‘Take no notice of him,’ said the friendly angel. ‘He’s just in a bad mood about being put on gate duty.
‘Are you Erasmus?’ asked Jack, his courage rising with this friendlier approach. This one did not seem to think he was worthless. In fact, there was admiration in the gentle eyes. Admiration and understanding.
Erasmus nodded. ‘And you are Jack,’ he told him, just as if he did not know his own name.
‘Many people here do not know their own name,’ explained Erasmus, although Jack had not spoken. ‘The nature of death. It’s a force of habit to remind them. I apologise.’
‘You said you knew why I was here?’ said Jack. ‘I’m beginning to see why.’
‘I have been expecting someone for some time. You wish to find my son?’
I don’t wish to find him. I have to.’
‘I understand.’
‘You have been watching him, haven’t you? I mean I figured you are an angel, and on top of that, he is family.’
‘Two excellent reasons why I should have been watching him, indeed,’ agreed Erasmus. ‘I have been watching over him.’
‘Not very well,’ said Jack tartly.
‘A rebuke,’ said Erasmus. ‘You are no doubt wondering why I have not … intervened. I am forbidden. I intervened in human affairs once before and was banished for it.’
‘So, you don’t want to risk it again?’ said Jack contemptuously.
‘You misunderstand. They watch me closely after my transgression. Were I to attempt to interfere, they would step in and prevent me before I could even begin.’
‘Are they really so heartless?’ said Jack. ‘He’s your family.’
‘I was not supposed to have a family. I am supposed to be divine. Being forced to look on as my son destroys the world and his own soul, while being able to do nothing to stop it, is my punishment. One of my own making.’
‘So, I guess you shouldn’t really be talking to me, should you?’
‘You came here of your own free will, to ask me a question. Ask.’
‘Where is your son?’
‘In an in-between place.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I hardly expected that you would.’
‘Look,’ Jack was losing his temper. ‘Are you going to tell me where he is or not?’
‘No.’
‘To hell with you then …’
‘I am going to show you. It is the only way to understand.’
‘Oh! Er… I’m sorry.’
‘Come with me.’
‘She really was very clever, you see?’
‘Yes.’
‘The mind of a god.A powerful thing.’
‘It’s incredible. No wonder we couldn’t find him.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘I’m going in there.’
‘He will kill you.’
‘Maybe.’
‘So alike and yet so unalike,’ said Erasmus, looking sidelong at Jack.
‘Everybody says that,’ said Jack, feeling a little nettled.
‘Ah, but not everybody can see what I can. The differing souls. The one so pure and clean, the other so tarnished – yet it is not his fault. What others see, is perhaps an echo of the same thing. They feel, rather than see the difference between you.’
‘I’m supposed to be the tarnished one really,’ said Jack. ‘Evil Faerie changeling and all that.’
‘It seems that a fallen angel has more evil in him than a Faerie,’ Erasmus said. ‘The sins of the father. But your father didn’t really sin all that much, did he?’
‘Is he evil, though, or is he just …?’
‘Mad?’ As a Hatter, I assure you. Be careful in his realm. I will give you one piece of advice. Not everyone will be able to see what I can see.’
Jack thought about this. Then he spread his wings. The wings shimmered in the light and became the large feathered angel wings that Ashtoreth sported.
‘I’m going to end up doing a comedy, glassless mirror routine aren’t I?’ he said suddenly. ‘I can just feel it coming on.’
‘Not unless you also shorten your hair,’ said Erasmus.
Before he left, Erasmus gave him one more piece of advice. ‘Forgive her,’ he said. ‘Nothing was ever healed by holding on to resentment and bitterness.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ said Jack.
‘It’s never too late,’ said Erasmus.
* * *
Not a slow boat, but a fast plane to China, the wonders of modern technology. However, now that he was here, he would have to rely, not on modern technology, but ancient magic to find what he was looking for.
He had definitely drawn the short straw here, he realised. Not only had he taken the longest journey of all the Nephelim, but the one least likely to succeed. He knew that the power he had been sent to find was up in the sky – in the clouds somewhere and how was a man supposed to find that without wings?– Which had not been a part of the power package the master had “blessed” him with.
