Tennessee Night (The 8th Jack Nightingale Novel)

by Stephen Leather

  He took five large white candles and placed them at the points of the pentagram, then lit them all with his lighter, being sure to move clockwise round the circle. Then he took out plastic bags containing herbs, and a lead bowl. Again moving clockwise, he sprinkled the herbs over the flames, until the air was filled with pungent smoke that caught in his nose and irritated his lungs. The remainder of the herbs were placed in the lead crucible, which he put down in the centre of the circle. He took his lighter and set fire to them too.

  This time the smoke was almost unbearable, and set Nightingale coughing furiously, but he choked it back down, and composed himself. He looked around his circle, checking that he had forgotten nothing, and that there were no gaps in any of the chalk lines. Any mistake could be fatal.

  Or worse.

  He took a deep breath, and began to recite the Latin incantation that he knew by heart, after using it more times than was probably healthy. He still didn’t know what the words all meant, but he took care to pronounce each one carefully. Almost without thinking about it, his voice grew louder as he spoke, and was at full volume when he shouted the final three words, which were in a language which long pre-dated Latin.

  ‘Bagahi laca bacabe.’

  The fumes grew thicker, it felt as if the floor and ceiling were shaking, and, despite being indoors, there was a flash of lightning and a roll of thunder.

  His eyes were streaming, and the fumes caught horribly at the back of his throat, but he concentrated on remaining motionless as he used what little breath he could muster to shout again the final three words of the summoning incantation.

  ‘Bagahi laca bacabe.’

  Again the room shook, there were two more flashes of blinding lightning, then the air in front of him shimmered. One moment there was nothing in the outer circle of the pentagram, the next the air flickered, time and space seemed to fold in on themselves, and then she was there, standing between the tip of the triangle and the edge of the circle, her face contorted with rage.

  Proserpine, Princess of Hell.

  The same jet-black hair and eyes as dark as pools of oil. The same leather coat over the short skirt, high studded boots and torn fishnet tights. The t-shirt had changed, this one was black and had a red inverted crucifix on it. The black and white sheepdog was by her side, as ever, and it stared hatefully at Nightingale, a threatening growl in its throat.

  Proserpine’s face was twisted in fury. ‘Damn you to Hell, Jack Nightingale. I told you not to summon me. I come to make pacts, not for social chit-chat or any time you need a helping hand. You’ll be sorry for this. I promised you I’d kill someone close to you for this. Do you think I make idle threats? Do you think I don’t mean what I say?’

  Many years ago, in another life, Jack Nightingale had been trained as a Police negotiator. His instructor had impressed one thing on the class on the very first day.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, there are two rules in negotiating which are more important than anything else you’ll learn here. Rule one, stay very calm. Rule two, if you can’t stay very calm, make everyone else think you’re very calm.’

  It had been excellent advice, though Nightingale doubted that Detective Inspector McGee had ever meant it to be used when dealing with a raging Princess of Hell. He took a deep breath and gave Proserpine a serene smile. ‘Of course I know you mean what you say. I’m sure you mean exactly what you say. Which is why I listen very carefully to everything you say, and everything you don’t say.’

  The fury disappeared from her face, and she frowned in confusion.

  ‘What do you mean by that, Nightingale?’

  ‘Just what I said. You swore that if I summoned you to Memphis, you’d kill someone I cared about. So I haven’t. I’ve summoned you to Nashville instead.’

  ‘You’re playing with words.’

  ‘No, I’m following your instructions, to the letter. I did exactly what you said. You can’t blame me for that.’

  She nodded slowly and she actually looked amused. She sniffed. ‘Nashville, eh? I’ve done business here a few times over the years.’ She smiled. ‘You’d be surprised what some people will do for fame and fortune.’

  Nightingale shrugged. ‘Nothing really surprises me any more,’ he said. ‘But it seems people often don’t prosper from your deals.’

  She smiled slyly. ‘Mostly they’re not specific enough, and never read the small print.’

