‘It doesn’t work like that,’ explained Tamar. ‘For one thing, you can’t teleport into Hell. It’s not a part of the world. And anyway, it’s too late for that now. He’s already opened the doorway. The damned will be coming through regardless. Askphrit doesn’t know it, but this is a part of something bigger than him and all his schemes. Six months ago we might have tried it, but now, all we can do is fight.’
‘Fight how?’ said Jamie. ‘I thought you said there’d be legions of them – against five?’
‘Six,’ corrected Stiles. ‘Hecaté will be with us.’
‘Okay six, big deal. Look, I ain’t trying to ruin your party. I just want to know, what’s the plan?’
~ Chapter Twenty One ~
The “men upstairs” as Tamar had referred to them were, as all such men are, completely unaware that they were only on the first level of the top floor. They thought that they were at the very top, the movers and shakers, but in this, they were, of course, deceived. They were very much the moved and shaken. Such men are useful. The buck stops with them, and they give the underlings someone to be in awe of. The real men in charge are always the sort of people that underlings are never in awe of, being merely more intelligent and powerful, not to mention more devious, than other people. These people do not have shiny offices with a nice view of the outer rings. They meet in shadowy rooms and wear shabby clothes. Many of them take a day job of such staggering mundanity that you might wonder, if you ever noticed them at all, how they managed to get from day to day. They make decisions, as opposed to making excuses. And they always know whatever there is to know.
* * *
Tamar went outside for some air. The house felt curiously stuffy, as if it had not been used by people for a long, long time. But she knew the real reason; she was feeling nervous. It was too quiet, even for the middle of the countryside. Outside was better. At least out here, there was the sound of the occasional owl, quiet scuffling noises, probably foxes, even the breeze made a noise, whisper, whisper, whisper. Tamar drew in a deep breath. Now she was ready.
Jamie was right, though, six against untold legions was bad odds even with her powers, Denny’s Athame and heroic tendencies, Stiles’s dogged determination, Cindy’s magic and a goddess plus a trained soldier. What they needed was an army.
* * *
Askphrit had bellowed like a wounded boar when he heard the news. Demons had dived left and right for cover, and Peirce had hit the ground running. The whole of Hell had shaken to the sound of his roaring voice.
‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THE FATES ARE GONE? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? WELL DO YOU?’ His voice hit new decibel levels ‘THAT BLOODY WOMAN!!! I’LL KILL HER, THIS TIME I’LL BLOODY WELL KILL! HER. I’LL KILL THE WHOLE BLOODY LOT OF THEM. HOW DID SHE DO IT, EH? ANSWER ME THAT!’ for once, Askphrit had lost his suavity.
‘My lord?’ whispered Peirce from the shadows in the voice of one who does not really want to be heard. Unfortunately for him, Hell has excellent acoustics.
‘WHAT?’ Askphrit calmed down a little. ‘What?’
‘Well sir, what does it mean?’ Peirce covered his ears and, therefore, almost missed hearing the answer that Askphrit gave, in unexpectedly moderate tones.
‘It means, you useless little twerp, that the Fates never existed and, therefore, never could have interfered in anybody’s destiny.’
Peirce got the point immediately. ‘So they know?’ he said, preparing to dive under some furniture.
‘Yes, they know. Are the troops ready?’
‘Yes sir.’ Pierce would have said this no matter what the truth of the situation. Like all Captains, he understood that, when dealing with Generals (or mad overlords of Hell – and some people have trouble telling the difference) whatever the facts are, you must eliminate the impossible, and whatever you can dodge up, however improbable, will be the truth. Besides, they were the damned, they were always ready. It was not as if they were going to get any more damned.
‘Good,’ said Askphrit. His mood was improving. ‘We must move immediately. Perhaps there is still time. After all, we have at least delayed them for almost a year. And they don’t know about …’ he coughed. ‘In any case, they have had no time to prepare, and they haven’t the manpower to deal with an assault of the magnitude that I am preparing to launch. Ha, they’d need an army.’
