Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (42 page)

“No,” he said at last. “The point is this: you have been sent to the Inter-World to bring back Sin. There is nothing you can do to prevent that from happening. You can return to the Ether because your body was destroyed by the Spear of Destiny. When you return, your body will be revived automatically. That’s Law nine. Or eight. I’m not sure which. But you are a Vessel because you are a descendant of the Ancient Travellers so you can bring anything you want back with you if you can obtain it and provided also that you return with Sin.”

She took her time thinking about this. It seemed so unnecessarily complex. After a while, she realised she didn’t understand most of it and she still wasn’t sure whether the old man did either.

“Jesus wept, why is everything so fucking hard? What about Ash?”

“Ash? He’s here. Somewhere. Along with Katelyn and Megan. They’re all here.”

“But Katelyn and Megan weren’t killed in the church.”

“That’s correct. But all souls come to the Inter-World upon release from one of the other worlds. Initially at least. The Laicey children were fated to end up here. I’m afraid that was their purpose.”

“They’re purpose?”

“Yes. We all have purpose, after all, although few ever get to recognise what it is. At least they had that privilege.”

“They were children. Innocent children. And they died for what exactly? So I could come here and take back an evil creature to the Ether to destroy it?”

“Yes,” Gabriel shrugged his shoulders again.

“Fine,” Alix huffed. “But I’m not taking anything back to the Ether. I’m not leaving here without Ash and without Katelyn and Megan. I’m not going to abandon them.”

“Is that because you’re in love with Ash and you feel guilty about the children?”

He said it so casually the words caught her by surprise. She stared dumbly at him. The words in response eluded her.

Gabriel smiled and ran his hand through his beard. He found something wedged between the hair. A crumb perhaps. He examined it for a while and, satisfied it was not an integral part of him,
threw it behind the rocks.

“Do you like cards, Alix?” he asked, producing a pack of what looked like old playing cards, but larger than a normal set. The corners were bent and the patterns faded, pastel browns and yellows. Alix didn’t respond. She eyed him suspiciously.

“The truth is: I hate Fate. Those matters that are predetermined – things seen by prophets, people lucky enough to be told by Cronos what is going to happen – they bore me. Sin will be delivered to the Ether. That is the end of it. I can’t stop it.”

“But would you if you could?” she asked quickly.

“I’ll let you decide that in time. But I am not Cronos. I am, like you, his servant. But I am a puppet who has learned to pull his own strings from time to time. Do you see? And
I
believe in Chance.”

He spread the cards out in front of her face up. Each had a different picture on it. She saw at a glance a few of them, but not all: a skeleton, a key, a grave, an old woman, a tower, a frog.

“On the Ether they’re called tarot cards. There are 78 of them. Traditionally they were used in the same way that normal playing cards were used but, as you may know, they are often used to tell something of a person’s future.”

He flipped the deck back over and shuffled. She quickly lost track of what was where. Then he fanned the cards out again but face down this time and offered them to her.

“Choose. It may be the most important choice of your life.”

She surveyed the cards, looked up into the old man’s green eyes but they gave nothing away. Then, without looking, picked a card and gave it to him. He turned it over and she looked at it. A picture of a jester, complete with yellow and red tunic and holding a flower.

“The fool!” said Gabriel excitedly.

“Great. The fool.”

“But of course! The fool. Who is liminal. Like you. Neither here nor there. Not at the beginning and not at the end. But caught here, in the Inter-World.”

“But what does it
mean
?” she asked, exasperated.

Gabriel looked at her and there was a terrible look in his eyes, a glint that was not there before. Something at odds with the old man’s benign features.

Something dark.

Something altogether unpleasant.

Smiling, he handed her the card and took another puff on his pipe. 

Chapter 88

Alix felt the change in the air. The warm breeze had turned cooler and the sun had begun its descent into the valley, lighting up one side of the sky with a blaze of purples and reds. Nothing about this place seemed real. Everything had a twinge of artificiality to it: the sun had set a little too quickly, the grass was a little too green; the rocks a little too jagged. More like a Hollywood film set than a field in the middle of nowhere.

Gabriel had changed as well. He looked frail all of a sudden, fatigued by some mysterious burden. He put the pipe down for the first time on a perfectly sized ledge and turned to her, his green eyes more grey in the failing light.

“I told you I was a messenger,” he said. “That is true and I have a message for you.”

“From whom?”

“From the Original Maker. The one who is responsible for all of this.”

“I don’t understand why the
Maker would allow one of his worlds to be destroyed by Sin.”

