Thy Fearful Symmetry (19 page)

Summer brought his own coffee to him at the window. “Beautiful, isn't it sir,” she said, and as soon as she voiced it, he realised that it was.
 

“Bloody disruptive, I was thinking,” he said. “How's the search going?”

“Not good sir. There's nothing on the national computer or the intel databases that references Pandora Numen. Nothing at all. Same with the Electoral Roll, immigration databases, the credit reference agencies, and so on. I don't know who she is, or where she's been.”

“What about Ambrose?”

“A similar story, almost.”

“Define
almost
, Summer. Either you found him or you didn't.”

“The only database he's come up in is our own. He's got a clean record, never been fingerprinted or under suspicion, but he has been mentioned as a witness several times over the years.”

“Witness to what?”

“Accidents, a handful of murders, disappearances, several unusual incidents of insanity.”

“How many years?”

Summer swallowed. “That's where it gets strange sir. Locally, he's been cropping up for at least thirty years.”

Gemmell frowned. Descriptions of Ambrose gave his age as between his mid-twenties and mid-thirties. “Perhaps he's aged well.”

Summer shook her head, the fires outside highlighting her cheeks in flickering orange. “No sir. Or if he has, then I want to know what skin cream he uses.”

“Summer, you're not talking sense.”

“Sir, he’s been in
Glasgow
for thirty years, but as far back as records go, you find occasional accounts across the country, of a witness or bystander called Ambrose. Sometimes it's a first name, sometimes a last name, but where physical descriptions are available, they always match.

“Sir, either this man is older than it's possible to be, or the name has been passed down. And wherever the owner turns up, bad things happen.”

Gemmell stared at her, then out of the window, wondering when the miracles were going to start working in his favour.
 

“Get your coat, Summer.”

“Where are we going sir?”

“Numen and Eidolon. Religious names. Outside, there's a small apocalypse happening. I think it's time we went to church.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Pinned beneath the corpse, Calum shifted his weight, trying to find leverage to roll the body off him. Desperation gave him the will to try, but he knew his efforts were going to be in vain. Even if he could get to his feet, Clive would beat him. The man knew no limits, the way he stood holding the girl's hand while her father's body cooled in front of her demonstrated that. Calum couldn't say the same of himself.

Earlier, he had wondered if he had killed this man, and felt no shame that the answer might be yes. Yet even then, he had not intended to strike a killing blow, was simply prepared to accept matters as they were. To premeditate on murder or mutilation was not within his powers, even now.

From the end of the hall there was a thump, and a startled, pained cry as Clive hurled the girl into a bedroom and shut the door. “Don't hurt her,” Calum yelled, and then flinched as the corpse weighting him down was lifted away, and thrown contemptuously into the dark kitchen. The crashing of cutlery against tiles marked its fall.
 

Clive towered over him, face and neck drenched in sticky, drying blood from the wound on the back of his head, looking far more the demon than Ambrose ever had. Before Calum could react to his sudden freedom, Clive grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt, and hauled him up. Calum's eyes went wide as he was swung against the wall hard enough to add new pains to the collection stored in his chest, and went wider still when he realised his feet weren't touching the ground.
 

Clive's strength was borne of insanity, not the otherworldly power that Ambrose and his kind displayed. Calum had felt the strain in Clive's muscles as he was lifted, could see his shoulders shaking as he held him against the wall. Somehow, these physical signs of weakness made Clive more terrifying. The limits of his flesh were no longer a barrier to him. How was Calum supposed to fight this madman?

He tried anyway. With his arms free, he swung his left fist against Clive's head, boxing his ear once, twice, again. Clive staggered, gritted his teeth, and thrust his face towards Calum's. The scent of his breath, blood, and sweat made the priest gag.
 

“Traitor,” Clive spat. “You want him for yourself. You want to hide him away.
Tell me where he is!
”

Calum shook his head, his energy gone. “I can't,” he said. “I promised him I wouldn't. I keep my promises.” To his surprise, he saw tears of frustrated grief fill Clive's eyes.
 

