Nephilim

by Barrowman, John; Barrowman, Carole;

  Sotto shortly came back down the hallway after a shower, fastening his jeans and wearing a clean vintage NWA T-shirt stuck against his damp, tattooed skin. ‘So does that make you and your sister the rest of the Doom Patrol?’

  Matt grinned. ‘We’re agents for an organization called Orion. Rémy is too now, I guess.’

  Sotto moved round the kitchen like a dancer, stretching for a cast-iron pan, lifting down a plate, a bowl, a whisk, reaching inside the fridge for eggs without breaking his stride. Here was a man comfortable in himself. Matt sat at the island with his sketchpad in front of him, doodling images of Sotto as he moved.

  ‘Is Rém OK?’ asked Sotto, filling a mug with coffee and handing it to Matt.

  ‘He’s upstairs with my sister.’

  ‘Then I’ll give him some time. Tough what happened. Some scary shit went down the day he left.’

  Matt nodded, feeling a sharp pang of remorse for his earlier impatience with Rémy. At least he and Em had family to help smooth their way into the supernatural. Rémy hadn’t been so lucky. The bad had initiated him.

  ‘I was worried we’d been followed since we left Edinburgh and, given what happened to your car, I thought it better if I kept an eye on the street.’

  Sotto whipped eggs in a bowl while a pat of butter melted on the pan. He added salt, pepper and a handful of grated cheese to the mixture. ‘Outside the Art Institute, there was def’ somethin’,’ he said, chopping a clove of garlic and some onions and tossing them into the sizzling butter. ‘An’ I mean somethin’ not from this side of town. For a second or two, the lions looked like they were alive.’

  Sotto’s anxiety for Rémy hit Matt harder than his fear of what he’d witnessed. In that moment Matt recognized a trusted ally. He relaxed.

  Matt quickly flipped to a page where earlier Caravaggio had sketched Luca Ferrante’s likeness. He slid the pad across the island.

  ‘His name is Luca Ferrante,’ he said. ‘A serious badass.’

  Sotto tapped his fingers on the nephilim for a second. ‘Definitely not him.’ He slid the pad back. ‘I saw a woman.’

  In the space at the edge of the page, Matt listened to Sotto’s description and sketched. Now Sotto looked interested.

  ‘Shade her skin darker. Make her a little older.’

  Matt did.

  Sotto set his plate in the sink and stood at Matt’s shoulder.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That looks like the bitch that shot out my tyres.’

  *

  Upstairs, Em stared at the framed photograph on the wall. Rémy in Annie’s arms as a newborn, a handsome white man grinning proudly at both of them.

  ‘That was my Tía Rosa’s favourite photo of my dad,’ said Rémy, coming up behind her. ‘She always said he had that look of pride and awe any time he looked at both of us.’ He swallowed. ‘I wish he was here.’

  Em set her hand on top of Rémy’s, but she didn’t try to lessen his hurt. She just squeezed his hand and pushed open the bedroom door.

  The room smelled of Pine Sol and fresh paint. Em could detect the lingering odour of blood, but she said nothing. Despite a layer of dust on Annie’s desk and the whispers of musical graffiti noticeable beneath the pale green paint, the room was immaculate. Lines of a vacuum cleaner were still visible on the carpet. Books were stacked on a birch rocking chair next to the balcony windows. Another pile was on the bedside table.

  Rémy ran his hands over his head. ‘I should’ve told Sotto not to paint the walls.’

  ‘At least her journal’s in a safe place,’ said Em.

  Three embroidered pillows sat against the headboard of Annie’s double bed, the quilt folded with tight military corners. Rémy stared at the empty space above it.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said worriedly. ‘But the painting’s gone.’

  44.

  ON THE SAME PAGE

  The alarm on the security panel next to the door buzzed. Sotto punched in a series of numbers and the door swung open.

  ‘River City!’ Sotto kissed the top of Rémy’s head. ‘For ‘while we was thinkin’ you got left.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Rémy, grinning. ‘Still here.’

  ‘River City?’ asked Em.

  ‘The Music Man?’ said Sotto, squeezing Rémy’s shoulders. ‘Trouble in River City?’

