Thy Fearful Symmetry (36 page)

There would be time to help her when he killed the angel, and saved the world.
 

Motioning that they stay put, Malachi stepped further into the fog, able to see a few feet around him. Silently, he stalked towards the unwary threesome.

The sobbing of the man in Pandora's arms masked his advance, and it took Malachi barely a minute for him to get into position. Staring at Pandora's winged back, blood and ichor staining her dove-white wings, he raised the sword. She was faster and stronger than he was. He had only one chance.

Taking a breath, the fate of the world weighing on his sword arm, he tried to picture Stacey's face, and found only Melissa's waiting for him.
 

Malachi lunged, his aim true.

The man watching her was too fast to be mortal, but it wasn't going to be enough.
 

The man in Pandora's embrace lifted his head from her shoulder, and saw him coming. A twitch was all it took to spin Pandora off balance and out of the way. The burning blade grazed her as it passed.

And punched hilt-deep through the chest of her teary-eyed saviour.

Ambrose saw the man in the leather coat lunge from the fog, and astonishment made him hesitate for a single beat.
 

He knew the man.
 

He had watched Pandora stab out his eyes and break his arm.
 

Now he was lunging towards her with a burning sword.

Darting to intercept, he felt the world slow down, until he was moving through treacle. The pause had undone him, and as he realised he wasn't going to be in time, a little bit of him died.

Calum made the smallest movement, twirling her off balance and out of the way. The sword plunged into his chest. His eyes widened as the stench of charred meat filled the air.
 

Time returned to normal, and their attacker screamed in rage, yanking the blade free and standing above Pandora.

Calum toppled to the ground, mouth moving in silent shock, but he had bought Ambrose back the beat he had lost. Grabbing their attacker's sword arm, the demon yanked him round, slapping the sword away. Pulling the man towards him, their faces almost touching, he saw hate in his eyes and wondered what they had done to him.

Then he snarled, and hurled the man along the street. His leather coat flapped awkwardly as he flew, making him look like a dying crow. Crunching down against the kerb fifty feet away, he bounced and slid across broken glass and stone. Ambrose snarled, and then remembered Calum.

Pandora was already kneeling above him, and though Ambrose could have cried with relief that she lived, he pushed her aside. She nodded understanding. Ambrose called the dying man his only friend.

Cradling him, he saw that it was hopeless. Once, Pandora could have channelled God's power into his wound, healing it instantly. Now they were cut off from such wonders. All they could do was watch Calum die. There hadn't even been time to find out what he might have done to save the world. All their preparation was for nothing.

Calum's eyes were full of tears, his mouth moving silently, like a fish dying on dry land. Soon, the ex-priest would take his place in Hell, and suffer for the infinity that was to come.
 

Ambrose’s eyes widened delicately, and he jerked his head up to look at Pandora.

“He's dying.”

She nodded sadly, not understanding, and put a gentle hand on his arm. Ambrose shook it off, and slapped the ex-priest's cheek. Pandora gasped, but Calum's eyes focused. Ambrose placed his hands on either side of his friend's face and leaned close.

“You see me,” he whispered.

Calum nodded weakly.

“You hear me.”

Calum nodded again, barely a twitch of the head, his eyes crossing as he tried to focus.

“Then know that God has a name, and it is YVWH.”

No human being had ever heard the word pronounced as Ambrose pronounced it, because no human being had a throat capable of making those noises.
 

To hear that word was to die.

Calum stiffened in Ambrose's arms. The light vanished from his eyes, and he was still. Ambrose laid him carefully down on the ground, stroking his bloody face. “There's nothing else we can do,” he said, swallowing an unfamiliar mix of emotions.

“Yes there is, my friend,” said a voice behind him. Ambrose looked over his shoulder.

The fog was gone, revealing horrors that he had last seen in Hell. Leviathan stood at the head of a legion of damned things, and he was smiling.

“You can suffer,” the demon said.

On his back, Malachi stared up at the stars.

No, they weren't stars. Storm clouds hung low over the city, blocking out the sky. Malachi was watching bright sparks flicking on and off in his own eyes.

