Jago (64 page)

‘Allison?’ Jenny asked, uncertain, peering through the Light at her.

Allison took two steps forwards, nodding. ‘Jenny.’

They had never had much to say to each other. Allison remembered being not invited to Jenny’s birthday party at primary school, and not caring much. At the comprehensive, they had rarely been in the same class. Teddy Gilpin fancied the girl, but she looked as if she’d break if touched! Besides, she was Jago’s. She always had been, from the time the Lord God came to Alder. Now, Jago needed someone else.

Without Jago, their lives might have been different: Allison would be a bruised slag like Sharon Coram, hating herself as much as the louts she fucked; while Jenny would be a young farmers’ cheerleader, like Beth Yatman, organizing dances and day trips to Minehead. In a few years, Allison would have turned into one of Alder’s solitary mad people, like Mr Keough or her dead granddad; while Jenny would have ended up as Sue-Clare Maskell or Ursula Cardigan, married to a man with property or a business, working one day a week in a charity shop.

Jago had been a saviour for them both. Allison looked into Jenny’s face and saw her own reflection, her dark against Jenny’s light. She reached out and held the girl, hands on her shoulders. Jenny grabbed back, taking her waist. Neither knew whether to push or pull. Allison knew she could crush Jenny like a butterfly.

‘We share Love,’ Jenny said.

Allison pulled Jenny into an embrace. ‘Sisters,’ she said.

‘Sisters,’ Jenny confirmed.

There was an awkward moment. Allison felt Jenny squirming in their hug and let her go. ‘I’m not a dyke,’ she explained. ‘God knows.’

Jenny smiled kindly and hugged Allison again, quickly and briefly.

‘It’s all right,’ Jenny said, ‘the other stuff is all gone. Flesh is old-fashioned. It’s just Love now.’

‘Love?’

‘The Love of the Lamb. Beloved.’

Love was in the Light, but that was only a part of what Jago wanted. First, there must be a scourging.

‘He needs me,’ Allison said. ‘So I’m here for Him.’

Jenny took her hand and led her upstairs. As they climbed, the Light was stronger. They went up more stairs than could possibly be in the house, stairs enough to take them half a mile into the sky. All around, the Brethren sang. They were like Jenny, shining from the inside. At last, having walked and climbed so far the aches fell from her body, Allison was brought before the throne. The girl from the Pottery—Paul’s girlfriend—was nestled in Jago’s lap. Fountains towered, and Light was made concrete in the throne. Jenny dropped to the floor and humbled herself. Allison saluted, a general before an emperor.

Jenny rose, reciting, ‘And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and their faces were the faces of men, and they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions…’

Jago didn’t need to speak to Allison. She knew she was welcomed into the fold. Soon Jago’s enemies would try to topple Him. She was charged with guarding His life.

‘…and they had a queen over them,’ Jenny continued, holding Allison’s arm, ‘the Angel of the Bottomless Pit whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue is her name Apollyon.’

Abaddon, Apollyon. The names sounded comfortable, familiar, fitting.

‘And in English?’ she asked.

‘Allison,’ she was told.

Jenny, she realized, had just made her Queen of the Earth.

* * *

Before the throne were two girls, one light, one dark. Hazel remembered their faces, but it was what had been made of them that was important. Beloved’s hand cradled her head, touch funnelling Light into her. Her own memories were faint, memories of a film she’d seen, not a life she’d led. Other memories crowded in, blotting her out. A city at night, with fire all around, and sirens. London, she thought, during the Blitz. In the north, another city, a sea of faces beyond a lectern, listening to a sermon. A chapel in the rain, with Wendy and Derek. A first sight of the Manor House. The two girls as children, bare knees and big eyes. Her own face, eyes tight shut, with chanting and incense. Beloved whispered in her brain. She held tight to His arms, knowing He’d see her safely through the storm. For a moment, she thought she heard Paul crying out to her to be careful, but his tiny whine was lost in the music of angels. Through His eyes, she saw the earth below, devastated by fire and blood, scarlet seas thick with fish corpses, continents shifting and buckling, a poison star falling into the Atlantic, darkness thickening above the plains of carcasses. But in the Light, the Brethren were safe.

