The Dark Detective: Venator (The Max Darke Files)

by Jane Harvey-Berrick

  Max couldn’t argue with that.

  “You really look a terrible mess,” said Sophie, critically appraising the wound on Max’s cheek. “You have very red blood. I think you should clean that up, people will stare. And by the way, you’d better clean it with vodka – the Beast of Bodmin has rather a lot of diabolical germs in his claws.”

  “Vodka?”

  “Yes, best thing for the job. Trust me,” said Sophie.

  Max wasn’t too sure that vodka had been mentioned on the First Aid course the police had sent him on back when he’d joined the Force, but Sophie had just saved his life – or at the very least saved him from having his face torn off – and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings – or annoy her unnecessarily.

  They stopped at an Off Licence and bought half a bottle of vodka then made a hasty retreat back to Demon Division HQ.

  Max’s wound stung like mad when Sophie dabbed it with vodka and the pain made his eyes water.

  He was also rather alarmed when the wound began to smoke slightly.

  “There! All fixed and good as new,” said Sophie proudly.

  Max stared at himself in the mirror of Sophie’s powder compact. The wound was completely healed, with only the faintest white scar stretching under his eye and down his cheek.

  His shirt was still covered in blood but in every other way, he really was as good as new.

  “Jeez, Sophie! Where did you learn to do that?” said Max.

  “Oh, I was a Girl Guide,” she replied.

  Max wasn’t sure whether or not she was joking and it seemed rude to ask.

  “Actually,” said Sophie, smiling sweetly, “vodka only works on Beast wounds: one of those little tips I picked up while we were dating.”

  Max was really keen not to hear any more.

  North of Chelsea

  “Well, that was a fun morning,” said Sophie. “What are we going to do this afternoon?”

  Sophie’s run-in with the Beast certainly seemed to have improved her humour. She’d been a bit depressed without having anything to kill.

  “We still need to find the Brood,” said Max. “If they manage to get to the Summoner – whether it’s the Bruce woman or someone else – before we do, I’ve a feeling that we’ll be in a whole lot more trouble.”

  “I agree,” said Sophie, “but where do we start?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Max. “One of the benefits of being on the side of good is that Scotland Yard has access to high quality satellite photography. We’ll look for any recently deceased plant life on a large scale. Nothing organic can live around demonic energy for long, right? A large nest of Brood must leave a trace.”

  “What? You want us to look at photographs for the whole of London?” yelped Sophie. “That’ll take days!”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Max, tracing a tentative finger down the rapidly healed scar. “But I think the Brood will want to stay central if they’re going to give the Bruce woman the amulet – and we have to assume they now have it – so we’ll check out Zones 1 and 2.”

  “Next you’ll be suggesting we check the database of Oyster card users,” moaned Sophie.

  “Yeah, well, that’s a thought,” muttered Max tiredly, “or we could just check out politicians’ main residences and second homes, but we’ve got to start somewhere – perhaps you have a better idea?”

  Sophie was unusually silent. Max rather enjoyed the change.

  “What if we don’t find anything?” said Sophie in a small voice.

  “We will,” said Max, with an assurance that he didn’t feel. “We have to.”

  Hours later with their backs aching and their eyes scratchy and dry from staring at thousands of images on a computer screen, they were close to giving up.

  “I’ve checked every park and piece of open ground that I can think of,” said Sophie. “But what if they’re not near a park? What if they’re somewhere that doesn’t have any plant life? How will we find them then?”

  “That’s unlikely,” said Max. “London is one of the greenest cities in the world. We’ve got more parks and open spaces per square mile than...”

  “Spare me the tourist twaddle,” said Sophie, grumpily.

  Fair enough, thought Max. To be honest, the same question had been racking his brain; not that he had any intention of admitting it to Sophie. Then something caught his eye. It was a satellite photograph of an elegant Georgian house in Belgravia.

  “Look at this!”

  He pointed at the screen.

  Sophie looked fed up. Briefly she scanned the screen then her eyes lit up.