  Rémy laughed. ‘He’s called me that since we moved here.’ A flash outside the window like a mirror reflecting the sun caught his eye. He blinked, shook his head. ‘And thanks,’ he added. ‘For … you know. Taking care of my mom.’

  ‘The police kept her for a while, but when the case went cold…’ Sotto shrugged. ‘We know you would’ve done the same for us.’

  The light flashed again.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Em asked Matt, who shook his head.

  ‘I need your help again, Sotto,’ said Rémy. ‘What happened to the painting of the angel playing the violin that was above my mom’s bed?’

  Four tear-gas canisters burst through the window at once, shattering the glass before exploding in the middle of the room. Glass rained down. Em screamed as the air filled with thick, choking fog.

  ‘Five O!’ hollered Two, charging through the front door.

  Sotto tapped his watch. The door slammed behind Two, sealing with a whoosh. It was clear that they had done this before.

  ‘Masks!’ Sotto shouted.

  Everyone ran for the back rooms of the apartment, trying to get away from the gas. Matt was scribbling as fast as he was moving. Two threw open a cupboard on the way and grabbed two army gas masks hanging inside the door. In the same instant, two masks dropped from a crack of light above Matt, who tossed one to Em and pulled the other over his own head.

  ‘At least we’re on the same page,’ said Sotto, as everyone fastened the masks to their faces.

  They sprinted for the bedroom. Sotto slammed the door. Gas insinuated itself into the room like warm breath on a frigid day. They all heard a loud banging on the apartment’s front door.

  ‘In here.’

  Sotto guided everyone into what looked like a walk-in closet, but wasn’t.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Rémy, looking around at the safe room with its flat-screen security camera mounted in the middle of a wall of first-edition mysteries, all sealed in Plexiglas containers.

  Sotto slammed the steel-encased door. It, too, sealed with a whoosh. ‘Should be safe in here,’ he said.

  Everyone took off their masks. Em ran shaky fingers over the hard spines on the first editions. On the security monitor they could see what looked like two Chicago SWAT officers in full masked gear at the apartment door. One of the officers was kneeling and holding an electronic pick at the lock.

  ‘Not Five O,’ said Two. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin beneath them beginning to puff like bread dough.

  ‘Oh my God,’ gasped Em. ‘Two, you didn’t get a mask.’

  Two shrugged off the problem and pointed at the screen. ‘If they find Rémy, they’ll kill him. I’ll call their bluff and stall.’

  He opened the safe-room door and ran back into the choking fog. On the flat-screen, they watched him kneel on the living-room floor and lock his hands behind his head.

  ‘That’s gotta hurt,’ said Matt, with feeling.

  Sotto reached under a shelf, exposing a security pad. He placed two fingers on it and pressed. Up on the ceiling the dome light shifted to the left, the faux ceiling slid away, and a folded ladder dropped out of the space.

  ‘It’s not magic,’ Em said to Sotto, ‘but it’s pretty cool.’

  They all heard a pneumatic drill start up, tearing through the steel front door. Sotto checked the screen.

  ‘Where did that come from?’ he said. ‘They didn’t have no drill last time I looked.’

  ‘From him,’ said Matt.

  He pointed to a third person standing slightly off camera, dressed in a single-breasted camel coat and skinny black trousers, and holding a sketchpad open in his hand.

  ‘That’s the pedestrian I saw earlier
at the Art Institute,’ said Sotto. ‘Is it your Ferrante guy?’

  ‘According to our source, Luca Ferrante is tall, muscular, older,’ said Em. ‘This guy is younger and skinnier.’

  The drill was getting louder, high-pitched, screaming. On the security panels, they could see the newcomer slide the pad into his coat pocket and back up into the shadows.

  ‘He’s got skills,’ said Sotto. ‘He knows where the cameras are hidden, and I hid them babies good.’

  Em kept her eyes on the screen while Matt helped Sotto unfold the last section of the ladder.

  ‘Why would an Animare not just blow open the door?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘Make it disappear even? Why go to all the trouble of creating a drill?’

  ‘I’m OK with it,’ said Sotto. ‘It’s slowing them down, givin’ us more time to get out.’

  45.

  IN THE CLOSET

  Rémy was only half-listening to Matt and Em’s debate. Mostly he was thinking about Two, exposed and vulnerable in the living room, taking a hit for him. Again.

  ‘Is Two gonna be OK?’

