Dominion

by Peter McLean

  “Look,” I said, after a moment. “About what you heard…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Pride comes before a fall, and I have been proud. I know I have, Don. I admit that. I have been given gifts, and I have become accustomed to them. I have taken my skills for granted, when in reality they had only been lent to me by greater powers. If those skills should have failed me, then obviously it was because I needed to learn a lesson.”

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  I supposed nothing of the fucking sort as it went, but I really didn’t want to have another argument with her right then. Trixie was coming at this from a position of blind faith, whereas I had rejected that a long time ago. As I saw it, her skills were as great as ever, but Bianakith had overwhelmed her all the same. And I thought I knew why. Oh sure, it was an archdemon, not something even she could have just flicked away with a twitch of her fingers, but all the same that wasn’t right.

  I am a Sword of the Word, I never lose, she had said, and from what I had seen of her fighting prowess I could well believe it. Before I knew her, Trixie had battled the Furies all by herself for thousands of years. Trixie had killed three devourers singlehanded in one afternoon. Trixie had walked into battle against Wellington Phoenix on a broken thigh and thought nothing of it. Even the Burned Man respected her abilities, I knew that much.

  Trixie was death walking, to put it bloody mildly. Angelus Mortis, Janice had called her. The Angel of Death. Maybe she wasn’t exactly that, not literally anyway, but she wasn’t bloody far off it. There was no way Bianakith should have been able to kick her arse the way it had. Unless…

  “Look,” I said carefully. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

  Trixie blinked at me. “You can always talk to me, Don,” she said.

  “Yeah well, thanks and all that,” I said, “but what ‘can I talk to you’ really means when people say it is that you might not like what they’re going to say, you understand? It’s like saying ‘please don’t hit me when I say this’, yeah?”

  “All right,” she said.

  She sat back down on the sofa and put her coffee cup on the floor, and looked expectantly up at me.

  “Well, look,” I said. “You’re right. You did lose to Bianakith, but you shouldn’t have done, should you? I mean, when we first talked about it, you were sure you could kill it if I kept its aura under control. And that wasn’t just pride talking, Trixie. That was simple fact. There’s no shame in knowing what you can do.”

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  “It was stronger than it should have been, wasn’t it?” I said. “I mean, you’re realistic about this sort of thing. I know you are. It was you who said it was out of your league while it still had its rot aura active, after all. That’s not pride, that’s acknowledging what you can do and what you can’t. That’s just realism, Trixie.”

  She looked at me for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I don’t pretend to be able to do what I can’t, Don.”

  “No, exactly,” I said, warming to the topic now I had her attention. “I know you don’t, and that’s the whole point. Once I did my thing, you should have been able to take it apart, shouldn’t you? Something went wrong. Or rather it didn’t. Someone was cheating.”

  “Who?” she asked, and looked up at me. “And how did you kill Bianakith anyway?”

  No, I wasn’t going to tell her.

  “Same way I like to play cards,” I said. “I cheated more than the other guy did.”

  “Oh,” she said. “So who was the ‘other guy’ here?”

  Well now, this was the tricky bit. This was the bit that was going to get me backhanded through the window and under a bus if she took it the wrong way.

  Fucking hell, you shouldn’t be this scared of your own missus, should you?

  She’s not your fucking missus, the Burned Man sneered at me. She might have been by now maybe if you’d have fucked her when you had the chance but you bottled it, didn’t you? You’re back to square bleeding one there now aren’t you, you daft prick?

  I didn’t think I was actually, not quite anyway, but either way I didn’t need the Burned Man’s fucking relationship advice. I ignored it and ploughed on.

  “Well, well look,” I said. “I mean, we’ve established that something must have deliberately summoned Bianakith, yeah?”

  “Yes,” Trixie agreed. “There’s no way something like that could have squeezed through the Veils by itself.”

