‘And what would that be?’
‘I introduced myself already when we met,’ he huffed.
‘Be a lamb and refresh my memory.’
He gave me the hairy eyeball. ‘My name is Adonael.’
Great. My parole officer sounded like a wizard from a bloody Hobbit movie. ‘Alright then, Adonael. So long as we're done here, I’m going to toddle off.’
‘You have twenty-four hours, Mister Fletcher. Go with God.’
I didn’t bother answering back, just made for the exit.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ asked the angel, shaking the chain on his wrist for effect.
I offered him a shit-eating grin. ‘I don’t think so,’ I replied, twirling the handcuff keys on my finger as I strolled off. ‘Ta ra, matey.’
Considering he was an angel, the words that followed me out of that church were none too biblical.
17
On the way to my next stop I rang Stronge and told her that the landlord she was guarding was fit to be released from custody. Much as I wanted to use the conversation to make good with her, she wasn't especially glad to hear from me, and I didn't have time for deep and meaningfuls. Those would have to wait.
The clock was ticking, a lot of clocks, so many clocks it was getting deafening. There was Adonael’s clock, counting the hours to my last chance at redemption. Then there were the clocks that ticked for Fergal and Mike and the gassed OAPs, who’d soon be stranded on Earth for good, cut off from the afterlife. Finally, there was the clock that counted down to the Hooded Man’s next attack, and there was no telling when the bell would chime on that one.
I wasn’t going to let that happen though. I was going to catch the Hooded Man, whoever he was and whatever he was up to. I still didn’t know much about his game plan, but I’d met him now and learned a thing or two about his methods, which were perverse to say the least. And when it comes to perverse around these parts, there's only one game in town.
The Den.
An anything-goes, Soho fetish club run by a family of succubi. The Den wasn’t a place people went to for a bit of harmless slap and tickle. The club satiated its patrons wildest and most debauched desires, and in return, its owners fed upon their lust, their pain, their unchecked aggression. All kinds of people came to The Den to whet their appetites, and no one spoke of what happened there outside of its four walls. The club’s policy of unbridled hedonism, coupled with its open-plan architecture, meant any dirt that might be dug up there was distributed equally among its guests, ensuring an unspoken arrangement of mutually assured destruction. The rare person stupid enough to break The Den’s code of silence had been known to receive a visit from a vengeful succubus that served as an apt warning for anyone else considering entering its doors with blackmail on their mind.
The Hooded Man’s actions were the behaviour of a sick individual, which meant there was every chance he’d visited The Den, and if he had, Anya would know about it. Anya was the head of the succubus family that ran the joint, and was known to keep records on all of her clientele. It helped her keep people in line and ensure the club ran without incident, assuming you didn’t count the wanton shit that went down there as “incidents.”
I saw The Den’s flickering neon sign looming at the end of the alley. Now, you might think that advertising your illegal Soho sex and violence club with a great glowing banner was a bad idea, but the club operated on a perceptual bandwidth that could only be sensed by a few. Concealment magic kept it out of view of the hoi-polloi – only those invited to be there were able to perceive the place. That way the succubi could guarantee a guest list that provided only the very tastiest sins to feed from. A gourmet menu of filth and depravity.
As to how I know so much about The Den… well, I’m a detective, it’s my business to know what goes on in this town. My visits to the club are strictly professional and always above board. I draw no pleasure at all from what goes on in that pit of perversion, no matter how many times I’m forced to witness them, or how flimsy my pretext for being there. Your Honour.
I arrived at The Den’s entrance, which was guarded as always by the club’s two doormen, a pair of seven foot tall twins with bovine features and heads as bald as eggs. I knew from experience that they could see and touch me, which told me they were some kind of Uncanny, though to date I’d never figured out what kind.
‘Well, well,’ said one of them, I couldn’t tell you which. ‘If it isn’t the defective detective.’
‘What are you doing here?’ asked the other. ‘Second time this week, ain’t it?’
‘I’ve come to see Anya,’ I told them.
