Stealing Sacred Fire (46 page)

The dark brotherhood moved
towards them, from every side. Melandra put her shoulder against
Shemyaza’s chest, and urged him to retreat, until they were pressed
back against the wall of a shuttered house. Her mind was churning
with a thousand unconnected thoughts: memories of her childhood;
Nathaniel Fox’s face; the queen of Babylon; traffic in the city
centre.

Prometheus strode towards them,
his hands clasped behind his back. His silent companions parted to
let him pass between them. Halting directly in front of their
captives, he sneered in Melandra’s face. ‘My dear, you, and your
incompetent commanders of the Children of Lamech, have
inconvenienced us greatly. We dislike dealing with these messy,
sordid matters ourselves, but unfortunately your untimely defection
has left us no alternative. We are busy people, and traitors have
to pay for disrupting our routine.’

Melandra felt weak now; her
blood pumped out between her numb fingers onto the dirt of the
road. An enervating force that poured from the dark brotherhood
amplified the effects of her wound. Her legs could no longer
support her weight and she sank down to kneel, swaying, before her
towering enemy. Tiny, bright motes pulsed before her eyes, but she
was still able to see that the Brethren of the Black Sun were all
armed; not with guns, or the silvery cutting disks, but with what
appeared to be knives or daggers. Perhaps because she was losing
consciousness, it seemed to her as if the knives had no real form.
They were like black holes in the shape of blades; non-reflecting,
made of shadows.

‘You, traitoress,’ hissed
Prometheus, ‘have reached the end of your life. You have abandoned
your god, so you die in sin. Look forward to hell, little assassin.
You will have an eternity to reflect upon the rashness of your
apostasy.’

The dark figures closed in,
their shadow-daggers raised. Their leader stood, hands on hips,
appraising Shemyaza with dispassionate eyes. ‘Few things have the
power to destroy you completely, but rest assured these blades will
not only end your physical life but annihilate your soul.’

Shemyaza did not move. Melandra
leaned against his legs now, and it seemed to her as if a torrent
of soothing strength flowed out of him into her. Why wasn’t he
afraid or angry? She wanted to rise up and fight for him, but her
strength had gone.

‘Helen, I really think we
should go back now.’ Lily’s voice had changed from sounding merely
tense to fearful. ‘It’s horrible here. We can’t stay.’ The empty
streets had closed in around them, watchful and threatening. Dust
rose in eddies on the road ahead of them, but there was no wind.
They walked through an ochre gloom. The sky, the buildings around
them, even the air glowed with a deep, orange tint. No-one lived
here or walked here: it seemed no-one ever had.

‘Not long now,’ Helen murmured.
She let go of her mother’s hand and tilted back her head, as if
listening to something.

Lily frowned. ‘I can’t hear
anything.’ She paused. ‘Helen, listen. There isn’t a single, normal
sound. No traffic, no people, not even the wind. Even our voices
sound muffled. We’ve got to get out of here.’

‘Mum, it’s all right,’ Helen
said softly. ‘We’re not in danger.’ She lifted Met-Met’s jar before
her face and slowly unscrewed the cap.

‘What are you doing?’ Lily
asked in a whisper.

Her daughter glanced up at her
with a disturbingly adult expression. ‘He is in terrible danger,’
she said. ‘I have to help him.’

‘Who’s in danger? Where?’

‘Shemyaza,’ Helen said. ‘He is
near to us now. Very near.’ She removed the lid of the jar
completely.

‘He’s here?’ Lily’s voice was
soft. She appeared to accept Helen’s words without argument. Her
eyes stared without blinking at the motionless scarab within the
jar, as if she expected it to spring to life at any moment and
launch itself from confinement.

The scarab did not move, but a
sound came out of its container. At first, it was hardly more than
a sigh, like scouring sand rubbing against dry grasses, but
gradually it changed into a rapid clicking, as if a thousand
insects were trapped within the jar and snapping their wing-cases.
Met-Met still lay alone in the bottom of the glass, but Lily and
Helen could hear an enormous swarm of insects that whirred and
chattered its way up in the evening sky. They poured invisibly out
the jar, and the noise of their chitinous wings filled the air.

‘Fly!’ Helen shouted, flinging
out her arms. She still held the jar in one hand.