  “Yes, I see it, too,” she breathed.

  They stared at the photograph. It was quite clear that a once carefully tended roof garden had been reduced to a few brown twigs. The shrubs and small trees looked as if they’d been scorched by a flame thrower. Max had never seen such violated plant life. He figured it must mean the nest of Brood was a large one. Bingo.

  “Oh, fun!” said Sophie. “Let’s go!”

  “Woah! Hold on there a minute, pardner,” said Max. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  Sophie shook her head and Max couldn’t help noticing that the sun glinted off her red curls in a rather alluring manner. He shook his head to clear it, making a huge effort to focus.

  Sophie stared at him curiously.

  “How about a plan?” said Max. “Weapons? A way of making sure we both come out of this alive? Or undead, at least. We don’t know how many Brood demons there are, for a start. And supposing they’ve already called the Mother and she’s waiting for us?”

  “No, they haven’t,” said Sophie, “I’m sure of it. If a Great Evil like that was already in London, I’d have felt it. I’ll bet you the Mother is going to be called by that Lily Bruce woman. I’ll bet you your next month’s salary.”

  “No deal,” said Max, who was already a bit hard up. “Now concentrate – time for a weapons’ check.”

  “You do know the way to a girl’s heart,” whispered Sophie.

  “Yeah, but you’re not a girl and as I seem to have to keep on reminding you, you’re a cold-hearted killer so don’t you forget it,” said Max.

  Sophie smiled coldly. “Oh don’t worry – it’s not the kind of thing I’m likely to forget. And neither should you.”

  The silence stretched uncomfortably between them.

  Max made the first move by opening the lock to his weapons’ chest and Sophie shuddered with pleasure.

  There was a delicately inlaid silver letter opener – clearly ancient; several cheaper modern letter openers – also silver; a crossbow with wooden arrows (for vampires), and silver darts (for demons); a shot gun with silver bullets (for werewolves); and several bottles of Holy water (for everything else). Rather incongruously, there were also two more plastic toy water pistols: odd looking, perhaps, but important weapons in the fight against evil.

  One of the rarest and most powerful weapons in the chest wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Catholic church: it was a beautiful gold censer. Priests filled them with incense and swung them through the church during solemn Mass. It was supposed to help carry the prayers of the faithful up to heaven. Max filled his with a combination of olibanum and holy oil – more commonly known as frankincense and myrrh. That mix of three holy materials turned it into a powerful killing tool in the fight against darkness. It was hellishly expensive so Max only used it as a last resort.

  “And, er, you can have these,” said Max, blushing slightly.

  He passed Sophie a pair of soft, black leather gloves. “To replace the pair you damaged. They’re lined with lambs’ wool and I’ve put some protection spells on them – so you can use the silver weapons and avoid splashes from the Holy water.”

  “Darling boy!” said Sophie softly, “I didn’t know you cared. And you’re blushing! Red has always been my favourite colour – especially on you.”

  Max frowned and delved deeper into the weapons’ chest to cover his confusion. He had th
e unsettling feeling that Sophie knew exactly what he was doing.

  They packed up the weapons and Max re-filled the water pistols with Holy water. He decided to take the crossbow because although it was hard to hide from civilians, it was his favourite weapon. Plus, it could be useful against the Brood if the darts were dipped in Holy water first. He wasn’t sure how powerful these Level Threes were in such large numbers – a demon’s power increased in the presence of evil, in the same way their powers receded in the presence of pure goodness. Max wasn’t particularly looking forward to finding out just how much power these Brood demons now had.

  “So how do we play this one?” said Sophie. “Shall I just knock on the door and wait to be invited in like last time?”

  “That’s Plan B,” said Max. “Plan A is to try and find a way in around the back or through the servants’ entrance and approach by stealth.”

  He glanced at Sophie’s disapproving scowl. “It won’t kill you to go in the tradesman’s entrance for once in your lives, but it might kill you if you don’t.”

  She tossed her curls in annoyance.