‘She ain’t in.’
Bullshit she wasn’t.
‘Mind if I take a look anyway?’ I asked. I went to push past, but one of them put a hand the size of a dinner plate on my chest.
‘Not tonight, Fletcher.’
Why the caginess I wondered. I knew it couldn’t be anything to do with the way I was dressed seeing as I’d died wearing a spiffy suit and permanently looked like I was on my way to an important court hearing.
‘What’s the matter, boys? Got another Tory party conference in? Don’t worry about me, mum’s the word.’
Probably the safe word for some of those degenerates.
‘None of your business, dick,’ chimed the bouncers.
‘I'm going to assume you're using the slang word for “detective” there and let that one slide.’
Again, I tried pushing past, but the doormen were having none of it. I really didn’t have time to waste standing around being stonewalled by Tweedledum and Tweedledummer, so I came up with a distraction.
‘Hey, isn’t that Elton John?’ I asked, pointing off to a side street.
While their eyes were busy following my finger I ducked between them and phased through the door they were guarding, leaving them temporarily stuck on the other side.
‘Oi!’ I heard in stereo as I arrived in the club’s foyer and took off in the direction of Anya’s office. If I could just get to her in time I could state my case and get those walking biceps off my back.
I speed-walked as I went so as not to draw too much attention to myself, though I doubt anyone there was interested in my presence, even if they could see me. While the outside of The Den looked relatively innocuous, the inside was a hub of sordid activity. This was not a place for subtlety; within its walls The Den wore its heart very much on its sleeve.
As I passed briskly through the club I bore witness to all manner of perversions. I saw a group of naked people sat cross-legged around a Japanese style dining table, except instead of eating sushi they were feeding on raw fairies, biting their heads off and drinking down the magic inside. I saw a man playing a baby grand made of glass, its insides filled with tortured puppies that whelped musical notes as the piano’s hammers struck their tiny faces. I saw a donkey show, except instead of a donkey it was a unicorn, and instead of copulating with a sad Mexican prostitute, it was using its spiral horn to go vigorously at a man’s behind.
‘Jesus wept,’ I exclaimed as I stopped and caught the pervert’s face.
It was old B.J. himself, Boris Johnson, Ex-Mayor of London. I guess that explained why the club didn’t want any snoopers in that night.
My sudden arrival spooked Boris, but not as much as it did the magical mare, who bucked violently at my approach and caused a terrific tearing of the ex-Mayor’s rear end. The noise that issued from his guilty schoolboy face, the eyes wide with horror, mouth rigid and wide, fists clenched, nails digging into the palms of his hands deep enough to draw blood… well, it was almost enough to make me forgive him for the broken pledges and endless, smarmy, political flip-flops. Still, you know what they say, you mess with the unicorn, you get the horn.
It was just as I was contemplating this that I was rugby-tackled by the club’s doormen and sent sprawling to the ground. The Den’s floor was a surface I’d have preferred not to have touched with my shoe leather, much less my face, but
there I was, kissing marble that had seen more sins than Sodom.
I fought my way to my feet and squared up to the two lummoxes.
‘Out!’ said one.
‘Right now!’ said the other.
‘Not until I see Anya.’
They sighed and rolled up their jacket sleeves in unison. What happened next looked to be a foregone conclusion, but as we’ve already established, I’m the type that rages against the dying of the light.
I gave them a little Muhammed Ali soft shoe to let them know I was game for a laugh. Tweedledum puffed out his chest and bumped tits with me. That was his first mistake. Unlike the two vampires, who I couldn’t possess on account of them being undead, these guys I could take control of.
The moment he came into contact with me I transferred to his body and took root in his brain. It was a curiously unruffled thing, small and smooth like a billiard ball. It definitely wasn’t human, but I had neither the time nor the inclination to figure out what manner of creature it belonged to. Not when his brother was coming at me with both fists swinging.
