Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [26]
Creed grinned right into the cold air playing onto his face. It was like a breath from a tomb.
But you aren’t going to claim me, scumbag, he thought. Creed felt a good hot rage rising in him, warming his chest where the cold had begun to probe at his heart. I am me and I am strong and you don’t scare me one bit. I am myself and I live in my skull and my mind is my own and you’re not going to use it against me. This is survival time and every single nerve and cell in me is rising to this fight and I will not be bettered in this challenge. In any challenge.
I am myself and I am united against any threat. This is the moment where my life is in danger, and every part of me is united against you. So go sniff at someone else.
The heat of rage and hate rising in Creed’s body was focusing forcefully. The cold air in front of him ebbed, broke up, and withdrew. It swirled around the room.
‘This is unbelievable, man,’ said the younger Mayan.
‘Shut up,’ said his brother, and Sorbelio took it like a slap on the face. You could see that some childhood conflict had been triggered, awoken vividly from the past. The expression on the kid brother’s face was one of infantile hurt and injustice. Suddenly the cold air was spiralling together into a solid mass again and flowing straight towards him.
Creed was familiar with the different worlds created by different drugs. Each one produced its own alternative sensory reality in the mind and with years of experience he could find his way around these strange perceptual places. Each drug had its own signature or personality. Like different entities with different characteristics. Now Creed felt he was beginning to understand a new entity. He was getting the measure of warlock.
The drug heightened interpersonal signals, but it didn’t guarantee that those signals were authentic. It was like a lie detector, responding to emotional reactions. But like a lie detector it responded to anxiety without being able to interpret the cause of that anxiety.
A smart drug, but not that smart.
The older Mayan stared in astonishment as the wind flowed back across the room. He couldn’t believe what was happening. The warlock phenomenon seemed to be pointing to his little brother.
The kid himself seemed about to panic as the cool breeze circled him, moving steadily like a slow spinning miniature tornado. The wide collar of his black silk shirt stirred and lifted as if the wings of a dark predatory bird were rising at his throat.
But then the young Mayan rallied. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ he said. He slapped his collar down. There was fear in his voice but there was anger, too. ‘It’s not supposed to be coming after me.’ The breeze faltered and ebbed away from him. It seemed the kid’s feet were too firmly on the ground for him to be panicked into stoned self‐destruction.
Creed felt a pang of disappointment. But the young Mayan knew he wasn’t guilty and his brother virtually shared his certainty. The two of them formed an oasis of calm in the growing hysteria of the room. The flow of cold air slipped back again, then returned to the visitors, rising. It came sliding back into the room with a renewed vengeance, like a skier accelerating down a slope.
Straight towards Creed.
He fought his fear with anger. He concentrated on the Mayan brothers. They were basically stupid, he told himself. Warlock and its mechanism of action were an occult mystery to them. Even the older one believed it. Despite a bit of technical talk, he had no real understanding of its nature. They were both willing to buy any kind of bullshit voodoo explanation. They just weren’t bright enough to begin fitting the drug into the framework of science. So they sold their brains out cheap to superstition.
The breeze passed right over him. Creed repressed a smile. He was right. It responded to fear of any kind. He had successfully fended it off Now it circled restlessly, probing the living room, looking for a weak point.
It hovered over Miss Winterhill.
She stared up at it in total fascination, genuinely interested in