Wormwood

by G. P. Taylor

  Footstep followed footstep as whoever approached them crept closer, stumbling in the black shadows and muttering in a low, deep voice. Blake held his breath, he could hear the being close by, only feet away, skulking towards them. Abram waited, holding Blake against the door with one hand to stop him bolting. The buildings opposite were silhouetted and tinged in the red of the fire that raged in Hampstead. They reminded Blake of the Chinese theatre he had seen in Vauxhall Gardens and the mystical creatures cast in shadow by silk-clad puppeteers.

  Suddenly a black figure crossed the doorway. Abram leapt from their hiding-place and like a spider quickly lashed out and pulled the figure back down. He held him like he had held the Dunamez, his hand firmly over the mouth, smothering the breath from its lungs.

  Blake saw in the half-light the frightened eyes of a young man whose hands grasped at Abram, trying to loosen his suffocating grip.

  ‘Quiet, man, or you will breathe your last in this place,’ Abram said softly in his ear.

  ‘You’re going to kill him,’ Blake said, and he made futile attempts to pull Abram’s hand from the man’s face.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time and perhaps would not be the last,’ Abram replied menacingly as he slowly released his hold on the man. ‘For someone who has so cleverly researched the supernatural, you have a very strange view of angels. The little cherubs you paint are far from what we really are.’

  The man sucked in the cold night air as he coughed the fear from his lungs and squatted on the ground. ‘I mean no harm to you g-g-good gentlemen,’ he stuttered.

  ‘Then tell us why you never fled this place,’ Blake asked.

  ‘I am from Newgate Gaol, a prisoner freed from his chains by the blasts from the sky. The gaoler thought it was the end of time, that the last judgement had come upon the earth, and he let us all go free. There has never been a finer time to be a thief in London as this night. Fortunes are to be made, riches found on every corner.’

  ‘And the rest of you?’ Blake asked.

  ‘We hide in the old church at Blackfriars. You can join us, there are plenty of takings for us all to share. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow –’

  ‘In the morrow you could be dead and where would your thieving have got you?’ Abram asked as he squeezed the man tighter.

  ‘Are you a magistrate?’ the man asked angrily.

  ‘Some would say I am a judge, jury and executioner, but that is a matter of opinion. For you I am a gateway to freedom, so who do you say I am?’

  ‘You play games with him, Abram,’ Blake said. ‘Let him go. He will do us no harm.’

  ‘But I will,’ came a voice, followed by the quick click of a hammer-lock being pulled on a pistol. ‘Bad things always come in threes,’ the man said as he pressed the muzzle of the gun into Blake’s temple and turned to Abram. ‘Give him his freedom or whatever brains your friend has will dangle from your coat like a Spanish medallion.’

  From the corner of his eye Blake could make out the shape of two men. One held the gun to his skull whilst another skulked behind, darting his head from side to side.

  ‘Freedom?’ asked Abram calmly as he lifted the man to his feet. ‘You can be a slave and yet free, poor and have the world as your home, but are you free? What wrongdoing binds you in perpetual night and eats away in the dark hours when you entertain yourself in self-pleasure and loneliness?’

  ‘He speaks like a Garrick bard whilst I hold the gun to his friend’s head,’ the thief said, and his companions laughed, the former captive taking Abram by his collar and pushing him back against the door.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Blake said, attempting to step away from the pistol. ‘He is not one to be pushed around. My friend is an angel, and they don’t appreciate that sort of thing.’

  ‘Did you hear that? He’s an angel and won’t appreciate it,’ the man with the pistol said mockingly as the others laughed. ‘What a fine voice you have, just like the Vauxhall dandies we had so much pleasure in robbing. Now gentlemen, as you can see we left Newgate in rather a hurry and we would like your coats and your boots and of course your purses. So, my dear angels, take off your clothes.’

  ‘If we give you these things then you will not have a world in which to spend your gains. Your fat will boil and bones turn to dust, so put the pistol down and go on your way.’ Abram straightened himself and pushed the thief away with an outstretched finger.

