“You’re right. She’s not a redhead. But you’re both in my dreams.” Cody grabbed another glass. “And you’re much cuter.”
“How’s it going, Cody?” Martin had just been talking with Mike Carson about the afternoon’s adventures. He was close to panic and wondering about commitment laws in England.
“Ms. Klesst Kane, meet famous writer, Jack Martin.”
“I already know her,” said Martin. “Blue pumps. We all met yesterday at The Friend At Hand. Nobody told us you were the publisher’s daughter.”
“My secret identity,” said Klesst, and then she smiled and left them to greet the always fashionably late Kent Allard.
“Everything OK?” asked Martin.
“No. I don’t think so.” Lennox emptied his glass.
“You missed a really great lunch. You really ought to eat something. Just look at all this food here!”
“Had a late lunch with Carson. Wonder if Klesst might like a late dinner?”
“Cody!” Kane’s massive arm gripped his shoulders. “Grab a glass of champagne, and let’s sit down for a minute in the other room. I want to talk about your next book. Jack, please excuse us for a minute. Business.”
“Business,” echoed Lennox, reaching for another glass as he followed Kane.
Kane closed the door behind them. “So, how’s your day been?”
Lennox sipped his champagne. Kane was pulling a fresh bottle from the ice. “Very pleasant. I dropped by Klesst’s shop. Nice place for your daughter to work.”
“Kids these days.” Kane popped the cork. “Heard you bought some neckwear from her. Not wearing it tonight.”
“Took it off. Didn’t go with my tie. Had trouble with the catch, though.”
“Good job, Cody. There was no key to that lock.” Kane refilled their glasses. “I’m impressed.”
Cody stood up and bunched his fists. “No way do I believe any of this. I’m blitzed out of my skull just now, and I know I need to cut down on my drinking. Let’s do lunch tomorrow, if you really exist, and then we can talk about the next novel. I’m sorry if I’m perhaps not making a lot of sense just now, but life’s been a bitch.”
“Do a couple hits of this, and then you’ll be sober enough.” Kane tossed him a phial of white powder. “I need you tonight.”
Lennox delved into the phial with the attached spoon. “Kane, you are very weird.”
“Take a couple hits. Nice big ones.”
Lennox blinked and looked about him. He was sitting in a hotel room across from a huge individual who at best just might be mad. And Lennox suddenly felt sober for the first time in months. Then last night . . .
“Much better,” said Kane, retrieving the phial. “Just take a moment to get used to it all.”
“You’re not a publisher.”
“For the moment I am. Needed a realtime framework. Bought Midland Books and kept the staff. Nice cover, and I may even turn a profit. Want to talk about the advance for your next book?”
“Those other times when I saw you. All of that really did happen?”
“Trust me, Cody. It really happened.”
“So, I’m not losing my mind.”
“Afraid not, Cody.”
“So, then.” Lennox rubbed his forehead and wondered whether he was over the edge beyond return. “If I’m not crazy, and you’re for real, then who are you?”
“A friend, Cody. Haven’t I saved your life?”
“That was real?”
“All of it. And anyway, you already knew that beneath the alcoholic fog you’ve been hiding in. Head in the sand, Cody. Doesn’t work. They can still see you.”
“No, this is reality: I’m sitting in a hotel room in London talking with my publisher and there’s a party going on. One or both of us is quite mad. I think I’ll mingle.”
“It takes a bit of getting used to,” said Kane, escorting him back to the others. “That’s why I’m trying to bring you along slowly.” He squeezed Lennox’s shoulder in a comradely way, and Lennox sensed that beneath the friendly grip there was latent strength that might crush him in an instant. “Now go enjoy yourself. Busy night ahead.”
Carson greeted him with a glass of champagne. “So then, did you make a deal?”
“I’m afraid I may have.” Lennox tossed back the champagne. “Mike, I’m beginning to think that all of this is really happening to me.”
“Best get some food inside you,” Carson said, looking about for Martin for help. Martin was chatting up Klesst.
