Damnation

by Peter McLean

  She tailed off, and sighed. I thought again how tired she looked, but as she was having to look after Olivia all by herself and work as well it was hardly surprising.

  “Can I hold her?” I asked. “Just for a minute. Please?”

  Debbie looked at me and sighed again.

  “Oh, go on then,” she said. “But sit down first, I don’t want you dropping her. And I’d take your coat off if I were you. I only fed her twenty minutes ago and she might spit up a bit.”

  I shrugged out of my coat and jacket, and sat on the sofa in my shirtsleeves. I’d never held a baby before in my life, and as Debbie started to lower her into my lap I have to confess I got a bit scared. Weren’t you supposed to support the head or something? I was sure I’d read that somewhere, that you were supposed to support the head. How the hell did you do that? I got my hands in a muddle and generally made an awkward twat of myself.

  “Just stop flapping about for a minute,” Debbie said. “You’ll frighten her. She’s not a newborn, she isn’t made of glass. Just hold her. There, see?”

  Olivia settled into the crook of my arm and looked up at me, and I felt a big soppy smile spread itself over my face. I wondered if my dad had ever held me like this when I was a baby. He couldn’t always have been as bad as I remembered him being, surely? I didn’t know, but I found myself really hoping that he had done. If only once.

  “Yeah,” I said softly. “Hello. Hello, Olivia.”

  She gurgled and dropped her new bunny, and Debbie put the rubber chewy ring in her hands instead.

  “Her poor little cheeks are so red,” she said. “I’m glad we don’t remember teething, it must be bloody awful.”

  “I suppose so,” I said, but I was only half listening.

  I was looking down at my little daughter in my arms, and it was like I couldn’t hear the world any more. This was it, I realized. This was my chance to redeem myself, to be a better man than I had been. I wanted to be the sort of man that I would be happy to have around my daughter. I wanted to be a proper father.

  Debbie stifled a yawn, and I looked up and really saw just how bloody knackered she looked.

  “Look,” I said, “do you, um, want to grab a lie down for ten minutes or something? I’ll call you if she… well, if she does anything, really. I don’t know what I’m doing but I can sit and hold her if you want to just, you know, have a minute.”

  Debbie gave me a hard look.

  “How do I know you won’t be in that car with her and away the moment I turn my back?” she demanded.

  “What? For fu… for pity’s sake Debs, I’m scared half out of my wits just holding her. Do you really think I know how to change a nappy, or do a bottle or… or whatever else you have to do? I don’t even know what I don’t know how to do, you know what I mean? I’m not taking her anywhere, trust me.”

  “No,” she sighed. “No, I suppose you’re not, are you? Oh God, I must admit I wouldn’t mind. I’ll leave my door open, and you call me the moment she starts looking unhappy, you understand?”

  “Course,” I said.

  Debbie shuffled off down the hall, and if you’ve ever wondered what the expression “dragging your tail” actually looks like, then she was doing it right then, bless her.

  I looked down at Olivia again and smiled as she dribbled around her chewy thing. I wiggled a finger at her, feeling a bit of a fool, but she reached up with one chubby little hand and curled her fingers around it. I swear to God she smiled back at me, and I must admit I got a bit of something in my eye, just then. She was just so perfect, you know? So innocent and trusting. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had trusted me that much, and I swore to myself right then that I would never let her down.

  A moment later Olivia’s eyes closed and she seemed to doze off, still holding my finger. I don’t think I’d ever been quite so happy in my life. All the same, I knew she wasn’t mine, not really. Oh, she was my daughter, there was no doubt about that, but she was most definitely Debbie’s baby, and only Debbie’s. I was Don, not Daddy. Not yet, anyway. Maybe not ever.

  Whether I would be able to change that depended on a lot of things, I supposed, but most of all it depended on Debbie. She was letting me have this moment but I suspected that was more because she was so tired she was ready to have a breakdown than because she actually wanted me there. No fuck it, I knew she didn’t want me there. Not really, and I didn’t blame her.

