Being cast out for eternity to wander, incapable of true death and final rest, had given him a unique insight into the lies humanity told itself. Perhaps he should become a prophet for a while? Walk the world spreading the real truth as he passed by. Of course, they would not thank him for it. Cain smiled at the notion, seeing churches and cathedrals and all of those so-called Houses of God come crumbling down in his mind’s eye. Pick up a stone, break a stick of wood, he wouldn’t be there.
And then, again, that uncertainty: did Sataniel know that his brother archangel had sired mankind?
”I have always known,” the Morning Star said gently. ”How could I not? I can see my brother in every one of his creations. I cannot see my Father in a single one of them.”
Of course he did, Cain realised, even as Sataniel spoke. Micha’el had cast him out from Heaven and imprisoned him in the tree. Only Micha’el had been strong enough, or so he led them to believe, but that was just another lie. Micha’el had banished his brother in anger. He had refused to bow down to the imperfections Micha’el had created—it had never been about God, their Father. Sataniel had refused to worship mankind because they were completely lacking in the divine. They were born of jealousy, vanity, all of these supposedly human flaws.
He had told Uriel that he had killed God. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t the Father he had slain. It was Micha’el, Who is Like God, that ruled Heaven, and it was Micha’el, the impostor he had killed.
Where then was God?
If the angels were family then He was the absent Father.
Perhaps it was Micha’el himself who had killed his Father? The first and worst patricide? How else could he have gotten away with raising up his own children from the clay and playing at being creator? It would explain so much the believers out there beyond the Garden wall couldn’t explain or tried to wash away as simply being sin.
Flame dripped from their clasped hands. It sizzled and spat as it landed on the grass, searing into the earth. It didn’t burn out. Instead it spread out with the two of them standing at the epicentre of the fire as it chased to the four corners of Eden, consuming everything it touched in its unquenchable fire. Cain saw the flames rising, but they didn’t register. His mind was filled with the revelation of his existence, that he was the son of Micha’el, and by extrapolation, nephew of the archangel holding his hand now.
But he was so far from angelkind …
So removed as to be unrecognizable.
There was nothing divine about the homunculus, Cain.
Cain did not feel his flesh burning, and the angelfire didn’t creep above the wrist of his right hand. The crackle of the flames intensified as they reached the tree, dry bones cracked and snapped under the intense heat. The fire chased up the trunk of the blackened tree and out along the skeletal limbs, seemingly bridging the burning tree and the fire in the sky so that all of paradise was lit up red.
Cain turned his back on the place he had called home long since after it had ceased being so.
Sataniel led him toward the Ald Gate and the Land of Nod beyond the ’Garden’s walls. He didn’t once look back at the tree that had been his prison for so long. He didn’t need to see it burn to know that it was gone, purged from the earth right down to the deepest roots.
”There are still those living beyond the gates that would serve me,” Sataniel said, stopping just inside the gate. His gaze grew distant as he reached out to the black hearts and blacker minds that still offered worship to the Lord of the Flies. A beatific smile spread across his beautiful face. ”Yes, there are,” he said, and Cain could not tell if the Morning Star was assuring himself or if he had found them. ”So many, so many,” he sighed. The look of pure unadulterated bliss on Sataniel’s face spread in the silence that followed. The Bright One was communing with his flock. ”We are the light,” he breathed, the words seeming to swell to fill the distant city spread out before them. The words rippled across the night sky, alive, crackling, filling the world. ”We are the flame, burn, burn, burn with me, burn.”
He nodded to Cain.
They stepped through the gate together.
Behind them, Eden burned.
The God Particle III
Chapter Fifty-Three
Fabian Stark found himself adrift, his consciousness reaching out to have and to hold anything that could slow his dissipation. It was a marriage of need and desperation. The scattering of his soul went beyond the four winds. It went beyond the reaches of the Prime Material and Mother London and rippling out in a sine wave across each and every one of the oblique cities that there ever had been, ever could be, never will be and never was. And he found himself being absorbed into everything and anything, God for a moment once more. But a helpless deity. He could not change things or influence them. He was merely a spectator, no matter that his soul touched every atom and particle of these places.
Given the nature of his death it was only natural that the one unfailing anchor across every time, every plane in each and every oblique city, should be a statue.
He reached out, trying to fasten on to any of them, any stone that might weigh him down and slow the scattering of his soul. And occasionally he would snag something and linger for a heartbeat or two, only to spiral away again, losing himself. But in those moments where he lingered he made discoveries. Mind racing, Fabian Stark tried to process what these revelations meant. For one, across every realm there were consistencies, places that his mind recognised simply for the fact that they remained unchanged, people who were to all intents and purposes the same as the people he knew.
But he never once saw another of his brother Gentleman Knights as his consciousness dispersed, no matter how far from the root of his existence he travelled. There were not infinite variations of McCreedy or Millington or Locke, they were unique to Mother London. It was a staggering realization, for even as he had wrestled with the concept of infinite possibilities he had assumed that every road not taken would create a radically different future and an unrecognizable city, but in truth in so many of these other places London was still recognizably his London. Those similarities helped him maintain a firm grasp on his own identity, keeping not only the physical details of face and body in his mind, but the more subtle personality aspects that made him every bit as unique as McCreedy and the others.
