Thy Fearful Symmetry (3 page)

“Be careful,” she whispered, and her urgency was not lost on him.

“Of course.” Pulling on his trousers and t-shirt, he padded towards the bedroom door, fumbling for the handle.

As his fingers touched the metal, a long, wailing shriek cut through the night. Where the scream that woke him had been full of fury, this was the sound of agony and desperation balled up into one primal howl. Clive froze, barely aware that Heather was out of bed too, her footsteps taking her to the light switch on the wall. When the bulb flashed to life, he saw the clammy shock on her face as she waited for him to take the lead.

Yet Clive couldn't move. Imagination seized him, and he played through the scenarios that could lead to a scream like that. The cry was Ambrose. Though he wanted to rush next door and burst into the flat, ready to throw himself at an attacker, adrenaline was squirting him in the other direction.
Hide
, it urged his muscles.
Stay away
.
 

Heather grabbed his arm. “What should we do?”
 

Another scream, and this time Clive heard stumbling movements to go with it. The second cry rallied him, and he opened the bedroom door. Six months from his thirtieth birthday, Clive was still in good shape, unimposing but far from incapable. He could handle this. “Call the police,” he told his wife.

“What are you going to do?”

“Never mind that. Just call them.” Heather rushed for the phone by the living room window as Clive stepped to the front door. Pushing his ear to the wood, he tried to hear what was happening outside, hoping to make out the running footsteps of Ambrose's attacker fleeing the scene. There was nothing, and now he couldn't hear anything from the flat next door either. He stood there, torn, knowing that if he stepped outside now he was going to get badly hurt.
 

Behind him, Heather was on the telephone, stammering over the address. Resting his head against the door, he tried to find the will to move.

A new clatter arose, three or four sharp, hard thuds, as though a cricket ball had rebounded off several walls. Moments later the cold, cultured voice that did not belong to Ambrose was speaking again. Clive was too far away to make out any words.

When Ambrose's door slammed open, and somebody fell into the hallway, Clive shrank back. A howl sounded from the flat, full of rage and hate, and this time the words were perfectly clear.

“Aaaaammmmmmbrooooossssse! I will fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind yoooouuuuu….”

Relief poured into Clive like warm water, and he slid to the floor as he heard footsteps stagger down the hall. Ambrose had overpowered his attacker and was fleeing the scene. Clive wanted to cry, and when he looked over at Heather he was surprised to see she was doing just that. “I thought…” she stammered. “I thought he was…” For once, Clive's instincts as a husband won out, and he stood to embrace his wife.
 

“Me too.” Clive said. “But it's over now. Everything's going to be fine.”

Whoever was screaming next door refused to stop, and the threats that filled the night chilled Clive's soul. Pulling Heather tighter, burying his face in her tight blonde curls, he tried to hold back his own tears as he heard the first distant wail of approaching police sirens.

A shadow fell over him. Clive glanced out of the window without really thinking about it. What he saw in that second, before it swept out of sight, stayed with him for a long time, as though the image was carved directly onto his eyeballs. Great, malevolent wings beating powerfully. A frail, wounded man dangling between them as though they were an independent thing, a huge bat perhaps, carrying him to a place of refuge.

Ambrose.

Clive blinked away the image, pretending he didn't see it reflected in the sinister frost shapes sprinkling the playground. Heather and he had been frightened and tired. His imagination had run away with him.
 

He had seen it so clearly, watched it as it rode the night winds and vanished from sight.

It wasn't important. Ambrose had not been heard from since, and that was Clive's single preoccupation. Never mind that his work was suffering, that Heather was drawing further away from him, that he couldn't sleep for fear of reliving the beat of vast wings. Clive had promised himself that he would not rest until he had found Ambrose, though he had not realised how literally he would live up to that vow. Sleep deprivation and worry were driving him beyond distraction, and sometimes he wondered if he was going mad.

