For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) (30 page)

“Or a week,” said Harmonium.

“Or a month,” said her husband.

“Or a year...”

They joined Patrick Irish, who was stood watching at a distance. “You’re satisfied with our deal?” he asked.

Jones nodded. “The Exchange is happy to concentrate on business here in the Dominion for now. As for me, I couldn’t care less. We won’t interfere with the mortal world. Not yet, anyway.”

“That’s good enough,” said Irish, “things are delicate for now. It’ll take time for us all to adapt. I just needed room to breathe. Let the Dominion of Circles keep itself to itself for a little while, just until people get used to what they’re now sharing reality with.”

“What about the Dominion of Clouds?” Harmonium asks. “Now God’s dead, who speaks for them?”

Irish smiled. “Me, I suppose. Not bad for an alcoholic old hack, eh?”

14.

T
HE
P
RESIDENT DIED
as the sun began to fall low on the horizon.

If the crowds had been large before, the hours of the afternoon had only seen them swell yet further as people continued to gather, a never-ending procession from Alliance to the strange, ill-matching mountain range that stood in that Nebraska plain, and the town it surrounded.

The mourning was cut by a sense of wonder, an awe that passed through them all as they moved in and out of Wormwood. Demonic caste and human intermingled both in the streets of the town and the land outside it.

Elspeth Gorman and her son, Hodge, sat out on the street, smiling at the passersby. Their next door neighbours, Remy and Boo, recently from the Bough, had decided to organise a barbecue and the air was thick with cooking food. Abernathy’s till was fit to burst with the sudden upswing in trade and he was caught in a state of euphoria and irritation, trying to fulfil orders.

“We need to set up a run to Alliance,” said Knee-High, “get more supplies coming in.”

“We?” Abernathy asked.

“Don’t tell me you don’t need a business partner,” the dwarf replied. “You wouldn’t have the first idea what you were buying.”

“I already have a business partner!” Abernathy replied. “He’s around here somewhere with a mop. William? William? Where in the name of duck teats is the tower of a bastard? William?”

But William couldn’t be found, so Knee-High got his deal.

Popo was returned to his hotel, dressed in a spare monk’s habit loaned by Father Martin, who accompanied the Incubus along with the rest of his brotherhood.

His return was well-received by those who had all but given up on him. “You’ll never get rid of me,” he’d said, twirling somewhat weakly in his borrowed clothes. “I’m far too fabulous to die.”

Father Martin, overcome by the sights around him but determined to try and retain an open mind hung back. He and his brothers had done their best to help Popo but it had become clear that the Incubus healed only too well on his own. All he’d really needed was a bit of rest. Father Martin suspected Irish had known that, but had wanted to force Father Martin into choosing the route his future would take. In that, he’d succeeded.

“You know,” said Brother Clarence, looking around, “it’s not quite as awful as I thought it would be.”

Father Martin nodded. “It never is.”

“What about...” the old monk hesitated, “well, what they were saying about God. Do you think He really can be dead?”

Father Martin thought about Irish. “Not in any sense that matters,” he said, and led his monks along the street in search of food.

Not everyone welcomed the intrusion of course, certainly not Fingers and Nyctos who stared out of their window at the influx of mortals and felt their thoughts turn to murder.

“Look at them all,” said Nyctos, the dark pulsing with anger. “We’re infested with apes.”

“Not for long,” Fingers replied, clicking his fingers in irritation, “just you wait. There’ll be more like us, willing to band together and drive these monkeys out.”

Which was undoubtedly true, but while there would be dissent on both sides, the union held, not least because of Lucifer’s announcement a few hours later.

15.

T
HE YOUNG MAN
who up until recently had been a novice in the Order of Ruth and then a shop boy to Abernathy was on the edge of the Dominion of Circles, having decided to leave Wormwood behind and see where his feet took him. William looked out onto its rough and blasted landscape and wondered where he’d be tomorrow.

“Wherever I want,” he said aloud, smiling at the freedom of it.

“Who are you talking to?” asked a voice from beside him. He looked down to see a young girl.

“Where did you come from?” he asked, looking around. “Your parents around somewhere?”

“I don’t have any,” she replied. “I’m on my own. Unless I can walk with you for a little while?”

William thought about it, but didn’t see he had much choice. He could hardly leave her here by the side of the road. “I guess,” he said.

“Thanks.”

So they walked off towards Hell together, he with his sack of provisions and her with her wooden toy train, trailing behind her in the dust.

16.

L
UCIFER WAITED UNTIL
the dawn to address the people. He knew he had to allow a little time to pass after the death of both Harrison and Morton, but he also wanted to make his statement while the memory of those gentlemen’s passing still lingered. The crowds were in mixed spirits but that was when they would be at their most amenable, Irish had assured him, so he climbed on top of the Land Carrage, still stood out there in the plain, and held up his hands for silence.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “thank you for allowing us to join you in remembering those who were so recently taken from us. I want to assure you that what I’m here to say is intended to honour their memory rather than taint it. Your leaders came to me wanting to form a union between my people and yours. I respected that and hoped to achieve the same. So, with that in mind, I want to announce my intentions here and now. You have lost a great leader, I only wish I could have arrived here in time to save him. But I could not. I can, however, honour his wishes by saying that I intend to honour his last wishes for the future. In order to do that I intend to run for President.”

