by Thomas Emson
He quickly looked around. Sirens blared in the distance. Cops and ambulances were arriving at the accident he’d caused. They’d probably come looking for him soon, so he’d have to make a decision.
He knew where Jasmine had gone. She’d gone through. She’d found a way. Because she was psychic, she must have known about the places Jack had shown him.
“You have to look hard,” Jack had told him, “but if you do, you will always find a way through from your world to these lost places, these hidden locations.”
So that’s what he did. He looked hard, directly at the brick wall between the two entrances. Something about the spot made him look.
Perhaps it was the damp strip running down the wall or the voices he was sure were coming from behind it. Perhaps he was just going crazy.
But then, as his vision blurred, the dark strip on the wall became clearer, more defined.
He gasped.
“Christ,” he said. It was an alleyway. A very narrow alleyway. He climbed up the steps. Now the strip was just damp running down the wall again. He tutted. He stared again, looking hard at the bricks.
Again his eyes blurred, and the dark, vertical band became more definite.
Without blinking, so as not to clear his eyesight, Spencer reached out. He should have touched brick. He didn’t. His hand went into the darkness. Into the passageway. He walked forward and then turned sideways. He had to. It was too narrow, otherwise. Holding his breath, he slid into the passageway. The darkness stretched. He shuffled into it. The walls pressed against his back and his chest.
He thought, What happens if I blink? Will I be crushed?
Panic flooded his bowels.
Chapter 114
EXECUTION
Faultess, hell’s thing, floated down.
Hallam Buck managed to get Jasmine through the door. But Tash was also inside the room, as was the thing born moments before Faultless.
The thing he was sent here to fight.
His brother? How could that be?
He felt gloom and misery overwhelm him. Everything he’d come home to achieve was now lost to him. His goals were altered. His humanity gone. Madness knocked on the door of his mind. His sanity teetered on a precipice.
His psyche quickly fixed on something just in case he went insane—and what he fixed on was his purpose.
The reason he was made.
To fight this creature who threatened hell on earth.
At first, the instinct programmed into him by his maker made him head towards the door behind which Jack lurked.
But then something else took hold. Another desire that had been encrypted into him. But not by God this time. Not by a being Faultless hated.
The desire was vengeance. And it came from love.
He might have been born an angel, but he had been raised a human. Raised by a woman called Patricia Faultless. Charlie loved his mother. He loved her more than anything. He would also love another woman. Given time, he was sure his love for Rachel would have grown stronger than the love he had for his mum.
But destiny drove both women into the knife of the broken man at Faultless’s feet.
He wrenched the mask off Don Wilks’s head. Sweat sheened the detective’s face. Wilks grinned madly, his eyes bulging. He was clearly in agony. Faultless had smashed him from wall to wall, breaking his body. Wilks lay ruined. Bone poked through his flesh. One arm was nearly amputated.
Wilks somehow managed to speak, his voice coming out as a growl. “Fucking cunt,” he said. “Where the fuck did you get wings, then, fucker? Ha! You think you’re a fucking angel, Faultless, you’re a fucking . . . cunt. And I killed your bitch mother and your bitch girlfriend. Wish I’d shagged them, now. Wish I’d put it in them, the cunts . . . the . . . ”
“You finished?” said Faultless.
“Fuck you, you—”
Faultless’s wing slashed. The speed of the movement made it lethal. It was like steel slicing through Wilks’s neck, decapitating him. His head rolled off his shoulders. It crunched into the tiny bones on the ground. Faultless stared into the dead eyes. He felt empty. All the anger, all the pain, was dulled now. Everything he had been was gone. Everything he believed was false.
Executing the man who murdered his mother and girlfriend should’ve brought satisfaction. It should have brought a release.
Instead, it brought nothing.
He was about to turn around and head for the showdown with Jack when something crashed into him and sent him wheeling through the air.
Chapter 115
SURVIVAL
Tash came around.
Everything trembled. Dust rained from the ceiling. The floorboards shook. The walls creaked.
She looked around.
“Jasmine,” she said, trying to get up, but she was still tied to the bed. “Jasmine, baby.”
Her daughter was curled up in the corner. Standing by the door, looking out, was Hallam Buck. He came in and shut the door. He looked scared. It sounded like there was an earthquake.
“Th-they’re fighting,” said Buck.
“You bastard,” said Tash. “Untie me, Hallam. Untie me so I can kill you, you fucking bastard.”
He went to the table. He opened a leather briefcase—Montague Druitt’s briefcase.
“W-where did you get that?” said Tash.
“It was mine to start with. Faultless stole it.”
“It was at my—”
“Yes, and now it’s back with its rightful owner.”
He fished around inside.
Tash said, “What are you doing?” She looked over at Jasmine. She mouthed, Get out—run, but the child stayed where she was.
The trembling got worse.
“What’s going on?” said Tash.
“I told you,” said Buck. “They’re fighting—Faultless and Jack. But he’s not Faultless anymore. He’s something else.”
“Hallam? What do you—”
Buck looked up. Out of the briefcase he brought a scalpel. Tash felt her blood turn to ice.
