by Peter McLean
I went cold. “You what?”
“Adam will meet us at Wormwood’s club tonight at midnight,” she said. “Neutral ground and all that.”
I gaped at her. Jesus wept.
* * *
We had dinner out and got to the club at about half eleven, me in my good suit and her in a long black sleeveless dress with elbow-length black satin opera gloves and a feathered fascinator in her hair. She really does look like an old-time movie star, I thought as I followed her up the stairs. I just wish I did too. I was vaguely aware of Connie turning someone away behind us, that grinning ginger-haired bloke with the eyepatch who had jostled me in the bar the last time we had been there. I couldn’t help thinking there was something about him… nah, sod it. He wasn’t allowed in so he couldn’t be anyone who mattered. The club was strictly invitation only after all – the hoi polloi were supposed to stay out of sight downstairs and not lower the tone.
Trixie swept onto the floor of the club itself and I trailed in her wake, as ever feeling hopelessly inadequate next to her. Wormwood was at his usual table and I saw him give us a queasy look through the haze of smoke that surrounded him, but that was all. He might have wanted to argue about Trixie being there again but I knew damn well he didn’t dare.
I could see Miss Marie of the flirtatious threats standing across the club, watching us over her peacock feather fan.
I’ve seen you around, I remembered her saying, and I’ve heard things. The way you speak to Wormwood, for one. A mortal speaking to an archdemon like that, shoving him around. That’s the sort of thing that gets a man noticed, and that kind of notice isn’t always good.
Oh, she had seen that look Wormwood had given us all right, I’d have put bloody money on it. I still didn’t really know who she was but she was taking far too much interest in me for my liking.
Adam was standing at the bar with a glass of whisky in his hand.
He was too tall and too handsome and far too posh for my liking, and he was wearing a tuxedo with his hair slicked back the way Gold Steevie wore his. Used to wear his, I should say. Back when he still had a head.
“Trixie, my dear,” Adam said, his aristocratic accent cutting the air like a knife. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek in what I could only regard as an overly familiar greeting.
“Hello Adam,” she said.
He turned from her and looked at me. “Donald Drake, good evening.”
“All right,” I muttered.
“I am, actually, and thank you for asking,” he said.
I had forgotten just how punchable his smug smile really was. I fucking hate you, I thought. Or the Burned Man did, I wasn’t even sure which one of us that had been. It was true either way. Adam had been the archangel Lumiel, once upon a time, and he had been the very first to fall. He was Lucifer, the first of the fallen, and he was standing at the bar in front of me.
Fucking hell.
“How are you?” Trixie asked, as she accepted a glass of champagne from him with a warm smile.
I ordered myself a whisky, since he hadn’t offered me a drink. Arsehole.
“Oh, I manage,” he said, his fingers lingering too long on hers as he handed her the long fluted champagne glass. “I understand you have been very busy with our gnomic friends, far underground.”
Trixie smiled modestly. “Oh, did you hear about that?” she asked, almost batting her eyelashes at him.
I tightened my grip on my glass and felt my other hand curl into a fist. Only I could have a guardian angel who was in love with Lucifer. If only I could have just belted him I would have felt so much better, but of course life is never that simple, is it?
Why not?
That was the Burned Man for sure. Why not? Because he’d fucking eat me if I so much as lifted a hand against him, that was why not. I could feel the Burned Man stirring restlessly inside me. Maybe it could have taken Adam, I had no idea and to be perfectly honest with you I really didn’t want to have to find out. Either way that sort of thing couldn’t happen in Wormwood’s club. This was neutral territory for everyone, that was the whole point of the place.
“Was that your doing?” I asked him.
“I’m sorry?” he said, making out like he had forgotten I was there. “Was what my doing, Don?”
“Bianakith,” I said bluntly. I saw a few heads turn in our direction at the mention of that name, but I ignored them. I lowered my voice a bit all the same. “Someone must have summoned that bloody thing.”
