Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness

“There’s something I wanted to say to you, Gemma.” He couldn’t help it. “I think about you a lot, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh yes …?” He could almost see the dimples in her cheeks as she smiled.

“You mean a lot to me, Gemma. I just want you to know that. There’ve been so many times I wanted to tell you that, but I always chickened out. Stupid really.”

“Ashoka, are you all right?” Gemma said. “This isn’t like you.”

“It is, but you just don’t know it. Sometimes I don’t know what I am either.”

“Maybe we can talk tomorrow. I’d like to.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Why do you think I come to Josh’s to play Dungeons & Dragons every Tuesday?”

“Er … because you’re a geek?”

Gemma laughed. “That too.”

Gemma was interested in Ashoka? The world had gone officially loony.

“You’ll call me?” she asked. “So we can meet up? Just you and me?”

Totally loony. “That would be great. I’ve got some family business to sort out first. Might take a few days. But, yeah, I’ll call you.”

“All right. Listen, the bell’s about to go. Take care of yourself, Ashoka.”

“You too.”

He clicked off the phone just as Ashoka came back in. They looked at each other. “Was that for me?”

Ash gave him his most casual look. “Oh, just someone checking up. On stuff. You know. And, you know, Gemma.”

“You spoke to Gemma?”

Parvati sighed. “He asked her out. As you.”

Ashoka’s mouth dropped open. “A date? Why? What? Seriously? What did she say?”

“She said yes,” said Ash, grinning. “As unbelievable as it might seem.”

“She said yes?” echoed Ashoka. “Aw, excellent! Thanks!”

“This is too, too insane,” said Parvati, shaking her head.

Chapter Six

Ash couldn’t get it out of his mind. Gemma was alive. Of course he’d known she would be, but it was different actually speaking to her.

She lived. His uncle and aunt lived. All the trauma he’d been through had never happened to Ashoka.

Was that why he found his other self so irritating?

Admit it, you’re jealous.

Ash was the Kali-aastra. He’d saved the world a couple of times. He was the Eternal Warrior, the reincarnation of some of the greatest heroes the world had ever known, and he was jealous of a podgy, lazy kid who’d achieved absolutely zero with his life.

And he was still going to get the girl.

“Get with the programme,” snapped Parvati. She handed him his punch dagger.

“What? I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s all over your face. Life not being fair and all that.”

“Well, it’s not.” Ash glanced towards the sofa. Ashoka was bending over to do up his shoelaces. “Look at him. He can’t even touch his toes and yet he gets it all.”

“You’re such an idiot,” fumed Parvati.

“What’s up with you, anyway?” said Ash, looking at her.

Elaine came in jangling a bunch of keys. “I reckon if you’re heading into the lion’s den you might need some hardware.”

“What have you got?” Ash asked.

“More’s the question, what haven’t I got? Come downstairs. You too, fat boy. And bring that bow of yours.”

Ashoka flushed. And tried to hold his stomach in. “I’m not fat,” he muttered. “It’s water retention.”

Elaine smirked. “It looks like cake retention to me.”

There was a small door behind the counter that led to the basement. Elaine shuffled through her keys, shaking them off a cumbersome steel ring, inspecting one after another. “If you wait a month or so, I could get you some reinforcements.”

“Who do you have in mind? The SAS?” asked Ashoka.

Elaine tried another thick iron key in the door. “Better than that. But they’re all out in Russia right now.”

“We haven’t got a month,” said Ash. “Savage will catch up with us well before then. We need to take the initiative.”

“Ah, here we go.” Elaine pushed a key into the lock and twisted.

She flipped on a switch and a lone light bulb illuminated a narrow set of stairs leading into the basement. “This is where I keep the toys for the boys.” She gave Parvati a mock bow. “And the demon princesses.”

Ash followed Parvati down and then gazed about him. And grinned. Ashoka stepped in after him.

“Wow,” said Ashoka. “You really are ready for the zombie apocalypse.”

The wooden rack to his left was stacked with katanas – samurai swords – each wrapped in a silk cloth. Axes stood up against the wall opposite, their blades bright as mirrors. Spears, maces, even suits of armour ranging from stiffened leather to chain mail to plate helmets. Ash picked up a curved tulwar, slowly rolling his wrist in loose figures of eight.

