The Demi-Monde: Summer

by Rod Rees

  ‘We’re not. Lilith is a very powerful mage … maybe too powerful for us to take down. That’s why we need Vanka’s help.’

  ‘When are you planning to hold this séance of yours?’

  ‘Soon … as soon as I get back to the JAD.’

  The conversation faltered as Kondratieff sipped his coffee and Josephine lit another cigarette. It was Kondratieff who broke the silence.

  ‘Then if you think you have the beating of Doge IMmanual, why have you taken such a risk to come to speak with me?’

  ‘Jezebel Ethobaal asked me to deliver this. It’s a gift to thank you for the help you’ve given to the Code Noir.’ From her large canvas shoulder bag Josephine extracted a leather-bound book, which from the look of it was many hundreds of years old. ‘This, Nikolai, baby, is one of only five surviving copies of the Flagellum Hominum, more commonly monikered as—’

  ‘The Scourge of HumanKind. Yes, it’s one of the most famous of all relics from pre-Confinement history.’

  Famous certainly, and very, very rare. What Josephine Baker was holding in her hand was worth a small – correction, a large – fortune. By reputation it was a compendium of all Lilith’s wisdom regarding matters relating to the Spirit World, though of course, being written in the language of the Pre-Folk, until the discovery of the Column, no one had ever been able to translate it.

  ‘Jezebel said you’d dig its importance. She asked that you read the verse in the book relating to Loci’s Column. It’s a real nastygram. I’ve marked it with the slip of paper.’ With that she passed the book to Kondratieff, who took it reverently into his hands.

  The tome was as fragile as it looked and the pages brittle with age. Gently he opened it to the place marked. ‘It’s written in Pre-Folk A,’ he noted.

  ‘But you’re a real longhair when it comes to digging the Pre-Folk A inkings.’

  ‘A recent expert, Miss Baker: the language has only just been deciphered. Anyway, understanding is one thing, but fluency is quite another. To translate this will require time.’

  ‘Then I’ll give you the ten-centime tour. Thanks to Professeur de Nostredame’s unBabelising of Pre-Folk A, Jezebel has managed to decipher the contents of the book and the heavy-duty revelation is that the Column you have housed in the Galerie des Anciens has beaucoup de much occult significance.’

  ‘That we already know, Miss Baker. And the question which comes to my mind is “so what?”’

  ‘There’s a new face in town—’

  ‘Billy Thomas.’

  ‘Got it in one, daddyo. That cat’s a real piece of strange.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He’s a loose cannon and the feeling is that he ain’t the type of cat who’ll wanna play second banana to his sister. Our worry is if someone like Selim the Grim takes him under his wing he could become as big a threat as she is.’

  ‘You’re too late, Miss Baker, that’s already happened. Selim brought Duke William to the Galerie des Anciens this morning to view the Column.’

  ‘Shit. I should’ve known that Selim would be sniffing around … he’s one fly guy. The important thing is to keep Selim from getting control of the Column. According to the Flagellum, in the final struggle between the Messiah and the Beast whoever has control of the Column is gonna end up as top cat.’ Josephine allowed the waiter to refresh her coffee, to give him time, Kondratieff suspected, to absorb the import of what she was saying. ‘Jezebel has asked me to urge you to do everything in your power to prevent the Column falling into the hands of the badniks. You gotta know that if they succeed in tapping into the Column’s power, then it’s curtains for the good guys. It’ll be Lucifer who emerges triumphant from Ragnarok … Duke William.’

  Kondratieff gave a doleful shake of his head. ‘Dr Ethobaal flatters me if she thinks I am able to influence matters with regard to the Column. The Column is already in the hands of Doge IMmanual and she has already issued orders that it is to be moved to the Temple of Lilith.’

  Now that piece of information stopped Josephine Baker in mid-puff. ‘That’s beaucoup de bad news. Is there anything you can do to prevent that going down? If the Column gets to the Temple then we’ll all be hurtin’ for certain.’

  Kondratieff shook his head. Since his meeting with de Sade that morning he had thought long and hard about the Column and had come to the conclusion that the order he had been given to transport it to the Temple presented him with a unique opportunity to destroy Doge IMmanual’s poisonous brother … and, en passant, to give him the chance of destroying Heydrich and UnFunDaMentalism.

