Tommy laughed and gestured grandly at the piles of poker chips laid out before him. Some of them were in colours I hadn't ever seen before. Sitting around the table were Maggot McGuire, Big Alois, and Lucky Lucinda. Card sharks, all of them. Professional card-players, red in tooth and claw. They looked as much mystified as upset, though on the whole I think upset was rapidly coming to the fore. Their piles of chips were noticeably smaller. Tommy fanned out his current hand for me to have a look, and I almost fainted. He had a pair of threes.
Big Alois and Lucinda took one look at my face, misinterpreted what they saw, and folded immediately. That left the Maggot, a man not known for losing gracefully. Tommy grinned at him, and shoved all his chips forward, betting everything he had on his pair of threes. Maggot didn't have enough chips to match him, so he pulled a magic charm from his pocket and slapped that down on the pile. Tommy considered, nodded, and produced several handfuls of poker chips from his pockets and added them to the pile on the table. Maggot threw down his cards in disgust, pushed back his chair, and rose to his feet with a gun in his hand. But before he could aim it, two empty suits of armour moved quickly in on either side and grabbed him by the arms. One metal hand squeezed hard, until blood ran down Maggot's fingers, and he had no choice but to drop the gun. Then they dragged him away from the table. Wu Fang's enforcers were always good at anticipating trouble.
Tommy whooped with joy, and scooped up all the chips on the table, gathering them in with both arms.
Polly was suddenly there beside me, elbowing me discreetly in the ribs. I looked round, and she showed me the chaos dice in her hand, before quickly making them disappear about her person. While everyone's attention had been fixed on Tommy's triumph, Polly had got on with the job. Which meant there was now an empty display case on view, and it was well past time Polly and I were leaving. I said as much to Tommy, and he nodded easily.
"Catch you later, brother. I have some serious debauchery to be getting on with."
I had to smile. "What is this wonderful new card skill, that you learned from a book?"
He grinned cheerfully. "Betting entirely at random, with absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. No thought, no studying; half the time I didn't even look at my cards. Baffled the hell out of them."
Polly pulled me away before I could hit him.
I was still trembling and twitching, just a bit, when Polly and I arrived at our next destination: Savage Hettie's Lost and Found. (We Ask No Questions.) Polly's list of ingredients for opening her demon gate called for a Hand of Glory made from a monkey's paw. As if such a thing wasn't dangerous enough as it is, without meddling. Be like walking around with a tactical nuke in your pocket and the pin half-pulled. Savage Hettie specialised in items that were frequently as dangerous to you as they were to your enemies. Mostly because it amused her.
She sat in her chair by the open door, fanning herself with a paper fan covered in filthy pictures. Hugely fat, overflowing her chair on all sides, in a dark sack of a dress that fitted where it touched. Her red sweaty face was topped with a patently obvious wig of blonde curls. Her huge fingers were tattooed with the words DIE and SCUM. Her front two teeth were missing, and her tongue kept poking through the gap as she sucked the insides out of variously sized eggs that she kept in a sack by her chair. She radiated shifty malevolence but barely looked me over before fixing her piggy eyes on Polly. Savage Hettie sniffed loudly.
"I don't let just anyone in here, you know," she said, in her harsh East End accent. "And you look dead sneaky, girl. Hiding something, aren't you? Ho yes; I know your sort, girl."
"She's with me," I said flatly. "And you know me, Hettie."
She sniffed again. "I knows your father, you mean. Ho yes. I knew him very well, back in the day."
"Who didn't?" I said, resignedly.
She cackled loudly. "But I knew him intimately, as you might say. I didn't always look like this, you know."
I moved quickly past her, pushing Polly ahead of me, and Hettie's cackling laughter followed me into the dark interior of her shop. There are some mental images you really don't want to dwell on.
Hettie's place was always a mess, on a grand scale. All gloom and shadow and heaps of things, set out apparently at random. No order, no rationale, and absolutely no presentation. Handwritten price tags for everything; and no haggling. Pay Hettie's price or go somewhere else; except if you could have found it anywhere else, you wouldn't have ventured into Savage Hettie's appalling lair. There were shelves and boxes and tottering piles, and you had to dig for what you needed. At your own risk, of course. Touch the wrong thing in the wrong way, and it would have your hand off. Or turn you into a frog, or steal your soul. Browser very much beware; and watch your back at all times. Some of the items in Savage Hettie's Lost and Found had a way of sneaking up on you from behind.