“If he knew it was me, he wouldn't mind,” Clive whispered. “I'm his best friend. I'm trying to save him.” Conflicting emotions flickered through his eyes. “If you tell me, I won't have to hurt the girl.” His face crumpled, and there was desperation there. “Please don't make me hurt the girl.”

Calum saw the opportunity, and took it. “Like your wife?” Clive nodded, his face pleading. “I spoke to her, Clive. That's how I found you. She told me that she loved you.” The lie came fluidly, and Calum was shocked at the ease of it. “She wanted me to tell you that.”

“She's... alive? Heather?”

The second lie formed on Calum's lips, and stuck there. He saw the hope, pure and radiant, in Clive's eyes, and paused at the thought of feeding it further. Then he remembered Minna, and spat it out. “Yes.”

Too late. Clive snarled. “
Liar!
” The lunatic twisted, and Calum flew the few feet to the end of the hall. He slammed into the mirror, the frame crashing to the floor alongside him and showering his face in glass.

The slicing reminded him of the exploding pulpit in his church the day before, and the curse laid upon him. Yesterday, he had thought he might have years left before he faced his afterlife torment. Now, he thought he was moments from discovering what Metatron had laid out for him.
 

Even that fear could not make him lift his head from the carpet. Two feet away, he saw the little girl sitting in a dark doorway, possibly her own bedroom, white and shaking. Further down the hall, a woman in a dressing gown lay face down, her dark mousey curls falling around her face. She was breathing, but unconscious.

Clive stared at him. From somewhere he had produced a large kitchen knife. “Liars go to hell,” he said, as he raised the blade.

I know
, thought Calum, too tired to put the thought into words.

Behind Clive, at the far end of the entrance hall, there was movement. A dark shape filled the hallway, advancing impossibly fast. Before Calum could blink in shock, the shape had slammed into the back of Clive, lifting him from his feet and shoving him face first into the wall. There was a crunch, as parts of Clive's face broke.

The shape was one Calum recognised. “Ambrose,” he muttered, suddenly able to rouse himself.

The demon looked down, a slender eyebrow raised and a strange, excited hope in his eyes. “I told you not to get distracted,” he said.

Calum hauled himself to a sitting position, the demon's intentions the only thing on his mind. “Don't kill him.”
 

Ambrose swung Clive around. The man was unrecognisable beneath the blood and fresh swelling, but his eyes lit up when he saw the demon. He tried to say something, but his nose and throat were full of blood and snot. Calum understood then that this madman really did know the demon.

Ambrose did not look so pleased to see him, his lips pursing as he stared at the man. “Sorry Calum. I have to.”

“He's not well.”

“I know.”

“You'll be committing a sin.”

“By saving a little girl? I don't think so. I’m fixing a mistake. She would not be in danger were it not for me.”

“Ambrose, they could be coming for you now! There's no time!”

Ambrose looked down at him. Without looking back up, he swung Clive easily around and let him go, tossing him with breathtaking force down the hallway, over the fallen woman. Clive crashed into the closed door at the end, which shattered under the force, and kept going. The room at the end was dark, but Calum heard glass breaking, and the sounds of the crowd, and knew the man's flight had ended in a three-storey drop to the street.

“I can always make time for mending my wicked ways,” Ambrose said. He dropped to one knee. “I know you have the box, Calum. Take it to me at the church. Make me listen to you telling me what happened here. Do you understand?”
 

Calum didn't. “Take it now.”

“I can't. I have to take it at the church. Don't ask questions, just get me the damn box. If you don't, everything's going to end.”

With that, he ran down the corridor to the main door.

Calum stared stupidly after him, wondering when he was going to wake from this strange, mad dream.

Ambrose stood on the dais at the rear of the nave, amidst the splintered, blackened remains of the pulpit, and gazed out over his flock. A deviant satisfaction filled him at that phrasing, and then turned to irritation. The wolf might be playing shepherd, but only because it was defanged.
 

