The Jade Suit of Death (The Adventures Of The Royal Occultist Book 2)

by Josh Reynolds

  Snatches of old legends that St. Cyprian had tried to hammer into her head bubbled to the surface of her mind as she fought the urge to suck in a lungful of water. The Thames was lousy with old, sacred places—wells, temples and burial grounds dotted its length. Whatever was under this stretch of river wasn’t agreeing with the demon. It wasn’t agreeing with her either, come to that. Her blood was clouding the water now, and her limbs felt heavy, but the demon still held onto her.

  Gritting her teeth against the twin pains of drowning and the wound in her side, she jerked her feet up and planted them against the demon’s bulbous belly. She shoved away as hard as she could. Her knife hand slithered through the demon’s grip, the blade of her balisong slashing open the creature’s palm. Its blood and hers mingled in the water. The creature released her and thrashed away from her, and she took the opportunity to take her own leave. The water was cold and she felt as if she were being crushed. Nonetheless, she swam as fast as she could, leaving a dark trail behind her.

  Baphomet hauled itself out of the water mewling and whining, its scabrous flesh steaming. It crawled towards its master, gaining in strength the further it got from the water. The bleeding wounds it had sustained began to pucker and close.

  It looked up at Sadie, who stood watching it from the shadows of the shattered door. It made mocking obeisance to her. Baphomet had never been very respectful. It was even less so now, thanks to the looping knife slashes which had marred the ritual scars which bound it to human control. The scars had taken weeks to make, and had required tools which had been all but impossible to come by. To hear her father tell it, it had taken longer to find a blade fit to make such marks than it had to find the demon itself.

  “Is she dead?” she asked, softly.

  Baphomet made an ugly sound that she knew was laughter. It caressed its wounded hide and licked its teeth. There was an unpleasant light in its eyes, and it took a hesitant step forward, after pushing itself upright.

  “I’ll take that as a no, shall I?”

  Baphomet licked its teeth again. It did not breathe, for it was not truly a thing of flesh, but it heaved a preparatory sigh, like a tiger watching its prey. “The question is, did she escape under her own power, or because you let her?” she continued, with forced mildness.

  The demon tittered, and slunk closer. “I suspect that I should have simply shot her,” Sadie murmured, wondering why she hadn’t. “But that wouldn’t have been half as fun, would it?” she asked, her hand falling to the pistol in her coat pocket.

  The demon scrabbled closer, hunching and moving with an almost insectile rhythm. Its form might have been goatish, but it was no more a goat than it was a man. It was something that had come from Outside long ago, and had nestled in the bosom of reality for centuries since. It was both more and less than it had been, a thing of incalculable power squashed and squeezed into a fleshy container. But it was bound, now. Chained by the marks that coiled across its limbs and bloated torso. Marks made by William Melion at the behest of her father.

  The elder Fleece had wanted the demon bound, and rendered harmless. But demons were always dangerous, even when you took away their ability to outright gut you. Some might say especially then.

  She could not say when the idea to free the beast had occurred to her. But when it had, she had acted with characteristic efficiency. Shepherd had been easy enough to convince. Albert was as dogged in his loyalties as he was quarrelsome. It had been a matter of minutes to convince him to transport the creature to the Fleece estates in Wiltshire, rather than the Hebrides, and easy enough to accomplish without her father finding out. He left most of the day-to-day running of the Order to her, as he had her mother. Melion had taught Shepherd and a few others how to control the devil, via the marks he had made on its flesh, and Shepherd had eagerly taught her in turn.

  “You think yourself smart, don’t you beast?” she murmured. “Letting yourself be cut and flayed, to chance freeing yourself from the chains I have bound you in? Clever, demon. Too clever by half.” She’d half expected an escape attempt when the creature had showed her an image of what was to come. Its excitement about the woman’s approach had been all too palpable. It had tried to escape before. As enjoyable as it seemed to find her activities, it was nonetheless an untrustworthy thing.