  Debbie knew what I had done, or some of it anyway.

  She didn’t know about the Burned Man, of course, and she didn’t know about the heroin either. She would have called the fucking police at the first sight of my face if she had known about that. No, but she did know about the McRoth boy. It had been an accident and she was well aware of that, but all the same would you want a child-killer involved in your baby’s life? No of course you wouldn’t, and neither did Debbie.

  I had to atone somehow, I knew that. I had to make myself worthy of being allowed to come back.

  Olivia woke up again after a few minutes, and started going a bit red in the face like she was about to cry. I panicked, and did the only thing I could think of to keep her quiet. I told her a story.

  It was some nonsense my own mum used to tell me when I was very little, some sort of homebrew mixture of the Three Bears and at least two different Disney movies all jumbled up together. I could only remember bits of it anyway and I’m sure I wasn’t making any sense, but it was all that came to mind. I doubt Olivia understood a word of it but she seemed to like the sound of my voice, and she managed not to cry until I had finished the story.

  As soon as I ran out of words her little face started to screw itself up so I told it to her again, unable to think of anything else. I supposed it didn’t matter what I was saying really, so long as it made her happy. So I sat there holding my daughter and reciting nonsense while she clutched my finger in her pudgy little hand, and I knew then that I loved her. I really, really did.

  I knew in those moments that I was her daddy and she was my little girl. I smiled down at her, and I silently promised her that I would do anything in my power to protect her.

  Anything at all.

  I told her that silly mixed-up old story four times in all before she decided she’d had enough of it and started trying to bawl the house down instead.

  “Debs!” I called as I held Olivia awkwardly up to my shoulder and prayed she didn’t puke on me.

  I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was supposed to do with her now, I had to admit. Love by itself wasn’t enough to stop a screaming fit, it seemed.

  “I’m coming,” Debbie mumbled from the bedroom, and a moment later she was taking Olivia from me and rocking her gently in her arms until the bawling quieted to a sort of wet sniffling.

  “Twenty minutes, that’s not bad actually,” she said, with the ghost of a smile on her face. “I thought I’d be back within three.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, feeling faintly embarrassed. “Beginner’s luck, I suppose.”

  “Mmmm,” Debbie said. “Look, Don. Thanks for the toy, and for the twenty minutes, but… Well look, when you say ‘beginner’s luck’ it makes it sound like you think you’ll be back here again tomorrow, and the day after, and… No.”

  No, no I hadn’t thought so. Not really.

  All the same, I couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit crushed.

  “Right,” I said. “Right, well. Fair enough, I suppose.”

  “It’s just… what you do. What you’ve done. I can’t have that around her, Don. You know I can’t. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I pushed my hands back through my hair and sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Are you seeing anyone?” Debbie asked.

  “Um,” I said, a bit surprised by the sudden change of subject and completely at a loss as to how to explain my relationship with Trixie. “I, um, yeah. Well, you know. Sort of. It’s… I don’t know. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

  Debbie shook her head and
gave me a sad smile.

  “You love her, don’t you?”

  There must have been something in my face, I suppose. Debbie always had been able to read me like a bloody book.

  “Yeah,” I confessed. “I really do.”

  “Be better to her than you were to me,” she said.

  I swallowed.

  Ouch.

  “I… I’m trying,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “Now look, I don’t mean to be a bitch but I need you to go now. Olivia wants changing and I have to get dressed. I think you should go now. Go back to London, I mean. Not forever, maybe, but… well. Until I can trust you again. Until you’ve sorted your life out, at least.”

  Yeah, there it was. Much as it hurt, I had a feeling I should too. I needed to be a better man, and I wasn’t going to do it here with Davey and his fucking wheel looking over my shoulder, was I?

  Chapter Thirteen

  When we got back to the flat Mazin went to make coffee. I found Trixie sitting in the living room.

  “Can we go back to London?” I asked her.

