fic: Angels in Mourning (part 1) | Helen Magnus/River Song | teen | SFA Big Bang
Title: Angels in Mourning (part 1)
Rating: Teen
Genre:Adventure, Mystery
Pairings: Helen Magnus/River Song (Doctor Who)
Spoilers: Carentan, (ignores Doctor Who canon starting with Let's Kill Hitler)
Notes: This is late and a multiple parter (three - parts two and three are still being betaed) because real life is evil, vile and wicked. Many thanks to grav_ity and rubystandish for being so patient and understanding.
Summary: Helen attends an art opening to view the rare statue of an angel that for some reason is never drawn, photographed or painted. While Will, Henry and Kate look for clues, Helen relies on an unfamiliar archeologist who seems to be attached to Praxis.
Don't blink.
read on AO3
Beta:matildaswan, many thanks!
Art by the lovely and talented rubystandish. Many many thanks.
The invitation sat on her desk apart from the rest of the post, as if it required a special degree of consideration. Helen picked up the important personal correspondence, that coded specifically for her as per her careful use of postal redirecting. A great many things came for Helen Magnus, even the covert things, and this letter was rare indeed because it was not addressed to Helen Magnus.
She lifted the envelope, the paper heavy and smooth to her fingertips. The script of her address was neat, hand-written with the kind of care modern penmanship rarely saw applied. She appreciated that and the one who'd addressed her envelope knew that about her. Someone knew that she'd trace her fingertips over the ink and sniff the paper.
Perfume, not the cheap fickle scents she was unable to ignore when she ventured out of the Sanctuary, but a haunting scent that lingered like the memory of the hand that had sealed the envelope. The postmark was ordinary, Gothenburg, which had a poetry to it. Paris would have been obvious, Berlin too efficient, but she hadn't been to Gothenburg since before the Great War.
Circling her desk, Helen lifted the letter opener, a sharp, elegant gift from James, and sliced into the neatly sealed envelope. The paper tore and she pulled the contents, an embossed invitation, out of the envelope. There was no note inside, just the faint scent of perfume, something she knew from somewhere. There were times when she would trade her first edition Tsvetaeva for James' memory.
The invitation announced the opening of a rare collection of paintings by the (supposedly) insane daughter of sculptor famous for his Weeping Angels. After her suspicious death, paintings had been found all over her apartment, all consisting of the surroundings of one of her father's Weeping Angels, but not the Angel itself. She had painted the shadows of the Angels, their blurry reflections, but never the Angels themselves.
Pages of her journals were also on display, the invitation continued: a series of works that depicted her lifelong obsession with the Angels and that they be seen but never captured.
The full collection, named the 'Tears of the Angels of Bathalha', was on display at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. The invitation offered an exclusive pre-opening viewing, complete with cocktails, that Thursday.
Helen turned the invitation over, looking for additional clues to the sender's identity. Remembering something James had once said about shutting her eyes, she breathed in a hint of perfume from the letter in darkness.
It was pleasant, even spicy, with notes of musk and peppery undertones, like a particular red wine…
She remembered the scent and the neck she'd last found it on. Helen straightened the invitation in front of her and lifted her phone from her desk.
"I need transport and accommodation for Lisbon, leaving tomorrow night."
A private plane and the usual arrangements followed. She hadn't been to Portugal for several years, the country was too small to support its own Sanctuary, and her Portuguese was rusty. She could make do with Spanish or Italian, but she hated the crudeness of arriving in a country with its tongue clumsy on her lips. She'd have to make an effort on the plane.
There were no other identifying marks on the invitation or the envelope. She could bring it down to the lab and put it through the ringer there, but she had a hunch the perfume was what she was meant to remember. Quite a gamble, but she appreciated that kind of confidence.
Did she want to bring anyone along? Kate had little patience for art openings that didn't require armed guards. Henry had a programming resource summit he'd been talking about and though she knew it was half-LAN party, she didn't have a reason to deny his passions or ruin his attempt to hide them. Will would be perfectly willing to attend an art opening but he would be seen as her date, which would be useful under some circumstances but not if Ranna was trying to find her.
Helen was best served by attending this one alone, which meant no back-up. That was less than ideal. Grozny and London would both have to be informed about her trip and she'd have to smuggle in a gun or two.
All of her preparation sat behind the question of what Ranna wanted? What was special about this art opening? Angels were mythical creatures, not Abnormals, and though many Abnormals had become part of the legends of angels, no angel's outline of negative space meant anything.
Ranna had written this herself and arranged for it to be delivered through Sweden to reach Helen with enough time for her to attend. She had to go, but why? Why was she going?
Helen tapped her hand against the desk and turned to her computer. Sinking into her chair, she called up the broadest search protocol.
Weeping Angels brought up a few partial matches: the weeping amphibians of Indonesia, the angel bats of Madagascar and a species of flower called Angel's Tears. None of those were right and she waded through the pages of suggestions, cursing the complexity of her own database before she landed on a solitary mention from the Grozny Sanctuary.
Villagers in sixteenth century France had spoken of a stone angel killing an entire village in the darkness.
It was an old note. The file itself was only half-translated, but her French was better than her Portuguese. The Abnormal hunted in the darkness, left the bodies intact, and had vanished the same night it came, allegedly taking a statue of a stone angel from the local cathedral as a souvenir. The official account claimed the angel had defeated the creature, but one child said that stone angel had moved from her pedestal and killed the monks in the darkness.
"Reading ghost stories?" Will asked from the doorway. His hand was up by the door, which meant he'd knocked and she'd missed it.
"A stone angel came to life and killed most of a French village before vanishing into history."
"An angel, not a gargoyle? I've heard of gargoyles." Will set her tea on the desk and hovered, curious.
Helen waved him over to her computer. "There are no pictures of the statue. One of the accounts mentions something about a curse. I'll mark it for translation and have one of our French experts get back to me." She swivelled in her chair and offered him the one in front of her desk.
"Have you any requests from Portugal? I'm attending an art opening and I could pick you up some pastel de nata or a bottle of vinho verde if you like."
"If Tesla isn't coming to visit before I get a chance to drink it, I'll take a case. Just so I get a glass."
"So little faith."
"I was an optimist, once." Will scanned the screen, taken in what she'd just read before he took the chair. "Is there anything in records about the curse?"
"You don't believe in curses now, do you?"
"The list of things I didn't believe in that I now do grows longer every day." Will lifted her invitation and grinned. "Sounds formal."
"I shall pack appropriately."
"Who sent it?"
Helen watched his smile grow as she failed to respond. The longer she left it, the more he'd grin and the deeper she'd be. "I believe it's from a friend."
"A Swedish friend?"
He was as bad as James, and lacking in James' Victorian tact. Helen glared. "No, not a Swedish friend."
Will leaned back in his chair, deploying all his senses. "Someone who appreciates the art of the insane then?"
"Some say there's truth in insanity."
"Or it's the truth that drives us mad." He set back down the invitation. "You'll have Henry look at it?"
"Background checking my dates?" She lifted her tea and took a sip.
Will shrugged and stood. "You'd do the same for me." Grabbing the invitation from her desk, he folded his arms. "I'll take it to Henry."
A few years ago, he would never have dared ask where she was going or even considered teasing her about it. Now he thought himself her equal. Helen let her tea rest in her mouth, reminding herself how far they'd come. He was an excellent protege, one of the best she'd had, and he had the same unflinching loyalty that reminded her of James. Henry was loyal in the same manner as Nigel: a faithful creature who would go to the ends of the Earth for his friends. Nikola had his needs, as had John, but James had followed her with a kind of patience devotion that still made her ache.
What made her worthy of that from two men? What was it that had her people placing their lives between her and danger? Perhaps the loss of Ravi still weighed on her more than she realised. He'd given up everything, his family and the life he'd led, so she could leave Caretan and return to her endless struggle.
Putting on a fine pair of shoes and a silk dress wouldn't take away her grief. Milling through the well-dressed and even better read as they spoke of art in a way that gave away so much more of themselves was a foolish pastime, yet she was looking forward to the trip. She mentally planned her outfit and contemplated the tall pair of boots she'd been holding back for a special occasion. It was a rare hope that Ranna would brave the surface; even if she had sent the invitation through her own hands, she would hardly have time to waste at an art opening.
Hope was rare, so Helen let it take root; she needed the distraction. Reports of Abnormal activity were rising across the world and somewhere, something was brewing. She could nearly see it, like catching something dark out of the corner of her eye. She didn't like it but she couldn't confront it, so instead she'd go to Portugal and be beautiful.
Henry found nothing wrong with the invitation. The exhibit opening was real and the scent on the invitation proved to be perfume after molecular analysis. Perfume made with a flower not native to the surface for the last ten thousand years, so Helen's hunch was justified. Henry seemed more leery than Kate, who'd been smirking since Henry had announced his findings.
"I didn't know she got holidays."
"If she does, then we need to renegotiate our deals, Doc. You've never let me go to an art exhibit thing." Henry swirled away from his computers and grabbed a handful of Kate's bowl of pretzels.
"Have you ever asked for leave to attend one?"
Henry pondered that. "There's a small exhibition as part of a larger thing on the East Coast this fall--"
Kate snorted. "She already gave you leave for Dragon*Con."
"If I had more I could look at all the art."
"You mean comics."
"Some of those are art!"
"Some of them are naked drawings of big breasted women with demons on their-" Kate paused, swallowing the first syllable of an impolite term, "ladybits."
