Creed (48 page)

She was wrapped in deep red, a cloak or cape of some kind that covered most of her body, and she sat on the bed, her knees drawn up, back against the wall. The early dawn light through the partially drawn curtains offered shadows rather than brightness.

‘No point in asking how you got in,’ he said from the doorway.

She said nothing.

‘I thought not. You can come and go as you please, right?’ He loitered by the door, no longer afraid of her, but not so foolish as to lessen the chance of a quick exit.

‘I had to talk to you,’ she said, her voice heavy with tiredness, as if she were as exhausted as Creed himself. ‘I wanted to . . . explain.’ The last word was spoken limply, as if it were inadequate.

‘Why? What do you care?’

He heard her sigh, a rough-edged sound.

‘I want it to end here, Joe. If you keep wondering you’ll never be content, you’ll try to find out more for yourself, and that might upset things again.’

‘You think I’m that interested? Listen, I’ve had enough, I want to forget the whole thing.’

‘Perhaps you feel that way now. But eventually you’ll get curious again, you’ll start delving into matters that could be harmful to you and to those around you. Unanswered questions never quite go away, do they?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe you’re right. Too many unbelievable things have happened to me to think straight.’

‘Yet you did begin to believe. Finally you lost your scepticism.’

‘Wasn’t that the idea?’

A pause, then: ‘You’re not always so dumb as you appear, are you? You knew we were breaking you down, showing you things that no normal person would ever accept, priming you for the time we needed you to believe in everything we presented to you.’

‘No, I didn’t know. It occurred to me driving back here this morning. You could have dealt with me easily enough right at the beginning. Christ, he had the power to do that.’

‘Belial?’

‘Nicholas Mallik.’

‘The same.’

‘Whatever. So I figured you terrorized me for a specific purpose. Sure, the original idea was to get the shots I took of Mallik at Lily’s funeral, but then it became more than that. It developed into a kind of game, didn’t it?’

‘In a way. He had the notion that if you, a true cynic of this sceptical age, could be convinced that the Fallen Angels existed and were not merely figments of mythology or fable, then it would help them regain their dwindling powers.’

‘Wonderful thing, faith.’

‘It works for God.’

‘I still don’t understand why me.’

‘You happened along.’

‘No, I mean there were plenty of believers at the masquerade last night.’

‘They had good cause to believe. Every one of them has gained from their homage to Belial. You were an outsider, a materialistic non-believer, and as such you became the test.’

‘Lucky me.’

‘I tried to warn you.’

‘That I couldn’t figure.’

She remained silent for a while. ‘Will you come closer?’ she said at last.

‘Uh, I don’t think so.’

‘You’re safe, Joe, I won’t harm you.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Sit at the end of the bed while I tell you more.’

What the hell, he thought. He could be through the door and down the stairs before she raised a hand or started a shimmer. He sat on the corner of the bed, poised to take flight at the slightest provocation.

‘So why did you try to warn me?’ he asked.

‘I’m not one of them, part of me is different. There’s a conflict inside me that as yet has not been resolved. It’s possible to become tired of evil, you know.’

‘Too much of anything can become tedious.’

‘Yes, I suppose even for them.’

‘Tell me who “they” really are, Cally.’

‘I already have. The Fallen Angels, cohorts of the Archangel who fell from grace. You saw some of them for yourself last night – Abraxas, Hel, Fomors, Adramelech, Loki, and others. They manifest themselves when the faith is strong.’

‘Wait a minute. You mean those moth-eaten freaks with snake tails and peacock feathers and God-knows-what-else were these
Angels
?’

‘You would rather call them demons. But no, that isn’t how they are, it’s how mankind sees them or, I should say, imagines them. They appear as they are perceived.’

‘I saw Mallik become one of them.’

‘You saw Belial, but only as a concept. Very few have the potential to observe the real demon of lies, and the sight has always taken their sanity, if not their life.’

‘Mallik and Aleister Crowley . . .’

‘Crowley had both the ability and the yearning to see. Belial revealed himself to the master magician and his son in Paris many years ago. Crowley was driven mad and his son died from the trauma of what they witnessed.’

She noticed Creed’s thin smile. ‘Ah, your doubt is returning so soon. For you, that’s good. It’ll help you cope.’

Her hair had no lustre in the weak dawn light and her eyes seemed heavy, her shoulders slumped. He thought she might fall asleep at any moment. ‘Tell me about the Mountjoy Retreat,’ he prompted. ‘What was it used for?’

‘I think Belial meant it to be destroyed when its purpose had been fulfilled. It was a place to rest, Joe, a place to recuperate. A refuge, you might say, as well as a treasure house for all the possessions he had gathered through the centuries.’

‘It was more than that. It was a bloody asylum.’

‘And even more than that. A home for rejuvenation.’

‘For resurrection, you mean.’

‘That too.’

‘Lily Neverless . . .’

‘She didn’t turn out too well, did she? The new organs they gave her failed to help in the end. And her brain had deteriorated too much. Belial blamed you for interrupting the ritual at the cemetery.’

‘When I photographed Mallik?’

‘As he spilt his seed into the earth for the rebirth.’

‘And I thought he was just a dirty old pervert.’

‘Joke if you want, Joe. It’s probably better that you do.’

‘No, none of it’s funny.’ He gave a shake of his head. ‘That’s the pity of it. Lily wasn’t the only one, was she? You kept your own supply of goodies down in the basement for instant use. Mallik was doing it back in the ’thirties.’

‘They’ve always . . . collected.’

He leaned forward, one hand resting by her foot. ‘Tell me, what would have happened to old Lil afterwards? You know, if things hadn’t turned out so badly last night. What would they – you – have done with her?’

