The Watchers (26 page)

The dark night sky had turned blac
k
, blacker than any black seen by man. It was night on night, liked folded black satin sheets. No stars and no clouds, until the black moved, displacing the other black as if atmospheric layers were being stripped away to reveal the blackness of death.

Death was coming. Death to all.

As the black bore down upon the town of Imber, as those below; humans and silver Angels alike, looked up to the sky, the moon suddenly appeared as if God had sent a yellow orb as a guiding light. Except God couldn’t have provided that light. Only Lucifer; to guide his warriors.

The black Angels bore down, blanketing the fields and the buildings around Imber with their outstretched black feathered wings, soaring inside the darkness like clouds of black gauze, touching everything with their evil desires.

The black angels bared their teeth, their fangs protruding as if they were vampires seeking blood. But blood was not the desire of the black angels. They took souls, the souls of women, wanting to mate with them like the Watchers before them, to make the black Angels more human, able to create future generations of evil.

A blanket of black headed for the white Angels, now spreading their wings to retaliate on the sudden invasion. The devil’s Angels soared with their heads pointed downwards, with a smile on their scarred lips as their wings flapped behind them, accelerating their speed.

Before they hit, the white Angels rose from the ground to meet them with their formidable force. Black and white collided in mid-air, their wings touching as their talons protruded to make their killings, to defend their divine. The skin of the black Angels became shredded as their limbs were twisted and gorged by the strength of the white.

Shots were fired. British military snipers, already hidden in the grass around Imber, turned onto their backs and fired their bullets upwards into the black sky, hitting black angels as if they were on a firing range, scoring points. The Angels fell with their wings behind them, since they were lighter than their bodies. Black angels lay dead on the ground, on their backs, their mouths open and slack, their grimacing faces bloodied and torn, their wings covering the ground, as their feathers mingled with the grass. Their eyes finally closed to the night.

Out of the hundreds, in the air, more black Angels descended as the seven white Angels fought back with might and solidarity.

But the numbers were too great.

More black Angels collapsed to the fields around Imber, as finally, the Watchers knew their fight had come to an end when a single shot rang out.

Tom Stone hit the ground
.
The bullets were ricocheting around him like nothing he'd experienced before. Even in the movies, there was nothing that captured that sound and that bitter smell of burning flesh. The whole event was terrifying and the only reaction to the onslaught he could manage was to press his head to the ground and pray a bullet wouldn't penetrate his skull.

His response lasted only a second. As soon as his instinct for survival kicked in and his natural desire to witness the unleashing of the weapons and to see the Angels of death descend, he raised his head and reached out to pull Mia’s prostrate body next to him. His body shielded her from the attack, his arms covering her head, as soldiers fired at will.

The scene on Imber planes was a vision of disbelief and horror. The Watchers fought with such strength and courage, they were sure winners against the lowly blacks. Until more came and they were outnumbered. Beyond the parked cars, two men in black suits lay in pools of red as the bullets haphazardly struck, wounding and desecrating mortal flesh.

Alice Burton was no longer there. She had been pushed to the rear of the car and shoved inside by Harry Rains, as he, in turn, dragged Keri behind him to protect her too from the relentless onslaught.

Mia was screaming, covering her ears with soft hands. “Why don’t they stop? Why don’t they stop?”

Then, as if they had heard her words, the firing ceased, except for one single bullet.

“Get us out of here, Harry,
”
Alice Burton commanded. Her voice was deep and controlled, devoid of panic or recrimination. She knew what she had to do. She simply needed to convey the instructions to the people protecting her.

“No, wait,” Keri Rains screamed as Harry pulled her along with him. “My friends, my friends. Stop, Harry. You have to help them.”

He forced them into the car as he jumped in the front. The engine had been kept running, as requested by the Alice Burton’s defence squad. He shifted the gear into reverse and when he looked up a black Angel hit the windscreen, its blood soaking the glass, as the veil of his feathers blocking out all light. As the two women screamed, the Angel bared its teeth in a vicious smile before his eyes rolled back into his head and he expired, expelling a mist of blackness from its mouth.

