Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (22 page)

He bent down and studied his kill. He noticed something on the Doctor’s coat. Some fluff maybe, or a collection of dust particles. He wasn’t sure. He removed it carefully. The coat was immaculate, except for the blood.

“
May you find peace in whatever World the Creator sees fit to put you.”

He replaced the receiver and left the room.

Chapter 4
7

The
study to the Grand Hotel stank of an unpleasant mixture of cigar smoke and old leather. The walls were covered in oil paintings, mostly of the last days of Christ, bleeding and dying, repenting and ascending. An open fire crackled on the other side of the room, the flames danced and shimmered in the fireplace. Two marble angels supported the mantle on which stood a golden cross encased in a glass box.

Harker
stood hesitantly in the shadow; waiting, watching. She detested this hotel and its ridiculous collection of relics and artefacts. The religious bric-a-brac in this room: the products of a scared and ignorant race obsessed with the search for a meaning that didn’t exist. They had founded their ill-conceived faith on an event the significance of which was entirely lost on them. They knew nothing of the fragility of their existence. Their place in the big scheme of things hung in the balance, and yet the one that had the power to determine their fate dwelt in the rotting basement of a two star hotel in Soho, a place designed to hide away from the very creatures he was charged to protect.

A high back
Louis XIII armchair had been placed before the fire. Its back was towards her making it impossible to tell whether it was occupied. By its side, a small table, a glass of something, a grey vapour swirling in dark liquid. A grandfather clock in the far corner ticked and tocked rhythmically, each click seemed progressively louder, the delay progressively longer. This room belonged to a different time, a different place.

In the end Harker coughed and took a step forward
, ancient floorboards creaked underneath where she trod. She stopped, cringed at the noise and turned up her nose, the smell seemingly more potent the further into the room she crept.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
There was something stale about the furnishings, she thought: the art, the sculptures, the rows of leather bound books, even the fireplace; something fetid and old.

“Mrs Harker.” The voice was soft, ghostly
. She had to take another few steps forward to hear. “It has been so long. Too long.”

“Time is of little consequence to us, Steward. The years that have passed since last I was here are nothing but a blink of the eye.”

The speaker stifled a yawn before continuing: “still that time, as ephemeral as it was, has worn me.”

Harker pursed her lips. She felt a great weight upon her, something repressing her. The room, or maybe
the smell, condensed around her. It was difficult to breath.

“We have decisions to make, Steward,” she said quietly. There was silence for a moment, save for the ever ticking clock, while she gathered her thoughts. The occupant of the chair waited patiently for her to find the words. “I believe it has begun,” she said finally.

“Ah.
It
. Tell me something, Mrs Harker, how long have we been here? In this World, I mean.”

Harker suppressed a flash of annoyance before saying, “the Necromire have existed in the Ether for over five thousand years, Steward. You know this well.”

“But you say
it
has begun. Begun now. After five thousand years.”

“Yes. The Harbinger is awakened. Belial has found a new Host.”

“Have you identified this Host?”

She bit her lip, hard. The Steward already knew the answer and His testing of her was intolerable. “No, Steward. But his work is evident. I suspect a
Portal has already been created. One of the two Children is slain, the other possibly by now as well. Both their bodies are in the possession of Evil. We must act now.”

“
Act
, Mrs Harker?  What is it that you actually propose, given the gravity of the events you describe?”

“The remaining Necromire must be gathered together
, of course. There must be a call to arms. All who have knowledge must fight. If we do not unite, nothing stands in Belial’s way, nothing will prevent the Change and after two hundred years I am not prepared to sit back and watch this World burn.”

Harker found herself slightly out of breath and on edge. She felt as though something – a fury maybe – was festering at the pit of her stomach, waiting for its opportunity to escape. Everything about this room was oppressive: the lights were too dim, the furnishings too plush, the carpet too brassy. It sickened her. And the Steward, who had hardly moved in the last hundred years, sickened her
as well. But she stopped quickly. A hand, or something that passed for a hand, appeared from the corner of the armchair, creeping and feeling its way across the fabric, slowly caressing the side of the table until crooked figures wrapped themselves around the drink and there was the clink of bone against glass.

“Ephraim Speck and the Necromire within him
are slain,” she said more calmly. “Forgive me, Steward. I go too far.”

“You let the human H
ost control you too much, Lilith,” said the Steward. “She is no more than a means to an end. And you care too much about this failing World and its backward inhabitants. What does the Change mean to the likes of us after so long a time anyway?”

“It will mean suffering, Steward. Humans are such fragile creatures,
we
are such fragile creatures. The Necromire within me will find a way to survive, as will you. I will perhaps not be so lucky. But there is hope, hope that I intend not to abandon so easily.”

“
Hope?” There was no tone to the voice of the Steward. None of the rises and falls of speech that define us, none of the texture of real communication. Empty, hollow words, devoid of all emotion. “Ah, yes, Pandora’s last gift to the World.”

“The Harbinger may have found a way to travel both to and from the Inter-World. Time is against us.”

“Ah, yes. The secret of bilateral travel. But to what end I wonder.”

“
It remains Sin’s desire to enter the Ether to bring about the Change and bring about the destruction of the humans that dwell here.”

“There you go again, Lilith, with your talk about
humans
. Why should we care for them? Even the Creator has abandoned them. They do nothing but fight and squabble among themselves. They have no comprehension of the magnitude or significance of the Creation. They are petty, ignorant, self-centred and vengeful. I see no reason to mourn their passing.”