"I assure you, I have heard the all of the common terms for a woman's genitalia before." Helen said, taking a pretzel. They were odd crunchy things, and nothing like their namesakes in Germany, but she did like the salt.
"I know." Kate glanced down, chagrined. "I just don't usually say it in front of my boss."
Her employer, who was also old enough to be her great-great-great-grandmother, was probably not the person she wanted to curse in front of.
"If it helps, I have used such terms on occasion."
Henry faked a swoon, his hand on his forehead. "No."
"We did have vulgarisms in my lifetime, Henry. Though Shakespeare joked about it and wrote careful tricks around it, cunt was once commonly used and no more distressing than pussy or cunny."
"Speaking of country matters?" Will asked.
Kate and Henry looked at each other, unsure whether to laugh or retreat.
Helen patted Will's shoulder. "Exactly that. I see someone's read his Shakespeare."
"Any my Chaucer, though he was so tacky."
"The South Park of his day."
Henry perked up. "Really?"
Will held his hand level and waved it from side to side. "Similar. Lots of inside jokes and crude humour."
"As much as I love that and random lessons in etymology, I wanted to show you this, Doc, before you run off to Portugal and your cultural friends." Henry wiped his hand clean of dust on his jeans and called up the freshly translated file on the stone angel of Lorraine. The tiny village had been wiped out in some war across the centuries, but the cathedral was still there.
"It says that the stone angel came to life and murdered the village before disappearing into the night. No one heard it or saw it but the two survivors were sure it was the angel." Henry looked up from his reading, clearly skeptical. "Seriously?"
"There may be some truth in even the wildest rumours, Henry. We can't dismiss anything easily. " Helen peered over his shoulder. The account of the bodies found in the village was brutal. All of them had their necks snapped or bones broken by something strong. The skin was rarely marred, and none of the crude drawings showed blood.
"What kills so many without feeding?" Will asked at her side.
"Something that doesn't eat flesh." Kate called from the other side of the room. She was on her way to watch something with the Big Guy. They were constantly filling the television box with violent fantasy dramas from late nights on the extra channels. Their current favourite was something about lions, dragons and direwolves they were both addicted to.
"Kate's right." Will winced.
"So something disguised as a stone angel statue killed a whole bunch of innocent French peasants to feed on something other than flesh?" Henry looked up from between them. "Can we not decide to capture that?"
Helen rested her hand sympathetically on his shoulder. "It could have been many things. There are several creatures capable of disguising themselves as stone angels or any other kind of statue. None that I can think of would kill so many and refrain from feasting on the dead. It may be a predator that feeds on bioelectric energy or something more exotic. To kill so many it must have been very hungry."
"Or angry." Will pointed at another note in the file. "It says that there were two angels in the cathedral until one was destroyed in an attack by bandits. The night after the first statue was removed from the cathedral, the second went on its feeding frenzy."
"You think she took revenge on the village for what the bandits did? Bad form." Henry frowned at the screen. "This is weird. There aren't any pictures of the angels, just a whole lot of drawings of the church-"
"Cathedral," Helen corrected."
He rolled his eyes and continued, "-who doesn't have any pictures of the thing that did all the killing? Wouldn't that be more important than the door?" Henry gestured at the offending woodcut and sighed. "I don't like French food."
"Who said I was sending you to France?"
Will smiled at her, keeping the peace. "You have that look."
"What look?"
"It's a special look. It's a 'hey, guys, time to go off somewhere with strange food and no internet so you can be chased through the forest by an evil stone statue that you won't even be able to smell because it's stone and stone doesn't have a smell. So we'll die." Henry slid his chair between them and left, mumbling.
"Is there something on television he's missing?"
"Zombies versus Aliens opens this weekend." Will said, smiling sympathetically. "I know it's not an art exhibit in Portugal, but he really wanted to go opening night."
"And he's sure it won't be open in France?"
"They dub."
"Still?" Helen sighed. "Perhaps you can find a more modern theatre that only has subtitles. I assume that will be acceptable?"
"Sure. I love France."
"It's quite muddy this time of year."
"Pack my Wellingtons?"
Helen raised an eyebrow. "I was going to suggest you pack appropriate, but yes, Wellington boots would be part of that suggestion."
"So we get Wellingtons and you get champagne and caviar?"
She shook her head, chuckling. "You had a chance to volunteer to accompany me to the art exhibition, you chose the uncultured route, so you shall have zombies and mud."
"Great."
"Though, Will, Aliens aren't real."
He laughed, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, that's the best part. A little fantasy at the end of the day is a nice way to relax. Just not the one Kate and Big Guy are into. That one's bleaker than reality."
"Oh?"
"I caught the Big Guy tearing up over his dusting. Apparently it's incredibly tragic."
"I'll keep that in mind." Helen left Will to watch whatever it was with Kate and Helen's butler and headed upstairs to finish packing. They could all fly together, which would save fuel. She wouldn't have the quiet transatlantic flight she had planned, but the company would be pleasant. She spent too much time alone nowadays.
Will and Henry had convinced Kate that a Lord of the Rings marathon was suitable entertainment for the flight, and though she meant to be working, Helen's attention drifted to the film on the wall of the plane from time to time. She found the elf ears amusing and she admired the attention to detail that the author showed in constructing a whole language. An epic fight against the encroaching darkness was too close to the darkness in her own thoughts to be distracting, but when it grew late, she pulled up the blanket and watched the tiny Hobbits creep towards Mount Doom.
Will loved the book, she knew that, and as she watched she realised why he loved it so. He was no Boromir or Aragorn, but he was a Hobbit at heart, kind and loyal. A bit more intelligent than they were presented, but he was more like the little barefoot men than the great wizard.
She woke, still drowsy, and watched the white-gold elf queen see into the future. That was so reminiscent of a Aspicio Proscema that she stayed awake to see what would happen. Kate would have made a good knight errant, like the wild woodsman. She supposed that made Henry the chuckling dwarf and resolved not to tell him. Her thoughts grew so unfocused when she was tired.
She was more tired than not of late. Something was coming and though the Cabal had caught her off guard, this was building slowly enough that she could feel it in the air. The darkness grew in the east and she might not have the strength to meet it. She'd met the Cabal head on but it had cost Ashley.
As one by one her team fell asleep, she wondered which one of them the darkness would take this time. When the balrog took the wizard, she relaxed. He was old and he knew what had been waiting for him in the Earth. When she finally slept, she dreamt of stone bridges and whips of fire pulling her down.
The rest went on without her.
She avoided Will's direct gaze over breakfast during a stopover in the tiny little airport in northern France. She would go on without them and they'd stay here, searching for the stone angel who had never been drawn.
Helen had an entire exhibit of absent angels to study. She finished her tea and croissant, rolling her eyes as Will extolled the virtues of French coffee and returned to the plane as her team headed for the church and the site of the massacre.
"The aliens don't have to be benevolent, Will," Henry explained, kicking through the tall grass. His boots squelched in the mud and he raised his scanner, shaking his head. "Maybe they come to Earth and start a zombie plague so they can stop it, be our heroes and then turn us into their willing slaves. We'll be begging them to take over just to save us from the zombies."
Will hadn't read the reviews or watched a trailer of "Zombies versus Aliens" but he doubted the aliens would be that diabolical. "Aren't there humans in this movie?"
"Only to die. It's the same thing with 'Aliens versus Predator', humans are in the game but they're screwed. All you get is the little motion detector and everything around you in the dark just keeps going ping until bam- you're dead."
"Did we bring a motion detector?" Will kept the question light, watching Kate circle the perimeter of the ruin of the church. This was the fourth they'd visited and each had a record of a statue of angel that appeared to be weeping or holding her head in her hands. None of the angel statues were still present and though they were all mentioned in all the records, no sign of them was left.
"To do what? Hunt statues that don't move?" Henry said, giving Will the same look he'd gotten when he admitted he did not know how best to defeat a beholder.
"Isn't one in the kit?"
Henry rolled his eyes. "Not the standard kit because it's too bulky. You can have one in yours but don't look at me when you get sick of carrying around eight extra kilos of weight."
"Might bulk him up a little," Kate said, walking over to them. "Nothing here more interesting than some birds and rabbits outside and nothing inside but an old library that you're going to think is amazing. No tracks either, if something was here, something big enough to move an angel statue, it was a long time ago and it didn't have tire tracks the way I understand them, and trust me. I understand just about all of them."
"It could have been moved centuries ago," Will said, turning his bag on his shoulder to grab his notes. "There might still be a few books, records, something forgotten we can look at."
"Great," Kate said, sighing. "Looking through dusty, mold-encrusted paper, my favourite."
"It's going to make me sneeze," Henry added, frowning. They continued to complain all the way to the church, but that seemed to keep their spirits up. They were perfectly capable of working as they traded barbs over how library work was beneath both of them, so Will ignored them and kept his eyes down.
In the oldest books, the ones even Henry's impressive translation widget had trouble working through, there were mentions of the angel statue from the reflectory disappearing one night. There were a number of theories, from punishments from good to witches, but one monk had noted that the angel had simply stopped weeping and walked away.
"Do you see anything about the angel weeping?" Will set the book aside and looked for another.
Henry dug through his stack of books and passed one over. "Sure, right here, there's a picture."
"A picture?" Will asked, putting his book down hard enough to raise a thick layer of dust.
