Yet he deserved this. He had sworn to worship his God, to stand true on His behalf, and in proving lacking he had brought about the downfall of everything. God had given him…
The concept was gone, another piece of him that washed away. Anxiety sparked through Calum's essence as a wave of loathing the size of the Universe washed over him.
God had made him…
That thought was gone too, whipped away by a tidal surge of grief at the way the Great Experiment had ended prematurely.
God had… Calum fought to remember, fought to find something to hold on to. God had…
God had come to him when he was dying in a car wreck of his own making, and set him free.
Freedom.
No, that was wrong.
Calum strained with everything in him to remember words, concepts, sights, sounds. The last days came back to him in flashes. Ambrose. Pandora. The price the world was being made to pay because two beings had found a true and proper love.
It wasn't right.
God wasn't right.
God had come to him at his most vulnerable moment, and used it to make him a slave.
Yes.
He had broken free, and found himself.
Yes.
Ambrose had given Calum the wrong word. God's essence was too much, and in summoning it, he was overwhelmed. Things could be right, he knew that now. The world would never be the same, but something could be salvaged.
In whose image?
Questions for later. Calum needed to talk to the storm, and his recent memories gave him the name he needed.
Metatron. He formed the name carefully, thrust it out and waited for a response to his summoning.
Nothing happened. Calum panicked. How long did the world have left? Had he misunderstood? True names have power. Why didn't the Voice of God come to him?
True names.
Calum understood, and very carefully shaped a different name in his mind.
Enoch. The name punched out of him, and the storm vanished.
Malachi slashed out, a sweeping strike meant to take out Melissa's eyes. His aim was off, falling short by an inch. His momentum was too much, and rather than leave himself open while he tried to recover, he went with it, insides convulsing with complaint as he whirled away from her. Allowing the spin to take him back round, he stopped, breathing hard, trying to focus on her face. Her outline refused to fix in one place. Malachi dragged the sleeve of his coat over his forehead, wiping away rain and cold sweat.
She was barely aware of him, staggering forward like a smack addict looking for a fix, dozens more dead in her wake. Trying to keep his knife arm steady, fighting against the watery tremor gushing through his muscles, he wondered whether his aim was off because he had known this woman.
Behind him, Summer climbed to her feet. “You don't have to do that, Mr Jones,” she said, her voice sleepy. She had tried to help him, and her sanity was proving the price. Further back, he heard other voices. Gemmell was one of them. The other wasn't human. Malachi blocked them all out. It was difficult enough concentrating on Melissa.
She grabbed for him, and he brought the knife down across her hand, the blade's weight doing work that his muscles wouldn't. Three of her fingers flew, and he had a clear impression of her once perfectly manicured nails hanging ripped and torn from the ends before they splashed against the kerb. Nausea rushed him, and he swallowed down blood and vomit. Big movements left him unbalanced, and with the feeling going out of his left leg, he couldn't waste time.
Stabbing out in one quick, clean movement, hardly feeling the blade puncture her left eye, he knew he was successful only when it jarred the bone of the socket. Yanking the knife out, he stabbed forward again, taking her other eye and snapping her head back. Cold jelly slicked her cheeks, pooled at her chin, and Malachi was glad the creature felt no pain. Its scream would sound too much like Melissa. Better to hear only the wind, the rain, his own ragged breathing, and those thousands of sliding footsteps.
Unable to see, Melissa's corpse flailed blindly to his left, and he stepped around her, focussed on his balance and poise. Wrapping his free hand around her head, keeping his fingers away from her biting jaws, he yanked her skull back and dragged the knife deep through the cold meat of her neck. Slitting her throat would do little good, but decapitating her might be effective.
Sticky fluids oozed over his fingers. He didn't have the strength to saw through her spine, and a hand pawing the back of his coat was enough to make him move again, ducking around the front, and dropping to one knee as exertion overcame him. Melissa loomed over his exposed back. He didn't have the strength to move away. The finger and thumb of her slashed hand smeared blood over his hair.
