by Mick Farren
Windemere laughed. He went to the sideboard and started pouring from a decanter of amber fluid.
Christobelle's voice came from the depths of the leather armchair. "You'll need a raincoat. It's raining out and you don't have Yancey Slide's power to mysteriously remain dry."
Windemere handed Gibson what had to be a triple Scotch.
"She's right, you know. You came in with what you have on, dressed for autumn in New York. This is London and it's damp and chilly. Besides, you'd attract attention walking round soaking wet in a lightweight suit." He turned to Christobelle. "Joe and I are roughly the same size, why don't you have a look in my wardrobe for something suitable?"
Christobelle stood up. "Whatever you say, boss."
She left the room. Smith, meanwhile, seemed to be in the grip of high, controlled fury. "I still think this is a very bad idea."
Gibson was halfway through his Scotch. "Your protest is noted. If things fuck up, you'll have the satisfaction of having told me so."
"Maybe we should leave you altogether."
Gibson could have sworn that, in her own icy way, Smith was pouting. "That's for you to decide."
Smith shook her head angrily. "Unfortunately, I can't just dump you. I made an agreement."
"Then there's nothing to discuss. All you have to realize is that protecting me is not the same thing as holding me prisoner."
Christobelle returned with a black Italian trenchcoat over her arm. She held it out to Gibson. "Try this. It ought to be appropriate for the occasion."
"Aren't you worried that I'm going outside to get myself killed or worse?"
"I'm sure you'll do whatever you have a mind to."
There was still not the slightest intimacy or warmth. Gibson downed the rest of his Scotch and slipped into the coat. Christobelle looked him over and nodded.
"Yeah, that'll do. Turn your collar up in the back like a hood."
Windemere took Gibson's empty glass. "Take care of that coat, I'm quite fond of it."
Gibson pulled a wry face. "I'll try not to get blood on it."
Smith looked from one to the other of them. "How many of us are going?"
Windemere glanced quickly at Gibson and then faced Smith.
"I thought just Joe and I. We don't know how much Slide knows. It hardly seems like a good idea to give him the gift-wrapped chance to look you three over. We are hoping this isn't going to be a confrontation."
Smith nodded curtly, "We'll be watching from the window."
O'Neal stepped forward. "You want me to come with you?"
Windemere nodded. "Now, that might be a good idea, a bit of terrestrial bulk." He looked from O'Neal to Gibson. "Okay, so it's the three of us. Shall we go, gentlemen?"
As Windemere was putting on his own raincoat, he suddenly grinned at Gibson. "You seem to be getting the measure of our streamheat friends."
"I just don't like to be treated like that. I never cottoned to be nursemaided."
"Just don't underestimate them." He placed a dark-brown fedora with a wide black band on his head and tilted it at an angle."By the by, I don't think this is a very good idea, either."
Gibson started for the front door. "Then you'll be able to say You told me so, too."
Windemere followed him and O'Neal brought up the rear. Outside on the pavement, they waited for a break in the traffic. Even in a neighborhood that had its fair share of odd sights, the three of them must have presented a fairly bizarre spectacle. O'Neal looked like a terrorist; Windemere, in his fedora and Burberry, had turned into Sam Spade; and, for himself, Gibson had the distinct impression that the black coat made him look like an Italian pimp circa 1972. And they were all off to see the eighteen-thousand-year-old demon dressed like a refugee from the Civil War. Good-bye cruel sanity.
When Ladbroke Grove was clear, they walked straight across the road, straight toward the figure leaning against the big black Hudson. Yancey Slide didn't move. They were only halfway across the street when Windemere called out to him.
"Mr. Slide. My name is Gideon Windemere, and I own that house behind us. I was wondering why you were showing such an interest in it?"
Yancey Slide didn't move. It was only when they were right up to him that he finally pushed back his wide-brimmed hat and Gibson saw his face for the first time. Wherever and however Yancey Slide had acquired his human form, he'd gone for dramatic impact. It had clearly been modeled on Clint Eastwood, except it was a Clint who had engaged in such a wealth of prolonged and elaborate depravity, both ancient and modern, that it hardly bore thinking about. There had been no attempt to disguise the eyes. They just weren't human. The narrow, ice-blue slits were like looking into the heart of some deep frozen hell.
