‘Please, Mr Fletcher, I’m begging you,’ she pleaded, her icy demeanour thawing. A tear rolled over one of her knife-edge cheekbones. ‘My little brother means the world to me.’
I felt the urge to offer her a hankie, but of course I didn’t have one.
Prudence went on to tell me about her brother. To tell me all the things I wish my big sis had said about me, but never did: how much she loved him, how she’d do anything to get him back. She obviously cared a great deal about the kid, and had gone to an impressive amount of trouble to get him back. Coming to me was a last resort, she explained—which didn’t exactly inflate my ego, I’ll admit—a final, desperate attempt to see her brother rescued after years of pursuing other arcane avenues, all of which had amounted to nothing.
I respected where she was coming from, and I’ve always been a soft touch for a damsel in distress, but really, what were we talking about here? As drunk as I was, and as bulletproof as that made me feel, there was no way I was getting into Hell.
Or at least, that’s what I thought.
‘I know a man,’ said Prudence. ‘He calls himself the Coyote. He can get you there.’
‘Into Hell?’
‘Yes, and back too. Go there, bring my brother back to the land of the living, and I’ll give you anything you want.’
‘I don’t need money,’ I said, and I really didn’t. The Brownie points I’d earn for rescuing an innocent kid from the Devil’s clutches were worth more than any earthly reward she could offer.
I’d been treading water for a while now, taking whatever jobs I could, barely keeping my head above the water. I’d waited years for a job this size to come along. A score like this could change everything. A score like this could buy me the big ticket. The keys to the Holy Kingdom.
‘What’s his name?’ I asked.
All the tension Prudence had been carrying suddenly drained right out of her. ‘Thank you,’ she gushed, wiping away a fresh tear. ‘Thank you so much.’ She reached into the pocket of her fur coat and produced a small, leather pouch, which she placed on the table in front of me. ‘Go ahead, you can pick it up.’
And I could, which meant the pouch and its contents had to have been magically treated. Inside the pouch I found an old-fashioned compass made of brass. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a compass,’ she replied, a bit unnecessarily. ‘I calibrated it to always be pointing in the direction of my brother.’
I swung it about the room and the needle stayed pointing south, which seemed about right. ‘Let me sum this up, just so I’m clear… you want me to meet with a man who calls himself the Coyote, walk willingly into the jaws of Hell, and find your kid brother using this old doodad?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘And quickly.’
I had to admire the audacity of the woman. ‘What’s the rush?’ I asked. ‘He’s been dead for years already, why the big hurry now?’
‘My brother’s body is preserved in ice, Mr Fletcher, but his soul burns in Hell. Every minute he spends in damnation is another minute of torment he has to suffer. Would you wish that on even your worst enemy?’
I could think of two people in particular I’d be more than happy to see roasting in Hell for all eternity, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
‘Please, Mr Fletcher,’ she said, batting her ebony black eyelashes, ‘if you waste any more time, it won’t matter whether you succeed in rescuing my brother or not.’
She had a point. The chances of him coming back even half sane were already pretty slim at this point, without me dragging my heels. If I was going to do this, I needed to do it right away. Delaying any further could mean the difference between the kid living with some nasty flashbacks, or ending up locked in a padded room at Nightingale Hospital wearing a coat with sleeves that wrap twice around the waist.
‘What does he look like then, this brother of yours?’
‘The Coyote will tell you everything you need to know,’ she replied. ‘Now, please, hurry.’
She made it sound so simple. Like I’d be taking a quick safari to damnation. A fishing trip to the lake of fire.
I dropped the compass into my jacket pocket. ‘I’ll take the job,’ I told her.
She smiled gratefully, reached out to me across the table, and we sealed the deal with a handshake.
‘You know,’ I said, polishing off the last of my beer, ‘my friends would tell me I'm mad for doing this.’
‘Then why are you doing it?’ she asked.
‘Because I don't have any friends.’
7
Regret doesn’t even begin to describe it.
