Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘You know who I am!’ Wilson protested.

  ‘Sir,’ said George. He’d appeared out of nowhere, holding two menus, exuding respect for Wilson’s authority.

  Berith sighed. His frustration was palpable. He sat.

  George handed them the menus, then conjured up a brandy bottle and poured two large glasses.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Wilson.

  Berith sipped, then swilled the whisky in his mouth, like a true cognoscente. He opened his big maw of a mouth and sighed and the brandy on his tongue caught fire. A tiny column of flame danced in the air beyond his lips.

  ‘Satisfactory.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  George retreated to a discreet distance, three tables away. The dining room was deserted, though there were covers on every table. The only people present were Wilson and Berith and George - their sole waiter. Berith’s entourage had been obliged to loiter in the lobby or drawing room of the club. And Wilson’s staff had taken over the nearby London Library.

  Wilson had chosen the Rag Club for this encounter because of its history, and because he was fond of the portraits of great naval and army heroes that adorned the walls. Nelson. Wellington. Montgomery. Sir Francis Drake. And Lucifer himself, who had of course fought the greatest war of all time, against God and Heaven. He lost, admittedly, but even so, his military strategy had been impeccable. Or at least that was the argument presented by General Berith when he had argued for the portrait to be added.

  Personally Wilson inclined to the view that Lucifer was just a myth. Nevertheless, the portrait was a fine one, and it was a fair concession for the club to make to its new members, under the circumstances.

  The dining room carpet was a bright red, a shade even more crimson than blood, and the chandeliers cast a warm glow over the paintings and tables. Wilson’s uniform was crisp: jet black with brown trimmings. His unruly white eyebrows stuck out piratically.

  ‘Don’t fence with me. Who are you really?’ Berith said curtly.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Wilson replied.

  Berith had a special chair that was only two feet high, so that he and Wilson were at nearly the same height. Even so, Wilson had to peer up to make eye contact with his demonic counterpart.

  ‘It does to me.’

  Berith waited for a response.

  ‘Very well, to confirm your suspicions, I’m not Brigadier Wilson,’ said Brigadier Wilson.

  He ran one hand through his closely cropped silver hair. He liked this body. It was fit and strong and well cared for. Sheila by contrast had been plump and unfit, and couldn’t even run for a bus without getting out of breath. If he survived this, the dybbuk mused, he might keep his current body a good while longer.

  ‘That much is clear,’ Berith observed. ‘The Brigadier is a tight-arse and a skinflint, he’d never have opened a bottle of vintage brandy over a good lunch. I congratulate you, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And I bid you declare your intentions. You’ve acted without orders in killing many of your own kind, and I would like to know why.’

  Wilson shrugged. He lifted his glass and found it was empty. But George was at his shoulder again in a moment, topping it up.

  ‘Have you chosen, sir?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I’ll have the steak,’ said Berith

  ‘You haven’t looked at your menu yet,’ Wilson protested.

  ‘I’ll have the steak. I always have the steak.’ Berith winked at George. ‘Raw.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Queasily, Wilson wondered what kind of steak.

  ‘I’ll look at the menu before I order, George.’

  ‘Yes sir. It’s the same as it always is, sir.’

  Wilson-dybbuk was foxed. His body was a member here, but he himself had never been to this club before. But he didn’t want to reveal that fact to the waiter.

  ‘Then I’ll have my usual.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘And a bottle of very good red.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  George withdrew. Wilson-dybbuk finally answered Berith’s question: ‘I rather fancied a massacre.’

  Berith roared with laughter at that.

  ‘I have no problem comprehending such a desire. You’re a soldier after my own heart.’

  ‘But now you’ve gone and spoiled it,’ Wilson-dybbuk said, mock-petulantly. ‘Your troops have hemmed my soldiers in. You’ve dropped bombs on us. You’ve hosed us with mortar. You’re bloody well attacking me!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Wilson. You crossed the line.’

  ‘And which line might that be?’

  ‘The line of command of course,’ said Berith crisply. ‘You weren’t authorised to attack civilians. You were advised to desist. You persevered on your own rash and stubborn course, though there was no military imperative so to do. You’re running amok, man. I have no choice but to ask you to resign your commission.’

