by Mike Wild
Just in time.
The angel thudded onto the lip of the dome, the resultant tremor almost toppling Brand and Hannah off their feet and shaking powderfalls of cement from between the stone slabs from which the lip was built. There it let out a deafening roar and squatted like some huge gargoyle, its head slowly turning and taking in a world unseen by its fire-filled eyes for countless years. But it was free now. And ready to take up a position of master of all it surveyed.
Brand could have sworn the creature sucked in a deeply contented breath.
The angel raised its gaze to the soul-shield, a perfect Biblical image now, and then it began to rise on its haunches, its wings started to open and spread, and then it lifted itself until it became enveloped by the orange cloud. The two objects - angel and cloud - seemed to shift - metamorphose slightly - until neither thing was quite what it had been a moment before.
Something new was ready to take up dominion of the Earth.
"Do you think now might be a good time to - you know..." Hannah Chapter mouthed, pointing at the Eyes of the Angel.
Brand swallowed hard. The Eyes simply need to be brought into contact with the angel, Brother Patrick had said. But how in hell was he meant to achieve that? Maybe even Brother Patrick had not realised how much this thing had changed.
Nevertheless, he had to try. Swallowing again, Brand ran towards the lip and hurled the artefact up towards the soul-shield, watched as it arced through the air, aimed directly for the thing's torso. But it had no chance. As the Eyes of the Angel impacted with the shield, a burst of energy sent it hurtling back, the discharge blowing the academic off his feet.
"Oops," Hannah Chapter said. "I think we're in the shit."
[Oh no, you're definitely in the shit,] a voice said.
Brand and Chapter turned. Pushing aside chunks of masonry and stone from the blocked stairway, a very displeased Baarish-Shammon emerged onto the monastery roof. Infernal flame licked her as she stared at Brand and Chapter - but particularly at Brand. [There you are, you little bastard. Miss me?]
The demoness strode towards the pair across the roof, seemingly fully recovered from the artefact ordeal. More than fully recovered, in fact. The flickering aura of energy which always surrounded Baarish-Shammon was flaring dramatically, more so than Brand and Chapter had ever seen it. She was crackling dangerously with energy, her great gash of a mouth leaking jagged tendrils of raw power.
Bathed in the light from the glowing angel, she was a walking furnace.
And she was coming right at them.
Hannah drew her weapons.
"No," Brand said. "She won't hurt me."
Hannah stared. "That's nice. HELLO? It isn't you I'm worried about, Brainiac."
Brand placed his hand across the barrels of her guns, tipping them down. "She won't hurt either of us." He pointed up at the angel. "She hasn't come for us, she's come for that. Our resident demoness doesn't want this thing to live any more than we do. It's a challenge to her. A rival." Brand sneered. "In that respect, she's much like Michael Magister - she doesn't want anyone else playing their own God games."
It was Baarish-Shammon's turn to sneer. [You dare to compare me to that feeble old man, hiding away beneath his pathetic little rock?]
"Just how feeble is he? You must have wondered that, Baarish-Shammon? You know something - that feeble old man is really quite looking forward to meeting you."
Baarish-Shammon said nothing for a second, and then staring at Brand, held out her hands.
[Hand over the artefact, lover boy.]
"Brainiac, you can't trust her," Hannah said.
"It's all right," Brand replied after a moment. He regarded Baarish-Shammon carefully, and handed her the Eyes of the Angel. "We find ourselves in rare agreement once again."
"Brainiac..."
"There's no other choice. Think about it, Miss Chapter," he glared openly at Baarish-Shammon, "this half-souled thing may be the only one of us who is capable of penetrating that shield now. And penetrating that shield has become our only way to get to the angel."
Hannah nodded. After what had happened to good old Helen, she'd go with that.
Baarish-Shammon accepted the artefact and then weighed it before her, regarding it with a mix of revulsion and satisfaction. For a moment Brand feared he'd been wrong, that all she would do now was rid herself of it to prevent him finding Jen again, but then she rose up from the roof with it cradled in her arms, manoeuvred toward the angel, and drove the ancient artefact straight into its heart. The thing roared, and from the centre of the soul-shield, there came a brilliant flare.
"Do nothing," Brand instructed Hannah Chapter - and then he looked towards where Baarish-Shammon had disappeared and, despite himself, wished her good luck.
God came, then. Whatever manifestations Brand might have expected - whatever divine imaginings he had pictured - he could only look on in utter silence. Because the world itself had stopped.
What's happening? he thought, aware but at the same time senseless. The world has gone. All I know is gone. I am gone.
Brand felt himself pulled away from the roof of the monastery to float disembodied, looking down on his body, on Hannah's body - and on the angel. He realised that Hannah was beside him as well as on the roof, she too looking down on herself. It was like looking at a stage, brightly lit against the night sky, where the two of them were merely props. And then the stage became brighter still, because someone was shining a spotlight from the stars.
A shaft of light enveloped the soul-shield and dissolved it all away. Just like that. Gone to God knew where. The angel and the demoness hung there in the space that remained, grappling like warriors but static, frozen, like pieces of art. Brand heard himself taking in a breath, and next to him Hannah did the same. They looked at each other - and wondered.
