| Supernatural Fiction posted September 12, 2013 | Chapters: |
...6 7 -8- 
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Mike Radshaw tries to talk sense
A chapter in the book Mike Radshaw and the Black Dawn
Black Sky Dawning - BD8
by Fleedleflump
The author has placed a warning on this post for language.| Background Mike Radshaw has beaten the death demon Mr Black, but not before he sent an uber-powerful boy to wreak havoc on the world. |
Seething blackness engulfed my senses, riddling my body with electric sensation and crawling across my skin like swarms of ants. I felt myself coughing, wheezing air through the ruptures in my chest and hacking hunks of clotted blood into the ether, but I couldn't hear anything. I knew I was moving because my internal sensors were going haywire, but 'moving' is probably a relative concept when you've just stepped out of hell into a tear through the universe to chase an innocent messiah back to reality.
I studied that last thought for a moment, and then decided it wasn't worth the headache.
Like a sarcastic mosquito caught in a tornado, I span and flipped my way through nothingness. If I had anything to throw up, it'd be flying away from me right now in twisting ribbons to coat any onlookers. On the back of that realisation came another - I couldn't actually breathe. Even beyond my deflated lung and the pain gut-punching me from inside with every heartbeat, the frenetic movement meant I couldn't gulp in any air. If this journey took much longer, I'd arrive at my destination a badly dressed, under-deodorised corpse. Lights flashed like LED fireworks in the spaces behind my eyes. I wasn't sure which of the various unpleasant conditions caused them, but at least I had something pretty to look at.
Realising the fatalistic turn my thoughts were taking, I reminded myself why I couldn't die. The Angwrath was trained to be almost entirely bad - that was to say, he'd make everything deeply unpleasant because he'd grown up believing the entirety of existence and its populace was too nice and pretty. Clearly, he'd never watched Jeremy Kyle. He'd bring the black dawn everyone seemed to agree was a bad thing and quite possibly cause the deaths of millions of innocent people.
More importantly, Mister Black did a number on Amy's face. She was the only person worth her salt in the piss-poor experiment called My Life, the only one who made me believe there was anything worth saving about people. She was out of scope, the place bad guys weren't meant to go. If this was a buddy cop action film, she was my 'cop's family' and everyone knows you don't fuck with a cop's family. He broke the rules, and destroying the insides of his head with my magic hand wasn't punishment enough. I had to ruin his plans too. As for the Knights, not only did they let it happen, they actively participated.
Oh yeah, I had some visits to make.
Summoning all my mental strength, which admittedly might have been less than a Spice Girl with concussion, I thought about where I needed to be. I pictured the Angwrath - that naked twelve-year-old boy - and did my best not to include his junk in the image. Even in my head, there were some places not worth going. I didn't know how this void travelling thing worked, or where I might get spat out, but if I thought hard enough, believed strongly enough, perhaps-
CRACK!
Air! I wasn't spinning and sweet breath washed into my working lung. The joy might have been greater if I hadn't realised I appeared to be in the sky, falling through thin air. My fear didn't have long to manifest, though - mostly because it turned into fresh pain when my body impacted something smooth, hard, and entirely unforgiving. There were better things to have landed on - a bed of nails perhaps, or a thousand Dolly Partons. Unsure what made me think of that image, I banished it and took in my surroundings.
Under a strangely grey shadow, a broad river snaked into the distance. Not far away was Big Ben or, more precisely, the clock tower that housed it. So, I was in London once more. The realisation might have been more comforting if I wasn't looking down on Big Ben. I dragged a shuddering breath and let it ooze out, trying to ignore the hideous agony ripping through my chest. Casting my gaze across the Thames, I saw Charing Cross station and marvelled at how different it looked from the sky.
Finally, something clicked in my brain as the cogs ground away. It was running like an old Celeron without enough RAM (how's THAT for a geeky thought), but the evidence was clear. I was on the London Eye. I don't mean 'on it' in the sense of taking a ride and snapping some cool piccies. I mean on as in ON TOP. I'd have sighed, but it hurt too much.
My cheek was pressed against the glass of a passenger pod and I could see a thin line of blood trickling away over the horizon of its rounded exterior, drawing a line from my mouth to uncharted territory. Lain flat in the foreground was my arm, somewhat like a fallen tree branch with its bark-like skin and dark colour.
