Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (29 page)

More explosions. Louder. Closer. One by one each car in the queue was obliterated in a mass of flying metal and fire. She kicked out at the driver’s door in frustration, hard on to the handle but nothing. Panic surged through her body as the next explosion thundered about ten cars down the queue. This time the ground shook with the force.

She glanced up. People were running now, past her bonnet, behind her. To her left, mum and dad were furiously un-strapping two children from the back of the people carrier, their voices barely audible above the commotion.

“My bag’s on the front seat, Erik!”

“Forget your fucking bag, Martha, get Charlie out! I’ll take Harry.”

Two more explosions in quick succession sent balls of fire spiralling across the carriageway, ploughing into the bank; a woman stood mesmerised by the confusion on the side of the road took the full force of the missile and was wiped out instantly.

Nearby, she heard Slick Back’s importunate voice booming from her right.

“Hey, pal! Is that tanker full?”

She looked up and saw what he was pointing at: a forty five foot road tanker was sat in the slow lane about five cars down. Its cylindrical tank bore one word.

SHELL

Alix began to pound the driver’s side window with her heel.

“You – know – that – Essence crap – you were –
talking
about – ah! –
now
– would be a
good time
– to –
ah! – use it!
”

Chapter
61

Grigori
Yefimovich didn’t notice that the door to his flat was already open. He had war on his mind. He scanned the entrance hall, vaguely registered a disturbance on the side table; something out of place. It didn’t matter. He felt something stir inside him, a distant voice calling from the depths of his gut. He knew that the Hollow One was not far now.

He picked up
a bottle of vodka from the side and studied the label. He would need the liquor to dull his senses if he was to endure another meeting with the Master. He tipped half of the bottle down his neck, swallowed in great gulps and felt the alcohol burn his gullet as it went down. He wretched up a little, coughing and spluttering, then downed the remainder.

Above the side table wa
s a small mirror, stained somehow; he couldn’t remember how. He couldn’t remember much these days. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate or slept. Sustenance was of little value to a body that no longer wished to be sustained. There were very few indulgences left in life for Grigori. Except maybe one.

He looked at himself. His skin clung to his face hopelessly
, like a rag thrown over a tree. His lips were small and ill-defined, his teeth unnaturally pointed and sharp, set back in his mouth so that they remained partially hidden. And those dark, cavernous eyes from where life had departed so long ago.

What had he become?

He thought about the bitch psychologist. So the Demon Azrael had managed to escape his fate and now she was his Host. How intriguing. She must be of some significance to be able to act as a Host. He thought about her white, unconscious body in his arms. Her soft breathing, how unresponsive and vulnerable she was. He hadn’t been able to rape her. Why was that? The pleasure of women was his gift from the Master for his services. He was
entitled
to take her, to draw upon her flesh, to satisfy himself of her like he had done so many times before. Sometimes like that - with lifeless bodies - sometimes with them kicking and screaming. But something had stopped him this time.

It shouldn’t have. He should have taken her and slit her throat when he had the chance.

He looked down at his hand, at the broken glass around his feet, the little drop of blood accumulating at the tip of his finger before dripping to the floor to mix with the spilt vodka.

*

Ash was half way through a bag of crisps when the Russian walked into his flat. They were sat in the Outlander outside the block watching carefully for movement.

“He must have gone in through the back,” said Keera. Ash nodded, filled his mouth with a few more crisps and crunched loudly.

“Let’s go and pick him up.”

The light was fading early. As the car doors shut, a street light flickered on.

*

In the living room, Grigori knelt by the chair and examined the wood. It didn’t seem like anything important. Just a chair with some straps on it and a mechanism on the side. It could so easily be mistaken for some sexual apparatus. But what a mistake that would be.

Unbeknown to Father Ireland, Grigori had first spoken to Sin not through a dream but in much stranger circumstances. He was a small boy, a frail waif, raised by his mother alone. His father was a drunk, known to the village as a thief and a bandit. He died when Grigori was still a baby, in a hunting accident, his mother had told him. By the time he was six, he knew the truth. Some of the villagers had grown wary of his father’s thievery. They set upon him one night as he stumbled home drunk with pitchforks and hammers
. The killing was quick and brutal.

