Daemons Are Forever sh-2

by Simon R. Green

  “You demons are so full of yourselves,” said Molly. “If you’re going to tell us, tell us.”

  “As you wish, dear little indentured soul. Go you now to the Café Night, and someone there will tell you exactly where to find dear Mr. Stab.”

  He was still laughing loudly when we left, a horrible, dirty, disturbing sound, even though the attendants shocked him again and again with cattle prods to try to shut him up.

  And so by Merlin’s Glass we went straight to Café Night, a deliberately dark and gloomy establishment tucked away in a corner of Kensington you can’t get to without trying really hard. From the outside, the café looked like just another coffeehouse, a place for suburban mums to sit down after a hard day’s shopping and catch up on the latest gossip…but that was just a simple glamour, with an attached Move along, nothing to see here spell, to keep the uninformed from entering. Café Night has a strict entrance code, and nonmembers enter strictly at their own risk. The place started out as meeting place for vampires and those foolish romantic types who longed to be their victims. It was called Renfields back then. These days the Café Night catered to the kind of immortals whose presence wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else.

  I kicked the door open and strode in like I was there to condemn the place on moral health grounds. The café was distinctly gloomy, with artfully arranged track lighting to keep it that way while still allowing you to see who or what you were talking to. The background music drifted from the Cure to the Mission to Gregorian chants, and the air was perfumed with the sickly reek of rotting lilies. Café Night was big on atmosphere.

  Shadowy faces glared at me from every table, but nobody moved and nobody said anything, because I’d taken the precaution of armouring up before I crashed my way in. No one here would say a word to a small-time operator like Shaman Bond, so it was time to be Eddie Drood again and command respect the hard way. My silver armour might not be as familiar yet as the golden, but it still marked me for who and what I was, and what I might do if I didn’t get the answers I wanted. So all the various immortals, dark and dangerous creatures in their own right, were quite happy to just sit still, keep their heads down, and hope I’d pick on someone else.

  A few did get up to leave, heading for the rear door the moment I entered. But I’d already sent Molly around the back, and the fleeing immortals stopped dead in their tracks as they found Molly lounging threateningly at the rear door. The immortals retired sullenly to their seats, and Molly came forward into the café to smile at me. Everywhere, cold eyes moved quickly from me to Molly and back again, but still no one had anything to say. They hadn’t lived for so very long without learning to keep their mouths shut until they knew what was happening.

  I studied the various faces unhurriedly from behind my featureless silver mask (there’s something about the lack of eyeholes that really freaks people out), and finally settled on the few major players present. The only ones who might admit to knowing Mr. Stab, and where he might currently be found. They weren’t exactly top drawer, any of them. An elf lord in delicate filigreed brass armour, chased and etched with protective spells in old elvish. A monk in a tattered red robe, with a face so lined it was almost impossible to make out his features, marked as significant only by the Sumerian amulet around his neck. A couple of Baron Frankenstein’s more successful creations, dressed in black leather from head to toe, to hide their many scars. And a painfully thin presence in a grubby T-shirt and faded jeans who I only knew by reputation, the Hungry Heart. He had a plate full of steaming raw meat set out before him, and he was cramming it down as fast as he could shove it into his mouth. Blood dripped down his working chin, unnoticed.

  Proof, if proof be needed, that immortality isn’t everything.

  The elf lord looked vaguely familiar, so I started with him. He sneered openly as I strolled over to his table, disdain written all over his arrogant, high-boned features. He made no move to get up or reach for a weapon, but even sitting still with both empty hands resting on the tabletop, he was still the most dangerous thing in the café, and both of us knew it.

  “I know you,” I said. “Where do I know you from, elf lord?”

  “I was there,” he said in his sweet, sick, magical voice. “Leading the attack on you, in our ambush on the motorway. After your own family betrayed you to us. We came at you on our dragon mounts, singing our battle songs, with our brave new weapons. We had you outnumbered, we had our arrows of strange matter, and still you triumphed. Elf lords and ladies of ancient lineage, friends and family I had known for centuries, all fell beneath the thunder of your terrible gun. I am the only survivor of that day, but rest assured, foul and cursed Drood…the Unseeli Court does not forgive or forget.”

