Clovenhoof (47 page)

“Pitspawn?” he said.

“Nng,” said Pitspawn.

“Do you think a spot of ventriloquism would be vulgar and tasteless?”

Pitspawn couldn’t find an appropriate response. What he wanted was for the dead woman to vanish, taking the insane Clovenhoof with him.

As though in response to this wish, a mote of light appeared in the centre of the room and expanded rapidly to become a large glittering tear in mid air. Through the soft-edged portal, Pitspawn could see a bright and beautiful sky, white stonework and a trio of women gazing through at him.

“Is that Heaven?” he managed to say.

“About time,” said Clovenhoof, cast the corpse aside and leapt head first through the hole.

The portal shimmered and then vanished in a flash of light. Pitspawn blinked. Clovenhoof was gone and, he noticed, the woman’s body too.

Pitspawn whimpered, struggling to control his own body, thrust his hands together and tried to remember the first words of the Lord’s Prayer.

Clovenhoof landed on something soft and not at all unpleasant. Coughing away the dust that seemed to be enveloping him, he put his hands down to raise himself up. He encountered more soft pleasantness.

“Excuse me,” said the young woman in white beneath him.

“Oh, hello!” he said, removing his hands and getting to his knees. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Nerys hooked a hand under his elbow and lifted him up.

“You know her?” she said.

The woman in tennis whites gave the pair of them an admonishing look.

“He tried to sell me on E-Bay.”

Nerys stared.

“Molly?”

Molly rolled her eyes and smiled.

“Took you long enough,” she said.

Chapter 12 – in which Clovenhoof settles an old score, meets his maker and greets his new neighbour

Clovenhoof dusted himself down and raised his eyes to the city in front of him.

“Bloody hell,” he said. “This place has changed. I remember when it was nothing but gleaming spires of silver and glass and a hundred million idiots singing His eternal praises. What’s all this?” He waved his hand to take in the parkland, the grass, the looping monorail, the hodgepodge of buildings. “It’s bloody people, isn’t it? Cluttering things up. Making things... messy.”

“Whereas you are well known for bringing stability and order,” said the French girl in knight’s armour.

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” said Clovenhoof with such profound sincerity that he wasn’t even sure himself whether he was being sarcastic or not.

“Reverend!” he shouted gleefully, recognising the blonde woman.

“Still think you’ve got no friends who care about you?” smiled Evelyn.

Clovenhoof looked to Nerys. Nerys and Molly were locked in a tight embrace, Nerys’s fingers clutching at Molly’s back, tears in her eyes. Clovenhoof wondered if he was in for an unexpected display of incestuous girl-on-girl action but sadly doubted it.

“No, I have friends,” he said and then turned to face the woozy and staggering assemblage of angels and blessed dead who, it appeared, had just been trampled by a herd of wild beasts. “Oh. And enemies.”

“Where’s St Peter?” said Joan. “He’s gone.”

“Peter?” said Clovenhoof. “Gone? Fled like a coward? Abandoning his friends? Really? That’s not like him at all. No, wait. Silly me. It is.”

The angels and humans with purple sashes rearranged their robes and readied their weapons. Clovenhoof grinned. His infernal power, his one-time angelic power, wasn’t a form of energy. It was something that formed his very being, gave him reality and presence. He felt it returning to him now, making him feel larger and stronger than he had felt in ages.

“Once an angel, always an angel,” he whispered to himself.

He looked down at himself, his eyes particularly dwelling on the brown corduroy trousers that, not so very long ago, seemed like a wise fashion decision. He could click his fingers and throw off this body and becoming the angel Lucifer, the Bringer of Light, once more. He could magic away these clothes and becoming a towering goat-demon, all hairy balls and horns. Neither seemed quite right...

Clovenhoof clicked his fingers.

“Better,” he said and strode to meet Heaven’s forces in red velvet trousers, cravat and a quilted smoking jacket.

A sash-wearing man came running at him with a spear.

“Bekele,” he greeted the man. “Liked to poke children with sharp sticks.”

Clovenhoof stuck out an arm, which caught the man under his neck, sending him cartwheeling feet first through the air.

Another man tried to catch him unawares with a sword.

“Ernest,” said Clovenhoof, caught the blade between the palms of his hands, twisted it out of Ernest’s grip and knocked him out with the sword hilt. “My! Some very inventive sexual fantasies involving sandpaper and superglue. Dirty boy.”

