Weirdbook 31

by Doug Draa

  I tried a little bravado. “So where do I find these Angels of Malice?”

  “You cannot face them alone. That is, you can, but they would likely incinerate you in the blink of an eye. Doubtless you have protection. It won’t be enough, not here. We can help you. After all, we would be glad to see the Angels of Malice thwarted and if you were successful, they would focus their attention elsewhere.”

  “I’ll settle for that.”

  “The leader of the Angels of Malice has asked for a meeting with us, a final discussion in the wake of the murder—a last chance for us to capitulate before he does his worst. It is unlikely he will be expecting a trap. To some extent, he will be unguarded. He is a very arrogant creature. If we fail, however, it will be the end of the Daggermen, and of you, Mr Nightmare. At least, in the worlds we know.”

  * * * *

  The appointed place was at the end of an abandoned jetty that ran out into a run-down part of the harbour, long since disused, the black waters choked with rusted, half-submerged hulks. At the end of the jetty there was a circular area, a former landing zone some fifty yards across, at one end a crumpled crane, leaning over at a crazy angle, smeared in seagull crap that gleamed in the glow of the nearby harbour lights. It was very exposed, which is why the Angel of Malice had chosen it—doubtless he wanted to be sure he had a three sixty degree view of everything around him. A cold wind blew in from the Atlantic and I could see the white of breaking waves out in the slate grey of the bay.

  The Daggermen positioned themselves strategically around the perimeter of the derelict circular loading point, seven of them including the Dokta. I knew that they all carried long knives that were more like swords. It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were weapons of power. These Hungarians had been mixed up in demonology and all the other kinds of sorcery for millennia and they drew on magic that was outside the knowledge of most people.

  It was why the Angel of Malice wanted to recruit them. I’d asked the Dokta about it when he was supervising the preparations for the meeting. “If he could control us and use our powers,” the Dokta had told me, “he would control the carnival. It would enable him to extend his influence more easily. The Angels of Malice are always seeking ways to burrow into human affairs, like cancer invading a body. Subtle but deadly. We have fought them for centuries.”

  I’d been given various items—a thin, silver chain, a two inch statuette of some kind of forest creature, a sort of faun, ugly as sin and a necklace. Now, normally you’d have to get a bunch of toughs to hold me down before you got me to wear a necklace, but here, in these circumstances, I wasn’t going to argue. I’d suggested to the Dokta that I called on some of my contacts—in Pulpworld, I have many reliable friends—but he’d demurred.

  “We use the old magic,” he said. He was arranging for a large vat of something very oily and foul-smelling to be boiled up outside his caravan. When the bubbling contents had cooled down a mite, his men dipped their arms into the mess, up to their elbows. I had to do the same and it was only when I’d got the disgusting gunk right up to my own elbows that I recognised the smell. This revolting concoction was comprised mainly of blood.

  “Don’t be concerned,” said the dwarf, with an evil grin. “It’s not human.”

  So that was okay. Not human. I didn’t ask. I just rolled the sleeves of my shirt down and put my coat back on. Even so, it didn’t hide the stench.

  Now, taking up my position in the shadows behind the Dokta, I could still smell the muck on my arms. The harbour stank of oil, weed and other sea-type stenches, but the blood I carried won out. We waited. The moon, three quarters full, broke occasionally from the clouds, adding to the spectral nature of the area. The Daggermen were like statues, their long knives still out of sight. I was beginning to doze, when I saw movement.

  Up on the crane. A shadow detached itself from its top, slipping down through the tangled spars, soundless, agile as a spider. That was an image I didn’t want to think about. I like spiders as much as small flying insects do. We waited as the creature lowered itself to the ground. It was taller than most men, its body wreathed in darkness that completely obscured whatever it was wearing. Only its head was visible, a gaunt skull, devoid of hair, almost white. A dozen horror movies sprang to mind, but this wasn’t amusing. The Angel of Malice exuded an atmosphere that was deeply disturbing, like heat from an oven, different to any kind of power I’d ever come across before.

