Stealing Sacred Fire (8 page)

‘What I’d like to know,’
Melandra said carefully, ‘is, if these people exist, why no-one’s
aware of them. How have they managed to hide for so long?’

Fox raised a single eyebrow,
then smiled. ‘But, my child, we are aware of them. However, you are
right to ask these questions. You must be clear in your own mind
about what is going on. The Grigori have hidden among us by
counting on people’s inability to accept they might exist. Angels?’
He laughed. ‘Aren’t they just artistic ornaments on religious
paintings and Christmas cards?’ He shook his head. ‘The fallen ones
have been idolised by writers and poets, swallowed by fiction.
People see them as romantic martyrs, unaware that their descendants
are very real, a passionless race that seeks to take control of the
world. God cast them out of heaven for their wickedness and pride,
stripped them of their divinity. Now, they are jealous and greedy.
They would like to enslave all humanity. That was their original
intention when they divulged secret knowledge to humanity, and it
still is. Control. They look almost like us, and only a trained eye
can spot them. They are seducers, Melandra, and they have waited an
immeasurably long time to get their revenge. The Lord knows they
are cunning and deadly. Be in no doubt about that. It might be your
only defence. The last two millennia have been the centuries of
Christ, and the Grigori were disabled, but now the new millennium
approaches and if the Son of God is to remain its king, the Grigori
must be stopped.’

After several hours of
intensive information intake, Melandra left the House of Lamech
dazed with facts. Walking out into the dusk of the city, she had
seen Grigori in every shadow; tall men and women on the street
seemed to pause and glance at her with suspicious eyes. She had to
go into a bar and have a few drinks to get a grip on herself.

As a teenager, when she’d first
tasted the forbidden luxuries of alcohol and tobacco, she’d
reasoned with herself that although there was no mention in the
Bible of Jesus smoking cigarettes (they weren’t invented then,
after all), he had certainly drunk wine. He wouldn’t mind if she
did too. No other liquor had ever touched her lips. Once, she had
been caught sneaking into the college with a secret purchase
wrapped in brown paper. Her teachers had expressed their
disappointment, and because Melandra appeared to be an obedient
girl, they had never had to chastise her again. She had become more
careful. It all seemed farcical now. She had been brought up to be
trained as an assassin, yet it offended them if she drank alcohol.
They had looked like men and women, but their hearts had been cold
and inhuman. They could kill in the name of God, and had taught her
that this was a righteous and noble thing to do. She had learned to
emulate their zeal and had taken pride in the accuracy of her work.
Still, as yet, her skill was untried. She had killed all manner of
God’s creatures, except the ones created in His image. Was she up
to the task Fox had invested in her? Sometimes she felt too shaky
and vulnerable to be what they wanted her to be. Her guardians had
never known the real Melandra. If she met this great Shemyaza, the
devil himself, would she be strong enough to stand up to him?

After a bottle of good wine,
the prospect seemed less chilling, although she still vacillated
between belief and scepticism. Why was it so difficult to believe
in the Grigori? After all, she believed without question in God and
the love of Jesus Christ, and had felt it often during the lonely,
aching years of her insular childhood. Their holy presences had
sometimes seemed more real to her than those of the dour, devout
women who’d raised her. Alone in her room at night, she had talked
to the sorrowful man on the crucifix, which hung on her wall. He
had been her only confidant. He knew her childish hopes and
desires, even though she could not articulate them fully. A
yearning for love, perhaps, which unacknowledged bitterness had
hardened into something else. Jesus loves you, she had been told,
and there had been stories of the good angels, who crouched around
the throne of God, eternally singing his praises. The bad angels
burned in hell. Because of the stories, she could imagine angels as
spiritual beings, the messengers of God. But it was more difficult
to accept Fox’s theories.

She sighed, drew circles on the
table-top with the wet base of her wine glass. This great story
sustained the Children of Lamech; it was their reason for being.
She had grown up with it, without even knowing it.

Later, at home, she took down
her crucifix from the wall, and touched the emaciated belly of
Christ with a reverent finger. His enemies must be her enemies. ‘Is
it real?’ she asked him. He looked, as always, despairing. Perhaps,
now, she knew the reason why.

