Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1

by Angela Slatter

  Yet as long as this child remained alive, as long as she remained as she was, she would always be a danger, a threat to those around her, because she’d always be a weapon. The Archangel would pursue her to the ends of the earth, I was certain of that. Calliope would never be free. She would have no chance to grow, to become something different. She’d have no opportunity to make her own decisions, to change . . .

  The Arch advanced on us again and his movement galvanised the sirens. They rushed forward as one, like a rising tide, breaking into smaller groups until each angel was surrounded by his own pack of howling, biting, slicing bird-women, as enraged as they could possibly be, flying and clambering up monumental bodies, swinging on the angels’ wings, trying to tear them off in a dreadful echo of what had been done to their sisters. Eurycleia and a phalanx faced off against the Arch, blocking his path. Behind him, I could just about make out an eerie flashing presence, so fast and fierce I couldn’t be entirely sure of what I’d seen: something that whirled by in a haze of summer colours and blazing black and silver, an atavistic dance that left angels shrieking in its wake.

  Eurycleia leapt, talons aimed at the Arch’s beautiful face, her wings creating a tornado that buffeted Ziggi and me. He let her think she had a chance, let her get within a hair’s breadth, then struck her out of the air as if she was an insect. When she came to rest on the lawn, bleeding from her mouth and nose, feathers floating about, struggling to rise, the Arch bent and closed one of his hands around her swanlike neck and lifted her high.

  ‘Do something,’ I said to Ziggi. I couldn’t leave the baby, and though I wasn’t fond of Eurycleia, I didn’t want her slaughtered in front of her granddaughter – I didn’t want her to suffer the same death Serena had. Ziggi gave me a look of reproach, but loped into the fray anyway, fumbling with the Taser. I watched as the prongs flew and hit their target, pierced the fabric of the angel’s chiton, and embedded themselves in his thigh. The Arch roared and swatted Ziggi, who went down like a ton of bricks and didn’t move again. I bit off my cry and thought furiously.

  Ziggi’s charge had achieved his aim of distracting the Arch. Eurycleia, dangling from his fist, managed to get one leg swinging and kicked him right under the chin. His head snapped back and he dropped her, but her blow had been no more than a green ant’s bite to him and within moments he was poised to stomp her.

  Then there came that whirlwind of ragged colour I’d glimpsed before, and the battle changed.

  The Archangel froze, his face a ludicrous rictus of disbelief. His eyes met mine and I saw worlds dying in them. He toppled as slowly as a felled ghost gum tree, a hand outstretched towards me – towards Calliope.

  Ligeia, suddenly, terribly, stood over the fallen angel. A sword protruded from his back, its ebony hilt studded with gold, engraved swirls and curlicues weaving up and down the blade. She withdrew the weapon, kicked the Arch over as if he weighed nothing, then plunged her hand into his chest. The beating of the heart slowed and stopped in the seconds between being pulled from between his ribs into the air and being put into the old siren’s mouth. The Archangel began that same transformation his Brisbane brother had gone through, becoming a fast-burning silvery ash that was swiftly lifted on the slightest of breezes.

  An intense quiet settled over the battlefield, broken only by the last shrieks of angels being torn apart by siren hands, by the wet sound of chests being prised open and bloody hearts being shared amongst the victors. To my great relief, Ziggi began to stir and swear, and Eurycleia also sat up slowly, her gaze fastened on her mother as if she had never really seen her before. As if Ligeia was terrible and wonderful and worthy of awe.

  She truly was.

  The Arch and his tribe were gone, but there were more angels in the world. The baby was still a danger. This was my last chance, while the sirens were preoccupied.

  I knelt and put the little girl down, gently unwrapping the pink bunny rug and laying her on her tummy. I slid the Boatman’s knife out of its sheath. The blade heated up almost immediately.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tenderly I took both sets of the baby’s wings in one hand, holding on tight as they twitched against my palm. Ignoring the cries from Ligeia and Eurycleia, I raised the knife, praying I had enough time before they came for me.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, this will hurt,’ I whispered, and brought the Boatman’s blade down sharply. It sliced through the tendons where they attached to her back. Blood spurted, but only briefly, and only a little. Calliope gave a great howl, though the knife cauterised the cut almost immediately, so how much was pain and how much outrage, I couldn’t tell.

