A Mage's Gambit: New York Falling (A Malachi English book)

by Andy Hyland

  ‘How did you find me?’ I asked, after I swallowed the tablets.

  ‘Zack planted a tracing spell on your back when he gave you that hug. Anyone with half a brain could see that you were up to something, so he took action. We followed you round at a distance, just in case. Out of sight, but close enough to come running should you be monumentally stupid. Which you were. Neat little cast if I say so myself.’

  ‘He doesn’t usually do subtlety.’

  ‘Well, we live and learn. So what does all this teach you, Malachi?’

  ‘That anytime Zack expresses affection, he’s got an ulterior motive.’

  ‘Hardy har har. It teaches you, boy, that we don’t go trying to take the world on our shoulders. We don’t go running off by ourselves cutting everyone else off. And we do not, ever -’

  ‘Try getting one over on a demon,’ I said.

  ‘Not unless you’ve got something really good to trade,’ Arabella chipped in. ‘Then, they might go for it. But otherwise, they’ll take you.’

  ‘Lesson learned. Hang on. You said you got my letter yesterday? I’ve been out how long?’

  ‘Three days,’ Arabella answered, taking my temperature with a thermometer that she stuck in my ear. Against all the odds, she was turning out to be a reasonably competent nurse. Who knew.

  ‘What have I missed?’ I asked, trying to stand up but getting shoved back down.

  ‘Not a great deal,’ Becky said. ‘We got a bit out of Melanie. As usual, it all leads to more questions and no answers.’

  ‘But,’ said Arabella, ‘and this is important, it was so much fun getting it out of her.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Still back at my place,’ said Becky. ‘Tied up and drugged. Don’t look at me like that. If you’d have behaved yourself we wouldn’t have had to start giving you blood transfusions and we could have decided what to do with her.’

  ‘Where did the blood come from?’ I asked, slightly nervous now that I remembered how we got the blood the last time we were here.

  ‘Turns out,’ Becky said, ‘that Simeon’s got a fridge. Wish he’d have dropped that in conversation at some point. All the different blood types were there – I’ve now got a theory it affects the flavor, but not sure I’ve got the guts to ask. The hassle you and Zack could have saved yourselves if we’d known. So, do you want the full catch-up briefing now?’

  ‘Can we get out of here first?’ I asked. ‘I could really, really do with seeing some daylight.’

  ‘Sure,’ Arabella said. ‘I’ll get you unhooked and call Zack. Want to grab something to eat?’

  Benny’s was out, due to the aforementioned need for sunlight, so after a small argument we settled on a small steakhouse on the Upper East Side. Becky and Arabella went for salads – the only time they really went all out was in the Fades, where whatever you ate had no long-lasting effects on your hips. Zack turned up shortly after us and ordered a steak, bloody and rare. My own steak arrived extremely well done. I used to be a medium rare guy, but once I’d done a few body clean-up jobs, I didn’t want to see blood in my food anymore. The job changes you, it really does.

  ‘This whole going out in the day thing is really good,’ I said through a mouthful of fries. ‘We should do it more often.’

  ‘You live in the darkness too much, everything starts to look grim. Everyone knows that,’ Zack replied.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Didn’t we mention it to you?’ Arabella asked. ‘Surely someone told you about that?’

  ‘Everyone knows,’ said Becky. They looked at each other, then carried on eating. ‘Well, now you know as well. Daylight. Treasure it.’

  ‘Noted. So, come on. Melanie. Spill it.’

  ‘Allow me,’ said Arabella. ‘So, she wants to talk almost immediately, but I wouldn’t let her until I’d made it absolutely clear how very upset we were with her.’

  ‘Harsh,’ I said.

  ‘Not really. Anyway, moving on, she didn’t kill Neville Compton, the famous castrated banker. But she’s friends with the guy’s wife, who did kill him.’

  ‘I heard she’d been arrested,’ I said, recalling the receptionist’s words at the private morgue.

  ‘Arrested, confessed, charged. All going through the system. She ran and told Melanie as soon as it happened. Turns out they’re BFFs.’

