The Devil's Evidence (38 page)

“Yes,” said Fool. What else was there to say? “She and Marianne and all the others because the Man wants to take over Heaven and Hell. We can try to stop him, Gordie.”

“Will that bring her back?” Gordie met Fool's gaze for the first time since Fool had come around, and his eyes were red, raw and bloodshot.

“She came back before, you both did,” said Fool and hated himself for making the hope grow in Gordie. He watched it blossom in the man's eyes,
little manipulating Fool, making him hope just because you need him,
and he put a hand on his shoulder and said, “We can try.”

“What do we do?” asked Gordie. His eagerness was almost pathetic, it was so transparent.
Is this what I've become, or have I always been this way?
wondered Fool.
Is this the real me, revealed layer by layer the longer I survive in Hell?

There was another crash from somewhere in the building and a long shriek. The demons around Fool cringed and he thought they might have recognized the sound, heard something in it that spoke to them, of demonic pain and suffering and death, and made them see their own approaching ends. He looked down at himself, at the torn and bloodstained clothes and the scars and the dirt and the bandages and the tattoos that even now slipped about his skin like eddying water, and smiled.
They think I'm their only hope and maybe I am. I'm Hell's angel of survival.

The streets were chaos.

Of course, Hell's streets were always chaos, but it was usually a controlled form of disorder, one with hierarchies and rankings and structures, humans below demons below the Evidence below the oldest things. What Fool saw when he looked out the doors of Assemblies House was like nothing he'd seen before.

A train had been overturned in the streets and was burning, flames leaping in its broken windows, filling them. A single Estedea was walking along the side of the train, now its roof, flowing between the fires as Evidence Men attacked it. The angel flicked the little things away, long, white hands appearing from its robes and making tiny gestures that sent out strings of old and dusty fire. The street around the train was littered with dead demons and humans, and the kindliest angels flew among them, fluttering down to stroke the torn and battered bodies. When they touched the flesh of the dead, blue sparks sprang up that they caught and swallowed. Above them all, the atmosphere was black with smoke and flying figures that carved trails through air thick with cries.

The sky was the color of diseased skin.

Gordie and Fool watched as more angels dropped from the sky to form a phalanx beyond the train and demons boiled from one of Hell's alleys to attack them. These weren't just bauta, but a mass of the things that usually walked the Houska or worked the fields or swam in Solomon Water, all of them armed with their own versions of the angels' fires. Fool saw columns of smoke rising from some demons' hands, others holding writhing coils of what looked like living dirt. As the two armies met, the noise in the street rose, a caterwauling blanket of cries and clashes and sizzles and burnings and screams. In among the demons were humans, chained around the necks, held captive in metal collars. The demonkind used the humans as both weapon and distraction; Fool watched as one chained Sorrowful was spun so hard by its demon captor that its feet lifted from the ground and it crashed into an angel. The angel tried to shake off the Sorrowful, but its chain had wrapped around the angel's head, confusing it and pulling it over, and then the demon coiled its weapon of living filth around the angel, and flames and smoke rose from it until its head rolled free and bounced to the street. A burst of light exploded from the angel's sundered neck as its body collapsed and then the Estedea from the train was arrowing through the air and its own cracked and bitter light was reaching out and both human and demon fell to pieces alongside the angel. The Estedea picked up the demon's head and shoulders, the line of severance through the center of its chest still smoking, and fed off the remains. As it did so, the demon's body crumpled as though the Estedea was sucking the very essence from it, finally dropping it when there was nothing left to suck free. A kindly one dropped and swallowed the light from both human and angel; the demon it left alone.

As the battle raged, Fool and Gordie stepped into the street and began to move in the direction of the Flame Garden, hoping that the Archdeacons had obeyed and that he wasn't too late. His battered body wouldn't run no matter how hard he pushed it. He felt as though there were ropes around him, pulling and tautening, dragging against him. He needed to be fast, to be
faster,
but he wasn't, he was slow and clumsy and worried that time was slipping by more and more quickly and that he was late, so very late.

Too late.

An Estedea landed in the street in front of Fool and Gordie, its robes opened into huge wings as it descended and then wrapping back around itself as its feet hit the ground. In the black depths of its cowl a pale face shifted and teeth flashed and eye sockets gleamed and then it was coming at them.

