John Connolly - The Wrath of Angels

Louis nodded, and ran with me as I headed for the plane.

‘That thing on his throat,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘It looked like the same mark that Brightwell had.’

‘It is Brightwell,’ I said. ‘Like I told you: don’t kill him.’

Louis set aside his rifle and took out his pistol.

‘I hate these fucking jobs,’ he said.

Jackie Garner suddenly moved away from Angel and Liat and began scanning the forest to the south, his rifle raised.

‘What now?’ said Louis.

Angel called down to us. ‘He thinks he saw someone in the woods.’

‘Just get the list,’ Louis told me. ‘I’ll check it out, then go after the child, or whatever you say he is.’

The plane had sunk so far that entering it required stepping down into the cockpit, at least once I’d managed to cut away some of the sticky creepers that were coating the door, which was still ajar, even all these years after Vetters and Scollay had first forced it open. It was dark inside, the windows obscured by the vegetation, and I heard something scamper away from me at the back of the plane and flee into the forest through an unseen hole. I turned on my flashlight, and went searching for the leather satchel that Harlan Vetters had described to his daughter. It was still there, the sheaf of typewritten pages safe inside its plastic covering. Scattered beside the bag were various clipboards, soda cans, and a pair of shoes. I went to the back of the plane, for there was light filtering in from somewhere. The plane lay at a slight upward angle, the nosecone facing toward the sky, the rear submerged in the earth, but what had appeared to be just another part of the upper fuselage was revealed, on closer examination, to be a canvas sheet fixed to the metal. It had probably allowed Malphas to enter and leave the plane easily, if he chose to do so.

‘Charlie?’ It was Louis’s voice. ‘I think you need to come out here.’

‘On my way,’ I said.

‘Now would be good.’

Another voice spoke, one that I knew well.

‘And if you have a gun, Mr Parker, I’d advise you to throw it out ahead of you. I want to see your hands raised as you emerge. If you appear with a weapon there will be blood.’

I did as I was ordered. I emerged from the plane with my hands above my head, the satchel on my left shoulder, and prepared to confront the Collector.

52

I took it all in as soon as I stepped from the airplane: Liat, lying against a tree, her left arm hanging uselessly by her side, her face pale; and Angel and Louis in the clearing below, separated by about twenty feet, their weapons raised and aiming at the rise above that stinking pool of black water.

There, partly hidden by a tree trunk, stood the Collector, the wind causing the tails of his coat to extend behind him like wings but hardly troubling the greased lines of his hair. He appeared to have dressed no differently for an excursion into the wilderness than he would have for a walk in the park: dark pants, worn shoes, a stained white shirt buttoned to the neck and a black suit jacket and coat.

Jackie Garner knelt before him. There was a strange coil of metal around his neck, and silver objects along its length glittered in the dying sunlight. It was only as I drew nearer that their form became clearer. The coil was threaded with razor blades and fish hooks: any movement by Jackie or the man behind him would tear his flesh. Jackie’s body blocked a clear shot at what little of the Collector was exposed: just one half of his face, and his right arm, the muzzle of a gun pressed against the top of Jackie’s head while the Collector’s eyes moved from Angel to Louis and back again. When I appeared, his eyes fixed on me, but even at this distance I could see that they were different. In the past, their bleakness and hostility had been leavened by a kind of dry amusement at the world and its ways, and the manner in which it had forced him to assume the onerous duty of executioner. It was a facet of his madness, but it gave him a humanity that he would otherwise have lacked. Without it, his eyes were windows into an empty, unforgiving universe, a vacuum in which all things were either dead or dying. Here was the Reaper made incarnate, an entity entirely without mercy.

‘Let him go,’ I said.

Slowly, I shifted the leather satchel from my shoulder and raised it for him to see.

‘Isn’t this what you came for? Isn’t this what you want?’

Liat shook her head, imploring me not to hand the list over to this man, but he said only, ‘Is it? If it is, then it is not all that I want.’

He looked at the bodies of Malphas and the woman with the burned face.

‘Your work?’ he said.

‘No, their own. Malphas killed the woman, and the boy with her killed Malphas in reprisal.’

‘Boy?’

‘He has a goiter, here.’ I pointed to my neck with my free hand.

‘Brightwell,’ said the Collector. ‘So it’s true: he has come back. Where is he?’

‘He ran into the forest. We were about to go after him when you appeared.’

‘You should fear him. After all, you killed him once. As grievances go, that one’s hard to beat. The other two, though, you don’t have to concern yourself about. They won’t be coming back, maybe not ever.’

‘Why?’

‘Angels die only at the hands of angels. All gone now. No return, no new forms. Poof! ’

I considered what he had just told me. Brightwell had once died at my hand, but Brightwell had come back. If what the Collector was saying was true—

But he was ahead of me. He smiled, and his voice was filled with mockery.

‘Why? Did you believe that you might be a fallen angel, a shard of the Divine discarded for your disloyalty? You’re nothing: you’re just an anomaly, a virus in the system. Soon you’ll be expunged, and it will be as if you had never existed. Your life is being measured now in minutes – not hours or days, not months or years. You’re very close to dying here, because I am very close to killing you.’

I saw Louis and Angel tense, their bodies preparing for the gunfire to come. In response, the Collector jerked on the coil, and Jackie screamed in pain. Lines of blood began to flow down from his neck.

‘No!’ I said. ‘Lower your weapons. Do it!’

Angel and Louis did as I said, but their fingers stayed on their triggers, and their eyes did not leave the Collector.

‘And why am I to die: because my name is on that list you received?’

This time, the Collector actually laughed. ‘The list? Those names were nothing. They were bait, footsoldiers to be sacrificed. They knew the Kelly woman was faltering. They knew she would betray them. She had never been privy to their deepest secrets, and all she had were the names of those she herself had corrupted. Brightwell may have added your name when your paths first crossed, but others ensured that it ended up on Barbara Kelly’s list. It was their hope that its presence on it would convince your own friends to turn against you, that they would cast you out, or kill you. The real list, the important list, is in your hands. It’s older, and it’s the product of many hands. That list has power .’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I tortured it from a woman named Becky Phipps before I put her to death. She went hard. By the end, she was confessing in droplets.’

‘Who wanted my name to be put on that list?’

‘The Phipps woman died before I could get that information from her, but she spoke of Backers, all wealthy and influential men and women, but one of them more important than the rest. It was simple human psychology. They knew Kelly was turning, and they planted your name in her head. They told her it was significant information, that their enemies would place particular value on it, and she used it, just as they knew she would. They’ve been watching you for a long time, and they were as curious about you as I was, but pragmatism eventually outweighed any interest in your deeper nature. Now, like me, it seems that they’d prefer a world without you in it. So this is my deal, and there will be no bargaining: you give yourself to me, and the woman lives. So too do your belligerent friends down there. One life for many. Consider yourself a martyr to your cause. Otherwise, I’ll hunt you all down, and I won’t rest until you and everyone you love is dead.’