There was a similarly sinister mixture of patrons. Apart from the boisterous and scantily clad art students, there were customers of a better class who were presumably intent on sampling the primitive and dangerous pleasures of one of Paris’s famous bals-musettes. There were women dressed as men, wearing dinner suits and with their hair oiled flat, and men dressed as women, with only their broad shoulders and blue chins betraying their masculinity. Nothing was off-limits in the Maison d’Illusion.
As always, it was the women who caught de Sade’s attention, women resplendent in unambiguously and unashamedly provocative costumes created from leather, satin, lace … and lots and lots of bare flesh. Certainly their clothes were cheap and brash, and their make-up heavy and obvious, but they wore both with a coquettish exuberance. Steeped as they were in the teachings of ImPuritanism, the women of the Maison were confident in their sexuality.
Indeed, they were so blatant that the Lady IMmanual was emboldened to flaunt her body, too. She pushed her cloak back over her shoulders, allowing it to fall open, making her red-dyed body flex and ripple as she did so, obviously pleased by the way the tops of her black-tinted nipples peeped so cheekily above the leather gilet she was wearing, and that, as she walked, her naked legs glided in and out of view under her transparent skirt.
Not a wise move, decided de Sade, especially when he noticed how the tough-looking, hard-faced men were watching her, peering hungrily at her from under their caps. Trying to ignore them, de Sade urged the Lady towards the sanctuary of the dance floor.
There were about thirty couples dancing in front of the stage, moving with passionate abandon in some kind of pastiche of the tango, the men and women locked in a tight embrace as they swayed and snaked around to the sound of the accordion and the rhythm of the guitar. The strange music was a disturbing amalgam of jad and gypsy, syncopated to a rhythm that seemed wrong but also oddly correct.
‘Java,’ explained de Sade, in answer to the Lady’s unvoiced question. ‘It’s the bastard music of the streets, spawned by the bals-musettes of the Parisian underworld.’
Further attempts to explain were interrupted by a loud shout from across the floor. ‘I know you, you bastard!’ yelled a tall and well-set man. ‘Mask or no, I know you as that bastard the Marquis de Sade.’
De Sade looked up and, to his great relief, found his dissolute past pointing at him from the other side of the smoke-filled dance hall. He knew who the man was: Paul Keller, the father of the girl whose accusations had led to him being exiled from Venice. It was obvious that Rose Keller had got her looks from her father … they even wore their moustaches in the same style.
‘My Lady, an old acquaintance is beckoning me, one who is less than enamoured of my presence here in the Maison. It would be safer if you were to distance yourself from me for a moment.’
Watching de Sade slink his way into the crowd, the Lady IMmanual couldn’t resist smiling: he made a ridiculous guardian. But being such a duplicitous and venal individual, he might have other uses. Yes, de Sade had potential. Further consideration of de Sade’s limitations as a bodyguard was cut short when she felt her arm being taken, the hand doing the taking belonging to a lean and very elegantly dressed – if considerably mussed – young man clad in a well-tailored cream suit that showed off his fine figure to perfection. She suspected he was also very handsome, though a mask of red leather concealed his face rather effectively. What the mask couldn’t hide was the mischievous twinkle in his eye.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he yelled to her in heavily accented French, ‘would you permit me the honour of introducing myself to the most beautiful and provocative woman in the whole of Paris?’
She had to laugh at the man’s impertinence. ‘Of course,’ she answered with an encouraging smile. She had a soft spot for rascals.
The man clicked his heels military-style, and bowed. ‘I am Count Andrei Sergeivich Zolotov, and I have been sent by the Abbé Niccolò Machiavelli to escort you to safety.’
‘And the Sister Florence?’
‘Quite safe,’ announced Zolotov, then he cocked an ear towards the band. ‘We have to wait here, Mademoiselle, until more of Machiavelli’s agents arrive, so might I be so bold as to suggest a dance? They are, after all, playing our tune.’
Why not? She was in the mood … for many things.
