Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (39 page)

He
struck Grigori hard around the face with the back of his hand. The boy fell back from the chair and hit the floor. He curled himself up defensively, preparing for another blow, but it never came.

The scene changed.
Grigori sat at a table, his eyes focussed on the paper in front of him held down by a different man: a man in his sixties. A kindly face. Black clothes and dog collar.

“Hello,
Grigori,” said the Priest. “My name is Father Ireland. I’m from the Vatican and I’m here because your family are very worried about you.”

Grigori
didn’t respond but fondled the paper carefully, lovingly even.

“Your family are worried,
Grigori, that the people in your village fear you have a gift that might bring them misfortune. Do you understand that, Grigori? And scared people, sadly, can be dangerous people. Do you understand
that
, Grigori? But there is nothing to fear while I’m here; provided you do as I say. You have, perhaps, a great gift.”

Grigori
looked up at the Priest and there was a fire in his eyes far beyond his age. The Priest recoiled slightly, recognising immediately the abnormality.

“They say I am a messenger of God, Father Ireland,” he said. “Do
you
understand that?”

“I understand what they say, yes. But whether you are a messenger of God or... or just a boy with a good imagination remains to be seen.”

“You are not qualified to judge me, Holy Man. Only God can judge me.”

The Priest folded his arms and
the scene changed again. A long table, laden with silverware, sparkling in the light of the grand chandelier. Green and gold wallpaper, deep red carpet, extravagant and Byzantine furnishings. Father Ireland brought the boy into the room, ushering him forward to the man sat eating at the end of the table. He wore the expression of one who had weathered poorly but the clothes of a cardinal.

“This is the boy? The boy who has spoken to God?” He asked in a German
accent without looking up.

“This is
Grigori,” replied Father Ireland.

“See to it that he leads an uneventful life. His Hebrew ramblings are a sin
. The transcripts you have made of your purported conversations with him shall be destroyed.”

“If I could be given more time, My Lord-”

“No. No more time. This so called prophecy is an abomination.”

The cardinal turned to
Grigori and spoke but Alix didn’t hear the words. The room faded and was replaced with a church.

*

He’s a Prophet,
whispered Azrael.

“A person
who carries God’s message,” said Alix. “From the Greek word profetes, meaning ‘advocate’”.

We refer to a Prophet as someone capable of communicating with the Hollow One – or Cronos for that matter - across Worlds. People who dream of the Inter-World. Most don’t understand the messages they receive unless they have some help. I recognise the Priest from Grigori’s memories.
He must have been the one to nurture his abilities to serve Sin.

“My name is
Grigori Yefimovich,” he said, pulling his arm away, only vaguely aware of the temporary intruder in his mind. “You know me as Ned, the pet name that bastard Omotoso christened me with.”

He laughed and lit another cigarette.

“It is the greatest honour of my life for me to serve the Harbinger and, through him, to serve Sin. How naive I was back then to think that the visit I had was from the Christian God. It was only in England when the Harbinger found me that I learned of the existence of the Nine Great Worlds. I suppose you know all about that now. Cronos, Sin, the Void, the ridiculous laws that govern this world. What are there? Forty nine? Who cares? What matters is the end is coming, doctor. That is not something that can be prevented. Especially now the final part of the jigsaw is in place. That’s you of course. You don’t know about that bit and it’s not my place to tell you. But you will.”

Alix coughed. She tasted a mixture of blood and bile building at the back of her throat but her mouth was too dry to swallow it. At least, she thought, it might choke her before the crucifixion strangled her.

“Why? Why do you want this world to burn?”

“Burn?”
Grigori laughed. “It’s not the burning that interests me, doctor Franchot. You have to kill the bacteria before the wound can heal. It’s the phoenix that rises from the ashes that interests me. Sin will bring order to the chaos. He will destroy mankind and their pathetic beliefs and values. He will show their technology to be useless and their existence irrelevant. And he will have a place in the New Order for those that are loyal to him. Those who do his bidding and those that foretell his victory. It will be glorious.
I
will be glorious.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” she said, blackness seeping in round the corner of her eyes. She felt as though she was standing on a precipice, staring into the darkness, thinking of jumping.

“Crazy?” Grigori moved closer to her again. “No, doctor Franchot. I’m not crazy. I’m very sane.” He spoke quietly, “Would you like to know how it works? It’s quite brilliant really.”

Alix didn’t respond, felt too weak to respond. He walked over to the altar and pulled a wooden box out from the underneath. He placed it carefully on the table, ran his fingers down its sides, examined it with intimate fondness.