Hettie didn't give a damn. Except to laugh loudly when something really horrible happened.
Polly and I moved gingerly between stacks of magic boxes, enchanted dancing-shoes, and nasty old magazines, careful not to touch anything. There was fabulous and seriously valuable stuff to be found, if a person was not too fussy over little things like provenance, or guarantees. Savage Hettie was a fence as well as a dealer, and didn't care who knew it.
We passed by glass jars labelled Manticore musk, Vampire's teeth (which clattered and ground against the glass if you got too close), and a wine bottle covered in cobwebs marked simply Drink Me You Bastard. I was briefly distracted by a pile of old magazines that I couldn't resist leafing through (once I'd put some gloves on). The private schoolgirls' issue of Oz, International Times with a naked Paul and Linda on the front cover, and a battered copy of Playbeing, with something utterly revolting on the front cover. Polly, though, was not one for distractions. She stalked up and down the narrow aisles, seemingly following her nose, until finally she stopped abruptly before a sealed glass jam-jar. I joined her, and peered over her shoulder. In the jar was a small, withered thing, with half the hair fallen out, the stiff fingers made into candles with delicate little wicks. The stump was blackened, from where it had been sealed shut with a naked flame. I reached for the jar, and the fingers stirred slowly, like spider's legs. I snatched my hand back instinctively. Polly snorted dismissively and picked up the jar without hesitating in the least.
We took it back to Savage Hettie, who shocked me rigid by refusing to take any payment. She reared back in her chair rather than touch the jam-jar, and leered at Polly, the tip of her tongue poking provocatively through the gap in her teeth.
"I know your kind, missie, ho yes I do. Don't want no dealings with you and yours, and I ain't going to risk being beholden to you. Take the nasty thing. Glad to be rid of it." She sniffed loudly, then looked at me. "Surprised to see an Oblivion boy with one of her lot, but I suppose you knows what you're doing. Blinded by a pretty face and bemused by the smell of pussy. Just like your dad."
Polly and I walked quickly away.
"Do you know what she was talking about?" she said, after a while.
"Haven't a clue," I said determinedly.
"Probably just as well," said Polly.
The last two items were easy. Deconsecrated host soaked in virgin's urine and a fine powder made from the crushed wings of wee flower faeries. Women use the strangest things as cosmetics. We found both items at the Mammon Emporium, the Nightside's premiere mall, and Polly made me shoplift them from their shelves while she kept a lookout. We then stalked imperiously out of the mall, and no-one challenged us. I think I was less scared in the mummy's burial chamber.
"You know," I said afterwards, "we could have paid for these."
"Where's the fun in that?" said Polly, and I was honestly lost for an answer.
Not entirely to my surprise, we ended up back on the Street of the Gods, standing before a quiet little church in the Street's equivalent of a backwater. A simple stone structure, with no fancy trimmings and no obvious name. People passed it by without looking, but it must have had somethi
ng, or some other church or Being would have taken over its location long ago. The door was closed, the windows were dark, and there was no sign of life anywhere.
"Not very inviting," I said, after a while, because you have to say something.
"It isn't here for people," said Polly. Her face was full of an emotion I couldn't read, her eyes blazing.
"Does it have a name?" I said.
"It's old," said Polly. "Names come and go, but the church remains. It is a place of power, and it has been here for a very long time. So long that people have forgotten who it was originally created to venerate and preserve."
"The Lady of the Lake?" I said. "She's here?"
"Help me open the dimensional gate, and you'll see," said Polly.
There were no guards, no protections to get past. The door wasn't even locked, opening easily at Polly's touch. There wasn't actually a sign over the door saying Enter at Your Own Risk, but there might as well have been. I could feel all the hackles rising on the back of my neck as I followed Polly in.
