Hope & Fury (Heroes & Demons Book 2)

Anywhere you went in the world there was a dive bar, a dank pub. The décor may change but it would always be shabby and kitschy in equal measure. There would be peeling posters or dusty framed photos of celebrities who had never visited. There would be a jukebox which either hadn’t worked in years or which would be so close to its last legs that all music that came out sounded like Elvis Presley – regardless of the artist. The lighting would be low, dim, even in the brightest day so that when the door opened and someone entered their eyes would take a few minutes to adjust to the dimness. Enough time to feel socially awkward at turning around and leaving. There would be a couple of locals, perhaps one at the bar who has fallen asleep beside his pint and paper, perhaps one in the booth at the back still reading his while saying ‘sod it’ to the smoking ban – the cigar dangling from his lips filling the air with the scent.

You’d ask the barman what was on and find out there was only one option – beer, wine or a range of local spirits you’d never heard of but that were undoubtedly cheap knock-offs of the tourist brands – and in some cases watered down or made in the landlord’s private bathtub.

In Manchester, the bar was O’Malley’s which had been Rick and Sandy’s home away from home and Saturday night staple. It was as miserable and depressing as the man itself but was theirs at least. Thankfully it had survived the Blackout – although being like the most depressing nuclear bunker anyway probably helped – and had acted as a shelter during that night. O’Malley might have been a gruff gentleman but he was honourable in his unique way – and allowed shelter from the chaos outside to the people on the street and patrons alike.

He’d even reluctantly allowed the place to become a donation centre when the relief efforts began, although he advocated Guinness as a better alternative to a hot drink after people had given blood. Still charged full price though, it was a business after all.

After the dealing was done and the Horseman had left, Rick found his homing instinct kicking in. They filled in Ruth, Andrew remained behind at the Temple and Angel left to help an injured Tomas and Louise. Slipping away through the crowds and the chaos was easy enough; so Rick found his way to the nearest dive bar that hadn’t been destroyed.

As he would have expected, they were open. Not even an earthquake or any other catastrophic geological event could have stopped Bill’s from opening. On the outskirts of Mosta, it appeared the local ex-pat bar was the dive place, stranger things. He sat at the bar in his dusty BioSuit, no eyes raised, and asked for a beer. He didn’t specify the brand and couldn’t tell when the generic bubbly mess was put in front of him.

But it was cold, it was beer and it was all he needed.

Two hours later that was exactly how Sandy found him, propping up a bar stool, his third pint in front of him, staring into space.

“Am I that predictable?” he asked her, not having to look.

“To be fair I tried the Pink Cross first but when I saw the leather I realised that was a no go,” she responded, climbing onto the barstool next to him and waving for the same as he. He realised she had showered and changed, looking remarkably fresher than himself.

“Good call.”

“So,” she began when her pint arrived, “Is this the point where we have to have a serious talk, open up some feelings crap and then you continue to spiral anyway?”

“You’re worried about me spiralling?” he inquired, innocently enough. “What would make you worry about that?”

“The three coats of paint it took to get ‘Horsemen are wankers’ off the wall of Primark after Ben died,” she answered honestly. “And watching you have your stomach pumped after the funeral.”

“I can’t believe you’d think the events are connected,” he joked. She looked at him seriously.

He knew what she was getting at. When Ben had rejected him truly and started his new life with Allison, before everything that happened, he had spiralled. The mixture of guilt over killing Stacey, even if it had been to save Louise’s life at the time had intermingled with the pain of rejection and sent him on a downward spiral. He had drunk heavily, engaged in God knew what with God knew who (the only visual evidence they had of this person was a rude selfie sent to Ben’s fiancé at the time).

Following Ben’s death and the Blackout, it had been worse. There were times when Rick had disappeared altogether for three days only to be found in a camper van travelling with ELO groupies. He hadn’t even liked ELO, he’d stayed for the booze. Or times when he’d simply not come into work and stayed at home on the sofa. That autumn was the wettest on record – as though the subconscious influence of his elemental power somehow shifted with his grief.

As she looked into his eyes in the bar he knew what she would see. A calmness – not masking fury or anger or pain. A serenity which somehow was more disturbing than anything else.

