Hal Duncan, page 40
¯ I don't think they work for Metatron any longer, she says. I think they're like me.
She flexes her fingers in front of her; on the back of her hand, down just at the wrist, at the edge of her sleeve, he can see the clashing symbols on her skin. He reaches over to take her hand, hold it.
¯ You always said you thought there was a third player, she says, sitting on the sidelines, staying out of the game. Jesus, I'm not even sure it understands the concept of sides.
Her other hand goes to her stomach.
¯ But I think it just entered the game, she says.
Errata
Heroes and Villains
¯ Don't try to speak, says Malik.
He walks around to the side of the surgical slab and lays a hand on the shoulder of the man strapped down on it. He feels the muscle twitch, ribbed tricep quivering like horseflesh, bicep in a knot, straining against the leather bonds. Fresh blood seeps from the cuts and scratches reopened on his skin by pointless struggles. The poor creature looks quite exposed, naked and vulnerable. How the mighty are fallen.
Malik lifts his hand to straighten a gold and black obsidian cufflink. The stone glistens even in the fluorescent light of the operating theatre, as shining and dark as the fixed pupils of the angel staring up at him with hate. Malik feels his lip curl up in an involuntary sneer. One shouldn't gloat, but it's hard not to.
He reaches into the pocket of his white dress uniform ¯ his own design, replete with meaningless medals in the classic military dictator style so de rigueur in the last century; he's nothing if not a traditionalist ¯ and pulls out the set of dog-tags.
¯ Rafael Hernandez Rodriguez, Corporal, United States Marine Corps. Did you choose the body for the rank or for the name? No. Don't try to speak, Corporal Rodriguez. If s not worth the effort.
He dribbles the dogtag chain through his hand, lets it drop, chinkling, onto the man's chest. It only covers a fraction of the unkin lettering that's carved all across his torso.
¯ Not without a tongue, he says.
The archangel Rafael moans wordlessly.
¯ I apologize for the crudeness of the binding, by the way ¯ [he taps a finger on one of the sigils] ¯ but I'm afraid we don't have all the wonders of modern technology at our disposal. None of your bitmites here, I'm afraid.
He gestures around at the sparse theatre, the antiquated equipment that belongs in the last century, all hulking and obsolescent, hard screens and dials, tubes, lights, mirrors.
-No bitmites, he says. No microscanners. No VR modelling and mini-waldos here. No synthskin. No autosuturers. We still cut people open with stainless steel scalpels and sew them back together with needle and thread. If we think they'll make it through the operation.
Malik strokes his thick moustache, an unconscious gesture of a brooding mind.
¯ Ten years of war and sanctions and military coups and more war and more sanctions and so on and on and on and on. Do you know how hard it is to get antibiotics in Damascus? Do you know the child mortality rate here?
Rafael just glowers at him.
¯ And I'm the baby-killer, he says. The great and terrible Moloch.
-You used to be a healer, Rapiu, he says. Do you remember? Do you remember anything from before your blessed Covenant? Do you remember bathing the sick on the shores of the Dead Sea, handing out your medicines to the poor and needy? Do you remember watching the cities blossom in that land of salt and sand, because people could come there and be healed, because of the legacy you left behind? Or was that all burned out of you by the glory?
Malik leans over so he can stare back into the angel's eyes. He wants the bastard to see him for what he is, even knowing that that's impossible.
¯ How many children died in the furnaces of Sodom and Gomorrah? How many lives did you destroy because a few intransigent unkin wouldn't bend their knees? Your own lord couldn't stomach it. The most glorious of all angels chose the long walk into the Vellum rather than serve what your Covenant had become.
The angel turns his face away, but Malik grips him by the chin, pulls it back round to meet his hatred and contempt. He thinks of a thousand years of luxury, of cities rich with the scent of cedar incense and spiced food in markets, and beautiful whores dressed in linen dyed scarlet and purple by Canaanite craftsmen, and poets of the flesh and all the wonderful, wicked deviants and decadents that he would walk amongst, a king dressed as a beggar. There was injustice. There were terrible crimes. And there were people with souls that shone as brightly as their jewels. And he thinks of three thousand years in which his name ¯ Malik, Malak, Meleck, Moloch ¯has been synonymous with burning babies.