  “Right,” I said. “And like I said, since we killed Wellington Phoenix, I can’t think of a human diabolist who could have pulled that off. I half thought Adam might have been behind it, but I asked him and he denied it, and in all honesty I believe him. I mean, he just doesn’t have anything to gain, and Adam never does anything that doesn’t have something in it for him, does he?”

  “No,” Trixie had to admit. “No, I suppose he doesn’t.”

  “Well,” I said cautiously, and I have to confess I retreated behind my desk to put a bit more space between her and me. “That only leaves one possibility as far as I can see.”

  “Oh?”

  I sat down in my scruffy leather swivel chair and looked at her across the scarred expanse of desk. I suppose it would buy me another second or two if she decided to go for me.

  “Your Dominion,” I said.

  Trixie fixed me with a frozen blue stare.

  “What about my Dominion?”

  “Well look, it wasn’t exactly itself was it, the last time we spoke,” I said. “You know as well as I do that it saying Bianakith was doing the Lord’s work smells like a bucket of month-old fish. It’s not right Trixie. The Dominion isn’t, I mean. It fucking can’t be.”

  “It’s not for me to question,” she said, but I could see the confusion on her face.

  Trixie was a soldier not a general, and a soldier needs a chain of command above her. I knew she put all her faith in the judgment of that Dominion, and followed its orders without question like any good soldier would have. I’m sorry but the time for unquestioning obedience was pretty much over, as far as I could see.

  “I know, babe,” I said, “not usually it isn’t, but come on, fucking think about it.”

  “No!” she shouted, and lurched to her feet with a murderous look on her face. “You spurn me and now you try to turn my face away from righteousness, and–”

  “He’s right, you know.”

  I don’t know who turned faster, me or Trixie. Well obviously she did, if I’m honest about it, and she managed to produce her sword as part of the same fluid movement. God but I loved that woman.

  “All right, Adam,” I said.

  “Good morning,” he said, a wry smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

  He stepped out of thick shadows that really shouldn’t have been there at the far end of my office and waved a lazy hand that made them go away. He was as immaculately dressed as ever, in a dark grey business suit and a sober red tie. He nodded at me and fixed Trixie with his unnaturally dark eyes.

  “This man Drake speaks the truth today,” he said. “About many things.”

  Ouch. I knew this bugger could probably listen in on my conversations, and I had a horrible suspicion he had heard me confess my love for Trixie. Oh joy, that was bound to come back and bite me on the arse before much longer then. All the same, at least he seemed to be backing me up on this one.

  “Oh, does he?” Trixie asked archly.

  She still had her sword in her hand, I noticed.

  “Yes, I’m afraid he does,” Adam said.

  He ignored her blade and settled into one of the chairs opposite my desk, adjusting the crease in his trousers with one careful hand. When Trixie realised he wasn’t taking any notice of her sword she made it disappear again.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “There are things afoot, Meselandrarasatrixiel,” he said. “Great and terrible things. The prospect of open war in Heaven, for one, and the Domini
on you answer to has fallen hard enough to sunder the very plains of Hell with the impact of its coming. It is… no longer what it was.”

  “But…” Trixie said, and I saw the stricken look in her eyes.

  The Dominion was far more to her than just her superior in the chain of command. My father and my king she had called it once, or something like that anyway, and I knew she had still been struggling to find an adequate English translation for the words she was trying to express. It was everything to her, I knew that. It was her whole reason for doing any of the things that she did. She was so closely linked to it that it was no wonder she had been going off the rails if it had actually fallen altogether.

  “Oh Trixie…” I said, and trailed off helplessly.

  She was staring at Adam, and I knew I couldn’t get in the middle of that. I wished I could, don’t get me wrong, but I knew it just wasn’t going to happen. There are some things you really can’t compete with however much you might wish you could.

  “Your Dominion has fallen,” Adam said with an awful finality. “Bianakith was the Dominion’s work, not mine. The unmaking of the Eastern Veil was its doing, and the drawing forth of Menhit is its goal. There will be slaughter in Heaven, Meselandrarasatrixiel, if Menhit joins forces with that Dominion and I do not want that. Something fundamental will happen, unless we can stop it.”

