---------------------------------------------------------------------
   The light barely managed to scratch the darkness. It hung like a veil
of shadow above the shattered remnants of the small island nation.
   The tide had spread inwards over the past month, engulfing entire
cities and vast stretches of once green and fertile pastures, almost
stained black by the upturned soil.
   Those that could afford to do so had already fled the decrepit, sinking
lands of their birthplace, many relocating to Ireland whilst others had
resettled in Europe and India and places further abroad.
   Some waited like vultures to see what would be left and whether it
would be inhabitable, others chose to turn their backs completely.
   When they had first become aware that the trinity of countries that
compromised the island nation of Britain had been sinking there had been
mass panic.
   People, already brutalised by the regime of 'redemption' the Archangel
Raguel had set in motion had looted what little remained of the cities,
stealing and murdering in a frenzy of animalistic behaviour.
   Death and chaos reigned, mothers and babes were butchered for tickets
on boats and planes. The oppressed people of the Angels' concentration
camps in turn became the monsters they feared and despised.
   Fearing surges of refugees, the French government closed the Channel
Tunnel, setting a stricter boarder posts and posting French army officers
at the posts. They were issued rubber bullets to suppress any mobs that
may try crossing onto French soil.
   Two days after Heaven's destruction, the first mob attacked the French
boarder patrols.
   The rubber bullets weren't enough.
   The French military were issued live ammunition. It still wasn't
enough.
   Using corpses of the fallen as barriers, the mobs swarmed the Tunnel.
   Tanks were deployed. Hundreds of refugees were butchered.
   The final move came one week after the fall of Heaven when the French
Air Force bombed the Channel Tunnel.
   A statement was issued by the government declaring that, whilst the
situation was regrettable, the French economy was not strong enough to
take on such large numbers of refugees in the wake of their liberation
from Albion.
   No one argued with them.
   Small groups of scavengers and travellers were all that remained, their
bonfires burning bright through the perpetual darkness that covered the
sinking nation.
   Some established camps in the Scottish highlands, hoping to escape the
floods.
   Through the silent atrophy that enshrouded them one drunken and
anguished voice was heard singing out in the cold night.
   "Imagine there's no Heaven, s'easy if you try."
   A bitter laugh and then the sickening sound of vomiting.
   Joseph Dudley wiped his mouth with his sleeve and took another swig
from his stolen bottle of vodka. He couldn't remember how long it had been
since he had last eaten nor could he remember how much time had passed
since Emilia had ascended. All he knew was that he was alone and cold.
   The blanket wrapped around his shoulders provided little warmth and he
had long since lost any feeling in his legs. Alriel's blood still stained
the clothes beneath.
   His face was discoloured by bruises and dirt, his hair slightly longer
and his beard unkempt: a lifetime had passed for the young man, perhaps
even a birthday had been and gone - he couldn't remember anymore,
something he was thankful for.
   The rock beneath him was weathered by flood and plague a like, yet
still he had managed to pull himself and his chair up onto the higher
ground, looking out over the empty chasm of ocean where Aberdeen had once
rested.
   It had been arduous journey from London to Scotland, sitting in the
back of a crammed cattle wagon commandeered by travellers to move over
ruined railway part of the journey and then out into stolen lorries the
rest of the way. The space had been cramped and he had lost count of the
scavengers he had personally murdered to secure his place on the train and
in the lorries. The stench of death had followed them throughout their
entire journey and even here he could still taste the pungent odour at the
back of his throat.
   "Hello, Joseph." A soft voice whispered from behind him.
   He stumbled, nearly toppling from his chair and out onto the cold rock
face beneath in his drunkenness.
   The distorted shape of the Burning Man stood several steps away, his
face showing no trace of emotion.
   "What the fuck do you want, you cunt?" The younger man snapped.
   A faint smile crossed the Burning Man's features.
   "To bid fond farewells." He whispered.
   Dudley was silent for a moment and then gestured for the Daemon to take
a seat beside him, passing the bottle to him as he did.
   "Come on then, you old wanker. Let's talk about old times." He slurred.
   The Burning Man nodded, the fires in the distance playing across his
oblique face.
   "Yes," He whispered as if about to confess. "Let's talk about old
times."