  She looked forward to the day when she could banish it back to hell. The day when her task was done, and the British Empire had been set on its correct course. Then she would send the beast back to the infernal territories, where it could whisper and whine to the damned as often as it cared to. Baphomet took another step, and gave a bleat of challenge. Talons flexed as if anticipation. It’s given prey had escaped, but it still hungered for blood. Any blood would do, and all the better if it belonged to someone it had already taken an intense dislike to.

  She reached up to grip her locket. It could dislike her all it wanted, as long as she had her locket, and what it contained. A bit of her blood, mingled with its own foul ichor, to bind it to her will, and her will alone. Something she’d learned from the grimoires and tattered papyri her father hoarded like a miser. It wouldn’t do to let Shepherd or Melion or anyone else be able to command Baphomet. Not when she still had so much to do.

  There was a world to be put right, and Sadie Fleece was the person to do it.

  “Kneel, Goat of Mendes,” Sadie hissed. The scars on the demon’s body reddened and flexed and Baphomet squealed as she made one of the six profane gestures. The demon shook its hairy head and glared at her with bulging eyes. It spoke, chattering in its hateful language, the language of dead places and horrible secrets. The words sloshed like water in a corpse’s belly, and seared the air, leaving behind a peculiar stink of super-heated ozone to mark where the sound of them had passed.

  “Kneel, Mendean Ram,” she snarled hoarsely. Her gloved hand was outstretched, fingers spread, as if to push back against the force of the demon’s fury. “Obey me, spawn of the black sands. Obey or suffer agony.”

  Baphomet reared back and sank down, wormy-veined fists slamming down to crack the ground as it vented its fury in a tantrum of destruction. Its hooves left scorch marks on the ground as it danced about in rage, like a dog jerking on its leash. It screeched at its jailer, battering the air with a deluge of words, things not meant to be heard by mortal ears, blasphemous words and foul pleadings. Its scars became a more vivid crimson, standing out from its pale flesh like bloody weals.

  Sadie shuddered as the effort of controlling the entity took its toll. It was like trying to keep a blanket over a typhoon; it required constant vigilance, and one instant of weakness, one slip, and the demon would be away and free, flying God alone knew where to wreak whatever havoc it so wished.

  It was a damned thing, a thing of barely checked lust and malevolent mischief. It was old as well, and steeped in a cunning that had seen it outlast empires. But it had its uses, beyond the obvious. The Knights Templar had kept it chained and bound by circles of salt, silver, water and iron, and transcribed its prophecies and secrets, using them to make their Order a power in the world. But the beast was deceitful and had escaped, to the ruination of its captors. It could not be allowed to do so now, or ever again. Especially not while she had need of it.

  “I command you by threefold names—Kneel Banebdjed! Kneel, Bafumaraias! Kneel, Baphomet!” Her fingers curled inward with a snap. Baphomet gave a wail as its scars were suffused with an incandescent lividity. The demon sank down awkwardly, squatting like an ape, its arms outstretched before it, palms up.

  Puffing slightly, heart hammering, Sadie lowered a trembling hand and looked towards the dark path of the Thames. Charles’ assistant had either drowned, or escaped. Given Baphomet’s behavior, it was likely the latter. She reached out to idly stroke Baphomet’s skull, as the demon pulled itself up to crouch at her feet.

  “Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do about that, won’t we?”

  12.

  Cheyne Walk, Chelsea Embankment, London

/>   It was dark by the time St. Cyprian made his way back to No. 427. He’d made sure to see Wendy-Smythe off safely from King’s Cross, and then turned his steps towards home. The Crossley grumbled as he brought it to a stop on the street, and set the brake. He leaned back in his seat, thinking of what he’d learned. Which wasn’t much.

  The presence of a member of the Order of the Cosmic Ram at the crime scene could have been a coincidence. The Order was far larger than he liked to think about, and it had several centuries’ worth of a head start on covering its tracks. Fleece was the nominal head, for his family had started the thing, but then, if the head of the Freemasons weren’t responsible for the crimes of individual members of that august fraternity, why should Fleece be responsible for the crimes of a jackanapes like Gladstone the mummy-wrangler, or whoever the dead man in Limehouse had been? Unless of course, he was.