Eustace Mason—the current chamberlain’s father—was the only member of his ”team” he did encounter in these other places. And in each place he stood as a last crusader, sword in hand, gun in hand, flail, mace, holy water, whatever weapon offered the greatest chance of survival against the oncoming storm. And in every place that same voice cried out: burn with me!
He didn’t know what that meant.
He didn’t know what any of it meant.
It was all he could do to remember himself; to focus on the person that had been Fabian Stark right up until the moment that he had sealed off the lost hour and trapped the Meringias, becoming stone.
Stone.
Like one of Hertz’s giant radio antenna, Nelson’s column in the centre of Trafalgar Square, was a beacon to the lost. It called out to him. Drew him. It flashed through his mind in thousands of incarnations, every subtle variation of the granite Lord Admiral and the bronze lions standing guard at his feet; different stone, different features, different animals, every possible connotation was played out across the infinite oblique cities. Where the stone in some had atrophied; where moss and vines crept up to reclaim it as London herself fell to Nature; where the huge column shone out like marble under a glaring sun; where protesters draped flags that had nothing to do with nations or pride around the plinths; where crowds gathered and rioters fought. It was always there.
As were the giant lords of the concrete jungle.
He reached for the lions.
Then he saw the girl. He didn’t know her name but he had seen her face only moments before—moments—millennia. There was no time where he had gone. But that did not change the fact that he recognised her fa
ce. He had seen it beneath the mask of ice worn by the other Victoria, the grief-stricken queen who had violated every dimension in search of her dead love, and he knew she was vital.
He heard the bells of London chiming thirteen while rain sheeted down, drumming angrily on the empty street. He willed himself closer and felt himself opening his eyes even though they had never been closed. It was the most peculiar sensation, akin to waking up in a borrowed body. The girl held her hands up palms bared as though showing him she was defenceless, though why she would need to do such a thing escaped him.
He wanted to calm her, to tell her it was all right, she was safe, he would not harm her but even as he opened his mouth the sound of the lion’s roar filled the square.
She edged back a step and then another.
The sound came from deep in his throat and climbed violently into the night. The rain ran in red tears across his sight. Rust, he realised. The rain was full of rust.
The girl was alone in the square with Landseer’s lions, and Fabian was back in Mother London, though not in any way he could have foreseen. He reached out with his mind, touching all four of the bronze lions. A part of him, it seemed, was with each, like limbs, though his consciousness was firmly rooted in only one of them. He bounded down from the pedestal. The sheer amount of strength trapped within his bronze body was daunting. He prowled toward her, pressing his bronze nose up against her legs, then went down on his forepaws and lowered his head to the ground. It was the only thing he could think to do to show her he was no threat, that she was safe, and that no matter what he would protect her. He brought the three remaining lions down from their plinths and presented them to her.
Up above a murder of crows circled.
The rain came down.
Fabian Stark tossed back his head, startled by the sudden and powerful surge of The Art in the night. Death was close. More than death. He caught the fragrance of the Meringias—but that was impossible, the daemon could not have escaped the lost hour. But something else had … something else carried the stink of that place.
Stark roared, then took off toward the house on Grays Inn Road, willing the girl to follow. He didn’t know what that other escapee was, but he didn’t need to. He could smell the death that clung to it, the reek of Pandemonium, and the only thing he could think to do to protect the girl was to get her to the house. There was nowhere safer in the city, and no one he trusted more with her safety than Mason. The man was more than merely a servant, he knew now, he was the last hope of the damned.
On the corner of the square he looked back over his shoulder.
She was following him.
He dipped his great head, hoping she read it as approval, and took off toward Holborn.
The Dead Gates
Chapter Fifty-Four
Brannigan Locke crept silently away from the table and took a swallow from the phial loaded with the antidote to the Shadwell water. He couldn’t risk the possibility that Arnos was not bluffing. The man was certainly unpredictable enough to poison everyone in the room without thinking twice about it. Locke breathed deeply, slowly, measuring his movements so he made no sudden moves. He checked the faces around the table. None of them had noticed he was gone from his seat. The dead-faced Gatekeepers gave nothing away. They didn’t appear to see him, but when he touched their minds there were none of the familiar neuron pulses and electric impulses that signified brain activity. It was as akin to touching the mind of a corpse, but, in effect that is exactly what the Seven were. Still, he planted the suggestion, hoping his gift would work on the undead as well as it did on the living.
It was a relatively simply deception, under normal circumstances at least. Minds were suggestible. People saw what they wanted or expected to see. As far as the members of the Conclave were concerned, he was still sitting in his chair, fingers steepled, deep in thought. But the fact that he needed to maintain it inside so many minds simultaneously made it considerably more strenuous than it otherwise would have been.
