Relics

by Tim Lebbon

  “It’s my first… I didn’t know… Didn’t mean…”

  But there was no pleading with the Nephilim, and no begging. He stood behind the chef and rested his heavy, gore-slimed hands on his shoulders.

  “May all of your dreams be red,” he said to Angela, to Vince, to everyone, before he took in a deep breath and tore the man apart.

  Angela backed toward the door. Vince went with her. Mallian glanced their way, then snorted.

  “Lilou,” Angela whispered. Lilou was leaning against the wall next to a window, head lowered. When she looked up she looked defeated.

  “You’d better run,” the nymph said.

  Stunned, numbed by such violence and brutality, yet with senses sharpened by gore, they bolted through the doors. Angela grabbed Lucy, and Vince was on her other side, holding her up.

  “We have to go. Now.” Angela said this into her friend’s face, and Lucy’s tears, her softness, almost made her cry.

  “Me…” Fat Frederick said behind her. “Don’t forget…” The blade protruded from his upper chest just below his right clavicle. He kept glancing down at it.

  “Follow us,” Angela said. The gangster was pale, but still mobile, and she couldn’t leave him behind. She wasn’t sure who was good or who was bad. She wasn’t certain there was any such thing.

  They made their way back through the kitchen where another sick course of food awaited, never to be eaten. The door through which they had entered stood open. As they ran outside, the gardens were illuminated by the burning cars, and the high roof wore a halo of flames. Angela looked around for the fairy but saw nothing moving in the flickering firelight.

  Fifty meters along the driveway they found Claudette. She was slumped against a tree with her head ripped off, blood blackening the ground around her. Mhoumar roosted in the branches above, the head clasped to her mouth, taking her fill.

  Angela looked to the sky, glowing with the light of this great, terrible city. Cool air washed against her face, chilling the tears beading down her cheeks.

  Sirens sang to the night.

  30

  They can never be revealed.

  This was their vow after they left the grounds of Mary Rock’s burning home. Fat Frederick was still with them then, moving at their speed even with the blade in his chest. He echoed the words. Angela believed him. Whatever else she thought of Meloy, she knew that the Kin were even more wonderful to him than they were to her. As well as their beauty and uniqueness, she had seen their brutal side and been repulsed by it.

  Fat Frederick was not repulsed by brutality.

  He pulled out a phone and arranged for his man Cliff to collect them from several streets away. Waiting for him to arrive, the four of them hid in the shadow of a row of garages, listening to the concerto of sirens and roaring engines that descended on the big, burning house. None of them spoke. Maybe because there was too much to be said, or perhaps because there was nothing.

  Lucy was silent and withdrawn, shivering in shock, almost not there. She shrugged off any attempts by Angela to touch or hold her. She wouldn’t catch her eye.

  Meloy leaned against an ivy-clad wall and hummed softly. Angela couldn’t place the tune. The blade protruding from his chest glimmered in the moonlight.

  Once in the car and with Cliff driving, the gangster insisted that he take them home first.

  “No, really, it’s fine,” he said as if this were a lift from a party, and Angela found herself giggling. It was that, or allow in the terror and madness that stalked her mind.

  The last she saw of Fat Frederick was as Cliff drove away along Lucy’s street. He was in the car’s passenger seat staring from the window, one hand nursing the knife in his chest without actually touching it. Anyone watching might have believed he was looking at her, Vince, and Lucy. But Angela thought not.

  * * *

  Lucy turned her back on them and slammed her door. Angela had wanted to take her to the hospital but her friend had responded with the only word she’d spoken since being rescued.

  “Home.”

  After she shut them out, they rang the bell, but there was no reaction. No response to phone calls or texts. Vince thought she would come around, but Angela feared that she’d lost her friend forever.

  At least she’s alive.

