Suffer The Children

by Rossi

Chapter Seven: A Child Shall Lead Them.

The end to this wasn't far, just up ahead, he could feel it in his bones and in the way his skin fizzled with the currents of magic. He could hear Kingston's heavy policeman's tread behind him, the pace he'd developed after years on the beat, steady and remorseless like the march of Time itself. Time indeed. Time to bury this.

They left the tunnel, crossed an open patch of waste ground, entered a dilapidated building. The air exploded with small, feathery bodies, wings clattering around them, mingling with startled calls. Kingston cursed as his battered suit jacket was splattered with white. Then the storm passed, and they found themselves standing in a maintenance shed. Disused now; there were a couple of dilapidated carriages abandoned there, one partially burned out, both scrawled with graffiti. Pigeons grumbled and muttered in their sanctuary in the rafters of the roof, where gaping holes let a cold drizzle drift down onto them.

Kingston squinted, even the dull London wintry daylight harsh to eyes grown accustomed to semi-darkness. It was Constantine who nudged him and pointed towards the one derelict carriage that still had a roof.

"There."

Feathers were drifting down, black and white, grey and brown, more varieties than could have been shed by the disgruntled pigeons. All wing-feathers, dragged to earth by the old blood crusting their ends. Over the sound of dripping water and distant trains came a panicked cooing. Quietly, they crept around to the end of the carriage.

Their quarry was perched on its roof, his legs dangling down, for all the world like Huckleberry Finn fishing from a bridge. Certainly he looked like any young boy, dressed in jeans and an England football jersey, his face round and soft; perfectly innocent, if you discounted the wings mantling above him, keeping off the rain. Once they had been festooned with feathers, but now the red leathery skin was showing as the camouflage failed. A pigeon struggled weakly in the small hands, pecking ineffectually at his fingers as they pulled out the wing feathers, one by one, using the blood to stick them back onto his own wings. Blood smeared his jeans, stained his hands.

Tears were streaming down his face.

"Raguel." Constantine's voice was bleak, the voice of a man who has decided he is tired of Fate's jokes at his expense. The pigeon was let fall; it lay on its side in a muddy puddle at their feet, struggling to use its naked wings. Kingston's face twisted with distaste, but Constantine remained impassive.

"It's you," the boy who wasn't a boy said. He drew his wings around him in a gesture of self-comfort. "I tried to fix it, but they all fall out," he continued. He drew his sleeve across his running nose with a thoroughly boyish snuffle. "I was just trying to be good, you know."

"By taking life?" Kingston pressed, policeman to the core. "By committing murder?"

"'And the sinners shall suffer unspeakable torment...' The Elder Martin said the wicked should be punished." Raguel smiled, the expression sending chills down Kingston's spine. "So I punished them. They thought I was their angel of vengeance, but they were wrong."

"How were they wrong?"

"_He_ knows." Raguel nodded at Constantine, who so far was standing silent. "Tainted seed. Everything he touches turns to shit." The words didn't fit the rosebud mouth.

"Why the perverts?" Constantine retorted, meeting the cold gaze. Raguel almost flinched and dropped his eyes to the pigeon lying at their feet, its struggles stilled.

"Why not? They preyed on the helpless."

"So do bank managers, but I didn't see any smiting going on there." Raguel frowned.

"You're making fun of me. You're not taking me seriously." Lightly, he dropped down off the carriage, his sneakers splashing on the concrete floor. His grin was almost feral as he looked up at them. " You'll see. Watch this."

It was just a small glow at first, creeping across the pale skin like sunlight, casting a warm glow to the white hair. Then it intensified, heightened, gradually initially so that the blood was visible beneath the skin, like a child placing his hand over the lit end of a flashlight, only magnified. It grew brighter, too bright to look at, and Constantine felt his chest constrict at the sheer amount of power being generated. A large, hard hand grabbed his arm, and for the first time he saw fear and awe etched on Kingston's rugged features.