  I remembered what Rashid had said to me. Rashid didn’t think he and the Burned Man together were strong enough to stop Menhit, and yet Adam seemed to think he and Trixie could do it between them? Now I’m sorry, but I thought that was a tiny little bit fucking unlikely, if I’m honest about it. But then it would have hardly been the first time Adam had spun someone a yarn, would it? He was Lucifer for fucksake.

  He was Lucifer, yes, but Menhit was a fucking goddess. She’s bigger than every cunt I know, the Burned Man had told me, and it knew Adam. I was painfully aware of that fact. No, I didn’t think Adam could take Menhit even with Trixie at his side. If Menhit joined forces with the fallen Dominion in its war on Heaven… well yeah, I dare say something fundamental would happen. I didn’t really understand what, but it wasn’t going to be anything fucking good was it? It never bloody is.

  “I think you might need a bit of help with that, mate,” I said, and winced inside.

  That had been the Burned Man speaking, or at least I thought it had. God, but I wished I could be sure which thoughts were mine. Even that would have been something, you know what I mean? Having the horrible thing spontaneously speaking with my voice before I even knew what it was going to say really was getting to be a bit too much for me to deal with.

  “Oh, do you really?” Adam asked, sudden venom in his razor sharp words. “And who exactly do you think could help us, Don?”

  I remembered with a cold slug in the guts that he somehow knew what had happened to me. He knew damn well he was talking to the Burned Man now, not me.

  “I know people,” I said, and suddenly that was me talking again. “I can help. Me and Rashid.”

  “Rashid,” Adam echoed, and Trixie gave me a look as well. It seemed Rashid really hadn’t made the best of first impressions as these things went.

  “And me,” I said, and met Adam’s eyes with a hard stare of my own.

  And the Burned Man, I thought at him. I can’t say it in front of Trixie and you don’t seem to want to either but we both know what I fucking mean, don’t we, you wanker? I mean personally I couldn’t give a flying fuck what happened in Heaven, but one thing I did not want was a rampaging war goddess on the loose in the middle of London. All the same, I kept wondering what the consequences of a war in Heaven might actually be. If something fundamental changed up there, who knew what might happen down here? No, on balance I really didn’t want Menhit making common cause with a fallen Dominion any more than Adam did. We might be coming at this from completely different perspectives, but I’m afraid it really did look like Adam and I were on the same side at that precise moment.

  Better the devil you know.

  I wondered what Papa Armand would say about me walking down that path.

  “Yes,” Adam said quietly. “And you. Yes, you might make all the difference. And your friend the Houngan perhaps.”

  I winced. Papa Armand had taken an instant dislike to Adam, and that might be hard to undo. All the same, I nodded.

  “And him, if he’s up for it,” I said.

  “Strange bedfellows indeed,” Adam mused.

  Wasn’t that the fucking truth?

  Chapter 20

  Adam fucked off in the end, thankfully, and Trixie went into the kitchen to smoke cigarettes and sulk. It was still early, about ten in the morning by then. I sat behind my desk and drank the end of my cold coffee. I wanted a fresh one but Trixie was in the kitchen and I really didn’t want to face her right then.

  Your Dominion has fallen, Adam had said, hard enough to sunder the plains of Hell with the impact of its coming. That revelation had pretty much broken her, as far as I could see. She lived to serve that Dominion, as its paladin or knight errant or whatever we had decided it translated as. It really didn’t matter now. It was gone, fallen, corrupted beyond saving. Where did that leave her, exactly?

  She’s bonkers, the Burned Man thought at me. If she wasn’t already, she fucking is now.

  I hated to admit it but I had a nasty feeling the Burned Man might be right. I couldn’t shake the memory of her true aura, rotting before my eyes.

