Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (24 page)

Welcome to the real world, Alix. Open the door and walk out of here. I have a lot to explain to you.

Chapter
51

Ash replaced the phone in his pocket. Answer
message again. Why wasn’t she picking up?

He
was sitting at home, not really having much of a desire to go to work just yet. His desk was a mess, more messy than usual. Three weeks of paperwork untouched. A station record. He was losing track of the number of problems he had to resolve: Eph Speck crucified in his own home, Katelyn’s  body taken, Megan kidnapped, a whole bunch of dead people in a church and now Alix had gone AWOL. And three weeks worth of untouched paperwork.

He had no leads
save for the connection between the guy who worked at Innsmouth who Alix had recognised as being on the CCTV footage at the hospital where Katelyn was taken. It might have been nothing at all. The picture was lousy and she could easily have been mistaken but he had given the image to Keera to follow up on and emailed Harker to see if he could get access to the employee records at Innsmouth. It was bloody ridiculous that he didn’t have access to that information with so many bodies and two missing children.

He buried his head in his hands, tried to clear his mind.
Think
. What was going on?

The doorbell shook him from the depths of his thoughts. He pulled the curtain back a little and
stared outside, saw the back of a van outside his front porch and frowned. Who was calling at this hour and why did they bring a van? He tucked his shirt into his trousers, did up the last few buttons, and went to open the door.

Penny stood at the door beaming oddly at him. Behind her, men were unloading furniture draped in plastic sheets.

“Through here?” one of them shouted.

“Yes!” Penny called back, waving the removal men through the front gate. They ambled past her, two of them lugging what was apparently a sofa.

“Penny,” said Ash, “what- what the Hell is this?”

“New furniture for you, sweetheart,” she said, running up the steps behind the removal men and gently caressing his cheek before
following them through to his hallway.

“The lounge is at the back,” she instructed. “Through there.”

“But I didn’t order any new furniture. I don’t
need
any new furniture,” he protested. “Why have you done this?”

“Your old stuff was pretty crappy, Asher. Out with the old and in with the new, as they say.” She smiled. There was too much gum when she smiled, he thought. That was perhaps where he had gone wrong in the first place. Ignoring the gum-to-tooth ratio.

“Down here?” one of the burly removal men asked, while standing in
his
lounge, eyeing up
his
old sofa. He cut Penny off quickly.

“No, actually,” he said. “Actually, I didn’t order any of this stuff.”

The removal man looked at him blankly, obviously not used to being given anything other than instructions about where to put things and where to take things. He studied the paperwork in his back pocket.

“You Mr Fielding?”

“Yes, but-”

“Then this is yours. You want us to take away the old stuff?”

“No, there’s been a mistake. Penny! Tell them I didn’t order this.”

“You’re card end in four five two five?”

“Yeah, how-”

“You paid for it.”

He turned to Penny angrily. “You paid for this on
my
card? How did you get my card details?”

“We’re moving in together aren’t we?” she shrugged her shoulders. “What’s your
s is mine.”

“No, that’s not how it works-”

“Oh, Asher, for God’s sake,” she exclaimed, slamming her fist on the new sofa to the alarm of the removal men who took a step back from her like she was radioactive or something. “I’m
trying
, Asher, I really am. Your house hasn’t been revamped in years and this stuff is fucking good. I mean real Italian leather and everything in a double discount sale
and
there are cup holders. Two of them. One for you and one for me.”

Ash stood bewildered, mouth open, tired eyes trying to take everything in. He didn’t have time for this. He made a few calculations. The sofa probably cost a couple of grand. It was an okay colour and there
were
cup holders. If it really was in a double discount sale then it might have only been twelve hundred. Would he pay twelve hundred right now to end this circus and get back on to catching bad guys and finding a missing child?

But then again she knew that. She knew he was in the middle of something big. That’s why she had chosen now to turn up at his house with a new sofa. Attention. He wasn’t even sure what the status of their relationship was. He had kind of hoped if he wished hard enough she would just disappear but that now seemed like quite a poorly thought out plan.

He made his decision.

“Listen,” he said to her. “Take the damn sofa, put the new one there, leave my house. We’ll talk about this later.”

He started to walk away but she grabbed at his arm.

“Asher! At least try it first!” He pulled away from her, kept on walking, not resolving the problem, just burying it deeper.
When he got to the car his phone rang. He hoped it was Alix but it wasn’t.

“Ash,” said Baron. “You need to come and see this.”

Chapter 52

The
door to Anwick’s cell had been left slightly ajar and she was able to prise it open and let herself out. She closed it behind her. It wasn’t clear how badly injured Ned was. He wasn’t going to be getting up quickly but that wasn’t a reason to dawdle around and admire the patchy paintwork either.

Alix ran down the long, wide corridor that led
from Anwick’s cell towards the end door which she recalled led to the way out. As she ran, she counted the doors, made sure there weren’t nine. That way she knew she wasn’t dreaming. Above her, a fluorescent light flickered intermittently. There was a network of exposed pipes and cables hanging overhead, dangling precariously in places. It reminded her of one of the scenes from
Alien
. Everything seemed so unfinished; a whole institute built on an archaic foundation thrown together cheaply and quickly.

