Another Bloody Love Story

by Rachel Green

  “Oldham Road,” she said. “I know where that is. I scrapped a Jag there once. Is this Benton chap the one who charged me fifty quid to take it off my hands? Big bloke, moustache, wears a black suit and a load of gold rings? Smokes a fat cigar with an expression like he can smell a fart?”

  “That’s him,” said Chase. “You know him then?”

  “Yeah. I saw my car again two weeks later, welded to the front of an XJS. He did me out of five hundred quid. That’s good news, then.”

  “Why?” Julie frowned. “I didn’t know you’d driven a jag.”

  “Because that makes it all personal,” said Felicia. She smiled, and in an unconscious echo of Jasfoup, showed elongated canines. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Latitia strode over to Jasfoup, stopping only inches away and shouting up at his face. “Let him go this instant,” she said, beads of spittle flashing like diamonds, some landing on his face. He didn’t twitch. “He has important work to do and you’re interfering with it.”

  “I will let him go,” said Jasfoup, “as soon as I can trust him not to interfere with the mortals. I mean…” He took a step to the side so he was facing Pelagius again. “What bit about leaving the mortals with free will didn’t you understand? You can’t go around killing them for your mission and then binding their souls to cover your tracks. It’s just not on.”

  He looked around to make sure no mortals were in earshot. He briefly considered Meinwen, but since she was dating Azazel the Lord of Hosts she knew what was really going on already. He lowered his voice to a hiss anyway. “Even a demon won’t stoop so low. We might stretch as far as possession but we haven’t freed a soul since the middle ages. You were a good man. What happened to you? And don’t say Hell rubbed off on you because it doesn’t.”

  “Limbo,” said Pelagius. “I was one of only two thousand caring for over one hundred and eighty million un-baptised infants. You try dealing with that for seventeen centuries and see if yous can keep the ‘hands free’ policy in operation.” He snarled and spat a gobbet of blood flecked saliva. “I have to make homunculi non stop for the next eighteen months to house the spirits that will be dispossessed by the closure of limbo. I expected the angels to be against me but demons. That was a surprise.”

  “Of course we would be against you.” Jasfoup rubbed his eyes with the finger and thumb of one hand. “Every soul you destroy is one we can no longer tempt and corrupt. The whole cycle of creation is lessened when a soul is destroyed in such a manner. That was why the elves were shunned, and the djinns and efreets and the necromancers. That’s why the summoning of the celestial beings of any kind became a dark art, punishable by an eternity of hot needles through the eyes.”

  “Still,” said Pelagius, “death and destruction is in your court, isn’t it? That’s why I came here. To Laverstone. To this gullible little mind so intent on his wishes and promises and oh-please-God-let-her-notice-me’s.”

  Jasfoup sat on the edge of a step, far enough from the exalted priest that he didn’t burn. “You’ve got it all wrong,” he said in a whisper. “Demons don’t hurt people. Demons torture souls, yes, but that’s after they’re dead, when they’ve been judged unworthy to enter Heaven.”

  “But Revelations of St. John,” said Pelagius. “The demons come then. The ants and the scorpions and the stinging locusts…”

  “…All of whom are summoned by the trumpeting angels. Look.” Jasfoup edged so close to Pelagius that he began to smoke. “All this is by-the-way. You picked the wrong side to fight. We don’t want all the souls of limbo merging into Hell to be lost. The last thing we need are walls that cry when you pass and ask for their potty.”

  “Then let me finish my work,” said Pelagius. “Let me build my army of homunculi.”

  “And have millions of indestructible killing machines with the minds of toddlers in charge of them?” Jasfoup laughed. “You really didn’t think this through before you started, did you?”

  “I did. I gave this imbecile control of the greatest technological plant in the country to help me achieve the project in a realistic time frame.”

  “And got to shag his girlfriend, too,” said Jasfoup. “There must be another solution.”

  “If there was I would have thought of it.”

  “It’s a shame you’re Catholic,” said Meinwen suddenly. “You’ve both completely missed the obvious solution.”