The interior was no bigger or smaller than it should have been, an open, empty space surrounded by four stone walls, heavy with shadows, only the barest light seeping in through a narrow-slit window at the far end. No pews, no altar, just the open space. The air was still and uncomfortably warm, as though some great furnace were still operating down below. There was no sign anyone had been here in ages, but no dust either, or any sign of neglect.
Whatever might have been worshipped here in the past, it hadn't been a good or a wholesome thing. I could feel it, in my bones and in my water. Bad things had happened here. The horror of them still vibrated on the air, like the echoes of a scream that never ended. I looked at Polly, but she seemed entirely unaffected by the atmosphere. She trotted happily down the length of the empty church, with me stumbling along in the gloom behind her, trying to look in all directions at once. She dropped suddenly to one knee, and her fingers scrabbled against the floor for a moment before finally closing around the metal ring of a large trap-door I would have sworn wasn't there a moment before. The trap-door itself was solid metal and must have weighed half a ton, but she pulled it open easily with one hand before letting it fall back onto the stone floor. It landed hard, but even so, the echoes were strangely muted, as though the grim atmosphere was soaking up the sound. I looked at Polly, only a pale gleam in the gloom. There was no way a woman of her size could have handled that much weight so easily. I'd suspected she was keeping things from me, and now it seemed I was about to find out what.
Beneath the hole in the floor was a set of bare stone steps, leading down and down into darkness. Polly produced her Looking Glass and started down them without even looking to see if I was following. She knew I wouldn't hang back, not now I'd come so far.
I followed Polly and her light down into the dark, and wasn't at all surprised when the trap-door slammed shut again, over our heads.
The steps were rough and unmarked. The bare stone walls to either side were close enough to touch, hot enough to burn the fingers. The air was hot enough to bring a sheen of sweat to my face. I had to wonder exactly how far down we were going. My legs were aching from the strain of continuous descent when the stairway finally came to an end, and Polly stopped abruptly. She held up the Looking Glass, but its light couldn't penetrate more than a few inches into the dark. She laughed lightly, made the Glass disappear, and snapped her fingers imperiously. A harsh light sprang up, illuminating a huge cavern dug out of the bedrock far beneath the Street of the Gods. It wasn't any normal light; long streams of electrical fire crackled up and down the stone walls and crawled across the ceiling like living lightning. The fierce light hurt my eyes, but didn't seem to bother Polly at all. She looked back at me, and smiled.
"What are you waiting for, sweetie? This is it. This is what you came here for. Come on down, Larry Oblivion, and claim your prize."
She bestowed her most winning smile on me and batted her eye-lashes, but it looked grotesque now, clearly artificial, and practised. All of the attraction I once felt for her was gone, perhaps because I was seeing her clearly for the first time. But I went down to join her anyway. Because I'd come this far, and I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what treasure had been buried here if it wasn't the Lady of the Lake. Polly took me by the hand, and my flesh actually crawled at her touch. I went with her, deep into the cavern, until finally she stopped, let go my hand, and indicated with a warm smile what she'd brought me all this way to see.
It hung on the wall before us, opened up and stretched out over twenty feet or more. I couldn't tell whether it had been a man or a woman originally, but the guts and organs had been spread out and pinned to the stone with silver daggers. The skin had been stretched terribly without tearing, to make a background. The face had been expertly peeled from the skull, and extended so far I couldn't recognise any features in it but the eyes, wide and gleaming and very aware. The whole thing was still alive, despite its state. That was the point. The suffering was fuel for the magic, feeding and maintaining the gateway that pulsed like an alien wound deep in the exposed guts of what had once been a man or a woman.
Not a dimensional gate. Not a dimensional gate at all. A hellgate. A doorway into Hell itself.
Awful sounds burst briefly from the gate, screams and howls and endless destruction.
"What is that?" I said. "Is that Hell?"
"No, sweetie," Polly said happily. "That's the future. That's what the future will sound like, in the hell on Earth we're going to make for all Humankind."
We stood facing each other before the hellgate. Her smile was wide with anticipation, her face alive with enjoyment at the secret she'd kept from me, now to be revealed. I should have known it would end up like this. I've always had rotten luck with women.
And when you can't see the patsy in the deal, it's almost certainly you.
