Devil City

by Gestalt Publishing

  vi

  What's the move?

  Didn't lie to Bettina this time. My move is chaos. But also, looking at Bettina's eye is getting at me. Need some time away from her. Guilt - I'll wear it but I don't have to wallow in it.

  Foulstone will come at me. He's smart, he'll take his time. Work up a killing curse. He's got my blood. I can protect against it but only if I take my time, drop everything. That sword, hanging by the horse hair, is a swinging.

  So I have to sort out Foulstone, pretty much between the time he buttons Katanya at the wedding and when he's got two or three hours to work up an execution hex. But he'll be eager. He'll be impatient. Like to question him but he wants the Hollow and he's the kind of man throws away lives to get what he wants. Not the kind of man I want with the Hollow, either mask or the package deal with Jon.

  Alright. There's a deadline.

  Let's make it complicated. Don't know how long until Ava kicks in. But the Devil will know I've been to see her. That pisses him off. So he'll be coming at me soon.

  Can't move on that till Ava says.

  Next issue. The Hollow. It's... he's... trying to spook me into making a mistake. Fuck. I liked Pizzalgo. More guilt but, you know, wasn't my hand held the knife. You walked into his house, says that voice that's always right when it looks on the underside.

  Hollow hates the Devil.

  Throw it all into the mix. See what burns.

  Meanwhile... got this book all about the Devil and whatnot. Could be pretty interesting. Light up, commence to reading. Aw yeah, Baudelaire.

  Time passes.

  Find another story I like. Wicked Jack.

  Jack. Wicked Jack the Devil. Mean old drunk. Like him already. Lot of magic symbolism in this one. Devil wants to take his soul, so he climbs up a tree. Tries. Doesn't work. 'Got till crack of dawn. Not one second more.' says Scratch, who's one who doesn't love the light.

  'Alright,' says Jack. 'Just let me leave a mark behind. My name.' Strong medicine, that. Jumps down, draws his bolo and carves crosses in the tree instead of his name. Laughs at the Devil. 'Come down now, motherfucker.'

  Devil can't. Crosses. Vampire rules. 'OK, help me get down', says the Devil.

  'Keep my soul out of hell for eternity, Devil. That's the deal.'

  Deal is done. Jack goes on his way, dies. Can't get into heaven, can't get into hell. Devil laughs at him. 'You'll walk alone forever. A ghost for all time.'

  Winner is who wins and that's the Devil. Still. I like that Wicked Jack's style.

  Little drunk when I finally ask one of the shaking old men the time. Shows me his watch. Ten.

  Two hours till she's married.

  Drunk enough to make bad decisions. Sober enough to see them through. Ache in my neck, ache in my cheek.

  You know what I would do if I was a hard-eyed investigator, kind of man who lives by wits and cruelty? Or if I was an assassin, dressed in a black suit, silenced pistol held in fine leather gloves? Some smooth operator? Some shadowy master of the mystic arts, pulling all the strings?

  I'd leave it all alone.

  I'd walk away.

  Nothing great can happen here. Out of this case, out of this town. It makes no goddamn lick of difference what happens now, I'm not going to look over it and nod with satisfaction when it's done. Got thousands of dollars in my pocket. Got whiskey in front of me.

  That's the best man like me can ever really ask for, right here, in this bar, with a cigarette machine with my brand just a few steps away, even got a book in my hand. That's all I can expect and it should keep me content. Walk away from the Devil, Ava, Scarlet, Hollow. Just leave. Smart and good for the soul.

  But I need to see what happens. I can't walk away without a few answers. Need that almost as much as I need to live through all of it.

  And brothers and sisters, nothing's more important than walking away alive.

  Except to a cat like me.

  Glad the girls left me alone. Cost people enough. Know I'm the kind of man who'll write checks, cashed on the bodies of my crew. Write ‘em, hell, write ‘em twice if it gives me the answers I require.

  Bettina's eye... I'd give it again, it bought me an answer.

  Pay my tab and blink against the morning light. Too much daylight in this job. Sun hits the glass everywhere, hits me eyes like a spotlight. But I know a place where, day, night, makes no nevermind.