  St. Cyprian leaned his head back. But if not Fleece, then who? Shepherd, maybe. What was it Sadie had said, about some being unhappy with Fleece’s leadership? He pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and examined the red tip, as if answers might be held in the crumbling ash.

  It took a certain amount of metaphysical skill to animate statues and conjure demons. More than he possessed in a pinch, if he were being honest. His knowledge of the occult was patchy and workmanlike; mostly self-taught, thanks to Carnacki’s peculiar ideas on education, and the library at No. 427 wasn’t as extensive as it should have been. “Ta for that, Mr. Cromwell,” he muttered. Nonetheless, he had an edge over most, given his own innate abilities, psychical or otherwise. Carnacki wouldn’t have chosen him otherwise.

  But his unidentified enemy was a magus in the truest sense of the world, on a level with Oliver Haddo or one of that lot. And that meant he was dangerous, far more dangerous than any would-be necromancer that St. Cyprian had yet come up against. Granted, if it came down to it, he’d have no choice but to pit his magics, such as they were, against those of his opponent, and damn the consequences.

  “Consequences,” he muttered. It was all about consequences, in this game. It was all about what you could live with, and what you could survive. It had been the same way in the war. Cigarette dangling from his lips, he examined his hands. For a moment, he thought he could hear the whine of approaching shells, and the screams of men, and he closed his eyes.

  If he were very lucky, Gallowglass had found something—maybe even Melion’s stolen antiquities—in Limehouse. He’d told her not to attempt to recover it herself, if she found it. He would pass along the information to Molly and let Special Branch handle the details; Melion had wanted to keep the police out of it, but St. Cyprian thought it best to let the plods sort it out. Especially given that Melion wasn’t being entirely truthful about his part in the affair.

  “What have you done, William?” he said aloud. He had no proof, as yet, but he had plenty of suspicions. Melion had helped Fleece to find something, and St. Cyprian thought he knew what that something was. He would need to check the books to be sure. But he could feel the itch in his third eye that said he was on the right track.

  It was a mess, that much was certain. He lit a second cigarette and puffed contentedly for a moment, watching the dance of the moon’s reflection on the surface of the Thames. For once it wasn’t raining, though it was still bloody chilly, even for March. The thought occurred to him that it would soon be the vernal equinox, and even as it did, he wondered why he’d thought of it. Something he’d seen marked on some papers somewhere—at Fleece’s, he thought.

  Funny what sticks in the head, he thought, rolling his cigarette between his lips. Vernal equinoxes were handy things, where magic was concerned. The walls between worlds were thinner, and there was a symbolic significance to the astronomical events which invariably accompanied such things. The druids had made an art out of interpreting the equinox, vernal or otherwise. Like as not, Fleece was looking into some bally rite or other.

  Thinking of that prompted him to think of other things. Book titles swam to the surface of his mind, and he straightened in his seat. “Hunh,” he murmured. He caught the memory and held tight to it. He was certain that both of those titles were on his own shelves. His third eye—the spirit eye, as Carnacki had called it—was itching like the dickens now, and he felt a thrill of excitement pass through him. He didn’t care for mysteries, as a rule, but he did so love solving them.

  Eager now, he climbed out of the Crossley. His eyes were drawn to the Embankment, where he thought he saw something, but it proved to only be a few stray loose papers, twisting and flailing in the night breeze. Chilled nonetheless, he hurried through the gate, towards the door to No. 427.

  St. Cyprian stopped as he made his way up the steps. Then he lunged forward, tossing aside his cigarette, his heart hammering in his chest. A smallish shape sat hunched in the doorway, reeking of the Thames and blood. He recognized Gallowglass immediately and bent to check on her, his mouth opening to speak. Metal flashed, and he found himself staring down the barrel of the Webley-Fosbery. He heard a click, and his heart stuttered to a stop. “Gallowglass,” he said softly.

  “Thought you were somebody else,” she muttered dully. Her eyes were blank with exhaustion. Water dripped from the barrel as he gently wrestled it out of her limp hand. He stuffed the pistol into his coat and reached up to fumble with the door lock. He scooped her up, with a grunt. She weighed less than he’d expected, and she felt terrifyingly fragile in his grip. There was a smell on her, not just of blood or the river, but of something fouler, and terribly familiar. His hackles rose as he stood, cradling her in his arms.

