Chapter 13

She'll let you in her house
If you come knockin' late at night
She'll let you in her mouth
If the words you say are right
Secret Garden, Bruce Springsteen

Hillhead, Glasgow, December 7^th

Despite her observations earlier, Caerys hadn't managed to oversee Gabriel punching in the combination to the armoury, so she directed them all towards the gym. Christophe was whimpering gently into his mother's shoulder, which should have been drowned out by the noise of the front door being kicked off its hinges, but it wasn't.

Heavy, solid footsteps sounded in the hallway, interspersed with a number of lighter, quicker footfalls that scampered across the wood. The door at the top of the basement stairs creaked as it opened, and Caerys closed her eyes, weaving another illusion across the hall. It seemed to work, as a muffled voice called out 'Just a pantry' and the door creaked shut again.

Minutes passed by in near silence, only Sophie's ragged breathing and Christophe's muffled whimpers interrupting as she let her senses drift beyond the tight confines of the room. The cacophony of footsteps seemed to come from everywhere at once, so she concentrated on what she could 'see', watching the organised team moving through the house.

Eight pairs of soldiers darted from room to room, and another four pairs waited around the entrance, but her attention was drawn to the bulky figure in the middle of the hall. Tall and broad, corded with muscle but not in the grotesque over-developed manner of Marduk's creations, this one she recognised after a few moments. He was bigger than he had been, though he had never been small, but her father had obviously learnt something from his battles with Gabriel's father. Three glistening metal pipes emerged from the back of his skull, flexing as his head turned this way and that. One bent back almost immediately into his spine, but the other two arced out into the back of his shoulders, and seemed to emerge again from his upper arms, coiling around the muscle there and following the line of his arms down to where mechanical claws had replaced his hands.

"Enkidu..." she heard herself whisper, the noise distracting her and dragging her back to the cellar.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" Sophie asked, and from the hallway footsteps quickly approached the basement door once more.

"See," a voice sounded out, louder this time. "I told you, it's just a pantry."

Bullets ripped down the stairwell, pinging and ricocheting from the brickwork, and a heavily distorted, mechanised voice replied. "Get down there and check properly." Peering through the small window in the door, Caerys saw the unfortunate soldier who'd misreported the basement come through the illusory wall she'd created at head-height and heard the wet crunch as he impacted with the real wall out of her field of view.

"Sophie," she whispered, a steely resolve settling over her. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this." Sophie just stared at her for a moment as Caerys walked over to wrench open the nearest of the trophy cabinets, hurriedly loading the shells into the shotgun as fast as she could. Despite her fear, and the adrenaline coursing through her, she didn't shake and scatter the round capsules as she thought she might, and by the time she heard the harsh, electronic denial of the armoury lockpad she was ready.

"Stay there, I'll try and hide you," she whispered, moving the trolley of exercise mats in front of where the doctor huddled with her son in the corner.

The first soldier to appear in the doorway lost his face to a shotgun blast, closely followed by the scrabbling of boots as the soldiers outside the door repositioned themselves. Silence held sway for a few moments, until she heard heavy, slow footfalls come down the stairs, and the familiar, distorted voice she half-remembered.

"Caerys," Enkidu baited her in a sing-song voice he'd used when she was younger, "I am coming for you..."

Hillhead, Glasgow, December 7^th

Satisfied that his first shots had cleared the path, Gabriel paused to consider the complete lack of activity in the street for a brief moment. Depending on the time of day and the nature of the street there might have been people looking out of their doors, neighbours from nearby streets appearing at the corners and the like. This was Scotland, gunfire wasn't an everyday occurrence, but there weren't even twitching curtains.

It was a curiosity he had no time to investigate as he approached the house, wondering why no-one had emerged to assess the fallen soldiers. They were all dead, he knew that well enough from the gouts of blood that had sprayed from his shots. Two through the head, one through the neck and a fourth that he'd had to adjust for as the target ducked for cover behind the stone stairwell had been hit centre of the chest.

