by Peter McLean
It was all of half past ten in the morning but you know, when in Rome and all that. I couldn’t have refused Papa Armand anything right then.
“Thank you Papa,” I said. “I’ll have a whisky, please.”
Papa’s whisky was even better than Wormwood’s, and again I winced at the mental image of what it must have cost. He wasn’t stingy with it either, sloshing it generously into a heavy crystal tumbler. He poured a rum for himself and touched a button on a remote control. The huge smoked-glass wall split smoothly down the middle and slid open to give access to a lavish balcony complete with heavy lead planters full of mature shrubs, and an antique white wrought-iron table and chairs. The dull roar of traffic seemed far away beneath us, the humdrum bustle and noise of London muted by a wall of sheer money.
Perhaps the Burned Man had a point after all – maybe I really had been wasting my talent all these years. I mean, if Papa Armand could have all this then why the fuck couldn’t I? I worked for cheap gangsters like the Russian and Gold Steevie, who themselves could only dream about this sort of wealth. I remembered the Burned Man telling me once how pathetic that was, how it was those twats who should have been afraid of me, how they should have been kissing my handmade shoes in Monte Carlo by now. Fuck me, but I was doing something wrong somewhere, that was for sure.
Papa settled into a chair and I took the one across the wrought-iron table from him, setting my glass down carefully. It was cool but sunny, and the view across the park was magnificent. Papa reached into the sleeve of his kimono and produced a gold cigar case and lighter. He offered me one, but smoking has never been my thing. I shook my head and sat patiently while he got his going.
“So,” he said after a moment, “what on your mind, Don-boy?”
I cleared my throat again. I wasn’t really sure where to begin, and for all that I liked and respected Papa Armand I had never been too sure how much I could trust him. He knew what I did, but he didn’t know I had the Burned Man, that much was certain. No one knew about that except Trixie. And Adam, a voice whispered in my head. Adam knows.
Adam says.
Yeah well, I’d burn that bridge when I came to it.
I looked at Papa Armand. He gave me a fatherly smile, and I made my decision.
“Papa, I need to trust you with something,” I said.
He nodded in silence and sipped his rum. I don’t know about you but I take a lot more reassurance from someone who just keeps quiet and listens than from people who’ll interrupt you to tell you how trustworthy they are. Anyone who feels the need to tell you that they’re honest usually isn’t, in my experience.
“You’ve told me several times I need to choose a path,” I went on. “Well, what are these paths I need to choose between, exactly?”
Papa Armand shrugged and blew cigar smoke into the crisp air.
“The safe path and the dangerous,” he said. “The choice between making and breaking, between healing and hurting.”
“So… which is the right one?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, I like you Don-boy,” he said. “You always know nothing as simple as it look first time.”
No it never is, is it?
“Bianakith is loose,” I said. “You know what that is?”
Papa Armand nodded slowly. “Bad shit,” he said, immediately awarding himself the understatement of the day award. “Where it loose?”
I held his eye and pointed at the floor beneath our feet. “Right there,” I said.
“Kaka,” he muttered, and swallowed his rum. “Madame Zanj Bèl was made to kill demons, Don-boy. That what she for. Turn her loose against this thing and let her write bloody slaughter.”
“Yeah, she’s not keen,” I said. “Not even a little bit. To be honest, I think Bianakith is a bit more than even she can handle on her own. She says she can kill it and maybe she could, but I think its rot aura would do for her all the same. I met a gnome who’d seen it, and… yeah. Well, yeah, it wasn’t pretty, if you know what I mean.”
He frowned. “So what she want do, la Zanj Bèl?”
“We evoked her Dominion for help,” I said. “That… Shit. That didn’t go well either.”
Papa Armand gave me a quizzical look.
“Her Dominion?”
So I told him.
I sat there on his balcony looking at his fifteen million-quid view drinking his grand a bottle whisky and I told him all about Trixie and Alice and about the Dominion, and then I told him about the Burned Man.