Parvati picked up a flat steel ring, slightly bigger than palm size. “A chakram. It’s been a while since I saw one of these.”

Ashoka collected a pair of nunchakus and adopted a Bruce Lee pose. “I’ll take these.”

Parvati raised an eyebrow. “You know how to use one?”

“I’ve seen Enter the Dragon a billion times.”

She took it from him. “You’re more likely to knock yourself out.”

Ash picked up an arrow. The tip was needle sharp. “I don’t want you getting close enough for a punch-up. You leave that to Parvati and me.” He handed the arrow over. “You stay at the back and use these with your bow, if you think you can handle it.”

“I can handle it.”

“Actually, you don’t have to come,” Ash offered. Maybe it would be easier if just he and Parvati went? That way he wouldn’t have to spend half the time looking out for Ashoka.

Ashoka inspected the arrow and ran his fingers through the fletching. “No. I want to do this. I have to.” He chose a collection of barbed arrows, broad leaf-shaped heads and some narrow, needle-pointed bodkins. The first two were designed for maximum damage, while the bodkins were for armour penetration. Ash would have picked the same.

Maybe we aren’t so different after all.

Elaine pushed open a wonky cupboard and lifted out a Kevlar jacket. “What about body armour?”

Ash peered at the rest. She had ancient mail shirts and even a knight’s helmet. “Why do you have this stuff?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Ash inspected the jacket. “Too heavy.”

Ashoka notched the arrow against the bowstring.

He knows how to handle a bow, that’s for sure. Maybe he wouldn’t be totally useless.

Ashoka turned to Elaine, arrow pointed safely down, but the bowstrings seemed to hum. “Care to put an apple on your head?”

Elaine grunted. “I’ll get the van warmed up.”

Ash inspected the rest of the weapons while Ashoka followed Elaine out to the van. Parvati watched him go, her long fingers on her chin, her green eyes glowing. “Interesting, don’t you think?”

“What?” said Ash. “Ashoka notched an arrow and didn’t shoot his own foot?”

“It’s not crossed your mind why he’s picked a bow?”

“Involves minimum running around? What’s your point, Parvati?”

Parvati tapped his forehead. “He’s the Eternal Warrior. Just like you. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Ash stopped and looked at her. “You’re sure?”

She nodded. “It might manifest itself differently, but the bow, his handling of it, I’ve seen it before, a long, long time ago. He didn’t learn that in archery class.”

Could it be true? thought Ash. Why not? They were the same person. They would have had the same past lives. Ash had had visions of his own past existences. They’d come to him in his dreams, with subtle messages as to what he’d be facing, offering coded clues and advice. The problem was, they were always obscure. “You think he’s accessing the talent of one of his past lives? I’ve never been able to do that.”

“Ashoka might be different, though. I don’t know for sure, but, at least at a subconscious level, he’s tapping their knowledge.”

Ash heard the engine start somewhere above them. He picked up his punch dagger. It was all he really needed. “Do you think we should tell him?”

“No. He’ll find out soon enough.”

Chapter Seven

Ash sat in the back of the van with Ashoka. Parvati was up front with Elaine.

It was good to be doing something. Now they knew where Savage lived there was a buzz in the air, a crackle of anticipation.

He’d been here before, at the eve of a battle.

Then why are my hands so sweaty?

Ashoka strummed his bowstrings nervously. He had an arrow clip fixed to the bow, and six arrows, double-stacked, ready and waiting.

How would Ashoka do in battle? Was he really the Eternal Warrior, just like him?

“How much further?” Ash asked. He just wanted to get started now. Then the nerves would go.

“We’re almost there,” said Elaine.

The Docklands in east London were a mixture of old and ultra-modern. Their route took them through Canary Wharf and past the headquarters of Barclays Bank, Credit Suisse, HSBC and all the other global financial houses. In the dark the skyscrapers shone as if covered in crystal.

Beyond the bastions of super-wealth came endless, squalid council estates, low and mean and hidden in the gloom, shadowed by the glass titans and circled by busy ring roads.

