A Madness of Angels: Or the Resurrection of Matthew Swift (63 page)

 

Then he’d told her to listen to the voices in the wire, the angels that had always talked to her in her childhood, because we’d always sensed that she had a love for life and could live it so fully, we were drawn to that delight in all things that she had in her voice even over the phone. Even when speaking to a faceless machine her words had been full of feelings and thoughts and honest truths, even in the wire we had sensed the expressions on her face, she had given us so much life.

 

Then he’d told her to talk back to the angels.

 

Then he’d told her that they were another form of magic, and that as such, they could give life.

 

Then he’d told her to summon them.

 

And after the shadow had appeared in her room at night and all the spells she’d thrown at it had been for nothing, she had. After it had told her that it was hungry, so hungry, that it wanted to drink the blue fire of the angels and, if it could not, it would have to feast on the meagre blood of sorcerers – or sorceresses – so, instead, she had.

 

We were going to say something rude, but I bit it back. Thinking about it, I pointed out a few basic flaws. It wasn’t about talking; all I had to do was listen, and I wasn’t going anywhere until the story was done.

 

Then she let us go.

 

 

We were surprised how weak we were. We did not understand how I could bear it; but then, I wasn’t in the mood to consider what could go wrong for us next.

 

Dana helped us to the door of the white room, and pushed it open. There was nothing outside but an empty corridor, with strip lights buzzing quietly overhead, and the humid hotness of water pipes running through the ceiling. There was also, however, the familiar smell of…

 

rich deep blue magic rising up from the underground lines

 

rumbling reddish-brown tints of the traffic overhead

 

silvery sparkle from the water pipes

 

flashing blue fire from the electricity!

 

… enough magic to grasp hold of and tangle in our fingers, a remembrance of our power, thick and compelling.

 

We let out a sigh of relief.

 

“I know where we are,” I repeated, pressing my fingers into the dry, unadorned concrete of the walls. More than just the ordinary hodgepodge of sensation, I knew why Bakker chose this place for his home. It buzzed with something more, a deeper line of power that in the good old days of naked dances and ritual sacrifice would probably have been worshipped at dawn.

 

“You’ve been here before?” she asked.

 

“No. But, Central line, Northern line, the Tower; and Mr Bakker always had a sense of the ironic. You didn’t need to tell me anything more.”

 

“I don’t like this dark,” she muttered. “
He
keeps on popping out of it.”

 

“It’s all right,” we answered. “We can protect you.”

 

“I’d rather Matthew did,” she replied.

 

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Tell me: when I was brought here, was I wearing shoes?”

 

“What?”

 

“It’s important.”

 

“Yes. Why?”

 

I smiled, standing on tiptoe to brush the ceiling, feeling the warmth seep into my fingers from the cables clustered within it. “Friends are coming. We need to get you out.”

 

“Me? Why?” Then she thought about it some more and added, “Friends? How?”

 

“Because they’re not very sympathetic,” I replied. “And you’ve been keeping bad company. What were the other questions?”

 

“Is this about your shoes?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Thought it might be.”

 

“Good. Which way to out?”

 

 

The map of the London underground system was an elegant bit of design by any standard. In other cities, the equivalent looked like a faded imitation, full of implausible destinations highlighted in unsuitable colours, and confusing junctions between overlapping stations, where dotted lines were indistinguishable from coloured blobs meant to inform the viewer that here you could get three escalators, or just walk between stops without violating the terms and conditions of your ticket.

 

Be that as it may, on the map of the London underground there were only two places where the Central and the Northern lines met, as they ran through the city nearly at right angles to each other. The first was the strange vortex of direction-distorting tunnels, platforms and winding white-tiled stairways that made up Bank station, a place in which even the shrewdest geographers armed with compass and map could get lost while trying to track their way between DLR and Circle line platforms. A place indeed, so some practitioners said, where the borders between spaces were more flexible than usual, and where the bikers swore that, even at the slowest speed, it was possible to find those weak points and slip through to a destination entirely different from any on the map.

 

But the buzz of magic in the place where I stood, feeling the warm, familiar rumble of the trains under my feet, wasn’t that of Bank. That left one other station: Tottenham Court Road, serving an area of suspicious computer shops, hi-fi warehouses and dodgy second-hand dealers, together with the megastores and brothels of Oxford Street and Soho.

 

And there was a tower. It amazed me that I hadn’t thought of it before; there was a tower, and it wasn’t just a giant building stretching up into the sky, it wasn’t just an expression of power or, as some feminists would have it, a symbol of masculine insecurity, as so many tower blocks in so many cities seemed to be. It was the Tower; it featured on postcards; and the air inside it buzzed with all the magic that such a position entailed.

 

If I hadn’t been certain before, I was by the time Dana helped me up a flight of stairs, pushed back a door with the words “Danger!! High Voltage!!” plastered in big yellow letters on it, and led me out into a concourse that smelt of sweat and chlorine. Opposite me was a sign. It read:

Men’s Toilets

Women’s Toilets

**
Centre Point is a Non-Smoking Zone
**

Dana said, “What d’you think?”

 

I laughed.

 

“Thought you’d say that,” she grunted.

 

“Bakker lives here?”

