A Madness of Angels

There was a pair of double doors at the end of a hall, and an empty reception desk in front of them. The doors were locked. We kicked them until they opened, no strength left for subtlety, and marched into the room beyond.

The room was gloomy, the lights switched off; but more than enough street light drifted through, reflected down from the orange clouds outside, drawing long shadows within shadows across the carpeted floor. Spread out beyond the windows, on every side except the one I’d come from, was the city. It ran away as far as the eye could see, a chaotic pattern of orange, white and pinkish stars across an uneven black floor, gleaming off the Thames, catching the flashing yellow indicator lights of the cars in the streets below, the glare of headlights where the streets aligned with our point of view, the glint of bedroom lights as they were turned out for the night, or the neon glow of the signs above the restaurants, clubs and bars.

And it was beautiful. No getting round the fact. It was simply and utterly beautiful.

And sitting in front of it, looking south towards the high red lights of Crystal Palace and the distant blackness of the North Downs where they cut off the orange sky, his back turned to the door, was Mr Robert Bakker.

He sat utterly still in his wheelchair, head forward, breathing slow and steady. Tubes were attached to his arms. On one side was a bag of some clear fluid that we couldn’t guess at, leading into a drip. On the other side was a bag of bright red blood. I could guess whose. We felt the weight of the gun in our hand, the sticky hotness of our palm, and noticed in the light of the moon peeking out occasionally between the scudding clouds that he was casting a very respectable black shadow.

“Mr Bakker?” I said.

He stirred slightly in the wheelchair. “Matthew?” he asked, in a distant, confused voice.

We moved forward. “Mr Bakker?” we repeated, louder.

“Matthew, is that you?”

I stepped round so that I was next to him. He looked up, confused, then smiled. “Come to admire the view?”

I nodded and looked out across at it. “It’s a good view,” I said finally.

“One of the best. I had this whole floor cleared out so I could see it better.” His eyebrows tightened. “How’d you get here? Not that I’m not pleased to see you…”

“I was kidnapped, drugged, tied up and left in a basement thirty-something floors beneath this,” I replied cordially. “I then had a large amount of my blood taken out of my body for what I can only assume were experimental purposes, before my friends, having followed me here with foreknowledge of my imminent kidnapping and likely fate, attacked, and I escaped.”

He thought about it, then said, “That’s not what I expected to hear, I’ll admit.”

“Would you like to hear the rest?”

“Yes,” he said. “I would.” And by now, his eyes had clocked the gun in my hand, and the blood on my clothes and skin, and his voice was level and tense.

“Your shadow is alive.”

“What?”

“Your shadow is alive,” we repeated, struggling not to raise our voice. “It’s been alive for several years. It killed Patel, Pensley, Dhawan, Akute, Foster, Awan…”

“Matthew, are you quite all right?”

“… Koshdel, Khay, Dana, and me, to name a few. It is you. No getting round it. And it won’t be killed until you are.”

His fingers tightened on the arms of his chair. “You… believe this to be true?”

“Yes.”

“What did you mean by Dana?”

I met his eyes squarely, and saw him flinch. “It killed her. It held her, and I said, ‘Domine dirige nos’…”

“The blessing of the city?”

“The very same, just like you taught me, the invocation of all its guardians and its spirits. And it killed her. I held her and I couldn’t stand it, so I just… we were… anyway. It killed her. It wants to be alive – really alive. It is hungry. Nothing will ever sate its appetite, it is so hungry for life. It has no pleasure in anything, it cannot understand delight or feeling or pain, but it tries; it feasts on the blood and the fire of others, kills in order to see how people die, is fascinated by death and feasting and life. And it is a he; and he is you. That’s how it is, I’m afraid. How it’s going to go.”

“Matthew…” he began.

“It came alive when you had the stroke. You were a good man – a brilliant sorcerer. You had always delighted in life, seen beauty in it; that’s what sorcery is. The ability to see something wonderful, magical, where other people see just mundane and boring nothing. A point of view. You taught me that. Then you started dying and you couldn’t cope. You couldn’t reconcile the loss of your faculties, your abilities, your strength, your life, to how you’d lived it in the past. You were a healthy and active man and suddenly you’re trapped in this dying carcass. But you’ve still got those scruples. The moral part of your brain says, “Oh, well, such is life, et cetera et cetera, better make the most of it and not cause any fuss.” Then there’s this other part, the part that everyone has anyway, that screams and fights and kicks against the idea of dying, that is terrified of it, can’t cope with it, refuses to accept it and longs, above all other things, to live. That can find nothing in this life that doesn’t lead to death, can see nothing in this life that it doesn’t think is destructible or must have an end. I’m sure you see where this is leading.”

“You’re wrong,” he said simply.

“Because you’re a sorcerer,” I went on, drained, empty. “Because you have a certain view on life, this other part comes alive. Perhaps it’s harmless for a while, but then its thoughts seep into your own, its dreams infect your own, and you start thinking, ‘Hey, let’s see if I can stay alive, I’m sure it wouldn’t cause anyone any trouble, where to start?’ And you think of the blue electric angels and go, ‘They’re just surplus life waiting to be tapped, I wonder if they’d like to give some of their power to me?’ And somehow in this process you forget the rules. You forget that the angels are about freedom from restraint and laws and all the earthly things, and you forget that they are not just life, they are power. And the hungry part of your brain might be thinking, ‘I shall be a burning blue fire across the sky,’ but you sure as hell don’t say it. You could steal the electric angels’ power and be a god, without flesh, form, feeling, substance, without restraint by the laws of man. And you’re already halfway there, as we’ve established, because there’s your shadow doing its thing. So you ask your apprentice round. And I said no. Probably didn’t explain it well at the time – sorry – but no was the answer and it was the right answer. And you’re a bit pissed at that.”

“Matthew, I didn’t…” he tried again.

“Let me finish,” I snapped. “I need to get it right this time. You’re a bit pissed off and, whether you like it or not, there’s a part of you going, ‘Little bastard betrayed me! The angels always talk to him, why not to me, little shit!’ or words to that effect and, Bob’s your uncle, I am surprised to find myself dead at the claws of a creature that wears your face but is distinctly, definitely not alive, merely hungry. So very, very hungry.”

We clicked off the safety on the gun, and turned it this way and that in our grip, wiggling a finger into the trigger guard. “So there’s really two things, as far as we see, which need explaining on our part, us to you. The first thing is why we didn’t talk to you, when you listened for us in the phone lines. And the short answer is this – you are a great sorcerer, a brilliant master of your arts, you see magic wherever you go. But you said, ‘Magic is life,’ and that’s not quite right. You think that the study of magic, the understanding of it, gives you some sort of better grasp of life. Unfortunately, even I worked out that this isn’t quite true; it’s a bit skewed, see? We understand this. Magic is not life. Life is magic. Even the boring, plodding, painful, cold, cruel parts, even the mundane automatic reflexes, heart pumping, lungs breathing, stomach digesting, even the uninteresting dull processes of walking, swinging the knees and seeing with eyes, this is magic. This is what makes magic. Understand that, and you are some way to understanding why we are what we are.

“And I guess that covers point the second – why I didn’t help you summon the angels. It pretty much boils down to this: a man who looks at everything and sees a tool to be used, a force to be manipulated, rather than just good, old-fashioned stuff doing its thing, should not be free of the restraints of humanity. Have we missed anything?”

He thought about it a while, then smiled. “I don’t think so.”