When Stephen turned, there was bottled madness in his face. “Why did you bring us into this,” he hissed. Calum had no energy to answer. “We were fine until you arrived.” Stephen lunged forward, seizing him around the shoulders with one powerful arm and hurling him to the ground. Behind them, the door to the flat burst open, throwing Mary aside. She looked at her boyfriend in horror.
Stephen paid her no heed, pointing at Calum. The dead stopped advancing. “There he is. He's yours. Take him, and leave us the fuck alone!”
Calum looked up at the man, who had rescued him from these things only an hour ago, and so was barely aware of the single zombie that shuffled a few steps closer to them.
When he did look back, and recognised the corpse staring down at him with hunger in its eyes as Clive Huntley, he finally found the strength to scream.
Pandora's hair was tossed around her head by the breeze as Ambrose kissed her. Brushing his hand across the silk skin of her cheek, kissing her still, he tried to remember how they had come to the statue. There had been an explosion of the most sheer, complete joy he had ever experienced, a rapture that blew conscious thought from his mind, and they had taken to the air, soaring, and chasing, and spiralling, and finally coming to roost on the column. Their lips had met, and they had cried as they kissed, and it was an act too precious to bring to an end, ever.
For two hours, they had held each other, only the movement of their lips indicating that they were not statues themselves. There were benefits to not having to breathe. Forty-one metres below, at the base of the towering column supporting the statue of Earl Grey, homeless men drank cheap wine. Beside the shutters of the two shopping malls facing into Monument Square, teenage girls made plans for getting served in the bars blaring music along the adjoining streets, and teenage boys passed cigarettes between themselves. Sirens blazed in the background, and stars shone above.
It was a perfect moment.
Pandora brought it to an end, placing her gentle hands to his chest and stepping back from him.
“I remember Michael,” she whispered, her voice crystal sweet. Ambrose nodded, content to be holding her hands and looking into her piercing blue eyes. “I remember that you stopped him.” Her slim, perfect eyebrows furrowed. “You could have been destroyed.”
“I wasn't.”
She nodded, smiling. “Good. You carried me, and then nothing, for a long time. I knew that weeks were passing, and I wasn't part of them, and…” She put a hand to her mouth, and Ambrose could guess what part of her memories she had reached. Pulling her towards him, he held her as her body stiffened with grief for the man she had crippled. On the dark streets, revellers looked around to see who was crying.
“You weren't yourself. I should have been there to stop you hurting anybody.” Ambrose let her cry as he stared down at the lights of the city, wishing he could go back and be better, stronger, faster. Eventually, she relaxed in his arms. Kissing her hair, he tilted her head up to look at him. “I let you down, love. I was supposed to be good, for you, but I hurt people. I did everything wrong, and now we have nothing to look forward to, nowhere to go.”
As she examined his face, she smiled, gently. “I don't believe you.”
Guilt rose, and he leaned on the railings at the edge of the column. “You should.”
“Ambrose, look at me.” When he refused to turn, she took him by the arm, and pulled him round. “No, I do believe you. I believe you weren't perfect. I believe you fell into temptation. I believe you hurt people.” Ambrose winced, looked up at the stars. How could she stay with him, knowing all that?
“You think I want you to be an angel. You're wrong. I fell in love with you, Ambrose, a fallen angel who tried to climb a little way back up.” Tears welled up in the demon, and he lifted a finger to her lips to stop her going on. Pandora batted his hand playfully away. “Ambrose, for everything you've done since I began to sleep, I forgive you. I hope you’ll forgive me for those times when I can't quite change my spots either.”
Somewhere, a busker struck a jaunty tune on a fiddle. It didn't fit the moment perfectly, but to Ambrose it was beautiful.
Clive let Calum scream, engulfed with strange envy at the hot flush of red across his enemy’s face, the moisture coating his mouth and teeth, the tears in his eyes. All of these were a part of his own distant mortality, and nostalgia made him want to reach into the pathetic, cowering man before him and rip them out, if only so he could taste them for himself again.
