Thy Fearful Symmetry

by Richard Wright

  “I'm not following you.”

  “Then you're not as bright as I'd hoped.”

  “It's been a long night,” Gemmell snapped. “Normally, I'm an expert in the destruction of mythological beasts that don't have any damn right to be flying around in my city.” A wave of tiredness went through him, and he wished that Malachi really was insane. That way, they could lie down and sleep. That way, he wouldn't have to watch innocent people die anymore.

  Malachi frowned, his head tilted. “Where was the last place you saw a weapon that looked as though it might kill just about anything, Inspector?”

  The penny dropped. “You're not serious.”

  “The angels warred in Heaven. They destroyed each other with those swords. I'm going to get one, and then I'm going to kill Pandora.”

  “Sir?” Summer was behind him, and as soon as he turned he saw what was wrong. Above them, winged, naked bodies flew silently into the fog in all directions. “The angels are leaving.”

  “They have a world to cleanse,” Malachi said behind them. “Time's against them. Now get me into the church. I have a sword to find.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Braced against the rising wind, Clive clenched his fists as the first of the demons leaped from the fog. On his knees where he belonged, Calum recoiled as it splashed in the slush, spraying him with icy water. Crouched on all fours, it had the tortured body of a skinned monkey, powerful muscles bunching and relaxing as it prepared to spring again. Clive couldn't look at its newborn baby head.

  What had it been doing in the fog? Clive had brought the man here to present to his blue angel, so that he could be made to pay for his sins by the proper authority. It was not Clive's place to judge sinners, and it had been presumptuous of him to consider it. When he had seen the city through a thousand eyes at once, he had the briefest glance of the blue angel entering the mist circling the church, face pinched in concentration, and had wondered if the building might be some sort of staging post for angels.

  Romantic notions of winged wonders spreading out from that point, joy following in their wake, were shattered now. Even his dulled hearing caught the sinister noises in the gloom. The crunching, trilling backdrop sang of perversity, and pain inflicted for its own sake. If the angel had entered this cloud of evil, it could only have been to challenge what it contained.

  More demons hurtled out of the fog, splashing to the ground in front of his prisoner with unnerving poise. The wind alone should have unbalanced them mid-flight.

  How long since the angel entered the cloud?

  Long enough. They had overwhelmed it.

  His enemy stared at the pack, twenty or thirty strong now. Clive expected to see relief on his face, for they surely served the same masters, not the hollow despair that made Clive remember what it was like to feel cold.

  Calum brought his arms up, holding them out to the side as he tilted his head back. The Christ-like pose infuriated Clive, who stepped forward to lash out with his foot.

  The demons tensed their shoulders and necks, opened their toothless mouths, and screamed.

  Even with his hearing impaired, the pain was intense, throwing Clive's balance as he stepped from the kerb to the road. He was so closely entwined with the gifted that they too stumbled, a vast synchronised misstep that sent some splashing to the ground, dragging others with them.

  Despite stiff legs, Clive recovered his balance in time to see blood sluicing down the prisoner's neck from his ears, pain scored into his face.

  Satisfaction surged through him.

  Panic followed. This wasn't how it should be. Clive was no lackey of Hell, delivering their errand boys back to them.

  What would Heather want me to do?

  The thought came from nowhere, striking him deep. The answer was so simple and convincing, so potent an antidote to confusion, that he acted on it instantly.

  Stepping forward, Clive looked down at the demons, who stopped screaming to stare balefully up at him.

  “You can't have him,” Clive said. “He isn't for you.”

  Bunching their haunches, the demons launched themselves at him.

  Gemmell crept alongside the wall of the church, his willpower devoted to keeping his feet moving in the wet grass while primordial instincts were trying to make him sprint away. There was no space in his terror-crammed brain to analyse why he was doing this, or how Malachi Jones had convinced him that the inside of the church was the place they most wanted to be.

