Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (12 page)

“Talk about what, Asher?”

“This
thing
you’ve got going on in your head about
us
.”

“What
thing
about
us
?”

“I don’t really know how to categorise it. A
keen interest
maybe. I don’t know. But it’s... it’s not reciprocated, Penny.”

“What’s not reciprocated, Asher?” There was that hint of danger in her voice he’d detected before. He’d never been further than this point previously.

“This
thing
you have. You know: turning up to my house, stealing my keys, leaving many gnomes –
many gnomes
– on my front lawn. It’s a bit weird to be honest.”

“You don’t like my gnomes?” She seemed genuinely hurt.

“It’s not really about the gnomes. Look, I’m in the middle of a very large and complex case and I don’t have time for a relationship-” That was a really stupid thing to say, he thought.

In many ways, he only had himself to blame. Really, as a detective inspector, it wouldn’t be too difficult to get a restraining order against her. He had enough incidents to persuade even the most liberal of judges if he needed to.
A few weeks of her making his life even more difficult, a court appearance, a piece of paper with a phone number and penal notice on it and he’d be free of her. But that was just it. Candidly, he was embarrassed. He was DI Ash Fielding. When it got round the station that he had a stalker he’d be a laughing stock. There was a precedent for it. Couple of years ago there was a DS in Complaints and Conduct who got into a fight with his neighbour about the size of a leylandi. Got a bit messy and turned into a drama. Regular updates rippling through the canteen every morning.
Did you know he’s parked his car across the other guy’s drive just to annoy him?
That sort of thing. Anyway, it got out of hand. Soon the DS was known solely because he was engaged in a long running legal battle with his neighbour and soon he was so swamped by it he put in for a transfer.

So Ash would deal with this himself.

“Well I’m sorry I don’t have as an important a job as you, Asher,” she was saying. “We can’t all be DIs and frankly your attitude is very selfish.”

“Penny, I don’t even know y-”

“No, you just hold on right there, Asher Fielding! I’m sick of this. What is it you want me to do? Beg? I’m here when you need me, aren’t I?” She was kicking up quite a frenzy by now. Ash wondered how thick his walls were. It was late and the neighbours were annoyingly nosy. “I don’t think you have any clue how lucky you are to have me around. Heaven knows why I bother with you, you selfish pig! If you want to keep me, Asher, you’d better start bucking your ideas up because there are plenty of men out there who would really appreciate a girl like me.”

And with that Penny pushed past him and slammed the door behind her. He watched after her, mouth gaping. After a moment the car roared into life and he heard the sound of the tyres screeching
as she pulled away from the house.

Later that night he got another text.

Hi sexy! Great to c u this evening. B over tomoz for hugz! XxxP

Chapter 2
7

As tired as she was, when she finally stumbled into her flat after Ash had dropped her off and they had exchanged an awkward goodbye, Alix felt strangely energised. Mixed feelings of horror, disgust, worry and excitement clashed, like two mighty oceans coming together in her mind. As
sickening as the scene she had witnessed in the church at White Helmsley was, the dark appeal of her involvement was as intense a feeling as she had ever experienced and more than compensated for the potential loss of the Anwick case.

Then she felt ashamed that she had trivialised the death she had seen as cards to be traded. Annoyed, she poured herself a glas
s of wine; supermarket own brand rose, the sort of cheap stuff that made you wince on the first swig.

But as she switched the lights on, checking each room
carefully before being satisfied that no one had broken in, she thought of Ash. Seeing him again had awoken some part of her that she had thought was long forgotten. Something deeply embedded and unresolved. Not to do with him, she assured herself, but to do with what she was doing. She was doing the right thing at last. This was her calling. She was sure of it.

But
then there was Anwick. Most in-house shrinks probably had to wait half a lifetime for a good murder. She had been fortunate enough (if that was the right phrase) to pick up two in a less than forty eight hours. Albeit of course that one was, according to the Crown at any rate, an open and shut case and no longer anything to do with her. Officially at least. The slight oddity was that the principal suspect was presently incarcerated in a secret psychiatric hospital that seemed to be run by morons and managed in accordance with nineteenth century values. Of course she wasn’t going to drop it.

Bugger Amanda bloody Harker.

She stripped off her clothes and tossed them in a basket of dirty clothes in the corner. They were heavy and toppled the basket over but she didn’t care. In her shirt and pants, she sat down at the desk in the bedroom and flicked open the cover to the laptop. It responded automatically, whirring into life.

She thought for a moment. There was little point in searching for
Innsmouth. She had done that prior to her visit and found nothing of interest.

She searched the word Anwick
had used as a name for his alternative personality.

Azrael.

The Archangel of Death. She scanned several pages of a Christian website but there wasn’t much, principally, it would appear, because the Archangel of Death only appears in certain Jewish traditions and not orthodox Christianity. In one account:

he has four faces and four thousand wings, and his whole body consists of eyes and tongues, the number of which corresponds to
the number of people inhabiting the Earth
. He will be the last to die, recording and erasing constantly in a large book the names of men at birth and death, respectively.

The accounts conflicted. Some painted Azrael as the embodiment of evil, devouring the souls of the worthy and unworthy indiscriminately. In other religions, he is nothing more than a taxi driver, delivering souls to God at His command. In others, he is an avenger, stalking the earth in human form murdering sinners and dragging their screaming souls to Hell for punishment.