  Lived in the City a long time. Know some places and a few blocks from here, there's a subway station. Go down, grab a ticket and hit Platform 3. Let a train go by me. No one's looking, drop down onto the tracks, hissing as my hip offers an opinion. Move quick as I can. Access point for maintenance. Step into it. Cover my ears as the next train goes by, shrieking metal and force and hot ferrous wind.

  Big steel door secures this access into the maintenance tubes. Locks are easy to get through. Draw a circle around it in the air with a finger. Turn it like a key.

  Into the warren of tunnels that criss-cross the larger tunnels.

  Love this. The places you walk over, past, every day you never see. Backstage. The hidden parts.

  Just bare concrete passages, lit by flickering fluorescents. Smells like old cement, stagnant water and mould. Walk down one corridor, another, passing janitor sheds, safety equipment in case of crash all the stuff you don't want the public to see. Looking for... yeah. Here it is.

  See. Years and years ago, City engineers digging a tunnel for the subway, they found something. Underground chamber in the bedrock. No big deal. Happens all the time. Bubbles of lava or something. Dunno. Never had a chance to sit down and learn that stuff. Though I should.

  But yeah, no big, you just work around it. Except this cave has a lake in it. A deep lake, like a bore, drilled into the ground. Lake that's been sealed away from the outside for a billion years. Weird fish, eyeless, lambent, swim around in it. Weird but not shocking. These things, they happen.

  But these fish, they get hunted by something else. A billion years of evolution turns an octopus into a horror. Species of black, leggy things. Fast - with a way of eating makes a spider look polite. Horrorshow but again, copeable.

  What was the problem, though, was those black octopi seemed to have religion. Biologists, zoologists, keen to get a hold of some new species, went down into the chamber. Noticed that, every twelve hours, the octopi beached themselves on the shore of a little island in the middle of the lake, same square footage as a two bedroom house. The octopi waved their tentacles around at the tor of stone, stood out in that island. Eventually, one scientist gets to examining the tor which, it turns out, is coated in limestone like a shell. Break it off with a pick axe.

  Runestone underneath but not any human language. Just looking at that alphabet made ‘em queasy. And the iconic representations of what seemed the octopus god, feasting on hairless mammal, well, that wasn't too relaxing either.

  There are places like this, hidden, in every city. What's under your house?

  Biologists reckoned the damn octopi had rudimentary vocal cords. They all get real interested at that, along with their twice-a-day Adhan where they whispered, where they sang praise. One of the scientists tried to break up the service and died screaming after necrotising digestive fluids got pumped into his brain though the wreckage of his eyeball.

  Prehuman ruins showing signs of art and industry? Undiscovered freak species? Too many questions. Someone said fake and they pulled out. Rezoned the tunnel. Forgotten about by everyone but railway maintenance workers who just put a real heavy security door over the cavern entrance and forgot about it. Although every now and again, someone sneaks in to look at it. To watch the things swimming in the water, illuminated in sick green phosphorescence. To listen to the octopi things at their prayers.

  Ameeta, who was the head of the emergency repairs crew, used to work down here. Train shuts down on the tracks, she hustled her team through the tunnels to get to it quick. She was also the head of a massively unorthodox Durga cult and we consulted with her once or twic
e. Ameeta showed me The Chamber, like she called it, way of saying thanks. Those were the early days, we still occasionally enjoyed less than hostile relations with other Lodges. Ameeta died of breast cancer two years ago, now I think of it. Refused treatment. The goddess' will.

  She tells me a story.

  'This is back in the 80s, before your time. I had just joined the team but they took it easy on me. There were two other kids came on same induction. Both were pricks so the usual ribs, hazing, well, they weren't enough. So Malky, the boss, he shows ‘em The Chamber. Tells ‘em to go in. Locks the door behind them. Clocks out. Clocks back in.

  The worst part, one was still alive. He'd seen what had happened to the other and more besides. Talked about the unsongs. Talked about the liquid intelligence. Talked about the horrorbuddha wound into annihilation. Invincible Durga protect me, you should have seen what they did to his insides.'

  Why come down here?