With a nod she held out her hand.
Zolotov led her out to the centre of the dance floor, clasped her tight in his powerful arms, and then began to sway in a most distracting way to the pulse of the music. She soon felt herself falling under the spell of the strange, hypnotic rhythm, and began moving as sensuously as the other women crowding the floor.
Zolotov danced well, holding her hard against him. He made an excellent partner; he didn’t so much dance as ripple across the floor, the joints in his limbs seemingly made of rubber rather than bone and tendon. And the way he used his hands was interesting, especially when they began to make a very intimate exploration of her body.
It was all very … stimulating.
For two numbers, Zolotov spun and whirled her around the dance floor, which streamed past in a dizzy blur of colour. It was intoxicating stuff, and as they moved around the floor, sliding their bodies against one another with increasing passion, she realised just how much she was enjoying herself.
But then she had thousands of years of practice in the art of mesmerising men with her charms.
As she twirled about the dance floor, held fast in Zolotov’s arms, the Lady was emboldened to ask him a question. ‘Tell me, Monsieur le Comte, are you always so familiar with girls you barely know?’
Zolotov’s lips brushed her neck, the fleeting touch making her tremble. ‘Of course,’ he breathed. ‘And, if I might be so bold, your costume this evening does indeed warrant the description “barely”.’
She laughed and thrust her body harder against his, encouraging his advances. Flirting, she decided, was an amusing pastime.
‘Over here,’ he whispered. ‘Let us take a moment to get to know each other a little better.’ With that he led her off the dance floor to a shadowy alcove. There Zolotov clasped her to him, manoeuvring her so that her back was pushed hard against the wall. She gasped as his hands began to fondle her, delving under her flimsy skirt, and as she arched back in delight she caught sight of herself reflected in the mirror set on the wall of the alcove. The girl that stared back at her looked the embodiment of dissolute sexuality, a disconcerting mésalliance of the knowing courtesan and the transcendent naïf.
Duality made flesh.
Delighted by her wantonness, she watched herself as a voyeur might, watched as her arms clasped themselves around Zolotov’s neck, as her left leg snaked around him, dragging him harder to her. The juxtaposition of what she was seeing and what she was feeling was so very arousing: she was simultaneously the voyeur, the lover and the loved.
It was the sight of the knife in Andrei Zolotov’s hand that drove all thoughts of passion from her mind.
20
Paris
The Demi-Monde: 14th Day of Spring, 1005
To my mind the most intriguing – and controversial – aspect of all the myths and legends attributable to Lilith are those which involve the Living. The work of Professor Heinrich Schliemann, regarding the deciphering of the Mantle-ite pictograms etched on the Great Wall, has revealed that the Living were imagined by the Pre-Folk to be invisible spirals which were present in all living things. It was Lilith’s ability to alter and influence the Living which gave her the power to interfere with the evolution of HumanKind and to create the Lilithi, the Grigori and the Kohanim. It was her hubris in usurping HisHer power over the evolution of HumanKind that moved ABBA to send the Flood that destroyed the Empire of the Lilithi.
Progressing Backwards: the Curious Case of Pre-Folk
Pictograms: Professeur Michel de Nostredame, a paper
presented to the Pre-Confinement Society of Venice, Fall 1001
The blade wielded by Zolotov would
have gutted her if it hadn’t been for the intervention of Sister Florence. Materialising out of the crowd, the Sister grabbed at the knife, taking the thrust through the palm of her outstretched hand.
With a curse Zolotov yanked the knife free, but the moment was gone. There was a sharp and deafening crack, the familiar smell of cordite, and then all hell broke loose. The bullet fired from the revolver held in de Sade’s shaking hand smashed into Zolotov’s shoulder just as he moved in for a second strike, but the hit didn’t prevent him dragging out his own pistol and blasting back. What it had done was give the Lady the chance to duck behind an overturned table which offered at least a modicum of protection from the flying lead.
