arrow appeared to go wild. He was already rising, preparing to seek cover, when the boy struck. From the folds of his jacket he produced a long knife and used it to slash at the back of Malphas’ right thigh, severing the hamstring. Malphas toppled, and the boy buried the blade in his back. Malphas dropped the bow, and tried to reach behind him for the hilt of the knife, but the movement must have forced the blade still deeper into him, the tip of it slowly, insistently, finding his heart. His mouth opened wide in silent agony. The life slowly left him, and he joined the woman who stared lifelessly at him from her single undamaged eye, his blood mingling with hers on the wood- strewn ground.
But he was not the only one to fall. Jackie called my name, and I turned to see Liat stretched in pain upon the ground, an arrow buried in her left shoulder. While we were distracted, the boy ran, disappearing behind the plane and slipping into the woods beyond.
Jackie and Louis helped Liat to sit while Angel examined the arrow.
‘It’s gone straight through,’ he said. ‘We break it, take it out, and strap the wound up as best we can until we can get her to a hospital.’
I saw the three sharp blades of the arrow protruding from her upper back. The wound would be bad. Those arrows were designed to create massive trauma. Already Liat was shivering in shock, but she still managed to point at the plane with her right hand.
‘I’m going to the plane,’ I said. ‘The sooner we have that damned list, the sooner we can leave.’
‘What about the kid?’ asked Angel.
‘That was no kid,’ I said.
I looked to Louis. ‘Go after him,’ I said. ‘Take him alive.’
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
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.
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.