As a marine he'd have been sending men out to recover the wounded, assess their injuries, but these people weren't marines. Given that, he suspected, they were waiting in the hallway for someone to continue their approach, so he mounted the wall and leapt over the drop that allowed a glimmer of light into the submerged windows of the basement, and crashed through the glass of the ground floor.

Movement was sensed, assessed and reacted to instinctively, and by the time he rolled to his feet, two more men were down. One bled profusely from the small, round hole in his forehead, but it was the other that held Gabriel's attention as he slowly twitched to a halt, small arcs of electricity grounding from his hair and a slight smell of burnt flesh rising into the air.

Gabriel felt bile rise in his throat at the sight — not for the fate of the man himself, nor the nature of death in the field of battle, but for the instinctive, natural, unthinking ease with which the power had flowed from him. Skills of war were learnt, were practiced and disciplined to give the dedicated and devoted the edge over the eager and the mindless, but this was unthinking, blind instinct.

Sounds from the hallway called his attention back to what he was doing, and he sprang into action again. Two steps, a leap, and the assistance of the solid back of the couch, and he wedged himself into place in the niche where the door resided, allowing him to drop on the two-man patrol that came to investigate. His elbow ended one threat, and his sword cut the fight from the other.

Holding his breath a moment, trying to ignore the pulse of blood in his ears, he listened for sounds of further movement, but everything seemed quiet. Moving slowly towards the rear of the house the echo of a shotgun blast came from below, and he turned towards the door leading to the basement. As suspected, bullets tore through the empty space when he opened the door, one or two sending splinters across the hall as they struck the wood of the door surround. Pressed against the wall, Gabriel lowered himself to floor level and risked a quick peek, spying the two automatic muzzles directed up the stairs towards him before pulling back an instant before they cut loose.

Scrabbling back to the fallen he quickly rifled the bodies, but there was nothing useful to be found, and all the grenades he might have been able to use were downstairs in the armoury behind the men he needed to get past. He approached the stairs again, this time managing a single shot that took down the man at the top of the stairs as he emerged, but any hopes he had that the others were following were quickly lost in the spray of bullets that deterred him from approaching.

Pressing himself against the wall he waited for a break in the gunfire, and stepped partially into the space, sighting along his snub-nosed gun towards the opposite corner. The gun appeared, lower than he thought, and his shot missed high before he had to throw himself back out the way of the return fire. Another gap, he positioned himself again, but the shooters were smart, changing the height of their shooting position and he missed again.

A third cycle, a third frustrating miss, and from somewhere in the basement, Sophie screamed. The air turned cold and crisp, a distant keening scream echoing up in the wake of Sophie's voice and the silence was cut by the thunder of the shotgun once more.

Hillhead, Glasgow, December 7^th

Caerys felt herself tremble slightly but she cocked the shotgun again as muffled gun-fire sounded from somewhere above them, and she began to hope a little.

"I think he's come for you, Enk..." she began, but cut herself off with a blast of the shotgun as another figure appeared in the doorway. Blood and brains sprayed softly against the opposite wall of the corridor, but the figure didn't fall. Pumping the shotgun to eject the smoking cartridge, Caerys backed off a step and cut loose a second round into the figure with the wet sound of organs shredding. Enkidu's harsh laughter echoed through the small room, and Caerys saw his blunt-tipped fingers wrapped around the neck of the thoroughly dead soldier she'd shot twice an instant before the corpse spun wildly through the air towards her, knocking her from her feet and sending the shotgun skittering over the floor and under the cart — out of sight and out of reach.

By the time the room stopped spinning and Caerys brushed the blood and hair out of her face, she was surrounded by a half-dozen soldiers, all aiming serious looking rifles at her, and Enkidu's brutish, twisted face staring down at her.

"Looks like your boyfriend's run away and left you..." he sneered. Caerys closed her eyes against the slight pain the light sent through her head, and let her other sight drift out. The six soldiers lurked heavy and dark, a faint grey miasma floating around them. Enkidu didn't show at all, although the heavier, darker clouds that billowed where she knew he stood were an indication of his presence.

