by Peter McLean
Trixie and Adam were coming back, I could see over Rashid’s shoulder, and I really didn’t want her to hear anything about that. It was bad enough that Adam somehow seemed to already know what had happened.
“Of course,” Rashid said, his feline grin widening still further.
Trixie and Adam rejoined us at the bar. At least they had both put their weapons away again, that was something.
“This is Rashid,” I said, nodding at them. “Trixie, Adam.”
“Charmed I’m sure,” Adam said in a tone that meant the exact opposite.
“Hello,” said Trixie.
“Honour to the messengers,” Rashid said, and offered them both a short bow. He paused, blinked at Adam, and bowed again. “And to whatever they may have become,” he added.
Adam scowled and retrieved his drink from the bar. He drained the whisky in a single swallow.
“This evening has gone awry,” he said, instantly winning my award for understatement of the day, if not the fucking century. “Perhaps we should talk another day, Don. Trixie.”
He turned and stalked off without another word.
“Oh dear,” Trixie said, looking after him with a rather lost expression on her face.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be back,” I said.
Better the devil you know, indeed. Was it really? I wasn’t too fucking sure about that, but then I supposed all things were relative. I looked at Rashid, and wondered exactly who and what the fuck he was. Perhaps Adam was right, at that.
“Perhaps he will, perhaps he will not,” Rashid said. “The Word moves as the Word Wills.”
He leaned on his staff, his face unreadable. He was still grinning, but then cats always look like they’re smiling, don’t they? It doesn’t mean they like you. Trixie was staring at him, I realised, rigid with anger. Damn, I’d heard that expression somewhere before, I was sure I had.
“Are you quoting my Dominion at me?” she hissed, her voice low and dangerous.
I suddenly realised just how close she was to going for his throat.
“Am I?” Rashid said mildly. “My apologies, messenger. I meant no offence.”
Still his face was unreadable, grinning, impassive.
“Mmmm,” Trixie said. “Who are you, Rashid?”
“A shaman,” he said. “A wanderer, a priest. A dweller in the ancient deserts.”
“The desert is far from here,” she said.
Rashid shrugged. “Near, far, it makes no difference. Your sword is by your side yet it too is immeasurably far away, is it not? Dimensions may brush against each other but remain forever out of reach.”
Trixie fixed him with a frozen blue stare.
“Do not,” she said, “do not ever attempt to be mysterious with me. You will lose.”
He laughed and swallowed his wine.
“Sky child,” he said, and smiled.
“Don’t wind her up, mate,” I said, and that time I thought it was probably the Burned Man talking. It was getting hard to tell, but either way that was sound advice as far as I was concerned.
Papa Armand came over then to say goodnight. He shook my hand, kissed Trixie’s, and gave Rashid a long, unreadable look.
“Orevwa,” he murmured, one of the few words of Haitian Creole I could figure out from my schoolboy French, and left us to it.
Rashid stared after him as he sauntered away with Jocasta on his arm.
“I wish only to discuss peace,” Rashid said after a moment. “I am a peaceful man.”
“Yeah well she ain’t,” I said, and that time I knew it was the Burned Man talking. “A man, or peaceful. Fucking trust me on this one.”
“Yes,” Rashid said. “Yes, I can see that much. You hide behind false colours, messenger, and your true purpose is clouded. Guidance from above has been lacking I think, hmm?”
“What would you know about that?” Trixie snapped. “Don, get me a drink. A strong one.”
I caught the barman’s eye and ordered her a double gin and tonic, and got another whisky for myself and a glass of wine for Rashid while I was about it. This conversation was getting extremely weird even by my standards, and I had no intention of staying sober for it if I didn’t have to.
I passed her the tall, cold glass, the ice clinking as she raised it to her lips. She swallowed and stared at Rashid for a moment over the rim of the glass. I watched her set it carefully down on the bar and open her cigarette case. She took out a long black and gold smoke, all the while holding his catlike stare.
“Well?” she asked at last, and lit her cigarette with a slim gold lighter.
