“Baphomet,” she murmured.
Baphomet crashed down onto the hairy thing, driving it flat against the floorboards with a loud crack. Surprised, the beast lashed out and swatted the demon aside. Baphomet rolled to its hooves with a hiss, even as its opponent wheeled about to face it. In the flickering lantern light, Sadie got her first good look at it, and a thrill of atavistic horror raced through her. Like Baphomet, it was a thing of wrongness.
But, like the demon, it was her thing now. Her prize. It lunged towards Baphomet with something halfway between a wail and a howl, and the demon capered from its path, moving more quickly than its foe could follow. Baphomet slid behind her with a gurgling chuckle, and the beast swung about to face her. A pointed, almost skeletal muzzle wrinkled, revealing a mouthful of brown fangs.
“Make yourself useful, demon,” she hissed. “Get its bindings. We must get it back in its box.” Baphomet chuckled, but did as she bade. She faced the beast-thing, her fear of moments earlier forgotten in a rush of awe. The thing had been trapped for centuries, but as weak as it was, as thin and starved as it was, it was still an impressive monster. Its chest worked like a bellows as it caught her scent, and a raspy growl slid from between its fangs.
She could feel its hunger. She pulled her pistol out of her coat and took aim. She didn’t want to risk damaging her prize, but from what Baphomet had told her, there was nothing on God’s green earth that could permanently hurt the beast before her. Certainly not the weapon in her hand. She had cast the bullets herself, and cooled them in the blood of a black cockerel, and they would bite the flesh of things that bullets normally couldn’t hurt. But they might as well have been pebbles for all the good they would do her against the beast.
She wondered if it would recognize its name, were she to say it. Was there anything left of the man it had once been, so many centuries ago? The creature’s talons scraped on the floor as it padded towards her. Its eyes were empty of anything save hunger. She was tempted to retreat, to rejoin the men, but she resisted the temptation. A Fleece did not run and hide, when faced with the ravening dark. Her father had taught her that much.
The creature sprang, jaws wide. Sadie fired coolly. Her first bullet took the creature in the centre of its skull. Her second caught it in the back, as it crashed down. It wailed and squirmed like a broken-backed snake. She didn’t fire again. Her point had been made, she thought. Baphomet pounced on the creature a moment later, the suit of jade in its clutches.
The demon worked swiftly, chortling as it did so. Soon, the wounded beast was stuffed back in its burial suit, and the golden threads were re-tied. It shifted and shuddered on the ground, and then fell still. At her direction, Baphomet slung the creature back into its crate, and replaced the lid.
“Still aware,” Sadie murmured, as she watched the demon’s efforts. “After all of these centuries, still aware, still hungry. It must surely be mad, if it wasn’t before.” She met Baphomet’s eerie gaze, and the demon exposed its teeth in an unpleasant smile. It gestured, as if in invitation. Almost against her will she stepped forward and placed her hand on the wood. She sucked in a breath as images bombarded her mind.
For a long time, there had been only silence. An eternity of quiet and stifling darkness. It could see nothing save the dark, could hear nothing, could not even move. Red thoughts boiled amidst the black, churning and frothing in a skull as heavy as stone. Hunger gnawed at that which had once been a man, and the flitting moth-shapes of memories devoured by madness passed over the surface of its mind’s eye and laid stinging kisses upon the tattered remnants of its soul. All of this Sadie felt as her fingers drifted across the rough wood of the cargo crate.
The thing in the jade suit howled silently in the dark as the threads of memory wove about its mind, winding tighter and tighter until inevitably they slackened and faded, growing weak. It saw the shapes of demons and devils in those threads, some of which it had banished back to their respective hells before it had become that which it was. The crate shuddered beneath her touch, and she drew her hand back.
It had been a man once, in the time before the dark. That much she’d learned from her father, in an unguarded moment. It had been a soldier, a scholar and a sage; a man who met the dark with a burning brand and drove it back again and again. Now it was that which it had hated most, though it could only recall that rarely. Instead, it was tormented by a procession of faces whose names it no longer knew but whose blood and flesh it desired to taste. In the dark, unable to move, bound in sacred jade, it raged against the silence.
