Inquisitor

by John Barrowman

  Em looked twice at her energy bar, shrugged, then popped the rest in her mouth.

  Rémy tilted the brim of his Chicago Bulls cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘Conning tourists is a dope way to make money,’ he said. ‘By the time I figured out what I could do with my voice and music, a demon was chasing me across the world.’

  ‘Mum made us donate the money to the primary school in Largs.’

  ‘And your friend, Zach,’ said Rémy, bringing Em’s ex-boyfriend carefully into the conversation. ‘He helped with the con?’

  ‘Couldn’t have done it without him.’ Em’s voice was surprisingly steady, Rémy thought, given that Zach had almost got them killed in Rome. ‘He created the sound effects and the 3D images that made the tourists think the pictures in the performance were all digital when, in fact, Matt and I were animating. We thought we were so clever.’

  ‘Pretty ingenious.’

  ‘Until a kid got hurt. Then no more nice things.’ Em picked a grey stone, walked to the mouth of the cave and skimmed the rock out across the bay. It skipped once, twice, three times across the water. She turned, giving a sad and broken smile. ‘I know you’re convinced it was Zach and his mum in that tomb with you, but I can’t see it. He was always one of us.’

  ‘Until he wasn’t.’

  Sitting this close to Em, Rémy could see the freckles dusting the bridge of her nose and the way her cheeks stood out against her pale white skin. Goggle indentations rimmed her striking emerald eyes like targets. Her short hair was wet and sticking out in every direction. She was beautiful. Not in the classic, breathtaking way his mom had been, but in the way he realized he was more and more attracted to. He buried the desire as soon as it surfaced and tried to think instead about how well-adjusted she was to her supernatural powers, even more confident in her abilities than her brother. For all his physical bravado, Matt was much more insecure.

  Early education was the key, Rémy decided. They’d had time and training behind them. Rémy still felt a bit like the man who fell to earth with no clue about the world he’d fallen into.

  He thought about leaning closer and kissing Em, but crushed the thought, letting a few bars of a Julian Vaughn melody curl across his consciousness. There was Zach to consider. Em claimed she was no longer in love with him, which Rémy believed. Kind of. But that was only a small part of the issue. Was Zach hunting them or helping them? No one seemed to know.

  Em frowned at him, finger-combing her wet hair from her forehead. ‘What?’

  Rémy was afraid she’d snagged the tail of his desire with her keen empathic abilities. ‘Nothing… just thinking.’ Idiot. That was your chance.

  Em was still gazing at him. Rémy cast around for something to say.

  ‘So the Council meeting,’ he blurted. ‘In London. The one Jeannie and Vaughn are at. Do you really think they’ll vote to shut down Orion because of what I did in Rome? What happened was my fault.’

  Em shrugged. ‘We’re running around without Guardians to keep us in check like most other Animare. The Council hates that. So probably, yes. Doesn’t mean we’ll let them though.’ She grinned. ‘Anyway, Jeannie says there are more important things the Council should be worrying about.’

  ‘Like the coming of the Second Kingdom and the end of the world as we know it?’

  Em laughed. ‘Something like that.’

  The wind was picking up, the warm sun flitting in and out of light white clouds, but beyond the tower on the smaller island of Era Mina, a storm was brooding on the horizon. A rogue wave slapped against Rémy’s beached kayak.

  Em tucked the energy-bar wrapper into the waterproof pouch belted at her waist. ‘We should get back to the Abbey before it storms,’ she said, settling the swim goggles back on her face.

  Rémy dragged his kayak into the shallow water, adjusted his life-jacket and eased his long legs inside. He was tall and fit in the way he imagined his dad had been. He’d never known his dad, but he’d heard stories about his athleticism and competitive streak: traits Rémy had inherited. Everything else came from his mother: his brown Creole skin, and his terrible fear that he’d fall into the madness that had consumed her if he didn’t bring this to an end.

  Em dived under, coming up for air metres into the bay. Rémy manoeuvred the kayak around to her right, keeping a barrier between her and the open sea. She was taking a breath every four strokes, and Rémy timed his paddling accordingly. They were in sync as they approached the Abbey’s dock.