* * *
The streets were deserted. This, in itself, would have been suspicious if it were not for the curfew. Civilians were to be indoors by eight p.m. or be carted off to prison. And it was now a quarter to eleven. Armed patrols would swing by at random intervals; the idea was to catch curfew breakers off guard. It was a curfew in the original sense of the word. The idea being to keep people in their homes after dark to prevent plotting. For this reason the curfew was augmented by an enforced complete blackout. This being the origin of the curfew, an anglicised version of the French ‘Couvre Feu’. A law first instigated by William the Conqueror that all fires were to be doused at sunset, to prevent people staying up and plotting. With no fire for heat and light, in those dark old days, people tended to go to bed. At least that was the idea. What the great Conqueror failed to realise, and also his later imitators, was that plotters tend to be devious people who take risks and are quite prepared to break the law to do so.
And if you do not have magic, a good strong pair of heavily lined curtains will do the trick.
The invisibility spell was hardly necessary. The streets were pitch black, and, in any case, everyone knew that the patrol men were notoriously easy to bribe, should they run into any. It was the other things that they might run into that they were worried about. But so far, there had been nothing. The streets were as deserted as they appeared to be.
After about an hour, Tamar said. ‘Okay guys let’s see what’s going on down there.’
‘Okay,’ said Denny. ‘All those without magic of their own catch hands with someone who has.’ This of course referred to Stiles and Jamie. Only Jamie disregarded this order, but Tamar grabbed hold of his elbow. ‘Believe me,’ she said. ‘You’ll be a lot safer with us.’
He looked at her sourly. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
* * *
Down in the caverns beneath the sewers the curfew was, unsurprisingly, not being observed. Thus it was, ironically, far lighter down here than it had been up on the street. On the minus side, the patrols that they were likely to encounter down here were far more deadly and less open to bribery than the ones above their heads.
Tamar found herself explaining, once again, to Jamie this time, about the homeless people who lived down here.
‘That’s how we first came across this place,’ she said, defending these people against the evil that lurks down here. God, I sound like a bad sermon.’
The sewers were ominously deserted, apart from the few white faced human inhabitants that could be seen scurrying here and there in the dim light.
‘Are you sure we’re in the right sewer?’ asked Jamie after a while, his voice echoing weirdly along the empty tunnels.
Denny was worried about Tamar. She had not even said ‘Damn’.
She was looking about her, warily, occasionally sniffing the fetid air. After a while, she visibly relaxed.
‘Wherever they are,’ she said. ‘They’re not here. I reckon they …’
They emerged from the sewers, bloody, bruised and battered. Not to mention stinking to High Heaven.
‘It was a good fight, though, wasn’t it?’ said Jamie enthusiastically. Last of the great sceptics. His opinions were revolving faster than a politician’s in an election year.
‘They ambushed us,’ wailed Tamar. ‘I don’t understand it, I couldn’t sense a thing, not even a sniff, and those buggers stink worse than Vikings.’
Denny put an arm around her, which she shook of pettishly. She had been fooled, and she was not in a good mood. Denny raised his eyebrows. As far as he was concerned, they had all survived, and that counted as a win.
It had happened
so suddenly, which is the point of an ambush, I suppose. From out of nowhere, apparently, but really from Hell (which was why Tamar had not been able to sense them) about a hundred feral vampires had suddenly appeared. They had set about them with the old divide and conquer, and they seemed to know exactly what they were about. They divided Stiles and Jamie from the others, knowing no doubt, that those two could not escape on their own and that the others would not leave them behind. Unfortunately for them, Tamar was infuriated by this move. The battle was bloody and swift and soon, what passed for the air down there was choked with flying dust and it was raining limbs, for Tamar had manifested a couple of broadswords and made her progress like a demented windmill. Cutting off whatever came within her reach. If not a head, then an arm or leg would do just as well, she really was not fussy.
‘Come on,’ said Denny now, ‘Let’s get out of here, we need to regroup, they’ll be after us in a minute.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Tamar. ‘That was just a feint. I think we’re supposed to think we’ve won and just go away with a sense of victory. But he made it too easy. I’m not falling for that!’
