Blue Angel

by Phil Williams

  “You’re behind all this?” Pax asked, taking another cautious step closer. There was a good twenty metres between them, but something about this thing, hideous and unnatural as it seemed, was oddly unthreatening. “The minotaur – berserker – glo? It’s you?”

  The hissing chuckle came again, the creature’s eyes narrowing with delight. “Grugulochs’...city. Belongs...to me.”

  “Crispy. Bloody. Geckos.” Pax met Casaria’s eyes to share her shock.

  Landon shook his head, phone to his ear. “It’s me,” he said, and in the quiet of the church Ward’s voice came through unapologetically loud.

  “I know it’s you! I need you to get to –”

  “We’ve found it,” Landon said. “The...thing. It’s...I don’t know what it is...”

  “It’s the grugulochs,” Pax told him. “Clearly.”

  Ward was quiet for a moment. “What...but...the FTC...”

  “It just fed,” Landon said. “Or looked like it was feeding? Test your theory – is it connected to the praelucente?”

  “Hold on,” Ward replied. She relayed a series of muffled commands. “Just hold on. Jesus Christ. It’s there? You’re really seeing it? What is it?”

  Pax took another step closer, trying to move fluidly, calmly, in case she might scare it off. She asked, “You control all this? The Sunken City? The myriad creatures?”

  It nodded excitedly, and added, “Gloooo.”

  “To feed?” Pax frowned.

  “Feed...good.”

  “A great fucking parasite,” Casaria concluded. In awe, in disgust.

  “Yes, two minutes ago,” Ward’s voice announced. “A minor spike from the praelucente, south of Old Ordshaw. Does it mean –”

  “You manipulated the Ministry?” Pax asked the creature, loudly. “The Fae? This fight?”

  It started shuddering again, pleased with its own actions. “Fight...fight...kill...no one knows. No one knows...grugulochs.”

  Pax turned a look to the others. Not sure what was more alarming: the confirmation of her theories or the fact that the mastermind of all this was some bulbous slug that seemed too dumb to realise it was giving its own game away.

  “Did you hear that?” Landon said into his phone.

  “I heard it,” Sam said, stunned like the rest of them.

  Landon looked at his phone for a second, like he wasn’t sure what to do next.

  “Can you...” Pax took another gentle step forwards. She could feel that pull, that energy, but it wasn’t as strong as before. It was around her, not focused on that one spot. She checked the walls, the shadows. “Can you explain...to us?”

  “Explain?” the grugulochs gurgled. Its eyes started rolling again, and a great tongue lapped out of its slot of a mouth, bovine in thickness and texture. “Yesss. Friends?”

  “Sure,” Pax said. It was the Ripton Chapel blue screen all over again. This thing felt the world through its blue screens and knew people through their words, the way they wrote. It didn’t know who she was to look at her. “We’re friends. Tell your friends what you’ve done.”

  “Tell friends?” Its bulging eyes narrowed uncertainly.

  “We can help,” Pax nodded. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t like this...” Casaria said. Pax held a hand up without looking back.

  “Minotaur...” the grugulochs said. “Feed. Minis...try? Find minotaur. But...find me. Fairieeees” – it drew out the word, long and high-pitched – “want to hurt. Minis...try. Fairieeees. Want to hurt.”

  “Want to hurt you?” Pax said. “Or you want to hurt them?”

  “What difference does it make,” Casaria said. “You’re right, it’s an abomination. All this time, we’ve been feeding this?”

  “Feeding, yes!” The monster bounced up and down suddenly, hardly moving from its spot, but sending rumbling shakes that rattled the pews and staggered Pax. The walls creaked as it came to rest. It rolled its head towards Pax, and slowly raised one arm.

  “Get back, miss,” Landon cautioned, edging into the room. Casaria sidestepped in the other direction, gun rigidly aimed.

  “Friend,” the grugulochs said, reaching towards her. Pax didn’t move, transfixed. It was well out of reach, even with the arm fully extended, its fingers spread. There were suction pads all around its palm. With a great effort and a grunt, it moved, the sluglike base snapping free from the floorboards. Pax jumped back. But for all the volume and power of its movement, it shifted an inch at most. “Friend!”