“Sin came to me when I was ten in a dream. He took the form of a sea-monster and he spoke to me in a language that I did not recognise but somehow understood. He told me that I was chosen to help his agent on the Ether and that I would come to know this man as the Harbinger, the Bringer of the New Order. He told me that once we have located the children we could use them to keep open a Portal to provide a direct route to the Inter World which could be used as a corridor allowing Sin to enter the Ether.

“But of course,
ascension to the Inter World is simple. Law twelve of the Forty Nine: any soul whose body is destroyed by unnatural means becomes the resident of the Inter-World. The Portal was opened by the murders that the Harbinger committed in this church. The Laicey twins keep the Portal open, providing the connection between the two Worlds, their bodies resident here, their souls in the Inter-World. What is needed is a Vessel to travel through the open Portal and, crucially, to
return
to the Ether with the Hollow One. Harker no doubt told you all of this if the pestilent Necromire in your head has forgotten it.

“
For centuries the Hollow One’s partisans searched for a way to achieve this. Throughout the Dark Ages, hordes of Sin Worshippers swept across Europe bringing death with them. They were the Witch Hunters. Convinced that achieving travel to and from the Inter-World lay in the
method
of death itself, they murdered women in their thousands and whilst ignorant crowds laughed and cheered at the flames consuming those hags and crones that, to their eyes, brought plague to the land and stripped their fields of corn, the Witch Hunters watched carefully the last moments of torture before slyly turning away only to return later to regenerate the body. They found, time after time, that the regeneration performed by their necromancers led to nothing but a barely animated, empty shell; a little like our friends the twins over there. Their bodies were barren, and they knew that the soul had been lost to oblivion.

“But the answer had been there all along, written in the scriptures of the Christian god Yahweh. Mentioned several times of course, but ignored for two thousand years. The Witch Hunters – for that
is what we call the early Sin Worshippers – disregarded the Bible; the incoherent ramblings of a scared and ancient race of people trying to make sense of their complicated world. It had no value to them. But you knew, didn’t you Azrael?”

The Russian looked up suddenly and their eyes met. Never had she felt so much contempt for one man.

The secret of bilateral travel to the Inter-World was lost centuries ago,
said Azrael.

He looked at her. His grin was incessant.

“Ah, the Necromire cannot recall,” he realised. “So much of you was scrambled, wasn’t it demon? Or perhaps... yes... perhaps you never knew in the first place?”

I don’t understand. Nobody knows the secret; nobody even knows whether it is real or not.

“Perhaps I should put you out of your misery.”

Grigori
flicked open the wooden box he had put on the altar. He carefully placed his hands into the box and brought out a metal object, leaf shaped, glinting in the moonlight. About twelve inches long, much like a knife but with no handle. He took a staff from beside the altar and inserted the metal into one end to make, unmistakably, a spear.

“The Spear of Destiny,” he announced. “The lance thrust into Christ’s side during the crucifixion
by the Roman solider Longinus. Little did he know its untold power. And from his body wept blood, because he was human, and water, because he was divine. At least that’s what the Bible would have you believe. Christ was the ultimate regeneration, wasn’t he? And he did it with this spear. Not of a material that can be found on the Ether of course, but something altogether quite alien. You’ll no doubt be beginning to understand, doctor, that creatures and substances such as the Wyrm that so easily incapacitated the wretched Necromire in you from one of the other Great Worlds have seemingly magical properties if brought to the Ether. If used correctly, they can perform miracles.”

Alix breathed slowly, every rise and fall of her chest seemed to
bring her closer to black out. Her body wept with pain; it bled from every pore. She was in Hell, speaking with the Devil.

Grigori
gazed at her capitulated body; her soft, white arms, outstretched in submission. He brushed the spear across her midriff, gently lifting up her top to expose her tensed stomach. Her heart rate quickened, she knew how powerless she was. He examined her flesh where it was untouched by blood, hovered the tip of the spear just below her left breast. She looked away, disgusted.

“You’re so beautiful,” he told her. “I thought that the first time I saw you at
Innsmouth. My beautiful, dark Angel of Death. The Harbinger will be here soon to bring about an end to your suffering. To bring about an end to all suffering.”

Then a noise from behind.

The click of the latch.

He removed the spear, bowed graciously and backed away until he was engulfed by the shadows. 

Chapter 82

Harker stood with her arms folded, her hand stroking her chin, waiting for an answer. There was a musty smell in the windowless room underneath the Grand Hotel that permeated everything. It was the smell of old; unpleasant and stagnant.

Henry and Bill, the small men who tended to the Steward, sat side by side in matching armchairs watching Harker closely, their stumpy legs not quite long enough to make solid contact with the gr
ound. The high backs of the armchairs made them look even more disproportioned. They wore matching suits with thick pin stripes, ill-fitting waist coats and bow ties. It was impossible to tell them apart. Harker had given up trying decades ago.

