he turned to face the entryway.
Blue light engulfed the room as Taran pulsed and sparked with power.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!” Taran screamed, the light exposing a hideous mosaic of bodies.
Mal saw Taran’s face through the gloom; he seemed lucid and terrified.
Mal had hoped to find a dazed old man unaware of what he’d done, but this was so much worse.
It was as if the atrocity had somehow forced his mind awake.
“WHO ARE THEY?” Taran screamed, gesturing to the bodies. Mal stood in putrid awe, unable to fully comprehend what lay in front of him. Taran’s gaze fixed on Mal, pained and enraged. Mal realized that this was not where he wanted to be.
In a blink and a pop, Taran was inches from Mal’s face, coursing with power. The old man grabbed Mal by his shirt. Blistering flecks of lightning lashed from him and seared their surroundings. Mal flinched, powerless.
He felt Taran’s grip go limp. The old man let out a long, pained breath.
“Elaine …”
Mal felt her push past him and watched as they embraced.
Taran crumpled like a small child in her arms. Mal heard them both begin to sob.
Mal let out a breath he’d been holding in like his life depended on it and turned back to the room.
They had to look for survivors. Someone might still be okay in there; Walters might still be okay.
He could still be alive, Mal thought, lying to himself.
Mal left the entryway and set off through the devastation Taran had wrought.
He looked back to the others. Hala had retreated back up the steps, unable to deal with the scene.
Mal couldn’t blame her. Des and Yu eked slowly out, following Mal.
Mal put two fingers to his neck, hoping to convey “look for vital signs.” Des was already way ahead of him. Yu followed, but much slower.
Mal looked about but there was no movement.
He searched from face to face, desperately hoping for signs of life, or signs of Walters.
Praying for both. Mal felt an anger and a pain course though him the further he stepped.
He’d failed them, one and all. He wanted desperately to be angry at Taran for what he’d done, but how?
You can’t get mad at a hurricane; you can’t demand justice from an earthquake; this was just the same.
Taran had no clue where he was, what he was doing, or what was happening; he was a toddler holding a gun.
This wasn’t his fault, but it was someone’s fault.
Elaine could certainly take some of the blame—she knew Taran was dangerous and she covered it up.
She hadn’t even taken steps to try and stop him from teleporting, but then again, she didn’t know the bigger picture; she didn’t know that someone had been using Taran.
An anger so thorough paralyzed Mal for a moment, forcing him to wrestle it to one side.
That wasn’t going to help him now, not in this moment.
He needed to find Walters; he needed to help anyone who had survived.
He made it through to the other side of the foyer but had found no one still breathing.
Des joined him a few moments later; she’d had just as much luck.
They agreed to split up, heading in opposite directions to continue their search.
Mal could see the desperation in Des’s eyes—they were both getting less hopeful by the minute.
Mal made his way down an empty, dimly lit corridor, dreading what he would find.
At its end he found a large circular room with the same domed ceilings as the foyer, most of the room was filled by a circular table at its center.
The room was rich and elegant and strewn with the dead.
It was clear that this was where Taran had started: scorched lightning extruded from a single point and lashed out into the rest of the room.
Some bodies remained sat up in plush armchairs that still surrounded the table; others had been knocked to the floor with the blast.
Walters had been standing against the back wall. Mal found him slumped on the floor, burn mark perfectly placed over his heart. Mal rushed over to him. He tried to feel for a pulse but felt only the sickly stillness of death.
No, Mal thought, as tears rolled down his face.
“No,” Mal cried. Memories of his parents’ faces forced their way into his mind.
Not of them tensing and contorting as they returned, but of their stillness, their absence.
Though their features had not changed, they had been unrecognizable to him.
Eyes devoid of light, mouths bereft of smiles, ears unwilling to hear his cries.
Mal had pushed those memories deep, behind his traumas, behind his pain.
Only now, looking upon the face of someone he’d known, someone he’d cared about, did he see that same absence.
The mask that Death takes, leaving us to our intolerable truth.
Mal sat defeated, a small child in the wreckage of his pain. He looked down as a tear rolled from his face, it was black and viscous. He caught it in his hands. Not again, Mal thought as he lost control.
Mal watched as a shadowy blackness consumed him.
