by Peter McLean
The warpstone was a flat black disk about the size of the palm of my hand, inscribed all over with sinuous spiral lines that seemed to move if you looked at them for too long. It was strangely similar to the hexring I also had tucked away in that drawer, but it served a completely different purpose. Warpstones, in case you didn’t know, are the keys to the Veils. With a warpstone, a magician who knows what they’re doing can open portals to other dimensions and even speak with the recently dead. I’d spoken to a dead man once before and I hadn’t bloody liked it, but that was beside the point. It was a portal we wanted now, and apparently Davey knew how to make one all the way down to Purgatory.
So he said, anyway. If he wasn’t lying to me. If he really was Merlin it was quite believable, but of course I only had his word for that, didn’t I? Still, I supposed he probably was. It was such an outrageous claim that I doubted anyone would dare to make it unless it was actually true, and the Burned Man certainly seemed to believe it. So did Trixie, for that matter. I sighed. Even supposing he was Merlin, did that mean I could trust him? Depending which version of the stories you read, Merlin wasn’t necessarily a very nice bloke. To put it bloody mildly.
I didn’t really have a lot of fucking choice, did I? Come hell or high water I was getting Olivia back, and this was how we were doing it. If that meant trusting Davey, then so be it. I spared the dust-encrusted fetish of the Burned Man a sour look, then slipped the warpstone into my pocket and went back into the office.
The fuck are you doing with that? the Burned Man suddenly piped up in the back of my head.
Have you been asleep on me again? I asked it. We’re going to Purgatory, to get my daughter back.
We are?
Yeah we are, and you’re going to do what you’re fucking told for once. And oi. You remember those ten truths you told me once, and only reminded me of five of them? I think I’ve figured out what one of the missing ones was, you little git.
Ah, it said. You and Davey been talking family history, have you?
You might fucking say that, I said. I’m a fucking cambion, seriously?
Yeah, it admitted. You are. I took up with you for a reason, Drake, after all.
It went quiet on me again after that, thankfully.
It was about five o’clock by then and Wormwood’s boys wouldn’t be bringing the goat and mercury for hours yet. I looked at Trixie and Davey, who were eyeing each other in hostile silence like two strange cats in a closed room. Oh fucking hell, this was going to be a barrel of laughs, wasn’t it? Thankfully Davey seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“Well I’ll leave you two sweethearts to it until tonight,” he said. “I’ll be back about ten.”
With that he got up and left, and I heard the front door bang closed behind him. On impulse I hurried over to the window to see if he was actually outside, but of course he wasn’t. It seemed he could just disappear into thin air the same way Trixie did sometimes. Oh what a joyous thought that wasn’t.
“Do you trust him?” Trixie asked me.
“Not particularly,” I said, “but I can’t see that we’ve got a lot of choice.”
“No, we haven’t,” she said. “I was just making sure your eyes are still open, that’s all.”
I sighed and turned to look at her, sitting on the sofa with a cigarette smouldering between her fingers. My eyes were open all right. They were now, for the first time in a very long while. I felt… different. Determined. Strong. I had just told the Burned Man to do what it was told, for fucksake, and it hadn’t even argued about it.
Do not ask, command. That is the true way to power.
“Yeah, my eyes are open all right,” I said. “What do you know about him?”
“No more than you do, I shouldn’t think,” she said. “When he was supposedly making legends here in England I was chasing the Furies across Persia, I’m afraid.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, right. Ah well.”
I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and I was bloody starving. I rustled us up some sandwiches and we sat and ate together in silence. Trixie never bothered to eat unless I actually put food in front of her, I had noticed. It didn’t seem to make any difference to her either way, in the same way that booze didn’t seem to have the slightest effect on her. I suspected she only ate at all in an attempt to be sociable.
“What are we going to find when we get there?” I asked her, after a while.
“I have no idea,” she said. “Nothing good, I suspect.”
No, I didn’t suppose we would. What had the Burned Man called it, “Hell with training wheels” or something equally fucking encouraging like that. Oh joy. I slipped a hand into my pocket and stroked the warpstone, running my fingers reflexively over the cool surface. I’d had it for years but I must confess I’d never actually used it before. The only time it might have come in handy, when we had needed to speak with Lavender’s corpse, I had temporarily lost it in a game of cards with Wormwood. This would be its first proper outing and I have to admit the thought was making me a bit nervous.
I didn’t even really know what it was. It seemed to be made from the same stuff as the hexring, but of course I didn’t really know what that was either. I was fairly sure it wasn’t of Earthly origin, at least. I sighed. I had been a magician for twenty years and there were still far too many things I didn’t know anything about. Davey was right – I was a very long way from being a magus. That was something else that was going to change, once this was over. It was time the Burned Man starting earning its fucking keep around here.
* * *
The doorbell rang about half nine, and I went down to find one of Wormwood’s creepy croupiers on my doorstep. There was a black van pulled up to the kerb outside with the engine running.
“Good evening,” the man said. “I have a delivery for Don Drake.”
“That’s me,” I said. “I hope it’s still bleating.”
“Mmmm,” the man said, and went to open the back of the van.