  Both Pelagius and Jasfoup looked at her. “Which is?”

  “Rebirth,” said Meinwen. “Enough other religions believe in it. Even Christians believe it’s possible, else they wouldn’t bang on about the second coming. If you led all these souls in limbo to the rebirth canal you’d solve all your problems. They’d get their chance to be free willed beings in their own right, too.”

  “Is that possible?” said Pelagius. “I thought rebirth was denied by the Church.”

  “It is, according to theistic tradition.” Jasfoup picked up a stick and began drawing on the ground. No marks were made, but each of them could see the drawing in their minds eye. “But it is technically possible. See, here are the gates of Hell, and here are the outer gates. Between the two are the twisting mazes of Limbo.”

  “Why twisting?” Valerie asked, her Catholic upbringing at once appalled and fascinated.

  “We ran out of space,” said Jasfoup. “Fortunately, someone drew our attention to the drawings of M. C. Escher and we realized we were needlessly confining ourselves to one plane when we could utilise all six. After that things got a little less crowded.”

  “But meanwhile you sent the inhabitants insane.”

  “You can’t have everything.” Jasfoup glanced at Pelagius. “My point is, much of Hell is leased from the other religions, notably that of the Greek and Roman pantheons. That means there’s a direct route from Limbo to the birthing chambers where souls are inserted into the newborns.”

  “Which means you can send the inhabitants of Limbo into new babies.” Jim’s face grinned. “That would solve all our problems.”

  “Almost,” Jasfoup agreed. “The only problem is, all the souls will have to be submerged into the Styx first. We can’t have them remembering their past life when they’re reborn. We get enough of those leaking through already. It was all right in the old days, but then Charon set up his ferry business and people started paying their way across, so when they were born they still had their past life tucked away in a small corner of the brain. Even Christians began remembering their past lives.”

  “What sort of numbers are we talking about?” said Meinwen. “If Limbo is closing, will you have time to rebirth them all?”

  “Hmm.” Jasfoup took out a calculator. “Four billion souls in Limbo, one-hundred-and-thirty million babies born every year. That makes over thirty years of rebirths to cope with, not counting the new souls lining up to be born. Let’s say sixty years.”

  “Limbo closes in two,” said Pelagius. “That makes us a bit tight for time.”

  “Only fifty eight years,” said Jasfoup. “It might be possible to shuffle the souls about for that long. We could borrow a bit of Tartarus, maybe, or deep freeze them in the ninth circle.”

  “So I don’t need my legions of homunculi after all,” said Pelagius.

  “No,” said Jasfoup, “though where you were going to keep four billion homunculi is anybody’s guess.”

  “An infinite number of angels can dance on the head of a pin,”

  “That’s as may be,” said Jasfoup, “but they have a distinct advantage over homunculi in that they get to be whatever size they want. The trouble with you, old son, is that you’ve got a fourth century mind in a twenty-first century body and it’s playing tricks with the old synapses.”

  “You’re probably right.” Pelagius flailed his hands. “Any chance of releasing me from these chains, then, now we’ve
reached an amicable agreement?”

  “I suppose so.” Jasfoup nodded to Meinwen who produced the keys. She removed the padlocks and Latitia unwound the chains.

  “Ha! Fool” Pelagius stood up, rubbing his arms. “You know what we used to say about demons?”

  Jasfoup yawned. “Why have they got appendages when God didn’t give the angels any?”

  “No.” Pelagius frowned. “We used to say demons hadn’t got the brains they were born with.” He grabbed Latitia’s wrist and set off for the edge of the churchyard.

  “Where are you going?” Jasfoup called. “The reception’s at the White Art, isn’t it?”

  “But my servant is right here.” Steve’s silver bulk stepped out from the trees and hoisted the two of them into the air. “See you in Hell.”

  Jasfoup watched them go. “Not if I see you first,” he said, “and I happen to have some hot needles.”

  * * * *

  “Stupid, meddling demon,” said Pelagius as he set an engraved skull into the homunculus mold. “Did he really think he was clever enough to negotiate with me?”