We’ve all looked at ourselves in the mirror after a night on the lash, shamefaced at the memory of something we did while we were under the influence, but how many of us have sobered up and realised that we’ve made an iron-clad promise to walk willingly into the gates of Hell?
My mouth tasted like bin juice and my head felt like it had been scooped out and stuffed full of old sausage meat. I ought to have known better at my age. I’d acted like a middle-aged woman at her niece’s hen party, away from her kids for the first time in ten years and drunk as a lord. Not that I was prepared to shoulder all of the responsibility for my actions. Oh no. Lenny's delicious craft beers had their part to play in this mess too. Honestly, the man ought to call them “crafty beers” for the way they sneak up on you.
I took my hangover to Legerdomain, which, while easy on the ears, still let in just enough sunlight through its grimy windows to amplify my headache.
Jazz Hands looked up from her magazine. ‘You’re back. Did you recover my inventory yet?’
‘Not yet,’ I mumbled.
‘Then why are you wasting time hanging around here?’
I pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘I booked another job, Jazz. Bit of a weird one. Going to need your help getting tooled up for it.’
She made a face like a bulldog licking piss off a thistle. ‘What have you gotten yourself into this time, Fletcher?’
I tried to make light of it. ‘Funny story: brunette has a brother that wound up in Hell, and muggins here is gonna get him back. What am I like, eh?’
Jazz Hands set her magazine down slowly, as if it were a bomb. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I need to take a trip south, Jazz. Made a promise.’
‘I've heard some stupid plans in my time, but this one really takes the biscuit. You're trying to buy your way into Heaven, Fletcher, not gain a place in Hell!’
I felt my temples throb. ‘Can you keep it down a smidge? I’m a bit under the weather after a night at The Beehive. Honestly, I feel as rough as a crab's arse.’
‘You took the job drunk then, did you? Why am I not surprised?’ She ground the heel of her hand into her eye as though she were trying to juice the thing. ‘You stupid, stupid gobshite.’
‘You’re making too big a deal out of this. How hard can it be? I already went to that nightmare realm, remember, and I came back from there alright.’
‘That was different, you had Stella with you then; a powerful witch’s familiar.’
‘What makes you think I won’t have her with me this time?’
‘Will you?’
I stared at my feet and traced a horseshoe in the rug. ‘Well, no. But you didn’t know that, so...’
Having Stella on my side would have been a fine thing. She’s the last remaining member of the London Coven: an attack dog for the forces of righteousness (though don’t call her a dog to her face, if you know what’s good for you). I’ve got my uses, but when it comes to a job this size, Stella would be any right-minded person’s choice. Unfortunately, I’d already looked into procuring her services, and found her to be unavailable.
‘She’d like to help,’ I explained, ‘but apparently she's up to her eyeballs with some armageddon thing.’
‘What?’
‘I know, right? That kid just can't stay out of trouble.’
Jazz groaned and ran two hands down her face.
‘L
ook,’ I said, calmingly, ‘maybe I was a bit rash taking the gig, but I’m a man of honour, and a deal is a deal.’
I mean, if I don’t have a code, then what am I? There’s not a lot left of me as it is, without losing my integrity too.
Jazz removed her head from her hands and looked up at me. ‘What do you need?’ she sighed.
Bingo.
‘A weapon, for starters,’ I said. ‘I’m guessing it might get a bit tasty down there, so a shooter would be good.’
‘In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve already been cleaned out,’ she replied, swinging open her empty wall safe to illustrate the point.
‘Can you knock us up a quickie then?’ I asked. ‘A swift enchantment for the road?’
For a moment, she looked as though she might throw something my way for belittling her craft, then settled with offering me a contemptuous stare instead. ‘Your pistol. Do you have it?’
I reached inside my jacket and removed my pearl-handled revolver from its holster. ‘This one?’
Jazz had enchanted the pistol once already, which allowed me to hold the thing, but she was offering something extra this time.
She took the compact weapon in her palm. ‘I can juice it up,’ she said. ‘Make it so the bullets are able to hurt demons. It’ll only be good for six shots though.’
