by Peter McLean
I found myself standing back to back with Trixie, her facing the Dominion with her flaming sword in her hands and sobs racking her body while I stared into the eyes of an ancient Nubian war goddess. Flames erupted from my hands as the Burned Man prepared to do battle, but I knew it was hopeless. However powerful the Burned Man might be, it wasn’t a god. I could only see one way this was going to end.
I felt Trixie move behind me, the back of her arm brushing mine as she shifted her guard and prepared to try to kill her father and her king.
“I love you,” I said.
It wasn’t like I was going to get another chance to say it.
“Yes,” she said.
She went for the Dominion with a shriek of righteous fury. It had fallen, and I could barely begin to guess how utterly betrayed she must have felt by that. I heard a furious clash of blades behind me, and allowed myself a grim smile. Trixie was in no mood for forgiveness, that much was abundantly clear. I didn’t have the luxury of watching her though. Menhit strode towards me, her burning arrow at half draw. I swayed, mesmerised for a moment as she met my stare with her glowing golden eyes. I could feel the flames licking out of my hands but something held me back. She drew and loosed in one fluid motion almost too fast to follow, and the arrow screamed like a thing in torment as it shot over my head and smashed into the Dominion.
Well fuck me. That was a turn-up for the books.
Menhit roared and came on at a dead run. I threw myself out of the way, trailing flames in the air from my hands. Even the Burned Man wasn’t going to take that on if it didn’t have to, and by some miracle it looked like we might not have to after all. I rolled in time to see Trixie dashed aside by a swipe from the Dominion’s lightning tentacle thing, and then the Dominion and the goddess of war were going at it like the very fucking end of the world.
Menhit’s bow had turned into a huge bronze sickle-shaped sword somewhere along the way, and it flashed as she sliced away the Dominion’s tentacle-like weapon and met it blade to blade. The Dominion raged and blazed with light, and I winced at the thought of what that sort of release of power would have done to me if I hadn’t been hiding behind the Burned Man. I think I would probably have been reduced to a greasy smear of ash on the ground by now, in all honesty.
They fought, and the cavern shook and crumbled, and fissures opened in the ground and great, ominous cracks ran up the walls. I dragged myself on all fours across the heaving ground to Trixie’s side.
“I thought…” she said, when I was close enough to hear her.
“Yeah,” I said. “So did I. Guess not.”
It seemed that the Dominion had been mistaken. Oh, there was no longer any doubt that it had summoned Bianakith to destroy Rashid’s statue, this Sentinel it had spoken of, so that it could bring Menhit through from behind her Veil to use as a weapon in its war with Heaven. Only it seemed the lady herself had other ideas.
Their battle raged until it was a wonder the entire cavern hadn’t come crashing down around us. The Dominion beat its massive wings and rose into the air but Menhit sprang after it, leaping impossibly high with her blade flashing as she roared defiance. She crashed into it in midair and brought it down with one wing twisted and broken, flopping uselessly behind it.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine the amount of power being used in this fight, or where it was all coming from. I got the distinct feeling that even the Burned Man was a little bit awed by what we were seeing. Only a god can create energy from nothing, after all. A Dominion is monstrously powerful but it’s not a god.
But Menhit was.
The Dominion was flagging now, I could tell. It stumbled as it met Menhit blade to blade, and its riposte was slow, almost clumsy. The blazing sun in the pommel of its sword was starting to dim as it gradually ran out of strength.
The lioness was unstoppable. She fought in a constant whirlwind of bronze and fire, tireless and merciless and utterly relentless.
There is no other power to equal that of a god.
The Slaughterer. She Who Massacres.
Those names were well earned, it seemed. The fury of her attack never let up for a moment. She hammered the Dominion’s blade until at last she drove it to its knees in defeat, exhausted.
Finally, she spoke. Her voice was like gravel on glass, like a rusty gate creaking in the wind. A voice unused for an unimaginable length of time.
“I choose my own battles,” she said.