That, looking back on it, was when everything went to fuck.
“Well well Don-boy,” he chuckled when I was done. “I always knew you were more than met the eye, eh? The Burned Man, Don-boy? That some heavyweight shit you carrying right there.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, feeling faintly embarrassed. “You know how it is.”
“No I don’t know how it is,” Papa Armand shot back at me. He put his glass of rum down on the table and leaned forward to fix me with a hard stare. “This some serious shit you got there, white boy.”
“I know, Papa,” I said.
“Papa,” he echoed me. “Yeah, I told you call me Papa. Would I have done that if I’d known what you had, Don-boy?”
I shrugged. “I dunno, would you?”
Armand was a Houngan, a Vodou priest in the Haitian tradition. Him giving me permission to call him Papa was tacit acknowledgment that he had taken me on as a spiritual pupil. It sounded like he might be having second thoughts about that just now.
“I dunno neither.” He kept that hard, flinty gaze on me for a moment longer, then lifted his glass and laughed. “Guédé laughing at me now, Don-boy,” he said, and clinked his glass against mine. “Fuck it. You my boy.”
I grinned and raised my own glass in a toast. “Fuck it,” I repeated. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Chapter 11
Oh boy, those famous last words again. Papa Armand had known exactly what to do, of course. I suppose that’s why he was a multimillionaire and I wasn’t. I stood in front of the Burned Man and outlined Papa Armand’s plan to it.
“So basically, in a nutshell, you need me to keep Bianakith’s rot aura down while Blondie slaughters it for you,” it said.
“That’s about the size of it,” I said. “The only thing that can suppress an archdemon’s aura is another archdemon, according to Papa Armand. I can’t see Wormwood coming down to play into the gnomes’ warrens with me somehow, so that leaves you.”
The Burned Man shrugged and rattled its chains at me with a sarcastic look on its ugly little face.
“I ain’t exactly fucking portable,” it said.
“Nope,” I said, “but I explained that to Papa and he’s got a plan.”
“‘Course he has,” the Burned Man said. “I haven’t even met this smug cunt and I hate him already.”
“Fuck off and just listen for a minute,” I said. “I can make a talisman out of you, yeah? An ouanga, he called it. Something I can carry down into the warrens with your essence in it that will protect me and Trixie from the rot while she gets all avenging angel at Bianakith.”
“Oh can you now?” the Burned Man said. “You ain’t great with talismans, as I recall.”
It was true, I wasn’t, and that had bitten me badly last year. All the same, I’d been learning. Some of the books Papa had lent me over the last few months had been most educational.
“I’ve got a bit of an idea,” I said. “I reckon a blade of unmaking ought to hold you long enough to put this wanker in its place.”
The Burned Man snorted.
“You’d need a weapon of unholy power to make one of those,” it said, “something forged in the very depths of Hell. Where the fuck are you going to get something like that?”
I nodded at the cupboard in the corner.
“Third drawer down,” I said.
“You what?”
“Ally’s dagger, remember that? I kept it.”
It blinked at me in surprise, then a slow grin spread
across its face.
“Sometimes you amaze me, Drake,” it said. “Not often, granted, but sometimes.”
That dagger was certainly of unholy power, there was no argument about that. Adam had given it to Ally – or, to give her her proper name, Aleto the Unresting, the leader of the Furies. I had seen her use it to channel demonic lightning at her command, and call up hellfire from the ground. If anything could contain the power of the Burned Man it was that thing.
Trixie was a hell of a lot less supportive of the plan, all things considered. And that was without me explaining exactly what I had in mind, or mentioning the dagger. I hadn’t quite told her that I still had it for one thing, by which I mean I had flat out lied to her and told her it had been destroyed along with Ally herself. I knew I was going to have to phrase that one very carefully indeed when it eventually came up.
“I have to guard that horrible thing, Don,” she said, rather waspishly I thought. “It’s supposed to stay trapped in its awful little fetish, you know that. You remember the… difficulties we had, when we almost let it free.”