ANGELS OVER ALBION: IFS ISSUE #25
"ANHEDONIA (REPRISE)"
YEAR OF THE DAEMONITE ACT VI

Written and Created by Jacob Milnestein
Edited by Jericho Vilar

Based on concepts and characters created by Neil Gaiman, James O'Barr and
Alan Moore

"This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night;
there is not a Field
without its Spirits, nor a City without its Daemons, and the Lunaticks speak
Prophesies while the
Wise men fall into the Pitte. We are all in the Dark, one with another."
- Peter Ackroyd,
'Hawksmoor'


   "I have nothing to offer you. Leave this place." He waved his hand
before them and the scavengers, faces caked with excrement and blood
scurried away into the darkness.
   In the dim light of the bonfires they looked more like animals than
human beings.
   The old man did his best not to dwell on the matter, turning his mind
to other more pressing engagements.
   "Uncle," A shivering voice questioned him. "When can we eat?"
   Melchizedek turned and looked at the two daughters of the Alukah
huddled at his side.
   After the failed invasion of New York, the two girls had been separated
from their father. Melchizedek had found them, half-starved, wondering
aimlessly about the darkened streets looking for their father. He had
taken them under his wing and brought them back to Albion in order to
restore them to their father.
   Until five weeks ago...
   The aching simultaneous departure of both Alcinous and the Alukah
vampir he had sought had wounded him as much as any physical blow, leaving
him disorientated and unable to make sense of the world.
   Once upon a time he had been an Angel, after that he had
become...something else...
   "Soon, my child." He whispered, running a hand through her pale blonde
hair.
   The fire danced before him, sending up patterns and imitations, a
mockery of life and in that sense, he was as brethren to the flames.
   He hadn't been able to tell the children of their father's demise, not
yet at least though he knew he would have to soon.
   He was Melchizedek, teacher of Abraham and confidant of the prophets.
He had fathered hundreds upon hundreds of Nephilim and eliminated them all
at the behest of the Watchers. He had stood upon a mountain and watched
the Earth flood with waters, drowning those of his children that he did
not murder himself. He had made love to Azazel, he had touched the stars
of the very Heavens themselves...and yet he could not bring himself to
tell two abandoned children that their father had passed away.
   Silent tears formed at the corners of his eyes but he suppressed them,
choosing not to display his weakness before the children.
   He rose from his seat and, taking the children in each of his hands,
left the comfort of the fireside for the cold, loneliness of the night.
   The girls shuddered, having become scared of the night since their time
abroad.
   "Tell us a story, Uncle." Wendy whispered.
   "A story about the girl with the ash blonde hair." Alice added
   Melchizedek smiled quietly.
   "Once upon a time there was a girl with ash blonde hair, much like
yours, my dear Alice," He began. "She was the queen of an entire empire
yet in her heart she was unhappy. Now, in those days there were still such
things as Angels..."
   He continued to tell his story, lifting the girls up in his arms when
they became too tired to walk any further and holding them close to his
chest.
   Night turned into day but the Earth's suns were too distant to harm
him, hidden behind the veil of dust that would fade eventually, within the
next twenty years at least - not that there would be anything left of this
place by then.
   He put the dark thoughts out of his mind and, holding the slumbering
children close to him, continued to whisper his lullaby of story.

