Fallen Angels chpt 27

With Knives and Pens

He thought for a moment that he could see Carolyn running. It reminded him of the games they used to play around the Morticians'.

Playing tag and hide-and-seek amongst the coffins.

Chasing each other down by the river.

But it was only a flicker of his imagination as his eyes slowly eased open.

He was lying flat, and not in the corridor anymore. It was a strange room he'd not seen before. The walls were unpainted, but embellished with golden mosaics of the sun. There was a small hole in the ceiling where normally a beam of daylight would have shot down and illuminated the room, but daylight had for the moment been kicked into touch. So the room was lined with candles and torches. He raised his head. There was a door not too far away, which was open onto a red room. The red room.
Andy snapped himself out of sleep and opened his eyes properly. He could see him now; the crumbling old High Priest, standing with his back against one of the gold suns. There were others too. The inner circle of the Temple.
He moved to sit up, but found he couldn't. His hands were caught fast above his head and they held him lying down. He couldn't move. His wings were free at his sides, but his feet had also been clamped down. He struggled until his wrists were worn a sore red and looked about frantically for the others. They were nowhere to be seen.
"Stop looking. They're not here." The High Priest turned around. He straightened his back, clicking each individual spinal bone. Andy winced against the noise. The cracking seemed to have a powerful effect on the old man; suddenly his back was as straight as Andy's was. As he stepped closer, Andy noticed there were less wrinkles in his face. The hair wasn't pure white anymore. He walked to the edge of the stone platform Andy was lying on, placed his palms down flat on the cold surface and stared at him.
"Where are they?"
He smirked. "Lying in the next room, over there." He pointed over to the doorway with the red glimmer. "We haven't decided what to do with them yet… Do we kill them all now? Or not?" He reached out a hand that moved towards Andy's head. As it reached he saw that the skin wasn't hanging off the bones as it had done before. Andy flinched as it passed over his eye, near to his ear. "I know! Perhaps we'll ground them!" A malicious spark danced in his eyes. "After all, they say a DOWNED angel is a DEAD one. What do you think about that, Andy? I mean, you lived with it, didn't you?" As he muttered, his fingers were tangling round the long, spikey strands of hair at the side of Andy's head. He wanted to stop him, but couldn't even turn away. "Although, rather troublingly, yours seem to have grown back." He took a moment to tap the broad leather surface of his wings. Andy closed it quickly to his body. "And all this… THIS." He indicated to the new black apparel. "It's all very… troubling."
"It's not yours you mean." Andy hissed. "Well neither am I!"
"We'll have to see about that." The High Priest replied. His voice was changing now too. It suddenly occurred to Andy he was getting younger. He frowned. The High Priest saw and smiled. "Confused? Well," he leaned closer so Andy could see the golden yellow of his new eyes, "it would appear you aren't the only one with a god inside you."

"It's you."

"Hello, dear. The love-of-my-life. The girl-of-my-dreams. My ball-and-chain."

"Don't call me that. I don't belong to you."

"Maybe not yet but now your angels do. You never did answer me when I asked if they were mine. I'm simply recovering my lost territory. Although that doesn't mean I have to treat them nicely."

"I wouldn't be so bold if I were you. Your city has fallen. The Outcasts have Heaven now, and you're sitting in the last known faithful outpost of your kingdom. This room is all you have now, NOTHING MORE."

"In that case dear, I should warn you against the same thing. I think you'll find I do have more. I have this little play-thing of yours." His fingers tightened on Andy's hair. "Are you going to come take him back? Or can't you?"

The Bride said nothing.

"See, you can't! When I scarred you I made you infinitely weaker – you didn't tell them that, did you?"

"Shut up."