"Yeah, right here." Henry flicked through and Kate wandered over to see what he had. The pages moved slowly because they are thin and stiff with age. "Right after all the drawings of the gargoyles."
The gargoyles leered up at Will as he scrolled through.
"That one's almost cute." Kate pointed at one and as her finger touched the page it bled. Blood pooled around her fingertip on the page, like bright red ink. She lifted it up, staring at the drop of blood. "I didn't know you could get paper cuts from old pages."
"It's not on the edge." Will turned the page, following the blot of blood as it soaked into the page. "It's in the middle."
"That can't be right," Henry said, circling the book. "How can the middle of a page cut Kate's finger? That's ridiculous."
Kate turned her finger over, then sucked off the blood. She held it up for all of them, exposing a tiny cut which was rounded instead of neat like a paper cut would be.
"It's a bite mark."
"That's--" Henry looked at the cut and nodded. "It's a bite."
"The book bit me."
Will turned the page and stared at the weeping image of an angel. Kate's blood had seeped through, coating the mouth of the statue with red. For some reason, perhaps it was the age of the paper, the blood was only on the mouth and chin of the angel.
"That's odd."
"The book bit her," Henry said, backing away. "That thing bit her. It can't possibly have bitten her, but it did. I mean, it looks like it did, didn't it."
"Not the book," Will said, running his hand over the page. "The angel. I mean, that's what it looks like, doesn't it? This drawing of the angel, hundreds of years old, bit Kate's finger."
Kate popped the still-bleeding finger back in her mouth, muddling her words. "That's ridiculous."
"Is it?"
Henry thudded a book down onto the table, releasing more dust. "Of course it is!"
"In every book we've found, everything that talks about these statues, there are no pictures of them. There has to be a reason no one else has ever drawn them. This is the only picture, here, and it bit Kate." Will ran his hand through his hair. "Magnus, she went to a whole art exhibit about not showing the angel. Negative space, shadows, empty places in oil paintings, this creature, whatever it is, is never drawn. There has to be a reason."
"Because it's evil," Kate said, at least, that was what Will thought she said; she was still sucking her finger.
"Certainly looks evil." Henry scrunched his nose. "I thought statues were supposed to be beautiful."
"It's hard to tell. They all have their hands over their faces."
"This one doesn't. It's snarling, look at it." Henry pointed and Will followed his finger, looking down at the page. The drawing of the angel, with the blood stained mouth, snarled at them from the page. Her eyes were narrowed and hungry, her mouth wide with teeth and her hands reached up at them from the book, almost as if the hands were three-dimensional.
"It moved."
"It didn't," Kate said, pulling the finger from her mouth. "How could it?"
"We weren't looking at it."
"It moved because we weren't looking at it?" Henry asked, staring down all the more intently. "How can it know we weren't looking at it?"
"It must be able to do that. It's some kind of abnormal that won't move when we look at it, maybe it can't. Keep looking at the book." Will grabbed his backpack from the floor, dumped the first aid kit out and held the metal box open. "Shut the book while you're looking at it then toss it in here. We have to contain it, hold it in somehow."
"You want us to throw the biting book in the box?"
"Just like Harry Potter," Kate said, smirking.
"Right," Henry replied, unconvinced.
Kate grabbed the book, shut it and thrust it into the box as Will clanged it closed. He held it tight against his chest, waiting for it to squirm and try to free itself with a clatter of rustling pages, but nothing happened. Setting the box down on the table, Will stared at it, almost willing it to move.
The box was motionless, as a book in a box should be, but it brought none of them any comfort.
Taking the box gingerly, Henry stuffed it into Will's backpack. "We have to go."
"Magnus is at an art gallery with the jumbo-sized version of the book that bit me, isn't she?" Kate asked, grabbing one of the loose bandages from the floor and tearing the wrapper.
Will nodded, pulling his backpack on. "I think so."
"So, if the pint-sized paper angel wants my blood, the big one, with sharp stone teeth wants lots of blood."
"Lots of blood," Henry repeated. "Great."
They left the library briskly, heading out into the sun past the bored receptionist of the very rural museum the old church had become. Kate's face was hard; she was already calculating strategy.
Henry led the way back down the road towards their rental car, then stopped. "Should we be watching the backpack? Will's backpack? That thing, it's in there and--"
"It's paper," Kate said. "It might be a nasty little critter, but it's made of paper and old leather and it's trapped in a metal box. No matter how long it has to move, it can't gnaw its way free."
"She can't," Will agreed.
"She?"
"It looked like a she."
"It's a book."
"An evil book," Henry chimed in. "An evil, vicious, bitey-sort of book that really needs to attend a Nazi party with a bonfire."
"I'm sure we can keep her safely locked away at the Sanctuary." After the words left his mouth, Will wondered if they could. Some creatures had to be destroyed for the safety of everyone else. Was this one of them? If the book wasn't too dangerous to survive, surely the statue was.
They wouldn't know until they found Magnus and she had a knack for being in all the wrong places when things went bad, which they did around her with great frequency.
Reading through the life of the mad artist, Helen decided something abnormal had been involved. No ordinary madness had this kind of methodical strength to it. Something had driven this woman to repeat the same image over and over; it was no disorder of the mind but something external.
She'd have to sort that out. This mystery wanted her attention even more than she wanted to see the leader of Praxis. Helen's mind wandered as she showered off the dirt of travelling. She dressed slowly, pulling stockings up over the soft skin of her legs. The dress slipped easily over her head and her underclothes. The slip was silky against her thighs and her hair tickled her bare shoulders before she tied it up.
Makeup was an afterthought, but she lingered over her earrings. The blue glass matched the dress, even if they were far from decadent, they were beautiful. Dressed and calm, she pulled her shawl around her shoulders and headed for the waiting car.
The museum was lit with bright lamps that bathed the elegant building in golden light. Cars paused in front, letting off their elegant passengers before disappearing to wait for to be summoned back.
Helen told hers to wait for her to call in her best Portuguese. The driver smiled and answered in English. She left the car and headed up the steps, lights in the windows beckoned and a large copy of one of the more sinister oil paintings hung on a banner over the entrance.
The space where the angel would have been was bright white, like an afterimage burned onto the retina of her eye. Around it a dead tree stood dark against a background of swirling leaves. The angel's hands were outstretched, seeking.
Helen pulled her shawl closer.
"Terribly beautiful, isn't it?" The woman next to her lowered her sunglasses, an outrageous affectation at this late hour, but something Helen found charming instead of ridiculous. "Like a shark's cold eyes or a spider in the corner of the room."
"It does have a certain macabre appeal."
The woman lifted her skirt, a heavy green train that caressed to the steps like a lover's hand. She wore it well, her figure curved and well-formed. Helen appreciated all varieties of the humanoid form, from the Abnormal to the mundane, and this woman with her irreverent sunglasses was well worthy of notice.
"You enjoy the macabre," she said, lifting her sunglasses from her eyes slowly enough that Helen had to wait for her eyes to appear.
"Are you certain?" Helen asked, setting her words as if preparing for a chess match.
"It's in your eyes."
The tip of the sunglasses rested on bright red lips. Brilliant red suited so few women, but here it was well placed. Helen's own lipstick was subtle, more guarded. Only the dangerous flaunted their colours and this woman was a predator. Helen had dealt with her share of predators but that took away none of the thrill. Adrenaline was a rare commodity for those past a century and Helen coveted every tingle running down her spine.
"Just don't get lost in there," Helen said, smiling. "I'd rather not have to fish you out."
"You could lure me."
"If I knew an appropriate bait."
The woman laughed. "I'm sure you could think of something." She ran her hand along the edge of her décolletage, as if inviting Helen to imagine what it would feel like to follow the same route.
She vanished into the crowd, one head of long black hair amidst a sea of the well-dressed. Helen wondered if she'd see her again, allowing herself to imagine that she would. She pulled her invitation from her handbag, handed it to the security guard at the end of the rope line. She smiled when the invitation was returned to her. She was rather fond of the smell. She ignored the cloakroom and took a glass of champagne more to have something in hand than because she needed the drink. Her thoughts were divided between the legend of the angel and the promise of the woman in green.
She'd grown up in Britain, Helen could hear that in her voice, but beyond that, this woman was as much of a mystery as the white space making up the angel's silhouette in picture after picture. Chance encounters rarely left Helen with any meaningful impressions, so here she knew something was important. She drank her champagne, ate a hors d'oeuvres from one of the passing trays and walked deeper into the museum. It was a stunning place. The architecture had been well-adapted to housing priceless artefacts and she passed a few things she recognised and smiled.
What the public never knew about Abnormal contributions to the artistic world wouldn't hurt them.
Returning to the exhibit with fresh eyes, she paused in front of a watercolour where the angel's shape had been kept blank with wax. Some of the wax still clung to the picture. The note beneath it explained that this was one of the last to be finished. A reproduction of a page of the artist's journal announced in a rambling script that the angel could no longer be contained in art. It was watching her.
The rambling that followed was in a spidery script, scrunched and illegible, but it ended with God save us all. Macabre was an apt description.
She was into her second glass, this one a lovely white with a subtle frizzante, when the museum director drew attention to the centre of the room. There, something waited behind a red curtain. It would be unveiled just after ten, once everyone had taken the time to absorb the exhibit.
"Excuse me, Doctor Magnus?" One of the pages, a slender young man with perfectly white teeth, drew her attention.
"I am."