I was surprised to see Tweedledummer attack his own brother with so little hesitation, but I was even more surprised when he grabbed a hold of his wrist and tore my new arm out at the socket like he was pulling apart a roast chicken.
There was no pain though. Usually, I feel whatever the body I’ve taken hold of feels, but all I got this time was a dull note informing me that some part of my body had incurred a wound. Not a klaxon horn screaming that I’d suffered a catastrophic injury, but a gentle reminder that I might want to check out the afflicted area, so long as I could find the time. No rush.
I soon realised why when I looked down at the stump to see it growing a new limb. What the…?
And that was only the half it. When I looked back at my assailant I found he’d shifted form. He was no longer a bald man with a bovine face but a big green monster with scaly skin, a distended belly and a long nose that drooped so low it hung past his mouth. Likewise, the glamour concealing my true form had also been dispelled, revealing me as a matching monster.
Trolls.
That answered the question of what flavour of Uncanny the brothers were. Trolls were exceedingly rare, frighteningly strong, and capable of rapid regeneration. They were also dumb as muck and loved to fight, which was one of their traits I was only too happy to mimic.
I seized Tweedledummer by the forearm using my regrown appendage, tore his limb out at the root and smacked him with the soggy end.
THWACK!
Revellers looked up from their various orgies, stopping mid-stroke to gawp at the two trolls beating seven bells out of each other.
Tweedledummer jabbed me in the face and knocked my jaw clean from my head, but I’d grown another one in the time it took him to wind up another punch.
I tore a lump from his scalp.
He ventilated my chest with his fist.
I bit a nice, wet chunk out of his shoulder.
As soon as he hurt me I hurt him back, spraying the walls in oily black troll blood and littering the floor with spent body parts. We were fighting a fight that could conceivably go on forever. A zero sum game. A no-score draw on a wet Sunday afternoon.
Fortunately, the ruckus was broken up by an onlooker. Unfortunately, that onlooker was Anya, head of the succubus family and owner of the club we were destroying.
‘Stop this!’ she cried, reaching into the troll I was wearing and pulling me out by the scruff of my neck.
‘Detective Fletcher,’ she growled. ‘I might have known.’
Anya’s office was up two flights of stairs and overlooked the action below by means of a one-way mirror (and yes, it is a one-way mirror for those of you who use the phrase “two-way,” because a “two-way mirror” would be “glass”). We entered the room and Anya pointed to a chair. I took a seat there as ordered while she sauntered around her large, mahogany desk and plonked herself down on the thick velvet cushion of an antique chair. There was stuff going on through that one-way mirror that made Eyes Wide Shut look like a Mormon courtship, but my gaze didn’t stray from Anya for one solitary second.
She was the kind of woman that women loved to hate. Anya’s was an overstated beauty that her peers would often describe as “obvious,” yet most men described with an involuntary escape of drool. Tonight she wore a form-fitting black dress that perfectly complimented her exposed ivory shoulders. Her long, dark hair cascaded down the soft curve of her back like an Egyptian queen’s. Her lips were painted cherry red and her silver eyes shone in the gloom like twin moons.
She was a beauty alright, but that beauty was strictly on the outside. Scratch a little deeper and you’d see Anya for what she really was: a monster that gorged on human emotions, a vicious, hellborn creature that fed on suffering and wicked thoughts. If you ever saw Anya feed you’d be left in no doubt of her true nature. If you saw her eyes turn black, her fingers elongate into claws, her jaw dislocate and slit down the chin, opening wide enough to swallow a man whole.
So, why was she tolerated? Why hadn’t Stella come in here and wiped Anya and her kin off the map? Why was this place allowed to operate at all?
The simple answer was that they had permission to. The regular police were blind to the club, and the forces of Uncanny righteousness—who’d once spent decades battling the succubi—had agreed to condone its presence on the condition that its owners confined their activities to within its four walls. Before The Den arrived in Soho, the succubi had stalked London, breaking into people's homes as they slept, sitting astride them and sucking them dry.
And not in a good way.
