by D B Nielsen
Now, at the bottom of the stairwell, standing upon newly-laid marble tiles, I recalled the death of the security guard and allowed the memory to stoke the fire of my anger, as Sariel stalked towards one of the fallen warriors who was slowly recovering his footing. It was the petulant young man called Jenkins I’d first seen at Home House, lamenting his cruel fortune with Belladonna.
Pen’s mocking exclamation – sure to incite – resounded through the Great Court, ‘He’s no more than a rash adolescent! Let the fool be, Sariel!’, which earned the wrath of the young Fravashi warrior who lunged mindlessly, rage impelling him to attack.
Sariel’s agile parry deflected the keen edge of Jenkins’ blade, even as the Fravashi prepared to lunge again.
‘Bastard! Coward! Traitor!’ Jenkins spat at his former captain, as he swung honed, bright steel in a vicious arc that would have taken any normal man’s head clean from his shoulders with the momentum of the blow.
But Sariel’s surefooted, lightning-quick reflexes were unmatched. His advance jammed Jenkins’ strike, deftly wielding his short sword in his left hand to block the blow whilst, in his right, Sariel’s needle-sharp long sword pierced his opponent’s chainmail, slicing deeply into flesh – a slick, bloody gush – as Jenkins’ recoil failed.
The heavy broadsword was savagely yanked back but Sariel jerked the weapon out of Jenkins’ grasp, sensing his core hatred. It clattered loudly upon the marble tiles.
‘Damn you!’ Jenkins’ lashed out, held in check by the Gibborim. ‘You gutless bastard!’
Seething viciously, the other Fravashi and Rephaim warriors drew hard steel and talon, and seemed to flood the Great Court, increasing in numbers like a tsunami of demons. Where once they would have formed ranks and fanned out, their mindless fury and poisoned minds drove them forth – sweating with anticipation and bloodlust. The smell – the roiling smell was unbearable, overwhelming; the stink of carcass, of fetid flesh, of slow decay – making me want to dry retch in response.
Yet one moment rushed into the next. No time for human fears or frailty. On that poised instant, Mizrael flared into luminous heavenly-fire; its ringing cry of righteous might and bright power sheared the airborne particles and darkness recoiled. Unnatural night was rendered apart by its pure, majestic tone. And the enemy’s unintelligible attack was smashed asunder by pure, unbridled starlight.
Clear in mind and purpose, I ceded will to the Seed and the Sword, vised to merciless alliance. Briefly closing my eyes in assent, I became an instrument of the Word, yet as insignificant as a particle in the flux of time and space.
Sword struck. Blow by blade felled the enemy through a single cosmic chord plucked from the spheres – the same chord that had dismantled the world in a flood and washed it clean. Bloodless.
Seared, stripped, weighed and found wanting. Our foe faltered.
The malignant fiends were caught in the fierce light, trapped for a heartbeat and all eternity. The sheet lightning bled gold to silver-violet – brightening, incandescent – until each figure was limned in white gold and all the recesses of the British Museum were floodlit.
And, in my hand, the raised force of Mizrael judged and meted out justice.
A conflagration of living torches, like lit effigies on Guy Fawkes Night, like burning bundles of faggots to send a signal. No voice, no cry or hue was raised – they screamed without voice as the sword flooded through and engulfed them wholly. Searing flesh and viscera, fire and light poured forth through gaping orifices, through now-hollow charred bone. Cremated by the verdict handed down in the holy might of the Archangel’s sword. Soot and ash rose; flaming cinders threshed into airy nothingness. Incinerated. Beyond redemption.
The beacon of heavenly light suddenly extinguished in my hand, and the museum was plunged back into a semi-darkened netherworld. Moonlight now bathed the Great Court in waves of bluish-white; the shadows of the glass panes and stairwell undulating across the pale stone walls like sea snakes in a strange underwater scene. And I felt like a swimmer or a deep sea diver surfacing for oxygen as I slowly, and gratefully, breathed in the wholesomeness of fresh, untainted air.
Crouched low, dazed and reeling, I paused in the midst of the purified space, sweeping my eyes across the entrance hall from left to right in search of our adversaries as I reclaimed my wits.