"You've been granted special clearance. The exhibit will close to the public at eleven, but you are welcome to remain." He handed her a pass, laminated, with the director's signature at the bottom. "Show this to the guards and use it to pass the magnetic locks on your way out."
"Thank you."
Helen tucked it away and the page left her. The wall to her left was covered in pages of the artist's journal. Somewhere legible, even neat, and spoke of her life and her relationship with her father. She had even once been betrothed, but that had ended badly. Madness came slowly on the artist, stealing first her thoughts, then her penmanship. Her final entries were twisted masses of scribbles and ink blotches. She'd never been married, never had the children she dreamed up in the early pages, and died consumed by her work.
"Makes you wonder, doesn't it?" The woman in green appeared again, now with her own glass of wine. Her skin was too dark to hold the flush of wine as Helen's did, but there was a brightness in her eyes that suggested it wasn't her first glass. "How will we be remembered? Will our innermost thoughts inspire pity and fear when they're pinned to the wall next to our belongings or will we be lost to history, forgotten and unlamented?"
"There's no shame in being forgotten."
"Nor in being invisible, is there, Doctor Magnus?" The woman extended her hand, reaching for Helen's. "I'm Doctor Williams. I believe we share an associate."
"Oh?" Doctor Williams' grip was strong and warm; her palm rougher than the usual academic's.
"Lady Seneschal is a great supporter of my work. She's mentioned you several times, always with great affection." Doctor Williams rested her glass against her lips, again drawing Helen's attention to the brilliant red of her lipstick.
"I'm afraid she hasn't reciprocated."
"I'm hardly worth mentioning in the same breath as the great Doctor Magnus. I'm only an archaeologist, not a teratologist, xenobiologist, medical doctor--"
"You're making fun of me."
"In the way those of us with one lonely Ph.D. can."
Helen glared over her wine glass. "I've never judged anyone for their lack of academic credentials."
"Never say never, Doctor." Doctor Williams pulled a device from her handbag and toyed with it. She could have been checking email on a smartphone, but Helen had spent just enough time in Praxis to know its technology when she saw it.
"What do you know?"
"All the words to "Om Shanti Om"."
Helen tapped the toe of her foot on the floor.
Doctor Williams laughed again. "I'm on a mission. I believe you're my backup."
"Your backup?" Helen raised an eyebrow, wondering if she should be incensed or flattered. "I don't even know your first name."
Doctor Williams found something on her device interesting enough to make her purse her lips. She glanced up at Helen. "You could ask or suggest I call you Helen, I'd love that."
"Please, call me Helen."
Shivering playfully, as if Helen's name had been a rush of cold water down her back, Doctor Williams winked at her. "See, that was fun, wasn't it?"
"Perhaps for you."
Doctor Williams turned, smiling as she slipped close enough to Helen to allow her to see the device. "Something in this room is displacing more quantum resonance energy than a nuclear weapon."
When Helen grabbed for the device, Doctor Williams, who still hadn't mentioned her first name, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned close enough to whisper. "Melody."
"A melody of what?"
"My first name, at least, it is of late."
"Melody Williams?"
"My mother wants me to take her name, which I do for publishing, because my father's surname makes me sound too much like a librarian. Perhaps in another life."
The device, that definitely was not a smart phone, chirped in Helen's hands.
"The quantum lock is weakening," Melody said, pointing at an orange indicator.
In Helen's experience, locks existed for a reason and the longer they stayed locked, the better off everyone was.
"I assume that's not in our best interest."
"Change rarely seems to be."
The clock on the wall chimed the hour, beginning with a pleasant arpeggio and ending with ten much more ominous bells.
The red curtain in the centre of the room fluttered, as if something behind it had just stilled. Then it fell away, revealing what was missing from every painting that surrounded it. The stone angel, just over two metres tall and carved in a disturbing fashion that refused to be immediately recognisable as a classical period, stood in the middle of the room. The patrons clapped their approval all around them.
Melody frowned and shifted her weight, reminding herself that a gun was strapped to her thigh. Helen knew that change of position well. What good a gun would do against a creature of stone she couldn't be certain but having one was preferable to being unarmed.
The angel, for her part, stood still and calm. Her hands were raised in benediction over them all and her empty eyes watched.
"Oh dear," Helen whispered.
Melody stood still, toying with the skirt of her dress. She wanted the gun. Helen's hands ached for hers but they were in the middle of a room full of people, all enjoying the party without knowing that they were celebrating their doom.
"It's stone," Melody reported, frowning. "I had a reading for a moment, but now I only read stone."
"And the statue being stone is not in our best interest?"
"The statue being merely being here shortened our life expectancies by several centuries, but this is the life we've chosen, isn't it, Helen?"
Melody kept her eyes on the angel but Helen couldn't stop staring at her. Was she making light of immortality? As a Praxian she may also have had an extended life span, but how did she know of Helen's? Would Ranna have put that into a briefing?
"I need to make a call," Melody continued, stepping back. "Save some caviar for me, would you? It's dreadfully hard to get the good stuff in Praxis."
When Melody disappeared, Helen stood in front of the angel alone, looking up into her empty stone eyes. She stared for a moment then looked away, almost as if she were a frightened child. Scolding herself mentally, Helen turned her eyes back. The angel had a beautiful, calm face with elegantly formed lips and hair. Her gown was exquisitely carved, as if the fabric was moving around her feet.
Helen turned her head, trying to catch a glimpse of Melody through the crowd. When she looked back, the carving had changed or was it that she simply remembered incorrectly?
"Beautiful, isn't she?" One of the other patrons tilted his glass towards the angel. "So sad there's only one by this artist in existence."
"A tragedy," Helen replied. He wasn't excited enough to be an academic and his suit was expensive. This man was an art dealer; one who thought he was charming.
"Almost a shame to have her in a museum, but it is something to think that the public will be able to see her." He finished with the kind of intonation that suggested he thought the public were barely better than the cockroaches found in most cheap hotel rooms.
"What's the point of art if you lock it away?" She made the question light, playing the philanthropist. She'd done that before and it was easier than trying to convince anyone who'd already made up his mind.
"Ten," he said, almost as an afterthought. He was still looking at the angel, staring deep into the empty stone eyes.
It was not an answer to the question so Helen ignored it. She let the conversation drift away, circling the angel on her pedestal. When Helen was back around, the waiter passed again. Melody stood next to the art dealer, holding a glass of champagne.
"Crispin here was telling me all about his favourite pieces. Have you heard of the wreck of the Byzantium?"
"Are we talking about pirate treasure?"
"What makes you think I deal in that?" Crispin asked, smiling. "Eight. Have you tried the canapés?"
Helen looked at Melody, who rolled her eyes. "The parma ham is particularly nice."
"For museum fair," Melody said, smiling. "I'm in it for the caviar. So delightful."
Crispin glanced across, catching someone else he knew across the room. "Please excuse me."
Melody leaned close, her lips nearly touching Helen's ear. "How delightfully dull."
Helen buried her smile in her glass. "There's always at least three of them at every event."
"Sometimes four." Melody sighed, folding her arms over her chest. "Praxis needs us to deliver a more detailed threat assessment than 'we think the statue wants to eat us'."
"We do?"
"I do. You might want to call it something more refined."
"Refinement can be overdone."
"Don't tell that to the Victorians, they'd be ever so cross."
She had to smile at that. "That they would."
Melody started to take a sip of her champagne then stopped, flute in hand. "I can't look at her face. I can't tell you what it is about her eyes but I can't seem to bring myself to look at them."
"Yet the basilisk is no trouble for you?" Helen asked, looking to Melody instead of the angel.
"Old Toothless and I go way back," Melody replied, grinning. "You just have to know how to talk to him. He loves a good riddle."
"I'll keep that in mind for next time."
The two patrons Crispin had been in conversation with passed, remarking how odd it was that he kept mentioning numbers. With his potential buyers gone, he returned to them, only looking at them briefly before returning his gaze to the angel.
"Three," he said without seeming to notice it. "Funny how some just can't appreciate the beauty in the macabre."
"Oh?" Melody said, pretending to be enamoured with the front of Helen's dress. "Beauty's all around us, isn't it?"
"Perhaps it is."
He had somehow managed to miss the very obvious look Melody wore and she took that as an invitation to advance. Setting down her glass, Melody rested a hand on the small of Helen's back, pulling her closer.
"It definitely is," she said, widening her eyes.
Helen knew that look.
"Two. Well, it is nice to be in the company of those who truly appreciate beauty."
He didn't turn, which made Melody's lingering hand on Helen's shoulder entirely unnecessary yet neither of them moved.
"Why is he counting?" Melody whispered.
Helen looked at him as he stared up at the angel's face, his own nearly as placid as hers. Melody's hand dropped to Helen's rear, like a feather brushing the curve of her bottom. Swatting that purposefully away, Helen shot Melody a look.
"That one was for me," Melody said, winking.
"He's counting down. It was eight before, then he spoke with the others, now it's two."
"One," Crispin said, his face smooth and radiant. He was as still as the statue, then lifted his hands to his face, almost as if he meant to rub his eyes. Then he stopped, hands over his eyes, stone.
Melody started to scan and Helen reached for what had been flesh, dumbfounded. Like the angel above them, Crispin's exposed skin was grey and smooth, as if he'd recently been carved.
"He's stone."
"He's an angel."
"How can that--" Helen and Melody shared a look, then turned as one to look to the other angel.
High above them, though she couldn't possibly have moved, the angel looked down with a hungry smile.
to be continued...