“What I need is some air. I’ll just have a stroll around Russell Square. Back in a flash.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No. I just want to be alone for a minute. Stay here and talk to Kane. See what you make of him.”
Allard had cornered Kane, and Lennox waved as he made for the door. “Just getting some air.”
“Catch you later, Cody,” Kane shouted back, and Blacklight let Lennox out the door.
Feeling somewhat conspiratorial, Lennox did not cross into Russell Square, but instead walked along Southampton Row and turned down Cosmo Place into Queen Square. With a shudder he made to ignore the human wreckage hunched over their bottles and their benches about the cobbled pavement, and he passed through an iron gate onto the green. It smelled less of urine and unwashed bodies here, if he kept away from the shrubbery which sheltered the enclosing iron fence. The trees deadened the noise of London at night, and the grass felt cool beneath feet bruised by endless pavement.
Lennox walked slowly toward the end of Queen Square, toward the woman’s statue there, formerly thought to be a statue of Queen Anne but now believed to be that of Queen Charlotte, Consort of King George III. He paused there, his thoughts aimless—vaguely wondering, as he had so often done before, as to what Queen Charlotte’s downward stretched right hand might be pointing.
It was there and then that Lennox found the Queen of Spades.
She was dressed all in black, and at first he just saw her face, ghostly in the darkness. Lennox stared, and the rest of her emerged from the night.
He said: “Hello, Cathy.”
“Hello, Cody.”
“You’re dead, Cathy.”
“You should know, Cody.”
“So this is it, then. It’s not just the booze and all that. I really am completely mad.”
“You must have been to cast your lot with Kane.”
She moved toward him, swaying bewitchingly as she balanced forward to keep her stiletto heels from digging into the sod. She had on glossy black stockings and a black ciré sheath minidress that would have clung to her waist even without the wide leather cinch. Her dress was strapless and exposed a swath of pale skin from above her breasts to her bare shoulders, where the tops of her long black evening gloves reached the neckline.
Her black hair was gathered in a high chignon, so that her pale face and shoulders seemed to be an alabaster bust floating out of the darkness. Perhaps a plaster deathmask. Lennox recognized the familiar sensuous mouth and finely boned features, and he knew the shade of green of her eyes even before she gazed into his own.
Lennox grasped her bare shoulders. Her flesh was cool but certainly solid beneath his touch.
“Are you really Cathy?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Cathy is dead. There was a funeral, and I stood there. It’s been more than a year.”
“There’s nothing permanent about death, Cody. Not when you have power.”
“This is another of Kane’s tricks.”
“I’m not one of Kane’s minions. You are. I’m trying to help you break away from Kane.”
“All right, that does it. I’ve been called a lot of things, but never a minion. No more of Kane’s white powder, because God knows what’s in it, and it’s too much for my mirror. I’m going back to my hotel room, where I will curl up with a bottle of Scotch and find oblivion. If I’m still like this tomorrow, I’m really and truly this time for sure going to seek professional help.”
Cathy seized his arm and firmly halted his departure. “I can take you to someone who can help you.”
As Lennox spun about, the sunburst pendant on his left ear faced her. She instantly released him and stepped back.
“Please,” she said. “Please come with me, Cody. Anyway, what have you got to lose?”
“Plainly, not my wits. My sanity is history. I’m standing in a London park talking with my dead wife. You can not be Cathy.”
“I can be anyone you want me to be.”
“Really? Did you leave your shoes in my room the other night? And did you develop severe acne in the pub the next day? And do you loiter about non-existent streets in Soho in the company of rotting zombies? Because if you answer yes to any or all of the above, then you are not Cathy. Cathy had her secret life, but nothing this extreme.”
“I think you need a drink, Cody. Let’s go to my place. There we can talk.” Cathy took his right arm.
“You know,” Lennox told her. “I think I’m handling all of this very well. It’s that mega coke that Kane gave me, isn’t it? I learned back when I used to do lots of acid that if the trip starts to get too weird, it’s best not to fight it and just go with the flow. So, take me to your leader.”