  He kicked the door open and staggered in, burdened by his assistant’s dead weight. Even as the phrase occurred to him, his mind shied away from it. She wasn’t dead, that was the important thing. Water and blood stained his clothes, but he ignored it as he carried her into the sitting room. He laid her down on the chesterfield, stripped off his coat and went to the bookshelf, fighting the incipient surge of panic that threatened to render him useless. His thoughts kept straying to the last time he’d seen Carnacki, laying sprawled in the mud at Ypres, the light going out of him even as his blood carved strange, terrible paths through the gray mud of the battlefield. He shook his head, forcing the thought back down into the recesses of his mind. Gallowglass wasn’t Carnacki and this wasn’t Ypres.

  There was a first aid kit he’d smuggled back from a field hospital before he’d been mustered out occupying a spot between a demonology text and a botany reference book. He hauled it out and scanned the shelves. His eyes passed over canopic jars, book spines and strange, grotesque statuary before fastening on a clay jar, covered in Arabic script. He grabbed it, as well as a vial of hyssop oil-infused water, one of several which sat in tray on the shelf.

  “Found it,” Gallowglass mumbled as he sank down beside the chesterfield. “Found Ghale’s goat-demon too,” she continued. He pulled aside her coat and saw that something had slashed her side. The smell of blood grew stronger as he ripped the side of her shirt open, exposing the wound. He fought the urge to vomit, as he saw squirming white shapes nestling in the torn flesh. Wounds made by things from Outside tended to be fatal, even when not mortal.

  “I see that,” he said from between gritted teeth. The wound would have to be cleaned, before it could be treated. He pulled the stopper from the clay jar and scooped out a handful of turquoise powder, which he dashed over her wound. Gallowglass arched her back, and a hiss of pain escaped her as a foul-smelling steam rose from the wound. The white, squirming things shriveled and curled in on themselves. St. Cyprian quickly emptied the vial of hyssop-infused water across the wound and used a rag torn from Gallowglass’ shirt to wipe it clean.

  “Hurts,” she grunted.

  “Good,” he said. “It’ll teach you not to let it happen again.”

  “Your bedside manner is terrible.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re hardly the perfect patient. Hold still,” he said, swabbing the wound with alcohol. The cuts weren’t as d
eep as he’d feared. Barely more than scratches, really, for all the blood. In their short association he’d come to learn that Gallowglass was a remarkably fast healer. Nonetheless, once he’d cleaned the wounds, he slapped on a salve from one of the jars and bandaged them. Gallowglass sat up as he wound the gauze about her belly and sides, holding the ragged ends of her shirt up out of the way.

  “What was that stuff?” she asked, when he had finished.

  St. Cyprian put the first aid kit back where he’d gotten it and said, “A healing salve I learned how to make from a young woman of my acquaintance, made from the crushed berries of a certain tree in Gloucester and the water from a peculiar spring in the Scottish Highlands. It’s supposed to purify wounds made by woeful creatures.”

  “Does it work?”

  “No, I smeared it on you for a laugh,” he said acidly. She rolled her eyes, but didn’t reply. He procured a blanket and a plate of bread, cheese and jam, the latter of which was probably older than Rationing, but which was still delicious and apparently bottomless, given that they’d been sharing it for more than a year. As Gallowglass tucked in, he pulled a chair towards her and sat down. “Tell me what happened.” She did, frankly and without prevarication. When she got to the bit with the demon, he interrupted her, and made her produce the balisong.

  He handled the blade gingerly as she continued to speak. He’d seen her use it more than once on supernatural entities, most recently the savage doppelganger of Jack the Ripper they’d encountered at the beginning of the year, but had never questioned why it seemed so effective. That it was apparently blessed made sense, and he shook his head as he examined the blade. He wondered what else Gallowglass was keeping from him.

  When she’d finished her report, he handed the knife back and stood. He strode quickly to the bookshelf and pulled down a silk banded folio that crackled as he opened it. Gallowglass gestured with the spoon she’d been using to extricate jam “What is that?”