Dominion

by Peter McLean

  “No,” Rashid said, a bit too quickly I thought. “We don’t need him, and he’s no fighter, as you say. The three of you will be enough.”

  I shrugged. “If you say so mate,” I said. “Look, I’m going to take Trixie her coffee and let her know you’re here. Just sit tight, yeah?”

  I left him in the kitchen and went back through. She was already awake, sitting up in bed waiting for her coffee with the covers pooled around her waist. I passed her the cup and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Rashid is here,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “I felt him change.”

  “Right,” I said. You did? Fucking hell, she never ceased to surprise me. “Right, well. Look, he says it’s happening. Today, I think. Menhit is coming through and we have to be there to face her, to stop it or to turn her back somehow. Fight her if we have to, I suppose. Whatever it takes. You and me and him, and Adam if he’ll come.”

  “He will,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “I can’t see Papa coming through for us right now, but I suppose I can ask him.”

  Trixie shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, leave him alone. We really upset him last night, I think. Anyway, he and Adam are never going to work together are they?”

  “No, I doubt it,” I agreed.

  “Right, well I’m going to have a shower and get prepared,” she said. “This is going to be quite a trying day, I think.”

  Battling an emergent war goddess could be described as trying in anyone’s book, I supposed. I sighed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We have to go back down to the gnomes’ warrens to face her, according to Rashid.”

  “Yes, that would make sense,” she said.

  It was still too early to call Wormwood so I took Rashid down to Big Dave’s for breakfast while Trixie was in the bathroom. When we came back she was sitting at my desk smoking a cigarette, and Adam was standing at the window.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  I nodded to him, and Rashid gave him a short bow.

  “Now we are assembled,” Rashid began. “The only two sky children on Earth, and the–”

  “Yeah, bully for us,” I interrupted him before he could say anything I didn’t want him to. “It’s time to sort this.”

  I picked up the phone and called Wormwood, aware of the other three giving each other cool looks behind me. Oh what a happy band of fucking musketeers we weren’t.

  “What?” Wormwood snapped when he picked up.

  I think he was starting to regret giving me his direct line, all things considered. He had probably only gone to bed a couple of hours ago, after all.

  “It’s Don,” I said. “I need to contact the gnomes again.”

  “What the fuck for?”

  “Never you mind what for. I need a number, Wormwood.”

  He grumbled for a bit as he fiddled with his phone, then he read out a number which I hastily scribbled down on a scrap of paper. He hung up without so much as saying goodbye, the miserable git.

  I called the number he had given me. It rang for a long time, so long I was sure it wasn’t going to be answered. I was about to give up when eventually there was a click and a muffled voice spoke.

  “Yes?”

  I cleared my throat. “Um, hi,” I said. “It’s Don Drake. I, um, I need to speak to Janice, please.”

  “To who?”

  “Janice,” I said again, getting irritated now. “Alice’s sister. The one who led me into the deep warren when I came down there to kill the fucking Rotman for you and received the eternal thanks of your matriarch for saving all your ratty little lives. That Janice.”

  There was a thud as whoever it was dropped the phone, and I could hear what sounded like something scurrying away in a big hurry. I sighed and waited. A minute or so later someone picked up the phone again.

  “Don?” she asked. “Don, is that you?”

  I smiled despite myself. “Hi Janice,” I said. “How are you?”

  “I’m all right thanks,” she said. “It worked. It really worked. I haven’t gone the way poor Alice did, and Her Highness has been able to start healing the warrens. Thank you for asking. I… Well, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you again.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “Look, something’s happening. Today, I think. I need to come back down to the deep warren where we fought the Rotman, me and some friends.”

  “Angelus Mortis?” Janice whispered.

  I remembered that was what she had called Trixie. The Angel of Death.

  “Yeah, she’ll be there,” I said. “Her and two geezers, and me. You don’t know them but they’re… well, a bit like her, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Janice said.

