And still it did not stop folding in and absorbing more and more textures of sound until it had created a glorious symphony of the city, with everything from the hisses of steam venting from the Soul Golem and the crackling of fires rising where gas pipes had ruptured and ignited into isolated blazes, even the people themselves, adding to the song with their cries of awe and fear, the stampede and the panic, as the stuff of London crumbled around them.
The four parallel gashes across Sataniel’s chest healed, closing up in four parallel slashes of pink scar tissue before they too healed.
The lion roared again, and even as Sataniel began to stand, lashed out with staggering force, driving the fallen angel back into the press of people. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, making room for the bronze lion to pounce. It bore down upon Sataniel, claws burying deep into his shoulders and legs as the sheer mass of the Landseer beast drove him into the ground. The hard-packed dirt of the street fractured, fissures splintering out from beneath Sataniel in a web. The fissures widened into cracks as the lion hammered down mercilessly with all of its immense strength, driving the fallen angel deeper and deeper into the ground as though it could compel the earth to open up and send the Devil back to Hell by sheer force of will.
But Sataniel was not about to be so easily beaten.
Even as the bronze lion’s fangs tore out his throat, Sataniel tired of the fight, though he was not about to slip into that endless winter night. Angels did not die, they were imprisoned in trees, they were banished, they did not cease to be. The lion could rend his flesh tooth and claw, it didn’t matter, Sataniel would not die. The only one about to do any dying here was the lion, that was just the way of this wonderful world.
Sataniel invited its teeth to tear out more of his flesh; let the damned animal think it had a chance …
And the bronze lion did, those long metal fangs piercing the soft skin of Sataniel’s neck and biting deep, through the sinew and stringy tendons to puncture the windpipe and throat itself, opening up the oesophagus and ripping through to the pharynx. But even before the ropes of greasy tendon and fatty sinew had fully shorn through, they began to reknit and the blood congeal around the ragged tear until there was no tear, only a desiccated membrane of dried blood over too-smooth new skin.
Undeterred the lion struck again, and again, using the dewclaw high up on its right paw like a switchblade to slash open the angel from stem to sternum. The dewclaw broke off against Sataniel’s ribcage. It fell at the feet of one of the gawkers who knelt quickly and claimed it. The woman, in a filthy nightgown and bonnet with her bare feet black with dirt, stared at the fight, stroking the bronze dewclaw in her hands as though it were the fabled horn of a unicorn where in truth it was nothing more miraculous than eight inches of cold metal.
Sataniel responded with a flurry of attacks, his open hands slamming into the lion’s jaw and muzzle and ear with blistering speed, each blow driving the impossible creature’s head back and back until it was forced to rear up on its hind legs, towering over Sataniel. And yet, even as the beast dwarfed him, the fallen angel seemed to grow in stature until he dwarfed the lion. The ground sighed beneath him, straining to cope with the sudden and immense shift in forces his new density subjected it to. He stood head and shoulders above the lion, as tall as any of the buildings around them and every bit as firmly rooted to the ground. He stretched his spine, shaping the moonlight shadow around him as though his vestigial wings had unfurled. The shadow-wings stretched three times his height and where it fell, be it dirt, stone, brick, or wood, began to smoulder, wisps of smoke corkscrewing up through the dust-clogged air.
”Time to die, little lion,” Sataniel said, savouring the absolute silence of the onlookers. He held out his hand. He had no weapon. He had no need of one, not for the job at hand. He could reach into the cast bronze and tear out whatever passed for the lion’s heart, soul, it’s very being just as effectively as he could cut off its head with a flaming sword or disembowel it with a swift cut from a much less glorious weapon. He could smelt its body with a mere glance, leaving nothing more than a pool of molten bronze to spill into the fissures in the earth and fill in the cracks. He could end its life with theatre, but he could just as easily end it with a snap of the fingers, leaving the lion dead on the side of the street like road kill, such was Sataniel’s power over life and death in this place. He was an immutable force.