Yet Clive saw all of these symptoms of humanity not through one pair of eyes, but as a single-entity mob, from every body standing still and silent along the street. The difference between Calum and himself was the difference between godhood and mortality.
Holding his own corpse still, Clive stepped his gifted closer to the three humans, reaching out for the woman and the man who had thrown Calum to the ground. The woman stared at the man with sullen shock, and offered no resistance when the gifted seized her arms. Her boyfriend tried to fight free, despite his obvious injury. Clive's first two gifted were thrown aside by the big man, who backed towards the open door. Clive had no time for distractions, and rushed the entire front row of corpses forward. His concentration strained with the effort of coordinating too many limbs, charging the same target from too many directions. It was like trying to pat his head and rub his stomach at the same time, multiplied a hundredfold. Two of him stumbled and fell, and others of him trampled on his own backs, jerking him further off balance. Weight of numbers was his advantage, and even while some parts of him fell before they reached the screaming, kicking man at the door, other parts dragged him to the ground.
Calum was coming to his senses a little, and climbed shakily to his feet. “Don't,” he said hoarsely. “Whatever you're thinking of, if you're even still in there, please don't do it.”
Clive was confused at the suggestion. Where else would he be? Brows furrowing, he tried to make his lungs, mouth, tongue, and teeth, work together. Speech should not be so difficult, when he could control the bodies of hundreds, all at once. “I…” He started again, noticing Calum's eyes widen at the rasp of his voice. “I wouldn't worry about them.” To his own ears, it sounded clumsy, but at least he was understood.
The big man was limp in the arms of the gifted, his face wet with tears. “I gave him to you,” he said, the whine of terror making him sound a third of his age. “It's him you want, isn't it? I gave him to you. Please set us free.”
Clive nodded happily. At last, somebody understood. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I will.” The man's face lit up with fresh hope, at the same moment as the woman's screams ripped the night apart. Clive did not need to tell the gifted clasping her to proceed. All he needed was to relax his control of them, and their urges took over. Shredding her abdomen with their fingers and nails, they sent hot blood splashing to the slush soaked pavement. The man did not understand what was happening at first, and then his own flesh was pulled rudely apart, sinews tearing beneath filthy hands. One of the gifted bent, and gnawed beneath the ribs with his teeth.
Bug eyed, jaw working silently, Calum threw himself towards the woman. Clive turned four of the gifted to intercept. While the woman choked on her own blood and bile, Calum struggled with the four, his mouth tightly closed, and for a second Clive thought he would have to deploy more of the gifted to overpower him.
No, he went limp in defeat, as the others went limp in death. Opening his mouth, Calum threw up a watery, putrid mess.
As the man and woman climbed to their feet beside their discarded hearts, Clive stepped up behind the man he hated more than anything else in the world. “You see the gift? I was chosen to pass it out by an angel. I am something you will never be, and this,” he pointed with pride at the slack jawed, empty faces surrounding them, “is something you will never have.”
Calum turned his head slowly, vomit still smearing his chin, and shook his head numbly. “You're insane,” he whispered, and Clive's fury at those two words burst like a storm, swe
eping his restraint away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Do you still love me?” The wind buffeting the top of the column stole his words, but she understood. Having unburdened all that had happened since the archangel Michael was destroyed, Ambrose waited for her answer. It was one thing to profess love in ignorance, but now she had the facts.
Pandora took a deep breath. “Of course I do. I wish I'd been there, changed things, but I don't blame you.” Sitting beside him on Earl Grey's left foot, she put a tentative arm around him, and guided his head into her lap. Her fingers stroked his hair, and he relaxed.
“I tried, love. I can't tell you how hard…”
“Shh. I know.” There was a long, easy silence, the night wrapping them in privacy. Pandora broke it with a whisper. “You know we have to fix things, don't you?”