‘Of course not,’ said Denny. ‘That couldn’t have been more than a fraction of what he’s got down there. That’s why I said, “regroup” and not “celebrate”. I’m not a complete idiot you know?’
‘Easy?’ said Jamie. ‘You call that easy? My Lord!’
‘Sorry,’ said Tamar, ignoring Jamie. ‘I’m just a bit pissed off. I should have seen it coming.’
Stiles who, by his reaction to the ambush, clearly had seen it coming – and it was just as bloody well (his most potent weapon was his permanent state of mistrust) tactfully said nothing.
They headed for home in silence.
Jamie wiped the blood off his neck.
It was a long time until dawn, but, up ahead of them, there were bright lights glowing. They had decided to double-check the streets before going home. This was Stiles’s idea, which everyone agreed was a good one.
This seemed like it might be something worth checking out. As they drew closer, they heard the sounds of what seemed to be a riot.
‘It’s the prison,’ said Jamie. ‘Look they’re on the roof.’
They were indeed. Distant shapes, silhouetted against the glow of the searchlights, were dancing and gibbering, brandishing long pieces of wood and iron bars, and shouting defiance. There were a few small fires.
‘Sign of the times,’ said Stiles. ‘It’s the bloody overcrowding. It’s got a lot worse of course, since the curfew.’
Jamie had the grace to hang his head.
‘Just look at them,’ said Cindy. ‘Like animals, disgraceful! They ought to be locked up.’
They all turned to look at her. Even those of them who were used to this sort of thing from Cindy stared.
‘Locked up you say?’ said Denny, trying to keep a straight face.
Then they burst out laughing.
‘What?’ said Cindy. ‘What? What have I said now?’
‘Nothing, darling,’ said Denny. ‘Oh Cind.’ He draped an arm over her shoulder. ‘Don’t ever change.’
Cindy pouted. ‘I don’t see what’s so funny.’
* * *
‘It all went exactly as you planned sir,’ said Peirce, the dutiful captain.
Askphrit frowned. ‘They only just got away, you’re sure? It wasn’t too easy?’
‘Oh no sir, I sent at least a hundred …’ he faltered at Askphrit’s expression. ‘Wasn’t that right?’
Askphrit rose glowering from his throne. ‘A hundred?’ he said. ‘One hundred, that’s all?’
‘Sir?’
‘Oh God. Chimps, I am working with chimps!’ he groaned. ‘One hundred, I don’t believe it.’
‘Sir, I assure you …’
Askphrit grabbed Peirce by the collar. ‘And I assure you,’ he snarled. ‘She won’t fall for that. She’ll be back.’
~ Chapter Twenty Two ~
They decided to stop off at their old flat (they would probably never get back to Clive’s house tonight, at this rate, and that suited most of them just fine) and give Jamie a crash course in monster fighting using the training weapons that Denny had used. Not that he was not a good fighter, he was a trained soldier after all, but vampires require a special skill that is not, as a rule, taught at West Point.
The problem was that Jamie was exhausted to the point of collapse. As soon as they arrived at the flat he dropped like a stone where he stood on the living room rug, and could not be woken.
Stiles and Denny heaved him on to the sofa and left him there, where he went off into deep reverberating snore.
Tamar shrugged and idly pulled at a drawer behind her. It fell out, spilling the contents all over the floor. As she bent down to pick them up, she gave a cry of shock.
The floor was covered in old photographs of – her! Her family, her childhood – surely an impossible thing.
‘What the hell …?’ she stared in utter bewilderment. ‘B-but these things were not real.’ she said. She picked up a photo of herself aged about three, with a big shaggy nondescript dog. ‘My mother took this,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘That’s me and Flopsie.’ She started to cry. ‘Oh God.’ Denny darted forward to comfort her, while Stiles hung back awkwardly. Cindy was in the kitchen.
‘What does this mean?’ sobbed Tamar. ‘Was it real or not, how can there be pictures? I don’t understand it.’
