Three…
He stood level with the kitchen entrance, facing a thickening mosaic of blood that outlined the shape of a body. The body was gone. There were only haphazard gashes of blood left behind to streak the floor and walls. So much blood it couldn’t all surely belong to the woman. Quietly, almost so quiet as to be silent, he heard the radio whispering out from the windowsill.
Even though it was close to being cold, Stern was sweating. Shifting the hammer to his left hand he wiped the right across his brow. God, he wanted a drink.
After, he promised himself.
Four…
He stepped around into the lounge doorway and saw the Christmas tree covered with its fine frosting of fake snow and its glitterballs reflecting miniature deaths in a thousand fragments across his eyes.
The woman was trying to stand. It was hard to see how she could, with so much blood leaking from her wounded flesh. Her legs were unsteady. She grabbed at the branches of the tree, brought the whole thing down on top of her.
Only then did he see the dead man, or rather the shell of the dead man lying on the floor, the face of St. Malachi’s angel from his nightmares staring up blindly at the ceiling. The wooden stake slipped through his fingers.
She was alive, it, the thing, the Jesus Demon, was dead. It refused to lodge in his mind. He looked at the woman, saw her wounds, knew that if he didn’t help she was going to bleed to death and soon. She lay there, her own eyes dancing with the shine of death approaching.
But he couldn’t move.
Chapter Seventy-five
Gabriel was in the air when he felt her die.
A tall flaxen haired stewardess was offering refreshments, whiskey and hot towels, her eyes a million miles away, hands moving in slow and listless motion, going through the motions, faking any feeling, when he began to vomit.
He coughed once and clutched at the back of the seat while she fumbled for the paper bag and tried to get it under his mouth. Another convulsion took him, arms folded across his stomach he doubled up in pain, his legs drawing up towards his chin. He put his hands up to his mouth as if trying to force it back into his stomach. The vomit just spilled through his fingers.
She pushed the bag beneath his face again, trying to coax him into its paper maw. It wasn’t happening. Gabriel swallowed a lungful of sick smelling air, tried to hold from vomiting again. Through the sickness an overwhelming sense of loss, of something simply ceasing to be, suffocated him, and emptiness like blackness bit back, forcing its way out of his body this time as the hot wet rush of urine from his bladder and the stench of feces as his sphincter gave out in a sympathetic death as —
The angel stepped forward… reached out… the rasp of agonized breaths…. A sheen of blood clung with lover’s intimacy to thing’s face, blood that washed all trace of humanity from its hating eyes… Claws that should have been fingers pushed into her, gripped her, and pulled her close so that the sting of the angel’s over sweet breath brought tears to her eyes… And in that second it tasted the spectre of Gabriel’s presence… tasted his nearness and gazed not into her eyes but at the face reflected in them, back into its own eyes, and deeper, inside, into Gabriel’s… “Do you want to live?”
— he heard the angel’s goading question echo inside his heard, it’s voice drowning the stewardess’s concern. He struggled to blank it out, stifle the angel’s nearness but it was all he could do simply holding himself, the pain too wide and too deep. As he tried to hold himself together Ashley’s screams gave way to the smells of his emptied flesh as they corrupted everything trapped within the confines of the plane with their cloying reeks.
He looked at the stewardess, wanted to explain, but all she saw was a drunk who’d evacuated his stomach, bladder and bowels on her shift, her blind eyes didn’t want to see, weren’t prepared to see, the truth.
“Can I… Can I… get cleaned up… somewhere?”
Disguised as tears, blood began to run from his eyes.
Chapter Seventy-six
The snow was falling thicker now. Settling on the blacktop like creamy icing. Mannelli was alone in his old Torino, chasing the headlights of Delgado’s fishtailing Impala. Cigarette smoke played thickly with the trapped air, making ghosts out of the wispy tendrils of white. Outside, there was neither sun nor sky. He’d been here before, that was all he could think. He’d been behind the wheel of the same car, making the same desperate drive with a bunch of lemon yellow flowers forgotten on the passenger seat. Three years between the journeys, and no Gabriel with him this time, but the same stone faced death waited at the end of both races.