When you stole it, you mean, I thought. When you almost fell, and nearly allowed it to break free and lay waste to the land. Those the difficulties do you mean, Trixie?
I didn’t say any of that though, much as I might have liked to. She looked sour today, more so than usual, and I didn’t want to wind her up. I had to admit I was still scared of Trixie for all that I was hopelessly in love with her. I was glad she had stopped hiding her aura, but I couldn’t help seeing those rotten patches in it, and the black streaks that told their own tale of just how close she had come to falling altogether. There wasn’t any sign of them getting any better, either, and I wasn’t sure why not.
“I know, I know,” I said, “but I’m all out of ideas of how else we can do this without us both ending up like poor little Alice. Papa said this was the only way to get close to Bianakith and still stand a fighting chance.”
“You get me to it without me rotting and it’s dead,” Trixie said. “No fighting chance about it. I can take that thing.”
She is proud, a little voice whispered in my head. Just like the Burned Man is proud. Once again I told that little voice to shut the fuck up. I didn’t want to hear it.
“‘Course you can,” I said, with a levity I didn’t feel. “It’s the whole not rotting part that’s going to be the tricky bit. Papa’s way makes sense, Trixie.”
“But we’d be letting it out,” she said.
“Out of the fetish, maybe,” I agreed carefully, “but that doesn’t mean setting it free. Bound in the fetish or bound in… something else, something portable, it’s still bound. Don’t worry Trixie, I know what I’m doing.”
Have I mentioned famous last words at all?
Trixie sighed and looked at me. “There’s nothing else we can do?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. “I had hoped your Dominion would have a better answer but… yeah. We know how that went.”
“Yes,” said Trixie. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the air, then frowned at me with her mouth set in a hard line. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
I bet you have.
Like Sisyphus pushing his rock uphill for all eternity, Trixie had originally been doomed to battle the Furies on Earth forever. When the greater threat of her falling to Adam – and of the Burned Man breaking free for that matter – had started to look like it might actually happen, the Dominion had appeared and put things right. It had destroyed the Furies out of hand without any great appearance of effort, and straightaway had given Trixie another makework assignment – to babysit the Burned Man. That kept her stuck here on Earth just as indefinitely as fighting the Furies had, and for no better reason. I couldn’t help thinking that someone Upstairs really didn’t want her going home, and I was starting to give more and more thought as to why that might be.
“How are you going to do it?” she said at last, cutting off my train of thought.
I shrugged. “I’ll make a magical container, a sort of talisman,” I said. “Kind of the same sort of thing that Wellington Phoenix kept his devourers in, but instead of enchanting it with a live summoning I can imbue it with the essence of the Burned Man instead. That way we get to bring a real live archdemon with us, like Papa said, and it can keep Bianakith’s aura suppressed while you do your thing. It’s not like I’ll actually be summoning it, just having it with us will be enough to do the trick.”
“And Armand is sure this will work?”
“He’s sure,” I said. “Trust me, Trixie.”
She mashed her cigarette out in the ashtray and gave me a long look, but eventually she sighed and nodded.
“All right,” she said. “I trust you.”
Famous last words. I’m telling you, nothing good ever comes of them.
* * *
This one needed a lot of stuff, of course. It meant a phone call to Wormwood on his personal number and then a long wait, but eventually everything arrived. I knew it was going to be expensive, deal or no deal, but I’d worry about that later. I still had his angel’s skull after all, so I had a few negotiating options.
I expect the sight of a live goat being led out of the back of a van and up the stairs to my office probably turned a few heads on the high street, but it was dark by then and most of the locals were used to me by now. Sort of, anyway. I dragged the goat and the suitcase full of other bits and pieces into my workroom and shut the door behind me. Ally’s dagger was lying on the altar in front of the Burned Man.
“You didn’t tell her, did you?” it said at once.
Damn, but that little fucker could read me like a book sometimes.
