by Peter McLean
All the same, I thought about just washing my hands of the whole fucking mess and leaving her to it, I really did. For about two seconds, anyway. After everything I’ve done in my life, after all the killings and betrayals I’ve been responsible for, there was no way I was having a fallen angel on my conscience as well. There was still just enough of that long-gone twenty year-old left in me somewhere that I knew I couldn’t live with that. That, and she had forgiven me. I closed my eyes, and saw his face.
I forgive you, she had said, and those three words had meant the world to me. Perhaps more than that. She was an angel, after all. It was just possible that those words had meant my soul.
I had to stop her, and I had to rescue Debbie too. I didn’t even know where they were but it stood to reason that they’d both be in the same place, and that was wherever Ally was. Unfortunately the only person I could think of who was likely to be able to find Trixie and get me to her in time was Adam himself.
I wanted nothing in the world more than to knock that prick’s teeth down his throat, but for one thing I needed him and for another I knew he’d eat me alive if I so much as looked at him funny. A sad fact I know, but there we were. I gritted my teeth and called his name.
“Adam, I need your help,” I shouted. “Please Adam, this is important. Trixie needs your help.”
He might just humour me, with that one. I certainly wasn’t about to admit I was wise to his game, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he wanted to gloat over her fall anyway. Fuck it but I wished I knew his true name. That would bring him a damn sight faster than just asking nicely was ever going to. Whatever his name was, it obviously wasn’t going to actually be Adam – that would be far too easy. Things like him don’t give away their true names for free, after all. Trixie had, to be fair, but that was just another sign of how naive she could still be about certain things. She’s a child, relatively speaking, Adam had said, and I could tell he was right about that in a way. I paced the workroom for five minutes before I had to admit to myself that he wasn’t coming.
“Damn it,” I muttered aloud to myself, “why do you call yourself Adam? Trixie’s simple enough, it’s just a short form of the end of her bloody unwieldy true name, but you? No, you wouldn’t do that. You’re clever, aren’t you? Oh yes, you’re too bloody clever by half you are. You think you’re so fucking clever no one can touch you, so you leave clues, don’t you? It is a clue isn’t it, you cocksucker, I know it is.”
I paced some more, painfully aware of the seconds ticking by. I didn’t even know how long I had been knocked out for but the daylight coming into the room didn’t seem to have changed so I could only hope it hadn’t been too long.
“Basics first,” I told myself, still thinking out loud. I do that sometimes, when I’m tense. It doesn’t mean I’m crazy or anything. “Adam was the first human in the Abrahamic creation myth, everyone knows that. You’re not human though, you never have been, so why call yourself that? It’s an Abrahamic form though, so that’s the paradigm we’re working with here. Adam was the first man in both Genesis and the Quran, but you’re not a man, so what am I missing? The first something else maybe, but what? So what are you? You’re a fallen angel. You’re…”
Oh fuck me.
“The first fallen angel was Lucifer, any first year occultist or heavy metal fan will tell you that, but that’s no fucking use to man or beast is it?” I was starting to rant now, I knew I was, but I really didn’t give a toss any more. “That’s a title not a name, that’s just Latin Vulgate for morning star from a dodgy King James translation of the Hebrew Bible, in which it appears precisely once and is virtually irrelevant anyway. What’s your fucking name?”
I tore into my dusty pile of books like a man possessed. I couldn’t believe I didn’t know the answer, but it had never really come up before, and truth be told I’d never expected to need to know it. The first of the fallen was an archangel, I knew that much, although, according to Trixie, that made him a lot less high up in the great scheme of things than most people would have you believe. How had she put it? The archangels are like our sergeants, something like that.
That made sense. Lucifer was still a big deal, don’t get me wrong, but he was a long way from being the boss downstairs. Hell was there before he fell into it, after all, and something must have already been in charge down there when he turned up. All the same, it was a start. I read furiously, tossing one book aside and grabbing another, cross-indexing in my head as I went. I hadn’t been a student for all those years for nothing, you know.
According to LaVay he was the Torch of Baphomet, which would make him Azazel – but Azazel was a Hebrew goat-demon, and Baphomet is just a corruption of Mahomet which was the Latinization of Muhammad, so that was nothing but medieval bigotry in action and an obvious dead end. In Arabic lore there was Azazil, which as far as I could see was the same goat thing, and that was supposedly the original name of Iblis who was the Islamic devil. Ah, but then Iblis was originally a djinn not an angel so that didn’t work either. Fuck it!
I made myself take a deep breath and calm down before I lost it and threw one of the precious books through the window. OK, not that then. Back to basics again and try another tack. The name Lucifer means morning star, which equates him with the planet Venus, and therefore by the table of correspondences with the archangel Lumiel. Aha! Lumiel is the archangel of light, which also fits LaVay again who says Lucifer represents enlightenment. The Kabbalah says that Lumiel is sometimes considered to be the angel of the Earth. The name Adam derives from the Hebrew noun ha adamah which means… Earth. Got you!
“Lumiel!” I bellowed, throwing every last ounce of my will in to the command. “Get in here, you cunt!”