  ‘It’s true, the devil is in the detail,’ said Nightingale.

  She laughed and looked around the vast basement. ‘I must say, Nightingale, your taste in decor has improved. Though I assume you didn’t choose it. A girl could feel quite at home here.’

  ‘More your style than mine. It was the best I could do at short notice.’

  ‘So here I am in Nashville, not Memphis, and aren’t you a clever boy. Should have been a lawyer, they’d call you Mr. Loophole.’

  ‘What’s done is done. And I don’t think I’m being clever at all. You were very precise, I think you wanted me to summon you. ‘

  ‘I hate being summoned without a deal, you know that. Why would I want idle chit-chat? Here or anywhere?’

  ‘Maybe you have things to tell me, things you can only tell me if I ask. And I think you must have had reasons of your own for not wanting to be summoned to Memphis. Someone you need to avoid there? Somebody you wouldn’t want to know you were there?’

  She laughed again, this time so loud that the walls shook. ‘Ha, don’t pretend you understand our world, Nightingale. There’d be as much chance of an...’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Nightingale. ‘As much chance of an earthworm understanding nuclear fission. Well, maybe this earthworm’s on a learning curve.’

  Her laughter seemed genuine this time. ‘Oh, Nightingale, you do make me laugh. I shall miss you when this is over.’

  ‘Maybe you won’t need to. Maybe I’ll still be around.’

  ‘Maybe that’s not the way it’s written. Now, was there something you wanted, Nightingale? I’m a busy girl.’

  ‘Time means nothing to you, you always say. So why the rush? But yes, there was something I wanted. Why did you get Professor Schiller to tell me everything I needed to know about Dudák?’

  She gave him another sly smile. ‘What makes you think I did? Isn’t he one of your white-hat posse, maybe dear old Mrs. Steadman put him on to you.’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘No, she told me she couldn’t help. So why would she call someone else to help me within hours? And if she had called him, why would he not say so? He was evasive about that, and said the lady ‘wouldn’t want to have her name mentioned’. And who do I know who hates having her name taken in vain?’

  ‘We all have our little foibles,’ she said. ‘But why would I want to help you?’

  ‘That’s what puzzled me for a while. Especially since you seemed to be the only one who could have freed Dudák and be controlling him. You didn’t seem to have any grudge against me lately, or Wainwright ever, so it occurred to me you might have made a pact with someone, someone who certainly did have a grudge against us, and you were working on their behalf.’

  ‘Goodness me, the ideas you come up with, Nightingale. I don’t discuss my deals with anyone, except the co-signatory. Or ‘The Damned’ as I like to call them.’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you to. But it makes sense, this nasty little plan has got your fingerprints all over it.’

  ‘I’m flattered you’re such a fan of my work.’

  ‘It just took me a while to figure out why you’re using Dudák to do the nasty bits for you.’

  ‘Dudák enjoys that sort of thing, and has talents for it. I can’t do everything myself. Not that I’m admitting I’ve done anything at all. Things like Dudák are not too pleasant to have around. And there’s more than one demon in Hell with the power to release it, control it and make pacts.’

  ‘No, it won’t wash. If someone wanted revenge on me and Wainwright and made a pact with you to do it in exchange for
their soul, you could have done it in ten minutes. If Dudák’s involved, it’s because you want it that way, and you wanted me to know all about him.’

  ‘And why exactly would I do all that, Sherlock?’

  Nightingale smiled. Make them think you’re calm. Time to play his one and only card. He took a long slow breath before answering. ‘Because you want me to kill Dudák for you.’

  She stared at him for a long time, her face a blank mask. Then she tilted her head on one side. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Explain yourself.’

  ‘Why bother? You know what your plans are. And as ever, I’m chief pawn.’

  ‘Ha, always the ego, Nightingale. You’re not even on the board. Why would I want Dudák destroyed? Assuming I have anything to do with all of this.’