Harry wasted no more time. He shoved his foot onto the accelerator and as the two women carried on screaming, the Angel slid off the bonnet as if he was a heavy dead bird.

Harry leaned his arm across the back of the passenger seat, hoping to see something in the blackness to guide him out of the range of fire. The reverse lights were shining and then all of the lights brightened as if a stage had been lit and the curtain raised. A small car was behind. It was the one Keri had arrived in. He steered off the road to avoid it, reversing with speed through the long tangled grass, but just as he went past, he caught sight of a child, peering out from inside the car.

Her eyes were wide with questions and her mouth was contorted as her lips cried a name. “Mummy…Keri,” she yelled. “Keriiii...”

Harry slammed his foot on the brakes and stopped the car. In his haste, he fell out of the door, but when he found his feet, he took only two paces to reach the child banging on the window. He pulled the door open and dragged her into his arms. And even though the situation he found himself in gave him no time for contemplation, the feel of her arms being wrapped around his neck, as her small frame clung to him, made him want to cry.

And Harry never cried.

As She waited for the firing to ceas
e
, Mia saw a single Watcher collapse to his knees. Before he toppled forward to the rough earth, his head revealed a wound at the back of his head. He reached up to stem the flow of blood, and then he died, falling into the earth face first, his magnificent white wings covering him like a shroud.

The fighting had stopped. The black Angels had disappeared into the night, going to other places to terrorise more of the human race.

The six Watchers fell to their knees next to their brother. Mia knew what it meant. It was the end for all of them. They lived as one and died as one. It was their law of nature.

“Uriel,” she screamed as she shoved Tom away from her body and rushed to Uriel’s side.

Snipers were standing up, no longer camouflaged by the long grass. They had been placed there to protect the Prime Minister and protect her they had. They looked confused and exhausted as they staggered over the mass of broken and bloodied wings…They hadn’t expected the onslaught of black Angels. No one had.

Uriel spoke with a weakness to his voice she didn’t recognise. “We will return to our world to die. You can help us,” he croaked.

“Die?” Mia screamed again. “No…”

Uriel raised his eyes to hers. “We cannot survive as six. We are brothers in every sense of the word. That cannot change. We live and we die together. This is our weakness.”

Mia placed her hand over Uriel’s fingers, splayed into the dirt while holding his weight.

“No, not your weakness,” she said with her lips trembling. “This…this is your strength.”

Tom was yelling. “What can we do, tell us what to do…”

Uriel pushed himself from the ground as the other five followed. They stood erect now, but without their normal towering strength, as their wings dragged on the ground behind them.

They lifted their brother from the ground and his lifeless body was hitched aloft. Then they moved, slowly, his inert wings covering the group like a white canopy. They took a step forward, together, as they had walked in life, and then they carried his body like pall bearers, taking their dead home.

Alice Burton was trying to retriev
e
her mobile phone from the floor of the car. Her right hand grappled for it as her left brushed back her unkempt hair from her eyes. Her face was devoid of colour, her lips no longer painted red. She had a snag in her stockings, running the length of her calf from her black patent leather shoes now covered in a layer of dust. When she found the phone she crossed her legs and ran a finger over the front of her shoe, making a clean shiny stripe reflecting the light from the road outside.

“What have you done?” Keri spoke in a half-whisper, her voice guarded and controlled as if to speak any other way would allow the emotions she was feeling to tumble out of her mouth in sickening defiance. “They came to you in an act of faith. I told you that. I told you they were peaceful, that they meant you no harm. I told you they just wanted to talk, to warn you of the dangers of the political moves you were about to make. I told you, I told you…”

“Enough, Keri!” Alice Burton snapped. “Now you listen to me. I have done everything you have asked. I came to this hell-hole of a place in good faith too. I trusted your word because we have a history. For goodness sake, Keri, we’re friends. Or have you forgotten that?”

Keri remained silent as she soothed the girl in her arms.