  “I thought you reached a compromise,” said Latitia. “I thought you’d got what you wanted.”

  “What I wanted?” Pelagius laughed. “Dominion over the earth is what I want. I was promised it.”

  “Who promised you that?”

  “God.” Pelagius set the pourer into motion. “The meek shall inherit the earth He said. I was one of the meek, and look what happened. The church condemned me. Now I’m back and we will overthrow the Church and rule in its stead.”

  “What good will that do?” Latitia laughed. “The Church doesn’t rule the world.”

  “Of course it does.” Pelagius watched lights blink as the mold was filled. “All edicts come from Rome. The church is all powerful.” The panel glowed green and began the process of cooling it. “Once I have built an army of these homunculi I can destroy the church and rewrite the missive that dissolves Limbo and keep it open for eternity. I can absolve original sin so that new babies are not sent to Hell at all, but go straight to Heaven without even pause for judgement.”

  “Advance to Mayfair,” said Latitia, softly. “This would all be very well,” she said in her normal voice, “were it not for the government. They’ll see your army and blow you to bits.”

  “I thought of that,” said Pelagius. “That’s why I had to go to the trouble of making homunculi instead of golems. Homunculi can reform themselves. They are indestructible.”

  “The country isn’t.” Latitia pulled at his arm. “You can’t do this. It will be seen as an act of aggression from Britain. You’ll precipitate a nuclear war. The earth will be destroyed, left to rot as a molten, radioactive wasteland.”

  “And the meek shall inherit it,” said Pelagius, his eyes shining. “We shall inherit it and I shall rebuild the world as God intended it. I have studied the development of the modern world closely. Christian fights with Muslim. Jew fights with Hindi. Shinto fights with Buddhist. This world is what the devil made it. It is all the result of Satan and the pride of Man. I’m giving it a second chance at redemption.”

  “But millions will die.”

  “So that many more millions will be redeemed.”

  Pelagius, still in Jim’s body, was almost in a state of rapture. He was reminiscent, to Latitia’s eyes, of the Voudoun priest her mother invited round to the house when they were kids to help rid Winston of his affliction. The old man’s eyes had rolled back and he spoke in a melange of English, Latin and medieval French. Latitia and Winston had been terrified but only she, being three years older, remembered the old man.

  “Leave me.” Pelagius said. “I must summon one of the Lost into this new form I have prepared.”

  Latitia backed away, wondering why her predictions of the future had never foretold anything like this. Not even a hint.

  “He’s a bit of a nutter, if you ask me.”

  Latitia whirled at the sound of a voice. She recognized the creature as an imp like the one that travelled with Julie, but she had never expected to see another. It was seated on a pile of etched skulls in a glowing circle and was sucking on a damp, dog-eared cigarette. She put a hand out toward it but was stopped short―the air was as impervious as a fishbowl.

  “S’no use,” the creature said. “A circle has to be collapsed by its maker and ‘e looks like ‘e’s got a lot of other stuff on his mind right now.” It nodded toward Jim. “That’s the trouble with religious types,” it said. “Megalomania to a man.”

  “Who are you?” Latitia asked.

  “Keritel’s the name,” said the imp. “You must be Sacrifice.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Felicia parked some distance away and pulled a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment, “What?” she said to Julie’s quizzical look. “I’m a werewolf not a were-eagle. If I can’t smell it I can’t see it.”

  “That’s useful to know,” said Chase. “If I’m ever being pursued by the supernatural I’ll hide in a barn.”

  “You’d need to stop hoarding money then,” said Felicia, the binoculars to her eyes. “I can smell the bookie’s on you.”

  “Bookie’s?” said Pennie. “You didn’t tell me you gambled.”

  “It never came up,” said Chase. “I do like a little flutter now and again.”

  “Every day, according to Jasfoup,” said Julie. She turned in her seat. “Any sign of them?”

  “Daily? You gamble every day?” said Pennie. “You need help, Chase.”