Gabriel sighed heavily, leaned back against the rock and stared out into the sunset.

“Spectacular, isn’t it?” he said. “As are all of Cronos’ creations in one form or another. But they are just that: creations, albeit the creations of a higher, omniscient being.” He turned to her. “Do you remember, Alix, when you were a little girl your father made you a miniature pantheon theatre from cardboard? It was a box set he bought for you in London. You helped him colour in all of the little figures and attach them to lollypop sticks and you would play for hours and hours, making stories for your characters to act out, giving them names, personalities, fears, hopes and achievements. Sometimes, you even made them do bad things, didn’t you?”

“How do you know all of this?”

“Because I am the servant of Cronos and I know what he allows me to know. Do you remember the pantheon, Alix?”

“Yes. I can’t remember how old I was but I remember it.”

“What you did was to create your own world. You wrote the rules and the scenarios and you acted them out and saw how things turned out. Not too well for some of your more unfortunate characters as it happened. Do you remember what happened to that cardboard pantheon?”

“Zara stamped on it and I couldn’t use it again,” she said, automatically. She remembered telling the story to Ash. He had laughed at the chagrin she felt with her sister and put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her. Without knowing it, she had been crying. His finger momentarily lingered on her neck, just a little longer than it should have
done. He had pulled it away and looked down at his coffee, embarrassed.  

“And what did you do after she had stamped on it?”

“Got mad. I think I flushed her fuzzy felts down the loo.”

“And after that?”

She thought a while. So long ago. “Dad brought us both a puppet theatre each.”

“And you made up new stories with new characters and the whole thing started again. And the puppet theatre was much better, wasn’t it?”

“So you’re saying Cronos doesn’t give a monkey’s about the Ether and if Sin destroys it he’ll just make another World to replace it?”

“No,
it’s not that he doesn’t care as such. Sin desires the Ether to survive, just in the same way that you would have preferred Zara not to have ruined your pantheon.”

“But Cronos can stop Sin, can’t he?”

“He could. But he will not do so. The Maker does not intervene in the affairs of his Worlds. He does not actively participate in their development, nor does he influence the creatures that inhabit them. The Maker desires that, in this instance, man finds a way to avoid destruction but he will not step in at the eleventh hour to prohibit it. But we’re getting off point. What I want to know is: what do
you
desire, Alix Franchot?”

“I want everything back as it was.”

The old man laughed and shook his head, genuinely amused.

“Oh, you don’t ask much then? Just a major readjustment of time and fate.”

“Is that beyond an omniscient higher being?” she could feel her face burning red. She folded her arms.

“Now, now, young lady, there is no need to be cynical. I’m sorry I laughed at you.”

She shuffled around on her rock to get a little close to him, not really sure how to take this odd man in this odd world.

“Is the Maker
... here?” she asked.

Gabriel thought about it before saying, “yes and no.”

“That’s – again – quite vague for an answer.”

“I suppose it’s fairly non-committal. But the best answer you’re going to get. But anyway,” he threw his hands in the air in mock horror, “I really just don’t get you, Alix. I mean, why not just say it?”

“Say what?”

“Say why you’re here! Why are you here? To save the Ether from destruction? No. I think not. That’s not real enough for you. Despite all you’ve seen. Despite the complete desecration of your erstwhile understanding of how the world worked, the idea that an evil demi-god from another dimension coming to your world to destroy it just doesn’t seem real, does it?”

She looked at him, but not dumbfounded. In a way, he made sense. She had begun to accept that nothing would ever be the same again. But Sin was just a word. He was not real to her. The Destroyer of Worlds was like the micro-organisms in the air. Others said they were there but, since she had never actually seen them, she didn’t need to worry too much.

“But Ash dying was real, wasn’t
it?” he said, finishing her thought process to her surprise. She looked at him questioningly but he didn’t explain. “But there’s something wrong.” He looked at her, as if noticing something different about her for the first time. “Yes, I see.”

“See what?”

“He said something to make you think... so you stole back to his office and went through his computer and you didn’t like what you found, did you?” Alix didn’t say anything. She suddenly found the vines creeping up the rocks more interesting.

“But what did you see? Notes, pictures, plans. Not much really. But you questioned it and it concerned you. You thought you knew him
but that made you think again, didn’t it?”

They sat in silence for a short while. Alix was scratching at the rock with a small twig, playing around like a child in trouble. 

“You know what I found?” she asked eventually.

“Yes. I do.”

“Then what was it?”

