No Rest for the Wicked
Page 10
“He will stay right here, beside me. You and I are not so dissimilar. But I see the best in people, and you see the worst.”
The Angel nodded. “Agreed. The worst is so much more… nourishing.”
The three syllables could’ve shattered glass. Jones just stood there and watched – he knew he was insignificant beside his father and the Angel, the leader of men and the leader of everything men feared.
“And you’re agreed we’re at a stalemate?” Montgomery asked.
“We could just kill you. But I am interested in you, little man. You have sins that no-one else can offer us, and your position makes you unique among the vermin you share the planet with.”
Montgomery smiled, sadly. “You know all about me, but I know nothing about you. Grant me the privilege of knowing who I’m facing.”
“I have nothing to tell,” growled the leader of the Angels. “I exist because of the evil in others. I have found myself, taken shape, and grown because of you and the rest of your kind.”
“Where did you come from?” Montgomery asked.
“Your scientists brought us forth. They were trying to disprove God.”
“And is there a God?” he pressed.
“There is only us,” the Angel replied.
They watched each other for a minute or so, standing in uneasy silence. Montgomery closed his eyes and prepared himself.
Finally, he spoke. “There’s only one way out of this. We must switch our views and experience each other’s perspective. You must see the world like a priest, and I must see it like an Angel.”
The leader thought with the combined brain of an entire army. Every soul they’d ever swallowed, every deed they’d done, and every piece of depravity and sin they’d ever witnessed converged into one resentful whole.
The Angels decided – they would be open-minded. They would see the world through the priest’s eyes. The evil leader looked the priest in the eye and sealed the infernal deal.
“We will do it.”
CHAPTER FORTY: SACRIFICE
Thursday December 24th, 2009
MONTGOMERY WAS ON FIRE. His entire being repulsed him; he was held together by spit and dust, sin, lies, and bodily fluids. The world was multi-faceted, filled with colours he didn’t know the name of.
Jones stood beside him, the living incarnation of his own evil doings. Somewhere, dead and buried in the grounds of a run-down church, Sarah at least was unpunished – she was never touched by Angels.
Everything, everywhere, stirred a deep hatred within him. He could never un-see what he was seeing, he could never be Montgomery again. He looked through the haze at his opponent, whose sole ambition he started to understand, and at his son who stood still beside him, finally aware of the carnal sin that planted seed in Sarah’s stomach.
The hatred began to build – of himself, of his fellow man, and of his son. The Angels’ eyes lit up with comprehension. Montgomery stared down at the twisted mortal hand that lay useless by his side. That pain was nothing compared to the evil that boiled his blood and wracked his brain in useless spasms. The defeated priest fell to the floor in subservience.
***
They saw it now – they saw it all, everything the priest had told them about goodness and humanity. The stars above them were beautiful, a twinkling mirror image of the massed ranks of the murderous, unstoppable, avenging Angels.
They saw it all. How they’d sentenced Angelica to death, how they’d judged as inadequate every other life-form that had crossed their path. For a brief second, every Angel experienced the same emotion – a profound and disturbing regret.
This was something unforgettable. Even their leader, the first Angel to come forth into this new universe, was changed forever. They felt the wind in the trees, the light patter of snow that fizzled and melted on their flesh, cooling their angry bodies.
In one last, desperate movement, their leader stepped forward and touched the cowering priest on the forehead, burning the mark of the Angels into his skull. The old man dropped to the floor, dead.
***
The shriek of the grieving Angels tore the sky in two, wiping out power lines and deafening the vermin that scattered down alleyways away from them. They’d never felt this pain, this sheer remorse at a terrible act that, once done, could not be undone.
As one, they turned upon their leader and descended upon him with sharp, sinister teeth and talons that sprouted from their warped, demonic bodies. He wailed in mortal fear, seeing the end in their flashing eyes. Then he was gone, torn apart and scattered in the gutters.
Ashamed of their depravity and now leaderless, the Angels covered their genitalia with fleshy hands and disappeared into the night. They resolved to see the good in everything, to see it as they saw it now – omnipresent and all consuming.
***
Jones crumpled as the Angels closed ranks, the heat and horror of it all too much for him to bear; on his knees, through tear-filled eyes, he could see their embarrassed faces. Inhumanly perfect, but just as flawed by sin. For a moment, he thought he saw Montgomery rise towards the heavens; then he passed out, the last person ever to lay eyes on the priest.