W
ith difficulty, he managed to get Teddy and Pam into the pub. The boy was on the point of catatonia and probably had a few broken bones. When Paul held up three fingers and asked how many, the boy mumbled ‘Jenny’, which wasn’t helpful or reassuring. The girl was only malleable because she’d been hysterical for so long she was exhausted. She needed to hold on to someone, so he thought it clever to attach her to Teddy, but he hurt when hugged. Finally, she settled for holding the boy’s hand with a death-tight grip. Paul installed them in a deep sofa.

The saloon had fewer windows than the public bar, and thus felt more defensible. With Teddy and Pam settled and not in any immediate danger, Paul looked around, hoping not to find anything. If he shut his ears to the din outside, the empty place seemed normal. There was a notice board by the door. The heads of drawing pins reflected the light, reminding him the electricity was still working. There were posters up for a Christmas club and for the local skittles league, plus a bent card from someone who’d lost a cat and was offering a small reward for safe return.

Perched on a bar stool, he was drained. His tooth still hurt, but it was absurd to be concerned with that when he’d seen living people cut up, monsters from a medieval woodcut. He thought of Hazel, and tried to resign himself to never seeing her again, to never putting things right between them. It was impossible that both of them would survive the next few hours, let alone get back together. It was possible no one would survive the next few hours.

There was another tremor, and bottles fell down behind the bar. Teddy drew in a pained breath as Pam pressed close to him. Paul counted the seconds, and, when he was still alive after thirty, breathed again.

What would happen if Lytton killed Jago? Would reality come flooding back, a village packed with injured, insane or dead people? Maybe Jago’s dreams could live on after his death, and killing him would end the world. Now, the end of the world was an option he was willing to countenance. At least, it would put a full stop to suffering. In nothingness, his bloody tooth wouldn’t torment him any more.

Just for something to do, he poured a tumbler of whiskey, and sipped. The liquid made his broken tooth shriek, allowing actual sunlight to stream into the dark. The reality flash was short-lived. It took more pain each time to dispel the visions. Maybe Jago’s dream would finally usurp everyone else’s and
become
reality. He drank to the pleasant thought.

He strolled to the window and looked at the chaotic battle. Giant locusts crawled over the dead, six-winged 1950s special-effects horrors with scorpion tails grafted on to their hind parts. His tumbler was empty. He refilled it. No danger of getting drunk. There was enough fear adrenalin and nerve-deadening pain in him to counter a quart of Jameson’s.

He couldn’t work out how long Lytton and Susan had been gone. Time twisted and contorted around Jago. The black sunny day outside could have been any time in the morning, afternoon or evening back in the real world. Perhaps months had passed since moonset, perhaps only a few seconds.

He started playing with octagonal beer mats, making honeycomb patterns. Bored, he went behind the bar and scavenged. He hoped he’d find something to use in his defence, if it became necessary. All he came up with was a plastic box half-full of shiny drawing pins. Maybe he could scatter them in the path of something barefoot. He pocketed the box, hearing it chink as it slid against his hip.

Teddy was either asleep with his eyes open or in a comatose daze. Pam, tired of being stretched beyond breaking point, was coming round. He offered her a drink, and she shook her head.

‘Are you down for the festival?’ he asked, for want of anything else.

The girl nodded sulkily. ‘I’ve lost my boyfriend.’

‘Snap. Well, nearly. My girlfriend’s off somewhere in this mess.’

‘We were going to break up after this week.’

‘We probably wouldn’t have made it through to autumn,’ he admitted.

‘I think I’ve lost my sister, too.’

Pam was dabbing her face with a hankie, licking the cloth and then using it to work the clotted make-up away from her eyes and mouth. An ordinarily pretty face emerged.

‘Why aren’t we mad, like the others?’

‘Good question,’ he said.

The pub door opened, and Paul saw fear light Pam’s eyes. Teddy moaned, his first sign of life in minutes. The saloon door pushed in and an Angel stepped through, wings bent to squeeze under the lintel. Paul recognized Janet, the champagne girl with the quick tongue. She recognized him too.

‘Are you saved?’ she asked.

Inside the saloon, she spread her wings. They grew from her arms, her fingers turned into lengthy, feathered bones. Her robe hung torn, and her skin shone with an all-over halo.