“I dare say someone must have done,” Adam said. “But not me.”
“So who?”
“I’m flattered that you assume I know all about every single thing that happens, Don, but in this case I’m afraid I have to disappoint you,” he said. “I’m not the omniscient one, after all. I have no idea.”
“Excuse me,” Trixie said, “I must just powder my nose.”
I wondered if his mention of “the omniscient one” had given her acid indigestion. Trixie was skirting around some dangerously divided loyalties here, after all. She floated off across the club and left us standing drinking at the bar together like two normal blokes. Which neither of us were, of course.
“You have changed,” Adam said.
I blinked at him. I had asked the Burned Man to keep its aura hidden and as far as I knew it still was, but it seemed we weren’t quite fooling everyone.
“Yeah, I’m trying something new with me hair,” I said.
“Don’t try to kid a kidder, as they say,” Adam said softly. “I know what has happened.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh yes. I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
“I thought you came for Trixie,” I said.
“No,” he said, and stubbed his cigarette out in the heavy crystal ashtray on the bar. “Meselandrarasatrixiel can fend for herself, for now. I came to see you, Don.”
“You tried to fucking kill me,” I pointed out.
Adam chuckled and took a sip of his whisky. “Oh, come now,” he said. “A dead old woman throwing a few knives at you? That can’t have been much of a challenge for a man of your calibre, Don. That was… merely a feint.”
That was almost a compliment, coming from him. Fuck it, now that I thought about it that was a compliment. Like I said before, maybe he was overestimating me. I was more than happy to let him do it, too.
“Why didn’t you just have Charlie kill me himself?” I asked him.
“Oh where would the fun have been in that?” Adam said, and laughed. “Besides, he might have actually succeeded and I never wanted that. I knew you’d see through his charade with the old woman.”
No, I wasn’t about to admit that I nearly hadn’t. The more powerful he thought I was the better, as far as I was concerned.
“Yeah,” I said instead. “Waste of everyone’s bloody time as far as I can see.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I found it quite educational.”
I necked my whisky and waved the barman to do me another one.
“How’s that then?”
“Well, I was interested to see what you would do, of course,” he said. “I was quite impressed when you killed Charlie Page. I had half thought his poor tearful little old man routine might sway your judgment.”
“Someone tries to kill me, I’ll happily kill them back,” I said.
Adam nodded. “Good,” he said. “Listen to me, Don. There are things you need to know.”
“Yeah, there usually are,” I said. “I don’t see why the fuck I should believe a word you say though. I have made an enemy, you told me.”
“Oh come now,” Adam said. “If I wanted to make trouble for you I could have done so already, very easily. I dare say you haven’t told Meselandrarasatrixiel about the, ah, meeting of minds, shall we say, that you and the Burned Man seem to have reached.”
I winced. No of course I hadn’t, and I can’t say I had been planning to. I didn’t want this smug bastard telling her for me either, so now he had one over on me agai
n. That was just wonderful.
“Not as such, no,” I admitted.
“Well if you wish to keep it that way then you had better give me the time of day, Donald Drake. I never said I was the enemy you have made, but Meselandrarasatrixiel will believe me should I choose to tell her.”
Of course she would, much as that pained me. All the same, this was getting interesting. If he wasn’t the enemy, and I wasn’t at all sure I believed that, then who the fuck was?
“All right, all right, what’s on your mind then?” I asked him.
“There is trouble Upstairs, as I believe you put it,” he said. “A great deal of trouble.”
I blinked at him. I mean, it made sense, after how the Dominion had behaved, but it still wasn’t exactly the sort of thing I wanted to hear. I wanted Trixie to hear it even less.
“Yeah well you would say that,” I said. “You ain’t exactly on their side any more, are you? Trixie told me you were trying to recruit her for some coming war.”
“Yes, there may well be war,” Adam said, “but I’m not sure you completely understand what the sides are.”
