Thy Fearful Symmetry (32 page)

“You've got business with these things,” he said, staring at the archangel's feet. “I don't want to be in the way.” There was a pause, and Gemmell waited to be dismissed.

When the archangel next spoke, he sounded puzzled. “Of what business do you speak, James Gemmell?”
Of course he knows my name
, Gemmell thought.

“Banishing. Smiting. That sort of thing.” Try as he might, he couldn't raise his voice above a whisper.

“We are not here for them.” Gabriel spoke gently, as though to a child.
 

“Then why…”

“This world is their domain now, little one. I am here to ring in the Day of Judgement.”

Gemmell's head jerked up, unconscious defiance on his face. “What?”

Gabriel raised his horn. “We begin with the people inside. We shall cleave their mortal bodies, and send them to the Lamb for judgement.”

Gemmell's mouth flapped. Behind Gabriel, the angels raised their swords, eyes on the door of the church, steam rising from the ground around them. “You can't,” he stuttered. “They're innocent.”

“If that is the case, then Christ shall pass them into Heaven.”

“You're going to kill them?” At the gate, Leviathan watched them, hateful mirth in his eyes, and the Inspector worried for the first time in his life about what was waiting for him beyond death.
 

“It is their time.” Gabriel's face was expressionless. “It is everybody's time.”

Shaking his head, Gemmell stepped towards the doors, pressing his back to them. Feeling tiny, he found the anger inside that had so recently dimmed, fanned it to a blaze, and gritted his teeth. Gabriel frowned.

“You can't have them,” Gemmell said. “They're under my protection.”

With a sad shake of the head, Leviathan's laughter echoing in the background, Gabriel lifted his trumpet to his lips, and blew.

Gemmell was right. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.

The angels rushed him, swords raised, and he closed his eyes.

“Up! Get me up!” That crystal clear trumpet blast rang in his ears, trying to melt his resolve, ease his anger. Malachi Jones was having none of it. When Jackie didn't come to his aid immediately, he pushed himself up on his own. Whether it was the aspirin or the adrenaline, standing wasn't nearly as difficult as it should have been. When his arm went out for balance, he found a railing, and realised he had been right. He was at the top of the stairs.

The last thing he wanted to do was go down them.

Malachi had read about this, and if Melissa had been right about the end of the world then the angels represented salvation of a kind he couldn't accept. So far, she had not been wrong.

“Summer, are you still there?”

“That noise…”

Malachi was finding his bearings and balance. Letting go of the railing, weak on his feet, he flailed his hand down at the point her voice had come from, connecting solidly. She cried out. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We haven't got long. We need to get out.”

“My Inspector…”

“If he isn't dead already, he will be soon.” Malachi was cut off by a mighty bang that echoed from the front of the building. “The doors. Your pretty angels are inside.”

“Then we're saved!”

Malachi gritted his teeth and pulled the bandages up from his eyes, tilting his head towards her. “Tell me how saved you think I feel!” There was a pause, and the screaming began. Malachi could barely remember what the nave of the church looked like, but it wasn't difficult to turn those screams into mental images. “Those swords you told me about? They're being put to work.” The sounds of running, and wood splintering, and men and women dying in terror, rushed up the stairwell at them. “Soon they'll be finished, and they'll come looking upstairs, and they'll find us. I can't get out without you.”

“How... how do we get past them?” Malachi had only heard about those flaming swords. Jackie had seen them with her own eyes.

“One of these rooms has to look over the back of the church. Take me.” Feeling a hand on his good arm, he shook his head. “I need that arm free. Take the other.” Careful fingers took his elbow above the break, and he gritted his teeth. “Don't pull. Guide.” She did so, and his free hand went to his coat pocket, hoping it hadn't been emptied. No, there was his knife. Easing it free, knowing it was no defence but feeling better for having his fingers on the grip, he took careful steps along the corridor until Jackie spoke.
 

“Turn right here.” Malachi did, and the background noise of the massacre dimmed a little.

“Is there a window?”

“Yes.”

“Open it. Quietly.”

There was a pause, and her hand did not leave his elbow. “You can't be serious.”