“I told her most of it,” I said. “I’m making a container with you in it, and just having that in my pocket will stop Bianakith’s aura from touching her. That much is true, well true-ish anyway, and that much will have to do.”
It nodded down at the wickedly curved black blade in front of it. “So what’s this for then, you prick?”
“Insurance,” I said.
A blade of unmaking is a bit special, in case you didn’t know. Which I’m guessing you didn’t, all things considered. Things like this are where the legends of runeswords come from, I’m sure they are. You need, as the Burned Man had said, a weapon of unholy power to make a blade of unmaking. Something forged in the very depths of Hell, and that’s just for starters. Then you need the soul of a demon to enchant into it. Not just any demon either – no one ever made a runesword out of a vorehound, know what I mean? No, this was proper grownup magic, archdemons or nothing. Excalibur had been a blade of unmaking for certain, and Beowulf’s Hrunting too if I’m any judge.
Of course Hrunting had turned on Beowulf in the end, but then if magic was easy, every fucker would be doing it.
“Insurance?” it echoed me. “Oh dear oh dear, are you finally starting to doubt Blondie’s unstoppable awesomeness?”
“Everyone has their limits,” I said, “and she’s only one soldier, as she’s said herself. I mean, I hope she can do it. I’m sure she can do it, as long as you keep up your end of the deal. But it can’t hurt to have something up my sleeve, can it? You know, just in case something goes pear-shaped, and if it does, a container talisman won’t cut it. If I really have to, I need to be able to bring you out to play. It can’t hurt.”
“Oh no, no, it can’t hurt at all,” the Burned Man said. “I ain’t arguing mate, just taking the piss a bit. Come on, you’ve got to let me have a little bit of fun now and again.”
It rattled its chains in an attempt to look sorry for itself, and grinned at me. Of course with hindsight I really should have smelled the rat by then.
But I didn’t.
“Yeah, yeah, poor hard done by little you,” I said instead. “Come on you wanker, let’s get this done.”
The goat made a bloody mess, literally, and none of the other things we needed for this were entirely pleasant either, but eventually the work got done. It was late by th
en, one or two in the morning, and I found myself wondering if Trixie was waiting up to see the results of my hard work or if she had got bored and gone to bed by now. My bed.
Oh, who was I kidding? Of course she had gone to bed.
I sighed and wiped my hands on a towel that was already sticky and red. The dagger glistened in the candlelight, soaked in blood and mercury and… other fluids, some of them mine. I’m not going into that. Magic isn’t all fast cars and yachts, I’m telling you. I just wish some of it was, but there we were.
“You ready then?” I asked the Burned Man.
“Ready,” it said.
So we did it.
I pressed the tip of the enchanted dagger into the Burned Man’s tiny blackened chest, just enough to make a small incision. The blade quivered with power as the poisonous black aura that always surrounded the fetish gradually shrank away to nothing. The fetish slumped lifeless in its chains, but I could feel the dagger throbbing slowly in my hand. I shuddered and withdrew the blade. I needed a drink. Oh fuck me, did I ever need a drink.
Trixie was waiting up, as it turned out, although by then I had convinced myself she wouldn’t be. I came out of the workroom still holding the dagger. That, I have to admit, was not an entirely clever move.
She stared at the dagger in my hand. Ally’s dagger. The dagger that Adam had given Aleto the Unresting to kill Trixie with as part of his ultimate betrayal of the pair of them.
Trixie hissed like a scalded cat.
“You… Don, you lied to me,” she said.
“Trixie, look…” I started, but it was far too late for bullshit and I knew it.
“You lied to me,” she said again, her voice turning cold.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “Things were confused as all hell back then. I found Ally’s dagger afterwards, and, well, you know, I kinda thought it might come in handy so I just, you know, sort of hung onto it, and then, well, I mean…”
“I explicitly asked you what happened to that,” she said, “and you very clearly said that it had been destroyed. I remember you saying that to me, Don.”