Time him come, Don-boy, when a man gotta choose what path he goin’ walk. Papa Armand had told me that enough times, but Adam was right. I really didn’t know what the sides were. As Armand had told me, nothing was ever as simple as it looked at first glance.
“It’s a fucking stretch to take the word of a self-confessed fallen angel,” I said.
“Yes, I fell down into Hell,” Adam said. He paused and met my eye. “Other things would have to climb far and high to reach it. Those things, you do not wish to meet.”
I could have done without meeting him, to be perfectly honest about it, but there we were.
“Oh do tell,” I said. “I thought you were a duke down there.”
“Oh I am, but I am still not a god, and not all gods are above if you take my meaning.”
“I’m not sure that I do,” I said. “Are you trying to tell me there’s some sort of god of Hell on its way?”
“Of Hell? No, not that. Not all the Veils are between Earth and Hell, you know.”
I remembered what Papa Armand had told me about the crossroads, and frowned. “I suppose they wouldn’t be,” I said. “Bit outside my field I’m afraid.”
“You may just find, Don, that sometimes you’re better off with the devil you know, so to speak.”
“So the enemy of my enemy is my friend, is that it?” I said.
Adam gave me a cool smile. “Something like that.”
Trixie came back just then with Papa Armand on her arm and Jocasta trailing in their wake in a tiny white dress that barely covered her arse. I’m afraid Trixie completely eclipsed the poor girl, and it looked like Jocasta knew it.
“Are you boys having fun?” Trixie asked.
I gave her a look.
“Don-boy Drake,” said Papa Armand. “Good to see you.”
“Hello Papa,” I said. “This is Adam, by the way.”
Papa Armand looked at Adam, and narrowed his eyes.
“Bondye’s balls,” he whispered.
Adam smiled. “Good evening, Houngan,” he said. “Perhaps we might have a little chat, later.”
“We can talk,” Papa Armand said, his silk top hat nodding. “Not sure you like what I goin’ say.”
“Armand dear, Adam is a friend,” Trixie said.
“No friend to me, Zanj Bèl,” Armand said. “Now, I promised show Jocasta how to play roulette.”
He put his arm around his teenage girlfriend and walked away, leaving the three of us standing at the bar.
“I’m sorry Adam,” Trixie said. “Armand is usually rather more polite than that.”
“But not to me, it would seem,” Adam said with a wry smile. “You need not apologise my dear, I’m quite used to rudeness.”
I had a feeling that was aimed at me but I was buggered if I was going to rise to it. Armand had got Adam’s measure straight off the bat as far as I was concerned, and good luck to him. Adam lit another cigarette and was obviously about to say something else when there was an almighty bang from the downstairs bar.
Smoke billowed up the stairs into the club and Connie came backing rapidly out of it in a low fighting crouch, his massive horns lowered like a bull about to charge.
“Bloody hell!” I said.
Trixie twisted her hand through a deft figure-of-eight and her sword shimmered into existence, gleaming in the dim light. Adam reached into the jacket of his tuxedo and pulled out a ridiculously huge automatic pistol. A Desert Eagle, I remembered he had called it the last time I had seen him use it. The bloody thing was nearly a foot long and there was no way he could have been hiding it under that perfectly tailored tux, so I could only assume he could do the same trick Trixie did with her sword. He must have been compensating for something with that thing, I was sure of it.
He stood there for a moment with his elbow cocked, holding the gun pointed at the ceiling and looking for all the world like a poster for a bad spy movie. I just sort of stood there, watching the club erupt like a kicked anthill around me.
“Stay out of the way, Don,” Trixie said.
She and Adam advanced toward Connie. A few of the other more physical-looking patrons were going with them, while the majority retreated across the club as far away from the blowing smoke as they could get.
“What are you?” I heard Connie bellow.
He backed up another step, pawing at the ground with one foot and looking for all the world like he was being pushed backwards against his will. A figure came into view, climbing the stairs from the bar. It was that smiling ginger-haired bloke with the patch over his eye, only now he was holding a long wooden staff in his hands and he wasn’t smiling quite so much any more.