"Gather your wits, Mike." I thought about Trinity at the start of The Matrix and angled for some of her energy. "Get up, you pussy."
One arm at a time, I lifted myself off the glass. We didn't appear to be in motion and the screams I could hear from below might've had something to do with it. That grey pall was getting darker and a deep chill was emanating from above. Wobbling to my knees, I could see why. Black clouds were descending like alcohol-induced unconsciousness, draping their way across the sky. The sarcastic part of me compared it to a normal London summer but even I had to admit it wasn't usually this bad. Why in all that's fucked and holy did I reappear here?
"Why are you following me?" demanded a voice from behind. It went from high pitched to death metal growl and back again, giving me a clue who was speaking.
I turned on my knees to see the Angwrath, his feet planted apart and arms held over his head. The first thing I noticed was armpit hair. I know, it's a funny thing to look at first, but we look for what we most fear. With Azza's warnings lurking in my mind, what I most feared was this kid hitting puberty. He was looking at me like a petulant silverback, all power and suspicion. I actually felt the gulp working through my throat. This boy was a human atom bomb on a hair trigger, and that hair was about as stable as Kerry Katona on a TV breakfast sofa.
"There are some things you should know," I said, holding my hands up in what I hoped he'd recognise as submission. "And it's not just that I've got girl bands on the brain. You've got your GCSE in Unlimited Power, but you never took the Common Sense module."
He lowered his arms and the dark pall's progress halted. "Abaddon warned me about you, Radshaw. He said you'd try to confuse me, but I should ignore you."
"He probably also told you he was all-powerful and couldn't be harmed." I shrugged. "Look where that got him." Our eyes met and I could see the raw potential burning behind his gaze, yearning for use. There was just the merest hint of confusion, though. The Angwrath's mould wasn't quite set yet. Like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, I decided the potter's wheel needed my input. "Look around you, kid. Does this look like the world Abaddon brought you up in? He loaded your education, weighted the dice, painted the dominos in his favour. Err, those are metaphors, in case he didn't teach you that."
His chest heaved and I couldn't tell if he was angry, upset or baffled. Mind you, at that age I'd usually been all three at once.
"I don't have anything else to be," he whispered. "I am the power and the glory, a magnet to all things and beings. Nothing can resist me."
I chuckled. "Yeah, round here we call that the Lynx effect." I shrugged. "But like most advertising, it's really bullshit. In reality, you'll do just as well with a cheap own-brand imitation from Asda."
He blinked. "You speak in riddles, Radshaw. Say what you mean. Why should I not do as Abaddon urged me - what difference is there between life as it is now and the darkness of my bleak oblivion?"
"Probably not a lot, if we get right down to it." I shrugged again, boiling the thoughts down in my head. "But there's one thing here that's more important than anything else."
His eyes burned. "What?"
"Choice."
His nostrils flared visibly as he flexed his underdeveloped body. "This is beyond the whims of man. I serve a purpose for all existence. The choices of humans do not factor."
"Not their choice, not even mine. I mean yours. Listen kid; when a demon you've never met before suddenly gives you a life mission, that's dodgy. He played you by making sure you only saw one very extreme facet of what is. You stand there with your milky white boy-skin approaching the most powerful moment of your life, but dude ... you haven't lived. You talk fancy but there's nothing backing it up."
"What do you mean?"
I looked into eyes as deep as the ocean and yearning like Captain Nemo, and I knew I was right. "You think there's only one path to follow but you don't know anything. That isn't choice. That's doing what you're told without question. If what I've heard is right, you're not just meant to appear and kill or bless everything on the spot. You're meant to live here, to understand the way things are so you can know whether there's imbalance."
Shadows rippled like dark water reflections across the pod surface we perched on, playing out a dance of menace and chaos. "I can only be what I am," he whispered eventually.
"And what are you - a disposable camera or the living embodiment of the Big Brother house?" His brow furrowed so I continued quickly. "I don't see a tool that happens to be called an Angwrath. I see a teenage boy with a whole world in front of him - one he wants to explore. Can't you be both things at once?"
His chest was heaving and the glistening in his gaze confirmed his ability to feel. "I don't see a way out of this. The Black Dawn is here to level your playing field."
I glanced up at the roiling clouds. "Crappy weather in London? That's like shitting in a cesspit, kid. Why not put things off? Take some time to live and experience the world. Duplicate some fish or turn the Thames into a cheap Chardonnay. Essex girls'll love that one. Get laid - I hear it's a worthwhile experience."
