Rapture Falls (27 page)

             
Gabriel saw all of this, he had s
lowly regained his composure with great effort, it was beginning to become increasingly difficult to maintain his serenity. At first this slipping had greatly concerned him
,
but he had become more
and more intrigued at the raging torrent of sensations that swarmed and battered against his protective shell. Perhaps these human emotions could serve a purpose, after all humanity had been destroying itself for centuries, perhaps his cause could use a little spite and fury. He
stood back and watched over the metaphorical chessboard, the pawns scurried as he thought they would, the two knights now stood on opposing sides of this game and his royalty rival played her game and made her choices. Gabriel was not a fool, he knew only too well that if he and Lucifer were Kings and Queens, McCullum and Baine were knights and humanity were pawns then God was the board upon which they all stood and the air that all breathed, fortunately for all of t
hem God was AWOL from this world and it did not look like he was coming back any time soon.

NOT SO HAPPY TRAILS

“
Say
to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retrib
ution he will come to save you”.

Isaiah 35:4

Lester Haines
watched the early evening traffic through a
spotless window, since the bypass had effectively segregated Port Talbot from the major road
and
his small guest house from the majority of passing motorists
,
his business had declined rapidly.
His wife Cerys had passed away some twelve years ago now
,
taken by cancer, all he had left to fill his days was the conversation of passing strangers, he had looked upon his guests as friends but now their dwindling numbers had left his days empty and lonely.
He only had one guest today, the man who had checked in this afternoon, the man seemed perfectly average in every way, a non-descript individual whose appearance would normally pass un-noticed save for his eyes which seemed to burn through Lester whenever he had attempted to engage him in any from of extended conversation. Lest
er sat in his armchair holding his
favourite photograph of Cerys, she faced the camera
at 27,
wearing a light summer dress that had been snapped flapping in mid air as she twirled on a warm summer day and her pretty face lit by a playful smile, he could still see her standing in their modest back garden, her head turned up to meet the hot sunshine, he often thought of her in this perfect pose and his heart broke every time with the weight of his sorrow even after twelve long years. His only guest was holed up in his room that still smelled a little stale despite Lester’s best efforts to air it at short notice with open windows and chemical fresheners. His eyes misted as he cradled the photograph remembering his wife when a noise interrupted his mourning, something had collided nosily with one of large metal bins outside, as his business was so slow now and he still lived alone the bins were normally fairly empty and so they hit the ground with a resounding clang. He stood and wiped his teary eyes on his freshly laundered sleeve
, he moved out through his lounge and into the large kitchen area, he looked through the rear windows to the garden, he could not see anything, the back door suddenly began to shake violently against its lock, someone was pulling and pushing with tremendous force in an effort to force entry. Suddenly the door exploded off of his hinges, the sturdy wooden frame splintered as the door fell inward and a large shape filled the doorway. Lester stood transfixed as the shadow entered and stepped into the light, he could not believe his own eyes, Lester had little imagination in his life and what little he did have had been eroded by years of sorrowful loneliness, his brain immediately shut down and refused to process the evidence even as the thing struck a sharp tearing blow across his chest. Lester sat down hard suddenly unable to catch his breath, his shirt felt wet and he looked down unable to quite understand why his blue shirt was now red, as he closed his eyes he was filled with the image of Cerys, she stood just beyond him, hand out stretched reaching to take him home, he died with a smile on his face.

             
Baine heard the noise as he tried to rest in the small guest house bedroom, he heard no voices only the sound of the back door being forced and the sound of a
wet ripping
blow
followed by
a body falling, he rolled from the bed and was up on his feet in an instant, whoever was here was here for him, he slid the book under the bed and edged out of the door to meet his latest aggressor.
He had spent the last couple of hours pouring through the pages of his families book, he had found a passage within the pages that spoke of a monk selected by God to carry his word and preach his truth, the monk, David, was obviously a trusted ser
vant of God, the book had one phrase scratched across the page by a hand he instinctively knew to be his fathers, it read, “Kneel only before the true word of God”. He had been pondering this and deciding upon his next move when the noise from below had caught his attention.
The landing was narrow and the staircase open, he looked over the banister but could see no-one approaching, as quietly as he could he crept down the stairs carefully avoiding any creaks that would announce his arrival.
Whatever awaited him was in the lounge area and it was eager, he could feel that it knew he was here and that any attempt at stealth was already pointless, he marched into the large living room area, he could smell the blood emanating from the kitchen, he did not have to look to know that it came from the landlord. The Reaper panted with anticipation, Baine now saw the thing far more clearly than McCullum’s confrontation in the dark car park.

