Thy Fearful Symmetry (28 page)

Hammering down the middle of the road, swerving on to the pavement only when the occasional lonely driver went by, he grabbed street signs and lampposts to spin himself around corners, his feet almost silent on the damp tarmac.

When he reached the final corner, to a narrow path cutting off from the main road that separated the street doors of a small row of terraced houses from their front gardens, he overshot the mark. Slowing himself down in a series of exaggerated steps that sapped a little more of his velocity each time, he turned and jogged lightly back to the path, his breathing only a little harder than usual.

Stepping on to that dark path, he realised the chase was done. Treading the fashionably cracked flagstones, the only illumination now coming from pallid garden lamps set into the strip of lawn to his left, his worst fears caught up with him. Pandora was in the last house on the row, and Ambrose closed down the small section of his mind reserved for pinpointing her essence. As close as he was, the crazed jumble of pains and half-thoughts that had become her mind were deafening.

Halfway along the path, shrouded in gloom, he stopped, unable to take another step forward. No alien force seized him. No invisible barrier held him back. Rather, it was the weight of his own heart that snared him. A Pandora waited in the dark house, but not the Pandora he had learned to love. Sly voices from his subconscious asked him to move on, to leave her be. Ambrose had lost his heart, perhaps his mind, to a woman who bore only a physical resemblance to the creature he now pursued. The victory had belonged to the Almighty since Michael tortured the sanity from his angel.
 

Backlit by streetlights and the spill leaking from behind curtains drawn fast against night creatures just like him, Ambrose approached the door with dread.

In the darkness of the nave, all Gemmell could hear was scattered weeping. The voice outside continued. “You can't hide in there any more, my sweet. Leave your pretty one, and come back to us. We won't make it quick, and we won't make it painless, but it will be better than what the angels will do when they arrive to ask why the legions of the damned are standing outside His house.”

For a moment, Gemmell debated sitting tight, waiting for the promised angels. What stopped him was his experience of the one angel he had seen, and the snarl on her face as she attacked Ambrose Eidolon. It was not a reassuring picture.

Besides, these were his people, and it was his job to protect them. If God wanted to step up to the plate, He was welcome to do so, but He'd been happy to stay in the background so far.

Gemmell couldn't believe what he was about to do, and his legs went water-weak at the thought.
 

“People,” he said, his voice low. “Listen to me. Whoever that is, he's come for the man who was pretending to be a priest here until an hour ago, when he…” Vanished in a flash of light? “Left.” Nobody answered, and he assumed he had their attention. “I'm going to go outside, to speak to him. I'm going to explain that the one he wants isn't here. I'm going to hope that makes him go away.”

“You're leaving us?” It sounded like the woman in the headscarf, but he couldn't be sure.

“Not bloody likely. I'm not setting foot off church property.” It was all he could do to stop himself hyperventilating. The assumption that because the dead wouldn't cross the wall, the things outside wouldn't either, was a vast one.
Am I really going to step out there?
Yes, he was. His sense of duty wouldn't let him do anything else. “My sergeant Jackie Summer is upstairs. If you need anything urgently, go to her. In the meantime, find somewhere to sit, and shut the hell up. I don't want them outside to get too interested in you. If somebody stands on you, it's probably me trying to find the front door, so don't scream.”

The next minutes took an age, as Gemmell felt his way to the stairs at the edge of the dais, and walked carefully down them. Arms out, he felt his way to the wall at the edge of the nave, muttering under his breath the whole way to give people some warning that he was coming. Mostly, they shuffled out of his way.
 

When he reached the wall, the chanting outside began.

“Am-brose! Am-brose! Am-brose!” The beat was repetitive, and there was no tune. How could there be, when some screamed the word, others sang it, and some could barely pronounce it? Gemmell tried to imagine what mouths could make some of the noises he heard, which sounded more like evisceration than speech. It had to be part of the chant, because it kept time.
 

Once at the wall, the journey was faster. When he crossed to the vestibule and the exterior doors, feeling isolated despite knowing he was in a room full of people he could not see, a hand dropped on his shoulder. Gemmell jumped, slapping it away. “Are you trying to give me a bloody heart attack?”