"My powers are at their peak as I become a man. If I don't act now, they will diminish steadily." His shock of blond hair buffeted in the breeze and, damn it, he looked cute. He wasn't David Beckham struggling for coherency, he was Hugh Grant stammering his way through a romantic approach. "I'll only be able to effect a subtle change."
"Subtle is fine." I took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. "Subtle is meaningful."
We stared at one another for a while as his chest heaved and mine sent waves of nausea through my frame. I was fighting an urgent need to cough. Blood was collecting in my throat, but this felt like a fragile moment and I didn't want to shatter it. The future of the western hemisphere teetered in the balance while one innocent boy wrestled with indecision. Kneeling opposite his anguished expression, probably dying and as spent as Eddie Izzard on his forty third marathon, I couldn't decide if I felt privileged or too exhausted to care. I felt a line trickling from my mouth and my breath piled up against the obstructions in my head.
I sneeze-coughed, leaning forward and gargling out a beautiful combination of blood, bile and phlegm.
At once, the moment was broken. Bare feet thudded towards me and I looked up desperately, realising my head was at exactly the wrong height as the Angwrath stood in front of me. As shadows retreated and the deathly-cold winds subsided, something akin to hope bloomed in my chest. That, or my heart just exploded.
"Thank you, Radshaw. I have much to consider." He planted a hand on my shoulder and pushed me to my back. Agony kicked me in the ribs and I groaned, but it turned to a moan of relief when his bare hand touched my ruptured chest and sweet numbness suffused me. "I think the world needs you in it." His fingers touched my blackened hand and it faded to that subtly grey tint I'd got used to. Still demonic, but no longer looking like a prop from The Mummy. Through the beauty of painless air, I saw him wave a hand awkwardly. "Goodbye."
"Wait," I coughed. "I just want to know one thing." He raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't I change? In Abaddon's domain, my arm turned but the rest of me stayed the same. Everything and everyone was altered except me. Why?"
He smiled. "Not everything needs balance. You're not a good guy, Mike, but you're not a bad one either. Brave or stupid, aggressive or afraid, right or wrong - none of it matters. You're just you." With that, he simply wasn't there. My hair wafted as air rushed to the space he'd vacated.
"Good luck, kid," I muttered as the sun came out, picking detail from London in reflections and shadows. As the maelstrom of madness faded, my ears heard the sirens and shouts from below. I waggled my tongue mentally - this was going to take some explaining.
I rolled to my front and looked down at a gaggle of white-faced tourists in the pod beneath me. Talk about front row seats - and what an angle! I shrugged at them as I shouted through the glass.
"I'd really like to get down now!"
*****
I sat alone in the darkened pub, perched on the single chair I'd dragged into the middle of the floor, and faced the door. After two days of chaos and explaining, I was making the necessary call. It felt good to be amongst shadows that weren't trying to frighten, maim or kill me. The silence calmed my senses like airborne balm, soaking into my lungs and suffusing my thoughts. The comfortable feeling of my gun holster nestled against my chest wasn't mitigated by the fact it was empty. My jacket pressed the leather into my shirt, against my heart, and it served a purpose.
Presently, keys jangled in the lock, pausing uncertainly - presumably, because the person holding them realised the mechanism was already undone. After a few moments, the door creaked open in a way I could only describe as tentative. A group of guys edged into the common room, squinting at the space before them like asylum seekers emerging from a cargo container. The Knights, afraid of their own lair - how appropriate.
I waited until they turned the light on before smiling. Judging by their expressions, it didn't do much to put them at ease.
"Radshaw..." started the first one - an older guy I didn't recognise.
I held up a hand to cut off what he might say next. "Here's how it is. My level of respect for you guys, whatever it once was, is now lower than an arthritic sloth's speed index. If things had turned out differently - if the black dawn was upon us, if Amy died while I was off fixing your fuck-ups ... hell, if I found myself in a slightly worse mood - this place'd be ashes and blood by now. You'd be fighting one another over the remaining intestines to stuff back in the holes where your guts should be."
I pointed to a group of chairs I'd arranged facing my own. "Sit." Their expressions ranged from defiant to meek, but they all complied.