   Dudley coughed loudly, blowing his nose into a torn rag.
   The cold damp of the train and the wide-open space of the mountains had
worsened his health. Persistent colds and malnutrition had served to dull
the brightness in his wide blue eyes. It wouldn't be much longer before
the pneumonia to set in.
   The Burning Man smiled sadly, trying to mask his thoughts from the
younger man.
   "I fucking hate colds." Dudley smirked, inhaling deeply and coughing
once more. "Almost makes me want to give up smoking."
   "You should." The Burning Man answered quietly.
   "You're one to talk." He scowled, flicking the cigarette out over the
cliff.
   "I've got a different metabolism to you." The Daemon answered. "Its
hardly going to do me any harm, is it? I'm on fire, for Christ's sake,
that should be a clear indication that I'm somewhat different from you."
   Dudley was silent for a moment, glaring accusingly at the raging waters
beyond the cliff face.
   "So, you not going to tell what it was like then? No light at the end
of the tunnel or nothing?"
   "No," The Burning Man shook his head. "No, light at the tunnel." A
brief smile crossed his face. "Actually it looked a bit like London."
   Dudley continued to look out across the horizon, apparently oblivious
to the Burning Man's words.
   "When I was at school I used to go out with a girl called Samantha
Gable." He said, his voice little more than a whisper. "Stuck up little
cow she was, used to try and get me to give up the fags and all that." He
lit a fresh cigarette and smirked at the memory. "We split up after a few
months, agreed to go our separate ways and I breathed a silent sigh of
relief.
   "Anyhow, I heard a little story about her last year or something.
   "She'd got pregnant about two months after we broke up, some idle
teenage fondle behind the back of the bike sheds with some other cunt of
apparent educational merit. She ended up living in fucking Battersea
sharing a flat with some with some wanker called Milton or something.
   "So one day she's on her way to Tesco's or somewhere with her little
boy in order to buy herself some fags or something - I smiled at that one,
one small victory for us cancer ridden old cunts, eh? - when she meets
this Angel. They talk for a little while and all that and then she goes on
her way and all the way up to Tesco's the little boy's got frowning and
thinking and eventually he turns to his mam and asks who Mummy's friend
with the wings was.
   "Dear old Sam replies that she was the Angel so-and-so of wherever.
   "The kid frowns a little and then looks up at his mum and says: 'Mummy,
why don't you believe in God?'
   "And Samantha Gable just looks at her little boy and says nothing.
   "She doesn't have an answer."

   The fading suns were just visible by the time they reached the next
campfire.
   Distant smudges of light beyond the darkness, the tendrils of their
illumination too weak to touch the skin of the travelling vampir and his
two wards.
   After bartering with the site's chief, they found their place besides
the warmth of the fire with fellow travellers and those that had chosen to
remain at the site, waiting out the end.
   The girls slumber'd still, wrapping in blankets that Melchizedek had
acquired from one of the fellow travellers he had met along their journey.
   Melchizedek looked deep into the flames, his eyes dark as shadow and
his brow furrowed in concentration.
   The Angels had been destroyed and, in the void they had left behind,
the people who they had tortured had demonstrated their own remarkable
cruelty towards one another.
   He felt sick, bile rising in his throat.
   All the centuries and all the monsters he had sought out and butchered
and all the time he had been looking in the wrong place, trying to make a
division between humanity and the monsters when the hideous truth of the
matter was that there was no division.
   There was no distinction; no dividing line between humankind and the
monsters it desperately sought protection from.
   They were one and the same thing.
   He sighed regretfully and drank deeply from a bottle of wine he had
been offered.
   For a brief moment he imagined he could smell flowers, orchids cut down
in the summertime of their youth.
   But it was little more than a fragment of his imagination.
   The darkness that covered the suns, whilst only temporary, had already
made it impossible for the flowers to grow. If the sea didn't consume them
then surely the lack of oxygen would suffocate them.
   He shook his head bitterly; trying to shrug off the morbid thoughts
that had so engrossed him as of late.
   There would be time for regrets later, for now, there were other
matters to attend to.