"So, Polly," I said, calm as calm could be. "No Lady in the Lake, and the pretty face was just a come-on. So what's the deal? What do you need a hellgate for?"
"Sometimes, the living can be cast down into Hell," said Polly. "Damned to the Houses of Pain, forever. Unless you can send down a worthy replacement."
"That's why the scavenger hunt," I said. "You didn't need any of those things to open a hellgate. You wanted to test my mettle, see if I was… worthy."
"Exactly. I knew your reputation, but I needed to see you in action. After all, reputations are ten a penny in the Nightside. And the items we acquired will make a fine tribute for my long-lost mistress."
"Who?" I said. My mouth was dry, though my face was streaming with sweat, and I had to clench my hands into fists to stop them trembling. "Who are you planning to raise up out of Hell?"
"Can't you guess?" she said, and just like that she didn't look like Polly Perkins any more, or anything human.
She was tall and supernaturally slender, her glowing skin pale as the finest porcelain. Her ears were long and pointed, and her eyes had slitted cat pupils. She wore a simple white shift with the arrogance of nobility and a necklace of human fingers. Delicate elven script had been branded in a straight line across her forehead. Just looking at her now roused a kind of arachnid revulsion in me. There's nothing worse than something that looks like human, but isn't.
"You're an elf," I said, and my voice sounded dull and defeated, even to me. "Never trust an elf."
"Exactly," she said, and her voice was rich and sweet and cloying, like poisoned honey. "You're here to help me bring back our lost mistress, Queen Mab. Oldest and greatest of our kind, thrown down into Hell by the traitors Oberon and Titania. But any living thing damned to Hell can be rescued or redeemed by another living thing. One of the oldest rules there is.. She stopped, and looked at me, thoughtfully. "I wonder if the same rule applies to Heaven? What sport, what joy, to drag a noble person back from Paradise! But that's a thought for another day. Bye-bye, sweetie. Give my regards to the Inferno. It's been fun; but now it's over."
She lunged at me while she was
still speaking, moving inhumanly quickly, expecting to catch me off-balance. But I was ready for her. I had the wand. She'd been so caught up in her moment of triumph that she'd forgotten to take it from me. I said the Words, and the wand stopped Time. Polly hung in mid air before me, her elongated alien form suspended between one moment and the next. I looked at her for a while. Thinking of what might have been. We'd worked well together, and I had enjoyed her company. But I'm nobody's patsy. So I took careful hold of her, turned her around in mid air so that she was facing the hellgate, and started Time up again.
She screamed, just once, as she saw what lay before her, then the gate sucked her in and sent her down, and she was gone while the echo of her scream still hung on the hot air. I looked at the hellgate, at the suffering human eyes in what had once been a human face, and thought about killing it. I knew how. I'd done it before. But to disrupt the hellgate while the transfer was still in progress could release unimaginable energies. I certainly wouldn't survive it. Wand or no wand. I didn't want to die, not while I still had so much life ahead of me… So even though I knew what was coming, I waited and watched, as Queen Mab of the Fae returned to the world of the living. One of the old monsters, Humanity's Ruin.
Something came rising up out of Hell. I could feel it, in the deepest part of what made me human. Something old and powerful, and huge beyond bearing, was rising up out of the dark latitudes, up from the Houses of Pain, forcing her way back into a natural world that wanted no part of her. Rising up, like a shark through bloody waters, like a tidal wave come to sweep away every living thing before it, up she came, Queen Mab, rising faster and faster. Coming at me like a meteor crashing to the Earth, like a bullet with my name on it.
Screaming in an ancient tongue, laughing horribly, swearing damnation and torment on all her many enemies; Queen Mab came back.
She stood before me in all her terrible glory. The hellgate lay in ruins on the wall behind her, incinerated by her passage through it, nothing now but small pieces of cooked meat pinned to the wall. The gate was closed, its victim released. That was something. Queen Mab fixed me with her fierce gaze, and I couldn't have moved to save my life. She was eight feet tall, slender, graceful, overbearingly regal. Horribly abhuman and utterly evil. Her presence filled the cavern, and I knelt to her. I still like to think I had no choice.
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