Through the mist and smoke she could see the festering cancer deep in one soldier's lung, the jagged scar of a poorly set bone in another's leg, a number of minor ailments she could aid and assist, and none of it served her at all. What she could hear, could sense, could feel, was the adrenaline boosted heart rates of the six; a half-dozen tolling bells sounding the time remaining to them away peal by peal, pulse by pulse.

Mortality was written of in the book she'd inherited, ways and means of death and dying, slaying and killing. She'd read those pages — the theories she'd needed to follow through did not differentiate between healing and harming when it came to manipulating flesh — but not for the practicalities. Despite herself, despite the lack of attention she'd paid to the details, she couldn't help but work her way through the ideas. It would be so easy to manipulate their flesh, such a simple thing to twist it to her own purposes — against its own ways and means — but she hesitated.

There had been little in her life that had been pure and unsullied until the magic came along, and she almost felt she'd rather die than let them take that from her. She was knocked from her thoughts by Enkidu's leathery, open-handed slap across the side of her head.

"I asked you where your boyfriend had gone..."

"I don't have a boyfriend, retard." Another lazy blow shook her as she tried to rise to all fours, squeezing her eyes shut against both the tears and the light, the grey mist flowed around her again, as formless and powerless as she felt.

"You three stay here," she heard. "You three, go find the kid and the doctor. Between the three of them I'm sure someone will be willing to tell us where he's gone..."

"Soph..." the whisper crept out, eliciting a chuckle from Enkidu, but she blocked it out as she reached for the mist.

Hillhead, Glasgow, December 7^th

Sophie clutched her sweating hands nervously around the dark wooden stock of the shotgun where it stopped at her feet, eyeing the dangerous glint of oiled steel warily. At her knee, Christophe's wide-eyed look of panic set her quivering jaw in place as she realised she had to be strong for him — if only to keep him from crying out and alerting the soldiers to their presence.

The temperature started to lower, dipping sharply and painfully, stinging at her eyes as she felt tears crystallising on her cheeks. A few muffled sighs and unfamiliar noises from beyond the mats she hid behind had her confused, but the sound of heavy footsteps kept her head down out of sight.

"Very good, Caerys," someone muttered, the previously unfamiliar voice of Enkidu. "Someone's been teaching you things you aren't supposed to know, haven't they?"

"You should be dead." Caerys' confused reply was slightly slurred, and Sophie risked a quick peek over the top of her barricade at the odd sound.

The centre of the room was a clear circle, clearly marked out by the absence of hoar-frost that spread out across the fallen bodies of the dead soldiers. Fluids seeped out of their ears and nostrils, slowly, crystallising as they hit the floor, a symptom of the pervasive cold that had penetrated their bodies before they could fight back.

Enkidu stood with his back to her in the middle of the circle, a hulking beast of a man with three grotesque silvered tubes jutting from the base of his skull, all three pulsing gently as something viscous appeared to pump through them. On all fours on the other side of the room, her hands wrapped up under her arms, Caerys huddled in obvious pain, blood staining her face and soaking through the material of her blouse from a wound in her side.

"I should have been dead many times," Enkidu continued, whilst Caerys very obviously looked anywhere but at Sophie. His voice was distorted, amplified and changed in a mechanical way, although his breathing seemed entirely natural. "Once I even was dead, for a while. Your father is a great man, Caerys, and he rewards those that serve him. I was dead, and he brought me back — I can even kill you, so long as I bring you back to him. He can still make use of you."

"Your soul is gone..." Caerys eyes had turned a pale golden colour, gently glowing. From where she crouched Sophie couldn't tell if the irises and pupils were still there, but Caerys was looking somewhere else, anyway. "He didn't bring you back, he just animated the remains. If he wants my magic, you'll need to take me back al..."

Enkidu's speed was incredible as he lunged across the room, the mechanical claws opening and closing with a mechanical whine around Caerys' arms, hoisting her into the air. The gold aura of her eyes flickered and died as he sneered into her face.

"I can siphon off your soul if I need to, witch." Caerys spat in his face, and he released one claw from her arm to swipe the metal attachment across her torso, trailing blood as it did. Sophie let out a scream at the sight, and immediately dropped down behind the mats again as Enkidu started to turn towards her. Servos and pumps whined, suddenly, accompanied by an electric hum, and Caerys' arm bent with an audible snap as Enkidu's smile broadened.