Gabriel wasn’t the only one with feelings.
The dispatcher’s call had gone out for a 311, robbery in progress, and then he’d heard Ashley’s address on the riverside.
“Please God let her be all right,” he breathed, answering the call. All he could think of as his feet manipulated the pedals was the intense fear he’d heard in Gabriel’s voice. Then, crossing himself: “Okay, I know I’ve probably used up my credits in the prayer department, God, but I’m kinda hoping you’ll okay an overdraft just this once. Not for me you understand. For Gabriel.” You can’t do this to him twice, he wanted to add but of course God could do whatever He in His terrible wisdom wanted, and who was he, a second generation lapsed Catholic, to argue.
Those eleven minutes, chasing through the maze of streets like a laboratory mouse, were the longest of Mannelli’s life. He was exhausted and he was frightened. One feeling he was used to, could handle, the other he wasn’t and that made it all the more so. In front of him, Delgado took the last corner at a crawl, driving as if he were looking for a space in a Supermarket car park.
Bill Stern’s dusty blue Coupe was the first thing he saw as he turned onto Prospect.
Mannelli hit the brakes and the hazard blinkers simultaneously, cranking open the Torino’s door and abandoning it in the middle of the road. He ran up the small rise of steps to Ashley’s apartment building. The thick security door stood wedged open. It was wrong, it was all wrong, he wanted to argue with the cop in him, but he knew instinctively it was right.
Swallowing down a mouthful of fear Mannelli drew his service .45 from its shoulder slung holster and forced himself to enter the foyer.
Chapter Seventy-seven
The Angel of Red stretched out within the carapace of its new form, tasting the soft feminine flesh against its singing nerve-endings, savouring the failing life juices of the newly dead as they melted into him, enjoying the desperate longing to live that lingered still.
He licked his tongue across her soft lips.
He felt the Colour Dance swell around his — her — body, the driving hungers of the spectrum demanding another sacrifice but outside the dance, or maybe inside it, deeper inside within the swirl of negative and positive, dancing to the tramp of lightning and thunder, he felt them coming, closing in.
He’d seen the Amerind’s face in her dying eyes, looked out through the Amerind’s eyes and seen seats and people, and a woman. So beautiful, so, so beautiful as she had tried to help the Amerind. He wanted to take her face in his hands and crush it. Feel the bone slowly give way. Feel the softness of her thoughts on his fingers as she stopped thinking forever.
Even as he felt his personality begin slipping away he dragged himself back to the present. The lights from the Christmas tree had gone out, a broken bulb somewhere in the chain, but with the tree up-ended on the floor and dirt spilling out of its pot it didn’t matter that a bulb had stopped working.
The Angel turned slowly, sensing rather than hearing the newcomer with his arcane toys of superstition, his stake and his garlic. He — she— smiled at the sweat blistering the Watcher’s pale, craggy face, at the intense relief burning in the pathetic man’s eyes.
More footsteps were coming up the stairs. A long way down but running hard. More strength to them. Younger. Urgent. A real threat. Not like this wreck in front of him.
He — she — had to move quic
kly. Started screaming. Really screaming. And threw himself at the stunned man in the doorway, knocking the wooden stake from his hand, clawing at his face, and all the while screaming.
Chapter Seventy-eight
The mixture of smells was incredible; disinfectant, ammonia, furniture polish and beneath them all, rising, death.
Climbing the stairs in a semi-darkness that lifted the higher he climbed, Mannelli made it around the second set of risers. The reason for the artificial brightness hung on broken hinges, Ashley’s door and through it the light spilling in from the world.
Mannelli stopped moving. He felt cold all over and despite the fact that he had run the scenario a thousand times through his head both in the car and again charging up the twisting flights of stairs he couldn’t cross the threshold and make it all come true. It was a head-fuck. A rape of the soul that left him brittle.
“Sorry, Gabriel,” he whispered, crossing himself. “I’m so sorry, Gabriel…” Behind him Delgado, Lambert and Kolchak started loudly up the stairs. Then she began screaming.
