by Peter McLean
I was starting to wonder when Papa Armand and Trixie would be coming back when a bloke walked up to our table. I supposed a cigar probably took longer to smoke than a couple of fags and no doubt she was waiting for him to finish just to be polite, but when I looked up and saw the size of this geezer, I have to admit I wished she was at the table with us. He was Russian by the looks of him, or maybe Polish. You can just tell from looking sometimes, get me?
“Harry Weasel,” he said in a thick accent, like he thought it was really his last name.
He loomed over us in a scuffed black leather blouson jacket and tight jeans that strained over his meaty thighs, his broken-nosed face a butcher’s block of old faded scars beneath his cropped hair. He might as well have had a sign saying “hired muscle” hanging around his neck.
Weasel gulped.
“Nah,” he said. “You’ve got the wrong bloke, mate.”
“Fuck you,” Russian Muscle said, and grabbed Weasel by the front of his tracksuit.
He dragged Weasel out of his seat with both hands, ignoring me completely. That, as it went, was fucking rude of him. I glanced towards the door but there was still no sign of Trixie. That was probably best, I thought. A gorgeous blonde beating up a Soviet hardman in the Rose and Crown would have upset the local ecosystem beyond my ability to imagine. The world just didn’t work like that around here.
“Oi,” I said, and caught his eye.
“You got a fucking problem?” he said.
He let go of Weasel with one huge hand and stuck it in my face instead.
“Yeah,” I said. “I fucking have as it goes.”
I grabbed his hand and squeezed. I felt the muscles in my forearm clench with a strength I had never known before, and my hand closed like a hydraulic vice around the bloke’s meaty paw.
“Weasel is a greasy, lying, treacherous little shit,” I said, “but he’s my greasy, lying, treacherous little shit. You understand?”
My hand closed tighter, and I heard bones crunch in my grip. Russian Muscle let go of Weasel altogether and stared at me, his eyes bulging in his ugly scarred face. His other hand dipped towards the back pocket of his jeans and came out with a blade in it.
Oh you twat, the Burned Man thought.
I surged to my feet with a snarl. The Burned Man was driving now, I already knew that. Don’t burn the fucking pub down, I begged it. Shit, I liked the Rose and Crown, you know? It seemed like the Burned Man knew that too. I hit the geezer instead, my left fist slamming into his solar plexus so hard I felt his sternum crack. He folded around me and collapsed in a wheezing heap, almost taking the table over with him as he went.
Alfie was there then, the baseball bat he kept behind the bar raised in his hands, and a moment later Trixie stepped back into the pub with Papa Armand behind her. I ignored the lot of them and stared down at Russian Muscle. He was finished, from what I could see.
“Fuck a duck, Don,” Alf said. “Where did you learn to hit like that?”
I shrugged, embarrassed. Obviously all this kung fu shit was coming from the Burned Man, not me. All I knew was my hands hurt like hell again, but at least nothing was on fire this time.
“Thanks, Mr Drake,” Weasel said in a shaky sort of voice.
Shirley had come out from behind the bar now too, and she was standing beside Alfie in her high heels and too-tight skirt looking down at the twitching Russian bloke.
“Get him out of here, Alf,” she said. “I ain’t calling a bleedin’ ambulance, it’s bad for business. Ambulances come with rozzers and no one wants that in here.”
“Yes, Ma,” Alf said.
He hooked the huge Russian geezer under the armpits with both hands and dragged him towards the door. I doubted anyone would see him again, or miss him for that matter. The Rose and Crown was that sort of place, if you know what I mean.
“Sorry about that, Shirl,” I said.
She smiled at me. “Don’t you worry about it, duck, he started it I’m sure,” she said.
He had, to be fair, but I knew damn well it wouldn’t have mattered either way. Shirley was a sweetheart like that, and very understanding about business.
“Thanks, Duchess,” I said, before Trixie came and got in my face.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” she hissed at me.
I swallowed. “He was after Weasel,” I said. “I, um… Yeah. I talked him out of it.”
