by Peter McLean
No five year-old kid had ever sounded like that.
I tried to fight it but astral bodies aren’t physical and my size and relative strength made no difference whatsoever. Astrally, this dead little kid was a lot stronger than I was. Or whatever was pretending to be this dead little kid, anyway. I still didn’t believe this really was Danny McRoth’s grandson, but at that precise moment it was a bit fucking academic. Whatever this horror was, it was choking the life out of me and I had no Burned Man to help me.
I spun helplessly in the air, the apparition now on top of me. In my astral form I had no actual throat, of course, and no need to breathe anyway, but that didn’t seem to matter. It was all just symbolism and it was killing me one way or another, I was all too aware of that. I couldn’t banish it – on the astral plane we were both spirits, so where would I have banished it to?
I did the only thing I could think of.
I pulled on my silver cord and dived for my body. The ghost and I both plummeted through the roof of the house. I could see myself thrashing helplessly on the bed, my mouth locked open in what looked like a silent shriek of agony. Menhit was still bent over me, holding my head with one hand while Trixie and Mazin held me down between them. Did I really want to go back into that body? No, I really didn’t, but the child was clawing at me now, spitting with murderous hatred, and I knew it was only a matter of minutes before it finished me. Fuck it, I didn’t have any choice. I’d just have to.
I dropped back into my body and the agony hit me like a freight train. I was suddenly staring up into Menhit’s broad, flat face, her pitiless eyes looking down at me. It felt like every bone in my body was being stretched until it cracked and split, the joints screaming and tearing. My back arched and one foot came free of Mazin’s grip. I kicked him full in the face, unable to stop myself. Trixie threw herself across me and pinned me to the bed. Something tore in my back and my vision greyed out with pain. I screamed like an animal being butchered alive.
I didn’t know where the ghostly child had gone and I didn’t care. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand it, simple as that.
Whatever Menhit’s brand of primitive healing was, she was going to end up killing me at this rate. My eyes were actually bulging in my head, the pain was so excruciating. I bit into my tongue and my mouth filled with hot blood, choking me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I could hear the Burned Man howling. I’d never heard that before.
That’s how bad it was.
I blubbered and sobbed, bloody spittle frothing on my lips and tears streaming down my cheeks. I pissed myself, and I screamed until my throat bled.
And suddenly it stopped.
Menhit lifted her hand from my forehead and straightened up, and I collapsed onto my back, gasping and sobbing. Trixie got off me and went to see to Mazin who was nursing a nosebleed from where I had kicked him. I gradually got my breathing under control and did a mental damage assessment. Now that the agony had stopped I actually seemed to be in pretty fair shape, all things considered. My bones had stopped aching at least, and my stomach wasn’t cramping any more. The fever had gone too, and if anything I was feeling a bit chilly lying there in nothing but my piss-sodden boxers. I had a suspicion I’d just gone through a month’s worth of withdrawal compressed into a handful of minutes. I didn’t actually know how long it had been since she started but it couldn’t have been more than a quarter of an hour at the most.
“The poison has worked its way out of his system now,” Menhit said.
“Thank you, Mother,” Trixie said.
She left Mazin holding a handkerchief to his face and stood to give Menhit a short bow. I blinked and shuffled backwards out of the soggy patch until I was sitting up against the pillows.
“Yeah,” I croaked, trying to work some bloody spit around my mouth. “Thank you. Mother, I mean.”
Menhit nodded.
“Be more careful in future, my Keeper,” she said. “I should hate to find you had been poisoned again.”
She hadn’t said anything about it but there was something in her tone, something in the flash of her eye, that made me suspect that perhaps she hadn’t fallen for Trixie and Mazin’s carefully phrased explanation after all. I wondered if the healing had really needed to hurt as much as it had, or if that had been her idea of teaching me a lesson. I didn’t know but it wouldn’t have surprised me one little bit.
Menhit was no one’s fool, after all.