  For a moment he resisted the temptation to share his plan with Josephine Baker. Having made a quick calculation of the risks and benefits of confiding in her, he had come to the hard-headed decision that as the probability of her being captured by the Signori di Notte was well over fifty per cent – she was much too noticeable for it to be otherwise – it would be imprudent for him to reveal his intentions to her. But as the girl had risked her life to meet with him, for once in his life Kondratieff decided to cast caution to the wind. He leaned closer.

  ‘Very well, Miss Baker. Let us assume that you and your fellow WhoDooists are successful in stripping Lilith of her powers, then it will only remain for us to dispose of Duke William and to position the Column atop of the Great Pyramid.’

  ‘Sounds easy if you say it quick.’

  ‘Indeed … but I have a plan,’ and for the next five minutes Kondratieff explained what he was intending to do.

  When he had finished, Josephine Baker sat back in her chair and whistled. ‘That’s a real ballsy play, Nikolai, and you dig that for you it’s a one-way ticket to endsville?’

  ‘I know …’ Kondratieff trailed off. Josephine Baker had verbalised that which he had so desperately tried not to think about … that to destroy Duke William he would have to sacrifice his own life.

  For several moments the pair of them sat in an uncomfortable silence. Then Josephine Baker took Kondratieff’s hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. ‘Let me thank you on behalf of the Code Noir and the people of the Demi-Monde for what you are intending to do, Nikolai. It takes a steamer-load of moxy to go up against the Beast.’ She checked her watch. ‘I better be going. Knowing what I know now I can’t take any chances of been picked up by the badniks. Shit, I still can’t believe that you’re serious.’

  ‘Oh, I’m very serious, Miss Baker, but before you go I need you to do me a service. I want you to stand up from this table, slap me and then storm out of the café.’

  ‘You’re kidding me!’

  ‘No, I’m not!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’ll be my insurance policy if we have been spotted together.’

  With a nod of understanding Josephine Baker stood up, moving so quickly that she knocked her chair over. Then she glowered down at Kondratieff. ‘Man, you’re one big disappointment, Nikolai,’ she announced in a loud voice. ‘I thought you were a stand-up guy, but now I see that when the heat is on, I’ve gotta number you amongst the missing. Pardon me while I commune with the cobbles.’ With that she slapped him hard around the cheek then flounced out of the café, not even pausing to secure her veil around her face.

  Even Kondratieff wasn’t sure if she had been play-acting.

  19

  The NoirVille Hub

  The Demi-Monde: 10th Day of Summer, 1005

  Twins have a special place in preConfinement mythology, being seen as the embodiment of the duality of the Kosmos, or, as Confusionists would have it, of Yin and Yang. Folk mythology contends that twins are conceived only by a woman who has had coitus with a Daemon and hence twins are supposedly blessed/cursed with supernatural powers and abilities. That Lilith had a twin brother, Lucifer, has only added weight to the widely held superstition that the birth of boy/girl twins is especially portentous: such twins are generally thought to embody the good and the evil of the Kosmos.

  Myths and Legends of the Demi-Monde: James Sallusius, ForthRight Books and Periodicals

/>   ‘Behold, Your Grace … the Temple of Lilith!’

  Billy Thomas braced himself against the sway of the Bucintoro as the Captain brought the ship alongside the stone jetty and then looked to where de Sade was pointing. Thankfully, the rain had eased a little so he could see, maybe a mile or so inland from the river, at the end of an arrow-straight road, a huge – make that a fucking huge – temple standing alone and majestic slap-bang in the centre of the grassland the Dupes called ‘the Hub’. It looked like one of those temples they had in movies like The Lord of the Rings, all columns and statues and shit, though he couldn’t ever remember any of them glowing green in the sunlight. Well, not so much glowing as shining: the Temple looked perfect and perfectly clean, which, he guessed, wasn’t surprising given the army of people de Sade had had scrubbing and polishing it.

  Still, it was a weird building to see rising out of the grass prairie, but then everything in the Demi-Monde was weird to the max. Especially his sister. Yeah, in his opinion, Ella was taking all this Doge IMmanual shit too fucking seriously by half.