"I've had enough of you now. Be gone. Go and cry at the ends of the sky, because you, darling, have lost." Andy watched the Priest walk over to a little ledge in the wall. He took something dark and long, and rolled it in his hands. "I demand a sacrifice. Do you know why I chose you in particular, Andy?"
"No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me." Andy growled.
"Because the last time we met, you left me with this." The Priest rolled up his sleeve on his right hand. There was a semi-circle of tiny little purple marks. Teeth marks. "It won't heal up. It won't go away."
Andy smirked. "It seems like a fair trade to me. One bite on the arm for a scar across the face."
He thought he heard a noise in the next room. His spirit raised, but he saw no shadows pass the door.
The Priest glared furiously, sliding a hand across the long object. Silver flashed. It was a knife. He came closer. Andy felt his body tense. "You had really better be careful, Andy." The Old Priest said again in his own croaking voice. He shook the point of the blade at his face. Andy scrunched tight his eyes. "You can die either as an angel in one piece or in three. Weeds grow, but you can always cut them back again." He leaned a hand down on one wing, trapping it to the stone. "Grimm was kind enough to use an axe; unfortunately all I have is this penknife. I guess you're just going to have to grit your teeth and hope you lose consciousness quickly!"
Andy looked down to his foot. Something caught his attention. The cuffs that held down his feet were clamped over one of the many new buckles and studs that circled his shoes. He frowned, and instead of pushing against the metal, he tried to bend his leg. The studs scrapped the metal. He kept bending it, pulling his foot back. He was just about able to slide his foot from underneath it when a sharp pain shot through his bones. He turned his head to see the blade at the first bone of his wing. The knife went down, spraying his face with tiny red droplets.
He folded his knees. His feet were free.
He twisted quickly to the side, facing the old body, and with as much strength as he could pull together he gave him a hard kick. The Old Priest was forced away, and the knife flew from his hand across the floor. Now only his hands were trapped in the chain. He rolled and pushed himself into a sitting position; bound hands between his knees. The cut on his wing was only small; a thin trickle of blood was running to the pointed edges.
While the Old Priest was being recovered, he noticed a black mist forming at the doorway. It moved over the tiled floor, spreading into every crack.

"JINXX!"

A hand grabbed his throat. The Old Priest was up again, the bloodied knife back in his hands. Andy froze. The Old Priest leaned into his face. Andy saw all the lines that had disgusted him before only now magnified by ten times. "You know, I'm doing the world a favour in doing this. It doesn't need this disease of yours!" He raised the knife up above his head. "I'M STOPPING YOU… YOU… BLACK VEIL BRIDES BEFORE YOU DESTROY ANYTHING ELSE!!!"

"Get away from my friend."

Andy knew that voice. It was Hers, but it hadn't come from his mouth. The Priest suddenly looked in the direction of the door.
She was standing surrounded by the mist, in her full black bridal dress. It was short at the front; they could see the garter and the distressed black tights. The black veil was draped over her face, concealing her features. And she raised a straight arm.
C.C, fully awakened, leaped up and knocked the Old Priest back from Andy's chest. The others of the Elders turned to the door, only to find their way blocked by three very angry angels. Ashley's flames bounced off the gold tiles. Andy pulled against the chains, dodging the raging fire. C.C got up and closed his arms over his shoulders, gripped the chain and tugged. They shattered.
"Where's the Priest?!"
C.C turned around, only to find the space on the floor empty. "…Oops."
"I've got to stop the heart!"

Andy dodged out of the room. He paused only for a second to look at the Black Veil Bride as he passed her. She twitched a hand, as if wanting to join him, but it rested back at her side. He nodded, and crawled through into the red room.
The Priest had backed towards the bed shielded in curtains. He didn't have the knife anymore. Andy remembered it was still lying on the floor in the other room, from which he could now hear screaming.
A smile cracked in the old man's face. Andy stood blocking the doorway, wings outstretched. He stared at the shrivelled creature with contempt. It was that same sickness he'd felt the last time he'd been inside that room. With every second it looked older, greyer and closer to death. He wasn't going to be dragged down with it. As these thoughts ran around in his head, there was a deep thudding that seemed to be coming from the Priest's corner. Andy closed his hands over his ears, but he could still hear it. The heartbeat – the sun god's heartbeat.
He wished he'd picked up the knife. That would have been a perfect weapon in this case…
For a second he thought of the strange object he'd found in Jinxx's cathedral. He cursed himself that he'd not brought it back.

"If you find anything useful to you… Take it. What's mine is yours."

He glanced to the side, and saw a quill pen lying on the top of a small stool. He bent over, picked it up. It was running black with thick ink. Perfect.
"Now, now, Andy… You can't hurt me with that…"
"Yes I can." He replied, taking a step closer.
"You haven't got the strength."
"Wanna bet?"  Andy seized the wrinkled throat and threw it against the wall. His fist clenched.
"The Andy we knew… wouldn't have been able… to…" the voice splintered beneath his fingers, deep in the folds of skin. Andy held the pen up, nib pointing down, wings raised. And he paused. "You are something… different… The Other Andy…"
He felt his heart tremble inside of him. "Maybe not… but he wanted you dead too. And I've got one more thing to say," Andy leaned in closer, the closest he'd ever been and whispered;

"We are NOT a disease. And we have come to ROCK the WORLD."