For a heartbeat, while he denied its reality, the door was closed and there were no screams. Everything was all right. But the door was open, could never be closed again, and he was moving with his gun suddenly feeling so very heavy in his hand. Weighing a life? More than a life, its grey metal suddenly weighing a death.
He stepped into a blood smeared footprint. The carpet was gashed with haphazard splatters of blood, and each one of the staggered slashes of red dissolved another layer of hope that this might end in anything other than death, hers, his or someone else’s. Hope ground like diamonds into dust in the palm of his hand. Mannelli caught sight of himself in the distant mirror as the screaming became unbearable. His finger curled around the snub-nosed .45s trigger pin.
Noises.
He couldn’t separate them all at first.
Music beneath the screams. A man’s grunts as flesh hit flesh beneath the music. Breathing… Someone falling…
On the kitchen floor a dried pool of blood outlined the shape of a body. Though the body was gone, the stench lingered. Whoever it was had shit themselves as they died. The ugly truth of death. He ignored it all, followed the bloody stagger of footsteps into the lounge. In the light of the hall his worst fears merely simmered, hope taunting him with a deceitful hand held out for him to grasp at; but they began to boil as he crossed over into the slaughterhouse that had once been a lounge.
So much blood. So much blood. And the smell. Dear God, the smell.
And then the screaming snapped him into focus. A wreck of a body lay just beyond the door. Beyond salvation and therefore beyond a second look. In the centre of the room Bill Stern hunched over Ashley’s body. The claw hammer in his right hand was raised to strike.
“Hold it right there, Motherfucker!” Mannelli screamed, bringing the .45 up and pulling the trigger in a single smooth pull. He didn’t have time to aim or pray. It was either going through Stern’s head, his hand, thin air or Ashley.
The bullet slammed into Stern’s hand, opening his fingers and sending the hammer spinning.
Stern’s head tilted as the scream was torn from his lips. Behind him Ashley whimpered.
Unable to believe the truth of his ears, Mannelli thumbed back the hammer on the .45 and cleared his throat. He heard Delgado coming through the door. No second chances. “Turn around, Bill. It’s over,” he didn’t hear his own words. As Stern turned to face him, he pulled the trigger sending a single bullet into Bill Stern’s surprised face and making his obese body pirouette into the oblivious arms of death. The sound of the shot was deafening. Stern slumped forward, the sound of his fall loud in the silence following the gunshot.
Tears streaming down his cheeks, Daniel Mannelli walked over to the body of his surrogate father, kicked it over with his foot and pumped five more rounds into the dead man’s head.
Chapater Seventy-nine
Jack Delgado froze in the doorway, counting the shots.
One…
A pause.
Two, three, four, five, six in rapid succession followed by a desolate banshee-like wail.
Delgado looked right, into the kitchen, taking in the wide pool of drying blood. And left, into the lounge. There was a heavy smell in the room; the stench of an ugly death, a bloater-floater or a shallow grave. He had to breathe but it was difficult to expel the fetid air from his lungs, impossible to shift the taste it left behind in his mouth. Delgado saw Mannelli first, cradling the head of a woman in his lap. Blood matted in the thick bangs of hair. Some of it hers but more of it belonging to the two dead bodies that shared the room with them. Mannelli was weeping, rocking to and fro on his knees, not looking at the woman he was cradling. He brushed a strand of blood clotted hair from her too white forehead. She was crying too, softly but without tears.
Delgado’s eyes swept the room quickly. Two bodies, one gutted like a fish while the head of the other one was made unrecognisable by the opalescent coating of blood and the pulverised mesh of bullet wounds covering it but the body, the clothing, was familiar. Too familiar. A friend lying dead. Another friend wrecked because of it. Delgado looked at Lambert and Kolchak.
Lambert was looking down at the torn and mutilated body of Carlos Lamenzo, a garland of bloody tears around its open ribcage. An instant later sickness knifed his stomach. But that was it, it came and it went and he was the street-hardened cop again.
“Looks like we’ve got The Trinity,” he said.