             
“Well then chief” Baine greeted the Reaper, “
Why don’t we
”

             
The Reaper exploded into sudden savage life, it flew across the room covering the ground in an instant and trampling the small coffee table in the process, it grabbed Baine firmly by his tee-shirt ripping it and drawing blood. Baine staggered backwards under the weight of the snarling Reaper, he used the creatures own momentum as they moved, he grabbed firmly on the things thick scaly forearms, he planted his left leg on the carpet and pivoted, he released his grip and allowed the Reaper to fly past him
and crash into the wooden banister smashing them into jagged pieces. Baine leapt onto the things back as fast as could knowing that he was over matched in strength and needed to end this quickly, he wrapped his arm around its face pulled the Reaper’s head up revealing its throat, he moved it over one of the broken spindles, the wood was shattered to a sharp splintered tip whilst the end was still firmly secured in the base. Baine drove the Reaper’s exposed throat onto the spindle, the wood penetrated the scaly flesh
and drove up into
its head, Baine was not sure just how much of brain the thing actually had but when the splintered spindle protruded through the top of the Reapers head it ceased its struggles and hung limply.
Baine moved around onto the stairs to look at the Reapers face in order to make sure, its mouth was open and a foul green substance seeped from its lips staining the carpet, slowly it began to fade away, Baine sat on the step and watched as it became nothing more than a memory.
He had only wanted a chance to rest but now he had another body that would mark his trail clearly to the authorities and the others that would follow, he did not know just how they kept finding him but it seemed impossible to just disappear. He walked into the kitchen and looked quizzically at the man lying slumped on the linoleum floor, Lester had a strange look of peace on his face and in that moment Baine envied him greatly.

             
McCullum was bogged down in a mindless investigation he knew only too well just who he was searching for but he had absolutely no intention of sharing this information with any of his colleagues. DCI Jones was buzzing around with an air of ignorant self-importance
, McCullum encouraged him to be the official face of the investigation and handle the public relations side of it standing shoulder to shoulder with
Irving
in front of the television cameras and the eag
er reporters. Meanwhile he
had the job of running two parallel investigations, one to spin around in circles in order to satisfy Superintendent Irving and one to really track down Baine,
as McCullum had been the one to set up the arrest at the castle after Gabriel’s lead he would have had a lot of questions to answer about the identity of the man wanted for the priests grotesque violation and the slaughter at the station, if he had not had the foresight to phone it in anonymously. He still felt shamed by his actions at not fully trusting Gabriel immediately as he had not wanted his name attached to what might have been an embarrassing wild goose
chase;
he swore a private oath to himself that he would never let his father down again.
He led his team around all of the same dead end avenues that he had tried when all he had was a name after the suicide of Arwel Thomas whilst at the same time surreptitiously seeking to intercept any information or leads for himself. The forensic boys had been through the station with a fine toothcomb and despite the public notifications that they had found a hotbed of evidence McCullum knew that in reality they had found nothing, not a hair, not a fingerprint, not a sample
anywhere and the CCTV footage had been completely wiped clean.
It had been a long and fruitless day, he had pressure on all sides to deliver this man Baine quickly up for justice and he fully intended to do so, only to a much higher power than the city. The day was winding down and many officers had already left for the various drinking holes that they frequented with increasing severity, McCullum had long since held these activities at arms length with distaste but now he could not stomach these pits of depravity and the sinful activities of his peers. A report came across the wire just as he was beginning to call it a night, one Lester Haines had been found dead at his guest house on the outskirts of Port Talbot, the information that caught McCullum’s eye and his breath, the body had been discovered with a large undeterminable raking gash across his abdomen, McCullum’s hand went instinctively
to the healed wound on his back
“Reaper” he whispered to himself.