Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1

by Angela Slatter

  ‘Stop them, the angelics,’ he said. ‘They will break the sky and night will be forever. They will change the nature of death.’

  Okay, so I could see he had a stake in that.

  ‘How can I stop them if I can’t fucking find them?’ I shouted, losing my temper just a little with someone I definitely needed not to piss off. ‘Or anyone else?’

  He pointed upwards, jabbing at the air: upwards, and kind of behind. We were below St Mary’s Church.

  ‘Spaces are not what they seem.’ The mist shifted again, thinning and dissolving into nothingness. Anders Baker turned his eyes in the direction of travel. The Boatman shook his head as if he couldn’t believe he’d put faith in me.

  ‘Spaces are not what they seem,’ I muttered. I thought about City Hall and its hidden dimensions. I thought about how easy it might be to hide something in plain sight. I clambered up the rocks and as soon as I hit the path I started to run, almost knocking Ziggi over as I yelled, ‘Spaces are not what they seem!’

  I didn’t need to check to see if he was following me.

  *

  The cliffs were deserted, no sign of any siren conclaves, angels, abseilers, or random sightseers to be seen in the last of the daylight. No one. It was almost as if the city’s population as a whole had sensed something wasn’t quite right, wasn’t quite safe, and had gone home to hunker down with a cup of tea and chocolate biscuits until whatever threatened had blown over.

  I ran up the stone steps, panting for breath, half-skipped, half-jogged towards St Mary’s and pushed through the gate. I took the corner of the church a little too sharply and felt a pain in my knee, which I ignored; I had to keep going. Out past the garden, where the ground fell away, the sky was shot with pink and red, with silver limning the clouds. I circled the building, coming at last to where the ragged stones and missing masonry were hiding more than they revealed.

  There had once been a room there.

  Perhaps there still was.

  I stepped forward, just as I had that night when I’d been hit by the thrown stone. The air congealed, feeling like glue against my skin, but I pressed on, blindly hoping that the ward, like so many others, wouldn’t work on me, or at least not entirely. Only when my lungs began to burn did I start to doubt . . .

  . . . and then I was through, gasping and stumbling into a well-lit chamber. It was warm, and to my relief there was no scent of decay. There was, however, a crib, rocking chair, changing table and baby bath, and toys had been scattered across the thick rug. The two solid walls were hung with sumptuous tapestries depicting ladies and unicorns getting on famously, both gorgeous, and perfect for keeping away the chill. A camp bed piled with blankets said someone else was spending time here too: someone who’d gone to the trouble of making it comfortable and safe.

  The enchanted walls that hid the stone nursery from the outside world were transparent, and through them I could see the manse and the community hall, and the hospice beyond.

  Then a gurgle came from the crib and I turned back and bent down, pushing aside the net with its lilac ribbons, embroidered purple butterflies and yellow bunnies. Sitting in the middle of creamy sheets was a violet-eyed baby girl with a ton of curly black hair, wearing only a nappy, a drooly grin and two sets of unbound wings. The pair closest to her skin were black, the others, smaller and silver, nestled just inside the first like the petals of a flower: so beautiful, so magical – and putting her in mortal danger. They were only wings, but they had turned her into a thing, wanted and pursued. With them, she would always be hunted.

  Beside her lay a half-full bottle, still warm, which suggested her guardian wasn’t long gone. Calliope Kallos was well cared for, apart from an untimely diaper issue. I wrinkled my nose and she laughed, a sound bright as bells. Fortunately, the changing table was equipped with all the necessities.

  ‘This was not on my List of Firsts, baby.’ I peeled open the nappy. ‘Oh, sweet mother of crap!’

  After cleaning her up with an inordinate number of wet wipes and spraying half a ton of talc everywhere, things were a little less dire.

  ‘You’d think a divine infant might manage to poop something a bit more fragrant,’ I told her, but the baby just kept laughing and dribbling. When I picked her up, she snuffled against my neck. She smelled sweet, floral, but not like powder. She smelled like Tobit; his odour of sanctity clung to her.

  Jiggling her back and forth, I peered through the walls, but the only person I could see was Ziggi, puffing up the cracked asphalt drive, looking for me. Utter perplexity was writ large on his face.