“I don’t know what’s got into you, Don,” she said, “but I don’t think I care for it.”
You don’t know the half of it, Blondie, the Burned Man sniggered.
“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “Won’t happen again.”
Papa Armand sat back down at the table as though nothing had happened.
“Thank you for tellin’ me, Don-boy,” he said.
I nodded. “What are you going to do about Jocasta?”
“I don’ know yet,” he said. “Maybe something, maybe not.”
“Who is this Marie anyway?” I asked him.
“Oh, ol’ friend. Ol’ enemy. Just business to start with, but some things happen that she take personally, you know?”
I didn’t, particularly, but I supposed it wasn’t really any of my business. What was my business was that she had tried to have me killed.
“And why the hell does she want me dead?”
He chuckled. “You gettin’ conspicuous, Don-boy,” he said. “Pushing Wormwood around.”
A mortal speaking to an archdemon like that, shoving him around, I remembered Marie saying to me. That’s the sort of thing that gets a man noticed, and that kind of notice isn’t always good if you take my meaning.
Obviously not.
“You and Madame Zanj Bèl,” Papa added. “She conspicuous too.”
I glanced sidelong at Trixie, at her blazing white lie of an aura. I had to admit he had a point there.
“I suppose,” I muttered.
“Someone like you, gettin’ too powerful too quick, you know how it is. Some people think it best to just get their revenge in first.”
I sighed. Jesus, I needed more enemies like I needed a dose of the clap. I wondered if that would be the end of it, and decided it almost certainly wouldn’t.
“Look, Papa,” I said. “I don’t know what’s between Marie and you and if it’s personal then I understand that, but… well, I don’t need any more of her boys trying to feed me to their dogs, you know what I mean?”
“Oh, that won’ happen,” he said, and there was a grim set to his mouth now that I don’t think I’d ever seen before. “Papa talk to Guédé tonight. Papa sort this bitch out, don’ you worry ‘bout that.”
The Guédé are the death spirits of Haitian Vodou, in case you didn’t know. Papa Armand wasn’t fucking about with this one.
Chapter 22
Weasel and Papa Armand went their separate ways when we left the pub, and Trixie and I headed home.
“I think it’s fair to say it’s been a hell of a day,” I said as I unlocked the front door and held it open for Trixie.
She gave me a flat look.
“Yes,” she said.
I winced and locked the door behind me then followed her up the stairs. Trixie could smell a rat, I knew she could. Now I knew there was no way she could know what had really happened but she obviously knew something wasn’t right with me. I followed her into my office.
“Look, Trixie,” I said. “I… Fuck. I don’t know what to say. That geezer in the pub, he just… I mean, he was going to drag Weasel off to God only knows where, kick the snot out of him or worse. What was I supposed to do, just let him?”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “Weasel is your villein, I understand that, and you are his manorial lord. Or however you’d phrase that sort of relationship these days, I don’t really know. Either way, he serves you and so you have a responsibility for his welfare. You did the right thing.”
I blinked at her. That was a very medieval way of looking at it, but I supposed she was right. It did sort of still
work like that in London’s underworld, in all honesty. I mean, if you worked for a gangster and someone came and leaned on you, you didn’t go to the Old Bill now did you? Of course not, you went to your gent and he sorted it for you. Hell, the gangsters around here still referred to their territory as their manor. Funny how these things carry on down the centuries even if people might not realise where they originally came from.
“Right,” I said.
“You did the right thing,” she said again, “but I’m not sure how. That man was twice your size Don, and nothing caught fire this time. I know that was magic before, and I can accept that magic is what you do even if I don’t always understand how you do it. Tonight though, tonight you fought like a warrior.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said.
“But you’re not a warrior,” she said. “You know you’re not, Don. You’ve told me as much yourself before now. But you felled that man with your bare hands without taking so much as a scratch.”
“Yeah well,” I said, “that’s a kind of magic too, you know what I mean?”