* * *
Of course Davidson did die in the end, about three months later as it turned out. It wasn’t a moment too soon as far as I was concerned. He never really forgave me for trying to steal the Burned Man, but he was much too far gone to do anything about it by then. The Burned Man wanted to be mine, we both knew that, and as I’ve said, it ruled the professor with a rod of iron. I kept going to his flat and there was nothing he could do to stop me. I think he’d realized by then that if I wanted the Burned Man badly enough to try and steal it then I must be praying for his death anyway. One joyous morning he obliged and I found him dead on the living room floor in a puddle of the bloody vomit he had choked on. I left him lying there and went straight to the study.
“It’s over,” I said.
The Burned Man looked at me with glittering eyes, and grinned.
“Oh no,” it said, “it’s just beginning. You’ve got real potential, boy, potential like I haven’t seen for a thousand years or more. Do what I tell you and I’ll make you more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
* * *
The bolt of pure power that shot up my spine from God only knows where almost took my head off. All the same, I couldn’t help feeling just a little bit pleased with myself when Adam stepped out of the pitch darkness that had suddenly filled the doorway.
“Oh, very well done,” he said. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”
“I need you to get me to wherever Trixie is,” I said. “Right now.”
He chuckled. “Oh do you now? You might know my name, diabolist, but you are a very long way from being able to order me about. You are a very long way away from that indeed, especially now that you appear to have lost the Burned Man.”
“Why do you think I want to find her?” I snapped at him. “I want it back!”
“Mmmm, I dare say you do,” he said. “You aren’t all that much without it, are you?”
I gave him an ugly look. Partly because he was right, admittedly. But then again, he was there, wasn’t he?
“I’m enough to get you here when I want you, you bugger,” I said. “No Burned Man this time, that was all me. I’m that much, mate.”
I realized that what I had just said was actually true. I never knew I had it in me, to be perfectly honest
with you. The enormity of what I had done slowly began to sink in, and right then I wasn’t sure how much I really liked it after all. I had managed to summon him without any help from the Burned Man, without any ritual or ingredients or anything, and that was some impressive shit whichever way you looked at it. Only now that I actually did look at it, of course, I realized that meant I had summoned him without any protection whatsoever. Oh shit.
Adam smiled. A bit, anyway.
“I suppose you are,” he admitted after a moment. “Isn’t it astonishing what one can sometimes find out about oneself… in extremis. Oh very well, I don’t really care if you want your nasty little fetish back. What about Meselandrarasatrixiel?”
Now I don’t know how much you know about controlling a summoned demon, but I’m going to take a guess at not much. Even when I’m working with the Burned Man and using the grand summoning circle and the best ingredients available they can still put up a bitch of a fight sometimes. I had called Adam without so much as a basic ring of salt around me. That was sort of like jumping out of a plane without a parachute at the best of times, except in this case I might as well have doused myself in petrol and set myself on fire before I jumped. This wasn’t just any summoned demon after all, this was Lucifer for fuck’s sake. I thought my head was about to split open from the effort I was having to put into this.
“You can have her,” I said. “She stole from me, the bitch. I just want Debbie back, and I want what’s rightfully mine.”
I hurled my Will at him so hard sweat broke out all over my body and my knees began to tremble as my mind ranted at him in desperate fury. Thou shalt do my bidding Lumiel, I bind thee to my Will Lumiel Lucifer Morningstar, my Will be done I command you to do my bidding!
Oh dear God what was I doing? I command you? Wasn’t that exactly what he had been trying to tempt Trixie to do? I could feel that quicksand beneath me again, shifting, sinking ever downwards. Fuck it, it was too late to worry about that now.
“Well…” Adam said, and his thin lips slowly twisted into a cruel smile. “Oh, I suppose it might be fun to watch, at that. You can have your woman and your Burned Man, and I get the angel. Deal?”
My words do not bind me to thee, fallen abomination. I command thee, Lumiel Lucifer. My Will prevail, my Will be done.
“Deal,” I lied.
“Very well then,” he said. “Come with me.”
He gestured towards the impenetrable darkness filling the doorway. Just then I noticed the talisman lying on the floor beside the altar where Trixie had obviously discarded it. I had no way of knowing if there was any more of the opening spell left in it or not, but I picked it up and slipped it into my pocket anyway. You never knew, it might still work and if it did there was always a chance it might come in handy. I nodded and followed him into the shadows.
Chapter Nineteen
I stepped out of the darkness and stood beside Lucifer, the first of the fallen. Fuck me, I never thought I’d get to say that.
“Well,” he said, “is this what you were looking for, diabolist?”
I stared at the sight in front of me. We were back in the same underground car park or whatever it was that Ally and her sisters had dragged me to when they had kidnapped me that time before. There was even a parked van, albeit a different one. That was all that was the same, though.
The whole space seemed to be burning, and howling with an unnatural hot wind. Trixie and Ally were circling each other like furious lionesses, Ally cutting and slashing with the steel claws of her right hand. She had made up for the loss of the other set with a long, wickedly curved black dagger. Trixie had a flaming sword in her right hand, and in her left she held the Burned Man tightly around its middle. Both of the women had minor cuts and scratches in half a dozen places already, and the look on their faces was pure murder. I watched their steel ballet in stunned silence until Trixie turned enough for me to see her face properly. Her eyes were on fire.