   Gently he wrapped the blanket about the younger man's sleeping body.
   Dudley had continued drinking until he had passed out and then the
Burning Man had gently lifted him from the chair and taken him into one of
the caves that that the earthquakes had formed, wrapping the blanket
around him and starting a fire before returning for the chair.
   Now he sat watching over his sleeping form, his dark fingers knitted
together in a pyramid the fire that protruded from his skull and hands now
nothing more than dim embers.
   The events of the past months had changed the younger man, forced him
to mature beyond his years. The similarities between him and Livingston
Chance were not ones he would have cared to admit to yet deep down, the
Burning Man expected that he knew the truth of it also.
   "Poor bastard." He murmured.
   Dudley twitched in his sleep, half-heatedly lashing out against his
nightmares.
   Briefly the Burning Man wondered whether he could still walk in his
dreams.
   He suppressed the thought, pushing it to the back of his mind for a
reason he couldn't quite understand. In his time he had tortured and
murdered thousands of people. From Angels and their bastard half-breed
children to Chance's prot‚g‚, Anya yet still he found a strange
companionship with this young man.
   Several months ago he would have happily eviscerated the
twenty-year-old former Earl of Leicester and what's more he would have
done it with a smile on his face. For countless centuries he had
slaughtered without even pausing to question why.
   But the true horror of what he had seen during the dying days of Albion
had turned his stomach. Perhaps it was in the impersonal way in which the
Angels had hoarded herd upon herd of human cattle into the camps, perhaps
somewhere in the back of his mind it reminded him of his own home and the
indignities that had had driven his own people into a similar Pit.
   He shuddered at the memory and lit himself a cigarette.
   No, the true horror was not that it was impersonal - it was that the
Angels knew what they were doing, each and every face they forced into the
black maw of those death camps had been a face etched upon their memories.
They knew every single living being in Albion and still they had sent them
into the camps.
   All the long years in which they had claimed fraternity with the
peoples they oppressed, all for this.
   In essence it was different from the Chinese occupation of Tibet, or
the American occupation of Japan, or any land occupied by any invading
force - 'the spoils of war' or some such bollocks.
   He lifted the cigarette to his lip-less mouth, drawing the smoke deep
into his tired lungs.
   Dudley murmured once more and looked up, bleary eyed at the brooding
Daemon before him.
   "I feel like shit." He whispered, his voice quiet and subdued.
   The Burning Man smiled benevolently.
   "That's because you've been fucked out of your face for the past few
weeks." He replied. "When was the last time you ate?"
   "I don't know. I can't remember." He paused and looked up at the
Daemon. "Give us a hand up, will ya?"
   It would be so easy to kill him, so easy to just walk over and snap his
neck. Perhaps it would even be a mercy killing.
   He reached over, hands lingering near the younger man's neck.
   "Are you going to help me or what?" He demanded, oblivious to the
threat the deposed Daemon Lord posed.
   The Burning Man nodded and reached down, allowing the young man to put
his arm around his shoulders and lifting him up to his feet.
   "I need to piss." Dudley said.
   "How did you go before I got here?" The Daemon asked.
   "I don't know." Dudley said, looking away shamefully. "I.I think I
crapped myself."
   "That would explain why you smell so bad." The Burning Man answered in
an attempt to make light of the situation.
   Carefully he lifted him up and took him outside of the cave. There was
a faint layer of snow on the ground, unusual for the time of year but not
really a surprise when you considered the ecological turmoil the planet
had gone through recently.
   The Burning Man placed him down on a ledge, helping him pull his
trousers down and then walking back to the mouth of the cave.
   Nothing happened.
   "What the fuck am I supposed to do here?" Dudley asked, gingerly
holding his dick in his right hand.
   "Piss down into the ocean." The Burning Man replied. "Just don't fall
off. Oh, and while you're at it you might as well leave those trousers
there. They've probably given you sore and I can make you a new pair."
   "Aren't we the fucking saint today?" Dudley grumbled, turning away and
will himself to urinate.
   A slow trickle ran out over his hand and down the inside of his legs
and to the ocean below.
   "Fuck's sake." He shouted.
   "What's the matter?" The Burning Man shouted back.
   "I.I've pissed down my fucking legs." He shouted in anguish, tears
forming in his eyes and his face brightened with shame.
   "Its okay." The Daemon responded calmly. "We have water, I'll give you
a bath."
   "I don't want a fucking bath! Not from you or anybody! I don't need
anyone to fucking help me wipe my arse! What do you think I am, you cunt?"
He screamed back, his voice struggling against the wind to be heard.
   "If you don't change your clothes and wash then you're going to die,
Joseph." The Burning Man answered, beginning to walk over.
   "Just piss off, Mum!" Dudley shouted, glancing over his shoulders. "I
don't fucking care, I'm going to throw myself off this fucking cliff right
now."
   "Don't be stupid, Joseph." The Burning Man said.
   "You coming any fucking closer and I'll fucking do it. Just fuck off,
alright!"
   "Listen to me."
   "Just fuck off! I fucking hate you, you cunt, I wish you'd never
fucking got me out of that fucking cell. I want to fucking die, oh Jesus
Christ, do I want to die." He wept loudly, streams of tears burning his
face and slowly fell back into the Burning Man's outstretched arms,
sobbing uncontrollably.
   The Burning Man held him, hold his sobbing body in his arms as the
young man whispered the same name over and over again:
   "Emilia."

