Rod Rees - [The Demi-Monde 02]

by Spring (v5. 0) (epub)

  But the reality was that Ella Thomas was jeopardising this work.

  Trying to massage away the last of his lingering headache, Bole wondered if now was the time for him to wander along to the ward where Ella Thomas’s TIS-swathed body was lying, and turn off her life-support function. But he couldn’t. The ward she was in was surveilled and patrolled on a 24/7 basis. The Americans were wary of ABBA and had installed their own independent surveillance system based on an Imperial Business Machines 3090 Series computer, the most up-to-date model the British government would issue an export permit for. Obsolete it might be but it was effective, too effective for him to risk doing anything as crude as murder.

  ‘ABBA, where is Ella Thomas’s Dupe in the Demi-Monde?’

  ‘She and her colleagues have left ExterSteine and are now en route to Paris, located in the Quartier Chaud Sector of the Demi-Monde.’

  ‘I wish a message sent to Dupe Tomas de Torquemada, alerting him to her arrival and advising him that she is a threat to UnFunDaMentalism.’

  ‘The PigeonGram has been sent, Septimus.’

  As Bole rose a little unsteadily to his feet, he wondered if he could trust de Torquemada to organise the assassination of Ella Thomas. He had other cryptos on his payroll in Paris, but the best of these was of an intellectual persuasion and hence would make a reluctant assassin. Perhaps now was the time to unleash Semiazaz and his brothers inside the Demi-Monde, then there would be no chance of failure. But the very thought of employing pure-blooded Grigori to perform such a simple task smacked of overkill.

  No, the Grigori would be the last resort.

  2

  ExterSteine

  The Demi-Monde: 1st Day of Spring, 1005

  Most disturbingly, my studies have led me to hypothesise that Dark Charismatics are not lunatics, as Alienists traditionally view those beset by Moral Insanity. Their aberrational and destructive behaviour is not a product of lesions in their Solidified Astral Ether, or other somatic or visceral damage. Rather, I have come to believe that Dark Charismatics are a separate and distinct taxon of the genus Homo, whose members are the very antithesis of H. sapiens, being innately and wholly evil. This discrete taxon I have named Homo singularis.

  Letter dated 53rd day of Spring, 1002,

  from Professeur Michel de Nostredame to

  Doge Catherine-Sophia

  Ella’s breath haloed around her, white in the frosted chill of the Winter night, as she panted her way up the long, steep staircase that led to the summit of ExterSteine. There was so little time left; she could see the pink of dawn painting the horizon and once dawn was here then Norma would be lost, Crowley’s Rite of Transference complete. Dawn’s light was the final piece of occult empowerment that Crowley needed to work his diabolical magic.

  ‘Faster,’ she whispered to herself, trying to ignore the pain wracking her protesting body and the heaviness infesting her tired legs.

  ‘I am goin’ faster,’ moaned Rivets from ahead of her, but he upped his pace anyway, taking the snow-slick steps two at a time.

  ‘Quiet!’ snapped Vanka, and as they followed the staircase around the huge Mantle-ite column, Ella saw the reason for the warning: there, in front of them, was the gaping mouth of a cavern, out of which poured a strange, atonal music. ‘That’s where Crowley’s performing his magic, so stay tight to the shadows: there might be guards.’

  Ella barely heard him. She stood staring into the huge, black, gaping maw of the cavern. It was a place of nightmares … but it was also a place of power. Yes, the cavern seemed to exude a cold, spine-chilling power that was replete with licentiousness and depravity and Ella had no doubt that acts of terrible perversity and vileness had been enacted in this place. She shivered, but not through cold or fear; power was very exciting.

  A cacophony of seductive voices echoed in her head, telling her that this power could be hers again … if she had the will … if she had the courage.

  A hand gripped her shoulder. ‘Ella, are you okay?’

  Vanka’s question brought her back to the here and now. Strong, wonderful Vanka. The man she loved, the man who had sacrificed all his instincts for self-preservation to stand at her side and to help her rescue Norma Williams.

  Rescue Norma Williams …

  ‘Yeah, Vanka, I’m fine. Let’s get moving. We’ve got a Rite of Transferance to screw up.’

  Lavrentii Beria was a bastard.