He had a quick look up and down the street to make sure there was no one too close before he led a live goat out of the van and herded it quickly through my front door. It’s a good job goats can climb stairs, that’s all I can say. He passed me a small briefcase as well that I assumed had the mercury in it.
“Payment on account, right?” I said.
He shrugged. “That is between you and Mr Wormwood.”
He got into the van and drove off without another word, leaving a cloud of disapproval in the air behind him. Tosser. He wasn’t even human and he worked for an archdemon for fucksake, what right did he have to be looking down his nose at me for needing a goat?
I shooed the thing up the stairs into my office, where it promptly crapped on the floor. Lovely. I hoped Davey wasn’t going to be much longer – the last thing I wanted in my flat was a live goat. Not that a dead one was going to be much better, of course. There are aspects of the sort of magic I do that I really don’t like.
For fucksake get over yourself, the Burned Man said. You eat the fucking things, what’s the difference?
I sighed. I knew it was right. There was a Jamaican place down the road that did a bloody marvellous curried goat, after all. I supposed I could always let them have the carcass afterwards. At least that way it wouldn’t go to waste.
Oh what did it matter? It was only a fucking goat. I was ready to burn the world to get my daughter back, what the hell difference did a goat make?
Davey arrived ten minutes later, while I was on my hands and knees cleaning up goat shit. I have a way of looking impressive like that, you know what I mean?
“Ah, the glamorous realities of the magician’s life,” he smirked.
“Yeah, innit,” I said, deliberately not mentioning the fact that he had strolled through my locked front door without so much as a by your leave.
I supposed he got to do things like that, being who he was. Not to mention that he was doing me the mother of all favours here. Trixie came out of the k
itchen where she had been brewing coffee, and gave him a look.
“Evening, Angelus,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “How long will this take?”
She looked tense, I realized. She had changed her clothes while I wasn’t looking too, and now she had her hair tied back and was wearing bulky army boots with black combat trousers and the same sort of articulated matt-black body armour that she had worn to face Wellington Phoenix and his devourers. Oh fuck, she hadn’t even bothered with that for Bianakith for fuck’s sake. She really wasn’t expecting this to be easy, was she?
“Not too long,” Davey said. “We cast a circle, do the goat, mix the blood with the quicksilver, feed the warpstone and we’re all done.”
That was pretty much what I had been expecting. That was the same way the Burned Man and I had powered the hexring the one time I had used it, after all, although we had only needed a couple of toads for that. Like I said, they seemed to be made of the same stuff so I supposed that made sense.
“Right,” I said.
“Then I’ll need your blood,” Davey said. “Both of yours, if you’re coming too, Angelus.”
You fucking what now?
“Um,” I said. “Really?”
“Aye, fucking really,” he said. “The Veil has to taste you, boyo, or it won’t let you through. Me it knows, aye, but not you. And most definitely not her.”
I thought about the Veils, and about how some people said they were alive. I had to admit that prospect was getting even more unpleasant now that I was seriously planning to cross one. Passing through Veils just wasn’t something humans did, if you understand me. Although, as I had recently found out, I might not be quite as human as all that after all.
“Right,” I said, casting a nervous sideways glance at Trixie.
I wasn’t expecting her to like this idea one little bit. I could see in her face that she didn’t, but she was a soldier, and soldiers do what they have to do.
“If you need to then so be it,” she said with a short nod.
Davey took the goat into my workroom, and I trailed behind him. He smirked when he saw the inanimate fetish of the Burned Man slumped in its chains on my altar, thick with dust. Trixie obviously hadn’t been able to let the cleaners into this room when she had had the flat done for me, and unsurprisingly she hadn’t felt the urge to clean the bloody thing herself. I couldn’t say I blamed her, really.
“Oh Donny boy,” he said. “Oh fuck me silly, I never thought I’d see that.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, feeling a bit tongue-tied.
This was Merlin for fucksake. What the hell do you say to Merlin when he’s about to do magic for you? I felt as close to starstruck as I’d ever been in my life.
“Close your mouth and give me that warpstone,” he said, still smirking. “Then get the circle piped out with the iron filings, there’s a good lad.”
I passed him my precious warpstone and busied myself pouring iron filings carefully into the outline of the grand summoning circle that was carved into the wooden floor of my workroom. I watched with some trepidation as Davey tossed the warpstone carelessly onto the floor in the middle of the circle. I mean sure, I’d won it years ago in a game of cards and I’d never actually used it, but I knew how much that thing was worth. A modicum of respect might have been nice. Still, to him I supposed it was nothing special.
Davey reached inside his shabby old coat and produced an alarming looking ritual dagger. He made as clean a job of the goat as a kosher butcher would have done, I must admit. He held it easily in one hand to bleed out over the warpstone, which gave me a bit of a nervous twitch about how strong he must be. Now you’d think that would have made an almighty mess but the stone drank every drop, even greedier than the hexring had been. Even the splatters of blood that had inevitably gone all over the floor slowly flowed towards the warpstone like iron filings drawn to a magnet, until every drop had gone. He crouched down beside the dead goat and very carefully poured the mercury over the stone, and I watched in astonishment as the thick liquid metal flowed perfectly into the swirling lines that covered the stone until the whole thing was gleaming.
