Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (28 page)

Chapter 60

By now they were half way to London. They had also slowed down
again. It had started to snow and giant, white flakes were now landing on the windscreen. She could see break lights in the distance as the traffic clammed up with the drop in visibility. In the distance, flashing information boards read: QUEUES AHEAD 40.

Inside her head the last
few hours of her life spun in an endless cycle. Parts of her memory seemed faded. The fire. She remembered so vividly, the awful feeling of her skin burning and the smoke clogging her lungs. But there was no physical evidence that she had been burnt. The Russian – Grigori – chasing her, his stinking breath and greasy hands. How had she thrown him half way across the room? The eagle that had rescued her on the rooftop. It was all so messed up.

Harker. They were going to see Harker. It had only just occurred to her that, after escaping the rooftop, she had just driven, instinctively, out of the city heading east.

“Is this what madness is like?” She asked the voice in her head.

You tell me. You’re the expert.

She laughed. “I’m a criminal psychologist not a psychiatrist.”

You were prepared to say whether you thought Anwick was mad, though.

She thought about that, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth over and over.

“I was there to evaluate his behaviour.”

No. You were there because Harker wanted Anwick back in Innsmouth and you were going to cover her tracks.

“What? That was point?
I don’t understand.”

They were crawling now, rows and rows of vehicles lining the three carriageways. Frustrated drivers slumping back in their seats, adjusting radios, turning to shout at wailing children. There must have been an accident up ahead but all Alix could see was break lights fading into the distance. Beside her a middle aged man in a Mercedes, slick back hair and prominent chin, smiled at her. She stuck up her middle finger and he looked away, embarrassed. Perhaps being mad had its perks.

Which bit?

“Which bit what?”

Which bit don’t you understand?

“Pretty much all of it.”

Fortunately, the guy in the merc had drifted forward a few places and was no longer in her eye line. He was replaced by an old lady in a Corsa. She looked skeletal, her frail skin pulled tight around her thin skull. Alix might have mistaken her from someone who had died quite some time ago were it not for the heavy drag she took on a cig before re-adjusting her mirror. She flicked the remainder of her cigarette butt out of the car window. It bounced off the tarmac and fell into the black snow shovelled to the side of the road where it was instantly extinguished. She glanced sideways and caught Alix’s eye, scowling at her incredulously, the dark rings around her eyes looking like they were painted on.

Alix chewed her tongue. The traffic still wasn’t moving. It felt suddenly very hot and she switched the heating down a few notches and turned the air con on.

“Tell me what happened to Anwick,” she said.

Ah, yes. My friend the Professor. I shall miss him.
We were ready to take the Laicey twins to a safe house. The idea was to keep them with us, protect them from the Harbinger but then it all started to go wrong. I suspect the Harbinger managed to use his power to influence Anwick’s wife. He returned home to find that she had hacked the maid to death. There was a struggle and she fell backwards down the stairs. I tried to appeal to Anwick but he wouldn’t listen. The sight of the maid and his wife dying unhinged him. I tried to repair the mental damage but his mind had already started to decay rapidly. And with it, so did I.

The connection between a Necromire and his
Host is symbiotic. The mental stability of the Host directly affects the mental stability of the Necromire. That’s why anything that affects your brain waves – caffeine, alcohol, drugs – is a bad thing. There was only so much I could do before I began to succumb to Anwick’s response to the trauma his mind had endured. I remember him in the garage, hooking the pipe to the car exhaust. I knew what he was doing. It was something he had talked about before. Something we had discussed. Self termination: the only way to truly break the connection between Necromire and human. I think that the burden of his responsibility to the World had damaged him irreparably and the horror of what happened that night he was arrested was the catalyst that caused his fragile mind to implode.

I guess I should have
seen it coming long before but I had hoped he could keep it together long enough to protect the Laicey girls.

“But why are the Laciey twins so important? What have they got to do with Sin?”

I’m coming to that. Let’s stick with Anwick for now.

“
Fine. Does that happen a lot? People with Necro-whats-its in their heads going nuts?”

What do you think
Innsmouth’s for?

“
Innsmouth is a mental institute for people driven mad by-”

Yes. By H
osting a Necromire. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that well.

“That’s why it’s so secret. Because you have people in there affected by aliens from other worlds. That’s why no one knows about it, why it’s outside of the system.”

Yes.

“I don’t want to get all conspiratorial and nine-eleven slash Watergate on you but does the government know about this?”

There are a handful of people – some in government – who are trusted by us to know the secret of the Necromire, yes.

“Brill. And will I be going nuts soon or are we already there?”

You’re doing fine. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.

“
Dudey. So what happened next?”

Well,
fortunately Harker found out what was happening. Anwick’s arrested and Harker pulls some strings to get him transferred to Innsmouth. But then something happened. We were moved. I don’t know why. Perhaps Harker realised that we needed one last opportunity and arranged the transfer. I don’t know. I remember the truck hitting something. Grinding into something that stops it fast. We jolt forward. There’s blood. I get Anwick to open the doors. There’s still some power left. And he walks away from the wreckage. Walks and walks to where he knows the Laicey children are. The guilt of what happened bored into his soul, it had contaminated him. He walked right into the field where Megan and Katelyn played... After that, I’m not sure.

“Was she dead? Katelyn? Anwick didn’t kill her, did he?”

No. Anwick didn’t kill her. He tried to save her. But
he
had already started it.

“Started what?”