Pain hit him, his back a sheet of flame where he had skidded along the road, tearing the leather of his coat, his t-shirt, and the flesh of his back. Before that, there had been flight, Pandora's bodyguard deflecting his efforts to strike a second blow by hurling him away.

Malachi shifted where he lay between burning tenement buildings, knowing the dead were approaching. Sharp, broken things scraped inside him, slicing and spearing flesh, and he arched his back as he tried to scream. What came out of his mouth was a gurgle, and he realised there was fluid in his lungs.
 

Holding still, aware now of dozens of leaden footsteps marching his way, he tried to conjure up Stacey's face. Nothing. When he tried Melissa, he was horrified to discover he couldn't picture her either. They had abandoned him. He was not worthy of them, even in memory. Malachi had failed them in every way.

Closing his eyes, still too proud to show the world his shame, he felt tears form behind them. His struggle had been worthless. In hunting Pandora down, he had left Stacey to her fate. Again, he thought about the miracle of his healing, when his eyes and arm were restored. Surely, if he had stayed with Stacey, he could have begged the same favour for her from whichever angel sliced them up and sent their souls for judgement. If he had never begun this doomed quest for revenge, he might have gone to Heaven with his wife. They might have had eternal life together.

Now, he could not even picture her face.

Melissa was another matter. Having let her die, convenience outweighing her value to him, he had sworn to achieve her goal. By killing Pandora, he would save the world. In that too, he had failed.

Malachi writhed, relishing the agony as he fought to breathe through the fluids inside him. It felt like drowning.

Sudden resolution swept through him. Death was coming, and he could lie in wait for it, or race to achieve something worth the memory of two perfect women before it took him.

Jaw gritted, he rolled to his side, letting his bloody vomit splash against the kerb and his coat as he pushed himself up on arms he could barely feel. Something sharp, a shattered rib, pressed hard from the inside, slicing through the flesh to poke into the air. Malachi blacked out where he stood, but it could only have been for a second, because when the lights came back on he was still standing, hot blood drooling from where the bone poked out above his belt.

The dead were only a few feet behind him. Malachi shook his head, which only made his balance worse, and staggered up the street like a Glasgow drunk.

The fog was gone. Pandora and her bodyguard stood before a phalanx of insanity, wind howling around them. They looked small, faced with such horrors.
 

Forgotten, the burning sword rested on the ground behind them.

Malachi stumbled forward, gravity doing most of the work, each agonising footstep only barely in time to stop him collapsing on his face. Pandora was his to kill. No demon was going to do it for him.

Dead men and women followed him, and Malachi knew he would be joining them soon.
 

Ambrose scooped Calum's body into his arms and stood. Pandora stepped up beside him, and they faced the armies of Hell.

Behind the furred things, the maggoty behemoths, the fallen angels, the scaled ones, and the monkey-demons, the Church of St Cottier was no more. Where it had once been, there was now a hole in the ground, wreathed in ice vapour. By abusing its sanctuary, he and Pandora had made the building a weak point in the universe, which had eventually melted to nothing. Now that weak point was a gateway to Hell, conjoining the mortal plain with the realm of the damned and allowing free passage between each. While God claimed the devout for his own, embracing them in Heaven, Earth belonged to Lucifer.

“Leviathan,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady as the naked demon smirked. “You're late.”

“I thought you'd fled, my sweet. I thought I'd have to scour the past to find you.”

Ambrose shrugged. “It didn't work out.”

“No crucifix to help you this time.”

Ambrose scanned the gibbering ranks behind Leviathan, noting the hate with which they looked back. Leviathan was all that held them in check. When he gave the signal, they would slaughter everything in their path, he and Pandora included. “I'd need a lot of them,” he said, desperate to keep the demon talking.

“You'd burn before we did. I can smell the sin on you. You've been a very naughty boy, Ambrose. I'd love to hear what happened.”

“It's a long story, but if you've time…” Pandora was taut beside him.

