New York Night

by Leather, Stephen

  The fumes from the burning herbs started to spin, faster and faster. The floor began to vibrate and the ceiling tiles shook above his head. There was a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder that made him flinch.

  Tears were streaming from his eyes and he wiped them with the back of his hand. Breathing was an effort, he felt as if he was inhaling a thick, treacly liquid and he could taste burned meat at the back of his throat.

  The floor shook so violently that he staggered to the side. His right foot hovered over the chalk circle and he pulled it back, knowing that to step outside would be fatal.

  ‘Bagahi laca bacabe!’ he screamed again. There were two flashes of lightning that were so bright that he put his hands over his eyes to protect them. When he took his hands away the room shimmered, then the room seemed to fold in on itself and Proserpine was there, standing in a space between the tip of the north-facing point of the triangle and the edge of the circle. She was wearing a long black coat, black boots and a black t-shirt with a hand-drawn pentagram in the centre. Her jet-black hair was long and cut with a fringe and there was so much black eye-shadow that her eye sockets were dark pools of nothingness. Next to her stood a black and white collie sheepdog. It had a black leather collar from which hung an upside down ankh symbol, the key of life. The dog sat down and stared at Nightingale as it panted. ‘This had better be important, Nightingale,’ she said. ‘I was in the middle of something.’

  ‘I thought time didn’t matter to you,’ said Nightingale. ‘You can come and go as you want.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean that I don’t have plans, plans that are more important than your mindless chatter.’

  ‘I’m pleased to see you, too.’

  The dog snarled and Proserpine reached down and rubbed it behind the ears. ‘We won’t be long, baby,’ she whispered. ‘Seriously, Nightingale, you’re playing with fire.’

  ‘Fire and brimstone?’

  The floor shook beneath Nightingale’s feet and her featureless eyes stared at him with contempt. ‘What do you want, Nightingale?’

  ‘One of yours is killing teenagers.’

  She shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘So I need to stop it.’

  ‘And this concerns me, how?’

  ‘I think they’re demons looking for a way out, a way from your world to ours. And I thought that was against the order of things.’

  She tilted her head on one side. ‘And what do you know about the order of things?’

  ‘I know that rules are to be followed. Let’s face it, if all the devils in Hell could come and play here on earth, they would, wouldn’t they? For the fun, if nothing else.’

  ‘Fun? You think that your kind are fun?’

  ‘I think we amuse you, sometimes. And I’m guessing that even Hell could become boring over eternity.’

  ‘You don’t know what eternity is,’ said Proserpine.

  ‘I know you see time differently to us. But I’m right, aren’t I? Most devils are supposed to be confined to Hell. You’re a Princess of Hell so you can come and go as you please, but most devils, they have to be summoned.’

  Proserpine stared at him for several seconds, her face a blank mask. ‘Tell me what you think you know.’

  ‘Three teenagers have been killed. One boy. Two girls. Butchered. And sigils were carved into their flesh. Three different sigils.’

  ‘You have them?’

  Nightingale nodded and he took out a sheet of paper on which he had drawn three sigils – the two that Wainwright had given him and the one that he had seen on Sara Moseby’s back. Proserpine held out a languid hand and Nightingale instinctively went to give them to her. At the last moment he realised what he was doing and he jerked back. Any contact with her would negate the protective circle. She smiled at his discomfort. ‘I’m hurt, Nightingale,’ she said. ‘Do you think I’d pull a cheap trick like that?’

  ‘I figured it’d be a scorpion thing. Your nature and all.’ He pointed at the first sigil. ‘This was a young man killed out in New Jersey.’

  Proserpine stared at the sigil with featureless unblinking eyes. ‘You are sure about this?’

  ‘I haven’t seen it myself, but I’m assured it’s accurate. You recognise it?’

  Proserpine nodded. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Do you mind sharing the information with me?’

  She looked at him, her face black. ‘Lilith. She’s a princess from Hell.’

  ‘So if she’s like you, why does she need to do this?’

  ‘I didn’t say she was like me, Nightingale. She’s nothing like me. I come and go as I please but then I have special privileges. Lilith doesn’t. If what you say is true, she is breaking her covenant.’

  Nightingale pointed at the sigil that had been carved into Kate Walker’s back. ‘This was the second one. It happened here in Manhattan, last week.’

  Proserpine studied it and nodded. ‘Xaphan. A second-order demon. He stokes the furnaces of Hell.’ She frowned. ‘If he has left Hades, there is a problem.’

  ‘A problem?’

  ‘With discipline. His place is there. And there is no way that he should have been summoned.’ She looked at the third sigil. ‘That’s not familiar,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know them all?’ asked Nightingale.

  Her jaw tightened. ‘I know them all, of course. Whoever did the drawing did it incorrectly.’

  Nightingale looked at it, frowning. ‘I copied it,’ he said. ‘I saw the real thing, in an autopsy room.’

  ‘Then you made a mistake when you drew it,’ she said. ‘Think carefully.’

