"Do you want me to wait?" the driver said as he pulled up in McDougall's driveway outside the big house. "George is paying so we're not on the meter."
"If it's no bother, then yes," I said. "I've got a message to pass on to the man inside and it depends on him what happens next."
I got out into the still, quiet night. There were plenty of shadows under trees and shrubbery, but there was no chanting, which I took as a good sign as I made my way to the door.
The front door opened when I turned the handle, and creaked as I pushed it inward.
"Is that you, Duncan?" McDougall called from inside the main room.
I assumed Duncan must be McDougall's man, the one who was supposed to be turning up earlier.
"No, it's Adams." I called out, and headed through.
The three men still sat inside the marquetry circle. They had an empty whisky bottle, and no sign that they'd eaten.
"Duncan didn't show?"
"No," McDougall said. "And we're out of booze. I hope you've got some good news for us."
"Hold on, I'll get you a drink," I replied. "You're going to need it."
I fetched two bottles from the cabinet, one for them, one for me, and dragged an armchair over so I could sit just outside the circle. McDougall leaned over and took a bottle from me, eyeing the door as he did so, expecting an attack.
I waited until they were settled with a fresh drink each, then gave them the story.
"I found MacMaster," I said. "But he's not going to be of any help at all."
They listened in dead silence as I laid it out, the done deals, the soul Collector's appearance, and MacMaster's fiery end.
Jordan, in particular, didn't take it well.
"We're royally fucked, aren't we?"
"It looks that way," I said, addressing McDougall. "Is there anything I can get you?"
Brown replied.
"Two fish suppers, a pickled onion, and a lot more whisky," he said. "The last request of a condemned man."
Jordan had turned away, gone quiet, with a pensive look on his face. If he was formulating a plan, it wasn't one he was prepared to share.
McDougall took a long slug of scotch and poured another.
"MacMaster tried to wiggle his way out?" he said.
"Aye. He offered me up like a tied-up kipper. But your demon, collector, whatever the fuck it is, paid no heed and went for him anyway."
"But his circle held?"
"Right up until he broke the line, yes."
"Then here we stay," McDougall replied. "There's no other choice."
"And what happens later, when your time really does run out?"
"God knows," the man replied, "although I'm pretty sure by now he doesn't give a fuck."
Jordan moved, tilting his head to one side, and almost immediately I heard it again, the rising wind, and the far off chanting that came with it.
"Stand your ground," McDougall said to the others. "It can't get us if we stay in the circle."
This time there was no preamble, and no polite knocking on the door. A blast shook the structure of the house and the front door caved in with a crack like a pistol shot. Wind and chanting roared in. A storm fell on us so fast we had no time to react. Blackness, swirling and already solidifying filled the doorway, red lightning arcing through it. It felt stronger than before, the sense of power thrumming off it in waves.
The marquetry circle responded in defense glowing yellow and gold, pulsing in time with the already painfully loud chanting of the monkish choir.
The Collector came into the room.
Jordan stepped out of the circle, and walked across to meet it.
I clearly heard what he said, despite the cacophonous din.
"You know what I do, where I work. I have a deal for you, better than the one MacMaster offered. I can rig it. One big bang at the depot and you get a whole town of people. It's me for them. What do you say?"
The dark cloud swirled, the monks' chanting dimmed and faded, and the red lightning fizzled away to leave only two bright red spots in the black, at Jordan's eye level. Everything fell quiet, then there was a hot rush of air heading out the door.
Jordan left at a run after it before I could move to stop him. By the time I got to the doorway he was away and running across the garden. My driver lay, slumped at the cab's door and he looked up at me wryly.
"He's stronger than he looks," he said. "Cold cocked me before I saw him. Want me to head after him?"
I looked up again, to where I'd last seen Jordan, but he was already lost in the gloom and darkness under the trees lining the property. A car started up somewhere over in that direction, the engine revving; Jordan making his escape.
When I went back into the house, MacDougall and Brown still stood inside the circle, although Brown was holding a bottle containing the last dregs of the scotch and he didn't look too steady on his feet.
"What did Jordan mean?" MacDougall asked.
"You heard him. He wants to blow the fucking depot and give the Collector Beith in return for his soul."
"Can he do that?"
"Buggered if I know, but he's off to have a bloody good try. And you're coming with me to stop him."
"No, I'm not," McDougall said.
I stepped over to the marquetry circle and stamped down, hard on the lines of the outer circle. The wood cracked; one more like that and I'd be able to chip pieces off it.
"Yes, you are," I replied. "He's your pal. Maybe he'll listen to you, maybe he won't. But I’m going to Beith, right now. And you're either coming with me, or facing that fire without your protection. What's it to be?"
He came, dragging Brown with him.
10
I didn't have much of a plan; I had to get to Beith and stop Jordan. It sounds simple put like that. It wasn't that I had any great affection for my home town; far from it. But my folks were buried there, plenty of decent hard working people lived there, and I wasn't about to let a coward get it blown to buggery for the sake of three pints of beer and a packet of crisps.
George's cab driver didn't even blink when I told him where to go, and how fast I wanted to get there.
"Jump in then, lads. It's Monte Carlo or bust time."
I got in the front with him, while McDougall and Brown got in the back. Brown was drunk as a skunk and sound asleep less than five minutes down the road. I wished I could join him, for our driver took risks on corners, through lights, and in overtaking that would put a racing driver to shame. We were doing the ton somewhere on the motorway west of Govan when he looked in his mirror, and jerked, almost sending us off the road. He regained his composure just in time to stop from hitting the central reservation barrier, then spoke, very softly.