“I think not. I'm going to enjoy your brief and futile struggle.” Leviathan lifted a hand, and the horde behind him shuffled in anticipation. “Goodbye, Ambrose. Goodbye, angel-whore.”

Cradling Calum's body, reluctant to put it on the ground for his former comrades to feast upon, Ambrose prepared to die. At least Pandora was with him. Her hand brushed his arm, and he wanted so badly to tell her one last time that he loved her.

A voice from behind him broke the moment. “I love touching reunions.”

Ambrose turned. Inspector Gemmell, the man he had last seen in a church that no longer existed, stepped forward, the burning sword in his hand. “Mr Eidolon, you can go on your way. There's nothing to see here.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“No,” Gemmell peered at him intently, and Ambrose saw the strain on his face, the effort of will it took for him not to turn and flee. “Are you?” Ambrose got the message loud and clear, he just didn't understand it. The Inspector wanted them to escape.

“Inspector Gemmell!” Leviathan was delighted, and he lowered his hand without signalling his army to attack. “I had hoped to run into you.”

“Then it's your lucky day, you pimped up arsehole. I've been looking for you too.”

“Really?”

“Aye. I'm placing you under arrest. Do you want me to read you your rights?”

As Leviathan's lips twisted to a snarl, Pandora took to the air. Ambrose followed, too stunned to do anything else.

Soaring towards the black clouds, they left one mad human to face the legions of Hell, as an army of dead men approached from the rear.
 

Sprawled on the ground where he had fallen yet again, Malachi raised his head to watch Gemmell level his sword at Leviathan, feeling as though the fog that had filled the street had found a way to enter his head and body, slowing his thoughts and diluting the power in his limbs. Increasingly dizzy, the bubbling in his chest worsening with every breath, he still had time to admire the man’s stupidity and bravado. Malachi related to it. What else, if not shades of that same ill-conceived courage, had led him to death in the middle of a road, perhaps an hour from the end of the world?

Behind him, a low collective rumble of moans underplayed the hundreds of shuffling footsteps bearing down on him. That would do, then. Pandora was gone, and he would not have another chance at her.

Malachi was about to rest his head in the slush and close his eyes, preferring to face what the next life had for him than live with his monumental failure, when movement caught his eye. Summer walked calmly over to where he lay. Without a fuss, she sat down cross-legged, staring quietly over his head at the dead people almost upon them.

Let her die
, Malachi told himself, closing his eyes.

Another one? Where that voice came from, he didn't know, but he forced open his eyes again, and took in Summer's expressionless face. Despite knowing that it was shock resting her features, Malachi saw peace there too. Overlapping the scene in his mind, he saw Stacey, the scarred side of her face buried in the pillow, and there was sweet peace on the whole half. Overlapping that, he saw Melissa, but there was no peace there, only pain as her heart was ripped out in front of him.

Malachi had a jagged history of abandoning women when they most needed him. Even now, he should be with his wife. Pandora was gone, all his efforts had been futile, and in pursuing her this far he had betrayed the woman he loved.

Again.

If he lay down and accepted death, he would be abandoning Detective Sergeant Jackie Summer too.
Third time's the charm
.

Malachi scowled, shoving himself first to his knees, and then to his feet. Swaying, he looked at the woman in front of him, who gazed back with a slight, sad smile. “There's nothing we can do,” she said. Black spots danced in front of Malachi's eyes, and he pulled his knife from the pocket of his leather coat.
Don't faint
, he ordered himself, and was surprised when his body paid attention. Some of the nausea dampened down, and he felt less like gravity was his enemy.

“There's always something we can do,” he said, the wet rasp of his breathing infecting his speech, making him feel like he was trying to talk underwater.

Turning, the world spinning for a worrying fraction of a second after he had stopped, Malachi faced the dead.

There were dozens of them, the first rank only a few feet away, and when he saw the front row he cried out.

Melissa reached out for him, her jaw slack and her eyes dull. Bloodstains streaked her clothing, and death lived in her flat, dry eyes.

Malachi could still do something for her, it seemed. He could make sure that this time, he killed her properly.