- Chapter 063 -

  A Hunger That Can Never be Sated

  "Tori!"

  Mark's voice was an urgent crack that cut through the haze of Valerie's hysterical sobs and Eric's broken mumblings. It wasn't an angry shout, but he was out of his depths and Tori was the expert, or closest to it.

  She had been trying to soothe the screaming and broken Valerie, with everything falling apart her magic was operating a lot better, and even through her exhaustion and confusion whatever she was doing was helping her friend.

  "Let them help her." Mark ordered, his gaze flicking to Dawn and Carl, who were already supporting Valerie with a grim determination. "I need you. Now."

  It took a moment. The flicker of indecision in her eyes, her healer's instinct to tend to the immediate, visible wound warring with the urgency in his voice. With a final, worried look at Valerie, Tori pushed herself to her feet and walked over to where he stood.

  "Is he right?" Mark wasted no time. "If Clyde dies here... does he just wake up? And us?"

  Tori stared at the unconscious, bleeding form of the specialist on the floor, her academic mind kicking into gear. "Yes… but…" she took a breath, attempting to keep clinical. "It would be a catastrophically traumatic way to sever the connection, a psychic backlash of monumental proportions. But... yes. The core consciousness would be expelled. He'd wake up, a broken man…"

  She looked at him then, her eyes wide with a new, dawning horror as she saw the cold, calculated logic forming in his own.

  "No," she said, a definitive command before he could even form the question. "Don't even think about it. It wouldn't work for us. We're not the anchor of this place, he made himself that. The backlash will already be infinitely worse for us if he dies here. If we try, it would just... hurt. A lot, I am not understating that!"

  Eric, still in the midst of his own breakdown had given himself a stupid idea, even by his standards, now moving around the high table, his gaze fixed on the remaining, unturned cards.

  He never got there.

  The broken and ash covered patrons of the pub, the silent ghosts of Mark's memory, seemed to stir. They weren't a mob. They were just… present. The burly man, once in a high-vis jacket stood up, blocking Eric's path, Mark couldn’t find his name or picture his face, just fragments. Another regular, a man whose face was an indistinct smudge, took his arm.

  "Now then, mate," a voice, strange and monotone, drifted from the group. "Don't you think you've caused enough trouble for one day?"

  Eric tried to pull away, his desperation in his greed, and the fear of what may come next. "Do you know who I am?" he shrieked, his voice a high pitched wail. "I am a Senior Administrator of the—"

  His words were cut off as he was unceremoniously bundled into one of the partially burnt booths at the back of the pub, his protests swallowed by the phantom crowd. His position, all his power, it was all worthless here.

  With a strained sigh, Mark turned his attention back to the more immediate, and far more dangerous, problem. Looking from the unconscious Clyde to Tori's exhausted face. "Is there a way," his voice low and clinical, searching for a final, desperate option, "to take this anchor or key? To find the ritual for the exit in his mind? Since we're all linked."

  The reaction was immediate and visceral as Tori physically recoiled, taking a step back as if he'd just suggested they perform surgery with a rusty knife. Her face already pale was now white as a ghost, her eyes wide with a horrified, absolute refusal.

  "Yes," she choked, an unwilling admission. "In theory. I possibly… navigate what's left of his consciousness, find the… But…" She shook her head, a violent, definitive gesture. "I can't. To do that to another person, to violate their mind so completely… I just can't." Her voice broke, a raw, pleading sound. "Please, Mark. Don't ask me to do that."

  There was raw, unfiltered terror in her eyes staring back at him. He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, his touch gentle, reassuring.

  "I'm not," his voice was quiet but absolute. "I'm not the kind of monster that would ask something like that of anyone. To do what he’s done to us."

  Mark walked over to where Clyde lay, a silent heap on the sticky, ash covered floor. He knelt, his knees cracking in protest, and with a grim detachment, he slapped the unconscious man across the face. Once. Twice. The sound was a flat, wet smack across the ruined pub.