  “Look, can you make that happen?” I asked her. I remembered what Wormwood had told me about dealing with gnomes, and about guanxi. “I’ll owe you a favour, if you can.”

  “All right,” she said. “Meet me in the Tube, the same place as before. Nine o’clock tonight.”

  I shot Rashid a look.

  “Nine pm?” I asked him. “Will it keep that long?”

  He shook his head. “Sooner would be better, I think,” he said.

  So I sorted it out with Janice, feeling my favour getting larger by the minute, and arranged for her to meet us on the platform at one. I hung up. Oh good, that gave us all morning together then. What fun.

  Chapter 23

  Needless to say fun was the last word to describe it, but time passes eventually whatever you have to put up with. We had an uncomfortable and somewhat unfriendly lunch together in the City, and were on the deep platform at Bank by twelve fifty. Rashid drew a few sideways looks with his eyepatch and the horrible scar it barely covered, and Trixie drew looks everywhere just for being Trixie. Other than that no one seemed to really notice us. I was as nondescript as ever, and as usual Adam looked like he had just stepped out of an executive corner office at one of the big multinational banks above us. Git.

  Something tapped my arm and I looked around to see Janice’s pointed little face looking up at me from the shadow of her hood. I smiled with a warmth I didn’t even have to fake. I really did like Janice.

  “Hi,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”

  She nodded and tugged on my arm, leading me hurriedly off the platform and down into a side corridor. The others followed and clustered around to hide her while she unlocked a door she really shouldn’t have had the keys to. I think being out in public during the day was freaking her out to be honest, and she obviously couldn’t get the door shut behind us again fast enough.

  “Hi,” she said at last, when it was closed and locked.

  “This is Janice,” I said. “Janice, these are Adam and Rashid. You remember Trixie, of course.”

  Janice gave Trixie a nervous smile, and nodded. Rashid bowed to her.

  “Honour be to the gnomes of the Earth,” he said.

  Adam just stood there looking unimpressed. I wanted to kick him, I really did.

  “Thank you for helping us, Janice,” I said. “I owe you one.”

  She smiled again and led the way down through the underbelly of the Tube and into the warrens. It was a bit better than it had been before, to be fair. It looked like the gnomes really were starting to put the place back together again after Bianakith’s depravations. At least the rock floor wasn’t spongy underfoot any more. That was certainly an improvement, if nothing else.

  “I’m sure Her Highness would be pleased to receive you,” Janice said as she led us through the rough brick arch from the Victorian levels into the warrens proper.

  Rashid shot me a look and shook his head.

  “This is a little bit urgent, I’m afraid,” I said. “Can you just take us straight down to where we were before? To where we killed the Rotman, I mean.”

  Janice nodded. “Yes, if you like,” she said.

  So we carried on, winding down and down through the strangely luminescent tunnels until we came to the great
cavern where I had been forced to release and then invoke the Burned Man. Oh, such happy memories. I sent Janice back up the tunnel and out of the way to wait for us. I had no idea if we’d be coming back, but if we didn’t there was no sense in her dying too.

  Rashid rushed across the dark expanse of rock to the corroded pile of slag that had once been his statue. He twisted his hands through a figure-of-eight movement and his staff shimmered into view. He rammed it end down into the rock floor and it stuck there like a standard. He fell to his knees before it, reached his arms up to the ceiling, and began to chant.

  “The fuck is he doing?” I wondered aloud.

  “Mourning his broken work, perhaps?” Trixie suggested.

  “Finishing his work, I rather suspect,” Adam said.

  I shot him a look.

  “You what?”

  “I think he’s bringing her through,” Adam said.

  He reached into his jacket and produced his monster of a handgun.

  “No!” I shouted, but it was too late.

  The gun roared three times, the sound rolling like thunder around the cavern as the muzzle flash lit the faintly glowing walls around us. The air flashed and flared around Rashid’s staff, some three feet behind him. It was as though Adam’s bullets had hit an invisible wall, like some sort of forcefield or something. Whatever it was, Rashid barely seemed to notice.

