Casino Infernale

by Simon R. Green

  We told him what we’d settled on, and he wrote it down in nice neat handwriting.

  “Five minutes, tops,” he said. “They don’t sweat the simple stuff here. And by the way, my appendix is in a jar at a Paris hospital.”

  He grinned at me, and I couldn’t help grinning back.

  “What wine would you recommend?” I said.

  “Avoid the clarets, they’re an abomination in the sight of God. And the Médocs are all malignant. Everything else is overpriced and an abuse of your taste buds. I’d stick to the house red, if I were you. That’s what we drink, in the kitchen. It’ll get you there.”

  “Bring us half a dozen bottles,” I said. “And, I need a new knife.”

  “Right away, sir,” said the waiter.

  And just like that he was gone, off and running before his fellow staff could accuse him of fraternising with the enemy.

  While we waited for our food to arrive, Molly and I stared openly around us. Everywhere I looked there were familiar faces with bad reputations. Big Names and Major Players from every scene, in every city. It soon became clear to me that I knew pretty much everyone in the restaurant by face or reputation. And not in a good way.

  “I didn’t realise how much I knew about this place,” said Molly. “I mean . . . I never wanted to come to Casino Infernale before. Not my thing. But the stories and legends that surround the Casino are just so big, so pervasive, they sort of force their way into everyone’s conversations. Casino Infernale, where you can test whatever nerve and skills you think you have, against the biggest and most dangerous gamblers in the world. I do see the attraction. . . .”

  “Oh, dear God,” I said. “Look over there! Is that who I think it is? Is that Jacqueline Hyde?”

  “Yes . . . poor thing,” said Molly. “What the hell is she doing here?”

  I knew Jacqueline Hyde’s story. Everyone in our line of work does. It’s one of the great cautionary tales from the Nightside. Jacqueline started out as a Society girl, happy spending Daddy’s money, leading the most comfortable of lives, partying till she dropped . . . until she couldn’t resist trying this marvellous drug: Hyde. It had been around for ages, in one variation or another. Harvested from the body of Edward Hyde (because that was the body Dr. Jekyll died in), the drug had been doing the rounds in various strengths and mixes ever since. Bouncers and thugs for hire used a much diluted strain as a kind of super-steroid. Others mixed and matched the drug with other chimerical compounds, so they could turn into other people. For commercial or recreational purposes. Hyde was a vicious and unforgiving drug, and hardly anyone was stupid enough to take the original formula. Jacqueline knew better, but she never could resist a dare. And so she became Jacqueline Hyde, a Society girl and a monstrous man, bound together, forever.

  Her family disowned her. Daddy cut her off without a penny. She went from party girl to homeless in a matter of weeks. She had no idea how to look after herself. Spent some time living on the street, in Rats Alley, along with all the other unwanted monsters of the Nightside. But that isn’t the real tragedy.

  Jacqueline and Hyde are in love with each other, but they can only meet and experience each other in that extended moment when one turns into the other. The long love letters they write and leave for each other have turned up in most of the major auction houses of the Nightside. They’re collectible.

  Jacqueline Hyde—a lot of people have found a use for her, and him, and their fortunes have fallen and risen many times. But neither of them were ever rich enough to attend Casino Infernale.

  “Someone’s funding her,” said Molly. “But why?”

  “Another distraction?” I said. “A wild card thrown into the mix . . . or, just possibly, she knows something we don’t.”

  Jacqueline herself was small, painfully thin, neurotic; sitting uncomfortably at her table, scrunched up and eyes down as though trying not to be noticed. Her dress would probably have looked attractive on anyone else. She had a sharp-boned face with piercing eyes, a tight-lipped mouth, and ragged mousy hair. She didn’t bother with her appearance, because she never knew how long she’d stay that way. Hyde came and went. She glanced about the restaurant, but never looked at anyone for long. She had a bottle of whisky on the table in front of her, and was drinking steadily through it, one glass at a time. Didn’t seem to be affecting her much, but then, once you’ve had Dr. Jekyll’s Formula, everything else is always going to seem like a poor relation.