The angel, illuminated and exposed now in white light, looked at last what it actually was - some pathetic, distorted thing, a twisted abomination, a freak of supernature... something that didn't belong. Its anvil-like head held rigid and high, its fiery eyes wide and strangely wet, it stared at things Brand couldn't imagine. Was it, Brand mused, seeing directly into the realm of God?
He realised suddenly in his strange, displaced place that there was no heavenly choir of angels here to bring their lost friend home. Only more of that seemingly endless silence.
Because silence was all that was needed to see.
The angel - and the angel alone - began then to shudder. Baarish-Shammon remained frozen still, as if in a strange photographic trick. The angel began to shake, shimmer, and finally - ever, ever so slowly it seemed - to disassemble one molecule at a time. Brand hoped that from whichever plane of noncorporeality he was observing its demise it was quicker than that, because in truth he almost felt sorry for the thing. Especially when he saw its mouth straining wide with a last yawning but still silent agonised scream.
Another angel emerged from within the dying and disintegrating form, and hovered above it for the briefest of moments, looking down. This was the angel as manifest in the soul-shield - what its ancient memory perceived itself to be - only this time somehow real. A classical angel as depicted in a million religious tomes.
And it began to rise into the light.
But before it reached the heavens, it too began to dissolve. And as it dissipated but halfway to the stars, the silence was broken by a voice from above.
It spoke a phrase that was strangely familiar.
SHOW ME YOUR SINS.
"Brainiac, snap out of it!" a voice shouted. A hand slapped his face. "Brainiac, we have to get out of here now!"
What? the academic thought. What the hell?
He was suddenly back on the monastery roof with Hannah Chapter shaking him. Only it wasn't just her shaking him because from the feel of things, the whole place was collapsing under them both.
"What... just happened?"
"The harridan from hell pulled it off is what just happened - look at the dome... look!"
Brand looked towards the dome - where the dome had been - and saw Baarish-Shammon and what there was left of Abaddon locked together still. But the grotesque thing was lifeless now, nothing but a shell, crumbling into scaly pieces as he looked on. Strangely though, the demoness seemed for some reason unable to break free of its grip, and as the angel continued to disintegrate, she beat against it to no avail, and then her demonic body actually started to smoke, as did the angel's. A moment later both were consumed in fire.
It wasn't infernal fire. This was real fire.
My God, Brand thought suddenly, the Eyes of the Angel. The demoness must also have looked upon the realm of God. And in turn it had looked upon her.
A phrase sprang to mind. That old adage. Kill two birds with one stone.
Two birds with one stone.
"It's destroying her too!" he shouted to Hannah Chapter. "We have to do something!"
"We can't! Take a good bloody look around you, Brainiac - there's no time!"
Brand knew this was true. Around him chunks of the monastery roof had actually begun to collapse in on themselves, or elsewhere jut up suddenly as tooth-like slabs. The place was coming apart at the seams. Helpless, he span back to where the death-throes of the angel were nearing their end. As he watched, its inner core seemed to quake and then in a storm of blackness it simply blew apart into countless pieces. Afire and writhing, the form of Baarish-Shammon hung in its wake for just one second and then plummeted helplessly into the shattered remains of the dome, where she tumbled like a rag-doll into the flue down to the cavern.
As the demoness fell endlessly into the deepest dark Brand looked on horrified as she transformed back into the form of Jenny Simmons.
Then he and Hannah staggered as the whole roof went full tilt and the monastery slid from under their feet. Towards the side of the roof, a slab of stone broke upwards as the supports beneath it collapsed, a jagged fang that almost decapitated them both.
Hannah Chapter grabbed Brand's radio.
"Brigadier, if you're there, we could really do with some help here!"
"I had noticed, Miss Chapter," the Brigadier's voice came back, and she saw him in the distance gazing through his binoculars. "Only just got around the fact that it all seems to be over... quite a show you people put on up there. And the damndest thing the way that soul-shield returned to the living like that. Quite a bit of mopping up of the dead, of course, but not to worry, eh - things are in hand."
As he spoke, Hannah heard a welcome whup-whup-whup of helicopter rotors and a moment later the Iroquois in which they had arrived appeared above the edge of the collapsing battlements. Except this time it was a bruised and battered Ness in the pilot's seat and - though Hannah had thought they'd never get him up in one of those things again, bless him - a rather dishevelled Lawrence Verse. What was more, Verse was further taking his life in his hands by dangling out the side of the chopper to drop a rope ladder down to the two of them.
Hannah grabbed Jonathan Brand by the shoulders and bundled him towards the ladder.
Five minutes later, as a medevac chopper lifted away into the distance, Brand walked through the on-ground aftermath and stared up at the burning ruin of the monastery. Peace at last for Brother Patrick, he thought. Peace at last for Boswell. But what peace for Jonathan Brand? Because Jenny Simmons stared at him from the steps of a medevac where she'd been taken after being "miraculously" pulled "alive" from the collapsed cavern. But it was as far from a miracle as one could get, Brand knew. God, he thought - if she could survive You how was he ever going to get his own Jenny back?
