She only screamed once in the night, and this time I held off waking her until she stopped by herself. Eventually she settled back into a fitful sleep, and I lay back on my pillows and closed my eyes again. So many things weren’t right I hardly even knew where to start. Me sharing a bed with the woman of my dreams and not being able to touch her seemed at the time to be pretty much top of the list, if I’m totally honest about it. Still, when you compared that minor frustration to the fact that I had accidentally got myself possessed by an archdemon I now couldn’t get rid of, I supposed it paled into insignificance, all things considered. Then there was the small matter of the threat of war in Heaven, Lucifer himself walking around London, a highly dodgy Dominion and an iffy hippy shaman, and the apparently imminent arrival of a goddess called She Who Massacres.
Who’d have my life, honestly?
You there? I thought at the Burned Man.
Always, it replied. I ain’t going to go to sleep when I might miss the chance of you and Blondie getting it on, am I?
Not going to happen, I thought sadly. Sorry mate, I wish it was.
So do I, it said. You’re fucking useless with women, you know that?
Of course I knew that, but oh how grateful I was to have the Burned Man point that out to me. Not. I sighed and turned over. It was light outside now and I didn’t feel like I was going to be getting back to sleep any time soon. Might as well just face the day, I thought.
I slipped out of bed as quietly as I could and pulled a robe on over the boxers and T-shirt I had slept in. I eased the bedroom door open and shut it as quietly as I could behind me, letting Trixie have her sleep. I had a feeling she needed it.
I took a piss then went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on. The clock on the cooker said it was eight thirty so I’d had a grand total of maybe three hours actual sleep if I was lucky, and my head was banging from all the booze I had drunk last night. Today was going to be a pleasure then. I made coffee and sat at the table with it, staring out into Mr Chowdhury’s back yard. For a moment there I wished I smoked. It would have been something to do, at least.
“Bloody hell,” I muttered.
I blew the steam off my coffee and watched a pigeon stalk along the top of the wall, its head bobbing back and forth as it walked. Stupid-looking thing. There was a flash of ginger fur as something hurtled over the wall from the other side, followed by a squawk and a shower of feathers as the pigeon went down.
Morning Rashid, I thought. Enjoy your breakfast.
I went through to the office and noticed the light was flashing on the answer machine. I turned the volume right down before pressing play, not wanting to disturb Trixie. The old-fashioned mechanism clicked and rattled as it came to life, playing the tiny cassette tape.
“It’s Adam,” he said, his voice cutting through my sleep-deprived morning fuzz like a cold knife. “I need to talk to you. Call me.”
He read out a mobile phone number and hung up. The machine beeped and rewound its tape with a harsh rattle. I grabbed a pen and paper and replayed the message, jotting down his number this time. Lucifer’s mobile number for fucksake – I couldn’t help but wonder what that would be worth to some of the idiots on the stupid bloody Internet. Whatever was the world coming to?
Did I really want to call him back though, that was the question. Had things got so fucking bad that I was making common cause with Lucifer of all people? Better the devil you know. Well, he was the fucking only devil I knew, unless you counted the Burned Man. I really had to get their hierarchy straight in my head before much longer. It might be bloody important soon. Experience told me that the Burned Man had outranked Bianakith, in raw power if nothing else, but then they were both archdemons. Where Adam fitted into that as both a fallen angel and a duke of Hell, I had no bloody idea. Still, he was being awfully polite to me since the Burned Man and I had our little meeting of minds, as he had put it. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
I picked up the phone and dialled.
“Adam,” he said when he answered.
“It’s Don,” I said. “Don Drake.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Thank you for calling me back, Don. I wasn’t at all sure that you would.”
“I nearly didn’t,” I said.
“Yes well, there we are,” he replied. “Strange times make for strange bedfellows, I’m sure you will agree.”
Strange bedfellows – Rashid had used that same expression, and I liked it even less coming from Adam than I had from him. If either of them thought we were going to be getting that close then they were sadly mistaken. An uneasy alliance was the best anyone could hope for at this point, as far as I was concerned. And I still wasn’t even sure about that.