A succubus drains its victim of their every essence, leaving behind a desiccated corpse; a hollow, vacant husk, forsaken by God and the Devil besides. That’s the kind of power Anya has, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that she sent the clanging numb-nuts that let me slip into her place of business back to their post. Anya didn’t need trolls looking out for her wellbeing. She was quite capable of taking care of herself.
‘Why did you come here, Detective?’ she asked leaning back in her chair and lighting a cigarette.
‘I wanted to ask if you knew anything about the strange killings that have gone down in Camden.’
‘Of course I know about them. This is my city.’
A lot of people like to lay claim to this town, but Anya’s claim is truer than most.
‘So, who is he then? Who’s the new guy?’
‘Do you really think I’d tell you that? The privacy of my clientele is sacrosanct.’
I put my hands together. ‘Pretty please?’
She smiled. ‘Why are you interested in this man anyway?’ she asked.
‘Because he's a nutter, that’s why. A grubby little perv who gets off on killing.’
‘We all have our peccadillos,’ she said, leaning forward to place a soft, slim hand on my wrist. ‘Don’t we, Mister Fletcher?’
The room melted away.
I was somewhere else now.
The inside of my own brain.
And I was not alone.
Anya was there, dressed impeccably in an ivory dress and long, white opera gloves.
She traced a clean digit along the dark recesses of my mind and inspected the tip of her index finger.
‘Filthy,’ she said, as she thrust the dirt into my face. ‘Absolutely filthy.’
For once it was my turn to have my brain invaded, and it was not a sensation I enjoyed. My head felt full, pressured, like I was swimming at the deep end of a swimming pool. Anya was glamouring me. Toying with my emotions, trying to get a rise from me, making me sweat.
A catwalk had appeared besides her now, the kind strippers get paid to parade along. A velvet curtain arrived with it and parted to reveal two women, who strutted out dressed in g-strings and nothing else. They began to cavort and twirl around a brass pole, thrusting their nether regions in my direction.
One of them was Stronge, the other Stella.
‘Interesting,�
�� said Anya, licking her lips. ‘An Uncanny and a normal. You have broad tastes, Mister Fletcher. Let’s broaden them some more…’
The fantasy versions of Stronge and Stella embraced and went at each other like a couple of piranhas in a feeding frenzy. Then suddenly I wasn’t just a spectator, I was part of it, a man sandwich, naked and wedged between the two of them while Anya looked on with lascivious eyes. It was some real 18 certificate stuff. Pure gonzo.
Pulling myself out of that fantasy might be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Nevertheless, I gave it everything I had and succeeded in pushing Anya out of my brain. Or maybe she decided she’d had her fun and left the insides of my skull of her own free will. I very much suspect the latter.
We were back in her office now, sat across from each other, her dressed in black again, me with my tackle safely tucked away. It felt hot in there. Was it hot? It sure felt hot.
For a moment Anya’s eyes were all black, then the whites returned like milk poured into two buckets of pitch. ‘I like ghosts,’ she told me, taking a casual drag on her cigarette. ‘So much fun.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, hoping she didn’t notice the quaver in my voice.
‘You exist in the in-between,’ she continued, ‘on the cusp of pleasure and pain, straddling life and death, a human stroke and choke. Tell me, phantom man, what is that like? How does it feel to walk with one foot on the primrose path? Are your sensations intensified? Your thrills heightened? I must know.’
‘I have my fun,’ I told her. ‘You should have seen me the other day, I absolutely murdered a tube of Pringles.’
Her lip curled and she slumped back in her chair, disillusioned.
It was as good a time as any to bring the conversation back on track. ‘If you won’t tell me who the hooded perv is, at least help me catch him.’
‘He’s no pervert,’ Anya snapped. ‘He kills for justice, not for pleasure. It’s not about kinks or taboos with him, it’s about black and white. Good and evil.’
‘How do you know all this?’
Something Rotten: An Uncanny Kingdom Urban Fantasy (The Ghosted Series Book 2) Page 11
