Thy Fearful Symmetry (24 page)

He could sense how close she was, and the new adrenaline that blazed through his blood burned away his pains and weariness.

At the top of the stairs, a dark corridor. Halfway along the corridor, two holes in the wall, on each side of the passage. It looked as though there might have been doors there once, but somebody had knocked them clumsily through, making them look more like the mouths of caves than human built doorways.

Malachi stole along the corridor, checking the left room first. An office, but something wasn't right. It looked like there had been a fire or something. Everything looked melted.

He didn't care enough to wonder about it.

She was close.

When he stepped into the room on the right, hearing running footsteps behind him on the stairs, he had only seconds to take everything in before the world became pain.

The room was mostly empty.

There was a bed against the wall to his left, which looked as though it had melted too.

There was a naked woman standing next to the bed, facing him, and she would have been the most gloriously beautiful thing he had ever seen if it had not been for the lips peeled back over her teeth in a mad, smiling snarl, and her red, staring eyes.

Pandora.
 

Malachi froze for a heartbeat, stunned that the moment he had been preparing for since Stacey's attack had finally arrived, and then she was on him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Gemmell groaned, afraid to open his eyes and face the pain. Along the back of his neck and into his shoulders, a burning had set in deep, and the throbbing from his temple played an accompaniment to those hurts that made him want to vanish into the void again.

There were hands under his armpits. His legs were dragging across the ground, slush soaking into his pants. The wind chilling his face and hands confirmed that he was outside. Gemmell remembered the last moments before losing consciousness, of his body slamming forward in the seat, and the crystal clear thought that if he and Summer blacked out then there would be nothing to stop the dead from ripping the car to pieces around them.

Jerking free of whoever was dragging him along, crying out at the flare of pain from the whiplash in his neck, he opened his eyes, arms flailing. The world span briefly as the hands vanished, and he flopped to the ground.

“Sir! It's me! Sir, it's all right!” Detective Sergeant Jackie Summer. Not a dead man at all. Rolling onto his back, seeing the gravestones around him, he took a breath and let the snow and fire flecks land on his face. From that position, ignoring everything that was happening around him, he could appreciate how beautiful the sky was. Perhaps that was the point, that only the thin slice of the world that humans stood on had turned ugly and vile. That had to tell them something, didn't it?

Gemmell sat up, one hand supporting his neck, and saw that he was in a churchyard. The Church of St Cottier towered above him, its narrow spire reaching for the beauty of the heavens. Behind him, he saw their car. They had ploughed into the wall of the churchyard, hard enough to smash through the centuries old brickwork. The car hung over the remaining double layer of stone, front wheels off the ground.
 

Dead men and women pawed the rear of the car. One was in the back seat, having crawled through the shattered rear window.

“They won't cross the wall,” Summer said. “Even in the car, they won't reach over to the front seats.” Gemmell saw that both of the front seats had come to rest over the threshold of church property.

“How long were we out?”

“You were out, sir. I was wearing a seatbelt.”
 

Gemmell rubbed his neck. “Clever girl.” To the left, a small path hugged the right side of the church, leading to the front. “Shall we see who's in?”

Unable to shake the feeling that they were somehow trespassing, Gemmell led Summer along the narrow path, hurting everywhere. If he had not worked so hard to get there, he decided, it would be nice to lie back down in the slush and not move for a while.

The street alongside the church was quiet, but for the handful of zombies that remained with the car. Summer saw him try to look painfully back, and filled him in. “After we crossed the wall, most lost interest. They went to the front of the church. There was some screaming.” Gemmell could hear the undead, now that he was concentrating, their low muttering punctuated by groans.
 

Gemmell stopped at the corner of the building, motioning for Summer to pause behind him, and peered around the front. Zombies massed on the far side of the road, and he was sure that there was somebody trapped there. On this side of the gate, inside the churchyard, a man was watching, his shoulders tense and his hair whipping in the wind. “Calum!” The man shouted, but there was no reply.