“Sorry,” the voice was deep, not one he recognised from earlier. “I… do you have any family?”

Gemmell paused. The darkness hid the sudden tears in his eyes, and he was glad. “I have a wife, and a son. He's the most beautiful boy in the world.”

“Right. It's just, you know… on the off chance you don't come back in, do you want me to get a message to them? I could find them, you know… afterwards.”

Gemmell swallowed, unable to consider accepting. “Thanks. I'll give them the message myself.” If they survive. If there was going to be a tomorrow in which to find them.

“Why… why aren't you with them? With all this? Why stay?”

“Because I've got a job to do,” Gemmell said.

Opening the door, he stepped into the night before he lost the will to do so.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Ambrose stood at the front door of the house, sensing Pandora only a few feet away from him, but unable to force himself further. Even his sharper than human hearing couldn't detect her moving. Had her shattered mind been able to cope with the madness and temptation of limbo? Perhaps, within, he would find nothing more than a husk, a living shell that once contained a vibrant, enchanting mind.

Without Pandora, none of his rebellion had meaning. Without her, he had destroyed the world for nothing.

It would break the heart he should not have.
 

“I'm stronger than that,” he muttered, feeling sick to the stomach. “I won't be broken.” His voice was forced, high pitched, and he rested his forehead against the door to gather himself.

If she was gone, then nothing mattered.
 

Time to find out.

Ambrose could have picked the lock of the door with ease, but instead gripped the handle and shoved. The wood around the door splintered, sending a flat crack into the night.

There was still no movement inside, no sound at all.

The hallway was clean and sparse, created by somebody who watched too many home improvement shows. Narrow and pine clad, it reached for the modern kitchen at the far end, from which shone aluminium fittings, and two closed doors along the way no doubt offered equally clinical dwelling spaces. A narrow flight of stairs thrust towards the first floor. Ordinary places, for ordinary people, with ordinary lives. If Pandora and he had been mortal…

They would never have met. Idiotic, to be idling over fantasies now.

Easing the door closed behind him, he stepped into the hall, pausing at the foot of the stairs. In the kitchen, he saw an edge of white fabric peeking around the corner of a cupboard, and his heart leapt.

Cautious, he padded along the hallway, fighting the urge to stop, sit down, and never have to see.

He stepped into the kitchen. Pandora lay on her back next to the improbably clean cooker, staring at the ceiling with distant blue eyes, her hair spread out on the tiles.
 

Ambrose's fears thrashed at one another for dominance. What did he expect of this moment? Would it be better to find her comatose, or awake and murderously insane? How could he go on in either case?
 

“Pandora?” What voice he managed was hollow.

She blinked.

The shock of seeing that tiny sign of life left him breathless. Disparate emotions stormed him as he tried to make himself go to her.

There was a footstep in the hallway behind him, soft and stealthy. Instinct took him over, a blind rage at the fate that had presented him with a flicker of hope, and then set his enemies on him to snatch it away again.
 

Unleashing his true form, his unfurling wings shredding his shirt and jacket, sweeping pans from the kitchen top and clattering them across the tiles, Ambrose snarled. Talons split his shoes, and his hands flashed agony as they turned to claws. Whirling, a blur of motion, he reached out his right hand to strike.

The small, frightened woman behind him wore only a dressing gown, carried no weapons, and looked as scared as it was possible to be.
 

She lives here! You woke her when you forced the door, she's come downstairs to confront the intruder, and you're a heartbeat away from killing her!

Talons were already hooking the flesh beneath her jaw, there was too much momentum for Ambrose to stop.
 

Blood sprayed the wall.
 

The woman crashed to the floor, shrieking pain and shock.
 

Looking stupidly at his hand, Ambrose saw that he was holding half of the woman's face.

Malachi was unconscious, unaware of the voices of demons booming outside church walls, or the trembling hands trying to make him comfortable. Memories snatched him from the present, flicking him back through the pages of his own memory.

“Who is Pandora, Mr Jones? I know this is difficult, but the more information we can gather now, the more chance we have of finding the perpetrator.”

