Chapter 110

A CHILD OF ANGELS

Jasmine kept running.

She was headed for that darkness in the corner of her mind. She felt tuned in to the streets, able to see beyond the concrete and the bricks, the wood and the glass, the steel and the asphalt.

She was seeing dark rooms unseen for centuries. Long corridors that lay undiscovered. Tunnels and caves. Nooks and crannies.

She saw life in the underworld—snakes and rats, angels and demons.

It was like being on a ghost train at the fair. Things flashing past your eyes. Skeletons popping up. Screams filling the air. The difference here was that the danger was real.

She kept running, unaware of where she was going. Just following the signals in her mind. Following the darkness.

I am a seer, she thought, and she wondered what that word even meant.

Seer.

Where did that word come from?

Seer.

Why did she think of herself like that?

I am a child of angels.

Her visions now started to comfort her. They suddenly stopped being scary. She was starting to use them, to use the power she had.

She saw bodies buried under the pavements. Corpses in various states of decay, some fresh, others decomposed.

She saw inside people’s homes. Husbands beating wives. Wives sleeping with strangers. Kids smoking fags while their mothers boozed. A family praying together for peace. A young girl practicing violin while her dad needled heroin into his veins.

She saw anguish and joy. She saw rage and harmony. She heard it all and it seeped into her and she understood now how to tap into it.

She was learning to see by seeing.

After a while, she stopped running. She stood in an empty street, and for a second, she felt scared again. She was eleven and on her own. It was dark and quiet. There was a barrier across the road to stop traffic. It said NO ENTRY on the Tarmac. On one side, an office building towered above her. On the other stood a red-brick building.

Now she was lost. She looked around, confused. Her panic grew. She started to pant, her chest tightening.

A voice in her head shocked her. It was a man’s voice. It was the ghosts voice. It said, “Old Dorset Street, little seer. This is where it stood. And there, there stands the entrance into Miller’s Court. Where he killed poor Mary. Where your mother waits. Go save her, little seer.”

The voice faded. Jasmine stared at a row of green roller doors. They looked like garage doors. She hurried over to one and stared at it desperately. Whimpering, she wondered how she was supposed to find Miller’s Court.

Where he killed poor Mary. Where your mother waits.

She lost hope now. She fell to her knees, burying her face in her hands. She cried, calling out to her mother. She just couldn’t concentrate anymore. It was too difficult.

How could her mother be behind these doors? How could she be in a place where some woman called Mary had died?

And how was Jasmine supposed to open the doors to find out?

She was about to give up when a shadow moved across the pavement where she cowered. And then she heard flapping, as if a huge bird were beating its wings just above her.

She slowly turned and gawped as the creature descended to the street. Its black-feathered wings fluttered as it landed. Its muscular body was covered in blood and strange pictures and words.

She looked into the creatures eyes. One was brown, the other blue.