Nor was there likely to be any more glory in his journey than the others.Quite the opposite, in fact. Of all the quests, this one was the least likely to please the master by its success. Eastern magic did not appeal to him as much as the more familiar western kind. Not that it was any less potent, but the master considered it heathen. And he was against that – in principle anyway. He was not sure how he knew all these things, but he was sure that he knew them.
Arron had found that the further away from the master he travelled, the more he was having these traitorous thoughts. The more, in fact, he was thinking for himself, and what he was thinking mostly, was that he was wasting his time.
* * *
Jack crept through the corridors of Ashtoreth’s palace. Dark corridors with burning torches for that delightfully gothic effect. He felt like a fugitive here. Like he was the one in the wrong. The convict haircut may have contributed to this feeling.
‘Pull yourself together,’ he told himself. ‘You’re acting like you have a bag marked swag over your shoulder. Ashtoreth wouldn’t be creeping like a burglar through his own palace.’
He straightened up. Forced himself to walk tall. Straight into the throne room. He stopped with a gasp. Ashtoreth had grown up here? No wonder he was crazy. Everything was wrong. Beautiful, but all wrong. It reminded Jack of Heaven. A puzzle box of worlds within worlds. A place outside of reality.
Outwardly lovely but twisted up. All inside out. You could wander through it forever and never get anywhere, always ending up back where you started. Its infinite size was both real and a mere illusion. An illusion that Jack’s Faerie eyes could see through, to the other reality hidden beneath. The reality that everyone knows, that everyone lives in (under normal circumstances). It was as disorienting as walking through the mainframe. Five minutes in here was giving Jack a headache and Ashtoreth had been here for sixteen years. Ashtoreth probably was not able to see it the way he did, but it would still have had a subconscious effect.
And to think, this place had been right under their noses the whole time. Hidden in plain sight.
He had no idea what he was looking for. He did not really want to run into Ashtoreth, whose power was far greater than his own and whose homicidal instincts were unparalleled in human history.
Half a dozen Nephelim warriors entered the room and bowed. For a moment Jack was nonplussed. Then he remembered what he looked like – who he looked like.
‘Report!’ he hazarded, hoping fervently that Ashtoreth would not suddenly appear. He was evidently expected.
‘Our quest is complete my lord,’ said a gruff looking fellow with a nasty scar running down his face.
‘Good,’ said Jack.
‘What quest?’ He looked nervously beyond them for the arrival of Ashtoreth. This action was evidently misinterpreted, however.
‘Yes, Arron did not return with us my lord. He chose to betray you. But you will no doubt punish him when the power that we who are loyal have gathered is
surrendered to you.’
‘No doubt,’ said Jack absently.
‘We are ready to make our sacrifice my lord,’ said the spokesman.
Jack hurriedly held up a hand. ‘Not yet,’ he said as he desperately tried to think. He had no idea what was going on here but sacrifice did not sound like a good idea. Neither did surrendering their power.
‘My lord?’ asked the spokesman in a perplexed tone.
‘It is not yet time,’ said Jack thinking on his feet.
‘Oh I think it is exactly the time.’
Six heads whipped round, and Jack fled through an archway behind him only to end up face to face with Ashtoreth standing before the throne.
‘A bloody puzzle box,’ he thought. ‘I knew it.’
Ashtoreth grabbed his arm, and Jack did the only thing he could think of. This world was built from the imagination, and Faeries have power in the realm of the mind. If he could just catch Ashtoreth off guard … He concentrated and shut down the illusion it only lasted for a second before Ashtoreth caught it, but it was long enough.
Still hanging on to Jack with an iron grip, Ashtoreth spun round in confusion dragging Jack with him. ‘What is this place?’ he demanded.
‘Abandoned warehouse,’ said Jack. ‘I hate to tell you this, but this is where your palace really is.’
Ashtoreth let go of his arm and stared around the place.
‘How did you do that?’ he said.
‘Faerie magic,’ said Jack. ‘The magic of the mind. Your palace is nothing more than an illusion made real.’
