The chains fell free and, taking a firm hold on Norma’s arm, Vanka led her down a dark corridor and away from the fighting. It was a nerve-shredding experience, tripping and stumbling along in the darkness, half-expecting to hear a stentorian voice bellowing at him to surrender, or the crack of a pistol firing the bullet that would send him to his maker. But they made it and fifteen minutes after escaping the hall they were standing at the back entrance of the prison.
The exit was guarded by a large oak door and by two large but fortunately very dead GrandHarms. Cautiously Vanka eased open the door and then stepped warily out into the alleyway beyond. It was pitch dark outside, and there was the smell of rain in the air.
‘Good evening, Vanka Maykov, I am so pleased you could be persuaded to join me.’
Vanka glanced towards the speaker and his soul sank. Standing with a pistol pointed at his midriff, and surrounded by five very tough-looking confederates, was Godfrey de Bouillon.
For five long minutes de Sade scurried them through the maze of dark passageways, until he brought them to a halt alongside what appeared to be a featureless stretch of corridor. Giving the torch he was carrying to Machiavelli, he carefully examined the brickwork and then, with a grunt, scrabbled one of the bricks free. There must have been a catch hidden there, because immediately that part of the wall sank back to reveal a narrow staircase beyond. Blind and confused, Sister Florence allowed herself to be hustled and pushed through the doorway and up the stairs, at the top of which de Sade led the trio, blinking and bruised, into a small drawing room.
‘That was a near-run thing,’ gasped de Sade, ‘but in the end we are all safe.’ He bowed in greeting. ‘I have the honour of welcoming you to my humble hidey-hole which occupies a little-used part of the Convent of Visual Virgins here in Paris. And, as we would in all the Convents in the Quartier Chaud, we now enjoy diplomatic immunity … for the moment. Perhaps I could offer you all a drink. I know I could use one myself.’
Sister Florence eyed de Sade suspiciously, noting he had a strange aura, one that flickered and faded, and was never still for a moment, never allowing her the opportunity to see precisely who – or what – the man was. All she knew was that there was something dangerously artificial about de Sade. He was hiding something. Somehow he’d camouflaged what he really was.
Camouflaged?
Yes, that was the word. And wasn’t that what all dangerous animals did, use camouflage to help them stalk their prey, to get close to them until they were ready to make a final, killing strike?
The Sister shrugged those suspicions aside. She knew from her studies that it was impossible for anyone to alter their aura. De Sade was clearly just as she saw him: a disgusting, degenerate man, but harmless for all that. There was too much of the poltroon about de Sade for him ever to indulge in murder.
But there were other things about de Sade that needed explanation. She turned to Machiavelli. ‘I am much befuddled, Your Grace. I know of this man, for he is the renegade exiled from Venice for the acts of gross indecency and bodily harm he did most venomously inflict upon the wench Rose Keller.’
As he poured four long flutes of Solution, de Sade gave an uncaring laugh. ‘I don’t suppose it would do any good to point out that she was paid for her trouble.’
‘Thou art a foul beast who inflicted such pain and torment on a girl thou believest to be thy inferior, to be weaker than thee. Thou art a living stain on the purity of ImPuritanism.’
De Sade seemed totally indifferent to the Sister’s criticism. He eased himself into a chair and sipped at his Solution. ‘What can I say? I freely admit that I suffer from a deformity of spirit in that I derive pleasure from inflicting pain.’
As Machiavelli, struggling with his wounded arm, unlocked her fetters, the Lady IMmanual gave a wry laugh. ‘You’ll be pleased to know, Sister, that de Sade is as infamous in the Spirit World as he is in this. He is what we Daemons call a sadist.’
‘A sadist? How intriguing,’ said de Sade in a mocking tone. ‘You Daemons have given me immortality.’
‘Sadist or not,’ observed Machiavelli, grimacing as he freed his wounded arm from his jacket, ‘what is important is that de Sade has been working for the Inquisition at the order of the Doge. He was tasked with discovering the secrets of galvanicEnergy.’
‘Which, by the by, I have done.’ De Sade flicked a finger towards a slim file lying on a table. ‘I have examined the thermopile brought to Paris by Mengele, and its secrets are now yours, Machiavelli. This, I believe, settles my account with the Doge.’