It was as well, if you squinted at it. Obviously that had been the Burned Man moving me, feeding strength to my body and skill to my hands the same as it had at Marie’s house. If that wasn’t magic I didn’t know what was, albeit not quite in the way Trixie meant. Although now that I thought about it, I couldn’t help but wonder where that strength had come from. Only gods can create energy from nothing after all, and the Burned Man’s not a god. That power had to have come from somewhere, and the Burned Man isn’t the charitable sort. I couldn’t help but wonder which one of the Rose and Crown’s patrons was going to die in their sleep from simple exhaustion that night. As long as it was no one I knew, I didn’t really care, to be perfectly honest with you. Was that wrong of me? Yeah, it probably was, but right then I really didn’t care about that either.
“If you say so,” Trixie said. “I’m going to bed.”
I gestured helplessly towards the sofabed.
“Should I, um…?”
“You can sleep with me,” she said. “Sleep.”
I nodded. Yeah, I think we were all pretty clear what that meant by now and I wasn’t sure she really needed to spell it out again. All the same, I supposed that meant she couldn’t be too angry with me.
“Right,” I said. “Well, OK. Good. I’ll have the bathroom after you then.”
“I suppose you should feed your nasty little friend before you come to bed,” she said.
I blinked. Shit! Of course I didn’t actually need to feed the fetish now that there was nothing in it, but I didn’t want Trixie realising that. I had to keep up appearances, after all, and I was starting to slip.
“Yeah, I should,” I said. “I don’t want it getting grumpy.”
She headed to the bathroom and I went through to my workroom. I shut the door behind me and sagged down onto the floor with my back to the wall and put my hands in my lap. They still hurt, and I looked down at them with a sigh. This one crushed a Russian enforcer’s hand. That one broke his sternum with a single punch. This morning, in a million pound semi-detached house in Totteridge, both of them had been uncontrollable flamethrowers.
No, not uncontrollable, I realised. Just not under my control.
Oi, I thought. Are you awake in there?
‘Course, the Burned Man thought back at me.
What, if you don’t mind me asking, exactly the fuck are you doing to me?
I felt the Burned Man laughing in the back of my mind.
Are you complaining? it asked. There’s a lot of people who would kill for the sort of power I’ve given you. You’re like a fucking superhero now.
You fucking what? I’m your meat puppet half the time. I don’t even know what I’m doing or saying when you’re driving, and you’re no more of a bleedin’ hero than I am.
It made a sort of spitting noise in my head.
Get over yourself, Drake, it said. You’ve got an archdemon in your head. Don’t you understand what that means? No one, and I mean no one, is going to fuck with you any more. Gold Steevie? Fuck him. Barbequed Steevie more like. Those cunts this morning? Toasted. Vlad the Masturbator in the pub? Chest crushed, breathing through a tube by now I shouldn’t wonder. What more do you fucking want?
I sighed and rested my head against the wall behind me. Reasoning with the Burned Man was difficult sometimes, to put it mildly. It just didn’t see the world the same way that normal people did. I supposed it wouldn’t, come to think of it, what with being an archdemon and all that. It had absolutely no morals whatsoever, after all, and not even the vaguest sense of right and wrong. I rubbed my aching hands over my face and sighed again.
What did I really want to ask it? Obviously the most important thing I wanted to know was how to get rid of it, but it was hardly likely to tell me that. The other thing that was bothering me, I mean really bothering me, was what it was feeding on now. I had been feeding the Burned Man with my own blood for almost as long as I had known it, since I had first taken it on from Professor Davidson, but of course that had stopped since we had our little meeting of minds. To start with I had been worried I would suddenly start needing to drink blood or something ridiculous like that but thankfully that didn’t seem to be the case, which was a huge relief. I didn’t think I could cope with all the tragic teenage angst that seemed to come with being a vampire these days, if you believed Hollywood.
Look, I thought, I just need to get my head around this, all right? I mean, this is all new for me. Very new. I don’t even feed you any more.
Don’t you? it asked. I’m doing just fine in here.