Closing his eyes, he pushed the pen nib forward. He felt it tear the skin of the old chest but he kept pushing. His fingers were slippery with the wet red liquid, but he drove on until in his ears the terrible beating stopped. He'd broken the heart. A gurgle leapt up from the old man's throat, and Andy released the hand on his neck. He let him fall to his knees, and he trusted himself to look. The pen was driven right into the centre of the body. Blood was running down over the floor, and onto his boots, but it was harder to see with the redness of the floor. The Old Priest started at him, gasping in shock, and then he tumbled forward. Never to move again.
"You wanted a sacrifice? Well there!" Andy glowered down at the dead thing. "There's your bloody sacrifice." He stepped backwards, out of the puddles of blood, and took a deep breath. His fingers tingled. He realised his throat was dry. He felt dizzy and wanted to sit down, to sleep.
He had killed the god. That fact was still settling in. He was horrified by the corpse he'd created; how the skin was marbled with blue veins and the eyeballs insipid and watery. But as he gulped that down a smile spread to his face, a sign of silent celebration. The demon that had haunted his days and kept him down for so long was gone. He'd done what they had told him he couldn't – he'd won.
He turned away and stepped back through to the dark room behind. It was much the same, only a few more bodies. C.C was still in the process of pulling off a limb. Jake, being the Mourner, was walking between each body checking for any signs of a pulse. Ashley was sitting casually on the end of the table, innocently twirling the knife between his fingers. Andy glanced just up behind his head. The golden sun mosaics were cracked. Some had even fallen away from the wall.
Jinxx ran towards him and held both of his shoulders. Despite the careless blood on his hands, his eyes were frightened. "Are you ok?"
"I'm fine. I got him."
"That's good."
"Awww you killed him already?" Ashley pouted. "I wanted to have a go!" Andy shrugged. There was a murmur from the distant corner. Both Ashley and Jake turned on their heels, firing straight ahead. It was a pretty light they made; orange fire crackling with black poison.
"That should finish him off." Jake said, clicking each individual finger.
"Was she really here?"
"Was who really where?" Ashley asked.
"The Bride. I saw her… didn't I?"
C.C, now having severed the tendons of the arm, threw down the body with a laugh. "Turn around and you'll see your 'bride', Andy!"
Andy obeyed. She was hiding in the shadow of the door. She stepped out, the dress's train catching on the bottom of the door. And she lifted the veil. Andy's eyes widened. Carolyn smiled, and removed the veil from her head, tiara and all. "Alright, Jinxx. Enough's enough – get me out of this clown costume."
"You mean… it was you all along?" Andy frowned.
"Well not all along. Even I can't get inside your head, Andrew." She answered as the wedding gown disappeared. She was left with her ordinary black dress which suited her just fine. The veil in her hands had turned into her ebony hat. She replaced it back on her head. The make-up on her face was smudged. "But just for this moment… Yes."
"But… how did you get here?"
She shrugged. "I don't really know myself. I just kept running and… Well, here I am. Call it 'divine intervention' or whatever…"
"So that was an illusion." Jinxx beamed at Andy's conclusion. "Well done, buddy. You had me convinced."
Jinxx grinned.
Carolyn gave a loud sigh. "I wanna get out of here now. As much as I enjoy the sight of dead bodies I think I've had my fill for today."
"Yeah, me too." Ashley replied, jumping down off the sacrificial table. "I need a whiskey."
Carolyn glared and tossed her head. "For Hell's sake, do you ever think of anything other than alcohol?" Ashley frowned and opened his mouth, but she got there first "… Actually, no. Don't answer that. I don't want to know."
Jake shook his head but the smile remained on his face. C.C stretched and gave a yawn. Andy took Carolyn's hand and led her back through into the Priest's room. The body was still lying where he'd left it. They stopped to gape at it, each crowding around to see. Carolyn's eyes slid warily from the bloodied quill pen to the angel holding her hand. Andy grinned.

And he stepped right over him.