“Sure does,” Delgado agreed bitterly, thinking of the days Bill Stern had stood by his side, friends, and partners. Something had pushed him this way; guys like Stern didn’t suddenly wake up one morning as dysfunctional sociopaths. Something had broken him. Jack Delgado looked down at the body of the man who he had once been proud to call his friend. He owed him that much, one last look as a friend before Stern became the monster the world was going to make him. Things, simple things, stopped making sense.
Kolchak had never seen anything like it in his life. In the kitchen behind them, bent double, he vomited into the sink.
“Let’s get them covered up and him out of here.” Him could have been Kolchak or Mannelli. Then: “It’s over, Dan,” he said softly, laying a hand on Mannelli’s shoulder. “You didn’t have a choice. You really didn’t.”
“Why Jack?” Mannelli asked, looking up with the wounds of betrayal in his eyes. “Why?”
Chapter Eighty
The Angel lay in his arms, letting the weeping man stroke his — her — hair and play protector while the police secured the crime scene. It was a pitiful sham. They photographed the bodies from every angle, covered them, and talked quietly about one of their own gone bad.
It was too easy to smile, to let his lips curl into satisfaction, when he — she — was supposed to be the victim here. The helpless woman needing the big strong protectors. But the smile was there, inside, when he looked at the mess of The Watcher’s face and saw another aspect of his dark secret dying with those six bullets.
Now only one of the wraiths from St. Malachi’s still walked this land of the would-be dead, Gabriel Rush, the Little Indian Boy, and he (at least some parts of him) was inside this shell with the Angel. Inside the dead flesh of his love, memories and weaknesses to be trawled while the Angel sought the means of his undoing.
He allowed them to help him — her — stand and be ushered towards the door and the cars waiting in the street below. Said: “Gabriel…”
“He’s on his way home, Ashley. On a plane now.”
“Yes,” he said, tasting the rightness of it. On his way back into New York City, back into his glassy territory. There would be more blood. He could feel the song singing in his veins. One more sacrifice and then the dance could truly begin.
“We’re going to get you to a hospital. Get you checked out.” The olive skinned police man said soothingly. “But everything’s going to be okay now. It’s over. I promise.”
Ah, the Angel savoured the already broken prom
ise, wondered why these humans were compelled to promise what they couldn’t deliver.
“Yes…” he — she — said again picturing the face of the last dead man walking back into his cold embrace. “Gabriel.”
It was almost time. Almost time.
Chapter Eighty-one
Gabriel left the 747 with his clothes in a clear polythene bag, borrowed loose fitting pleated slacks and a white cotton shirt his only protection from the cold. The sky above his head was the red of a lost battle, dawn rising. He felt the sting of tears on his cheeks, not his, the wind’s. A fresh layer of virgin snow blanketed the taxi rank and the roads out of JFK. The only place he could think of going was home, but without Ashley there to hold him he didn’t think it could ever be home again. A simple word like home had somehow become the hot tip of a needle ready to slip into tongue even before the sounds had begun to leave his mouth.
He thought again about the killer. Wanted to turn to the girl standing in the taxi rank smelling of Ashley’s perfume and say: “I feel so alone. Can you understand that? He killed her. Cut my soul out.” But he didn’t say anything. He thought about calling Mannelli to hear what he already knew. Getting it second hand would make it all the more real.
Gabriel walked towards the crossing, stopping beneath the hazy ghostlike glow of the DON’T WALK sign. Across the road, against the glare of neon, a man was silhouetted blue, there but not there, not really. He recognised the man wrapped in shimmering Harmony. Knew he was on the other side, not just of the road, he knew that he was dead.
Gabriel closed his eyes and opened them again. Bill Stern hadn’t moved.
Chapter Eighty-two
He leaned his weight against the lamppost, unable to feel its solidity and happy at last to be away from it all. There were tears in his eyes, copper coloured tears of blood that mingled with the six craters burned into his face by the gun. The Watcher was glad he couldn’t see himself. Glad for the protection of the slowly falling snow. For the cloak of invisibility it draped across his broad shoulders.
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