A shrill siren screamed through the air, and the police helicopter lit up the sky with powerful flashlights. It was seven minutes before the first officer arrived on the scene. There was no sign of any disturbance, just a comatose man in a dusty suit, spattered with burned blood and coated in his own vomit. No Angels meant no disturbance, and no disturbance meant their last shift of the day was over.
They took him to the drunk tank and went home to spend Christmas with their families.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: JONES’ CLOSURE
Friday January 1st, 2010
I WELCOMED the New Year on a hospital bed, sleeping in fits and dreaming of darkness and despair. Medically, there was nothing wrong with me, but consciousness was a struggle. I felt half-dead, on the verge between good and evil, and my eyes had been opened forever.
So, the priest was my father – perhaps I should’ve known. I loved him, and I knew that he loved me. I saw it in his eyes at the end, and I understood. I hope that wherever he is, he’s waiting for me in the afterlife, with the angels. He saved us all, and he solved the unsolvable. The doctors tell me he’s dead, but I’m not so sure. My father, he’s a martyr, and no-one knows his name.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the police don’t believe a word of it – they just think I’m crazy. I don’t care, because the Angels are gone for good. The newspapers are in uproar, they have nothing else to write about. Reality is slowly returning. Perhaps this way, the whole ugly episode can be forgotten.
But my father will always be remembered in the hearts of the people that he helped when they had nowhere else to turn, by the drunks and the addicts that sheltered in the rectory, and by me, his only son. Goodbye, father.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Where do you start with something like this? First off, big thanks to Jesse James Freeman and the management team at Booktrope for helping me to chase the dream, one book at a time.
If you enjoyed NO REST FOR THE WICKED, it’s because of the tireless work put in by my team – Laura Bartha (the best editor I’ve ever worked with), Ashley Ruggirello (cover artist extraordinaire), and Jennifer Farwell (my long-suffering proofreader).
Thanks also go to my family, for putting up with my erratic behaviour – Donna Woodings, Heather and Dave Clarke, and Alan and Olga Woodings in particular.
If you want to achieve greatness, you need to surround yourself with people who are doing great things. Big thanks to Allie Burke, Rosy Illustrates, Michael-Israel Jarvis, Ant and Ali Lightfoot, Alex Nimier, Imran Siddiq, Matt Sears, and Maddie Von Stark for doing great things on a daily basis and keeping me inspired when it’s three o’clock in the morning and I have a deadline to make.
And the most heartfelt thanks of all go to you, the reader. Stay awesome.
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Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
CHAPTER ONE: A FAIR TRIAL
CHAPTER TWO: ROBERT JONES’ EDITORIAL, THE TELEGRAPH
CHAPTER THREE: AN OLD FRIEND
CHAPTER FOUR: THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
CHAPTER FIVE: A DAY AT THE ZOO
CHAPTER SIX: FATHER MONTGOMERY’S LECTURE
CHAPTER SEVEN: RETRIBUTION
CHAPTER EIGHT: A CLANDESTINE MEETING
CHAPTER NINE: A NEW DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER TEN: A CLIPPING FROM THE OBSERVER
CHAPTER ELEVEN: BEINGS OF LIGHT
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE RENDEZVOUS
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE ORPHANAGE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GET WELL SOON
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: A STATEMENT FROM CERN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE AFFAIR
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: ANNIHILATION
CHAPTER NINETEEN: MIXED REPORTS ON CHANNEL FIVE NEWS
CHAPTER TWENTY: REBELLION
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: CONSPIRACY THEORIES FROM NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: CONGREGATION
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: POSSESSION
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: VISITATION
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: EXORCISM
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE PLAN
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: CERN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: VENGEANCE
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: MONTGOMERY’S VOICEMAIL MESSAGE
CHAPTER THIRTY: THE MEETING
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THE WORLD STANDS STILL
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: RESEARCH
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: THE END IS NIGH
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: EXODUS
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: COMEUPPANCE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: THE LAST SUPPER
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: THE LAST STAND
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: EYES IN THE SKY
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: PARLEY
CHAPTER FORTY: SACRIFICE
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: JONES’ CLOSURE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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