"Gideon Windemere. I've heard of you. And Joe Gibson. You know, I saw you perform once? And the third gentleman I think I might know by sight. Didn't we once go kneecapping up the Falls Road? Or was that someone else, Paddy? I'm damned if I know. All you boyos look alike to me."
Slide's voice was little more than a ruined whisper, a dangerous reptilian rasp that sounded as though he might really be eighteen thousand years old. Gibson turned and looked at O'Neal. He seemed seriously taken aback. This surprised Gibson. He wouldn't have thought that the implacable Irishman had it in his repertoire of responses.
Windemere quickly tried to cover the disarray of the moment. "Perhaps we should all step onto the pavement."
It was a practical suggestion. They were standing on the off side of the Hudson with black London taxicabs hurtling past just inches from their backs.
And, with that, they were on the pavement.
With no movement or even a sense of discontinuity and in less than the blink of an eye, they were standing in another place some ten or twelve feet away. Slide was still leaning on the car in exactly the same thumbs-in-his-belt gunslinger posture, except he was now leaning on the other side of the car. His smile was a fraction less faint.
"Excuse the parlor trick, mis amgos. Sometimes I just can't resist."
Gibson was speechless. If the man-he was still thinking of Slide as a man, "demon" a hard word to use with conviction even after everything he had seen-could instantly move them through space, what the hell else could he do? Windemere, on the other hand, seemed completely undaunted.
"I'm suitably impressed. Now perhaps you'd like to tell me why you're taking such an interest in my house."
Slide fumbled in the pocket of his duster and pulled out a thin black cheroot. "You know who I am?"
Windemere nodded. "I know who you are."
"Then you're showing a hell of a lot of balls for a human, coming out here like this."
He held up his right index finger. A blue flame appeared at its tip. He lit the cigar from it and then extinguished the flame with a shake of his hand.
Windemere watched him without expression. "If you're trying to frighten us, you're not succeeding. We've seen magic acts before."
Slide slowly nodded. He tapped softly on the black glass of the front passenger window of the Hudson. The rear door swung open and a man and a woman climbed out. They were equally impressive. If Slide's human form had been modeled on Clint Eastwood's, the woman was a hybrid of Cher and Elizabeth Taylor with a liberal dash of heavy metal-a stunningly beautiful Amazon road warrior, over six feet tall with high, jet-black hair and, as Little Richard put it, "a figure made to squeeze," although anyone squeezing her right at that moment might find himself hampered by the chrome studs, the chains, the metal plates, and the reinforced, tuck-and-roll leather. The only truly feminine parts of her costume were the torn fishnet stockings and spike-heeled ankle boots. The man was a totally bald sumo wrestler in a suit that looked as though it had been constructed by a tentmaker. It was a yellow-and-black plaid, cut in a style that Gibson hadn't seen since the passing of Nikita Khrushchev.
"These are my traveling companions, Nephredana and Yop Boy."
Gibson wondered if these two had the same nonhuman eyes as Slide. It was impossible to tell sin
ce they were both wearing impenetrable Ray-Bans. Then Yop Boy let his coat swing open, and Gibson stopped wondering about the eyes. He, Windemere, and O'Neal were treated to a brief glimpse of an elaborate, ultralight assault weapon strapped to the huge man's massive thigh. It was a design that Gibson had never seen before. It looked something like a deluxe version of an Uzi that had been fitted with a weird set of gas ports under the ejector, finished in gold leaf, and then fitted with mother-of-pearl grips and a top-mounted laser sight. Gibson suspected that he was looking at a weapon that had been brought through from another dimension. He was also puzzled. Why should a demon, seemingly with all manner of supernatural powers, resort to such a temporal show of force?
Windemere seemed to be thinking the same thing. He faced Slide with an amused smile. "You want to watch that. This is London and people here are a little down on firearms."
Slide's smile had disappeared altogether, "I don't think we'll have any trouble."
