Thy Fearful Symmetry (16 page)

As the room whirled into action, Gemmell withdrew to his office down the corridor, Summer in tow. As she closed the door behind them, she gave him a cautious smile. “Well done sir.”

“Whatever works. Now, while they're getting on with that, we have other things to be doing. Most importantly, you're going to head down to the cantina and grab four bottles of mineral water.”

“Health kick, sir?”

“To boil. I need coffee.”

As the door closed behind her, Gemmell snatched up the telephone on his desk, his face anxious. When he tapped in a number and got an engaged tone, his heart sank, and he slammed the receiver back down.
 

It would have been so good to hear his voice.

That was a worry for later. He had to concentrate on the here and now.

Searching through the piles of paper around his desk, throwing files into corners at random, he found what he was looking for. His dictionary was the worse for wear after much crossword consultation through the years. Dropping into his swivel chair, a new one the requisitions officer had insisted he take despite his protestations, and which had a long way to go before it was as comfortable as the battered piece of junk he had been using, he searched for the entry for 'Numen'.

1. A presiding divinity or spirit of a place. 2. A spirit believed by animists to inhabit certain natural phenomena or objects. 3. Creative energy; genius.
 

That raised his eyebrow, and he flicked quickly to 'Eidolon'.
 

 

1. 1.
   A phantom; apparition. 2. An ideal.
    
   

An interesting choice of pseudonyms. Obviously, the names were selected long ago, so they couldn't have known that the news of the day was going to be a natural phenomenon of biblical proportions...

Had the news said that the Clyde was the first river hit?

Gemmell shook his head. Impossible. There couldn't be a connection, the water turning to blood was an international phenomenon. It was a coincidence.

Bugger.
 

He didn't believe in those.

Coincidence
.
 

Gemmell made himself believe it. Half of his staff were recycling superstitious gobbledygook, and he was damned if he would do the same.

Summer chose the right moment to come back in, and he sighed with relief when she filled the kettle with water from three bottles. Sparking up a cigarette, ignoring Summer's outraged stare, he fished out his makeshift ashtray from the desk drawer. When the station had become a smoke-free zone, and tin no-smoking signs had been tacked up in every room in the building, Gemmell had taken the one above his door off the wall and bent it up at the edges. Since then it had collected his ash, and accumulated a brown-yellow tarnish that made him wonder what his lungs would look like stretched out before him.

Summer poured the coffees and placed them on the desk. The other chair teetered with cardboard folders, and she looked around for somewhere to put them.

“Knock them on the floor,” Gemmell said, his eyes closed in bliss as the aroma of thick black coffee steamed up from the mug in his hands. “You'll enjoy it. It's therapeutic.” The thud of paper hitting the floor made him smile, and he opened his eyes to find her sitting, looking askance at the mess she had just made. “I order you not to pick anything up. Fight those urges, Summer.”

She smiled at him, and he tossed the dictionary at her. It thudded on the desk, scooting dust into the air. “Numen and Eidolon. Look them up.” She did, then quietly closed the book. “Odd, don't you think.”

“Definitely a strange coincidence.” Summer sounded as uncertain as he felt.

“Normally I'd tell you I don't believe in coincidence. Trite, I know, but true. Today though… well, there's a lot going on.”

“What do we do now?”

Gemmell frowned. “To be honest, I hadn't thought that far ahead. Start by running database checks on our missing persons. Let’s see if they turn up in the national computer. I'm guessing they're assumed names, but we'd better make certain.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to go back over Huntley's statement from the night Eidolon was attacked. There has to be a way back into this. The trail's cold, weeks old, and we're the unlucky bastards that have to try to pick it up again.” Gemmell stared at her. “What are you waiting for?”

With her steaming cup of coffee abandoned on the desk, Jackie Summer left the room at a disgruntled trot.

Malachi swung Melissa one-handed, hurling her at the Queen sized bed. Knees catching the edge of the mattress, she flipped face first into the duvet.
 

