Better the Devil Read online

  "What? Have you finally gone clinically gaga?"

  "I don't think they're harmful... not yet," the academic called back. "I need to see them up close."

  Brand activated the gantry and, gazing around to see if they had been spotted - which it seemed they miraculously hadn't - Jenny joined him as it descended. It dropped them on the floor of the cavern and Brand immediately headed for the first golem in line, looking like a child next to the giant that had been carved from the clay in which it stood.

  At last he knew where Emmanuel Konterman fitted into all of this. The man's religion, his occult background, steeped in a rich history of God's powers of creation, had no doubt given him the ancient knowledge of how to wrest life from the earth itself. It was doubtless why the Ministry of Defence had sought his aid during World War Two, and why Conrad Capek sought - for his own reasons, whatever they were - that of his doppelganger now.

  Konterman's talent: the arcane creation and instilling of life into artificial men.

  Of golems.

  Lehmverkund.

  The Clay Resource.

  But there was something wrong here; Brand could sense it. Whatever plans the Ministry of Defence had once had for these creatures, something had changed. Not only was there a strange feeling about this whole cavern - a horrible, dizzying vibration that seemed to be coming from beneath his feet, but also something about the appearance of the golems themselves. Though they were naturally slightly glistening - and vaguely hairy - in their appearance, there was also a sheen to them that seemed as out of place as the feeling in the cavern itself. Brand wandered through the golems and ran his hand over them, from chest to abdomen. They did seem to have a coating of some kind, something sticky and lotion-like that, when he rubbed them, tacked his fingers together. He pulled his hand away and sniffed, jerking back as he did - whatever the hell this stuff was he doubted it belonged. No, he smelled blood, semen, urine and faeces... and something else that for some reason he found stomach-turningly familiar. He struggled and then remembered. He used to pass the local abattoir on the bus when he was a kid, and when the place had been in full swing - after the cattle markets - the stench of rendered animals had been utterly nauseating. This was like that only different... tallow, for sure, but different. It smelled of...

  Brand retched. His fingers - the inside of his nostrils and his throat - were coated, he knew, in the remains of the missing reanimates. This was the purpose of Ravne's kebabs.

  But why? For God's sake, why do this?

  Brand's heart suddenly lurched. There was a sound, one that he knew from earlier, only this time the pitch seemed reversed. The gantry, which was their only way out of the pit, was retracting.

  Brand snapped his gaze around. Only now did he realise why none of Capek's people were down here with them. Because they were all staring down in silence from behind the safety rails above. And one or two of them were smiling.

  A rolling metal roof began to close between him and them.

  Something was wrong, very wrong.

  Calling Jenny Simmons to follow, Brand ran. Ran as fast as he could through the mirey forest of silent figures, dodging and weaving to the left and right past the obstacles in a way he imagined - but probably didn't in any way - sped up his attempted flight. Whichever way he could have gone, he really had no chance - not only was running through the clay of the cavern floor like trying once again to run in a dream, his investigations had taken him to the far end of the excavation and he was simply too far away.

  The academic neared the gantry just as it passed above head height and he threw himself upward, arms flailing for purchase. His fingers missed the metal by a full centimetre.

  Brand slapped down on his knees and palms in the mud, panting like a dog. Dammit! What the hell was going on?

  An evacuation alarm sounded.

  The rolling roof fully closed.

  Metal sluice gates in the walls of the cavern slammed shut here, opened there, and Brand realised suddenly what they were. Little Rose's fireplaces. Designed to control air flow, heat exchange...

  Oh Jesus. The explosives Ravne had seen. They had nothing to do with killing the reanimates, except, perhaps, incidentally.

  There was a dull boom from somewhere in the subterrain. Another. Then another. Blowing at perfectly timed intervals and placed to create a self-perpetuating and super-heated front with the effect they produced.

  A heat front that was heading this way.

  These golems were about to be fired.

  He and Jenny were standing in a kiln.