I paused to think. I mean, I didn’t physically feed it any more. And I hadn’t dropped from exhaustion after any of its feats of magic either, but if it was feeding off me anyway then…
What exactly are you feeding on?
Your soul, of course, it said. Don’t worry, you’ll soon reach a point where you don’t miss it any more. They’re fucking overrated anyway. Diabolists don’t need souls.
Where does that leave me, when it’s all gone?
The Burned Man laughed, and didn’t answer. I dragged myself up to my feet and left the room. I had been in there plenty long enough for Trixie to think I had fed the little monster by then, and I really wanted my bed. I heard the toilet flush, and a moment later the bedroom light came on.
“Bathroom’s all yours,” she called out, like we had been married for twenty years or something.
“Cheers,” I said.
I stood at the bathroom sink and stared at myself in the mirror. The Burned Man was feeding on my soul. It had destroyed Gold Steevie and his lads, and Miss Marie’s Initiates of the Melek Taus, and a Russian mobster. I wondered how much that had cost me. One year’s damnation each? Ten? A hundred? I had no way of knowing. Fucking hell.
I don’t know, maybe I could do a deal or something, sort it out somehow. Adam would probably know about that sort of thing.
Adam would know? Fucking hell Don, what are you thinking?
Asking Adam for help would be like making a deal with the devil. Literally. Were things really that bad?
You know, by then I think they really were.
I sighed and went to bed.
Lying next to Trixie in the darkened bedroom, I stared up at the ceiling and wondered what the hell my life had come to. A year ago I had had a girlfriend who loved me however badly I treated her, a steady source of income, and a fair idea of what I was doing. Now I had a woman I adored who wouldn’t come near me, total financial dependence on her, and a soul-eating archdemon living in my head. I had to admit that wasn’t really progress, however you looked at it.
Fucking hell.
I turned over and forced myself to go to sleep.
* * *
I was up first the next morning, and after I’d done the bathroom thing I pulled on a pair of jeans and went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. I let the blind roll up and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw the hideous one-eyed
ginger tom staring at me. The bloody thing was sitting on the window ledge, its nose all but pressed against the glass. I sighed and opened the window.
“Morning, Rashid,” I said as the cat jumped down onto the kitchen table, then the floor.
There was a shimmer in the air, a swirling that made me think of dust devils blowing atop some distant sun-baked sand dune, and then he was standing there grinning at me and wearing a battered old brown trenchcoat over a white shirt and a pair of jeans.
“Blessings of the dawn,” he said.
I grunted. I wasn’t feeling very fucking blessed just then, to be perfectly honest about it. I poured the coffee and offered him one.
“Thank you,” he said as he took it. “We need to talk.”
“Talk,” I spat, and realised the Burned Man had taken control again. “Talk is all anyone fucking does these days.”
“No longer,” Rashid said. “The time is upon us. She comes. Now it is time to talk about doing, and then it will be time to act.”
“About fucking time,” the Burned Man said for me. “I’m going out of my tits here.”
“The sky children will help us?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“And the Houngan?”
“Ah, well I’m not so sure about that,” I said, and that was me talking again now. “Him and Adam don’t exactly get on, and he’s got problems of his own right now. It might be just the four of us, I think.”
Rashid’s smile tightened for a moment but he nodded. “So be it,” he said, and I nodded.
“Right, well, there we are,” I said. “You and me and two dodgy angels. Think that’ll do it?”
“That will be sufficient,” Rashid said. “We must go below, to where my work lies ruined. That is where she will come through.”
Shit, that meant yet another trip down the rabbit hole to gnome land then. Still, if the alternative was a war that could quite possibly lead to Armageddon then it was a small enough price to pay, I supposed.
“I’ve got no idea how to get down there on my own. I’ll have to call Wormwood later on, get a contact with the gnomes set up,” I said, and a thought occurred to me. “Shit, Wormwood. He’s an archdemon too. Not a fighter maybe, but… well, maybe we can lean on him to help.”
