Dominion

by Peter McLean

  He nodded. For all that you’d never guess it in a million years from looking at him, Harry the Weasel was a magician. Not a very good one, admittedly, but he had his uses. I hadn’t seen him for well over a year, and if he lived round here I supposed that was no wonder. This wasn’t the sort of neighbourhood I went to if I could help it. A few years back though he’d been pestering me no end, wanting to become my apprentice. Now obviously I had never let him anywhere near the Burned Man or anything that really mattered, but I had taught him a few things, and my little trick with probability had been one of them. Perhaps that hadn’t been entirely wise but people like to see tangible results, you know what I mean? It’s up to them if they abuse them and get themselves in the shit. Anyway, it wasn’t hurting me, and it had been a good way to keep him pretty much permanently in my debt.

  “I need a little favour, Weasel,” I said.

  “Thought you might,” he said.

  “Have you been hearing anything recently about a bloke called Adam?”

  Weasel’s lazy eye twitched. Now for all that Weasel was horrible, he knew pretty much everyone else who was horrible too, and in South London that was a fucking lot of people. Pick any petty criminal – low-level gangsters, street-corner dealers and junkies, burglars and toms, rent boys and cheap magicians, Weasel either knew them or he knew someone who did. That made him bloody useful sometimes.

  “Adam?” he asked. “Lots of people are called Adam, Mr Drake.”

  He gulped his beer and stared down at the sticky table. I knew he was scared of me, that was how it was supposed to be, but I was starting to get a nasty feeling he might be scared of that name, too.

  “Yeah they are, Weasel, but lots of people aren’t like this Adam, are they?”

  “No, Mr Drake,” he muttered.

  “Look at me, Weasel,” I said. He reluctantly lifted his head and met my eye. I gave him a little prod with my Will. “Tell me about Adam.”

  “I dunno really,” he said. “There’s been some people talking, that’s all. You know, the Black Mass crowd. I don’t like them, Mr Drake.”

  “I don’t think anyone does,” I said. “What have they been talking about exactly?”

  “Someone called Adam, and what he’s been telling them. I don’t think…” He lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned forwards so I could hear him. “I don’t think he’s human, Mr Drake. I think he’s… he’s a demon.”

  “Hmmm,” I said. I knew exactly what Adam was, but there was no need for Weasel to know that. “And what has he been telling them, do you think?”

  “I dunno, Mr Drake,” he said, “but they’re all listening to him. When Adam says do something, they do it.”

  Adam says. There it was again. This tasted bad, even worse than the horrible cheap whisky I was drinking.

  “Yeah, I bet they do,” I muttered.

  “Look, Mr Drake,” Weasel said. “I’ve been thinking. I mean, I help you out, don’t I?”

  “When I can find you,” I said. “Where the fuck have you been, anyway?”

  Weasel coughed. “The Scrubs,” he admitted. “I done twelve months.”

  I didn’t ask what for. That would have been very rude in these sort of circles, in case you didn’t know.

  “Oh, right,” I said instead.

  “Only got out a couple of weeks ago,” he went on. He leaned forwards again, his voice dropping to a nervous whisper. “I’ve been meaning to call you, actually, Mr Drake. I had a lot of time to think, when I was inside. I wanna learn off you. Properly learn, I mean.”

  Oh fucking hell, do you?

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I’ve got me books and that but… it ain’t the same as when you taught me them bits and pieces.”

  Of course it wasn’t – magic isn’t for everyone. Some people simply have no intuitive ability at all and there’s not a lot you can do about that. Magic isn’t painting by numbers. Harry the Weasel had a bit of spark about him, hard though that might be to believe, but not a lot. Not enough for me to be able to teach him anything that really mattered, anyway.

  “A grimoire ain’t a cook book, Weasel,” I told him. “It’s not a matter of ‘this plus that plus the other equals Weasel gets laid’, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know, but I’m trying, Mr Drake. I’m really trying. I’ve got hold of a copy of the Goetia now, you know.”