“I understand, Mother,” I said, and she gave me a cold smile that made me shudder.
Oh yeah, we understood each other, didn’t we? That smile said that if I went back on the smack she would fucking crucify me. Literally, I imagined.
I sighed and looked at Mazin.
“Sorry about that, mate,” I said. “I wasn’t myself for a bit there, I’m afraid.”
“There is no need to apologize, Lord Keeper,” Mazin said, wiping his nose again with the bloody hanky. “I am just glad to see you returned to us.”
I nodded. I was fucking glad to be returned to the civilized world, I have to say. I’d done smack before, when the Burned Man was training me, but these last six months had been my first real exposure to the proper junkie lifestyle. It was utter shit, believe you me.
Never again, I told myself, and I meant it.
The best thing, the most wonderful thing, was that I didn’t even want to. Menhit must have done more than just rush me through withdrawal, as I knew damn well that a lot of junkies kept relapsing however many times they went cold turkey. The need never really went away, so I gathered, except it seemed like mine had. I can quite honestly say that if Mazin had put a bag of gear and a set of works in front of me right then I’d have thrown it at him. That’s what a goddess can do when she wants to. I just hoped that it was going to last.
It was going to last, I promised myself. Never again. Now I’m not always great at keeping promises, I’ll grant you, but I meant this one.
I sighed. That meant I had no fucking excuses now though, didn’t it?
Menhit had cured me. She had taken away my addiction in a few short minutes of blinding agony, and in doing so she had taken away my last hiding place. Without the drugs to hide behind any more there I was, exposed in all my pitiful cowardice and weakness. With nowhere left to hide, I had no option but to face myself.
I knew I had to face up to what I had done, stop wallowing in self-pity and take some responsibility for once.
Whichever way I looked at it, it was time to start putting my life in order.
* * *
They let me go and have a lovely long shower after that, and generally clean myself up a bit. I still had the fucking awful beard and straggly long hair I’d grown while I was living like a feral animal but at least now it was a clean fucking awful beard. That was something, I supposed. I rubbed my hair with a towel and wrapped another one around my waist and was about to leave the bathroom when I realized I could hear raised voices coming from the bedroom.
“…possibly let this happen?” Menhit was demanding.
“…apologize, Mother,” I heard Trixie replying, only catching snatches through the closed door. “…a disagreement. I left the Keeper’s side in a moment of anger… bound me away from him with an amulet… last half year to find him and… bindings broken but–”
“I don’t care about your disagreement!” Menhit interrupted her, shouting now. “My Keeper, reduced to a crawling wretch enslaved to chemical poisons? What sort of Guardian are you, to allow this?”
There was a sharp crack. I winced as I realized Menhit had just hit Trixie. I wanted to storm in there but really, what the fuck could I do? This was like my mum and dad all over again, but my dad had only been an abusive cunt of an alcoholic. Menhit was a goddess for fucksake, a really bloody dangerous one. I hid in the bathroom and felt nine years old all over again, ashamed and scared and wanting to help my mum and knowing damn well there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
�
�This will never happen again, do you understand me?” Menhit raged.
“Yes, Mother.”
That was Trixie, obviously, and she sounded cowed. She sounded the same way she had when Adam had been bullying her, come to that. I remembered the way that arsehole had pushed her around, and that made my hands curl into fists. I wasn’t nine years old any more. I was a grown man and a magician and I wasn’t fucking having it. Not all over again I wasn’t, goddess or no goddess. It didn’t matter how scared I was of Menhit – I owed it to Trixie, and most of all I owed it to my poor mum.
All the same, I’d have to be bloody careful about this.