  At least everything was quiet. While the fog on the other side of the churchyard wall persisted, the monkey-demons were gone. From within the church, the sounds of slaughter had died, presumably because there was nobody left to kill.

  Gemmell hoped that meant that there were no straggling angels left, even though they were only going inside in order to find one. At least that way, his conscience would be appeased. Malachi offered a way to help his city, and Gemmell was trying to follow it through. It wouldn't be his fault if the angels were gone, and their swords with them. He could tell himself that he had tried, then finally go home to his boy.

  Summer followed behind him, intent and terrified, Malachi's hand on her arm. How the man was even standing was a mystery, but after his evening of full-on miracles, a little superhuman endurance scarcely fazed him.

  Something wet and leathery scraped the tarmac of the road bare metres away, and he froze, his mouth drying. Force of will was not enough to part the gloom and reveal the owner of that sound, and the noise did not recur.

  He was going to have to start moving again, so made himself lift his foot. It felt very heavy, but he got himself going. One hand trailing against the damp stone of the church wall, he reached the corner of the building and stopped again, his heart hammering.

  “Sir,” Summer whispered, but it sounded far too loud.

  “Maybe we should go back to the car, Sergeant,” he hissed, arms shaking with bottled hysteria. “We could grab the megaphone, and announce our presence properly.”

  “Inspector,” Malachi used the word easily, but there was an irritating lack of respect underlying it. “We might not have much time.” Gemmell knew he was being used, that he was just a convenient pair of eyes to this man, but that was fine as long as he got what he needed in return. It wasn't really a magic sword he sought, just a way to be useful, to throw even a small spanner into the plans that gods and monsters had developed for his city. While Malachi offered him that, it didn't mean he was going to let himself be patronised.

  Stepping around the corner, Gemmell found the churchyard empty. So was the fog.

  No. The fog was full to bursting. He could feel the air straining, as though it was trying to reject them. Just because he couldn't see them, he couldn't let himself forget they were there.

  Not giving the fear another chance to set his legs in stone, he strode to the open doors of the church, convinced he was walking to his death.

  Expecting to face his angelic murderer, he had somehow forgotten the slaughter he had escaped. The abattoir stench that treacled from the darkness into his lungs left him reeling.

  I'm going to die, Calum thought, as the demon in front of him tensed to leap. Snowmelt mixed with its surface veneer of blood, rose droplets dripping to the ground. On his knees, arms outstretched to welcome his fate, he took a deep breath as the demon leaped.

  It missed, flying over his shoulder, and he turned his head in outrage. It's my time, he wanted to shriek. Where are you going? Living with the horror of what his afterlife would be was too much. Better to face it, than taint whatever life he had left with constant fear.

  The creature thudded into Clive's still chest, sending the walking corpse staggering backwards as it wrested hold of his arm and held tight. Clive thrashed silently at it with his free hand.

  The rest of the malformed pack sprang, passing inches over Calum's head, and he threw himself backwards into the freezing slush. Rolling onto his front, he watched the first punch into Clive, taking the man down. The rest of t
he demons fell on him like homicidal hail.

  Behind the thrashing pile of demons burying the man, dozens, if not hundreds, of the walking dead swayed. Calum wanted to scream at them. What was stopping them rushing forward? Clumsy and awkward though they were, strength of numbers alone could win this. For the first time, Calum realised that Clive must be controlling them directly. Distracted as he was, he was unable to guide his troops to his own assistance. The demons in the fray shrieked childish cries of hate. Every few seconds, pieces of flesh shot out of the melee, soaring into the fog, or slapping against the walls and windows of the tenements on either side of the road. Clive was being torn apart.

  Scream, Calum thought at the dead man. If you screamed you'd sound human, and maybe I'd be able to move my legs and help you. Madness. All he would achieve was his own swift slaughter. He pushed himself up anyway, fingers sliding through the slush. Flinching back as some anonymous piece of meat flew past his face, he reminded himself that this was the man whose madness would have driven him to kill a little girl, who had cut up his own wife and left her to bleed. This was a man who would sacrifice Calum to these same creatures.