  She blinked at me.

  “I suppose so,” she said. “Although this is quite a nice flat. What’s wrong with Scotland?”

  “Well apart from the fucking awful weather, Davey is here,” I said. “I’d quite like to be somewhere that creepy old git isn’t. Anyway, I’m a London boy at heart.”

  “Yes, well Davey might not be in London but Menhit very much is, in case you had forgotten,” Trixie snapped, a bit waspishly.

  I remembered Trixie picking herself up off the bedroom floor where Menhit had knocked her down, and winced. All the same though…

  “I don’t think it really makes any difference where Menhit is, does it? If she wants us, she’ll find us,” I said gently. “We can’t hide from a goddess, Trixie.”

  “No, no I suppose not,” she admitted.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I left some stuff behind when I… left.”

  When I ran away, I meant. When I ran away in a fit of chivalry, or cowardice or blind panic, or whatever the fuck it had been. I really do think I’d been having some sort of breakdown at the time, looking back on it. Whatever it had been, I had run away in the night and abandoned everything – all my books, my hexring and my precious warpstone, even a Blade of Unmaking. I had abandoned the fetish of the Burned Man for fucksake, and if I was ever going to stand a chance of getting the fucking thing out of my head I knew I would need that. It had to go somewhere, after all.

  “Everything is still in your flat where you left it,” Trixie said.

  I blinked at her. She probably didn’t have the faintest idea how this sort of thing worked, I realized.

  “I haven’t paid any rent for nearly eight months, Trixie,” I said, and sighed. “Not to mention that you blew the bloody windows out. I can’t imagine I’ve still got a flat.”

  “Of course you have,” she said. “I paid Mr Chowdhury for the windows and I’ve been paying your rent ever since, and a little bit more on top to compensate his son for keeping an eye on the place. He’s a very nice man, your Mr Chowdhury.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh, right. Um, thank you.”

  She shrugged. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “So can we get out of here? Can we go back to London, I mean?”

  “Yes,” she said. “If you want to.”

  She looked a bit mournful at the prospect, and I supposed I could hardly blame her. This place was palatial, whereas my flat over Mr Chowdhury’s grocers shop on the high street very much was not. Trixie would miss her private bathroom with its whirlpool bath, I was sure.

  I weighed up keeping Trixie in luxury against keeping Debbie happy and the prospect of bumping into Davey again, and I’m afraid she lost. There was something about what Davey had said, about breaking people on his wheel, that had really and truly put the shits up me.

  Trust me, you don’t want to know, the Burned Man had told me, and that in itself was enough to fill me with dread.

  I knew the Burned Man, and I knew how it thought and how fucking little it cared about, well, anything really. If the Burned Man said I didn’t want to know, then… yeah. Fucking hell, what sort of horror show were we talking about here? It didn’t bear thinking about, it really didn’t.

  Even leaving that to one side, Davey was quite obviously the last sort of person I should be mixing with any more. I had to get out of Scotland and that was all there was to it, whether Trixie liked it or not.

  “Look,” I said. “I know my place is a bit, well, shit, but… yeah. I just–”

  “I don’t mind,” Trixie interrupted. “Really. I’ve lived in imperial palaces and I’ve lived in dirt-floored hovels. South London won’t kill me. There is one thing, though.”

  I supposed she probably had, at that.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Your daughter is here,” she said.

  Yes she was, and so was Debbie, and Debbie had just told me in the nicest possible way to fuck off out of her life until I had learned to be less of a cunt.

  “Yeah, she is,” I said. “I… Oh fuck, I don’t know, Trixie. I mean, you said yourself that she’s loved and she’s safe and to leave it be, and London’s not all that far away and… well, I don’t think Debs really wants me around.”

  “No, perhaps she doesn’t,” Trixie said. “All right, we’ll go back to London. I’ll have Mazin make the arrangements.”

  * * *

  It sounded simple, didn’t it? Needless to say it wasn’t.