‘She would have continued to live at the Retreat, that was her bargain with Belial. She would have lived on, like so many others.’

‘Other failures?’

‘The failures are few, and the worst of those were kept in the lower chambers.’

‘The dungeons, you mean. I thought they were for loonies like Henry Pink, a place to torment anyone who had ever upset Mallik in the past.’

‘Certain people had to be punished.’

‘Pink was a professional hangman, for Christ’s sake. He didn’t get any pleasure out of it.’

‘You think not? And you the cynic.’

That silenced Creed for a moment. ‘Who else was kept down there?’

‘The experimentals, and others who had been kept alive too long.’

‘I saw someone covered from head to foot – one foot, anyway – in bandages.’

‘He was centuries old. There was hardly anything left of him.’

‘He was like a . . . like a mummified thing.’

‘Where do you think your own legends spring from? Do you honestly believe in vampires, mummies . . .’

‘Werewolves? And the other goon who looked like Frankenstein . . .’

‘Frankenstein’s monster. Prometheus, to be precise. And, of course, the walking dead. All these imaginations created by yourselves from rumours, even subconscious knowledge, of our ways, exaggerations realized to abate your deeper fears.’

‘Are you saying that Nos – Bliss – wasn’t a vampire?’

‘Of course he wasn’t, but eventually even he wasn’t too certain. You might say Bliss had begun to believe his own publicity.’

‘But he did things, he floated outside my window . . .’

‘An illusion, as you originally suspected. We
wanted
you to believe these things, we
helped
you to.’

‘He stabbed me with his finger. He drew blood. I didn’t imagine that.’

‘Show me the wound.’

Without hesitation, Creed opened his coat. ‘There, look, bloodstains.’

‘Show me the wound,’ she repeated.

He pulled at his shirt and stared at his own chest. He touched his skin, then turned towards the light from the window. ‘It’s gone. Not a mark.’

‘Already you’re beginning to distrust what you know.’

‘It’s only genuine if you believe?’

‘No. It’s real enough. But if you don’t accept it, the effect is minimal. And it works both ways, Joe – the powers of Light are as diminished as the powers of Darkness if they’re not accepted.’

‘A coupla days ago I’d be rolling on the floor listening to this. Even now I’m telling myself I should at least be chuckling.’

‘Tomorrow you might. You’ll start to ask yourself if you didn’t dream half the things you witnessed. You’ll be protecting yourself.’

‘I
know
what happened.’

‘We’ll see.’

She moved on the bed and Creed edged away, almost rising. Cally settled once more. ‘Don’t be nervous, Joe. I told you, it’s over. Belial has left this place for the time being.’

‘That’s something else I don’t understand. Why
did
Mallik kill himself last night?’

‘Belial was never alive – at least never in the sense that we’ve been conditioned to believe in. He destroyed the shell he’d been using for so many, many years, along with the secrets and the prizes he had gathered during that time. Quite simply, he had wearied of the game.’

‘Is that all it is, a game?’

‘More or less. It’s always been such.’

‘And it’s finished?’

‘Oh no. There’ll be a fresh start, but I don’t know when or where it will originate. Perhaps in a place where the old beliefs are still strong. South America, India – who knows? The Middle East is already being used by others. But there are still scores of dark zones on this earth, countries, even continents, where the demons can thrive.’

‘That’s it, though? He’s packed his bags and left here for good?’

‘He took nothing with him. He needs nothing, not even his loyal servant, Bliss. He grew weary of him, too.’

‘Has everything been destroyed at the Retreat?’

‘Everything of importance.’

‘And you let your mother die there.’

Her head snapped up as though he had surprised her. ‘I keep forgetting how little you understand,’ she said. ‘Lily Neverless was my mother. Nicholas Mallik, Belial incarnate, was my father.’

It took a while for that to sink in. Creed rubbed his forehead, then the back of his neck. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it when he realised his thoughts were not quite there yet. He tried again. ‘There is no Grace Buchanan?’

‘Joe, everyone knew Lily had a daughter, and they naturally assumed that Edgar Buchanan was the father. Haven’t you realised by now? I
am
Grace Buchanan.’

His voice was even, but very grim. ‘She’d be old, she’d be at least—’

‘You’ve witnessed so much, yet still you doubt the Delphian forces. We can control the ageing process just as some of us can control our shape. I chose to remain of a certain age, although it meant I could not be known as Lily’s daughter after a time. That was why Grace was kept away from the public eye, why stories of mental illness were deliberately rumoured.’

‘But your brother . . .’

‘Daniel? Not my brother, Joe – my son. Sired by someone not unlike yourself, and with no demonic powers because of it.’ She spoke in a whisper: ‘But then all our powers are waning more rapidly now that Belial has forsaken us.’

Something dredged the lower regions of Creed’s stomach. Cally was still in shadow, although the light shining through the gap in the curtains had grown stronger since he’d entered the bedroom. He could see her eyes, but there might have been a thin veil over the rest of her face so indistinct was it. He rose from the bed and went to the window; he drew back the curtains and allowed the grey dawn full incursion. Creed turned back to the figure sitting on his bed.

He (and possibly you, too) expected to find an elderly woman there, maybe even a wrinkled hag, given the physical trauma of a young body ageing overnight. But Cally was no Ayesha: she had hardly changed at all.

She smiled at him. ‘It’ll come, Joe. But not for a while.’

He was relieved and, perhaps naturally enough, far less wary of her. He went back to the bed and sat closer to her. He frowned.

There was a difference. Cally’s skin was still clear, her features fine and unsagging. It was her eyes that revealed the passing of years, for they were not just tired, they were dispirited.