‘I don’t suppose you could do me an Uzi instead then?’ I asked.
‘Do you have an Uzi?’
‘No.’
‘Well then.’
As Jazz Hands rolled up her sleeves and went about performing the necessary magic on my six-shooter, I browsed the shop, idly perusing her wares as I considered the pickle I’d gotten myself into.
I didn’t like how quickly I was having to put all this together. Ideally, I’d have had my affairs in order before I went waltzing into H-E-double-hockey-sticks. Especially aggravating was the fact that I was having to put the job of finding that thieving eaves on hold. Loose ends drive me bonkers, but finding Prudence’s brother had to take priority for now. The Mystery of the Purloined Masque would just have to wait.
‘Done,’ Jazz announced from across the room, her hands still glowing with a faint nimbus of vermillion light; an afterimage of the enchantment she’d performed.
I took back the pistol, the grip of which prickled my palm as I picked it up, fizzing still with fresh magic. I shoved it back into its holster. ‘Wish me luck, sweet cheeks,’ I said, forcing a smile.
‘Look after yourself, gobshite,’ said Jazz, less angry than affectionate now. ‘You’re playing a very dangerous game.’
And I was, like a round of Russian Roulette, or a thumb war with Edward Scissorhands, or a game of Pop Up Pirate with an actual pirate.
8
I found the Coyote in the basement of a Camden undertakers. I followed Prudence’s instructions to locate him, scribbled on the back of a bar napkin in rosebud pink lipstick.
The Coyote was a small, clammy man with fever bright eyes and a ghoulish grin.
‘Come in, come in,’ he insisted, ushering me into his establishment.
He wore a white shirt turned nicotine yellow under a faded tailcoat, the back of which licked at his heels like a serpent’s tongue as he lead me into his parlour.
I followed him through a forest of long, sticky flytraps that hung from the ceiling, studded with dead bluebottles. The Coyote walked ahead of me, his posture hunched, his arms barely moving. He looked like a rejected concept drawing of Quasimodo.
We arrived in a windowless room lit by a single, naked bulb, its sickly glow illuminating the outlines of a few tatty bits of antique furniture. A raven clinging to a perch squawked as we entered.
‘Shall we begin?’ the Coyote asked, clapping together a pair of waxy, white hands.
‘How about you start off by telling me exactly what it is you do?’ I replied.
He offered me a piano-key grin. ‘I specialise in helping people get from this plane to the next,’ he explained, ‘sneaking them under the wall, so to speak.’
‘Simple as that, eh?’
‘Simple as that.’
‘And when you say “the next”...?’
‘...Heaven mainly,’ he clarified. ‘The bulk of my clientele are people who want in on paradise, without the scrutiny that getting there entails. Rich men looking to bypass the pearly gates. CEOs stricken with cancer, retired lawyers dying of old age, disgraced priests given months to live. The list goes on.’
‘So you help these people duck the red velvet rope, and get fat off the profits?’
‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’
I thought of Sarah, buying her way out of jail after she’d orchestrated my murder. The real sharks don’t get tangled in the mariners' nets, oh no. The big fish never end up on the dinner plate.
Behind my back I screwed at my wedding ring, but the nut wouldn’t slip the bolt.
‘Here,’ said the Coyote, holding up an envelope. ‘Your paperwork.’
‘Come again?’
‘For your escort. There’s a return ticket inside. Once you have your man, hand it over and have him read the details off the reverse to get him back here.’
I went to take the envelope off the Coyote, but he snatched it back.
‘Don’t expect Hell to be so civilised,’ he smarmed, his mouth doing something grotesque that I think was meant to be a smile.
I really disliked this bloke. He’d made a career out of counterfeiting Get Out of Jail Free cards. Helping villains cheat their fates and sneak into the Promised Land. I’ve done some dodgy things in my time, but this guy was an absolute toilet. The kind of person who’d watch Philadelphia and come out rooting for the AIDS.