  This was a man who had already died.

  Yet he was being attacked, and some confused part of him was still human, and Calum was going to do his best to help.

  As he stepped forward, the demons scattered, and for a delirious moment he thought they were running scared of him. Then he saw the smear of meat they had left behind. With the limbs and head torn off and flung away, the torso was barely recognisable. It looked like roadkill, left in heavy traffic. Whatever perverse extension of life Clive had been granted, the demons had torn it out of him.

  Now they stared at Calum, and behind them the masses of the walking dead orientated themselves. Calum wondered what would happen now the puppet master was gone, and as they shuffled towards him, moans spiralling in the wind, he found out.

  Alone in the snow and fire, the fog at his back, Calum shook as the armies of hell approached him.

  Malachi was living in the deepest blackness. It wasn't like closing your eyes, where light filtered through the eyelids and told you whether it was day or night. This dark was absolute, and filled with pain.

  Were his other senses really more powerful now that his eyes were gone, or was he just paying them more attention? It was difficult to tell, with adrenaline-brewed fear, pain, and anticipation amping him up. Regardless, he knew he was inside the church. If the sound of Inspector Gemmell throwing up to the right of him wasn't enough, then the heavy smell of blood and burned flesh would have clinched things.

  “We're here,” Summer said, her voice dull. The urge to be silent had not diminished, despite Gemmell splattering the stone floor noisily. Summer was less affected, and Malachi thought she was going into shock. Even through his coat, her hand on his good arm was too cold.

  “Good. Stay here.”

  “But…”

  “Make sure your Inspector stays too.”

  The hand on his arm vanished, and he struggled to keep his balance.

  Learning that Pandora was not a demon had shaken him, but in the end it hardly mattered. She had taken Stacey from him, angel or not, and she would die for it. He had not chosen to do this out of some innate goodness. He was an instrument of revenge, and knew it. All he needed was the right weapon. This objective put him in control again, and that mattered more to Malachi than anything else. Once upon a time, on an evening when he did not have control, Stacey had lost her face and her mind. Since that day, nothing more than absolute control had satisfied him.

  Malachi stepped forward, and something squished beneath his boot heel. He slid his foot forward, noting how wet and sticky the floor was. It didn't matter where he was going, as long as he put some distance between himself and the police. As soon as he was through the door, he reached for the wall and turned left.

  Inside, the smell was worse, and he paused to let dizziness wash over him. Once it passed, he got moving, occasionally kicking soft, wet lumps of body, his fingers dragging on sticky blood. When he reached the far wall, he turned again, moving along the length of the room. Malachi didn't believe for a second that the angels were all gone. Granted, it was a big world, and there were plenty of people in it requiring judgement, but how much time had passed since…

  Amidst the reek of innards, shit, and piss, Malachi caught a powerful scent of cookies, honey, and goodness. A gentle heat brushed the right side of his face. Somewhere behind him, Gemmell swore.

  Malachi turned, dropping to his knees in front of the angel, and began to weep.

  The army of the dead advancing towards him in sombre procession looked numberless to Calum. Closer still, the demons with the heads of babies crouched, ready to send him to Hell, where their kin would take him to their bosoms in an everlasting embrace of torture.

  Calum hungered for it, unable to witness any more evidence of the destruction he had wrought. Taking a breath, he stepped forward, tired of fighting so hard for just a few more hours of tortuous freedom. Perhaps in Hell, the pain would make him forget. That would be worth every agony. Tears wet his cheeks as the demons coiled to pounce, baby eyes declaring that his time had come.

  “Come on then,” he whispered. As last words went, they were far from epic, but come morning there would be nobody left alive to remember him anyway.

  Before the demons launched, bullets of muscle ready to tear into him, a distant voice drew his attention up, above the crowd.

  Two bodies were dropping from the roof of a four-storey tenement at the far end of the street. When they reached the second floor, each snapped open a pair of wings. Raising his hands to his eyes, squinting against the wind, he watched them sweep low over the crowd.