An angel with what appeared to be a broken nose and a shredded wing, came at Clovenhoof.

“Look in my heart, demon. You’ll find only love there.”

“I know,” said Clovenhoof. “You and Feruzial. Up in the clerestory when you think no one’s looking.”

The angel looked sheepishly aside at one of the other angels. Clovenhoof used the distraction to plant a powerful punch on his chin and lay him out on the ground.

“Jian! Paulo! Belaphron!” cried Clovenhoof and leapt into the group of men and angels, lashing out joyously with fists, hooves, horns and an endless list of individuals’ transgressions.

“I was an awful niece,” said Nerys, rubbing her eyes.

“Is that so?” said Molly. “How many nieces do I have?”

Nerys thought.

“Four.”

“And how many of them cooked for me, cleaned for me, escorted me to every bloody whist drive I wanted to go to?”

“Yeah, but...”

She turned away, to see Clovenhoof emerge, beaming like a happy fool, from amongst the still and scattered bodies of the
Keep Heaven Holy
squad.

“I don’t think I did any of it out of love,” said Nerys.

Molly took hold of Nerys’s hand.

“What we do and what we intend to do. Families.” She squeezed Nerys’s hand. “It’s all relative.”

“Okay, ladies,” said Clovenhoof, clapping his hands together. “I’ve come here for some answers. Who’s going to help me get them?”

“It’s Michael’s committee that kicked you out of Hell,” said Joan.

“And started all this
Keep Heaven Holy
nonsense,” said Evelyn.

“That was Herbert’s idea,” said Nerys.

“He’s just a pawn,” said Clovenhoof. “I always thought Michael was a brainless doofus but I guess he’s the game player here.”

“The power behind the Throne,” said Joan and then frowned. “Michael has been very cagey about talking about the Throne of late.”

“The Throne?” said Nerys.

“Where God sits,” said Evelyn.

“I thought you said he was in the Imperial something or other.”

“The Empyrium,” said Joan. “On the Throne in the Throne Room in the Empyrium.”

“Yes,” said Clovenhoof grimly. “The Other Guy and I haven’t spoken in ages. Maybe it’s time for a little chat.”

“So where’s this Empyrium place?” asked Nerys.

Clovenhoof shook his head at her.

“Nerys, God isn’t in just one place. God is everywhere.”

He drew a rectangle in the air with his finger and a doorway appeared.

Layers of curtains in the richest of colours were draped from the hands of gilded cherubs. Chandeliers were suspended from a frescoed ceiling and the walls were lined with pleated silk in jewel colours.

“I don’t want to be rude,” said Nerys, “but I always imagined God would have better taste than this.”

“It’s like the castle of Gilles de Rais,” said Joan.

“Reminds me of Brighton Pavilion,” said Molly.

“Oh, we went on that coach trip for the day, didn’t we?” said Nerys.

“Far too much queuing,” said Molly. “And those seagulls!”

Clovenhoof growled in his throat.

“Do you think the Empyrium really looks like this?” he said irritably. “Do you think this is actually a physical place? That we are actually walking along a corridor?”

“Er, we’re not?” said Nerys.

“Humans,” he said. “I could learn to hate them all over again.”

“Now, now,” said Evelyn, patting his arm. “You’re doing really well. Don’t spoil it now.”

They passed through a gothic archway, hung with swags of heavy, tasselled damask, and into a large hall. The walls were hung with panels of crushed velvet with quilted gold accents. It was uncannily like Clovenhoof’s outfit.

The Archangel Michael stood in the centre of the room, his Italian suits now sacrificed for the more traditional robes, angelic wings and golden lance. Clovenhoof involuntarily touched his side, remembering what the tip of that lance had felt like, what it had done to him.

Behind Michael, hovering in tiered rows that stretched up to the high ceiling, were rank upon rank of angels.

“Oh, it’s Michael,” said Nerys.

“Have I met him?” said Molly.

“Possibly. He’s Jeremy’s I’m-definitely-not-gay friend.”

“He’s got lovely hair.”

“You ought to see his nails. Keeps them perfectly tri-”

“Not another step,” said Michael loudly, cutting across the women.

Clovenhoof clip-clopped forward an inch on the marble floor.

“Or what?” he said.