Originally posted on Dreamwidth with
comments. Please comment on either. :)
Rating: Teen
Genre:Adventure, Mystery
Pairings: Helen Magnus/River Song (Doctor Who)
Spoilers: Carentan, (ignores Doctor Who canon starting with Let's Kill Hitler)
Notes: This is late and a multiple parter (three - parts two and three are still being betaed) because real life is evil, vile and wicked. Many thanks to grav_ity and rubystandish for being so patient and understanding.
Summary: Helen attends an art opening to view the rare statue of an angel that for some reason is never drawn, photographed or painted. While Will, Henry and Kate look for clues, Helen relies on an unfamiliar archeologist who seems to be attached to Praxis.
Don't blink.
read on AO3
Beta:matildaswan, many thanks!
Art by the lovely and talented rubystandish. Many many thanks.
The invitation sat on her desk apart from the rest of the post, as if it required a special degree of consideration. Helen picked up the important personal correspondence, that coded specifically for her as per her careful use of postal redirecting. A great many things came for Helen Magnus, even the covert things, and this letter was rare indeed because it was not addressed to Helen Magnus.
She lifted the envelope, the paper heavy and smooth to her fingertips. The script of her address was neat, hand-written with the kind of care modern penmanship rarely saw applied. She appreciated that and the one who'd addressed her envelope knew that about her. Someone knew that she'd trace her fingertips over the ink and sniff the paper.
Perfume, not the cheap fickle scents she was unable to ignore when she ventured out of the Sanctuary, but a haunting scent that lingered like the memory of the hand that had sealed the envelope. The postmark was ordinary, Gothenburg, which had a poetry to it. Paris would have been obvious, Berlin too efficient, but she hadn't been to Gothenburg since before the Great War.
Circling her desk, Helen lifted the letter opener, a sharp, elegant gift from James, and sliced into the neatly sealed envelope. The paper tore and she pulled the contents, an embossed invitation, out of the envelope. There was no note inside, just the faint scent of perfume, something she knew from somewhere. There were times when she would trade her first edition Tsvetaeva for James' memory.
The invitation announced the opening of a rare collection of paintings by the (supposedly) insane daughter of sculptor famous for his Weeping Angels. After her suspicious death, paintings had been found all over her apartment, all consisting of the surroundings of one of her father's Weeping Angels, but not the Angel itself. She had painted the shadows of the Angels, their blurry reflections, but never the Angels themselves.
Pages of her journals were also on display, the invitation continued: a series of works that depicted her lifelong obsession with the Angels and that they be seen but never captured.
The full collection, named the 'Tears of the Angels of Bathalha', was on display at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon. The invitation offered an exclusive pre-opening viewing, complete with cocktails, that Thursday.
Helen turned the invitation over, looking for additional clues to the sender's identity. Remembering something James had once said about shutting her eyes, she breathed in a hint of perfume from the letter in darkness.
It was pleasant, even spicy, with notes of musk and peppery undertones, like a particular red wine…
She remembered the scent and the neck she'd last found it on. Helen straightened the invitation in front of her and lifted her phone from her desk.
"I need transport and accommodation for Lisbon, leaving tomorrow night."
A private plane and the usual arrangements followed. She hadn't been to Portugal for several years, the country was too small to support its own Sanctuary, and her Portuguese was rusty. She could make do with Spanish or Italian, but she hated the crudeness of arriving in a country with its tongue clumsy on her lips. She'd have to make an effort on the plane.
There were no other identifying marks on the invitation or the envelope. She could bring it down to the lab and put it through the ringer there, but she had a hunch the perfume was what she was meant to remember. Quite a gamble, but she appreciated that kind of confidence.
Did she want to bring anyone along? Kate had little patience for art openings that didn't require armed guards. Henry had a programming resource summit he'd been talking about and though she knew it was half-LAN party, she didn't have a reason to deny his passions or ruin his attempt to hide them. Will would be perfectly willing to attend an art opening but he would be seen as her date, which would be useful under some circumstances but not if Ranna was trying to find her.
Helen was best served by attending this one alone, which meant no back-up. That was less than ideal. Grozny and London would both have to be informed about her trip and she'd have to smuggle in a gun or two.
All of her preparation sat behind the question of what Ranna wanted? What was special about this art opening? Angels were mythical creatures, not Abnormals, and though many Abnormals had become part of the legends of angels, no angel's outline of negative space meant anything.
Ranna had written this herself and arranged for it to be delivered through Sweden to reach Helen with enough time for her to attend. She had to go, but why? Why was she going?
Helen tapped her hand against the desk and turned to her computer. Sinking into her chair, she called up the broadest search protocol.
Weeping Angels brought up a few partial matches: the weeping amphibians of Indonesia, the angel bats of Madagascar and a species of flower called Angel's Tears. None of those were right and she waded through the pages of suggestions, cursing the complexity of her own database before she landed on a solitary mention from the Grozny Sanctuary.
Villagers in sixteenth century France had spoken of a stone angel killing an entire village in the darkness.
It was an old note. The file itself was only half-translated, but her French was better than her Portuguese. The Abnormal hunted in the darkness, left the bodies intact, and had vanished the same night it came, allegedly taking a statue of a stone angel from the local cathedral as a souvenir. The official account claimed the angel had defeated the creature, but one child said that stone angel had moved from her pedestal and killed the monks in the darkness.
"Reading ghost stories?" Will asked from the doorway. His hand was up by the door, which meant he'd knocked and she'd missed it.
"A stone angel came to life and killed most of a French village before vanishing into history."
"An angel, not a gargoyle? I've heard of gargoyles." Will set her tea on the desk and hovered, curious.
Helen waved him over to her computer. "There are no pictures of the statue. One of the accounts mentions something about a curse. I'll mark it for translation and have one of our French experts get back to me." She swivelled in her chair and offered him the one in front of her desk.
"Have you any requests from Portugal? I'm attending an art opening and I could pick you up some pastel de nata or a bottle of vinho verde if you like."
"If Tesla isn't coming to visit before I get a chance to drink it, I'll take a case. Just so I get a glass."
"So little faith."
"I was an optimist, once." Will scanned the screen, taken in what she'd just read before he took the chair. "Is there anything in records about the curse?"
"You don't believe in curses now, do you?"
"The list of things I didn't believe in that I now do grows longer every day." Will lifted her invitation and grinned. "Sounds formal."
"I shall pack appropriately."
"Who sent it?"
Helen watched his smile grow as she failed to respond. The longer she left it, the more he'd grin and the deeper she'd be. "I believe it's from a friend."
"A Swedish friend?"
He was as bad as James, and lacking in James' Victorian tact. Helen glared. "No, not a Swedish friend."
Will leaned back in his chair, deploying all his senses. "Someone who appreciates the art of the insane then?"
"Some say there's truth in insanity."
"Or it's the truth that drives us mad." He set back down the invitation. "You'll have Henry look at it?"
"Background checking my dates?" She lifted her tea and took a sip.
Will shrugged and stood. "You'd do the same for me." Grabbing the invitation from her desk, he folded his arms. "I'll take it to Henry."
A few years ago, he would never have dared ask where she was going or even considered teasing her about it. Now he thought himself her equal. Helen let her tea rest in her mouth, reminding herself how far they'd come. He was an excellent protege, one of the best she'd had, and he had the same unflinching loyalty that reminded her of James. Henry was loyal in the same manner as Nigel: a faithful creature who would go to the ends of the Earth for his friends. Nikola had his needs, as had John, but James had followed her with a kind of patience devotion that still made her ache.
What made her worthy of that from two men? What was it that had her people placing their lives between her and danger? Perhaps the loss of Ravi still weighed on her more than she realised. He'd given up everything, his family and the life he'd led, so she could leave Caretan and return to her endless struggle.
Putting on a fine pair of shoes and a silk dress wouldn't take away her grief. Milling through the well-dressed and even better read as they spoke of art in a way that gave away so much more of themselves was a foolish pastime, yet she was looking forward to the trip. She mentally planned her outfit and contemplated the tall pair of boots she'd been holding back for a special occasion. It was a rare hope that Ranna would brave the surface; even if she had sent the invitation through her own hands, she would hardly have time to waste at an art opening.
Hope was rare, so Helen let it take root; she needed the distraction. Reports of Abnormal activity were rising across the world and somewhere, something was brewing. She could nearly see it, like catching something dark out of the corner of her eye. She didn't like it but she couldn't confront it, so instead she'd go to Portugal and be beautiful.
Henry found nothing wrong with the invitation. The exhibit opening was real and the scent on the invitation proved to be perfume after molecular analysis. Perfume made with a flower not native to the surface for the last ten thousand years, so Helen's hunch was justified. Henry seemed more leery than Kate, who'd been smirking since Henry had announced his findings.
"I didn't know she got holidays."
"If she does, then we need to renegotiate our deals, Doc. You've never let me go to an art exhibit thing." Henry swirled away from his computers and grabbed a handful of Kate's bowl of pretzels.
"Have you ever asked for leave to attend one?"
Henry pondered that. "There's a small exhibition as part of a larger thing on the East Coast this fall--"
Kate snorted. "She already gave you leave for Dragon*Con."
"If I had more I could look at all the art."
"You mean comics."
"Some of those are art!"
"Some of them are naked drawings of big breasted women with demons on their-" Kate paused, swallowing the first syllable of an impolite term, "ladybits."