"Now," I fixed each in turn with a stare. "This is how it's going to be. Next time something supernatural's happening in London, you come to me. I'll tell you how it's going to play out, and you'll follow the route I map for you. You don't plot, you don't act, you don't wipe your worthless arses without consulting me. Understood?" Menace drifted on the air, but I had more than all of them put together. "I'll be taking your silence as total compliance. Five points if you can name the song I just paraphrased." Another silence. "No, I didn't think so."
The old guy who'd first appeared cleared his throat. "So that's it - you expect us to work for you now?"
I shrugged. "I don't expect you to. I know you will. See, you've proved you can't be trusted to do what's best. You followed that dickhead Wilberford way beyond the point of rational consent."
"He's history. We sent him back to the Vatican."
"Too little, too late. The Knights are now my resource, my army to direct as I see fit. I want unfettered access to all your archives, your research materials, the doodles you scribble when you can't sleep at night - and I'm guessing that happens a lot. It all belongs to me."
He shifted again and I decided he was the ringleader. "What do we get in return for this arrangement?"
"You get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing you're doing the right thing. You get the reassurance you'll never again try to sacrifice a baby for some fucked up sense of greater good. Most importantly, you get my personal assurance I won't spank you within inches of your lives."
"We work for the Pope." He blew himself up, chest thrust forward. "We are a tool of the most holy."
I almost laughed. "I had to deal with a rancid old gypsy woman to find Mr Black. I gave her my spit, blood and spunk so she could get her jollies, then Black made festival decorations from her innards. I'd walk through hell and drag her disgusting person back into this existence before I defer to your previous master. Fuck the Pope." I pointed at the floor between us. "When he comes here, begs for my forgiveness, and satisfactorily explains why letting Amy get tortured and handing over a toddler to a death demon was the right thing to do ... then he gets a say."
The old guy didn't once look back at his colleagues. His pale green eyes met mine with a calculating gaze. He didn't mind the silence floating between us, and I respected that.
"You're full of shit, Radshaw," piped up someone hiding at the back.
"Shut up, Barnstable," said the old guy, standing up and approaching me with hand extended. "We have a deal Radshaw." I heaved a huge inward sigh of relief as I stood to grip hands with him. "Don't lead us astray. We've had enough of that for all our lifetimes."
I nodded, and then took my leave without another word.
*****
"I just wish I'd been there to see their faces," said Amy, smiling at me from the hideous turquoise pillow of her hospital bed. "With the Knights working under you, you're not going to need an assistant anymore."
I shifted in the chair, harder than a statue of Vinnie Jones and so uncomfortable my arse went to sleep within moments of being placed on it. "Are you kidding? I'll need someone to keep them in line while I'm out getting the shit kicked out of me by terrifying forces of evil."
She giggled and I marvelled at how like herself she looked. Last time I'd seen her, her face looked like squashed steak and kidney pudding. Now, the only trace of all that damage was a network of faint scar lines.
I felt tears filling my eyes. "I never thought I'd be able to look you in the eye again."
"It wasn't your fault, boss. You caught up to him - you sorted him out for me."
"Yeah," I smiled. "I dragged his brains out through his face.
"I feel suitably avenged."
I nodded. "I just can't get over how great you look. I need to send your consultant a fruit basket so big he'll die of health food poisoning."
"I wasn't in a good place." She lowered her eye to avoid my gaze. "It was bad, Mike - there's no denying it. They told me I might not see again, and they'd need to rebuild my face over a few months. But then I went under for the first surgery yesterday and dreamed about a boy. He was naked and happy, and he smiled at me the whole time. When I came round, the nurses were all running round, excited. My face was almost normal - they said it was impossible." She raised her gaze to mine again. "That was him, wasn't it - the Angwrath?"
"Sounds like," I said, nodding. "I'm starting to think this kid might be a messiah worth believing in."
She shifted, wincing. "He's welcome to come back and finish the job."
"Give the kid a break. He's learning to be subtle."
"So, you finally got round to going on the London Eye. Not quite the way you expected, though."
I snorted. "I'm just glad the custody sergeant was an old mate from my time in The Job. Otherwise, I'd still be in a cell, and they'd still be thinking I was a member of Fathers for Justice. I think I'm going to take a week off."
"No you're not," she chuckled. "Something will go pear-shaped and you'll feel obliged to peel, poach and serve it up for dessert. Besides, I know you're going to look into this Angwrath. It's not every day you meet Jesus' cousin. He's something genuinely new - a force not seen before in modern society."