  “Good,” I said. “Neither do I.”

  “We shall be at your throat all the days of your life!”

  “Of course you will,” I said. “You’re an elf.”

  And then I turned my back on him, and ignored him. Knowing that would piss him off the most. There was no point in questioning an elf. He’d cut his own tongue out before taking the risk he might say anything that would help me. I looked thoughtfully at the monk in the scarlet robe, and he straightened self-consciously under my silver gaze.

  “Know, O mortal,” he said, in a surprisingly rich, deep, and commanding voice, “that I am Melmoth the Wanderer, that original lost soul upon whom the legend is based. Long have I wandered, across all the world, through lands and peoples whose very names are now forgotten.”

  And then he stopped, because everyone else in the café was laughing at him. I couldn’t really blame them. I’d already met a dozen Melmoths in my time, all claiming to be the original, along with as many Draculas, Fausts, and Count St. Germaines. Even immortals have their wannabes. I leaned in close for a better look at the Sumerian amulet, and the monk flinched back in his chair. Up close, the thing was clearly a fake, and I turned my back on the monk too, and looked at the Frankenstein monsters.

  They were both tall and on the large size, but they could still have just about passed as human, as long as they kept well wrapped up. Here at the Café Night, among their own kind, they didn’t bother, and their black leather motorcycle jackets hung brazenly open, revealing long Y-shaped autopsy scars on their torsos. One had started out as male, and one as female, but such subtle distinctions had not survived their surgical rebirth. They were monsters, with nothing human in their faces or thoughts. Their faces were gray, their lips black, their eyes yellow as urine, the eyelids drooping slackly away from dry eyeballs. Long rows of stitches showed on their foreheads, where the baron had sawed open their skulls before dropping new brains in. Unlike everyone else in the café, these two weren’t scared of me, or even impressed. They had left such emotions behind them, in the grave. Their thoughts and their hearts were cold, and they didn’t care about anything I might threaten to do to them, because the worst possible thing had already been done to them. No point in asking them anything.

  That just left the Hungry Heart, sitting alone at his table, set well aside from everyone else, because some things are just too disturbing, even for an immortal. A man so thin he was hardly there, but driven by a terrible energy. He looked up at Molly and me as we approached his table, but kept on stuffing his face with the raw meat, chewing desperately, even pushing pieces back into his mouth with his long, bony fingers. He managed a sort of smile, and blood trickled down his chin.

  I knew his story. Everyone did. It’s one of the great cautionary tales of our time, the gist of which is: never piss off a voodoo priest with a mean sense of humour. The Hungry Heart lives forever in the grip of an unrelenting hunger, never satisfied, and he can only survive by eating his own body weight in flesh every twenty-four hours. He has to dope himself heavily just to get a few hours of sleep, every now and again. So, never sleep with a voodoo priest’s daughter, never get her pregnant and then abandon her, and never do a runner afterwards, thinking fleeing halfway across the world will put you out of the voodoo pri
est’s reach.

  Good thing he wasn’t a vegetarian, I suppose. That would have been really terrible.

  No one knows how old the Hungry Heart is. Or how long the poor bastard might live. Depends on his strength of will, I suppose. He finished the last scrap of raw meat on his plate, licked his bloody fingers, looked sadly at the empty plate, and only then looked at me and Molly.

  “Any meat will do,” he said, in a surprisingly soft and ordinary voice. “As long as it’s raw. Human flesh is the best. It’s like a drug…Got a real kick to it. Wonder how much of a jolt I’d get…from eating a Drood?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Tinned meat isn’t on the menu today.”

  “What do you want here?” said the Hungry Heart, all the tiredness of the world in his voice. “No one here wants any trouble. We all have enough of our own. All we want is to nurse our wounds in private, among our own kind.”

  “Just looking for a little information,” Molly said breezily. “We’re trying to locate Mr. Stab, and we’ve been given to understand that he frequents this place.”

