Blue Angel

by Phil Williams

  Pax kept her head low, passing more pedestrians, willing the young man to tone it down.

  “I was the one who went in to get you,” Casaria said. “And it’s me who knows how to face the hell that the Ministry’s going to raise after this.”

  Pax cut through the crowd to a set of steps that intersected riverside office blocks. She said to Casaria, without looking back, “You’re sure they’ve got anything left? Seemed your people just took a blow.”

  “Hardly,” Casaria said. “Mathers? Devon? Those two were dead weight. There’s others that’ll fill the gaps. London will send people. It’ll be weapons-free.” He opened his jacket demonstratively. The pistol he’d retrieved was holstered there. Pax slapped the jacket shut again.

  They came to the edge of the thick, rolling grey slosh of the River Gader, 200 metres wide at this point. Planter Bridge, with its jagged pillars and worn floral moulding, was accessible by a tall set of steps. Trying to refill her lungs, Pax cursed the architects of Central for taking them down to river level before sending them up onto the bridge. After a five-storey flight from a tortoise-hydra, it was enough to keep them all quiet until they reached the crest of the bridge.

  Alongside thinning traffic, Rufaizu skipped to the bridge’s edge to look down into the river, and cooed at the cityscape that flanked it, like he’d never seen such grandeur. Pax gave him a warning look, to tell him they needed to keep moving, but what the hell, it was a chance to recharge.

  She came to the young man’s side and followed his gaze to take in Ordshaw. How long had it been since she’d last seen this view? And during the day? The cityscape was beautiful in its rises and falls, a spectrum of old and new. There was the domed, twin-turreted Hall of Tongues, now home to the mayoral office. The vast gothic peaks of St Margaret’s Cathedral. In the distance, it was possible to see the pointed tip of Grant’s Obelisk, and near that the familiar stepped riverfront facade of Featherback’s Casino. Between those landmarks sat the glass and metal totems of modern business: most notably No. 2 Waterfront, better known as The Spoon, and the Duvcorp building.

  “Lot’s changed,” Rufaizu said, with wonder.

  Pax nodded. It was different enough from when she’d first arrived, and she couldn’t imagine how it must look compared to his childhood memories; he’d left aged nine, and must have seen some things in between. But at least he’d always known what lay beneath it. For her, she was only just discovering Ordshaw’s true layers. Ready to kill them all. She asked him, “Why did you come back?”

  Rufaizu’s face screwed up. “To kill the minotaur.”

  His answer was so simple, so honest. The fool. Pax said, “You know it’s more than just a monster, right? You know about the Blue Angel? You know what your father knew – that word he wrote in the Ripton Chapel? The grugulochs?”

  His face screwed even tighter. “The what?”

  Pax stalled. Not the revelation she’d hoped for.

  A trio of Japanese tourists passed, huddled together with hurried whispers, a wildly conspicuous attempt at subtlety. One of them pointed at Pax and she looked away. A camera clicked behind her.

  “What do you know?” Pax implored of Rufaizu. “What happened between Apothel and the Fae? Between him and the Blue Angel?” Rufaizu’s face clouded in anguish. “What?”

  “Don’t trust the Ministry,” Rufaizu said, reciting it like rote. “Nor the Fae. The Angel, he was our only ally. But don’t trust him.”

  “He – him? You know who it is?”

  “No,” Rufaizu said. “No oh no, don’t know, don’t know.”

  “He’s an imbecile,” Casaria summarised.

  Rufaizu raised a pointing finger, “Am not. I’ve just never seen him. But I know he made trouble. Got Papa angry, made him betray the Fae. Fairy friends.”

  “And what happened?” Pax said. “How’d you find the weapon, the book? Why’d Apothel deface the Ripton Chapel?”

  “He didn’t.” Rufaizu frowned. “Never defaced nothing – Papa loved his work. He sent the Fae gun and the book away to protect them. Once he knew the gun didn’t work – and the Angel told him wait. My father died and...” Rufaizu spat aside as a curse, almost hitting a dog walker. “I wanted nothing to do with that kind of friend.”

