by Sue Tingey
‘How about if we split up,’ Kerfuffle said. ‘Two of us wait here and follow the Sicarii while the rest go to the church?’
‘They came by an automotive vehicle,’ Shenanigans pointed out, ‘and only Mistress Lucky and the Guardian can drive.’
‘It can’t be that difficult,’ Vaybian said.
‘Hah!’ I murmured.
‘Besides we have only one vehicle,’ Kerfuffle added.
‘I can wait and go with them; they can’t see me so I can hitch a ride,’ Kayla said. ‘I know where you’re heading, so if they go somewhere else, I can find you and tell you.’
‘You’ll be able to find us?’ I was scared that I might lose her.
‘My darling, I will always be able to find you. You’re like a beacon, not only to me but to all the dead. You’ll find that out if you stay in one place for any length of time.’
‘But I didn’t see one spirit at the cottage, and I was there all the time—’
‘Because I warded it. That’s why you were never bothered by spooks wherever we lived … I warded the buildings. I couldn’t do anything about the school; the twins were already there.’
‘Lucky,’ Jamie made a ‘time’s rolling on’ gesture, ‘we have to make a decision and then get moving. The clock’s ticking for Jinx.’
I told them Kayla’s suggestion, and Jamie grinned. ‘That’s a brilliant idea,’ he said.
‘I’m not just a pretty face, you know,’ Kayla replied.
‘My princess will be able to find us again?’ Vaybian sounded concerned.
‘She tells me yes.’
‘Good. Although I can never see her, knowing she’s close at hand is a comfort to me.’
Seven
Kubeck and Shenanigans dragged the dead Sicarii leader into the stairwell, leaving a swathe of black slime coating the shiny lobby tiles. We had to hope nobody decided to take a look before Jamie’s Guardians came to clear the body away – they’d get the surprise of their lives if they did. When we left, Kayla was sitting on the heap of brown-robed minions.
‘So when a daemon dies in the human world, the Guardians know?’ I asked Jamie.
‘We can hardly have humans finding dead daemons lying about the place – imagine the fuss they’d make!’
It didn’t bear thinking about, so I changed the subject. ‘Why’s Sicarii blood black?’ Jamie’s brow creased. After a moment he said, ‘I think it’s because they’re rotten – their evil is putrefying them even as they live.’
‘Yuck!’
Those of us who hadn’t already, changed back to human form before heading back to the car – we didn’t need anyone seeing us like that – while Jamie set up the satnav. The others watched with interest and scepticism in equal measures.
‘Do they not have maps in this world?’ Vaybian asked.
‘Yes, but we don’t have a map of Sussex, whereas we do have this gadget,’ Jamie pointed out.
‘You love all this technology, don’t you?’ I said.
Jamie glanced up from the keyboard. ‘It’s funny, I never miss it when I’m at home, but here I use it every chance I get.’ He grinned at me. ‘And yes, I enjoy it.’
‘Probably just as well, as I bet Amaliel’s got access to all manner of hi-tech gadgetry.’
‘Expensive tech,’ Jamie added. ‘No doubt the humans he’s involved with will be rich and powerful.’
‘So why would they risk everything to make a deal with what is, to all intents and purposes, the Devil?’
‘The more wealthy and powerful some people are, the more they want; that’s what makes the Overlands such a fascinating place to some daemonkind.’
‘Too busy and too densely populated,’ Kerfuffle grumbled. ‘I’d rather be home.’
‘If we find the Deathbringer today, we could be home before supper,’ Jamie said.
‘Or dead.’
Jamie glanced back over his shoulder at the scowling daemon. ‘It’s being so happy that keeps you going.’
Kerfuffle’s expression softened. ‘That’s what the Deathbringer always used to say,’ he said, and we all fell silent.
*
As we drove through the grey streets of greater London, the sun at last showed its face, making the city look like a whole different place. I could see Kerfuffle’s point: in some places the streets were so crowded you couldn’t see the shop windows through the sea of bodies – Heaven knows what he’d think of New York or Beijing or New Delhi!