  Oh God, that’ll end well.

  The Goetia is the first book of the ancient grimoire Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, or The Lesser Key of Solomon the King, in case you didn’t know. It’s basically a manual for summoning demons, and it’s the last thing on earth someone like Harry the Weasel should be allowed anywhere near.

  “Knock yourself out,” I said. “Go ahead and call up a demon, tell it I sent you if you want. Just don’t be surprised when it turns round and bites your fucking face off.”

  Weasel gulped down the rest of his pint and wiped sweaty palms on the thighs of his already greasy-looking tracksuit.

  “That’s what I’m scared of,” he said. “That’s why I want you to help me, Mr Drake.”

  “Yeah well, we’ll see,” I said. “Let me think about it.”

  I really wasn’t in the market for an apprentice, and even if I had been, I can’t say Harry the Weasel would have been at the top of the list of prospective candidates. Or even on the list, for that matter. All the same, if I could dangle the chance of it in front of him for a bit he might make himself useful.

  “Thanks, Mr Drake,” he said.

  “While I’m thinking about it, I want to know everything you hear about Adam. Every word of it,” I told him. I pushed my empty glass across the table towards him. “It’s still your round, by the way.”

  * * *

  I have to admit I was more than a bit pissed when I got home, and I crashed on the sofabed in my office without speaking to Trixie. Stupid of me, looking back on it. When I woke up the next morning I found her sitting at my desk, smoking a cigarette and staring at me.

  “It wouldn’t come,” she said, her voice strangely flat.

  “What?” I said blearily, sitting up in the tangled mess I’d made of my bedding.

  “My Dominion,” she said. “I called and I called and I prayed and called and cried and screamed and it wouldn’t come, Don.”

  I blinked and noticed for the first time how red her eyes looked. She really did look like she’d been crying, and I’d just come home drunk and passed out without even talking to her.

  Jesus wept, and I wondered why she didn’t fancy me?

  “Oh God, Trixie, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, whatever that was supposed to mean.

  I sighed and pulled a sheet around me as I got up.

  “I’m going to grab a shower and get dressed,” I said, “then we’ll talk.”

  I shut myself in the bathroom and sat down on the bog. I scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to wake up enough to think. I had been going to tell her about what I’d found at Charlie Page’s house, about Adam and what Harry the Weasel had told me. Now I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. It appeared her Dominion had stood her up yesterday and she had obviously got herself in a bit of a state over that. Was bringing Adam up now really such a good idea, what with how fragile her sanity still was after last year? I sighed. It really wasn’t, was it? Oh well, it would just have to keep then.

  I did the morning shit-shower-and-shave routine and got dressed, and when I came back I found she had made coffee for us both and was sitting behind my desk again.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  I took my coffee and wandered over to the window with it.

  “Something must be wrong,” she said. “Upstairs I mean, as you so succinctly put it. My Dominion has never ignored me before.”

  “Well isn’t there a chain of command or something?” I asked her. “You told me once before it works like the army, so aren’t you suppos
ed to go through your sergeant first? Your archangel or whoever it would be.”

  “In general, yes,” she said, “but I’m a bit of a special case.”

  Why doesn’t that surprise me?

  “Oh, right,” I said.

  “My original assignment with the Furies was given to me by my Dominion in person, so I’m a… well, we have a word for it, but I don’t know how you’d phrase it in English exactly. I work directly for that Dominion, outside of the usual structures.”

  “Like a knight errant?” I ventured. “A sort of paladin?”

  I’m sorry, I used to play Dungeons and Dragons when I was at university. Try not to hold it against me.

  “Yes, yes, something like that, I suppose,” she said. “Anyway, again to try and put it into your words, the Dominion is my immediate commanding officer. I’ve communed with it many times in the past without a problem.”

  I looked at her, and I could still see the thin black tendrils of corruption that streaked her aura. I’d have to phrase this one a bit delicately.