"I assure you, I have heard the all of the common terms for a woman's genitalia before." Helen said, taking a pretzel. They were odd crunchy things, and nothing like their namesakes in Germany, but she did like the salt.
"I know." Kate glanced down, chagrined. "I just don't usually say it in front of my boss."
Her employer, who was also old enough to be her great-great-great-grandmother, was probably not the person she wanted to curse in front of.
"If it helps, I have used such terms on occasion."
Henry faked a swoon, his hand on his forehead. "No."
"We did have vulgarisms in my lifetime, Henry. Though Shakespeare joked about it and wrote careful tricks around it, cunt was once commonly used and no more distressing than pussy or cunny."
"Speaking of country matters?" Will asked.
Kate and Henry looked at each other, unsure whether to laugh or retreat.
Helen patted Will's shoulder. "Exactly that. I see someone's read his Shakespeare."
"Any my Chaucer, though he was so tacky."
"The South Park of his day."
Henry perked up. "Really?"
Will held his hand level and waved it from side to side. "Similar. Lots of inside jokes and crude humour."
"As much as I love that and random lessons in etymology, I wanted to show you this, Doc, before you run off to Portugal and your cultural friends." Henry wiped his hand clean of dust on his jeans and called up the freshly translated file on the stone angel of Lorraine. The tiny village had been wiped out in some war across the centuries, but the cathedral was still there.
"It says that the stone angel came to life and murdered the village before disappearing into the night. No one heard it or saw it but the two survivors were sure it was the angel." Henry looked up from his reading, clearly skeptical. "Seriously?"
"There may be some truth in even the wildest rumours, Henry. We can't dismiss anything easily. " Helen peered over his shoulder. The account of the bodies found in the village was brutal. All of them had their necks snapped or bones broken by something strong. The skin was rarely marred, and none of the crude drawings showed blood.
"What kills so many without feeding?" Will asked at her side.
"Something that doesn't eat flesh." Kate called from the other side of the room. She was on her way to watch something with the Big Guy. They were constantly filling the television box with violent fantasy dramas from late nights on the extra channels. Their current favourite was something about lions, dragons and direwolves they were both addicted to.
"Kate's right." Will winced.
"So something disguised as a stone angel statue killed a whole bunch of innocent French peasants to feed on something other than flesh?" Henry looked up from between them. "Can we not decide to capture that?"
Helen rested her hand sympathetically on his shoulder. "It could have been many things. There are several creatures capable of disguising themselves as stone angels or any other kind of statue. None that I can think of would kill so many and refrain from feasting on the dead. It may be a predator that feeds on bioelectric energy or something more exotic. To kill so many it must have been very hungry."
"Or angry." Will pointed at another note in the file. "It says that there were two angels in the cathedral until one was destroyed in an attack by bandits. The night after the first statue was removed from the cathedral, the second went on its feeding frenzy."
"You think she took revenge on the village for what the bandits did? Bad form." Henry frowned at the screen. "This is weird. There aren't any pictures of the angels, just a whole lot of drawings of the church-"
"Cathedral," Helen corrected."
He rolled his eyes and continued, "-who doesn't have any pictures of the thing that did all the killing? Wouldn't that be more important than the door?" Henry gestured at the offending woodcut and sighed. "I don't like French food."
"Who said I was sending you to France?"
Will smiled at her, keeping the peace. "You have that look."
"What look?"
"It's a special look. It's a 'hey, guys, time to go off somewhere with strange food and no internet so you can be chased through the forest by an evil stone statue that you won't even be able to smell because it's stone and stone doesn't have a smell. So we'll die." Henry slid his chair between them and left, mumbling.
"Is there something on television he's missing?"
"Zombies versus Aliens opens this weekend." Will said, smiling sympathetically. "I know it's not an art exhibit in Portugal, but he really wanted to go opening night."
"And he's sure it won't be open in France?"
"They dub."
"Still?" Helen sighed. "Perhaps you can find a more modern theatre that only has subtitles. I assume that will be acceptable?"
"Sure. I love France."
"It's quite muddy this time of year."
"Pack my Wellingtons?"
Helen raised an eyebrow. "I was going to suggest you pack appropriate, but yes, Wellington boots would be part of that suggestion."
"So we get Wellingtons and you get champagne and caviar?"
She shook her head, chuckling. "You had a chance to volunteer to accompany me to the art exhibition, you chose the uncultured route, so you shall have zombies and mud."
"Great."
"Though, Will, Aliens aren't real."
He laughed, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, that's the best part. A little fantasy at the end of the day is a nice way to relax. Just not the one Kate and Big Guy are into. That one's bleaker than reality."
"Oh?"
"I caught the Big Guy tearing up over his dusting. Apparently it's incredibly tragic."
"I'll keep that in mind." Helen left Will to watch whatever it was with Kate and Helen's butler and headed upstairs to finish packing. They could all fly together, which would save fuel. She wouldn't have the quiet transatlantic flight she had planned, but the company would be pleasant. She spent too much time alone nowadays.
Will and Henry had convinced Kate that a Lord of the Rings marathon was suitable entertainment for the flight, and though she meant to be working, Helen's attention drifted to the film on the wall of the plane from time to time. She found the elf ears amusing and she admired the attention to detail that the author showed in constructing a whole language. An epic fight against the encroaching darkness was too close to the darkness in her own thoughts to be distracting, but when it grew late, she pulled up the blanket and watched the tiny Hobbits creep towards Mount Doom.
Will loved the book, she knew that, and as she watched she realised why he loved it so. He was no Boromir or Aragorn, but he was a Hobbit at heart, kind and loyal. A bit more intelligent than they were presented, but he was more like the little barefoot men than the great wizard.
She woke, still drowsy, and watched the white-gold elf queen see into the future. That was so reminiscent of a Aspicio Proscema that she stayed awake to see what would happen. Kate would have made a good knight errant, like the wild woodsman. She supposed that made Henry the chuckling dwarf and resolved not to tell him. Her thoughts grew so unfocused when she was tired.
She was more tired than not of late. Something was coming and though the Cabal had caught her off guard, this was building slowly enough that she could feel it in the air. The darkness grew in the east and she might not have the strength to meet it. She'd met the Cabal head on but it had cost Ashley.
As one by one her team fell asleep, she wondered which one of them the darkness would take this time. When the balrog took the wizard, she relaxed. He was old and he knew what had been waiting for him in the Earth. When she finally slept, she dreamt of stone bridges and whips of fire pulling her down.
The rest went on without her.
She avoided Will's direct gaze over breakfast during a stopover in the tiny little airport in northern France. She would go on without them and they'd stay here, searching for the stone angel who had never been drawn.
Helen had an entire exhibit of absent angels to study. She finished her tea and croissant, rolling her eyes as Will extolled the virtues of French coffee and returned to the plane as her team headed for the church and the site of the massacre.
"The aliens don't have to be benevolent, Will," Henry explained, kicking through the tall grass. His boots squelched in the mud and he raised his scanner, shaking his head. "Maybe they come to Earth and start a zombie plague so they can stop it, be our heroes and then turn us into their willing slaves. We'll be begging them to take over just to save us from the zombies."
Will hadn't read the reviews or watched a trailer of "Zombies versus Aliens" but he doubted the aliens would be that diabolical. "Aren't there humans in this movie?"
"Only to die. It's the same thing with 'Aliens versus Predator', humans are in the game but they're screwed. All you get is the little motion detector and everything around you in the dark just keeps going ping until bam- you're dead."
"Did we bring a motion detector?" Will kept the question light, watching Kate circle the perimeter of the ruin of the church. This was the fourth they'd visited and each had a record of a statue of angel that appeared to be weeping or holding her head in her hands. None of the angel statues were still present and though they were all mentioned in all the records, no sign of them was left.
"To do what? Hunt statues that don't move?" Henry said, giving Will the same look he'd gotten when he admitted he did not know how best to defeat a beholder.
"Isn't one in the kit?"
Henry rolled his eyes. "Not the standard kit because it's too bulky. You can have one in yours but don't look at me when you get sick of carrying around eight extra kilos of weight."
"Might bulk him up a little," Kate said, walking over to them. "Nothing here more interesting than some birds and rabbits outside and nothing inside but an old library that you're going to think is amazing. No tracks either, if something was here, something big enough to move an angel statue, it was a long time ago and it didn't have tire tracks the way I understand them, and trust me. I understand just about all of them."
"It could have been moved centuries ago," Will said, turning his bag on his shoulder to grab his notes. "There might still be a few books, records, something forgotten we can look at."
"Great," Kate said, sighing. "Looking through dusty, mold-encrusted paper, my favourite."
"It's going to make me sneeze," Henry added, frowning. They continued to complain all the way to the church, but that seemed to keep their spirits up. They were perfectly capable of working as they traded barbs over how library work was beneath both of them, so Will ignored them and kept his eyes down.
In the oldest books, the ones even Henry's impressive translation widget had trouble working through, there were mentions of the angel statue from the reflectory disappearing one night. There were a number of theories, from punishments from good to witches, but one monk had noted that the angel had simply stopped weeping and walked away.
"Do you see anything about the angel weeping?" Will set the book aside and looked for another.
Henry dug through his stack of books and passed one over. "Sure, right here, there's a picture."
"A picture?" Will asked, putting his book down hard enough to raise a thick layer of dust.
"Yeah, right here." Henry flicked through and Kate wandered over to see what he had. The pages moved slowly because they are thin and stiff with age. "Right after all the drawings of the gargoyles."