He tried not to let his misery show on his face. The pews were crammed with worshippers, lit by the dozens of candles on stands along either side of the room. There was a certain peace in their contemplation, even though he knew that many of them were desperate and lost. Three quarters of those before him had very likely never been to church in their lives, and while they knew how to pray, unfamiliarity with the act made them feel foolish and self-conscious.
 

Ambrose had known he was going to miss toying with the lives and souls of mortals, but he hadn't realised how deeply hardwired his base urges had become. There had been a commotion as soon as he entered the nave. Cries went up across the room that he should lead them all in prayer, and he had bounded onto the dais before the mob could trap him against a wall, waving his arms for silence.

“It is not for me to bargain with the Saviour in your place,” he had boomed, liking how his voice bounced back from the cold, stone walls. “Your souls are not mine to broker!” An ironic touch that he couldn't resist. Trapped in the church since the nightclub incident, he needed to have some fun. “Let each man, woman, and child here seat themselves. Bend your heads in prayer and speak to Christ yourselves. He saved you once, and soon he will judge how you have used the salvation bought by his sacrifice. Use this time, as blood flows in the river and fire falls from the sky, to make your peace with God!”

It was a fine performance, and had sent the crowd scurrying to the pews. For the last hour, they had prayed, desperate murmurs reaching him through the gloom, and Ambrose had paced the stage.

In part, he was pacing through boredom. While he was shut away from the action, the world appeared to be ending. He also had cause to fear. If the world ended before he could execute his escape plan (
where are you Calum?
), then he would have nowhere to hide.

The second reason he was pacing, trying to take a different path with each crossing, was that the blurring of the world around him continued. The floorboards on the dais were a smudged brown, devoid of detail. There were only patches left where he could still see the hard lines between the boards, and he didn't want to stand still for too long for fear of having the floor beneath him vanish entirely. Ambrose was glad that the faithful and faithless alike associated prayer with looking at their own feet. If anybody examined his too closely, he was going to have to come up with an incredibly plausible dismissal of the problem.

Because most people had seated themselves in the pews, a movement at the far end of the nave caught his eye. Somebody was standing next to the doorway, hands held up to his face.

There was a dazzling white flash, and Ambrose spent two stupid seconds blinking, before realising that he had been photographed.

Some in the impromptu congregation tutted, or looked back in irritation, and then returned to their makeshift devotions. They were far more startled to see the priest leap down from the dais, and bolt along the central aisle. Heads turned to follow his run, eyes wide at the speed he managed, but Ambrose ignored them.

Even at the best of times, he tried to avoid having his photograph taken. Most of the angels and demons on earth did. Their work, for good or evil, was easier when they remained undocumented. Now though, it was more serious still. As he shot along the stone floor, hair flying and jaw set, he tried to think of a harmless reason why somebody would want to take his picture. His imagination provided many, none of them terribly credible. What photographer decided to eschew capturing images of an actual apocalypse in favour of church interiors?
 

That picture would be going to agents of one of the two Great Powers. The photographer was unquestionably human - an angel or demon would not have bothered with a photo, but instead simply opened their minds for their superiors to judge the images within. Ambrose had to stop him. While he had been blinking stupidly, the photographer had turned, pushed the door open into the night, and darted out.

Ambrose hit the door with his shoulder, and it flew back. He was on the path before he had seen it, eyes scanning the surrounding graveyard and street, prepared to leave the sanctuary of holy ground so that he could haul the photographer back inside. It would be a small risk, but worth taking to destroy the photographic evidence.

Yet as he reached the gate, he skidded to a halt, his momentum such that he had to catch himself on the gate to stop from toppling over it. The graveyard was quiet and still. The street was empty.

The photographer was gone.

Ambrose strained his preternatural vision, searching every shadow for a cowering figure, leaning over the fence to check the man was not crouched behind the wall, straining his ears for the scrape of a shoe or the rustle of a coat.

Nothing.
 

Somebody had a photograph of him in the church, and there was nothing he could do about it. Ambrose squeezed his eyes closed, knowing his arrogance had put a time limit on his sanctuary. Why had he wanted to stand in full view of the nave, when he could have hidden upstairs with Pandora?