Fade to Black (11 page)

He stared hard at her,
through her
, reaching into her thoughts.

“He is known in human literature as The Destroyer—Belhor.”

“Belhor?”

Michael sighed and walked to the mirror, where he stood staring into it.

“Belhor, Belial, Mechembuchus, call him what you will, he has been known by many names over time.” He turned from the mirror, the weary look she saw before plainly evident. “Cut the cake anyway you like, but you are about to confront one of the four Crown Princes of Hell.”

She stumbled, saving herself from falling only by grasping the mantelpiece. He made no move toward her. She noted he just stood there in that crazy, long, black trench coat.

“Get some sleep,” he said at last. “I’ll wake you in three hours.”

She had no strength for further argument or questions; they would have to wait. Smiling weakly at him, she shuffled to the kitchen, drank some water and belly flopped into bed. She was asleep within seconds.

Michael walked back to the window, watching again as the rain hammered at it. He understood Allie’s reaction and had expected it. She was exhausted, for a start. But he knew she had neither grasped the significance of what he had told her, nor the enormity of the task before her. The reality was that he could not apprehend the demon without her and she could not hope to survive more than a day without his protection.

Allie would have many questions when she awoke, some of which he could answer, some he could not—unfortunately, there were still rules to be observed. In fact, he knew they were immutable
laws
that governed the ways in which a being such as he could interact with humans. He turned off the lights and backed into the darkest corner of the room where the streetlights did not penetrate. He would stand there, vigilant, until 7:00 a.m., at which time he’d awaken Allie from her dreams and then plunge her into a nightmare from which she might never recover. He had no choice of course.
Vinculum infinitas.
A deal was a deal.

Chapter Nine

Thursday, 6:00 a.m.

For Arthur Wendell, the morning could not have come quickly enough. The darkness had been overpowering, suffocating. He hated it, yet he craved it. He showered, shaved, and put on a fresh pair of beige trousers and a crisp, white shirt. He buffed his brown loafers and selected a bright tie, then discarded it. No tie today. At 10:00 a.m., he was to meet with Paula Armstrong, the good-looking woman from
La Mode
magazine for whom he had completed income tax returns for the past three years. He had been recommended to her from another client of his, Jackie Bransden, a local girl who worked in the make-up department attached to the magazine’s photographic studio. He liked Paula and she was unfailingly courteous, a trait he admired and valued.

“Why don’t you gut her while you’re at it?”
the voice asked. Arthur hit the floor, shouting and covering his ears.

“C’mon, you can have her as well. Before or after—she’ll love it either way. You know she will. It’s you, after all. You know how women crave you!”

Arthur felt himself go rock hard. His thinking twisted in on itself.
That’s right
, he thought,
they
do
love me
.
Georgie would have done anything for me last night. In fact, she did!
Funny how he seemed to forget. He stroked himself and thought about how she had begged him to stop. God, what a feeling! He remembered the laneway, the Chinese restaurant, and what he had done to her.

“One thing leads to another, Arthur. You know how it goes. We’re going to have such fun!”

Arthur felt himself grow. The electricity coursed through him again.
What a day ahead
, he thought.
What a day!
He didn’t bother about eggs for breakfast; he scrambled for the big red bus, instead.

*****

Mathew Connors was ill. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting to eat again. He had barely slept, and the fact that his brain had gone into neutral at the crime scene in the early hours of the morning worried him. He had been a Detective Constable for two years now and he had never seen anything like the carnage in that Earl’s Court lane. It had not only sickened him, but frightened him as well. He went over the events for the hundredth time, admonishing himself yet again for failing to interview Mr. Lin. How could he have not done that? DCI St. Clair had been generous with him; he knew that. Rachel Strauss and some of the others at the Met were scathing of St. Clair’s appointment, mocking her public school accent and self-possession, but he felt she had shown over the two years of his tenure that she was clearly the star performer. He’d had no problems with her promotion, but he knew she would be tested by the crew.