The gargoyles leered up at Will as he scrolled through.
"That one's almost cute." Kate pointed at one and as her finger touched the page it bled. Blood pooled around her fingertip on the page, like bright red ink. She lifted it up, staring at the drop of blood. "I didn't know you could get paper cuts from old pages."
"It's not on the edge." Will turned the page, following the blot of blood as it soaked into the page. "It's in the middle."
"That can't be right," Henry said, circling the book. "How can the middle of a page cut Kate's finger? That's ridiculous."
Kate turned her finger over, then sucked off the blood. She held it up for all of them, exposing a tiny cut which was rounded instead of neat like a paper cut would be.
"It's a bite mark."
"That's--" Henry looked at the cut and nodded. "It's a bite."
"The book bit me."
Will turned the page and stared at the weeping image of an angel. Kate's blood had seeped through, coating the mouth of the statue with red. For some reason, perhaps it was the age of the paper, the blood was only on the mouth and chin of the angel.
"That's odd."
"The book bit her," Henry said, backing away. "That thing bit her. It can't possibly have bitten her, but it did. I mean, it looks like it did, didn't it."
"Not the book," Will said, running his hand over the page. "The angel. I mean, that's what it looks like, doesn't it? This drawing of the angel, hundreds of years old, bit Kate's finger."
Kate popped the still-bleeding finger back in her mouth, muddling her words. "That's ridiculous."
"Is it?"
Henry thudded a book down onto the table, releasing more dust. "Of course it is!"
"In every book we've found, everything that talks about these statues, there are no pictures of them. There has to be a reason no one else has ever drawn them. This is the only picture, here, and it bit Kate." Will ran his hand through his hair. "Magnus, she went to a whole art exhibit about not showing the angel. Negative space, shadows, empty places in oil paintings, this creature, whatever it is, is never drawn. There has to be a reason."
"Because it's evil," Kate said, at least, that was what Will thought she said; she was still sucking her finger.
"Certainly looks evil." Henry scrunched his nose. "I thought statues were supposed to be beautiful."
"It's hard to tell. They all have their hands over their faces."
"This one doesn't. It's snarling, look at it." Henry pointed and Will followed his finger, looking down at the page. The drawing of the angel, with the blood stained mouth, snarled at them from the page. Her eyes were narrowed and hungry, her mouth wide with teeth and her hands reached up at them from the book, almost as if the hands were three-dimensional.
"It moved."
"It didn't," Kate said, pulling the finger from her mouth. "How could it?"
"We weren't looking at it."
"It moved because we weren't looking at it?" Henry asked, staring down all the more intently. "How can it know we weren't looking at it?"
"It must be able to do that. It's some kind of abnormal that won't move when we look at it, maybe it can't. Keep looking at the book." Will grabbed his backpack from the floor, dumped the first aid kit out and held the metal box open. "Shut the book while you're looking at it then toss it in here. We have to contain it, hold it in somehow."
"You want us to throw the biting book in the box?"
"Just like Harry Potter," Kate said, smirking.
"Right," Henry replied, unconvinced.
Kate grabbed the book, shut it and thrust it into the box as Will clanged it closed. He held it tight against his chest, waiting for it to squirm and try to free itself with a clatter of rustling pages, but nothing happened. Setting the box down on the table, Will stared at it, almost willing it to move.
The box was motionless, as a book in a box should be, but it brought none of them any comfort.
Taking the box gingerly, Henry stuffed it into Will's backpack. "We have to go."
"Magnus is at an art gallery with the jumbo-sized version of the book that bit me, isn't she?" Kate asked, grabbing one of the loose bandages from the floor and tearing the wrapper.
Will nodded, pulling his backpack on. "I think so."
"So, if the pint-sized paper angel wants my blood, the big one, with sharp stone teeth wants lots of blood."
"Lots of blood," Henry repeated. "Great."
They left the library briskly, heading out into the sun past the bored receptionist of the very rural museum the old church had become. Kate's face was hard; she was already calculating strategy.
Henry led the way back down the road towards their rental car, then stopped. "Should we be watching the backpack? Will's backpack? That thing, it's in there and--"
"It's paper," Kate said. "It might be a nasty little critter, but it's made of paper and old leather and it's trapped in a metal box. No matter how long it has to move, it can't gnaw its way free."
"She can't," Will agreed.
"She?"
"It looked like a she."
"It's a book."
"An evil book," Henry chimed in. "An evil, vicious, bitey-sort of book that really needs to attend a Nazi party with a bonfire."
"I'm sure we can keep her safely locked away at the Sanctuary." After the words left his mouth, Will wondered if they could. Some creatures had to be destroyed for the safety of everyone else. Was this one of them? If the book wasn't too dangerous to survive, surely the statue was.
They wouldn't know until they found Magnus and she had a knack for being in all the wrong places when things went bad, which they did around her with great frequency.
Reading through the life of the mad artist, Helen decided something abnormal had been involved. No ordinary madness had this kind of methodical strength to it. Something had driven this woman to repeat the same image over and over; it was no disorder of the mind but something external.
She'd have to sort that out. This mystery wanted her attention even more than she wanted to see the leader of Praxis. Helen's mind wandered as she showered off the dirt of travelling. She dressed slowly, pulling stockings up over the soft skin of her legs. The dress slipped easily over her head and her underclothes. The slip was silky against her thighs and her hair tickled her bare shoulders before she tied it up.
Makeup was an afterthought, but she lingered over her earrings. The blue glass matched the dress, even if they were far from decadent, they were beautiful. Dressed and calm, she pulled her shawl around her shoulders and headed for the waiting car.
The museum was lit with bright lamps that bathed the elegant building in golden light. Cars paused in front, letting off their elegant passengers before disappearing to wait for to be summoned back.
Helen told hers to wait for her to call in her best Portuguese. The driver smiled and answered in English. She left the car and headed up the steps, lights in the windows beckoned and a large copy of one of the more sinister oil paintings hung on a banner over the entrance.
The space where the angel would have been was bright white, like an afterimage burned onto the retina of her eye. Around it a dead tree stood dark against a background of swirling leaves. The angel's hands were outstretched, seeking.
Helen pulled her shawl closer.
"Terribly beautiful, isn't it?" The woman next to her lowered her sunglasses, an outrageous affectation at this late hour, but something Helen found charming instead of ridiculous. "Like a shark's cold eyes or a spider in the corner of the room."
"It does have a certain macabre appeal."
The woman lifted her skirt, a heavy green train that caressed to the steps like a lover's hand. She wore it well, her figure curved and well-formed. Helen appreciated all varieties of the humanoid form, from the Abnormal to the mundane, and this woman with her irreverent sunglasses was well worthy of notice.
"You enjoy the macabre," she said, lifting her sunglasses from her eyes slowly enough that Helen had to wait for her eyes to appear.
"Are you certain?" Helen asked, setting her words as if preparing for a chess match.
"It's in your eyes."
The tip of the sunglasses rested on bright red lips. Brilliant red suited so few women, but here it was well placed. Helen's own lipstick was subtle, more guarded. Only the dangerous flaunted their colours and this woman was a predator. Helen had dealt with her share of predators but that took away none of the thrill. Adrenaline was a rare commodity for those past a century and Helen coveted every tingle running down her spine.
"Just don't get lost in there," Helen said, smiling. "I'd rather not have to fish you out."
"You could lure me."
"If I knew an appropriate bait."
The woman laughed. "I'm sure you could think of something." She ran her hand along the edge of her décolletage, as if inviting Helen to imagine what it would feel like to follow the same route.
She vanished into the crowd, one head of long black hair amidst a sea of the well-dressed. Helen wondered if she'd see her again, allowing herself to imagine that she would. She pulled her invitation from her handbag, handed it to the security guard at the end of the rope line. She smiled when the invitation was returned to her. She was rather fond of the smell. She ignored the cloakroom and took a glass of champagne more to have something in hand than because she needed the drink. Her thoughts were divided between the legend of the angel and the promise of the woman in green.
She'd grown up in Britain, Helen could hear that in her voice, but beyond that, this woman was as much of a mystery as the white space making up the angel's silhouette in picture after picture. Chance encounters rarely left Helen with any meaningful impressions, so here she knew something was important. She drank her champagne, ate a hors d'oeuvres from one of the passing trays and walked deeper into the museum. It was a stunning place. The architecture had been well-adapted to housing priceless artefacts and she passed a few things she recognised and smiled.
What the public never knew about Abnormal contributions to the artistic world wouldn't hurt them.
Returning to the exhibit with fresh eyes, she paused in front of a watercolour where the angel's shape had been kept blank with wax. Some of the wax still clung to the picture. The note beneath it explained that this was one of the last to be finished. A reproduction of a page of the artist's journal announced in a rambling script that the angel could no longer be contained in art. It was watching her.
The rambling that followed was in a spidery script, scrunched and illegible, but it ended with God save us all. Macabre was an apt description.
She was into her second glass, this one a lovely white with a subtle frizzante, when the museum director drew attention to the centre of the room. There, something waited behind a red curtain. It would be unveiled just after ten, once everyone had taken the time to absorb the exhibit.
"Excuse me, Doctor Magnus?" One of the pages, a slender young man with perfectly white teeth, drew her attention.
"I am."