‘Excellent. And if it does contain such secrets then I will ensure that you receive a full pardon.’
De Sade glanced at the Lady IMmanual and smiled. ‘I must apologise for having cooperated in your torture by galvanicEnergy, my Lady, but the mission I was given by the Doge – in exchange for not having my head chopped off for my supposed crimes against Rose Keller – was of vital importance to the security of Venice. To accomplish this you had to be tortured. Happily you survived.’
‘That you helped me escape from Torquemada makes us square, de Sade.’
‘You are very generous, my Lady.’
Too generous, decided Sister Florence. The Lady IMmanual appeared to delight in de Sade’s evil. Closer to the girl, now, Florence was able to study her more intently, and though her aura was as immaculate and as pure as ever, there was something about it that disturbed the Sister. It was almost too pure … too immaculate. It was more inhuman than divine: there was no emotion shown by the aura and no humanity, no charity and no holiness.
Sister Florence shook her head to try to free herself of these delinquent thoughts.
Ridiculous.
The Lady IMmanual was the Messiah and her aura, unusual though it was, proved that.
It was Machiavelli who interrupted her reverie. ‘And now, Monsieur le Marquis, I have to order you to perform one further service. You must assist Sister Florence in escorting the Lady IMmanual safely to Venice. My wound has rendered my sword arm useless, so as an escort I would be more encumbrance than assistance. You, de Sade, will have to stand in my stead.’
For the briefest of instances de Sade’s aura flared with the scarlet of excitement. For some peculiar reason that Sister Florence couldn’t fathom he was pleased to have been given the chance to risk his life protecting the Lady IMmanual. This enthusiasm for danger sat oddly with the yellow of cowardice that flecked his aura.
‘You’re taking me to Venice?’ enquired the Lady IMmanual.
Machiavelli nodded. ‘Yes, my Lady, the Doge has charged me with the task of having you brought there as quickly as possible. Heydrich wants you dead, and Beria is bending all his might to achieve his master’s wish. There are assassins loose in the Medi, and the bounty on your head is very large. Unfortunately, with you being a Shade, getting you out of Paris is going to be difficult; every ForthRight crypto in the Sector is going to be on the lookout for a girl of your colour.’
‘Then it is best we hide a tree in a forest,’ said de Sade quietly.
Machiavelli frowned. ‘Tell me, de Sade, just where is this “forest” in which you would conceal the Lady?’
‘The forest of painted people that is the Fleshtival des Quat’z Arts!’
Vanka hadn’t seen Godfrey de Bouillon for over a year – not since he’d sold him that cargo of adulterated blood – and in that time the man had packed on a lot of weight and his fair hair had got decidedly greyer. What hadn’t changed was his air of supercilious condescension and the disdainful twist to his mouth. Worse, he still had that vengeful gleam in his eye, which was bad news for Vanka, very bad news indeed.
Any hope he might have had that de Bouillon had forgotten how he had diddled him out of five thousand guineas – by switching a cargo of Class-A blood derived from those certified as Aryan stock for Class-D blood taken from nuJus and Shades – evaporated when the bastard pulled a copy of the contract out of his pocket.
‘It seems that ABBA has smiled on
me, Maykov. I had been summoned to the Bastille to take you for execution, but it appears that you are so eager to meet ABBA that you have come to me.’ His smile hardened. ‘You swindled me, Maykov,’ he said quietly, ‘and for that you must be punished.’
‘A simple administrative mix-up, Your Grace,’ Vanka said with a smile. ‘And I am now in a position to fully recompense you for the financial losses you incurred.’
‘Financial losses? Do you think a man of my rank is concerned with “financial losses”? Do you think noblemen trouble themselves with pecuniary matters of such a trivial nature? I have clerks and bookkeepers to do that. No, Maykov, I am here to extract payment for the assault you made on my honour. I actually consumed some of that vile nuJu blood you sent before I realised from the aftertaste what it was.’
Oh, fuck.
In the Demi-Monde the competition to be the most nuJu-loathing bastard was intense, but de Bouillon was certainly a front runner. For him to have drunk nuJu blood was a violation of all he stood for.