The busy streets and tall buildings gave way to leafier suburban areas, and within an hour or so I saw the first sign for Brighton: we would soon be entering Sussex.
We left the A22 and long stretches of woodland gave way to small villages with quaint tearooms, old-fashioned butchers and picturesque pubs. On any other occasion I’d have been begging Jamie to stop so we could go antiquing, or try the local beer, but today, it all passed me by in a blur. I hadn’t been able to feel Jinx for a long time, and I was scared of what this might mean.
‘Ten more minutes and we should be there,’ Jamie said at last, and those ten minutes felt like the longest of my life. The road went on and on for ever through a corridor of gnarled trees whose branches had intertwined above us, blocking out the sun. It might have been my overwrought imagination, but the place felt dark and evil.
Jamie slowed to a crawl.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I’m wondering whether we should park up and walk into the village.’
‘We’re probably going to need a quick getaway,’ Shenanigans said.
‘And we don’t know what sort of state the Deathbringer’s going to be in,’ Kerfuffle added. ‘We don’t want to have to run for it while carrying him.’
‘Of course, it may be that he’ll fight us and we have to take him by force,’ Vaybian added unhelpfully.
‘Don’t say that,’ I whispered. ‘Please, don’t say that.’ I didn’t want to think about it, but if he’d lost free will, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.
‘Mistress, you must be prepared for the worst,’ Kerfuffle said, his voice unusually soft and gentle, ‘then anything better than that won’t be a disappointment. If we can get him back to the Underlands, we will at least have a chance of repairing the damage.’
‘Kerfuffle’s right,’ Jamie told me. ‘We get Jinx back home, then we can worry about getting him better.’
I looked down at my clenched fists – my human clenched fists – resting on Pyrites’ back, and took a deep breath. ‘I am going to kill Amaliel.’ I looked up at Jamie. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’
‘You look after Jinx. Leave the killing to us.’
‘We’ll see.’
He patted my leg, then announced, ‘Right, here we go then!’ and put his foot down.
The road ahead narrowed. It was flanked on either side by huge wooden gates standing open, as though at night they barred entry to the village. Two wooden posts supported a sign welcoming us to Chalfont Saint Bartholomew’s and urging us to drive safely. Jamie slowed down as we passed through the gates and into a hedge-lined lane that curled up a slight gradient before straightening out into a street lined with centuries-old cottages made of white plaster and black beams. There was a bow-fronted village shop, the leaded windows filled with old-fashioned jars of sweets and racks of pipes and tins of tobacco. The glass panes were streaked and dusty, and despite the time of day the shop was in darkness.
‘It’s like we’ve stepped back two hundred years,’ I murmured, half to myself.
The street was too narrow for parking and was devoid of cars, which added to the effect. I suspected Kerfuffle felt right at home.
We didn’t see a single person: no flicker of curtains, nor face at a window of any of the small cottages we drove slowly by.
‘It’s like a ghost town.’ Jamie’s voice was hushed.
There were a few more houses set back from the road, then a huge dirty white building with a forecourt for parking – and still not one car. Black patches of
mould clung to the grey walls, reminiscent of Sicarii skin; had I not known this village was our destination, I knew I would have felt it in my bones. I could sense the death all around us. With a shiver, I changed.
‘Lucky?’ Jamie whispered.
‘There’s no one living in this place.’ The voice wasn’t mine – or maybe it was, maybe it was the Soulseer’s.
‘What do you think’s happened to them?’ Kubeck asked.
‘Amaliel’s happened to them,’ Jamie said with a bitter twist of the lips.
We didn’t see a single living creature, not a cat or dog, not even a bird to be seen on the rooftops, or in the sky overhead.
Vaybian leaned forward between the two front seats to look up ahead. ‘This is unnatural,’ he said. ‘There is a wrongness about this place.’
‘Aye, there is,’ Kubeck said to murmurs of agreement from Kerfuffle and Shenanigans in the back.
‘Look – up ahead on the right,’ I said, pointing.
‘Saint Bartholomew’s,’ Jamie said, and slowed the car to a crawl.