  “Ideally, I’d like to pick off the Brood one by one, rather than risk a full scale battle like last time,” he said.

  “Oh, but that was so much fun!” said Sophie.

  “Possibly,” said Max, trying not to smile, “but this time there’ll be a lot more of them – and they’ll probably be expecting us. Actually, by now I reckon they’ll definitely be expecting us. The word’s on the street – thanks to the Malleus doppelganger.”

  Sophie pouted but she didn’t argue. For a change.

  Max ordered a taxi, which restored much of Sophie’s good humour, and they were soon heading west along Warwick Way.

  The taxi driver had thrown a few witty comments about Max’s crossbow, but as they’d fallen on stony ground, he decided that discretion was the better part of being a taxi driver and had concentrated instead on listening to some of the wilder UFO theories being put forward on Talk Radio.

  The streets in this part of London were wide and tree-lined, the houses expensive. Max felt scruffy and conspicuous. Sophie, on the other hand, blended in perfectly. Even the taxi driver seemed to think that she belonged there and thought she must be a very kind lady to let the (very) odd-job man share her ride.

  He glanced in the mirror so often that Max was beginning to wonder how he managed to keep the taxi from lurching into a misplaced letterbox or inconveniently parked car.

  They arrived without incident and the taxi driver dropped them on a street parallel to their intended target. Max figured there would probably be scouts on the look-out. He didn’t want to make it too easy or obvious for the Brood, so arriving by taxi at the front door was definitely on the list of things marked ‘careless’.

  Max studied the building from a distance. A faint olive aura surrounded the house but he couldn’t detect any Brood lookouts. Sloppy, he said to himself – either that or really, really sure of themselves.

  Either way, it made him nervous.

  He led Sophie along a narrow alleyway to the side of the building and down a set of steps to the servants’ entrance.

  He muttered the usual incantation then used his mystical key to open the lock.

  “I really must get myself one of those,” whispered Sophie, whose eyes glittered greedily every time she saw Max use the silver key.

  Max replaced the key in a pocket deep inside his coat, buttoning it carefully. He didn’t know if Sophie’s light fingered habits had been curtailed by the Blood Oath she had signed – and he didn’t really want to find out right now.

  “Okay. Let’s keep it tight. We need to make a sweep of the house and find the amulet if it’s here.”

  “Oh yes,” said Sophie, “but I will be able to kill things as well, won’t I? I mean Brood demons, of course.”

  “I’d say that’s a distinct possibility.”

  They tiptoed through the kitchen. The beautiful marble surfaces were covered in a thin film of dust. Max suspected that the Brood must have been in residence for several days. He didn’t like to think what had happened to the house’s occupants, although he could guess.

  They were just making their way up the stairs when a brisk ring of the doorbell made them both jump.

  “Oh no!” breathed Max. “That is really lousy timing.”

  A delivery man dressed in a bright yellow and red shirt was leaning in the portico, waiting for someone to answer the door. Max could see the man’s shadowy outline through the embossed glass.

  He had to make a decision: save the man and, more importantly, the man’s soul, or carry on with the current strategy, picking off the Brood one by one. It wasn’t really a hard decision to make – Max’s job was to protect humans from the things that go bump in the night.

  Already a Brood demon was opening the front door and beckoning the delivery man inside.

  “Where d’you want it, mate?” said the delivery man. “I tried the back entrance but nobody answered. Here, you all right? I gotta say, guv, you ain’t looking too good. In fact... Oh my God!”

  The man screamed. Max wasn’t sure if it was because he’d just realised that the person he’d been speaking to was definitely not human – or whether the demon had attacked.

  “Sophie! Watch my back!” yelled Max as he charged forward.

  He was almost too late – the demon had already got a grip on the man’s head and his thumbs were hovering to gouge through the man’s eyes, ready to suck out his soul. In a detached part of his brain, Max noted that each Brood demon had a slightly different style of killing.