“I am a shaman,” he said again. “I feel the movements, the waves, the undulations of power and influence, the shifting of the endless sands beneath our feet. I know when a force is ascendant, and when it begins to decline. I may not see every detail but I perceive the bigger picture. I know what is happening above, and I know what is coming.”
That made me sit up, I can tell you. I’d heard more than enough out of Papa Armand and Adam both to know that something fucking big was about to go down, but I still had no real idea of what. Trixie’s Dominion had been acting screwy, sure, but then of course I didn’t have a clue how I was supposed to expect something like that to act. And even Trixie’s viewpoint wasn’t completely reliable, and seemed to be getting less reliable the more screwy her Dominion became. All in all, I found myself hopelessly adrift on a stormy sea. Cold and shark-infested waters Adam had called them. I was starting to think he was right about that, and I was no longer even sure he was the biggest shark in them after all.
“Cut to the fucking chase,” I said, or the Burned Man did. One of us did, anyway. “Spare me the Bedouin sage routine, there’s a good lad.”
I winced inside, but thankfully Rashid laughed. I could only assume the Burned Man knew whoever this bloke really was well enough to know how much piss taking it could get away with.
“She’s coming,” Rashid said, and suddenly he wasn’t grinning at all any more.
“Lucky her,” I said, and obviously that was the Burned Man talking again.
Shut up if you can’t be serious, I snapped at it in my head. You still haven’t told me who this geezer even is but he’s obviously trying to tell us something important here.
Rashid smiled, and Trixie gave me a slightly bewildered look. Bless her.
“No,” Rashid said. “Fear upon the world. My work on Earth has been undone by the Corrupter of Flesh and Houses.”
I frowned. The Corrupter of Flesh and Houses? He layeth waste to houses and causeth flesh to decay and all that which is similar. Bianakith. He meant Bianakith, I was sure he did. I looked at him, and my gaze settled on the headpiece of his staff. A cat, sitting upright and looking smug and regal like cats always bloody do. As I said earlier, I’m not a big fan of cats. The ancient Egyptians had a goddess that looked like that, I remembered. Bast, or Bastet, as memory served. She was a goddess of, amongst other things, protection against evil spirits. Well, that was interesting, I supposed. I drained my glass and looked at him.
“This work of yours on Earth,” I said. “I don’t suppose it was a statue of a cat was it, by any chance? Somewhere, oh I dunno, down there?”
I pointed vaguely at the floor. It didn’t really matter where, I was just making the point. Rashid looked at me.
“It was,” he said. “And now it is destroyed, corroded away to nothing by the only force that could have destroyed it. Only the Corrupter of Flesh and Houses had the power to undo my work.”
“What was your work for?” Trixie asked him. “What did it do?”
“It held her safely beyond the Veils,” Rashid said. “Now it is gone, she comes.”
That didn’t sound good, to put it fucking mildly.
Chapter 17
This didn’t feel like it was going to be the sort of conversation you could really have in public, so we left. Trixie and Rashid were looking silent daggers at each other in the back of the taxi while I had to put up with the Burned Ma
n sniggering in my head. I noticed on our way out that nothing seemed to have been damaged in the bar downstairs by whatever Rashid had done to make the big bang and all that smoke. It was good of him to leave the place standing, I supposed, and no one seemed to have been hurt. Maybe he was a peaceful man at that. Sort of, anyway.
What the fuck are you laughing at? I thought at the Burned Man. And will you for fucksake tell me who this geezer is?
Rashid, the Burned Man whispered in my head, although I’d kind of gathered that by now. He’s a shaman from… somewhere else. Doesn’t matter where. He’s a clever bloke. Bit of a hippy to be honest, but he’s not all bad. I hope you like cats.
I don’t like sodding cats.
What does he want? I thought back at it. And more to the point, what’s he on about with all this “she’s coming” fuckery?