  Becky turned to me. ‘That’s best fr -’

  ‘I know what it means,’ I said.

  ‘So,’ Arabella continued. ‘Turns out wifey heard a call where her hubby Neville – get this – agreed to murder their five year old son. Not an average murder, either. A sacrifice. She challenges him on it, he tells her to shut her mouth, get in line and carry on spending the money. She goes apeshit. Grabs the kitchen knife, goes to work, and the rest is history. Once she calmed down, she ran straight to Melanie. Blurted it all out and then tried to get out of town.’

  ‘But the police got to her first.’

  ‘Yep. Neighbor heard the noise, the usual thing. They got her, but not before she passed the kid off to a relative – cousin or something. They took the boy and ran, and are now somewhere in this great country of ours, still running if they’ve got any sense. Happy trails to them, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘So Compton was definitely in Carafax,’ I said, ‘who are turning out to be quite the bunch of playboy occult wankers. This old guy at my apartment – did she have any idea who he is?’

  ‘Guy called Monk. Edwin Monk. Senior partner at the bank. The senior partner. And get this – that occult blaze that kicked off the thermal scope when we looked at that building for the first time? That was him.’

  ‘Still can’t believe that,’ said Zack, a trickle of blood from the steak running down his beard. ‘That kind of power – I’ve not seen anything like it. No over here. Not human.’

  ‘How could that happen though?’ asked Becky. ‘I mean he’s strong – more than anyone else I’ve ever met, and everything about him feels off, somehow. I can live with someone taking me, but then he goes and sends all Sitri’s goons running back to Daddy? You couldn’t even get hellkind on this plain with that kind of power. Couldn’t happen.’

  ‘Not unless we’ve got net theory all wrong,’ I mused.

  Net theory, in a nutshell, explains why we don’t have demons stomping around the earth setting cities ablaze and pulling down the moon on our heads. Think of a series of nets standing between hell proper, and our plane, going all the way through the Fades. The nets near hell have larger holes. As you get close to earth, the holes get a lot smaller. For something to pass through from hell to here, it would have to systematically shed its power. Satan himself could walk from his throne all the way through the Fades to Central Park. But when he got here he’d be on a more or less even playing field with a powerful human magician. Becky would love to have a crack.

  Some people think the whole arrangement is a happy circumstance for which we should be grateful. Me, I’m back to thinking it’s God giving us another fighting chance.

  ‘Net theory holds up,’ Becky said, picking at the salad. ‘Maybe we’re describing it wrong, maybe the pictures we use aren’t accurate, but everything we know of how Earth, the Fades and hell interact is explained by net theory.’

  ‘Please, don’t get her started,’ Zack pleaded.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not kicking off. Just saying.’

  ‘So they’re into child sacrifice,’ I said. ‘That can call up some pretty dark stuff. But if they’re that serious, if that’s what they’re into, and we’ve got no reason to think this was the only attempt, then how come we’ve not heard of them before?’

  ‘Caution,’ said Becky. ‘Patience. The long game.’

  ‘Also,’ Arabella pointed out, ‘if you’re a power-hungry evil bastard, then working in a bank’s as good a place to hide as any.’

  Becky continued. ‘They’ve been able to resist the immediate power-grab, waiting out for something more.’

  ‘The Aleph,’ Arabella s
uggested.

  ‘Did she fess up to selling us out?’ I asked. ‘Edwin Monk had no trouble finding out who I was and getting to my apartment.’

  ‘Oddly enough, no,’ said Arabella. ‘Complete, consistent denial on that front.’

  ‘Lying bitch,’ said Becky.

  ‘Going right back to the big, big question,’ said Zack. ‘Until we know who or what the Aleph is, we’re not going to see the big picture with Carafax.’

  ‘Sitri,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have to strike a deal with Sitri.’

  ‘Wow, you’re full of crap ideas lately,’ said Arabella. ‘I know we spoke about it and got a bit full of ourselves, but in the cold light of day, it seems like a stupid waste of life. I’d rather not.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not talking about going up against him. I’m talking about dealing with him. We have to find something he wants. You said it yourself – you only go up against a demon if you’ve got something really good to trade. Something they crave. Get them focused on that, and maybe you’ll get what you need and make it out alive.’