“Thank God I had my protection detail? I’m the Prime Minister, Keri. Have you forgotten that too?”

In front, behind the wheel, Harry Rains drove the Prime Minister’s car on the A303, heading back to London. They had been surrounded by twelve armoured vehicles, immediately provided by MI5 once the news had gotten out.

Trembling from the shock and horror of the night, the missing child Sarah huddled next to Keri, inside the folds of her beige woollen sweater.

Harry’s eyes were darting to the sky, watching for more deadly black angels.

Undeterred by the PM’s reprimand, Keri had reached the stage of not caring what the damn woman wanted, but now, as she contemplated her daughter still in the hands of the Watchers, she was starting to wonder if Alice Burton would be instrumental in securing the rescue of her own child, Elizabeth. “The Watchers just wanted to talk to you. They had no knowledge of the black Angels. If they had known, they would have gone prepared. They were attacked, as we were attacked. It wasn’t the fault of the Watchers. They wanted to speak of their desire for peace. To tell you how things could be better, how all our lives could be better…”

Alice rolled her eyes. She was sitting upright now with her jacket and her skirt smoothed and in place. She was once again crease-free. “My security should never have been compromised in such a way. It won’t happen again; I can promise you that.”

“Everything I told you was the truth. What happened out there was a shock to everyone.”

“But you told me they were holding your daughter to ransom. She was in the back of the car you arrived in.”

Keri shook her head as she cupped Sarah’s chin in her hand and turned her face towards the Prime Minister. “She isn’t ours. This is Sarah, the child who was taken from her parent’s home in Taunton a few weeks ago. The Watchers have been caring for her.”

Alice clicked her tongue. “I naturally assumed she was yours.”

Keri turned her head towards the profile of her husband driving the car. She was going through the ramifications of Harry’s actions. He should have left her there. He should have…

A voice interrupted her thoughts “I want my mummy,” Sarah cried as the car sped into the night.

To
m
held her han
d
as they followed the Watchers home. The darkness and the eerie silence of the trek through Imber made Mia feel enraged by the chain of events that had just happened. She felt anger boil inside her, making her stomach churn, making her feel like she wanted to vomit any moment.

Tom was silent but his hand holding hers made her feel she wasn’t alone. He was watching out for her, protecting her, as the Watchers protected their own.

The black Angels had broken the spirit of the Watchers. She could see it in their eyes. They looked despondent, without any more fight left in them as their wings dragged in the dirt on the ground. The notion was disconcerting. Without the guardian angels, what hope did any of them have?

And what of the world now. Were the devil Angels now seeking more prey? Were they descending upon towns and cities around the world? What would that mean? Was it now really the end of days for mankind? Mia had no answers. She had relied on Uriel for that, but now he was as lost as they, almost dead, along with his beloved brothers.

Mia and Tom followed the Watchers down concrete steps where a gate at the top had once barricaded the way. Only recently it had been forced open from the inside, looking as if it had been crushed as it hung from its hinges. It must have been the Watchers entrance to Imber and now it was their way back. The steps led to a tunnel made of simple breeze blocks, and varied pipes ran its length, going somewhere…serving something.

Where were they? What was that place?

Pacing along the tunnels with the body of their brother held aloft, the Watchers turned and turned again as the bare grey passageways stretched throughout a subterranean land. Only half a mile along, they passed steel doors. Tom and Mia stopped to observe them. Steel doors underground, in the middle of nowhere? It didn’t make sense. There was no mechanism to open them, only pipes moulded into them as if it was all one piece of metal. At the side, banks of sophisticated high-tech terminals held controls to operate the rooms at the other side of the doors. Atmospheric pressure, it said on one. They walked past four more doors labelled IB530 to IB534 until they reached another blank wall where pipes ran downwards like lines of coloured threads on a loom block.

They turned at that point and kept moving towards another tunnel, blocked off with debris left from builders. Old bags of sand and cement, strips of plastic piping, tools and ladders lay abandoned and as the Watchers went past, they kept walking along the tunnel getting darker the further they went. Two more lanes turned left and right, but before them, a sign propped up on disused bricks read
No Entry. No personnel beyond this point
.