  ‘This, my Prince,’ de Sade prattled on, ‘is the centre of all power in the Demi-Monde. This is where Lilith – the greatest mage ever to walk the Nine Worlds – conducted her rites.’

  As he stood listening to this crap, Billy found it difficult to keep a straight face. But that was the deal he had cut with Bole: to enter the Demi-Monde and make like he believed all this Lilith baloney his sister and her main man, de Sade, were laying down. Humour them. And for a million bucks he was willing to do most anything, even stand on the deck of a ship dressed like Gandalf’s gay brother in a golden robe (now that was a picture he sure didn’t want posted on Facebook; the KY cru would be sniffing around him in no time flat) surrounded by sixty almost naked bitches and being told by de Sade that he was gonna be taking part in the Ceremony of the Leaping or some such heavy-duty bullshit. What made things worse, he hated the fucking crown he had planted on his head. Bling was one thing but this made him feel like a total prick. But Ella had insisted, and whatever Ella wanted, Ella got. She was the big enchilada in the Demi-Monde.

  Yeah, all this religious crap was getting right up his ass.

  There were compensations. He was living large and now that Selim had hooked him up to a regular supply of Dizzi he could go through life with everything sunny. Then there were these really toned priestesses de Sade had brought along for the ride to the Temple and as he had discovered, fucking a Dupe was just as much fun as fucking a Real Worlder. And with him being a Duke and the brother of Doge IMmanual, every one of these priestess honeys was more than willing to frolic and fuck.

  Yeah, role-playing a Duke was kinda cool in a screwed-up, offbeat sorta way and with all this ImPuritan shit the girls in Venice believed in, since he’d arrived in the Demi-Monde he’d been laid all ways and sideways.

  ‘It is truly magnificent, is it not, Your Grace?’ murmured de Sade.

  For a moment Billy wasn’t sure if he was talking about the Temple or the really stacked Shade priestess with the tight ass he’d be putting the moves on later. It was difficult to tell with de Sade. When it came to women, de Sade was as down and dirty as Billy, but at the same time he came on like he really believed all this IMmanualism shit.

  ‘The Temple? Yeah, man, it’s banging. Real awesome.’

  ‘Are you ready to attend the Ceremony of the Leaping?’

  Billy tore his gaze away from the girl. He had no doubt whose bones he’d like to be leaping right now, but the problem with being, like, a main man in Ella’s little fantasy world was that he couldn’t just stand there checking out the talent and trying to decide which one he’d like to fuck next. No, he had to look real serious and religious and shit which was difficult with sixty naked girls parading around him. He felt like a kid let loose in a candy store.

  ‘Yeah,’ he murmured as the priestesses began to disembark. ‘I’m cool.’

  Despite his professed insouciance, it was a very reluctant Billy who followed de Sade into the Temple. The Demi-Monde might be a very trippy place, but as trippy places went, the Temple of Lilith was up there in a class of uno.

  Fuck, it was scary. Big – nah, cancel big and substitute fucking enormous – and empty. In fact, it was so big and so empty that every sound ricocheted off the walls and ceiling in a really spooky way, the slap of his sandals on the stone floor reverberating around the immense hall that opened before him. It even stank scary, having that musty, dusty smell you could taste, the sort of smell that lodged at the back of your throat as though it was intent on choking you.

  ‘The roof of the Temple is remarkable, is it not, Your Grace?’

  Looking up, Billy had to admit de Sade had a point. The roof seemed to have been made from glass, though this PINC gizmo Bole had shoved into his head was telling him it was actually one unbroken and unbreakable sheet of transparent Mantle-ite – MantlePlex – which stretched the full length and width of the Temple and which allowed sunlight to stream in, making it as bright inside as it had been in the open air.

  The problem Billy had was that as the light struck the MantlePlex roof, it caused images to be cast around the Temple – images of snakes – so wherever he looked, he saw the fucking things wriggling and squirming around the floor and the walls. Snakes like the ones he had embroidered on his robes. All this IMmanualism crap Sis kept mouthing off about seemed to be really big on snakes.

  The Temple gave him the jumps.

  De Sade seemed to sense his concern. ‘Don’t be afraid, Your Grace, there is nothing to be frightened of.’

  Billy bridled. ‘Yo’ dissing me, bro? Yo’ saying that I’m a coward? This is Billy Thomas yo’ talking to, and Billy Thomas ain’t scared of nuffing.’