Not a conversation he wanted to have. “I don't know how. In twenty-four months, give or take, God's going to end the world. How are we supposed to stop Him? We can't change what will happen. It's part of our history now. Everything we'll do has already happened.”
“I know. But eventually we'll be at the same moment where we stepped into Limbo. From then on, anything could happen. Nothing after that is fixed for us. And we have two years to get ready.”
Ambrose shook his head, eyes closed. “Prepare what, love? You think I should challenge God to duke it out, one on one, Marquis of Queensberry rules, fate of the universe to the winner? It's romantic, I grant you, but...”
Pandora swatted him playfully, and he smiled. “It can't be us.”
“Well who else? We don't even know we'll survive the next two years. Think about it. In Glasgow right now, we'll soon be falling in love. At some point, our masters find out about that, and start looking for us. Leviathan and Michael track us down, and we go into hiding. They'll still be looking for us, despite that. I know that our other selves hide in the church, and that works, but how can we be sure that we won't be found here in the past? Where can we hide? Perhaps we only survived in the church because they had already found us here.”
“I hate talking about time, it's so confusing.”
Ambrose turned onto his back, and smiled up at her. “Isn't it just?”
“Wait. We do survive. At least, you do. You're going to rescue the priest. Whatever happens between now and then, you're going to pull your neighbour off him, and save the little girl. You haven't done that yet, but it's part of the web of events that let us come here. It can't fail to happen.”
Ambrose sat up, swivelling around to face her. She was right. And if he survived, there had to be a good chance she would too. “You beautiful genius.” Reaching out, he flicked a strand of hair back from her face. “You're right.” Immunity was still his, at least for the next two years.
“You save your friend Calum, so that he can bring us the box, and we can escape to here.” Ambrose nodded, shocked that the word “friend” actually applied. He had a beautiful lover, for whom he would do anything, and a friend. Who would have thought?
“I don't even know if he's alive, love. The last time I saw him, he was in trouble.”
“Did you see him die?”
“No, but…”
“Then there's hope. Every time we find ourselves at a dead end, he opens a door for us. He's been our key since you met him.”
Ambrose was confused. “I don't know what we'd ask him to do. He's just a man. He's not important.”
Pandora's eyes widened. “You're wrong.” Standing, she paced back and forward along the railing, and it was bliss to see her so animated. “Oh my word, Ambrose, you're completely wrong.”
Ambrose laughed, he couldn't help it. “I'm glad that delights you.”
She stopped pacing. “It does. It really does. Your friend Calum isn't just a man. He's the only man we know who might force God to listen.”
Gemmell made a stubborn struggle not to prostrate himself as the angels touched down around him, at least twenty of them, the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen. Where the demon Leviathan was seductive, these beings were pure, and the vision of them filled his heart with courage and glory.
Male and female, all were naked, with sensually powerful bodies. Each had a pair of wings so soft that he wanted to bury his face in them, and huge metal swords with impossible flames licking gently from the edges.
One stood out among all of these silent, wondrous warriors. Taller than the others, standing at least six foot six, he had the physique of an Olympic body builder, and a face that would make movie stars weep. Long, dark hair pillowed to his shoulders, and even awestruck as he was, Gemmell couldn't help wondering what an advertising executive would pay to have this creature in a shampoo commercial. Armed with a flaming sword, the angel carried a shining metal trumpet in his other hand, and Gemmell knew the note it would blow would be the most perfect musical sound ever heard. He wanted to beg the creature to play it.
Touching lightly down, the angel spoke in a deep, soothing voice. “Leviathan,” he said, and there was polite disgust in his voice.
“Gabriel,” the demon sneered. An archangel? Gemmell wished he had paid more attention at Sunday school. Instincts of self-preservation were pushing back to the fore, and he realised he was standing gormlessly between the demon masses and the angels. He tried to step away.
“Where do you go, mortal?” The churchyard had warmed again, the angels bringing such heat with them that the air was heavy with the moisture of evaporating ice and water. Slowly, Gemmell turned, resisting the almost genetic need to kneel. Leviathan had driven him to his knees twice, and he was damned if he was going to do it again unless God showed up in person, and asked nicely.