‘You contaminated me, Maykov. By drinking blood taken from nuJus, my body – my soul – has been rendered unclean. For such an insult I must, of course, kill you.’
He flicked his head towards one of his toughs, who drew a long knife from his belt and advanced towards Vanka.
The man stopped in his tracks. From out of the darkness of the alleyway strolled three of the tallest men Vanka had ever seen. The way their leader had to duck to pass beneath a sign advertising a boulangerie indicated that he was a good six and a half feet in height.
And it wasn’t just their height that made the three men so remarkable. Even though their broad-brimmed hats were pulled hard down over their heads, it was still possible to see how pale and chalk white their skin was. But most unsettling of all was the way their yellow eyes glistened in the lamplight, eyes that reminded Vanka of the wild animals he’d seen in London Zoo. They were eyes that had no place in the face of any man.
But then they weren’t men, they were Grigori, or as they were better known, vampyres.
Certainly it was a somewhat melodramatic thought, but from what Vanka could see, an accurate one. The three men did look like the vampyres portrayed in penny dreadfuls.
The trio halted by the team of horses harnessed to an elegant carriage presumably belonging to de Bouillon. There one of them reached out to take hold of a bridle, to steady the team, though the horses still pawed the cobbles, as if they were as unnerved by the Grigori’s sudden appearance as Vanka was.
‘We will take the Russian man and the Anglo woman,’ the first vampyre said, speaking with the precision of a non-native speaker. And as the vampyre spoke, Vanka saw in the lamplight that its teeth had been filed to points. He almost wet himself.
‘Move aside,’ shouted one of de Bouillon’s toughs. ‘This is His Grace, Senator Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Paris. His Grace takes instruction from no man. I am Captain Philippe Pétain of His Grace’s personal bodyguard, and it is an offence to interfere with officers of the Senate or to delay them in the execution of their duty.’
As the attention of Captain Pétain and his men now seemed to be wholly concentrated on the three vampyres, Vanka took the opportunity to signal to Norma that she should get ready to run. If his bowels weren’t deceiving him, in the next few moments they would need every bit of their sprinting abilities.
‘Do not be foolish, Fragile, hand over the man and the woman or die.’
Captain Pétain nodded to his huge sergeant, who squared up to the newcomers. ‘It’ll be you doing the fucking dying, if you don’t fuck off,’ he advised.
The vampyre struck.
Now Vanka would have been the first to admit that, after ten days of being locked up in the Bastille and pretty comprehensively banged about to boot, his critical faculties might not have been at their best but there was no mistaking what he saw, unbelievable though it was. He watched as the vampyre retracted his arm, then stabbed his hand forward at quite astonishing speed, skewering two viciously taloned fingers deep into each of the sergeant’s eye sockets. Then, without removing the fingers, he twisted his hand and threw – threw! – the eighteen stone or so of the sergeant’s now lifeless body hard against the alley wall.
As all Hel broke loose, Vanka made a decision that the one place he wanted to be at that moment was called ‘somewhere else’. And the opportunity to vacate the scene was given to him by the lunatic heroics of de Bouillon and his bodyguards. Vanka had very little time for Godfrey de Bouillon, but even he had to admit that the man was brave as a lion and his reputation as a soldier was second to none. So it came as no surprise to see de Bouillon unsheathe his sword and wade into the fight. His bodyguards were of a less chivalrous and more practical turn of mind, and in a twinkling they had flashed their sticks and were blasting away at the vampyres. And from what Vanka could see, as he edged quickly away from the fighting, they certainly knew how to use their pistols. As the vampyres leapt at them, Vanka saw the five men score at least three or four hits, but amazingly these hardly seemed to slow the attack of the vampyres at all.
This, he decided, was going to get nasty. He grabbed Norma by the arm and dragged her down the alley, taking a moment to spare a look over his shoulder as he ran. Pistols now empty, two of de Bouillon’s men had unsheathed their swords ready to defend themselves. It did them no good; the vampyres pounced on their opponents, ripping their throats out and hurling them aside. The stench of death and rended SAE was everywhere, mingling with the acrid smell of cordite.