It was mad, and Baphomet, Sadie knew, found its madness good. The demon crawled across the crate, snuffling at the wood, tasting the foulness of the thing contained within. The devil drew strange, eye-watering sigils of binding in the wood with a crooked talon as they listened to the gnashing teeth and garbled almost-words that fluttered behind them, seeking escape.
She glared at the devil, revulsion welling up in her. As if it sensed this welling distaste, Baphomet glanced at her, goatish lips peeling back from long, yellow fangs. The creature was constantly in motion, never still. Its form ballooned and shrunk at its whim, becoming gigantic at first and then barely the size of an ape. Its head was that of a goat one minute, and the head of leering satyr in the next. Its eyes were the only things which stayed the same—flickering between yellow and red like crackling flames.
Baphomet spoke. Not in words, but in hateful black images which spread across her mind like shattered glass scattering across a stone floor. The sound of its voice caused nausea, and she clutched her stomach. Bile burned in the back of her throat and she swept out a hand in a sharp gesture. “Enough,” she growled. “Enough!”
Baphomet laughed and settled back on its haunches, hairy knuckles drumming on the surface of the crate. She could hear the thing inside begin to shudder and quake in response, and she wondered whether what she was doing was entirely sensible. The thing in the jade suit was a weapon as devastating as any fire-bomb dropped from a German zeppelin. It was a living plague, and soon, it would walk at her command.
Poor Gladstone had had the right idea, but he simply hadn’t thought big enough. He’d wrestled a corpse into motion at her request, and set it throttling the enemies of the Order of the Cosmic Ram, all for her. Poor, besotted Gladstone, happily slaughtering those men who’d stood in her way, keeping her in check, refusing to see the sense of her words. With them out of the way, she had been able to strengthen the Order’s position.
But then Charles had to go and ruin everything, just like always. She frowned, as Baphomet tittered. It slapped the crate with its leathery paws and bobbed its head in amusement. “Quiet, beast,” she snapped. “Out of my sight.”
Baphomet retreated, slithering off the crate and back into the darkness, but its leer remained hanging before her eyes like the grin of Carroll’s Cheshire Cat. Shepherd was right. It was in her head, pawing about like a fox in a midden heap, distracting her. She smiled. Well, it was welcome to do so. It would find nothing of use in there. Her mind was her own, as was her will. The devil had not made her do anything she hadn’t already intended. It had merely given her the means to do so in an efficient, orderly manner.
It was just a tool, in the same way the thing in the jade suit was. A tool for putting the world into the proper order, for ensuring the greatest good for the greatest number. The same way Gladstone had been, the way Shepherd was, the way Charles…could have been. Her smile faded, and she sighed. She was going to have to take care of Charles, one way or another. She looked around. It wouldn’t take him long to find this place, if the little surprise she’d sent Shepherd to deliver didn’t do for him.
A sudden sharp pain rippled through her, as an image forced its way into her head. Baphomet’s way of telling her that someone was coming. She saw a woman—she recognized the ragamuffin who’d been with St. Cyprian. She cursed. She’d underestimated Charles’ practicality. He obviously trusted the dark little guttersnipe more than she’d thought. She
turned and gestured her men forward. “Quickly,” she snapped. “Get this crate out of here.”
The men bustled forward, moving quickly and with only a few hesitant looks at the bodies scattered around. Sadie looked up into the darkness, searching for Baphomet’s crouched shape. “Well, she’s taken all the trouble to find this place. Let’s give her a proper welcome, shall we?” she asked softly.
Somewhere above, the demon laughed.
10.
Edwardes Square, Kensington, London
“Get down, man,” St. Cyprian said, shoving Wendy-Smythe aside as the Nkonde nail-fetish statue pounced. As Wendy-Smythe fell, St. Cyprian danced back, narrowly avoiding the statue’s fists as they smashed down, splintering the floorboards. The statue was made of wood, but it was hard with age and covered in a porcupine’s coat of bent nails. Crudely-carved eyes glared hatefully from grimacing features as the construct hopped towards them, moving stiffly but quickly. It reeked of enchantment, but what sort he couldn’t identify.
A number of incantations and mystical gestures ran through his mind as he stumbled over an ottoman, but none of them seemed appropriate. Unless he knew how it was being animated—whether by the thoughts of someone, or by some magic inherent in its creation—he had no inkling of how to render it inert once more. The statue lunged for Wendy-Smythe, its nail-dotted hands pawing for him as he scrambled aside.