Despite his intention to investigate the disappearance personally, he had done nothing. He might fantasise about a Chandleresque investigation, full of bravado and derring-do, but he didn't know where to start. Mysteries had piled on top of mysteries, even from the start. When the police had arrived at Ambrose's flat, minutes after he had imagined that dark shape soaring on the night breeze, they had found nobody there. The howling stopped abruptly, moments before they had rushed down the hallway, and there could have been no escape for whoever had been inside. Yet he was gone. There were signs of a bizarre struggle in the flat, and it looked for all the world as though somebody had actually been hurled at the ceiling, leaving a sizeable dent where they had hit. Impossible of course – nobody could have the strength to inflict that on another person, and it was unlikely that the recipient of such treatment would be able to walk again for some time. Beyond that, the flat offered up curiously few clues. Listening at the wall during the investigation, he had heard the forensic team reporting in wonder that they could not find a single fingerprint in the flat. Even if the intruder had been careful not to leave a mark, they would have expected to find dozens from the occupant himself, Ambrose. Yet there was nothing.

Clive's head hurt, the ache shifting in sick waves as it did whenever he tried to rationalise the events of that night. His own investigation so far had been pathetic, involving nothing more complex than wandering the streets late into the evening, hoping to catch a glimpse of his friend. For all he knew, Ambrose wasn't even in Glasgow any more. As for why the fight had started, Clive couldn't even guess. Ambrose was enigmatic about his life, and his occupation, and Clive had wondered briefly about drugs, gang warfare, or other underworld activities.

He just didn't know. It was driving him mad.

The tides of pain ebbed out from his head in swirling patterns, one moment causing his teeth to ache, the next jabbing at his neck and shoulders. Clive folded his newspaper carefully away, trying to wish the pain to nothing, and saw the words carved into the surface of his desk.

Huntley's muvva sukked my cokk.

As he stared at the words, wondering how long they had been there, he heard the soft thud of a tennis ball bouncing absently off a student's desktop.

Clive lost time then, and was aware only of an incandescent, joyous fury lighting deep inside him and surging through his muscles and mind.
 

When he next had a cogent memory, he was in the back of a police car, trying to get the two officers in the front to explain why his aching hands, now handcuffed at the wrists, were torn and bloody.

CHAPTER THREE

Malachi Jones pushed the door back hard, slamming it against the wall and anybody who might be standing behind it. Having been on the hunt for two hours, there was little point in feigning subtlety now. Leaning briefly inside, he felt the wall for a light switch, found one, and flicked it. There was the tinny snap of a light bulb reaching the end of its natural life. The brief flash that went with it showed a large room packed with beer kegs, crates of wine, and other daily essentials for the running of the pub upstairs.

Orloch was waiting in there with something Malachi intended to have. It had taken months to track down a demon working in Newcastle, but the end was finally in sight. Over the course of his quest he had identified at least two angels in the area who might also have had the information he required, but the way he intended to extract it would have been a mortal sin on one of their kind, and he couldn't afford to damn himself.
 

Yet.

Standing in the cellar doorway, not overly concerned that Orloch might rush him, Malachi allowed his eyes to adjust. Silhouetted against the dim light filtering into the grimy passage from upstairs, he knew he was an intimidating sight; six foot two of lean muscle wrapped in a long, dark trench coat, his waist length hair tamed by a succession of elastic bands binding it into a rope-like ponytail. If he were facing a true demon given physical form, he would not present himself as such an easy target. As humans went, he had made himself powerful and dangerous. Compared to the preternatural strength and speed of the otherworlds though, that would be meaningless in a direct confrontation. Fortunately, Orloch was a possessor of humans. By taking on a human's body, it took on a share of human weakness at the same time. While it was stronger than the host body should allow for, Malachi could probably handle it.
 

Grunting with annoyance at the limits of his own senses, he realised that his eyes had adjusted as much as they could. Inside, the darkness had congealed into patches of thick blackness nestling within larger pools of gloom. There were no windows in the cellar, so if the door closed behind him even these tiny distinctions would vanish entirely.

Best get it over with then. Malachi stepped inside, and shut the door with a bang. Fumbling only slightly, he slid the bolt home. The only other exit was the street level steel trapdoor used for making deliveries. According to the proprietor upstairs, a padlock kept that secure.