That done, Davey stood up and tossed the drained goat carcass into a corner. He met my eyes and showed me his gap-toothed grin.
“Your turn,” he said.
I swallowed. “You’re not planning on slitting my throat I hope,” I said. “The whole point of this exercise is to get there without having to die, remember?”
“Don’t be such a fucking baby,” he said. “A wee slice of your hand will do it.”
I reluctantly held out my left hand to him, suppressing a wince before he’d even started. I’ve never been all that fond of the sight of my own blood, I have to admit. He slashed the blade across the meat beneath my thumb and held my hand over the stone, squeezing it to let the blood flow. The blade was so sharp I had barely felt the cut itself, but now that he was squeezing it burned like a bastard. I hissed through clenched teeth until he let me go a moment later.
“Put some pressure on that and it’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll need Madam herself, too.”
“I’m here,” Trixie said from behind me, making me jump.
“So y’are,” he grinned.
Trixie held out her hand the same as I had and he cut her in the same place, squeezing until her own blood splattered on top of mine and the stone absorbed it all. If she even felt it she gave no sign.
“Now,” Trixie said, “are we ready?”
I was holding a rapidly darkening towel to my bleeding hand, but Trixie seemed to have healed over already. I gave her a bit of a look.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.
She came and touched a fingertip to the gash in my palm, and I sighed with relief as it closed up and healed. She really was good at that, bless her.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Aye, we’re ready,” Davey said.
“Let’s do it then,” I said.
He looked at me.
“You might want a coat, laddie.”
I might?
I went and got one all the same, and stuffed a pair of gloves into the pockets while I was at it. I mean I’m sorry but I’d never been to another dimension before. I wasn’t too sure what the fucking dress code was.
When I came back Davey and Trixie were standing in the middle of the circle with the warpstone on the floor between them, blood-slick and glistening black in the low-wattage glow of the overhead light. It was crowded but I joined them there, feeling too warm with my heavy winter overcoat on over my suit.
All the same, it was good to be prepared… shit! I could be a damn sight more prepared than I actually was, I suddenly realized. I quickly turned away again and opened the cupboard drawer, keeping my back to them so Davey couldn’t see what I was doing.
“Are you no done fannying about yet, laddie?” he asked tersely.
I snatched the Blade of Unmaking out of the drawer and pushed it through my belt, covering it with my jacket and coat. Adam himself had given that dagger to Aleto the Unresting, the leader of the Furies. Even without the soul of an archdemon inside it any more it was still a weapon of unholy power that had originally been forged in the depths of Hell. It might help or it might not, and I didn’t even really know how to use it. All the same, as I had no fucking idea what I was about to walk into it certainly couldn’t hurt to have it with me.
“Yeah, sorry,” I said, smoothing my coat as I turned back to them. “I’m done.”
“Join hands,” Davey said, so we did.
Trixie’s hand was warm in mine, her calloused palm like a piece of polished hardwood from God only knew how many centuries of sword fighting. Davey’s hand was rough and grubby and I really didn’t want to touch him, but I clutched it all the same as he muttered under his breath.
You’d better be fucking awake in there, I thought at the Burned Man. You’re coming too.
Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world, it replied.
&nbs
p; I should have known, shouldn’t I?
Chapter Twenty-One
Davey started to chant in some language I didn’t recognize, and a moment later the air tore open in front of us and projected a thin pillar of swirling matter. The column of whatever-the-fuck-it-was shot up out of the warpstone where it lay in the centre of the circle and went into the ceiling overhead. It gradually began to widen, with the three of us making a ring a ring o’ roses around it.
“Keep still,” Davey said. “Let it take us in its own good time.”
I swallowed as the column gradually resolved into something that looked horribly like flesh. If this was a Veil, and if Veils really were alive, I wasn’t sure I liked the thought of being taken, as such. I could only hope he knew what he was fucking doing. I squeezed Trixie’s hand and she smiled at me.
“We’ll be fine,” she reassured me.
A moment later the pillar of spinning fleshy energy was almost touching my face, then it swelled all at once and seemed to split open as though swallowing me whole. I gasped, feeling a curtain of moist heat sweep over my body. Everything went pitch dark for a moment and I clamped my hand down on Trixie’s in sheer terror.
When the light came back we were standing in a stone hall, all still holding hands. I looked around, taking in the high vaulted ceiling and a huge, cold fireplace stacked with coals. It was bloody freezing in there.
There were old rushes on the flagstones underfoot, dry and grey with age. High narrow windows lined one wall, letting in thin shafts of dim grey light. Davey let go of my hand and took a step back. He gestured absently at the fireplace as he moved. Flames roared up in the grate, making me jump.
“Welcome to my keep,” he said. “This is Kelmeth, that stands in the shadow of the La’hah. This is my castle.”
Fuck me, we were in Merlin’s castle? Seriously?
There was a long wooden table running down the middle of the room, with chairs along either side and a great carved wooden throne at its head on a raised platform. There was no round table here, that was for sure. This was Davey’s place and it was obvious he wanted whoever came here to know it.