Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (33 page)

“Well, how?”

“The Fifth Law of the Ether says that, s
hould any place bear witness to a forbidden act, then that place shall have a particular connection with the Inter-World and shall be called a Portal
. The eighth law of the Ether says, “
It shall be forbidden to destroy a life on the Ether in a place assigned for the worship of a Devine.
”

Alix looked at Harker blankly.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” said Harker. “It’s about killing people in a church!”

Alix thought about that. She looked at Harker, a glitter of realisation appearing in her expression.

“At no stage did I say the Forty Nine Laws would make any logical sense to you. They were written by a higher being, a creator of worlds. How can your organic brain possibly even begin to understand the complexities of His thought process? Cronos created the Forty Nine Laws because that’s how he wanted the Ether to work. I cannot stop time for sufficiently long enough to enable you the opportunity to question each one.”

“
A church,” Alix repeated. The images of what she had seen over the last week, confusing and horrible as they were, flooded her mind until finally she could think of nothing else.

“The murders at White Helmsley.”

“Indeed, were carried out by the Harbinger, making the Church at White Helmsley a Portal.”

Alix shuddered at the thought of those bodies, piled high on top of each other before the altar. One by one their throats were slashed. All to hail in the end of the world.

“What about the second stage?”

“
A tad more complicated. The Portal is opened by creating a link between the Ether and the Inter-World. This link can be created at any place and time although, once the Portal is opened, it can only be accessed through the Portal, assuming one knows how to achieve that. That brings us to the twelfth Law of the Ether:
Any soul whose body is destroyed by unnatural means becomes the resident of the Inter-World, his fate thereafter to be determined by Chance
.”

“What? So, if you murder someone, their soul doesn’t go to heaven. It goes to the Inter-World?”

“Correct, although Heaven is the pathetic fabrication of man. A murdered soul goes to the Inter-World. What happens to it afterwards cannot be foreseen although, initially at least, the soul exists in a sort of eternal purgatory. The body of course remains on the Ether. But bodies can be regenerated.”

“What do you mean? Like, what, resurrection? How?”

“The Necromire possess the power of body regeneration. But they cannot retrieve souls.”

“So you can bring someone back but without their soul. So, what, do they become like a zombie or something?”

“Crude but not far off. Such wretched creatures are barely capable of communication and completely incapable of feeling anything. They are empty shells, nothing more.”

Alix thought back to the picture she had seen of Megan after Katelyn’s murder. The hollow, dead eyes. She looked at Harker with trepidation. No. Surely not.

“The Harbinger...” She began

“Murdered
both
children. But was only able to regenerate one of them before Anwick intervened.”

“But Katelyn’s body is missing.”

“Yes. Taken and most likely now breathing again. Every breath utterly meaningless. Their bodies on the Ether, their souls stuck in the Inter-World. They are an alignment between each World but one that is illusionary unless the body is physically connected to a Portal. Once it is, the Portal is opened. Think of it like this: if I stand on one side of a river bank and toss a rope to the other side, I cannot use the rope to get across unless it is fastened to something on the other side. The Portal is where the rope may be fastened to.”

Alix winced. She felt as though her frazzled brain was full and all this new information was just over spilling on to the floor around her. She looked into Harker’s eyes, searched for something. Some spark of truth perhaps. The last twenty four hours didn’t seem real; but nor did it seem unreal. Caught somewhere between the two, in that muddled world between sleep and awake.

“Who is the Harbinger?” She asked.

“Most likely a rogue Necromire coupled with a rogue human. Both are vulnerable to corruption despite the Necromire’s belief that they are a superior species. Perhaps they have been offered some great power in return for helping Sin, or more likely a place in the world he creates after the destruction of the Ether.”

“But
who
is he?”

“We have not yet been able to establish the exact identity of the Harbinger. A regrettable underachievement.”

“So he’ll take the Laicey twins to the church at White Helmsley. That’ll open the Portal and then Sin can enter the Ether.”

“No. It will just open the Portal. This will allow a Necromire and Host – presumably the Harbinger himself – to travel through to the Inter-World.”

“But he can do hat anytime if he’s killed unnaturally.”

“
Any soul whose body is destroyed by unnatural means becomes the resident of the Inter-World, his fate thereafter to be determined by Chance.
Chance is not sufficient for the Harbinger. He needs control. An open Portal allows him to travel to the Inter-World and remain in control of his destiny when he gets there.”

“I thought you said that you didn’t know how he gets back.”

“I don’t. Accessing the Inter-World through a Portal allows the Harbinger the control he needs to avoid Chance interfering but how he wields that control is not known.”

“You must have some idea.”

Harker drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She rarely blinked, Alix noticed. “The Great Worlds are finely balanced. Plates spinning on a stick. Only a small amount of disturbance is needed to destabilize them. What happens on the Ether can have profound consequences for the other Worlds and vice versa. You are of course familiar with the Butterfly Effect. Whether or not a butterfly flaps its wings determines whether or not a hurricane is formed thousands of miles away several weeks later. The trope is only of metaphoric use on the Ether but it is a very real quality of the relationship between the Nine Great Worlds.”

“So?”