Locke reached out with calming thoughts to sooth their minds. It was like a silky touch brushing against their consciousness one after the other, whispering on to the next as he steered their attention away from him. While the trick wasn’t the same as making himself invisible, in certain circumstances it was every bit as effective as Napier’s light manipulation. Their minds would only register what he allowed them to, meaning they would only see what he wanted them to see. Essentially, it was as simple as that. He sub-vocalised the lie he wanted to place into each of their minds, urging them to believe it.
They needed to believe he was still at the table if he was going to be able to sneak out.
It was a straightforward suggestion, but still, he hated the fact that he was forced to use his gift on his friends. It was an unwritten rule they all abided by—they did not use their talents upon one and other. And for good reason. There were things he could do with his mind that did not bear thinking about. He could drive a weaker mind to madness, plant nightmares as easily as he could plant suggestions, and inflict physical pain by triggering nerves, even override the autonomic responses of the body, causing synapses to misfire. He could do all of this and more, but to use his talents on his friends was an invasion every bit as much a violation as to take a woman against her will.
But, he rationalised the invasion to himself even as he planted the false perceptions, he had no choice in the matter. Not this time. Something was wrong here. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but so many little things came together it was impossible to ignore them. The haste with which the Conclave was convened in the wake of the Meringias’s attack, the breaching of the Catamine Stair, Stark’s sacrifice, even the fallen angel; then there was the location that had been chosen for the Conclave, the secrecy and the merry dance the boy had led them through the slums, this whole shtick with the auto-icon and its supposed message from the other side, that someone had warded the chamber to keep Dorian out disturbed him more than anything. It was deliberate. Those glyphs only affected him, his second sight. Whoever it was behind the whole charade knew about his blindness, but more worryingly, knew how he compensated for it, pushing his consciousness into other minds and looking out through borrowed eyes. The glyph had been crafted specifically to nullify Dorian’s sight. They wanted to keep him out. That was warning enough.
Locke was no fool.
Something was very definitely rotten in the City State of London.
Someone was deliberately separating them. That was the only reasonable conclusion he could draw, and extrapolating that deduction, it had to be someone who not only knew about their gifts, which was damaging enough, but someone who knew about things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Someone who knew them almost as well as they knew themselves.
The thought sent a shiver down the ladder of his spine.
Even as he slipped away from the table, the thought that he was playing into their hands, whoever they were, wormed away in the back of his mind. He ignored it, reaching out to smooth over the disconnect in what the others saw.
He crept out of the chamber, turning as he reached the threshold to look back at the table and at the Seven lining the room. The auto-icon held them rapt. Locke slipped through the door, easing it closed behind him.
Burn with me, burn, burn, burn … the imperative swelled to fill his mind, the voice behind it irresistible. The sheer ferocity of the command, which began as a whisper and ended as an overwhelming scream inside his head, echoing over and over, burn with me, burn, burn, burn, brought Brannigan Locke to his knees.
Head down, hands over his ears, he moaned as he clutched at his temples. When he looked up again thin trickles of blood ran from his ears. He pulled his hands away, slick with blood and stared at them. The words lingered in his mind. Burn with me, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn … It was only as they faded finally he realised that he had lost his grip on the psionic suggestion. Anyone who looked, really looked, would see that he wasn’t at the table with the
m and raise the alarm.
Locke struggled to stand, leaving a bloody handprint on the wall where he steadied himself. He swallowed hard and stumbled across the marble floor of the anteroom toward the main reception area and the street beyond.
He did not see the Seven turn as one, the dead faces expressionless.
Nor did he see the fire in their eyes.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Locke reached the marble staircase and cast a lingering look back over his shoulder towards the Conclave’s chamber. The ceiling was high, vaulted with thick timbers, with a line of windows just below the lowest braces. There was a crystal chandelier in the geometric centre of the ceiling, the lowest glass still twenty feet and more above his head. It hung from a metal chain. Silver moonlight streamed down from those high windows in bright unbroken beams. The chandelier painted a moonbow on the furthest wall. Dust motes hung lazily in the moonbeams but they weren’t what stopped him dead in his tracks. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the keystone above the door was set with a small Green Man relief, branches and vines sprouting from the leafy face’s mouth. By itself there was nothing untoward with the foliate head; it was a symbol of rebirth, of renaissance, resurrection. They were common in churches throughout the country. There were three representations of the foliate head: the first simply called the Foliate Head, completely covered in vegetation; the second, the Disgorging Head, spewing vegetation from its mouth; and the third, the Bloodsucker Head, which sprouted vegetation from all of its facial orifices, mouth, nose and eyes. In some places the foliate head might have been symbolic of fertility, drawing upon woodland spirits like the woodwose to bless or protect the chamber, but not here, not now.
Now, with the Devil’s Cup on the other side of the threshold, the head’s numinous quality was unnervingly eerie. The fact that it was a Bloodsucker Head only served to make it more so, with the Seven, creatures vampiric in their nature, standing guard within the Conclave.
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