Falls the Shadow (36 page)

‘I love my children. I loved my daughter and you killed her,’ he said simply, finally. ‘You killed her.’

Tears began to burn down his cheeks, but he made no sound. Benny flinched, trying very hard to keep calm, trying very hard not to turn on Gabriel and Tanith and scream with hate. Winterdawn’s words had touched her, teaching her a new level of frustration.

‘Yes,’ Gabriel replied languidly. ‘We killed her. We enjoyed it. The rending of flesh, the spilling of blood, the screaming and the despair. She wanted to live, we disapproved.’

‘But,’ Tanith took up the theme, ‘amidst the horror and the gore, the true instant of elegance was that moment when she
knew
she would die. She pleaded. She offered us so much. We were tempted… but we had to experience the ecstasy of murder.’

‘And it is
ecstasy
!’ Gabriel declaimed, hurling his arms wide, almost slicing off Ace’s ear with his knife (Ace took it without comment). ‘Transfiguration! Ascension!
Rapture
! Of the five people you see before you there isn’t one who can honestly say that they don’t know that to be true.’

‘Actually…’ Benny protested. She was interrupted by Tanith.

‘Four out of five,’ she said smoothly. ‘Bernice prefers alcohol and orgasms. She doesn’t know what she’s missing.’

‘Why did you kill Sandra?’ Winterdawn said. Benny followed his voice closely, hoping it stood for something saner and kinder than Gabriel and Tanith.

‘That’s exactly what she wanted to know. And you know what? We couldn’t remember then either.’

He laughed stupidly. Tanith joined in.

‘You don’t think what you do means anything,’ Winterdawn purred. ‘You’re
stupid
people, so I’m going to give you something, something for you to keep and remember.’

‘A present?’ Gabriel asked, with little enthusiasm. ‘Goody.’

‘I’ll show you.’ Winterdawn’s mouth made itself a slight smile, ominous, humourless. He stood up. He steadied himself, swaying slightly but displaying little difficulty. That came when he spoke, when his voice forced itself in thin bursts between hard breaths.

‘Anything… you can do… I… can do… better!’

Pain slipped up his face, fixing his mouth, his eyes, his brow. He gasped. He fell forward onto the cold floor. He lay still.

Benny dropped onto her knees beside him. She reached for his pulse. It throbbed quickly at his wrist, then deadened into stillness.

‘He’s dead,’ she said. ‘His heart’s stopped.’

She saw the Doctor hide his face behind his hands. She saw Ace turn brusquely on the couple beside her.

‘You killed him!’ Ace said, her tone accusing but bereft of anger.

‘No.’ Tanith shook her head. ‘He managed that all by himself.’

The silence lingered. The stillness lingered. Death stifled the chamber, emptying it of even the grimmest humour. Something sullen and depressed had entered the faces and bodies of the assembled company. Even Gabriel and Tanith seemed unprepared to move and spoil the effect. Benny stayed crouched beside Winterdawn’s body, staring at the dead man’s face. His expression conveyed a sense of satisfaction. Or rigor mortis.

It was the Doctor who moved first, who spoke first. Smoothly he disturbed Death, making sacrilege seem easy. He strolled to stand by Benny, looking down on Winterdawn’s corpse. Benny glanced upwards and saw bitterness in his eyes.

‘He should have stayed where he was,’ he said softly. ‘He would have been safe. He didn’t have to do this.’

Benny shrugged.

‘Maybe he did,’ she suggested. The Doctor frowned, and offered her a hand. She rose without his help. His hand, outstretched and empty, was small in the darkness. Benny felt guilty for ignoring it.

The Doctor stepped away, approaching the throne that Winterdawn had vacated. He grasped the arm‐
rests, stroking and squeezing the fabric as if trying to push his fingers through to the brittle metal frame beneath. He pulled away abruptly, turning with equal sharpness and sinking into a squat beside the chair. His fingers formed an accusative point, stabbing at Gabriel and Tanith.

‘
Who
are you?’ he said, his voice cold and loud. Gabriel and Tanith shuffled. They seemed more embarrassed than afraid.

‘We’re us,’ they said together. ‘We’re free. We’re wonderful.’

‘You want to sit here?’ The Doctor indicated the chair curtly.

‘Oh bloody hell!’ Tanith moaned. ‘Haven’t you been paying attention?’

‘Is that a yes?’ The Doctor’s face was flat but his eyes were alive and fiery. His pupils were sky‐
dark, sparkling with cruelty.

‘Yes,’ Gabriel insisted languidly. The Doctor’s disgust wasn’t touching them, Benny thought. Maybe it was boring them.