  Pax tried to piece the frantic account together. Apothel had known the Fae were coming for him, to get their Dispenser back, and the Blue Angel had persuaded him to face them. He’d made provisions to preserve his work, though he couldn’t have preserved the chapel – but he hadn’t been the one who defaced it –

  “The Blue Angel itself?” Pax said, quietly. “It got in there and destroyed whatever hints Apothel left behind, before anyone could see it. Trying to erase his legacy. So why leave the word grugulochs?”

  “As a warning,” Casaria suggested. “Sign off their work?”

  That didn’t sound right, but what other reason was there? As a reflex, a joke? Another trick? This was getting Pax nowhere.

  A man in a white van shouted “Mentalists!” at them, his laughter punching the sky as he sped off. Casaria snarled, “We ought to keep moving.”

  Pax nodded. “Let’s walk and talk. Rufaizu, how’d you trace what Apothel sent away?”

  Rufaizu smiled, trotting at her side, towards the far side of the bridge and the stairs down. “Hard work. The hardest.”

  Pax watched his expression, listing upwards on the left side like he’d once taken a blow that left permanent damage. “Where’ve you been all this time?”

  “No easy path. Ran just to run, you know, to start. A long way from Ordshaw, making sure those Fae didn’t do for me. I looked for Papa’s people and found a lot else besides. Secrets of the French Alps. Myths of Gardossa, legends of the Antler King.”

  “Gar-what-sa?” Pax said, not liking the broadness of any of that.

  Rufaizu ignored the question. “Uncle Staryn took me in, eventual. Good as a blood uncle. Papa trusted him with the gun, and the book, but he didn’t tell me, not for a long time. Didn’t know Ordshaw and thought I oughta not know it either. I came of age, though, and I learnt what needed knowing. Learnt why Papa couldn’t work the weapon. Had to come back. Had to find Citizen Barton and get the electric weed, to make the gun work. Finish what Papa started.”

  “And it brought you here,” Casaria concluded. “Hobbling across a bridge like an escaped dementia patient. The boy’s an imbecile, he’s led an imbecile’s life –”

  “Watch your mouth!” Rufaizu sprang towards him, then back again, hopping like a boxer. “Got me by surprise before, but I scrap – you’d better believe I scrap!”

  “Alright, put your dicks away,” Pax intervened irritably. “You can punch each other out when I’m through with all this. What did you learn that needed learning?”

  Rufaizu paused to give her a merry look, like all the answers of the universe were obvious. “That last call from the Angel, that was true as blue. Scratched in the wall when Papa wanted to know how to get the gun going. Told him, real simple, wait. Just that. Wait. No other answers – no more help. Not for the first time, I learnt. Everyone out there waiting – ignoring the truth, actively ignoring it. They waited in Gardossa and the city crumbled. What we’ve got in Ordshaw, it’s not the first, might not be the last. The Blue Angel’s moved and been around. He’s old and powerful and didn’t always have a minotaur or glogockles, but he always had something.”

  She felt like that she already understood this, just hadn’t put the thoughts together yet. The thing behind this was more than a person. It had done more than move and manipulate the glo; it had a hand in the monsters themselves. Was it possible the creatures were its creation, somehow produced by it? The minotaur included. “What else did it have, what other things?”

  “Hard to say,” Rufaizu admitted. “History ain’t kind to legend. He had a hand in the demon of Gardossa, I’m sure. And the waywards of the Alps, they were not natural – I swear he was there.”

  “Why?” Pax said. “Why do you think the Angel wa
s involved? How do we find it?”

  “Ask me?” Rufaizu said. “It’s to do with his food. Cut off his food, get him angry, get him making mistakes, showing himself. The honourable Theo Murhaimer, in his saga, claimed the light was revealed, like glo reveals a trail. But whatever he attempted, he didn’t succeed. No more than legacy, but it’s enough, right?”

  “Seriously,” Casaria snarled. “Utter gibberish.” He marched ahead to the stairs down, shoving past people coming up. Pax signalled for Rufaizu to follow, quickly. They caught up as Casaria reached the Underground entrance. At the gates, he pulled back his jacket to show a guard his badge and muttered a few words. The guard buzzed him through, and Casaria waited for Rufaizu and Pax to go ahead. His hand lingered a little too long on Pax’s shoulder, guiding her through. Pax was fairly sure he hadn’t had that badge before. Nor a holster. The bulging grenades, of course, she’d seen him pocket. He was ready for war, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  It was another problem she didn’t have the capacity to focus on, as she tried to unravel Rufaizu’s words. She could see he’d collected hints he didn’t fully understand himself, but there were names at least, paths to follow. And her instincts were right; the Blue Angel was a hider. It was possible no one had got close, or lived to talk about it. No one had formed a connection like she had.

