by Peter McLean
Right, I thought at it through the mental equivalent of gritted teeth. So grotty old Davey is really Merlin. Oh that’s fucking wonderful that is. I don’t suppose there’s any chance he’s on our side?
Hard to say, the Burned Man said. He hates me, but he seems to like you well enough. Anyway, Merlin is always on Merlin’s side, if you know what I mean. That’s how he’s lived so fucking long.
I supposed it probably was, at that.
“Anyway,” Davey went on, “now you’ve finished being rude to me, and you have fucking finished with that, what do you actually want?”
“Oh Jesus,” I said, and put my head in my hands.
I mean, now that I knew who he was did I even want to tell him? I supposed having dragged him all the way down here for nothing would have been even worse than asking him for a favour but… but he was fucking Merlin! To a magician like me, this was like meeting Jesus, Elvis and the Easter sodding Bunny all at the same time.
“Go on, I’ll no bite you,” he said, grinning his awful grin again.
I sighed.
“Right,” I said. “All right look, it’s like this. I’ve got… oh shit a brick. Come here, I don’t want to say this loud enough for anyone to overhear me. I’ve got a big fucking problem. Someone’s kidnapped my little baby daughter, and taken her to Purgatory to… to use her to threaten me, and to make me do something that I don’t want to do. I mean that I really don’t want to do. I need to get to Purgatory so I can rescue my daughter, and I have no sodding idea how to do it.”
“Your wee bairn has been taken by someone who can just stroll into Purgatory when he feels like it?” Davey asked. “I don’t like the thought of people walking in and out of there at will. I think you’d better tell me the rest of this, Donny boy.”
I looked at him, and met his twinkling blue eyes. Could I trust him, really? I shouldn’t bloody think so, but as far as I could see I didn’t have a lot of choice. From what little I knew about him he wasn’t likely to be a friend of Adam’s, so I supposed there was that if nothing else.
So I started to tell him.
I’d just got to the bit about the ghostly child or whatever the fuck had been tormenting me when he started to laugh.
“It’s not fucking funny,” I snapped.
“Aye well, it was at the time,” he said, wiping a tear of glee from under his eye with one grubby finger.
“You what?” I said, and the penny dropped with a rusty clang. “Are you trying to tell me that you sent that bloody thing after me?”
I stared at him across the table, sorely tempted to punch him in his horrible toothless face whoever he fucking was.
“Aye, that I did,” he said.
“What the fuck for?”
“To put the shits up you of course,” he said. “That and because you deserved it for being a gobby wee shite to your elders and betters, and because it was funny. Until it saw what you were in bed with, anyway. Then it fucked off on me and refused to go anywhere near you again.”
I remembered how scared the apparition had looked of Trixie. I supposed the sight of a Sword of the Word lying there beside me would have given virtually any demon a minor nervous breakdown, whoever it was working for.
“That’s why I came to see you after that, to get my truth out of you,” he went on. “I knew she had been looking for you, aye, but I’d never have guessed why until I saw that. There’s no way a simple gobshite like you was going to be in bed with the likes of her.”
Oh fuck, yes. The very next night after the apparition had seen Trixie in bed with me and I had banished it for good, Davey had shown up in that bar when I was out with Mazin, and that was when he had figured out that I had the Burned Man inside me. I felt like telling him that actually it was me she was in bed with, and she fucking hated the Burned Man being inside me and would have much preferred it if it was just me, actually, but I simply couldn’t muster the energy. I didn’t really care what he thought about that.
“What was it, anyway?” I asked him. “That fucking horror show you were plaguing me with.”
“A talonwraith,” he said, “with a bit of my special sauce on it, if you know what I mean.”