‘Nothing can stop you?’ The Doctor smiled mischievously. If anything his lightness disturbed Benny more than his anger.

‘Nothing,’ they retorted proudly.

‘If I asked you,’ the Doctor spoke again, his voice coming in slow chunks, ‘would you relinquish your claim on this throne?’

Their heads shook deliberately. The Doctor smiled slightly and sprang to his feet.

‘You’re not free,’ he said, his sprightly energy returning. ‘If you can’t say no, you’re not free.’ Gabriel and Tanith blinked, perhaps confused. Bernice allowed herself a smile at their expense. She looked down at Winterdawn’s dead face. His lips were twisted and his skin was turning cold‐
grey, so that he seemed to be wearing a ghoulish smile, as if even death couldn’t prevent him from following events.

Gabriel and Tanith pushed past her, trampling over the corpse to reach the Doctor.

‘There’s a wound in your knee,’ Tanith said.

‘It bursts,’ Gabriel continued. ‘It bleeds. It bubbles.’

The Doctor sank, clutching his leg, and Benny felt a stab of sympathetic pain. Gabriel kicked at him. A portion of darkness flowed round his leg and held it tight. A flicker disturbed Gabriel’s perfect features, half‐
surprise, half‐
irritation.

The darkness grew. It gained form, structure, colour, texture. It became flesh. It became human. It became Cranleigh. It became almost‐
Cranleigh. He was naked and Benny could see the way his skin seethed and rippled. He had gained height – his body seeming stretched and elongated but far too
full
to appear thin. There was too much flesh to fit into Cranleigh. It was in danger of overflowing, of spilling out of his frame. When he spoke, it was a babble of voices. Benny recognized every one. They had killed her once.

‘Please don’t kick the Doctor,’ they said. ‘He means well.’

‘We took your shape,’ Tanith squeaked in protest. ‘That’s not fair! We took your structure!’

Cranleigh nodded, a grotesque smile growing on his sharpened features.

‘We are the essence. We can make our form. We are whole, we learned.’

As if proof of this, Cranleigh’s flesh swelled and burst. His body spilled into a profusion of new shapes – some human, some not. New bodies coming so fast they could hardly be seen, and it became impossible to tell where one shape ended and another began.

‘Justin Cranleigh.’ The Doctor had straightened up. Pain lingered in his voice, accompanied by wistful melancholy. ‘I offer you a chance to nullify your selves, they who might have been, but weren’t. Through Cathedral, through this chair, you could erase from the cosmos that core of pain which gave rise to your existences. I offer you peace. Sit here, and die. It’s your choice.’

Cranleigh’s flesh‐
form dance froze. The woman who might have been Jane Page stood by the chair, her naked body tapering as Cranleigh’s had done. Her body rippled as though her essence was trying to break free from the body that constrained her. Her torso expanded and contracted in short, sudden bursts. She had eyes again, though these were balls of gristle.

‘Page liked being alive,’ she said in many voices. ‘We all did.’

She shoved past Gabriel and Tanith and lowered herself onto the throne. Only then did her body harden into a single, permanent shape. Page’s body seemed tiny between the arms of the chair. Her skin was pallid – colour seeping from it. Her smile was a corpse‐
grin, shared with Winterdawn.

Benny crept forward. Ace fell in at her side. The Doctor watched calmly, his face betraying no feeling. Gabriel and Tanith shuffled uneasily. Page’s chest rose and fell, though this rhythm grew slow. A pentecost of chuckles fell from her mouth – each weak and breathless, together they drowned out the city’s siren.

‘What’s she got to laugh about?’ Ace pondered. ‘She’s dying.’

‘
They’re
dying,’ Gabriel interrupted. ‘They’re killing themselves.’

‘We’d done so much for them too.’

‘They’re healing the pain that made them,’ the Doctor said simply. ‘I have a confession.’

Bernice looked up, intrigued. Ace too turned. Gabriel and Tanith kept their heads lowered.

‘Gabriel and Tanith were born of pain. Cosmic pain,’ the Doctor said abruptly. He was forcing the words, as if they hurt him in a far deeper way than the graze on his leg. Benny recalled things he had said about guilt, about responsibility, about truth, and about fear.

He’d seen a pattern in Cathedral. He had refused to tell her about it.

The Doctor spoke slowly, because he was afraid of what he said, because it was true.

‘It was Winterdawn’s experiments with Cathedral that gave the pain a form of expression, sentience, as Gabriel and Tanith.’

They bowed graciously. The Doctor continued, his tone sour.