  It's about as isolated as a place gets in the City. A dozen people know it's here and half of them just know it's an old tunnel behind a locked door. Jon's stalking me. I know it. He's coming for me, not Katanya or Aristide or anyone else. He's coming for me. Want him to show himself in a place he can't sneak up on me.

  Steal a key, open the door. Pull it aside as it rolls on rusted casters.

  Step into the darkness. Close the door behind me.

  Sixteen

  i

  Mr. Foulstone's entire outfit today cost less than fifty dollars. Thirty for the gabardine/polyester suit. Three for the belt, five for the shoes. Ten for a new shirt. He looks terrible. No thirty dollar suit, bought off a rack, looks good on anyone, let alone a heavy man. Let alone one in a shirt that's not quite big enough and strains at the buttons.

  Not that it really matters. He hit the shrimp and cocktail sauce fifteen minutes ago and he's splattered with it. There's a fine buffet lined up beneath the trees of the park.

  Foulstone, you'll recall, detests all beauty but he hungers after flavour. There's a fountain burbling pleasantly and capable wait staff serving drinks. Many of the guests are in a bright mood. It never occurs to him that food's flavour is its own kind of beauty.

  A light brush on his shoulder and he turns. There's Mr. Blossom tall and thin as an epidemic.

  'A word, Reg.'

  Foulstone grunts and white meat snorts from him mouth.

  Mr. Blossom, the lawyer and Mr. Foulstone have worked together for three years now. Neither really likes the other for some obvious reasons. Mr. Foulstone assumes Mr. Blossom is gay and is the kind of man to detest a homosexual on principle. Blossom is, after all, fastidious in his appearance and displays a sense of cleanliness and that can only be a signifier of homoerotic attraction. The reality of Mr. Blossom's sexuality is rather more interesting. While his alarming fantasy life most certainly focuses on men, Blossom is appalled by the idea of that much human contact and intimacy. Indeed, he married a profoundly mysophobic woman partly to avoid the need for it. Mr. Foulstone operates by instinct whereas Mr. Blossom is a man of clinical calculation. Mr. Foulstone enjoys European football whereas Mr. Blossom is entirely uninterested in sports.

  Tiny conflicts, all the way between them. But neither of them are looking for a friend. They simply require partnership and both understand their alliance is an excellent one.

  Mr. Blossom wishes total control of the occult world in the City. He considers the secrets about the world simply too dangerous to be left in the hands of madwomen, prophets, visionaries and the viciously ambitious. Undesirables. Mr. Foulstone, of course, just like the process of stomping on anyone.

  Fist in glove.

  Mr. Blossom draws Mr. Foulstone's attention to the girl. What's her name? Tanya.

  Tanya is talking to a tall woman in a man's suit. They look over at him nervously.

  Wait. That big woman, whose shoulder's burst at her suit coat... Lark's slapper.

  Mr. Blossom and Mr. Foulstone wait. Tanya walks over. She reaches into her bag and then two men stiffen. She notices and slows her pace.

  'Look, what happened chasing the Hollow. The Hollow was just too much for us. I understand that. And I would - I would hate for that sor -. I don't want. Let me start again. I would hate to find myself unready for another job. So. So I bought you something from the Hollow operation. I hope you'll see it wasn't a total waste.'

  They stare at it.

  'Lark's blood.'

  Mr. Foulstone looks at it. Extends his hand but Tanya doesn't offer.

  'We have an understanding?'

  'Aye. Hand me that and I'll nay have a problem with you girl.'

  She gives it over.

  Now, Mr. Foulstone has pretty specific orders about how to conduct the Hollow operation. They bought him over from England to do it. Scarlet gave strict instructions. Lark will probably interfere and you are to use force if he does. But he is not to be killed. Scarlet is a formidable woman and Mr. Foulstone is not interested in crossing her.

  'You should know, Lark knows I have that. He's known since this morning. He'll be getting ready to ward against it.'

  But Mr. Foulstone is also a brutal and petty man and he never liked that Lark prick from the first meeting. Hot saliva spills out of glands, filling his mouth with warmth and violence anticipation.

  Mr. Blossom shares Mr. Foulstone's esteem for Lark. Tanya waits a moment, turns to go. Mr. Blossom stares at her, stares at the big woman.

  'Seems Lark's companions have abandoned him.'