Michael pouted at him.

“Be serious for once, Jeremy.”

Clovenhoof wrinkled his nose.

“You don’t want me to be serious, Michael. Me serious is me angry. Very very angry.”

Michael lifted himself up on his tiptoes and floated up into the air.

“I don’t care how angry you are,” he said. “I don’t care about your petty grievances. You should not be here.”

“You had me fired.”

“You got yourself fired.”

“You organised it, arranged it. You teased me out like a winkle from its shell and cast me down to Earth. And then – and
then
– you tried to make me think I was human.”

Michael shrugged.

“So? No one cares what happens to you. You are the fallen one, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit. You are the Great Dragon. I threw you down once and I will throw you down again.”

“
That
was an unfair fight,” said Clovenhoof, wagging a finger at the angel.

“
It wasn’t a fair fight
,” said Michael in a high-pitched mocking voice. “
I had the sun in my eyes. I couldn’t see. You had all the best soldiers.”
Michael shook his head and his halo shone fiercely. “Change the record, Jeremy. We fought. I won. You lost.”

“Come down here and say that!” shouted Clovenhoof.

Michael’s lips curled in the faintest of smiles. He looked round at the angelic host about him to share his amusement.

“You honestly want me to do that?” he said to Clovenhoof.

“Absolutely.”

“You want to be beaten and humiliated again?”

“I won’t.”

Michael slowly drifted down.

“I was going to let you return to Earth and your sordid little suburban life but you would rather take the pain, be thrown down into another pit of torment, one which you will never leave?”

“Bring it on,” said Clovenhoof.

Michael’s bare feet touched the ground and he walked slowly towards Clovenhoof, like a big cat approaching its wounded prey. He stopped a few feet from Clovenhoof.

“Last chance,” he said with a triumphant twinkle in his eye. “Do you really want to do this?”

“Yes,” said Clovenhoof and then, “Oh, just one question, Michael.”

“Yes?”

Clovenhoof smiled.

“Do you honestly think that was the
sun
in my eyes?”

Michael frowned and Clovenhoof head-butted him in the face. Michael staggered back.

“The light that blinded me,” said Clovenhoof as he advanced on Michael. “That brilliance. That glory. You think that was the sun?”

Michael swung at him awkwardly with his lance. Clovenhoof ducked and stamped a hoof down on Michael’s foot. Michael fell to one knee.

“You think that
you
threw me down?” said Clovenhoof. “You conceited, idiotic fool.”

He snatched Michael’s lance from his hand. Michael resisted but Clovenhoof kneed him in the mouth and sent him flying back. Clovenhoof snapped the lance in two and threw the pieces aside.

“There was only one power that could defeat me,” he said, addressing the host above him. “And I can’t see that power here.”

Michael was crawling on the floor, apparently trying to pick up some of his teeth. Clovenhoof twisted a handful of cloth at the neck of his gown and yanked him upwards. Michael tried to say something but it was weak and muffled by blood and the lack of teeth. Clovenhoof kicked him viciously in the ribs to silence him.

“My friends and I are going to see the Throne,” he told the host. “If anyone has an issue with that, I’m right here.”

The angels stayed exactly where they were. In fact, Clovenhoof thought that some nearer the ground were slowly distancing themselves from him.

“Good.”

He looked back at Nerys, Evelyn, Molly and Joan.

“Come on, girls.”

He led the way, dragging Michael facedown with him and leaving a fine trail of blood and teeth in his wake. They passed beneath the angels, through a tall archway and into a grand high-vaulted corridor with double doors at its end.

“It’s like that bit in Wizard of Oz,” said Molly as they walked.

“Where they go to see the wizard in the Emerald City,” agreed Nerys.

“Yeah,” said Evelyn, “but if this wizard turns out to be a man behind a curtain, I’m going to be seriously put out.”

“Joan can be the tin man,” said Molly.

“I have no idea what you’re on about,” said Joan.

“Jeremy can be the cowardly lion,” said Nerys.

“Cowardly?” said Molly.

“Well, he’s hairy enough.”

“The brainless scarecrow,” said Evelyn, pointing at the limp form of Michael.

“Good call.”

“That just leaves Dorothy,” said Molly.

“Well, I’m the youngest,” said Nerys.

“I played Dorothy in a school play,” argued Evelyn.

“What about me?” said Molly.