I nodded. "Well hung, too."
"Mike!"
"What?" I said, grinning. "It was literally two inches from my face - it's not like I tried to notice."
We spent some time in verbal fencing and I settled into the comfort of my friend's company. Life felt alright again. London and I were once more friends, I had a powerful new ally (at least for the moment) and the world was free to flush itself down the shitter.
Until the next time.
I studied that last thought for a moment, and then decided it wasn't worth the headache.
Like a sarcastic mosquito caught in a tornado, I span and flipped my way through nothingness. If I had anything to throw up, it'd be flying away from me right now in twisting ribbons to coat any onlookers. On the back of that realisation came another - I couldn't actually breathe. Even beyond my deflated lung and the pain gut-punching me from inside with every heartbeat, the frenetic movement meant I couldn't gulp in any air. If this journey took much longer, I'd arrive at my destination a badly dressed, under-deodorised corpse. Lights flashed like LED fireworks in the spaces behind my eyes. I wasn't sure which of the various unpleasant conditions caused them, but at least I had something pretty to look at.
Realising the fatalistic turn my thoughts were taking, I reminded myself why I couldn't die. The Angwrath was trained to be almost entirely bad - that was to say, he'd make everything deeply unpleasant because he'd grown up believing the entirety of existence and its populace was too nice and pretty. Clearly, he'd never watched Jeremy Kyle. He'd bring the black dawn everyone seemed to agree was a bad thing and quite possibly cause the deaths of millions of innocent people.
More importantly, Mister Black did a number on Amy's face. She was the only person worth her salt in the piss-poor experiment called My Life, the only one who made me believe there was anything worth saving about people. She was out of scope, the place bad guys weren't meant to go. If this was a buddy cop action film, she was my 'cop's family' and everyone knows you don't fuck with a cop's family. He broke the rules, and destroying the insides of his head with my magic hand wasn't punishment enough. I had to ruin his plans too. As for the Knights, not only did they let it happen, they actively participated.
Oh yeah, I had some visits to make.
Summoning all my mental strength, which admittedly might have been less than a Spice Girl with concussion, I thought about where I needed to be. I pictured the Angwrath - that naked twelve-year-old boy - and did my best not to include his junk in the image. Even in my head, there were some places not worth going. I didn't know how this void travelling thing worked, or where I might get spat out, but if I thought hard enough, believed strongly enough, perhaps-
CRACK!
Air! I wasn't spinning and sweet breath washed into my working lung. The joy might have been greater if I hadn't realised I appeared to be in the sky, falling through thin air. My fear didn't have long to manifest, though - mostly because it turned into fresh pain when my body impacted something smooth, hard, and entirely unforgiving. There were better things to have landed on - a bed of nails perhaps, or a thousand Dolly Partons. Unsure what made me think of that image, I banished it and took in my surroundings.
Under a strangely grey shadow, a broad river snaked into the distance. Not far away was Big Ben or, more precisely, the clock tower that housed it. So, I was in London once more. The realisation might have been more comforting if I wasn't looking down on Big Ben. I dragged a shuddering breath and let it ooze out, trying to ignore the hideous agony ripping through my chest. Casting my gaze across the Thames, I saw Charing Cross station and marvelled at how different it looked from the sky.
Finally, something clicked in my brain as the cogs ground away. It was running like an old Celeron without enough RAM (how's THAT for a geeky thought), but the evidence was clear. I was on the London Eye. I don't mean 'on it' in the sense of taking a ride and snapping some cool piccies. I mean on as in ON TOP. I'd have sighed, but it hurt too much.
My cheek was pressed against the glass of a passenger pod and I could see a thin line of blood trickling away over the horizon of its rounded exterior, drawing a line from my mouth to uncharted territory. Lain flat in the foreground was my arm, somewhat like a fallen tree branch with its bark-like skin and dark colour.
"Gather your wits, Mike." I thought about Trinity at the start of The Matrix and angled for some of her energy. "Get up, you pussy."
One arm at a time, I lifted myself off the glass. We didn't appear to be in motion and the screams I could hear from below might've had something to do with it. That grey pall was getting darker and a deep chill was emanating from above. Wobbling to my knees, I could see why. Black clouds were descending like alcohol-induced unconsciousness, draping their way across the sky. The sarcastic part of me compared it to a normal London summer but even I had to admit it wasn't usually this bad. Why in all that's fucked and holy did I reappear here?