  ‘He knows the drill,’ replied Sotto, climbing on to the ladder.

  There was no way Rémy was leaving another situation for Two to clean up. He inhaled deeply, pulled up his mask and tugged open the door.

  ‘No!’ shouted Sotto. ‘Two can handle it.’

  It was the reflection from the mirror in the bathroom on the far side of the bedroom that changed Rémy’s mind. Rest on the Flight into Egypt was hanging above Sotto’s spa tub. He ran to the bathroom, lifted the painting from the wall and sprinted back.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ demanded Sotto, slamming the door again. ‘These guys want you bad. Are you just going to hand yourself over?’

  Rémy set the painting against the wall of books. Its heavy frame was shining, the gilt gleaming from a recent polish. It was all he could do not to collapse on to the floor and give up. His whole life, this had been above his mom’s bed. His whole life she had been protecting it, protecting him.

  ‘They want this more,’ he said aloud. ‘What was it doing in your bathroom?’

  ‘Figured it was as safe a place as any.’

  Sotto reactivated the seal on the door, and a ventilation fan sucked out the eye-watering gas that had penetrated the space. The drilling sound on the front door was muffled, but clearly audible through the walls.

  ‘They’ll be through that door in a sec,’ Matt said.

  Em’s eyes traced the glow around the edges of Caravaggio’s model angel, his elaborately detailed wings, and the shimmer from the sheet music of the Devil’s Interval held reverently in Joseph’s hand.

  ‘It made me feel when I looked at it,’ said Sotto, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted at the painting. ‘I guess that’s why I brought it down to the flat.’

  ‘Art will do that,’ said Em. ‘If you let it.’

  Behind his sister, Matt was drawing something. Em threw up her hand, catching the handle of an X-Acto blade that flashed into reality above her as Matt closed his pad. She kneeled and swiftly sliced into the canvas, cutting a tight clean line as close under the frame as she could.

  ‘My mom stole this painting a long time ago,’ explained Rémy to Sotto, as Em rolled the canvas up. ‘The Camarilla – the guys who killed Mom and Tía Rosa – and Luca Ferrante, they want it back. Badly. It’s part of a bigger plan. An apocalyptic plan.’

  ‘So this Camarilla want you too?’ asked Sotto. ‘And Ferrante’s calling the shots?’

  Rémy nodded.

  ‘Good to know,’ said Sotto, as if he’d been told the price of eggs had gone up.

  Outside, the pneumatic drill was hiccupping, making its final cuts in the front door.

  ‘We should be out there,’ Rémy said in frustration. ‘Helping. Two’s not going to hold them for long.’

  ‘No,’ said Matt, heading up the ladder. ‘We need to get this painting back to Orion. Two’ll be OK.’

  Em rolled the canvas and slipped it inside Rémy’s jacket. She glanced at Matt and Sotto and the safe-room door, then back at Rémy.

  ‘Do it!’ she said.

  Rémy yanked open the door and stepped back into the bedroom. He needed to conjure something to slow down the intruders. He dropped his mask to his neck and put his harmonica to his lips, playing lightly at first, and then with a fervour that rang with the full force of his imagination.

  ‘We gotta bail right now, River City,’ said Sotto, his foot on the first rung, his eyes on the security panel.

  ‘Almost there.’

  Rémy ignored the searing pain in his throat and the burning in his eyes as he conjured to Lightnin’ Hopkins’ ‘Fugitive Blues’. The wood planks on the hall floor snapped up one after the other and shot into the hallway below like torpedoes, leaving a dangerous gaping hole like a moat.

  46.

  NO SMOKING

  Rémy and Matt pulled the ladder up into the crawl space. Below them the faux ceiling slid back into place.

  ‘I added this after the attack on your mom,’ said Sotto.

  Hunched over but moving fast, he led them along a reinforced air duct the width of the building which ran between his apartment and Rémy’s above. They climbed up a rope ladder and on to a scaffold beneath a skylight. Sotto popped the lock, sliding the skylight open.

  ‘Wait,’ said Em. ‘Something’s not right. My skin is tingling.’

  Sotto looked at her. ‘No kidding.’

  ‘Hear her out, man,’ said Rémy. ‘Em can feel stuff you really want to know about.’