Fool didn't draw his gun. Instead, he stood his ground as it approached and said, “We're not your enemy.” In response, the angel opened its arms, the robes pulling back from those impossibly long and bone-white hands, and produced its fire. This wasn't the flame of Benjamin or Israfil but something older and darker, a fire that was made of smoldering dust and old shrouds caught by embers, but it moved quickly, lacing its way through the gap between them and encircling them.

“We're not your enemy,” said Fool again as the fire closed in. The urge to pull his gun from its holster was pulsing in him but he fought it, no aggression, no violence, giving the Estedea no excuse. “Look at us. We're no threat. We're human, we're the damned, not demons.”

The Estedea tilted its head, its
hood,
and the blackness underneath the cowl looked at him quizzically. The gray fires tightened slightly, ready to snap closed, but didn't touch them. Somewhere behind them there was an explosion, a dull crunch of sound that sent flurries of dust dancing around them on gusts of heat, and then horns sounded again. Over the Estedea's shoulder Fool watched as a squad of demons and chained humans emerged from a side street and ran to the entrance to a farther street, bauta outlying the squad and harrying it along. None of them looked around.

“Please,” said Gordie. “Please, listen.” The Estedea took another step toward them and Fool could smell it now, could smell old stone and rain and damp earth and ancient paper as it leaned in, peering at them, assessing them.

Judging them.

The string of fire came closer but Fool felt no heat from it even as it touched his skin. He smelled burning hair and then it was gone and the Estedea was stepping away and then something came at the angel from the side and swallowed it.

It happened fast, a creature like a mass of spiders riding a living web rising up in the alleyway between two buildings and surging forward, parts connected by constantly moving cables, and the whole of it fell on the Estedea, and now Fool saw it for what it was—not a thing from outside but demons, demons controlled by the Man like some parasitic host, his branches thrust into their back and sides and making them do his bidding the way his own flesh had once been manipulated by a Falling angel.

How had he not seen? How had he missed it, been so convinced of his own rightness that he hadn't seen the obvious? The thing he had chased across the Sleepers' Cave, the thing that had fed on the Joyful on the island in the middle of Solomon Water, all demons as captive as the humans themselves.
That's why the Man needs the Joyful, as captive food for his captive demons, all of them in boxes until he needs them, and then he takes them out and makes them his puppets.

The Estedea thrashed against the Man, against the demons controlled by the Man, and its fire curved through the mass that gathered around it, cutting chunks of the demonkind away, but for every piece that fell another took its place, more and more emerging from the alleyway to consume the angel. It shrieked, a sound that was the absence of sound, a silence torn wrong ways out that filled the street like oil and pressed against Fool's ears, making him wince.

The Estedea rose into the air, carrying its attackers with it, and then the weight was too much and it crashed down. This time, as it hit the ground, the mass flowed over the top of the angel, crushing it. It made that heavy not-noise again, its cry rising into the air and expanding into the clouds. There was a sharp tearing sound, and the Estedea's fire, twisting around itself like a dying snake, was tossed from the struggling confusion and flopped into the street. The Man began to drag the angel back toward the alley as it howled, the silence louder than ever, destroying the noise of the war and the fires and the distant rumble of trains, filling Hell with nothing.

“We have to go,” Fool said but heard nothing, made no sound. He tried again but again his words were absent. He shook Gordie's shoulder, pointing; the Estedea's cry had summoned help and more of the saddest angels were looping in the sky above them, searching for their fallen companion.

There was a sudden pop, and sound rushed back in, the clamor of Hell shocking after the nothing. “It was Fool!” screeched the Man, still pulling the Estedea back into the darkness of the alleyway, still battering it down. Another piece of its fire was cast aside and then a flapping thing that might have been a wing or might have been a section of its robe was tossed to the street to lie, pulsating weakly.

“It was Fool!” the Man shouted again, and then was gone, taking his prize with him. The Estedea above them began to close in, crackles of dry fire slithering across the ground, searching. One of them hit the now-still wing and immediately they were all crying, their noise a grand muteness that had weight, had mass, weighed down on Fool.

“They'll kill us,” Gordie mouthed at him, and Fool simply nodded and they ran and fuck his aching flesh, fuck its infirmity, Fool was running because that was the only hope there was, and if that was his only hope he would damn well keep hold of it.