"Why are you following me?" demanded a voice from behind. It went from high pitched to death metal growl and back again, giving me a clue who was speaking.
I turned on my knees to see the Angwrath, his feet planted apart and arms held over his head. The first thing I noticed was armpit hair. I know, it's a funny thing to look at first, but we look for what we most fear. With Azza's warnings lurking in my mind, what I most feared was this kid hitting puberty. He was looking at me like a petulant silverback, all power and suspicion. I actually felt the gulp working through my throat. This boy was a human atom bomb on a hair trigger, and that hair was about as stable as Kerry Katona on a TV breakfast sofa.
"There are some things you should know," I said, holding my hands up in what I hoped he'd recognise as submission. "And it's not just that I've got girl bands on the brain. You've got your GCSE in Unlimited Power, but you never took the Common Sense module."
He lowered his arms and the dark pall's progress halted. "Abaddon warned me about you, Radshaw. He said you'd try to confuse me, but I should ignore you."
"He probably also told you he was all-powerful and couldn't be harmed." I shrugged. "Look where that got him." Our eyes met and I could see the raw potential burning behind his gaze, yearning for use. There was just the merest hint of confusion, though. The Angwrath's mould wasn't quite set yet. Like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, I decided the potter's wheel needed my input. "Look around you, kid. Does this look like the world Abaddon brought you up in? He loaded your education, weighted the dice, painted the dominos in his favour. Err, those are metaphors, in case he didn't teach you that."
His chest heaved and I couldn't tell if he was angry, upset or baffled. Mind you, at that age I'd usually been all three at once.
"I don't have anything else to be," he whispered. "I am the power and the glory, a magnet to all things and beings. Nothing can resist me."
I chuckled. "Yeah, round here we call that the Lynx effect." I shrugged. "But like most advertising, it's really bullshit. In reality, you'll do just as well with a cheap own-brand imitation from Asda."
He blinked. "You speak in riddles, Radshaw. Say what you mean. Why should I not do as Abaddon urged me - what difference is there between life as it is now and the darkness of my bleak oblivion?"
"Probably not a lot, if we get right down to it." I shrugged again, boiling the thoughts down in my head. "But there's one thing here that's more important than anything else."
His eyes burned. "What?"
"Choice."
His nostrils flared visibly as he flexed his underdeveloped body. "This is beyond the whims of man. I serve a purpose for all existence. The choices of humans do not factor."
"Not their choice, not even mine. I mean yours. Listen kid; when a demon you've never met before suddenly gives you a life mission, that's dodgy. He played you by making sure you only saw one very extreme facet of what is. You stand there with your milky white boy-skin approaching the most powerful moment of your life, but dude ... you haven't lived. You talk fancy but there's nothing backing it up."
"What do you mean?"
I looked into eyes as deep as the ocean and yearning like Captain Nemo, and I knew I was right. "You think there's only one path to follow but you don't know anything. That isn't choice. That's doing what you're told without question. If what I've heard is right, you're not just meant to appear and kill or bless everything on the spot. You're meant to live here, to understand the way things are so you can know whether there's imbalance."
Shadows rippled like dark water reflections across the pod surface we perched on, playing out a dance of menace and chaos. "I can only be what I am," he whispered eventually.
"And what are you - a disposable camera or the living embodiment of the Big Brother house?" His brow furrowed so I continued quickly. "I don't see a tool that happens to be called an Angwrath. I see a teenage boy with a whole world in front of him - one he wants to explore. Can't you be both things at once?"
His chest was heaving and the glistening in his gaze confirmed his ability to feel. "I don't see a way out of this. The Black Dawn is here to level your playing field."
I glanced up at the roiling clouds. "Crappy weather in London? That's like shitting in a cesspit, kid. Why not put things off? Take some time to live and experience the world. Duplicate some fish or turn the Thames into a cheap Chardonnay. Essex girls'll love that one. Get laid - I hear it's a worthwhile experience."
"My powers are at their peak as I become a man. If I don't act now, they will diminish steadily." His shock of blond hair buffeted in the breeze and, damn it, he looked cute. He wasn't David Beckham struggling for coherency, he was Hugh Grant stammering his way through a romantic approach. "I'll only be able to effect a subtle change."
"Subtle is fine." I took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. "Subtle is meaningful."