The response to this was beyond measure, the reporters ecstatic as they scribbled in their notebooks, the people unable to quite believe what they were hearing.

“Your country wisely believes in democracy,” Lucifer continued, “so the choice will be yours. Let this be my final proof to you that I do not come here to do anything but build a union between us. I am not your enemy, I am not your invader, I am a man who wishes to serve you and protect you. I am yours if you’ll have me. What comes tomorrow is up to you.”

WHAT AM I DOING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REVOLUTION?

(An excerpt from the book by Patrick Irish)

I
NEED HARDLY
tell you whether Lucifer achieved the position. It is, after all, a matter of history. The Vote Lightbringer campaign—that name, Lucifer, always so contentious and better avoided—the attempts by Democrat and Republican alike to derail his rise to power. They claimed it unconstitutional, that he was unfit as a candidates until, of course, it was shown that Lucifer had been a citizen of the country since the Constitution itself was drawn up (indeed, he had walked its roads long before it) and thereby perfectly eligible under law.

They claimed it would herald an era of terror and violence, and, certainly, there were times when that seemed to be so. Yet the fighting, the riots, the attacks on his party in general and his person in particular, they were all nothing compared to the destruction that might have been. The vast majority accepted him, as the landslide vote proved. People are very simple creatures, they want to feel safe, they want to be reassured. With Lucifer in power most citizens felt that their fears were needless; if there were one candidate that could guide them through the turbulent times ahead it was the candidate that knew the dangers Hell had to offer. Not only did he know them, but he could fight them. All a voting public ever really wants is a steady, safe hand on the rudder and that was what Lucifer offered.

So it was that six months later, the results of the emergency ballot were unveiled and a new man sat beneath the roof of the White House.

I visited him that night. Possibly I was feeling smug. As you will have gathered by now I can be susceptible to the more base human emotions.

“Happy?” he asked, sat in the solitary light of the lamp on his desk, a scattering of papers in front of him.

“Yes,” I admitted. “It worked didn’t it?”

He didn’t answer that, just stared out of the window at the remnants of the celebratory banners and ribbons that hung from the trees and the windows.

“I spent so long avoiding authority,” he said, “preferring to live my own life, out of His shadow.”

“His shadow has long since dispersed,” I said.

He looked at me. “It never will,” he replied. “But I shall continue to do my best while it falls over me.”

I left him to his brooding, knowing better than to argue.

I thought I might return to the mortal world, give up this temporary pretence of godhood for an honest life amongst my peers. Somehow it’s never happened. I still sit here, watching life unfold beneath me. Sometimes I visit, but I’m determined not to get too involved. I think it’s time we all made our own way, don’t you?

I warned you that stories never really end. Of course they don’t, they just change. The day that Lucifer took his place in the White House was a beginning, not an ending. The years that followed, the crises and the victories, the bad years and the good, were all, in their own way, just as—if not more—important than the events of those few months that saw our world become something fresh and new.

I could tell you more. About Elwyn and Meridiana’s child and the chaos it brought? About Black Tuesday, when the Exchange finally made its mark on the mortal world? How Biter took on the Chicago gangs? About the Texas assassination, and the attempts on behalf of the grassy knoll—or Branches of Regret as we know him—to uncover the murderer? Or what about the Great War? Demonic castes and mortal soldiers fighting side by side while the world burned?

No. Stories never end. They just become history.

And, for better or for worse, this was mine.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T
HE
H
EAVEN'S
G
ATE
books have lived in my head for far too long. Unwanted lodgers who cluttered up the place and never did the washing-up or contributed towards the rent. Naturally, once I finally brought them outside and looked at them in daylight they bore no resemblance to the shadowy, indistinct creatures I always imagined them to be, but it's a relief to finally evict them from my brain and put them into yours. The fact that I was able to do so rests entirely with the frankly gorgeous people at Solaris.

In the Rebellion Oval Office, President Jason and Vice President Ben could easily have pressed the large red button but resisted.

Jonathan Oliver (Calamity Jon as we've never thought of him but might now) pointed out the targets; David Thomas Moore (whose hairy face brings the banks of the Gristle to the minds of fearful onlookers) polished the ammunition; Michael 'The Moustache' Molcher (who sounds like a really shit Cab Calloway song now I come to think on it) ensured there was a crowd to see the first shots fired; Lydia 'I Fed it to the Fucking Dog' Gittins ensured the crowd continued to grow (despite my best efforts); Kit 'What Is it with this man and commas?' Scorah steadied my aim; Jake 'Pretty Boy' Murray and Dominick 'Tentacles' Saponaro designed my jackets and Pye 'O' Parr and Sam 'Sam' Gretton stitched it beautifully together. Finally, Gareth 'sign here' Busby and Martyn 'The Dollar' Wiggins ensured the papers were legal and the funds were there for gunpowder.

I cannot thank all of them enough. These books mean a great deal to me and the fact that the above folks allowed it all to happen puts in their debt, every single one of them.

As always, my posse had my back. Mother wasn't quite as disgusted with this one as the last (though she was VERY cross about the horse) and Debs just laughed at the nasty bits, proving that there's nothing more satisfying in life for a despicable man as the love of a despicable woman. I love them both.

And if you've read this far I love you too, you mad, word-starved fool.