“You've got business with these things,” he said, staring at the archangel's feet. “I don't want to be in the way.” There was a pause, and Gemmell waited to be dismissed.
When the archangel next spoke, he sounded puzzled. “Of what business do you speak, James Gemmell?” Of course he knows my name, Gemmell thought.
“Banishing. Smiting. That sort of thing.” Try as he might, he couldn't raise his voice above a whisper.
“We are not here for them.” Gabriel spoke gently, as though to a child.
“Then why…”
“This world is their domain now, little one. I am here to ring in the Day of Judgement.”
Gemmell's head jerked up, unconscious defiance on his face. “What?”
Gabriel raised his horn. “We begin with the people inside. We shall cleave their mortal bodies, and send them to the Lamb for judgement.”
Gemmell's mouth flapped. Behind Gabriel, the angels raised their swords, eyes on the door of the church, steam rising from the ground around them. “You can't,” he stuttered. “They're innocent.”
“If that is the case, then Christ shall pass them into Heaven.”
“You're going to kill them?” At the gate, Leviathan watched them, hateful mirth in his eyes, and the Inspector worried for the first time in his life about what was waiting for him beyond death.
“It is their time.” Gabriel's face was expressionless. “It is everybody's time.”
Shaking his head, Gemmell stepped towards the doors, pressing his back to them. Feeling tiny, he found the anger inside that had so recently dimmed, fanned it to a blaze, and gritted his teeth. Gabriel frowned.
“You can't have them,” Gemmell said. “They're under my protection.”
With a sad shake of the head, Leviathan's laughter echoing in the background, Gabriel lifted his trumpet to his lips, and blew.
Gemmell was right. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.
The angels rushed him, swords raised, and he closed his eyes.
“Up! Get me up!” That crystal clear trumpet blast rang in his ears, trying to melt his resolve, ease his anger. Malachi Jones was having none of it. When Jackie didn't come to his aid immediately, he pushed himself up on his own. Whether it was the aspirin or the adrenaline, standing wasn't nearly as difficult as it should have been
. When his arm went out for balance, he found a railing, and realised he had been right. He was at the top of the stairs.
The last thing he wanted to do was go down them.
Malachi had read about this, and if Melissa had been right about the end of the world then the angels represented salvation of a kind he couldn't accept. So far, she had not been wrong.
“Summer, are you still there?”
“That noise…”
Malachi was finding his bearings and balance. Letting go of the railing, weak on his feet, he flailed his hand down at the point her voice had come from, connecting solidly. She cried out. “What the hell are you doing?”
“We haven't got long. We need to get out.”
“My Inspector…”
“If he isn't dead already, he will be soon.” Malachi was cut off by a mighty bang that echoed from the front of the building. “The doors. Your pretty angels are inside.”
“Then we're saved!”
Malachi gritted his teeth and pulled the bandages up from his eyes, tilting his head towards her. “Tell me how saved you think I feel!” There was a pause, and the screaming began. Malachi could barely remember what the nave of the church looked like, but it wasn't difficult to turn those screams into mental images. “Those swords you told me about? They're being put to work.” The sounds of running, and wood splintering, and men and women dying in terror, rushed up the stairwell at them. “Soon they'll be finished, and they'll come looking upstairs, and they'll find us. I can't get out without you.”
“How... how do we get past them?” Malachi had only heard about those flaming swords. Jackie had seen them with her own eyes.
“One of these rooms has to look over the back of the church. Take me.” Feeling a hand on his good arm, he shook his head. “I need that arm free. Take the other.” Careful fingers took his elbow above the break, and he gritted his teeth. “Don't pull. Guide.” She did so, and his free hand went to his coat pocket, hoping it hadn't been emptied. No, there was his knife. Easing it free, knowing it was no defence but feeling better for having his fingers on the grip, he took careful steps along the corridor until Jackie spoke.