It was obvious that however it had been animated, it had been done in order to silence Wendy-Smythe. The question was, why? What had he said to initiate the attack? Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wendy-Smythe lunge for the mantle of the fireplace. The little man grabbed a wooden box and snatched it open, retrieving a disk of beaten metal. He flung the box aside and thrust out the disk, yelling, “By the light of the myriad and malevolent moons of Munnapor, I blind thee, by the roving rings of Raggadorr, I bind thee.”
Both St. Cyprian and the statue paused to stare at the little man, as he contorted the fingers of his free hand into a torturous gesture and jabbed the air with his disk. “What in the name of God are you doing?” St. Cyprian asked.
“Banishing this foul entity,” Wendy-Smythe huffed. His face had gone as red as his fez as he continued to shake the disk about. “It—ah—it doesn’t seem to be working.” He peered at the disk. “Maybe it’s broken?” The statue leapt towards him, and Wendy-Smythe yelped and scurried away. “Why isn’t it working?” he wailed.
“Because it’s a fake, just like that idol,” St. Cyprian snarled. “And Raggadorr only has one ring!” He grabbed two handfuls of curtain and tore it down, as the statue pursued Wendy-Smythe towards the bookshelf. The little man began to climb the shelves like an overly indulgent squirrel. At that moment, the valet chose to make his reappearance, obviously alerted by the noise. The man flung the door open and stared at the tableau before him.
“Withers,” Wendy-Smythe shrilled, “retrieve the cursed scepter of Ibn-Schacabao! It’s in the upstairs airing cupboard!”
Withers blinked. “I’m afraid that I must give notice, sir,” he intoned. “Such shenanigans simply cannot be borne by a gentleman’s personal gentleman.”
“Withers—the scepter!”
“I trust that a referral will be forthcoming, sir. I shall be in residence at the Junior Ganymede Club,” Withers continued, as if the rampaging statue were not there.
“Yes—fine—referral noted—get me the blasted scepter, please,” Wendy-Smythe screamed, as the statue clawed at his heels. Withers shut the door to the library with a sniff. “Don’t worry, he’s gone to get the scepter,” Wendy-Smythe called out to St. Cyprian. “That’ll settle this bally statue’s proverbial hash.”
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” St. Cyprian said, flinging the curtain over the statue and dragging it away from the bookcase. The cloth tore as the statue thrashed its way free, sending St. Cyprian tumbling over the ottoman. The statue shredded the remains of the curtain and made to launch itself towards Wendy-Smythe again, as he dropped from the bookshelf.
St. Cyprian hefted the ottoman and sent it flying towards the statue. It struck its back and became lodged in the nails there, causing the statue to topple over like a flipped turtle. Its stubby arms and legs flailed for a moment before it thrust itself up back onto its feet. St. Cyprian had already scooped up a fireplace poker in the interim, and he made a two-handed swing, smashing the statue in the side of the head.
He battered at it, knocking it further and further away from the cowering Wendy-Smythe. The statue tried to get past him, but he blocked it at every turn using the poker. It couldn’t see in the traditional sense, but it seemed to know where the little occultist was, and had no compunctions about going through anything between itself and him. It would pursue him until it accomplished its task, or was destroyed. Which left him only one course of action, really.
As the struggle drew close to the liquor cabinet, St. Cyprian stretched out a hand to snatch a bottle of spirits. He dashed the bottle against the statue. It shattered, and alcohol drenched the statue. Then, acting swiftly, he hooked the statue with the poker and, like a shepherd employing his crook, he dragged the construct around so that its back was to the fireplace. “Stoke the fire,” he shouted.
Wendy-Smythe goggled at him. “What?”
“The fire, man, stoke the bloody fire!”
“You can’t mean to destroy it,” Wendy-Smythe babbled. “It cost me a mint.”
“Oh well, in that case, I suppose we should just let it kill you then,” St. Cyprian snarled. “The fire—now!”