Cathy held fast to his right arm and steered Lennox in the direction of the Russell Square tube station. “You really haven’t a clue, do you?”
“I am totally clueless.”
There were still meth-men and blow-lamps sprawled in the bushes and folded onto benches.
“Promise no more zombies.”
“You’re marked by Kane.”
There were tired tourists and late revelers hurrying along the streets toward the underground for the last trains. Cabs busily scooted past, braking as they dared a zebra crossing, and all of this was very reassuring to a man out on a stroll with his deceased wife.
“Can you see her, too?” Lennox asked a cluster of blue-haired ladies who were puzzling over their maps outside the tube station. He received bifocaled glares and a muttered “Disgusting!” as Cathy dragged him through.
“Let’s get a cab,” he protested.
“I’m just down the way.”
“We’ll need tickets.”
Lennox stumbled and touched one of the automatic ticket machines. The machine spat out two tickets, and Cathy captured them before he could react.
“I hate these lifts,” she said. “Let’s take the stairs.”
The Russell Square station had a pair of wooden-slat lifts that probably dated back to its Victorian construction. Their open cages crawled down a sooty shaft of geological strata to the depths of London, and often they stuck there when overloaded with too much compressed humanity. Present construction to replace the aged lifts with new shiny steel boxes only added to the congestion.
“These steps go down a hundred miles,” Lennox argued, pointing to a sign which advised caution to all those rash enough to attempt the descent. “It’s like climbing to the top of the Empire State Building.”
“But this is all downhill, Cody. Stop whining and come along.”
The stairway bored into the depths in a tight spiral. Cathy’s heels made a rhythmic echo, and Lennox began to feel dizzy. Not many people took these stairs, and just now they met no one at all.
“Cathy,” said Lennox, pausing for breath. “If it’s really you, I just want to say how glad I am to see you again.”
The stairwell was hot and claustrophobic, and Lennox felt certain they should have reached the platform by now.
“Cathy, do you remember when we saw that film, Deathline? Parts of it were shot down here.”
“Come on, Cody.”
“I think the print we saw was retitled Raw Meat.”
“Right. That was some birthday treat, Cody.”
“We had fun afterward.”
“Right. You pulled one of my stockings over your head and chased me around the apartment, waving a rubber chicken and yelling: ‘Mind the doors!’”
“Was that before you began seeing Aaron?”
“Just keep walking, Cody. We’re nearly there.”
“I can’t hear the trains.”
“So, what made you throw in with Kane?”
Lennox grasped at the railing. The brass was warm and seemed to be filmed over with slime. He stumbled and leaned hard against Cathy.
“He bought out my British publisher, acquired all my contracts. Hey, I just met the guy. He has some awesome coke and a lovely daughter. Inasmuch as you’re dead, you’ll forgive my lust, won’t you?”
There seemed to be steam filling the spiral stairway. Droplets of something fell onto his face, and Lennox wiped them away curiously. The brass railing began to look more like an uncoiled intestine. He hoped he wouldn’t throw up on the steps.
“I think we’ve been walking too far.” The steps were so slimy as to feel gelatinous beneath his feet. Lennox clung to Cathy.
“You’re more likely to recognize his name when it’s spelled C a i n,” she said.
“As in the fratricidal horticulturist? Surely, he’s dead by now.”
“Immortal,” said Cathy. “Unless you can help us stop him. That’s why he’s bonded you.”
The stairway ended, and they walked onto an underground platform of sorts. The overhead tunnel was oozing tendrils of gluey foulness through misshapen tiles, the rails seemed to be writhing like salted worms, the platform and all were clogged by enveloping steamy mist.
For as far as Lennox could see into the mist, hundreds of would-be passengers aimlessly shuffled against one another, rotting in their tatters of medieval clothing.
“Sorry about the mess,” said a figure standing on the platform. “Been holding this lot here for quite some years. Really in remarkably good state of preservation though, all things considered—don’t you think?