  ‘I saw a weird flash of light outside the window before those canisters were tossed,’ Em said. ‘There’s something else out there. Something bad.’

  ‘Maybe the bitch that shot out my tyres,’ said Sotto.

  Matt filled Em and Rémy in on his and Sotto’s conversation in the kitchen. The daylight coming through the skylight illuminated the small space.

  ‘Can we maybe get outside first and then figure out what’s going on?’ Matt suggested.

  ‘No,’ said Sotto, climbing out. ‘Stay there until I see what’s goin’ down.’

  Matt shouldered his way through the skylight after him. Sotto glared.

  ‘If something isn’t right, I can help,’ Matt said. He tapped his sketchpad in the pocket inside his jacket. ‘Fastest draw in the west, remember?’ He glanced back at Rémy. ‘Get Em to put the painting in something more secure than your jacket, man.’

  *

  Rémy and Em watched Sotto and Matt back away from the skylight, their footsteps soon lost in the distance. The tingling was like burning goosebumps on Em’s scalp. She realized she was trembling.

  Rémy leaned close to her, his harmonica gripped in his hand. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Just the damp and the dark,’ Em said, trying to ignore how her stomach was cramping. ‘Maybe I’m getting sick.’

  ‘Can your kind get sick?’

  ‘We’re Animare, not aliens.’ Em scratched her scalp aggressively before she dug her sketchbook out and, with broad thick strokes, drew an airtight aluminium poster tube for the painting.

  Rémy slid his arm round Em’s waist, pulling her closer. ‘You feel warm,’ he said.

  Em glanced round at the narrow scaffold platform they were sitting on. ‘Just a little anxious in this tight space.’

  Rémy rolled the canvas inside the tube and sealed the top before slipping it inside his jacket sleeve. Em leaned into him and yawned.

  ‘So now we have the Conjuror and the sacred chord,’ she said, exhaustion seeping through her words. ‘Let’s go home. Caravaggio can destroy this and the Camarilla will stop chasing you.’

  ‘I love your optimism,’ said Rémy, tightening his embrace. ‘But why not destroy it now?’

  ‘Because I’m not destroying a priceless work of art on Caravaggio’s word alone. Let’s get it back to Orion first and run a few more checks.’

  ‘You know you’re scratching your head a lot?’

  Em shot uprig
ht, her fingernails tearing at the skin on her scalp.

  ‘Do you smell that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Smoke.’

  ‘I don’t smell anything.’

  ‘I can taste ash in my mouth.’ Em spat off the edge of the scaffold. Both hands were clawing at her scalp, her nails drawing blood.

  ‘You’re freaking me out now,’ said Rémy. ‘Whether Sotto likes it or not, we need to get out of here.’

  He reached for the skylight. Em let out an awful scream and threw herself to the ground, rolling back and forth.

  ‘My hair’s on fire. My head. Aaargh!’

  Rémy lunged on top of her and grabbed her wrists. ‘Look at me.’

  Wide-eyed with terror, Em stared into Rémy’s eyes, fighting against his grip.

  ‘Your hair is not on fire. Something is doing this to you.’

  Em bucked and wrestled. Her body was convulsing violently and she was reeling towards the edge of the platform.

  ‘Em!’ Rémy shouted. ‘You’re going to—’

  It wasn’t far from the scaffold platform to the ground, but it was far enough. As she fell, Em hit her head on a beam with a sickening crack. For a moment, everything went black.

  ‘Shit!’ Rémy had scrambled down the rope ladder beside her. ‘Talk to me!’

  Em forced her eyes open against the pain in her head. ‘My scalp hurts so much, please make it stop...’

  Rémy played a fast riff on his harmonica and caught the flashlight before it clattered out of sight. He put it in his mouth. With his hand gripping Em’s wrists, he held her steady enough to aim the light at her scalp. He gasped. The torch clattered to the ground.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Em gasped, gripped with terror. ‘What can you see?’

  47.

  NOT GONNA LIE

  A circle of wet red welts was erupting on Em’s crown. Thin writhing snakes stabbed through the sores, like she was Medusa. Rémy wrapped his arms more tightly round her to stop her from tearing at the grotesque eruption on her head.

  ‘It’s bad,’ he said, swallowing. ‘Not gonna lie. But we’re gonna fix it, OK?’