I glared at him but I couldn’t help wondering exactly what his “special sauce” might be. I remembered telling Trixie how it was just about possible that a strong enough magician could have hidden a talonwraith’s true nature with something stronger than a glamour, and how they might have been able to skim the memory of the child out of my head and imprint it into a summoned wraith to torment me. That was how you manifested someone’s own nightmares on them, theoretically at least. I knew that, but I had never really believed that was what had actually happened. An actual real ghost would have been more likely than someone being powerful enough to do that, and I don’t even believe in ghosts. That’s proper fucking magus stuff, I remembered telling her. Well if there was ever a proper fucking magus it was Merlin, wasn’t it?
“Cocking hell,” I muttered. “You horrible old git.”
He laughed at that.
“Aye, I’ve been called that and worse,” he said. “Tell me the rest of it.”
“In a minute,” I said. “I need another bloody drink first. You almost drove me mad with that fucking thing.”
I supposed I had to buy him one as well. When I got back to the table with two pints and two whiskies he was still looking pleased with himself, and it took some effort not to just chuck the lot at the smug old bastard.
I need his help, I had to remind myself. I remembered the card he had drawn, back in Glasgow. The Hermit, the great sage and wise teacher. The father. Maybe…
Jesus, I was never going to stop looking for that father figure, was I? It was fucking pathetic and I knew it was. Davey could never be a father to me, Merlin or not, no more than Professor Davidson or Papa Armand or even the bastard Burned Man could. That wheel had turned full circle and the only father in my life now was me, I suddenly realized. I was Olivia’s father whether Debbie liked it or not, and that was the important thing. The only important thing. I had responsibilities now. It was finally time to stop worrying about myself for once and sort this out.
I sat down opposite him again and had a quick gulp of my lager, then I told him the rest of it. By the time I was done he had stopped smiling.
“A Dominion, is it?” he said. “And the Fallen One, and this mad fucking imported war goddess of yours? I have to hand it to you Donny boy, when you fuck up you do it in style.”
I had to give him that one, I must admit.
“Yeah well, there we are,” I said. “Shit Davey, I just want my little girl back.”
“Of course you do,” he said. “I understand that. I’ll help you.”
I blinked at him. I mean that was great, that was what I had wanted after all, but all the same it was a bit of a surprise.
“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. “Um, do you mind if I ask why?”
“Let’s just say we’ve got something in common,” he said.
“Oh yeah? What would that be, then?”
“You’re like me, Donny boy,” he said, showing me his repulsive grin.
I was nothing like him, as far as I could see.
“Like you how?”
“Your parentage, you fool. We came into this world the same way, you and me, and you’re right – that is a rare thing. That makes us almost brothers. Why do you think I gave you the time of day in the first place?” He paused for a moment and looked at me, no doubt taking in the expression on my face. “Did ye really not know?
I gaped at him. Was he saying I was… I was a cambion, like him? My father… I thought about my dad, dead since I was ten. I remembered him coming home stinking drunk and bearing some grudge or another, taking it out on my poor mum or me or both of us. I remembered him stumbling into the kitchen, bouncing off the sink and ripping the cupboard open looking for more booze. I remembered how he would lash out at us when there wasn’t any, knocking my mum to the floor with a bl
oody mouth. I thought about him, and I slowly let it sink in that he wasn’t my father after all.
Oh dear God.
I took a long, shuddering breath as I let that really sink in. It wouldn’t make the memories go away, of course. It couldn’t erase what had happened, or take away all those childhood years of pain and guilt and feeling worthless, but it meant one very important thing.
I wasn’t that man’s son after all.
Oh dear God, thank fuck for that.
All the same though, that meant I had been sired by an incubus. Well sort of, anyway. I must have had a biological human father I supposed, some bloke who had been visited by a succubus somewhere along the line, but he could have been literally anyone on Earth. Bloody hell. I wondered if Mum had the faintest idea, and decided that she almost certainly hadn’t. They came in dreams, from what I had read. Oh bless her, she might have woken up a bit sore and confused one morning but no, she wouldn’t have had a clue, would she?
Bloody hell…
I suddenly remembered something Trixie had said to me, shortly after we had first met.