  She’ll be fine, I thought. It’s just a lot for her to come to terms with in one go.

  It was a fucking sight more than a lot to come to terms with though, wasn’t it? Poor Trixie. As I had said to Adam on the phone, she had been going gradually nuts again, and now at least I knew why. My father and my king. I had a feeling it was more like her father than anything else, and the bond was probably even closer than that. Trixie was a very private person and still I didn’t really know a great deal about angels even after spending the last six months with her, but… oh bloody hell.

  I wondered if the bond had been even closer than that. Had this thing been her lover? Not in a sexual way perhaps, but maybe on a spiritual level. All the same I couldn’t help thinking of how she had offered herself to me, when she had been at her lowest point. With her Dominion fallen, had she been looking to me for whatever it was she needed even if she hadn’t known why at the time? Oh fucking hell, that couldn’t be right could it? I was nobody’s idea of a king, that was for fucking sure.

  The Burned Man snorted somewhere in the back of my head but mercifully resisted the urge to take the piss for once. I sighed and sat back in my chair, swivelling it round to stare out of the window.

  Oi, I thought at it. Make yourself useful and fill me in a bit here. This Menhit, is it as bad as I think it is?

  Oh fuck yes, the Burned Man said, and for once it sounded completely serious. You still haven’t got your pin-sized head around this have you? She. Is. A. Goddess. Not an angel, fallen or otherwise. Not an archdemon. Not a Dominion, even. She’s a cunting goddess, Drake. There is no other power to equal that of a god, that’s practically the fucking definition of the term. If she comes through and sides with this sodding Dominion then whatever it wants, it’s getting. End of. If that means the walls of Heaven come tumbling down then that’s what’ll fucking happen, you mark my words. That’s when it’s time to find a new planet to live on, if you still aren’t getting this yet.

  Fucking hell.

  I sighed and pushed my fingers back through my hair. This was getting out of fucking hand. I stared out of the window and tried not to think about it.

  I was still watching the world go by twenty minutes later when the phone rang.

  “Don Drake,” I said.

  “Mr Drake, it’s Harry.”

  “Hello Weasel,” I said. “I hope you’ve got something useful for me.”

  “I have, Mr Drake,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial hush. “Something good.”

  “Where are you, Weasel?” I
asked him.

  “At home, why?”

  “Then you don’t need to fucking whisper, do you? Just tell me what you’ve got.”

  “Oh, right,” he said, sounding slightly embarrassed. For fucksake he did my head in sometimes, he really did. “Well, look, it’s like this…”

  What it was like, according to the ever unreliable gospel of Weasel, was that there was something going on. Now I think we all already knew that by then, but this was a little bit different. There was, according to him, a counter movement happening amongst the city’s occultists. Adam had his followers as Weasel had told me before, and as I had personally discovered in the short and unpleasant time I had known Charlie Page. That aside though, it appeared there was a new faction amongst the adepts of London. And Weasel said he knew how I could contact them.

  “Meet me at Big Dave’s in half an hour,” I said. “I want some breakfast anyway.”

  “Yes, Mr Drake,” he said.

  I tidied myself up a bit, as much as you needed to for Big Dave’s café on a Monday morning anyway, and picked up my keys.

  “I’m popping out,” I told Trixie.

  She was sitting at the kitchen window, smoking and staring vacantly into Mr Chowdhury’s empty yard.

  “All right,” she said, without looking at me.

  She really, really wasn’t herself. I shrugged and went. I felt bad for her, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it at the moment, after all.

  Weasel turned up while I was halfway through a full English and a blissfully hot cup of strong black coffee. I looked up at him and waved to the seat across from me, still chewing.

  “Sit,” I said. “Talk.”

  Weasel sat down and looked at me, his droopy lower lip glistening as he eyed my half-eaten breakfast.

  “I could eat,” he said.

  I sighed and waved Big Dave over.

  “Same again for my ugly friend,” I said. “And I’ll have another coffee, ta.”