  Moving was effortless, of course. Mazin made a phonecall and early the next morning a big truck and five blokes turned up and they packed our things for us and loaded the truck and off they went, sweet as a nut. It’s amazing what money can do, isn’t it? As I said before, that’s the whole point of the stuff, as far as I’m concerned – not to buy piles of gaudy crap you don’t need, but just to make life easier.

  Mazin drove Trixie and me back down south in the comfort of the Mercedes.

  No, that wasn’t any bother at all, quite the opposite in fact. The bother started as soon as we actually got back.

  The car pulled up at the kerb outside Mr Chowdhury’s shop and I got out to see that Trixie had had my front door repainted and the sign replaced. “Don Drake, Hieromancer”, that sign said, in lovely brass letters. No one had defaced it this time, and I suspected that I had Mr Chowdhury’s burly eldest son to thank for that. He was a big lad and he was known around the neighbourhood, and once word had got about that he was keeping an eye on the place I knew it would have been regarded as off limits by the local scrotes. Sometimes reputation can work as much magic as money does, you know what I mean?

  Trixie unlocked the door and we went up to my office. There was new glass in the windows, and she’d had the end wall fixed properly too so that the paint actually matched now and the dent where I had botched filling in a bullet hole wasn’t visible any more.

  Bless her, she had bought me a new desk too, to replace the one she had smashed in half. My phone and answering machine were sitting on the desk, looking old fashioned and out of place. The light on the answering machine was flashing.

  I walked over and pressed the button. There was a click and rattle as the ancient machine started to play its little tape.

  “You have eighteen new messages,” it said.

  Oh God.

  Half of them were bullshit of course, wrong numbers or some tosser trying to sell me insurance, or offering to get my money back from insurance I shouldn’t have bought in the first place or some other such pointless shit like that. The rest of them weren’t. Three were from the Russian, getting increasingly terse as they went on. Five were from Selina, Wormwood’s secretary. And the last one was from Janice.

  “Don?” she said, her snuffly little voice sounding faint and muffled on the line. “Don, it’s Janice. Um, the gnome? Do you remember me?”

  Of course I remembered her, bless her little heart. Janice really was a gnome, an Earth Ele
mental from the tunnels underneath London, and she was an absolute sweetheart. She was also one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. She had healed Trixie after her disastrous battle with the archdemon Bianakith. She had seen me bring forth and then invoke the Burned Man, and she had kept quiet about it when it mattered. She had taken us down into the deep warrens to face a fallen Dominion, and she had guided us back out again, leading an actual living war goddess, and all without complaint. I owed Janice the mother of all fucking favours, to say the least.

  “Um,” she went on, “I’m sorry to bother you but I really need to talk to you. The–”

  The tape ran out, and rewound itself with a noisy rattle.

  Oh fucking hell! That message had been from six weeks ago. The answering machine was supposed to go back to the beginning if the tape ran out and just start recording over the oldest messages but needless to say the bloody thing didn’t work properly, and when the tape got to the end it tended to get stuck. God only knew who had been trying to call me since then.

  “Oh dear,” Trixie said.

  I stared at her. “You haven’t been checking my messages?”

  “No Don, I haven’t,” she snapped. “I’ve been searching high and low for you, and worrying myself sick about you, and I’ve been at Menhit’s beck and call every hour of the day and night, and–”

  “Sorry,” I said, making peaceful gestures with my hands before she smashed this desk in half as well. “Sorry, I know you have. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry, it’s just… poor little Janice. She wouldn’t have phoned if it wasn’t important.”

  “No, no she wouldn’t,” Trixie agreed. She stared at the answering machine and sighed. “I’m sorry, I honestly never even thought about it.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I should be grateful I’ve still got a home to come back to, and I know that’s only because of you.”

  Trixie shrugged and turned away, but I could see I had upset her.

  Well done Don, you twat, I thought. Way to welcome the missus home.

  Not that she was my missus of course, but you know what I mean.