The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (3 page)

I left the row house burning behind me and went down the street as the familiar sound of sirens started up in the distance. I was bloodied and beaten, but I had what I’d come for. I felt whole again now that I was full of Baal’s grace. How to describe the grace? It’s what makes the angels what they are. It’s their essence, or maybe the closest thing they have to a soul. It’s also what my body uses as power for all the little tricks I’ve learned over the ages, as well as the ones that just come naturally, like resurrection. When the grace is in me, I think I can almost glimpse God everywhere in the world: in the rays of sunlight coming into a dark room, in the feel of a breeze on my skin, in the scent of the sea air, in those quiet moments where you’re drifting to sleep and your mind opens up to everything outside of it. When I’ve burned through all the grace and I’m empty inside again, I know that God is gone and never coming back.

I was wearing clean pants and a shirt I’d taken from Baal’s wardrobe before I started the fire. I had also taken a couple of credit cards from Baal’s wallet. I used them to go to the airport and catch a flight to London, but first I used a bit of that new grace to heal all my injuries, so I looked like just another traveller. It wouldn’t do to pass through security looking like I’d just killed an angel.

I spent the time in the air staring out the window beside my seat, at the clouds and the sky and all the miracles of creation. I thought about other miracles, like Penelope, my one and only true love. Penelope, who had given off a grace herself thanks to her angel father. Her grace had fed and nurtured me, so I didn’t have to hunt the seraphim when I was with her.

I thought of the miracle that was Amelia. A child who never should have been, because I’d been unable to father children during all the ages before I met Penelope. It seemed my divine body and mortal women weren’t all that compatible. Which was probably for the best. Who knows what mischief a hundred other versions of me running around in the world might cause?

And then Penelope and Amelia died at Hiroshima and that should have been the end of it. Hiroshima was the end of miracles. Until Morgana gave birth to Amelia.

The first time I had seen my daughter had been when she’d erupted from Morgana’s womb in a wave of blood and snakes and black rings on the floor of an abandoned Irish pub the faerie had taken over for their festivities. I don’t know how Morgana had managed to reach into the grave to steal Amelia from Penelope’s dead womb, but she had. Perhaps she’d done it as an act of simple trickery, as the faerie can be like that.

Or perhaps she’d stolen Amelia as an act of revenge against me for the King Arthur incident. When I first met Morgana, I’d taken her away from a tower in the woods guarded by a troop of men under an enchantment, in order to deliver her to King Arthur. I was trying to become one of the knights of Camelot at the time, and I thought it would earn me some favour with Arthur. As usual, I was woefully misguided. Arthur and Morgana had some sort of history together, but I didn’t know the nature of it until he tried to kill her with that strange blade of his. I stopped him by putting my own body in between them to shield her. Perhaps I should have let Arthur kill Morgana and Excalibur drink her blood. Then I wouldn’t be in this situation now. But I’ve never been very good at doing the right thing.

Our relationship was definitely troubled after that. We made up and patched things over, because when you’re both immortal or close enough to it, you’re going to have to learn to live with each other. And when one of you is a faerie queen, there are definitely going to be drunken nights where you both wind up in the same bed. But there were other incidents over the ages, so we each had plenty of reasons to want to even the score with the other.

But stealing my daughter crossed a line. Morgana had not only stolen Amelia from Penelope, she had stolen her from me. My memories of her now were not what they should have been. When Amelia was born, I should have seen her in Penelope’s arms. I should have held her in my own arms. She should have been living and breathing, not stillborn yet somehow still alive. She should never have been taken from the dead by Morgana. This was as far away from a miracle as I was from Heaven.

I’d barely had time to think about Amelia since I’d had that glimpse of her in Morgana’s arms in the pub. Dead and unbreathing, but conscious and looking around nevertheless. I’d been too busy battling a group of angels inside a painting in order to free the real Mona Lisa, who was being used as a secret weapon in a war between the seraphim. After that I hadn’t even had time to catch my breath before I had to help another angel save the good people of Barcelona from an unnatural peril that had awoken under the Gaudí church at the heart of the city. That one’s a long story I don’t care to repeat here.

In fact, I’d forced myself not to think about Amelia during all that. Because if I thought about her, I wouldn’t have been able to do all those other things. I would have gone to save her instead, and then we’d all have a lot more to worry about than just a curse killing a few fey and faerie. Sometimes you’re damned no matter what you do.

I’d returned to the faerie pub after Barcelona for Amelia. But the pub was abandoned once more, nothing left behind but a few bodies of the fey. Morgana and her court had moved on, taking Amelia with them. I had lost my daughter a second time.

But now she had returned. And she was nearly all grown up, even though it had been less than a year since she’d been born. I looked at the patches of land I could see through the clouds. She was down there somewhere. With Morgana and the rest of the faerie court. I had no idea where, but I’d find her. And then I’d take her from Morgana. Even God could not stop me from doing that. And I’d find a way to break the faerie enchantment and make Morgana pay for what she had done.

First, though, I had to stop the curse from killing again. I would not lose Amelia once more.

It was afternoon by the time I walked out the doors of Heathrow airport and into the usual English mist. I took a cab to Kew Gardens and spent the rest of the daylight hours wandering the paths, losing myself amid the flowers and greenhouses. I wanted to keep a low profile, away from any security cameras. That was getting harder by the day in England. I had no doubts the English authorities were still looking for me after my last visit to the country, given the fact I’d broken into the British Museum, resurrected Princess Diana and accidentally turned an Egyptian mummy into a living god. The Brits tended to frown on things like that. Frown more than usual, anyway.