London

Shemyaza had forgotten how filthy the
capital city was. Even pedestrians wore masks against the polluting
air nowadays. Yet still London charmed him. He sensed its great age
beneath his feet and even now, closing his eyes upon the busy
street, fancied he could sense its previous incarnations, when the
streets had been merely mud. Perhaps it had always been filthy.

He and Salamiel had been in the
city for two days, staying at a Grigori-owned hotel hidden amongst
the streets of Soho. Enniel Prussoe had arranged the accommodation
for them, and had booked them in under assumed names. He assured
them the hotel management was renowned for its discretion.

Daniel had been summoned, but
for some reason was delaying his return. Shem was amused by this.
He knew Daniel did not like having his strings tweaked too
forcefully, and the phone call he’d made to Cornwall had perhaps
been a little abrupt:

‘What are you doing down there,
Daniel? Get back here now! We have work to do.’

Daniel’s silence had been
eloquent on the other end of the line. Shem was reminded that his
vizier was five years older now; a boy no longer, and perhaps not
quite as malleable as in the past. To Shem, it felt as if he’d only
seen Daniel a few days before. ‘So, thanks for asking after my
health.’ He couldn’t help sounding sharp.

‘I know how you are. Salamiel
called Enniel as soon as you woke up.’

‘Salamiel and I are going to
London. I want you to meet us there.’

Daniel uttered a repressed
groan. ‘What’s the hurry? What are you planning?’

Shem noticed the reserve in
Daniel’s tone, a stony reticence that had not been there before.
‘To carry on what was started. That is what you want of me, isn’t
it?’

‘I don’t know what we started.
I don’t know how we carry on.’

‘You’ve changed, then.’

Shem heard Daniel sigh down the
line. ‘It all seems so unreal now. What you did here... what effect
did it have? I can’t see any. Perhaps it’s pointless, and we’re
kidding ourselves...’

‘We shouldn’t be talking about
this on the phone, Daniel.’

‘No... Shem, I’m not sure I
want to come back...’

‘You don’t have a choice.’

‘Something strange happened
today.’

Shem listened as Daniel told
him about the events surrounding the eclipse. ‘That just sounds
like proof to me. We have to act.’

‘Do what though?’

Shem paused. ‘We need to talk.
Please come to London, Daniel. I want to see you.’

Again, a sigh. ‘OK, but we must
talk, Shem, not just go haring off somewhere.’

‘We’ll talk. I promise.’

‘Give me a couple of days, will
you? I want to see Lily.’

‘Whatever you wish. Give her my
regards.’

Shem had fought the impulse to
slam down the phone. How could Daniel become so estranged? Shem
knew him as a warm, compassionate creature, and had been sure of
his love. Had five years eroded that loyalty?

Attempting to banish any doubts
about Daniel, Shem immersed himself in the bustle of Oxford Street,
letting the crowds swirl around him like water. No-one seemed to
notice him. He felt invisible.

So much activity; most of it
mindless. It was difficult to see a spiritual awakening in the
land. Shem gazed into shop windows, contemptuous of the
siren-allure of the colourful displays. Perhaps Daniel was right.
So little seemed to have changed since his ordeal in the
underworld.

He wandered past an electrical
goods mega-store, and the flickering banks of televisions in the
display window caught his eye. What he saw depressed his spirits
further. Every set was tuned to a channel showing a brutal public
demonstration in the Middle East. Contorted faces yelled at the
cameras, which flashed to pictures of burned bodies lying in a
dusty village street, and scuffles with the armed forces. A strong
emotion coursed through him. His homeland: gripped by war and
mindless violence. What had happened to the people who had once
lived there, the noble race of his ancestors? The invaders who’d
raided the land after his people had been forced to flee had made
it wholly their own, permeated it with their repressive creeds,
destroyed and buried the knowledge of the Elders, the race who had
existed even before the Anannage. He burned with a cold fury. It
was all so wrong. The knowledge of the Elders belonged to the
world. He had died for that belief, once.