I opened the bathroom door and strolled into the bedroom like I hadn’t heard any of it. Trixie was just getting up off the floor from where Menhit had obviously knocked her down, but I made myself pretend not to notice that. I pretended not to notice the ugly red mark on her face, either, just the same as I had always pretended not to notice Mum’s frequent black eyes and split lips. There were only so many doors a woman could walk into, after all, only so many times she could fall down the stairs. After a while it had been easier to just stop making her lie about where the bruises had come from. I was only nine years old, for fucksake. Whatever you may think of me now, please forgive a scared little boy for that, at least.
“That feels better,” I announced, as cheerfully as I could manage. “I still look like a bloody tramp though. Trixie, I know you don’t want to let me out of your sight but now I’m healed is there any chance you could take me to see a barber?”
“Have someone call here,” Menhit said. “One does not go to service people, Keeper. They come to us.”
“Um, OK,” I said. “That costs more though and I’m afraid I, um… well, I’m sorry Mother but I don’t have any money. None at all.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Menhit snapped. “Talk to Mazin, he will arrange whatever you need. That’s what he’s for. Now that you are healed, Keeper, I expect you to take your people in hand. There have been shortcomings that must be addressed, and I may have need of you soon. All of you.”
I saw her give Trixie an icy look, but I ignored it.
“Yes, Mother,” I said, bowing my head to hide the look on my face.
One does not go to service people. Oh, doesn’t one? For fucksake. She must be driving poor Papa Armand round the bend by now.
“I must leave,” Menhit said. “I am expected back in London and the aeroplane will be waiting for me. Put your house in order, Keeper, and await my summons.”
With that, she swept out of the room. I watched through the bedroom doorway as she was greeted by two men I hadn’t even realized were in the flat, big black men in expensive looking suits. They radiated danger in a way that said “mercenaries” loud and clear. Where the bloody hell had she got them from? They both bowed to her and escorted her towards the hall, out of sight. The plane would be waiting for her, I noted. Jesus wept.
I waited until I heard the front door open and close with a heavy thump that spoke of steel reinforcement, then turned to Trixie.
“Bloody hell,” I said. “What the fuck have we got ourselves into with her?”
“You’ve only had a few days of her in total,” Trixie said. “I have had the pleasure of her company for the last six fucking months.”
I blinked in surprise. Trixie hardly ever swore. She put a hand to her face and covered the red welt with her palm.
“Jesus, I’m sorry Trixie,” I said. “I am so, so sorry. About Menhit, and… and about everything.”
I knew that was lame but what else could I say to her, really? She wasn’t my mum, she was a Sword of the Word for fucksake. She could stand up for herself, I knew that. But she hadn’t, had she?
“Even Armand was close to the end of his tether before she left him,” Trixie said. “She got herself banned from Wormwood’s club months ago, and Armand and I were almost banned along with her just for being in her company. Wormwood was absolutely furious.”
“What the hell did she do?”
Wormwood was quick enough to kick out people he didn’t like, but Papa Armand was one of his best customers, after all. He was so rich that Wormwood practically let him have the run of the place so long as he kept spending money.
“She killed a waiter.”
“She did what?”
“With her bare hands,” Trixie said. “He brought her the wrong drink, something she didn’t like, so she tore him in half and pulled his spine out through his stomach. Literally.”
“Fucking hell!”
“Yes, quite,” Trixie said. “It was… very unpleasant to watch.”
There was no way Wormwood could have overlooked that, whoever she was. I was just grateful that none of his staff were human. Trixie had killed a good number of demons herself over the centuries, of course, and if she was saying this had been unpleasant then… yeah. I swallowed, and tried not to think about it.
“She moved out of Armand’s apartment shortly afterwards,” Trixie went on, “and I think by then he was pleased to see her go. She’s installed herself in a mansion in Surrey now, surrounded by these new hired bodyguards she has acquired.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
Menhit had left Papa Armand, then. That was probably for the best, all things considered. If she had been doing things like that then I doubted he was missing her.
“Why, Don?” Trixie demanded suddenly.
Her hand fell away from her face and I saw that the mark was already fading. She did heal very quickly, I reminded myself, not that that made it any better or gave Menhit any right to hit her in the first place.