Good riddance, Grigori had thought.

The Siberians thought little of Grigori. He was pale and thin. In their eyes, he was his father’s child, just another thief; not yet strong enough to prise open a window or clever enough to pick a lock but it was only a matter of time. He was odd, too. Didn’t like playing with the other kids, didn’t like playing at all. He spent entire days wondering the forest near the village, throwing stones at birds and trying to catch wild animals to torture and kill. He barely spoke, and when he did it was in a strangely low and textured voice that sounded like an old crone’s mumbling rather than a child’s.

As Grigori grew older his connection with the world seemed to grow weaker. Perhaps it
was that the more the villagers installed in him the belief that he was some miscarriage of God’s creation the more he believed it himself. Perhaps it was that very belief that drove him deeper and deeper into the forest every day. Amongst the damp earth and deformed tree roots he felt somehow at home; or at least less of an outcast than he did in the village.

One day he decided that he would travel into the forest and stay the night there. His mother was barely capable of looking after him anyway. Most nights he found his own food, made his own bedtime and tucked himself in. He had lost the memory of the warmth of her breast and h
ad no real desire for it anyway. The house was ill-equipped to keep out the Siberian chill. Sleeping outside was little different to sleeping inside anyway so it seemed a reasonable adventure for a six year old misfit to undertake.

He packed a small bag. A carton of milk, some bread and berries. The forest itself would provide anything else he needed.
He set off as the sun was beginning to set and the trees at the mouth of the forest were beginning to cast long, spindly shadows across the soft mossy ground. He might decide never to return, he thought. What had he to leave behind him? A drunken, useless parent and neighbours who despised him?

For two hours, he made his way deeper and deeper into the city of trees and plants, longer than he had ever travelled before. As he walked, the trees became bigger, taller, their trunks fatter and knurlier
; twisted roots spread out into the ground like giant tentacles embracing the earth around them. The light began to struggle to penetrate the canvass; everything was shrouded in a cold, sultry fog.

Eventually, Grigori came across a clearing where the trees had relented from their endless suffocation of the forest and there was a space where only patches of dry grass and dead leaves resided. In the centre of the clearing stood a solitary tree which had grown much larger and thicker than the rest. The trunk was constructed from a series of plump roots coiled round the base and forming a sort of arch over a large gnarl into which Grigori could not see far but which may well lead into the tree itself.

The young Grigori stood motionless, taking in the image of the monstrous tree which could only have been forged by the Devil himself, he thought, such was the peculiarity of its form. The way the leafless branches twisted themselves outward rather than up so they covered the clearing with a sort of wooden roof was like nothing he had ever seen before. This must be a very special tree, he surmised.

As he walked slowly to the giant tree he looked up and caught a glimpse of the moon shining through the gaps in the branches and he felt a comfort in the chilled air. Someone, or some
thing
, was calling to him. At the base where the roots arched over the gnarl he placed his hand on the bark, just as any inquisitive child would, and found it to be soft and moist, not like the cold, hard knobbles he had been expecting. It was more like... more like skin than bark, he thought.

He stared into the gnarl but it was too dark to see what lay there. He looked around the clearing, thought he heard a whisper in his ear. Must have been the wind. He looked back and found his hand creeping into the darkness, reaching in, little finger tips feeling the warmth inside, probing for something,
anything.

H
e leapt back, whimpering, grasped at his wrist and forced his hand to turn over to see the wound. Something had cut him, not deeply, but enough to draw a few drops of blood which fell to the base of the tree and soaked into the roots. It hurt and he winced at the pain, closing his eyes tightly, waiting for the shock to pass, trying to block out the strange sound of bark rubbing against bark, the rustling of the roots and the rumbling of a great movement like the entrance to an ancient tomb finally giving way and when he opened his eyes again he could no longer see anything save for a tiny picture of the forest through a slit no greater than a tear in a canvass.

