Cold Warriors (33 page)

"Just one more thing," Raphael said, and then, "Ah."

Tomas heard them before he could see them, footsteps approaching on the concrete behind him. He wasn't very surprised when the young man appeared, holding Nicholson's diary in one hand and a snub-nosed semi-automatic in the other.

Full circle, Tomas thought. I took it from him in Budapest, and now he has it back again.

Raphael nodded when he saw the book, head wobbling on his fragile neck. "Bring it here, Vadim."

Vadim stared at Tomas as he walked past. Tomas thought his expression wasn't quite fear. More a sort of sick fascination. It was the way you looked at an object or a wild creature, not a man.

"You know what this is, don't you?" Raphael said.

Kate nodded. "Nicholson's diary."

"And the first Ragnarok artefact," Tomas said.

Kate sucked in a startled breath. "That? No. Those things are ancient."

"Tomas is right," Raphael said. "The... formula for the artefacts is old, but they're made anew in each age. This is the first: the total corruption of a soul, recorded in its own hand. And the second is -"

"- is me." Tomas stared at Kate, willing her to understand. "Nicholson made
me
too. A dead man walking, of his own free will."

"Yes," Raphael said. "The broken heart of a dead man. All around the city, at the points of a pentagram, Belle and His other servants are ready to perform the great ceremony. But this,
this
is the heart of it all." He knelt down, placing the diary in the very centre of the pattern he'd drawn, chalk swirls of red and white circling inward towards it, like water heading for the drain.

Kate's gaze blinked between them, unsure.

"The artefacts are reputed to bring about the end of the world," Tomas said. "That's what they're - what we're - for."

The knife still sat at Kate's feet, the sunlight sparking slivers of light from its blade. Raphael stood beside the diary at the centre of the runes, shoulders hunched with age. His semi-automatic still pointed at Kate, and now Tomas could see his finger squeezing the trigger, bringing it to that fine point of balance where only the slightest extra pressure would release the waiting bullet.

"The book," Raphael said. "And your heart. Give it to me, Kate. There's no more time."

"No," she said. "I'm not letting you use me any more."

Her face was full of fear and guilt and Tomas could see the tremors shivering through her body. She wouldn't do it. She couldn't.

He remembered, suddenly, how he'd felt, the third time he'd asked her to marry him, and the third time she'd said, "not yet". The insecurity had eaten away at his confidence in himself, in their feelings for each other, and he'd begun to ask himself if she really did love him. He'd wondered whether all this time he'd been going to bed with a future wife, and she'd been lying beside an over-extended one night stand. He'd made up his mind to ask her for the truth, the day she came back from Russia.

Twenty years later than he'd expected, he didn't need to ask the question, because he could see the answer in her eyes. She did love him. She always had. It was why she would never take that knife and cut out his heart.

But Tomas knew her refusal wouldn't stop anything. Raphael probably expected it. He could see the old man watching her with a gleam of cruel amusement in his eyes. He wanted her to say no, so he could kill her in front of Tomas. He wanted Tomas to be broken-hearted - the ritual required it.

Tomas had died once already. He'd thought it was for something, some big romantic ideal of love. But it had been for nothing. And when he climbed out of his own grave, it had seemed as though he had a second chance at life, but that was never true. Just a part of him had come back, and not the part that could be in the world and change it - or if he could, it was only for the worse.

The second chance he had wasn't at life, it was at death. He had to die again, only this time it could mean something. This time he really
could
die for Kate, in a way that wasn't just a pitiful self-indulgence. And he'd be leaving this job half-finished, but that was what the dead did - they left the world and its problems to the living.

He thought he understood about Morgan now, and why they'd been paired together. The rest of this would be his responsibility, and Tomas didn't know how he'd handle it, but that was Morgan's choice. Tomas only had one more he could make.

"Tell me," he said to Kate. "If you'd come back from Russia. If - if none of this had happened. Would you have married me one day?"

She didn't want to answer, he could tell. She knew he was saying goodbye. But after a second she nodded. "I don't know what I was waiting for. I spent the last twenty years wondering."