Summer stepped in front of him, and he looked up as she swung a bloodied tyre iron over his head. He heard a cruel snap, and jumped as Melissa's head sailed to his left, her face pulping against a door, and leaving a stain of blood there as it bounced to the ground.
Summer held a hand out, helping Malachi up, and they staggered away from the dead.
Gemmell lunged forward with every desperate ounce of strength in him. Only then did he realize that he had almost nothing left to give. Stress, lack of sleep, injury, and more, had made him pathetic.
It still should have been enough. With Leviathan distracted, and the burning blade almost scratching the demon's chest before the thrust even began, he should have skewered it.
Instead, he stumbled forward, finding nothing in the way to slow him down. Leviathan had moved, sliding aside with ludicrous ease and leaving Gemmell staggering in the wind. A roar went up from the demons as he found himself face to face with their front ranks, the racket dizzying him. Pulling himself to a halt before he crashed into the first body, he whirled, trying to forget the brief glimpse of an oversized man with flesh sloughing of his bones, and holding his breath against the putrid smell of the creature. Was Leviathan's word good, or would he be attacked by the monstrosity at his back?
Leviathan stood calmly, waiting for Gemmell to turn, and the Inspector knew it didn't matter either way. He was dead. The scorn on the demon's face told him that he could have been dead a dozen times in the moments he had squandered recovering from his lunge. Leviathan was playing with him. Rain drizzled down Gemmell's face, and he felt faint. Behind him, Hell was spitting forth its multitude. The sword in his hand no longer looked like a tool to slay the damned, and instead felt like clumsy steel licked by matchstick flames that threatened to die beneath the wind. Gemmell felt like that flame.
Had he thought that in some way he could continue doing his job as the world fell apart, that he could protect the weak? Images from the slaughter in the church flicked through his mind, each hammering failure harder into his bones. What had he achieved, that justified his absence from his son. When the sky rained fire, and the dead marched up to their door, Gemmell should have been there, holding his boy tight.
The sword slipped from his hand, sticking point first into the tarmac. Rainwater sluiced around it, mirroring Gemmell's grief, washing away his will and purpose.
Leviathan's smile broadened. “Kneel for me, James Gemmell.”
Gemmell kneeled, tears running down his face and blurring his killer's outline. Leviathan stepped towards him. “This is our world now, Inspector. You have no place here. Your people are being taken away. You are nothing, before us.”
Shame washed through Gemmell, at himself, at the species he represented, and he slumped in resignation. Behind Leviathan, he glimpsed furious movement, and knew Malachi was on his feet, fighting the inevitable. The man was a fool for trying.
Above them all, the sky caught fire. Clouds ignited, and raging orange light lit the street, the deformed shadows of the damned and the dead mutilated further by the furnace in heaven.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The old man was weak, frail-looking. Calum had expected the tower of wings, lightning, and mouths that had interrogated him in the church. Instead, he stood in a pure white voi
d, a place of perfect nothingness, with a human who looked as old as time.
“Not quite,” the old prophet murmured. “But near enough. And you summoned me by my true name, and so you see the truth of me. I am the man who ascended to Heaven, to sit at God's right hand.”
Calum swallowed his surprise that his thoughts had been read so precisely. The old man pulled his grey robe tight around himself, impatience on his face. “Why have you summoned me?”
“God speaks through you.”
“He does.”
“Tell me why the world is ending. I gave your true name. I command it.”
Enoch's lips drew up in a snarl, and Calum readied for an attack. “Your temerity is incomparable. You command what should only be dictated by God.”
“What's He going to do to me, that I haven't already been promised.”
Enoch's eyes burned. “The world is ending because the laws of existence have been broken. There is little more to understand.”
“Because of Pandora and Ambrose?”
“And you. You pardoned a creature who was unpardonable. Yet the Laws stated he had to be set free of his sins. The Universe could not hold the contradiction.”
“The Universe? Or God?”