  Afterwards, she traced his wounds, tending them as best she could. She told him that he should really go to the hospital, but Vince shook his head, sitting naked on the edge of the bed and wincing as Angela cleaned his battered and cut body. She bathed his swollen eye, then ushered him into the shower. She joined him there. Water flowed red down the plughole. They held each other until the water ran cold and clear, then went to bed.

  “Everything’s changed, but we have each other.”

  She and Vince breathed these words into each other’s mouths that night, warm and afraid in their bed, making love, together again at last.

  * * *

  As darkness gave way to dawn, the world seemed so naive in its ignorance. Their neighbours woke them as usual, coming together to usher in a perfect day. The postman brought an electricity bill and a charity appeal from WaterAid.

  Angela stood staring at her desk, frowning and trying to understand how she had ever been able to sit and work. The reality of what she knew made the everyday more mundane than ever. Yet she craved mundanity. Vince bore the wounds and scars, her friend had nearly died, she had witnessed murders more brutal than she could ever have imagined.

  She wished that she could forget.

  The massacre at Mary Rock’s house was all over the news. The dead included a disgraced former MP from Devon, an American football player fallen from grace, and several prominent business figures from home and abroad. It was also rumored that the house’s owner was among the dead, and the press were digging deep. It seemed that Mary Rock had a shady past and had been the subject of police interest for years. In a time when scandal traveled at the speed of a keyboard click, there was already talk of a sinister club for the mega-rich, peddling drugs and other forbidden offerings.

  Their discussion was brief. They were both in agreement. Their involvement at Mary Rock’s house haunted them, and every time they saw or heard a police car they jumped. Getting away from everything—the shadow of Mary Rock, memories of the awful massacre, and the Kin—became a necessity.

  Neither of them put a duration on their trip. Angela had been promising to introduce Vince to her parents for more than a year, and the timing felt ideal.

  By mid-morning, Angela and Vince had packed their bags and were heading for Heathrow. She tried calling Lucy one more time, but had to make do with leaving a voicemail message.

  “Hey, Lucy. You know I love you. I hope you’ll talk to me sometime about what happened and what we saw. You’re my best friend. So much has changed, I’m so adrift, that… I just can’t bear to lose you, too.”

  At Heathrow, she kept her phone switched on until the last moment, but there were no calls.

  * * *

  They took separate flights. Vince didn’t want to, but she insisted, especially after he revealed that he owned a false identity to travel under. He’d used it a couple of times, flitting to Europe to sell relics to rich continental collectors. Angela felt a weight closing in on them, and while she wanted nothing more than to be with him, she knew that they each would be safer alone.

  They would meet up in a hotel in Boston. They even arranged a time, less than twenty hours in the future.

  “Not even a day,” she told him as they kissed goodbye outside a bustling Costa in Heathrow. Then Angela sat alone in the coffee shop for an hour, reflecting on what had happened and what was to come.

  * * *

  A little more than ten hours later she landed in Boston. The police were waiting for her at the terminal.

  Angela had no idea how she had been traced or caught, who had seen her, or how anyone knew she had been at Mary Rock’s house. To begin with, she didn’t even know whether or not Vince had been arreste
d. Maybe Lucy had given them away, still angry, or unable to think quickly enough to lie after visiting hospital to treat her wounds. Or it could have been Fat Frederick, furious that Vince had run instead of coming into the fold once again.

  It didn’t really matter. Her boot treads had been identified from the scene, cast in dried blood. Her fingerprints had been found on smashed bottles around the burnt-out cars. Once caught, there was no use in denial.

  Angela began to understand what the fairy must have felt. Shut away in a cell, kept from the real world outside. But really, she could never understand. She and Vince had been offered a brief glimpse into a wider, deeper, more wondrous and terrifying existence, and it had been their choice to try and remove themselves from it once again.

  At least he might find freedom, and peace.

  She felt so alone.

  A day after her arrest, Detective Inspector Volk and his team arrived in Boston from Scotland Yard. The questioning began.