  “Step away from it!” Landon ordered, louder. Casaria joined in.

  “Pax, you’re too close!”

  “Look at it,” she said. “It’s harmless. An idiot. It does everything through those screens, but in the flesh it’s...what? Just a filthy mass.”

  “Filthy...mass?” The creature’s arm slapped back down into the floor, its face distorting in an expressively pained look. The lower lip quivered. “Friends say...filthy mass?”

  Oh. Apparently it was a sensitive filthy mass.

  Pax took a step back. “Well...you have fantastic abilities. You can change things, can’t you? The way they look?”

  “Change.” It fixed its eyes on her again. “Change. Yes.”

  It leaned onto both arms, arching up like a gorilla. Pax felt the energy coming closer before it appeared; the blue light returned, one square forming around each of the monster’s hands. They pulsed again, but this time a bulge came the other way. Out of the torso, rolling down the arms.

  “Change...” Its voice grew grittier, aggressive. “Friends.”

  “Step away from it!” Casaria ordered.

  Pax didn’t need to be told. The blue screens around its hands glowed bright as a flare, and something sparked out of them, spurring her to run. More sparks crackled around them. Around the whole room. Pax staggered to a standstill, Landon ahead of her, and they both looked dumbly up. In the far corners of the room, other blue squares were appearing, lit like sparkling floodlights.

  Arcs of electricity lanced into the room.

  They cracked like thunder, building in quick succession as the grugulochs roared, bass voice vibrating the entire building, “Filthy mass!”

  Casaria fired a single shot but the wall lit up behind him and something struck him from behind, flinging him into a pew and to the floor. Landon turned and ran. Pax couldn’t move, feeling the energy, the draw all around her, the creature active, alive in the walls. It was coming from all the different points – alive in every blue screen – dozens of them – at least thirty –

  “Grugulochs!” The beast thundered its own name as Landon reached the doorway. A fierce whip of electricity snapped out from the doorframe, exploding with a flash that threw him back into the room. His pistol slid past Pax’s feet.

  The monster roared again and the room grew ever brighter, the sound of lightning bolts piercing Pax’s ears, pews snapping in half from the shaking. The energy was building, growing in every screen, and focusing again on the grugulochs behind her. A shard of lightning cracked overhead and Pax ducked, snapped out of her trance.

  She twisted to where Landon’s pistol lay.

  At best she might run and save her own life, for now. But it was going to keep growing in power, going to keep striking, bleeding this city.

  She snatched the pistol from the floor and spun back to the beast. It reared up on the great arms rooted into the floor, eyes lit like headlights, brilliant blue flooding out of its gaping maw. A monster full of tremendous power, focusing ferociously on her.

  She pulled the trigger.

  The lights went out. As the deafening echoes faded away, the monster slumped down, streams of green gunk pouring from the back of its head. Pax blinked and fired again. Again, again, each shot coming easier, hitting the creature’s torso like stones thrown at mud.

  When the gun clicked empty, the room was silent. Dark. The blue squares were gone.

  The grugulochs was dead.

  Pax stood stone still, sca
rcely believing it.

  She could feel its energy, still. All around them, in the walls, but receding fast. It was spreading beyond her reach, all but the tiniest feeling left.

  There was still something there. The faintest flicker beneath the grugulochs’ mountainous corpse. Pax took a step towards it. Then another. She passed Landon, groaning on the floor a short distance away, apparently alive.

  “Pax,” Casaria croaked wearily, somewhere behind the broken pews.

  She ignored them both, approaching the beast. It was an empty husk of life, that was plain to see, but her sense for its energy remained. And the closer she got, the better she understood. The energy was beyond it, now. Not within it.

  “Don’t,” Landon called out, pushing himself onto his hands and knees. “Don’t get so close.”

  Pax frowned, watching the floor and the walls as she felt the energy shifting. The feeling was unclear, unfocused, but she understood it was moving, not fading away. It was still there, that was the crux of it. The monster was dead and the feeling remained, even as it drifted away from her. Its novisan pulsing back into the city through the Bright Veins?

  No. It was nothing so innocent as that.