  “I can see three in the yard,” said Felicia. “A couple of dogs, too. None of them are Benton though. He has an office tucked against the fencing I can’t see from here. That’s where he’ll be. There’s a crane and a crusher.” Her head moved as she followed the rows of cars. “Well, well, well.”

  “What?” said Julie.

  “I don’t need help,” said Chase, his voice a hiss against the slight breeze. “I’m not addicted to gambling.”

  “The scrap yard ends in a small dirt road which leads to the garage on Holbrook Hill. No wonder they can do you a special price on parts. They can nip out the back to Benton’s place and pull the bits off a scrappie. It explains why they’re so ready to tell you a car needs scrapping too. They charged me seven hundred for a new catalytic converter last year. I bet the car it came off had been scrapped for fifty quid.”

  “Then stop,” said Pennie. “No more bets from now on.”

  “I can do that,” said Chase. “No more wagers. Oh, wait.” He took out his wallet and leafed through it, looking for a race ticked stub, “Is it three o’clock yet? I said I wouldn’t place any more bets, but I do need to collect the winnings on this one. That’s allowed, surely?”

  “It’s only just gone mid-day,” said Pennie. “What time was the race?”

  “The two-thirty at Ascot,” said Chase. “I’ve backed a horse called ‘Fallen Angel’ Cute, eh? I was thinking of you, Pennie.”

  “I appreciate the thought,” said Pennie. “Very well. Give your ticket to one of the others and if it wins they can collect it for you.”

  “Sure,” said Felicia. She pulled the glasses away. “I make it Benton plus two dogs and three to five guards,” she said. “There’s three of us…” she looked at Chase’s broken fingers, “…two of us so there shouldn’t be much trouble.”

  “We don’t want to kill them though,” Julie said. “Just rough them up a bit and scare them into giving back Chase’s money.”

  “The dogs might be tricky,” said Felicia. “I remember them. A pair of killers that would rip the flesh off a vicar.”

  “You can leave them to me,” Wrack said. “I haven’t eaten for hours.”

  “Certainly not!” Pennie vanished from the back seat and reappeared at the front of the car. “It’s not their fault they�
�ve been taught to hurt people. Is it true that dogs can see the supernatural?”

  Felicia nodded. “For the most part. Apart from corgis who think it beneath them.”

  “Leave the dogs to me then,” said Pennie. “I’ve always liked dogs.”

  “Fair enough.” Felicia took off her driving gloves and put them away along with the binoculars. “But if they come for me, I’ll toss them to Wrack.”

  “Okay.” Pennie looked toward the scrap yard. “I’ll go first then,” she said. “They won’t see me. I’ll be like a…”

  “Ghost?” Julie winked. “Go get ‘em, girl.”

  “Right. I’ll be back.” Pennie vanished into the ether. Only Julie could still feel her. The dogs in the scrap yard were oblivious to their scent from this distance.

  “You’re staying right here,” Felicia said to Chase. “We’ll call you if we need you.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me.” He held his arms in the air and put his feet up to recline on the back seat. Felicia took the keys from the ignition and handed them to Julie to be on the safe side.

  “Will you run some long distance ordnance?” she asked. “Some distractions, maybe? Something to tie up the goons?” She twisted back to Chase. “Nothing that you see today gets repeated,” she said. “Trust me, I have ways of keeping you quiet if I feel the need.”

  “You won’t. I’m fascinated by the whole thing.” Chase grinned and waved his two splinted fingers toward the corrugated iron gates of the scrap yard. “You get off and do your… whatever you do. I’ll be right here waiting.”

  “Good.” Felicia horse-vaulted her legs over the car door. She looked at her sister one last time. “Don’t you need a circle?” she said.

  “I’ve never needed a circle.” Julie smiled. “Not for what I do best, anyway. Other people might want to make a circle to protect themselves from me.”

  Felicia laughed. “I sometimes think I had the easier deal,” she said. “I’d rather twist my skeleton inside out every night than do what you do.” She looked to the yard. “See you on the dark side.”