by Unknown
Tick.
***
I was right. We had an outbreak, not only among the populace outside our walls, but apparently technicians had managed to get themselves infected as well. The facility went on full-scale alert, with military troops expedited to maintain order and enforce the lockdown. I had it on good word that orders were given to shoot on sight if any showed signs of infection.
Advanced Sciences had the good fortune to bunker up in one of the secure wings at the facility. Major Thomsen was confident we would be safe there, but if not, he told me personally that if it came to it, he would ensure that I was evacuated to a safe location off-site.
Perhaps we should have reconsidered the name we came up with. Despite my calm exterior, I am terrified.
***
One. “Dammit! Shut that damn thing up!” James hit the console hard, hard enough that his knuckles came up bloody. He slammed it again for good measure; he was trying to think, and that damned thing kept counting down to him, like he cared. If it kept up, he’d look for something harder than his fist, shut that damned number-counter up for good.
He had no idea what the numbers meant anyway. Maybe they were his countdown, and when they hit zero he’d explode into sheer absolution, a pure rage that would envelop everything around him. They all deserved it.
James realized, like a revelation, that he did, too. He’d rip everything to shreds if he had to, including himself. He knew it with cold certainty.
Tick.
***
I haven’t seen Major Thomsen since. Things have gone from bad to worse, and there are telltale signs that the strain is already spreading beyond control. This will be my final log until I have been able to locate suitable secure arrangements for my exit. I wish that I had more time, wish that we had been able to contain this beast; it was reserved for our enemies, those that truly deserved it. Instead, we may have doomed the entire human race. I may have doomed them.
I must find a way out.
Forgive me.
James Mesnehan
***
Zero. James heard a rushing sound, followed by short thumps and vibrations. The console displays lit up, showing hundreds of blinking areas on the continental maps. He had a quick lucid thought, remembered for a moment what had happened, what he had just done. Unbidden tears streamed down his face as the displays changed, showing massive fireballs in the sky; regions of the earth faded into a brilliant white, and then blacked out. Humanity died millions at a time, along with most of the planet’s infrastructure, before the displays were all overcome by blackness or static.
For a second afterwards, there was a peaceful silence. Then the earth was quiet, save for the hiss of smoke and dying fire that only he heard. He saw the displays, full of noise, saw the blinking alerts and lights, but James heard nothing but the crackle of slowly burning ember.
James’ screams shattered the silence. His last thought, before a permanent and lethal rage overtook him, was that he had become Ragnarok.
PETE McLEAN
The Last Hand
Peter McLean lives in Norwich, England, with his wife and their two Siamese cats. When he isn’t being an account manager at a global technology outsourcing firm, he is busy writing about magic, fantasy, and demons. He is currently courting agents for his urban dark fantasy series.
Occult hitman Don Drake gambles his way into the debt of the nastiest demon in London. He can’t drink his way out of this one, but maybe he can make a deal with something else to save his skin. Something much worse...
5. THE LAST HAND
by Pete McLean
He saw my warpstone and raised me an angel’s skull, and there was no way I could cover that bet. I had a Knight-high flush and the Tower, a fair hand in Fates, but that warpstone was all I had left. My palms were itching. I looked down at my cards, and the face of the Knight of Cups looked back up at me. He looked drunk and happy in his painted tarot world, the lucky sod. I was only drunk.
Someone laughed, away on the other side of the smoky club. Glasses clinked. Across the table from me, Wormwood was starting to look impatient. He lit another cigarette off the butt of the last and poked it between his thin, grey lips before he mashed the old one out in the overflowing ashtray beside him. A strand of his long hair was stuck greasily to the three-day growth of stubble on his cheek.
He rested his free hand on top of the skull and stroked the pristine white bone with fingers that were nicotine-stained to the colour of dark mahogany.
“Well, Drake?” he asked. “I ain’t got all bleedin’ night.”
I cleared my throat, and the waitress wiggled up beside me and poured another generous slosh of whisky into my glass. Very old single malt whisky. I nodded a thanks at her. She was pretty, I thought. Nice tail. Another night I might have tried it on with her, but this was serious now and I needed to concentrate on the game. I knocked the whisky straight back and set the glass down on the table.
The Tower, again. This was the third hand tonight that I’d drawn it as my trump, and if that didn’t suck for an omen I didn’t know what did. I glanced at the two decks of cards on the table, the thick one for the suits and the slimmer deck of major arcana, the trumps in the game. I half wondered if Wormwood was cheating somehow, but that was a dangerous kind of thought to be having here. I reached up and loosened my tie a little, stretched out my aching neck. He was drumming his fingers on the skull now, and his ugly, horned minder was starting to give me that look that said I’d better not be taking the piss.
“Well now,” I said. “I’d be about ready to call you on that, but, ah…”
“But you’re skint,” Wormwood finished for me. “Ain’t you?”
He grinned. He had one of the most repulsive grins I’ve ever seen, and he stank. I could smell him from where I was sitting, with three feet of card table between us and enough cigarette smoke in the air to kill a beagle. It wasn’t that unwashed body stink like tramps got, it was worse than that. Wormwood smelled of rot, somehow, of disease and misery. And cheap cigarettes, I thought. Lots and lots of cheap cigarettes.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
His mean little eyes glittered as he looked at me.