"Do you think you'll come quietly if I rip her soul out of her?" Enkidu asked her as she dangled limply in his grasp, and the keening scream that came out of her mouth should have dropped him to the floor, but he merely laughed until a wall of flames burst through the door.

Hillhead, Glasgow, December 7^th

Gabriel felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise at the sound of the cry, feeling a power in it that went beyond just the obvious anguish. Down below, nearer to the sound, the gunfire hesitated, and he couldn't let the opportunity pass. Stepping into the open, he stared down into the stairwell, and flames burst forth from his hands. Billowing and rolling down the steps, the gout fell upon the gunmen before they could move, still pained from Caerys' enchanted wail, and they began to char almost immediately.

By the time the rolling fire finished, a handful of seconds later, three corpses lay at the foot of the stairs, he was able to slide down the banister and approach the open door of the gym from where heavy breathing could be heard.

Stepping into the doorway, sword in one hand and the machine gun in the other, he paused at the sight before him. The bulky, part-machine figure wasn't clearly visible beyond the dangling, limp figure of Caerys, bedraggled amongst the mingled sweat and blood that oozed across her face.

"Before you think that you might get away a clear shot," the figure told him in a partially digitised voice, "you should know that these claws won't relax if you kill me. They're hydraulic, and they need to be consciously opened."

"I shall just have to come and take her off you, then, won't I?" Gabriel assured him with far more confidence than he felt. "Or I could just kill her now and take the pieces back when I'm done with you." The bulky figure sneered, and Caerys let out another cry, this one a muted, gurgling whisper, as a pump somewhere out of sight whined into action. The machine gun aimed low, under Caerys' suspended feet, pumping two rounds into the armoured boots in quick succession, and he was already in motion to his left, seeking a good position to try and hack the sword through the mechanised arms.

Even as he moved, though, he caught sight of Sophie rising from behind the mats. Tear-streaked and obviously panicked she lifted the shotgun to her shoulder barely six feet from the cybernetic man's back, and unloaded two cartridges in quick succession into his back. Two of the three metal pipes split and burst, a thick green-grey ichor oozing from the holes to mingle with the huge amounts of blood emerging from the back of his decimated skull.

Seeing the sudden weakness the damage caused, Gabriel reversed his motion and hacked through the remaining tube, catching a spray of the fluid in his face as he did, but wiping it away in time to see Caerys slipping out of the suddenly limp grip.

"Merde... " Sophie whispered, the shotgun falling from suddenly limp fingers to bounce on the mats, and Gabriel reached up to secure it quickly. To his slight surprise her gaze wasn't on Caerys, as he'd expected, but fixed on the surprised stare of the fallen figure she'd shot. Snatching his sword back up, he flipped it over in his grasp and drove the point into the middle of the man's chest, feeling it grate on metal as he did.

"Take that back with you." He muttered, but as he looked up he realised she wasn't looking away.

"I... I killed him." She whispered, when she realised he was looking at her.

"No." Gabriel assured her. "I killed him."

"The gun... he would have died..."

"Maybe, maybe not." Gabriel demurred, reasonably certain that she was right. "I'm sorry you had to try, but we need to move. Now." For a moment she remained still, her gaze fixed on the corpse, until Caerys moaned and tried to roll over, and then she suddenly flew into action.

"I'll get a first aid kit." Gabriel explained, taking the shotgun with him, and heading off to make sure there were no more left.

Two figures were coming down the stairs as he approached them, but the shotgun took care of them, and he decided that another battle had been won, even if there were a few stragglers to be cleaned up. The victory, though, gave him no pleasure at all, and it was the haunted look in Sophie's eyes that robbed him of any appreciation of the moment.

Holiday Inn, Edinburgh, December 7^th

The atmosphere in the car was quiet and tense, the soft noise of the tyres on the road rivalling the near-silenced radio and Caerys' occasional pained whimpers. Christophe was slumped against the rear door, lulled to sleep by the frenetic pace of the day and the gentle motion of the car, whilst Caerys rested against the other door in a more pharmaceutical slumber, looking uncomfortable with the bulky sling holding her arm against her chest.