Ignoring her for the moment, he glanced around the room, establishing that it was empty. Being the Honeymoon Suite, there was space, open carpet between bed and desk, between dresser and wardrobe. The less clutter there was, the more chance he had of seeing the shadow-things as they formed.
 

What he would do then, with no weapon to defend himself, was open to speculation.

So he couldn't let them take form. To date, they only attempted to do so in his immediate vicinity. Once fully formed, they could move freely in and out of the light, though it caused them evident pain. Surveying the room more carefully, satisfied that Melissa was going to do nothing other than catch her breath for the next few moments, he thought he could make things work. The bed on which Melissa now hugged herself with exhausted arms was a four-poster, with soft curtains tied back, ready to close them in. That wouldn't do. Striding over, cold to the flinch in Melissa's tear-streaked eyes when he approached, he took a firm grip on the material and tore it down with a clatter.

Taking one of the larger pieces of liberated fabric by the edges, he swung it neatly over the desk and chair, watching as it ballooned out, casting a flapping shadow over the back wall for the briefest of seconds. Nothing materialised in that moment, and as the curtain dropped, it covered the angles of the television, kettle, and other universal facilities that might cast strange, distrustful shadows into the room. While Melissa watched, he yanked down the curtains from above the glass sliding doors leading out to their fifth floor balcony, and then flipped on both of the bedside lamps.

“There's...” Malachi looked across at Melissa, and she aborted her sentence, her meek eyes going to the duvet on which she sat. Malachi nodded, ignoring the small, shamed part of himself that despaired at his intimidation of this frightened girl.
 

Gathering the remaining curtains in his arms, he dropped them inside the open cupboard. Almost closing it, he changed his mind at the last moment and left it open. By closing it, he was inviting a menagerie of shadow-things to greet him when he next pulled back the door.
 

Satisfied that the main bedroom was well lit, he stalked to the bathroom door. Pressing his ear to the wood, he scowled when he heard the whispery shuffle of something trying hard to be quiet. The bathroom had no external window. It was pitch black inside.
 

Sliding a hand into the left pocket of his leather coat, Malachi felt the hardwood of Stacey's old crucifix. At the hospital they would not let her keep it for fear that she would use it to harm herself, and Malachi had carried it with him for a long time. Once, he had hoped to give it back to her, when she was well again.
 

That was never going to happen, and resignation did not dull his fury.

Pulling the crucifix out by the tarnished chain, he slipped it over the handle of the bathroom door, turning the flimsy wooden barrier between himself and the thing on the other side into something it would find far harder to breach.

That done, he turned back to Melissa, noticing as he did that the bathroom light switch was on the exterior wall.

Smiling without humour, he turned it on, and was rewarded by a furore of crashing and tearing within. Heavy things hit the wooden door, shaking it on its hinges, causing Malachi to draw back before relaxing. The door was going to hold. He turned the light off.

Melissa was still sitting on the bed, eyes fearful, and he held her gaze until she broke off, turning to look out of the window. She studied it as though the night would reveal some secret knowledge.

“You wanted to say something,” he said. “Say it now.”

“There's...” her voice faltered, and Malachi watched her try to rally. When she had asked him, in the park, not to kill her, he had remained silent for good reason. He wanted her to be scared, unsure whether he might be prepared to hurt her in search of the information he wanted. He didn't know yet what it would take to undo the hold she had on her tongue. Instinct told him she had already lied, and he didn't have time to play long games with her.

What would Stacey think of him, if she saw him now? Malachi slammed the door on that line of thought.
It's all for her
, he told himself, with such command that he made himself believe it.

In movies, or on television, he would be bluffing. The sanitised view of the world available from screens both large and small didn't account for his hate, rage, or single-minded purpose. Malachi would do everything required to gain her knowledge. Killing Orloch's host body had changed him. Now there was no act beyond him in this hunt, much though he might wish that there were.