“They are one and the same. You know this.”
Calum gritted his teeth, searching for the right questions to ask. “What is happening on Earth?”
“Those souls that could be saved have been claimed by Our winged forces. Now the fires fall from the sky. The Earth, the Universe, will become an extension of Hell. The portal has already opened, and cannot be closed. God will leave, closing the gates to Heaven, and Earth will be left to the Enemy.”
“I want it to stop. I want everything back in place.”
“You cannot command the impossible. God will withdraw. The Gates will close. God is life. Without God, the Earth cannot continue. The experiment has failed, and will be started anew elsewhere. This has happened before. It will happen again.”
Calum tried to think past what he was hearing, though he wanted to know how many dead Universes were abandoned because of such small and paltry errors.
“Why can't He leave, and just let us get on with it. Why do we need Him?”
Enoch sneered. “Because you are Him. You are of his essence. Take that essence away, and there is no life, no spark, just a billion chemical reactions bouncing off one another. You cannot exist without God, because without God you do not exist. You are God, human.”
Calum closed his eyes in frustration, the phrase repeating over and again in his head. You are God.
Calum opened his eyes, and knew what he had to do. He felt sick. Enoch looked at him sharply, suddenly curious.
“I am God,” Calum whispered.
Enoch nodded. “You understand.”
“No,” Calum fixed his gaze on Enoch's, and the old man shrank back from what he saw there. “I am God. Make me God.”
“What?”
“I am God. I see that. But I'm Calum Baskille too. If God is going to leave, and we can't survive without his presence, then he needs to be replaced. I am God. Make me God.”
Gemmell stared upwards, mesmerised by the burning sky. For a moment, he forgot where he was, as his mind tried to cope with the roiling flames stretching to the horizon. This was a ferocious beauty, the blaze so hot that, even where he knelt many miles below, he could feel heat on his face.
The warmth, uncomfortable though it was, heated the air, pushed back the chill from Leviathan's body, and Gemmell awakened to what he had been about to do. The demon standing above him was also distracted by the sky.
Without thinking, without allowing his suffering soul another second to reflect, Gemmell reached out and found the hilt of the sword. Stepping to his feet, he yanked the blade, and it slipped free from the tarmac, eager to be put to the use it was forged for.
Gemmell roared as he swung the blade around, and only then did the demon react, averting his gaze from the skies with eyebrows raised, surprise freezing him for a heartbeat, and that was all that was needed for the blade to bite him. The sword sliced into Leviathan's naked side, spilling ugly ichors onto the pavement as the demon howled.
The sword was yanked from Gemmell's hands as Leviathan fell back. The Inspector had an off balance moment to wonder if the hordes behind him would surge forward, and then the demon began to change. Flesh spilled out from Leviathan's body in great folds, muscles squirming and expanding from the slim form as though it was a burst dam. As Gemmell stepped back, his mouth wide, Leviathan sank to the pavement, his legs fused together and expanding, white dead flesh blowing out from him like a balloon. Gemmell couldn't track the stages of the transformation, it was too fast, but he knew where it was going. Leviathan was the serpent, and now he was hurt and enraged.
While the undulating flesh before him became longer, thicker, sent waves of rot gusting over him, Gemmell found new motivation to flee. Behind him, Hell's minions were ranked by the legion. In front of him, a serpent the size of a train was growing hard, shiny scales, shrieking its hatred. Gemmell had to get round it before it settled into its new form. Wasting no more time, he ran, aiming for the still battling figures of Malachi Jones and Jackie Summer further along the street. Better the walking dead than the monster.
The serpent writhed, already vast, growing more huge every second. Gemmell looked for a way past. Every time a gap formed on the road, it filled again a moment later. Now the serpent was two stories high, and Gemmell could see how badly he had hurt it. In this new body, the wound he had inflicted was grave, leaving the serpent half severed in the centre. Its evil, window eyes shone with pain, and Gemmell wondered whether it was seeing him at all.