It was Sophie, though, hunched and staring out the window at the intermittent lights of the M8 drifting by that was the source of the tension.

"You think I'm weak, don't you?" she finally asked, as they finally turned off the motorway into the newer districts of Edinburgh.

"Excuse me?" Distracted for a moment, Gabriel navigated the junction before turning to look at her briefly.

"You think I shouldn't feel like this, don't you?"

"I don't know how you feel, Sophie," he pointed out, truthfully. "I'm guessing that you're distressed... you had to shoot someone, but you've taken an oath to do no harm."

"It's not the promise..." She shook her head, still staring out the window at the clusters of grey houses that they left behind. "It's... I don't hurt people. I heal people, it's what I am, it's what I do..."

"You save people?" he asked, and caught her nod from the corner of his eye as they waited for traffic lights. "You saved Caerys."

"I killed Enkidu." She countered. "I should have shot at his arms, or..."

"If you'd have shot his arms," Gabriel pulled the car over to the kerb and took it out of gear, turning to face her, speaking gently. "you'd have risked hitting her. When you first get given a gun they teach you some basics, and right at the top of the list is 'point it at what you want to kill, don't point it anywhere you don't want to kill'. It's a gun, Sophie, it kills people, that's what it's for. It doesn't do anything else. It's a tool, but it's a very specific tool, for a very specific job, and like all jobs, sometimes it needs to be done."

"I should just accept this, then?" She finally turned to look at him. "I shouldn't feel guilt for this, is that what you were saying? I shot another human being..."

"You shot a circus-show freak raised from the dead with weird rituals and micro-electronics," he corrected her. "It was already dead. And no, you shouldn't feel guilty..."

"You do." They both turned to the weak voice from the back seat, as Caerys sat up, wincing at the pain from her arm.

"He doesn't feel guilty for killing anything," Sophie pointed out, tears starting to show in her eyes as she turned away.

"Not for killing." Caerys leant forward slightly, trying to reach a hand out to Sophie's shoulder, but couldn't get upright and slumped back into the seat. "For leaving us alone so that you had to." His jaw set, muscles twitching in his temple as he turned back to the wheel, and put the car into gear.

"You do?" Sophie leant forward a little, but he turned away from her to look for oncoming traffic, jabbing the accelerator a little harder than he needed to, pushing her back into her seat and getting a hiss of pain from Caerys.

"Be careful!" Sophie snapped at him in a whisper, turning to face Caerys.

"He doesn't like it being pointed out when he's made a mistake." She mock whispered, giving a gentle chuckle as he slammed the next gear into place.

"What are you so happy about?" he asked, a force calm obvious in his voice.

"Me?" She slumped back into the seat. "I'm alive for another day, isn't that enough?"

"No." Sophie answered, after a moment. "No, it's not. I don't want to spend the rest of my life just being thankful I didn't die that day."

"Then we need a plan to change things, and soon," Gabriel explained, as they turned off the main road an into a hotel car-park.

"A hotel?" Caerys looked out the window.

"An hotel." Gabriel corrected, rather archly, reaching down for the boot release and opening his door.

"No more houses?" Sophie emerged a second later, wrapping her coat tightly around her against the chill wind whistling across the tarmac.

"I don't have any more in Britain," he pointed out, with a shrug. "I don't keep a spare just in case my first three get blown up, gun-riddled and generally over-run. It's not something I predicted needing."

"It wasn't meant to be accusing," she offered, and he sighed, straightening up from looking into the boot.

"I'm sorry." He acknowledged. "It's been a long day, we probably all need some sleep."

She just nodded, not trusting herself to speak in the wake of the tense look she'd seen in his face.

"Wait here, I'll go and book us some rooms."

Sophie nodded, once, staring away across the bowl shaped depression amidst the hills where the bulk of the city lay nestled in a thin blanket of the afternoon's snow. Street-lights glimmered a dull orange in the feeble mist that rolled in from the port, past the hulking mass of the two Forth bridges, and the occasional siren wailed for few moments.