  “Now that really is an insult,” said the elf lord, rising gracefully to his feet, a slender, shimmering dagger in his hand. “As if even we would tolerate such an abomination as Mr. Stab in our select little circle. We do have our standards.”

  “Yes,” said the monk, rising to his feet, pulling back the sleeves of his crimson robe to reveal arms corded with muscle. “You come in here and insult us to our faces? Associate us with the likes of Mr. Stab? There’s a limit to the abuse even we will take.”

  The Frankenstein monsters were on their feet too, looking even larger and more imposing. And the Hungry Heart sighed, pushed his empty plate to one side, and rose to his feet.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “Anyone here got a can opener?”

  “I might have,” said the monk. He produced a short knife from under his robe. “This is the blade that cut Judas Iscariot down from the tree where he hanged himself, in Haceldama, the Field of Blood. Legend has it this blade can cut through anything. Maybe even Drood armour.”

  He lunged forward incredibly quickly for one so old. The dagger slammed into my side, skidded across the silver armour in a flurry of sparks, and continued on, leaving my armour entirely undamaged. The monk staggered forward, caught off balance, and I hit him in the head. The whole left side of his face flattened, bone crunching and splintering, but he didn’t fall. He raised the knife to cut at me again, so I grabbed his head with both silver hands and turned it all the way around, so that he was looking backwards. His neck broke loudly, but he still didn’t fall. I pushed him away, and he staggered off around the café, lost and bewildered.

  By now everyone else in the café had run for the doors, not wanting to tangle with a Drood in full armour, and I was happy enough to see them go. They would only have got in the way. The two Frankenstein creatures had closed in on Molly, reaching out for her with their large, mismatched hands. Molly laughed in their ugly faces, and hit them with a simple spell that made all their stitches come undone at once. The two monsters cried out in harsh, hopeless voices as ancient cat gut exploded like rows of firecrackers in their skin, undoing them like zippers. They fell apart, bit by bit, their separate pieces pattering to the floor, slowly at first and then in a rush. Hands fell from arms, arms from elbows and then from shoulders. Legs collapsed. Torsos hit the floor hard and opened up, spilling long-dead preserved organs onto the floor. The heads were the last to go, features slipping one by one from the faces, until finally the skulls cracked open and the dry, gray brains fell out.

  By then I had my own problems. The elf lord was closing in on me, smiling his nasty, superior smile. He waved his long, shimmering dagger meaningfully before me, and I knew what it was, what it had to be. The blade was made of strange matter, presumably put together from bits left over after the forging of the silver arrows that so nearly killed me in the motorway ambush. Could a blade of strange matter cut through armour made of strange matter? I decided I didn’t want to find out. I concentrated, and the armour around my hands extended into long silver killing blades. Just like my Uncle James taught me, when he was trying to kill me.

  The elf lord and I circled each other slowly, taking our time, looking for weaknesses in stance and style, for hesitations and openings. Finally we darted in and out, cutting at each other with gleaming blades, come and gone in a moment. The armour made me supernaturally strong and fast, but he was an elf, so we were fairly matched. And for all my family’s extensive training, he had centuries of experience, so he struck the first blow. His dagger came flying in out of nowhere, slipped gracefully past my defence, and slammed into my ribs. I cried out despite myself, but when the blade met my armour, the armour just absorbed the blade into itself. The elf lord was left standing there with only a knife hilt in his hand.

  I ran him through. You get a chance with an elf, you take it. You might not get another. My hand slammed against his chest, my extended blade splitting his heart in two. He grabbed my arm with both hands, as though that might hold him up. I twisted the blade, and he fell down and died.

  I retracted the silver blades into my hands, flexed my shining fingers, and looked around to see how Molly was doing. She was staring disgustedly at the Hungry Heart, who was squatting over the disassembled Frankenstein creatures, feasting on their ancient flesh. He looked up and smiled apologetically.

  “Tastes like dust, but flesh is flesh and beggars can’t be choosers. If you really must find Mr. Stab, and I can’t think of any good reason why you’d want to… I suggest you try the old Woolwich Cemetery.”

