“What do you want?” Carol said. She had been lucky to get away from them with her life the last time but now there was no one around to help her. No one except the people she had run past in the alleyway. “Help!” she shouted.
“Ain’t no one gonna help you sweetheart,” Jack said. The big man beside him reached into his jacket and removed a knife which she recognised at once.
“Help me!” Carol shouted again.
Her voice echoed back to her but there was no reply.
“It’s Jack!” Carol shouted. She hoped that the thought of being the person to catch Jack the Knife might draw people to her aid but still no one came.
Jack, both of them, stepped towards her. The knife glistened in the moonlight. Carol tried to step back but the building was still there.
She couldn’t look at the men who were going to kill her. She closed her eyes and turned her head to the side. It would be over soon enough.
Nothing happened.
Carol waited but she didn’t feel the cold knife against her skin and she didn’t feel her blood being drained from her body. There was no pain, there was nothing at all. After a moment she opened her eyes.
She looked down and saw the two men on the floor in front of her. There was plenty of blood but none of it was hers. It looked black in the darkness, pooling around their bodies like pigs that had been slaughtered. For a moment Carol didn’t know what to think.
“Seems like I’m always saving you.”
Carol gasped and looked around. She saw Matthew standing in the shadows she ran to him without thinking. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tight. He had saved her again and this time Jack wouldn’t be able to come back to get her.
Eventually she let go of him. She could hear voices further down in the alleyway again now but they weren’t coming close.
“What are you doing here?” Carol said.
“What does it look like?” Matthew said. “Rescuing you.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. How did you find me?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you. What are you doing here?”
Carol considered keeping the truth from him but that didn’t seem fair. She had no need to protect him, of all people, from the reality of her situation. So she told him about Emily and about John and what she had set out to do. He listened without comment and when she was done he put a hand on her arm.
“We should leave,” Matthew said. “You need to get home.”
She nodded and allowed him to lead her away. She didn’t consider what people would think if they saw the two of them walking arm in arm. For a moment she was her old self again, the Carol of the brothel who didn’t care about public opinion.
He led her out of the alleyway and back through the slum. People had begun to appear on the street now but they seemed to be making a concerted effort not to see the two of them. She supposed the police would be called but that was none of her concern now. Jack was gone. He could no longer hurt her or any of her friends.
“There might be something I can do,” Matthew said. They had reached the end of the slum and he stopped. “I can’t promise anything.”
Carol felt unbelievably grateful. Even if it turned out that he couldn’t do anything, at least he was willing to try. There were precious few people in her life that were willing to help now.
“When will I see you again?” Carol said.
“I’ll be around,” Matthew replied.
Carol stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. He was her knight in shining armour.
CHAPTER 12
GRAHAM LOOKED AT THE BOTTLE AND SAW THAT it was almost empty. One dose, maybe two if he was careful. He took the cork off the bottle and hoped that he was getting close.
The effect was immediate but reduced. The golden light was faded and difficult to see. If he didn’t find Bridget soon it would be too late.
He was back in the middle of the city which was good. He felt safer there. If there was a giant lurking beneath any of these holy buildings he wouldn’t be the only one to see it.
There was no time to waste. Graham walked towards the faintly glowing church and through the open doors. The building was quiet except for a solitary voice singing. When he walked along the central passage he saw a man wearing a dusty suit singing as he mopped the floor.
“Evening,” the man said. He stood up and squinted at Graham, wiped his head with the back of his hand and whistled. “Vicar’s not here.”
Graham nodded. He’d expected as much. He had seen the pattern and was now pretty sure that the Vicar of each church Bridget was taken to left when she did. “Just passing through,” Graham said.
“Following the light huh?”
Graham felt his body become rigid and his breath froze in his throat. Was it possible that this man knew? Could he actually see the light that hung in the air above him.
“Light of The Lord?” the man said.
Graham realised that it was just a figure of speech and he relaxed. “Something like that,” he said. Graham bid him a good evening and then continued along the beam. It led him out of the back of the building before circling around to the road.
The night was warm and he unbuttoned his jacket. It was still early, not long since dark, and there were plenty of people on the street. He nodded to some who he seemed to recognise and crossed the street to avoid those who he didn’t like the look of. The air was clear and, despite everything, he was feeling in high spirits. The potion in his pocket was almost run out but that only seemed to prove that he was nearly at the end of his journey, that he nearly had Bridget back.
The beam flickered and faded in the air above him. Graham walked quicker, keen to get as far as he could on each dose of the potion he had left. Up ahead he could see a church and his heart rose as he began to think he might recognise it. Graham walked more quickly still and approached the dark, gothic building.
The door was locked but he could see light, other than the faintly glowing gold, in the windows. If this was the church Bridget had been held in when they had last spoken in the mind space then fewer than two weeks had passed. There was little chance that she was still inside but little was better than nothing and, if she wasn’t there, then she couldn’t be far.