The darkness was near to absolute.

Malachi held his breath, trying to ignore the calm, steady thump of his pulse and the faint drone of morning traffic outside, letting his other four senses stretch out and see what they might find.
 

The air was damp and warm, swirling lazily around him in stagnant currents, heavy with mould spores that clung to the back of his throat like dust. Stale beer fumes dominated the room, but underneath them lay a trace reek of sweat and fear. The body Orloch had chosen, while well suited to creating maximum chaos within the Department of Work and Pensions where it worked, was not built for the chase.

The air shifted, stroking Malachi's cheek. All of a sudden, he heard the soft, anxious hitching of a heavy man, out of breath but trying to make no sound. With his eyes still closed, Malachi focussed down, narrowing his awareness until there was no cellar, no darkness, just an auditory world made up of that frightened, desperate breathing.

There. He had placed it. Ten feet away, to the left but moving very slowly towards a point directly in front of him. Malachi fought the urge to cross his fingers. Luck had not been his lady for a long time, and he knew better than to gamble when the stakes were so high. A true demon would be able to see in the darkness, as clearly as if it were a summer day. Malachi had absolutely no idea whether the same applied to a demon in a man's body. Logic told him no. Logic also told him that these creatures should not be walking the same reality as he did. By shutting the door, he had placed his trust in rules that did not apply. Had he transformed himself from hunter to prey?

He would find out in just a few moments.

Very carefully, he took two broad, gentle steps to his left, picturing the room's layout from the half second of light the bulb had offered before blowing out. If he was correct, he was now standing next to a row of metal kegs stacked two high against the left wall. Moving slower than his taut nerves told him he should, he slipped his right hand into the pocket of his overcoat. As soon as his fingers brushed the lead weighted cudgel he carried there, he felt some of his panic die away. Taking a firmer grip, still moving with exaggerated care, he withdrew the weapon. The demon's careful, creeping movement had stopped now, and the pace of the breathing had increased. It was waiting for a signal to action.
 

Malachi gave it one.

Swinging his right arm out in a wide arc, he cracked the blackjack into the wood of the door, then dropped his arm out of the way. It was enough. Panicking already, the sudden noise was all the trigger the demon needed to launch itself. For a drawn, slow motion second, Malachi thought he had misjudged, and the demon was flying straight at him. When it smashed into the door just feet away, he flinched with expectation as it howled frustration and fear.

The shock of the moment stilled Malachi's arm, and he lost a vital second in which the demon could have retreated into the darkness and the unknown. Fortunately, its wits were reeling, and the air swirled with its panicked thrashing. When he swung out his arm a second time, it was still there. The blackjack made bone-crunching contact, whether with the back of the thing's head or its face Malachi could not tell and did not care. All that mattered was that it squealed, and thudded to the floor.

Sliding the blackjack into his right pocket, Malachi drew his small torch out from the left, thumbing it on. Half closing his eyes to combat the moment of blinding disorientation the light induced after near total blackness, he swung the beam round to the grimy concrete floor. A fat, suited man lay there, clutching his shattered nose, smearing the blood across his face as he snorted pain.

Placing the end of the small flashlight into his mouth, Malachi dove back into his pockets for his handcuffs. Kneeling, he yanked the demon’s pudgy arms away from its face and rolled it over, ignoring the snarl of protest and the suddenly thrashing legs. Binding the wrists, he rolled it again, seizing it by the lapels to haul it to a sitting position against the door.

One of the feet jabbed into Malachi's calf, and he winced. Drawing back one of his large fists, he slammed it into the mass he had already made of its face. The thing in human flesh shrieked agony, tears dribbling from its eyes as its head slammed against the wood behind it.
 

“Be still,” Malachi told it, the torch dropping from his mouth into his waiting hand, “or I'll hurt you some more.” The message struck home and the demon quietened, staring balefully at its captor. Piggy eyes, made yellow and bloodshot by the presence of the demon inside, glared from a fighting mask of glistening blood. Deep red stains spread across the creature's crumpled white shirt and cheap grey jacket.