  Ambrose and Pandora. Blood flushed his cheeks, heat seeping into his chest, and the weight in his limbs that had made him feel more a part of the army approaching him than humanity, lightened.

  That's hope, he thought, astonished. That's what hope feels like.

  The two figures shot towards him, wings barely twitching, and he could just make out their faces. Ambrose's was strained and serious, while Pandora's was peaceful. Calum had never seen her eyes open before, and if anything was worth trying to live just a few more hours for, it surely had to be those eyes.

  As they approached the front ranks of the dead, Ambrose gave a casual flick of his wings and crashed down into them, vanishing from sight. Calum stepped forward in fear, but then a body flew from the crowd, straight up into the air, and it wasn't Ambrose. Calum remembered the casual ease with which the demon had thrown Clive through Minna Gilroy's flat.

  Movement caught his eye, a blood red streak, and by the time he realised one of the monkey-things had leaped at him, it had already pounded into his chest, a hammer blow that paralysed him, leaving him empty of air and unable to draw more. Staggering backwards, his hands trying to find purchase on the thing's blood-wet flesh as it tore at his arms, he stared into baby eyes and knew he was dead.

  Something else slammed into him, knocking him onto his back and leaving him stunned. They had fallen on Clive like a red hail of hate, he remembered.

  The demon vanished, wrenched away, and Calum saw milky flesh and feathers. Able to fill his lungs, he looked up to see vast white wings folded on Pandora's back, as she stood in silent challenge to the monkey-things. The torn corpse of the one that had attacked him dangled from her outstretched fist.

  She dropped it into the slush, blood dripping from her fingers, as the demons screamed and flew at her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Christ,” Gemmell whispered. Having been pulled back by Summer, they each framed the doorway, peering round to see inside. When Malachi entered, they saw nothing, the darkness mercifully masking what looked like a congregation in hell. The few flagstones illuminated by the poor light outside were awash with blood, meat, and worse.

  Then they did see him, lit by a warm, golden light emanating from behind a pillar, and Gemmell's legs turned to
water. As the angel stepped out, standing over Malachi with its blazing sword held aloft, he felt his heart pounding at triple speed. He wanted to shout a warning, but couldn't.

  Malachi dropped to his knees, sobbing, and Gemmell remembered how he had felt when the angels descended from the heavens. How much of that was Malachi experiencing? Did he know what a wondrous sight he was missing? Was it worse, being unable to shed tears?

  “Please,” Malachi's voice was high with grief, and Gemmell knew the man was not the bringer of hope he had briefly believed in. “Please, take me! You can't do this to me, and then leave! Take me too!”

  The angel paused, frowning. “Mortal, I have done nothing to you.” Honey-sweet, the voice both soothed and sickened.

  “You took my eyes, you bastard. You broke my arm, and took my eyes.” Gemmell wanted to turn from the piteous sight, but it was too compelling.

  “Not I, mortal.”

  “One of your brothers then. You know I'm telling the truth. You can tell.”

  The angel lowered its sword, staring at the cripple at its feet. “It is not our policy, to inflict suffering.”

  “You can't leave me like this!”

  “I will not leave you. You will stand before the Almighty for judgement.”

  Malachi stopped sniffling, and his voice rose in hope. “Will I see Him?”

  The angel didn't answer, instead placing one powerful hand on Malachi's head. Gemmell bit his tongue, knowing there was enough strength in that hand to crush a skull.

  Malachi gasped. The angel staggered.

  “It is done, mortal. Remove your bandages. Prepare to witness your Maker.” Gemmell thought that the angel sounded weaker, even as it raised its sword two-handed for the killing blow. Something had happened, but he didn't know what.

  Malachi slipped his sling off his broken arm, and stretched it out. Gemmell tried to tell himself this was demonstration of Malachi's impossible endurance to pain. When Malachi deftly plucked the bandage from across his face, there was no denying what had happened.