Malachi Jones looked up at the angel with brand new eyes. “Thank you,” he said, the low intensity back in his voice.
Gemmell had witnessed a healing.
Mind racing, he tried to work out what Malachi's intentions were. Did he expect Summer and Gemmell to rush and help him overpower the being? The healing had clearly drained the angel. It wasn't going to get any more vulnerable than now.
Gemmell tensed, ready to weave his way through the human offal on the floor, but he was too late. The sword flashed downwards.
Malachi wasn't there any more. An elegant blur, he rolled aside, the blade missing him by inches. Turning too fast for Gemmell to track, he gripped the angel's hands, and jerked. The blade flipped, pointing towards the angel's torso.
Before the angel could do more than looked stunned, Malachi shoved forward, his full body weight on the pommel, and the sword shot through the angel's flesh.
Ambrose twisted, one powerful wing sweeping three of the dead from their feet and spinning them over the heads of the crowd. There were so many of them. After saving Calum at the flat, he had watched with gritted teeth while Leviathan had passed the curse to Clive Huntley, unable to expose himself and hoping only that the arch-demon would not realise his quarry was crouched on a rooftop barely fifty feet away. Since then he had borne mute witness to the bodies of the dead pulling the hearts from the bodies of the living, swelling their ranks with every murder. The plague had spread faster than he had thought possible.
Jaw set, he lashed out at another zombie, claws tearing through its throat and ripping out part of its spine. The head toppled, catching on a still attached tendon of neck and hanging upside down. The abomination blinked stupidly, trying to make sense of the world flipped over. Grabbing a second corpse by the arm, hurling it into the crowd in front of him like a bowling ball, Ambrose shoved the decapitated body to the ground.
The dance continued. Ambrose was not foolish enough to try to kill these creatures, knowing that the facsimile of life they clung to extended beyond dismemberment. Unless he ground them all to dust, or meticulously pulled the limbs off every one, they would keep coming. All he needed to do was force them back from Calum. Months of planning and careful positioning had come down to this snow and fire framed moment, with the wind whistling along the street, and less than an hour until the sunrise brought the end of all things. Smiling, he allowed himself to imagine the scene from above. Legions of the dead bore down on this spot, still responding to the last instruction Clive had given before the demons tore him apart. All that stood between them and their prey was one graceful demon, spinning, and leaping, and fighting them back. It was suitably epic.
Skipping to his left, he back-pedalled to block two who had stumbled past him. Nothing in the crowd could hurt him. The risk was that the rare chance to unleash himself distracted him, and some got through. Snatching the arms of two corpses, he gave a single beat of his winds, the thrust of air sending him twelve feet up, where he flung them to the very end of the street. There was no time to relish their bodies scything through the air. Crashing back down, he caught a glimpse of Pandora, tearing the lesser demons attacking Calum to bits. While he was graceful in action, she made him look sluggish. Her dance was balletic, almost choreographed. Calum watched her stupidly, something strange and tearful in his expression.
Time to worry about that later. When they could buy a second, they would talk to him, try to work out what the man could do to save the world. Pandora and he each believed that somehow, as the one being alive who had thwarted God, Calum was connected to the Almighty in a unique way. While neither of them dared pray, they hoped that he could use that to save the world.
Deep down, Ambrose knew they could be wrong. Calum was a beaten soul, ground down by the insanity around him. While he admired his friend, the ex-priest was only human.
Putting such thoughts from his mind, Ambrose pushed himself harder, faster, forcing the crowd back, counting down the minutes in his head until the end of time.
Placing his foot firmly on the angel’s abdomen, Malachi eased the sword out of its chest, letting the dimming body flop to the ground. In the gloom, he wrestled with a strange sense of disappointment at his healing. One moment he was utterly blind, could hardly breathe for pain, and the next he was whole. The suddenness of it, the lack of sensation, was the only shocking thing. When he had then grabbed the sword, he was ready for agony beyond words. An angel's sword, the blade still flickering with fire, should not feel like an ordinary, well-balanced piece of metal.