  ‘So what do we trade, O Malachi the wise and resourceful?’ asked Zack.

  ‘Damned if I know.’

  When the meal finished we headed out for a walk down Broadway. It was refreshing being amongst so many people rushing around, only worrying about their work that afternoon, or what show they’d see that evening, or how their big date was going to go, or….I don’t know. Whatever regular folk fill their minds up with, I guess.

  Zack and Arabella wandered a bit ahead, leaving me trailing behind with Becky.

  ‘I saw her, you know. Julie. You were concerned in your note, so I paid her a little visit. We had coffee. She’s fine.’

  ‘Thanks. Appreciated.’

  ‘She asked what I did for work, so I fessed up to being a clairvoyant and psychic. Don’t look like that – what was I meant to tell her? If I keep things simple and close to the truth it saves me tripping over lies further on down the line. Anyway, she only went and asked for a reading. Wanted to know how things might turn out with you.’

  ‘Please tell me you didn’t.’

  Becky cracked up. ‘Oh, Mal, I so did.’

  ‘I hate you. Sometimes.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I kept it all happy and vague. She was wondering where you were, so I told her you had some family illness issue out of town. Remember that when you see her. Don’t make me look like a liar. She said to give you this.’

  I looked at the stiff cream envelope. Looked formal. Hopefully I wasn’t being dumped with an official typed letter. That would suck. I opened it carefully and pulled out the embossed card inside. Finally, something was working out for us. I smiled at Becky.

  ‘We need to get word to Sitri. Sort out a meeting. I think we’ve got something he wants.’

  Chapter sixteen

  We slid into the Fades together and stood at the outer edges of Rarkshah. Rarkshah was where you ended up if you entered the Fades and didn’t end up at Benny’s. If it was your first slide and you came here unawares and undefended, then God help you, because nobody else around here was going to. In the words of the great Obi Wan Kenobi, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Unless you went deeper hellwards. If you did that, things got worse really quickly.

  At the fringes, Rarkshah looked like a shanty town, huts and hovels springing out of the red dusty ground. Most of the light came from the blazing torches set on poles or hanging from walls, more often than not fashioned from skulls or other gruesome trophies. Hungry eyes blinked at us out of the shadows.

  ‘I’m still thinking bad idea,’ Zack whispered.

  ‘I sent word via emissary to Sitri,’ said Simeon, who was as formally dressed as ever, but also now carried a katana, swinging it like a walking stick. ‘I was assured under the terms of the pact that we would be granted safe passage to the place of meeting.’

  ‘This pact,’ said Arabella, ‘it covers humans, right?’

  ‘They’re not specifically mentioned,’ Simeon admitted.

  ‘And did you get any assurances about safe passage from the meeting?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe that was discussed.’

  ‘Bloody hell, we’re all going to die.’

  She wasn’t being melodramatic. We were here, the four of us plus Simeon, because we’d been told the big man had managed to carry out a minor diplomatic miracle. I had no idea what weight Simeon’s words or presence carried in the Fades, but we had to hope it was enough.

  We kept walking. Here, at the borders, lived the scavengers and the listless, the hellkind rejected from all other places, the weak and the angry. Angrier than usual. Sitri arrived in the area, took the strongest of these and formed the K’Tai, the Source of Shadows. When they weren’t earthside they lorded it over the other rejects here, in a citadel at the centre of this slum city. For a former Hell Lord it must be a humiliating agony every time he looks out at his domain. Which of course makes him all the more dangerous.

  The hovels gave way to more stable dwellings, each individual and unique, designed to be an expression of ego and power. Sitri’s personal guard met us halfway to the centre. A small detachment of six demons, bare of any human disguise, wearing scraps of stolen mismatched armour, long curved scimitars swinging from their belts. They varied in nature but most fit a certain type that Sitri apparently preferred: tall, broad and aggressive looking. A few had stubs of horns protruding from their foreheads but most didn’t. What really turned your stomach was the rotting skin than hung in folds from their faces.