Fucked if I know, it said, somewhere in the back of my head. They’re big on the Egyptian pantheon where he’s from though. Bast was his patron, last I spoke to him. It could be her I suppose, but I can’t see why he’d have been trying to stop her if it was. Isis, maybe? Sekhmet? I don’t fucking know, they’ve got hundreds of bloody goddesses over there and I haven’t seen Rashid for millennia.
Fucking hell, goddesses? What was it Adam had said, “not all gods are above” or something like that. I could only assume the same thing held true for goddesses too. I can’t say Egyptian mythology was exactly my strong point but I was sure they must have some nasty ones in the pantheon somewhere. Oh joy, there was something to look forward to.
Still, I thought as the cab pulled up outside the Rose and Crown, it could have been worse. I could have had to take this weird ginger hippy cat back to my place, but luckily I had a bit of an arrangement with the lovely Shirley. It was late, I knew, but I didn’t think she’d mind. The Rose and Crown had a lock-in pretty much every night, and as the cab coasted to a stop by the kerb I saw that there were still lights on under the drawn blinds.
“Cheers, mate,” I said to the driver as I paid him.
I stepped out into the cold night and offered Trixie my hand to help her out of the car. Not that she needed any help, obviously, but something about her just brought out the chivalry in me. She didn’t seem to mind anyway, and graciously accepted my hand as she stepped onto the pavement with Rashid behind her. He had somehow made his staff disappear again when we left the club, which was probably for the best, all things considered. That said, I was starting to feel like the only person who didn’t know how to do that trick.
I ducked under a hanging basket and rapped on the door.
“We’re shut,” I heard Alfie’s dulcet tones shout through the thick wood.
“No you ain’t, Alf,” I said. “It’s Don Drake.”
I heard a bolt being pulled back, then the door opened and Alfie’s flat-nosed boxer’s face appeared in the sudden spill of light and laughter from inside. Alfie is Shirley’s son, if I hadn’t mentioned it. If there’s a human version of Connie he’s it, but he’s a nice lad deep down. Unless you upset his mum anyway, then God help you.
“All right, Don,” he said, and gave Trixie a shy smile. “Hello again, love.”
“Hello,” said Trixie.
“Good evening,” said Rashid, when he really should have just kept his sodding face shut and followed us in. Some people know jack shit about basic protocol, and it does my head in. Now I had to introduce the prick and make a big fucking song and dance about him being all right. If he hadn’t said anything, Alf would have just happily assumed he was all right as he was with me, and that would have been the end of it. Bloody foreigners.
“Alf, this is Rashid,” I said. “He’s sound, he’s with me.”
Alfie gave him a dubious look, taking in his eyepatch and horrible scar. “You sure?” he asked.
“I’ll vouch,” I had to say, when I knew fuck all about the bloke and only had the Burned Man’s word for it that he actually was all right. The Burned Man’s word wasn’t worth a lukewarm turd as a rule, if you hadn’t gathered that by now.
“Well, if you say so,” Alf said, although he still didn’t look convinced.
He stood back and held the door open for us, and we filed into the pub. Alf closed and bolted the door behind us again. They should have closed hours ago of course, but this was Shirley’s domain and she closed when she said she was closing and bugger the law. There was a fair old crowd still in there, a lot of faces I recognised. The Rose and Crown is one of those places where the local characters tend to congregate, and most of them are fairly serious drinkers. Round these parts “characters” is a sort of friendly euphemism for “thieves, conmen and thugs”.
“I’ll find us a table,” Trixie said, but I shook my head.
“Nah, we’ll need a bit of privacy, I think,” I said. “Hang around a sec.”
She sniffed but did as I asked. She had a bit of a thing about not going to the bar, for some reason. I gave Rashid a nudge as we headed over there.
“I don’t think you’ll get any wine in here that you’d want to actually drink,” I warned him.
“Beer is fine,” he said. “Something dark.”
Shirley beamed when she saw us.
“Don, how are you, duck?” she said. “And your pretty lady too. And this fine gent.”
Oh great, here we had to go all over again.
“‘Ello Duchess,” I grinned at her. “This is Rashid, he’s all right.”
“Honoured to meet you, noble landlady,” Rashid said with a bow, proving that I was talking out of my arse.
