Thy Fearful Symmetry

by Richard Wright

  “Turn right here.” Malachi did, and the background noise of the massacre dimmed a little.

  “Is there a window?”

  “Yes.”

  “Open it. Quietly.”

  There was a pause, and her hand did not leave his elbow. “You can't be serious.”

  Behind them, there was a bang, and the rumble of confusion from the nave turned to ear-splitting shrieks of terror. The door to the stairwell was open. Jackie's hand vanished from his elbow. Standing there helplessly, waiting for a blade to skewer him from behind, Malachi focussed on the echo of warmth from her fingers.

  Wood sliding against wood told him the window was open, and a sharp slice of breeze hit him. Not waiting for her, he stepped towards it as he heard someone on the stairs behind him. When he had his hand on the wall, he stopped. “You first,” he whispered.

  “I... Mr Jones, I can see…”

  “I don't give a fuck what you see.” The footsteps were in the hallway, padding towards them. They reminded Malachi of a big cat, stalking. Something soft brushed the walls out there, and he thought it might be wings.

  Jackie didn't move. Malachi took a guess, and pushed her, feeling her body drop away from him. Wondering if the angel was in the doorway yet, perhaps watching his attempts with a cruel smile, he hooked a leg up, fumbled for the sill, and swung himself over.

  The fall took a long time, or so it felt in his dark world, and the flash of pain when he landed on his broken arm spiralled him into a deeper blackness still.

  Gemmell froze as the angels swept forward, a thunderhead of swords and wings. The angel who was going to kill him was female, with red, curling hair and small, delicate breasts. While Gabriel's eyes were full of tears, hers were perfectly clear. There was no hate or rage in them, just peaceful acceptance of the way things were.

  The wave of heat rolling ahead of her hit him, his limbs remembered how to move, and his mind flashed back to the riot of nineteen-ninety. Gemmell braced himself, hardly able to think as she raised her sword.

  She swung, and he ducked, fiery steel skimming above his head. Unable to slow herself, she ran full pelt into him, all hot flesh and muscle. The collision threw them hard against the doors, which burst inwards under their weight.

  Gemmell and the angel skidded across the floor, rolling together as the other angels trampled past. Gemmell found his feet first, the angel a second behind him. They stared at one another, and finally there was emotion in her eyes, a hint of sadness. Gemmell knew he couldn't fight this thing, probably couldn't even hurt it.

  She raised her sword.

  The screaming began, and both he and the angel turned towards the worshippers. Gemmell had almost forgotten they were there. Lit only by the flickering of the angelic swords, the slaughter began.

  Bodies carpeted the floor. The angels were machines of death, elegant and brutal at the same time. They busied around the nave, swords flashing. Gabriel stopped in the centre of the room, calmly searching faces. When the angels killed, they did not stab, or slice. They cleaved. At Gemmell's feet lay a woman with no legs, and he wondered stupidly where they had gone to. She looked up at him with stunned eyes, blinking, hardly aware that her intestines steamed on the stone floor. The smell of meat and shit hit Gemmell hard, and he coughed, staggering.

  An old woman on her knees, hands clasped in prayer, died with dignity as a sword went in beneath the arm of her cardigan, and came out at the opposite shoulder. The blade was hot enough to cauterise the wound, thickening the seared meat smell filling the building.

  A few feet from him, a man wheezed through a crushed windpipe as an angel lifted him by the throat. The breath ended in a rattle as its sword punched through his heart.

  Gemmell had no more time to observe. His own red-haired slayer turned back, and readied her sword. Knowing he had nowhere to go, that dodging was only delaying the inevitable, he thought of Barbara, and his boy, Jamie. I'll see you soon, he thought.

  A shape lunged out of the church at the angel, landing on its back, wrapping hands around its eyes. It was the narrow-faced boy who had mouthed off earlier. Gemmell tensed to help, but the boy's fierce gaze told him not to waste his time. The angel bucked, trying to dislodge the young man, smashing into a pew and overbalancing. As they hit the ground, the boy still holding tight, Gemmell did something that he would regret until the moment of his death.