Finally, the angel had simply died. It should have blown up, vanished, something. Instead, it died, just like anything else, and he knew now how anti-climactic it would be when he killed Pandora. Stacey's revenge should be powerful, extraordinary, far more than a simple murder.
Spitting on the angel's body, he stepped over it, avoiding as much of the blood and meat on the floor as he could. With the sword lighting his way, he tried to luxuriate in the restoration of his sight, but found it impossible. His eyes were tools, bringing him closer to revenge. Beyond that, they were irrelevant. Look at me, Malachi thought, self-pity snarling his face. Look at what I am. I'm an automaton of revenge, and I don't even mind. The last part was the worst. While he pitied his own emptiness, he found no cause to challenge it. He found himself hoping the world really would end in the morning. Pandora would be dead, and he would be nothing but an empty husk. While she lived, he had a reason to take the next step, and the one after that. When she was gone, he could not imagine what reason he would have to move again.
Striding out of the church doors, he found Gemmell and Summer waiting for him. The woman closely matched his mental image, right down to the frozen tension around her eyes. She was very close to breaking, and that was good. She was a weapon he might find a use for, locked and loaded. Gemmell was a different matter. The man was a natural leader, somebody whose voice and manner made even Malachi stop to listen. The dishevelled, unshaven man before him looked nothing like he had imagined, and he began to doubt how much use he would be. “I thought you'd be taller,” he said.
“You've caught me on a bad day. Normally, I'm a man-mountain.” Malachi's mouth twitched, and he didn't know whether humour or irritation had spasmed his lips. Gemmell was wary. “So you have a sword. What now?”
Indeed. In the gloom, Malachi's certainty wavered, though he didn't let it show. Pandora could be anywhere, but he had to assume she was close. Whatever forces had conspired to bring him this near to victory, after two long years, would hardly let him lose the trail now.
Malachi approached the gate to the church grounds purposefully, pulling it open, and looked to see if they were following. Summer and Gemmell lagged behind. “Not a good idea,” the Inspector said. “Believe me, there are dangerous things in there.”
Malachi stepped forward, the icy mist chilling his face. “There are now.”
Gemmell trailed into the fog, Summer behind him, sweat pouring from him despite the chill. Somewhere in there, Leviathan waited. Gemmell only hoped he had things to worry about besides one mouthy policeman.
The fog was impossibly dense. Raising his hand to his face, he strained his eyes, knowing it was there but seeing only grey. Something brushed his nose, and he jumped before realising it was his own palm. How was he supposed to follow Malachi in this? The whole city could be shrouded in fog.
“Summer,” it was muted even to his own ears, and when her reply came he couldn't tell whether she was right behind him or a dozen paces away.
“Sir?” Gemmell hoped it was the fog flattening her voice. Everybody was walking a fine line between sanity and madness, and he thought Summer had begun to topple the wrong way.
“Reach out your arms. We need to stay together.” Something brushed his back, but he was ready for it this time, placing her arm in his as though they were going for an evening stroll. “Quietly does it.”
They walked slowly, Gemmell guiding, no longer concerned about losing Malachi. Around them, t
he fog was busy. If he left it alive, he would be a happy man.
To his left, horribly close, something cackled, but not with a human throat. Gemmell forced himself to keep walking.
Ahead of him, he heard huge footsteps that trembled the ground. Heart pounding, he debated whether to try to go around it but, as far as he could tell he had kept a straight course from the church so far. If he started to deviate from that, he would lose his way. Direction was almost impossible to judge in the murk, but if Malachi had also held to the same route then he would encounter whatever was ahead of them before Gemmell did.
Images formed in his mind of the angel-killer being snapped up in a single, silent mouthful by something vast, with jackhammer footsteps.