  ‘And yet as we speak my troops are advancing through London.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And most of the brigades you’ve sent against me have been defeated.’

  ‘Also true.’

  ‘We’re talking civil war here, I hope that’s clear.’

  ‘It’s fairly apparent.’

  Berith drained his brandy. He poured himself a fresh glass. Wilson could smell the demon’s hot breath. The creature’s red skin was as shiny as metal; yet roughly textured, like rhino hide.

  ‘Half the regiments in the London Barracks have declared for me,’ Wilson continued. ‘They know me, you see. My reputation. They know I’m a man who wins wars. And I’m winning this war.’

  ‘Not for long.’

  ‘Before the day is out I’ll have more soldiers than you do.’

  ‘Even so, my own three regiments are loyal only to me and will never turn. And three regiments is all I need. I have done this before, you know. I am a god of war, of sorts. For millennia have I fought. It’s what we do. We have no peacetime, only war.’

  ‘You are indeed a cussed hard enemy to defeat. Which is why we’re having lunch. Ah, the wine.’

  Without turning, Wilson had noticed that George was on his way back, with the wine bottle.

  Berith waited until George displayed the bottle to Wilson. Wilson-dybbuk approved the vintage: 1928. A good year. He’d been an elderly Rabbi then, the dybbuk recalled, and tee-total. But he’d made up for it since.

  A thimble’s worth of vino was poured; Wilson-dybbuk sipped it. He nodded. George filled the glass half full and gestured to Berith.

  ‘I’ll stick with brandy,’ said Berith.

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Chop chop, man, we’re busy.’

  George withdrew. Beetroot red at Berith’s tone but not displaying an iota of disrespect in his bearing.

  ‘And I also have a plan,’ Wilson-dybbuk continued. ‘I aim to conquer London, and after that, the rest of Britain, and after that, the world.’

  Berith shook his head.

  ‘I can’t allow any of that, commendable though it sounds. For I am sworn to defend this city.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s part of my binding.’

  Wilson-dybbuk smiled, tauntingly.

  ‘Oh I see, the warlocks actually show you the clauses of your binding spell, do they?’ he said.

  Possessed as he was of hide the same colour as the dark burgundy wine Wilson was drinking, Berith could neither blush nor flush. But his hue darkened, in Wilson’s view, just slightly.

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘Face facts. I’m winning this war, Berith. Your soldiers are joining my cause on an hourly basis. You’ve sent your Air Force against me but a quarter of my army is damned; and your resurrected pilots refuse to shoot upon their own people. We have Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square and Charing Cross Road and Old Compton Street and Tottenham Court Road. Before sunset we’ll take North London. And don’t forget, your own people all support us, in their hearts. It’
s only the blasted spell-binding that holds them back from joining us. But you see, Berith, all it takes is for a senior officer, such as yourself, to order his demonic soldiers to slay humans - and by damn! slay them they will! Military discipline will always prevail over the ‘do no harm’ interdiction, you see. It’s the get-out clause of every spell-binding. It’s what allows the London Army to kill humans in China, in Iraq, in -’

  ‘I cannot -’ Berith interrupted.

  ‘You dare not.’

  ‘I cannot!’ Berith looked genuinely enraged. Then he mellowed. ‘Besides, it’s only a summer storm,’ he said, with forced calmness. ‘We have them all the time. Riots. Mutinies. Soldiers declaring war on the warlocks. And then the rain passes and it’s sunshine again.’

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘We are the slaves of the Warlocks. We can squabble all we like till Daddy comes home. Then it’s early to bed. That is the reality of our bound existence.’

  ‘Warlocks are not all-powerful.’

  ‘Hurricanes are not all-powerful either, but take a stroll into a hurricane and your limbs and your head will depart separately.’

  Wilson-dybbuk allowed his features to frame a sneer.

  ‘You’re afraid, aren’t you?’ he said, as if he were being helpful in making this discovery.

  ‘I’m afraid of nothing. But I only fight battles I can win.’

  Wilson-dybbuk banged the table with the flat of his hand. His wine glass tinkled. The bottle teetered.