  He ran for the door.

  Emerging into the fresh air, he felt as though he had been in the church, watching the massacre of those in his care, for hours. Skidding to a halt on the path, he found Leviathan still grinning at the gate. The monkey-things were back, lining the wall, bleeding baby-faces watching him cruelly, and Gemmell knew that they would be all around the church, waiting.

  “You've come to discuss your flaying, I presume,” said Leviathan. “I’ve had a few ideas, not one of which involves harsh language.”

  Gemmell gritted his teeth, biting back the reply, and bolted for the path along the side of the church. As he turned the corner, he saw that he had been right, and demons perched on the wall all the way to the rear.

  Gemmell ran along the path anyway, knowing it was futile, as the demons opened their mouths to scream.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Ranked along the street, the gifted opened their mouths and shrieked, fingers scratching wet, bloodless furrows into their faces and bodies. Fire danced on the rising wind, sweeping along on its accompanying howl, as they flailed at themselves.

  At the heart of the crowd, his fury fuelling the bodies around him, Clive screamed into Calum's face while the man recoiled, hands up to protect himself, his flesh a clammy white and his pupils pinpoint narrow. Grabbing him by the shoulders, Clive drew him close, trying to regain control of his own body, venting his anger through the sea of other flesh at his command. While the gifted continued his throes of fury, he managed to swallow his own voice. Calum lashed his forehead into Clive's face, shattering his nose. It didn't matter. While he felt the cartilage bend and snap, it didn't hurt, and he cared little about his physical form. The body would soon be a disposable commodity, when his spirit roamed free in Heaven.

  Still, the resistance was annoying, and so Clive responded in kind, pulling back his head, and ramming it forward. Since moving to Scotland, Clive had been amused to hear a head butt called a “Glasgow Kiss”, but in so close an embrace he thought the term appropriate.

  Calum's head snapped back, and fresh blood streamed down his chin. When he went limp, hands cupping his face, Clive yanked Calum's shirt out of his jeans. Calum realised what was happening, and shoved on Clive's shoulders, trying to force him away. Two of the gifted stepped forward to seize his arms, holding him prone. Another two dropped to their knees and wrapped their arms around his legs. He struggled, but was helpless.

  Clive held Calum’s shirt up, revelling in every appalled flinch and jerk his enemy made. With his other hand, he stroked the stomach, tracing the abdominal muscles with his fingers, stopping at the bottom of the rib cage. Calum's breathing was furious, and finally he resorted to begging, as Clive had Chapter Twenty-Nineknown he would.

  “Please, you don't have to do this. Whatever you think I've done, you don't have to do it.” Clive could barely hear him whining over the storm, and didn't have the fine control over his facial muscles to sneer at what he made out.

  He pressed his fingers harder against the skin and muscle of the abdomen, ignoring the incoherent shrieking this prompted, feeling the skin reach its point of maximum tension.

  What am I doing?

  Clive stepped back, staring at Calum, whose tears were streaking the dirt and blood on his face in long, swerving runnels. Was that how Ambrose had been tricked then? Had it been so subtle that he still didn't know it had happened? Clive had no idea how Calum had done it, and yet he had almost given the least worthy man he had ever met the key to eternal life.

  Bidding the gifted to follow, ignoring the hollow confusion on his enemy's face, Clive turned and shambl
ed along the street.

  As the screams of the demons lining the wall died away, Gemmell pushed to his feet, fresh blood dribbling from his ears. Having lost track of Leviathan, but knowing that he had managed with his usual tact to make an enemy of somebody extremely powerful, he thought that staying still was a bad idea, even within the confines of the churchyard.

