A Madness of Angels

angels.”

He spat. Again we considered slitting his throat, ending him right now for his arrogance and his stupidity. But he was no longer a danger to us, and without the blue rage in front of our eyes, we found the thought repulsive. We could imagine the feel of the skin parting at our strength, the slickness of the blood on our hands. We felt colder now, the water no longer refreshing but bringing out stained goosebumps in the night breeze, and the idea of killing him seemed like murder. That was fine. I had prepared for this event: a magic circle drawn in Camden, with enough sandwiches and water to keep him alive for a week. Long enough to get answers. Murder might have to come eventually; but not yet.

So I pressed my hand across the back of his neck and put darkness over his thoughts until he went loose in my grip, slipping to the pavement like a dead salmon, in a pool of spreading green ink.

I left him there, and went to get the van.

When I got back with the van, approximately thirty seconds later, San Khay’s heart was missing. Part of his ribcage too, although the odd shard of bone spread across the scarlet pool of his blood suggested it hadn’t been taken, merely broken in the process of getting into the chest. His stomach had been split open, and the veins and arteries running down either of his neck slit straight down from ear to collarbone. I had seen death before, but never this death, in such proximity, or with myself so heavily to blame.

We got down on our knees without noticing that we fell, and threw up. Salt in our eyes and acid on our tongue, we emptied out the entire contents of our stomach in the puddles of colour around us and retched until we thought we would throw out our bones. When we were done, we sat in a pool of blue water with our arms across our knees and shook.

I saw the shadows move, but still all we could do was sit and tremble. I saw the way the shadows bent around the lights, twisting across the paving stones, the long arrow of the pillar’s shade turning like the point of a sundial, shrinking and bending slightly in the middle, as if cast by something concave. When he started to rise out of the ground, dragging the darkness up with him like a blanket spread on the earth, all we could do was stare, and shake, and feel tiny.

He solidified a bit at a time, starting with his feet and spreading upwards: the whiteness of his hands, the face becoming brighter and more intense, his features growing out of the darkness into eyes, nose, and eventually, a smile of curved blue lips, and yellow teeth. He opened his arms – in greeting or an apologetic shrug, we couldn’t tell which – and said,

“Hello, Matthew’s fire.”

I got us up off the floor somehow, on hands and knees first, pulling us up a little at a time and feeling hollow inside, as if at any moment we might collapse in on ourself. I said, “He was on your side! One of yours!”

“I would have taken his skin, but it isn’t so beautiful any more,” he murmured, drifting across the soaking ground. The water ran off his feet like droplets from a puddle of oil. “You did that.”

I backed away, mind racing without my being aware of it, a background scream. Unable to think coherent thoughts, we burned with anger, fear, shame, sickness, guilt, hate.

I said, “How did you find me?”

“I heard your dance,” he replied, his voice tipping over his teeth like oil popping in the pan. “I felt the electric burning. I tasted you play with shadows. I knew it was you, even from so far away. I rushed through the dark to get here, I sped across the river in the shadow of the waves blown in the wind. I thought perhaps I would be too late.”

“I wasn’t going to kill him!” I spat, and realised, to my surprise, that it was true. A wave of relief nearly knocked me to the ground, passing as quick as the last breath of the storm. Relief, and something riding the back of the wave: hot sharp anger.

“No,” whispered Hunger. “I had to do that for you, because you were too afraid.”

“You are an abomination!” we snarled.

“Such fire! What shall I call you, deepest blue?”

I bit my lip and snapped, “Do you know why I call you Hunger?”

“Yes,” he said, almost preening, stretching out the unnatural length of his limbs, and uncurling his fingers to admire the black curve of his nails. “It is myself.”

“Do you remember what you said when we first met?”

“No.”

“You said, ‘Give me life.’ You tried to see if my life really did flash before my eyes as I died; you scratched at my face asking, ‘Can you see yet? Can you see?’ Do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

“Learnt anything since then?”

The shadow thought about it. “I’m still hungry,” he replied.

“We thought you might be.” Bending, not taking our eyes off him, we picked up the two curved steel knives that San had carried. My hands were shaking. “And we could kill for fish and chips.” We swiped the blades a few times through the air, testing their weight. “Fish and chips and ketchup.”

The creature looked confused. “I hunger for life! What are your desires to mine?”

“We,” we said firmly, “are living it.”

His face darkened, the shadows spreading out from beneath his eyes, around his mouth. “Give it to me,” he hissed.

“No,” we replied.

He stretched his arms out wide, the darkness spreading around him with the movement. “Give it to me!”

“Get stuffed,” I said, and, because the words made us feel stronger, we added, with a feeling of recklessness that made us almost dizzy, “Arsehole!” We felt like a child caught stealing sweets and wanted to laugh at the terrifying, impossible consequences we faced. Anger was heating up my skin, despite the sodden state of my clothes, and the rage across my eyes was clean, not a hint of blue, entirely mine. I raised the knives towards him, and they dragged fiery sparks through the air as I laced their edges with the heat in my heart.

Hunger grinned, and flexed its fingers. It could kill me, I was pretty confident of this, but in that moment of heady drunkenness, we didn’t care.

There was a rattling.

It sounded like a hundred broken teeth being knocked around inside a metal box.

It took me a moment to realise that it had nothing to do with the shadow. Surprise must have shown on my face; suspicion was on his.

It got closer, an uneven noise of bouncing, of metal clanking. As it approached, so did the smell: a mixture of curry powder, dust, car fumes, petrol, mothballs, wool and old tea bags which was somehow familiar. Hunger’s face was a picture of confusion, the darkness still warping the air around him, as he stood, ready to pounce. The rattling came nearer, the smell got stronger and with it came another sound.

The sound went like this:

“Buggery buggery bugger youth today! Buggery arseholes when I was young but no no no they don’t listen, moving with the phones, jazz, bling, ting, zing! Fucking pigeons! Shit where’s me oranges? Oranges oranges oranges gun oranges two pairs of nylons oranges…”

Hunger whispered, “Sorcery.”

I said, “You have no idea.”

The voice replied, “Show respect you imbecilic nit toad flea insectoid wart!” Rattling along in front of her on three wheels, her trolley heaved with ancient plastic bags as Old Madam Dorie bounced her way into Paternoster Square.

There is a story of the Bag Lady.

She isn’t simply a bag lady – a lady who carries plastic bags full of the strangest scrounged items she can get her hands on – she is The Bag Lady, the queen of all those who scuttle in the night, gibbering to themselves, and the voices only they can hear. She is the mistress of the mad old women in their slippers who ride the buses from terminal to terminal, she is the patron of the scrapyard girls who play with the