  As it walked calmly across the circular area, its feet made no sound, as if it was gliding—that and the fact that the whole area was covered in a number of tarpaulins that the Daggermen had spread there earlier in the day. They were black and blotched here and there with oil stains and as far as anyone knew, they’d been lying around for a long time. The Angel of Malice paid them no heed. He just went to the centre of the area and stood very still, his gaze fixed on the pint-sized Hungarian.

  “Ferenc Halmosi, my old friend!” said the Angel of Malice. Its teeth were a brilliant white—they’d have sold a million tubes of toothpaste. “You came. Perhaps you’ve reconsidered my offer, after all.” The voice was harsh, but somehow very seductive, part of the creature’s power, I guessed. “Sensible of you to prevent any more unpleasantness between us. I trust you are ready to capitulate?”

  “I will never surrender to you, Urruzaal, you should know that. My ancestors have fought your kind since time began. It shall be so with my descendants.”

  The Angel’s face changed, the epitome of hatred, agony, all that stuff. It wasn’t good to look at. “Ah, so it has to be a contest of wills. Very well. I expected as much.”

  The dwarf raised his arm slightly and around the circle I saw his men take out their weapons and hold them before them like firebrands. He did the same and the Angel of Malice regarded all seven blades, its eyes ablaze, but whether with anger or delight, I couldn’t tell. As it watched, the men pulled back their sleeves and even in this faint light, the dried blood was evident. The Angel of Malice lifted its head and sniffed the night air like a huge hound. It had caught the scent of the blood and now it was definitely pissed off.

  “Demon blood!” For a moment it looked nonplussed, but then it laughed, a truly horrible sound. Everything about this monster suggested pain, so it was well named. “You’re a fool, Ferenc, if you think you can bind me. You need more than the blood.”

  The Dokta bent his small frame and hauled aside the tarpaulin he was standing on, to reveal a section of what he and his men had laboriously painted across the whole of the stone floor of the area earlier—in demon blood, naturally. It was an elaborate pentacle.

  The Angel of Malice hissed like a steam engine, glaring at the tarpaulin where it was standing. My guess was it could see beneath it now, and understood the extent of the painted workings. I knew that the Dokta had written a name in its very centre, though it had meant nothing to me at the time he daubed it there. I knew it now—Urruzaal.

  At another signal from the dwarf, he and his men stepped forward, three strides, their long knives pointed directly at the dark figure. Urruzaal emitted an animal howl of fury and pulled from its robes a weapon of its own. It was some kind of short staff, its head the size of a tennis ball. Weird light coruscated from it. Somewhere between the seven knives and Urruzaal’s staff, light fizzed and popped like some kind of miniature electrical storm. It was spreading, the light intensifying: I could make out shapes writhing within it, hurtling around, claws spread, mouths gaping. Urruzaal was ringed by the incandescence, turning this way and that in an attempt to drive the light back at the wielders of the blades.

  The Dokta had told me that this would happen and had primed me for my part in this colossal battle of wills. I bent down and reached under another flap of tarpaulin, pulling out a metal lance, a couple of metres long, another item in the Dokta’s supernatural arsenal. It was deceptively lightweight but beautifully balanced. The Angel of Malice was too preoccupied tr
ying to blast aside the weapons of the seven Daggermen to notice me. I waited for the roaring within the circle of light to reach thunderous levels and at a cry from the dwarf, stepped forward.

  Urruzaal saw the movement and turned his frightful gaze—no longer remotely human—on me. A vampire would have been a whole lot more attractive. I concentrated on the lance and my target area. A couple of steps and I threw the weapon: I made like an Olympian and put every ounce of my strength into that cast, adding to its weight my fear. The shaft actually sang as it shot across the space between us, tearing through the whirling lights, striking its target—Urruzaal’s chest—plumb in the centre. I’d put such a heck of an effort into the throw that the lance tore through the body of the Angel of Malice like a knife through butter and came bursting out of the creature’s back. I’d done a good job.

  Or so I thought. Actually, I’d messed up. I was supposed to spit Urruzaal’s body like a piece of meat on a sheesh kebab, thus rendering him temporarily useless, at which time the Daggermen would swarm over him like leeches in a bowl of blood. Instead my throw had been so hard that the goddam lance went right on through, out the other side and clattered impotently on the tarpaulin several feet away. I did get the consolation prize, though—Urruzaal screamed in pain and staggered to one knee.