  He was not forgetting the flock of homicidal angels determined to fill Christ's waiting room before morning. The instincts that had driven him into the police force in the first place, the compulsion to protect those who could not protect themselves, made him hesitate, but there was nothing he could do. Armed only with good intentions, he would walk into the church and be cut down, like all the others. He could only run, and hated himself for it.

  Rounding the rear corner of the church, he saw the car still perched halfway through the wall, monkey-things sitting patiently on its roof like exhibits in a grotesque safari park. He almost missed Summer entirely, crouched as she was in the weeds at the base of the building.

  She was more alert, seizing his arm at the elbow and wrist, and wrenching him into a classic arm lock. Bent double, fire shooting along the burning muscles in his neck and upper back, he cried out. “Summer! Bloody hell, woman!”

  She released him instantly, and they both turned to the row of demons now laughing in idiotic, high-pitched voices. “Sorry sir, I...”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “So did I. Think you were dead, I mean.”

  “I should be. Give it time.” Gemmell smiled, delighted to see her, and bent over the body she had been kneeling beside. The blinded man they had found upstairs. Gemmell glanced up at the window. “Bloody hell.”

  “It was his idea, sir. Malachi Jones. He's quite insistent, when he's awake. One of the angels was right behind us. I don't know why it didn't follow us. I mean, they've got wings.”

  “Well, they aren't short of victims inside. They think they're sending souls for Christ's judgement and a place in Heaven.”

  “That doesn't sound like a bad place to be.” Summer was eyeing the demons along the wall, and Gemmell didn't know whether he should be concerned that they had scarcely fazed her.

  The man in the weeds moaned, and Gemmell noticed the misshapen arm beneath his coat. Sharp shapes poked at the sleeve. “Well, we've got nothing to do but wait for them to find us, so you can start looking forward to harp lessons.”

  “You think you'll go to Heaven, sir?”

  Gemmell paused. “On the assumption that anywhere's better than here Summer, I don't really care.”

  “I do,” said the man at his feet, and Gemmell jerked backwards as Malachi Jones sat bolt upright, his lips set with bloodless determination.

  Corpses bore Calum aloft, hands on his shoulders and the back of his legs carrying him at head height. Every now and again he craned his neck, trying to see between his feet, but the sea of heads in front and around him was disorientating. There must be hundreds of them, with more joining every second. A quote kept going through his mind, ludicrous given his situation but compelling all the same. When there is no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the earth. What was that from? It sounded biblical, like something he should know, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

  Calum blinked furiously. Winds tore at him, and the flecks of fire that sailed on them were hotter and more frequent than before. An explosion punched the city somewhere nearby, and a second later flames bloomed over the top of the buildings on his left. There had been a petrol station there that morning.

  Snuffling blood, he pulled his feet upwards, trying to see if there was any weakness in the grip of those holding him, but found no give. Even if he wriggled free, how was he supposed to fight through the dead mob of snatching, biting flesh barring his escape?

  Above him, behind the falling fires, dark clouds smothered the stars, and Calum knew that darkness would soon embrace the earth. In the next few hours he was going to die, and when he did he would go to hell. Would that be worse than where he was now?

  Apart from the clammy touch of the dead, the smell was fast becoming overpowering, even through his blocked, ruined nose. Calum had lost track of the number of times he had either been sick, or dry heaved. Not too long ago, he had been enjoying a cup of tea, in a flat, with two normal people. They had talked, and while they had discussed crazy things, the manner of the discussion had for a short time been mundane. Calum hungered for the mundane, for a slice of normality. He didn't want to be the destroyer of worlds, or friends with angels and demons, or held captive by mad zombies. All he wanted was to sleep in his bed, knowing that outside the stars were shining, and everything was right and proper. It disturbed him that he could not remember what clean sheets felt like against his skin.

  Everything flipped over as he was thrown to the ground.

  Through surrender rather than design, Calum went limp, rolling through the icy slush on the road, relishing the clinging wetness on his flesh. Only when he realised what he was lying in front of, did he force himself on to his knees.