  'He's playing with the Hollow and no mistake. Stupid moos probably didn't fancy getting shish kebabed.'

  'Hmm,' purrs Mr. Blossom, who is much better at being suspicious.

  Lark's plan was a good one but, as ever, thrown together hastily. Binding ghosts is a lengthy process. He expected Foulstone to take some hours to come looking for him. Tracking him. All true.

  But Mr. Foulstone lives a block away. He nips over the road and unleashes his beasts. Lark assumed Mr. Foulstone needed to have handlers but he doesn't. He only recruited Tanya's team because it just makes the whole thing easier and, after all, that team wasn't working out.

  Lark has underestimated the man

  Invisibly, they howl down the street inerrantly nosing out Lark. They wind like a freak wind down the street, rustling dresses and mussing hair and giving colds. Many at the wedding notice. There are many adepts there. But now isn't the time.

  Mr. Foulstone ambles back and rejoins Mr. Blossom.

  'Oh look,' says Mr. Blossom. 'The groom has arrived. Doesn't he look fine in his jacket and his kilt. What's the dagger in his sock?'

  'Sgian Dubh,' says Mr. Foulstone, rolling his eyes at the whole wretched costume.

  ii

  'Hello Jon.'

  Here we go. Figure I've got three hours until Foulstone moves on me. Time enough to set the Hollow on him, while Foulstone prepares. Having this conversation is why I've come down here in the dark. Try to reach him one last time and if that falls apart, well.... then I'm probably fucked. Maybe I'll hire him, take out everyone for me.

  'The man is not here.'

  'Let him out. He deserves to hear this.'

  'No.'

  'You're doing yourself. It is in your best interests he hears this. You are doing yourself disservice.'

  It stops moving. It's been pacing, idly catching the luminous fish in the lake, practicing blade work on the helpless, wretched things. Let's one drops and it does what dying fishes do.

  The Hollow stinks of fishguts and pain.

  'Hello Lark. We knew you'd come here.'

  'No you didn't. You just followed me long enough to figure it out. Get here before me.'

  'No.'

  'Yes.'

  It's not omniscient. Need to remind myself of that. It's just appalling. Fear is rushing through my body. Feel it collecting in my jaw and fingers. Avert my eyes from the fish, which makes too loud a thumbing sound on the stone as it dies.

  So instead, I see one of the black octopus things raise itself out of th
e water. Eight eyes, glowing with an internal luminosity, just hanging there in dark water. Watching. Its tentacles, over a foot long each, just wave in the current.

  Look back to the Hollow. He goes, stands by the edge. Watches the octopus too.

  'Do you know what this place is?'

  Out of place, the distant sound of a train taking people to appointments.

  'I've heard the stories.'

  'It's a temple to the true powers of the earth. We are shadows of such principalities.'

  'You never met Wick. You never saw the Archon.'

  'I've met other powers in my time. Enochian Seniors. The Vanir. Ophanim. True entities. Embedded into the walls of time and space in ways no human thing, no matter, ever could be. One of them walked here once. One will again.'

  The Hollow turns to look at me. 'Oh, Lark. The Teaching Darkness has seen such things. It's right to hate you. Humans are an ugly species and pointless.'

  'Yeah. So?'

  Seems stumped by this.

  'Do you cast yourself as a saviour of mankind, Lark? A champion?'

  Wait a moment. Think about this.

  Start to laugh. For real. Haven't done that in a while.

  'Seriously Jon. You think that, you really are beyond all saving.'

  It whirls away from staring at the pool, takes three steps towards me and I take four back not entirely voluntarily.

  'Then why do you hunt us?'

  'Are you. Do. Fucking hell Jon because you're my best friend and hurting people is bullshit. It's boring. It never makes any other pain go away. You and me, we're magicians man. What is magic for if it's not to find better paths than just... slicing up fucked up fish in the darkness. Hurting a dumb thing just because it can't stop you?'

  Voice goes low.

  'Jon, man. I want you to stop this. I want you to come home. This is the last time I make an offer. Don't be just another bastard. Don't be the same as everyone else. Because that's all the Hollow is, Jon. Just another prick who thinks he can push people around to get what he wants...'