At the far end of the room the Steward
sat in front of the crackling fire. To Harker, only part of his arm was visible, hung loosely over the chair, fingers tapping gently on a glass of murky, grey liquid.

There was something about this room
that made Harker feel uneasy. Something about it was unnerving. Like the walls themselves were breathing.

“Well, Steward?”

There was a noise from the other side of the chair, something like a sigh but deeper, as if the entire world was expressing indifference.

“Lilith, this must be understood: the secret of how to return from the Inter-World has been hidden for centuries. Many men and Necromire have died protecting it but
there are certain things that are predetermined, certain paths that cannot be altered. You know this well yourself.”

“Bullshit. The Maker bequeathed the gift to shape this world’s future to those that inhabit it. The twenty-eighth Law of the Ether.”

“Yes, but the Maker also provided that the Saviour would determine the fate of the Ether. For the Saviour to exercise that choice there must be a Rapture in one shape or another.”

“Tell me the secret, Steward. You gain nothing from keeping it from me now.”

Henry looked at Bill, or perhaps it was vice versa. They seemed to be enjoying the dialogue. With crooked fingers, the sort of fingers a puppet might have, the Steward lifted the glass of grey liquid and engulfed half of it. He replaced the glass clumsily.

“
You already know the answer, Lilith, to bilateral travel. It is depicted in the portrait that hangs in your hallway.”

Harker pulled a face like she had eaten something disagreeable.

“No. You surely don’t refer to the Spear?” The Steward said nothing, but continued to tap at the glass. “The Spear is lost. It’s not even on the Ether and in any event is unlikely to hold the properties that you attribute it with.”

“Don’t be so hasty, Lilith. The power of the Spear of Destiny has long since been recognised on the Ether by those who are enlightened and those who are not. Hitler started his own world war with the sole or at least primary aim of acquiring it.
And it is here. It has always been here.”

“It is a myth that the Spear may allow return from the Inter-World.”

“It is no such thing.”

Harker looked distastefully at the back of the chair.

“This was what George Bricken was protecting.”

“Yes. Mr
Bricken was the most recent guardian of the Spear and I grieve for his loss.”

“Grieve?” Harker snorted. The midgets shuffled excitedly in their seats, they knew the heat was rising. “
If
the Spear does what you say it does, you entrusted it to the safekeeping of a weak old man? You are a fool, Steward. You should have given the Spear to me and it would not have fallen into enemy hands. Perhaps then, lives could have been saved.”

“I think not, Lilith. As I have said, there are certain matters pertaining to the Ether that are already destined to play out. One of those events is the transfer of power to
the Witch Hunters. More particularly, the acquisition of the Spear by the Harbinger was as inevitable as your reaction to my account of our actions.”

Harker
turned her head in dismay. She moved to find some support from a mahogany table. The item had probably once graced the home of some French aristocrat, maybe even a royal one; now it was used to prop up an old lamp in a forgotten room.

“So let me understand this, Steward, the old man that died was a pawn in your game-plan?”

“Lilith, it is sometimes necessary to make sacrifices for the greater good and, when making those choices, one must ensure that in so doing one bears the smallest loss to our side conceivable.”

“A pawn, Steward.”

“Yes,” and here, for the first time, the slightest hint of annoyance from the faceless speaker, “better to lose a pawn than a knight.”

“I had no idea the Necromire were given to the utilitarian attitude of the feeble minded creatures native to the Ether.”

“Their future is our future, Lilith. Ironically, the father of the concept of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, Jeremy Bentham, designed the Innsmouth institution where we now hide away our dirty secrets. The other pawns that have fallen by the wayside.”

“Like Anwick.”

“A good man, considering his native creed, but I understand the Necromire named Azrael survives?”

“In the body of an ignorant woman named Franchot.”

“Ah, yes, of course. Her father was also a Host, albeit an empty one.”

“We never found a purpose for him and I would not have thought his daughter any more worthy. Fortuitous circumstances brought the wretch and the outcast together but which side of the line they tread is unclear.”

“Indeed.”

There was silence for a moment whilst Harker chewed her tongue thoughtfully. Bill and Henry
watched, eagerly awaiting the next bout.

“So the Spear is the key to bringing the Vessel back through the Portal to unleash Sin upon the Ether,” she said. “Very well. And what of the Sav
iour, Steward? What else have you kept from me?”

“There will be a time, Lilith, when the fate of the Ether shall rest exclusively with the Sav
iour. You know this much.”

She took a step forward, staring dangerously at the back of the armchair, willing the Steward to turn, to see how the centuries had altered him.

“And this Saviour: is it you, Steward?”

The Steward said nothing. Drank the last of the murky liquid. Withdrew his hand from sight. And withered into the chair.

“Very well,” said Harker. “The hard way it is.”