  Max’s shout distracted the demon long enough to save the poor, unfortunate delivery man from eternal damnation and a couple of squished eyeballs – and gave Max the chance to shoot the Brood foot soldier between its stolen shoulder blades with a well aimed blast of Holy water.

  The delivery man seemed to have frozen in horror. Max took him by the shoulders and shook him hard. The man stared at him in terror.

  “Run!” hissed Max.

  As the delivery man staggered back out of the door, Max turned his attention – and Holy water pistol – on the demon again. But the Brood was shrieking and had already begun to sizzle, like pork chops on a barbeque.

  Brood demons were erupting from every room. A few had fresh human skins but the rest were in various stages of decomposition, and the stench made Max gag.

  He glimpsed Sophie out of the corner of his eye – she seemed to be buried under a mountain of Brood but clearly she’d kept her head because several staggered back, caught by the deadly aim of her Holy water pistol. But there were too many of them and the fight could only end one way. Max picked off one Brood with his crossbow, and emptied his water pistol at another clutch of Brood racing towards him. Max had decided many years ago that he wouldn’t be captured alive by a demon. He always kept one silver letter opener stashed away for such an emergency and today, it seemed, was the day.

  Max’s last thought was what his gran would say when she knew how he’d died.

  As his mind turned to his grandmother, Max’s coat began to glow with mystical energy and the Brood were thrown back, as a pulsating mass of blue-white light surrounded Max like a force field.

  “It’s the Eye!” yelled a demon who still had a larynx. “The burning Eye of Horus! The coat is bewitched!” and then he screamed as his eyeballs were scorched in his stolen skin.

  Stunned with the turn of events, the reprieve still gave Max just enough time to reload his water pistol and start to fight back. He forced his way through a mass of flailing, blinded Brood towards where he had last seen Sophie – he hoped he wasn’t too late.

  She arose, shaking free of the Brood, and rising like Venus from the waves, her eyes blazing with fierce joy. She was terrible and magnificent. All suggestion of the little woman who complained about having to walk anywhere or do anything that might break a fingernail was gone. Her demon nature radiated menace as she shredded the blinded Brood one by one.r />
  Max felt grateful that she was on his side.

  He took pity on the few Brood who had escaped her wrath, and vaporised them with his Holy water pistol before she could use the silver letter opener on them, body part by body part.

  By the time the screaming stopped, a cloud of acrid smoke hung over the room. The fine Arabian carpet was badly burnt and covered in green slime from annihilated Brood.

  Sophie turned to face him. She was panting slightly and her fangs were prominent. Her usually immaculate hair was dishevelled and Max could see a hint of horn beginning to grow back.

  Gradually she regained her composure. She rubbed a finger over the singed spots on her red dress, looking irritated.

  “Are you okay, Sophie?” said Max.

  “Why, Max, darling!” she said looking up and throwing him a stunning smile. “How sweet of you to ask. I’m quite well, thank you!”

  Her normal poise and demeanour had survived the Brood attack in one piece. Her dress, on the other hand, had not. Max could tell that this bothered her more than nearly being dismembered and returned Down Under in a blaze of Hell fire.

  “Different strokes for different folks,” he told himself.

  “That was quite a work out,” said Sophie, thoughtfully.

  Max nodded. He didn’t like to admit that the effort had left him feeling drained and shaky. He badly wanted to sleep but there was work to do.

  “We need to search the house,” he said. “The Brood must have left some trace of what they’ve got planned. Look for mystical objects: doppelganger books, rings, amulets, Dark water – anything that will tell us what they were up to.”

  Max searched the servants’ quarters first, his police training making him methodical. It was clear to him that nobody human had been in those rooms for several days. He suspected that their occupants had been the first Brood sacrifice – or meal – depending on your point of view.

  Unlike most demons, the Brood didn’t eat food: they got their sustenance entirely from human souls. A clean, healthy soul could be used to spawn four or five new Brood. Even a well-worn, grubby human soul could be used to breed at least one new Brood: it was the main reason they were so dangerous.