  The Dokta and his six men charged inward, but their assault was met with powerful resistance. Even down on one knee, the Angel of Malice was amazingly powerful. It held up its staff, which absorbed all the cuts, swipes and blows that the Daggermen could unleash. The crazy stalemate threatened to go on for the rest of the night. I would have made a try for the fallen lance, but Urruzaal was wise to that and I couldn’t get round him: something coiled out of the air close to his feet and smothered the weapon in a wreath of shadows. Neither I nor the Daggermen were going to be able to penetrate that cloud.

  Urruzaal was gradually showing signs of regaining his former strength and slowly he rose up to his full height. My guess was he was going to make one final push and blast all of us to Hell and damnation, and there didn’t seem like there was much we could do to stop him. Around the far edges of the circular stone area, a thick mist was gathering, kinda like there was something out there that was enjoying this mayhem on the dock. The mist curled upwards and shaped itself into a wave more than a billow of cloud.

  The Dokta abruptly lurched backwards. I could see that the balance of power had shifted. Urruzaal was definitely getting the upper hand. We’d missed our chance. I saw the creature’s face contort with unholy glee, then change as a shape came gliding in over the dock, riding on that rolling bank of mist like a manta ray. It took me a minute to figure out what it was.

  Henry Maclean had surfed in, his shark-faced board skimming the air just above the stone. With one swift twist, Henry aimed the board directly at the legs of the Angel of Malice. The board sliced into the creature, homing in like a missile and Urruzaal was knocked sideways, shrieking out curses that were thick with its own pain. The Dokta and his men and I watched the fallen monster struggling to get up again, like a crab with a broken shell. Urruzaal raised his head and howled out his fury, curses flaming like fire.

  Henry Maclean was having the surf of his life. He gave his own version of a rebel yell and curved back into the centre of the area, this time propelling his board at Urruzaal’s exposed neck. The shark nose cracked against muscle and bone and Urruzaal’s head flopped over sideways, the spinal column broken clean in two by the majestic pass of the astral surfer. The Angel of Pain toppled to the ground like a beached fish. Its fingers went into brief spasm, there were a series of particularly revolting curses, then all was still.

  I noticed that the lance I had hurled earlier was now free of its protective cloud, so I went over to it, lifted it and wasted no more time in ramming it into Urruzaal’s fallen form. I felt the point of the lance bite into the stone floor of the dock. This time the creature was pinned like a butterfly to a card. The dwarf and his men were at my side, unable to resist giving a unified cheer.

  “Is this thing dead?” I asked them as Henry came zipping in, dismounting and picking up his board in one dramatic flourish.

  The Dokta shook his head. “The body was once a human, chosen to host the Angel of Malice. Urruzaal remains alive, inside the body, but it is trapped. We will complete the work and seal it in, so that it cannot infest a new host. The creature cannot be killed, but it can be contained and rendered powerless.”

  “Henry,” I said, much relieved, “your timing is perfection itself.”

  The young man beamed, tossing back those extravagant blonde locks, like some mad Celtic god. But right now, mad Celtic gods were fine by me. “Get a load of that lance! That’s what I’m talking about. You think these guys would do a trade? The Admiral has some neat stuff—”

  “I don’t think so, Henry. You probably don’t want to mess with it anyway. And you’ve got that surfboard—what the hell else do you need?”

  He laughed. “You bet. That was some mist! Don’t usually get currents like that other than in the sea. What a rush! You want to try this, Mr Stone? It’ll blow you away.”

  “Probably not right now, Henry. I need to get this case cleared up. I have to get this fallen angel back to my Chief of Police. Any ideas how we do that?”

  Henry laughed. “Sure. The Admiral will accommodate us.” He pointed to the edge of the dock and I wasn’t surprised to see a bloated metal shape bobbing up from the murky waters—a deep green metal shape. Its deck hatch clanged open and Sten-Gun Stan emerged, jumping on to the dock and coming over to us a little apprehensively.