“Not surprising Savage would set up here,” said Elaine as she drove. “This was where it all started.”

She was right. Savage had begun as a soldier of the East India Company back in the eighteenth century. From there he’d built his fortune through slavery and drug smuggling and conquest. He’d marched with the likes of Napier and Clive, carving up India, creating what would be the heart of the British Empire. Spice ships had docked here, bringing pepper, once more valuable than gold, but there had been gold aplenty too. Gold, silver, diamonds, ivory, and tea and cotton and countless other treasures of the East.

But the old warehouses had all been turned into offices or fashionable apartments for the merchant bankers, now trading electronically and growing just as rich as the nabobs of the Honourable East India Company.

Snow had just started to fall. The clouds were a deep orange from the city. It never truly became dark in London, and small flurries of snowflakes swirled in the pool of amber from the sodium streetlights.

Elaine slowed down and came to a halt at the corner of the road. “There it is.”

The warehouse took up an entire block. Four storeys tall with a multi-pitched roof with plenty of nooks and crannies among the chimney stacks. As it stood alone they could see the building backed on to a dock: a square, artificial bay with a few designer barges and yachts moored, quiet and idle. Two hundred years ago the basin would have been filled with high-masted clippers and men heaving the fortunes of nations off the boats and into the warehouse.

The windows were dark. A white Humvee stood outside the front door.

Ash slid the side panel open and stepped out of the back of the van. He shivered as the wind whipped along the street, but pulled off his coat and threw it back in. He didn’t want it getting in the way. He touched his katar handle, strapped to the back of his belt. “You ready for this, Ashoka?”

“No, but I’m coming anyway.” He slung his bow across his back.

Parvati smiled at him as she stepped out, hand on her urumi.

Elaine leaned out of the driver’s window. “I’m going to hide over the other side of the dock. Good luck and don’t be long.”

They made their way towards the warehouse. Ashoka was pale, eyes darting everywhere.

Ash flexed his fingers, trying to keep the cold out. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to take on Savage. They were on the back foot, going into unknown territory without all their powers.

But that was just the way it had to be.

What and who was in there? Ashoka’s family? Jackie? Savage even? Ash wished he was more ready; that they all were. The only one who looked at ease was Parvati. Nothing ever phased her. Always cool, always in control.

She peered through the letter box in the front door. “What’s the PIN?”

Ashoka inspected his palm. “040776.”

Parvati shrugged off her coat. “I’ll just be a minute.” Then she reached through the letter box, sliding into her cobra form as she did so. Her tale flicked before vanishing through the slot.

Ashoka glanced up and down the street. “I’ve never done anything illegal, and now I’m breaking and entering.”

“How are you finding it?”

“I feel half sick and half excited, you know?”

“Yes,” said Ash. “I do know.”

A minute later the door opened and Parvati, back in human form, smiled at them. “Come in.”

Savage hadn’t stinted on the decorations. It was an elegant mix of old and modern. The walls were original bare red brick, but full-height portraits lined the hallway, each lit by a discreet spotlight hidden among the old wooden beams across the ceiling. A long, dark red Persian rug ran all the way to a wrought-iron staircase, and the doors leading off the hallway were antique wood, their colour glossy and dark from the varnish.

Ashoka stood facing a life-sized portrait. “It’s Savage.”

Ash had seen it before, back in India. “At the beginning of his career.”

Savage wore the red jacket of an officer of the East India Company. He gazed down at them with half-lidded eyes that were cold blue chips of ice. They burned with all the greed, hunger for power, the sense of destiny, and of superiority that would define his three-hundred-year existence. All present in this first portrait of him as a mortal man in his mid-twenties. He held a tiger-headed cane, and the beast’s own gaze was pure red, two small rubies glistening from the silver face, snarling at the painter. Behind Savage lay a pair of manacles and a bundle of dried poppies, the source of his wealth. Further along the hallway was a portrait of him as an old man, then nearest to the stairs the most recent – just him sitting on a stool, dressed in his customary white suit, wearing his black shades. His skin was pearly white, almost luminescent. Behind him was desert and the faint outline of a vast archaeological excavation. His cane rested across his knees.

“That’s the dig in Rajasthan,” said Ash, “where we found Ravana.”