The more I saw of you the more I realized you were a little bit different from most other mortals.
Yeah, apparently I fucking was.
I mean, I was sure she didn’t have the faintest idea either and now I had the bloody Burned Man living in my head it was a bit of a moot point anyway. All the same, I supposed she had probably felt something. That same little auric snag that I had seen in Davey? Perhaps she had felt that, I really didn’t know.
I remembered summoning Adam all by myself too, wherever he had been at the time, and wondering where the hell I had found the power to do that. Had that been my demon blood at work? No, no that wasn’t right, it didn’t work like that. I didn’t actually have demon blood, did I? Demons can’t breed with mortals, after all, but the whole horrible process of transference from human man to succubus to incubus to human woman had to do something, didn’t it?
The offspring isn’t quite human.
I mean, just look at Davey. I stared at his aura with that faint snag in it, that slight but hard to define difference from a human aura that made my skin crawl so badly.
“No,” I said to Davey, after a conspicuously long pause. “No, I can’t say that I did.”
He raised his glass in salute, and I rather halfheartedly clinked mine against it.
“Wee brother,” he said, and laughed at me. “Why do you think I bothered to go to all the trouble of tracking you down in Edinburgh? To please your lovely lady angel? For the reward money? Dinnae make me laugh. Because we’re family, after a fashion, and I couldn’t leave you in that state forever. You were making me look bad.”
“Are we… immortal?” I whispered.
He snorted. “I could shoot you dead right now, and you’d stay dead,” he said. “Don’t go getting your fucking hopes up, Donny boy. I’m old, aye, very old, but I’m no immortal. I’m still alive because I’m very clever and I’m very cruel and I’m the greatest fucking magus most people have ever heard of. You, sonny lad, are not.”
No, I supposed he had a point there, but at that moment I realized something.
I don’t know what happened, it was like something just clicked inside me as I sat there looking at Davey’s ugly gap-toothed grin. It almost felt like it did when the Burned Man took me over, but that wasn’t it. Not this time. This was something different, something that felt like I had finally woken up at long fucking last.
I wasn’t the greatest fucking magus in history, no.
But I was half the Burned Man, and apparently I was demon-born too, and all that mattered in the world, the only thing that mattered, was that my little girl had been taken away from me.
How dare they?
Those dead Russians? Mickey Two Hats and Dimitri? Heinrich, even? Fuck them. They were just collateral damage, and they didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except Olivia. Nothing at all.
Yes I had changed, I accepted that now. No, it wasn’t for the better. And that didn’t fucking matter either, not now.
Diabolists go to Hell?
So fucking what.
If that’s what it took then I’d gladly sell whatever was left of my soul to get Olivia back. Anything in my power, I had promised her, and I meant it.
Anything.
I was going to man the fuck up and I was going to take responsibility, and I was going to bring Adam down whatever it took. If that meant war, if that meant raising devourers from the pit, then so be it.
ANYTHING!
And that’s when I knew.
That’s when I knew I had lost my battle, and it simply didn’t matter any more.
“Right,” I said, and I couldn’t help biting back just a little bit. “So why are you living like a grotty old tramp, then? It seems to me that a great and ancient magus ought to be a bit fucking better off than you are.”
“Oh, I do very well for myself, thank you,” he said. “I don’t live in these parts, you understand. When I come here, I like to be invisible. I like to mix with lowlifes, with people like you. The man at the top of a high tower sees only ants below him, after all. But when you’re in the gutter looking up, then you can see everything.”
There might be something to that, I supposed. It would be nice to have the fucking option though, wouldn’t it? One day, I promised myself, when this was sorted, I was going to have that option. If I was the Keeper of the Veil then I was going to take what was due to me, and bugger Mazin and his purse strings and his cooked books. He’d just have to cook them a bit more, wouldn’t he? I’d had enough of grubbing around in poverty.