 

She shook her head. “He moves around.”

 

“But he’s here, tonight.” It wasn’t a question.

 

“Yes. How’d you know?”

 

“He wants our blood,” we replied. “He’s trying to make it catch fire, he wants us to give him life. I knew he wouldn’t want to be too far from us, once he found us.”

 

“You… wanted to be found?”

 

“I knew Simmons was most likely dead. I knew Bakker wanted us alive. I knew that, with San Khay and Guy Lee both gone, the shadow would have to deal with me myself. I knew I was going to be betrayed, and a process of elimination led me to think it would be by my friend. With such a wonderful array of information at your fingertips, what would you have done?”

 

“But… you were… there were needles and…”

 

“I was keeping my fingers crossed that you might let me go.”

 

“You didn’t know?” she asked sharply.

 

“Didn’t seem good manners to presume.”

 

She scowled. Then, sharply, out of nothing asked, “Can you?”

 

“What?”

 

“Give him life? Can you cure Bakker?”

 

We shook our head. “Not as he’d see it.”

 

“He said that you could save his life. He’s dying,” she added, with reproach in her voice.

 

“I know, and no one can,” I replied gently. “Least of all us.”

 

“Then what can you do? Sorry to sound like the naive one, but wouldn’t it have saved a lot of trouble if you’d told him this?”

 

“We are creatures of the life you leave behind. We feed off the feelings you forget, we were born of the thoughts that faded the moment they were spoken, of the unseen things, of the unspoken things that got trapped in the wire when the phone was cut off or the words lost in interference, or when the mouth that spoke them lied, but on the other end of the line they couldn’t see their faces. We
are
all this, and he thinks that if he takes it, for himself, takes that which makes us alive, he will live for ever.”

 

“Forever doesn’t sound so bad; I mean, if you’re not such a bad man. What’s the catch?”

 

“Apart from the fact that he’s been leeching my blood?” I asked.

 

“Apart from that.”

 

“It’s complicated.”

 

“Oh, please. I think I got way past that lesson on day one.”

 

“Which way?” I asked.

 

She nodded round the curve of the dimly lit passageway. I grinned.

 

“What?” she asked, seeing my expression. “What’s so funny?”

 

“I’ve always liked this place.”

 

“You know that it’s a disgraceful example of the greed of the property industry, a crappy piece of planning and, until dead recently, a dive for druggies, right?”

 

“Yeah,” I said. “It fits the vibe.”

 

“Is this the right time to criticise some of your teaching techniques?”

 

A rumble somewhere not too far off, a ripple of sensation, a shudder of the lights, a moment where we thought we heard

 

hello Matthew’s fire
…

 

“No,” I said firmly. “Come on.”

 

 

The tower’s foundations had been set deep, and there were more than on the official map; tunnels spread around the water mains, and between the passages of the underground station almost immediately beneath it. We seemed to walk, stagger, jog on our irregular progress through the maze of seemingly identical passageways under Centre Point, the smell of the underground gym – all body odour and chemicals – being replaced by the stench of urine that defined the subways passing beneath its concrete struts, which in turn faded down to the distant
thrumthrumthrum
of pounding club music humming through the walls.

 

We found a service lift, its panels rusted, its floor uneven, its wall of cardboard stuck on with gaffer tape. Dana pressed the ground-floor button and I didn’t argue, leaning against her and watching my world steady itself as we rose up with a slow cranking sound through the lift shaft. I didn’t know how much blood they’d taken or how much they’d put in me, but by the lightness of my head I was willing to guess that it hadn’t been a proportionate ratio.

 

We had passed the grid to the basement exit when the lift lurched, the lights went out and everything stopped.

 

Dana said, her breath coming fast and ragged, “What the hell?”

 

“Friends are coming,” I replied, straining to hear something through the dull echoes of the shaft. “It’ll be all right.”

 

“Is this something to do with your bloody shoes?”

 

“Yes. Magicians are always so hung up on magic, they never bother to check for technology.”

 

“You… were followed?”

 

“Pretty much. I’m not the only one capable of tricksy planning and cunning insight, you know.”

 

She scowled, staring round the tight confines of the lift, uneasy at the small space. “We’re going to sit here?”

 

“Too many shadows,” I answered.

 

“You had to say it, just when I was being steely with self-control, you had to say it!”

 

We took a deep breath and rubbed our hands together, searching for warmth between our fingers. The magic was easy in this place, we didn’t need much to work with. I opened up the palm of my hand and let the bubble of pinkish-orange neon light float up above our heads, illuminating the tight space of the lift. Dana’s face was pale, the fixed smile scared, but refusing to sink into any more honest expression. “He’s going to kill me, isn’t she?” she said, not bothering to raise her voice or let the terror fill it. “He’s going to kill me.”

 

“He hasn’t yet.”

 

“So?”

 

“The shadow… is part of Bakker,” I answered, thinking about my argument a word at a time. “Perhaps there’s a part of him – both the man and his creature – which doesn’t want you dead?”

 

“You’ve always got a way with the implausible.”

 

“I’m just theorising.”

 

“What now?”

 

The lift jerked, and started moving again, of its own accord, tossing us to the sides to cling on for support.