  Rémy suddenly heard a squeal like an injured animal. It pierced his earbud, and he dropped his paddle. Em’s head shot out of the water.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ said Rémy.

  Em’s eyes were wide. ‘I felt it under the water. What—’

  A massive ball of white light dropped out of the storm cloud and hit the Abbey tower. It sent a shock wave in a kind of slow motion out across the lawn, rippling the grass in waves, coming towards the dock, imploding everything in its wake.

  ‘Em!’ screamed Rémy. ‘Get out of the water!’

  42.

  The Dock of the Bay

  Rémy yanked the belt at Em’s waist. Seconds before the concussion from the explosion hit the dock, popping up each plank one after the other, he raised her out of the water and – with every muscle screaming – held her as a wave of electricity rocked the kayak.

  ‘Don’t move or we’ll capsize.’

  He kept his balance. Em held herself motionless. When the dangerous ripples of energy had sucked all the water from the shoreline, leaving jelly fish popped on the hard sand like used balloons, Rémy dropped Em on to the sand.

  ‘Run!’ he shouted.

  They both sprinted for the shore. Behind them, the water gathered itself into a giant tsunami and began to chase them down like a thundering freight train. They scrambled on to the Abbey lawn and kept running. The wave hit them midway up the lawn and pulled them into its surging current, dragging them violently back out into the bay.

  Rémy and Em fought the current and eventually dragged themselves back up on to the soaking lawn. The wooden jetty was floating in pieces. One of the walls of the boat shed had been blown out. The Abbey speedboat was undamaged, but off its moorings and halfway across the bay.

  Em sprinted towards the rubble of the tower. By the time Rémy caught up, she was bent over, vomiting into what was left of the rose garden. Gently, he rubbed her back, staring into the black pulsing hole where the west tower had stood. Loose papers fluttered like doves out of the abyss.

  ‘Oh God,’ Em croaked. ‘My grandfather’s study… And the vault. The vault was below the tower. All that priceless art entrusted to our care, all those manuscripts…’

  The rim of the hole was shifting and sliding into the abyss.

  ‘It’s closing in on itself,’ Rémy warned.

  ‘We need to save the art!’

  Her rage shrieked like a banshee inside Rémy’s head. ‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do,’ he said.

  Rocks and rubble and even the nearby rose plants were getting sucked down into the darkness. Rémy tried to pull her away from the precipice. But Em jerked her arm away, lost her footing and slipped over the side. Her hands scrabbled for a stone, a root, anything to stop falling further into the blackness. Rémy lunged at her arms and missed. His head was a cacophony, like notes shredding on a guitar.

  ‘Rémy!’

  The hole was contracting. Em still wasn’t getting any traction. Closing his eyes, Rémy pulled out his harmonica and played. The music amplified in a pulsing haze that quickly surrounded the hole. A rope appeared at his feet. Knotting it quickly around his waist, he dug his feet into what was left of the garden path and tossed the end into the thickening mist.

  ‘Take the end, Em!’ he bellowed. ‘Em! Em?’

  43.

  Wonderwall

  Em grasped the rope and Rémy yanked her back to safe ground as the hole closed with a faint sizzle of light. Not even the foundation wall of the tower was
left standing. It was as if the ground had swallowed it whole. Without its tower, the Abbey looked as if the structure had lost a limb.

  Rémy wiped his bloody nose in the evaporating mist. Recovery from a conjuring often involved a nosebleed. It was generally a price worth paying. He’d read in his mom’s diary how conjuring depleted her energy so much she’d sometimes sleep for fifteen hours straight.

  A high wall with ivy weaving in and out of the bricks surrounded what was left of the Abbey compound, stretching from the main road to the water, enclosing the woods and the rocky beach. The ivy was ablaze in light, each leaf radiating like green bulbs on a Christmas tree. Strange-looking storm clouds stretched over the islands in the bay, shading the summer sky a peculiar turquoise blue.

  Em wiped her grimy arm across her teary eyes. ‘Whoever did this is still nearby.’

  ‘I know,’ said Rémy. ‘Look at that sky.’

  ‘It’s not just the sky.’ Dirt and small rocks were embedded in her skin. ‘The ivy on the walls is an animation. It reacts to strangers and supernatural beings. Zach designed it. It’s a kind of digital-organic hybrid invention of his.’