We stared at one another for a while as his chest heaved and mine sent waves of nausea through my frame. I was fighting an urgent need to cough. Blood was collecting in my throat, but this felt like a fragile moment and I didn't want to shatter it. The future of the western hemisphere teetered in the balance while one innocent boy wrestled with indecision. Kneeling opposite his anguished expression, probably dying and as spent as Eddie Izzard on his forty third marathon, I couldn't decide if I felt privileged or too exhausted to care. I felt a line trickling from my mouth and my breath piled up against the obstructions in my head.
I sneeze-coughed, leaning forward and gargling out a beautiful combination of blood, bile and phlegm.
At once, the moment was broken. Bare feet thudded towards me and I looked up desperately, realising my head was at exactly the wrong height as the Angwrath stood in front of me. As shadows retreated and the deathly-cold winds subsided, something akin to hope bloomed in my chest. That, or my heart just exploded.
"Thank you, Radshaw. I have much to consider." He planted a hand on my shoulder and pushed me to my back. Agony kicked me in the ribs and I groaned, but it turned to a moan of relief when his bare hand touched my ruptured chest and sweet numbness suffused me. "I think the world needs you in it." His fingers touched my blackened hand and it faded to that subtly grey tint I'd got used to. Still demonic, but no longer looking like a prop from The Mummy. Through the beauty of painless air, I saw him wave a hand awkwardly. "Goodbye."
"Wait," I coughed. "I just want to know one thing." He raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't I change? In Abaddon's domain, my arm turned but the rest of me stayed the same. Everything and everyone was altered except me. Why?"
He smiled. "Not everything needs balance. You're not a good guy, Mike, but you're not a bad one either. Brave or stupid, aggressive or afraid, right or wrong - none of it matters. You're just you." With that, he simply wasn't there. My hair wafted as air rushed to the space he'd vacated.
"Good luck, kid," I muttered as the sun came out, picking detail from London in reflections and shadows. As the maelstrom of madness faded, my ears heard the sirens and shouts from below. I waggled my tongue mentally - this was going to take some explaining.
I rolled to my front and looked down at a gaggle of white-faced tourists in the pod beneath me. Talk about front row seats - and what an angle! I shrugged at them as I shouted through the glass.
"I'd really like to get down now!"
*****
I sat alone in the darkened pub, perched on the single chair I'd dragged into the middle of the floor, and faced the door. After two days of chaos and explaining, I was making the necessary call. It felt good to be amongst shadows that weren't trying to frighten, maim or kill me. The silence calmed my senses like airborne balm, soaking into my lungs and suffusing my thoughts. The comfortable feeling of my gun holster nestled against my chest wasn't mitigated by the fact it was empty. My jacket pressed the leather into my shirt, against my heart, and it served a purpose.
Presently, keys jangled in the lock, pausing uncertainly - presumably, because the person holding them realised the mechanism was already undone. After a few moments, the door creaked open in a way I could only describe as tentative. A group of guys edged into the common room, squinting at the space before them like asylum seekers emerging from a cargo container. The Knights, afraid of their own lair - how appropriate.
I waited until they turned the light on before smiling. Judging by their expressions, it didn't do much to put them at ease.
"Radshaw..." started the first one - an older guy I didn't recognise.
I held up a hand to cut off what he might say next. "Here's how it is. My level of respect for you guys, whatever it once was, is now lower than an arthritic sloth's speed index. If things had turned out differently - if the black dawn was upon us, if Amy died while I was off fixing your fuck-ups ... hell, if I found myself in a slightly worse mood - this place'd be ashes and blood by now. You'd be fighting one another over the remaining intestines to stuff back in the holes where your guts should be."
I pointed to a group of chairs I'd arranged facing my own. "Sit." Their expressions ranged from defiant to meek, but they all complied.
"Now," I fixed each in turn with a stare. "This is how it's going to be. Next time something supernatural's happening in London, you come to me. I'll tell you how it's going to play out, and you'll follow the route I map for you. You don't plot, you don't act, you don't wipe your worthless arses without consulting me. Understood?" Menace drifted on the air, but I had more than all of them put together. "I'll be taking your silence as total compliance. Five points if you can name the song I just paraphrased." Another silence. "No, I didn't think so."
The old guy who'd first appeared cleared his throat. "So that's it - you expect us to work for you now?"
I shrugged. "I don't expect you to. I know you will. See, you've proved you can't be trusted to do what's best. You followed that dickhead Wilberford way beyond the point of rational consent."