The gunfire had a dramatic effect on the crowd. Obviously experienced enough to realise that a gunfight wasn’t part of the scheduled entertainments, the crowd had made a mad dash for the exit, an exit which, unfortunately, was too narrow to accommodate the mob of people struggling to put as much distance as possible between themselves and any stray bullets. In a instant, disorder deteriorated into panic: fighting broke out, glasses were thrown, a lamp was smashed and exploded into flames, people screamed and the Maison d’Illusion was reduced to pandemonium.
‘Run, my Lady, run!’ yelled Sister Florence as she struggled to her feet, cradling her ruined hand. ‘This is one of Beria’s agents and there may be more of his confederates nearby. Run!’
It was sound advice but, determined not to succumb to the mood of panic, the Lady took a moment to get her bearings, then decided that the best line of retreat wasn’t out through the jam-packed entrance, but over the bar, behind which, she hoped, would be the Maison’s rear entrance. And as it was better to be armed than not, she grabbed a cane abandoned by one of the fleeing patrons, and, suitably equipped, vaulted the counter, dodged between wooden cases packed with Solution bottles, then raced along a dingy corridor in the hopeful direction of ‘Out’. She was in luck. At the end of the corridor she saw a door that led to the streets beyond the dance hall and with one firm shove of her shoulder she had it open.
*
Soaked by a burst of rain, the Lady IMmanual strode along the narrow streets leading away from the chaos and violence that had engulfed the Maison d’Illusion. As she marched through the darkness, her eyes flicked hither and thither, peering into the gloom of the night trying to see if she was being pursued by cryptos of Lavrentii Beria.
And, of course, it would not do for her to forget that the Grigori were also abroad. Oh, she had recognised them immediately, even before they had been pointed out by Sister Florence; she, after all, had been the one who had created them, the most perfect killers the Nine Worlds had ever seen.
It was this somewhat disturbing thought that persuaded her to lengthen her stride, walking until the noise of the fracas engulfing the Maison had faded behind her. Now the only sound accompanying her was the slap of her sandals on the cobbles. Finally, when she was sure that there was no one following her, she paused for a moment under a gas lamp to take stock of her situation and to decide what to do next. But try as she might, she found it difficult to compose herself: her heart was beating like a steam hammer with excitement, and she was almost vibrating with unsated lust.
Lust? Now that was a feeling she hadn’t experienced for a good many centuries.
Her tryst with Zolotov had rekindled remembrance of what it was to be the master of men, and having them dance to her will. And it was lust seasoned by an undercurrent of danger – even Goddesses could be assassinated – and danger was one of the most potent of all aphrodisiacs. She shivered in the cold night air and tried to calm herself, pleased that she’d kept the cloak with her in the Maison and even more pleased when she found Sister Florence’s derringer in one of its pockets.
The question now was, in which direction should she go? It was a difficult thing to answer as her PINC was no longer functioning. Fortunately, from where she was standing she could see the top of the Awful Tower away in the distance and this allowed her to orientate herself. Rome was to the south.
Hefting the comforting weight of the cane in her hand and with a quick glance up and down the street to check it was still empty – the rain and the late hour having ensured that even the most tenacious of Fleshtival revellers had given up for the night – she began to head in what she hoped was the direction of safety.
By her calculations, she was only half a mile or so from Rome when she heard the click of heels reverberating along the deserted streets behind her. The night was crisp and clear, so the sharp snap of steel-capped boots striking on cobbles carried easily through the darkness.
The Lady picked up her pace, and immediately her followers matched it. She dodged right and left down the maze of alleyways, and her followers imitated her, turn for turn. They were moving faster too, closing in on her. She tried to estimate how many were in pursuit, and decided there were three of them – and now they were only a minute or so behind her.