  That was the conclusion Burlesque Bandstand had come to, as he sat atop the great column that was ExterSteine, huddled inside his huge dublonka, with his back set against Winter’s last winds, waiting for Vanka Maykov and Miss Ella to arrive. He shuffled his numb arse on the cold, unyielding Mantle-ite, and indulged in a scratch: his lice were playing him up something terrible. And as he scratched, he decided that he was wrong in his assessment of Beria. Beria wasn’t just a bastard; he was a big bastard.

  Gazing out, in an unfocused sort of way, as dawn lazed slowly over the snow-decked HubLand that stretched around ExterSteine, Burlesque’s mind drifted back to the terrible weeks he had endured at the hands of that bastard … that big bastard. Following his arrest at Dashwood Manor he’d been thrown into a cell on one of the most secure levels of the Lubyanka prison. It was a soundproof cell, which Burlesque supposed was just as well because he had done a lot of screaming during the time he was held captive there.

  Yeah, they had tortured him long and hard during those seemingly endless days and nights, and as they had tortured him, Burlesque had changed. Oh, it wasn’t just the weight he had lost or the interesting and comprehensive collection of lumps and bruises he’d acquired that signalled this change, it was the deep and undying hatred of Beria and of UnFunDaMentalism. Burlesque had sworn that if he ever escaped the Lubyanka he’d kill the bastard in retribution for the pain inflicted on him.

  And now retribution beckoned.

  Shielding his eyes with a gloved hand, Burlesque squinted towards the rising sun, checked his watch – shaking it to make sure it was still ticking – and then let out a long doleful sigh. He’d expected Vanka and Miss Ella to show up before now. He’d been sitting atop ExterSteine for most of the night, listening to the shit-awful music rising up from the cavern below, waiting for the pair of them to come galloping to Norma Williams’s rescue. Now, as dawn was breaking, it would soon be too late for them to save the Daemon.

  Serve her right for being such a cow.

  The funny thing was that it had only been the failure of Beria’s Checkya agents to track down and assassinate Vanka and Miss Ella that had saved Burlesque’s bacon. It was on the back of this failure that Beria had come to the belated conclusion that the only person who had a chance of finding them was Burlesque Bandstand.

  He vividly remembered that final interview with Beria. One cold and damp morning – he didn’t know which particular morning, since all mornings in the Lubyanka were cold and damp – the bastard had come strutting into his cell, had plonked himself down on the chair the guard had brought for him, and had given Burlesque that empty, cold smile that Burlesque had come to despise.

  Beria got straight down to business. ‘Would you like to live?’ he had asked.

  ‘Live?’

  ‘Yes, I can arrange for you to be given a pardon for all of your crimes against the ForthRight, and a safe conduct to the Quartier Chaud.’

  ‘I ain’t committed no crimes against the ForthRight,’ Burlesque had lied.

  Beria had arched an eyebrow to signal that he thought Burlesque was being deliberately obtuse. ‘Oh, please, it becomes tedious when someone as cunning as you denies what is both obvious and inevitable.’

  ‘Obvious and inevitable?’

  ‘It is obvious that if I let my guards loose on you again, you will inevitably confess.’

  ‘Confess? Confess to wot?’

  ‘To whatever it is that I might wish you to confess to. My experience is that the gravity of the crimes confessed to is directly proportional to the amount of pain I inflict on a body.’ And t
o confirm the reality of his contention, Beria had stood up from his chair and smashed his fist into Burlesque’s face. ‘That is to demonstrate that I am in earnest. So now I repeat: would you like to live?’

  ‘Yus,’ Burlesque replied, as he’d spat out one of his few remaining teeth.

  Bastard.

  ‘Excellent. Then in order to achieve that outcome, all you have to do is render me a service. You remember the PsyChick of Vanka Maykov’s – the Shade you knew as Ella Thomas, but whose real name is, we believe, Marie Laveau?’

  A careful nod from Burlesque: careful because he hadn’t yet decided if the punch had broken his jaw.

  ‘Very good, I wish her killed. And you, with your prolific and comprehensive knowledge of the Demi-Monde’s criminal fraternity, are just the man to find and assassinate her. You will also kill her paramour, this Vanka Maykov.’

  ‘And iffn I do off them, wot’s in it for me?’