  Calum was at the edge of the fog, dead men ranked behind him, Clive at his side.

  “Here,” Clive shouted at the stillness. “I have him here! The betrayer, the one who hid Ambrose! I've brought him for you!”

  All Calum could hear was the storm.

  Then, from deep inside the fog, tiny nightmares leaped at him.

  When Malachi woke, his arm so far beyond pain that he felt only white, cold nausea, Summer was speaking.

  “You think you'll go to Heaven, sir?”

  A gruff male voice answered, the Glaswegian accent resigned. It could only be her inspector.

  “On the assumption that anywhere's better than here Summer, I don't really care.”

  Malachi gritted his teeth. Had Melissa been the only person ready to fight for the world?

  “I do,” he told himself, surprised to hear the words spoken aloud. Hauling himself into a sitting position, he paused to see whether he was going to throw up. He didn't. “I care, and I'm going to stop it happening.” Using his one good arm to balance himself, he pushed himself to his feet.

  “Mr Jones, you shouldn't…”

  “Stand up and fight? You want to lie down here and wait for death? Go ahead. I have an angel to kill.” Demon or angel, Pandora had to die. Perhaps Stacey had been taken from him simply to put him in this place, at this time, for this task. Melissa had believed that killing Pandora would save the world. Time to find the truth in that.

  “Mr Jones?” This was the Inspector, and there was something in his voice that Malachi respected. Here was a man used to getting things done. “My name is James Gemmell. While your fighting spirit is admirable, you're not making sense. If you want to kill angels, I can point you in the right direction, but there are dozens of the bastards, all armed with bloody big swords, and they're not in the mood to spare the crippled.”

  Malachi snorted. “Do my injuries make a difference to my chances?”

  There was a pause. “Put like that, you have as much chance as anybody.”

  “Help me then.” In the background, surrounding them, he heard a strange, collective shuffling. “Are we alone?”

  “We're being watched, but they can't cross on to church ground. The angels are busy indoors.”

  “Good. We need to find a way to…”

  “I haven't agreed to anything yet.”

  Malachi held still. While he didn't like to admit it, he wasn't going to get far without somebody pointing him in the right direction.

  “I want to help you, but I'm not going to. I don't know how many hours I have left to live, and I'm going to need a good reason to spend them leading a blind man on a fool's quest. I'm tired, I'm hurt, and I don't like having my time wasted. If you want my help, you'll stop giving me bloody orders, and tell me what you're doing in the middle of all this.”

  Malachi gaped, and a tiny part of him rejoiced that finally, somebody worth listening to had given him an order. Aware of tim
e slipping away, he let Summer sit him on the wet grass, and began his story.

  Gemmell listened as Malachi Jones spoke, at the same time wondering why they were still alive. The angels must have finished their cleaving work in the church by now. There had been silence from within the building for long minutes, and he expected to see them round the corner at any second, flaming swords held high.

  Yet they didn't come, and the story Malachi was telling drew him in. The man was remarkable. He had spent months researching, training, preparing to revenge his wife, and just two days ago Gemmell would have had him sectioned and put away for doctors to study.

  Today, he didn't give the story's credibility a second thought, and instead found the man's drive and purpose more than a little terrifying. When the story reached the psychic called Melissa, and the path she had placed Malachi on, Gemmell began to pace a tight little line as he listened.

  Malachi finished his taut, expressionless tale just before Summer and Gemmell had entered it, and Summer shook her head. “What were you expecting to do? You burst in, and she destroyed you. What was your plan?”

  “I didn't have one. Everything moved too quickly, and I was expecting a lower demon, not an angel. There are rituals that would have helped me with a demon.”

  Gemmell nodded. “But you had no idea how to destroy an angel. What makes you think that, if we can even find her, you'll have better luck a second time?”

  Malachi swayed, and Gemmell wondered how much strength of mind it took to make yourself function with so much damage done to your body. “You know where we can find a weapon that will kill an angel.”