The Love of the Dead Page 18

  He started running, his feet pounding hard on the road. He didn’t feel the impact through his shoes or the wind rushing through his hair. He wasn’t aware of the moon rising overhead, or the chill, or the wind rustling through the reeds.

  He ran, not out of breath, not tiring. He felt stronger than he ever had, fitter. He increased his pace, his feet flying and kicking up dust. He clenched his teeth and pushed as hard as he could, through the chill night, onward, ever onward. He knew the roads well. He knew how far it was. Miles passed beneath his feet. The sea on his right now, moonlight reflected on the gentle surf like a silver road leading over the horizon.

  But no matter how fast he ran, it could never be fast enough. He could feel her life slipping away from his with each mile he covered, each yard he ran.

  He imagined her screaming, blood pouring, but he shut that down. It would only drain his strength, and he had to run.

  Run. Run faster. He urged himself on, willing his legs, his lungs, his heart to hold on.

  He’d lost Miles. He couldn’t lose Beth too. She was all he had left.

  Tireless, so close now, but always too late.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Sawyer had changed. When she’d seen him in his trophy room he’d been a withered husk, more bone than flesh. When he’d taken his black blade to her son he’d been powerful, with unnatural strength running through him. But he was neither of those men anymore. His shoulders were covered in feathers, but not a cloak like he’d worn when he murdered Mary and Stan. The feathers sprouted from what would soon be wings, growing out of his back. At the moment they were nubs, fledgling wings. Soon he would be like a dark angel, one of the fallen, like the Devil himself.

  The Devil didn’t have cloven hooves or a forked tongue. He didn’t have red skin or curved horns growing from his forehead. As far as Beth could tell, he didn’t have a tail.

  But he was dark. A black soul. Sawyer’s soul was turning his skin black, but not in any natural hue. His skin looked like slate, a hint of gray, and hard. There would be no feeling in that skin. No feelings in Sawyer at all. If his name was really Sawyer.

  Beth didn’t think it was. It was something ancient, maybe biblical, maybe before, a Sumerian name, Babylonian, before names, before humanity itself.

  He smiled at her and pulled out a chair. He glanced at Coleridge. Dismissed him, for now. Beth liked it that way. She didn’t want Coleridge to be harmed. Maybe she could bargain for him. Trade her life for his. In death, perhaps she could save something instead of only destroying.

  “You came,” she said.

  “Of course. Did you ever think I wouldn’t?”

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  But he didn’t come for her. The black blade was nowhere to be seen.

  She’d expected murderous rage, terrible anger that would sweep her away in agony.

  But he took out a pack of cards. She recognized the design on the front. Different from her cards. The Thoth deck.

  The first Tarot was supposedly from ancient Egypt. Maybe that was where he came from. Maybe not. She’d never know, and she found that, apart from natural curiosity, she didn’t really care.

  He pushed out her chair with his foot.

  “Sit.”

  Calm.

  She sat. She was his to command. Whatever he wanted, she would do. She was ready to die, but Coleridge’s life hung in the balance.

  “Drink if you want, Elizabeth.”

  Her name was Beth. But being a pedant when you’re faced with the angel of death wasn’t wise. She’d never been stupid.

  The smell of scotch hit the room once more as she poured, and the vapors floated through the freezing air. When she poured, she noticed the scotch was thicker.

  “Beth...” said Coleridge.

  “Shut up now, Coleridge,” she told him, not taking her eyes from Sawyer. She couldn’t take her eyes from him. His gaze bore into her, laid her bare. He knew her guilt, her every shameful secret. And still he wanted her.

  She drank a little.

  “Smoke if you want. You’ll not die of cancer, Elizabeth. I love your name. You have a beautiful face, too. One I’d be proud to own. You’ll never grow old. Your looks will never fade. I come to give you eternity in my service.”

  Her hands shook. His manner was polite, reserved, but there was a terrible light burning in his eyes. When he spoke some inner-fire showed through, like the gates of Hell burning within, the legions waiting to break through. He was their vanguard. An emissary.