We gazed over the grey stone walls surrounding the churchyard and cemetery. ‘It can’t be unconsecrated, surely,’ I said. ‘Not if there’s still a graveyard.’
‘Consecrated, unconsecrated … it matters not to daemonkind. I told you before: just because man calls a place a temple, it doesn’t make it sacred in our eyes,’ Jamie said.
‘But what about a Satanist’s?’
He gave a humourless laugh. ‘It would probably add some piquancy for men who worship the Fallen One.’
I looked at Jamie. ‘The Fallen One? I thought you said there was no such thing as God or the Devil.’
‘I keep telling you: gods, devils, daemons, angels – these are all names humans give to creatures they don’t understand.’
‘But “the Fallen One”?’ I said in exasperation. ‘That sounds like you believe in such a being yourself.’
‘This I’ve got to hear,’ Vaybian muttered.
‘I suggest you shut up. I have in no way, shape or form forgiven you for your actions earlier.’
Vaybian gave a snort of humourless laughter. ‘Just because you don’t like me saying something doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be said.’ He moved a little in his seat so he could look me in the face. ‘The Fallen One was once a Guardian.’
‘The Guardian,’ Kerfuffle corrected.
‘Just as the Deathbringer may turn now, this Guardian went rogue,’ Vaybian went on.
‘It is he who humankind call the Devil,’ Shenanigans finished.
‘A fallen angel,’ I whispered to myself. In some crazy way it all began to make sense.
‘As much as I would like to sit here and discuss human theology, there are more pressing matters to attend to, like finding Jinx,’ Jamie said, and he swerved the car and mounted the kerb with a bump.
‘Double yellow lines,’ I said.
‘You see a traffic warden?’
I very sensibly kept quiet. Jamie was not at all happy, but then neither was I. I was pretty sure there was no one living left in the village, which meant either Amaliel and Jinx had already gone, or—
But that was something I couldn’t possibly think about.
We all clambered out and as soon as Pyrites’ paws touched the ground, he started to grow, his white and tan fur darkening to black and gold until he was a rather large Rottweiler – and in a moment of sheer psychobabble it crossed my mind that I really should get him a collar and lead; preferably a flexible collar …
He pushed his furry head up under my hand and gave a low rumble in his chest. My drakon wasn’t very happy either.
We gathered outside the gateway to the church. One of the double gates was hanging ajar on rusted hinges beneath a greying wooden lych gate that had seen better days. Tiles were missing from the ridged roof, their shattered remains scattered at our feet.
Jamie pulled the gate open; the bottom bar scraped the concrete, the rasping sound grating in the silence. He gestured for me to go first then followed, the others close behind us. We were all uneasy; it was too deathly quiet for us to be anything but.
We stopped halfway along the paved path to look up at the imposing, once-beautiful church, incongruously large for the size of the village that surrounded it. Someone very wealthy and pious must have lived here all those centuries ago.
‘Come on,’ Jamie said, ‘let’s get this over with.’
‘We’re unarmed,’ Vaybian said.
‘There’s no one here but the dead,’ I told him, and even they were conspicuous by their absence: not a single spirit loitered in the graveyard and I had seen none in the streets as we’d driven through. If Amaliel had used the church for his unholy rites, he hadn’t seen fit to curse the dying to bind their souls to this place – but then, he probably had other things on his mind. Like breaking Jinx.
Jamie led the way, waiting at the door until we had all crowded into the vestibule.
‘Ready?’
I crossed my arms and hugged myself; I had a very bad feeling about this.
Jamie leaned forward, turned the ringed door handle and pushed. The door swung open without a sound. It was cold inside, our breath clouding the air, and our footsteps echoed as we walked into the church.
‘Shit,’ Jamie muttered.
Amaliel and his freaks had been here, and as in the Sicarii temple at Dark Rock, he had left us his calling card. I walked down the central aisle between the rows of wooden pews with Pyrites by my side, Jamie at my left shoulder and my guards close behind us. I reached back to find Jamie’s hand and his fingers curled around mine and squeezed.