  Change transforms, makes things both less and more – different – and we all adapt in our own way. Be patient: you’ll find your own way. The vision of my father the Archangel had offered me had reminded me of Grigor’s words, of their value, and had given me an idea of how to make the child anew.

  Calliope had been transformed: less than she had been, but free of that which put her life in danger. She was no longer double-winged, no longer a key, and so no longer suitable for anyone’s arcane purposes.

  In my hands, both pairs of wings, black and silver, turned to a luminous powder, which I tossed into the air like glitter.

  I breathed out and resheathed the knife before re-wrapping the bawling baby against the cold and settling her on my hip. I rubbed a hand over her skin and found nothing more than a raised pink scar that looked months old.

  Ziggi wobbled to his feet. One of his eyes was swollen almost shut and blood trickled from a split in his lower lip.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked and his look of disdain made me laugh in spite of everything. I pulled him into a hug with my free hand.

  ‘We still got things to do, you know,’ he said gruffly. ‘Boyfriends to rescue, monsters to slay.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, and felt horribly guilty that I’d had even a moment of relief when David was still missing. ‘What was I thinking?’

  ‘The child.’ Eurycleia’s imperious tone was gravelly, but no less demanding. She and Ligeia stood in front of me, and seeing them side by side, I could at last see their resemblance to each other. Tobit waited behind them, his chains gone, with the rest of the conclave, bloodied but unbowed and positively glowing with their victory. Eurycleia held out her arms for the baby she’d never bothered to see and said again, ‘The child.’

  Though Calliope had been giving me some reproachful glances, her crying had diminished to a grizzle and she showed no sign of throwing herself at her grandmother, or anyone else. As I surveyed the three, I wondered which of them was praying for the chance to do as Eleanor Aviva had suggested: to go back to the beginning, back to the place where it had all begun and do something differently, to change something, to make things go their own way.

  Eurycleia was motivated by her regrets, but I didn’t think it would change her behaviour. She would try to shape Calliope into the mould Serena had resisted. Ligeia, happily licking blood from her lips, would be no better; she’d bring the child up in the old ways, tell her about everything she was heir to, every morsel of flesh, every trickle of ichor. And Tobit . . . Tobit was completely uninterested, maybe because he thought he had no right to his daughter, or because he didn’t want the responsibility. I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t really care.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘none of you lot. Not now, at any rate.’

  I didn’t need to see Eurycleia’s expression to know she wasn’t going to take that lying down, but as she lunged, Ligeia held her back, one clawed hand clamped on her shoulder. Mother and daughter stared at each other for long moments until the older woman said, ‘She’s right. Wait. We will wait.’

  Eurycleia shrank, somehow. As Ligeia wiped her sword on the skirt of her dress, adding a smear of dark silver to the sedimentary layers already there, I saw the weapon up close for the first time and realised how strikingly similar it was to the Boatman’s dagger, both in craftsmanship and design. She must have seen that dawning
on my face because she said, ‘Such things often come in pairs.’

  ‘I’ll contact you when I’ve made my decision,’ I said.

  The sword became a tattered umbrella once more and Ligeia gave a brief smile before wrapping a wiry arm around her daughter and leading Eurycleia away. The other sirens followed in their wake and soon the garden was empty except for us, some stray feathers wafting in the air and piles of ash that grew smaller with each puff of the winter wind.

  I blinked. My eyeballs felt dry, as if I’d been staring for the longest time. I probably had. Looking at Tobit I realised he was roughly the same size as the Archangel. So who had he been before? I also realised the angel-related buzzing in my head was gone. He noticed my stare and shrank down a bit, as if embarrassed.

  I looked askance at him. ‘Why don’t I hear a noise around you?’

  ‘I’m not like them. I never was.’ He rubbed his wrists where the now-disintegrated chains had worn them red.