But we stood, the five of us and my Lamassu protectors, in the vastness of marble, closed casket of mute and ancient relics – alone.
No artificial light illuminated the museum’s antiquities, the power outage continued and suggested the presence of more of our enemies nearby. But nothing moved. All was silent.
And then I realised – the sword of the Archangel had not harmed the Gibborim. Sariel and his men, like Pen, were stunned into immobility, dropped prone by Mizrael’s absolute and final sentencing of their brothers. Unmoored, unmanned, they wept for pure rapture and infinite faculties too mighty for mortal reasoning to fathom or embrace. And I, too, bowed my head in acceptance of the sword’s judgment – no longer could I doubt the conversion of these Nephilim who, like one on the road to Damascus, had been called back to the light.
Everything I had believed in was being tested. The hush of the museum seemed a living, breathing thing. Waiting pensively. In stillness. In solemnity. And the world – my world – now appeared completely foreign to me. Yet it was my choice to seek the sword of the Archangel. It was my choice to bring us here to fight. The burden was mine, even if I was wracked on the spokes and fellies of Fortune’s Wheel.
But the point that kept my true north was still St. John.
Pen was the first to thrust his bulk off the ground, nimbly rising despite the loss of his hand, his eyes ablaze.
‘Merciful heaven!’ he exclaimed. ‘Never did I think to witness the might of Mizrael!’
‘The sword of the Archangel was there when the stars were born,’ stated Sariel, rising to help scoop up his men where they had been felled in awe of Mizrael’s power. He spoke as a true believer, submitting to fate. ‘The principal task of Saint Michael the Archangel is to battle the Devil – Mizrael is the instrument of unmaking.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked in an urgent but hushed tone, testing the weight of the sword in my hand to still find it fused with my own essence.
It was the Seed that responded without words but as a knowing which could not be denied, a consciousness formed in the womb. The wisdom of eternal law – the only law that acknowledged primal order. There was to be no reprieve. No moment or allowance for pity. True names had been unmade, reclaiming millennia of hatred and violence for harmony and order. We few would remember to bear witness to the truth of this night but all others would forget as these lives were erased from history, expunged without trace.
Shuddering, I lifted my gaze to the Lamassu. They turned their unblinking stare my way before prowling the corridors of dead time like ghosts.
The locked moment ended.
I had assured the Anakim and St. John that I was ready for this but I had been naïve and foolish – nothing could have prepared me for the burden of knowledge, no amount of training – and I wrapped my guilt and regret around me in stoic silence and prayed that I would be up to the task I had set for myself. Too shocked and distressed for speech with my men, I blindly followed after the Lamassu’s purposeful stride, which brought me ever closer to my quarry ...
... and my beloved.
QUARRY
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We moved as one through the labyrinthine galleries of the British Museum, following the lissom movements of the Lamassu. I suspected that I was the only member of our group who could not naturally see in the dark – and only my repeated, almost-daily traversings of these now-empty galleries with my school tour groups allowed me the ability to navigate my way in the dark without needing to rely on the others for guidance.
The sword brandished in my hand restrained its radiance to a dull, sullen glow; a mere glint of silver-violet along its wicked razor’s edge. I
could feel its sentience pressing at the limits of my consciousness as it seemed to communicate with the Seed – but not in any language that I knew – and I became accustomed to their presence or sound like the living stream whose untroubled flow was calmly diverted by the stone in its midst.
‘Keep close,’ murmured Pen, halting momentarily. ‘There’s someone hiding behind the display cases ahead.’
‘Fravashi?’ I asked tersely.
Pen shook his head. ‘No, it’s a human. A museum security guard. He’s scared witless, poor man – the stench of his fear alerted me to his presence.’
One of Sariel’s soldiers interrupted in a low voice, warning, ‘Wise One, I’m sensing a dreadful confusion in this human’s mind; his thoughts are incoherent.’
‘Wait! Don’t approach him!’ Pen said, sniffing suspiciously at the air. ‘There’s a peculiar smell – and all too familiar!’
I shook my head. ‘It’s belladonna! He’s been poisoned!’