“Something like that,” I said. “Question for you – if I said ‘Menhit’ to you, would you know who I meant?”
There was a long pause. “I would,” he said at last.
“Thought you might,” I said. “And if I said ‘cat statue’, how would that grab you?”
“No, now you’ve lost me I’m afraid,” he said. “Did you say cat statue?”
“Yeah, as in ‘a statue of a cat’. A really fucking old one, buried deep under London. Bronze age, maybe. Possibly Egyptian, from what I can gather.”
“Have you started drinking already, or are you still drunk from last night?” he asked me. “How do you suppose there would be a bronze age Egyptian statue of anything buried underneath London of all places?”
“Buggered if I know,” I said. “Rashid says he put it there, a long time ago. To keep this Menhit in her box, apparently. Well now it’s knackered and she’s on her way over here, according to him.”
“Rashid,” Adam echoed. “Tell me, Don, how did Meselandrarasatrixiel take to your friend Rashid?”
“There wasn’t a lot of love at first sight,” I admitted. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“I’m interested, that’s all,” Adam said.
I had to remind myself just how little I could trust this posh prick. Adam had set up Charlie Page and his zombie wife to kill me just because he had been interested to see what I’d do about it, after all. I knew that even if Adam wasn’t exactly my enemy any more, and I still wasn’t completely convinced that was the case, he was still a fucking long way from being on my side.
“I bet you are,” I said. “You’re far too interested in Trixie in general for my liking.”
He laughed, the sound like shards of glass flying down the telephone wires to imbed themselves painfully in my eardrum.
“Oh Don, are you jealous? Truly?”
Yeah I fucking am as it happens. Not that I’d have ever have admitted it to that smug wanker of course, but it was true all the same. I knew Trixie was still more than a little bit in love with him, and I hated it. Oh God, how I hated it.
“No I ain’t,” I said. “Don’t be fucking stupid, we’re not even the same sodding species.”
I blinked. That had to have been the Burned Man speaking up suddenly – I had never even thought of it like that, to be honest about it. But I mean we weren’t, were we?
“I see,” Adam said in a dry tone that made me think he didn’t believe a word of it.
Fuck him, he could believe what he wanted.
“Never mind what you see,” I said. “What are you going to do, more to the point? About Menhit, I mean?”
“What makes you think I would do anything about Menhit?” he asked.
Oh for the love of God, nothing was straightforward with him, was it?
“You’re recruiting soldiers for the coming war, Trixie told me,” I said. “If a rising war goddess isn’t a coming war then I don’t fucking know what is.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “I’m not sure that’s exactly what she told you now, is it?”
I supposed it probably wasn’t, but I’m afraid I couldn’t remember her precise words from a conversation we’d had half a year ago.
“What then?”
“Oh, I believe in being prepared, I have to admit,” he said, “although my concern is the war in Heaven, not whatever may transpire on Earth. I am very invested in the status quo, you understand – a status quo that has left me free to pursue my own interests for a long time now. A regime change Upstairs would not be at all in my best interests, and there may be a very great change afoot indeed unless I can prevent it. If the voices of dissent above can prevail upon Menhit to take their side then that change may become inevitable. She would be a great and terrible weapon indeed, in the wrong hands.”
I had to admit it sounded like he had a point there.
“So the cold war might be about to go hot,” I said. “You’re recruiting soldiers to fucking keep Heaven safe, according to you. Papa Armand is trying to get me to choose a path to walk but he won’t tell me which is which. Bianakith was summoned by God-only-knows-who to undo whatever Rashid did to keep Menhit away from Earth. Bianakith beat the snot out of Trixie and I killed it too late and now Rashid has appeared out of nowhere spreading his tales of fucking woe. Trixie’s Dominion is lying out of its holy arse whatever she wants to think, and she’s gradually going batshit crazy on me again. For pity’s sake Adam, what for the love of God am I supposed to fucking do?”
“I am not,” she said quietly from behind me, “going crazy.”
I slammed the phone down so hard it’s a wonder I didn’t break it. The sudden hostile tension in the room was so electric I could feel it making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I must admit I was cringing, waiting for the blow that had yet to fall. Oh fuck me, how much of that had she heard?