  ‘Ready for this, kid?’ I marvelled at the intense colour of her eyes as she gurgled up at me. I grabbed a pink bunny rug to wrap her in, then paused. Where could I take her? Where was safe? Maybe the Rectory—

  ‘Don’t,’ an angry growl pierced me, ‘or I will gut you where you stand.’

  I pivoted; the pile of blankets had fallen from the bed, revealing Ligeia’s hiding place. She stood tall beside the crib, her wings spread to make herself more threatening, brandishing her umbrella in a white-knuckled grip. She pointed her left hand at me, grubby talons growing longer and sharper as I watched. The summer dress might be filthy beyond rescue, her feathers scraggy and moulting, but Ligeia was a terrifying sight in her protective rage.

  Trying to stop my voice shaking and summon some of the confidence I’d felt when she stalked me in the Botanical Gardens, I said firmly, ‘I think you’d have done it by now, Ligeia, if you meant to, like when my back was turned.’ I wasn’t at all sure of that, but I had to believe that it wasn’t just because she preferred her prey to know what was coming. This was such a dangerous gambit: if I died here, no one could save David. Still, she didn’t move, just stared at me intently.

  ‘You know she’s in danger,’ I said.

  ‘Calliope is safe here. I will protect her. I promised my granddaughter.’

  Serena.

  ‘I know you want to – I know you’d die for her, Ligeia, but she can’t stay in here forever. How many years will you be able to hide her? The angels aren’t going to go away; they aren’t going to stop hunting for her. They’ll keep killing people, sirens and humans alike. It’ll mean more loss, more grief.’

  ‘You can’t protect her,’ she sneered.

  ‘I can protect her better than you did her mother,’ I said meanly. That was unfair, especially since I’d let Serena down too, but I could see I’d hit home. I went on, a little more gently now, ‘Maybe not me, but I know people who can.’

  I hoped that was true: Bela, the Councillors, even the Norns – somebody could at least whisk her away.

  Ligeia bared her teeth and took three deliberate steps towards me.

  I raised my voice. ‘There’s got to be somewhere more secure than this!’ She halted, and I added, ‘Ligeia, this baby needs a chance – a chance to be what she wants. She needs the opportunity to grow and choose a life for herself. She’s too small now to make her own decisions, but she can’t stay here. I can get her to safety – we can get her out of Brisbane and away from the Arch. We can give her the choices you didn’t have; the choices Eurycleia denied her daughter.’

  Still she stayed silent and in an anger born of despair I yelled, ‘You couldn’t save Serena. You couldn’t save Teles, or Raidne. Let me save Calliope.’

  And finally the old siren’s shoulders slumped and her wings drooped as her hands dropped to her sides. On her ravaged face was all the pain of defeat and loss, a look I’d been imagining on my own face at the thought of letting David down. I shook the thought away and held the baby tighter, as if she were an anchor.

  ‘Ligeia, I’m taking her now. You can come with us, and I promise you can stay by her side, but you need to let me do this, for Callie’s sake.’ I waited for her to answer, to either agree or dissent, but she did neither, just appeared crushed. ‘You’ll find me if you need anything?’

  She still didn’t speak and I risked turning my back. The nape of my neck and the spot between my
shoulder blades twitched as I stepped into the invisible barrier, but the return trip wasn’t as bad; it took less of an effort and the burning in my lungs settled far more quickly. It didn’t bother the child at all, and as we came out into the dusk she gave a delicate little baby fart that stank up the fresh air. What the hell had Ligeia been feeding her?

  Ziggi, who’d planted himself at the base of one of the tall pine trees, saw us and smiled, dusting himself off as he climbed to his feet. I headed towards him, then watched as his mouth slowly turned down. I didn’t have to ask why.

  On the wind came the beating of enormous wings, sounding terrifyingly like a cohort of Black Hawks. A humming in my head set alight every promise I’d made to Ligeia, every chance I had of surviving, of finding David, and turned all my hopes to ash. Something angelic this way came.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  You can’t outrun an angel; I knew that without having to be told. Ziggi’s cab was still down beside the river, and there weren’t enough trees to duck through in the vain hope that the hordes might fly into them and come a cropper. I ran towards Ziggi as six angels dropped into the garden in front of us. One of them was larger than the others: the Archangel, deigning to show himself at last. I kept thinking about Serena and Teles and Raidne, with their skin branded, their wings torn off. Cut off from the hidden room by a flanking angel, Ziggi and I backed into the front entrance of St Mary’s, a tiny covered portico, putting the pair of padlocked doors at our backs.