¯ Understand me, Rafael. Understand me. I am not the villain here. You are.
¯ No, says the voice behind him.
He stands in the doorway, a shape of black, a silhouette even though the well-lit room should pour its light upon his face. Some of the black rises in wisps off of him, like steam from a beast of war slick with its own sweat. The volutes carve out symbols in the air, thin trails of thought. Malik tilts his head, more curious than concerned, even though the breach of his security is clearly severe. The city has been sealed off for the last week, ever since he choppered in with the angel Rafael drugged up in a bodybag, a squad of guards scouring the landscape all around them with their nightshades glowing white in the darkness, lances snapping this way and that to train on any smallest motion, and the pair of black monks in the back of the Sikorsky, legs curled into lotus position, chanting the mantras that rendered them as invisible to the watcher angels scattered all around the area as to the Allied radars and surveillance satellites. No one should even know he's here and even if they did, they shouldn't have been able to get past his circles within circles of protection. Part of him feels he should be outraged at the inadequacies of his minions; but, as Malik would dearly like the angel Rafael to understand, Malik doesn't have minions, just men and women willing to die to drive the occupying forces from his land, their land. His Philistine liberation Organisation, he calls it, sometimes, in his moments of blackest humour.
¯ No? he says calmly to the shadow-thing.
It's got to be some emissary from another rebel group, of course. Maybe Marduk, he thinks. Or Nergal. Nergal does have a tendency for melodrama, playing the underworld god, the dispossessed turned demon. Playing right into the Covenant's hands, like so many of them.
-No, the creature says. No more villains. No more heroes. No more victims.
The tongueless moaning of the angel on the table grows louder, higher-pitched, more wail than moan now.
¯ A commendable concept, says Malik bitterly. And who might you be?
And we tell him exactly what we are.
The Heart of Damascus
White light, white noise, he feels the loss rip through him like a blow to the back of the head, like a syringe of morphine rammed into his spine at the base of his neck, squirted and then broken off with a savage downward snap. A searing, blinding dagger of sensation followed by utter numbness and confusion. Gasping. Staggering. Metatron hits the floor on his knees like a boxer with a glass jaw, and doesn't even see or hear the palmtop crack against the wooden desk, tumble and skitter on the marble floor. His dreadlocks hang down over his face, his arms shaking as he tries to hold himself up like a drunk over a toilet bowl, retching, grasping for breath.
Rafael's dead.
¯ some kind of explosion, in the heart of Damascus, just a few seconds ago ¯
Phreedom crawls across the motel floor, sobbing and clutching at her stomach. It's too early. It's too fucking early, but the cramps are unbearable.
¯ reports coming in from all over the city, a sort of blinding flash of ¯
She reaches for the phone up on the bedside table, knocks it down onto the carpet beside her, then another cramp hits her and her fist curls even tighter round the corner of the quilt. Liquid dribbles down between her thighs.
¯ horrific devastation, absolutely unimaginable ¯
She reaches for the phone, pushing her hand through a moment of time as solid as a wall. Goddamn it. Fucking. Not now.
Time flickers.
¯ Israel or America. Nobody knows but this is sure to—
The TV flickers too, switching channel every couple of seconds ¯ CNN NBC, Fox BBC, ABQ VNV, ANN, channel after channel and some of them she knows never existed until this moment, until some fucking bastard unkin bit the farm and ripped a chunk right out of reality as they went down. The channels are changing. Literally. She grabs the phone and punches at a key. It's too fucking early. Oh, Christ, it's too fucking early but she's not going to let them take this from her.
¯ I need an ambulance, she sobs into the phone, not even hearing the voice on the other end. I need an ambulance. Room ... I don't know. I need an ambulance.
And then the gurney is slamming through swing doors, lights flashing above her head and doctors leaning over her, hands examining, and she hears phrases like breach-birth and c-section and have you taken anything?