He found a door at the rear of the church. In the moonlight he could see tombstones silhouetted and a dark forest somewhere behind them. He could hear water running, just as Bridget had said, although he was nowhere near the river. It must have been coming from another source which would explain why he had overlooked this building in the first place.
The door was locked but he didn’t give up hope. He was sure that he would find a way into the building somehow. Graham carried on walking and tried other doors as he passed them. There was a well in the middle of the graveyard and he could hear water trickling inside it.
He found a door. A small utility looking wooden plank that hardly seemed to fit in with the otherwise gothic nature of the building. He turned the handle, pulled it towards him and was rewarded with the gentle creek of rusty hinges.
It was dark inside but that didn’t matter. A narrow passage led away from the graveyard into the church itself. Graham closed the door behind him and started walking.
There was no golden light here so they couldn’t have brought Bridget this way but she had been somewhere inside this building and he was sure that it had been recently. The golden light would be there waiting for him and then he would either find her or know where to go next.
At the end of the passage there was another door, also unlocked. He opened it and found himself in another corridor, although this one was better lit by the glow of the golden path. He smiled to himself and began walking more quickly in search of the source.
One passageway led to another, led to another, led to another. Each more ornately decorated than the last. The gothic shapes carved into the wood seemed at odds with the churches expressed simplicity and peace. Graham didn’t slow down
to admire any of it but carried on.
A hand grabbed him from behind and, for a moment, he was too surprised to react.
“Come with me,” the voice said.
Graham bolted forwards and the hand fell away. He ran into the great hall ahead of him without thinking about who might see him.
There was uproar. Men, old and young, dressed in multicoloured robes, jumped to their feet and started shouting. Graham ignored them and kept running. He didn’t know if Bridget was there but he wouldn’t be able to help her if he got caught.
Three men were behind him. Graham wasn’t quick but he also didn’t care what he damaged or broke. He knocked down candlesticks and fonts behind him, doing his best to block their path, and hoped that none of the men in robes would manage to stop him.
He ran towards the door. Men moved towards him from all directions. Graham began to think that he might not be able to escape.
He dodged a fat man in purple and heard the grunt as he hit the stone floor. He swerved another fat man, this time wearing yellow. A slim man in orange ran towards him, himself swerving left and right to avoid the people who were in his way. He had a shaved head and deeply tanned skin.
Echoes of footsteps and grunts filled the hall. They were coming for him but he had no intention of making it easy for them.
He turned around so that the front doors were no longer in front of him. He tried to move towards them but he knew they were locked anyway so when his path became blocked he didn’t fight it. He had to find another way to get out.
The men circled him. They seemed to know as well as he did that there was nowhere he could go. But Graham had escaped from worse situations than this.
A man in red came towards him.
Graham stepped forwards, stamping on the ground, although it was barely audible in the din. The man reacted as he had hoped, stepping back and cowering. Graham repeated the gesture to the next man and the next one. It wouldn’t be long before they dared to come closer but it gave him a chance to think.
“You aren’t going to get away Kable,” said a man in a blue frock. He was mostly bald but wore what was left of his hair long. “Not this time.”
Graham didn’t waste his breath debating the man. Instead he turned around again and faced down the other man in green who had been approaching him from behind. The green man stepped back.
The circle around him was tightening. Strangers grabbed him and held him down until he could no longer move. He waited to feel pain but it didn’t come.
A loud bang rang throughout the building. Graham could feel the hands on his arms loosen as the noise echoed. Then more voices were shouting and the men in frocks began to back away.
Graham turned around and tried to see what had happened. Men dressed in black suits were coming into the church and they looked like they would be capable of fighting and hurting him. He began to back away with the others but he couldn’t get away with pretending he was one of them.
“Hand him over,” a voice said.
Graham saw the man who had spoken. A large man with his head shaved clean. He was holding a weapon that looked like a crossbow.
“We’re not giving anything to you,” said one of the priests, Graham didn’t see which one.
“I won’t ask you again.” The man raised his weapon and pointed it across the room. “Hand him over or we start shooting.”
“If you kill us you’ll never find her,” said a different voice.
A trigger was pulled. A man fell to his knees and Graham saw the end of an arrow protruding from his head. The men in robes gasped but no one went to the fallen man’s aid.
“There’s plenty of you to kill before that happens,” the man said.
The vicars muttered amongst themselves. Graham began to move away. Eventually he reached the wall and felt for a door handle. The door opened and he climbed through. The noise of the men arguing continued but nothing suggested that he was seen leaving. He pulled the door closed and waited.