By the time she reached the end
door she knew she wasn’t dreaming. The feeling she had experienced in Anwick’s cell that had preceded her escape (or precipitated it, she wasn’t sure which) had subsided. Her head throbbed, colours had returned to normal, her hearing had desensitised. The veil once again covered the world.

Take the door to your left,
said the voice inside her head. She clenched her teeth, desperate for whatever it was to stop, for the madness to rescind. But the voice was still there, as clear and independent from her thoughts as ever. She thought about it. The door in front of her led to the main entrance. She knew that. She’d been through it before. She had no idea where the door to the left went. She’d never been down there. She’d spent considerable time in Innsmouth now and so far she hadn’t seen one helpful sign saying EXIT or even TOILETS. Just a jumble of meaningless numbers to represent different corridors and different sections.

So she ought to stick with what she knew.
The voice inside her head, she supposed, was the creation of her subconscious mind, a reaction to the trauma of nearly dying in a fire perhaps. It was still, however, ultimately
her
. It didn’t know anything more than she did and she knew she had never been through the door to the left. So she should go right. For now, the nagging point that Omotoso had told her that many of the patients in Innsmouth developed multiple personalities, a common first symptom of which was hearing voices in one’s head, would have to wait. Getting out was more important. Furthermore, the door to the left was locked and controlled by an electronic lock, the code for which could be one of a billion different possibilities. The door ahead was operated by a handle and, when she clicked it down carefully, apparently unlocked.

No brainer.

She pushed it open a little and listened for signs of anyone on the other side. In the distance, she heard a low throbbing noise; a generator or a computer server perhaps, or just a large fan. But no footsteps or talking. She opened the door and padded through. Her bare feet were freezing on the concrete floor and she was shivering. An icy draft hit her on the other side of the door, her warm breath was visible in the cold air; but her only thoughts were of survival, getting out of Innsmouth as quickly as possible. She knew that Ned would come round soon but she didn’t know whether he was working alone, whether everyone in Innsmouth was on his side, whether Omotoso had deceived her. But whatever the situation, wandering the corridors with no shoes on wearing the same outfit as the patients was a bad start.

You should have gone left
, said the voice, although it didn’t seem too concerned.

“Shut up,” she muttered
and began to trot down the corridor, trying to stay as far to the off side as possible.

She past a door on her right. It was like all the others, with a slide at head height to see through. But there was noise on the other side. She froze, put her ear to the door to hear. Shuffling and scratching on the other side. She held her breath, pressed her ear harder against the metal. Waited, strained, tensed.

The click of the door didn’t register at first. It hadn’t occurred to her that it was being opened and for a second she didn’t move. She just watched the handle drop on her side and felt the beginnings of pressure from the other.

The door swung open as she moved away. Two men appeared, dressed like Ned: blue scrubs and surgical masks. Why did they have to wear surgical masks? Time seemed to slow as she saw the realisation cross their faces, watched their eyes narrow as they saw her.
She turned awkwardly, her feet caught on something sharp, a break in the concrete, pain in her foot, a flash of blood as she fell. She felt the impact on her hands and knees and then hip.

Run, Alix. Run.

“One of the inmates has escaped!” The crackle of a radio and the sound of men moving swiftly towards her, the crack of their boots across the concrete echoing down the corridor.

She launched herself forward, pain crackling up her leg, back towards Anwick’s cell. In horror, she realised that Ned might have come round by now and she might be trapped but she had no choice about where to run. She was light and fast, even with the injury to her foot and she sensed that by the time she got
to the door at the top she had created a little distance between her and men in masks.

“How the Hell she get out!” she heard one of them shout.

“Fuck knows! Base, we have breach! Shut this place down!”

She scrambled through the door, slammed it behind her and stopped dead, the blood quickly drained from her face. At the other end of the wide corridor, Ned staggered out of Anwick’s cell, rubbing his head and coughing angrily. For a moment she was paralysed, not sure what to do. He looked up and saw her, bewildered.

“Hey!” he shouted suddenly. “Wha-? You little bitch!”

With a roar, h
e began pelting towards her, his long legs closing the distance frighteningly quickly. Behind her, she heard the men in masks scrabbling over each other to get the door opened. There were yells and shouts, curses and anger. A siren began to whir outside, like an old war siren announcing the incoming raid. Her heart pounded, rose up her in her chest, sucked the air out of her lungs. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to.

Alix,
said the voice calmly.
The door to your left, which you should have taken in the first place, is now to your right.
She looked over at it, at the key pad.
The code is four-nine-nine-six-six-one.

Why not? She rushed over and tapped in the combination, every clank of Ned’s boots on the concrete getting louder and louder. Another noise told her the men in masks were through the door behind her. Evidently, they were closer.

“Stop her!” Ned screamed. More movement as they descended upon her. And then, as if the mechanism had deliberately waited until the very last second, the door in front of her swung open. She had no time to think. She fell through to the other side, slammed it behind her, heard the merciful sound of the bolt fire across automatically. She wasn’t in the clear but she had bought a little time, a few seconds at least.