Blinding darkness burst forth from his tear in streaks that cut the world in twain.
Darkness that passed from this realm to others and returned with something awful, something that should not be.
Creatures and screams from the harshest hells burst forth from this tiny tear and flooded Mal’s vision.
His evil had returned. Through him, through his pain, through his inability to accept what was, through his weakness.
He knew this was his doing, but he couldn’t stop it, he didn’t want to stop it.
Mal removed his hand but the tear remained, a drop of pure blackness floating in front of him.
An implosion of light sucked the evils back into the tear.
It hung in limbo for a moment, waiting. Mal knew what needed to be done.
He looked to Walters and searched for something to contain this evil.
Mal found a talisman around Walters’s neck, a small, silver pendant about the size of a coin.
Mal held it in his hand and watched as the tear absorbed itself into the pendant.
Walters took a sharp, useless breath in, then froze.
A look of unabated horror gripped his face.
Mal knew that look; Mal had seen it before, on the faces of his parents.
It was the look of someone who was staring evil in the face, a look of disgust and contempt, of anger and fear; a look of hatred.
Mal was a monster. Wisping, pitch-black shadow had replaced his flesh; white circles shone from his eyes; a skeleton lay beneath, barely visible through Mal’s swirling shadowy mass.
His edges clawing to escape him. He was a creature cut out of the world.
A skeleton emblazed in shadow. Mal knew what he was, and that this thing had always been a part of him.
Mal regained control, and slowly the shadows faded; peeling back his mask to the man beneath it.
Walters’s expression remained for just a moment longer, that look of hatred.
That look held the truth of what Mal was, a truth that was seared into Mal’s soul over and over by those he had first raised and who were meant to raise him.
Mal studied the array of emotions that crossed Walters’s face next: a relief the monster was gone, a relief to still be alive, then the realization that that was not what had happened.
“Is everyone …?” Walters stuttered.
Mal nodded solemnly. Walters looked down and found the burn mark in his chest. A fatal wound. He sat back, defeated.
“Mal?” said a voice from the doorway behind them.
Mal barely recognized it; he’d never heard her voice so timid before.
Mal turned and saw Des standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the dim light of the corridor, her eyes piercing out of the shadow.
What had she seen? Did she witness his horror too?
Walters got to his feet and before Mal could say anything Des ran over and embraced Walters.
“Oof, careful, kid,” Walters said as she slammed into him. As they hugged, Mal saw a tear roll down Des’s face. When she let go, she quickly returned to Sergeant Desdemona.
“I haven’t found any survivors, sir,” she said, straightening up.
“None in here either by the look of things,” Walters said, a hint of irony in his voice. “I’ll keep looking,” he continued. “I’m guessing Taran’s already gone.”
“He left with Elaine,” Mal said.
“The woman Murray saw?” Walters said. Mal nodded. “They have a lot to answer for those—”
“He was just the weapon,” Mal said sternly. “I know who the real killer is, but you’re not gonna like it.”
“How bad can it be?”
Mal gave him a hard look that said, Worse than what just happened to you. Walters seemed to understand.
“We can deal with the killer later. I have to sort this out.” He gestured to the carnage. “Head back to the safe house and get ready. I’m going to need one hell of an explanation.” Walters scanned the wreckage of the room one last time, gave them both a nod, then left.
Mal and Des stared at each for a moment, ignoring the horror that surrounded them.
Mal had no words: he’d failed these people; failed Walters; then out of weakness, given in to the evil inside of him—and she’d witnessed it all.
Whatever was happening between them, whatever trauma bond was joining them, Mal was sure it was over.
“How much did you see?” Mal said, reflexively taking a small step back.
“Everything …” As Des spoke she brought herself closer, filling the space Mal had made. “It was … a lot.”
“I know,” Mal said, trying to avoid Des’s eye. “I’m … a monster.”
“No,” Des said, taking a stand before Mal.
“A monster wouldn’t have tried to save all these people.
A monster wouldn’t have brought Walters back.
A monster wouldn’t offer his own life to save a woman who had stalked him on her evening off.
If that’s the kind of monster you are, then we’ll be monsters together.
” She took his hand in hers and held it defiantly.
“Let’s go. Walters isn’t the only one who needs an explanation for all this. ”