Buck said, “I’m going to kill one of you, Tash. I got to. I made a mess of things before. I was weak, Jack said. And he ripped my cock and balls off. But if I kill one of you and cut you open, he’ll be grateful. He’ll let me worship him again. I’m going to be brave and—”
“Don’t do this, Hallam,” said Tash, panic in her voice. She struggled, trying to get free. “We’ve got to get out of here. The whole place is coming down. Untie me. Untie me and . . . and we can be friends.”
He laughed. It was a cold laugh. “No point in that anymore, Tash. I got no equipment now. You know what? Charlie Faultless should never have interfered all those years ago.”
Tash knitted her brow.
“You don’t remember?” he said.
She shook her head.
“You remember being attacked and Faultless saving you?”
“I remember that. It was you?”
“Yeah, me. He stopped me having you, the bastard.”
Tash tried to say something, but her throat was too dry.
“I’ve always liked you,” he said, “but, you bitch, you never liked me back.”
“I . . . I . . . ” She didn’t know what she was trying to say. What could she say? She could lie. But he’d see through it. He’d know. So she kept her mouth shut and looked at Jasmine and started to think how they would survive this.
Then she thought of something Hallam had said.
“What did you mean Charlie’s something else?”
“He ain’t human no more.”
Dread filled her heart. “What’s that mean?”
He said nothing, just sneered.
The fury of whatever was going on outside increased. Floorboards sprang up. The wall cracked. Everything was coming apart, and the noise was d
eafening.
How was she going to get out with Jasmine?
Hallam was moving towards her with the scalpel now. His eyes shone in the gloom. Debris showered him. He looked like a ghost. He licked his lips, and his tongue stood out pink against his pale, dust-coated face.
Tash arched her back. The ropes cut into her wrists and ankles. She felt the panic rise up. Her chest tightened. Hallam was going to kill her. He was touching her, lifting up her top, and she begged him not to. But his eyes fixed on the skin of her belly, and he rubbed it, his cold, clammy hand making her scream and writhe.
“You like it,” he said.
Tash screamed for Jasmine to run. But Jasmine sprang to her feet like a cat, and she was out of the corner in a flash, kicking at Hallam using what she’d learned at her tae kwan do classes.
It rocked Hallam, and he staggered, slashing with his blade. Tash feared her daughter would be cut. But Jasmine fought like a cornered animal. She had Hallam on the back foot. Her fury had scared him. Tash was still shouting at her to run, but her shrieking eleven year old drove Buck back towards the door with her attacks.
He hacked and sliced at her. And then he kicked and kicked again, anger etching his face now. And Jasmine yelped, stumbling. She bent double. Tash screamed. The scalpel rose. Hallam grabbed Jasmine’s hair. He snarled, spit spraying from between his teeth.
“I’ll kill you both,” he said.
The walls crumbled. The roof started to cave in. The door flew off its hinges.
A man, covered in dirt, flew into the room and barged into Hallam. The three of them—Hallam, Jasmine, and the man—fell in a heap.
“Jasmine, get out,” said Tash again.
The man pummeled Hallam. It was Spencer. For a second, Tash panicked because the youth had been with Jack. Her dad had grabbed him when they’d rescued Jasmine. Her dead dad. She screamed with rage. She cursed Hallam and urged Spencer to beat him, to kill him.
Jasmine rose from the pile of bodies and came to her mother, scrabbling at the ropes.
Hallam fought back. He jabbed with his scalpel. He cut Spencer, who shrieked. Blood spurted.
Tash, on her feet now, shoved Jasmine away and kicked Hallam hard in the side. He bent double, gasping for breath. She stamped on his hand, and he dropped the scalpel. She went to pick it up, but Spencer was shouting.
“We got to get out . . . we got to leg it . . . everything’s coming apart . . . the whole world’s breaking up . . . ”
Blood ran from his arm. He was at the door. Outside, it seemed as if the sky was falling in.
Tash looked for the scalpel again, her eyes skimming the floor, but it was gone. Her chest tightened.
Hallam’s got it, she thought.
But he was lying on the floor. A pool of blood formed around his head. It spread, dark fluid leaching across the dirty floorboards.
Tash turned her head slowly. Behind her stood Jasmine. She held the scalpel in her hand. It dripped blood.
“Jesus, we got to go,” said Spencer.
Tash snapped into action. She snatched the scalpel from Jasmine and tossed it aside, then grabbed her daughter by the hand and pulled her to the door.
“Go on, get out,” she said to Spencer as the ceiling behind her collapsed, burying the dead Hallam under rotten wood and plaster. “Now!” she yelled and shoved Spencer out of the door.
They stopped dead. Tash stared in horror. Everything was disintegrating. Huge walls cracked to reveal the night sky. As their surroundings collapsed, the streets of London came into view—the streets of Whitechapel. Through the crumbling masonry, Tash saw Londoners flee.
They must think it’s an earthquake, she thought.
A tremor shook the floor, and she looked down. It was giving way. She clutched Jasmine tightly. The ground was sliding apart as if tectonic plates were separating. And as the earth split and opened around them, Tash saw what was below.