And then the lion’s head dropped, the realization that it couldn’t win this fight sinking in to its thick sink. The fire left its eyes and the burnished bronze tarnished. It lowered itself onto all fours, then lowered itself even more, until its chin rested on the ground and it prostrated itself at Sataniel’s feet.
”Why so sad, little lion? You’re about to enter the glory of God’s kingdom. Oh, wait,” Sataniel smiled ruefully, and as he spoke his flesh began to glow, softly at first, a gentle blush of light, but more fiercely by the word, until he blazed like the Morning Star he was named for. ”Perhaps that’s the problem, God being dead and all? Would you rather linger while I create my kingdom here on earth? I am a charitable master, unlike Him. Amuse me and I will let you abide a while longer. Dance little lion, dance!”
The lion did not move so much as a bronzed muscle; like every other living thing in the street it was utterly still, bound to the earth by Sataniel’s radiance. There was no denying him. It waited, face pressed to the ground.
”What are you?” Sataniel asked again, though this time he placed his palm on the huge lion’s brow, feeling the thrill of The Art course up through his fingers into every fibre of his being. The surge caused his radiance to flare momentarily, twice as bright, and everything caught in that fierce light began to char and twist, smoke rising from the living and dead alike as their skin began to blister. The first scream came as the woman’s hand turned to ash even as she raised it to her face. Other screams followed as people pushed and shoved, desperate to escape the light. Sataniel pulled his hand away from the lion’s brow, mastering the intensity of his own radiance before it purged every living cell from the street. He dimmed the light of his flesh, wrapping his shadow-wings about his body to protect the onlookers. Now he knew, or at least suspected, the nature of his enemy. It was an Archai: a spirit that spanned time itself. It was, to all intents and purposes, divine.
Sataniel had no wish to make a pet of anything touched by divinity.
He reached down to crush the spark of life out of the damned lion.
The beast didn’t raise its head.
It accepted that it was beaten.
Sataniel knelt beside the lion.
This time when he pressed his hand against the creature’s bronze skull he didn’t hold back, didn’t try to dim the light. He let the Morning Star blaze to its fullest, brightest, most lethal intensity. The bronze heated beneath his touch. As the Morning Star’s light spread, and the first of the onlookers turned to ash, Sataniel pushed down with his hand, and the metal gave slightly, allowing him to ease his way inside. The lion mewled as he pushed his hand deeper, searching for the spark, the thing that made this impossible creature walk.
”Where are you hiding, little lion? Come to me, don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you,” Sataniel whispered into the beast’s ear. Even as he did, he forced his hand in all the way to the wrist and spread his fingers wide. ”I can feel you in here. Yes, I can. I can feel your heat.” And he could, its warmth suffused every molecule of the metal, intensifying the nearer his hand came to it.
And then he found it, that spark, the last thing that remained of Fabian Stark.
He touched it, allowing it to wash over his fingers, and he opened himself up to The Art, letting it flood through him. In the time it took for the first thrill of power to enter his blood Sataniel knew all there was to know about the man Stark had been. He knew it all, saw it all, felt it all, and delighted at the irony that had caged the man’s spirit within not one but two statues. ”A Gentleman Knight of London? How very quaint,” he said, savouring the anti
quated notions fealty and honour that fired the lion’s ghost-heart, and then he snuffed out the light that was Fabian Stark.
The lion shuddered once, a violent tremor that wracked every muscle, causing them to bunch tight as though coiled to pounce, but the beast’s eyes glazed over dully and the great beast stayed like that, frozen in place, forepaws spread wide, head down in obeisance.
There were no death throes.
No roars.
Not so much as a whimper.
Sataniel patted the statue on its head and turned to regard the remnants of his danse. The dead were unmoved, but thirteen people had been burned to ash by his radiance. Twice that stood rooted to the spot beating at their own bodies as their skin blistered and burned.