Yet he kept walking, Summer's grip digging into his arm, her flesh icy. Gemmell wanted to ask her to loosen her grip, just a fraction, before he lost the feeling in his fingers, but stayed silent. He didn't want to draw attention their way, but he also suspected that she was beyond talking now.
They hadn't reached the far side of the fog. Fear made him want to turn around one hundred and eighty degrees, and head back to the church, but the competing dread of getting lost kept him from doing so. Above him, something buzzed, as though a bee the size of a lawnmower was circling them. Perhaps it was. Gemmell willed himself to be smaller, less noticeable. It no longer felt like he was even on Earth, and he wondered if, should they breach the fog, they would find themselves in the bowels of Hell itself.
Something screamed behind him, and it sounded like a little boy. It sounded like Jamie. Gemmell wiped his hand across his eyes. It isn't, he thought. While he knew this was true, the fear that somewhere his son really was screaming just like that, while Daddy was away protecting the anonymous masses, made him want to curl up on the ground and howl.
Gemmell walked on, eyes wide, and tried not to think of anything at all.
Calum's legs shook, but no longer with fear and exhaustion. Relief overwhelmed him. As Pandora dropped the last of the monkey-things onto the road, where it twitched once before dying, and Ambrose fought the dead further back along the road, a whirlwind of grace and purpose, he clambered to his feet.
They had come for him. A little of his faith had paid off, and it wasn't faith in the Almighty or the afterlife that rewarded him. It was faith in such a simple thing as friendship.
Calum wasn't naive enough to believe that camaraderie alone was enough for Ambrose to fly to him in his hour of need, but this too was a new well of hope. If Ambrose had a reason to find him, then not all was lost. The demon would not waste his last hours with Pandora on futile conflict.
Pandora turned, her wings splashed with gore. For a moment, her visage was fierce and forbidding, and Calum stepped back. Many hours spent with Ambrose sitting at her bedside had made her face and body comfortingly familiar, but he realised he didn't know her at all. To inspire such love in a creature so far removed from that emotion as Ambrose required somebody extraordinary, or so Calum assumed. Yet because Ambrose adored her, that didn't make her safe. She was now a fallen angel, and despite Ambrose's assurances of her gentleness and wonder, Calum felt a shock of fear when he looked into her blue eyes. This was no heavenly damsel. Pandora was a purebred warrior, and she terrified him.
Then she smiled, and it was as though the sun had come up. “Hello Calum,” she said. “We're here to help you save the world.”
If she had told him that they were here to help him boil living babies in hot oil, that honey voice would have made him agree. “All right,” he whispered, though he didn't understand what she was talking about. “That's fine.” No man could abort the final countdown, but Calum would say anything to make this creature keep smiling.
Pandora stepped towards him, the soft smile warming him further despite the raging wind tugging at his clothes and brushing snowflakes against his skin. Calum realised that there was no longer any fire on the wind, that it had stopped drifting from the sky.
“Are you ready for that, Calum?” she asked. Beside them, Ambrose touched lightly to the ground. The dead were a hundred feet down the road, many lying in twitching disarray while their brethren began again to stumble towards them. Clearly, the demon thought he had bought them enough time.
Time for what?
Pandora's question crystallised in his head. How could he save the world? He didn't know.
He only knew how to end it.
Calum burst into tears, feeling grubby and pathetic in front of these two elegant marvels. If he understood what they wanted from him, he would give it gleefully. He didn't, and couldn't, and if they flew away and left him to the dead it would be everything he deserved.
Pandora took him in her arms and held him to her slender breast. Ambrose stepped back a respectful pace, and let him cry into the arms of his angel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The fog thinned in the space of a footstep, and the change was so startling that Malachi paused, wired for an attack. Jaw clenched so tightly that he felt his teeth might crack, exploding in little puffs of powder, he waited, sword up. For the first time since entering the fog, he could make out the fire dancing along the edge of the steel.