For a moment, Lily saw an
amorphous dark cloud hanging over them. Instinctively, she ducked,
but then the swarm was speeding away from them over the roofs of
the buildings. Lily clutched at her face, staring between her
fingers at the burning sky.

With precise movements, Helen
carefully recapped the jar, where the body of Met-Met still lay
inert, and offered it to Lily to put into her shoulder-bag. ‘We can
go now,’ she said.

Lily scraped her hands through
her hair, swallowed. ‘Where?’ she asked in a hoarse voice. ‘Where
can we go?’ She knew in her heart they would not be returning to
the hotel. Something had begun here, like a spring pushing its way
up through the ground. Now, they were caught in its current.

‘To the great lion,’ Helen said
and took her mother’s hand in her own once more.

‘Is Shem there?’ Lily
asked.

‘It is where he wants us to
go,’ Helen answered.

Together they began to retrace
their steps through the silent streets.

The Brethren of the Black Sun were so
close to their prey now, they were forced to step through the
puddle of Melandra’s blood. She could no longer tell if her left
hand was still clamped around her right wrist and wished, wearily,
that it could all be over. If death was to happen, let it be quick.
She was prepared to face whatever came after. But these dreadful
faces, these cold, inhuman men: she could not tolerate their
proximity. They seemed to be advancing in slow motion, relishing
the fear and pain they saw in her eyes. Shemyaza was like a statue
behind her; she could no longer feel his warmth.

Then, a strange sound, like the
rushing of a field of corn, filled Melandra’s ears. She blinked,
forcing her heavy eyes to focus upon the source of the sound. Was
it simply the approach of death, the rustle of his sere robes
brushing against the ground? When would the fatal blows fall?

She closed her eyes for a
moment, but became aware that movement had ceased around her.
Forcing her lids apart, she saw that the Brethren had halted their
approach. They had raised their heads to the sky and were sniffing
at the air like dogs. They seemed perturbed. Then, Prometheus spoke
a rapid phrase in a language she did not recognise. The rushing
sound had grown louder. It was no longer the susurration of corn,
but something like the whirring of a million insect wings. She
thought of locusts, a biblical plague. Blinking, she tried to focus
on the sky, but could see nothing. The Brethren had begun to slap
at their heads and shoulders, as if assailed by invisible insects.
Melandra drew in a painful breath. Either her sight was truly
fading, or the air had become black and dense, but not with
anything that she could actually see. She could not describe what
she was seeing; it was perceived within the deepest level of her
being.

One by one the Brethren fell to
the ground, clutching at their throats. A writhing, formless dark
mass swarmed all over their bodies, probing with invisible feelers,
pushing relentlessly into all orifices. The mouths of the Brethren
were stretched into hideous blackening holes as they gasped for
breath. Melandra watched them turn blue, their movements become
fewer, until they lay motionless on the street around their
erstwhile prisoners. Their destruction had taken less than three
minutes. A faint, ground level breeze scattered grains of dust over
the still, open eyes. Dust gathered in the folds of clothing,
between lips, in hair. Melandra imagined that very soon, the
attackers would be nothing more than unrecognisable, sand-covered
mounds in the street. It seemed as if the desert was prepared to
take them already, even here in this back-street of Old
Babylon.

Shemyaza uttered a short sigh,
leaned down and lifted Melandra to her feet. ‘Those who hate change
should learn that it is always inevitable,’ he said. ‘Here ends the
Brethren whose legacy has initiated all holy wars throughout human
history.’

‘What happened?’ Melandra asked
in a slurred voice.

‘They were killed,’ Shemyaza
answered simply. ‘The Kephri beetle will carry their black souls
forever beneath its great carapace.’ He straightened Melandra’s
injured arm and peered at her wrist where the wound gaped wide. Her
skin was covered in sticky blood from her finger-tips to her elbow
and her clothes were soaked with it. It pulsed from the wound
weakly now.

‘I’m dying,’ she said. ‘There’s
nothing you can do. We haven’t enough time.’

‘Hmm.’ Shemyaza ran one finger
over the open wound. Melandra could not feel his touch. She felt no
pain at all.

‘I don’t regret what I’ve
done,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t think that. I don’t believe that hell
is waiting for me.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Shemyaza
said.