“Trixie…” I started, but it was way too late for that now and I knew it.
“No!” she screamed at me. “No, don’t you dare! Don’t you dare Trixie me Don, not now!”
I made myself turn around and face her. She was standing there barefoot in her nightdress, a length of white silk that barely covered her thighs. The expression on her face was pure bloody murder.
“Oh God I’m sorry,” I said. “Don’t….”
Don’t hurt me, I was thinking, and I hated myself for it. I loved her, and I wanted her, and she still scared the fucking life out of me just the same.
It’ll never happen again, she had said, but I wasn’t too sure how much I believed that.
She glared at me for a moment longer then suddenly sank onto the sofa and put her head in her hands. All the tension drained out of the room at once and I felt myself sag with relief. I wasn’t getting a beating then, that was something. I looked at her, and realised just how broken and defeated she looked right then. Her hard, brittle shell had well and truly cracked, hadn’t it? I got up and went to her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Oh Trixie, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
She looked up at me, her long blonde hair falling loose over her eyes.
“You killed Bianakith,” she said in a soft voice. “I have no idea how you managed it but you did, didn’t you? It beat me.”
There didn’t seem to be any point in denying it any more.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“I lost,” she said.
“Just that one time,” I said.
“I never lose,” she said, and put her head back in her hands again. “I’m a soldier of Heaven. I am a Sword of the Word. I never lose.”
She was crying, I realised. Oh dear God, she was crying, right there in front of me. I couldn’t cope with that. I knelt down in front of her and reached out to take her in my arms. She let me hug her for a moment, then tossed her hair back out of her face and met my eyes.
“Mate with me,” she said suddenly.
I almost died.
“What?” I managed to croak.
“You heard me. I know you want to. Come back to bed and mate with me.”
“I… um…” I said.
Mate with me had to be the least alluring chat up line in history but all the same, this was Trixie for God’s sake. Yes, of course I wanted to. Bloody hell, I wanted to so very much. But all the same… I looked at her then, at the blinding white lie of her aura, and my heart sank.
“Show me your real aura,” I said softly. “Please, just show me. Just for a moment.”
A single tear ran down her cheek. The white illusion disappeared and I looked at her in utter horror. She was more than half gone now. Her beautiful golden glow was a corrupted monstrosity of black streaks and green and purple rot. The black threads were writhing even as I watched, spreading and growing, enveloping the remaining patches of gold as though strangling them. I pulled her into my arms and hugged her tight.
“Oh Trixie,” I said, my face buried in her hair. “Oh my poor darling.”
This was her bloody Dominion’s doing, I was sure it was. I was convinced that thing was teetering on the brink and it was dragging her down with it.
I wasn’t fucking having that, but I had absolutely no idea what I could do to stop it.
“I’m all right,” she said, that waspish tone creeping back into her voice. “Do you want me or not?”
“Yes,” I said at once. “Yes I do, of course I do. You know I do Trixie, but…”
But not like this. She wasn’t in her right mind, I knew that. Not even a little bit she wasn’t. I’d be taking advantage of that, and that would make it basically rape.
Fuck her! the Burned Man urged in my head. What’s fucking wrong with you Drake? Drag her into bed before she changes her fucking mind again.
Yeah, well, it would say that wouldn’t it? The Burned Man had the libido of an alley cat at the best of times, and no morals whatsoever. She was offering herself up on a plate, but it just wasn’t as simple as that, was it? Nothing ever fucking was.
“But what?” she demanded, her voice turning chilly.
Oh shit, I was on thin ice now, I knew I was. If I spurned her now, if I left her feeling scorned and unwanted, I dread to think what would happen. Fucking chivalry. I might not be any sort of white knight, but all the same it seemed to keep getting me in hot water.
“I love you,” I said at last.
That knocked her right off her guard, and I have to admit I surprised myself a bit with that one. I mean of course I loved her, but I hadn’t exactly been planning to say so. I’m not that brave, as a rule. She blinked at me in open astonishment.