  Nightingale stared at the drawing, then closed his eyes and tried to think back to what he’d seen in the autopsy room. He opened his eyes and pointed at the left side of the sigil. ‘You’re right, there was a curved bit here.’

  ‘Curving to the left or the right?’

  ‘To the left, with a barbed thing on the top. Like an upside down fishing hook.’

  For the first time Proserpine smiled. ‘Baalberith,’ she said. ‘An archivist. He also has no right being out. It looks as if you’re right, Nightingale. Something is happening. Something that most definitely should not be happening.’

  ‘Why the killings?’

  ‘As part of the ceremony for these demons to leave Hell and to walk the earth, there has to be a sacrifice. And their sigil has to be carved into the victim.’

  ‘By the demon?’

  Proserpine shook her head. ‘By whoever acts as the host. The demon has to be called by name. And at the time and date that is appropriate. Then a sacrifice has to be made. Only then can the demon pass over into this world.’

  ‘Is there any way you can check if these demons have left Hell?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And if they have, then someone must be organising things. Could that be a demon? A demon still in Hell?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘The only way they can get out is if they are summoned. There must be a facilitator, someone who is pulling the strings.’

  ‘Is there a pattern? Is there any link between the demons you’ve named?’

  ‘None that I can see at the moment,’ she said. ‘But it can’t be happening by accident. I don’t see three demons deciding independently to do this at the same time. Someone is behind it.’

  ‘What about this Lilith? The princess? Could it be her?’

  ‘It is possible, I suppose. But she isn’t the brightest or best. I can’t see that she could have come up with something like this.’

  ‘So how do we leave it?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Let me find out what’s going on. I’ll get back to you.’

  ‘I don’t need to summon you?’

  ‘I’ll find you, don’t worry. You’re still doing Wainwright’s bidding?’

  ‘I do the odd job for him, yes.’

  ‘He’s using you.’

  ‘It’s symbiosis. We help each other.’

  ‘What do you think you get from him?’

&n
bsp; ‘Protection,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘You think he can protect you?’

  ‘He’s done okay so far.’

  She smiled. ‘If it’s protection you want, you could work for me. I’d take care of you.’

  ‘You’d want my soul, Proserpine. I went to far too much trouble to get my soul back to squander it so easily.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to promise me your soul, Nightingale. Just promise to serve me.’

  ‘Become one of your minions?’

  ‘You say that as if it’s a bad thing,’ she said. ‘You’re already working for Wainwright. You do his bidding. And believe me when I tell you that he doesn’t have your best interests at heart.’

  ‘And you do?’

  ‘More than you know, Nightingale.’ Now say the words to release me.’

  ‘You’ll let me know what you find out?’

  ‘Just let me go, Nightingale. Before I lose my patience.’

  Nightingale raised his hands in the air to say the words that would allow her to leave. There was an ear-splitting crack, time and space folded in on itself, and she and the dog were gone.

  CHAPTER 37

  Nightingale took an Amtrak train from Penn Station to Philadelphia’s 30th Street station. It took just over an hour and he was outside the block where Dee-anne Jackson’s family lived at nine o’clock in the morning, sitting in the back of a cab. The driver was a Ukrainian and after a few minutes haggling had agreed to take Nightingale to and from the block and wait so long as Nightingale handed over fifty dollars every half an hour. The driver was a smoker so they passed the time listening to the radio and smoking.

  Dee-anne’s brother finally emerged at ten-thirty after Nightingale had paid a hundred and fifty dollars and was starting to wonder whether he should risk going up and knocking on the door. The teenager had headphones over the top of his baseball cap and was carrying a skateboard. Nightingale climbed out of the taxi and hurried across the road. ‘Hey, remember me?’ asked Nightingale.

  The teenager took off his headphones. ‘Say what?’

  ‘I said, do you remember me? I was at your apartment talking to your mum.’

  The boy squinted at him and then nodded. ‘The British private eye? Yeah. What’s up?’

  ‘I need your help. Look, I’m sorry but I didn’t get your name.’

  ‘Dwayne.’

  ‘Okay, Dwayne, I’m still looking for your sister. But to find her I’m going to need to have something of hers. Something personal, an item of clothing, something she’s touched.’

  ‘For DNA? CSI?’

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ said Nightingale, figuring that it was less trouble than explaining what he really wanted it for.

  ‘Why are you waiting here? Why didn’t you come up?’

  ‘Because I thought your father would just slam the door in my face.’

  ‘He’s not my father,’ snapped Dwayne.

  ‘Sorry, my bad,’ said Nightingale. ‘But you know what I mean, right? He’s not going to do anything to help me, is he? The way he was talking, he doesn’t want her back in the home.’

  Dwayne nodded. ‘He keeps calling her “the bitch”. I’m coming close to hitting him myself. Or worse.’

  ‘I’d advise against that, obviously,’ said Nightingale. ‘But maybe you should think about moving out?’

  ‘It’s on my list,’ said Dwayne. His cellphone buzzed and he took it out and checked a message. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, but can you do this for me. Just pop back upstairs and get me something of your sister’s?’

  The teenager looked at his phone again.

  ‘Please,’ said Nightingale. ‘She might need help.’