The Watchers went that way.

Another thirty metres along, the roof of the tunnel changed. Below a vaulted ceiling of fine artistry with moulded curves like a bishop’s mitre, they dipped and turned as they walked among crumbling pillars where they came to a standstill inside the vault.

“We must be under Imber’s old church,” Tom said. “I saw the steeple when we drove in.”

Row-upon-row of crypts covered in dust and dirt and cobwebs didn't bother Mia one bit. But then the notion of becoming so sceptical about something that normally would have frightened the hell out of her freaked her out. What was left for her to be scared of?

She heard a voice. It was Uriel. “There is a stone crypt at the far side. Go to the end of it where it meets the wall and look left. Hurry!”

Tom went first and Mia followed him as they went straight to the spot as the Watchers had instructed, and as they turned their heads left, they saw sideway steps disappearing into the wall. It was the same illusion as the other entrances in Caer Sidi, except this was made from the bare bricks and plaster of the vault beneath the church and was just as mystical as the first one they’d experienced.

Mia went through and arrived at the other side. It was as tantalisingly amazing as the others and that was something she would never take for granted.

The Watchers came through just after them, carrying their dead. Mia and Tom stepped aside as they moved forward into the tunnel leading to the otherworld. Now, they all trundled through passages of solid white chalk where the dust from its walls sat in mounds on the ground, dirty and spent.

Up ahead the Watchers were slowing down. They were running out of energy. Then, as the tunnel led to a chamber that glowed white, looking as bright as the sun scorching sand on a beach, the air spirits came. They formed dark clouds above their heads. They were mourning, gently sobbing, and their robes were grey like the bricks in the tunnel under Salisbury plain. They lifted the Angel from the arms of his brothers and as if he was weightless, they carried him away.

Mia saw Uriel use his arm to support himself on the wall of the cavern. His shoulders were drooped and his head hung until his jaw rested on his chest. She went to his side as the others waited. “I will fall last. My brother will be next and then we will all expire one after the other.”

Mia's tears flowed freely. It was all too much. "No, Uriel," she whispered, "There must be something..."

“Come,” he said as he began to move. Mia watched as they walked without their brother in a group of six, looking as unnatural as a digit missing from a set of fingers on a maimed hand.

in the magical world of Caer Sidi
,
the Watcher
s
received their dead. Arriving there was a solemn occasion, unlike before when Tom and Mia saw the otherworld for the first time. Varquis and a group of maidens of Avalon were there, led by Rhiannon in all her regal greatness. She was different this time. She looked as if the essence of her whole being had left her, her radiance diminished by the loss of an Angel.

Mia watched her bow down, leaning across the body of the lifeless white Angel as her white shimmering gauze-like robe trailed in the sand on the beach. Two handmaidens stepped forward with cloths soaked in salt water from the sea. They kneeled alongside her and washed the blood from the Angel's lifeless face, cleaning him as he was being prepared for burial. When they had finished, and when the other Watchers around the city had acknowledged the one now deceased, Uriel and his five brothers picked up the body once more, lifting him aloft like grim pallbearers. Solemnly, they walked towards the spiralling castle of Caer Sidi.

Rhiannon spoke to Uriel as he went past. "We have prepared the room for you." Then the handmaidens followed them in a procession of mourners.

Mia stepped forward to speak to her. “Where are they going? What’s going to happen now?”

Rhiannon placed a hand on her shoulder to prevent her from following the group going towards the castle. “They will rest now, like brothers side by side and then when the time comes they will expire.”

“When the time comes? How long? When?” Mia was finding it hard to accept that moment of death. It was something she had never experienced before, not even with a loved one.

Rhiannon began to move away. “You must accept this. There is nothing you can do.” She took one more glance at Mia and Tom and then she left them on the beach, just as a lone turtle dived into the sea.

Then they heard a voice behind them. “There is something.”

It was Jesus.