In his ear, Sin spoke to
Grigori in his own language. The words were like someone running a knife slowly through his gut.

Chapter 62

Before the noises came, Charlie had been reading a Spiderman comic. Spiderman was his favourite Marvel hero because he could climb up walls and his life as a human wasn’t boring like Batman or Superman. Harry had cried all the way from the shop because he had wanted to play on the adult machines with the flashing lights but he wasn’t allowed because he was four. Charlie was five and that made him older and sometimes in charge but not always. Always, mummy was in charge and sometimes Daddy.

When the noises came, Mummy got angry with Daddy and yelled at him.

“Erik, what the Hell is that? Did you see that? That car just...”

Charlie heard the noises first. He heard them before Harry did because Harry was crying loudly. It was like
pop, pop, pop
. But then noises got louder and soon they was like
bang, bang, bang!

“Jesus Christ!” Daddy was shouting. “That car’s on fire!”

Jesus is a man from a book that Uncle Phil got Charlie when he was little. Jesus is like Spiderman, a bit.

Charlie didn’t mind the banging noise but Harry did. Charlie wanted to colour in Spiderman’s red and blue but he didn’t have those colours, only black. Then Mummy and Daddy got out the car, which is funny because you’re not supposed to get out of a car on the road. You’re supposed to wait until you g
et home.

Daddy opened Harry’s door. But Harry didn’t want his door open because it was cold maybe. Mummy opened Charlie’s door and Charlie saw her face, red and greasy like angry Mummy after fighting Daddy. But when the car door was open, Charlie heard the banging too loud and covered his ears.

“Noise!” He shouted but Mummy didn’t say anything about the noise, just started to undo Charlie’s seat belt but she was all clumsy and couldn’t find the click click. Then Charlie noticed lots of people on the road, which is naughty because you’re not supposed to be on the road unless you’re in a car. There was a lot of people looking at a big white lorry and pointing. And a girl in a red car kicking the window. She didn’t know that you can open car doors from the inside.

Charlie guessed that they needed to get out of the car and so started to collect his things to put in a bag to take but it was very cold.

“No Charlie, for God’s sake, put those things down! Can’t you see? We have to get out of the car now!”

Mummy was angry but she should have been angry with Harry because Harry wouldn’t stop crying. Then there was a massive bang, the biggest bang Charlie had ever heard in his life and the car started shaking and Mummy started crying. Charlie had seen Mummy cry before but not at a big bang. Usually Mummy liked fireworks and it was Charlie who was scared but not today.

Mummy hauled Charlie out of the car and pulled him across the road towards the snow but there was an old lady who fell. She looked silly because old lady’s aren’t supposed to run.

“Oh, Jesus! Erik, take Charlie!” Shouted Mummy and she went to pull the old lady. Charlie thought that Mummy would come back so he stopped running. Daddy was carrying Harry but maybe hadn’t heard Mummy tell him to take Charlie. But that didn’t matter because Charlie needed to go back to the car anyway.

“That tanker’s gonna’ blow!” A man shouted and people were crying.

Charlie ran back to the car. Charlie was very scared but he felt sure if he got back in the car the bang bang noise couldn’t hurt him. He could hear Mummy screaming but he would be safe in the car. Then another humungous bang, the biggest ever, and the ground jumped and Charlie fell and hurt his knee and a car was driving sideways towards him like being pulled on string but the car didn’t stop like the cars at the zebra crossing it just kept going and Charlie was very scared because the car might hit him and he felt sure that he would be hurt even more than his knee...

Charlie landed near Mummy. She shouted things Charlie didn’t understand and threw her arms around him. Charlie liked her warm.

“Oh, Charlie, what happened? What the Hell happened to you?”

“I flewed here, Mummy. Like Spiderman.”

“I don’t understand, sweetheart. What do you mean you flew here?”

“A lady took me and we flewed together.”

“Lady? What lady?”

Charlie looked about but the lady with the red hair was gone. And then the biggest bang in the whole world. Even bigger than Jesus.