“Now I might,” he went on, “be able to do something about that.”
I reached for my glass, and remembered it was empty. I glanced around the club instead, playing it cool. There were maybe twenty punters in tonight, a mixture of us and them. Mostly them. Wormwood’s club was private, obviously, not open to the general public. Hell, it wasn’t even visible to the general public. You’d walk straight past it if you didn’t know exactly where to stop in the alley, and precisely which bit of graffiti-covered brickwork was a glamour covering the front door.
“Oh?” I said. “How’s that then?”
“I might sub you,” he said. “Enough to finish this hand, anyway.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked him.
He shrugged.
“I know you’re good for it,” he said. “Anyway, I like you Drake.”
No you don’t, I thought. You don’t like anyone.
I had a Knight-high flush and the Tower, and I really, really wanted that skull. There was a lot I could do with an angel’s skull. I met his eyes, trying to feel him out. If I folded now I’d lost the warpstone anyway. If I went for it, if I won, I’d walk away with both and a good pile of cash besides.
What’ve you got, you little bastard? I wondered.
The waitress was filling my glass again. She really did have a cute little tail. I swallowed the drink and coughed, feeling the shot of ancient whisky burn its way down my throat and chase all its little friends into my guts. There were a fair few people watching us now, I noticed. Well, I say that, but people might be stretching it a bit. This was Wormwood’s club, after all.
“All right,” I said. “Sub me then, and I’ll call.”
I laid my hand out on the table. Wormwood took a long, careful look at my cards, and slowly shook his head. He turned his own ha
nd over to show a full house and Judgment. Bastard.
“It ain’t your lucky night, Drake,” he said.
I shoved my chair back from the table and stumbled to my feet, feeling the hot rush of the whisky slam up and into my forebrain all at once. I wobbled on my heels, holding on to the edge of the table to keep myself upright.
“Steady,” said Wormwood’s minder.
I took a deep breath, my guts twisting into a sick knot as it sank in. I’d lost the hand, I’d lost my warpstone, and now I owed Wormwood big time.
“I’m all right,” I muttered. “Just need some air.”
“Right you are then,” said the minder, affably enough for a nine foot monster with horns.
“Go home, Drake,” Wormwood said as he lit yet another cigarette. “I’ll be in touch. Like I said, I know you’re good for it.”
***
I wasn’t good for it. Not by a long way. I was so not good for it, in fact, that I had to walk home from the club. It comes to something when you can’t even afford a pissing taxi.
South London is bloody awful at three in the morning when it’s cold and raining, but at least this part of town is so bad even the muggers don’t dare go out after midnight. I had the pavement to myself, and I weaved my way down it with my hands buried in my coat pockets, collar turned up and my hair stuck wetly to my forehead. The cold rain was starting to sober me up, and that was the last thing I wanted. At one point I felt something watching me from the darkness of an alley, but it kept to the deal and stayed out of my way.
I’d made my deal with the night creatures of this part of South London when I first came here, and the terms of that deal were pretty simple. So long as they didn’t bother me, I wouldn’t come and bother them. They were more than happy with that.
I made it home in the end. Home was my office, above a Chinese pawnbrokers. At least I had my own front door at street level, with my own sign on it and everything. The sign said “Don Drake, Hieromancer,” in nice big gold letters. Well it had done, anyway - some wag had spray-painted out the word “Hieromancer” and written “wanker” underneath it instead. I kept meaning to do something about that, and I kept not getting around to it.
I leaned my forehead against the door as I fumbled through my pockets for the key. It went in the lock at the third attempt, and I opened the door and stumbled up the bare wooden stairs to my office. I had a couple of rooms out the back where I actually lived, and another where I worked, but I kept the booze in the office. I sank down into my chair and opened the bottom draw of my desk.
There was a half-empty bottle of whisky there, much cheaper stuff than Wormwood served, and a couple of relatively clean glasses. I ignored the glasses and drank it straight out of the bottle, which, when you thought about it, was glass anyway so what the hell difference did it make? It’s not like I had anyone to share it with.
I swallowed and let my eyes close. Damn it!
***
The phone woke me up. I was slumped over my desk, my fingers still curled around the empty bottle. I fumbled out with my right hand, realised that was the one holding the bottle, and winced as it rolled off the edge of the desk and shattered on the hard wooden floor. I groaned and let the machine pick up.
“Good morning, Mr. Drake,” said a woman’s voice. “This is Selina from Mr. Wormwood’s office. Mr. Wormwood would be pleased if you could telephone him this morning to discuss your repayment terms. Good day.”
I frowned. Wormwood? What the hell did he want... Oh no... My sodden memory turned over in the throbbing mess of my head, and I suddenly felt like crying. My warpstone. I had gambled away my warpstone, I remembered now, and I owed Wormwood the equivalent value of an angel’s skull to boot. The warpstone had been the last artefact of power I had left. The rest… well, I’ve always been better at drinking than I have at playing Fates, if I’m honest about it.