Now we knew what had happened to the local residents. They had been dead for a while – I didn’t know exactly what had been done to them, but now they looked like they’d been mummified: dirty-brown desiccated skin stretched taut over their skulls, pulling their lips back to show teeth as if they were laughing at some hideous joke.
Their bodies sat upright in the pews, young and old alike, hymn books on laps and in some cases even pressed between fingers, sightless eyes staring straight ahead.
I couldn’t take it in. I knew I should feel something, but I was numb to it, like my heart had been frozen.
The village priest was positioned at the lectern, as though taking the service, peering down at an open Bible. I wondered how they’d managed to keep him standing, but then decided I’d rather not know.
The altar was covered with a black silky material, embroidered with a silver pentacle within which there was the head of a goat – the Goat of Mendes. Anyone who’d ever read a Dennis Wheatley novel knew what that was. Silver candlesticks holding the obligatory black candles flanked a silver chalice. It was all such a cliché – clichéd and sick.
As well as the ridiculous Satanic paraphernalia, the scene was dominated by a black inverted cross: because that was what it was – a set piece. Amaliel’s set piece.
I guessed the young woman was probably about my age, although it was hard to tell. She had been dead for a day or so; her skin had paled to the colour of marble and her lips had taken on a lilac hue, but she hadn’t yet begun to visibly decompose. Her rich chestnut hair hung from her head in a glossy curtain, the only colour in that dreadful tableau except for the blood. There was plenty of that.
Gore-encrusted spikes protruded from her ankles; they had pounded them into her, smashing through bone; her wrists were a similar bloody mess.
‘Not a good way to die,’ Vaybian said.
‘Poor, poor girl,’ I said, glancing at Jamie. His expression was strange.
‘Is it just me’ – Jamie asked – ‘or does she remind you of someone?’
Shenanigans and Kerfuffle both gave grim nods.
‘Aye, she does,’ Kubeck said.
‘She looks like you, mistress,’ Kerfuffle said.
Jamie squeezed my hand. ‘If you weren’t here with me now, I would have thought it was you.’
I squinted at the girl’s face. I couldn’t see it myself.
‘Is it some sort of message to me personally, do you think? Like, “interfere in my business and you’ll die horribly”?’
‘Could be – or it could have been for Jinx’s benefit.’
‘Jinx already thinks I’m dead,’ I said, and my voice cracked. I took a deep breath and breathed out again slowly. Breaking down now would help no one, least of all Jinx. As for this poor girl – well, she was past anything we could do for her.
‘Lucky—’ When I turned my head Kayla was gliding down the aisle towards us, clearly agitated. ‘The three Sicarii from the apartment will be here in about five minutes and they have reinforcements.’
‘How could they have got here so quickly?’ I asked. ‘They were out stone cold when we left.’
‘Another two cars turned up a minute or so after you left. They scraped our friends off the floor and came straight here – they’re expecting to find you here. I would have come sooner, but I wanted to hear their plans.’
‘Which are?’
‘Capture you and Jamie, if they can, and kill the rest – but if it comes to it, Jamie’s as expendable as the others; it’s you they want.’
‘Two carloads of Sicarii are on their way,’ I told my guard, ‘and they have no intention of taking us all alive – only me.’ I glanced up at the dead girl. ‘And I’d rather they didn’t.’
‘Fight or flee?’ Vaybian asked.
‘As you’ve pointed out several times, we have no weapons,’ Jamie said.
‘Do they?’ I asked Kayla.
‘They have at least three humans with them and they have guns.’
‘They have guns,’ I said out loud.
‘Guns can’t kill us unless they get a point-blank head-shot,’ Jamie said.
‘Though it’ll probably hurt like you wouldn’t believe,’ Kerfuffle grumbled.
The slamming of car doors out on the street told us we’d run out of time.
‘Is there another way out?’ Kubeck asked, and we all started past the altar towards a door to the left.
Kerfuffle got there first and started rattling the ringed door handle. He gave it a hefty tug. ‘It’s locked.’ He pulled again, and I heard something give.
‘Leave it,’ Jamie said, turning back the way we’d come. ‘There’s no time.’