Strangely enough, it was Godfrey de Bouillon who saved the lives of Vanka and Norma. Bellowing his war cry, de Bouillon slashed his huge sword at the leading vampyre. De Bouillon was a big man, taller than Vanka, and although no longer in his prime he was still enormously strong. His attack was so ferocious that even the vampyres were forced to take a step back, and for a moment de Bouillon’s blade looked to have carried the fight. Then fate took a hand and de Bouillon tripped, barged into the horses, and the vampyres were on him in an instant, stabbing him to the ground. The spooked horses reared and bucked, smashing the carriage across the alleyway, in doing so putting a barrier between Vanka and Norma and the vampyres.
Never one to look a gift horse – or even a team of them – in the mouth, Vanka decided there was only one thing for it. ‘Come on, Norma,’ he screamed. ‘Burn the ground! Run for it!’
16
The apartment of
Baron Giovanni Mangione: Paris
The Demi-Monde: 13th Day of Spring, 1005
In an effort to ensure that MALEvolence was eradicated from life in the Quartier Chaud, and recognising that women by nature are more peace-loving than men, it was agreed by the Senate that henceforward the Doge – the spiritual guardian of the Sector – would always be a woman. Doge Ninon de l’Enclos (also called ‘the Great’ or ‘the Enlightened’) was the first female Doge, her coronation taking place in 520. There are many sayings attributed to Doge Ninon, but she will go down in history as the woman who first coined the three words which so succinctly encapsulated ImPuritanism and became the Quartier Chaud’s famous motto: ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fornication’.
MALEvolence: Is that a Pistol in Your
Pocket or Are You Just Glad to See Me?:
Mary Jane West, Venetian Institute of Holistic Sociology
‘You sure it was this geezer Maurice Merriment you saw, Burlesque?’
‘Yeah, it wos ’im: I’d recognise that piece ov shit anywheres.’
‘Then if he’s a comic in the Rookeries, wot’s he doing ’ere in the Quartier?’
‘Looking for me, that’s wot. Old Beria must ’ave sent ’im ’ere spotting for the Checkya, which means they’ve got wun ov their assassins ’ere in Paris.’ Burlesque gave a nervous look around the suite of rooms that Rivets had been calling home for the past few days. ‘You sure no one knows you’re living ’ere?’
‘Course. Even the owner don’t know I’m living ’ere. Wiv all this trouble wiv the ForthRight, he’s upp
ed sticks and decamped to Venice. I got in through a window in the kitchen.’
Although he’d never admit it, Burlesque was quite impressed by the hidey-hole Rivets had found for himself. The garden apartment belonged to an Eyetie banker, and was very well appointed, with a formidably well-stocked wine cellar just off the kitchen from which Burlesque had selected a very fine blood-merlot to help settle his jangling nerves. Seeing Maurice Merriment had really rattled him: he had known that Beria would come looking for him one day, he just hadn’t expected it to be quite so soon.
What he did know was that there was no way Maurice Merriment could find where he and Rivets were hiding. They had doubled back so many times after leaving the bar that even Rivets, who knew where he was going, had ended up lost. But Burlesque still couldn’t throw off the idea that Beria’s jackals were gathering somewhere outside. He must have checked that his Webley revolver was loaded three or four times already.
In the end, desperately trying to take his mind off Beria and his thugs, he had challenged Rivets to a game of billiards, with a pot of five guineas a game. But Rivets was such an inveterate cheat – every time Burlesque turned his back to post the scores, Rivets shifted the position of the balls on the table – that around midnight Burlesque gave it up as an exercise in futility.
‘I’m off to bed, Rivets. I’ll just go round to check all the windows and doors, and then call it a day.’ Rivets, annoyed that Burlesque had spotted his cheating and refused to pay up, decided to turn in too. Still grizzling, he’d disappeared, accompanied by a bottle of the banker’s finest cognac, down the corridor to the room he had commandeered for himself at the rear of the apartment. With Rivets gone, Burlesque set about making sure that all the doors were locked and the windows tightly shuttered. Everything seemed secure, though the lock on the kitchen window, where Rivets had forced entry, was still knackered. The frame was rotten, too.
Rod Rees - [The Demi-Monde 02] Page 17