Gibson wasn't so sure. He was surprised that they hadn't had trouble already. In daylight, on a street with heavy traffic and with the local police station just a block away down the hill, the Hudson alone should have been enough to cause comment. Combined with the appearance of the six of them, the sight should have been enough to stop traffic, and yet no one was giving them a second glance.
Windemere was still facing Slide. "I sincerely hope we won't."
Slide looked Windemere up and down. "There are places where walking up to a man and demanding to know his business is construed as a hostile act."
Again, Windemere wouldn't allow himself to be intimidated. "I believe there are other places where to watch a man's home is a way of making the man in question exceedingly paranoid."
Slide took the cheroot out of his mouth and spat on the pavement. "And this paranoia is the reason for all the firepower?"
Windemere's face was a picture of injured innocence. "Firepower? The only firepower I've seen is strapped to Yop Boy here."
Slide's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Don't bullshit me, Windemere. I know about the three streamheat inside your house, and your other bodyguard, standing in the doorway over there, undoubtedly has some sort of weapon under his coat. "
Both Windemere and Gibson looked across the road at the house. Cadiz was standing at the front door and there almost certainly was a weapon concealed under his loose combat coat. Gibson couldn't see anything inside the bay window on the first floor, but he knew that it was safe to assume that Smith, Klein, and French were inside watching.
Windemere shrugged. "These are troubled times. You can't be too careful."
Slide looked up and down the street and around at the nearby buildings. He flipped his cheroot away, and for some reason the butt vanished just before it hit the ground.
"I suspect that we could probably make a tolerable mess of this particular corner of merry old England if we were to fall to fighting. Is that what you want, Gideon Windemere?"
Windemere shook his head. "No, of course not,"
"So, having established the basic standoff, shall we start talking? You want to know what I'm doing here-what I want with you people-is that correct?"
"You can't blame me for being curious."
"Then you'll understand when I say that I'm here because I was curious myself. I wanted to see why the focus of so much attention should show up at your home,"
Gibson stiffened. "You mean me?"
Slide pushed himself away from the car. "Yes, you. Anyone who has what you people call a UFO chasing him across the Atlantic needs watching. I hate fucking UFOs."
Gibson wasn't buying the impartial-observer routine. "You're just here to watch? You don't want to kidnap me or kill me or anything like that?"
Slide made a sighing sound that was his approximation of a laugh. "Why should I want to kill you, Joe? I already told you.I saw you play. I enjoyed it. I like rock 'n' roll, Joe. I was a personal friend of Jim Morrison." A slow hand indicated Nephredana. "She was there,"
Nephredana's face was impassive behind the Ray-Bans and the red lipstick. Her voice was husky, down in the Mariene Dietrich range, and almost as burned-out as Slide's. Was she eighteen thousand years old, too? "He was a personal friend of Jim Morrison's. He also went on a three-day drunk with John Lennon in Hamburg when the Beatles were starting out."
She produced a stick of gum, unwrapped it, and folded it into her mouth. Although the wrapper was the same color scheme as a standard pack of Bubblicious, the lettering was in a strange alien script. She dropped the wrapper and it, too, vanished just before it touched the sidewalk. The little display didn't help Gibson in any way to accept the premise that having been a drinking buddy of both Jim Morrison and John Lennon confirmed Yancey Slide as nothing more than a curious bystander.
"There have been a lot of strange people trying to get me in the last couple of days and it's made me a little distrustful of strangers."
" You know why all these strangers should be out to get you?"
Gibson shook his head. "That's the worst part. I don't have a clue. All I know is that this old Mexican guy shows up and says this group called the Nine wants me to join up with them."
Windemere looked at him sharply but Gibson was damned if he was going to shut up on order. "Since then, all hell seems to have been breaking loose."
Slide's lip curled. "So you've become a lackey of the Nine?"
Gibson eyed him coldly. "I'm no one's lackey, friend. I'm just-"
He broke off abruptly. Two constables in blue uniforms and those improbable Victorian helmets had come down the steps of the police station, apparently at the start of a foot patrol. They were walking up the hill toward the group by the Hudson.
"What do they call them here? The Old Bill?"