  ‘And where are your weapons to make us do these things? Isn’t it I who has the gun and you nothing?’ The man spoke firmly, looking Abram eye to eye. ‘Give us your clothes and I will consider your life, argue with me and I will gladly take both your life and your coat.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Blake said feverishly. ‘He is an angel and he can stop the madness.’

  ‘This madness is not such a bad thing, it brought us our freedom and will give us all we need for a new life. We will take our chances with whatever is to come, and as you will not give us what we desire alive then you will both be dead.’ The man took the pistol from Blake’s temple and placed it to Abram’s forehead. ‘Alive or dead, what is it to be?’

  ‘In your heart you have already chosen my fate and I yours.’ Abram took hold of the pistol in his right hand and slowly squeezed the metal, which began to glow white-hot in the man’s hand. ‘Pull the trigger and see what will happen. Do it!’ Abram shouted.

  The man released his grip and stepped back under the cover of a long arcade that stretched along the row of shops.

  There was a sudden crack like the snap of a horsewhip. Abram hardly moved, yet the thief crumpled before him, bent double and with a look of disbelief etched over his wrinkled brow.

  The angel looked down at his clenched fist and then at the other two thieves. ‘Would you like to share his experience?’ he asked, raising one eyebrow.

  ‘You’ve killed him!’ one exclaimed.

  ‘Not yet, but I could do if you so required me. I suggest you take him and go. Tell no one of what has taken place and I will not come looking for you.’ Abram stepped out of the doorway and into the street.

  ‘You ain’t no angel,’ one said as he drew a long cooking knife from his belt and stepped towards him.

  Abram turned and without speaking held out his outstretched hand. The man lashed out, cutting the tip of Abram’s forefinger.

  ‘See, you bleed like any mortal,’ he said as he pulled back his arm to strike again.

  ‘And you combust like a dry mattress,’ Abram replied as he flicked his bloodied hand at the thief.

  Two drops, thick as claret, landed on the man’s dirty white shirt and began to smoulder in plumes of dense blue smoke. The man dropped the knife as he vainly tried to quell the flames that sprang from beneath his skin. His screams echoed from building to building as he was engulfed in a fire that fed from his bones and welled up out of his mouth like the billowing of a baker’s chimney.

  Abram looked on as the man slowly crisped into an unrecognisable mass of bubbling flesh. ‘I give you my peace, now go,’ he said to the spirit that hovered over the flames.

  As Blake stared at the fire, he could in his mind see the Nemorensis, its golden letters glinting in the soft embers of another hearth. He had the overwhelming sensation that he had seen that place before. Abram had been right – the book was drawing him closer.

  ‘We must leave this place,’ Abram said as he turned away from the flames. Blake was silent and walked head-down towards the river. ‘They had set their hearts on killing us. But tonight was not the time for you to die.’

  ‘You see our thoughts?’ Blake asked.

  ‘Sometimes before they come to your lips.’

  ‘And you know what I think of now?’

  ‘That I am a murderer and a demon not to be trusted,’ Abram said as he put his arm around him. ‘I know that you are taking me to the river, and I can see that our journey together is nearly complete. From what I know of your world, what we seek is at Bibblewick’s Bookshop. The hearth you see in y
our mind is in that place, and where else but in a bookshop would such a possession be hidden?’

  ‘You guard my blood and yet yours explodes like gunpowder.’

  ‘You forget, I am an angel – a warrior.’

  27: Summis Desiderantes

  An eerie stillness consumed London as if the whole of the city was being dragged into a large bell jar. The stiff breeze that had blown feverishly was suddenly calmed as the fire in the north began to die away, seemingly starved of the very air it needed to burn.

  Blake rubbed the stiff sweat from the palm of his hand and saw that it had dried as bright white salt crystals. His eyebrows were etched in ageing salt that cut lines in his face like deep furrows and crusted his cracked lips.

  Abram looked at his companion, then wiped the salt from Blake’s face with the soft palm of his hand. The angel’s own skin glowed in the ebbing light of the northern fire.