  ‘When we first spoke about your daughter and you told me about the Arch, did you know there was a prophecy? That it wasn’t just a random crusade?’ I demanded.

  ‘Your opinion of me is that low?’

  I looked around the garden. ‘The sirens certainly cleaned up.’

  ‘The angels were starving – too many of them in this small area and not enough faith.’ He tentatively reached out a large finger to Calliope, who grabbed for it like a bird going for a worm. ‘Lucky for the old lady. She wouldn’t have had a chance against the Arch at his full strength.’

  ‘Lucky for us all,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure about his assessment. I reckoned Ligeia could have taken out a whole legion of Archangels, given the right motivation.

  Tobit shook off Calliope’s tenuous grasp and started to move away, but I put up a hand to stop him. ‘Hey! You’re not going anywhere – Brisbane needs an angel. Probably. I might have been a bit careless with our last one.’ He looked sceptical, but I hadn’t finished with him. ‘You owe me a big fucking favour! I know exactly what you’re going to do.’

  He said nothing while I told him what it was.

  *

  I slouched into the seat, Calliope clinging like a small clam. It was quiet in the gypsy cab, and warm, and I closed my eyes, savouring the knowledge that at least one thing was okay. One thing – not the biggest thing, no, but one thing, and for a few beats, that was fine. That was a win.

  ‘Next?’ Ziggi had never been a big fan of resting on laurels. Without opening my eyes I sighed, and the baby echoed me. The bubble broken, my fear for David rushed back in and pushed all the air out of my lungs. Though the Arch had shown me my dead and David hadn’t been amongst them, that was a while ago, and it felt like ages had passed since then. Time was a knife’s edge, seldom kind, and I was keenly aware that I might be chasing a ghost by now.

  ‘I dunno. Back to the drawing board,’ I muttered. Then I sat up straighter, an idea taking hold. We hadn’t heard from Bela yet and he wasn’t answering his phone, but I thought of Eleanor Aviva’s words again: Beginnings are so hard, that’s why we always try to go back to them, to change them, make things move differently. To make things go our way.

  ‘Back to the beginning, Ziggi.’

  He turned the key in the ignition as I started explaining. ‘Ascot – the Winemaker’s house. It’s still there, right? You can’t erase it, it’s still glamoured. Hiding in plain sight . . .’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The house looked the same: huge, deserted, pale against the dark sky. On closer inspection, however, the paint job appeared a little grubby, not quite crisp, as if without the old witch in residence to make sure every surface was wiped and every wall washed, things had started the process of slow decay. I was willing to bet cobwebs were beginning to creep across the windows, that the curtains were becoming home to colonies of upwardly mobile insects.

  And the place wasn’t entirely deserted: I could see, just peeking out, the back of a Transit van: gunmetal grey, nondescript, serviceable, the sort with no windows anywhere but the cab . . . the sort that would be perfect for transporting stuff you didn’t want seen, like a golem, or a kidnapped boyfriend.

  ‘No one’s been watching this place since you toasted the old lady,’ Ziggi reported, adding, ‘Didn’t seem to be any need.’ He’d turned off the headlights before we’d entered the property and now we were once again parked under the looming camphor laurels, waiting quietly, watching. Calliope had apparently forgiven me; she’d gone to sleep soon after we’d hit the road, switching between silent slumber and stunningly loud snoring. I had the awful feeling another nappy change was due, and of course I’d not had the forethought to retrieve the bag of baby stuff from the church.

  ‘I’m going in,’ I said, although part of me – a very large part of me – wanted to run away, terrified of what I might find. That part of me was certain I didn’t want to know, that I couldn’t handle that loss. I wasn’t sure the other part of me disagreed much.

  ‘Okay.’ Ziggi moved to open his door.

  ‘No, you’re not coming.’

  ‘I’m not?’

  ‘Nope, you’re going to be left holding the baby.’ I reached forward and handed him the slightly damp, dozing lump. ‘And you’re going to keep trying to contact Bela.’

  ‘Gotta say, this doesn’t seem like a great plan.’ He held Calliope as if trying to work out which way was up. As I got out, she farted and burped at the same time, just to be helpful.