The Burned Man was right about this. It had always been right, about everything. I deserved better. I was going to have better, but first I was going to get Olivia back.
“Right,” I said again. “So are you going to help me or not?”
“Aye, I said I would,” Davey said. “Do you have somewhere we can work?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.
Trixie was going to just love this, wasn’t she?
Chapter Twenty
Needless to say she didn’t. I got back to the flat in the middle of the afternoon, smelling of booze and with grotty old Davey in tow. Trixie gave me one of those very special, very Trixie looks that she reserved for the occasions when I have truly and exceptionally pissed her off.
“Hi,” I said. “This is Davey.”
Trixie was sitting on the sofa in my office with a cup of coffee in one hand and a long black cigarette in the other, her legs crossed and an ashtray balanced on the knee of her black jeans.
“Yes,” she said. “We met, in Glasgow.”
“So we did,” Davey said, treating her to his horrible grin. “You paid me all that lovely reward money for finding yon fool here.”
“And now you’re here,” Trixie said.
Her voice had that flat tone to it that meant someone was likely to get hurt soon, and badly. I only hoped it wasn’t going to be me.
“It’s all right, Trixie,” I said. “Me and Davey, we’ve sorted it out. He’s going to help us. Help us to find Olivia, I mean.”
“Oh is he?” Trixie asked archly. “You can open a portal to Purgatory, can you Davey?”
“That I can,” he said.
That took the thunder out of her sails a bit, I had to admit.
“I believe him,” I said. “We’ve been talking and… yeah. Davey is…well, um…”
“You may know me as Merlin, Angelus,” Davey said, and to my utter fucking astonishment he bowed to her.
“Ah,” Trixie said. “Oh Thrones, how did I miss that?”
Davey smirked. “It’s easy to miss the things you least expect to see, Angelus,” he said.
He gave me a bit of a sideways look when he said it, too, but I didn’t think Trixie noticed that. I bloody well hoped she didn’t, anyway. Having the Burned Man inside me was quite bad enough without her discovering I had apparently been sired by an incubus as well. None of these things w
as exactly doing any good for my standing as boyfriend material, if you know what I mean.
“I suppose it is,” Trixie said. She stubbed her cigarette out and got to her feet, looking businesslike all of a sudden. “Right, how do we do this?”
“Ah, well now,” Davey said, and I got a sinking feeling in my guts.
He wasn’t just going to wave a magic wand, then.
Bugger.
“Yes?” she prompted.
“Now for me, Angelus, I come and go as I please,” he said. “Purgatory is where I’ve made my home, after all, and the Veil is like a lover to me after all this time. But if I’m taking Donny boy here, and especially if I’m taking you along with us, this isn’t going to be that simple.”
I sighed. Nothing ever bloody is, is it?
“What do we need?” I asked him.
“You’ve an alchemist, of course?” he asked. I thought sourly of Wormwood, and nodded. “Of course you have. Well I’ll be needing a goat, two pounds of iron filings, five ounces of quicksilver, and this is the bit that’ll hurt your pocket and test your alchemist to the limit, Donny boy – I’ll need a warpstone.”
My sigh of relief made his bushy eyebrows lift.
“I’ve already got a warpstone,” I said.
“Have you now?” he said, and for the briefest of moments he almost looked impressed with me. Almost. “Well, that’s good. Run along and rustle up the other bits, there’s a good laddie.”
Patronizing old git. I picked up the phone and called Wormwood.
I put in an order for the goat and the mercury, and was assured they would be delivered by the evening. Conversations only diabolists have, if you know what I mean. That done, I went into the workroom and retrieved my warpstone from the drawer while no one was looking. There was a sack of iron filings sitting on the floor in there already so that was taken care of, but I didn’t want Davey seeing what else was in that drawer. I really didn’t want him seeing that I had a Blade of Unmaking in there, that was for sure. That was strictly on a need-to-know basis, and he didn’t need to know at all.