Damnation

by Peter McLean

  Mazin blinked at me.

  “I can have a tailor call here, Lord Keeper,” he said. “No need to trouble yourself.”

  “I quite like shopping,” I lied. I mean obviously I fucking hate shopping, but he didn’t need to know that. “I don’t mind going myself.”

  “Service people come to us, Lord Keeper,” he said with a small smile. “We do not go to them.”

  Yeah, so her ladyship said, the Burned Man said.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Look, how about if I want to go for a drive? I haven’t even got a motor any more. I quite fancy getting a–”

  “I would be honoured to drive you in the Maybach,” he interrupted, and unless I was mistaken I thought I could detect a slightly terse edge to his voice.

  “Thanks, but what if you’re not here? Can I borrow the keys?”

  “If I am away on business I will be in the car,” he pointed out. “Another car and driver can easily be arranged if you require them.”

  Right, that was me told then, in a very polite but firm sort of way. I was starting to realize that the Burned Man was right. However much money there might be, it certainly wasn’t my money. In fact it looked like I wasn’t going to get a hell of a lot of freedom at all.

  Still, I supposed I could hardly blame Mazin. He was the head of this Order of the Keeper so he had probably been in Rashid’s service for a long time, quite possibly all his life in fact, and then suddenly Rashid was dead and I was his boss. I was a total stranger to him, and a very recently reformed junkie at that. No, I supposed in his position I wouldn’t be giving me piles of cash either.

  “Cheers,” I said, as though I had just been making conversation. “A tailor would be good.”

  I supposed that if I could get some new suits out of the deal if nothing else then that would at least be an improvement on the nondescript shirts and trousers that had been provided for me in the apartment. I had noticed that there was no coat and not even a jacket in the wardrobe in my room. It was as though it had been taken for granted that I wouldn’t be going outside any time soon.

  They can’t keep us locked up forever, I thought. Not when Menhit wants us for something.

  Yeah, but for what? the Burned Man asked.

  Now that, of course, was a fucking good question.

  Chapter Nine

  I put up with it for another six days before I finally lost my shit at Mazin.

  “Enough!” I yelled at him. “I’m fucking going out. I’m bored out of my fucking skull shut up in this sodding flat, and the air in here is thick enough to gag a fucking vulture. Get out of my way!”

  I was wearing one of the gorgeous new suits his tailor had delivered yesterday. The bloke must have been working around the clock, but I dare say Mazin had made it worth his while. I had a very nice new black cashmere overcoat on as well – I was all dressed up and I sodding well did have somewhere to go, actually.

  It was called the pub.

  Any pub, I didn’t care. Being the multi-millionaire Lord Keeper of the Veil had turned out to be a bag of fucking shit so far, and I had simply had enough of it. Menhit still hadn’t got back in touch and I was starting to feel like a prisoner, kept on ice until I was wanted. I simply wasn’t having it any more.

  Mazin was standing between me and the front door. He was trying to look tough, but he was shit at it and he couldn’t hide the nervous expression on his face. He knew what I could do, or he must have had a rough idea anyway. That, and even if he didn’t exactly respect me he at least respected the office I held. All the same, he obviously had his orders. I felt a bit bad for the poor bastard, but only a little bit. One way or another I was going out of that door if I had to go straight fucking through him to get there.

  “It’s all right, Mazin,” Trixie said from behind me. “I will accompany the Lord Keeper.”

  Mazin visibly relaxed as Trixie walked towards us wearing her long leather coat over jeans and a white jumper.

  “Very well, Madam Guardian,” he said.

  “Right,” I said, looking at her. “Yeah, ta.”

  I have to admit I was a bit surprised. I wasn’t sure if she was just trying to keep the peace or if she was feeling cooped up as well, but I was bloody livid that he was taking her authority over mine. I was supposed to be the boss here, after all.