I looked round in time to see Wormwood scurrying towards his office. Papa Armand and Jocasta were behind the roulette wheel on the other side of the room, but while she was cowering in fear, I noticed Papa Armand was just watching, his face impassive and a cigar smouldering between his teeth. Miss Marie was fanning herself slowly, and watching everything.
“Get out of my fucking club!” Connie roared.
“I’m sorry, but no,” the ginger bloke said. “As I have told you several times now, I need to come upstairs.”
He took another step forwards and Connie took another step back, cords of muscle standing out in his thick neck as he fought whatever was pushing him backwards. The man raised his staff and I saw there was an effigy of some sort on the top of it. He was a good way off and the air was hazy with smoke so I couldn’t see all that clearly but I could have sworn it was some sort of cat.
“Is there a problem?” Adam asked, his cut glass voice carrying clearly through the air.
He was holding his massive pistol loosely at his right hip, not exactly pointed at the ginger bloke but not exactly not pointed at him either. Trixie came up on his left flank, her sword erect in her guard position but not burning. Not yet, anyway.
“Angels,” the man said, sparing them a glance. “I have no quarrel with you, sky children. I have no quarrel with the messengers of the Word or with anyone here. I merely wish to come in.”
“Your name’s not on the fucking list,” Connie said.
Something clicked in my head. The Burned Man stepping in, I realised.
“Oi, Rashid,” I called out, waving at him. “Over here, mate. It’s all right, Connie, I know him.”
The man turned and strode between Trixie and Adam as though they weren’t there, his staff held upright in his hand as he walked. They stepped back to let him pass, and I’m not sure they did it altogether voluntarily. Connie gave me a wary look but that seemed like it was going to be the end of it, for now anyway. Bless him, he knew when he was beaten, and at least this way he got to save some face.
The man walked towards me, that grin breaking out on his face again. He had very pointed teeth, I noticed, the canines ridiculously long. He looked like a vampire almost, but I knew vampires were
n’t real. Nah, he looked more like… a cat.
“Well fuck me,” I said.
It was him, I suddenly realised. The eyepatch and the ugly mess of scar tissue around it would have given the game away earlier if the whole idea hadn’t been so utterly bonkers, but now that I really looked at him I was sure of it. This bloke, somehow, was also the ugly bloody one-eyed ginger tom cat that had been haunting my neighbourhood like a bad smell for the last couple of weeks. The one that had been haunting Trixie’s dreams, too.
He planted the butt of his staff in the thick carpet and clapped me on the shoulder with his free hand. The carved headpiece of the staff really was an effigy of a cat, a very Egyptian looking one.
“The bodies we wear, old friend,” he said.
“Innit just,” I said, or rather the Burned Man did. “You’re fucking whiter than I am this time. Call me Don.”
This bloke, this ginger cat man who seemed to be called Rashid, laughed at that. It seemed he and the Burned Man had some history together, which must make him a truly ridiculous age. Or whatever was wearing him was, anyway.
Who the fuck is he? I thought furiously at the Burned Man.
“You drinking then?” I asked him.
“I will take wine with you,” the man said.
I ordered him a glass of red and got myself another whisky while I was about it. This was just fucking weird. I was still in control of myself, pretty much, I was sure I was. All the same, I knew the Burned Man was talking through me but it really didn’t feel like that at all. It felt like I was saying the words myself, I just had no idea why I was saying them.
“What brings you through from the endless sands then?” I asked him, as I passed him his drink.
He paused and sipped his wine, then quite deliberately poured a small trickle of it onto the carpet. A libation, I knew, but fuck only knew what to. He nodded slowly.
“I had not thought to see you in human form again,” he said, ignoring my question. That was fine by me, I had no idea what I’d just asked him anyway.
“Yeah well,” I said, and I realised I was talking for myself again suddenly. “There’s a bit of a story to that but it’s not one for right now, if you understand me.”