Nothing attacked him, and he started walking again. Malachi's legs tried to tell him that he had been walking blindly for hours, but it only felt that way because of the constant noise surrounding him. If he lashed out with the sword in any direction, he felt he would hit something vile and murderous. Stopping him putting the theory to the test was his uncertainty about where Gemmell and Summer were. A while ago, he had heard them speaking some distance behind him, but they could be anywhere now. Striking blindly might bring one of them down, and he did not know yet whether he would have further use of them.
Another two paces, and he stepped out of the fog. Relief loosened his muscles, held hyper-tense while he had walked, and he took a breath.
Then he saw where he was, and stepped backwards, hoping the edge of the fog masked his movements.
Against all probability, Malachi had found his prey.
The street was not one he recognised from his reconnaissance the previous night, but he must have passed through it. The difference was that twenty-four hours ago, there was no army of corpses blocking the far end, stumbling towards him. Bits of flesh scattered the street. There had been action here.
Further along the edge of the fog was the probable source of the human debris, so far oblivious to his presence. There were three of them, two men and Pandora. She held the smaller man in her arms, and he could not tell whether she was comforting him, or crushing the life out of him. The second man simply stood, watching the embracing couple, and he realised he had seen this one earlier, at the church.
Malachi heard Gemmell and Summer a second before it was too late to stop them stumbling into the street, and threw a hand up to get their attention. Gemmell drew up, his face drawn and white, but he nodded that he understood Malachi's gesture. Summer simply stared at him, and Malachi wasn't sure that she was seeing him at all.
There would be time to help her when he killed the angel, and saved the world.
Motioning that they stay put, Malachi stepped further into the fog, able to see a few feet around him. Silently, he stalked towards the unwary threesome.
The sobbing of the man in Pandora's arms masked his advance, and it took Malachi barely a minute for him to get into position. Staring at Pandora's winged back, blood and ichor staining her dove-white wings, he raised the sword. She was faster and stronger than he was. He had only one chance.
Taking a breath, the fate of the world weighing on his sword arm, he tried to picture Stacey's face, and found only Melissa's waiting for him.
Malachi lunged, his aim true.
The man watching her was too fast to be mortal, but it wasn't going to be enough.
The man in Pandora's embrace lifted his head from her shoulder, and saw him coming. A twitch was all it took to spin Pandora off balance and out of the way. The burning blade grazed her as it pass
ed.
And punched hilt-deep through the chest of her teary-eyed saviour.
Ambrose saw the man in the leather coat lunge from the fog, and astonishment made him hesitate for a single beat.
He knew the man.
He had watched Pandora stab out his eyes and break his arm.
Now he was lunging towards her with a burning sword.
Darting to intercept, he felt the world slow down, until he was moving through treacle. The pause had undone him, and as he realised he wasn't going to be in time, a little bit of him died.
Calum made the smallest movement, twirling her off balance and out of the way. The sword plunged into his chest. His eyes widened as the stench of charred meat filled the air.
Time returned to normal, and their attacker screamed in rage, yanking the blade free and standing above Pandora.
Calum toppled to the ground, mouth moving in silent shock, but he had bought Ambrose back the beat he had lost. Grabbing their attacker's sword arm, the demon yanked him round, slapping the sword away. Pulling the man towards him, their faces almost touching, he saw hate in his eyes and wondered what they had done to him.
Then he snarled, and hurled the man along the street. His leather coat flapped awkwardly as he flew, making him look like a dying crow. Crunching down against the kerb fifty feet away, he bounced and slid across broken glass and stone. Ambrose snarled, and then remembered Calum.
Pandora was already kneeling above him, and though Ambrose could have cried with relief that she lived, he pushed her aside. She nodded understanding. Ambrose called the dying man his only friend.
Cradling him, he saw that it was hopeless. Once, Pandora could have channelled God's power into his wound, healing it instantly. Now they were cut off from such wonders. All they could do was watch Calum die. There hadn't even been time to find out what he might have done to save the world. All their preparation was for nothing.