  She lit a cigarette because she wanted one. Getting the light to the tip took a couple of tries, until she got it burning straight. The smoke seemed to settle her in a way that the drink hadn’t.

  “Are you the Devil?”

  He laughed. Beside him, Coleridge’s teeth chattered. Cold radiated out from Sawyer, freezing the room. Beth was warm though. The cold couldn’t touch her anymore.

  “I’m more than that. I’m real. The Devil, if he exists, is so far removed from your petty lives that he’s...irrelevant. I’m here. I can touch you here. I straddle both worlds now. The Devil’s nothing. A nobody.”

  Such confidence, such hubris. His pride was towering and frightening because he entertained no doubts as to his supremacy. And who could prove him wrong? It was just a statement of fact.

  “Why?”

  He seemed to think about it earnestly. While he sat between Beth and Coleridge, she noticed that his wings had grown. What had been nubs were now around two feet long. His feathers, his plumage, shone blackly, just like a raven in the sunlight.

  Coleridge took Beth’s cue and put a cigarette between his lips. He shook, too, but she loved him a little then, because he couldn’t see death sitting beside him, and he didn’t cry. He didn’t beg. He watched her, and she took strength from him. Sawyer drained her. Coleridge bolstered her.

  Between the two of them, maybe she could face her death with her head held high. She didn’t want to cry. She deserved death.

  “Once, many years ago, before you people had crawled from the mud, I walked on two feet. Before you people found words I had named the stars.”

  His wings shook and he grew distant. Remembering. Looking back.

  “When you came I hunted you. Always above you, always alone. I lived among you while you covered the earth, living out your pointless, filthy lives. I killed, I ate. I grew strong. But I’m so hungry, Elizabeth. People can’t fill the hole in my belly. In my soul. I’m empty. But I found something that tasted good to me.”

  He stretched as he spoke. His black skin cracked as he flexed his back, and his wings grew longer still.

  “The flesh of those with talents,” he said. “No. Not talents, maybe, but something...some kind of strength. I fed on those who died in battle. Their flesh was sweet. I took the name Valravn, for a time. The Norsemen feared me, even as they slaughtered and fed me. They built up legends around me. Valravn, Elizabeth. As good a name as any. But is that what I am?”

  He shrugged his wings and Beth’s hair blew back as wind filled the room.

  “I don’t know. I took my fill of the dead. They made me stronger, like placentae, feeding me. Then I found the flesh of those with magic, the path to the ancient powers. People like you. I ate your kind, and I grew stronger.”

  He grinned and black teeth showed, but no humor. “I’m born, now. This is me. This is what’s been waiting inside me. My true form. I’ve been caged so long, Elizabeth. Now I’m free.”

  “You’re a monster,” she said, without thinking, but he took no offence. She didn’t care anymore if he did. He was beginning to make her angry. His arrogance was stunning. He thought he was some kind of divine creature, but he was just a murderer. No better than her, no worse. Just another bastard.

  “I’m more than a monster. I’m unique. Something that will never come again. All I know is millennia have passed and I have always been set above mortals. Valravn, Sidthe, Anubis, Bhaal...what’s in a name? None of these is me, nor my kind. I heard tale
s of a witch called Morrigan. Maybe she was my sister. Who knows? I have never met anyone like me. Now I transcend flesh. I’m more than immortal. I’m nothing, everything.”

  His wings were bigger, still. Four feet, five, growing. Stretching. His skin, harder, shining now. Polished stone.

  He was terrifying, but she no longer cared.

  “You’re something else, all right. You have pride, but no knowledge. Even I know what I am. What are you?”

  “I am a demon. A magus. An angel.”

  “No,” she said, loosening the reins on her anger. “You’re none of those things, because they are myth. You’re alone. You’re nothing. You don’t even know what you are. Kill me, but don’t bore me with any more of your shit.”