A lake of fire sizzled and bubbled deep down in the crevice revealed by the upheaval.
“We’ve got to get away now,” said Tash.
“Mum, look.”
Jasmine was pointing upwards. Tash followed her gaze. For a moment, she saw nothing except the world coming apart. But then in the downpour of debris, two figures whirled.
She couldn’t make them out. They wheeled in the air so quickly. They were just a blur to Tash. One had wings. The other seemed to have a huge cape flapping behind him.
“It’s Charlie,” said Jasmine.
No, thought Tash, no, never.
And then Jasmine said, “He’s an angel.”
And then she remembered Hallam’s words.
He ain’t human no more.
As she stared up, praying Charlie was still a human who would hold her and kiss her and love her when this was finished, the ground under their feet gave way.
Chapter 116
GOD WEEPS
The One Who Made Everything watched as this little corner of his creation came apart.
His children fought, and their battle wreaked havoc and destruction.
It always did. It wasn’t the first time he’d sent someone against the up-elo, the first evil. But at least today it was a better match.
Thousands of years ago, a blink of an eye to him, he’d sent a man called Noe. Noe had been created good. He’d been fashioned by The One Who Made Everything as a perfect man. But even Noe had sin in his heart. That was the problem now. The blueprint had been set down, and it had this flaw in it—a flaw that came about because the designer got angry after his wife rejected him. But The One Who Made Everything wasn’t about to take the blame for that. It was man’s fault. He had free will. He could choose. And most times he chose evil. He chose sin.
Man’s fault, not mine, he told himself.
But there were high hopes for Noe.
He had a heavy dose of goodness in him. He’d been made especially to face up to the up-elo.
But sin was strong. Noe got a taste for drink. He was ratty and rude. And when the up-elo came after him, the world paid a heavy price.
Their battle unleashed a flood that drowned the earth. It destroyed virtually everyone and everything.
Noe and his family escaped. The up-elo laughed and said to his father, “Don’t you have better adversaries for me to play with?”
The story of Noe and the flood threw up fables. They were mostly to do with an ark Noe was supposed to have built to survive the deluge. Another myth. There was no ark. The ark was Noe’s heart, where goodness dwelled. It had to survive there or after the flood there wouldn’t be any of it left on earth. But sin survived too. Sin always survived. It would always be around, a dark stain in the human heart.
After Noe, The One Who Made Everything decided that up-elo was too powerful. The world was decaying even after being purged by the flood.
Back then, he didn’t want to kill that First Evil. In a way, it had brought some balance to creation. More darkness made more light. The worse some men behaved, the better others acted. Goodness followed in evil’s wake.
But slowly up-elo was getting the upper hand. And although The One Who Made Everything couldn’t wreck his own creation—that would be an admission of failure—he could at least balance things out.
So what he did was send male angels to breed with human women.
Their offspring he named nephilim. They had the foresight of angels and the craftiness of man.
The One Who Made Everything set out the laws under which they would live. The nephilim and their children were seers who had mind powers enabling them to track down up-elo. When they caught him, they should contain him with a curse.
But up-elo had a way out.
All he had to do was tap into the sin in men’s hearts to secure his release, and then, if he could kill and claim the souls of five seers while he was free, the world would be his. I
f he was captured and contained before he’d got to five, the seers he’d killed would not count—he’d have to start all over again once he was free.
But there was a catch. There was always a catch.
Up-elo was not allowed to lay a hand on the seers himself. That would have been too easy. He had to recruit a ripper. He had to call to the part of himself that lay in every human heart.
The battle went on for centuries, back and forth. Over time the creator grew weary with his own creation. His attempt to generate balance had failed. He was sad and angry that sin had corrupted the world. He had tried to control it but failed. Finally, there was only one thing to do.
Up-elo had to go. He’d grown arrogant. He was wily and spread a little too much of himself around the world. Even when he had been trapped by the seers, the sin he had distributed during his freedom had tainted the world. War, famine, and plague swept creation. It seemed unstoppable. The earth was dying.
There was only one way he could get rid of up-elo without throwing things completely out of balance. He would have to replace it. He would nurture a fragment of the first evil thought and give it life. Send it to earth and give it a destiny. Carve out a path for it so that one day it would come face to face with its brother.
Now was that day.
The One Who Made Everything had to let them fight. He had to be fair to the up-elo, to the original sin.
But in truth, he favored his second son.
He would be a good evil in the world. An equalizer to the goodness that The One Who Made Everything had, at the beginning, tried to instill into everything he’d made. But creation needed balance. It was better that way. It had to continue.
There would always be evil, he decided. Only sometimes it would be a new one. And here it was. Its human name had been Charlie Faultless. Its true name would be unspeakable. It would suffer, and it would bring suffering. It would tempt men to sin, testing them to see if they were worthy of a place in heaven.
It would be the lord who gapes. It would be the lantern of the tomb. It would be the moth eating at the law.
The One Who Made Everything sat back on his throne in heaven and watched the destruction below.