“Dear me, Alix, you should have worked it out by now. How can you be so brilliant at reading and understanding people and yet you don’t understand yourself, or him as it turns out.”
She looked up and he laughed. “He’s been looking for Zara, Alix. He’s been looking for your sister for years and the material you found was part of his investigation. The case was made dormant years ago but he never gave up. He devoted his spare time to finding your sister. And you thought he was a freak!”

Alix felt
ashamed. A tear formed in the corner of her eye.

“But why?” she asked.

“Because he thought if he could repair the gaping hole in your life.”

She
swallowed hard but said nothing. Even in the madness of this form of death, she could feel the unstoppable course of blood rushing through her veins.

“
So now, Alix, on to business.” He clasped his hands together purposefully. “As Hades pitied Orpheus, the Maker pities you, Alix. And, as such, there is an opportunity for you to return to the Ether and return Ash’s soul to his body.”

Every beat of her heart felt like it may break her rib cage.

“And what about Sin?”

“Sin is inevitable. Whatever happens,
Fate has decided that Sin will achieve his goal and he will, through you, enter and possess the Ether.”

“To destroy it.”

“Fate has not written the final chapters for the Ether.”

“Is there hope?”

“No. Hope is a confident expectation.  Here there is no hope. But there is uncertainty as to outcome.”

“What do I have to do?”

A long, deep breath. But doesn’t everything seem so irrelevant when compared to love? Gabriel had finished his pipe. He knocked out the remains on the edge of the rock and they were carried off by the wind. The sun was setting fast. The birds had flown away. A cool breeze had descended upon them.

From behind a rock, Gabriel produced a small wooden box. Its sides were worn and tattered. The lid was sealed with a simple gold clasp. He held it up and inspected it and, seemingly satisfied, passed it to her.

“What’s this?”

“Greek mythology isn’t your thing,” said Gabriel. “But you must sure
ly be familiar with Pandora.” He cleared his throat and watched her carefully as she held the box close to her chest. “Prometheus was a Titan, so they say; one of the first Gods of the Greek Golden Age. He was a compassionate and loved man. To aid them, he stole the gift of fire from Zeus and passed it to the mortals. In his anger, Zeus punished Prometheus by creating Pandora, the first woman, and sent her to earth to live among men. With her, Pandora carried a box, or more likely, a jar, which she was told under no circumstances to open. But her curiosity overcame her and Pandora opened the box, releasing into the world all evils.”

“And there was one thing left at the bottom of the box,” said Alix. “Hope.”

“Yes. Pandora knew immediately the error she had made and tried to close the box but it was too late. Mankind was, by that stage, stained by her mistake.”

Alix looked more closely at the box. A groove ran around the centre of the lid. Around that, tiny symbols had been carved delicately into the wood. She didn’t recognise them.

“Is Sin in this box?”

Gabriel gazed out across to where the sun was beginning to submerge behind the horizon, a golden slit of energy draining into the distant earth. One side of the sky was draped in a black sheet punctured with pin
pricks; the other was a vast chasm of deep purple. She couldn’t make out his face any more but now and again she caught a glimpse of the light reflecting in his eyes.

“
You will return to the Ether,” he said. There was a sadness in his voice that broke her heart. “That, I cannot change. You are the Vessel, of course, but you knew that. The brother of Cronos, the Original Maker, lies dormant here, as does the soul of your friend. The fate of the Ether, Alix, is being placed in your hands. You may choose to keep the box shut: the Ether will go on and Ash will remain lost in the Inter-World. Or you may choose to free him and also release the evil within.”

“Why?” Her voice was nothing, just a breeze running across the grass. “Why am I to be burdened with this? Why me?”

“I cannot say, Alix. I am, as I have maintained, just the messenger.”

“But you said some things are within your power to control.”

“Yes. Some things. But this chapter in the Ether’s history was set down a long time ago, long before I came into existence, and there is nothing I can do to release you from your role in the Ether’s history. I only ask that you choose carefully.”

“The Laicey twins?”

“Will be returned once the Portal is closed.”

“Wait,” she said, but he was fading and the rock was softening, the world beginning to implode around her. “I still have so many questions. Is Zara connected to this? I mean to... to what’s happening?”

“That is not for me to say,” his voice was distant now, hollow and empty.

“Is-” but she felt herself slipping into a new state. Not unconsciousness but something less tangible. Something deeper. She was drowning, fighting for air, clasping helplessly at the bubbles of air that floated above her. Gabriel’s voice was nothing but a distant memory now, as was the grass, the rocks, the brilliant sky.

Piece by piece, the Inter-World slipped from her grasp.