Then the popping noises began.

The maintenance shed had been home to generations of pigeons, who had found the rafters a safe haven from the bustle of London's train stations. No longer. With a series of small, wet explosions, Raguel detonated them, filling the air with blood and feathers and pureed body parts. Out of the corner of his eye, Constantine saw Kingston stagger back, retching. A severed head had caught in the front of the detective sergeant's coat, beak still gaping open and shut. A shrill giggling reached his ears, and he turned back to Raguel; the demonchilde was gleaming brighter than a star, shining with a light that was both beautiful and terrible.

His grin was that of a boy playing his favourite prank.

Constantine half-shut his eyes against the glare, reached out, grabbed the small shoulders. He wasn't sure what he expected to achieve - except a horrible, bloody death - but this had gone on long enough, it had been too much.

Two things happened.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Ragual wailed, grabbing at Constantine's wrists. The cry was not the evil rasp of one of the Fallen, or the righteous trumpet of one of the Host: it was the cry of a child, abused and frightened.

The other thing that happened was that as the small hands closed around his wrists, Constantine's mind exploded with light.

'Christ, not another friggin' mind trip,' he managed to think briefly, before a host of memories not his own hit him:

~ The Mary, waking cold and alone in the hollow tree where he'd left her, the first seed of doubt sprouting in her heart even as the seed of her destruction began sprouting in her womb. ~

~ The mother, lying cold and dead in a sterile room, as her first born son is taken from her by grim-faced zealots. The room echoes with his thin cry. ~

~ The righteous men, their faces cold, their hearts colder, standing in judgement. "The vessel was flawed, but her spawn might still prove useful," says one. "The forces of darkness think they have won. Let their changeling prove to be the vehicle of their destruction." ~

~ The child, huddled cold and alone in a bare stone cell, fearing what the opening door will bring, but fearing the dark even more, because the darkness speaks to him. "Our little secret," the bad man says, his hands sliding over the child's smooth skin. And the hurting begins. ~

~ The Angel, standing cold and terrible, filled with righteousness and power, released at last upon the world to wreck the Lord's vengeance. A toilet block, a moment of groping hands and stammered invitation, bringing back the fear of the small boy in the cell... His first kill. ~

The link between them shattered into a million fragments as a driving pain drilled through his heart. Constantine gasped and staggered back, returning to himself with the thought that it had been too much, that his heart was finally giving up on him. Instead his eyes opened on the sight of the child - _his_ child - wearing an expression of abject surprise, blood flecking the pale pure skin of his face. One hand still held his father's wrist, the other reaching down to touch the tip of the railway spike protruding from his chest.

"F-father?" he asked, lifting his eyes to Constantine's, the glow diminishing around them. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned..." Blood dribbled scarlet over his lips, spilling onto Constantine's hands as he tried to support the limp body. Then with a sigh, like he was falling asleep, Raguel slumped, becoming a dead weight that slipped through Constantine's fingers. He raised his glance to meet Kingston's where he had stood behind Raguel, his hands stained with red, his face grey with shock.

"Phil?"

The police officer blinked, as if roused from a deep sleep.

"Phil? What have you done?"

Kingston looked down at his hands, regarding it with shocked detachment. "I had to do something, John. He was killing you."

"He wasn't killin' me, he was showing me, showing me the truth. He was as much a victim as poor bloody Craig." Constantine looked down at the small figure lying crumpled at his feet. "Christ, Phil, he was just a kid. A hurt frightened kid, who was only doing what he'd been taught." He dug savagely in his pockets for his cigarettes. "For fuck's sake, he was _my_ kid."

"But I thought..." Kingston let his voice die away, lost in the melancholy wail of the approaching sirens. Rain drifted down through the ruined roof, rinsing the blood from their faces and matting in the stolen feathers on a would-be angel's wings.

[next part]

back to Rossi's stories | Miscellaneous archive | comicfic.net