I slowly hauled myself up into a sitting position, and had to clutch a hand to my stomach as an acid rush of half-digested whisky burned its way up my throat and into the back of my mouth. I gave serious consideration to throwing up before I winced and swallowed it back down again. Maybe I’ve never been that good at drinking either.
Of course the warpstone wasn’t exactly the last artefact I had left, but if I ever consider gambling away the other you have my permission to shoot me though the head on the spot. I dragged myself to my feet and shuffled through to my work room to look at it.
My sign downstairs wasn’t entirely truthful, of course. Well, the wanker part might be I suppose, but not the Hieromancer. Hieromancy is divination through reading the entrails of a sacrifice, in case you didn’t know, and while I could do that it wasn’t exactly my main line of work. A man would struggle to earn a living looking at the insides of a pigeon, after all. The real money was in Sendings.
Summoning and Sending is one of the oldest, most dangerous and most taboo disciplines of magic. It’s also, it ought to go without saying, the most lucrative. That was what really paid the rent and bought the booze. I pushed open the door to my workroom and looked at the Burned Man.
“Morning,” I said.
“Now what?” it muttered.
The Burned Man was a nine inch tall fetish who stood on the altar at the far side of my work room. Tiny iron chains bound it by the wrists and ankles, and were bolted firmly into the solid oak top of the ancient, sanctified altar. It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever owned, or even seen. The floor of my workroom was carefully inscribed with a grand summoning circle from the Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, the Lesser Key of Solomon, one of the great classical grimoires. Through the Burned Man, I could use that circle to summon demons and send them to do my bidding. Certain people, not the sort of people you’d have round for tea exactly, would pay a hell of a lot of money to get you to set a demon on someone.
“I’m in the shit,” I admitted.
The Burned Man snorted with laughter.
“No change there then,” it said.
I pushed my hands back through my hair and sighed. The only trouble with the whole set-up was that the Burned Man wasn’t quite as bound as it was supposed to be. Oh sure, it did what I told it to, it had to, but it had a bitch of an attitude problem. That, and it always wanted its cut.
I shrugged out of the crumpled suit jacket I had fallen asleep in and chucked it in a corner, well outside the circle. I noticed there were dried sweat stains on my white business shirt. Oh well. I pulled my tie off, too, wrinkled as an old typewriter ribbon after my night face-down on the desk, and dropped it on the floor. My hands fumbled with the buttons of my shirt.
“What’s up?” the Burned Man asked.
I looked at it as I took my shirt off. It was little, as I said, but it was horribly lifelike. Every millimetre of its tiny naked body was blackened and blistered, its skin cracked open in places to show the livid, weeping red burns beneath. It was thoroughly revolting, and the bloody thing was always hungry.
“Wormwood,” I said. “I owe him, and I can’t pay.”
I approached the altar and crouched down, offering my scarred chest to the Burned Man.
“You’ve been playing Fates again haven’t you, you pillock,” it said. “Were you drinking too, by any chance?”
I grunted as it lunged forward and sank its tiny, needle-like teeth into the flesh beneath my left nipple. It started to suckle, blood running down its chin from the fresh wound.
“Is a bear catholic?” I muttered, wincing against the pain. “I need you to get rid of him for me.”
The Burned Man snapped its head back and stared up at me.
“Wormwood?” it repeated. “The Wormwood? Are you mental?”
“How many Wormwoods do you know, exactly,” I snapped. “Yes, that one.”
“I can’t do that,” it said. “No can do. Nein. Nyet. Not gonna happen. End of. No.”
It leaned its head forward and bit into my chest again, a little harder than it really needed to. Horrible thing.
“You have
to,” I reminded it. “I own you, Burned Man. I command it.”
It whipped its head back again without opening its mouth first, spitefully taking a chunk of bloody meat out of my chest. I yelled in pain, hand raised to swat it. That, of course, would have been ten kinds of a stupid thing to do. I let my hand fall and glared at it instead.
“I command it,” I said again. “Send something. Summon and Send… I don’t know, Astaroth if you have to for pity’s sake, I don’t care. Just get rid of Wormwood for me.”
“Listen to me for a minute, you dog-sucking little puke,” the Burned Man spat, “or I’m really going to have to hurt you.”
I stared at it, and had to remind myself that this was just the fetish of the demon it represented and not the real thing. The real thing itself, bound somewhere in the Oblivion Marches by a magic far older than London itself, didn’t even bear thinking about.
“I’m listening,” I said, but I moved back out of reach.
“It. Can’t. Be. Done.” the Burned Man spelled out, slowly and carefully like it was talking to a simpleton, or perhaps to a very scared, very hungover magician who was in a very long way over his head. “Wormwood would have Astaroth for breakfast.”
I blinked. “Astaroth is a Crowned Prince of Hell,” I said.
“Astaroth lives in Hell,” the Burned Man said. “Wormwood lives in Mayfair. Who do you think has the most pull, exactly?”
When you put it like that…
“Bugger,” I said. “I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”
“You ought to pay better attention to who you’re playing cards with in future,” it said.