He hadn't realised how good it would feel to hear it. He didn't want to let go of the moment, and he held her eyes as he tensed his muscles, pulling against the ropes. They were strong. The people who'd bound him knew what he was, and they'd assumed he'd be at full strength, not weakened after two days of starving himself.

The knife was on the ground in front of him, almost touching his left foot.

He pulled a little harder, dragging the ropes taut across his arms and chest.

"Don't," Kate said. Her fingertips reached out to brush his jaw, and then his cheek.

He shook them off. Everything that was left in him was focused on those ropes. They were digging into his skin as he strained, cutting through it. He was just flesh and blood, but there was magic in him too.

He smiled at Kate. "Had we but world enough, and time..."

He saw the instant Raphael realised what he was doing. The old man's gun swung from Kate to him at the precise moment the first rope snapped.

"I'll shoot her," Raphael said, and turned the gun back round to Kate.

Tomas knew he had seconds before Raphael carried out the threat. He didn't let himself believe that he might fail. The ropes would break, they
would
- and with one last fierce heave they did, tumbling him to the ground beside the knife.

For a second the gun wavered between him and Kate, and a second was all Tomas needed. The knife felt far too small in his big hands. They shook with weakness now, but it didn't matter. There was only one more thing he needed to do.

The pain as he stabbed the knife into his own chest was almost a relief. He wanted to feel something in his last moments. He tore the knife upward, shouting in agony. But it was almost finished. Almost finished. He could see Raphael staring at him, only now understanding what he'd intended. And Kate, looking furious rather than sad, which was so like her he almost laughed. And then he jerked the knife sideways and down, and he felt something fall out of his chest on to the ground. And then there was only silence.

Morgan ran faster than he'd known he could, but by the time he reached them, it was already over. For a long moment, everyone remained frozen in place. A woman, kneeling on the ground in front of Raphael, face buried in her hands. Vadim to one side, staring at his boss in shock. Raphael himself, a gun dangling from his slack hand.

And Tomas, sprawled face first on the ground.

He's
dead
, Morgan thought. And though he knew that had always been true, this time he could see that it was final. It didn't seem fair Morgan hadn't been there to witness it. It didn't seem right at all.

Then, like a DVD taken off pause, everyone jerked into action.

Raphael must have heard Morgan approaching. He spun to face him, semi-automatic raised and steady.

"Oh god..." Anya said. She was looking at Tomas, lying on the concrete. There was very little blood around him. No heart to pump it. And then Morgan saw it, the thing Raphael had stooped to pick up from the ground. It looked obscenely red against his white skin.

"You vicious fuck!" Morgan snarled.

Raphael dropped the heart in the centre of the sprawl of runes that had been chalked onto the concrete. It sat on top of Nicholson's diary, plump and glistening.

"I wasn't expecting you quite this soon," the old man said, turning to Morgan. "But it may be for the best. You deserve to witness this."

"You don't get to kill Tomas," Morgan said. "That's not something you get to do."

Beside him, Anya muttered what might have been agreement, but he didn't look at her. This was between him and Raphael. In some strange way, he knew that it always had been.

"I'm sorry if you cared for him," Raphael said. "But he chose his death - both times." He pointed at the knife, lying beside Tomas's slack right hand, and Morgan saw that it was caked with blood.

"You made him do it," Morgan said, his voice shaking.

Raphael shrugged, but he didn't deny it.

The woman kneeling beside Tomas's body finally looked up. Her face was streaked with tears but her expression was hard. She didn't take her eyes from Raphael as she backed towards Morgan and Anya. "He's trying to end the world," she said. "The book and... and Tomas, were two of the Ragnarok artefacts. All he needs now is the third."

Raphael smiled, and Morgan instantly knew that he already had it.

"Is that what this whole thing's been about?" Morgan said. He swept his arm around him, a gesture that took in the city and everything that had brought them there. But really he was talking about Tomas. "You want to end the world, you fucked-up freak? You think you can do that?"