"Darling," Jenny said, and nodded at the trauma team fussing over her. "These gentlemen insist I am to be taken for X-ray. Will you tell them it isn't necessary... or shall I?"
Brand stared at her. The threat was clear. He knew also that those X-rays would raise questions difficult to answer. "Doctor Jonathan Brand," he said reluctantly, simply forgetting to point out the title wasn't medical. "Miss Simmons is in my care."
"Thass right, lads," Mikey Ness chipped in. He and Verse were exiting the medevac surgery after being treated for cuts and abrasions. "An' right now the doc's prescribing a wee snifter, ain't ya doc?"
"Sounds good to me," Verse said, nodding toward the Breaking Point.
"I reckon there's a Jack and Black with my name on it," Hannah agreed.
Ravne shrugged. "Why not," he concurred. "It has, after all, been a hell of a night."
If Ness was expecting a knees-up, however, the thing didn't materialise. After brief recaps of each of their experiences, a sheer knackeredness set in and they all soon stared out of the window lost in their own thoughts and in their drinks.
Solomon Ravne nursed a Bloody Mary, the colour of the drink making him think of home and when he could truly relax in the bath that Simmons had so kindly reminded him of while in Whitby. He had already forgotten how many bodies he had scythed down that night with the Lamp of Alhazred - the dead and, he had to admit, some collateral damage - and in truth it didn't concern him at all. The fact was, the night had been an inconvenience and now he'd have to renew the oils for the lamp all over again. No Scotsman next time, though. Next time, pious or not, he'd take the priest.
Lawrence Verse gazed up at the tor, thinking of how mere minutes before it had been a gateway to his God, the old dilemma rumbling like gastritis in his guts. God had proven his existence to him yet again, but then had simply gone away. Why was it He did nothing to stop the evils of the world, why did He force people like himself to do what they did, to use the methods they did? Once more the dilemma remained unanswered - and until it was - excommunicated or not - knew he'd just have to get on with the job.
Hannah Chapter was possibly the only untroubled person in the room. After what she'd survived that night, why not? The strength of will it had taken to resist Abaddon's call from such close quarters was beyond Louisiana, beyond anything. If she ever had cause to doubt who she was again, all she had to do was remember this night. Score one for dyke lib, she thought. She even felt comfortable with herself sitting there naked but for Verse's leather coat. To be honest, she quite liked it. It made her feel like "O". Not that she wanted to suggest she was happy being surrounded by male BO, of course - oh no, that'd create the wrong impression entirely. She'd have to give the coat back. Only just not while Mikey Ness was around.
Mikey Ness raised a glass, scowling as a black-uniformed group moved past outside. The Ministry of Defence cleaners - the Closure Squad - had wasted no time. They were already moving in to remove the living's corpses to the nearby airbase, those of the dead for expeditious reburial, and to then ensure that the civilian survivors didn't recall anything from the night's events they shouldn't. The Scotsman wondered what explanation they would come up with this time. One thing was certain - a Nazi incendiary assault was out of the question so it'd likely be terrorists instead. Made aboot as much sense as their '44 lie but it'd give 'em another excuse to bomb somewhere, eh? Bastards.
Sometimes he wondered where the real horrors lay.
As the Scotsman downed his fourth Scotch in as many minutes in one glug, Jenny Simmons stared at Jonathan Brand, a smile playing on her lips. She subdued the pathetic mewling inside her and swore she would never let the academic get so close to the real Jenny again. But then, she thought with a silent chuckle, if only he knew the truth about his dead beloved. If only, in fact, he - if any of them - knew the truth about anything. Because only she had gazed directly into the realm of God that night, and what she had seen - what she knew of the place - would terrify the crap out of any of them. Oh yes, she was definitely on the right side.
Jenny Simmons grinned. "Slainte!" she said.
"Slainte," Brand repeated mechanically. Out of all of them, oddly, it was only he who had not yet touched his drink. His thoughts were back at the monastery, locked in that wonderful moment as he had spoken with the real Jenny, and that maybe it gave him something to hope for despite what he had just seen of Baarish-Shammon's fort
itude. It comforted him slightly knowing Jenny was in there somewhere and he vowed to find a way to at least speak with her again, and suddenly his desire for drink was not so all-consuming.
But another thought remained deeper in his mind, as stubbornly anchored as a rock.
That night, between them, they had just managed to rid the Earth of one fallen angel. One.
Which, of course, meant that if Alphonsus de Spina was correct in his calculations, somewhere out there - give or take - there were one hundred and thirty three million, three hundred and six thousand, six hundred and sixty odd of the unholy bastards to go.
He contemplated his drink again.
Maybe he'd have just the one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cursed from birth with the world's worst haircut, Mike Wild has to lock himself away and write things to earn a crust. Over the years he's been paid by Doctor Who, K9 and Company, Masters of the Universe and the ABC Warriors, and is consequently rolling in oddly shaped, curiously hued money, some of which purrs. He enjoys drinking, smoking in pubs, and elven women in Mithril bikinis who wink at him from trees.