Thankfully Shirl had obviously been at the vodka by then, and she giggled like a teenager. “Aw, isn’t that nice?” she said. “What’re you having, boys?”
“Lager and a bitter and a G and T, please, treacle,” I said. “And a large one for yourself, of course. And, um, a bit of time in the back, if we can.”
Shirley smiled as she stuck a glass under the vodka optic and did herself a double.
“Oh go on then, as it’s you,” she said. “Alf!”
Alfie lumbered over and she told him to open up the back room for us.
“Cheers, love,” I said as I paid for the drinks. I put an extra hundred quid down on the bar for use of the back. “Do us a bottle as well will you? This might take a bit.”
“Got you,” Shirley said, making the money disappear.
We took our drinks and followed Alfie down the narrow corridor beside the bar. He unlocked a door and flicked a light on to let us into what must once have been a dining room or something. These days it was just “the back”, and it was where private business got done in the Rose and Crown. Usually that business was buying and selling, nicked cars or vanloads of moody computers or fur coats or fags or whatever it might happen to be that day, but sometimes it was just a good place to have a quiet little chat away from prying eyes.
Whatever had used to be in here was gone and there was now just one long table, with low-hanging lights over it and ashtrays on it and bugger the smoking ban, and a dozen chairs arranged around the sides. There was also a lot of empty space which made this a bloody good place to hurt someone too. Shirley was very understanding about business matters, by and large.
We sat, and Trixie pulled a battered orange plastic ashtray towards her and took her cigarette case out of her handbag. The ashtray was decorated with the logo of a brewery that had gone bust at least ten years ago, I noticed. Shirley came in just then with three glasses and two bottles of scotch on a tray, for all that I had only asked for one, and put them down in front of us. She noticed Trixie had the plastic ashtray in front of her, and tutted loudly.
“No, love, you’re guests,” she said. “Let me get you the good one.”
She came back a moment later with a white china ashtray with a rose painted on the side, and put it carefully down on the table in front of Trixie.
“Thank you,” Trixie said.
I grinned at Shirley. “Thanks, love,” I said, by which of course I meant “go away”.
&nbs
p; She knew that. She went. Shirl knows how things work, bless her, even if Rashid didn’t.
“This is pleasant,” Rashid said.
He sat back in his chair and stretched, looking for all the world like the overgrown cat he apparently was. He sipped his beer and looked at me.
“This is private is what it is,” I said. “As private as I can afford, anyway.”
I opened the nearest bottle and poured a healthy measure into each glass. To be fair, I was being pretty free with Trixie’s money that night but she always had plenty of it and she didn’t seem to care what I did with it, so why not? I liked having money, you know?
“Now,” Trixie said, and fixed Rashid with one of her cold blue stares. “Time to talk.”
“It is always the right time to talk,” said Rashid, showing us his long-toothed grin. “It’s so much better than the alternative.”
There was a long silence. Trixie swallowed her whisky and glared at him.
“I warned you about trying to be mysterious with me,” she said. “Don’t do it. You obviously wanted to tell us something, so tell us.”
“I have said my piece,” Rashid said. “The Corrupter of Flesh and Houses has undone my work and now she comes.”
“Who comes?” I asked him.
He frowned at me. “The one I am sworn against, the one I have always fought,” he said. “You know this thing, old friend.”
Shit. The Burned Man might well have figured it out by now but it had gone worryingly quiet on me. I didn’t have a fucking clue what he was on about, personally. I improvised with the best multipurpose word in the English language.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly. “Is old age dulling your wits?”
“Fuck off,” I snapped, and suddenly realised the Burned Man had woken up and was talking again. “This isn’t fucking funny, Rashid.”
“I know this thing,” he said, for all that he was still grinning. “This is disastrous.”
I gulped my whisky and prayed Trixie didn’t say anything to give the game away. I had to keep Rashid thinking I actually was the Burned Man, without letting on to Trixie that I even might be. It was starting to do my head in, to be perfectly honest with you.