He turned clumsily and started walking. The tunnel went up and down and wound around so that he lost all sense of which direction he was going. In the darkness it became difficult to tell how much time was passing and, when he reached the door at the end of the tunnel, he was unsure whether he would emerge back into the night or early morning. As long as it wasn’t the church itself then he would be relieved.
He paused and felt for the little vial in his pocket. His fingers brushed the roughly shaped glass. He had one dose left and it wouldn’t be a strong one. If Bridget wasn’t close then he might never find her.
Graham opened the door and took his final chance to find his daughter.
CHAPTER 13
THE NIGHT AIR WAS FRESH AND CLEAN COMPARED to what he had endured in the tunnel. Graham found himself in a small copse of trees but he could see the road through the other side and knew that he hadn’t gone far from the church. He didn’t know how long he had been beneath the ground but it had been long enough for the golden light to disappear.
Graham took the bottle out of his pocket. It felt so light in his hands now. The night was quiet. He could see buildings on the other side of the trees but no people. It felt unusual but it was an unusual time in Graham’s life and at least this sort of unusual wasn’t trying to kill him.
The cork came out of the bottle easily. It had been worn down by constant use over the last few nights but this was the last time. He could feel it in a way that he couldn’t explain. This was the final potion that he would have to take before he found Bridget.
He lifted the bottle to his mouth and touched the rim with him dry lips. It didn’t taste of anything and seemed to have almost no weight. He tilted the bottle but before the liquid could run down the neck and into his mouth the ground began to shake.
It was a powerful vibration. The trees all around him rustled and birds that he hadn’t even known were there took to the air with loud tweets and flapping wings. Graham took the bottle away from his mouth and looked around. The shaking continued but he couldn’t see what was causing it.
He walked to the edge of the copse and looked down onto the street. There was nobody there but he had a terrific sensation of presence. He couldn’t see anyone but he knew he wasn’t alone. Something was coming.
The already dark streets grew darker as if a shadow passed across the moon. The shaking continued but it began to feel more like footsteps.
He looked both ways but he couldn’t see anything. Somewhere a woman began to scream.
Graham walked slowly down the grassy hill towards the road. The sky was clear and the air dry but he could hear thunder.
In the distance a dark figure appeared and in a moment Graham realised that it was running towards him. He backed away and thought about finding somewhere to hide.
He staggered and almost fell. He could see buildings fall. He could no longer pretend that he didn’t know what was happening.
The demons and the angels were impossible to tell apart. They were all monstrous, terrific but ugly.
Graham fell to the floor. The site of the beasts made it impossible for him to deny what he had known all along. The ceremony was complete, Bridget was gone.
CHAPTER 14
THE GROUND STOPPED SHAKING BUT THE WAR HAD begun. It was almost impossible for Graham to conceive of what was going on around him. His mind seemed to rebel against his own eyes and refused to accept the sight of the creatures in the sky.
They weren’t really in the sky. They were on the ground. They were nowhere and they were everywhere. The rest of the world seemed to be the projection and they the reality. He had to look away but he didn’t want to let them out of his sight.
He could feel the impact of invisible, impossible weapons shaking the air. They sounded like thunder. The ground shook with each mighty blow.
He could barely think. The whole world seemed to be coming down around him. He could see people now. They were standing on the road in front of him looking up at the sky as it flashed fiery oranges
and reds.
“What’s going on?” said a man wearing a dressing gown.
Graham turned away from him.
“Some crazy weather Joe,” said a woman in response.
Graham wished that it was weather but this was something much worse. He wondered if it could be the end of the world? It might as well be. How was he supposed to go on now that...
...Bridget was dead.
He found it difficult to believe. Not his Bridget. Not after all this time. Not when he was so very close. He felt numb. His movement along the street was a habit without purpose.
If she was dead then he was dead as well. Maybe not in a physical sense but in all of the important ones. There wasn’t any point going on. Agnes was dead and now he was supposed to believe that Bridget was as well. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. If she was dead then why was he still breathing?
The buildings that fell around him didn’t mean anything. The looming shadows of angels and demons battling in the sky meant less still. They were no concern of his. Let them destroy the world if they wanted to. It wouldn’t bring her back.
The road wound around residential streets and business districts. Here and there he found small groups of people gathered together, looking on in amazement. They didn’t know what was happening.
He stopped at a bridge and looked down into the icy black water. He thought that if he was any sort of man he would have jumped. He wasn’t brave enough to do it, or maybe that was the cowards way out. A short painful death instead of dying by inches over the years ahead.
The water shook and sparkled, it reflected the red sky above. A creature bigger and more solid than anything he had ever seen appeared in front of him. It was there for a moment. A giant with pure white skin and long black hair. Its flesh rippled with muscles. The creature, be it angel or demon, didn’t seem to notice him. It stood for a moment and the water moved around its legs and feet. Then it flickered and vanished and the world crept back into the void it had left behind.
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