“So,
everything
matters. Death takes you to the Inter—World. But
the mode of death
may also be relevant. There may be other factors. Items or lesser creatures brought from one World to the next are of significance. They may have properties in one World that they do not have in another. Only this morning I learnt of the murder of an elderly man named George Bricken. The murder bears the hallmarks of the Harbinger. Mr Bricken is known to the Necromire as a faithful servant, although his exact purpose is unknown to me. His house was ransacked. The Harbinger was searching for something. I believe he was searching for something that completes the puzzle for him. Something that allows him to travel through to the Inter-World and, more crucially, back again.”

“What do we do now?” Alix shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. She felt depressed, weighed down by bleakness of it all.

“
We
don’t do anything. I am trying to establish what the Harbinger took from Mr Bricken’s property. As for you, you must be registered.”

“What?”

“All Necromire must be registered when they change Hosts. This way there is some record of our movements through the Ether. There are some select humans who know of our existence. One of them holds a place in government but he is not a Host. You must go and see him.”

“I have to get back to Bristol.”

“No, you have to do what you are told, young lady.”

It won’t take long
, said Azrael. She understood what she meant: get it over quick and we can get back home.

“Who in government knows about us?” she asked.

“Walter Cargil, the Home Secretary.”

“
The guy who shags everyone?”

Harker didn’t answer. The ticking started again.
A cool breeze swept under around Alix’s feet.

I think we’re done here,
said Azrael.

Alix got up uncertainly and left the room.

“What do you think?” asked Harker when the solid oak had slammed shut. “Is she the woman the prophecy talks of?”

She is just a child,
replied a voice in her head.

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “Yes, I thought so too.”

She took the cup of tea from the table and drank it.

Hot.

Perfect temperature.

Chapter 70

Ash slammed the Outlander
brakes on and hit the curb. The front wing nudged a bin on the path, the contents spilled down the street but he barely noticed. He flashed his ID to the uniform on the front door and took the stairs three at a time. Jeff met him on Alix’s floor.

“Any sign of her?”

“Afraid not, guv. Flat’s been trashed, like they were looking for something. No sign of Doctor Franchot. Response team are here.”

Ash
went straight to the flat. A couple more uniform had manned the doors. One of them stepped out in front of him.

“I’m sorry, sir, no access until-”

Ash moved him aside and went in.

He stood in Alix’s open plan kitchen and living room, hand rubbing the back of his neck, heat rising through him as the panic set in. The sofa had been tossed to the side and slammed against the wall, a bookshelf pulled down, cupboard doors ripped off. Damage on the internal doors suggested they’d been kicked open, hard.

“Think they were looking for something?” asked Jeff.

“No. They were looking for Alix. Look,” Ash motioned to a table with some papers on it, “this is untouched. The only things that are disturbed are big areas, like hiding places.”

Ash picked up a copy of
Inside the Criminal Mind
and flicked through the pages, for want of something to do with his hands more than anything else. He’d never noticed the dedication on the first page to A.F. before.

He put the book down and ran his hands across his face.

“Fuck!”

“Sir,” said Jeff. Ash looked at him through his fingers. “There’s something else you should see.”

*

Ash followed Jeff to the roof in a dream-world. This was his fault. He should never have let her go. Now he had put her in danger. Perhaps she’d even been kidnapped and was sat in a ship somewhere with Megan Laicey sailing off to Eastern Europe. He should never have let that bastard Russian go either.

He could hear Jeff talking but the words sounded distant, like he was talking to someone else in another room. Past another uniform on the stairs, his high-vis jacket was a blur against the magnolia walls. He recognised the face but couldn’t put a name to him. He’d been one of the first at White Helmsley. He said something but Ash didn’t register it. He grunted a response, not caring whether he heard him or not.

On the roof the cold didn’t
register with him and he left his jacket open. A forensics team were buzzing around two bodies on the far side busily taking photos and measurements. A film camera had been set up. For one horrible moment he wondered whether one of the bodies was Alix but it was clear from their frames they were stocky men.

“We’ve no idea who they are yet but we’re checking the database. They were shot at close range with a handgun. Oh, just wait there, sir.” Jeff put his arm out and Ash stopped at the blue and white tape. “We want to preserve the t
racks in the snow till we can work out who else was up here.”

He handed Ash a phone wrapped in a clear plastic bag. He recognised it immediately.

“Doctor Franchot’s phone, sir. Found in the snow just over there.” He pointed a few yards from the bodies.

Ash looked down at the phone dumbly. He wondered how many missed calls it would have registered from him.
Sir?
He’d have to explain why he was so desperate to get hold of Alix at some point but that seemed like such an insignificant point at the moment. Right now nothing mattered but finding her.
Sir?
He had to focus, get his brain to work, but everything seemed just out of his reach.

“Sir?”

He shook his head and looked up. Jeff was looking at him perplexed. “Are you ok, sir?”

“Yeah,” he said unconvincingly. “I’m fine.”

“D’you want to see the
really
weird thing?”

“It gets weirder?”

Jeff led Ash through a gap in the tape across some boards that had been put down presumably to save as much of the tracks as possible. In the corner Ash could see a dark shape in the snow. A sack of something maybe? But the closer he got the more it took shape and he could see the snow was stained red. He recognised the feathers for what they were first, scattered around the shape, the sort of thing he might occasionally see in his rear windshield on a narrow country lane when he’d been driving too fast.

“What the fuck is that?”