Read Online Thaumatology 12: Vengeance by Niall Teasdale - Free Book Online Page A

church, not old, but lacking a lot of the paraphernalia Ceri would have expected. There was a very large, oak cross mounted on the wall behind the speaker though it looked a little odd to Ceri.
    ‘Exodus, chapter twenty-two, verse eighteen…’ the voice from the TV intoned.
    ‘Here we go again,’ Ceri muttered.
    ‘…thou shall not suffer a sorceress to live. Leviticus, chapter nineteen, verse twenty-six, thou must not practise divination or sorcery. And yet this very city has constructed buildings to study magic. It seeks to power its lights through magic. It allows the dead to walk among the living and its parks are home to beast-men.’
    Ceri looked up. Ziel was a tall, attractive man with the kind of black hair you saw in movies, strong features, and blue eyes which blazed at the audience in his moment of righteousness. She imagined he was probably very charismatic to many, but she had seen people with real charisma; compared to Oberon, Ziel was a rank amateur.
    ‘We have learned that the angels we all know watch us from on high are unable to come within five miles of this city of depravity and corruption. The man who fell to earth through the roof of a mall was one such being. Others have been found, lost and unable to communicate with their God. A God who has turned His sight away from this place before He destroys it. Leviticus, chapter twenty, verse six, whoever turns to mediums and spiritualists, and prostitutes himself with them, I will turn against that person.’
    ‘Oh… goody,’ Lily moaned. ‘Just what we need, another Bible-quoting nut job.’
    The screen had cut back to the presenter, but all she had to say was that no one in government was willing to talk about the matter and Ceri mentally switched the TV to mute as she focussed on her tablet.
    ‘Looks like several evening papers are reporting it. The Watchers… Ah, here we go. The Watchers of Saint John were founded about fifteen years ago by Ziel, weird spelling. They’re named for the John who wrote Revelations. They believe that Revelations is a literal transcript of a conversation John had with Jesus and originally they believed that the end of the world was coming at the turn of the millennium. Have you ever read Revelations?’
    ‘Uh-huh,’ Lily said, nodding. ‘After the Witch Hunter business and America. I want to know what he was smoking. I mean, I didn’t think they had LSD back then.’
    ‘There’s a mould that grows on wheat that does the same thing.’
    ‘He was on that then. I mean, locusts shaped like horses with the faces of men, the hair of women, and crowns? Oh, and scorpion tails.’
    ‘Well, the Watchers… That’s another name for the Grigori. Interesting. The Watchers are quite sure it’s all going to happen fairly literally. We’ve had our thousand years of Satan being locked in the Pit, and now he’s out and deceiving us with lies.’
    ‘As opposed to deceiving us with the truth?’
    ‘Yeah, that’s what politicians do. The question is, how did they find out about the angels in the first place?’
    Westminster, April 2 nd .
    ‘We traced the leak to our ambulance driver,’ Kate stated, her eyes scanning her notes. ‘He’s a member of this cult.’
    ‘You’re calling them a cult?’ Ceri asked.
    ‘Not officially.’ Chief Inspector Barry gave Kate a withering look before continuing. ‘We can’t charge him with anything, but at least we know how the information got out. I’m more concerned at the moment about public reaction to Ziel’s speech.’ Barry was ex-military, a solid man and a good detective. He wore his years of dealing with supernatural crime like a very heavy cloak and the stress was definitely starting to tell around his eyes.
    ‘Is anyone actually going to take him seriously?’ John grumbled. ‘He’s a fruit cake.’
    ‘He’s a fruit cake who got the prime slot on the evening news,’ Lily pointed out. ‘And a lot of people have gone a little funny about spiritual stuff after