  Fire roared towards them.

  Just before it hit he saw Jenny transform, and knew that Baarish-Shammon had shed her human, physical form to protect her host body. The demoness turned towards him and smiled. Brand had only a microsecond to wish that he possessed a similar faculty before the rushing sheet of flame instantly took the flesh from his bones and left the skull of a charred, open-jawed - and soon to be clattering to the ground - skeleton gawping in its wake.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I have to be dead, Jonathan Brand reasoned.

  It was not the first time such a thought had occurred to him. When last, he had fallen to a bullet fired at his temple at point blank range, his would-be assassin had been the Sonderkommando Thule agent Helen Earth, guardian of the mutated fallen angel that had lain buried beneath Boswell.

  On that occasion he had survived through the miraculous intervention - he had since decided it couldn't have been anything else - of the heaven-sent artefact known as the Eyes of the Angel.

  But he had not had that artefact a moment ago.

  He still felt the searing heat of the sudden inferno, the ice-coldness of awful realisation. He still heard the great roar of the tsunami of fire powerful, enough to strip the flesh from his bones. He even remembered the beginnings of his abruptly curtailed final scream.

  No doubt about it. He had been consumed in the heart of hell.

  He had to be dead.

  If that was the case, then why did he feel woozy? No, not woozy, exactly - more out of step with his surroundings, as if he were somehow no longer quite in phase with the universe around him.

  What universe? He was standing in absolute blackness. Nothing at all. Without knowing why, he took a step forward.

  A figure was standing there, beckoning him on.

  It was Norrell.

  "You? Where did you-?"

  Norrell shook his head. "That doesn't matter. Come this way."

  Brand did and found himself inside the House of Commons. A shadowed House of Commons, leached of all colour. Figures filled the benches on either side of him, but they were more flickering smudges than corporeal forms. As grey as their surroundings, too - like ghosts.

  Norrell slipped onto one of the benches and became like them. Whoever they were.

  The only one who seemed to have any substance at all was the one who sat in the Speaker's chair.

  "Welcome, Dr. Brand," the bearded man said. "I am John Dee."

  Brand faltered. He thought of the legendary alchemist - some said sorcerer - and advisor to the throne. "Dee? The John Dee?"

  "The same."

  "Then the fire must have done its job. John Dee has been dead for a very long time."

  Dee smiled, a little sadly. "Oh, I have been, but think of me as his shade, his projection through time. Like the others who make up this assembly, I am simply a representative - a perpetuation, if you like - of his ideals here in the Dark Parliament."

  "The Dark Parliament?" Brand queried. "What - shades don't pay their bills?"

  Dee laughed - no, actually guffawed. "It is a name meant to represent our hidden influence, doctor, not a physicality. What you see is only a context for you to inhabit. If you'd like, it can be changed to somewhere more comfortable for you."

  "More comfortable?" Brand mused, and shook his head. "No, I'm fine. Much as I might need it right now, the members of your Dark Parliament getting rat-arsed in the Arden Arms doesn't seem quite
right, somehow."

  "Rat-arsed?"

  Brand struggled to think of a word more contemporary for Dee. "Betwattled."

  "Ah. Then I suppose instead you should like to know why you are here?"

  "Actually, how I am here might start to get me up and running."

  Dee shook his head, dismissive. "Simple displacement. Much as Mister Norrell used to remove you and Miss Chapter from the custody of the Accord. Except that this time we displaced you a second before you died."

  It was Brand's turn to guffaw... a second before he died? Then it hit him what else Dee had said. "You're not the Accord? Who the hell are you people?"

  "As I said, we represent certain ideals. The way things should be. There is a balance to everything, doctor, but sometimes that balance becomes... disturbed. That is the reason for the Dark Parliament's existence. We intercede only when the balance between factions is... unjustly weighted."

  "You mean when the good guys start to lose?"

  "Sometimes when the bad guys start to lose."