  Sleeping in the cell was difficult. She had been assigned a lawyer, but he told her that being moved to somewhere more comfortable was unlikely. Not that she’d asked. The sleeplessness had nothing to do with her surroundings, or the fact that their escape to her home country had been short-lived.

  It was because all of her dreams were red.

  EPILOGUE

  “Angela.” It’s Inspector Volk again. She pretends to be asleep, but he can see through her. She is afraid that he will eventually see all the way inside. “Angela. Wake up.”

  She opens her eyes and sits up. Volk stands in the open doorway, a big cop behind him. With his scruffy shirt and cheap supermarket trousers, the detective inspector seems a throwback to simpler times.

  She sighs and leans back against the wall.

  “You get my coffee right this morning?” She’s lost the taste for tea. It reminds her too much of London, the place she’s come to think of as home.

  “I found a Dunkin’ Donuts three blocks down. Got you breakfast, too.”

  “Pastries for breakfast. That’s why you really came here, huh, Volk?”

  “Can we chat?”

  “Are you allowed to interview me in my cell?”

  Volk smiles. He is being her friend, but she’s withholding information about thirteen brutal slayings, and a lot more besides. At the moment it’s just the good cop, but the bad will have to make an appearance soon. Maybe when they take her back to the UK. Deportation papers are already filed, and her lawyer has told her there’s been a special intervention that will speed up the process.

  Even thinking about going back to London makes her heart beat faster. They are there. Under the ground, hidden away, living their own precarious lives. Lilou, the beauty who can entrance any man. Mallian and his plans for Ascent. Mhoumar, Jilaria Bran, Thorn, and others she has not seen or met. The fairy is with them now, too, and Angela sensed a power in Her that goes way beyond anything she can understand. Wonderful beings, beautiful creatures. Yet they scare her almost to death.

  She’s quickly come to realise that is part of the reason she will never betray the Kin. It isn’t only because she believes they deserve the peace and anonymity they have drawn around themselves. She’s also terrified of how they might react if exposure is forced upon them. Everything will change.

  Such change always comes at a price.

  “They found something in the house,” Volk says. “It’s troubling me.”

  “More than all the murdered people?”

  Volk ignores her. She’s neither denied the murders, nor claimed that she carried them out, but she knows that Volk knows she isn’t guilty. Of that, at least, though there is plenty more she’s hiding from him. He’s been a cop for a long time, and she can see how this case vexes him. Very high profile, it should have been a gift for an ambitious detective inspector.

  But every question Volk believes he’s answered presents him with three more.

  It’s a jigsaw where the edges do not fit, a puzzle without an end. Angela almost feels sorry for him.

  “One of the corpses in the dining room had something in her pocket. A tooth. Looked odd, so we sent it for analysis, and the results came in a couple of hours ago.”

  Angela feigns indifference.

  One of them was stealing, she thinks. The Kin must have cleared away their dead and cooked brethren before fleeing, whether Mallian wanted to or not. She’s still confused about that, but in their haste they neglected to check the murdered diners for anything they might have hidden away.

  “Not human,” Volk says. “It looked like an incisor, though a little bigger, but our specialists couldn’t identify it. Not human, canine, feline. No species they could recognise. It had been well-worn, so it definitely belonged to an adult. But other than that… nothing.”

  Try goblin, Angela thinks. She shrugs, sips at her coffee.

  “Is this part of what you’re afraid I’ll believe if you tell me?” he asks.

  “Where’s my donut?”

  “You get your fucking donut when you tell me something!”

  Angela glances up, startled. It’s the first time Volk has raised his voice, his first loss of control, and it brings a small, shocked chuckle from her. But when she sees him she feels suddenly sorry and sad, because he’s a man used to making loose ends fit together. He hates this. He wants to fly back home with the solution, but every hour that passes makes things more inexplicable. It’s as if mystery was planted that night at Mary Rock’s house, seeded in flame and blood, and now it’s blooming.

  “I don’t know what they had in their pockets,” she says softly. “I don’t know anything that’d make any sort of sense to you, Volk. I’m doing you a favor.”