‘Winterdawn took on guilt for you. He didn’t deserve that, because he didn’t create you, not even accidentally. If you’re the wounds of the cosmos you pre‐
existed Winterdawn by a long, long time. I’m a Time Lord. When I looked into the tetrahedron and saw the patterns that created you I perceived more than a creature of any other race might.

‘I travel in time. The mere fact of that is enough to erase hundreds of futures. Wherever I go I leave footprints, my testament.
There’s
your pain – the scream of infinite futures erased from the cosmos. And through Cathedral, through Winterdawn, that scream gained life. Gabriel and Tanith.

‘You were never Winterdawn’s children were you? You were mine. Mine, and many others. You’re my guilt, my responsibility, so I’m stopping you. Now.’

Something clicked in Benny’s mind. She grinned wildly.

‘Ah!’ she exclaimed. ‘So Cranleigh…’

‘…is easing the pain,’ the Doctor finished for her. His face was stern. He was not glaring at her though, but at Gabriel and Tanith who matched his stare with perverse smiles.

‘When it dies,’ he growled, ‘it will take your identities, or at least your power. And that’s justice. Come on – Ace, Benny. We’re leaving.’

Ace’s mouth opened, forming an aggressive shape with thin, wide lips and sharp teeth. The Doctor raised a finger to his lips, silencing her.

‘They’re finished. We can leave them. Let’s go.’

Ace’s face bristled with fury. Benny understood, but she felt nothing similar. Only aching, muted disappointment. Maybe the Doctor was right, maybe it was over. It didn’t feel that way. She glanced at Gabriel and Tanith. They held themselves in slumped and wretched poses, but when they grinned back at her she saw little defeat in their attitude. Quite the opposite, in fact.

‘Ah Doctor, there’s no justice,’ Tanith said graciously. She reached into her gleaming white jacket and, with a theatrical flourish, removed the tetrahedron. It burned with a weak light, though its surface had become a corrupt black. ‘You left this in the street. Litter bug.’

The Doctor frowned. Benny caught his unease.

‘Dear me, you really don’t listen, do you?’ Gabriel’s voice was sickly and smooth with triumph. He waved dismissively at the throne, at the shape that had been Page shimmering in its seat. ‘All this is symbolism. It isn’t real! Cranleigh’s sitting there, he’s got the structure of this place. But we never wanted that.’

‘We want the power that’s locked into the structure, the power that can tickle the universe.’

‘We’ll smash the frame, leech out the power and drink it all up ourselves. It comes to the same thing. And you come to a sticky end. Sorry.’

‘I knew it wasn’t over,’ Ace muttered darkly. She leapt at them. Gabriel threw his body into her path, wrapping his arm smoothly round her neck. The knife blade shone in the tetrahedron‐
light, playing against her throat. She froze, her anger slipping again into motionless patience.

The light winked and died. The tetrahedron crumbled, becoming dust in Tanith’s hand. She tipped it to one side, letting the dust slip to the floor. The beings in the throne seized tight and became dark and intangible.

Gabriel and Tanith smiled, teeth shining.

The throne sank into itself, metal framework jarring and intertwining.

The Cruakh juddered and shook. Benny’s stomach rose and fell disconcertingly, her eyesight swayed and her feet gave way beneath her. A steady arm clamped round her waist, holding her tight until the floor grew firm. She muttered her thanks distantly.

She looked up and saw four faces staring at her. Tanith was pointing. Gabriel’s arms were locked round Ace but he managed to aim a startled expression at
her
. No – not at her. Beside her. She half‐
turned to see.

The man at her side wore a long coat, a hat, dark glasses. He was in all respects grey, but it was a strange, vivid shade – a grey composed of rainbow colours, a dense variety of tones, infinite hues.

‘Excuse me. You’re dead,’ said Benny.

‘We killed you,’ Gabriel elaborated.

‘No, you killed
me
,’ said the man of many colours, the grey man.

Tanith threw her arms in the air, an assumed gesture of despair.

‘Get out! This is our game and
you can’t play
!’

The grey man paced towards her, a smile on his thin lips.

‘You would have deconstructed the cosmos. That would’ve been… interesting, but not to my taste. You can’t divorce the art from the beliefs of its architects.

‘We have met before and we have not. I love such obscurities.’ He smiled broadly. Benny smiled too – no one else did. ‘When I created the Cathedral for the Congregation of All Peoples, I put much of my power into it. And then I died. Cathedral survived and since it contained my essence, part of it became me. And then you killed me, and I was left without form, as energy infusing the city‐
structure. But you destroyed that too, because you thought it would be neutral, because you thought you could use it, because you didn’t think that it might have an identity, or priorities of its own. Because…