  Obviously shocked by the boy’s reaction, de Sade gabbled an apology. ‘I am sorry, Your Grace, I did not mean to imply—’

  ‘Okay, I’m good. But just remember that Billy Thomas ain’t no bitch.’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace,’ and a nervous de Sade bustled Billy up to a huge slab of red stone.

  ‘This, Your Grace, is the Altar of Lilith, once the most sacred place in the whole of the Demi-Monde.’

  ‘Yeah, great.’

  ‘It is indeed “great”, Your Grace,’ agreed de Sade, obviously not hip to Billy’s indifference. ‘Unfortunately, the Altar is incomplete: the Column that once stood to its side on that hexagonal base,’ and here he pointed to the six-sided platform a couple of yards behind the stone slab, ‘is missing. But now the Column has been discovered. It was the one we visited in the Galerie des Anciens …’

  Yeah, and what a drag of a day that had been. Billy fucking hated museums.

  ‘… and once it is returned to its rightful resting place, the Temple will be reborn.’

  De Sade’s explanation was interrupted when a trumpet note echoed through the Temple. ‘The Ceremony of the Leaping is about to commence, Your Grace. If you would come this way?’

  The courtyard that de Sade led Billy into was vast, but what really caught his attention was that there seemed to be some form of athletics contest taking place there.

  ‘This is the Ceremony of the Leaping,’ explained de Sade. ‘It is an ancient tradition performed on the tenth day of Summer, a tradition last performed when the Demi-Monde was young. It is a ceremony in which the priestesses demonstrate their prowess by pitting their strength and agility against one of the most fearsome of all creatures, the aurochs.’

  Billy felt PINC telling him that the aurochs was a huge species of wild bull – extinct in the Real World – that had been one of the most dangerous creatures ever to roam the earth. In fact, looking across to the far side of the Temple, he decided he didn’t need PINC to tell him that, he could see for himself.

  At one end of the courtyard a group of men were attempting to control what looked like an oversized bull. The animal was fucking immense. It had a shoulder height of way over eight feet with a huge head that sported a pair of long and savagely sharp horns. Jet black in co
lour – except for a white stripe running down its spine – the beast looked big and powerful and really, really pissed, tossing its head around and bellowing like billy-o as steam rose from its flanks. Instinctively Billy edged back: if that mother went on the rampage, it would crush and gore a lot of people before it was grounded and he wasn’t of a mind to be one of them.

  The aurochs was such a handful that it was giving the guys trying to keep hold of the ropes they had tied around its neck one hell of a time; it needed ten of them to stop the thing stampeding free. As best Billy could make out, the bull handlers were trying to manoeuvre it towards a long, narrow corridor, the sides of which had been built from six-foot-high tree trunks. Thick tree trunks: they did, after all, have to contain two tons of angry bovine. The corridor – runway more like – ran straight as a rule for the one hundred yards that stretched from one side of the courtyard to the other, but what its purpose was, Billy had no idea. It wasn’t long before he found out.

  After a lot of prodding with spears the handlers managed to edge the aurochs into the runway, where the evil-tempered bastard stood pawing the ground and giving off some seriously bad vibes.

  Immediately this had been done, there was another blast of the trumpet and a very tall girl – a black like Billy – who was naked apart from a half-mask walked towards the end of the runway opposite to the one where the aurochs was making waves. She was an imperious-looking piece who moved like a dancer.

  Nice.

  A priestess bowed to the girl and then opened a gate giving access to the runway, girl and aurochs now facing each other along the length of the wooden corridor. Immediately it saw the girl, the bull’s attitude changed: whereas before it had been kicking up one hell of a ho-ha, now it quietened, eyeing the girl ominously, its breath coming in short sharp pants. It might have been quieter, but the beast seemed all the more dangerous because of it. All the aurochs’s anger was now focused on the girl.

  Again the trumpet sounded, there were shouts from the handlers, the tethers were released and with a great roar the huge bull hurled itself towards the girl. The power of the aurochs was incredible; it charged down the runway like an express train, shaking the ground as it ran. Even standing fifty yards away, Billy could feel the vibrations shuddering up through the soles of his feet and could smell the hatred the bull gave off.