To Melandra’s dismay, he put his mouth
against her wrist. She could feel the smooth hardness of teeth upon
her. Was he sucking her blood? She became filled with horror and
revulsion and tried to wriggle away. ‘No!’ Her protest was
weak.

Shemyaza dropped her arm and
transferred his grip to her head. He pulled her towards him,
ignoring her feeble struggles. She saw his face loom large in her
sight, like a mask. Then his lips were upon hers. She could taste
her own blood. And something else. She became aware of an immense
void around them, and something she could not describe was shooting
towards them; formless light and heat. Her mouth, her throat, then
her entire body became filled with it: a sheer energy-filled
radiance that poured from Shemyaza’s soul, out of his mouth and
into her own. She hung limply in his arms, submitting to this weird
and shattering kiss. After only a few moments, he released her. She
thought she would fall, but strangely her body was quite able to
stand.

Shemyaza wiped his mouth and
smiled at her. ‘Forgive my importunity. I had to act quickly.’

Melandra frowned. She did not
feel weak at all. What had he done to her? She glanced at her wrist
and saw the faint line of a scar. Her jaw dropped open. ‘You have
healed me?’

‘Take up your bed and walk,
Melandra,’ he answered in a faintly sarcastic tone. ‘Only don’t
walk with me. You must go to Tiy at the Sphinx.’

‘I’m healed!’ Melandra said in
wonder, still staring at her wrist.

‘Yes, you are,’ Shemyaza
answered impatiently. ‘Melandra, I have to go now.’

‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘How did those pigs die?’

Shemyaza pulled a face as if
their miraculous rescue was of no consequence. ‘An ally of mine was
looking out for us. I have felt her presence for some time, yet I
do not know her. All I do know is that she released an ancient
power, that of the scarab god, Kephri, which intervened on our
behalf.’

‘Lucky,’ Melandra answered.

He smiled. ‘Not luck, but fate.
My work is far more important than the intrigues of any Grigori
brotherhood. It would never have ended here in futile death, but
I’m sorry you were hurt.’

For a moment, they stared at
one another in silence, then impulsively Melandra reached up and
hugged Shemyaza tightly. Very slightly, her wrist tingled as she
touched him, as if she’d been stung by a nettle there.

His arms snaked around her and
for the briefest of moments, he squeezed her body. ‘Go now. I have
little time.’

She let him go. ‘I feel that I
failed you.’

‘No. You are my guardian, but
there is nothing to guard me from now. Go to the Sphinx and
wait.’

‘What for? Will you join us
there?’

He paused, then stroked her
cheek with one finger. ‘I am always with you.’

He walked away then, beneath
the arch. Its shadows swallowed him. Melandra watched him go,
wondering whether she should follow him discretely. She picked up
her gun from where it had fallen and glanced at her wrist again.
No, she would do as he asked.

Melandra headed back towards
the centre of Cairo, stepping purposefully over the bodies of the
fallen Brethren without looking down.

‘He’s not
coming,’ Salamiel said. ‘We’ve been here half an hour, Daniel.’

‘He will come,’ Daniel snapped.
‘Have a little patience for once, will you!’

Gadreel sat down next to the
silent Penemue on one of the pews. ‘Something could have happened
to him. How could we know?’ She stroked Penemue’s arm, who looked
at her and smiled. ‘We should try to break through the gate to the
crypt.’

‘Don’t do anything,’ Daniel
said. ‘Just trust me.’

‘Trust you!’ Salamiel laughed.
‘You have no idea where Shem is. All you have is your blind faith
and endless hope!’

‘Oh, just shut it for once,
will you!’ Daniel snapped. ‘I’m sick of your sarcasm!’

A voice echoed down the church.
‘Bickering, bickering! You are like children in a playground.’

The entire company scrambled to
their feet. A tall figure stood silhouetted in the doorway to the
church, limned in tawny light.

‘Shem!’ Daniel cried, unable to
resist glancing triumphantly at Salamiel.

Shem sauntered down the aisle
towards them. ‘Not kept you waiting too long, I hope.’

‘Not at all,’ Salamiel drawled.
‘We’ve been quite the tourists, enjoying the sights.’

Shem walked past them all to
Salamiel and draped an arm around his shoulders. ‘We must get to
work. Where’s the crypt?’