  Sam Ward’s voice cut through the stillness, shouting from the phone, “Landon? Are you okay? Is everyone okay?”

  Silence for a second, as Pax kept staring at the empty vessel of the grugulochs. She said, privately, “I’ve got you, you fucker.”

  “Landon?”

  “She killed it,” Landon announced, finally. “It’s over.”

  19

  Pax sat alongside Rufaizu on the bonnet of Landon’s car, watching as men in hazmat suits marched into the church. They kept stopping in the doorway as they came and went, throwing unsubtle looks at Pax across the road. She wasn’t sure what to feel about any of it. Maybe she should’ve run, before they arrived, but it was too late now, with two vans here and another ministry car pulling up. She was tired and wanted to go home, that was the only thing she was certain of. And she was happy to sit still, feeling, even for a moment, like she had some breathing space. Her hands wrapped around a disposable coffee cup, a blanket over her shoulders, she told herself she was safe – more useful to the Ministry alive and free than confined or dead.

  Sam Ward approached with a forced smile. The sharp businesswoman looked oddly chipper, considering this success was balanced by a simultaneous catastrophe elsewhere. She tugged at the lapels of her suit jacket as she reached them, getting her ensemble in line, then held out a hand. Pax regarded it suspiciously. What the hell. She shook, and from Ward’s smile she’d at least made someone’s day. Pax caught Casaria watching unhappily from a distance, sat with Landon in the side door of one of the vans. He looked away when she met his eyes.

  “The city owes you a great debt,” Ward said. “And, I believe, an apology.”

  Pax knew there were a hundred smart responses on both accounts, but wasn’t in the mood. She simply said, “Yeah.”

  “I’ll see that it’s not forgotten. The Ministry won’t detain you or harm you. We’d like to do a full debrief, with you and the Bartons, that’s all.”

  “I have no idea where they are,” Pax said, doubting she’d tell her anyway. She hoped they were okay, but given the results of Lightgate’s conquest it was probably an unsafe bet. “But thanks.”

  “Citizen be fine,” Rufaizu murmured, tiredly. The doping and his previous wounds were catching up to him. “Nothing holds Barton down.”

  “I’m sure,” Ward said. “And you can trust me. Barton, Dr Rimes – they were left alone before, they will be now. Whatever you think of us, the MEE are reasonable.”

  Pax gave her a sceptical look, then nodded to Casaria and Landon. “How are they?”

  “They’ll be fine. With time. It’s a miracle you all got out of there unharmed.”

  Pax hummed. She’d replayed the event over in her mind and agreed. With the force of the attack, and direct strikes on Landon and Casaria, it was remarkable they’d survived. None of the blows had come close to harming her. Almost like it was deliberate. The thought that she’d been allowed to live was linked to the feeling that the energy she’d felt hadn’t been concentrated on the grugulochs itself. She wasn’t quite ready to face her conclusions.

  Ward cleared her throat and confided something of her own: “They’re all we’ve got left.”

  Pax frowned, studying the two imperfect agents. “What happened with the Fae?”

  “Hard to say,” Ward said. “We’ve got a ceasefire, but I don’t know how long it will last. Lives were lost on both sides and it’s unclear if either side’s attacks were retaliatory or officially sanctioned. Confusion alone is preventing worse from coming. But...eight men.” She swallowed. “Eight of ours died out there.”

  Casaria had said it on the way here. That was everyone. The whole Ordshaw street team wiped out. Which, for their faults, left Ordshaw vulnerable to whatever was left after the grugulochs. Everything under the city. It would also leave the Ministry poised for war, if this ceasefire didn’t deliver satisfactory answers.

  “We managed to trace your friend’s phone, by the way.”

  Pax’s surprise turned to worry as she noticed Ward’s uneasy tone. “And?”

  “She was there when our people arrived at the FTC. It doesn’t look good.”

  Pax didn’t respond. Had they hurt her? “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “We couldn’t pinpoint the phone, exactly, and didn’t find her, but...”

  “How would you, she’s the size of a matchbox,” Pax said.