‘It’s more than that,’ insisted Ashtoreth.
‘Well, yes. But only in a manner of speaking.’
But Ashtoreth did not want to know. ‘I will kill you,’ he said.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Jack calmly.
‘Faerie magic …’ mused Ashtoreth. ‘That’s how you penetrated my fortress? And you are the last of your kind.’
Jack bowed his head. ‘Yes, I am,’ he said sadly.
‘So, even if you were not evil, I would still have to remove you, you can see that?’
Jack raised his head indignantly; his face was flushed with anger. This was too much! To stand here while this maniac made out his justification for the fact that he was going to murder him. ‘You’re calling me evil?’ he spluttered. ‘You?
‘I haven’t slaughtered thousands, no millions, of innocent people,’ he raged on. ‘I didn’t kill the only man who was willing to be my father without knowing where the hell I came from. He was a good man. He took you in and looked after you, and you … you… And I didn’t take the best man in the world and lock him up in his own nightmares because I was afraid to face him head on.’
‘AFRAID?’ roared Ashtoreth. The other accusations seemed to have gone right over his head, but he picked up on this one all right. ‘I was not afraid. I was following orders. Obedience is the first virtue.’
‘And now you give the orders,’ said Jack. ‘So that works out well for you then?’
Ashtoreth just smiled complacently. ‘Yes, yes I do,’ he said. He spread his wings menacingly. ‘Time to die – Faerie scum.’
Jack tensed; his own wings outspread. He was breathing heavily.
‘No one here to save you this time,’ mocked Ashtoreth.
‘Jack?’
Jack never drew his eyes away from Ashtoreth’s menacing gaze. He did not have to, he knew that voice.
Ashtoreth knew it too. It haunted his dreams. He turned; his attention diverted temporarily from his step-brother. Then he headed towards her, but Jack was quicker, flying up he sped across the warehouse and landed with a heavy thump interposing himself between Iffie and the approaching Ashtoreth. His wings hunched as he raised his shoulders into a defensive pose, then spread out fully as if to shield her. ‘You leave her alone,’ he snarled. ‘You fight me.’
But Iffie, to his great horror pushed him gently aside. ‘It’s all right Jack,’ she said, holding out a hand to Ashtoreth. ‘He won’t hurt me.’
Jack was appalled to see her take his hand and go to stand with him. Ashtoreth laid one hand possessively on her shoulder the other curled around her waist, still holding on to her hand.
‘Please understand Jack,’ she willed him. ‘If I don’t choose him, he’ll kill us both. I can’t let you die. I can’t!’
But Jack – usually so sensitive to the thoughts of others – was too shocked and bewildered to hear her.
Iffie squeezed Ashtoreth’s hand. ‘Let’s go, Ash,’ she said. ‘Never mind him. He’ll keep.’ And she threw Jack a disdainful look that pierced him to the core.
Ashtoreth smiled; the triumphant smile of the victor. ‘I will deal with you in due time,’ he said. ‘Come and visit again, why don’t you? Bring the family. Soon I will have more power than the world has ever seen. I would be happy to see them all in my humble home. You can watch them all die before I deal with you.’ And he vanished in a flash of light, taking Iffie with him.
‘If only it meant he was dead, like those minions of his,’ thought Jack bitterly. He was incapable, at the moment, of more constructive thought (such as, what kind of power?) heartbroken and devastated by Iffie’s betrayal. And if he felt this bad, how were Denny and Tamar going to take it? There was little that was selfish in Jack, even in his grief.
He remembered vaguely that she had been carrying something as she came in. She had dropped it near the door.
Slowly and wearily, like an old man, he forced his legs to move. To walk as far as the door and pick up whatever it had been.
A bundle containing some oddments. A candle, a crayon, a kitchen knife, a small gas stove with a small non-electric kettle and a box of matches. This collection might not have meant much to the average person, but it told Jack that she had been intending to do a spell of some kind.
He looked around. There were marks on the floor to indicate that she had been here before, crayon marks that might have been in the shape of a circle once, before they had worn away. What had she been doing here?