  And then I saw who was sitting at the table beyond, and I forgot all about Jacqueline Hyde.

  I knew the face, and the reputation, from Drood files. Earnest Schmidt, current leader of the reformed Brotherhood of the Vril. Back in the day, the original organisation was a mystical supergroup, and a major supporter of the Nazis. The Vril supported Hitler on the way up, and once he was in power, he showed his appreciation by supplying them with all the warm bodies they wanted for their special experiments. Sometimes, they let him watch.

  The Vril loved being Nazis, and playing with innocent lives and deaths. But once the war was over they quickly discovered they had no friends and a hell of a lot of enemies, so they just grabbed as much loot as they could and disappeared into the jungles of South America. Along with so many other war criminals.

  The Brotherhood of the Vril split and schismed so many times, they effectively neutered themselves. But just recently they’d shown signs of pulling themselves together again. They’d run out of war loot long ago, but they were finding new funds from somewhere . . . which might explain what a Nazi scumbag like Earnest Schmidt was doing here, at Casino Infernale.

  A portly, dark-haired man in his early forties, he sat stiffly at his table in a tuxedo almost the match of mine. Though he didn’t wear it nearly as well. He held his head high, as though to make clear to everyone present that he was not a man to be trifled with. His eyes were a pale blue, his mouth a flat line, and he had a single glass of brandy in front of him that he didn’t touch. Nazis always were big on self-denial, except for when they weren’t. Schmidt didn’t wear a single swastika or Gestapo death’s head. Or even the SS double lightning bolts. He might have passed for just another successful businessman, here for the games and the thrills . . . except for the look in his eyes. The way he looked down on everyone else in the room for not meeting his exacting standards.

  “Vril,” said Molly. “I hate those little shits. You think he set those Pan’s Panzerpeople on us, on the way here?”

  “He does seem to be looking at everyone else in the restaurant apart from you and me,” I said.

  I picked up the croissant by my plate, and threw it at Schmidt with devastating accuracy. It bounced off his head with enough force to make him cry out. He put a hand to his head and looked round sharply and saw me smiling at him. He sat very still, and then turned away again. Saying nothing, doing nothing. Perhaps because he wasn’t prepared to acknowledge the existence of such an obvious inferior as myself.

  I reached for the water jug. Molly put a hand on my arm to stop me, smiling even as she shook her head.

  “Why not?” I said. “I can hit him from here.”

  “Because we don’t have any proof he was behind the attack,” said Molly. “And because you never know who you might need as an ally in a place like this.”

  “Him?” I said. “The only use I’d have for that evil little turd is as a human shield. Or possibly a battering ram.”

  “Anywhen else, yes,” said Molly. “But this is Casino Infernale. The rules are different, here. You never know when you might need to make a deal against someone else. Someone worse, or just more immediately dangerous. You must remember, Shaman, we can’t depend on our usual protections. Either of us. We really don’t want to start a fight we can’t be sure of winning.”

  “You’re no fun when you’re right,” I said.

  I looked around for someone else to interest me, and immediately recognised
a person of interest I knew from Drood files. A large and fleshy man in a scarlet cardinal’s robes, smiling easily about him. Smiling constantly at some private joke on the rest of us. His face was kind and calm, even serene, until you got a good look at his eyes. Fanatic’s eyes, fierce and unyielding. I knew his story, too.

  Leopold, the famous gambling priest. The man of God who went from one gambling house to the next, playing every game of chance there was to raise money for his Church. The priest who never lost because he had God on his side, murmuring in his ear. Or so he claimed. He certainly had a hell of a reputation for winning against all the odds. Backed by the Vatican banks, Leopold had spent the last twenty years cutting a swath through all the great gambling houses of the world, and taking them to the cleaners. Not for him, never for him. All the money he won went straight to his Church. But this was the first time I’d ever heard of him attending Casino Infernale.

  “Maybe the Vatican wants him to break the bank here, to bring down the Shadow Bank,” said Molly.