  He snorts and turns away. The American cop blocks the doorway, expressionless. Angela has no doubt that he’ll shoot her down if she makes any threatening moves. She and Vince have become notorious, and the public and press love the juice of the story. They have little time for all the factors that don’t make sense. It’s too meaty a tale to ignore.

  “You’re driving me mad,” he says, turning back, sitting on her bed. “You weren’t the only one there. There was Vince, too, and we’ll find him soon enough.”

  “Vince is dead.”

  “Yeah. Right. So you keep saying, but we have other footprints in the blood.” He trails off, frowning down at his hands, and Angela knows these footprints are as confusing to him as the strange tooth found in a corpse’s pocket. There are other mysterious traces, too. Solidified fat in the kitchen ovens, hair and fur found in the corners of rooms, the holding pen in the burnt-out attic, holes smashed through the roof with no signs of tools or explosives, bullets in two corpses with no guns found. There are lists of things that don’t make any sense.

  “We’ll be flying home in a few days,” he says. He sounds tired, and she wonders how he’s sleeping. He wears no wedding ring, though he’s definitely struck her as someone in a relationship. She guesses he’s missing whoever he left behind.

  As she’s missing Vince. At least Volk has a reunion to look forward to. She has nothing.

  “I don’t want to go,” she says.

  “Don’t care.” Volk sighs and stands. “You have to talk eventually.”

  “No, I don’t,” Angela says. Lilou told her of Ascent, and Mallian’s desire for the Kin to rise once again and present themselves to humanity, and she thinks that was why he slaughtered those rich scumbags. To leave them as a sign, a calling card. But with every day that passes—without stunned news items or social media footage of fantastical creatures—she realises that something has changed.

  Maybe Lilou has persuaded him that now isn’t the time.

  Or perhaps he and the fairy are waiting until they are stronger.

  “Who are you protecting? Who are you afraid of? We can keep you safe, you know.”

  Angela smiles. Then laughs. As soon as Volk leaves the room and her cell door slams closed again, the smile drops from her face.

  * * *

  “Lilou sen
ds her thanks.”

  The voice startles her from red dreams, and she sits up quickly and wipes the sweat from her face. Faint light comes in under the cell door, but otherwise it’s dark. She tries to calm herself, shed the memories of what she has been reliving while asleep, but those terrible images will always be with her. It’s at these times, alone in the dark with her dreams still bleeding, that she feels most wretched.

  “She sent me to help.”

  Angela gasps and shuffles back along the bed, hugging her knees and pressing herself into the corner.

  “Who are you? Where are you?” She thought she’d left them behind, in London. She believed them to be focused there, but maybe she’s been wrong all along.

  “I’m in here with you,” the voice says. “Don’t be afraid. I’m at home in the night, and I can tell you that you’re safe.”

  “From your kind?”

  “Perhaps. The Kin owe you both a tremendous debt. It’s the first time I remember this happening, but we have sworn to protect you both.”

  “Both?”

  “Vince, too. I’ve been to him. He’s close.”

  Angela smiles in the darkness. “What are you?”

  “A wisp of shadows. I’m not strong, Angela, but I can carry messages and perhaps, if your own desire is strong enough, I can help you get out of here. You have to want it as much as you can. You have to crave release.”

  Angela scans the shadows but sees no movement, and neither can she sense anything in the cell with her. That doesn’t make her doubt, but her heart sinks at the wisp’s words, because since their arrest she has let hopelessness settle within her. She’s lost so much that she can’t imagine what is worth escaping for.

  “There’s plenty!” the wisp says, anticipating her response, or perhaps reading her mind.

  “Like what? A life on the run?”

  “So much beauty and wonder you haven’t seen. So much hope and potential. So many Kin you can’t even imagine.”

  “So many? I thought you were so few, and only in London.”

  “Who said we live only in one city? And what we lack in numbers, we make up in other ways.”