Something else caught her eye in amidst the mass of contradictory dogma. She found a website listing the supposed names of common angel
s and demons, of which Azrael was one. The site claimed that the list was of the two hundred original angels sent by God to watch over mankind mentioned in the Book of Enoch, an ancient Jewish text. Enoch, said the site, was Noah’s great-grandfather and his scripture describes how God sent his angels to earth and that these angels – known as the Watchers – lived amongst men.

And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.

Alix read, but more out of interest than because it improved her understanding of Anwick any further. Somehow, she felt drawn to the story. God sent his angels to earth to protect man but those angels decided instead to fornicate with human women. She smiled. Even angels couldn’t resist a pretty face and a decent shag it would seem.

Before she knew it, it was three in the morning and she had absorbed everything there was on the name Azrael. And not one scrap of it helped
a jot.

Part II

The eighth Law of the Ether

It shall be forbidden to destroy a life on the Ether in a place assigned for the worship of a
Divine

Chapter 28

Alix didn’t sleep well. Dreams of her father were replaced by images of the dead swirling around her mind and mixing together with the faces of tortured souls, shut and abandoned in the dungeons of Innsmouth.

So Alix didn’t sleep well.

In the morning, she found herself outside the Governess Retirement Home watching the caretaker grit the path that lead to the entrance. For all the resentment her father caused her, she could never let go of him. She could never let him lose everything. Zara, then her mother. She was all he had left, as far as family went anyway.

She knew what the problem was. It was the curse of her profession. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Sometimes it’s easier if you don’t understand
yourself. But she knew. And he did too. Zara was his favourite, the daughter who lived up to his expectations, but the problem wasn’t Zara. The problem was that both Alix and her father blamed each other for the loss of Mai Franchot, Alix’s mother.

The years after Zara went missing were the hardest of Alix’s life. The family moved south of the city, to a new school and for a new start. Vaughn cut back on his practice, kept to lecturing. Spent his days locked away in his study, marking papers and writing. Alix recalled that his office resembled a warehouse. Reams and reams of unpublished works stacked on top of each other. She wondered where it all was now. Burnt probably when he purged the family home of everything before completing his self-imposed exile to the Governess.

Mai died from pneumonia two years after Zara had disappeared. Not anyone’s fault. But blame is the best anaesthetic.

She wasn’t going to go in. She just needed to be here, for a short while. Her hand was on the ignition when a blue Astra pulled in beside her and the driver got out.

“Well hello there!” Gail called over. She couldn’t leave now. Gail would see she hadn’t signed in and think it was odd she came and never saw her father. So reluctantly she got out and made her way across the car park with Gail. They made small talk before, as they reached the door, Gail turned to her.

“You know he loves you in his own way,” she said.

Alix nodded in agreement and made her way to her father’s room.

He was reading again. Less than a few chapters left. When she was here yesterday,
he had barely begun. As usual he didn’t acknowledge her at first but as she hovered uncertainly at the door it was Doctor Franchot senior who spoke for the first time.

“Twice in one week is indeed an honour. I feel weak at the knees.”

She took that as an invitation and walked in. Vaughn had a spare chair near his for visitors, although who visited him other than her and Gail she had no idea. She perched herself on it, not sinking back to appear at home but enough to let him know this wasn’t just a passing visit like last time.

“You rarely come here without a purpose,” he told her. “How’s the new job going?”

“I didn’t take it just to annoy you.”

“No, I suspect that was just a happy bonus.” He looked at her. The skin around his eyes was tired and dark but the iris was as bright as hers and just as piercing.

When she didn’t speak he eventually put his book down, although he didn’t turn to her directly.

“What is it you want?”

“Have you ever heard of a place called Innsmouth?”

He looked at her long and hard, considering his answer very carefully.

“Yes.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Why?”

“What do you know about it?”

He sighed, as if the whole conversation was a terrible bore and this time turned to face her.

“It was a Victorian asylum. Decommissioned in the sixties. A nasty blot on our history of treatment of mental illness. It’s just a ruin now.”

“It’s not a ruin. It’s still in use.”

He considered this, again very carefully before turning away from her.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want to discuss it with you.”

“No,” he turned to her suddenly and there was a look of anger in his fierce eyes. “You’re breaking some agreement you have with a higher power to give me information that is clearly classified to gauge my reaction. This conversation ends.”

She held her hands up defensively. “Who said anything about that being classified?”

“It isn’t then?”

Now it was her turn to consider her answer very carefully. “It’s operational. A handful of patients kept in nineteenth century conditions locked away from society.”

“Enough!” he shouted, holding his own giant hand up to her. “Enough, child.” She hated that word,
child
. It goaded her. “If it’s moral guidance you’re looking for, then seek it elsewhere. You should know better.” He gave her a look that said the conversation was over. She sighed heavily. Was this anything other than what she had expected? A little more of an over-reaction perhaps. He knew more than he was letting on. As always. That was enough to know for now. Their eyes were locked. He knew he’d let her on to something. But he
never
did anything without a purpose; even the most subtle of reactions that only the trained eye could see.

It was enough. She picked up her bag and stood. For a moment, she thought she might lean over and kiss his cheek.

Thinking better of it, she left without another word.