  “I have one last chance to stop this,” he shouted. “One final sacrifice to offer to the Veil!”

  Adam was wrong, I realised. Rashid wasn’t trying to bring Menhit through. Quite the opposite in fact, but now I suddenly realised exactly how he thought he could stop it from happening.

  “He fucking means us,” I said. “He’s trying to heal the Veil, and we’re supposed to be the sacrifice.”

  It was no wonder he had wanted Papa Armand along as well, and really hadn’t wanted Wormwood. I was sure a Houngan as great as Armand was a powerful offering indeed, albeit not as powerful as the Burned Man or an angel, but nothing in its right mind would want to be offered Wormwood.

  “It’s too late!” Rashid said. “The Veil is dead and she is coming, and now the other comes too, to claim its prize!”

  “The other? What the fuck else is coming?” I yelled at him.

  Trixie spun on her heel and stared into space behind me, a look of pure horror on her face.

  “Dominion!” she wailed.

  Ohhhh fuck.

  The cavern heaved and shuddered as blinding white light raged into the confined space. The pressure slammed me down onto my face with a hand flung across my eyes. I really hadn’t expected the bloody thing to turn up in person, I had to admit.

  “Stop!” the Dominion bellowed in a voice like Armageddon. “Let her come forth!”

  “No!” Rashid shouted back. I was facing him where I lay and I could see his magical force field or whatever the hell it was seemed to be holding off the worst of the Dominion’s power, but all the same he looked like he was walking headlong into a hurricane. “You can’t have her! Keeping her safe is my life’s work!”

  I fucking thought he was this Menhit’s enemy, I thought furiously at the Burned Man.

  He’s supposed to be, it said, and for the first time in as long as I could remember it didn’t sound sure of itself. He’s always said so, and I’ve known him a buggering long time.

  Well it doesn’t sound like it now, does it?

  No, the Burned Man admitted. I reckon if we were supposed to be a sacrifice to the Veil it was to keep her safe behind her walls, if that makes sense. It’s like he’s trying to keep a barrier up between her and Earth, and I don’t think it’s to keep her away from us.

  The Dominion roared in fury behind me.

  “I must have her power,” it thundered. “The war can be won, with her strength added to ours. Bianakith did its work and the Sentinel has been destroyed. She has no choice now but to come forth.”

  “She doesn’t want to!” Rashid shouted at it. “She never wanted to. All she wants is to be left alone!”

  Fucking hell. Maybe the Burned Man was right at that.

  “This world calls to her,” the Dominion snarled. “The petty hatreds and the constant wars draw her whether she wills it or not. Your efforts could only shield her for so long, keeper. Now I draw her forth to her rightful place at my side. Now she must come before me and do battle in my name!”

  This is fucking nuts, the Burned Man thought in my head. Rashid’s been hiding her all this time, when he’s been telling everyone he’s been keeping her shut away so she can’t hurt us. The fucking liar.

  I was fucked if I knew, to be perfectly honest about it. All I knew was that the impossible atomic presence of the Dominion behind me was holding me helpless on the ground. I couldn’t see Trixie or Adam from where I was, but I doubted they were doing much better. They hadn’t done the last time this had happened, I remembered.

  I wasn’t fucking having it.

  You told me once before you could stand against a Dominion, I thought at the Burned Man. Big bad archdemon, nothing can stop you, can it? Now would be a good time to fucking prove it, mate.

  It snarled with anger in my head. Above all else the Burned Man was proud, and sometimes I knew just which buttons to push to goad it into action. Maybe this time I goaded it just a tiny bit too much, looking back on it. I felt an almost physical shove as it mentally barged past me and seized control of… well, everything.

  I lurched to my feet, rounding on the searing nuclear light. The glare dimmed instantly as I suddenly found myself seeing the world the way the Burned Man did. In place of the howling, crushing presence of the Dominion I saw it for what it really was.