  “Unlikely,” I said. “The Vatican banks and the Shadow Bank have a relationship that goes back centuries.”

  And as I watched Leopold watching everyone else, it occurred to me that everyone in the restaurant was looking at everyone else, in their own quiet, surreptitious ways. A lot of people were looking at Molly, and some were even looking at me. The only completely detached person in the room was Jacqueline Hyde. And, maybe Leopold, who seemed to find the whole situation deeply amusing.

  The food arrived. Two huge plates of richly steaming paella. It looked and smelled amazing, and I had my knife and fork in my hand before the plates even hit the table. But Molly stopped me with a harsh look, and I made myself sit back and watch as Molly produced a long thin bone needle from somewhere about her person. Unicorn horn—a simple and effective test for poison. Molly thrust the bone needle deep into the paella before her, and we both watched grimly as a purple stain rose up the white bone. She tried my plate, and the poison was there, too.

  The waiter backed away from the table, shaking his head rapidly, to make it clear that none of this was anything to do with him. Molly rose to her feet, but before she could even accuse anyone, the whole restaurant went insane.

  The spaghetti in front of the man next to us shot straight up into the air, and tried to strangle him. White ropy stuff whipped around his throat and tightened, stretched taut and immovable in a moment. More and more of the stuff sprang up into the air, wrapping itself around his head, burying his face under layers of ropy pasta. He grabbed at the white ropes with his hands, but couldn’t break them. His eyes bulged, and his mouth stretched wide as he gasped for air.

  Earnest Schmidt’s salad exploded upwards, growing and shaping itself into a single massive green arm, studded with razor-sharp thorns. The green hand grabbed the front of Schmidt’s suit and lifted him right out of his seat and into the air, shaking him viciously. He grabbed at the green arm with both hands, only to cry out as he cut himself on the vicious thorns.

  Jacqueline Hyde was quickly on her feet and backing away from her table, as the steaming curry in front of her took on new life. A horribly monstrous form, all hot steaming flesh, with reaching hands and snapping jaws. It towered over the small woman, a monstrous thing of bestial angers and appetites; and then it stopped, abruptly, as Jacqueline became something much worse.

  Leopold’s baked baby chupacabra rose up off its plate, levitating on the air. The tiny stitches holding its mouth and eyes shut all snapped at once, and it fixed the gambling priest with terrible glowing eyes as he rose abruptly to his feet. It said something awful to him, in Spanish. Leopold stood his ground, his face twisted with loathing, and began an exorcism in old-school Latin.

  The thunderbird exploded right out of the paella before Molly and me; all the meat slamming back together to re-form the great flying bird it had once been, with a long bony beak and flapping skinless wings. It was dead and it was alive and it stabbed viciously at me with its beak. Screaming horribly, as though seeking revenge for its death, for our meal. I dodged the beak and punched it in the head, and hurt my hand. Molly yelled for me to get out of the way, and hit the thunderbird with a fireball. It scrabbled across the tabletop, burning fiercely, flapping its fiery wings, not dying because it was already dead.

  “Why isn’t the hotel dropping a null zone on all this?” I said.

  “I don’t know!” said Molly, hitting the flapping bird with another fireball. “Maybe they approve of competitors thinning out the herd, before the games start.”

  I looked quickly about me. The whole restaurant was in an uproar, with everyone fighting off what had been their meals just a moment before. No one was trying to work together, and no one was interested in helping anyone else.

  I grinned at Molly. “I’ve got an idea!”

  “About time! These fireballs are barely slowing it down. What’s your idea?”

  “Grab a wing!” I said.

  And we both grabbed a flapping wing, gritting our teeth against the flames, and ripped the wings right off the firebird. The fight went out of it. Slowly, it stopped struggling, and then it just lay there on the tabletop, a very overdone piece of blackened meat. The wings turned into mists in our hands, and disappeared. And the burns on our hands disappeared, too. Which made me wonder just how real the whole experience had been, anyway.