  ‘I’m making it up as I go along.’ I stretched my fingers towards the sky, loosening up. ‘I can’t wait any longer, Ziggi. I can’t leave David on his own.’

  ‘He might not even be there.’

  ‘I know. But I need to check this place first. If I have to, I’ll start working out Plan B.’ I patted his shoulder. ‘Just keep trying Bela.’

  ‘If you don’t come out?’

  ‘Then you can have my stamp collection.’

  ‘You don’t have a stamp collection.’ He opened the glove box and removed another Taser with all the aplomb of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

  ‘How many of these do you actually own?’

  He grinned.

  I almost refused it, then I remembered what I was facing and stuffed it into a side pocket. It was an X2, a bit more compact than the older models, but it still felt like a brick. I reached in through the window and touched the baby’s smooth face. She opened her eyes and giggled.

  ‘Good luck,’ Ziggi said quietly, and as I started towards the house he added, ‘Don’t get yourself killed.’

  *

  It took less time to cover the distance than before, but I was different: I was stronger, fitter, and this time I had a very good idea what I was dealing with. Emotionally, though, I was in an even deeper hole. Before, it had been Lizzie’s fate in my hands. I’d thought nothing could make me ache like that ever again. The height and depth and width of how wrong I’d been was breathtaking, but I was doing my best to stay calm, to stop the tiny section of my brain that had all the worst possible scenarios running on a hi-def loop.

  Of course I wanted to charge in there, all metaphorical guns blazing, but just because I was hurting did not mean I was going to unplug my cortex and do every stupid thing people did when suffering such uncertainty, facing such enormous loss. If I panicked, I risked losing the most valuable thing in my life, so I pushed the pain and anxiety down and let hard determination be my map. I told myself to be brave, no matter what I found.

  Up the steps, onto the verandah and to the double door. Someone had hammered a lovely piece of pine over the panel I’d broken previously. Those little ceramic pots, now filled with withered plants, were still sitting on the white iron table, so I used one to smash in the other panel of glass. People never learned.

  Inside, it was dark and cold. Before, I’d been able to smell only furniture polish; now there was the odour of dust and the faint, familiar stench of something nasty that had passed by a while ago. The narrow Persian runner squ
elched underfoot, so I hit the torch app on my mobile and crouched. There were dark patches of wet there, not only in the expensive weave, but also on the polished wood floors. As I moved on, I glanced into the lounge and dining rooms. It looked as if several items of furniture were missing; I was sure there were empty spaces where armchairs and dining chairs had once been.

  At the foot of the stairs I checked the light-coloured carpet for stains, but this one was clean – there was no way the leaking golem could have made it up there without leaving a trace, so instead I headed towards the kitchen, moving as quickly and quietly as possible. I’d almost made it when I heard that sound, that distinctive bang-click, and without thinking I hit the deck. I lost my grip on my mobile and it landed with a thud. The screen was cracked, but there was still a bit of a sickly glow that I could see by.

  Though I’d managed to avoid the shot, I had landed face-down in a puddle of yuck and my left hand went sliding through another to thud into the skirting board so hard it felt like my fingers had exploded. Ziggi’s X2 in my pocket crunched against my hip and the pain made me catch my breath. I rolled over and saw the two long metallic threads of Taser wire above me, the probes embedded in the wall. My gaze followed them back down the corridor to the front door where a lithe, muscular silhouette was throwing aside the spent weapon and cursing, but I was still trying to scramble out of the way when she came at me. In the weak light from my mobile I saw the glint of sleek blonde hair and hard blue eyes.

  Anders Baker’s AWOL security guard grinned and pulled a knife.

  I didn’t have time to get up so I kicked her legs from under her and she grunted as she fell. I really hoped she’d landed on her own weapon, but my luck wasn’t that good; she reared up like a cobra and swiped the blade across my chest. It split the leather of my jacket, but didn’t get through the T-shirt to the skin underneath. I did the only thing I could think of and kicked her in the groin. It didn’t have quite the same effect as it would on a guy, but it did slow her down a little.