Raphael nodded, stooping again to pick up the knife by Tomas's hand. "I can and I will. I know all this is new to you, Morgan, but haven't you seen enough to believe?"

The fear liquidising Morgan's guts told him he had. He looked at the acres of grass around them, a little faded after weeks without rain. At the sky, blue from horizon to horizon except for one small white wisp of cloud in the far distance. He could hear insects and birdsong. It didn't seem like the kind of day when the world would end.

He looked back at the old man. "Why would you do that? Why the hell would you want to?"

"Do you know what Ragnarok is?"

"Yeah, some Norse myth."

"The most important one. The final battle between the gods and their enemies, a war which both sides lose. When Ragnarok comes, the wolf Fenrir swallows the sun, the seas boil and mankind is reduced to a remnant of a remnant. The old gods die - but something takes their place. Something
better.
The Aesir were tainted by betrayal from the start. The new world will come and it will be better than the old.
That's
why, Morgan. Because my Master promises both an end and a beginning."

"Bullshit," Morgan said. "Don't try and make this into something noble. I saw that church and I saw Marya. You didn't start worshipping Satan because you wanted to make the world a better place. You're a fucking monster and you sold your soul so you wouldn't get caught."

Raphael's face twisted. "And if I do like children, if I love them, who made me this way? It was God who created me as I am - and then told me it was a sin. It's God who fills everyone with desires he forbids us to satisfy. And his Church? The Church that sixty years ago smiled and turned away as his chosen people burned? If you want hypocrisy look at them, not me. They knew what I was and they didn't care. Do you know, Morgan, do you know what my bishop said to me on the day I was ordained?"

Morgan shook his head, speechless in the face of the old man's rage.

Raphael's anger extinguished as quickly as it had taken light. He smiled, a bitter twist of his lips. "He said 'be discreet'. God made my Master too, then cast him out of Heaven for being as he was.
He
doesn't demand anything of us that we're not able to give. And in His name I'll destroy this world of lies and let another take its place - one where everyone can live according to their natures. Even you, Morgan. Especially you."

A spark of sunlight flashed from the knife as he raised it, and another when he brought it down. The blade slid through Tomas's heart without pausing and stuck fast in the pages of the book beneath.

Anya ran forward, shouting something incomprehensible. But Raphael still had the gun, and when he shot a bullet into the concrete at her feet, she skidded to a stop. "Too late," he said. "It's already begun."

At first, Morgan thought he was the one who was trembling. Then the shaking tumbled him to his knees, and when he put his hands on the ground to push himself back to his feet, he felt the vibration through the skin of his palms.

There was noise, too. Not the growling rumble he'd expected but something high and desperate, an almost animal sound that seemed to be coming from the earth itself.

"What's happening?" Anya said, turning wide, frightened eyes to him.

"I've got no idea." But even as he said the words, Morgan knew they were a lie. Some part of him, unacknowledged and long buried, understood exactly what was going on. The force shaking the ground resonated in his own body, in his chest. Sharp flashes of memory lit up in his mind. His sister's face, slack and pale when they pulled her from the water. John, gasping as Morgan stabbed him in the chest. The compassion in Tomas's voice when he told Morgan that death wasn't the end. Death, which was all Morgan ever seemed to bring to those around him. And there was death here - he felt it with a sense he hadn't even known he possessed.

When the first bodies started to rise out of the ground, Anya screamed, but in a secret corner of his mind, Morgan had been expecting them.

He staggered to his feet. The sky was still the same clear blue and the earth was rich and moist and brown where the fingers scrabbled from beneath it. They were nothing but bone, covered in the ghost flesh of the people they'd once been.

Morgan wanted to run but there was nowhere to run to. The ground was churning with rising corpses all around. Even the concrete beneath his feet was beginning to crack and he saw the white dome of a skull pushing up through the widening gap. He reached for Anya's hand and she didn't pull away. Her fingers biting into his wrist felt like his only anchor to reality.

Raphael smiled. "A million were slaughtered in the siege of Leningrad alone. Twenty million killed in the Soviet Union, an army of the dead to cleanse the world of the living."