She spun her sword into a reverse grip and plunged it down two-handed into the Dominion’s heart.
There was an unearthly shriek that seemed to go on forever. The ground beneath the Dominion opened up in a huge crevasse and an inferno erupted from it to kiss the roof of the cavern. The Dominion swayed helplessly, an anguished look on its perfect face as Menhit withdrew her weapon from its chest. It collapsed at last and fell screaming into the burning abyss beneath it. The rock fissure closed with an awful grinding noise, and all the fires went out.
Trixie put her head in her hands and wept.
I had an awful feeling I had just seen the mouth of Hell itself open up and swallow the fallen Dominion. I supposed that was the end of that then.
I looked up and saw Menhit’s golden eyes glowing in the darkness.
Maybe it wasn’t.
She stalked slowly towards us, her sword shimmering out of existence as she walked.
Now what the fuck do we do? I asked the Burned Man.
Buggered if I know, it said.
I’m afraid that was hardly reassuring.
“Mother,” I heard Rashid say.
Menhit stopped about ten feet from us and turned to look at him. I chanced a look that way too and saw he was still on his knees beside his upraised staff.
“Keeper,” she said. “You failed me.”
I very clearly heard Rashid swallow. He got to his feet and approached with obvious trepidation. Menhit seemed completely unashamed of her nudity but when Rashid took off his trenchcoat and offered it to her she slipped it on and belted it without a word.
“Five thousand years, Mother,” he said, backing away again as fast as he could. He was obviously terrified and I couldn’t say I blamed him, to be perfectly honest. “For five thousand years I have kept your Veil. I have kept you safe from the predations of this world for–”
“You should have been guarding the Sentinel. You failed me.”
The bow reappeared in her hands faster than I could even follow. She drew and loosed in a blur of movement, and an arrow of screaming fire impaled Rashid through the chest. He went up like a Roman candle, turning instantly into a pillar of flame. He burned until there was nothing left of him.
Nothing at all.
The bow vanished again, and Menhit turned the pitiless suns of her stare upon us.
“A lord of the Below and his sky child guardian,” she said.
I winced inwardly at that, but if Trixie took it in, she gave no sign of it. I supposed her finding out what I had become was probably the least of my worries right at that moment.
“Mother of War,” I said, inclining my head respectfully.
At least the Burned Man usually seemed to know the right sort of thing to say when it really mattered, that was something I supposed.
“Mother of Death,” Trixie echoed, and she too bowed her head before the goddess.
I have to admit that surprised me. Maybe she was just following my lead, I don’t know, but if so, it sounded bloody convincing. We both knelt before Menhit. When you meet a real actual goddess in the flesh you don’t have a lot of other fucking options, you know what I mean?
Menhit stood over us, black and terrible and murderous, wearing Rashid’s scruffy old trenchcoat like it was Cleopatra’s finest robe. She looked down at me, and then at Trixie, and I could feel the power coming off her like wild electricity, like lightning.
Nothing had ever felt like this before, not even the Dominion at its most theatrical. The Dominion had always felt like it was putting a lot of effort into appearing terrible,
if you know what I mean. I had an awful suspicion Menhit was putting effort into appearing less terrible than she was, and I was still about ready to piss myself with fear.
That, if you aren’t quite getting it yet, is what a goddess is like.
“I require a new keeper of the Veil,” she said at last. “The position is yours.”
I looked up at her and gaped. That didn’t sound like an invitation so much as a direct bloody command. I could feel the Burned Man about to say something that I think we’d all have regretted, and I managed to mentally strangle it just in time. I knew I really didn’t have much choice about this.
“Honour to serve, Mother,” Trixie said, and I echoed her words without even thinking about it.
That, looking back on it, was fucking stupid of me.
Chapter 24
As I’ve said before, Trixie was a soldier, not a general, and a soldier needs a chain of command above her. With her Dominion gone, I could see she had slotted Menhit into that role almost instantly. We walked out of the deep warrens together, the goddess striding barefoot and naked under Rashid’s old coat. Trixie marched by her side like some sort of Praetorian Guard, and I followed behind in their wake.