Harker
snorted loudly, shuffled her feet uncomfortably, made sure some of the dirt on the soles of her four hundred pound shoes rubbed off on the rug beneath them.

“You test me, Steward. You feel compassion for all creatures, ignorant or not, as do I. We just feel it necessary to exert that compassion in different ways but you have no desire to watch the suffering of billions of lives, watch children slaughtered in their mother’s arms, watch men turn to fire, women ravished and torn apart. That is what
Sin will bring with Him; an evil hitherto unknown even in this violent world. Those that are left will be enslaved. Am I to understand that you will abandon your obligations?”

The clink preceded the glass falling from the table, the dark liquid spilling out and soaking into the carpet, bubbling and hissing as it did, but whether it was an accident or something the Steward had intended, she was not sure. But she backed away in any event as the hand withdrew quickly into the chair.

“Do not question me, Lilith,” said the Steward and there was a sensation rising itself up through Harker’s neck and into her head as she regretted her outburst. “There are bigger issues at stake than the fate of humans.”

“But we are here to pr
otect them,” Harker countered.

“We are here to ensure that their suffering is minimal. We are not h
ere to prevent the Change. The Creator has deemed that this world must perish. It is not for us to frustrate his wishes.”

“But with respect, Steward,
how can you be so sure of the Creator’s intentions?” And with this Harker knew she walked a tightrope. Rumours that the Steward no longer possessed the power to communicate with the Creator’s agents had been in circulation for considerable time now. She knew that what she had said was a direct challenge to his power. And her heart was wedged well and truly in her mouth.

“I need no validation to impress you,
Lilith. You cannot stop what is happening but you can stop trying. And we must prepare ourselves, Lilith.”

“Prepare ourselves for what, Steward?
” she said as she continued to slowly back away into the shadows.

“For our departure, Lilith. Our exodus.”

“I have a choice, Steward. Don’t I?”

“Yes, Lilith. You have a choice. Now, cho
ose wisely.”

C
hapter 48

The buildings were alive.

Their foundations didn’t sink into the ground as they should do; they merged into a floor of blood and tissue that spread out into the distance on either side of her. The giant structures resembled modern skyscrapers but instead of shining glass fronts and concrete walls their sides were moist and slippery, deep reds and purples over a complex web of tubes and pulses, arteries and cartilage. The whole thing pulsated rhythmically and all around her was the purring noise of blood pumping through veins the size of sewers, gargling and burbling as muscle contracted around it to squeeze it through.

Beneath
her feet - what should have been roadway, tarmac and base-course - was an uneven, moving surface of leathery skin stretched over a network of bone and pulp. Where she took tentative steps, her feet occasionally sank deep into the ground where the skeletal structure was less dense. When this happened, she could feel smaller bones and gristle strain and snap with her weight. The noise and the jerks that followed as nerves were stimulated made her stop moving.

High
er up, the bloody mass of organisms that surrounded her reached into a shadowy sky of pinks and greys at some indeterminable point making it appear as though she was encased in an airless, living dome. A womb, perhaps. There were other smaller structures sprouting up from the flesh around her. Purple veins twisted their way round parking meters and street lights, giant car shaped boils, oozing with puss and bile, were lined up down one side of the road, trees made from bone had torn through the skin surface and jutted out from the ground.

Was this Hell? Alix wondered.

Was she dead?

There was a square in front of her, the focus of which was a circular fountain from which grew a large tulip shaped organ that throbbed metrically, like a beating heart. The peak of this abomination was an inflamed, rubbery
orifice that spat and choked as the fat, stinking body that supported it shuddered with every convulsion. Black, gelatinous blood trickled down its sides and accumulated at its base forming a pool of thick, bubbling liquid. It was sight that only Dante himself could possibly have conceived.

From the square sprouted nine paths, their sides lined with bony trees and throbbing buildings. Then more movement, from one of the paths
. The outline of a dark figure emerged from behind one of the buildings. But it was out of proportion, towering high above the bone trees. A human torso and a tiny head on giant, spindly legs, like a circus performer on stilts. The creature’s movement was irregular. It looked unbalanced, its top half seemingly too bulky for its brittle legs to carry it. But it made quick progress across the square and was soon creeping its way around the fountain less than ten metres from her. Alix froze. She could do nothing but watch as the creature bent low from its elevated position and regarded her with bright red eyes.

Sh
e could see now that its spider-like frame led to a woman’s torso, grey skin wrapped tightly around red, swollen breasts. Arms twice as long as hers stuck out at odd angles, biceps flexed, pushing veins to the surface of the skin. Its midriff disappeared beneath a mass of black hair from where the legs protruded. Its head was small and round, with piercing eyes and gaunt cheekbones leading to a set of shark-like top teeth. A wet tongue flicked from side to side around purple gums. It took Alix a while to realise that it had no lower jaw, so that the top of its mouth overhung its face exposing the inside of its throat, a tangle of red and blue conduits disappearing into its chest. She felt like her heart would shatter with fear.

The devil’s head was slanted to one side, as if it were appraising her inquisitively. Alix saw its cheekbones tighten and the muscles that lined its neck pulse. It emitted a low gargling noise and she realised, to her horror, that perhaps it was trying to speak to her. Its tongue lashed furiously producing more dreadful, unnatural noises. Wisps of thin, silver hair fell down around its face as it slowly lifted its arm, bones cracking and creaking, and extended a bony finger outwards. It was pointing, she thought. Mesmerised, Alix followed where the creature was indicating, turning her head cautiously, dreading what she might see, until she stopped, realising that she was now
looking at what the creature had wanted her see, what sight it had wanted to burn into her soul.