¯ No, she says.
No, no, no, no, no.
And Carter reaches into Seamus Finnan's body, into his heart to read what's written on it like a blind man reading Braille, his fingers feeling for the filigree of unkin language on a heart of damasked steel, while Pechorin holds him there.
-Where is the Messenger boy? he says, and then he finds the answer and he looks at Finnan with an honest shock on his face.
The shell blast knocks him off-balance for a second and he has to steady himself against the dugout's wall. A tin mug rattles on the floor where it's fallen.
¯ I don't care what you say, Sergeant. It's decided. Dismissed.
Sergeant Finnan snaps to attention, salutes him with a look of utter hatred and stalks from the room. Pickering stands up from the bunk, a cruel smile on his face.
¯ Tims, eh?
¯ Shut up, says Carter. Are you bloody well enjoying this?
¯ Come on, Jack. The boy's a coward and a deserter, and an urning at that.
¯ What did you say?
He spits the words with fury.
¯ I said he was a fucking faggot, says Joey. Come on, man. You saw the way he was looking at you. So we had some fun with him. He'll be OK.
¯ Stop the car, says Carter, leaning forward.
¯ What the fuck's the matter with you?
He pulls the car over to the kerb and Carter fumbles the handle open, falls out onto the sidewalk to vomit at the feet of a disgusted passer-by. Carter looks up and it's a boy's face looking back at him, a face he recognises without knowing. He scrambles back and away.
-Jesus, Jack, did you take something?
Joey leans over him, pushing an eyelid back with a thumb to study the pupil. Jack grabs at his jacket collar and, as he opens his hand to grasp the leather, a silver Zippo falls down to the ground. He has no idea where it came from but he grabs it like the most precious thing he's ever owned.
¯ What did we do? says Jack. What did we do?
¯ Nothing. For fuck's sake. Jack, what are you on? What did you take?
Jack pushes him away and clambers to his feet. They're parked outside an old derelict shop, the glass all shattered and boarded up, looks like it's been empty forever. There are shadows seeping out from under a padlocked door spray-painted with a weird graffiti logo, sort of like an Eye of Horus, sort of not.
¯ Where are we?
¯ College Street, Jack. Take a look at the fucking signpost.
But Jack's too busy looking everywhere, at the door, at the lighter in his hand, at the puddle of his vomit, at the passers-by gaping like he's from outer space, at ¯ yes ¯ the signpost that says College Street high up on a wall above the bar down at the corner, at the shadows seeping out from under the doorway and following the cracks in the sidewalk, at the low sun shimmering among striated clouds there in the west, the glow of an early evening at the end of summer, gold and yellow and red and orange like fire. He steps towards it, knocking Joey's hand off his arm with a flick of his shoulder, walking towards the sunset without any idea of what he's doing or why.
¯ Where the fuck are you going, Jack?
He passes a TV shop, registers the screens of flames in the corner of his vision, scrolling headlines telling of destruction in Damascus. Countless dead.
¯ Where the fuck are you going?
He has no idea.
¯ I had no idea, says Metatron.
He sits at the bottom of the long table. It's a custom dating back millennia, back to when they first met in some warlord's banquet hall, the seven of them all seated round the table, three down one side, three down the other, Metatron down at the bottom, ever the humble servant, his master's scribe and vizier, looking up at the empty seat of the megalomaniac they'd decided to overthrow. He'd found himself caught by the perfect symbolism of that empty throne, as he persuaded the others that not only could they do it but they had to do it. It was right. And since that day they carved the Covenant into their own souls, they had always kept an empty chair, in the banquet halls and tents and board-rooms where they met, through the ages. And Metatron always sat at the bottom of the table, as the lowest of the low, even though ¯ or perhaps because ¯ultimately it was his plan, his scheme, his vision, his voice. None of them, least of all Metatron himself, ever considered that the table was just a rectangle like any other rectangle, with four sides, two long and two short, that the allocation of top and bottom to it was an arbitrary notion, and that, to all intents and purposes, the head of the table was not where they quite spuriously projected it into an empty symbol but, in fact, in actuality, wherever the power sat, wherever the authority that they listened to laid his elbows on the table and leaned forward to say in a quiet firm voice, this is what we're going to do.No. That empty seat is too important, too central to the Covenant, for Metatron to question just how empty it might be, as a symbol.
