Part 9 (2/2)

”If so, you should have done it a long time ago.”

Yes....

Raphael turned his head and looked directly at me. His eyes were a bottomless grey, sucking me in. ”You, I will kill slowly,” he said. ”Over more years than you can imagine.”

I was fast becoming popular. First Mengele, now Raphael. It didn't help that I, too, had thought one of them was already dead.

You were planning a second revolt. Against me. You, whom I let live, you, whom I banished from my side, forever. You dare to threaten me?

”Hardly.” Raphael almost smirked. ”Only to retake what is rightfully ours.”

You planned to invade our world with the aid of humans?

”Plan,” Raphael said. ”Not planned.”

There was a moment of complete silence, as if sound, the nature of sound, were suddenly absent from the physical world.

Then Sophie's body began to convulse and the air about her grew hazy as if intense heat formed inside her mortal human shape.

Out of the haze, wings extended slowly, four, five, six metres in each direction; silver and sharp, they were like a bronze statue come to life in ba.s.s relief. The wings extended, then snapped.

And out of the circle of heat stepped G.o.d.

It is the only description I could think of. It was and wasn't the giant I had seen in that other world, and it was more than that: it was huge and all encompa.s.sing and kind and cruel and all things at once. It was an angel the like of which I had never seen before.

It didn't faze Raphael.

With a strangely human scream of rage, he attacked the bright angel. One wing extended and shot out, almost tearing through the other's bright facade. The thing that was once Sophie Stockard side-stepped him easily, and its own wing lashed and carved a deep wound in Raphael's torso.

It was hard to focus, but I had to. Glancing aside, I saw Mengele point the gun again at Eldershott, saw Eldershott begin to rock again, begin to mutter, begin to sing.

The heat from the Archangels' fight was melting a crater in the hall. I had to do something, had to stop Eldershott, banish the G.o.d-like being before it could kill again, before it started a third world war by its actions.

The cipher and the key. Destroy it. I remembered what it had said. I had to stop the Germans invading the angels' world; to fail would mean suicide for everyone on Earth. But I also had to stop the killings of the angels on Earth, or I would face the same outcome.

I formulated a plan but, before I could move, an awful, unearthly keening sound issued from behind me, and the first of the tortured angels I had freed stepped into the hall.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

When the angels came through into the hall, madness took hold of them. They tried to fly and failed and that seemed to drive them even madder. They came cras.h.i.+ng into the n.a.z.i soldiers, ripping them with their wings, with their teeth, with their hands. Some attacked the gate, trying desperately to go through, cras.h.i.+ng as they hit an invisible wall. The rest attacked Raphael, who drove them away easily as he battled his real opponent.

You dared to abduct my subjects? You dared to raid my world with what holes you had remaining through which to breach it? It was an awful voice, a voice like the heat of a nuclear reactor. They fought inside a rapidly-growing crater, and I looked at the ceiling, worried. Cracks were appearing in the ice, caused by the intense heat.

”As above, so below,” Raphael cried, the tip of his wings nearly cutting his opponent in half. ”And now our fellow humans will have all the angels they want for their experiments.” A clash of wings as bright as the sun, and I was momentarily blinded. Then: ”And when they're finished, I won't have even begun.”

I had to reach Eldershott. The angels seemed to avoid me; for the two fighting in the ice I was forgotten, at least for the moment; and Mengele was too busy keeping his gun on Eldershott and the rest of his staff (who seemed to want nothing more than to disappear into thin air) to pay much attention to me.

I approached cautiously along the wall, trying to reach them.

”Faster!” Mengele was shouting. ”Faster!”

And Eldershott was praying, and the gateway was again filling up with images, bringing into existence a world beyond our world. I wasn't sure how many soldiers Mengele would have left when the broken angels were done with them, but I suspected there were more, somewhere, only now getting ready for their a.s.sault on heaven.

There was only one thing I could have done and so I did it; I approached the back of the gate. From that side it looked like a clear piece of gla.s.s through which I could see the rest of the hall. The structure itself looked solid, and I needed to unbalance it.

Then one of the angels flying at the screen cried, a single word, and disappeared inside the gate and I knew it was open, and that if it were to be closed it had to be now.

There were corpses belonging to the blond soldiers all round me. I went through their uniforms, picking up what I needed.

I returned to the base of the gate, and I was right: more soldiers were streaming in and the first few looked as though they were about to go through. I had to act fast.

Grenades. Take a bunch in one hand, pull the pin, dump, repeat on other side. Get the h.e.l.l out of there. And counting. Counting all the time. Praying the numbers are right. Praying it would work. Praying it wouldn't kill me.

One. Two. Three.

Four.

Five!

Explosion.

Six.

Seven!

Explosion.

The gate shuddered-- Eight. Nine. Ten.

Eleven.

--and fell, slowly, forwards.

It was even larger than I'd thought. The n.a.z.is seemed determined to go through it en ma.s.se.

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