  Dwayne’s eyes narrowed. ‘If she needed help she’d call me.’

  ‘Her cellphones off,’ said Nightingale. ‘We tried calling her but it goes straight through to voicemail.’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’ He tapped the phone against his leg and then nodded. ‘Okay, wait here.’

  Dwayne headed back inside. Nightingale turned and gave his driver a thumbs up, then took out his cigarettes and lit one. He was half way through it when Dwayne returned. He handed Nightingale a white plastic case. Nightingale opened it. It was a retainer, for straightening teeth. ‘She’ll need that, if you find her,’ said Dwayne. ‘And when you find her, tell her to call me.’ He put his phone to his ear and pointed at Nightingale.

  ‘I will,’ promised Nightingale.

  Nightingale took the train back to Manhattan and spent the next hour buying the things he needed, including a white cotton robe, a large scale map and two white candles. He took his purchases back to the office where he showered and changed into the robe. He spread the map out on the floor. The map was double sided – one side showed the entire country, the other was a large scale and showed only New York state. He had the state map upwards. From the pocket of his raincoat he took a small brown leather bag. The bag was several hundred years old but the leather was supple and glossy and it glistened under the overhead fluorescent lights. He untied the leather thong that kept the bag closed and slid out a large pink crystal, about the size of a pigeon’s egg. It was attached to a fine silver chain. Nightingale lit the candles and placed them either side of the map. He knelt down on the floor and opened the retainer case. He put it at the bottom of the map, then sat back on his heels, closed his eyes and said a short prayer as he held the crystal pressed between his palms. When he had finished he opened his eyes and let the crystal swing free on its chain. He pictured a pale blue aura around himself as he took slow, deep breaths, then he slowly allowed the aura to spread out until it filled the room.

  He repeated her name as he held the crystal over the retainer. For a minute or two it remained motionless and then it began to slowly move in a small clockwise circle over the retainer. The movement was slight, much less than he was used to seeing with the crystal. He figured that was because Dee-anne wasn’t Dee-anne anymore. She was Lilith, a princess from Hell.

  He whispered a sentence in Latin, and imagined the blue aura entering the crystal, then he moved the crystal over the map. Almost immediately the circling slowed. He raised it higher so that it was above his head and the circling began again, but it was still a fraction of what he normally saw when he was trying to track somebody with the crystal. He lowered the crystal towards the east of the city and the circling slowed, then it quickened when he moved it westwards. North made it slow, south made it circle faster. His best guess was that she was somewhere in the south-west of the city. He put the crystal back into its leather bag. At least he knew she was still in Manhattan. But finding her wasn’t going to be easy.

  CHAPTER 38

  Cheryl Perez pulled the cork from the bottle of Chianti and sloshed it into a glass. She drank some and went through to her sitting room. She pulled open the drawer of a side table and took out the framed photograph of herself and Eric. It had been in the drawer for over a month – a new record. The photograph had been taken on New Years Eve three years earlier. They’d flown to Vegas for the weekend and seen in the New Year at a show in the MGM Grand. The casino’s logo was in the bottom right hand corner of the photograph. They were both a little drunk and they were holding hands either side of a champagne bucket that Perez was fairly sure contained their second bottle. Maybe their third. They had got so drunk that they had collapsed on the bed in their clothes and woken up the following morning still clothed and wrapped in each other’s arms. ‘You bastard, Eric,’ she whispered. ‘How could you leave me?’

  She took the photograph over to the dining table and stood it in the middle. She sat down, drank some wine and then picked up one of the two pencils there. She drew a cross on the page, dividing it into quarters. She wrote YES in the top right and bottom left quarters, then wrote NO in the top left and bottom right. She took another drink of wine, then smiled lop-sidedly at the photograph. ‘I know, I know, it’s stupid and my soul will burn in Hell, but I have to try, don’t I?’

  She
put the pencil on the paper, along the horizontal line. She picked up a second pencil and balanced it at a right angle on top of the first one. Then she sat back and drank more wine as she stared at the pencils. She put down the glass and linked her hands as if she was in prayer. ‘Charlie Charlie, can we play?’

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Charlie Charlie are you there? Charlie Charlie can we play?’

  Something cold blew against her back and she shuddered. She looked over her shoulder but there was nothing there. But the window behind her was open and the evening was getting chilly. Of course there’d be a draught. She drank her wine and stared at the photograph. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them again. ‘Eric, are you there?’ she said. As soon as the words left her mouth she felt ridiculous and even though she was alone her cheeks reddened with embarrassment.

  ‘This is stupid,’ she said, and raised her glass at the photograph. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’ She sipped her wine again. Her eyes were brimming with tears but she refused to cry. ‘Damn you, Eric. Damn you for leaving me, damn you for killing yourself.’

  She took another drink of wine, blinked away the tears and stared at the pencils. ‘Last chance, Eric. Are you there?’

  Nothing happened and she shook her head sadly, angry at herself for wasting her time. She was just about to stand up when the top pencil swung to the right so that the point was aimed at YES.

  CHAPTER 39