“I will require funds and domicile, servants and so forth,” Menhit was saying. “If I must dwell once more upon this plane then I shall do so in a manner befitting my station.”
Goddess seeks suitable accommodation, servants and so forth, I thought. Funds available are the square root of fuck all.
Oh dear God, what were we going to do with her? I could hardly have her at my place, that went without saying. I dreaded to even think what she would make of my grotty little flat. Who the fuck could I dump her on until Trixie and I at least had the chance to talk? I wondered what she would think of Wormwood. He was rich at least, but he was also bloody horrible. No, I couldn’t see Menhit wanting to kip in Wormwood’s spare room somehow. Of course, he wasn’t the only multimillionaire I knew.
Sorry Papa, I thought. I think the Guédé just called in your debt.
Poor bastard. Although knowing him he’d probably try to shag her, goddess of war or not. I wondered how that would work out for him.
We made our way back out of the deep warren and found Janice waiting for us in the next tunnel, bless her.
“Hi,” I said. “Hi, Janice.”
She looked at the three of us, and there was no hiding the fact that Adam and Rashid weren’t there any more. There was even less hiding Menhit.
“Oh my goodness,” she said.
“A gnome?” Menhit asked.
Janice nodded nervously, and gave me a look that quite plainly said help. She had at least a rough idea of what stood before her, I could tell.
“The gnomes of the deep Earth have served us well, Mother,” I said.
By then I really had no idea if that was me or the Burned Man talking. My grip on reality was probably a bit loose at that point, to be perfectly honest with you, and I knew it was getting worse. The Burned Man seemed to be doing at least half of my talking for me now. What was with calling her Mother anyway? I had no idea, but the Burned Man obviously thought it was the correct way to address her. She didn’t seem to mind, anyway. She nodded.
“Good,” she said. “Honour be to the gnomes of the Earth.”
Janice bowed her head and I’d swear she was blushing, poor little thing.
“Could you perhaps guide us back to the surface, please Janice?” I asked her.
She did as I asked without question or complaint, and again I could feel the favour I owed her growing arms and legs and getting bigger and bigger. Ah well, there was no help for that now I supposed. She had more than earned it, bless her heart.
When Janice finally returned the three of us to the Tube station I looked at the clock and was amazed to see it was only late afternoon. Somehow after the events we had just witnessed, it felt like it should have been the dead of night, but there you are. I gave Janice a goodbye squeeze and told her to call me if she ever needed my help with anything. I had a strong suspicion that she would, sooner or later.
Even down in the Tube, the sight of Menhit standing on the platform barefoot in Rashid’s trenchcoat was drawing a few odd looks. If she just hadn’t been quite so tall it would have helped, although I noticed that at least her eyes had stopped glowing. That was probably for the best, all things considered. You can get away with a lot of weird shit on the Tube but that might have been a stretch too far all the same.
“Don,” Trixie asked me as Menhit stared silently at the sights around her, lost in thought. “What are we going to do now?”
I sighed. “I have no idea,” I said. “I reckon we’ll have to try and stash her at Papa Armand’s for now. His place is the closest thing I know to a palace.”
“It’s not going to do for long though, is it?” Trixie said.
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t think it is.”
I felt the familiar push of warm stale air coming out of the tunnel, and a moment later a train pulled up to a halt at the platform.
“Mind the gap,” the station system announced in its automated voice. “Mind the gap.”
The train doors hissed open and there was the usual surprisingly efficient dance of people getting on and off around each other. I was aware of Menhit standing there, staring at the train as though hypnotised. There was an unreadable expression on her face.
“Well, keeper?” she demanded after a moment, seeming to snap out of her trance. “What have you prepared for me?”
“Um,” I said. “Look, I just need to make a quick call, all right?”
She gave me a blank look. Oh God, she didn’t know anything about anything, did she? The last time she had been on Earth it was probably the fucking Bronze Age or something.