Well, let’s see how they react to the news that an unfortunate girl had been crucified and ripped apart, barely twenty feet from a brightly lit restaurant
. He wondered how St. Clair would handle the investigation. Certainly, she had been ice cool and professional at the crime scene. He didn’t know how she did it. He reached into his refrigerator for the orange juice, thinking that perhaps he could just handle a small glass of it.

“She’s not that fucking fabulous, you know.”

Mathew spun around, expecting a man to be standing in his kitchen. Not seeing anyone, he ran into his living room. There was no one. He leaned on the doorjamb, his pulse galloping. He was hallucinating he reasoned–over tired and imagining things.

“You fancy her, don’t you?”

Connors spun around again, staring blankly into his tiny kitchen. The voice had been right there!

He stared at the door to his toilet, which was a few feet further down the hall. He crept slowly toward it, looking for any sign of moment from under the door. He flung it open, instinctively lowering himself into a crouch. An empty cubicle stared back at him. Letting out a half-chuckle, he decided he was overwrought. He’d use the toilet while he was there.

Closing the door behind him and flicking the latch, he fumbled with the fly on his navy blue trousers. He was breathing hard, his pulse elevated, a film of sweat on his back. He rolled his shoulders and neck in discomfort, catching his reflection in the small mirror above the narrow porcelain washbasin.

DC Mathew Connors, rugby player and occasional pub bouncer, screamed like a schoolgirl.

*****

Thursday 7:00 a.m.

Allie was deeply asleep until the noise woke her: a hissing, crackling sound. She wrestled the heavy cover off her bed, took a step towards her door, realizing only then what the sound was. Frying bacon. She could smell eggs now, too. A confusion of thoughts and images bombarded her. Michael, the hideous murder, the revelations, and incredible claims from the early hours of the morning–all of it flooded back. Was it all real? The bacon and eggs suggested it was. He was still here. She sank back on the bed, cradling her head in her hands–it was becoming a habit.

She peeked out of her window. The rain had finally stopped, but it was still dark. She looked down at herself, at her white singlet top and pink pajama bottoms, the ones with the strange Japanese cartoon characters who had huge eyes and all looked like AstroBoy. She couldn’t remember changing into them last night.

She creaked open her bedroom door. Michael stood at the stove. He said ‘good morning’ without looking up. She ducked back behind the door. She had to get past him to the bathroom so she could take a shower. Fossicking in the wardrobe, she found a faded, blue dressing gown. It had been her mother’s and she had never had occasion to wear it. Holding it up, she saw it was all but threadbare, with no cord, but it would have to do. She wrapped it around herself and strode out through the kitchen, swishing past him, blurting out a brisk ‘good morning’ as she went.

“How do you like your eggs?” he asked, as she swung the bathroom door shut.

Without thinking, she yelled back the old joke, “Fertilized!”

She was mortified when she realized what she’d said and leant back against the door, her hands covering her face. What had she been thinking?

He chuckled. “Would you settle for fried, easy-over?”

“Yes! Yes. I meant… that.”

Not wanting to think about her gaffe any further, she jumped into the shower and turned the tap on hard, wondering as she did what ‘easy-over’ meant. It sounded very American.

Ten minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom to find him tucking into his own eggs and bacon–a mountain of it, in fact. This surprised her. She’d assumed maybe he didn’t need normal sustenance.

“Man’s gotta eat,” he suddenly said.

“So it seems,” she replied a little sarcastically. “Have you turned American overnight or something?”

“Why, why, why… no, ma’am I-I don’t believe so…” It was classic, bumbling James Stewart and she laughed.

“Not bad, not bad,” she conceded.

“I’m surprised you would know James Stewart,” he said. “He was a big star when I was here… in the forties.”