Slide glanced at the two London cops. "I wouldn't worry about them,"
To Gibson's amazement, the officers proceeded to walk slowly past them.
"They didn't even see us."
Slide nodded. "I took the precaution of making us invisible."
"Invisible? You can make people invisible?"
"I'm a demon, kid, I do shit like that. If you notice, you're also not getting wet."
For the first time, Gibson noticed that the drizzle wasn't getting to him. There was no slick of moisture on his raincoat. It was as though there was a kind of force field a millimeter or so out from his body.
"I appreciate you keeping me dry."
Slide laughed. "I'm not doing it for your comfort, boy. I'd look kinda dumb if there was an empty shape in the air that the rain was going around."
It was while Slide was talking that a figure at the top of the hill caught Gibson's attention. There was a black man with dreadlocks perched on a ten-speed bicycle, on the opposite side of the street from the church, looking in their direction. He not only seemed able to see them but apparently didn't like what he was seeing. He took off on his bike with a look of considerable alarm and disappeared over the brow of the hill. No one else appeared to have noticed, so Gibson kept his mouth shut.
Slide leaned closer to him. "I think the only real answer to your fears, Joe, is that, if I'd wanted you, I would have had you by now."
This was easier to accept. Gibson was in no doubt that Slide hadn't showed them even the introduction to his bag of tricks.
Slide seemed to sense that he'd at least marginally won Gibson over, and he turned his attention to Windemere.
"It's really kind of pointless standing around in the street. Why don't we go into your house and talk in a bit more comfort?"
This was clearly the last thing Windemere wanted. "I'm not inviting you into my house."
Slide's eyes became angry slits. "Never invite an idimmu across the threshold? That's vampires, my friend."
Windemere refused to give ground. "Is there that much difference?"
"Find a vampire and I'll show you."
"I'm not letting you into my house."
"You may regret this, Windemere,"
"That's always possibl
e."
Slide gestured to the others to get back in the car. He took a final look a Windemere.
"Don't start feeling too pleased with yourself. I'll still be around. If you make a move, I'll know about it."
" Could your being here have something to do with the rumors that your master is about to wake?"
Slide was in the process of getting into the driver's seat of the Hudson. He stopped and slowly turned. To Gibson's surprise, he suddenly looked weary, as if eighteen thousand years had just dropped hard on him. "Master? My master? You don't know what you're talking about, Windemere. You really don't."
"I heard that Necrom will soon be on the move."
"If you knew anything, you wouldn't even mention the name."
The car door closed. Then the window rolled down and Slide fixed Gibson with those alien eyes.
"You should be very careful, Joe. You're running with some people who may not be all that they appear."
The window rolled up and the Hudson squealed away from the curb, laying smoke and rubber. When it reached the top of the hill, something happened to its shape. It seemed to distort and shimmer, and Gibson wasn't sure whether it had disappeared over the hill or just disappeared. He suddenly felt as though a cold, clammy hand had closed over him. The drizzle was noticeably wet.
"I guess we're back in the visible world."
Windemere indicated that the three of them should return to the house. "I think a drink is in order."
Gibson fell into step beside him. "That could have been a lot worse."
Windemere was thoughtful. "I don't think we've seen the last of Yancey Slide."
Cadiz met them at the door. The outline of what looked like a sawed-oflf shotgun was easy to make out through his combat coat. Once, years before, Gibson had been instructed in the lore of the sawed-off shotgun. Backstage at one of the band's concerts at the Wembley soccer stadium, a bodyguard called Big Cyril, who'd been hired on for the tour, had waxed lyrical, claiming that, in his youth, he'd broken legs for the notorious Kray Twins. "What makes the sawn-off shotgun so favorite is that it appeals to the imagination, like. All you got to do is point one at a geezer and he immediately imagines himself splattered all over the wall like a Sam Peckinpah film. Me, I don't hold with killing. I use a gun to avoid killing. I want a gun that so terrifies people they do exactly what you say and no bother. You know what I mean?" Gibson had hastily assured him that he knew what he meant. Big Cyril had later been fired for his violently overzealous handling of teenage fans.