I’m not sure. Maybe Harker knows. But I don’t understand what the Harbinger is trying to achieve and I don’t understand how the Laicey children are supposed to be responsible for Sin’s entry into the Ether. 

“You don’t know? You put in so much effort trying to protect the Laicey children but you don’t know why they’re important?

Look, I was pretty shot to pieces by what happened to my previous Host. I’ve lost a lot of my memory. I think. It’s all right for you pretending this is so unreal and how you must be going mad but believe me it’s no picnic for me either.

“Okay, calm down, I’m sorry. Don’t overreact. One day you
’re happy as Larry sitting in one of the most powerful minds around and now you’ve ended up in my fucked up universe where I don’t even really understand myself let alone you. I’m sure it’s very traumatic for you.”

Azrael didn’t answer.
The traffic stood still. Alix felt apprehensive. A storm was coming. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck move. She could feel the tension in the air. Beside her, Skeletor lit up another menthol.

“I want to believe,” she murmured.

Why? Because believing me is better than accepting the alternative? Or because you’ve always known the world was bigger and more complex than it seemed.

“A bit of both, I guess.” The snow was falling thickly now, the wiper blades struggling to keep the screen clear. She diverted the heat through the top vent so the snow would melt quicker and be washed away. The washer fluid was still frozen. The low hum of the idling engines around her sounded like the world was taking its last large intake of breath, readying itself for the fall.

“In Innsmouth,” she said, “I felt something. We did something. The man who came to the cell- he- I don’t know...”

Did you feel the Essence consume you? Like taking off sunglasses on a summer’s day. At first the light blinds you but then you see everything in true colour, as it actually is and not as it was dampened by the shades?

“Yes. That’s it. Everything suddenly felt... real.”

And on the rooftop. You knew something could save you. The eagle. You called to it and it came
.

“Yeah. Yes. It was like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”

Our bond is more powerful than you can possibly begin to imagine. The Essence is the living combination of you and I. A third entity created by our connection. It is dormant for most of the time until it is needed.  But it can, with time, enable you and I to have a greater control over our physical environment.

“I can do stuff like Superman. Cool. Can I fly?”

There’s no need for cynicism but the stronger and more adept our relationship becomes, the higher the limit on our capabilities is.

“Is that how the Harbinger managed to get to Anwick in
Innsmouth, how he got to Anwick’s wife?”

Yes. The Harbinger has one of the most powerful Essences’ that I have ever come across. He is able to reach out across both time and space to a degree that I have never seen before. But his power is not limitless. Fortunately. Only Sin’s power in the Ether is limitless.

“What about...”

Alix stopped. Something had changed. That feeling in the air, it clasped itself around her heart and gripped it tightly. Around her, she sensed people felt the same. To her left, parents were anxiously wrestling to calm their screaming children down; in front, Slick Back had got out of his car and was staring up the road into the distance. Even Skeletor had flicked away a half finished cig and had wound up the window.

A storm was coming.

Alix perched herself over the steering wheel and squinted at the line of traffic ahead. How vulnerable they all seemed, so tightly packed nose to bumper, disappearing off into a haze of snow and fog. She checked her mirrors. The same sight, reversed.

Alix... Wait...

She undid her seat belt. Something stirred in the pit of her stomach. The same thought kept coming back again and again.

A storm was coming.

Alix... He’s here.

She strained to listen above the engine noise. A pop. Like a gun being fired a long way off. The farmers out in their fields shooting pheasants, her father would tell her. Nothing to worry about. Then another pop. Then another, louder this time. A trucker jumped down from the cab of his lorry and walked over to where Slick Back was stood motionless, one hand hovering over the bonnet of his merc. The kids in the people carrier wouldn’t shut up.

Pop, pop, pop.

Alix, we need to be moving. Get out of the car.

She stared up the road. In the distance, just at the point where white fog swallowed up the traffic, people were getting out of their cars. Some hurriedly, dragging kids and bags and papers with them, others tentatively, as if not quite sure what the best thing to do was. Slick Back had pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and was speaking to someone urgently. The trucker had run back to his cab. What the Hell was happening?

Alix, get out of the car.

Pop, pop, pop. Louder and louder.

Then she saw it.

A four-by-
four, its rear tail lights gleaming, only half visible as it sat in the mouth of the fog jolted violently. Its windows shattered outwards like a bomb had been set off inside and the whole car lifted up off the floor and dropped again, lurching wildly right as it did and ploughing into a truck. Pop. Its roof had ripped open and a plume of smoke rose from its engine.

Then a smaller car next to it, bright pink, a Beatle maybe, suffered the same fate. Pop. The windows exploded outwards and the car was thrown sideways, further than the four by four, onto the side of the motorway where it buried itself in the heaped snow. A middle aged man in the car behind sprawled out of his BMW, panicked and scared. He looked around and started to climb over the bonnet of the car next to him, trying to reach the other side of the motorway. His BMW detonated
. The force of the explosion propelled him across the carriageway into the side of a truck in a heap of blood and bone.

All around her, more and more people scuttled out of their cars and made for the snowy bank.

Alix, as I say, please get out of the car now.

Alix grabbed the door handle. Nothing. She pulled it again. The handle moved but the door didn’t. She hit the central locking. The mechanism made a noise but whatever she did the door didn’t budge.

“What the Hell?”

I don’t know. Try the other side.

She scrambled over the gear stick but the passenger door was equally useless. Ahead, another explosion and she caught a glimpse of a small Fiat van lifting off the ground, rotating a full three hundred and sixty degrees in the air before crashing down on top of a convertible Saab.