  The entourage landed about twenty feet away. The Arch took a few steps towards us, the sound of thunder ringing every time his feet touched the ground. He dragged something in his wake: Tobit. His arms had been tied behind him and a bronze choke-chain encircled his neck. The other end was being brandished nonchalantly by the Arch. ‘Worse for wear’ didn’t even begin to cover his condition. His gaze was desolate as it slid over us, then he fell face-down into the grass, apparently out cold.

  About ten feet away, the Arch paused for effect. I had to admit he was truly a thing of beauty, even more than his disciples. Long silver hair flowed over broad shoulders; green eyes flared like the Aurora Australis. He wore bracers and greaves that shone like jet, and his sable boots had pale pearl lacings. His chiton was black, and in the centre of the burning heart in his breastplate was a mosaic of twelve precious stones. My chest tightened: this was what had been in my brain outside St Stephen’s.

  The baby raised her head and burped, dribbled down the front of my jacket, then looked at the troop. Her little fists clenched. I thought it pretty unlikely she’d sensed they were there for her, but she wasn’t oblivious to the tension crackling around us. She didn’t cry, though, and I was proud of her.

  I cleared my throat. ‘You’ve been following me?’

  The Arch smiled smugly and shook his handsome head. He threw the end of Tobit’s chain to no one in particular, assuming someone would catch it, and the ruby-hearted ginger did. ‘We did not follow you, for you would have sensed us. We followed it.’

  He pointed to Ziggi, who appeared surprised – I wasn’t sure if it was being tracked, or being called an ‘it’. Perhaps it was a little of both. We must have looked blank, for the Arch said impatiently, ‘Where you go, it invariably follows.’

  ‘My friend is not an it! Although admittedly he does follow me a lot.’

  Ziggi said helplessly, ‘Sorry, V.’

  I said, ‘You couldn’t have known.’

  ‘Thus we come to this meeting,’ began the Arch, and his smile slid from me to the baby and back again. Calliope shrank against me – she definitely knew something was up – and I held her more tightly. ‘It appears that you have what I want.’

  I took in my adversary and weighed up my chances of facing off against him or the golem. On balance I kind of preferred the golem; the golem got straight into it. But the Arch was wasting my time, time during which I didn’t know what was happening to David. For all I knew, the Arch was running down my clock. I needed to speed this up. ‘Looks like it.’

  He smiled again, and this time there was a real power behind it, and as that power got stronger I began to feel . . . strange . . . a kind of awe, in the oldest sense: devotion and fear and amazement, all rolled into utter belief. In short, I started to feel something I really shouldn’t: I was angel-struck. The small part of my mind that was still my own marvelled at the degree of dominance this creature must have had to break through my Weyrd DNA, to affect me as easily as Tobit had David. Maybe that was my problem: the Normal part of me was my Achilles’ heel.

  I fought the influence, but it was like trying to escape from a sealed plastic wrapper.

  ‘Now,’ said the Archangel in a soothing and reasonable tone, ‘now, you have something I want, something I need. But I do not wish to take it – I do not wish to leave you bereft. I know how these things work, these deals. We have been negotiating with your kind for aeons. Therefore, Verity Fassbinder, I propose a transaction: I will give you back your dead in exchange for the child.’

  Beside him a mist formed, shifting about as if contained in a cylinder, until it resolved into a symphony of friendly brown hues: tan trousers pulled too high at the waist, a taupe T-shirt and a nubbly chocolate cardigan with a hole in the left elbow, one my grandmother had kept mending but which kept getting torn on the same nail on the same old deckchair. Grandy smiled from beneath his thick thatch of silver hair, his eyes grey and kind, the stubble on his chin and cheeks just as it always was, resistant even to the closest of shaves. I smelled Old Spice, just a hint.