  ‘Then you will receive a pardon for all the crimes, real and imaginary, you will otherwise be charged with. It is really a very generous offer and one you would be stupid – fatally stupid – to turn down.’

  For Burlesque Bandstand it was an epiphany. Seated on his soiled mattress in that sordid little cell, he finally came to realise that no matter what he did, no matter how dutifully he served Beria, he was a dead man. As far as Beria was concerned, Burlesque was nothing more than the dirt beneath his feet, a nonentity. Once he had dealt with Vanka and Ella, the bastard would kill him with no further thought than Burlesque would give to killing one of the fleas that currently called his bed home. And knowing this, he understood that the reason why Beria thought he could treat him in this way was that the man wasn’t frightened of him. He had crawled and fawned for so long that it was all Beria thought he could do.

  But Beria was wrong, and he would show this pompous, arrogant bastard just what Burlesque Bandstand was capable of. One day, he swore, Beria would regret he’d smashed a fist into his face. One day he would make Beria suffer for what he’d done. And to do this, Burlesque knew he had to live, and to live he had to imitate cooperation.

  ‘Okay,’ he’d said quietly, ‘but I wanna know where the ovver Daemon is. I wanna know where Norma Williams is.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because wherever that Daemon is, chances are that’s where I’ll find Ella Thomas.’

  And that was why Burlesque Bandstand had been taken to ExterSteine in one of Beria’s own steamers, and why, when he got there, he’d picked up a rock and used it to stave in the head of the SS StormTrooper set to guard him. The thought of killing the man didn’t give Burlesque even a moment’s pause. From now on, anyone who was an ally of Lavrentii Beria was an enemy of Burlesque Bandstand.

  His pondering upon the delights of murder was interrupted by the scrape of boot heels. He turned his head towards the staircase that circled ExterSteine, and saw Vanka, Miss Ella and a scruffy young boy he didn’t recognise step uncertainly onto the top of the column, bracing themselves against the biting winds that vortexed around them.

  ‘Over there!’ Vanka shouted. ‘To the east! The shutters must be over there.’

  Leaning into the wind, the three of them pushed their way over to the eastern side of the column. Vanka was right: a pair of great wooden shutters covered that side of the column, facing towards the rapidly rising sun. There was a huge wooden lever to one side, which presumably operated the shutters.

  Why aren’t they guarded? wondered Ella.

  Vanka whipped his belt from around his waist. ‘If we tie this around the handles of the shutters that’ll stop them being opened.’

  His explanation was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a revolver being cocked. As one, the three of them looked up, and saw Burlesque Bandstand – a much thinner-faced Burlesque Bandstand – sitting with his legs dangling carelessly over the side of the column, brandishing a purposeful-looking Webley pistol in their direction.

  By the ever-brightening light of the rising sun, Ella could see that there was the body of a dead SS StormTrooper lying next to him.

  ‘’Appy First ov Spring, Wanker, you bastard,’ said Burlesque as he raised the pistol and took careful aim at Vanka’s forehead.

  The muzzle of the pistol flamed, and Ella felt the heat of the lead slug as it scorched through the air only inches from her ear. There was a scream behind her, and when she looked around she saw a black-uniformed Checkya captain crumpling to the floor with a neat hole drilled in his chest. Unfortunately, as he fell, his limp and lifeless body dropped over the lever that worked the wooden shutters, springing them open. Vanka made a dive to close them, but it was too late and dawn’s light poured down through the opening and into the cavern below.

  Aghast, Ella could only stand and stare in numb disbelief: it was the first light of Spring that completed the Rite of Transference, and now there was nothing they could do to prevent the Rite being enacted. Now there was nothing they could do to prevent Aaliz Heydrich taking command of Norma’s body in the Real World. They had failed.

  Devastated that all their efforts, all the dangers they had endured, had been for nothing, Ella sank to her knees and sobbed.

  Oblivious to Ella’s misery, Burlesque grunted himself up onto his feet and began a vigorous massaging of his arse. ‘Bastards,’ he muttered as he spat in the direction of the Checkya captain’s body. ‘That’s wot all ov them Checkya are, bastards.’ And with that, he limped across to where the body of the man he had just shot lay and gave it a wholly superfluous kick. ‘Dead as a fucking doornail.’ He spat into the dead man’s face. ‘Serves ’im right. Serves ’im right for being a Checkya bastard an’ for working for that piece of shit Beria. Serves ’im right for wot that bastard did to me in the Lubyanka.’