  Well no, I supposed that wasn’t quite right, to be fair. When Rashid had been the Keeper he had been Boss Almighty over these guys, but then for one thing Rashid had been a magic immortal and for another Menhit had been little more than a legend to them. They had followed their goddess through blind faith and the power of Rashid’s money and influence rather than any real evidence of her actual existence. Now that Rashid was dead and Menhit was very much alive and right there in front of them the whole chain of command seemed to have gone to shit.

  Menhit herself was the boss here now, and I had no idea what she might have told them about me. All the same, if Mazin was prepared to let me out with Trixie holding my hand then I’d take that. I really didn’t want to have to hurt the poor guy but I was going, one way or another. A man can only take so much, after all.

  He stood aside and finally opened the hallowed front door. That thing had taken on an almost mystical importance to me, like it was a portal to another world. I supposed in a way that’s exactly what it was – a portal to the real world, away from the constant fear and batshit craziness and endless tedium that being part of a goddess’s entourage seemed to entail.

  I let Trixie lead me out onto the landing and down three flights of broad, curving stairs to the ground floor lobby. We reached the outside door and she turned and looked at me.

  “Don, what exactly are we doing?” she asked me.

  “I dunno,” I said. “I just had to get out of there for a bit. I mean don’t get me wrong, I like Mazin, but there’s only so much bowing and scraping I can take. I want a pint and a game of cards and a bit of banter with someone, anyone. I want to be alive again, you know what I mean?”

  I hadn’t really meant to say that last bit but now that I had I knew it was true. I had been a walking corpse for six months and since then it was like I had been embalmed or something, preserved in extremely expensive aspic. I wanted to live.

  “Yes,” Trixie said, surprising me. “I do know what you mean. I’ve been very bored cooped up in there.”

  “Shit yeah, me too,” I said. “How about we go and have a few beers somewhere and just… I dunno. Live.”

  She smiled at me and reached into her handbag. She pulled out a fat roll of notes, probably a couple of grand at least, and pressed it into my hand.

  “You’ll need this,” she said. “I don’t mind paying at all but ladies don’t go to the bar, remember?”

  I grinned and stuffed the money into my inside pocket. I’d never get my head around that but if she didn’t want to go to the bar that was up to her. I brushed my fingertips one more time over the thick roll of cash and wondered how much smack that would buy. I wondered, but only in an academic sense. I was about ready to murder someone for a beer but I had no interest in heroin at all. Damn, Menhit’s healing might have nearly killed me but it had fucking well worked, I had to give her that much.

  Don’t forget our deal, the Burned Man said. If you go near that shit again I fucking will hurt you, I mean it. I have your permission to now, Drake, and I’ll use it the first chance I get.

  I ignored it. I wasn’t going near that shit again and that’s all there was to it. All the same, I supposed I had to admire the Burned Man’s honesty. It was normally incapable of directly hurting its owner, I knew that, but then I had given it permission in that specific situation. I took a moment to wonder what being hurt by the Burned Man might actually entail, and quickly wished I hadn’t. It didn’t really bear thinking about, which I supposed was the whole point of the exercise.

  “Come on then,” I said to Trixie, “let’s go get a beer or ten.”

  She pressed the button to unlock the front door of the buildi
ng and we stepped outside into blessedly fresh air. Edinburgh air actually is fresh, unlike London air. I don’t know if it’s because the city is so close to the sea or just because the wind is so fucking strong it blows the pollution away before you notice it, but there’s a cleanness to the air there. A bitingly cold, painfully damp cleanness, but a cleanness all the same. After God only knew how long cooped up in that dry fug of central air and Trixie’s cigarette smoke it was like smelling heaven.

  “Bloody hell that’s marvellous,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  “What is?” Trixie asked me.

  “Just being outside,” I said.

  I knew part of that was the Burned Man talking. It had been imprisoned in the fetish for thousands of years after all, no doubt being moved from one magician’s dark, smoky workroom to another over and over again down the centuries. I remembered how good it had felt just to be outside the day after I had invoked it, before I even knew what had happened. Being shut up in Mazin’s hermetically sealed apartment had been starting to make me feel the same way.