That always happens.
“Dear God,” I whispered.
She must have seen us there, for all that. She gestured urgently for me to keep out of the way. I had no idea how she was withstanding the Burned Man’s curse, but somehow she was. Her face was set in a mask of furious concentration as she cut and thrust one-handed with her sword, flames boiling from between her eyelids. I wondered how she could even see at all any more. I started towards her, but Adam put a restraining hand on my shoulder.
“Your woman is in the vehicle,” he said.
My woman… Debbie! I hadn’t forgotten her, honest to God I hadn’t, it was just that the sight of Trixie and Ally battling it out like that had knocked all other thoughts out of my head. I wrenched free of Adam’s grip and dashed towards the van, dodging pools of liquid fire on the ground as I went, and never stopping to wonder exactly where they had come from. It looked like both the girls had brought out their big guns tonight, and to be honest, the less I had to do with their war the better it was likely to be for the state of my health. I ducked and dived my way to the back of the van, and pulled myself inside. And there was Debbie.
Ally hadn’t been gentle with her, that was for certain. She was still dressed, sort of, that was something I supposed. All the same, Ally’s bullwhip had cut great bloody slashes through her jeans and T-shirt, and she had been beaten black and blue. She was tied up with the same greasy nylon rope that Meg had used on me when her and Tess had dragged me here the first time.
“Don?” Debbie croaked as she looked up at me through swollen blackened eyes, obviously struggling to focus. “Don, is that you?”
Oh dear God, this was all my fault. I knew it was, and I could see in her face that she knew damn well that it was too.
“Yeah baby, it’s me,” I said.
She was tied to some sort of crude wooden frame that had been erected in the back of the van, her wrists and ankles bound tightly to the rough, splintery uprights. If I’d been one of those macho guys who carry a big knife around with them I could have slashed through her bonds and carried her dramatically off to freedom, but I’m afraid I’ve never been that sort of bloke at all. I frowned for a moment, then fished Lavender’s talisman out of my pocket.
One more charge, I prayed, please God give me just one more charge in this fucking thing. I pressed my thumb down on the mystery third glyph, and focused. The talisman shivered in my hand, and I felt the mental image of a cutting edge appear in my mind. This was obviously the same spell that Trixie had used to cut the Burned Man out of my altar. If it would go through that then I reckoned it could certainly cut through a few ropes.
I moved the talisman carefully in my hand, focusing the image of the cutting edge on the ropes and being very careful indeed to keep it away from Debbie herself. Trixie had said it was for opening things, and I dreaded to think what might happen if you were to slip up and open a person by mistake. The ropes parted like butter in front of a chemical laser, and Debbie sagged forwards as the tension released in her shoulders and legs. I had almost finished cutting through the last of the ropes when the remaining power in the spell gave out. I dropped the now useless talisman on the floor of the van and tore at the last frayed rope with my fingernails until it finally gave way. I pulled Debbie into my arms and held her tightly.
“It’s OK, baby,” I whispered into her hair. “It’s OK, I’ve got you now. I won’t ever let you go again.”
I thought maybe I could get to quite like this white knight business after all. You know, rescuing the fair maiden from the foul monster and all that. Right at that moment it had a certain sort of appeal, I had to admit. Debbie wrenched free of my arms and put her whole body behind a right hook that felt like it almost broke my jaw.
“You son of a bitch!” she screamed at me. “Do you seriously think I want anything to do with you after this? Are you fucking insane? Your slut tortured me, because of you! Get out of my life! Get out of my fucking sight!”
Oh dear. So much for the big heroic rescue, then.
“I can�
�t really do that right now,” I said, rubbing the side of my jaw where she had belted me. “There’s World War Bitch going on outside, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
I turned to look over my shoulder, and saw that it was still true. Ally and Trixie were raining hell on each other out there while Adam stood back well out of the way with his hands in the pockets of his overly expensive-looking coat, watching with a smug smile on his face.
The Burned Man’s curse must have been really taking its toll on Trixie, because Ally was easily giving as good as she got now, if not more so. I watched in astonishment as she raised the black dagger overhead and raked her claws down its blade, striking sparks. Crimson lightning flared along the length of the curved blade, and another pool of liquid fire erupted from the ground at Trixie’s feet.
“Damn it!” Trixie screamed as she threw herself out of the way, rolling and coming up to her feet in her guard position with the Burned Man still clutched tightly in her other hand. “How are you so strong, you whore?”
Ally threw her head back and laughed, her long red hair blowing in the hot wind that seemed to be coming from the fires themselves.
“I made a deal,” she said, circling Trixie again now with her dagger held low down by her left hip. “Your pretty boyfriend doesn’t love you any more, sweetcheeks.”
I darted a glance at Adam, but his smooth face still bore the same highly punchable expression of self-satisfaction that it usually did.
“You’re lying!” Trixie shouted at her.
“He gave me my sisters back,” Ally said. “Oh, you may have destroyed their bodies but they’re right here, inside me. Three Furies in one flesh, three times the power. Oh, and he gave me this!”