All of it passed her by completely, seen and heard but not registered as her thoughts returned again and again to the violent recoil of the gun against her shoulder, the fine mist of blood and hydraulic fluid as the shot tore apart her target's head...

"Sophie..." She jumped a little as Gabriel's hand settled gently on her shoulder, and he backed off a step. "I could only get two rooms." He explained, quietly. "Both have two single beds... Did you want to share with Christophe? I can share with Caerys, but..."

"You think she'd rather share with me?" He nodded, and she shrugged after a moment. "Christophe will probably sleep until we're on our way in the morning, it won't matter to him." For a moment he looked like he was about to say something, then obviously changed his mind and reached into the boot of the car again.

"I'll help Caerys up the stairs, if you get Christophe. Take everything you need, we'll be taking another car in the morning."

Slinging a hefty rucksack over his shoulder and settling it into place, Gabriel reached in and pulled out a smaller pack, holding the straps out for Sophie to slide her arms into. Once that was done, he held the door while she eased Christophe out. The boy murmured gently as the cold air hit his face, and then nestled into the crook of her neck comfortably.

"You see," Gabriel told her, gently, as she started to walk away, and she turned back as he eased Caerys into his cradling grasp, her arms draped around his neck.

"See what?" she asked, confused, looking around for a moment to see if she could make out what he was talking about.

"He doesn't see a killer," Gabriel pointed out. "He still feels as comfortable around you as he ever did..."

Holiday Inn, Edinburgh, December 8^th

Swaying slightly on the bed, Caerys reached up with her good hand to rub at her tired eyes and stretched, sending shooting pains up her strapped arm that drew a hiss from her.

"Caerys?" Sophie appeared at the door to the small bathroom annexe with a concerned look on her face and toothbrush clutched in her hand. "Are you alright?"

"I..." She tried to focus on the various aches and pains, but the conflicting signals were having to fight a bone-deep exhaustion for her attention, and failed miserably. "You're the doctor, you tell me." She managed a wan smile, which Sophie failed to return.

"Your shoulder was sprained, but not dislocated. Your radius is fractured, but the ulna I think is alright. There was quite a lot of bruising, but Gabriel had another stockpile of medical supplies that helped with that."

"So... how am I?" she asked, but Sophie disappeared into the bathroom again, leaving her to struggle with the wrapover blouse she was wearing. By the time she returned, Caerys was still struggling with the knot at her waist.

"Let me." Sophie eased Caerys' hand aside and deftly untied the cloth before stepping back and watching the red-head struggle to try and get her arm out of the sleeve.

"How the hell did I manage to get dressed?" Caerys looked up at her, and smiled gently as she blushed. "You seem to be helping me a lot lately."

"Well, usually I'd have a nurse to help with this sort of thing." She pointed out, looking even more uncomfortable.

"Do they handle the shotguns, too..." Caerys joked, but cut off abruptly as Sophie spun away, tears welling in her eyes.

"Sophie?"

"Please, don't... I don't want to talk about that."

"Al... alright." Caerys acceded quietly, rising to her feet to walk up behind her. "I won't talk about it after this, but... thank you."

"You can't thank me, I killed someone." Sophie spun, leaning back slightly over her bed as she realised how close Caerys was.

"I killed at least five." Caerys tone wasn't cold like Gabriel's would have been, there was an obvious pain and regret to it, but her eyes were hard and her jaw set. "It was them or y... or me."

"You were about to say something else." Sophie pointed out, and this time it was Caerys who shifted away slightly, less sure of herself. "You... do you really care that you killed those people?"

"Not really." Settling herself back on her own bed, Caerys slumped back against the headboard, tiring rapidly. "They were dark, blackened souls, decaying spirits trapped by their own wants and needs and desires. If I hadn't killed them, we'd have died..."

"Then... something's hurting you when you think of it?" Sophie realised, crossing the small gap slowly to perch on the edge of Caerys' bed.

"I used the magic to do it." Caerys explained, her eyes shut tight against the memory, settling her head on the top of the headboard, concentrating on the feel of the rough wood against the nape of her neck as she battled to keep her tears under control.