  "And which am I?" Brand questioned, correcting himself when he thought of the others. "I mean, which are we?"

  "An interesting mix, actually," Dee responded, "but as far as your current circumstances are concerned, mainly for the good."

  Brand's head reeled. The fact was that he had signally failed to glean any significant information at the site and - even if this were some kind of dream - it might help him to begin to make sense of things.

  "Dee, what the hell is going on?"

  "The Clay Resource," Dee explained. "A project begun by the Ministry of Defence and Department Q towards the end of 1944. A project intended, with the help of Emmanuel Konterman, to create a force of golems that could defend London against a Nazi invasion, should the city fall."

  "My God."

  "Unfortunately, also a project whose existence Sonderkommando Thule was fully aware of. Their own project - Lehmverkund - was to replace the people involved with their own homunculus doppelgangers, and then use the golems not to defend London but to conquer it."

  "The homunculi - apart from Konterman - found rotted in the bunker," Brand said. "They were never used."

  "Both projects took almost a year to come to fruition."

  "The war ended," Brand guessed. "Both projects were abandoned. Then sixty years later Capek Construction accidentally breaches the homunculus bunker."

  "The breach was no accident, doctor. Conrad Capek had simply located the bunker after years of research, because the Konterman doppelganger had long been vital to his plans to reactivate The Clay Resource. Capek would probably have coerced the original years ago had he been able, but the real Konterman vanished after the war, as you know."

  This triggered a question that had been nagging Brand since this had begun. "But what about his memories? The doppelganger wouldn't possess the necessary knowledge, surely? He would have been pre-memory engram technology."

  "Not at all. The Peenemunde bunker was one of the first to experiment with the technique. We believe samples were taken from Konterman during the war. It need be nowhere near as invasive a procedure as Conrad Capek seems to enjoy."

  "Okay, fine, but if all of this was preplanned why call us in to investigate the bunker?"

  "As you have all already surmised, to remove your people from the scene. Capek knows that you all possess the skills and knowledge to threaten him, and so, when he discovered the rather elaborate traps that remained active there they suggested a method to eliminate some of you in the very first act. The only mistake he made was to underestimate your people's resilience."

  "People do that," Brand nodded. He felt an odd surge of professional pride towards Hannah Chapter and Lawrence Verse, if not necessarily towards Solomon Ravne. "And they'd resent you calling them my team," he added as an afterthought.

  Dee chuckled deeply. "They are a... disparate bunch, aren't they?" He turned and looked at the others for a second. Eyebrows were raised. "Tell me, Dr. Brand - would you like us to enlighten you as to exactly why Ethan Kostabi brought them all together? The particular gestalt he sought?"

  Brand took a moment to digest the words and then his heart lurched at the suggestion. But his response - and the speed with which it came - amazed him. "No," he said emphatically, though not exactly sure why. Perhaps his brain was overloaded enough with current circumstance, or perhaps it was simply the fear of what he might learn. "I think some things are best left to run their natural course, don't you?"

  Dee smiled at him and Brand got the impression that without him realising it there had been a right and a wrong choice. He thought he'd made the right one.

  "So when the bunker failed, he blind-sided us at the Eye," Brand said. "All to give him free rein with his golem army. But why the hell does he want a golem army in the first place?"

  "He does not," Dee said, surprisingly. "They have become a means to his end."

  Brand hesitated. "I don't understand."

  Dee was silent for a second, and when he spoke he did not answer the question directly.

  "Answer me this, Dr.r Brand - what do you know of the creation of golems?"

  "More than most, I suppose - it comes with the job, but I haven't made a serious study of the subject. There hadn't been the need for that... until now."

  "Tell me what you know."