Moving quickly ahead, before the others could gauge my intent, I sought out the infected security guard. He was cowering behind a display of antique pottery; a pitiful figure crouched low with his arms covering his exposed head. Beside him, the stone was blackened and the side of the display case charred – as if he was flanked by the Fravashi whilst they were scorched by the Mizrael’s heavenly fire yet left unscathed.
Rocking on his haunches, I could hear his teeth chattering with the extent of his shock. The Lamassu had loped easily beside me as I ran, continuing to provide protection, but I waved them slightly away as I didn’t want to further alarm the petrified guard.
‘Sir? Hello? Are you all right? We don’t mean you any harm. You can come out now.’
Broken only by the rasp of breath and the chattering of his teeth, there was a long, silent pause.
Sariel shifted restlessly where he stood a few paces away, as if we were wasting valuable time, but I shot him a quelling look before turning my attention back to the security guard. This man wasn’t meant to be here, caught up in a supernatural conflict beyond his comprehension. He was an innocent. And if I was to fulfil my duty and protect those who needed protecting, then I had to recognise the value of each soul and their salvation.
‘Honestly, we won’t hurt you.’ I kept my voice gently coaxing. ‘Look, why don’t you come out here so we can talk? Come out where we can see you ...’
‘There are m-m-monsters out there ... demons.’ His voice sounded frail and fearful. It was difficult to tell if he was already experiencing hallucinations or not. ‘How do I know you aren’t demons?’
‘Because I killed them – the ones who were about to kill you.’ I held Mizrael aloft – and though the blade was dim, its divine light wasn’t extinguished – hoping he would look up. ‘See? It’s all right.’
Without bringing his arms away from his unprotected head, he stole the briefest of looks and gasped in terror, ‘You w-w-won’t k-kill me, will you?’
‘No! Of course not! We only want to talk to you. We want to get you to safety,’ I said in my most reassuring manner. ‘We’re the good guys.’
There was another long, awful pause as the security guard thought about that.
‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll come out. Just – please – don’t kill me. I have a wife. Kids.’
Then he lowered his arms and, standing on shaky legs, stumbled out into our path. His uniform was torn and smeared with blood, and the remains of his right sleeve was tattered to the cuff proving where he had been shredded by the Fravashi’s poisonous talons. His eyes were wild in a too pale face, and his shoulders and hands twitched uncontrollably in reaction to what he had experienced as much as the poison coursing through his veins. He stared at me with a terrified expression upon his face.
‘M-m-miss Woods? You are real, aren’t you?’ His tongue tripped on my name.
And I realised I knew him. ‘Stanley? What are you doing here? Why didn’t you leave when the museum closed for the day?’
‘Swapped me shift,’ he mumbled in a voice so low, I could only catch a word or two. ‘Me missus was having over her knitting club tonight, wasn’t she?’
Poor Stanley. He must have been regretting his folly – it would have been far safer to remain in his cubicle issuing out Visitor Passes than taking on the role of night porter.
‘You don’t look to be in very good shape, Stanley,’ Pen said to him. ‘What happened? Where are the other security guards? Your crew?’
His eyes flickered left and right in agitation. ‘Gone. Dead. Butchered. Some of them were ... eaten.’
‘Eaten?’ I queried. He wasn’t making any sense. I suspected the onset of the symptomatic hallucinations caused by the belladonna poison. ‘What do you mean they were eaten? Who or what ate them?’
‘D-d-demon. Big. Terrible.’ Stanley’s eyes were haunted as if reliving hell. ‘It was enormous ... it looked like ... no, not real ... no ... can’t be ...’
‘What? What did it look like?’ I urged, grateful for sending back the Lamassu where they were obscured by the darkness in the gallery and could be mistaken for statues.
‘You won’t believe me.’ Stanley shook his head in horror.
Sariel and the others drew closer, not wanting to frighten away the skittish security guard. ‘Tell us, Stanley. After what we’ve seen, we’ll believe you.’
Stanley shuddered as he replied, as if talking to himself like a monkey chattering gibberish, ‘It looked like a hippopotamus or rhinoceros. Maybe. I don’t know. But its skin wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen on an animal – it was sinew and stone, all wrapped together ... no, not real ... not real ... in my mind ... but it moved its huge tail ... like it was hurling a tree trunk ... not possible ... can’t be ... I swear I could hear its bones crunching and scraping when it walked ... but like metal being crushed ... like bars of iron or something. I don’t know ... no, no, no ... it devoured some of the demons and then Mike and Dave too ... then it just up and disappeared ...’