  ‘I’m as dry as a salted herring,’ Blake said, licking his lips. ‘Must be something from the ice crystals changing the atmosphere.’ He hunched himself forwards as he walked in the shadow of a row of empty buildings. Ahead, the arch to the bridge was outlined in crisp white dust that shone in the clear night sky. He felt the book calling to him, whispering his name. A sense of deep excitement welled up in his stomach, twisting his gut to the point of nauseous expectation. He swallowed, gulping down the burning gore that was a manifestation of his growing fear.

  ‘It will soon pass,’ the angel said. ‘You have coped with much and soon it will all be over. You will either be dead or free to lead your life again.’

  ‘And what of you?’ Blake asked the angel. ‘Will you die also?’

  ‘And you a Cabalist! Angels do not die – well, not in the way you think of death.’

  ‘And what of tonight?’

  ‘Its secrets have not been revealed, nor shall they be. But I do know we shall recover the book, an angel and the life of a young lamb waiting for slaughter. That is work enough for you and I. Then I shall leave you to your world, your failed magic and desperate science, and return home.’

  ‘And leave me a man of constant sorrow?’ Blake replied earnestly, as the power of the book covered him in doubt and darkness. ‘It all seemed so simple, pursuing magic and science, wanting to be the one who would discover all that humanity needed. Now I ask myself, was it for them that I searched for these things or for my own glory?’

  ‘You have been held in the balance and found wanting. The proverbs you learnt in the Nemorensis will do you no good now. What you thought was a book of light is a book of darkness sent to mislead you.’

  The angel stopped and pressed himself against the side of a drinking house. The front door swung back and forth on a broken hinge. He edged himself along the painted wooden wall clinging to the black shadow, Blake following his every footstep. ‘There is a creature ahead by the gate, a sentinel the like of which I have not seen for sometime.’

  Blake peered into the darkness but could see nothing. The fine rain of salt powder had stopped. It had covered the streets in a tissue of white dust that shimmered on every surface like cold white frost cast on a winter night.

  ‘I see the salt mist but not the creature,’ Blake whispered, looking over the angel’s shoulder.

  ‘It is a Diakka, a fallen angel,’ Abram replied. ‘Its presence here means that they too search for the Nemorensis and the girl and know where it is.’ Abram edged his way closer. ‘I need you to walk to the gate. If you walk quickly and ignore the creature it may let you pass. I don’t think you have much to fear.’

  Something in his words did not ring true. Fear rooted Blake to the spot and his knees began to quake. ‘Walk by a creature that I cannot see? What if it should attack? I have been bait for too many night beasts. Is there no other way?’ he whispered.

  ‘It may let you pass,’ Abram said quietly as he pressed Blake forwards. ‘If it should attack I will be there for you. When have I ever let you down? I am the guardian of your blood, I do not want to see it spilled.’

  Blake stepped from the shadows and kept his gaze fixed on the centre of the gate. High above, the grey stone gargoyles stared down, fixed in their stone skin as they guarded the bridge. He saw the dust swirl and twist in a myriad of tiny tornados. As he approached the bridge gate he could make out the shape of the creature on the stone mounting block where it sat waiting, black and squat, with a powdering of crystals covering its long black spines.

  With every step his gut twisted. Blake kept his attention on the gate and what lay beyond whilst keeping the creature in sight from the corner of his eye. The dust wafted around his feet, covering his boots in snow-white crystals. He heard the low, guttural moan of the beast as he walked by. It licked its thick lips with a long blue tongue that swept across its face and over its pug nose, as if tasting the air for the scent of its victim.

  A shiver juddered down Blake’s spine as he crossed its path. He knew that the creature could leap from its hiding-place and swoop without warning upon him from behind. Fighting the urge to run to the bookshop, he checked his gait and counted the paces to himself as he calmly strode on.

  In one second his legs were swept from under him and he was spun through the air like some discarded rag doll. He crashed to the ground, his fall broken by the arm of the creature as it plucked him from the air and grabbed him by the back of his frock coat. The Diakka, fully visible now, stared bleakly at Blake with its bulging eyes and bared its long white teeth, holding him now by the scruff of the neck and facing him eye to eye.