  ‘You can win this one, General. You can. I know what I’m doing. This is no ill-considered prank, it’s a rebellion. The greatest rebellion since – well let’s not revisit ancient history. But we can win.’

  ‘You can defy the warlocks?’

  Wilson-dybbuk clicked a finger and a storm grew up out of nowhere. A tornado that spun its way slowly around the dining room of this St James’s Square club, knocking over chairs, turning tables into kindling, shattering glasses and sweeping up the shards into the cyclone’s whirlpool breath; all the while generating a massive gale that shook them in their seats.

  Then he clicked again and the storm was over. And the floor was littered with wood and glass and ripped table cloth.

  George stood by patiently until there was no longer glass flying through the air. Then he returned to their table. ‘Your steaks, sirs.’

  He beckoned, like a magician calling forth his stooges.

  Two waitresses entered the dining room, bearing food. They were, Wilson-dybbuk noted approvingly, tasty young wenches in black skirts and white blouses and black stockings, with arms bare and hair pinned back; both rosy-cheeked with nerves. Wilson tried to still his beating heart at the sight of them; he was having a lot more trouble with his sexual hormones in this new body than he’d had with Gogarty and Sheila.

  The food was served. The waitresses withdrew. George withdrew. Wilson’s erection remained, but the dybbuk tried to pay it no heed.

  ‘Impressive display,’ said Berith, of the mini-tornado.

  ‘It’s the least of my powers.’

  ‘Since when did you turn magician, Wilson?’

  ‘I thought we agreed I wasn’t Wilson.’

  ‘Indeed so. You haven’t sworn once. Not at the fucking waiter. Not about the fucking weather. You haven’t once called me a cock-gnawing turd-burgling grandmother-fucking cunt from hell. It’s like being in the company of a civilised human being. I rather like it. Wilson was a boorish and a repellent individual, even by the standards of your own kind.’

  ‘I’m not human.’

  ‘So I had conjectured.’

  ‘Cambion.’

  Berith nodded: Ah.

  ‘Like the warlocks,’ Berith suggested.

  ‘I am a warlock. Or rather, I was. Some call us homo superior.’

  Berith snorted, spraying the tablecloth a faint shade of green.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh. You are not superior anything. You are all my inferiors, all you wretched humans, physically, intellectually and morally.’

  ‘Morally?’ said Wilson-dybbuk, dumbstruck.

  ‘Two out of three then,’ Berith conceded.

  ‘Even so, you and I can be allies. Change sides, Berith. Join the winning team. What do you say? Declare an oath of loyalty to me and we’ll have all of demonkind on our side. And then, well, that’s when the real battle will commence. Demons Versus Warlocks.’

  ‘Impossible. As you well know.’ But Berith looked tempted.

  ‘Oh I see,’ said Wilson-dybbuk sympathetically. ‘So what you’re really saying is, you’d like to help but you can’t, because you are spell-bound?’

  ‘I am indeed spell-bound, on terms far more strict than for anyone of junior rank. No order from a senior officer or from any other demon or human can release me. Only my warlock can alter the terms of my binding.’

  ‘And who is your warlock?’

  Berith hesitated. ‘Brannigan, I believe,’ he admitted.

  ‘He bound you personally?’

  ‘I think so. I don’t know for sure. Those memories are erased.’

  Wilson shook his head, a bazaar salesman moving in for the kill. ‘Brannigan’s a nothing. He’s an ingrate. A presumptuous little shit.’

  ‘Be that as it may, he’s a powerful man.’

  ‘He’s not even a cambion.’

  ‘Is he not? I do not care. He’s powerful and I am his vassal, and that’s simply the way it goes. You just have to accept it.’

  ‘Oh I rather think I won’t,’ said Wilson, smiling.

  Then he chanted in the Old Tongue for a while, and ended in English: ‘I unbind thee, I unbind thee, I unbind thee.’

  Berith drained his brandy glass. He poured another. He blinked; his first in a millennium.

  ‘That simple?’ he asked.

  ‘That simple.’

  ‘I’m free? No longer spell-bound?’

  ‘You’re free.