“You do?”
“Yes,” I confessed, and it really was true. “Yes I do. And I do want you, Trixie, more than I can say. But not… not like this. Not when you’re just trying to make a point, not when you’re upset and hurt and trying to pretend you aren’t. When you want me, I’ll be here.”
There was a long pause.
“What if I never do?” she asked.
Ouch. I blinked and swallowed the hurt like bitter medicine.
“I’ll be here beside you anyway,” I said.
It was true, as well. I would. Pathetic I know, but there we were.
Fucking idiot, the Burned Man said in the back of my head.
“I see,” she said. She pulled away from me then, sat back and pulled her nightdress down to cover her legs as much as it would allow. “Well. Perhaps you’d be good enough to find my cigarettes for me?”
“Sure,” I muttered.
I rounded them up for her and left her sitting on the sofa smoking while I went to take a shower. A long, cold one. After I was done and dressed I came back through into the office to look for her. She had got dressed too, in pale blue jeans and a tight white jumper that almost undid all the good work my cold shower had done. She didn’t seem to have any clothes she didn’t look sexy in.
She was drinking coffee, and I saw she had made one for me as well and left it on the desk. She was hiding her aura again, I noticed.
“Thanks,” I said as I picked it up.
“You’re welcome,” she said, without meeting my eyes.
Oh good, we were back to bloody awkward again then. All the same, I couldn’t even imagine the level of awkwardness we would be at now if I actually had taken her to bed. I was sure that wouldn’t have ended well, for all that I desperately wished it would have. Ah well, such was life.
“Look,” I said, after a moment. “About what you heard…”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Pride comes before a fall, and I have been proud. I know I have, Don. I admit that. I have been given gifts, and I have become accustomed to them. I have taken my skills for granted, when in reality they had only been lent to me by greater powers. If those skills should have failed me, then obviously it was because I needed to learn a lesson.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
I supposed nothing of the fucking sort as it went, but I really didn’t want to have another argument with her right then. Trixie was coming at this from a position of blind faith, whereas I had rejected that a long time ago. As I saw it, her skills were as great as ever, but Bianakith had overwhelmed her all the same. And I thought I knew why. Oh sure, it was an archdemon, not something even she could have just flicked away with a twitch of her fingers, but all the same that wasn’t right.
I am a Sword of the Word, I never lose, she had said, and from what I had seen of her fighting prowess I could well believe it. Before I knew her, Trixie had battled the Furies all by herself for thousands of years. Trixie had killed three devourers singlehanded in one afternoon. Trixie had walked into battle against Wellington Phoenix on a broken thigh and thought nothing of it. Even the Burned Man respected her abilities, I knew that much.
Trixie was death walking, to put it bloody mildly. Angelus Mortis, Janice had called her. The Angel of Death. Maybe she wasn’t exactly that, not literally anyway, but she wasn’t bloody far off it. There was no way Bianakith should have been able to kick her arse the way it had. Unless…
“Look,” I said carefully. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
Trixie blinked at me. “You can always talk to me, Don,” she said.
“Yeah well, thanks and all that,” I said, “but what ‘can I talk to you’ really means when people say it is that you might not like what they’re going to say, you understand? It’s like saying ‘please don’t hit me when I say this’, yeah?”
“All right,” she said.
She sat back down on the sofa and put her coffee cup on the floor, and looked expectantly up at me.
“Well, look,” I said. “You’re right. You did lose to Bianakith, but you shouldn’t have done, should you? I mean, when we first talked about it, you were sure you could kill it if I kept its aura under control. And that wasn’t just pride talking, Trixie. That was simple fact. There’s no shame in knowing what you can do.”
“I suppose so,” she said.
“It was stronger than it should have been, wasn’t it?” I said. “I mean, you’re realistic about this sort of thing. I know you are. It was you who said it was out of your league while it still had its rot aura active, after all. That’s not pride, that’s acknowledging what you can do and what you can’t. That’s just realism, Trixie.”
She looked at me for a moment, then nodded.
“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I don’t pretend to be able to do what I can’t, Don.”