As they reached the end of the street, the mass of the Estedea arrived and the earth shook with their landing. A tongue of fire curved over their heads as they went around the corner, but it didn't grasp at either of them, instead scoring a line across the front of the building ahead of them and then snapping back to its owner in a flash and a stench of burning brick.

They came around onto a street that was pitted with the remains of old fires, some still smoldering, and that was littered with dead demons and angels. The burned remains of the Sorrowful were piled against the buildings, their flesh split and smoking, blue crackles still slithering across the piles as the vestigial remnants of their souls burned free to rise in the air like fireflies.

A single bauta ran out from a building ahead of them. It saw them running at it and shrieked, wheeling about and loping away, its head down, matted hair dragging across the dirt. As it reached the end of the street a spear of fire appeared from the clouds and impaled it, pinning it to the ground for a second before retreating and leaving the thing for dead.

Another street, another battleground. Here, the angels had come off worse and their dead outnumbered the dead of Hell, although chained remains of Sorrowful were plentiful in the debris.
At least there'll be a lot of space to take new souls out of Limbo,
Fool thought darkly as they went past the mess of bodies and death.
We won't need Delegation discussions about that for a while.

Another corner, and they were at the top of the Houska now and the war was here, right in front of them.

A second train, this one still upright, had been driven along the Houska's main street, blocking it. From its windows demons were attacking angels as the latter swooped and flew around them. Fool came to a halt and watched as an angel was caught by two demons, dragged in through the train's window, and vanished from view. Fires, angelic and demonic weaponry, and the flames they brought into being crackled across the train's engine compartment, smoke pouring from the vents that lined its sides, and its wheels ground over the dead and dying as it moved slowly forward.

The Man was there, sending his demon slaves to collect the still-living from where they fell, dragging angels and demons back into spaces and buildings, as Evidence Men scurried around the street, slashing with their tusks and claws, gibbering and capering. Mr. Tap walked through their midst, its angular frame and warped face dark, trying to marshal its troops to fight back effectively. An Estedea fell upon it but Mr. Tap grasped it, easily tearing into the angel's wings, shredding them so that it couldn't fly up from the street.

Before the bauta could reach it and finish what Mr. Tap had started, the Man had swallowed the fallen angel and stolen it away.

Fool and Gordie went along the Houska's street, skirting the skirmishes and staying close to the buildings. In some, he saw hiding Sorrowful and demons, for once not attacking or being attacked, simply sharing the space and fearing for their lives.

Behind them the train veered across the street and crashed into one of the Houska's brothels, grinding its way into the building's interior, tearing brickwork loose, sending a cloud of dust and ripping, grinding noises out behind it. A moment later, the building's roof collapsed, burying the front of the train. Angels flocked to its rear, the demons inside it still fighting, the Estedea still hovering above it all, occasionally swooping in to feed on the fallen and the damaged.

“We're losing,” said Gordie.

They were. Even now, Mr. Tap had started to retreat, calling the bauta back to its side, the little demons forming a shield around it as it went. The Estedea massed above it, not attacking but not giving ground or air. Mr. Tap found a covered street between two buildings and disappeared into it, and the Estedea followed, and the horns sounded again, loud and triumphant.

“Come on,” said Fool.

With the Estedea following Mr. Tap, the battle moved away. Angels still clashed with the demons on the train, but the street itself cleared, leaving more of the dead and air thick with dust and the odor of sizzling flesh. An angel's wing, white and feathered, lay against the wall in front of Fool and Gordie and they had to step over it to carry on. Blood trickled from the ragged stump that had, until recently, connected the wing to the angel's back, and then the Man's roots and stems slithered out from the building behind the wing and tangled around it, tugging it back in through the broken window. Feathers blew away from the wing as it vanished, and Fool remembered what the Man had said, that he'd be able to have all the feathers he wanted, and put his hand in his pocket. His own feather was still there, still safe, and he held it for a brief space, reassured by a cleanness and purity he could feel through his fingertips and palm even though he could not see it.

Another street, this one quiet. They made swift progress, wary, reaching the end without incident.

Another street, more of the dead, mostly Sorrowful here, a great chain of them, their bodies tangled together and blocking the path so that Gordie and Fool had to step into the road to go around them. On the far side of the pile was a Sundô, sitting and weeping. Gordie went to go to it but it looked up and hissed at him, its black face a mask of misery and pity and anger. They went around it and carried on.