  Rémy took Em’s hand. They walked towards the kitchens, carefully scouting the area for movement. As they reached the middle of the lawn, the ground began to move under their feet. The lawn rippled at first, then it tore itself up from the shoreline as if an invisible hand was rolling up a rug.

  As they pelted towards the French doors into the kitchen, fingers of light crawled out of the scar in the ground left by the tower, sending white flames snaking through the entire top floor of the Abbey. The peryton flag on the roof snapped defiantly in the wind.

  ‘Our bedrooms,’ gasped Em. ‘They’re on fire.’

  She was still in her swimsuit. No paper. No pen. Rémy was in basketball shorts with only his harmonica in his pocket. The ivy on the wall was blazing, twitching. Fingers of fire curled over the roof of the Abbey, the sky like neon above them, the strange storm clouds close enough to touch.

  ‘I need something sharp,’ said Em, running towards the ivy-covered wall.

  Rémy was soaked with sweat and fear, humming just to keep calm. He whistled a jazz riff and a small box cutter fell from the music to the ground. Em grabbed it. The heat from above was intense, the fingers of flames crawling closer.

  At the base of the wall, Em sliced through the skin on the pad under her left thumb, letting her blood fill her palm. Then she closed her eyes and shoved her bloody hand deep into the soil.

  ‘Come on,’ she muttered. ‘Come on. I need you.’

  The strange clouds exploded in blinding colours. A great white peryton swooped out of the rainbow vortex, its antlers wide and branching. And right behind the flying stag, the Nephilim took shape in the bruised, fractured sky.

  Luca Ferrante’s wingspan was as wide as the compound. A fiery ash cloud stretched and swirled like strips of blood-splattered bandages around him. His face was human but not, his skin stretched across his skull, his hair pure blinding light. The peryton bucked beneath him, its white rack of antlers flaring with light. Powerful as it was, it was no match for the Nephilim.

  ‘Oh, God!’ Em pulled her hand from the soil and covered her mouth. ‘He’ll kill it.’

  Not knowing what else to do, Rémy began to sing. His voice lifted from a place deep inside, rising out of him in waves of chilling blue mist. His notes engulfed the peryton. Its wing span broadened. By the time Rémy had hit high C, causing the compound wall itself to shake and crumble, the peryton was as large as the Nephilim.

  It tossed its antlers and charged.

  The sky screeched. The wall collapsed almost in slow motion, sending clouds of green dust into the air. Em fell to the ground, covering her ears, her face contorted in pain. Rémy heard the terrible sound, but it was somehow muted in his own head. He gave Em his battered iPod and earbuds, cranking the music as loud as she could stand. Then he grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the crumbling wall and out to the centre of the lawn. Visibility was almost nil. The clouds were alive with fire, hanging close to the ground, raining hot ash. It looked as if a volcano was erupting in the atmosphere.

  ‘The peryton!’ Em shouted, staring up into the terrible whirling clouds. ‘Rémy, what’s happening?’

  Rémy wiped hot ash from his face. ‘We need to get out from under this dangerous sky.’

  ‘We can’t leave it,’ said Em stubbornly.

  ‘We have to.’

  Rémy dragged Em towards the row of art studios running along the cloisters of the Abbey. He grabbed a rock and smashed open the padlock of the first one he came to, shoving Em inside ahead of him.

  The studio hadn’t been used in a while and was empty, except for a stack of white stretched canvases leaning against one wall and boxes of paint supplies stacked near an easel. The stone floor was filthy and the walls were bare.

  ‘Your hand’s still bleeding,’ said Rémy as Em sat on a box and bowed her head.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ She wiped her palm on the front of her swimsuit and shivered. ‘But clothes would be great.’

  Rémy wrapped his arms around her before singing a soft bluesy Nina Simone melody, a song his mom had always sung to him when he needed comforting.

  ‘My baby just cares for me…’

  A veil of fog uncoiled slowly at Rémy’s feet, misty ribbons of yellows, reds, blues and white threading into shapes on the stone. When his voice faded, jeans, T-shirts and two pair of boots sat in a neat pile on the floor, plus a green cardigan with big pockets for Em. They dressed quickly in separate shadowy corners.