  The Dominion had the form of a man, a man so divinely beautiful it made Adam look like a scabby old tramp. It was wearing ornate silver armour chased with gold filigree, and huge feathered white wings spread from its back and cast an enormous shadow on the wall behind it. It held a long silver sword in its hands, and the pommel was a blazing orb of white light as bright as the sun.

  And that’s where it all went wrong.

  The light from the sword shifted as the Dominion moved, and I saw its true aura writhing and rotting around it, black and purple with rancid decay. Black flames licked up from that appalling aura, twisting in the air like serpents. There was no golden glow left in there any more, none at all.

  If she comes through and sides with this sodding Dominion, then whatever it wants, it’s getting, the Burned Man had told me. Just the sight of the Dominion was enough to tell me how bad that would be. We had to stop this.

  Somehow.

  Trixie and Adam were lying prone on the ground before it as I had been, but I was up and moving now under the Burned Man’s control. I reached down and touched each of them on the back of the neck, feeling a jolt of unholy power shoot down my arm with each touch. They got to their feet beside me, astonished looks on their faces. Trixie stared at her Dominion and started to weep.

  “It’s fallen,” she sobbed. “Adam was right, my Dominion has fallen!”

  She looked about ready to sink to her knees in floods of tears, and I’m sorry but no one could afford that luxury right then. Maybe later, if we had a later, but not now.

  “Fight!” I shouted at her. I grabbed her arm and half-turned her to face me, yelling into her tear-streaked face. “You’re a soldier, aren’t you? Go and fucking fight!”

  Adam didn’t need telling. He dropped to one knee and braced his huge pistol in both hands with a grim look on his face. He blazed at the Dominion, spent shell casings fountaining out of the weapon as it roared in the darkness. Trixie twisted her hand through the air and produced her sword at last. I could only assume Adam’s pistol was no more a normal gun than Trixie’s weapon was a normal sword. For one thing it seemed to have an endless supply of bullets, and for another the Dominion was clearly feeling the impacts that smashed into its gleaming armour, making it stagger backwards under the onslaught. Trixie’s sword burst into flames as she took he
r guard position.

  Something lashed out of the Dominion’s blade, and to this day I have no idea what it was. Something like the blasphemous offspring of a devourer’s tentacle and a bolt of black lightning leapt from the sword and grabbed Adam around the waist. He shot it over and over again at pointblank range, cursing as it wrenched him off his feet.

  “Fallen abomination!” the Dominion bellowed at him.

  Adam’s bullets didn’t seem to be having any effect at all on whatever this new horror was. The tentacle whipped him up into the air then smashed him down onto the ground hard enough to pulverise the rock beneath him into a deep crater. Flames roared up from that crater, and Adam was gone.

  “Adam!” Trixie screamed.

  I chanced a look over my shoulder at Rashid, hoping he might be coming to help.

  He wasn’t.

  Rashid was on his knees, his arms outstretched and his face almost on the floor in a posture of total obeisance. Something was standing over him. A tall figure stepped out of the shadows until I could see it clearly. A female figure, I could see now. She strode forth into the glowing light of the Dominion’s blade and I saw her face. The Black Lion, I remembered Rashid calling her once, and I could see now what he had meant.

  This was Menhit, The Slaughterer.

  She Who Massacres.

  She stood well over six feet tall, naked and black and lean and muscular. Her hair hung about her face in a hundred thin black braids that brushed her shoulders as she moved. She had the broad, flat face of a lion, and her eyes were two blazing suns of molten gold. There was a great bronze bow in her hands, almost as tall as she was, and the arrow she held nocked appeared to be made of pure living flame.

  She threw back her head and roared.

  “Come to me, goddess of war,” the Dominion commanded. “Come storm the gates of Heaven at my side!”

  Menhit took a step towards me, and I knew it was all over. We were well and truly fucked, and the whole world with us.