  Bloody hell am I seriously starting to sympathise with the Burned Man? I wondered. That can’t be good.

  No it probably wasn’t, but then nor were a lot of other things. Fuck it, so what?

  “Buy a girl a drink?” Trixie prompted with a smile.

  I shook my head and blinked. Shit, yeah, we were going to the pub weren’t we? I had just been standing on the front steps of the house, breathing. Sometimes it was all too easy to get lost in my own thoughts, or the Burned Man’s. I’d have felt a lot more comfortable if I had still been able to tell them apart but I’m afraid that wasn’t always the case any more.

  “I’d love to,” I said, and I really meant it.

  * * *

  I was, if truth be told, a bit pissed. The pub wasn’t that far away from our apartment but Edinburgh’s New Town all looks very much the same, a grid pattern of lots of great sweeping Georgian terraces all built of the same grey stone and broken up by endless little green parks surrounded by identical rows of black iron railings. I wasn’t too sure I could have found my way back on my own by that point.

  Still, I didn’t have to care about that just then. I returned to our table with another pint and gin and tonic, on a tray this time with four whisky chasers for good measure. I unloaded the mismatched glasses in front of Trixie and grinned at her.

  “I thought we weren’t doing chasers?” she said.

  Of course what she meant by that was she thought I shouldn’t be doing chasers. However much Trixie drank she never seemed to get drunk, more was the pity, but I really did. I shrugged and winked at her.

  “In for a penny,” I said, and necked my first whisky.

  She shrugged and did the same.

  “If you say so,” she said.

  We drank in companionable silence. I wanted to talk but I had no idea what to say to her. Everything was so mixed up in my head I couldn’t even get my own thoughts straight, never mind express them in a way that approached coherent. I wanted to know what the hell Menhit expected me to do for her. I wanted to know what Mazin was hiding and why he wouldn’t let me near the money, and I wanted to know what was in that book he had given Trixie. I wanted… oh fuck it let’s be honest, what I really wanted to know was exactly what Trixie had meant when she said she loved me.

  I took a pull on my beer and had just about worked up the nerve to ask her when two men walked into the pub. There was nothing odd about that in itself, I grant you – we were in the heart of the New Town and the pub was busy, with people coming and going all the time. Only these two blokes were a little bit special.

  “Oh shit,” I whispered.

  Trixie raised an eyebrow at me but she had more than enough experience to know not to look around.

  “Two geezers with dark red auras just came in,” I said in a low voice.

  “I’m sorry?” she murmured, leaning towards me to reach for her second whisky. “Did you say red auras?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and sat casually back in my chair to keep an eye on them. “Yeah, I did.”

  Now as I might have said before, everyone’s aura is a sort of dull, fuzzy blue. Everyone human that is. Trixie’s wasn’t of course; Trixie’s was a dazzling white that was a pack of fucking lies, but then Trixie wasn’t human. Nor was I entirely these days, come to that, although I knew the Burned Man kept itself well hidden. And if I knew my arse from my elbow, these two blokes weren’t either. Not even a little bit.

  They were both tall and fair haired, one in jeans and a leather bomber jacket and the other in a long black overcoat. They were both wearing sunglasses though, and that jogged my memory. The only time I’d ever seen a red aura before had been on a bloke called Antonio who I had fleeced at cards one night last year in Wormwood’s club. I never had found out exactly what he was, but I remembered his aura and that his eyes had also had a dull red glow to them. That and he’d been shit at Fates and had accused me of cheating, which had led to him being thrown out of the club in short order. Still, that was beside the point – the point was, whatever he had been I’d have put good money on this pair of jokers being the same thing.

  I sipped my beer as nonchalantly as I could and watched them head to the bar, both still rather conspicuously wearing their sunglasses. They each bought a pint of lager and turned to stand with their backs to the bar, holding their beers and not drinking them as their heads slowly turned left and right, scanning the room.