  ‘Matches your eyes,’ Rémy remarked, handing her the cardigan.

  ‘It’s too big,’ said Em. She smiled and wrapped it around her body. ‘Just the way I like it.’

  The door flew open suddenly, in a wind gust so powerful it blew out the window behind them, showering the ground with shards of glass. All the vines of ivy that remained on the external walls stood upright like arrowheads, pointing to the sky.

  44.

  Smoke on the Water

  The sweet heavenly voice that had come from the ground. Luca whirled about. The Conjuror was here? He could take him…

  Before he could fully process the thought into action, the peryton stabbed her antlers deep into Luca’s side. He howled, filling the sky with his agony, twisting and swooping as he tried to escape. He couldn’t. They were locked together. With the sky a deep purple behind him, Luca made a full transformation to his bestial self. His massive torso stretched and scaled over, the silver edges of his black wings hardened to diamond stilettos and his long-tapered hands became claws. His hair flamed behind him, setting the clouds on fire, his fury raging through the atmosphere. These islands were meant to be deserted.

  He grasped the jagged antlers in order to wrangle the beast, but they were colder than ice and held a charge that shot up his torso, lighting up his scales. For an instant, he lost feeling in his tapered fingers. He tore his claws away. The peryton’s eyes were hard as glass, glazed as if fired in some great kiln. The beast was focused with a power Luca hadn’t faced in a long time. Numbness began to creep through his body. She was freezing him from the inside out. He somersaulted desperately through the deep purple sky, but he could not shake her.

  Had indulging his human side weakened him, as Cecilia had said? He raged as the peryton shook her mighty head, tossing him from side to side, as if he were a rival for her territory. With every whip of her body, Luca felt his strength waning. There was only one thing he could do. The Conjuror would have to wait.

  I will endure.

  Luca rocketed out over the western islands of Scotland until he was above open water. Grasping the peryton’s antlers one more time, roaring at the shock of the cold, he flipped and plunged towards the rough water. The two of them shattered the surface of the sea in a torpedo of light.

  45.

  Hungry Like the Wolf

  On the cusp of the Cairngorms, Caravaggio shot out from behi
nd the trees and up the steep hillside towards the cairn. At the same moment, a slavering two-headed hellhound bounded from the brush below in a cloud of mustard smoke, tearing up the hillside behind him.

  ‘Draw, Matt!’ Caravaggio yelled. ‘Per l’amor di Dio, draw!’

  He was almost to the cairn. The hellhound’s needle-sharp teeth snapped at his heels, the fiery jaws seconds from catching him.

  Seconds were all that Matt needed. As the hound stood up on its hind legs, ready to attack, Matt fired a flaming white arrow directly into the soft valley between its two thick necks.

  The hound howled. Two sets of jaws snapped at the arrow as it burned into the hairy flesh from arrow tip to feathery knock, driving deeper and deeper into the beast’s core, the white flame burning the hound from within. The hound exploded in a single fiery flash.

  Matt scrambled up the hill to Caravaggio, who was slapping his smoking, ruined boots against the ground. The artist’s tunic was torn in places and one of the sleeves was hanging by a thread.

  ‘I only just got these boots,’ Caravaggio complained. ‘I didn’t want to lose them so soon. That was a bit too close for comfort, my friend. How did you know where to land your arrow?’

  ‘It wasn’t my first hellhound,’ said Matt, helping the artist to his feet.

  ‘Who set it on us?’

  ‘Who set it on you I’d say.’ Matt grimaced. ‘Fire and brimstone at the church. A hellhound let loose. Someone’s after your blood. Take an educated guess?’

  Caravaggio whitened and spat on the ground. ‘Luca Ferrante. How did that damn Nephilim know I was here?’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’

  Silently, the artist slid back down the hill with Matt side-stepping through the brush next to him. At the bottom, Caravaggio reached for a thick branch from the base of a nearby tree and pulled himself upright. Snapping off a low branch, he pivoted, thrusting the jagged end at Matt, who backed into a tree. Caravaggio flipped the stick and held it at Matt’s throat, pinning him against the bark.