Wendy-Smythe hustled towards the fireplace and began to stoke it with the ash scoop, prompting the renewed flames to crackle hungrily. He hurriedly backed away as St. Cyprian began to force the statue backwards. It gripped uselessly at the poker, trying to rip itself free, but the hook of the poker had become lodged in a crack between its neck and shoulder. St. Cyprian put every ounce of muscle he possessed into driving the construct back. It skidded and stumbled and, finally, fell.
St. Cyprian snatched the ash scoop from Wendy-Smythe’s unresisting hands and used it and the poker to stuff the still struggling statue into the fireplace. Ash and burning logs tumbled out, dislodged by the thrashing construct as St. Cyprian fought to keep it in place until the flames could catch. Soon enough, it was wreathed in flame, and the old, hard wood began to crack and split with a sound like gunshots. St. Cyprian pinned it in place with the poker and stepped back. Its movements grew slower, weaker, and then, at last, stilled entirely.
He let out a long breath and bent forward, hands on his knees. His heart thudded in his chest, and his body trembled with fatigue. The thing had been stronger than it looked. He glanced at Wendy-Smythe, who had fallen into his chair, and was mopping at his face with a handkerchief. “It—it tried to kill me,” he said. “Why did it try to kill me?”
“Presumably to keep you from telling me whatever you were planning on telling me, before we were interrupted,” St. Cyprian said. He unbent, sniffed, and straightened his necktie. “Speaking of that—the name.”
Wendy-Smythe hesitated, his eyes still on the fireplace. St. Cyprian snapped his fingers in the little man’s face. “The name, Mr. Wendy-Smythe. I really must insist.”
“Fleece,” Wendy-Smythe blurted. “Sir Hermes Fleece.”
“Sir Hermes,” St. Cyprian said, with a sinking sensation.
“That’s the one,” Wendy-Smythe said hesitantly. He licked his lips and looked at St. Cyprian. “I—ah—I heard he and Melion had a…falling out, you might say, at the Savoy around Christmas.”
“Did they,” St. Cyprian said.
“Oh lawks yes,” Wendy-Smythe said hurriedly. “Bosom chums, those two. At least until recently, what? Melion even accompanied old Fleece-y to Damascus, on Order business, hush-hush,” he added, tapping the side of his nose.
“And what business might that have been?”
“The way I heard it—second hand, you understand, friend of a friend, you might say—they were looking for something.
And that they found it.”
St. Cyprian frowned. “And then?”
“Ah, well, not much to say, really,” Wendy-Smythe said hesitantly. “There was a bit of a scene; that Gurkha of Melion’s put Fleece’s valet through a privacy screen, and brandished that blade of his. If anyone has anything against Melion, I’d wager that it’s Fleece.”
“Why? What happened between them?” St. Cyprian asked, even as he wondered why Melion hadn’t mentioned it. Did he have some reason to discount the possibility of Fleece’s involvement? Or was it as simple as Melion not considering the incident to be pertinent?
Wendy-Smythe gestured helplessly. “How should I know? I’m not exactly in the center of the action, now am I?” His face assumed a mournful cast. “As you yourself said, I’m an amateur at best, and an annoyance at worst.” He took off his fez and worked its brim with his fingers. “I only know what I heard, and what I heard was that they had a squabble.” He held up the disk he’d tried to use against the statue. “This really doesn’t work?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“But it’s got the stamp of the Secret Lamas and everything,” he protested. But it was a half-hearted protest. He looked around. “Does any of it work?”
“Well, the statue obviously,” St. Cyprian said.
“That wasn’t magical. I bought it because I thought it tied the room together.” Wendy-Smythe tossed the disk on the floor. He looked up. “I was hoping that this was my chance,” he said very softly. “I thought, when I heard you were here, that I was finally going to be a part of something.”
St. Cyprian sighed. He felt a flush of pity for the little man. Wendy-Smythe was one of those doomed to be ever on the outside, looking in. He had no innate talent for the eldritch or unspeakable and given his taste in decorations, he was apparently as gullible as a child. But he didn’t appear to have a single truly bad bone in his tubby body, when all was said and done. His only real sin was curiosity, and who didn’t suffer from that? He hesitated, but then placed his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Philip, I hate to tell you this, but you are a part of something now.”
The Jade Suit of Death (The Adventures Of The Royal Occultist Book 2) Page 9