Mal shook his head, staring blankly at a police officer barely old enough to shave. Outside the private waiting area, reserved for delivering bad news to the relatives of patients unlikely to leave the hospital on their own feet, trolleys clattered, and doctors shouted instruction. Somewhere, Stacey bled furiously from the wound where her face had been.

“What?”
 

“Pandora, Mr Jones.”

“I don't know a Pandora.”

“Does your wife? A friend from work, maybe? Somebody she met at the gym and mentioned to you? Please think, Mr Jones.”

Mal tried, but he was sure neither of them knew a Pandora. Before he could say as much, the young officer nodded, glancing across at his female partner, who looked older to the tune of a couple of years. She sat on the vinyl chair next to Mal's, and put a careful hand on his knee. “Is there somebody we can call for you? Somebody who could help?”

Mal stared at her as though she was an idiot. “Help put Stacey's face back on?” Nothing was joining up right in his head.

“Help you, Mr Jones. It might help you to have somebody here.”

“You're here.” Mal shivered, unable to heat up.
 

“I mean family.” She was being as gentle as she could.
 

Stacey's parents were just a telephone away, but he couldn't call them. It was hard enough trying to force the world to make sense to himself, without having to explain it to them too.

“No.” A tiny fire sparked in his head, which he fanned into a full thought. “Why do you want to know about Pandora?”

The officer paused, watching his face. “I think you should worry about your wife right now. When you've had time to take it all in...”

“Please.” For the first time, he recognised his own voice. Since arriving at hospital, he had sounded more like an infant than a grown man. “It will help.”

“Mr Jones… may I call you Malcolm?”

“Why would you want to do that?” He looked at the other officer, confused.

“Mal. Short for Malcolm, isn't it?”

“Malachi. I'm Malachi. I prefer Mal.”

“Okay Mal. You've suffered a severe shock. You need…”

“Officer,” Mal had a moment of absolute clarity, and took her hand. “What I need is some idea of how my wife ended up looking like the phantom of the fucking opera. I wasn't there with her because I was working late again, and now she's in a room being stitched up by people I'll never even meet to thank.” The officer's lips had tightened when he grabbed her, and he noticed that her male colleague was leaning forward in his seat. Mal realised how he must look, and released his grip. “I'm frustrated, and confused, and at some point I'm probably going to melt down. What I need,
really
need, is to know what I'm melting down over.” The officer’s face relaxed. “Please?”
 

Nodding, she took a deep breath. “Okay, Mr Jones.” He noticed they were no longer on first name terms. “Bear in mind it doesn't make much sense to us at the moment, okay?” Mal nodded. “All we have is what the ambulance crew told us. She was raving when they picked her up, most of it gibberish. What they made out, over and over, were two words.” She paused, glancing at her partner, who shrugged. Nothing ventured, said the gesture.

“Those words were 'devil', and 'Pandora'. We were hoping you might know what she meant.”

Not knowing that he would one day stand closer to the truth than they ever would, Mal shook his head, took a deep breath, and crumbled to tears.

Clive stood outside the Gallery of Modern Art in the city centre, leaning against the plinth supporting the bronze statue of the mounted Duke of Wellington that guarded the paved square of cafes and bars surrounding the gallery. A traffic cone perched on Wellington's head, a familiar sight since students, alcohol, and traffic cones had first found one another. Clive thought it both sad and funny that the silent sentinel would see the end of times dressed so. If he had the mobility, he would climb up himself, dislodge the cone, and let the statue endure the empty millennia ahead with some dignity. The anti-pigeon net covering the square draped down over the neoclassical building facades in smouldering ruins. It was pretty, in its way, and he wished there were more people to see it. The city centre streets were empty.

Except he wasn't in the city centre, and there were people everywhere, running and screaming. Disorientated by the change, Clive stumbled as one woman fell against him, shoved by somebody pushing past. Wrapping a numb arm around her neck, he prepared to drag her to the ground where he could control her long enough to ram his hand into her abdomen, and fist his way to her heart. She was slim, and her frantic kicking and pushing did little to deter him. When she bit into his forearm, he was aware of the teeth going in, but felt it as a curiosity rather than an agony.