The fresh discovery that he was working against the clock increased his urgency to panic levels. If Melissa was right, and he had yet to accept that she was, then the end of the world was coming. Time was short.
 

Melissa raised her eyes, the jut of her chin stubborn. “I was going to tell you that there's a light switch by the window. I think it's for outside, on the balcony.

Malachi nodded, and walked to where she pointed. Flicking the switch caused a light above the sliding doors, on the outside, to flare into life.
 

Malachi turned back to her. When he realised in the park that evening was drawing close, and he was going to trap himself outside with a potential legion of shadow creatures, he had decided to abort his questioning and seek shelter. The timing had been good. With streets awash with the bemused and the terrified, it had taken a long time to find suitable accommodation.
 

Now, he could continue where he had left off.
 

He noticed that she had cut her hair, and wondered why. It had been beautiful.

He crushed the thought.

Walking to the bed, he pulled out his knife and sat down. The eight-inch blade transfixed Melissa utterly. She couldn't take her eyes off it. That was good. It would help her to assess her priorities.

He began, keeping his voice low, measured, and insistent. “What are those things?”

Melissa considered for a moment, obviously deciding that the question was one she could answer without compromising herself. “Shadows. Essences. They're minor demons that have never left Hell before. Mindless, barely formed creatures. In Hell, they have substance, but not here. Not yet. They make do with shaping the darkness into something they can wear. They don't think much for themselves.”

Malachi's eyes narrowed. None of his research had hinted at such things, which meant that Melissa was very well informed indeed. “The first was left to watch, then,” he ventured. “The others gave chase once we were identified. Why was it waiting? Is it guarding her trail, trying to pick us off before we reach her? Are they her bodyguards?”

“I don't think so.” There was something in the way her breath caught that made him suspicious. That had been a part truth. There was more to learn, and he would come back to it.

“Do they know about me?”

“I don't know. I'm not with them, Mr Jones.” Malachi almost broke his rhythm to tell her to stop calling him that, to call him Malachi instead, but caught himself. Something about her made the tiny sliver that was left of his humanity want to embrace her presence. He found the flicker within him that responded to her, and crushed it.
 

“How do you…” Malachi stopped. Melissa was no longer staring at the knife in his hand, or trying to meet his gaze. Instead, her eyes had snapped up to look over his shoulder, towards the window.

Reflex took him to his feet and twirled him around, knife out as his coat flapped behind him.

There was nothing there. Outside, it had begun to snow, heavy, fat flakes drifting to the balcony and lying there. When her attention was so suddenly caught, he had feared the worst, that one of the creatures had got in despite his preparations, and...

His eyes went wide as a drop of fire, like a splash of burning petroleum, dropped from above and landed on the balcony. It doused instantly.

Another followed, and another, until it was raining fire alongside snow, for as far as he could see.

Glasgow was lit, in glittering orange. Standing there, watching the firedrops fall softly onto roofs and roads across the city, distantly aware of Melissa standing beside him, Malachi had his first moment of absolute acceptance that the world was ending.

They watched, as the long night of fire and ice began.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Minna Gilroy sat up in bed and shook her head, giving herself an exaggerated rub of the eyes as though to tell herself that she really was tired, but really couldn't sleep, and that she had spent the last minute and a half trying really hard to drop off, and who could say fairer than that? The world had become much too interesting to sleep through.

When her parents brought her to bed, scarcely hiding the fact that they were getting her out of the way so that they could devote more time to staring out of the window, they had closed her curtains so that she wouldn't be scared of what was happening outside.

Minna wasn't scared.
 

Minna was deeply, deeply curious.
 

Hopping down from her mattress as quietly as she could, not knowing that her parents were halfway through a bottle of vodka and engrossed in the international spectacle unfolding on television, she shuffled across the bedroom floor, thick carpet tickling between her toes as she went, making her giggle.