“Cody Lennox?” The man stepped closer. “Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Satan.”
“I think this has gone far enough,” Lennox decided. “And anyway, I’m an atheist.”
“No problem,” said Satan, but he did not offer his hand. He was a tall, dark man with a widow’s peak and neatly trimmed black beard, dressed rather theatrically in cape and medieval costume.
“There are no horns and tail,” said Satan. “Or would you feel better if there were?”
“You’re a theatrical overstatement.”
“First impressions,” said Satan. His image blurred, and he was much the same but attired in formal dinner dress, fashionable about 1900. Cathy was suddenly wearing a black evening gown from the same period.
“Go away!” begged Lennox, anxiously hoping to awaken.
“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” said Satan. “Appearances are deceiving. Like yours. We need to talk.”
“That’s what Kane told me.”
“Cody, I can see that you’re confused. Who wouldn’t be? So you cut your first deal with Kane. We can renegotiate. What do you want? I’ve already brought Cathy back. No obligation.”
“That’s not Cathy,” Lennox insisted.
“She could be Cathy. Or whoever you want. Look about you, Cody. Anything you want. Name it. It’s yours.”
“This is not a mountain top. This is a very horrible subway tunnel, and I don’t see anything here that I like. Get thee behind me.”
“Good job, Cody,” said Kane. He was carrying two glasses of champagne, and he handed one to Lennox. “We missed you at the party, so I came to look.”
“Clever move, Kane,” Satan said. “So, he led you here.”
“Sorry. I should have brought another glass. Satan, is it? Is that what you’re going by now? Don’t mind if I slip and call you Sathonys out of old acquaintance?”
“Kane, you shouldn’t have meddled into this.”
“Nice place,” approved Kane. “I like the décor. Giger out of Bosch. It’s the catacombs beneath Coram’s Fields Playground, isn’t it? Connects through beneath Queen Square. Very convenient. And I see you’ve been rec
ruiting from the plague pits.”
Lennox made his voice calm. “Kane, are we in Hell or something?”
“What we’re in is deep shit,” Klesst answered him. “Dad, we’re going to run out of champagne.”
“The delectable Klesst!” said Satan. “My, how you’ve grown up!”
“Blacklight can ring room service,” Kane told her.
“Klesst,” Lennox asked, “is this the well-known . . .”
“We’ve all been around for a long, long time, Cody.”
“Best be getting back to the party,” Kane decided. “Can’t trust Blacklight to cope on his own.”
“A truce,” Satan offered. “We’ve fought on the same side often enough before.”
“But this is my turf now,” Kane warned him. “And I don’t like your plans for renovation.”
“You can’t stop this.”
“Lighten up, Sathonys. You’re like a brother to me.”
“Oh, shit!” said Klesst.
Kane’s left hand moved, and there was a gun in it, and Kane fired the gun.
Satan had instantly vanished, but the point where he had stood coalesced into a seething mass of flaming destruction.
“Cody, get your ass behind me!”
Dead creatures began tumbling from the walls, crawling over the slime-covered paving. Kane fired another annihilating burst. Part of one wall melted into glowing rubble.
Klesst tugged what might have been a derringer from beneath her skirt. She aimed it at the line of rails just as their tentacled lengths were reaching outward. Most of the platform and rails vanished in a consuming flash that hurtled the three of them backward over the slime and toward where the staircase no longer was.
The ceiling began to crumble. Kane fired pointblank into a collapsing tier of ravenous dead creatures. Stones were falling heavily from above. In seconds nauseous smoke clogged the warren of tunnels. Continuous bursts from Kane’s and Klesst’s weapons provided a strobelight vision of disintegrating masonry and mindlessly advancing dead. Beyond that spasmodic glow of destruction, ill-defined shapes hunched toward them.
“What do you say, Cody?” Kane shouted. “Want to go back to the party?”
Something long dead reached out of the buckling catacomb walls and clawed at Lennox’s throat. The sunburst pendant at Lennox’s ear blazed with instant power, and the desiccated arm vanished into ash.
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