  Locked in those thoughts, Pax barely noticed them boarding a train, nor it rattling out of the station. The lights flickered and Rufaizu looked out the window at the passing brickwork, creeping up out of his seat. “We shouldn’t be down here.”

  “It’s only a few stops,” Pax said. She didn’t like it either. The air seemed tighter than usual. Down the aisle, a man in a brown coat sagged against a pole, eyelids heavy. Were they being drained right now? Pax took a breath, trying to feel it, and she could all but sense the creatures lurking beyond the walls, ready to claw at her, chase her.

  Rufaizu sat back down, but his eyes didn’t stop moving.

  The lights flickered again. The train slowed. Like when she’d brought Letty underground, when the horde had approached. Pax felt her heart beat faster.

  She could sense them. Close and far, across the city. Tingling in her fingers, burning in her heart. So many creatures, writhing in the walls. And something else, lit in the blue. The memory flashed up from her dream. At least thirty. She put a hand to her head.

  “What’s wrong?” Casaria asked.

  Something sparked outside and she flinched, but she said nothing, trying to focus, to see or feel through the bricks. Imagining the tunnels beyond. Something was stirring in her. Not panic, not fear. She’d felt it in the Ministry building – something she could use.

  A voice came on the tannoy, apologising for the delay. A signal problem.

  “Pax? Are you okay?”

  It was the pull again. As it had been in the Ministry office. As it had been under the chapel, when she knew she wasn’t alone. The same in Chaucer Crescent. Not the minotaur’s surge, but connected. Was it an indicator, or was she just losing her mind?

  “Who is he?” Pax asked, not looking up. “The last one you mentioned, Theo More Hammers? He got close to the Angel?”

  “Ah nah,” Rufaizu said. “He’s a was. Left a journal – at least an account – of his trials. Long, long ago – before Gardossa. Centuries before, centuries before everything. He spoke of seeing without help.”

  “Seeing what?”

  “What we see in the glo. The Bright Veins.”

  Pax stopped and caught Casaria looking at her. She looked down at herself, half-afraid she’d see it again. Electric tracts, under her skin. Her grubby hands were solid, darker in dirt than her best tan. Definitely not glowing. But she had glowed. Casaria questioned it, at last: “What’s it mean?”

  Pax asked her own questions, “Have you ever touched it? The minotaur? Has anyone?”

  “Of course not,” Casaria said. “We’ve lost two or three agents that got too close, might as well jump on the tracks. What did it do to you?”

  “You touched it?” Rufaizu’s jaw dropped open. “You are true. I knew it when I saw her in that bar, I said, she’s something special. Look at her now and say it wasn’t worth it.”

  Pax gave him a sideways glance. “I’m not special. It was nothing to do with me, I didn’t want this – it was pure chance I got involved, and even luckier I didn’t die, okay?”

  “That’s the beauty, right? Blue Angel has his plans, machinations, but I’d bet you a tooth he didn’t count on you.” Rufaizu grinned. “Pure luck is what we need.”

  “Piss off,” Pax uttered, but knew he was right. With all the Blue Angel’s scheming, the fluke of her randomly bumbling in and connecting to it might tip the tide. Whatever it meant for her mind and body. She took a breath. “It affected me.” She looked at Casaria, confessing, “I’ve been getting a feeling when the minotaur acts. Pains. And more than that. It’s hard to explain. I’m sensing something, many things. Sensing when I’m getting closer to them, feeling it...” She tapped her chest. “Here.”

  “I knew it, I told you, I knew it!” Rufaizu said, excitedly. “You’re what he never was, what never was in any of them – you can see it? You can see the Bright Veins?”

  “No, I can’t see that,” Pax said, “but I did. When I tried that glo.”

  “We should get you to a hospital,” Casaria decided.

  “Piss off,” Pax snarled.