  “Have you communed with it since you, you know… slipped a bit?”

  Trixie put her cup down and gave me a hard stare. “I’m not the problem here, Don.”

  “All right, all right,” I said. She was emphatic enough that I didn’t want to argue about it, but I wasn’t completely sure I believed her all the same. That, and she hadn’t actually answered the question, I noticed. “In which case, what is?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s why I think there must be something going on.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Well I suppose so, yes, although I have no idea what. It’s no good, Don, we need the Dominion’s help if we’re going to deal with Bianakith. If it won’t answer my call you’ll have to summon it.”

  I almost choked on my coffee.

  “What?”

  “You did it before,” she said.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. “Summoning is making something manifest against its will. I never summoned your Dominion. I wouldn’t know where to start with that, or if it’s even remotely possible for that matter. What I did was more like… I don’t know. I begged it to come, and it did. It chose to come Trixie, I didn’t make it.”

  You summoned Adam once though, didn’t you? a little voice in my head reminded me. Yeah I had, but I had no idea how I’d done that either, and no particular desire to attempt it ever again. How I’d got away with that I still didn’t really know.

  She sat in thoughtful silence for a moment, fiddling with her cigarette case.

  “Not many magicians can do what you do, can they Don?” she asked suddenly.

  “No,” I said. “Thankfully.”

  Summoning and sending is bloody difficult, not to mention monstrously dangerous, that’s how come I can charge so much for it. Hell, I can’t do it without the Burned Man. You summoned Adam without the Burned Man though, didn’t you? Yeah, but I was trying not to think about that. Shut up, little voice in my head. Just shut the fuck up.

  “But lots of magicians commune with demons and spirits, don’t they? Or they say they do, anyway. How do they do that?”

  “Ah, that’s different,” I said. “Talking to something is a damn sight easier than making it physically manifest.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  “Invocation or evocation,” I said. “Invocation’s the sort of thing Papa Armand does, where you invite something to come into your mind and body and speak through you. I’m not a fan, personally. I mean, I can do it, but… it’s different for him of course, with his loa. That’s a religious thing in Vodou, and anyway, they’re not like the sorts of things I deal with.”

  “Oh,” she said, and smiled. “How is dear Armand?”

  “He’s fine,” I said. “His usual self, you know how he is.”

  For some reason Trixie had taken quite a shine to the eccentric old Houngan who seemed to have inexplicably taken me under his wing. Probably because he was so impossibly charming, and almost ridiculously polite to her.

  “So what would you do?” Trixie asked, catching me off guard. “Evocation then? That’s what, exactly?”

  “Part of the Goetic grimoire tradition,” I said, starting to lecture now I had a willing audience for once. “The magician causes the spirit to appear in a triangle of art before the circle, usually in a mirror or a crystal, where he can speak with it and… Trixie?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “Did you just play me?”

  She smiled and lit another cigarette. “Perhaps a little bit,” she said. “When can we do it?”

  So much for my lecture. This wasn’t academic interest she was showing, obviously.

  “It’s still not that simple,” I said. “Not with something as powerful as a Dominion it isn’t, anyway. Evocation might not be as rude as flat out summoning but it’s still not a polite invitation exactly. It needs a bit of oomph behind it. A lot of oomph for a Dominion, I expect. We’ll need to talk this through with the Burned Man.”

  “You can do that,” she said. “I’m not going in there.”

  “You’ll have to sooner or later if you want to do this,” I said. “That’s where the circle is.”

  Trixie pulled a sour face that said she hadn’t thought of that, which was some small consolation for the way she had just deftly wrapped me round her little finger. Women, huh? I left her to her smoke and went to speak to the Burned Man.

  “Let me get this straight,” it said, after I had explained the idea. “You want me to evoke that thing that manifested like a fucking nuke going off and tore Aleto the Unresting into charred mincemeat just by fucking speaking to her? Are you out of your tiny cunting mind, Drake?”