  Brand shrugged. "There are references in recorded history as far back as the Talmud, which contains several instances of Rabbis creating manlike creatures they then used to conduct their holy errands. Probably the most famous story is more recent, that of the golem of Rabbi Loew, or Yehuda Loew Ben Bezalel. Back in the sixteenth century, as the then Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Loew reputedly created a golem to defend the Jewish ghetto against a blood libel, some say an actual pogrom, instigated by the city Gentiles, who had accused the Jews of all kinds of horrors, including drinking the blood of children or using it to bake matzo - their unleavened bread - or simply murdering them for ritualistic purposes. The idea for the golem apparently came to Loew in a divine dream and, together with two helpers - the three born under the signs of air, fire and water, which together with the earth of the golem represented the necessary elements for the ritual - he prepared himself spiritually for seven days before crafting the creature from clay on the banks of the River Moldau. It was a complex ritual, but what resulted was reportedly three metres tall and capable of growing fingernails and hair that covered its body. Naturally, this golem - some accounts say Loew gave it a name: Joseph - dissuaded the gentiles from further persecution and when its task was done Loew hid the creature in the attic of the Altneuschul, the principal synagogue of Prague. The story goes that it's still there - having miraculously escaped widespread destruction by the Nazis - ready to emerge when called back into battle. There's a statue of it in present day Prague, at the entrance to the former ghetto." Brand paused and smiled. "But some say that it isn't a statue at all."

  Dee humoured him with a small smile of his own. Again, he took a moment before he spoke. "This creature of clay was - you believe - the archetypal golem?"

  "No, not necessarily, but it was the kind - no pun intended - that became stamped into the public consciousness after inspiring writers and film makers over the last two centuries. Gustav Meyrink's Der Golem, for example, or in slightly different form as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The director Paul Wegener made the silent classic The Golem in 1916, a measure of its popularity being that it was the first cinema film to spawn two sequels. His golem - the one with the ogre-esque jacket, the big belt and sculpted wig - became the iconic image that people visualise whenever the word is used today."

  "Then clay is not the only material that can be used to make such a being?" Dee asked, urging him on.

  Brand shook his head. "There are recorded instances of sand golems, iron golems, stone golems, and even flesh golems - Frankenstein, again - which must be made using parts from six or more dead bodies. The Talmud is only one indicator of the material and the methodology. Because what we'r
e talking about here are the secrets of creation. And the instructions for that are believed to be contained within the ancient Kabbalistic tome, the Sefer Yetzira, or the book of formation. The Sefer Yetzira teaches that it is not the material itself that makes the golem but the words used in the ritual, the Tetragrammata - God's words of creation - the words of power. Theoretically, then, a golem can be created out of anything... even from thin air."

  "And do you accept this?"

  "Many better men than I have studied - continue to study - the Sefer Yetzira in the hope they might eventually come to some understanding of God's plan. But the writings are vastly complex, elusive. And perhaps with good reason. It's been postulated that if the entire book could be fully deciphered and then reverse engineered, then the student would effectively become God."

  "Capable of creating his own Adam, his own Eve, in his own Garden of Eden," Dee said.

  Brand nodded. "Because that's all we are meant to be when it comes down to it, isn't it, we men and women? Golemim and Golemahot? All that we are until God makes us fully human by providing us with the breath of life."

  "Genesis 2:7," Dee quoted.

  Brand studied him. "Dee, what's this all about?"

  There was a murmuring from the others in the chamber and Dee appeared to confer with them for a few moments, though not a word was said. Then for the first time, Dee rose from his seat and approached the academic. "For a layman, Dr, Brand, your knowledge is extensive and insightful so we hope you will forgive us a small demonstration to ensure that you fully comprehend the import of your words and what we have to tell you next." Dee placed a palm on the side of Brand's head and the academic recoiled slightly - the alchemist's shade had no mass, no smell, no material presence at all, but he could feel the hand on his flesh.

  And then it passed through his skull.

  Brand staggered. It was as if Dee's hand were some old chalk duster and his mind the blackboard across which it moved, his perception of his surroundings erased beneath its stroke. But as the hand passed, it did not leave a blank board beneath... simply a different one.