I spent some time sitting at the edge of a pond, under a cherry blossom tree. I closed my eyes and thought of when Penelope and I had sat under another such tree, on the bank of the Kamo River in Japan during the war years. We’d been in the country looking for angels, because we had reason to believe they’d all sought refuge there for some mysterious reason. But we’d been tricked into thinking that, just part of Judas’s plan to lure us to our death.

Penelope had told me she was pregnant under that tree, and the cherry blossoms had showered down around us, like the entire world was celebrating. Weeks later, we took a train to Hiroshima, and the world ended in fire.

I continued on my way through the gardens. I snapped a thorn from a bush and dropped it into my pocket for later, then went back to the front gates at closing time. I hailed another cab and had this one take me to the Globe Theatre—the new one, not the original from Shakespeare’s time. Although if anyone could find a way back to the older one, it would probably be a London cabbie.

I bought a ticket with some money I’d lifted here and there from tourists during the day and went inside. I stood in the pit with all the other people who’d bought the cheap tickets. It was raining now, so it wasn’t long before I was soaked. It was just like it had been in Shakespeare’s time. Strangely, I didn’t feel any warm glow of nostalgia.

The play was supposed to be
A Winter’s Tale
, but that didn’t meet my needs so I changed it. I took my ticket from one pocket and the thorn from Kew out of my other pocket. I jammed the thorn into my finger deep enough to get a good well of blood. Then I wrote the name of the play I wanted over the name on the ticket.

There’s more to it than that, of course. There are a few particular words you have to say, in a particular order. But I’m not about to share them with everyone. It wouldn’t do to have random people changing a play the instant they get bored. No play would ever finish its run if that were the case.

If you
really
want to know the proper incantation, you can always make a deal with the Witches like I did. But I’d advise against it, unless you’ve got the same divine blood running in your veins that I have in mine. The Witches charge a high price—one I doubt you could afford.

It was the Witches I was here to see. If they were responsible for the curse that was wreaking havoc with the faerie shows, then they’d know how to lift it. Finding the Witches is a problem for most people. But, as you may have noticed by now, I’m not most people.

So I stood there in the rain for a while, and then the actors came on stage and started the play. It was two women and a man, all wearing business suits. The man carried a briefcase, the women had phones. The stage directions for the play I wanted called for thunder and lightning to accompany the arrival of the witch characters who start the play, and the sky overhead obliged. The whole world’s a stage and all that.

“When shall we three meet again?” one of the women asked. “In thunder, lightning or rain?” She wasn’t enough of a pro to hide the surprise at the unexpected words that came out of her mouth. They weren’t the lines she’d memorized for
A Winter’s Tale
, after all. Well, I’d done worse things in my lives, and there were even worse things to come yet.

The man hesitated a few seconds before blurting out the answer to her question. “When the hurlyburly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.” He half-raised his hand, like he was about to clap it over his mouth.

The other woman was quick on her feet, at least. She raised her eyebrows a little and then gave a shrug, as if she’d decided to roll with it. She said her words like she believed them, like they were the ones she’d been practicing for months.

“That will be ere the set of sun,” she said.

Now the people around me started to look at their tickets, wondering what had happened to the play they’d paid their money to see. I put my ticket back in my pocket along with the thorn. I didn’t want to just drop those things on the ground and have the Witches find them. The real Witches, not the actors on the stage right now. Who knew what tricks the actual crones could manage with my blood?

“Where the place?” the first woman said, looking at the other actors for help.

“Upon the heath,” the man said, looking into the wings for help.

“There to meet with Macbeth,” the other woman said. She gave the audience a look that seemed to say, hey, we may as well enjoy the ride.

If you hadn’t figured it out yet, I’d summoned the play
Macbeth
up onto the stage. Some people summon demons, I summon plays. I’m not sure what that says about my character. Make of it what you will.

The first actors exited stage confusion and there was a pause before the next ones entered. But they had to step onto the stage. It was the nature of the spell. So they eventually came on stage right and continued with the play. The show must go on.

Although the show definitely changed as it went on. Each new character that stepped onto the stage wore an older and older period costume, like time was running in reverse in the play. Which it was, in a way. And the set started to fill out, props appearing here and there when you weren’t looking. Trees with moss and cobwebs. Swords on a rack. A skull on a stick planted in the ground. Only they weren’t props. They were all the real thing.

I waited for the scene I needed and worked on my character while the play manifested itself. I was going to take a starring role in a few minutes, and I wanted the audience to remember me as someone other than I was. I wanted them to remember me as just another man in the crowd. For good measure, I used a bit of Baal’s grace to turn some of my blood into wine. A quick way to get drunk, if you have the ability.

And then I noticed the cauldron bubbling away at centre stage, and the Witches clustered around it, stirring their concoction with long, weathered bones. They weren’t the same actors as before—now they were three worn women in rags. They were so aged they didn’t even look human anymore. If they ever had. These were the real Witches. It was time.

“Round about the cauldron go,” one of the Witches said, in a tone that was equal parts weariness and boredom. “In the poison’d entrails throw.” She went on with the rest of her speech, but I wasn’t listening. I pushed my way through the crowd and climbed up onto the stage. No one tried to stop me. You can generally get away with anything at the theatre, because no one’s sure if whatever you’re doing is part of the play or not. For instance, when I killed the angel Elijah onstage in Sarajevo during a production of Webster’s
The Duchess of Malfi
, I got a standing ovation for it.