   "What the fuck are you doing with two little girls following you
around, anyhow?" The broad man spat, towering head and shoulder over
Melchizedek.
   "They are my nieces." The vampir said slowly.
   "Yeah? Like I haven't heard that one before?" The broad man snarled,
shoving Melchizedek with his fat hand.
   "Don't touch me again." The vampir warned.
   "What the fuck you going to do about it? Maybe I think I could take
better care of your 'nieces'."
   Melchizedek smiled, exposed his sharpened teeth.
   "I wouldn't if I were you." He warned.
   "And who's going to stop me?"
   "We are." The girls hissed in unison, leaping forwards and tearing the
man's head from his shoulders.
   His obese body quivered and then fell forwards, rancid crimson blood
splashing over the young girls' pale faces as they burrowed their teeth
into the gaping wound of the exposed neck.
   Melchizedek smiled and sat down once more.
   "Would anyone else care to infer that they may be better parental
guardians than myself?" He questioned, looking around at the gathered
faces.
   No one replied.
   Melchizedek returned to his bottle of wine.

   "Och, look at me, I'm a wee Scottish laddie." Dudley proclaimed,
pushing his chair out into the cold air beyond the cave, his blanket
wrapped around his legs like a kilt.
   The Burning Man smiled, using thread from the old trousers and one of
his own teeth to sew together a new pair of trousers from one of the
surplus blankets.
   Days had passed since the incident on the cliff-face, days in which
neither one of them really raised the subject again.
   The Burning Man had found a large hole into the ground and filled it
with rainwater, warming it with the flames from his hand and then lowering
Dudley into it and then talking a walk outside, allowing the younger man
to bathe himself in privacy.
   The routine had continued for nearly a week and every morning the
Burning Man would hunt for whatever food he could find.
   The first day he had brought home the dead corpse of a deer Dudley had
protested that he was a vegetarian.
   After another argument, the Burning Man had patiently explained that,
whilst admirable, there was no room for such idealism in an uncivilised
world.
   Dudley had quietly given up his protest and thankful consumed the dead
animal.
   "Joseph." The Burning Man called out softly.
   Dudley turned and looked at his companion.
   "What are you going to do when I leave?" He asked.
   Silence settled like snow between them. Dudley hadn't considered the
absence of his comrade.
   "I don't know." He whispered.
   "This place won't last for much longer." The Daemon said. "A few months
at least and then it'll all be gone beneath the waves. Like Atlanis - or
that mythical kingdom of Canada."
   "Canada's still there." Dudley pointed out.
   "I refuse to believe in it." The Burning Man answered and Dudley left
it at that, returning to the question he had been asked.
   "I-I'm not sure." He said after a short while. "Maybe I'll go down with
the ship or something like that."
   The Burning Man nodded.
   "I'm leaving here. Tomorrow." He whispered.
   "Fine, fuck off, I never needed you anyhow."
   The Daemon smiled.
   "I know. Just promise me you'll look after yourself, try and stay
alive. If not for your sake then for Emilia's."
   A scowl broke across the younger man's face.
   "How did you know about that?" He demanded.
   "I was in Heaven before it was destroyed. I.I saw what she became.
Before I left I absorbed the soul of a man named Johnny Faustus; he had
signed his soul away to the Devil. I didn't have the heart to tell him
that he needn't have feared going to Hell because Lucifer was probably
already dead. Anyway, he knew things and explained to me, in purely
metaphysical terms, what had transpired. She'll be back one day, won't
she?"
   Dudley bowed his head.
   "I hope so." He whispered.
   "Good. Then stay alive to see that day." The Burning Man closed the
conversation.