Pen stared at him.
‘A Behemoth,’ he whispered in a sickened voice.
‘I concur,’ Sariel said, seemingly unfazed.
I looked at them steadily. Moving slightly away from Stanley, I hissed, ‘A Behemoth? What aren’t you telling me? What’s going on?’
‘Chaos monsters. What you believe to be ancient mythology,’ replied Sariel, sombrely. ‘The Behemoth and Leviathan and Ziz. One on land. One under the sea. One in the sky. Thought destroyed by the Creator at the time of creation.’
‘The Behemoth is said to live in the invisible desert next to the Garden of Eden. Why it has come forth now is anybody’s guess.’ Pen paused, his expression grimly contemplative. ‘Unless it was summoned.’
‘By whom? Belladonna? Grigori?’ My voice was rising in frustration and I had to remember to keep it under control so as not to further antagonise an already skittish Stanley.
But Sariel shook his head. ‘They do not have the power to control it. Behemoth is said to be chief of the ways of God.’
‘But it also said to be a principal of darkness, of hell,’ contradicted Pen. ‘An infernal watchman.’
‘Enough already!’ I cried out at the split second the Lamassu gave an almighty roar, apparently having grown bored of our conversation. I just had time to see the security guard blanch before he fainted clean away on the marble floor.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ I pointed out angrily, but Pen was already shaking the terrified man awake.
‘We are wasting time!’ Sariel said gruffly.
I turned to confront the Gibborim as I wasn’t about to leave poor Stanley alone and defenceless. ‘Oh, I think we can spare a bit.’
Sariel accepted my command with equanimity but I knew, inwardly, he was rolling his eyes. I chose not to make an issue of it.
Stanley awoke and began to shudder uncontrollably. His wild eyes filled with a desperation. ‘Please don’t kill me ... I don’t know anything ... I ... I ... Why am I here? ... Wh-wh-who are
you people? ... Are you going to kill me?’
‘No, we’re not going to kill you,’ I told him firmly.
‘It’s horrible ... horrible. I can’t stand the horror,’ he wailed, spittle flying from mouth. He collapsed in a heap, putting his head into shaking hands and began to cry like an inconsolable child. Pen looked at the man with compassion as he fell into a poison-induced trance; his eyes turning glassy and his movements sluggish.
‘We need to leave,’ Sariel urged once more.
The security guard shuddered in response, coming out of his trance as out of a nightmare vision. ‘Don’t go there! Don’t go! Leave this place now! It’s hideous! Obscene!’
Looking at the hysterical security guard, Pen shook his head. ‘He’s losing it. There’s not much we can do for him. He’s suffered too much of a shock. Even activated charcoal won’t cleanse him now. It’s only a matter of time, Wise One ...’
I closed my eyes in anger. I knew this man. He was only ever kind to me. Now to be another casualty – victim – of this infernal war. I couldn’t bear to watch him die.
Stanley started raving like a lunatic – his sentences were breaking apart, falling and tripping and collapsing as his mind collapsed within. But he was trying to communicate something to us, I knew. Out of the fractured jumble, the twisted and tormented skeins of his brain, some scrap of sense was still struggling to break free, to surface.
Swallowing, my voice cracking in pained compassion, I bent down towards him to ask, ‘What is it, Stanley? What’s hideous? The demons?’
There was a long silence but I could hear all too clearly the struggle for survival. Stanley’s breathing slowed considerably, low, the breaths further apart and each one ending in a long, rattling wheeze.
Finally, he spoke on a manic note. ‘There’s a woman. They have her ... horrible ... horrible ... big belly ... monstrous belly ... pregnant ... she looks like she’s about to give birth. I saw–’ Stanley gulped, his throat working, his breathing merely painful gasps. ‘–saw it move ... it wasn’t human. The thing she carried. It wasn’t natural. Not hu–’ His voice cut out. His eyes were blind now – his pupils completely dilated. He was caught in this unimaginable horror in his last moments.