“No, exactly,” I said, warming to the topic now I had her attention. “I know you don’t, and that’s the whole point. Once I did my thing, you should have been able to take it apart, shouldn’t you? Something went wrong. Or rather it didn’t. Someone was cheating.”
“Who?” she asked, and looked up at me. “And how did you kill Bianakith anyway?”
No, I wasn’t going to tell her.
“Same way I like to play cards,” I said. “I cheated more than the other guy did.”
“Oh,” she said. “So who was the ‘other guy’ here?”
Well now, this was the tricky bit. This was the bit that was going to get me backhanded through the window and under a bus if she took it the wrong way.
Fucking hell, you shouldn’t be this scared of your own missus, should you?
She’s not your fucking missus, the Burned Man sneered at me. She might have been by now maybe if you’d have fucked her when you had the chance but you bottled it, didn’t you? You’re back to square bleeding one there now aren’t you, you daft prick?
I didn’t think I was actually, not quite anyway, but either way I didn’t need the Burned Man’s fucking relationship advice. I ignored it and ploughed on.
“Well, well look,” I said. “I mean, we’ve established that something must have deliberately summoned Bianakith, yeah?”
“Yes,” Trixie agreed. “There’s no way something like that could have squeezed through the Veils by itself.”
“Right,” I said. “And like I said, since we killed Wellington Phoenix, I can’t think of a human diabolist who could have pulled that off. I half thought Adam might have been behind it, but I asked him and he denied it, and in all honesty I believe him. I mean, he just doesn’t have anything to gain, and Adam never does anything that doesn’t have something in it for him, does he?”
“No,” Trixie had to admit. “No, I suppose he doesn’t.”
“Well,” I said cautiously, and I have to confess I retreated behind my desk to put a bit more space between her and me. “That only leaves one possibility as far as I can see.”
“Oh?”
I sat down in my scruffy leather swivel chair and looked at her across the scarred expanse of desk. I suppose it would buy me another second or two if she decided to go for me.
“Your Dominion,” I said.
Trixie fixed me with a frozen blue stare.
“What about my Dominion?”
“Well look, it wasn’t exactly itself was it, the last time we spoke,” I said. “You know as well as I do that it saying Bianakith was doing the Lord’s work smells like a bucket of month-old fish. It’s not right Trixie. The Dominion isn’t, I mean. It fucking can’t be.”
“It’s not for me to question,” she said, but I could see the confusion on her face.
Trixie was a soldier not a general, and a soldier needs a chain of command above her. I knew she put all her faith in the judgment of that Dominion, and followed its orders without question like any good soldier would have. I’m sorry but the time for unquestioning obedience was pretty much over, as far as I could see.
“I know, babe,” I said, “not usually it isn’t, but come on, fucking think about it.”
“No!” she shouted, and lurched to her feet with a murderous look on her face. “You spurn me and now you try to turn my face away from righteousness, and–”
“He’s right, you know.”
I don’t know who turned faster, me or Trixie. Well obviously she did, if I’m honest about it, and she managed to produce her sword as part of the same fluid movement. God but I loved that woman.
“All right, Adam,” I said.
“Good morning,” he said, a wry smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
He stepped out of thick shadows that really shouldn’t have been there at the far end of my office and waved a lazy hand that made them go away. He was as immaculately dressed as ever, in a dark grey business suit and a sober red tie. He nodded at me and fixed Trixie with his unnaturally dark eyes.
“This man Drake speaks the truth today,” he said. “About many things.”
Ouch. I knew this bugger could probably listen in on my conversations, and I had a horrible suspicion he had heard me confess my love for Trixie. Oh joy, that was bound to come back and bite me on the arse before much longer then. All the same, at least he seemed to be backing me up on this one.
“Oh, does he?” Trixie asked archly.
She still had her sword in her hand, I noticed.
“Yes, I’m afraid he does,” Adam said.
He ignored her blade and settled into one of the chairs opposite my desk, adjusting the crease in his trousers with one careful hand. When Trixie realised he wasn’t taking any notice of her sword she made it disappear again.
“Oh,” she said.