  “What would he be doing there?” said Molly.

  “You ask him,” said the Hungry Heart. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  The Merlin Glass transported us instantly to a gloomy, overgrown, and deserted cemetery in Woolwich Arsenal, down in the dark heart of the East End, on the far side of the Thames. The cemetery was dominated by Victorian styles, with oversized tombs and mausoleums, and fancy graves. That whole period was fascinated with death and all its trappings, and the graveyard was positively littered with statues of weeping angels, mourning cherubs, and enough morbid carvings and engravings to make even an undertaker shout Jesus! Get a life, dammit! Long exposure to the elements had scoured away the angels’ faces, giving the statues a sour, surrealistic look. The cherubs still looked like dead babies, though. In fact, I think that was the name of a cartoon series I saw as a kid: Casper the Dead Baby.

  Molly and I set off down the single gravel path, heading deeper into the extensive cemetery grounds. The place looked abandoned. The grass had been left to grow and there were weeds everywhere, even pushing thick tufts up though the gravel path. There were no flowers on any of the graves, and the headstones were so weathered it was hard to make out the inscriptions. A cold wind was blowing, light was fading as evening descended, and shadows were creeping everywhere.

  “I like this place,” said Molly.

  “You would,” I said.

  “No, really; it’s…restful. Modern cemeteries are far too busy for my tastes. Once I’m gone, I don’t want to be bothered with visitors or flowers. Just bury me deep, set up perimeter mines to discourage the body snatchers, and let me rest easy till Judgement Day. I’m going to need the peace and quiet to think up some good excuses.”

  “All Droods get cremated,” I said. “Just to make sure none of our enemies can play unpleasant tricks with our remains.”

  “Maybe you could have your ashes shot into outer space, like Timothy Leary,” said Molly.

  I had to smile. “Anything, to get away from my family.”

  “I don’t see Mr. Stab anywhere,” said Molly. “And I don’t see what he would be doing in a place like this anyway.”

  “We’re not that far from his original killing grounds,” I said. “Back when he first made a name for himself, in 1888.”

  “Maybe some of his victims are buried here.”

  “Somehow, I don’t see Mr. Stab as the sentiment
al kind,” I said. “And anyway, from what I’ve been able to make out on these tombstones, most of them date from long before Jack the Ripper.”

  We walked up and down and back and forth in the cemetery, and still no sign anywhere of Mr. Stab. Given the sheer size and scale of the cemetery grounds, it would take hours to cover it all, and besides, I was getting impatient. And cold. I’d dropped my armour when I left Café Night, but now I subvocalised the Words, and called up just enough of my armour to cover my face. With a little concentration, I can see infrared though the mask, and it didn’t take me long to locate the only other human heat source in the darkening graveyard. I armoured down again, rather than risk putting Mr. Stab on the defensive, and led the way over to where he was standing, doing my best to appear calm and unthreatening and not in any way worried. He doesn’t like it when people he’s trying to have a conversation with are clearly scared shitless of him. In fact, for an immortal serial killer, Mr. Stab could be quite remarkably touchy.

  He was dressed in the formal clothes of his original period, all stark black and white, with a top hat and even an opera cloak. When stalking his victims he could blend in just like anyone else, but when he was off duty, so to speak, he preferred the clothes he was most comfortable with. He was a tall and powerful man, with broad shoulders and long arms. He had a broad, paternal face, like a kindly old family doctor…until you looked into his eyes. And saw all the horrors of Hell looking back at you.

  He turned slowly to face us as we drew nearer. “Molly,” he said. “How nice. And Edwin Drood, again. An honour.”

  “What are you doing in a place like this?” said Molly, blunt as ever.

  “Just…visiting,” said Mr. Stab. He smiled vaguely, showing large, blocky teeth grown brown with age. He gestured at the graves around him. “Once this was a fashionable place, with people just dying to get in. Special trains brought the fortunate deceased here from all over the country. Long ago now, and no one remembers anymore. Except me. I have friends and family here, people who knew me when I was just a man. The last people to remember me as I was, before I became a name to frighten people with.”