  Trixie’s foot nudged mine under the table and I glanced at her.

  “They look like they’re hunting,” she murmured, “Probably for us, although I don’t understand why they can’t see my aura.”

  Oh how nice to be able to just assume we were the ones being hunted for. I was well and truly back in the life now, wasn’t I?

  All the same, I knew she was almost certainly right. I felt that now-familiar nudge in the back of my head that meant the Burned Man had mentally shoved past and started talking for me.

  “They can’t see your bullshit fake aura because I’m hiding it, the same way I hide mine to make numbnuts here look like he’s still as normal as he gets,” it whispered in my voice. “And I’ve put a glamour on you to make you look a bit less… you. All the same Blondie, you might want to get ready for a scrap. They’re bound to twig sooner or later.”

  Trixie’s mouth twisted in distaste at hearing the Burned Man speak through me, but at the same time I couldn’t miss the sudden glint in her eye at the prospect of a fight. She really had been as bored as I had, shut up in that apartment, and I knew how much she enjoyed her work. Well, the violent parts of it anyway. She really is a fucking case, bless her.

  “Mmmm,” she said.

  I looked at her and saw the Burned Man was right. I can see straight through glamours so I hadn’t noticed before but now that I was looking for it I could see it well enough, and I knew that was what everyone else would be seeing whether they liked it or not. Her hair was a couple of shades less blonde, almost mousy in fact, her eyes now a pale, watery blue instead of their usual piercing sapphire, and it had made her figure appear a little less, shall we say, conspicuous than usual. I still thought she was gorgeous, though. I really did love her, I have to admit.

  There was a group of lads a couple of tables away from us, builders or plumbers or something by the look of their work clothes, and for all that it was only mid-afternoon they were quite noisily pissed. A bunch of pissed-up Scottish lads in the same pub as two blokes who wore sunglasses indoors was never going to end well, was it?

  It didn’t.

  “…think he’s in the fucking Matrix?” I heard one of them laugh, his voice getting louder as the one in the overcoat turned to stare at him. “Tae the fuckin’ blue pill and fuck off, y’wanker!”

  “Oh dear,” Trixie said. “That might not have been entirely wise.”

  She really did have the gift of understatement sometimes.

  The bloke in the bomber jacket was beside their table in t
hree long strides, the pint glass falling from his hand to shatter on the hardwood floor in a fountain of unwanted lager and broken glass. The landlord bawled something unintelligible but by then it was far too late. Oh dear, we were all taking the red pill, weren’t we?

  Bomber jacket reached across the table and grabbed the one who had shouted by the throat, yanking him bodily out of his chair. He hauled him over the table, scattering drinks in all directions, and pulled him up into a vicious punch that sent him flying back the way he had come until his head met the wall with a solid thunk.

  All hell broke loose.

  The rest of the lads, five or six of them, reared up with glasses and bottles in their hands, and the other red-aura bloke in the overcoat waded in to join his mate. Someone screamed and I heard someone else shouting about calling the police.

  “Oh fuck this,” I said.

  “Yes,” Trixie said, and stood up.

  Now I must admit when I’d said “oh fuck this,” I’d meant “let’s leg it while we’ve got the chance,” but of course Trixie meant “oh good, let’s have a huge conspicuous fight,” so that was that down the shitter then. She was over the table before I could stop her, the Burned Man’s glamour shredding away from her as she went into action.

  Oh bugger, I thought.

  Fuck it, she’s gone, the Burned Man muttered. I can’t hide her if she’s going to do this sort of shit in front of people. There are limits, even for me.

  Trixie flowed between the Scottish lads like they weren’t even there and shoved the two red-aura geezers backwards with a hand on each chest.

  “Looking for me?” she asked, her own aura blazing white and a smile of fierce joy on her face.

  At least she hadn’t produced her fucking sword, I supposed there was that to be thankful for. This place was full of civilians, after all. One of the lads tried to come past her with a broken bottle in his hand.