"You've been granted special clearance. The exhibit will close to the public at eleven, but you are welcome to remain." He handed her a pass, laminated, with the director's signature at the bottom. "Show this to the guards and use it to pass the magnetic locks on your way out."
"Thank you."
Helen tucked it away and the page left her. The wall to her left was covered in pages of the artist's journal. Somewhere legible, even neat, and spoke of her life and her relationship with her father. She had even once been betrothed, but that had ended badly. Madness came slowly on the artist, stealing first her thoughts, then her penmanship. Her final entries were twisted masses of scribbles and ink blotches. She'd never been married, never had the children she dreamed up in the early pages, and died consumed by her work.
"Makes you wonder, doesn't it?" The woman in green appeared again, now with her own glass of wine. Her skin was too dark to hold the flush of wine as Helen's did, but there was a brightness in her eyes that suggested it wasn't her first glass. "How will we be remembered? Will our innermost thoughts inspire pity and fear when they're pinned to the wall next to our belongings or will we be lost to history, forgotten and unlamented?"
"There's no shame in being forgotten."
"Nor in being invisible, is there, Doctor Magnus?" The woman extended her hand, reaching for Helen's. "I'm Doctor Williams. I believe we share an associate."
"Oh?" Doctor Williams' grip was strong and warm; her palm rougher than the usual academic's.
"Lady Seneschal is a great supporter of my work. She's mentioned you several times, always with great affection." Doctor Williams rested her glass against her lips, again drawing Helen's attention to the brilliant red of her lipstick.
"I'm afraid she hasn't reciprocated."
"I'm hardly worth mentioning in the same breath as the great Doctor Magnus. I'm only an archaeologist, not a teratologist, xenobiologist, medical doctor--"
"You're making fun of me."
"In the way those of us with one lonely Ph.D. can."
Helen glared over her wine glass. "I've never judged anyone for their lack of academic credentials."
"Never say never, Doctor." Doctor Williams pulled a device from her handbag and toyed with it. She could have been checking email on a smartphone, but Helen had spent just enough time in Praxis to know its technology when she saw it.
"What do you know?"
"All the words to "Om Shanti Om"."
Helen tapped the toe of her foot on the floor.
Doctor Williams laughed again. "I'm on a mission. I believe you're my backup."
"Your backup?" Helen raised an eyebrow, wondering if she should be incensed or flattered. "I don't even know your first name."
Doctor Williams found something on her device interesting enough to make her purse her lips. She glanced up at Helen. "You could ask or suggest I call you Helen, I'd love that."
"Please, call me Helen."
Shivering playfully, as if Helen's name had been a rush of cold water down her back, Doctor Williams winked at her. "See, that was fun, wasn't it?"
"Perhaps for you."
Doctor Williams turned, smiling as she slipped close enough to Helen to allow her to see the device. "Something in this room is displacing more quantum resonance energy than a nuclear weapon."
When Helen grabbed for the device, Doctor Williams, who still hadn't mentioned her first name, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned close enough to whisper. "Melody."
"A melody of what?"
"My first name, at least, it is of late."
"Melody Williams?"
"My mother wants me to take her name, which I do for publishing, because my father's surname makes me sound too much like a librarian. Perhaps in another life."
The device, that definitely was not a smart phone, chirped in Helen's hands.
"The quantum lock is weakening," Melody said, pointing at an orange indicator.
In Helen's experience, locks existed for a reason and the longer they stayed locked, the better off everyone was.
"I assume that's not in our best interest."
"Change rarely seems to be."
The clock on the wall chimed the hour, beginning with a pleasant arpeggio and ending with ten much more ominous bells.
The red curtain in the centre of the room fluttered, as if something behind it had just stilled. Then it fell away, revealing what was missing from every painting that surrounded it. The stone angel, just over two metres tall and carved in a disturbing fashion that refused to be immediately recognisable as a classical period, stood in the middle of the room. The patrons clapped their approval all around them.
Melody frowned and shifted her weight, reminding herself that a gun was strapped to her thigh. Helen knew that change of position well. What good a gun would do against a creature of stone she couldn't be certain but having one was preferable to being unarmed.
The angel, for her part, stood still and calm. Her hands were raised in benediction over them all and her empty eyes watched.
"Oh dear," Helen whispered.
Melody stood still, toying with the skirt of her dress. She wanted the gun. Helen's hands ached for hers but they were in the middle of a room full of people, all enjoying the party without knowing that they were celebrating their doom.
"It's stone," Melody reported, frowning. "I had a reading for a moment, but now I only read stone."
"And the statue being stone is not in our best interest?"
"The statue being merely being here shortened our life expectancies by several centuries, but this is the life we've chosen, isn't it, Helen?"
Melody kept her eyes on the angel but Helen couldn't stop staring at her. Was she making light of immortality? As a Praxian she may also have had an extended life span, but how did she know of Helen's? Would Ranna have put that into a briefing?
"I need to make a call," Melody continued, stepping back. "Save some caviar for me, would you? It's dreadfully hard to get the good stuff in Praxis."
When Melody disappeared, Helen stood in front of the angel alone, looking up into her empty stone eyes. She stared for a moment then looked away, almost as if she were a frightened child. Scolding herself mentally, Helen turned her eyes back. The angel had a beautiful, calm face with elegantly formed lips and hair. Her gown was exquisitely carved, as if the fabric was moving around her feet.
Helen turned her head, trying to catch a glimpse of Melody through the crowd. When she looked back, the carving had changed or was it that she simply remembered incorrectly?
"Beautiful, isn't she?" One of the other patrons tilted his glass towards the angel. "So sad there's only one by this artist in existence."
"A tragedy," Helen replied. He wasn't excited enough to be an academic and his suit was expensive. This man was an art dealer; one who thought he was charming.
"Almost a shame to have her in a museum, but it is something to think that the public will be able to see her." He finished with the kind of intonation that suggested he thought the public were barely better than the cockroaches found in most cheap hotel rooms.
"What's the point of art if you lock it away?" She made the question light, playing the philanthropist. She'd done that before and it was easier than trying to convince anyone who'd already made up his mind.
"Ten," he said, almost as an afterthought. He was still looking at the angel, staring deep into the empty stone eyes.
It was not an answer to the question so Helen ignored it. She let the conversation drift away, circling the angel on her pedestal. When Helen was back around, the waiter passed again. Melody stood next to the art dealer, holding a glass of champagne.
"Crispin here was telling me all about his favourite pieces. Have you heard of the wreck of the Byzantium?"
"Are we talking about pirate treasure?"
"What makes you think I deal in that?" Crispin asked, smiling. "Eight. Have you tried the canapés?"
Helen looked at Melody, who rolled her eyes. "The parma ham is particularly nice."
"For museum fair," Melody said, smiling. "I'm in it for the caviar. So delightful."
Crispin glanced across, catching someone else he knew across the room. "Please excuse me."
Melody leaned close, her lips nearly touching Helen's ear. "How delightfully dull."
Helen buried her smile in her glass. "There's always at least three of them at every event."
"Sometimes four." Melody sighed, folding her arms over her chest. "Praxis needs us to deliver a more detailed threat assessment than 'we think the statue wants to eat us'."
"We do?"
"I do. You might want to call it something more refined."
"Refinement can be overdone."
"Don't tell that to the Victorians, they'd be ever so cross."
She had to smile at that. "That they would."
Melody started to take a sip of her champagne then stopped, flute in hand. "I can't look at her face. I can't tell you what it is about her eyes but I can't seem to bring myself to look at them."
"Yet the basilisk is no trouble for you?" Helen asked, looking to Melody instead of the angel.
"Old Toothless and I go way back," Melody replied, grinning. "You just have to know how to talk to him. He loves a good riddle."
"I'll keep that in mind for next time."
The two patrons Crispin had been in conversation with passed, remarking how odd it was that he kept mentioning numbers. With his potential buyers gone, he returned to them, only looking at them briefly before returning his gaze to the angel.
"Three," he said without seeming to notice it. "Funny how some just can't appreciate the beauty in the macabre."
"Oh?" Melody said, pretending to be enamoured with the front of Helen's dress. "Beauty's all around us, isn't it?"
"Perhaps it is."
He had somehow managed to miss the very obvious look Melody wore and she took that as an invitation to advance. Setting down her glass, Melody rested a hand on the small of Helen's back, pulling her closer.
"It definitely is," she said, widening her eyes.
Helen knew that look.
"Two. Well, it is nice to be in the company of those who truly appreciate beauty."
He didn't turn, which made Melody's lingering hand on Helen's shoulder entirely unnecessary yet neither of them moved.
"Why is he counting?" Melody whispered.
Helen looked at him as he stared up at the angel's face, his own nearly as placid as hers. Melody's hand dropped to Helen's rear, like a feather brushing the curve of her bottom. Swatting that purposefully away, Helen shot Melody a look.
"That one was for me," Melody said, winking.
"He's counting down. It was eight before, then he spoke with the others, now it's two."
"One," Crispin said, his face smooth and radiant. He was as still as the statue, then lifted his hands to his face, almost as if he meant to rub his eyes. Then he stopped, hands over his eyes, stone.
Melody started to scan and Helen reached for what had been flesh, dumbfounded. Like the angel above them, Crispin's exposed skin was grey and smooth, as if he'd recently been carved.
"He's stone."
"He's an angel."
"How can that--" Helen and Melody shared a look, then turned as one to look to the other angel.
High above them, though she couldn't possibly have moved, the angel looked down with a hungry smile.
to be continued...
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