   Melchizedek walked across the barren wastelands, hand in hand with his
nieces; the sky had become blacker over the past days, a sure omen of
impending doom.
   They came to a halt on the shore of a new beach that had replaced the
dull, grey industria of Nottingham.
   "Its time." The old vampir warned.
   "Time for what?" Wendy questioned.
   Their uncle smiled benevolently down at them.
   "Time to learn to fly." He answered, vast wings of dove feathers
unfurling from his back.
   Gently he lifted them up to his chest and stepped up into the air, his
wings beating against the wind and his strength more than compensating for
the weight of the children, their eyes wide in wonder as he rose above the
darkness and out into the full light of the moon.
   "Icarus flew too close to the sun and was burnt. No one ever said
anything about the moon." He smiled and together they went forwards into
eternity.

   Dudley awoke to the smell of roasting meat.
   The Burning Man was no longer there but he had left a fire burning and
the spoils of his hunt cooking before the fire.
   With eyes still full of sleep he pulled himself up, dragging himself
into the clothes the Burning Man had prepared for him and warming himself
against the fire.
   Beyond the darkness, the suns were brighter than usual.
   It wouldn't be long now.
   Carefully, he withdrew a cigarette from the extra packet the Daemon
Lord had left him and leant into the fire.
   The tip turned orange, burning brightly and Dudley drew back from the
fire, drawing first from the cigarette and then removing the cooking meat
from the fire and biting out of it.
   The sun was shining, just like Emilia had done the last time he had
seen her.
   "I will wait for you, Emmie." He whispered. "I promise."
   A broad smile crossed his face and he looked up to the sun and then
towards the second sun that Emilia had given them.
   Despite its distance it seemed closer now than it ever had before and
in away that comforted him because one day, she would be closer than that
sun could ever be, she would be back in his arms again and until that day,
Joseph Dudley would go through Hell and high fucking water to get to her.
   "I'm here, Emilia, I always will be." He smiled. "And I love you, more
than anything else in the world, I love you."
   The sun broke through the darkness, shattering the black veil and
spread the first rays of light the dying country had seen in an entire
month.
   And Joseph Dudley just smiled because he could already feel her coming
home.
   "I love you." He whispered, a solitary tear running down his face.
   Then he dragged himself up, forcing his weight against the cave wall
and slowly clambered outside, hands digging into crevices to pull him
outside.
   The sun played across his face and, leaning his entire weight against
both his left side and the wall, thrusting his right fist up into the air.
   "I LOVE YOU, EMILIA NESS, I FUCKING LOVE YOU!" He shouted at the top of
his voice and it was true.
   And somewhere deep in space she heard him and smiled to herself.
   Because she loved him too.
   And always would.

FINIS