  ‘Beats me, maybe it’s another one of those things that’s not meant to be walking the Earth. You were pretty keen for me to stop Bimoleth from returning in San Francisco, and I don’t think you shed any tears about the demons I killed in New York. In fact, I seem to remember you being pretty pissed about them escaping from Hell, and helping me get rid of them. Maybe there are laws about your kind killing other demons, and you need me to do your dirty work for you.’

  ‘You do see things in such simple ways, Nightingale. Sometimes I envy you your blindness.’

  ‘Well, I never envy you. So, am I right? Are you working on two things at once? Revenge on us, and using this Dudák thing as your puppet, so it can be destroyed?’

  ‘Sorry, Nightingale, I’ve told you before, it’s not ‘phone a friend’. The workings of my kind are not to be shared with you. And why do you always imagine that you have my full attention at all times? There are eight billion souls currently on the planet, and then there are all the ones to come. What makes you so important?’

  ‘You tell me, you seem to keep visiting me.’

  ‘And what makes you think I don’t visit billions of others? You’re a speck of sand in the Sahara, Nightingale.’

  ‘But you’ve said before that you want my soul.’

  ‘Of course I do, it was pledged to me and I was cheated out of it. But there are billions of others. If yours is denied to me, I shan’t sit up at night crying about it.’

  She turned her soulless eyes on him, those dark pools of nothingness, and he couldn’t imagine them ever shedding tears.

  This wasn’t getting Nightingale anywhere, and the strain of keeping a Princess of Hell imprisoned in the pentagram was beginning to tell. He could feel the sweat running down his brow, and he needed a cigarette badly.

  ‘You’re sweating, Nightingale,’ she said. ‘And you need a cigarette. You can’t keep me here forever.’

  Had she read his mind? Or was she just observing and guessing? Either way, what she said was true enough. ‘I need to know where to find Wainwright’s niece,’ he said. ‘She was taken from her home. After her parents were killed.’

  ‘Why? What’s she to you? Wainwright’s been a fool, exceeded his job description and upset powerful people, and powerful entities. They want revenge. I should get out of the way, if I were you. He’s not your problem.’

  ‘I work for him.’

  ‘My advice would be to find a new employer, and quickly. Your prospects of promotion aren’t good. And a gold watch on retirement is looking very unlikely.’

  ‘I don’t abandon people,’ said Nightingale.

  She gave a sarcastic, sneering laugh. ‘Aren’t you the hero? Maybe you would revise that policy if you had even an inkling of what you’re up against.’

  ‘And this isn’t just about Wainwright and his niece, that thing of yours has got Sophie Underwood in its sights.’

  This time the laughter seemed genuine, and went on for what seemed like minutes. ‘Did they try that on you? Someone does know your little weaknesses if they used her to bring you running. Dudák has no idea who Sophie Underwood is. She’s probably in London now, who knows, pregnant by some dopey boyfriend. She’s in no danger from Dudák and certainly not from me. Far too old for his tastes, and I can’t harm her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Forgotten already? You pledged your soul to save her life. That’s powerful protection, Nightingale, even against my kind. As for Dudák, it wouldn’t be interested. It’s children it craves, one whiff of puberty and the death-energies are different. No use. Now...if there’s nothing else, say the words, I’m a busy girl, what’s happening here will play itself out as its written. Maybe some of you will survive it, maybe not. Say the words.’ There was a hardness to her voice now as if he had pushed her to her limit.

  Nightingale had nothing left to ask, so he pronounced the words of dismissal. The air shimmered around her, time and space folded, and she and the dog were gone. Nightingale walked out of the pentagram to the altar at the front of the chapel, picked up his cigarettes, lit one, then sat on the nearest pew, shaking from head to foot.