Behind them, there was a bang, and the rumble of confusion from the nave turned to ear-splitting shrieks of terror. The door to the stairwell was open. Jackie's hand vanished from his elbow. Standing there helplessly, waiting for a blade to skewer him from behind, Malachi focussed on the echo of warmth from her fingers.

Wood sliding against wood told him the window was open, and a sharp slice of breeze hit him. Not waiting for her, he stepped towards it as he heard someone on the stairs behind him. When he had his hand on the wall, he stopped. “You first,” he whispered.

“I... Mr Jones, I can see…”

“I don't give a fuck what you see.” The footsteps were in the hallway, padding towards them. They reminded Malachi of a big cat, stalking. Something soft brushed the walls out there, and he thought it might be wings.

Jackie didn't move. Malachi took a guess, and pushed her, feeling her body drop away from him. Wondering if the angel was in the doorway yet, perhaps watching his attempts with a cruel smile, he hooked a leg up, fumbled for the sill, and swung himself over.

The fall took a long time, or so it felt in his dark world, and the flash of pain when he landed on his broken arm spiralled him into a deeper blackness still.

Gemmell froze as the angels swept forward, a thunderhead of swords and wings. The angel who was going to kill him was female, with red, curling hair and small, delicate breasts. While Gabriel's eyes were full of tears, hers were perfectly clear. There was no hate or rage in them, just peaceful acceptance of the way things were.

The wave of heat rolling ahead of her hit him, his limbs remembered how to move, and his mind flashed back to the riot of nineteen-ninety. Gemmell braced himself, hardly able to think as she raised her sword.

She swung, and he ducked, fiery steel skimming above his head. Unable to slow herself, she ran full pelt into him, all hot flesh and muscle. The collision threw them hard against the doors, which burst inwards under their weight.

Gemmell and the angel skidded across the floor, rolling together as the other angels trampled past. Gemmell found his feet first, the angel a second behind him. They stared at one another, and finally there was emotion in her eyes, a hint of sadness. Gemmell knew he couldn't fight this thing, probably couldn't even hurt it.
 

She raised her sword.

The screaming began, and both he and the angel turned towards the worshippers. Gemmell had almost forgotten they were there. Lit only by the flickering of the angelic swords, the slaughter began.
 

Bodies carpeted the floor. The angels were machines of death, elegant and brutal at the same time. They busied around the nave, swords flashing. Gabriel stopped in the centre of the room, calmly searching faces. When the angels killed, they did not stab, or slice. They cleaved. At Gemmell's feet lay a woman with no legs, and he wondered stupidly where they had gone to. She looked up at him with stunned eyes, blinking, hardly aware that her intestines steamed on the stone floor. The smell of meat and shit hit Gemmell hard, and he coughed, staggering.

An old woman on her knees, hands clasped in prayer, died with dignity as a sword went in beneath the arm of her cardigan, and came out at the opposite shoulder. The blade was hot enough to cauterise the wound, thickening the seared meat smell filling the building.
 

A few feet from him, a man wheezed through a crushed windpipe as an angel lifted him by the throat. The breath ended in a rattle as its sword punched through his heart.

Gemmell had no more time to observe. His own red-haired slayer turned back, and readied her sword. Knowing he had nowhere to go, that dodging was only delaying the inevitable, he thought of Barbara, and his boy, Jamie.
I'll see you soon
, he thought.

A shape lunged out of the church at the angel, landing on its back, wrapping hands around its eyes. It was the narrow-faced boy who had mouthed off earlier. Gemmell tensed to help, but the boy's fierce gaze told him not to waste his time. The angel bucked, trying to dislodge the young man, smashing into a pew and overbalancing. As they hit the ground, the boy still holding tight, Gemmell did something that he would regret until the moment of his death.

He ran for the door.

Emerging into the fresh air, he felt as though he had been in the church, watching the massacre of those in his care, for hours. Skidding to a halt on the path, he found Leviathan still grinning at the gate. The monkey-things were back, lining the wall, bleeding baby-faces watching him cruelly, and Gemmell knew that they would be all around the church, waiting.