He went on to explain that over the years, he had spent so much time in the States that he had to watch the language thing. She thought that was reasonable, except for the part of her brain that kept telling her that he was not of this world and she was basically having breakfast with a spirit, or an alien, or as he claimed, an Archangel.
The
Archangel, no less. They ate in silence–her head full of cosmic questions about Michael and the investigation ahead.

“Have you thought about our chat from early this morning?" he asked, right on cue.

She simply nodded and kept eating, not really even wanting to look at him. She was just hanging on to reality. He said nothing more for a minute or so.

“Go on,” he said. “Ask.”

She nodded again, a mouthful egg and toast delaying her response.“Michael,” she finally managed, wiping her lips on a serviette, “I have so many questions that we would be here all day. Basically, I’m not sure I can accept any of this…
craziness
.”

“Yes you can,” he said quietly. “You know you can. You just can’t rationalize it, like you try to rationalize everything else.”

“Is that so?”

“I’m sure of it. I’ve been around a while. I know stuff.”

There it is again
, Allie thought,
the casual, idiomatic speech, the almost ridiculously normal conversation that you would expect between two friends–except one of them is a Master of the Universe
.

“Look,” she said, pointing her fork at him. “My head is swimming with the appalling sights of last night and I have to go soon and coordinate an investigation into a crime that will sicken everyone I speak to this morning and probably the
nation
, once the media gets hold of it. I’m really pretty busy just keeping my own sanity.”

“I can see that,” he said, perhaps a little tersely.

Allie got up from the table, carrying her clean plate to the sink. “Maybe we can talk about this later tonight?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood again.

“Oh sure,” he said, rocking back in his chair. “We can do that. I’ll just putter about the antique shops in Portobello Road today, shall I? Maybe grab a coffee or two–maybe even lunch at Christies? Shall I catch you about 7:00 p.m. for drinks? Would that be okay,
poppet
?”

Allie froze at the sink, afraid to look around.

“You
have
to handle this, Allie,” he continued. “There is no choice here–it doesn’t work to your timetable, or mine, for that matter. Yes, we’ll talk about it later tonight, but after that, the talking is
done
. You have to trust me, as I have to trust you. Do you at least understand that?”

She spun around at him, her fear taking second place to annoyance. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a moron. You expect me to believe and completely take on board this fantastic story of heaven and earth and your pre-eminent role within it all, oh, and at the same time, understand I am somehow pivotal to the outcome of some cosmic-fucking game between goblins and Angels?” She held up her hand at him. “I know it’s not goblins–don’t start about that! To use one of your beloved Americanisms, give me a freakin’ break here!”

He stood up now, impossibly tall in the cramped room. “Give you a break, eh? No. No break. You have a responsibility, St. Clair–no ifs or buts. You drop the ball here, the whole system fails. You think I’m here on holiday? That I have nothing better to do with my time? Do you want to see a million stinking corpses just like the one you can’t get out of your head from last night? This is not about—”

He stopped in mid-sentence, whirled around, and stalked out of the kitchen, leaving her standing there open-mouthed and shaking.
Now what
? she wondered. She could hear him in the living room, his breathing loud, ragged and deep. He was angry, no doubt about that. She hadn’t expected this from him, although what she did expect, she didn’t know either.

His footsteps echoed on the timber floor as he returned to the kitchen. She braced herself. He poked his head around the corner like a child checking to see if the coast was clear.

“It occurs to me,” he said reasonably, “that you don’t know who you are.”

Allie frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I have made certain assumptions about what you know about yourself and your family’s past. It seems David has not apprised you of the situation. Correct?”

Allie’s pulse quickened.
Here it comes
, she thought. Maybe deep down, she did know something.

“Assuming you mean David, my father, and not King David,” she said a little cheekily, but noting there was no reaction. “We had a chat earlier last night… I told you that, and you certainly laid some very heavy information down last night yourself. Beyond that, he has not said anything about me specifically; it was more about
you
. Oh, he gave me a book to read, but I was interrupted by the small matter of a hideous crime, one I am being paid to solve, by the way.”