"Are you expecting company, Mr. Adams?"
He motioned at the mirror and I took a look.
A roiling, seething mass of dark cloud careered along behind us, gaining fast. Red lightning sparked and flashed, and in the distance a choir of mad monks sang as if their souls depended on it.
The driver stepped on the gas without having to be told, and we were doing a hundred and twenty as we passed Glasgow Airport heading south.
The Collector closed with every mile.
It being somewhere around five in the morning, traffic was almost non-existent, which was just as well, as we weren't going to stop for anybody. But we were catching somebody a way down the road ahead. They too were going a good deal faster than the speed limit, but either they hadn't looked in their mirror, or they didn't have the oomph the cab had at its disposal. We closed in on it, while the darkness closed in on us.
I felt static in my hair and on the back of my hands as red flashes struck at the road at our backs, crashing hammer blows in time with the riot of chanting and the roar of the engine and a scream that our driver wasn't able to contain.
We almost caught up with the vehicle in front by the time we reached Howwood, about a mile before the two lanes went down to one and the road narrowed to weave through hilly farm
land. There was just enough light from the approaching dawn to see Jordan's pale features, wild eyed, staring back at me as we came up alongside it.
"Floor it," I shouted, but our driver had already acted, and we inched up, almost taking the lead as the Collector reached for us and the road narrowed fast ahead.
We weren't going to make it.
The only thing that saved us was that our driver proved more competent than Jordan, with a steadier head in the crisis. He kept us going in a straight line, daring Jordan to do better.
The M.O.D. man cracked first. Ten yards before the road narrowed and we would both have been crunched together between the central barrier and the roadside wall, Jordan bailed, slamming on his brakes hard.
But he'd been going too fast; his car skewed sideward, and rolled. We had to get right up close to the central line to avoid it, and the sound of screeching metal was more terrible than the roar of the approaching darkness as Jordan's car tumbled and turned down the road ahead, strewing the tarmac with parts and rubber and bodywork.
We didn't get out of it unscathed. We hit the central reservation, ran along the metal barrier in a shower of sparks and screeching for twenty yards, then drifted into the center of the road and jolted to a halt that almost whipped me into the dashboard. Steam and smoke rose out the front of the cab; it wasn't going any farther.
MacDougall was the quickest of us to react.
"It's on us. Everybody out."
We piled out of the vehicle, McDougall and I hefting a still-comatose Brown between us, and staggered away up the road to where Jordan crawled, his face a bloody mess, out of the wreckage. The storm of black shadow, red lightning and howling chanting bore down on us, towering high over the empty road.
Jordan got unsteadily to his feet and screamed into the approaching storm.
"We still have a deal. Take them. Our deal still stands."
Red lightning forked and cracked and blew our cab apart, sending burning fragments spinning around us to be swirled up and away into the dark.
"Take them," Jordan shouted again.
The dark shadow took firmer form, black satin and silk veils as the monks yelled into the wind. It rose up, a towering wave, red-topped high over our heads, and I knew that if it broke, we would never surface.
Instinct drove me to step forward.
"I've got a better idea," I shouted. "I want to make a deal."
11
Everything went perfectly still and quiet, as if the whole world had taken a pause for breath.
"I want to make a deal," I said, and stepped closer to the swirling mass in front of me that had become even more solid now, coalescing into something I knew I did not want to see. Somewhere, far off in an impossible distance, the monks started up again, soft, sinuous, almost compelling.
Almost.
"This deal you have with Jordan," I said. "I have a better one. If he blows the depot you get, what, five thousand souls at most?"
"Ten," Jordan shouted at my back. He sounded desperate. I ignored him and concentrated on the thing in front of me. Cold came off it in waves, and high overhead it crackled with red sparks of energy desperate to be released.
"There are nuclear warheads in that depot," I said. "Hundreds of them. If you waste them now, they'll never be used; you'll never get the benefit. Leave them be. Leave MacDougall and Brown be, and let the nukes take what they take in the time to come. There won't be five thousand dead, or ten, but hundreds of thousands, maybe millions."
"No," Jordan shouted.
"Do we have a deal?" I asked.
In reply a blast of hot air blew past me. A crack like gunfire almost threw me off my feet. I heard a scream and turned, in time to see Jordan taken in flame, burned and gone to ash in the blink of an eye.
When I turned back, there was only the empty road, and the last fading chanting, already lost in the breeze that accompanied the sun coming up on the new day.
George's driver was already on his phone, and when he put it away he spoke directly to me.
"There'll be somebody here in a minute. We need to get off the road. It'll be hoaching with cops any time now."
Brown woke up, and stared at me blearily.
"What did I miss?"
MacDougall looked me in the eye.
"What have you done?"
"Saved Beith, got rid of the bad guys, and saved your souls," I replied. "Don't rush to thank me all at once."
"But the nukes, and the Collector and the deal... what have you done, really?"
I shrugged and lit up a smoke.
"That's for the future to decide. In the meantime, I think you owe me three pints of heavy and a packet of crisps."
The End
If you enjoyed Deal or No Deal, try The Amulet, book one of the Midnight Eye Files.
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The Midnight Eye Files
Gryphonwood Books by William Meikle
The Midnight Eye Files
Deal or No Deal
The Amulet
The Sirens
The Skin Game
Omnibus Edition
The Watchers
The Coming of the King
The Battle for the Throne
Culloden
Omnibus Edition
Stand-Alone Works
Berserker
Island Life
The Invasion
The Valley
Concordances of the Red Serpent
Sherlock Holmes- The Dreaming Man
Deal or No Deal? (The Midnight Eye Files, #0) Page 5