  She was dimly aware of Coleridge’s breath hissing through his teeth. But it was distant. Sawyer drew the eye like he was everything in the world. But really, he was nothing. A forgotten thing of the past that was moving on, moving on into the spirit realm.

  Sawyer dipped his head toward the table, drawing her eye to what he wanted her to see.

  “You shouldn’t anger me. You shouldn’t.”

  While he had been talking he had built a tower of cards. Two cards in a triangle, next to two more of the same, joined by a card atop. The same pattern, over and over. Triangles of his flesh visible through the pyramid.

  “Fuck you,” she said, but he didn’t kill her. He smiled. Held a finger to his lips. The fingernails on his hand were long and black. Deadly.

  “I made a promise to Coleridge. Did he tell you what we spoke of?”

  “No.” But suddenly the cold hit her. He’d ignored Coleridge until now. She didn’t want him thinking about Coleridge.

  “Are you going to get on with it?”

  “Immortality has given me patience. You’ll learn it, in my service. Your eyes will be mine. Your power will feed me. It’s a great honor. Just wait a little longer.”

  She tried to reply, but he held a fingernail against her lips. Foulness filled her mouth and she began to gag. Something so awful on her lips that she was unable to talk, just retch and wipe at her lips.

  “Shhh, Elizabeth,” he said, and the cultured, polite tone was gone. His voice was hard as stone.

  “I promised Coleridge when I spoke to him last that I’d let him lick your tasty cunt. I’m going to take his head from his fat shoulders and stick it between your legs and make him fuck you with his bloody tongue. But first I promised him something else.” He was snarling now, his wings filling the room and flapping with such power Beth’s breath was taken away.

  The tower of cards didn’t shift. The wind had no effect on it. It wasn’t anything other than a house of cards, but it must have been because Sawyer drew his black blade from within it and ducked to one knee, sweeping the blade around in an arc and taking Coleridge’s foot off halfway down his shin.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Beth screamed. Coleridge didn’t understand why but he did what came naturally to him. He pushed himself up, fast for a fat man, ready to fight.

  But his foot wasn’t there. He fell to the floor with a heavy crash, cracking his head on the cold hard tiles. Then the pain hit. He looked down and saw his foot and half his shin tumbled over to the side. He screamed, high, urgent, in a pitch that could have only come from agony.

  “No!” Beth shouted at Sawyer. Sawyer smiled.

  “One down. One to go. Bet he’s got a fat tongue, Elizabeth. You should be grateful. Clear some of the cobwebs out of your cunt.”

  “Fuck you!”

  She picked up the scotch.

  “You can’t hurt me. You may as well drink it.”

  She spat at him. Smashed the bottle on the edge of the table.

  This was what she’d been waiting for. Maybe it was what the spirits wanted, and maybe it wasn’t.

  But it was her time, and she knew it.

  Bottle held tight in her fist she drove the jagged end into her neck.

  “No! No!”

  “Fuck you,” she gurgled. Blood sprayed across Sawyer’s chest and face, coated his wings. It fountained into the air and splashed over Coleridge, his face already pale, his body shaking.

  “Ah...” she said. She smiled. Free at last. She’d denied him. She saw his immense rage at his failure and it made her smile all the more. She fell to her knees, then over to her side. Her strength was fading.

  Sawyer’s blade was forgotten on the floor. He beat at her with his fist, incoherent shouts falling on deaf ears as everything around her faded away, became distant. She could see Coleridge shuddering on the floor, the shock of losing his foot, maybe. Maybe he’d live. She wished for it with her dying breath, just as she laughed through the blood as Sawyer beat at her dying body.

  Then she sat up and he was still there.

  Her body slumped out in a pool of blood behind her.

  She put her hands on Sawyer’s hard chest and pushed.

  He fell back, shock on his face.

  “I deny you!” her spirit shouted, and she felt a blazing light that didn’t come from her fill the room. It pushed away the darkness and blinded her, blinded him.

  He roared as the light hit him. His skin split and he screamed in agony, surprised, shocked. A creature that had never known pain.