Gemmell swore as he recognised him from the descriptions they had, and stepped out. Summer followed. “Ambrose,” she said, quietly.

There was no way the man at the gate could have heard her over the wind, but he turned anyway, alarm on his face. Gemmell noticed him glance at the second floor of the annexe to the main church, and his instincts screamed the name of the woman he now knew was up there.
 

With a heavy look over his shoulder, Ambrose Eidolon began walking towards them. He was wearing a black shirt and dog collar, but Gemmell didn't believe for a second that he was a man of the cloth. The man's movement was predatory, and his bearing spoke of somebody used to being served, rather than giving service.

Gemmell stepped forward to meet him, wincing as every step he took sent a sharp little jolt along his neck, and pulled his warrant from his pocket. “DI Gemmell,” he said. “This is DS Summer.” He didn't quite know how to continue, what question to ask this man whose upraised eyebrows made Gemmell wonder which of them was actually in control of the impromptu interview.

“Ah, the local constabulary. I'm impressed. Of all the people I expected to find me, you failed to make the list.”

“There are lots of people looking for you?”

“Not people exactly, but yes. I've broken some quite important rules.” He glanced over his shoulder at the milling bodies across the street, “I'm actually starting to feel guilty about it.”

Summer stepped up next to them. “Mr Eidolon? We have some questions…”

The man in front of them wasn't listening. His eyes went wide with alarm, and he looked up through the snow to the second floor window. Before they could stop him, he turned and sprinted, amazingly fast, into the church.

“Bugger,” said Gemmell, as Summer gave chase. Gritting his teeth against the pain of sudden movement, he left the snow and the fire, and followed them inside as fast as he could.

Ambrose raced along the central aisle between the pews, aware of his candle lit converts raising their heads as he passed, some standing in premature panic at what their new priest's frenzy might mean. Behind him, he was aware of the two officers entering, but had no time to worry about them.

Somebody was upstairs with Pandora. Ambrose had to get to her. What he might do once he was there, he had no idea. To be on church ground the intruder had to be an angel, or worse, an archangel. Deep inside him, where the fear had been growing since he had watched the zombies converge on Calum, Ambrose knew he wasn't going to be able to do anything. She would be torn away from him.

Hitting the door to the annexe at a sprint, smashing it open, he saw Bob lying unconscious on the bottom steps. Blood poured from his head, and the accompanying smear on the wall told Ambrose everything he needed to know about the intruder.

Whoever it was, they were human. No angel would sink to brutality against a human.
 

Pausing, ears straining as water dripped from his hair, he heard the conversations in the nave turn into panicked shouting, the running footsteps of the police officers approaching the door, and, very softly, footsteps in the corridor above. They were stealthy, those footfalls. Quieter by far than Ambrose would have guessed a human could be, and his so recent sense of relief vanished again. From a standing start, he took the stairs four at a time, using a hand on the banister to swing himself around the spiral, and then he was on the top floor, turning the corner, seeing the shape of a tall man step into Pandora's room.

All thoughts of withholding from committing sin vanished as he prepared to rush upon the human, and tear him to pieces where he stood. While the man could be a curious innocent, or even an ill-advised thief, the fact that he had attacked Bob suggested he was here for a reason. Ambrose would not chance that reason being Pandora. He stepped forward.

And stopped as the man flew backwards out of the doorway, slamming against the wall hard enough to crack plaster, Pandora gripping his arm hard.
 

Ambrose froze, too stunned to react as his ears caught up with his eyes, and he heard the scream coming not from the man, but from the peeled, snarling lips of his naked angel.
 

Pandora was awake.

And she was completely insane.
 

She shattered the man's arm with a cruel, casual flick of the wrist. The callous intention of that small movement, made by such delicate, beautiful hands, belied the madness in her cry.