‘Pretty Polly,’ she said in a strangled parrot voice.

Pam was smitten, mouth a perfect circle.

Janet turned to the girl. ‘Are
you
saved?’ She extended a wing and brushed Pam’s cheek with feathers. ‘It’s not too late, repent your sins.’

The girl was torn. She had a choice between the glowing fantasy and Hell on Earth. She threw herself against Janet, and allowed the Angel to fold wings around her. The girl’s head rested against Janet’s feathered shoulder, wings tight around them like a fur muff.

‘Paul?’ Janet said.

He shook his head.

‘One saved,’ Janet said, looking at Paul and Teddy, ‘two lost…’ She backed out of the saloon, shouldering through the door. ‘Not a bad score.’

Paul followed, and was in the pub hall when Janet and Pam got to the outside. Pam clung to the Angel’s neck. Janet, straining, extended her wings and jumped into the air. He watched them rise, dodging red bat shapes and falling stars, on course for the shining castle of the Agapemone. Pam was heavy, and dangled like an oversize necklace, but Janet’s wings were stronger than they looked. The Angel wasn’t graceful, but she was air-worthy.

A scorpion-locust scuttled towards the doorway, and Paul slammed the wood into the hole. The sting smashed through the door about a foot above the lino, and wedged, squirting poison. Paul avoided the steaming splash, and hoped the thing was stuck. The sting tugged against the hole, breaking off splinters and dribbling, then was withdrawn. A locust leg stuck in through the hole and scrabbled upwards for the doorhandle. Paul crushed the leg to the door with his shoe, and it went limp, torn off at the locust equivalent of a shoulder. He could hear the thing yelling, with a rich Somerset accent, shouting, ‘I’ll ’ave ’ee’, over and over.

Teddy, groggy and shell-shocked, was in the hall too. Paul didn’t agree with Janet. He’d been given two souls to look after, and lost one. That struck him as a terrible score.

P
roblem one was getting through the panicked crowds choking the approach road. Waving the gun had no effect on people who’d seen giant bugs and flying women. Lytton fired once, into the air, and the report—which normally caused deafness a mile off—was lost in the clamour. With Susan holding his hand, he shoved, pushed and trampled with the rest, inching towards the Manor House. It was impossible to miss the way even in the unnatural dark: the Agapemone was lit from the inside like a neon novelty.

‘I suppose Jago is in there,’ he shouted.

Definitely,
Susan said, inside his mind.

Lytton shivered. She’d never done that before.

I didn’t need to.

Witch.

I read that.

Sorry.

With Susan inside his mind, he was able—forced?—to concentrate. He became single-minded in his purpose to keep her away from whatever else was cluttering his forebrain. Like how often he thought of her recently. Her eyes, especially. Her occasional tight smiles.

I’m flattered,
she thought, immediately swallowing it, trying unsuccessfully to keep it from him.

For the first time, just when he had no time to be compassionate, he realized how guarded Susan had to be. She was not really the chilled cynic she seemed; like him, she needed a wall to hide behind.

People began to give them a wider berth, as if an invisible cowcatcher were advancing before them. Lytton saw the road under his feet as the crowd parted, like the Red Sea for Charlton Heston.

‘Is that you?’

Yes. Like it?

‘Keep it up.’

When the casualties were listed, Jago ought to be lost among the rest of the Js. Lytton had always known being a snake meant, eventually, biting. Now, he didn’t have time to think it through. Besides, he hadn’t been given a sanction for his wet job. This was strictly a solo decision, taken because of his special knowledge. He hoped he’d never be called to justify his bite to Garnett or the minister.

If it were me,
Susan thought to him,
I’d want you to do it. Really. He’s not human any more. All the things that count are gone.

That wasn’t what bothered him most. He was afraid Sir Kenneth would want to keep Jago alive precisely
because
he could do what he was doing in Alder. What army would not want to have the Wrath of God on its side? This catastrophe might, within the parameters of the
IPSIT
project, be counted a success.

They were at the gates of the Agapemone, where multitudes gathered, staring up at the shining house or jostling forwards, seeking admission. The door, unaffected by the light that had seized the rest of the building, hung in space, a heap of faintly moving people on the front steps.