  He got the reaction he wanted, fueled by the belief that he would. A low, gurgling sound rumbled in Clyde's chest, a mixture of a cough and a laugh, and a trickle of blood and spittle dribbled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused and hazy, but a flicker of his old, malevolent arrogance was still there.

  "I'll... find them," Clyde coughed, the words a garbled promise. "Kill them all... and take what's left..."

  Mark's voice, when he spoke, was colder than the mountain air, flatter than the dead static of a broken television. "This is your only chance, Clyde," his tone devoid of any emotion. "You just torched my favorite bar, turned my memories to ash. You just burned a part of my history." He leaned in, his face inches from the specialist's. "There's a hole where my compassion used to be. Let everyone out. And that will be the end of this."

  Another gurgled, bloody laugh escaped Clyde's lips, but this one was laced with a new, frantic edge of fear. He saw the absolute, terrifying emptiness in Mark's eyes, and he knew. He was no longer dealing with a victim. A shallow and dim green aura had started for form around his body, protection or some kind of memory healing to fix his broken body, Mark no longer cared.

  "A copy," Clyde choked out, the words a desperate, final gambit. "I have... a copy of everything destroyed... you should be… begging me to get them back..."

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  The sound that left Mark’s lips had no humor in it, a dark, hollow echo in the ruined pub. "Beg?" he repeated, the word an almost gentle caress of a sound.

  He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that was for Clyde's ears alone. "I can feel you, Clyde. Reaching for your magic. Trying to get a read on me." He paused, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. "How about I let it…"

  The smile vanished, replaced by a look of endless darkness. "What I've shown you... that's been fact. History. Things that were." His voice became a near-inaudible hiss. "What should truly, deeply terrify you, Clyde, is the fiction. The things I've kept locked away."

  A flicker of confusion, of dawning terror crossed the specialist's eyes. And he continued, his words a slow, deliberate, talking from a broken person to a breaking mind, one that wasn’t able to avoid seeing what Mark wanted him to see.

  "I have seen telepaths who can peel a mind apart layer by layer. I have read of true magic, the kind wielded by dragons that can unmake reality with a word. I have schematics for machines designed to cut and dissect with a precision you can't even imagine.” The countless, endless moments from books, TV, games and other media flashed through Mark's mind, and into an unprepared Clyde. “I have faced creatures from beyond time, and I have stood before the thrones of Old Gods whose very existence is a hunger that can never be sated."

  He straightened up, looking down at the broken, bleeding man on the floor, his expression one of pitying disappointment that dwarfed the judgement gaze of Saturn moments ago.

  "And it's such a shame, Clyde," he finished, the final, devastating words laced with a cutting, theatrical sarcasm. "That all your magic... has made those memories so very, very vivid."

  From the corner of his eye, Mark saw Tori returning to the others, her movements a quiet, efficient return to her duties. She was murmuring to Valerie, her voice a low, calming sound, and he was thankful for it. The performance he was about to give was already distasteful enough without a wider audience.

  He reached down, his hand hovering just inches from Clyde's face. "Personally," he whispered, the words a final, intimate promise, "Consider it a mercy that I've always preferred the simple methods.” He flexed his fingers in front of their terrified eyes, “A hand in the head works just as well.”

  Clyde screamed. It was a primal sound of pure, unforgivable horror, the cry of a man who had just, with a terrifying clarity, comprehended the full, brutal meaning of Mark's words. Primed with the terrors of Mark’s fiction, everything else just happened…

  He fell silent as Mark's hand sank into his mind, passing through his face as if it were smoke, all resistance was gone, Clyde had broken.

  "Mark, what are you—" Dawn's shocked, questioning cry was cut short.

  It was over.

  Tori was the only one who understood. "Monster," she whispered, the single word a breath of both horrified and pitying recognition.

  The sound they all felt was a ripping, tearing sensation, a thousand fingernails screeching across a thousand chalkboards. Every remaining piece of glass in the pub, the pint glasses on the bar, the cracked windows of the surviving booths, the very bottles on the shelves, all shattered in a single, sympathetic explosion. The entire mindscape shuddered in revolt against the horrific, unnatural act that had just been committed.