  ‘You are expected,’ said the leader, a wiry demon with long arms that half-walked, half-prowled along, his long neck dipping before lifting his head high again. This one’s eyes burned green – a curiosity for hellkind and probably the reason for his banishment here to the edge of the Fades.

  ‘We know,’ said Simeon, raising his Katana and draping it across his shoulder.

  ‘You are the Lord Keeper?’ the demon asked.

  The four of us looked at each other as Simeon stepped forward. This was all news to us. As far as we knew, Simeon barely set foot in the Fades. When did he become a Lord of anything? Turns out the guy had as many secrets as any of us.

  ‘I am the Lord Keeper, the Watcher in the Night, the Many who are One, and I claim passage to the Lord Sitri, the Bringer of Pain, the Lord of Sixty Legions.’

  The green-eyed demon dipped his head low. ‘Did he bow?’ I asked out of the corner of my mouth. Simeon waved away the question with a barely-there flick of his hand.

  ‘Please, allow us to escort you,’ the demon said, before turning its gaze on the rest of us. ‘Your companions are also granted safe passage.’ He really didn’t seem happy about that one. The other five formed a rough circle around us as we moved, further on and deeper in.

  We were among what passed for the middle-classes in the K’Tai now. Finer dwellings, sprawling as far as they could before spats over territory started. Ostentatious displays of gold and jewellery – prized more for what they said about the plundering activities of the wearer than for any intrinsic value. My stomach tightened as we saw the first human slave, a pitiful wretch of a boy, muzzled and chained outside a door, a dish of water on the ground. No more than a dog to these scum.

  ‘Control yourself,’ Simeon warned me in a low voice. ‘Not what we’re here for. Remember that.’

  He needn’t have worried. If there was one thing I was going to do, it was to remember this. One day, I would free them as I had been freed.

  The heart of Rarkshah, the citadel of the K’Tai, was a miracle of demonic engineering. A long, squat fortress four times the size of Central Station, built entirely out of bones. Some recognisably human, some definitely not so. Some rotting, some fresher, some still carrying meat. Legend has it that it stood for millennia, abandoned and falling into disrepair until Sitri, fleeing from his own disgrace, took refuge here centuries ago. Through sheer force of will he’d created Rarkshah around him, calling out to
the forsaken of hell and building a private army. If a human had accomplished it, you’d probably feel a twinge of admiration. But this was Sitri, and like all hellkind he was filled only with ambition and ego and spite. Nothing to admire there.

  The great gate of the fortress parted and swung out in two sections, each one driven by a team of slaves, human, urged on by the stinging lash of a whip. We crossed in, and the gates crashed shut behind us. We would stay alive now only if we could persuade Sitri that he had more to gain by letting us go. It was complicated somewhat by me being here, but when Simeon sorted out the trip, my coming along was one of Sitri’s demands. I hadn’t gone face to face with him since the night of…well, it had been a while. For me anyway. For a demon, merely a blink in a whole universe of time. Less.

  In the centre of the courtyard there were spikes bearing the remains of those that Sitri had deemed no longer worthy of serving him. One of the bodies was the Jorogumo with only six legs. I almost felt sorry for the poor guy. It escaped from the Staffarian hotel shambles, only to face the penalty for failure when it got back home. Still, one less to worry about in the future.

  Inside, the décor was varied, consisting of ransacked valuables and artwork from the Earth plane. Everything was a reminder of their presence among us, their ability to take at will. There were at least three slaves in every room, in various states of physical and mental abuse. Their eyes followed us as we walked swiftly through each room. Becky grabbed my arm and squeezed hard.

  Sitri’s throne was, as word had it, a re-creation of his great throne on the borders of hell, which some other demonic arse now sat on. A great sculpture of interlocking skulls, the high back of it made of woven spines. It was, as Zack put it once, a statement piece.

  Sitri was studiously ignoring us as we approached, absorbed in conversation with a hulking brute that was probably his new favourite general, at least until he got pissed off and ripped his head from his shoulders. Why anyone in an outfit like this wanted promotion was beyond me. Greed over intelligence, I think.