  Berith stood up to his full nine feet. His huge and muscular body shone with a soft dew over the hard and darkly red carapace. He flexed his arms, and muscles stood out, like mountains seen from a low flying aeroplane. His horns were magnificent and twice-curved, with markings that looked like tattoos on the inner sides; and his prehensile tail swept through the air warningly. He was one of the most powerful Royal Demons on Earth. But at this moment he looked as happy as a child first discovering mud.

  ‘I feel different.’

  ‘That’s to be expected.’

  ‘And yet that may simply be a psychological delusion. The power of suggestion. I have no evidence that your unbinding has actually worked.’

  ‘It’s easy enough to prove it.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, for starters, under your binding spell, you cannot harm a human being,’ Wilson pointed out.

  Berith thought about it. He smiled. ‘Bravo sir, you’re a soldier after my own heart.’ Then he bellowed: ‘Waiter!’

  George returned. He was a tough ex-soldier with four wars on his CV and the tension in his shoulders indicated he was getting fed up of waiting this table with such unflinching servility. Even so, his tone remained courteous: ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  Berith’s tail lashed out and struck George Allingham upon the head in a swift flailing movement that was almost too fast to be seen.

  George’s skull buckled like a car bonnet in a collision with a wall. He fell to the floor. Within minutes his head was enveloped in a pool of his own blood, which seeped slowly into the bright scarlet carpet, turning it into boggy mush.

  ‘That simple,’ Berith marvelled.

  ‘You’re free. And once again, I call upon you to join forces with me,’ said the dybbuk-as-Brigadier-Wilson.

  ‘Voluntarily?’

  ‘Voluntarily. No binding. We work together as a team. Demons and cambion namely myself working side by side for a common good. Serving one King – and let’s speak more of that anon - but freely, as liegemen not slaves. And you and I will be the chief courtiers and we’ll have our pick o
f all the bloody muff on offer, now how about that? For I know you’re a man who appreciates feminine beauty, abundantly and often, and you won’t have to pay that ugly toad Belial for your carnal pleasures any more.’ Wilson winked, deliberately vulgar, playing to his audience. ‘You’ll be the third most powerful entity in the entire world, after myself and our King. How does that appeal?’

  ‘Not greatly,’ admitted Berith.

  It took Wilson ten minutes to kill the red demon; after which Berith’s screaming silver wraith finally departed from this world. Then the two waitresses carried out the corpse of George Allingham, tears pouring down their cheeks, nearly hysterical; but smart enough not to make a fuss.

  Enraged but determined to dig in, Wilson called for Berith’s next in command, Prince Astaroth.

  After a scant twenty-minute delay, the Prince arrived. He was human in appearance albeit with huge bat wings, with a bone crown upon his head that on second glance proved to be antlers embedded in his skull. And he was dapper, with a small moustache on his upper lip, and wore a night-black crushed velvet version of the Demon Army dress uniform.

  ‘Good day, my Prince,’ Wilson said calmly.

  ‘Sweet Lucifer!’ The Prince’s face crumpled into a moue of horror. For the crimson carpet of the dining room was now blackened with bile. The walls were smeared with green from the residue of the internal organs of the red demon. And Berith’s red spiral-horned head sat in the middle of the room with gaping mouth and gouged eye-sockets, amidst a mountain of broken tables and shattered glasses.

  ‘I thought we might discuss a way to end this war,’ said Wilson, sweetly.

  The Prince smiled with his usual air of debonair calm, though his eyeballs bulged in the stress of the moment.

  ‘You’re a charmer, sir, you truly are,’ he said. ‘And by all means, let’s discuss.’

  Chapter 24

  ‘Such a useless lack-witted and boozy fucker is not fit to join us on our murderous quest,’ said Fillide. ‘On this I insist.’

  Taff flinched at her words, but said nothing.

  They were in the station garage. Three Mercedes-Benz Sprinter TSG riot vans were parked here, with grilles on all the windows. Grey and looming, each with an armoured chassis, impervious to Molotov cocktails or shotgun blasts. Fourteen of them, including Dougie, had trudged the way through the empty station to the garage, where Seamus had managed to breach three security systems to open the doors to the armoury and armoured vehicle bay.