She scanned the room she had stumbled into. An office. Large. Mauve carpet and duck-egg blue wallpaper
. A large bureau in the centre of the room. Nothing on it. Books lined the right side. Five floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk, rattling in their lead frames, looking out into the snowstorm.

A dead-end.

She moved round to the other side of the bureau. Perhaps she could push it up against...

“Well Doctor Franchot
you’ve given us all the run-around for a few minutes but I’m afraid the game is up.”

The Russian accent was slightly muffled through the surgical mask. Ned was flanked by the other men. They had the door shut behind them and stood side-by-side on the other side of the bureau, the larger of the three, on the far right, puffing and
wheezing.

Alix leant on the desk defiantly and glared at them.
They weren’t going to take her easily.

“We’ll find out how you managed to break the coil later, doctor Franchot, but in the meantime I would be pleased if you would yield to us without further fuss.” He removed the mask, his thin lips pursed into a grin, and extended his hand towards her.

“Why aren’t I dead?” she asked, trying to catch her breath.

“You’re not dead, doctor, because I pulled you out of the fire before it caught hold of the poor professor properly. You were very lucky.”

“What happened to Anwick?”

“Spontaneous human combustion, doctor. You know the phenomenon is real.”
He was mocking her.

He lowered his head dangerously but levelled his eyes on her, hand wavered a little, like he was considering retracting it.

“Why?” she said. “Why have you done this? Why have you detained me here?”

“For your safety, doctor. And ours. I’m afraid that you being in the professor’s cell at the exact time he had his hot flush was rather unfortunate. Unfortunate and unplanned. Now,
as a consequence of your unexpected visit, you must remain here. Indefinitely.” His grasp of English had improved quite considerably, she noted.

“I don’t understand. Where’s
Doctor Omotoso?”

Considering the apparent bleakness of her
situation, Alix was surprised that she was managing to appear so confident, but the memory of Ned’s attempts to remove her nails and the anger she felt towards him, the thought of him taking her unconscious body, removing her clothes, getting his fill – or worse – and tying her to the wall. His giant hands on
her
body,
her
breasts. She felt dirty, contaminated, like she wanted to tear her own skin off just to remove any trace of him. She had never felt so much hatred towards another human being, except to the fuck who took Zara from her and ripped her life apart.

“Where is he?” she demanded again. The men in
masks exchanged glances and took a small step forward. The Russian smiled.

“Doctor Omotoso has been re-assigned. Permanently.”

Alix straightened up slowly, extended her own finger, penetrated Ned as much as she could with her glare, and pointed to his face.

“You take one step toward me and I’ll tear your stinking heart out.”

“Oh, come, come,” Ned laughed, and the sound of his pleasure filled her with more rage, “Doctor, we’re three grown men and you are but such a flimsy, little thing. I was telling my comrades just how limp your body went in my arms when I had torn the clothes from it and-”

“You shut up!” she roared. “You shut the fuck up you piece of shit!”

Ned’s hand fell to his side, his grin vanished, his dark eyes were barely visible in the weak light before he said, “that’s enough talking for now, comrades. Please show the good doctor back to her cell. I will visit her later and teach her some manners.”

They advanced upon her, one either side of the bureau, and she knew it was now or never. The bottom halves of the windows behind her were fixed in place but the top halves opened outwards. She wedged her foot on to the front face of the bureau and thrust it forward. It was lighter than she had expected and the sudden propulsion caught the men in masks off-guard, the corner
smashed into their midriffs with some force and they were both sent backwards to the floor. She heard shouting but it was enough time to throw the window open. The snowstorm thundered into the room, the window cracked backwards against the wall shattering the glass but Alix was up onto the ledge outside before anyone had time to react.

“This was a bloody stupid idea!” she shouted but her voice was barely audible above the roar of the storm. The blizzard swept across the face of the building as she edged away from the open window, the icy wind cut into her face and hands. It took all of her strength just to stay balanced. Below her, the snow whipped up from the ground. The top of the next window down was just visible but beyond that everything was swallowed up in a dense fog of snow and ice so it was impossible to tell exactly how high up she was.

She sensed commotion at the window and looked across. More shouting. One of the masked men was clambering out uncertainly, clasping the top of the frame as tightly as he could, trying to find a proper footing before heaving his body out onto the ledge. Finally he seemed to get himself balanced and began to creep slowly towards her. In panic, she lost her footing a little, the edge of the stone crumbled away, shards fell into the fog, she caught a sizable gap in the stonework just in time and managed to swing her leg round so she was facing the wall.

“Shit!”

Work your way around the edge,
said the voice in her head, but she was so weak, battered by the storm and exhausted, her arms felt like they had seized up and for every step she took, the masked man seemed to take two. She closed her eyes, bit her lip. Every muscle in her body contracted in pain; bones felt they were made of glass, tendons of old twine. She felt defeated.

The sound of Ned’s
voice carried itself on the wind. A darkness descended on her, her body began to shut down. She swayed precariously for a while. Even the voice in her head seemed distant now, like it was just a memory. The masked man was close, three, four feet away at best. He looked oddly scared, like she was. His eyes pleaded with her to give in, to submit; giving in to them was the easy option now.