  Another white wisp crept up and morphed into a lavender housedress with pink and white flowers, the apron she’d hand-embroidered as part of her trousseau, the fuchsia slippers I’d given her on her last birthday, so bright they could blind you at twenty paces. She smiled too, blue eyes sparkling, and I felt my heart expand. My grandparents represented safety, love. They’d been the only stable adults in my childhood, the only people I’d known, even as a grown-up, who were exactly what they seemed to be. They had no hidden agenda, no secret shape, and they loved me no matter what, even if I scared them a little. I felt my grip on Calliope loosen, my shoulder and arm muscles softening in the act of surrender.

  But the Arch didn’t know when to stop: a third cloud was forming, dense and thick, with none of the ethereal quality of the others. And it was tall, not as tall as the Arch, but big and broad, and strong, yet not quite right. Standing there in an ill-fitting suit with bloodied patches at the shoulders where the iron spikes had pierced his flesh, with a loose smile that showed sharp teeth and a hungry gaze that darted back and forth, as if looking for something to consume, was Grigor.

  ‘Well? Do we have an accord?’ said the Arch in his soothing voice, unable to hide the triumphant timbre.

  If only he’d been more selective about the images he’d put forth. If only he’d not overplayed his hand by showing me things he knew nothing about. If only he’d stopped before the sight of my father had shocked me back to my senses. And although he didn’t know it, he’d given me something to cling to: there was no sign of David amongst my dead.

  Ziggi’s hand was on my arm, as if he’d sensed how much I’d been tempted, but I tightened my grip on the baby and said firmly to the Archangel, ‘No. No accord.’

  That brought him up short, but I hadn’t finished with him. ‘You and your cheap tricks! You’re supposed to be looking after the mortals – you’re supposed to be keeping watch over us, not crying because you can’t go home, not plotting to murder innocent children. So, no, I will not give you this child.’

  ‘I demand the double-winged!’ All charm, all conciliation, all attempts at persuasion were gone now. The pillars of wishful dust dissolved as quickly as they’d come and the Arch started taking his earth-shaking steps towards where we sheltered in the porch. The church behind us shifted, just a little. I pressed my back against the unyielding doors while Ziggi, in an act of sheerest optimism, took the Taser off his belt and sank into a fighting stance. Now that was b
rave. I touched Calliope’s head, felt the silken hair, and turned her face away. She began a whimpering cry and I made shhhh-shhhh sounds, even as I expected her to be plucked from me at any moment and torn apart, but the Arch came no closer.

  ‘He can’t take her,’ yelled a newly roused Tobit. ‘You have to hand her over.’

  The Arch turned to glare at him and the emerald-heart angel kicked Tobit in the head. A tooth flew, landing in the grass some way off.

  ‘Give me the double-winged!’ bellowed the Arch, his voice echoing all around us, even though it shouldn’t have.

  ‘She’s ours!’ Another voice, and a hissing to the left of it drew everyone’s attention. That hissing noise grew and grew as Eurycleia and the conclave swarmed into the small garden. I had to give them credit: they knew what this flight had done to their sisters, and there were only thirty of them against the Arch and his five minions. The odds of a vastly reduced siren population seemed high. The women shivered, and as magics were undone, transformed, wings started unfurling, coming into the light for the first time in what I suspected was a very long time. The sirens fanned out, rolling their shoulders, fighters warming up their muscles. Talons grew at the tips of manicured fingers; teeth lengthened in pretty mouths; retroussé noses became sharper, beakish. The hissing ceased as they came to a standstill, laying claim to their ground, waiting, watching, mindful of the havoc the seraphs could wreak.

  ‘Give me the double-winged and I shall break the sky. We shall go home and be free of this place.’ The Arch made gigantic fists, just in case his point needed underlining. ‘Give it to me, or I will destroy everyone you care about.’

  He couldn’t take Calliope from me, but he could do that. He could find David, he could find Lizzie and Mel, Bela and Ziggi, he’d hunt down the Norns and Rhonda. He and his would turn the sirens into so many shredded feathers . . .

  No, he couldn’t take Calliope from me. I had to make a sacrifice of her, give up the protection of her – but if I surrendered, she was dead. And if I surrendered, there would be only a brief reprieve for everyone else: if I surrendered, the sky would be broken and there would be night eternal. Life under that kind of reign had nothing to recommend it.