  “If she was the one –”

  “She’s not the fucking one,” Pax snapped. “I told you it was Lightgate, all Lightgate. No way Letty would’ve gone along with whatever happened out there. This” – she waved towards the church – “this is thanks to Letty. It would’ve been over years ago if people hadn’t kept screwing her around. Jesus.”

  “Gonna be okay,” Rufaizu said, quietly, a gentle hand patting Pax’s. “She’s gonna be okay.” His smile was disarming.

  Pax told Ward, “Find her and keep her safe. Promise me that.”

  Ward nodded. “I will, I promise. There’s something else, to start. We ran a trace on the phone’s usage and got two numbers that tried to call it. One was a payphone in Broadplain. The one you used? The other we traced to a coffee shop in New Thornton. We haven’t tried it yet.”

  Pax stared. Would it link them to more Fae? “Can I have the number?”

  Ward glanced at her men milling about the church, concerned they might be watching. She gave a slight, conciliatory nod, with a whisper: “If I can listen.”

  Pax nodded back, and Ward took out her mobile. She brought up the number and hit dial before handing it to Pax, who held it between them, speaker chiming.

  “Reny’s Bean Barrel,” a young man answered.

  “We had a call from this number,” Pax said. “Someone –”

  “Right you are, I’ll get her.” The young man raised his voice. “Ma’am, someone returning your call!”

  Pax held Ward’s gaze as they waited for the caller to take the phone.

  “Letty?” Holly Barton’s voice came on hopefully. “Is everything okay? We did what we could, but after half an hour on that wretched train it was –”

  “Holly,” Pax said. “It’s me.”

  Holly skipped a beat, before replying with relief, “Thank heavens. You’re with Letty? Are you both safe? Should we –”

  “Holly,” Pax cut in. “I’m with the Ministry.”

  A slight, icy gasp.

  “It’s okay. I think...Are you all alright? Are any of you hurt?”

  “We’re fine. Of course. We fled that awful shopping centre but we couldn’t stand to be underground too long. Diz wasn’t the only one getting antsy about it – we came up for air and have been waiting here – what do you mean you’re with the Ministry?”

  “I found it,” Pax said. “The source of this energy. Kind of. They helped me, an
d they’re...look, things are winding down. It’s going to be okay. But – I’m not with Letty. What happened to her?”

  “I thought...” Holly slowed down, and her voice said this was bad news. “Have you been back to Broadplain?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Holly paused again, appreciating this meant Letty hadn’t been there. “She said the other one wanted to kill us. She stayed...to...well...where do you think she is?”

  Pax didn’t answer right away, wary of Sam Ward listening in. “We’ll find her, don’t worry. I’m going to sort everything out. Stay there for a bit, can you? I’ll finish up here and get back to you.”

  “Are you sure? Shouldn’t we keep moving –”

  “You’re safe,” Pax said. Even if the MEE had ill intentions towards the Bartons, they had no manpower left to do anything about it right now. “Wait for my call.”

  She ended the call and handed the phone back to Ward, whose concerned look suggested it had done some good for her to hear Holly’s voice. Now she appreciated they were real, normal people, all of them. Ward said, “We will find her. And things are going to change. This has brought the praelucente into question. The very figures that demonstrate its benefits might have been manipulated. The Sunken City itself will be reassessed. It’s a huge step and you will all be commended for your part in it.”

  “Listen,” Pax sighed, not meeting Ward’s eyes for this. It was time, wasn’t it? Her voice came out edgy with the truth. “There’s something you need to know and you’re not gonna like it. But before I tell you anything, I want assurances.”

  “As I said,” Ward replied slowly, “you’re safe. I guarantee it.”

  “I want more than that. Protection and damages for all of us. Him” – she patted Rufaizu – “especially. And that family, they deserve to go back to exactly the life they left four days ago – this was thrust on them, they’re nothing to do with it. And you have to make sure I’ve got a home to go back to. I want my money back and the rest of the money Casaria stole from me.”

  Ward frowned. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “So find out,” Pax sighed, thinking of all else she’d left behind. Where had she been that night Rufaizu first happened upon her? Her hopes for the next few days had been so much simpler. She said, “I want a ticket, too. Get me a ticket into the World Poker Tour. You can blatantly pull strings and I reckon I’ve earned that, at the very least.”