  It purred like a giant cat filled with cream as with one hand it stroked the salt powder from Blake’s face and then, with its tongue, licked his eyes and nose. The creature appeared to grow larger with each breath that Blake panted. He waited for his guardian to strike as the Diakka breathed its foul stench breath into his face, beads of moisture dribbling across its thick black chin. The creature opened its mouth and gave a loud gasp that rattled its tongue in its throat. Fit for a menagerie, Blake thought, as he sought to control his racing mind and fight the growing panic that welled up inside him.

  In the darkness Blake heard a sullen thud like a distant cannon. The Diakka suddenly gave an ear-splitting scream and thrust its head awkwardly towards him, its mouth opening wider than before as it spat out its tongue like a fat snake. It groaned and closed its eyes, rolling its head backwards and twisting Blake in its grip as its fingers unfurled. Dropping to its knees, it let slip its hold of Blake as it slumped to one side clutching its stomach and rolling back and forth.

  The angel stood behind the creature, a radiant smile fixed across his face. ‘What joy!’ he said as he fumbled in his pocket. ‘It never expected that when it took hold of you. I thought it would have bitten off your head straightaway, but thankfully you intrigued the beast and it gave me time.’ Abram took out a bobbin of red cord with which he began to tie the creature’s hands and feet.

  ‘Is it dead?’ Blake asked, stepping away from the trussed creature. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘It is not dead as you would know, but will be of no trouble to us for some time. As for what I did, all I can say is that I am thankful to an Abaris crystal and a stink hole in the back end of the Diakka. I don’t think it would ever have thought that something like that would happen. It brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it.’

  ‘You shoved an exploding crystal up the creature’s –’

  ‘Yes,’ Abram interrupted. ‘It was such an obvious place. There was no time for second thoughts – it was the creature or you.’

  ‘Then I am thankful for your absence of morals and your physiological understanding of demonic powers,’ Blake replied as he looked at the writhing creature rolling in the dust. ‘Do you leave the beast here?’

  ‘Wait in the shop doorway whilst I see to the creature. Its future should not be your worry.’

  A strange look crossed the angel’s face. Blake turned, fearing something terrible was about to be done of which he wanted no part. He strode to
the doorway of the bookshop and peered in through the frosted windows. A light glowed behind the shelves and a tall shadow moved across the far wall.

  From the bridge gate, Blake could clearly hear a loud gurgling and a sound akin to the grinding of teeth. It came at him sharp and cold through the night air and carried a short, final cry at the height of hearing. He had heard this sound before many times as bleating lambs had cried out before the butcher’s knife. Though he shuddered, not wanting to know what the angel had done to the creature, its cry pierced his heart.

  Abram appeared through the dust, wiping his hands on a piece of torn coat picked from the back of an old man who lay crushed in the street. He looked at Blake and read the concerns of his heart with one glance. ‘The ways of man are not the ways of angels. I am nothing but an assassin for righteousness, never forget that. There is war in heaven, and for us to lose would mean the diabolical would have power over the world and we would all be destroyed.’

  The angel barged past Blake and pushed against the barricaded door of the bookshop. His feet gripped the stones as he forced the wood to bend, snapping the door in two and pushing the timber to one side. ‘Tegatus!’ he shouted as he stepped into the shop. ‘It’s Raphael, come to take you home and deliver the girl from her oppressor.’

  Blake and the angel made their way through the narrow bookcases as they followed the light of the glowing fire towards the back of the shop. At each careful step Abram looked around the high vaulted room, as if searching for something that could not be seen.

  ‘Tegatus!’ he shouted again, and this time the whole room vibrated with his voice.

  ‘We’re by the fire,’ Agetta replied faintly.

  Blake and Abram turned the corner of the final set of high shelves, then walked by Thaddeus’s high desk and into the open space by the fire. Tegatus stood with his back to them, looking into the night through the tall leaded window. Agetta sat hunched on the stone hearth, warming herself on the fire.