“Rick, what’s going on with you?” she asked him.

“We shagged last night, by the way,” he pointed out. She rolled her eyes, “And I’m not telling you to brag, I mean I can bring all the boys to the yard without that milkshake nonsense – but because things need to be out in the open, y’know?”

“He wasn’t Ben,” she reminded him.

“No, he wasn’t,” Rick agreed, surprising her again, “You know, I know why you’re worried and to be honest when I saw him standing there in that Aquaman-bollocks of armour I was pretty much worried things were going to go that same way. After all, last night a simple kiss had my head spinning, so I was sure the sight of his face, a stranger in a suit of armour – the enemy…I thought that would be it.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed, “Because it was never him. I grieved, I mourned, I let go of him a long time ago. My Ben, the twisted, messed up angry man who didn’t know what he wanted until it was far too late. The one I have memories with that I can’t get rid of, that come out at night or after I go onto the gin – they’re the memories of my Ben, the real Ben.”

“The man who we’ve spent the last few days with – that wasn’t him. He was empty, devoid of the man I loved. Don’t get me wrong everything was still there and I dare say worked just as well…”

“Please spare me the details,” she begged.

“There is a reason I’m telling you the details,” he pressed. “You see, my Ben fell off a horse when he was fourteen – still working at his dad’s farm. Landed on some barbed wire, nicked the femoral artery and nearly bled out right then and there. Would have made a bloody different story, eh? Anyway, it led him to have this thin scar right here.” He traced the line of his finger along his inner thigh. “Wasn’t there.”

“What do you mean it wasn’t there?” Sandy snapped at him, scars didn’t just spontaneously heal themselves.

“I’m saying, the scar was not there,” he replied, “Just normal skin. He always wanted rid of it, though it was an embarrassing scar to have and it looks like death gave him his wish. So you see, the man in my bed last night – he didn’t have any of the scars from our time together, physical or psychological. He wasn’t mine. He was someone new.”

“That’s why you’re so calm?” she questioned, sceptical. “Because you think he wasn’t Ben?”

“I think he was a genuinely frightened individual who truly woke up without any knowledge of who the hell he was,” Rick agreed, “Then something in that bloody artefact woke something up in him, maybe something buried – maybe just drew in something new. Then he, War if you like, came thundering forward and took over. But no, in none of that scenario was my Ben ever back, or ever gone.”

He let the moment hang between them, took another sip of his drink and waited for Sandy to process everything. Before she could her phone pinged.

“That’s Andrew, he’s found something,” she explained. He nodded and agreed that they should go – once ‘Bill’ had the tab paid up of course, and he had finished the last pint.

He hadn’t lied to Sandy, not exactly. Everything he said and everything he suspected was perfectly true. Except none of it was the reason that he was calm, none of it was the reason he wasn’t breaking down and allowing himself to be crushed by the realisation that he never came back, his miracle never happened. His dream remained only the dream he would have at night in solitary bedsheets.

It was the sudden loss of an old friend, one he’d carried with him since he was younger. In his faith he had always believed God was with them, guiding them in some way but stepping back and allowing them to mess it all up. His last good memory with Ben had been without it, sat in his office in the Biogenesis tower, watching the night sky and waiting, taking every moment they would. He believed God’s indifference would see them in, would allow Janet’s plan to come through and crush the world in one swoop. Somehow Ruth’s efforts to mitigate the effects would fail and they would awake in the morning to a dawn of chaos, anarchy.

In some small way, the first drops of rain on the window sparked in him a renewal. He believed that he was broken and that remained true. He believed that Janet would succeed and she did. But the rivulets of rain, the breaking of the storm at that exact moment convinced him once more of the serendipity of life. In the rain they would fight, he would be given strength and they would ultimately succeed.

Hope was the thing he’d had renewed. Hope that they could win, hope that things could go forward. Hope in the next sunrise. He spiralled when Ben died because he still had hope, he still clung onto the notion that because the world continued to turn and because they already knew things were stranger than fiction – hope told him that maybe, just maybe, if Janet could find a way to come back and if he could be healed by a man with wings; then maybe, just maybe there was hope that they would be reunited.

He was the most serene he ever felt because he had lost all hope.