Parvati stood by a small electrical panel beside the door. A schematic of the building showed all the alarm locations, now all green. She double-checked and sighed. “The entire building is alarmed.”

“Which means no one’s at home,” said Ashoka. “What are we going to do?”

Ash knew Ashoka was gutted, and he was too. But then did he really believe it would have been that easy? This was Savage they were dealing with. The Englishman would have backup plans to his backup plans.

But they were here. In his house. Who knew what they might find?

“We need to have a good look around,” he said. “Maybe we’ll find a clue as to where they’ve gone. We know they were here recently.”

Parvati didn’t look happy. “It’s a big house.”

“We should split up.”

Ashoka shook his head. “Nope. No way. I’ve seen too many movies where that happens and the loser in the party …” he looked to Parvati, then Ash, “… which, under these circumstances, would be me, comes to a bloody and awful end.”

“Which is why you’ll be staying with Parvati,” said Ash.

“How come I get stuck with him?” replied Parvati.

“Hey!” said Ashoka.

“You have him,” she continued.

“No. Hanging out with him, it’s just too … freaky.” Ash smiled. “And look, you dealt with me when I was young and useless, so—”

“Who says I’m useless?”

Parvati put up a finger. “Shh.” She turned to Ash. “OK, then what are we looking for?”

“The house is huge, and I don’t want to stay here a moment longer than necessary, but we need to try to find out where they’ve gone, and we need to work fast, and that means splitting. I don’t like it any more than you do, Ashoka, but otherwise we have no leads. I’ll start at the top, you two start down here, and we’ll meet in the middle. All right?” Ash turned to Ashoka. Yes, it was still odd, staring at himself. “You do exactly as she says. Got it?”

“I am not useless.”

“Whatever.” Ash checked his watch. “We’ll meet in fifteen minutes.”

Parvati nodded, then took the left corridor, Ashoka close behind her.

Ash went directly to the wrought-iron staircase and climbed, moving quickly and keeping to the shadows. A clock chimed somewhere in the house, but all else was silence. He paused at the first floor to listen, gazing down the corridor. There was no one around. He continued on up.

Clues. I’m looking for clues. Now which door leads to clues?

He was at the top of the house. A skylight illuminated a large square patch of the corridor in a silvery blue. The space was mean compared to the rest of the house. The ceiling was low and the doors were plain, without the ornate panelling of the floors below. It smelled musty and a cold breeze sank through the old frame around the skylight.

He peered into the first room, opening the door slowly to minimise the squeak of the hinges. Linen sat in neat white stacks upon a row of shelves and there was the stuffy odour of mothballs. Ash moved on.

He went quickly from room to room, finding nothing of interest. He saw the stairs at the opposite end. One more room to check, then he’d make his way down to the floor below and search there.

The door was oak and the handle a brass curl, different from the rest. Ash opened it and entered.

Chapter Eight

A study. Savage’s home from home. It had to be. Small, cramped and with a row of windows overlooking the street, but there was a tiger skin on the floor and a large desk by a window. The desk was bare but for an old-fashioned telephone. Most of the wall was covered with shelves overstuffed with books, mainly old, worn and leather-bound. Alongside these were some glass cabinets, each filled with archaeological artefacts from around the world. There were ancient bronze arrowheads, clay statues, feather headdresses and gold coins, rusty swords and urns. Animal heads decorated the walls, everything from tigers to boars with massive tusks.

A chill breeze caressed Ash’s nape.

He’d been in a room a lot like this once, in the Savage Fortress. It had been the night he’d learned his world was stranger than he’d imagined, when he’d discovered monsters – demons – were very real.

A photograph caught his attention. Age had turned it yellow and the black had given way to a metallic sheen.

Savage wore an officer’s uniform. His legs were in puttees, long strips of cloth wound round for protection, and he had an old-fashioned tin hat, a Brodie, on his lap. The soldiers around him looked at the camera, cigarettes or pipes loose in their mouths, weary, with muddy shovels and picks lying around a half-dug trench. One man rested his arm across a large machine gun.

The First World War.