Pandora was torturing him, and his hoarse howl joined hers, a symphony to the destruction of the only thing Ambrose held dear. She lifted her other hand, two fingers pointed forward, and time paused. In that long moment, before she stabbed the man's eyes out, Ambrose felt a horror unlike anything he had ever experienced. Even during the long fall, when he was cast from his home and made the enemy of everything he once loved, he had not felt so appalled and terrified.

Pandora bared her teeth and jabbed her fingers forward. Bloody jelly splashed back across her pure, white face and breasts. The man's cry, previously hoarse, went up the register until it was a shrill scream. When would his lungs empty, and that scream end?

Ambrose realised then that the scream he was hearing did not come from the intruder at all. It came from his own throat.

Pandora turned to face him, even as the two police officers mounted the bottom of the stairs. She paused, made eye contact with him, and broke his heart. Whatever animal her madness had created, there was nothing of his angel left.

Unfurling her wings, she rushed down the hall, just as the female officer reached the landing below him, breathing hard. Ambrose wanted to give in, to let Pandora do what she wanted with him, but she wouldn't stop there. The church was full of innocents, who he had brought here as a shield against those hunting them. If he let Pandora hurt them, then he would have failed her one final time. While he barely cared what happened to those cowering below, he would not let Pandora further betray the memory of what she had been.

So when she slammed into him, he resisted, grabbing one of her arms and taking her with him as they toppled over the banister. They fell into open air, one of Pandora's wings clipping the female officer in the face, knocking her down the stairs. Ambrose heard the Inspector call out a name as she toppled past him, and wished he had time to apologise.

They landed awkwardly in the corridor on the ground floor, neither hurt by so small a drop, but it was Ambrose who broke their fall, and Pandora who found her feet first. Ambrose cursed. He had brought her closer to those he was trying to protect. Grief was fogging his mind.

Rather than head for the church proper, with its din of human voices squabbling in terror, Pandora reached down for him again. Thinking she was attacking, he tried to roll back, but her hands instead went to his pocket.

The box. She sensed the box.

Ambrose tried to snatch it back, too late.

She had it in her hands, and some part of her remembered what it was for. Ambrose sat up, as she said a word both hideous and wonderful. Upstairs, the Inspector cried out as that word, not meant for human ears, froze his soul.
 

A seam of pure light blazed around the edge of the box, dazzling Ambrose as the container fell apart. The seam expanded, until it was a nova without heat, whiting out the corridor until everything faded together. Ambrose couldn't see Pandora anymore, except as the vaguest of shadows.

She stepped forward, into the light, and was gone.

Ambrose scrabbled to his feet as the light began to dim. The Inspector looked silently down over the banister, eyes wide with terror.

“Sorry,” said Ambrose, and then dived into the portal, as he had so many times before.
 

When the light downstairs went out, Gemmell thought he had gone blind, and his hands flew to his eyes. In the sudden stillness, his mind played back what he had seen and heard.

A word that he was thankful his own tongue would never be able to replicate.

Wings. White, angel wings, streaked with blood, on a beautiful naked woman. They were vast, those wings. They had knocked Summer…

“Jackie,” he called out, the rasp of his own voice making him jump. Lowering his hands, he realised he had not gone blind after all. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the natural gloom of the stairwell and corridor. Summer was lying halfway down the stairs, face down, moaning something, and he went to check on her. Feeling shaky, not entirely trusting his own limbs, he took the steps slowly, keeping firm hold of the banister. Certain that Ambrose and the woman, surely Pandora, were taken by the light, he still fought the last threads of logic that told him that they must be downstairs despite the hush, waiting for him.
 

By the time he reached Summer, he could see this wasn't the case. She was stirring already, trying to swing her legs round to right herself. “Easy.” Gemmell supported her as she pushed herself round, sat next to her in the gloom.

“Sir?” She sounded weak.

“Yes?”

Instead of answering, she leaned forward, putting her head between her knees. Watery vomit splattered the grey step below, and the acrid smell turned Gemmell's own stomach. Swallowing the urge to follow suit, he put an arm around her. “Say one bloody word about sexual harassment, and you're on your own.”