  “Listen to yourself! Sensing something? Feeling something? It’s messed you up, there could be something seriously wrong with you. What are you feeling?”

  “The energy, I don’t know! Something passing between it all – like, it’s in all these things, and moving. I get a feel for how many there are, how close, but I don’t know –”

  “It’s the Bright,” Rufaizu said, “in the Veins. Murhaimer studied it and developed ways to see it – through his own eyes, no glo. Rik Greivous would’ve danced a jig if he’d known! But Murhaimer did it alone, never again, no explanation how.”

  “This Murhaimer, from ancient history, is the opposite of useful.”

  “But here you are – connected to the light that passes through all things!”

  “You’re talking about novisan?” Casaria interrupted. Rufaizu paused questioningly. “The energy in people that the praelucente interacts with. It uses that energy, decreasing or increasing levels. You know how complicated it is for us to measure that? How do you know about it?”

  “Clearly your systems aren’t the only ones,” Pax said. Her own connection with that energy, the Bright or novisan or whatever it was, had been corrupted when the minotaur caught her. She wasn’t mad, she wasn’t psychic – she’d become sensitive to a network they were all part of. An energy system that the Blue Angel was part of, too. It was abusing that energy to extremes that made the Angel more visible, too. Her dream flashed on her again. The lightning jumps, the nodes. At least thirty. “I can feel the energy that the minotaur and the Blue Angel have been collecting, or moving, or whatever they’re doing. It’s spread over the city. That’s why it’s so fucking confusing. When they use that energy, I feel it.”

  Casaria stared at her blankly, completely at a loss.

  She was feeling the blue screens in use, and the creatures affected by the shifts in novisan or whatever. That’s what she had felt in the MEE office; not the turnbold, some other force. She shot Casaria a look. “In your offices, that corridor where we were. What’s in the room at the end of the hall?”

  Casaria frowned. “What room?”

  “At the end of the hall!” Pax insisted. “The innocuous fucking cupboard near the fire exit.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Some stationery supplies, I think. No one uses it except the secretary, and that’s mostly to get faxes.”

  “Faxes? What the fuck are you talking about, faxes?”

  “You know, printed messages. Obviously we don’t use the fax machine ourselves, that’s why it’s down there, out of the way. The secretary gets –”
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  “Jesus Christ,” Pax huffed, “you’re talking about one of those old phone-email-printer things or whatever? Who the hell does use it?”

  “London,” Casaria clarified. “It receives orders from the Raleigh Commission.”

  Pax stared for a beat. “That sounds important.”

  “Well.” Casaria twisted awkwardly, like he realised he’d said something stupid. “I suppose, if you care for them. The Raleigh Commission have a commanding say in Ministry matters, when they deign to get involved. One of the idiots on the board won’t go online; he only ever sends faxes. Sometimes direct orders, but mostly summaries of nonsense discussions in London.”

  Pax kept staring. That was definitely important. She wasn’t sure how, but that was where the Blue Angel had their foot in the MEE. That was what she’d felt. As the train drew into Broadplain, she watched the platform, willing Letty to be ready to help her make sense of it.

  12

  The smell was horrendous. It seeped up from the fifth floor to pervade every inch of Floor 6. Sam couldn’t stop noticing it, a scent she’d associate with toxic waste. Agent Hail assured her it was only the turnbold’s pheromones, perfectly harmless. That didn’t help.

  Hail, returned from the field, attempted to brush off everything with cold professionalism, from the moment he’d found Sam staring at the carnage from street level. He and his partner had taken two barbed zinc harpoons (as they called them) from their car and silenced the turnbold with a series of careful shots, fired from the building entrance towards where the broken creature was stuck in the lift shaft. Then Hail tried to take charge with instructions for Greek Street to be sealed off and a retaliatory strike to be mounted, without any immediate idea of the target. Of course, the Ministry historically only had one true opponent in Ordshaw. Even with a long-established peace, resentment against the Fae ran deep amongst Operations agents. They would blame the fairies as a matter of instinct. As Pax and Casaria had suggested.

  But Sam realised Pax had saved her. She’d heard the shout, over the ferocious charge of the turnbold – “Fucking do something!” – just before the gunshot. And Pax had insisted this wasn’t simple, that they all needed to stop and think before attacking the Fae.