“There are things afoot, Meselandrarasatrixiel,” he said. “Great and terrible things. The prospect of open war in Heaven, for one, and the Dominion you answer to has fallen hard enough to sunder the very plains of Hell with the impact of its coming. It is… no longer what it was.”
“But…” Trixie said, and I saw the stricken look in her eyes.
The Dominion was far more to her than just her superior in the chain of command. My father and my king she had called it once, or something like that anyway, and I knew she had still been struggling to find an adequate English translation for the words she was trying to express. It was everything to her, I knew that. It was her whole reason for doing any of the things that she did. She was so closely linked to it that it was no wonder she had been going off the rails if it had actually fallen altogether.
“Oh Trixie…” I said, and trailed off helplessly.
She was staring at Adam, and I knew I couldn’t get in the middle of that. I wished I could, don’t get me wrong, but I knew it just wasn’t going to happen. There are some things you really can’t compete with however much you might wish you could.
“Your Dominion has fallen,” Adam said with an awful finality. “Bianakith was the Dominion’s work, not mine. The unmaking of the Eastern Veil was its doing, and the drawing forth of Menhit is its goal. There will be slaughter in Heaven, Meselandrarasatrixiel, if Menhit joins forces with that Dominion and I do not want that. Something fundamental will happen, unless we can stop it.”
I remembered what Rashid had said to me. Rashid didn’t think he and the Burned Man together were strong enough to stop Menhit, and yet Adam seemed to think he and Trixie could do it between them? Now I’m sorry, but I thought that was a tiny little bit fucking unlikely, if I’m honest about it. But then it would have hardly been the first time Adam had spun someone a yarn, would it? He was Lucifer for fucksake.
He was Lucifer, yes, but Menhit was a fucking goddess. She’s bigger than every cunt I know, the Burned Man had told me, and it knew Adam. I was painfully aware of that fact. No, I didn’t think Adam could take Menhit even with Trixie at his side. If Menhit joined forces with the fallen Dominion in its war on Heaven… well yeah, I dare say something fundamental would happen. I didn’t really understand what, but it wasn’t going to be anything fucking good was it? It never bloody is.
“I think you might need a bit of help with that, mate,” I said, and winced inside.
That had been the Burned Man speaking, or at least I thought it had. God, but I wished I could be sure which thoughts were mine. Even that would have been something, you know what I mean? Having the horrible thing spontaneously speaking with my voice before I even knew what it was going to say really was getting to be a bit too much for me to deal with.
“Oh, do you really?” Adam asked, sudden venom in his razor sharp words. “And who exactly do you think could help us, Don?”
I remembered with a cold slug in the guts that he somehow knew what had happened to me. He knew damn well he was talking to the Burned Man now, not me.
“I know people,” I said, and suddenly that was me talking again. “I can help. Me and Rashid.”
“Rashid,” Adam echoed, and Trixie gave me a look as well. It seemed Rashid really hadn’t made the best of first impressions as these things went.
“And me,” I said, and met Adam’s eyes with a hard stare of my own.
And the Burned Man, I thought at him. I can’t say it in front of Trixie and you don’t seem to want to either but we both know what I fucking mean, don’t we, you wanker? I mean personally I couldn’t give a flying fuck what happened in Heaven, but one thing I did not want was a rampaging war goddess on the loose in the middle of London. All the same, I kept wondering what the consequences of a war in Heaven might actually be. If something fundamental changed up there, who knew what might happen down here? No, on balance I really didn’t want Menhit making common cause with a fallen Dominion any more than Adam did. We might be coming at this from completely different perspectives, but I’m afraid it really did look like Adam and I were on the same side at that precise moment.
Better the devil you know.
I wondered what Papa Armand would say about me walking down that path.
“Yes,” Adam said quietly. “And you. Yes, you might make all the difference. And your friend the Houngan perhaps.”
I winced. Papa Armand had taken an instant dislike to Adam, and that might be hard to undo. All the same, I nodded.
“And him, if he’s up for it,” I said.
“Strange bedfellows indeed,” Adam mused.
Wasn’t that the fucking truth?