  I looked to Jacqueline, but she was gone. Hyde was there. A squat, ugly, barrel-chested figure, with a dark face and a beast’s eyes; an angry vicious brute that hated everything in the world, except the one person he could never have. He tore the curry monster to pieces with savage exuberance, laughing aloud as he did it. It was a horrid sound that raised all the hairs on the back of my neck. Hyde looked around, knowing he was feared and hated by everyone else in the restaurant, and loving it.

  He turned back into Jacqueline, and for a moment I seemed to see both of them at once, two people superimposed on the same spot. It looked like they were holding hands. And then Jacqueline was back; her head down and her shoulders slumped. As though she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  And then everything stopped. The food attacks crashed to a halt, as all the food went back to being food again. And that was when I realised Leopold had finished his exorcism. We all looked at him, and he looked coldly back at all of us. He didn’t look calm or serene any more.

  “Yes,” he said. “I saved you. Not because any of you are worth saving, but because there’s no fun in winning against second-raters.”

  He turned his back on all of us, and strode out of the restaurant, his scarlet robes swirling around him. Molly turned to our waiter, who was still standing by our table, shuddering and quaking. She smiled sweetly at him.

  “Could we order something else? I don’t think this paella agrees with us.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gambling with Your Life

  Uniformed staff arrived with stretchers to take away a dozen or so dead bodies. Presumably the official report would read food poisoning, although food attack would be more accurate. The staff had to hold the stretchers up to head height to manoeuvre them past the people still sitting at their tables. Some guests had left the restaurant, if only to change their clothes, but the vast majority had stayed. Some were actually eating the meals that had just tried to kill them. I suppose you have to have a strong stomach to be a gambler. No one looked at the stretchers, or the bodies on them. Presumably, in case such bad luck might rub off. Molly and I ordered lasagne. It seemed the safest thing on the menu. And the excitement had left us with an appetite.

  “Just as well no one ordered the dragonburger,” Molly said finally. “That could have got really out of hand.”

  “But, what was the point of all that?” I had to ask.

  “I think someone just wanted to see whether we could defend ourselves,” said Molly. “And get a look at what kind of protections people had going for them. Yo
u saw Jacqueline turn into Hyde. Which was . . . pretty nasty, actually.”

  “Do you want to look at the dessert menu?” I said.

  “Of course! It’s free!”

  “I think I just want to get started on the games,” I said. “You might remember you found poison in our food even before it rose up and attacked us. Which suggests to me two different attackers. I really don’t feel safe here.”

  “Of course we’re not safe here,” said Molly. “This is Casino Infernale!”

  And that was when the manager finally turned up. Jonathon Scott just came strolling in, as smart and casual and urbane as ever. Apparently entirely unconcerned with what had just happened. He clapped his hands smartly, to draw everyone’s attention.

  “The Introductory Games are about to begin,” he said, bestowing an avuncular smile on one and all. “Might I respectfully remind all of you that attendance is mandatory this year for all of our guests who have not attended Casino Infernale previously.”

  Everyone rose up from the their tables, sometimes abandoning half-finished meals or desserts, and headed for the exit. Scott stepped quickly back to get out of their way, still smiling his managerial smile. I was ready to go too, but Molly put a hand on my arm to stop me.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Frankie isn’t back. I want to hear what he has to say, before we venture into enemy territory.”

  I scowled. “I hate going on missions where I haven’t been properly briefed.”

  “Only so you can lecture everyone else,” said Molly.

  “True,” I said.

  “I do know a few things about the Introductory Games,” Molly said carefully. “I mean, a girl does hear things. . . .”

  “Go on,” I said, resignedly. “Tell me what you know. And we will discuss how you came to know it later.”

  “The opening games are the only ones where money still matters,” said Molly. “I had hoped we’d be able to skip them, but it seems Parris is playing strictly by the book this year. The Introductory Games are for newcomers, to sort out the wheat from the chaff; make sure you’re wealthy and worthy enough to be here. And, to test your nerves. Because if you can’t cope with these, you sure as hell aren’t ready for the big games.”