And now, up at the top of the table, across from Uriel, beside Michael, there is another empty chair.
¯ You make a deal behind our backs, says Gabriel. You give some little trailer-trash desert-rat total immunity after Eresh has done a number on her
¯ She wasn't relevant, says Metatron. She was nothing.
Michael snorts. Obviously, he's with Gabriel all the way. Uriel is the military type, more of a tactician than a city-burner, but he'll still side with the hawks. Sandalphon, the only real dove among them, will side with Metatron as always; he would have let the girl go free just out of sympathy. Azazel? Who knows?
¯ You waste two good agents, Gabriel carries on, just to get your little bitch-whore out of jail free—
¯ I sent them to get Eresh—
¯ Not to mention that you hack them into dogmeat first.
¯ I had to make her think that... look ¯ they were unstable to begin with.
¯ They were Covenant, says Michael. They were our men. Our boys.
Uriel nods grimly, but Metatron notes the weary look on Azazel's face, the way he rolls his eyes.
¯ And now, says Gabriel. Now whatever Eresh had under lock and key is out there using your own blessed bitmites against us.
-We don't know that, Sandalphon says. It might have been Malik. We don't know for sure—
¯ It's time we did, says Gabriel.
He pushes his chair back as he stands up, strides around the table to lean on the back of Raphael's empty chair.
-I'm working on it, says Metatron. I just need time. I have a source ¯
And Gabriel spins and throws the chair against a wall. A painting falls, its glass frame shattering scattering. He pushes the empty chair at the head of the table to one side and plants his hands on the wooden surface, staring directly at Metatron, challenging him silently. There are lines around his eyes; the last few centuries have been hard on him. He was born to burn bright, and they've been hiding in the shadows for too long now. Even Metatron understands how... alien this kind of angel feels in an age of science and technology, an age of information and mass-media. There was a time when stars meant cherubim of awe and majesty, with swords of fire flashing from their mouths, the unkin tongue lashing reality, laying waste the enemies of the Covenant. Not painted actors on a painted screen.
¯ No more time, says Gabriel.
He stands straight, then turns and leans behind to grab the chair, to pull it close behind him.
¯ No, Gabriel, says Metatron. This is against all that we ... you'll be nothing but another Sovereign.
¯ Weren't we all Sovereigns once, kings of this world? Baals.
¯ So what do we call you now? says Azazel with disdain. Prince Gabriel? Lord Gabriel? King?
Gabriel stares at him as he sits down. At the head of the table. The angel of fire on the throne of God.
¯ Not king, he says. And not just me, but all of us here in this room, if you'll stand behind me. We'll be ... Dukes.
Not dukes, thinks Metatron, but Dukes.
5
Narcissus Has Woken
The Reality of Dreams
¯ You think your dreams are real, Jack?
¯ That's the nature of the conspiracy. We all think our dreams are real.
¯ Most people don't see the world the way you do, Jack ¯
¯ You don't see it? You don't fucking see it? You don't see the statue of a saint watching over a priest as he molests some fucking altar boy. You don't see the book of lies in the hands of a zealot ordering a stoning. A horoscope read out to a president before he orders an attack. You say I'm living in a fantasy world, Dr Starn?
-Jack, these are terrible things, but—
¯ A flag flown by a skinhead, a bulldog tattoo on an arm throwing a brick. Offerings of flowers lain down for a dead princess¯ People's Princess ¯ paparazzi human sacrifice ¯ and every fucking newspaper with the glossy pictures of the funeral, mmm, zoom in, show me some grief, oh, such a tragedy. Who's in charge, Dr Starn?
¯ Jack, nobody's in charge. Not in the way you mean ¯