“The keeper will speak to your subjects,” Trixie translated, and Menhit nodded.
I hurried along the platform until I found a payphone. I really did ought to get a mobile, I knew I did, not that they worked very well down the Tube anyway. I shovelled coins into the phone and punched Armand’s number.
“Papa, it’s Don,” I said. “Look, I need a really big favour. The mother of all fucking favours, I’m afraid.”
He grumbled a bit while I explained, but he was pretty much all right about it. Admittedly I may have left out one or two key details, like exactly who the woman I needed to hide at his apartment actually was. If I had explained he would never have agreed to it, which was why I didn’t.
We went up to the street and I hailed us a cab, and waved enough money around for the cabbie not to ask any awkward questions about the state of the three of us. We sat in silence as he drove us to Knightsbridge. Menhit was staring out of the window of the taxi, gripping the seat so hard her knuckles were turning white. Her self-control was admirable but I could tell she was fighting to conceal sheer terror. Whatever must the towering, headlong rush of modern London look like to eyes that hadn’t seen the world in five millennia? Trixie was just staring at her boots, looking lost. I sighed again. Life never got simpler, did it?
Papa Armand opened the door of his apartment and gave me a weary nod. He really didn’t look himself either, truth be told.
“Come in Don-boy,” he said. “Zanj Bèl.”
I ushered Trixie into the flat ahead of me, and Papa’s gaze found Menhit at last. His smile broke like the rising sun.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, giving her a courtly bow.
“Je suis Maman,” she corrected him in flawlessly accented French. “Mère de la guerre.”
He blinked and looked at her again, properly this time.
“Ah,” he said. “Don-boy, maybe there somethin’ you’d like to explain?”
Fucking hell, here we go.
“Can we at least come in?” I asked him.
He paused for a moment, giving Menhit another long look, then nodded and held the door open for us to follow Trixie inside. He locked the door firmly behind us. I kicked my shoes off and padded down the luxurious
white carpet into the sitting room.
The mesmerising origami cabinet had been smashed to pieces, and there were dark drink stains on the carpet. At least I hoped they were just drink stains. Even the big smoked glass windows that led out onto his balcony were cracked, I noticed, and there was a long burn mark up one wall that had definitely not been there before. He saw me looking and nodded his shiny bald head slowly.
“Guédé come visit last night,” he said, by way of explanation.
I didn’t know a great deal about the death loa of Vodou but I knew they were a pretty wild bunch by all accounts. From what little I knew of how Papa’s magic worked I suspected he had done the damage himself whilst possessed by the spirits. If Papa had invoked the Guédé Barons last night then it was a testament to his power and control that the place was still standing at all.
“If you would please come with me, Mother,” Trixie said to Menhit, “I’ll find you some more fitting clothes.”
She led the goddess up Papa’s floating stairs to the second floor and I heard a door close behind them. I turned to Papa.
“Is Jocasta still here?” I asked.
I left the question deliberately ambiguous. When Papa gave his head a sombre shake I was glad I had. I’d rather not know, to be honest with you. Still, she might have been young but she knew the risks. At least, I sincerely hoped she had. Oh well, done was done and no help for it now.
“Your lady friend,” Papa said. “Talk to me.”
“Her name is Menhit,” I said, and Papa hissed like he had been stung. “You remember that guy Rashid?”
Papa nodded slowly, his jaw set in a hard line as he looked at me.
“Yeah, well,” I said. “Turns out he was her priest or something, apparently. Keeper of the Veil, she calls it. He’d been putting it about for just about ever that he was her enemy, that he was keeping her walled up safe somewhere the other side of a Veil, and that was sort of true. I think he had been doing that, but not to keep us safe from her. Because she commanded him to, is my understanding, so she would be left alone. Now, when Trixie’s Dominion needed Menhit’s help for its war in Heaven it summoned Bianakith to dissolve this Sentinel thing of Rashid’s that was keeping her Veil closed, and once that was gone the Veil fell apart and she couldn’t help but come through, even though she never wanted to. I think.”