  I think it’s fair to say the Burned Man wasn’t completely on board with the plan.

  “I’m not talking about trying to fucking summon it, I haven’t got a death wish,” I said. “Just an evocation, that’s all.”

  “That’s all? Have you got even the faintest idea what this fucking thing is?”

  I wasn’t sure I really had, to be perfectly honest about it. I tried to remember how Trixie had explained the hierarchy to me. Angels to Archangels to Principalities to Dominions, that was it. Then something called a Throne I think, I couldn’t remember how it went after that and I was sure it didn’t really matter anyway. I had a feeling a Dominion was as close as a mortal could get to meeting God Himself and still come out alive. Well, hopefully come out alive.

  “I know it’s dangerous but we haven’t got a lot of choice. Trixie needs to speak to it about Bianakith and–”

  “Oh, Trixie needs, I see. And Blondie gets whatever Blondie wants around here, doesn’t she?”

  Oh for fucksake, seriously? It was jealous? I decided to try some ego stroking, that usually worked.

  “Look, you’ll be right here with me,” I said. “You’re an archdemon for fucks sake. An archdemon so powerful that you were the one Oisin chose, right? Back in Tir Na Nog, when he first bound you into that fetish. He chose you, above all the archdemons of Hell. You can stand against a Dominion, can’t you?”

  “‘Course I bloody can,” it said, and showed me a nasty grin. “The question is, can you?”

  “I’ll just have to,” I said. “What are we going to need to make this work?”

  “Yeah, that’s going to be a problem. You remember that angel’s skull you didn’t win from Wormwood?”

  “Oh fuck me, how could I forget it?” I said.

  “Well, we need that. Or another one like it, I don’t care, but an angel’s skull is what we need.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. I could still remember how much that bloody thing had turned out to be worth. “All right, leave that with me. Anything else?”

  “Nah, not for an evocation,” it said. “You don’t need blood for that, just the focus. Get me that skull and slap together a triangle of art and I’m sure I can rustle you up five minutes of earache from a Dominion.”

  Get me that skull, just like that.


  Fucking hell.

  Chapter 8

  “Fancy a night out?” I asked Trixie.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I need to pay Wormwood a visit, and I’m really going to need you along this time,” I explained. “We need to persuade him to lend us his angel’s skull, and I don’t think me asking nicely is going to cut it somehow.”

  Trixie smiled. “Oh, I’ll ask him extra nicely, don’t you worry.”

  I’d sort of been counting on that, truth be told, so that was a bit of good news for once.

  We made a proper night of it, me in my best suit and Trixie in a stunning black evening dress she’d rustled up from somewhere while I wasn’t looking. I still had no idea how she did that. After dinner in a nice restaurant and a couple of cocktails afterwards we took a cab to Wormwood’s club. It was gone midnight by then, well past opening time, and the bar was crowded. Connie was in his usual spot at the bottom of the stairs where he was making sure only those who were on the list of invited guests made their way up to the actual club proper. We made our way over to him, narrowly avoiding being jostled by a big, smiling ginger-haired bloke wearing an eyepatch with a nasty scar around it. Something about that guy jogged at my memory but then Connie saw us and his face fell in obvious dismay, and I forgot all about it.

  “Evening, Con,” I said.

  “All right, Don,” he said. “Good evening, ma’am.”

  “Hello,” said Trixie. “It’s Constantinos, isn’t it?”

  Connie looked flustered that she had remembered his name, bless him, and I couldn’t help but smile at that.

  “No bother, Con,” I said. “We’re just having a night out. Thought I might play some cards.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Righto.”

  “And have a little chat with Wormwood, if he’s about.”

  “Mr Wormwood has been unavoidably detained on important business,” Connie said, pronouncing the words carefully as though he’d been taught them specially for just this occasion. Which he probably had been, to be fair. “Means he’s not here.”