  For Mark, it was just darkness. A blind, fumbling rage in the starless void of another man's mind, guided by an unwavering thought: Get them out. Get them all out safely. The sensations were a violation that made him sick beyond words, the feel of another's thoughts, another's memories, slimy and alien against his own. The total, fundamental wrongness of it was a psychic poison. Disturbingly it was easy, Clyde's mine practically giving him what he needed, what he wanted, its own realisation of its own actions.

  He pulled his hand back.

  In his grasp, he now held a sphere. Unlike the clear glass of Clyde's creations, this swirled as a chaotic ball of toxic, oily colors. Within its depths, distorted, but intact were moments of his own city. The memories stolen then turned to ash, now rescued but corrupted, tainted.

  He turned to Tori, registering the horror on her face, the quiet judgment of her whispered word. "He is no longer the anchor here, I am," he explained, with a ragged rasp. He gestured with his head to the sphere. "And the memories he stole. The ones he burned."

  He looked at them then, at the stunned faces of his friends. He saw the revulsion in Carl's eyes, the quiet, professional shock on Dawn's face. "I couldn't ask any of you to do this," his voice dropping to a near-whisper. "I would never ask anyone to become... that."

  He looked down at the unconscious, twitching form of Clyde on the floor. "I saw them, his memories, he's been doing this for over a century," Mark stated, attempting to not break down himself. "I had to learn in a few, desperate moments." He let out what should have been a pained laugh, and was a broken sob. "My methods were, obviously… more direct."

  A blood-curdling gurgle, a sound that was less a word and more a promise of undiluted hatred, escaped Clyde's lips. And then, he fell silent once more, his body limp and unresponsive on the floor.

  The moment the act was complete, Mark's own body betrayed him. His legs gave out, and he collapsed to his knees, a ragged, wet cough tearing through him, splattering a fresh spray of blood onto the sticky, burnt floor. The performance was over, and the cost was coming due.

  "Mark!" Tori cried out, rushing to his side, her hands already glowing, even Valerie who was still coming down from her actions tried to help, only to be held back by Dawn.

  He waved her off, a weak gesture. "I'm fine," he rasped, the lie unconvincing even to his own ears. With a monumental effort, he pulled himself back to his feet using one of the remaining stools, staggering upright. He had one last piece of business to attend to.

  He made his way to the back of the pub, to the booth where Eric was still being held by the silent, phantom crowd. He reached into the administrator's jacket pocket and removed the cards he'd given freely and abused for more. "Memories that were never integrated," he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else, "are surprisingly easy to retrieve."

  With a heavy groan, he placed a hand on Eric's shoulder. He felt a sickening, lurching sensation, a psychic shove, and the administrator's form flickered and vanished. He repeated the process with the unconscious Clyde, the effort walk sending a fresh wave of dizziness through him. He gasped for breath, leaning heavily against the side of the empty bar. The remaining patrons vanished as if never there.

  "The mindscape is collapsing," his voice a strained, ragged whisper. "Using his whatever... it's taking a lot out of me… I’m not him…"

  He moved to the others, his steps unsteady. One by one, he placed a hand on their shoulders, a final, desperate act of seeing his team to safety. Carl. Dawn. Valerie. Each one a quiet, disorienting push, and then they were gone.

  Tori was the last. She looked at him, her eyes wide with a mixture of awe, fear and gratitude. "Mark..." she began.

  "Go," he said, his voice barely a whisper. He placed his hand on her shoulder.

  "Thank you," she said, just before her form vanished.

  He was alone. He could feel the stolen memories from Clyde, the 'copies' he had so arrogantly stolen and now reclaimed. Each beginning to take hold in his own mind. But they were mangled, out of place, out of time and sequence. If possible at all, clearing and correcting them would take time.

  He looked across the half-burnt, ash covered ruin of The Cock and Pheasant one last time, trying to picture the histories, the people, anything in detail…

  And then, he fell.