“You've come to discuss your flaying, I presume,” said Leviathan. “I’ve had a few ideas, not one of which involves harsh language.”
 

Gemmell gritted his teeth, biting back the reply, and bolted for the path along the side of the church. As he turned the corner, he saw that he had been right, and demons perched on the wall all the way to the rear.
 

Gemmell ran along the path anyway, knowing it was futile, as the demons opened their mouths to scream.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Ranked along the street, the gifted opened their mouths and shrieked, fingers scratching wet, bloodless furrows into their faces and bodies. Fire danced on the rising wind, sweeping along on its accompanying howl, as they flailed at themselves.

At the heart of the crowd, his fury fuelling the bodies around him, Clive screamed into Calum's face while the man recoiled, hands up to protect himself, his flesh a clammy white and his pupils pinpoint narrow. Grabbing him by the shoulders, Clive drew him close, trying to regain control of his own body, venting his anger through the sea of other flesh at his command. While the gifted continued his throes of fury, he managed to swallow his own voice. Calum lashed his forehead into Clive's face, shattering his nose. It didn't matter. While he felt the cartilage bend and snap, it didn't hurt, and he cared little about his physical form. The body would soon be a disposable commodity, when his spirit roamed free in Heaven.

Still, the resistance was annoying, and so Clive responded in kind, pulling back his head, and ramming it forward. Since moving to Scotland, Clive had been amused to hear a head butt called a “Glasgow Kiss”, but in so close an embrace he thought the term appropriate.

Calum's head snapped back, and fresh blood streamed down his chin. When he went limp, hands cupping his face, Clive yanked Calum's shirt out of his jeans. Calum realised what was happening, and shoved on Clive's shoulders, trying to force him away. Two of the gifted stepped forward to seize his arms, holding him prone. Another two dropped to their knees and wrapped their arms around his legs. He struggled, but was helpless.
 

Clive held Calum’s shirt up, revelling in every appalled flinch and jerk his enemy made. With his other hand, he stroked the stomach, tracing the abdominal muscles with his fingers, stopping at the bottom of the rib cage. Calum's breathing was furious, and finally he resorted to begging, as Clive had Chapter Twenty-Nineknown he would.

“Please, you don't have to do this. Whatever you think I've done, you don't have to do it.” Clive could barely hear him whining over the storm, and didn't have the fine control over his facial muscles to sneer at what he made out.

He pressed his fingers harder against the skin and muscle of the abdomen, ignoring the incoherent shrieking this prompted, feeling the skin reach its point of maximum tension.

What am I doing?

Clive stepped back, staring at Calum, whose tears were streaking the dirt and blood on his face in long, swerving runnels. Was that how Ambrose had been tricked then? Had it been so subtle that he still didn't know it had happened? Clive had no idea how Calum had done it, and yet he had almost given the least worthy man he had ever met the key to eternal life.

Bidding the gifted to follow, ignoring the hollow confusion on his enemy's face, Clive turned and shambled along the street.

As the screams of the demons lining the wall died away, Gemmell pushed to his feet, fresh blood dribbling from his ears. Having lost track of Leviathan, but knowing that he had managed with his usual tact to make an enemy of somebody extremely powerful, he thought that staying still was a bad idea, even within the confines of the churchyard.
 

He was not forgetting the flock of homicidal angels determined to fill Christ's waiting room before morning. The instincts that had driven him into the police force in the first place, the compulsion to protect those who could not protect themselves, made him hesitate, but there was nothing he could do. Armed only with good intentions, he would walk into the church and be cut down, like all the others. He could only run, and hated himself for it.
 

Rounding the rear corner of the church, he saw the car still perched halfway through the wall, monkey-things sitting patiently on its roof like exhibits in a grotesque safari park. He almost missed Summer entirely, crouched as she was in the weeds at the base of the building.

She was more alert, seizing his arm at the elbow and wrist, and wrenching him into a classic arm lock. Bent double, fire shooting along the burning muscles in his neck and upper back, he cried out. “Summer! Bloody hell, woman!”
 

She released him instantly, and they both turned to the row of demons now laughing in idiotic, high-pitched voices. “Sorry sir, I...”