"He's history. We sent him back to the Vatican."
"Too little, too late. The Knights are now my resource, my army to direct as I see fit. I want unfettered access to all your archives, your research materials, the doodles you scribble when you can't sleep at night - and I'm guessing that happens a lot. It all belongs to me."
He shifted again and I decided he was the ringleader. "What do we get in return for this arrangement?"
"You get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing you're doing the right thing. You get the reassurance you'll never again try to sacrifice a baby for some fucked up sense of greater good. Most importantly, you get my personal assurance I won't spank you within inches of your lives."
"We work for the Pope." He blew himself up, chest thrust forward. "We are a tool of the most holy."
I almost laughed. "I had to deal with a rancid old gypsy woman to find Mr Black. I gave her my spit, blood and spunk so she could get her jollies, then Black made festival decorations from her innards. I'd walk through hell and drag her disgusting person back into this existence before I defer to your previous master. Fuck the Pope." I pointed at the floor between us. "When he comes here, begs for my forgiveness, and satisfactorily explains why letting Amy get tortured and handing over a toddler to a death demon was the right thing to do ... then he gets a say."
The old guy didn't once look back at his colleagues. His pale green eyes met mine with a calculating gaze. He didn't mind the silence floating between us, and I respected that.
"You're full of shit, Radshaw," piped up someone hiding at the back.
"Shut up, Barnstable," said the old guy, standing up and approaching me with hand extended. "We have a deal Radshaw." I heaved a huge inward sigh of relief as I stood to grip hands with him. "Don't lead us astray. We've had enough of that for all our lifetimes."
I nodded, and then took my leave without another word.
*****
"I just wish I'd been there to see their faces," said Amy, smiling at me from the hideous turquoise pillow of her hospital bed. "With the Knights working under you, you're not going to need an assistant anymore."
I shifted in the chair, harder than a statue of Vinnie Jones and so uncomfortable my arse went to sleep within moments of being placed on it. "Are you kidding? I'll need someone to keep them in line while I'm out getting the shit kicked out of me by terrifying forces of evil."
She giggled and I marvelled at how like herself she looked. Last time I'd seen her, her face looked like squashed steak and kidney pudding. Now, the only trace of all that damage was a network of faint scar lines.
I felt tears filling my eyes. "I never thought I'd be able to look you in the eye again."
"It wasn't your fault, boss. You caught up to him - you sorted him out for me."
"Yeah," I smiled. "I dragged his brains out through his face.
"I feel suitably avenged."
I nodded. "I just can't get over how great you look. I need to send your consultant a fruit basket so big he'll die of health food poisoning."
"I wasn't in a good place." She lowered her eye to avoid my gaze. "It was bad, Mike - there's no denying it. They told me I might not see again, and they'd need to rebuild my face over a few months. But then I went under for the first surgery yesterday and dreamed about a boy. He was naked and happy, and he smiled at me the whole time. When I came round, the nurses were all running round, excited. My face was almost normal - they said it was impossible." She raised her gaze to mine again. "That was him, wasn't it - the Angwrath?"
"Sounds like," I said, nodding. "I'm starting to think this kid might be a messiah worth believing in."
She shifted, wincing. "He's welcome to come back and finish the job."
"Give the kid a break. He's learning to be subtle."
"So, you finally got round to going on the London Eye. Not quite the way you expected, though."
I snorted. "I'm just glad the custody sergeant was an old mate from my time in The Job. Otherwise, I'd still be in a cell, and they'd still be thinking I was a member of Fathers for Justice. I think I'm going to take a week off."
"No you're not," she chuckled. "Something will go pear-shaped and you'll feel obliged to peel, poach and serve it up for dessert. Besides, I know you're going to look into this Angwrath. It's not every day you meet Jesus' cousin. He's something genuinely new - a force not seen before in modern society."
I nodded. "Well hung, too."
"Mike!"
"What?" I said, grinning. "It was literally two inches from my face - it's not like I tried to notice."
We spent some time in verbal fencing and I settled into the comfort of my friend's company. Life felt alright again. London and I were once more friends, I had a powerful new ally (at least for the moment) and the world was free to flush itself down the shitter.
Until the next time.
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I hope you enjoyed the concluding chapter :-)
Mike
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I hope you enjoyed the concluding chapter :-)
Mike
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