I kept my contempt contained though. I had a job to do, and the Coyote was holding all the cards.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ he said, ‘but you’re a ghost, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right,’ I replied. ‘Why, are you worried I’m going to try and make sexy pottery with you?’
He made a noise that was something like a laugh. ‘Tell me, why would a ghost want to go to Hell? Was dying once not good enough for you?’
‘It’s a job,’ I said.
‘Ah, yes,’ he replied. ‘I had the pleasure of meeting your client when she paid up front for my services. She looked fine and smelled even finer. Of course, you wouldn’t know that, what with being a phantom.’ He put the envelope up to his hooked nose and took a couple of lungfuls. ‘Dabbed with her perfume,’ he said.
The man was oilier than a Friday night kebab.
Sensing my displeasure—and possibly my bunched fists—the Coyote handed over the necessary paperwork.
‘Thank you,’ I said, tartly, snatching the envelope off him.
There was a photograph of my target paperclipped to it. A young lad in his teens, bowl-cut hair, pretty boy features.
‘Now, where’s my visitor pass?’ I asked. ‘Only I’d quite like to come back from Hell myself once this gig’s done.’
‘Of course. I’ve already prepared your return document, as instructed. I just need to put your name on it.’ True to his word, he placed an extra ticket on a desk, dipped a quill into an ink pot, and prepared to furnish it with the necessary monicker.
‘The name’s Jake Fletcher,’ I told him.
‘That's your full title? No middle name?’
‘No,’ I replied, recalling my useless, drunk of a dad.
‘Surely everyone has a middle name?’
‘Apparently not.’
The Coyote shrugged and scratched a title onto my ticket before blowing on the ink and stuffing it into an envelope. ‘Don’t lose it,’ he said, handing it over. ‘There’s no foreign embassy in Hell.’
‘Okay,’ I replied, placing the envelope in my jacket pocket along with the other one, ‘that’s the way home mapped out, now how do I go about getting into the Bad Place?’
‘Oh, Hell's a lot easier to gain access to than Heaven,’ the Coyote explained. ‘Not many people queuing
up to get in there.’
He turned and whipped a sheet of black velvet from what I’d assumed was a table, but turned out to be a coffin set on a wooden bier.
‘And what am I supposed to do with that exactly?’ I asked.
‘Climb aboard,’ the Coyote replied, sweeping a hand across the casket.
‘You’re having a laugh.’
‘You’re welcome to back out,’ he said, making a face that just about begged to be slapped. ‘Either way, I get my money.’
I wasn’t having that. No way was this Class A prick getting paid because his one honest customer hired a bloke who didn’t have the stones for the job.
‘Then what are we waiting for?’ I asked climbing into the silk-lined coffin and sitting there like I was riding a canoe. ‘Onwards and downwards.’
I saw the Coyote’s eyes glitter. ‘Very well,’ he replied. ‘I’d wish you happy trails, Mr Fletcher, but the journey to Hell is likely to be the least of your worries.’
He indicated that I lie back, so I shrank into the coffin and made myself comfortable. Well, as comfortable as it’s possible to be inside of a funerary box.
The Coyote slowly slid the coffin cover into place until the last chink of light was pinched from existence. The darkness pressed in on me, oppressive and heavy. As I lay there, arms pinned to my sides, I became convinced that my breaths were getting shorter, despite the fact that I don’t actually breathe. I heard sharp knocking sounds from above, the Coyote hammering nails into the casket with practiced precision, one blow for each nail. No going back now.
After what might have been a minute, but could have been five—it was impossible to tell with nothing to mark the passage of time—the Coyote finished his circuit of the coffin and all was silent. I tilted my head and pressed an ear to the wall of the coffin, straining to make out a sound.
Nothing.
No movement, no mystical invocations, just the quiet, wordless sonnet of the void.
Then, wham!
Uncanny Kingdom: An Eleven Book Urban Fantasy Collection (Uncanny Kingdom Omnibus 1) Page 70