  I turned to the Dokta and his men. They had already started exposing parts of the corpse and they used their knives to carve what I took to be runes of power in the white flesh, strange numeric designs like digital, binding chains. After they put their knives away, the dwarf smiled at me, his teeth gleaming. “I wish you luck in your own world, Mr Stone. Be warned, however—Urruzaal will never rest. You must seal him away carefully. Keep him far from fire, it is his life blood. A deep lake, perhaps, submerged in cold water, or in the heart of a glacier. That would hold him for an eternity.”

  A glacier. In New York? Yeah, that would be a challenge. I glanced at Sten-Gun Stan.

  “I’ll put him in one of the torpedo tubes,” he said casually, like he was about to load a few sacks of grain. “Once you’ve done with him, we’ll go out to Arctic waters and fire him into a deep water crevasse.”

  * * * *

  We got back to my New York uneventfully and it wasn’t long after I reported to Rizzie Carter that I found myself down at the local morgue. Dokta Dangerous, sans Daggermen, had joined me and I was given the dubious honour of doing the (fast) talking. Urruzaal had been bundled—complete with transfixing lance—into a makeshift coffin, which now resided on a bare metal table. The cold room was garishly lit and the group of people who stood round the coffin could have passed for a bunch of extras from a stalk and slash movie.

  Central to the montage was the Mayor, Johnny Wizacki, a lean, mean-looking guy of forty who liked very expensive clothes. He had taken a brief look at the now shrivelled body in the coffin, scowled with justifiable disgust and waited irritably for someone to tell him what the holy hell was going on. Rizzie Carter took a back seat, hands in his pockets, mouth closed, and studied the scrubbed floor tiles like a man waiting to be sentenced by a judge wearing a black cap.

  “This was no ordinary murder,” I began. “Your son, Mr Wizacki, got himself inadvertently mixed up in a turf war and was the unwitting victim of a particularly vicious gang.”

  The Mayor’s icy glare never wavered. I moved on. “The focus of the latest conflict was a carnival called Count Rudolfo’s Hungarian Extravaganza and its right to run here in the city. Some of the local Mob, and I don’t know the details, or the names, hired the guy in the coffin to do their bullying. They wanted Rudolfo’s out of the city, that or pay up fifty per cent o
f the takings. Rudolfo wouldn’t play ball, so the Mob applied some pressure. They had their assassin rig up a high profile killing to make it look like Rudolfo’s people were responsible. That’s where Mr Halmosi here, comes in. He, as Dokta Dangerous, together with his Daggermen troupe, are the world’s outstanding knife-throwing act.”

  The Mayor winced and I moved on again, a little more speedily. “The Mob’s assassin had a set of knives made—very realistic copies of Mr Halmosi’s knives—so good that only Mr Halmosi and his team would have known they were fakes. Your son was murdered with these, so that it looked for certain like Mr Halmosi was responsible for a death that would bring the whole of the city down on his neck. Chief Carter smelled a rat, though, shrewd operator that he is. He needed someone on the inside, which is why he asked me to do some snooping on his behalf. I talked to Mr Halmosi and that’s when I figured what had really happened. No one was going to believe Mr Halmosi unless we caught the real killer.

  “Well, sir, we did that, but it was like cornering a rat in a drain. The assassin put up one hell of a fight and you can see the result for yourself. He didn’t live to tell the tale.” I pointed to the coffin. “And he didn’t squeal on the big shots who employed him. It’s a dead end.”

  The Mayor walked quietly over to me and stood with his face very close to mine. “Nice try, Mr Stone, but I smell bullshit.”

  I was about to launch into a garbled defence of my revelations, but ironically the Mayor dug me out of a hole without realising it. “My son was a goddam moron—a gambling, whore-mongering, dope-sniffing moron! I told him time and time again, keep your friggin’ nose out of the crap! You got a good future, don’t screw it up by mixing with the hoodlums of this town. Did he listen? Nah. Couldn’t tell the jerk nothin’. His mother disowned him, you hear me? All those years of that love and fuss—wasted. What can I say? The kid didn’t deserve to be carved up like he was, but it would never have happened if he’d listened to his old man. So you don’t need to cover up for him.”