Sataniel was not displeased.
Chapter Eighty-Two
And across the city the three remaining Landseer lions froze in their tracks. The spark extinguished they became inanimate once more.
Fabian Stark was gone.
Chapter Eighty-Three
Locke crawled on his hands and knees.
The tunnel stank of the effluence of the city. The waste of thousands upon thousands of people had poured down into these tunnels for years, clogging them up completely. He tried to stand, reaching out to support himself against the wall as the tunnel opened up, but slipped and came down hard, sprawling face first in the filthy water. Sharp stones dug into his palms as he pushed himself up again.
Blind, he had to rely upon his other senses, for what little they were worth. Locke was negotiating the dark by feel alone. There wasn’t so much as a chink of light in the pitch black of the sewers. His fingers dragged across rough stone. His feet kicked against something, making him stumble again. He didn’t fall this time. He felt out the way ahead with his toe, nudging cautiously half a step at a time at whatever it was that was in his way. It wasn’t until he reached out with his free hand that he worked out what had happened: part of the tunnel had caved in beneath the force of the tremors.
He could only pray that the entire tunnel hadn’t collapsed.
Being buried alive was not a fate Brannigan Locke wanted to contemplate for very long but it was hard not to imagine this place as one giant coffin.
The only sound he could hear was the heavy, erratic ebb and flow of his own breathing. He couldn’t hide the panic in it, not even from himself.
He found a pile of broken stones with his toe. Locke felt them out for stability before setting his best foot forward. But, for all his care, the stones shifted treacherously beneath him and he lost his balance.
He grabbed at the wall but there was nothing to hold on to.
He fell to his knees, sharp jags of stone digging into his shins and hands as he reached out to stop himself from sprawling forward again.
The darkness was claustrophobic.
Somewhere though, there was an iron stair set into the tunnel wall, and up that ladder there was an iron manhole cover, and beyond that, the street and air and freedom.
Escaping the suffocating darkness of the tunnel was all he could think about. It was the sum of all things, all fears, the be all, the end all. He had to find a way out of the darkness before it swallowed him whole.
He edged forward on his hands and knees, splashing through the shallow water. He didn’t waste his time trying to stand, there was no point. He would only fall again. It was hard to credit that the city was built on such a foul and stinking foundation.
Somewhere in the dark he heard the chitter of rats.
He really wished that he hadn’t.
He felt the awkward weight of the papers folded up against his belly. His trousers were soaked from the falls and from lying belly down in the shallow sewer water, which in turn meant the papers were soaked. There was no way that they couldn’t be. As he forced himself to crawl on Locke had another prayer on his lips. This time his prayer was simple. This time he prayed that the wool had somehow protected the pages well enough that the ink hadn’t run, or at least where it had run, it hadn’t done so badly as to become illegible. As with every other prayer he had ever made, he wouldn’t know if it had worked until he reached the light. But in this particular instance, he hoped he reached the light sooner rather than later.
He forced himself to crawl on, trying not to think about what he was crawling through.
He could hear the rats getting closer, and growing more agitated and excited as they did, churning up the shallow water with their scurrying paws.
The tunnel shook again, more violently than ever. The tremors shook loose more bricks, which splashed loudly as they came down only to be followed by the susurrus of fine dust and crumbling mortar spilling into the sewer water behind them.
Locke didn’t dare move as another section of the tunnel wall succumbed to fresh tremors and came splashing down. He kept his head down, but that didn’t stop him from feeling the water hit his head. He held his breath, waiting for the tremors to stop.
They didn’t.
They got worse.
This time when they hit it felt as though the entire city was coming down upon his head.
Locke put his hands over his head protectively and curled up, a third and final prayer on his lips.