The question distracted his tortured mind away from the recent events that had torn his heart asunder so brutally. It was also a delaying tactic, he realised. He was dreading going home to face her parents with the news that he had lost her to Ashtoreth. It was all his fault. If he had not brought him here … His eye was caught by a torn scrap of paper, carelessly dropped, by the grime on it, some time ago. He picked it up indifferently, expecting nothing really, but he looked sharply again as he recognised Iffie’s handwriting. It was a summoning spell, a spell for summoning angels.
Jack did not bother fooling himself by even considering the possibility that it was Erasmus she had been after contacting. It was Ashtoreth, no doubt. And she had been here several times – perhaps many times, the betrayal went back much further than today. He noted that she had been shocked to see Jack himself here, but had shown no surprise at seeing him. He had not really noticed at the time.
He was shaking all over, blind with tears. He never knew how he made it home.
Denny found him lying on his bed staring blankly at the ceiling several hours later.
In the end, Jack lied. He only told Denny that Ashtoreth had taken Iffie away, that he had been unable to stop him. That he was sorry. He made it sound as if she had been kidnapped against her will. Why should they have to know the truth? It would only hurt them more and what difference could it make now? He was willing to take all the blame if it made it easier on them. If it let them remember her in a good way. He felt totally responsible anyway.
He told them later, what Ashtoreth had said about gaining great powers and improvised about what else he knew – about the six Nephelim and their “sacrifice”.
“Bring the family,” Ashtoreth had said. And Jack pondered on this. He could, but was it a good idea? Ashtoreth would be expecting them now, thanks to his foolishness. And he had not been bluffing about the new power. Jack’s own encounter with his soldiers had taught him that.
On the other
hand, once that power was his, he would be coming after them anyway. Would it be better to face him on his home ground or theirs? That was what it came down to.
The advantage of routing Ashtoreth within his palace was timing, it would be their choice. The disadvantage was the armies of Nephelim all over the place. But he might bring them along anyway.
In the end, he resolved to let Denny and Tamar decide what to do.
* * *
There was some consternation among the Nephelim. Had they or had they not seen two masters? Was it a test? Even more worrying – had they passed? It was not that they were afraid of being executed. Weren’t they all going to die anyway? But if they failed him in any way, Ashtoreth had made it pretty clear that they would not receive their heavenly reward. And they were all looking forward to it so much.
Then Ashtoreth arrived with a strange young woman. Women were strictly forbidden here. What were they supposed to do? Was this the impostor? Was it another test? They were all very quietly panicking.
Ashtoreth dismissed then peremptorily. He wanted to be alone with Iffie.
After a moment’s hesitation – what if it was the impostor, the master would be furious – they left.
When they had gone, Ashtoreth turned to Iffie and surveyed her with satisfaction.
‘I knew you would make the right choice in the end,’ he said. ‘I never had any fears for you, and soon you will witness my crowning moment, when I receive my power. Praise the Lord. And after that you shall become my queen. Hmm, I shall have to have another throne made for you. Only the very best for my queen. How do you like my palace?’
Iffie understood from this unbroken soliloquy that Ash wanted to talk, not listen. He wanted to boast. It was a relief actually. She could listen with half an ear and think her own thoughts at the same time, which were considerably bewildered. It had all happened so fast, she felt she needed time to assimilate it all and think of a safe way to get out of here – his queen indeed!
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said dutifully, and he continued to rattle on, about his plans, his power, his great and powerful self. Yawn!
At least she had saved Jack. When she had seen them squaring off against each other, a revelation had come to her. She wanted Jack to win, but there was no way he could. She had thought fast and done the only thing she could think of to save him. She had, she admitted it now, been attracted by Ash, very much so, in fact. Dangerously so. But when it had come down to a choice between him and Jack, Jack had won hands down. In fact, a terrible hatred of Ash had flowered when she had realised that he might kill Jack. For the one who took Jack away from her, there could be no forgiveness. And Ash had been ready to do just that. He might yet.
Rise Of The Nephilim (The Tamar Black Saga) Page 19