  CHAPTER 51

  Nightingale finished his cigarette, held out his hands to check that they had indeed stopped shaking, then went back upstairs to the sitting room where he messaged Wainwright that the coast was clear. He sat smoking on one of the black sofas until he heard the noise of the SUV on the gravel outside the front door. Wainwright walked in, a straw shopping bag in each hand, obviously heavy. He put them down behind the bar, poured himself a Glenlivet, took a cigar from the humidor, then sat on the sofa opposite Nightingale. He lit his cigar then stared at Nightingale’s face. ‘You look like shit, Jack,’ he said. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘It doesn’t get any easier. There’s such a darkness, such an emptiness about her...’

  Wainwright held up a hand to cut him short. ‘I don’t want to know. In theory I know a lot more about the Occult than you, but there are things you’ve done that simply terrify me, and summoning Proserpine is just about top of the list. I’ve known people who tried to summon her kind, and they always ended up dead. Or worse.’

  Nightingale shrugged. ‘I know. You told me. Maybe it’s ignorance that’s protected me so far. Anyway, it’s done.’

  ‘You learn what you wanted?’

  ‘I’m still not sure,’ said Nightingale. ‘She’s hardly the helpful type when it comes to information. But there’s more to this than simple revenge on you and me. A lot more. And it seems I might not even be a target here.’

  ‘You mean it’s all about me?’ said Wainwright. He took a slug of whisky. ‘It figures. I was the one who shoved my nose in places it had no right to be. You were just the hired help.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Without me leaning on you, you’d never have got involved. Guess I overestimated my power, my abilities and my chances of staying in the background. But if it’s not about you, how come that Sophie girl’s on the list?’

  ‘A bluff. She’s too old and too well protected, apparently. But she’s on the list because Proserpine, or someone, decided to make it about me too. I’m meant to be here. But Sophie is in no danger from Dudák. That’s just about the only good news so far.’’

  Wainwright leaned forward on the sofa, knocked the ash off his cigar into the glass ashtray on the coffee table and looked up at Nightingale again. ‘You know, Jack, if Sophie’s just a lure to get you into this for some reason, you don’t have to stay. I have the feeling this could turn even nastier, and it looks like it’s cantered round me, and I brought it on myself. Couldn’t blame you if you got in that car, and started putting lots of miles between you and this. Couldn’t blame you at all.’

  Nightingale lit a fresh cigarette, blew a smoke ring up at the ceiling and watched it widen and disperse. ‘That’s not going to happen, Joshua,’ he said, ’If I’m here, it’s for a reason that’s bigger than I know. There are a lot of dead kids in Tennessee because of this Dudák thing, and it needs to be stopped.’

  Wainwright gave a weak smile. ‘I appreciate it, Jack. Thanks.’ He raised his glass in salute. So what happens next?’

  ‘First I’ve got to finish clea
ning up downstairs.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I’m still thinking about that,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘The clock is ticking, Jack.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Tick, tock. Tick tock.’

  Nightingale flashed him an annoyed look. ‘Mate, I know what a fucking ticking clock sounds like.’

  CHAPTER 52

  Nightingale looked at his handiwork. There were no traces left of the pentagram, so Joshua or Tyrone or their associates could continue with their own rituals without interference. He shuddered a little as he wondered what actually happened down in the chapel. It was none of his business, but it reminded him how easy he found it to forget what Wainwright really was. The affable exterior was always so convincing but Satanists didn’t get their power by being nice to people.

  He glanced at his watch. There was still time to find Naomi, and Wainwright would help with that ritual. It came to him that he’d forgotten something, so he pulled out his mobile phone. There was no signal down in the chapel, so he headed back upstairs, remembering to turn the basement ventilation up to the highest setting to disperse the smell of burnt herbs and candles.

  Once upstairs, he walked through the sitting room, out the French windows and onto the lawn, where he lit a cigarette, then started to scroll through the call register of his phone. He found the entry he was looking for, noticed with surprise that it had been only thirty-six hours ago that the first call came through, and pressed the green phone icon to return the call. It was answered almost immediately.

  ‘Nightingale?’ said Bonnie Parker. ‘Where the Hell are you and where the Hell have you been? I’ve been calling you all day.’