She gave an experimental swish of the cane and that was when she had a moment of inspiration. As she strode along, she tested the cane, twisting the silver pommel, searching for a catch. There was a sharp click and the pommel turned in her hand. The cane was, as she had suspected it might be, a sword-stick, and triumphantly she pulled the thin but savagely sharp blade from its scabbard. As a sword, it was a little light for her taste, but in a mêlée it would be a hugely serviceable weapon. But even while she was celebrating this piece of good fortune, Lady Luck turned against her. She glanced up to see that the alleyway she had turned into was a cul-de-sac, blocked at the far end by a huge pair of wooden gates. She was trapped.
As she stood looking about her, searching for an escape route, she heard the pursuing footsteps turn into the alley. Pirouetting, she saw, silhouetted by a gas lamp, two Grigori advancing towards her. They were immensely tall and moved with a dancer’s fluency, but from the look of the long blade that each of them held, the dance they were intent on performing was not one that would ever be popular in the more fashionable salons of Paris.
Grigori …
The Lady IMmanual knew them well. They were old friends … and old adversaries. For three thousand years she had bred the Grigori, and generation by generation they had become stronger, faster, more implacable and more fearsome. They had become a race of supreme warriors, the most terrifying breed of humans – or neo-humans – ever to stride the Nine Worlds. She had bred them to be the fastest and the strongest, without peer in battle. She had bred them so they could fight at night, when stealth and surprise gave them advantage over their enemy. She had bred them so they were utterly ferocious and without mercy. And then she had fed them blood.
The Lady IMmanual shook her head in rueful remembrance. As the years had passed and as she trained them and fed them, so they became less and less human. They had hungered for darkness, they had hungered for violence, and they had hungered for blood. And now, once again, they were loosed on the world, the world which had come to know them as vampyres. But formidable though the Grigori were, it would not do to forget that she had once been their Mistress.
Readying herself for their attack, she palmed the derringer into her hand and then shucked off her cloak. If she was to fight for her life, then she would do so unimpeded. This done, she raised her sword to the en garde position, and waited as the two Grigori sidled towards her.
It was difficult to make out details of their appearance: the alley was very dark and what light there was was behind the Grigori. All she could see was that they were dressed in tight-fitting black suits, giving them the look of unusually athletic undertakers.
And that is exactly what they are, she mused, and I am destined to provide their next cadaver.
The Grigori stopped ten feet in front of her and studied her in silence for several long seconds. Finally …
‘You are Mademoiselle Ella Thomas?’ the one on the right asked.
‘I do not recognise that name. The girl who once was Ella Thomas is gone, and in her place stands the L
ady IMmanual.’ She raised her hand and slid the gold cowl from her head, revealing herself to the Grigori. ‘By what right do you interrogate me?’ she demanded. If she was going to return to the Living, then she would do so resolutely and with honour.
‘I am an emissary of Septimus Bole. He requests that you accompany us.’
Septimus Bole? So the Dark Charismatic finally breaks cover.
‘I fear Professor Bole overreaches himself, regarding the rights of others. I have no inclination to go anywhere with you two … gentlemen.’
‘Be advised, my Lady, that Professor Bole is unaccustomed to his invitations being refused. If you decline to come with us voluntarily, then unhappily we must … persuade you to accompany us.’
She laughed, the sound of her laughter echoing off the walls of the tenements that huddled in onto the alley. ‘Be advised, sir, that I take no orders from Septimus Bole or any of his ilk. I am a woman who is ready to fight to protect both her honour and her freedom.’ And, for emphasis, she rotated her blade so that it flashed and flickered in the gaslight.
The two men chuckled and the one to the left turned to his colleague. ‘Gospodin skazal shto ved’ma dolzhna sdohnut.’
Thankfully Russian had been spawned by the Old Tongue, and effortlessly she interpreted the words the Grigori had spoken: The Master has told us this witch must die. Now, at least, she knew that Bole had ordered her assassination; now she knew this would be a fight to the death. As surreptitiously as she was able, she drew back the hammer on the derringer concealed in her left hand. She suspected that such a tiny pistol would be very arbitrary in its aim and useless at a distance of anything more than a couple of feet. Best, then, to lure one of the Grigori close in before using it.
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