While the lands of his
ancestors were torn by cruelty and intolerance, there could be no
evolution in the world. But how could he end it? He had been shown
the possibility of ultimate power in the underworld of Cornwall,
but that stage of his work was over. He had been a conductor for
the force, a catalyst, but he did not feel as if any shred of it
remained inside him.

Before he could continue his
stroll, weighed down with melancholy, Shem’s attention was
attracted to an image on the screens. He did not want to see any
more violence, yet could not tear his eyes away. A struggling melee
was being shown; a mass of bodies. All was confusion, yet in its
midst stood a lone, motionless figure. This person was taller than
those around him or her. Their face was concealed by a dark red
scarf, only the eyes showed through, but they stared straight into
the camera; challenging, fearless, alive.

Shem shivered in the clammy
heat of the city. It felt as if the picture had crossed time as
well as distance to reach him. ‘Come,’ the eyes seemed to say. ‘We
are waiting.’ He put one hand flat against the window; it felt
greasy and hot beneath his palm. Were his eyes blurring or had the
image on the screens gone out of focus? He blinked, and the noise
of the demonstration crashed through the glass to fill his ears
with its clamour. He staggered backwards, and bodies thrust against
him, rough hands pushing him away, further into the midst of the
crowd. At first, he thought he had somehow been propelled into the
image on the screens, transported across oceans and many lands to
the country of his ancestors. Then, he glimpsed shop fronts through
the crowd, and realised he was still on Oxford Street, but
inexplicably caught up in a marching throng. Voices called out
furious slogans, but he could not understand them. What were they
protesting about? He saw many dark-skinned people, a few wearing
Middle-Eastern head-gear. Had the demonstration been brought to him
rather than the other way around?

Shem clawed and struggled his
way to the edge of the crowd. Sightseers and shoppers had vanished,
probably having sought sanctuary behind the doors of shops. Shem
grabbed hold of the arm of an olive-skinned girl. She turned hot,
brown eyes upon him; impatient and afire, and spoke to him sharply
in a tongue he could not fathom.

‘What’s this all about?’ Shem
asked her.

For a moment, he thought she
would pull away from him. Her lips curled into a contemptuous
sneer. Then, some kind of political zeal got the better of her.
‘Yarasadi!’ she snapped.

Shem looked at her blankly. It
meant nothing. ‘I’ve been away a long time. Tell me.’

‘My people are being murdered!’
the girl cried. ‘And your politicians look on, fearful and
ignorant. We mean nothing to them, but our voices are loud!’

‘Yarasadi? Where? Middle
East?’

She nodded, then smiled coldly.
‘Yes. You have been away a long time! Don’t you watch the
news?’

Shem shook his head. ‘Who are
your people?’

‘We are an ancient race, and
our lands have been plundered. Now, we raise our voices in protest.
Now, we are not afraid to fight! It is not too late.’ It sounded
like lines from a manifesto, learned by heart.

Shem thought the girl seemed
almost crazed. She was probably nothing more than a foreign
student, far removed from her roots, who was caught up in the
political enthusiasms of the young, yet something about her eyes,
her proud stance, touched his soul. He saw echoes of the past in
her. ‘Tell me more. It’s important I know what’s happened.’

She looked him up and down,
probably assessing his pale skin and white-gold hair. He would not
seem kin to her. Then, she shrugged. ‘I have to go, but you can
always follow us to the meeting place. There, you will learn all
you need to know, if you’re that interested.’ She glanced around,
probably to look for comrades who had marched on without her.

‘Take me there,’ Shem said.

The girl looked at him with
suspicion. He stared deep into her eyes, exerted his will. Then
without a word, the girl jerked her head to indicate ahead of her,
turned away from him and began to walk quickly alongside the crowd.
Shem followed. He did not let her out of his sight.

The police were a very visible
presence around the meeting hall, but here the demonstration seemed
to have quietened down, most of its participants having already
entered the hall. Shem caught up with his reluctant guide. She
looked over her shoulder at him, clearly suspicious, although still
subject to his will. She gave him a guarded half smile, and he
directed the full force of his own smile upon her. ‘I am
interested,’ he said. ‘You don’t know how much.’