Denny shook his head helplessly. He knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that Tamar had never had this family, never had a dog called Flopsie. (It sounded like the sort of name they would come up with in Hell; there were just too many Beatrix Potter books floating around down there) had not been a human child within the last 5000 years. And yet, the pictures were here. Her parents, her best friend, her eighth birthday party. He knew that, nowhere in the world was there a mother waiting at home for a phone call from Tamar. He knew it. On the other hand, he was not sure.
Tamar was not sure anymore either.
Within a few minutes, the whole world had fallen apart in a welter of confusion. Of course, if you were Stiles, you might wonder, in a cynical part of your brain (which was the part that he used the most) whether, from somebody’s point of view at least, that was not the point.
He gathered up the photos and unceremoniously dumped them back in the box. Neither Tamar nor Denny attempted to stop him. Tamar was still crying.
Stiles then took his life in his hands and hauled Tamar up by the shoulders and stood her up facing him, he looked her right in the eye and told her straight. ‘They may or may not be real, but for right now, it doesn’t matter. Do you hear me? We’ve got more – well not more important maybe, but certainly more immediate problems. Don’t you agree?’
Tamar nodded.
‘And it’s worth keeping in mind who is responsible for all of this confusion in the first place,’ he added.
Tamar’s face darkened. ‘Askphrit.’
‘If it helps, think of it like this. It’s like you told us. It was real, all of it. It’s not anymore.’
‘Tamar nodded. ‘I guess,’ she said.
* * *
It was almost dawn, and most of the group had fallen asleep. Denny had tried, but Tamar was restless and he kept on waking up, to see her pacing the room. She said that she was thinking about Askphrit and what his next move might be and what they could do to counter it. And she may have been too, but Denny thought. ‘Well we know what his next move will be, what is there to think about?’
Around ten, he could stand it no longer. ‘Look, what’s up really?’ he said, quite kindly, leaning up on one elbow.
‘An army,’ she muttered. ‘Hmm.’
She snapped her fingers at the puzzled Denny. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back later,’ she vanished. Her face reappeared briefly – just her face, hanging in mid-air like the Cheshire cat, she was grinning like him too. ‘Don’t start the fun without me,’ she said.
‘We won’t,’ Denny as
sured her, with a fixed smile.
Tamar nodded, without her neck, this was a peculiar sight.
‘Askphrit might, though,’ Denny muttered to himself after she had gone.
He waited all day. The others woke variously at two, five thirty and nine pm. The last to wake was Jamie. Stiles was first up. At around seven, Hecaté appeared.
They sat, they ate, Stiles smoked, and Denny drank beer and they talked about trivia. No one mentioned the coming night, or tried to speculate on what Tamar might be doing, although all of them were separately thinking about it.
At ten, every light in the street went out; this was customary these days under the blackout law. But tonight, it was like a signal. Everyone tensed. Denny clenched and unclenched his fists. Where the hell was Tamar?
Then they heard the screaming. It was cut off abruptly as only a vampire knows how to do. But only to make way for some more screaming, which had been queuing politely, waiting its turn. Then all such good manners were forgotten, and all Hell was let loose.
When people use the term “All Hell was let loose”, let me assure you now, they do not know what they are talking about. This expression can be used for anything from a Saturday night at the Two Goats and a Bucket to a political incursion. They are referring to a riot, perhaps at a football ground or at a political rally that has got out of hand. Where the police turn up in riot gear and make everything worse. Then arrest the recumbent when it’s all over.
They may say it of the overthrowing of governments or dictators. Almost every country has seen this at some point. And, although all Hell has not, in fact, been let loose on these occasions, perhaps from a certain point of view, it is hard to tell the difference. Until now.
At the last official count, done by a bishop in the later days of the sixteenth century, there were officially estimated to be over fourteen million devils in hell (only lazy people refer to ‘The Devil’) and that’s just the ordinary devils, not even counting the minor imps and demonic entities – including vampires, or the Lords and Princes of Hell. And that count was a long time ago. Askphrit had been doing a lot of promoting since then. I invite you, therefore, to reconsider the words “all Hell was let loose.”
The Day Before Tomorrow Page 11
