Read Online A Whisper of Southern Lights by Tim Lebbon - Free Book Online

was a dead Japanese soldier. They passed him by, and Gabriel knew this was not the source of the smell.
There’s more,
he thought.
More to this than death.
There’s
. . .
    “Holy fucking shit,” Sykes said.
    There was a clearing in the jungle, not too dissimilar from the place back in Wales where Gabriel used to sit and muse as a normal man. Around this clearing stood trees and wild clumps of foliage, and tied to them—at ground level or higher—were dead men. Some were crucified between the trunks of two trees growing close together. Others were tied closer to the ground, a bucket of water left before them as torture. One man had been pinned to a tree, a broken branch protruding from his abdomen. All of them were emaciated—that much was obvious even in death—and those who had not died of their immediate injuries must have starved to death.
    “Bastards,” Sykes muttered. He walked into the clearing, seemingly ignoring the stench. “British, Australians, Indians,” he said. “They didn’t differentiate. Didn’t care. Look.”
    Gabriel looked, and even he felt an element of shock. In a spread of young bamboo lay a dead man. The only reason he was still on the ground was because he had been staked there. Two dozen bamboo shoots had grown through him, distorting his body. They were dark with dried blood, and ants, flies and beetles buzzed the wounds.
    “This may not have been the Japanese,” Gabriel said.
    “Your demon could do all this?”
    “With ease.”
    “Why?”
    And then Gabriel heard the voice he had been dreading.
    “Bait,” Temple said. “Hello, Gabriel.”

    “You didn’t do this.”
    Temple looked around and shrugged. “How do you know?”
    “Because I see your eyes,” Gabriel said. “And you’re fascinated.”
    The man who could have been a demon then looked directly at me. “So, has this one-eyed madman told you all those strange stories about me? Called me a monster? Said he and I have been fighting down through the centuries, battling here, scrapping there? Did he tell you about the pirate ship, and Queen Victoria, and the Antarctic expedition? Such an imagination.”
    “He told me centuries, and I believe him.”
    “Why? He’s insane.”
    “I’ve seen you before,” I said. I took a step closer to Gabriel, relying on my knowledge about Mad Meloy’s grave to afford me some protection. Other than that, I sensed that I was nothing to these two beings. They existed somewhere else, a place where the war did not matter other than being a different venue for their conflict.
    “Oh, you mean this?” Temple flickered, and his face became that of the Japanese officer, just for a second. Then he was back to the tall blond man. He had changed his clothes somewhere, and now he looked like a thousand other captured soldiers. All except the eyes. None of them could have those eyes.
    “I have something else on my side,” Gabriel said.
    “You always have someone or something else on your side. You usually lose.”
    “Usually.”
    Temple walked from the shadow of a tree and through the new bamboo growth. As he stepped on the dead man’s chest, a rattle sounded in the corpse’s throat. “See? Even the dead think you’re a joke.”
    Gabriel glanced sideways at Sykes. “Don’t look at his hand,” he whispered.
    “This?” Temple called.
    “Close your eyes if you have to.”
    “Surely he wants to see? What scares you, Sykes?”
    “Don’t look,” Gabriel said. “And when the time comes, go for the grave. I’ll meet you there.”
    “And if you don’t?” I asked.
    “One look, that’s all!” the demon called, almost cheery.
    “Then he’ll meet you there. And if he does, you can’t let him see whatever you find. You can’t!”
    There was so much in Gabriel’s eyes, so many things unsaid, frightening things that I think he’d been holding back. I did not know who to believe—the man who could change his face, or this man who told me he was centuries old. Both were