It had to be. The style of the uniforms and the weapons were consistent with the Great War. Ash had studied it and read about the terrible slaughters of the first mechanical war and how thousands of men would march across no-man’s-land to be decimated by machine-gun fire and poison gas.

Only Savage looked relaxed. He knew that he was going to get out of this alive. He knew the bullets and the gas and the bombs couldn’t hurt him.

One of the men was gazing across at Savage. Ash looked at his face – just some nameless private. Forgotten in history. Was there anyone alive now who knew his name? What sort of life he’d led? What sort of death he’d had? Whether or not he’d made it out of the Normandy mud alive?

If only I could slip into the picture, thought Ash. Stop Savage then, before he became too powerful.

But that might only make it worse. He’d be changing Time himself then, and who knew what the effects would be? The further back you went, the bigger the ripples.

He came to the desk and checked the drawers. Then he grinned.

Got it.

A notebook, the electronic variety. He ran his palm over it. There might be some useful info on it, and if Ashoka could bypass all this security then surely he’d have no problem hacking something like this. He put it in its plastic case and zipped it closed. Too big for his pocket, he tucked it inside his shirt. Ash closed the drawer, had a last look around to see if there was anything else of use – nope. He had what he wanted.

He was out a moment later, the door clicking as he closed it behind him.

He jumped as Parvati appeared in front of him. She was just a silhouette at the top of the stairs, but he knew it was her by her stance and her shape. Even in the darkness he could see the faint shimmer of her scales.

“I’ve got Savage’s notebook.” He patted his chest as he approached her. “It could be useful. You find anything?”

Parvati hissed and Ash stopped.

“Parvati? What’s up?”

Her front foot slid forward and her fingers flexed.

Now, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Ash noticed something different about the rakshasa princess. “What happened to your hair?”

Her hair was always long, down to her waist and as glossy black as oil on water. Now it was cropped short and spiky.

“Parvati?” Ash stepped nearer and reached out. “What’s wrong?”

Her fist rammed into his jaw, propelling Ash into the wall. Stars blazed in his eyes. He blinked and dived as her boot swung towards his head. Her heel smashed the wall lamp, sprinkling Ash with glass.

He blocked the next kick, but couldn’t stop the flurry of punches that came from all directions. It was as if Parvati had six arms. One blow rattled the teeth in his mouth and suddenly he was spitting blood.

“Parvati!” he shouted. “Stop!” What the hell was going on? She had gone mad. But there wasn’t a chance to ask. Parvati reached over her shoulders and there was the ominous sound of steel against steel. Two curved blades shone in the darkness.

He needed to level the battleground. Darkness was Parvati’s element. He stumbled backwards towards the patch of light in the corridor.

“Parvati …”

She swung the twin tulwar blades with mastery. A wall of lightning, blazing silver blurred about him and Ash ripped free his katar, barely deflecting one of the swords before it decapitated him. Sparks jumped as metal struck metal. Ash struck back, a feint to try to wrong-foot her, but Parvati saw through it and he received a cut along his arm for his pains.

“Parvati, please …”

Parvati stepped into the square of light. “My name is Rani.”

Three crooked grooves crossed her face. Her left eye was blind and white, the tip of the upper lip raised in a sneer by the scar that ran from her temple down her cheek. Steel barbs chimed in her hair, tied to the brutal short locks. Her armour was a mixture of ancient and modern, her arms coiled with serpentine tattoos. A pair of daggers had been rammed into the white sash she wore around her slim waist, each with a cobra-styled hilt, matching the designs on her swords, their eyes glistening with emerald stones. She glared at Ash, her forked tongue flicking between her long fangs. Her face was framed by scales, giving her a greenish hue. This wasn’t the Parvati he knew.

“Ash!”

Parvati ran up the stairs. His Parvati. She stared at Ash and the girl he was fighting. Ashoka, huffing and puffing, clambered up behind her, carrying a satchel. His mouth dropped open.

Two Parvatis. And Ash was obviously fighting the evil-twin version.

That explains a lot. None of it good.

Two Ashes. Two Parvatis. Two of everyone.

Parvati flicked free her urumi. The four steel ribbons danced and lashed, eager tongues wanting blood.

“Wait!” shouted Ash. This was Parvati, of this world. Maybe she could help them.