The tunnels filled with the sound of the earth tearing itself apart. It engulfed him. He didn’t dare move. Bricks came loose, the entire frame of the twisted, as though the tunnel itself were trying to lash around on itself like a whip. It was all Locke could do to keep his head down as the tunnel caved in on top of him. The jagged edges of stones cut into him as they hit, again and again, battering every last ounce of resistance out of his body. And then they stopped. Locke didn’t dare release his held breath. He kept his eyes closed and counted to eleven, adding the extra number for luck. Throughout the duration of the entire count the tunnel was silent, though it was the kind of heavy silence that descends in the wake of a disaster, not the cocoon of comforting quiet.
Deciding it was safe, Locke opened his eyes and raised his head.
Moonlight streamed in through fissures in the tunnel’s roof that ran all the way up to the surface. Against the oppressive dark it was almost painful on his eyes. He blinked back the sting of tears. The tunnel was gone. All around him were piles of rock dust and rubble. The entire sewer tunnel had collapsed and somehow he had come out of it unscathed. Locke crossed himself. Someone was looking out for him. He pushed the rubble aside and stood slowly, careful not to dislodge any of the loose bricks that balanced precariously half-in, half-out of the mortar. The last thing he wanted to do was set off a second landslide and bring the entire roof crashing down on his head.
He moved cautiously into the moonlight and peered up at the crevice that had opened above his head. It was impossible to tell how deep the tear in the earth really was, but it seemed to go on and on indefinitely from where he stood looking up. It was akin to peering up a sooty chimney from the fireplace at the bottom. The fissure was far from a clean tear; he could see ample handholds for a start, and could no doubt climb up to the surface using his back to brace himself once he entered the chimney proper.
He looked back over his shoulder, but there was no going back. The entire tunnel was blocked off.
Had he been twenty feet back he would have been buried alive.
It was no better in front of him, but at least he could conceivably crawl over the banked-up piles of rubble and continue down the sewer tunnel if he couldn’t negotiate the climb. What he couldn’t see was an iron ladder set into the wall or a manhole cover above him. He wasn’t that lucky. He almost laughed at the absurdity of the thought. Given that the tunnel had come crashing down on all sides and somehow he’d come out unscathed, it was more than reasonable to assume he really was that lucky when it counted. Who needed convenience when it was weighed up against a little something like being buried beneath ten ton of rubble?
He scrambled to the top of the nearest pile of rubble, dislodging stones that skittered away and splashed as they reached the bottom of the pile,
and reached up, searching for a handhold, something he could grab onto and use to haul himself up into the fissure.
Locke fumbled around at the edge of the crevice, testing the first handholds he found, carefully applying a little weight to see if they would hold. It wasn’t the same as putting all of his weight on them, but it quickly proved which ones wouldn’t take his weight, which was better than nothing. The problem was it quickly became apparent that none of them would, but he couldn’t reach any of the higher handholds where at least the stones were still packed into the earth.
He scrambled back down the broken stones, and then began sifting through the detritus, looking for flat stones to bank the pile higher. He worked quickly, stacking the stones one atop another, dragging them out of the scree that blocked either end of the tunnel to form a third pile and kept stacking them until the pile was high enough for him to scramble up it and reach into the fissure. He lost track of time. The blood pounded in his temples as he ducked down and stood, ducked and stood, carrying the heavy stones a few feet at a time before dropping them. The tunnel echoed with the clatter of stone on stone. It was punctuated by his grunts. There was comfort in the echoing sound, and in the simple act of physical labour.
Finally, done, he clambered up the mountain of broken stone and collapsed tunnel wall, and reached up into the crevice to find a handhold. He hoisted himself up, kicking at the empty air as he struggled to bring his head and shoulders all the way up into the hole. When his chest came level with his fingertips Locke pushed back, hard, slamming his back into the side of the crevice and locking his elbows so that he spread his weight out over several points of contact. Gasping, he kicked out at the air again, trying to use the momentum caused by the pendulum effect to edge a few more precious inches up into the hole.
London Macabre Page 35