  Sawyer, whatever he was, could not stand that glorious light. He flapped his wings and flew into the ceiling. Plasterboard rained down and the ceiling light burst, shards of glass falling, too. He dove down, and, even though there was little room, he was heavy, a diving boulder. He hit the floor and tiles flew into the air.

  Shards of tile hit the cabinet behind Beth, driven into the wood. They passed straight through her.

  Dirt spewed from the hole, filling the room with that wet earth smell that reminded her of spring. Steam rose, then the last of him was gone, gone deep beneath the earth.

  Down. Where he belonged.

  Beth took one last yearning look behind her. Blood pumped from Coleridge leg. Her blood, his blood—the floor was covered in it. It ran in rivers toward the hole in the earth, down to his domain.

  Where she had to go. Where she had to finish it.

  She couldn’t do anything for Coleridge. Not anymore.

  Turning away from him, she stepped up to the edge of the hole and jumped into the abyss.

  Part Six

  The Tower

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Peter slowed as he reached Beth’s house. He didn’t understand what he was seeing at first. He blinked, halted. There were TV crews with cameras in a rough circle behind a police barricade. Her house was protected by a huge police presence, some of them armed. Lights flashed, spotlights blazed toward the house, but they just bounced back.

  Around the house a black wall, a tower, had risen so high in the sky it blotted out the moon. The spotlights, the moonlight, everything was reflected from it. A wall made from darkness so absolute it threw light away from it. Nothing penetrated. The policemen prodded it with the muzzles of their guns, a useless gesture that only succeeded in confusing them more. Peter had never seen anything like it. He doubted anyone had.

  He tried to see his way through it, but Beth’s house had disappeared. He could feel Beth, though, somewhere behind the terrible wall. Calling to him.

  Then he was running again, always running and always late.

  He barged through a knot of reporters. One swore and fell. He didn’t have time to apologize. He shoved a policeman with his shoulder, and the man spun away.

  Then he hit the darkness.

  It was like running underwater, deep down where strange fish lived, ungainly creatures that never saw the light of day. He could see nothing, feel nothing. There was no sound, not of his footfalls nor his breath. It was like the world had ceased to exist around him and he was the only person in the universe, running through space for eternity.

  He came through it so suddenly that he couldn’t stop when Beth’s house appeared before him. He crashed straight through the front door. He could
hear someone murmuring, high pitched, incoherent with pain.

  “God. No, no. Beth!”

  When he rounded the corner into the kitchen he saw a fat man without a foot, bleeding steadily onto the floor. His blood merged with Beth’s, the love of his life, his anchor that would never leave him adrift.

  She was dead. A jagged hole in her neck no longer bled, though, from the amount of blood on the walls, he guessed the killer had hit an artery. But then he guessed again. In death, she still clutched a broken bottle by the neck.

  She had taken her own life.

  But the killer had a hand in it. He didn’t doubt for a minute.

  He knelt beside her and kissed her on the lips.

  “Oh, Beth. Beth.”

  He felt tears well behind his eyes, but nothing would come. He couldn’t cry, even with his wife dead before him.

  He couldn’t cry because he was dead himself.

  He knew now beyond a doubt, because his son knelt at the other side of his wife, beside his mother. He looked unbearably sad, but he reached across Beth’s body and took Peter’s hand gently in his own small palm.

  Miles shone with some inner light. Bright, but beautiful.

  Somehow he felt stronger than Peter, though Peter was a grown man, and Miles would always be a young boy.

  “Daddy,” he said. “I missed you. Missed you so much.”

  “Me, too. Me, too. I was too late. Always too late.”

  “Not too late, Daddy,” said Miles. He pulled Peter to his feet with his strong hands. Peter clenched Miles’ hands tight, like he was frightened to let go, in case they never found each other again.

  “Not too late. She still needs you.”

  Miles pointed at the hole.

  “She went after him. But she can’t win. She can’t hurt him. She needs you, Daddy.”