A gap appeared, one coil of Leviathan's vast, muscular body rasping to the far side of the street, and Gemmell sprinted. Lungs burning, weeping at the stench of the beast, he pounded pavement.
It wasn't enough. From the corner of his eye, he saw the demon's tail whip towards him with an almost slow-motion inevitability. He couldn't dodge out of the way, and didn't have time to run back to safety. It smashed into him with impossible weight behind it, and he felt bones in his spine shatter, splinters punching through lung and muscle. Slammed against the wall of the tenement he had been running alongside, he crashed to the ground, where he lay on his back and started dying.
Malachi knew he was slowing Summer down. Some of the corpses had even overtaken them, although they were uninterested in the humans who should be their prey. Instead they had focussed on the ground near where he had last seen Pandora, and there was a sudden sense of purpose about them that he had not seen before. Every now and again, one bent, lifting something from the dirt.
Those closest to him did not share whatever new drive had infected their cousins, and Malachi and Summer remained their sole goal. They couldn't keep fleeing. Muscle and will were exhaustible commodities. Malachi stopped and turned because he couldn't go any further, and the only way to keep stalling their deaths was to face the dead army and fight.
Behind him, he heard the thrashing of the vast serpent, the crumbling of walls either side of the street as it crashed against them. The ground shook. Malachi knew the creature, now that he had seen its true form. Leviathan. If Malachi's wounds had not left him weak and reeling from blood loss, the fact that Gemmell had maimed a Lord of Hell would have had the same effect. The man had paid for his hubris. Malachi saw him crushed against the tenement wall, watched rubble crash down on him. The dust had yet to clear, but he doubted that the Inspector lived on.
Lit by the fiery sky, which he now saw was falling down, he realised that he needed shelter. Those flames were going to lick the earth clean of human flesh. While he didn't think it would be possible to escape, action in the face of futility had become his unofficial motto.
“Summer,” he choked on blood, coughing as he stumbled back from the reach of a corpse he had barely been aware was so close.
“Shelter,” she shouted. “I know. Here!” A hand landed on Ma
lachi's, and he was whirling blindly round with his knife before he caught himself, knowing it must be her. Summer guided him towards the edge of the street, and he saw the recessed doorway she was aiming for. It was a laughable defence against the unholy elements, but they wouldn't find better.
Something snagged his foot, yanking him down into the rainwater rushing along the road, and he cried out. The corpse of a short, obese woman clung to his ankle, its own legs torn away at the knees. He was so slow, she had caught him just by dragging herself along.
Summer crashed the iron down, breaking the skull like an eggshell, splashing brains out onto the road. The weapon caught on a fragment of bone, and Summer had to put a foot on the corpse's nightgown-clad shoulder to yank her weapon free. Destroying the brain made no difference to the corpse's intentions, so she took another swing, like some crazed golfer, and caved its face in around the eyes.
The corpse didn't need eyes to sink teeth into Malachi's ankle. He barely felt it amongst the assorted agonies his body had stored up for him, but disgust gave him strength to yank his leg away, and haul himself woozily to his feet. Summer followed, leaving the sightless corpse rolling in the street as they backed up the three stairs and into the recessed doorway.
Within seconds, the dead had hemmed them in, but that didn't matter. As Malachi and Summer prepared to hold them back, they knew they were defending the place where they would die.
Gemmell lay on the pavement, his lower body trapped and broken under rubble that had cascaded down on him when the serpent smashed against the wall. A haze of brick dust made him cough, and each spasm of his lungs filled him with enough pain to know he was finally going to be the reaper's bitch.
One of Gemmell's buried legs was shapeless agony beneath the rock. From the hip downwards, there was a pool of pain worse than anything he had ever known, but that was better than his left leg, which he couldn't feel at all. Unable to move anything but his head, which felt far too heavy a weight for his traumatised neck to bear, he stared further down the street, to where Leviathan still writhed and twisted, smashing the tenements on either side of the street. Further along, the demon horde scurried out of their leader's reach.