  ‘You were in the Lubyanka?’ asked Ella nervously. It had been a real shock for her to meet Burlesque again. The last time she had seen him had been at Dashwood Manor, when they had been organising Norma Williams’s escape.

  ‘Yeah, they arrested me after that kerfuffle at Dashwood’s gaff. Fucking Witchfinder disowned me. After everyfing I done for ’im.’

  Ella eyed Burlesque cautiously. He seemed even more wildeyed and unbalanced than she remembered, and the nervous tic under his right eye signalled that he was a man near the end of his tether. Vanka was obviously as wary of Burlesque as she was. He stepped closer to her side and eased his coat away from the butt of the Colt holstered in his belt. Taking his cue from Vanka, Rivets slid a knife into his hand.

  Burlesque noticed what Vanka and Rivets were doing and he gave a humourless little laugh. ‘Don’t fret yerself, Wanker. Iffn I wanted you dead, you’d be mutton by now. Nah, there ain’t no bad blood between us. I’ve learned me lessons an’ all I’m intent on doin’ now is settling me score wiv Beria. Gotta pay ’im back for wot ’e did to me. Me bollocks are still big as ball-cocks from the beatings ’e ordered, and iffn me toenails ever grow back straight, it’ll be a bleedin’ miracle.’ He looked mournfully down at his feet. ‘That’s why I’ve got this limp.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Burlesque,’ said Ella, though it seemed a totally inadequate thing to say.

  ‘Well,’ said Burlesque with a rueful shrug, ‘I suppose I ’ad it comin’. Wot do they say? When you sup wiv the devil, better use a long spoon. Well, I guess mine wos too short by ’alf.’ He scowled and lumped the collar of his coat up around his ears. The sun might be up now, but standing exposed on the very summit of ExterSteine, with the wind howling around them, was a decidedly chilly experience. ‘So ’oo’s the kid?’ he asked.

  ‘I ain’t no kid. Me name’s Rivets.’

  ‘Be careful, Burlesque,’ warned Vanka, ‘Rivets might be small, but he bites. He and I have been business partners for a few years now and we’ve come through some tough scrapes together.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m ’ere to protect my inheritance. Vanka owes me a ransom in rhino and then some.’

  ‘Pleased to meetcha, Rivets. No offence meant, so yous can put that blade away now.
’

  ‘So what are you doing here, Burlesque?’ asked Vanka. ‘It’s hardly the kind of place you’d come for a jaunt.’

  ‘That’s an easy wun, Wanker. I’ve bin sent ’ere, courtesy ov that bastard Lavrentii Beria, to top you an’ Miss Ella. After that shindig at the Manor, Beria got real fuckin’ upset, and as a consequence he got hot and hateful on my arse. And look wot that sod did to me nose.’ Burlesque tapped the side of his nose, which Ella could see looked decidedly askew. ‘Broke it, the bastard did. Broke it so bad that now every time I sneeze, I get an earful ov snot. Spoilt my looks, ’e did.’

  ‘How did you know where to find us, Burlesque?’ asked Ella.

  ‘Easy as blinking. I knew you’d turn up ’ere, ’cos I knew you wouldn’t give up trying to rescue that snotty cow Norma Williams.’ Burlesque gave a shrug. ‘Any’ows, she’s doornailed now, so there’s no point in us standing ’ere chit-chatting all morning. Give it an hour an’ an ’ole mess ov them Checkya bastards is gonna be buzzin’ around ’ere thick as flies on dogshit.’ He gave the body of the Checkya captain a final kick. ‘Best we get going now, while the going’s good.’

  Ella eyed him warily.

  ‘Get going where, Burlesque?’

  ‘Get you to the Quartier and then, when the ’eat’s died down, I’m gonna go back to the Rookeries and blow Beria’s fucking lights out. He’s gonna find out you don’t mess wiv Burlesque Bandstand an’ get away wiv it scot-free.’

  ‘’Ow we gonna get to the Quartier?’ Rivets asked. ‘It’s fuckin’ miles away.’