“Um,” I said.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands. What the bloody hell could I say to her? I could hardly tell her the truth, after all. I had run away because I was scared that I would hurt her. Her, a Sword of the Word?
Trixie was basically an angel of death, and I was scared I’d hurt her?
Yeah, that’d go down fucking well. Of course when I say “I”, what I really mean is the Burned Man, but that was academic really.
“I was scared,” I admitted at last.
That was true enough. I remembered the flames roaring up out of my hands, the snarl on my lips, but I also remembered her smashing my desk in two with the flat of her hand. I remembered my office windows exploding into the street all by themselves as she screamed with rage. Yeah, one of us would have certainly ended up hurt all right, but I had to admit that it might well have been me. Even the Burned Man respected Trixie, after all, and sometimes I got the distinct impression it was a little bit scared of her too.
Which was hardly surprising really – I knew I was. I had to confess to myself that I was very scared of Trixie for all that I loved her, and of course that had really been why I had run away, whatever I’d been telling myself all these months. I sighed. That still wasn’t right, was it? I mean yes, I was scared of what she might do, of course I was, but most of all I was scared of what she might think of me.
“Scared,” Trixie echoed. “You were scared. Don, you’d had the Burned Man inside you for weeks by the time I found out about it. Plenty of time to get used to the idea, I would have thought. How was that reason enough for you to leave me? To run away into the night and leave me alone with that… that harridan?”
I wasn’t sure I was used to the idea now to be honest, but that was irrelevant. She had completely missed the point.
“Trixie,” I said slowly, “I was scared of you.”
She stared at me.
“Oh,” she said at last.
Now that I’d said it out loud I knew it was true. I mean yeah, there was a chance the Burned Man might go for her in a fit of rage but in the cold light of sobriety I realized it was actually a pretty slim one. The Burned Man was violent and vindictive and horribly powerful, but it wasn’t exactly what you’d call brave. Trixie was a Sword of the Word, a soldier of Heaven. Killing demons was what she was for, and it bloody well knew that. N
o, now that I really thought about it I had to admit that I didn’t think the Burned Man would pick a fight with Trixie if it didn’t have to.
I licked my lips. Jesus, I could be such a fucking coward sometimes.
“Yeah,” I said, and put my head back in my hands.
She came and sat beside me on the bed, and put her arm around me. That was so nice I just sort of sagged against her, feeling all the pain and misery of the last six months well up all at once. I let her hold me while I tried not to cry like a baby.
She stroked my hair and sighed.
“I love you,” she said. “You do know that, don’t you?”
I pulled back and stared at her in open astonishment. No, no I fucking well didn’t know that, actually.
I loved her, I knew that all too well and it wasn’t so very long ago that I had made an utter arse of myself trying to prove it in bed one night. She had made it very plain indeed what she had thought of that, and other than one other time when she was basically going nuts after her Dominion fell, the subject had never come up again.
“Good God, do you?” I blurted like an idiot.
Trixie gave me a smile that was as close to shy as I think I’d ever seen her look.
“I think this is where you’re supposed to say it back,” she said.
“What?” Oh fucking hell I was on a roll today wasn’t I? Move over Frank Sinatra, the real Mr Smooth just got into town. “Oh hell, oh Trixie of course I love you.”
I hugged her again and tried to kiss her, but she turned away so I only got her cheek.
She cleared her throat.
“We aren’t having another misunderstanding, are we?” she said. “I love you, Don, but that’s not the same as wanting to mate with you.”
Mate with you. Jesus, she knew how to pour cold water on a mood didn’t she? What a truly bloody awful expression that was. I sighed and forced myself to remember that not only was she not human, not only was English not even close to being her first language, she was also probably old enough to remember the pyramids being built. She was certainly old enough to be my great-grandmother about a hundred and fifty times over. At least.
