Drake Read online

  What on Earth I thought I was going to do if it just went for my throat there and then I have no idea, and to be honest right then I didn’t really care. Luckily, night creatures aren’t very brave or very bright. I forked the sign of the evil eye at it with the outstretched fingers of my right hand and growled a few words of banishing under my breath. I gave it a hard stab of my Will to make my point. Wisps of smoke rose from inside the shadows around it and it hissed with pain. Pain was good. Pain was better than anger. I jabbed at it with my Will again, wanting to hurt it. It backed off again, whined, and turned and ran.

  “Wow,” the girl said in a shaky voice. “Just… wow.”

  “Are you all right love?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” she said, and brushed her hair back with one hand. She was wearing a silver bracelet, I noticed, shaped like some sort of snake or something. “No, no not really.”

  She started to cry. I took a half step towards her before it occurred to me that someone who had just been almost raped and eaten by a demon probably didn’t really want a cuddle from a drunk stranger. Apparently I was wrong. She threw herself into my arms, and started sobbing on my shoulder.

  “What was that thing?” she whimpered.

  “A night creature,” I said. “They’re nasty and they’re bullies, but they’re all cowards at heart really.” Well, that one was anyway.

  She pulled back a little and smiled at me, and suddenly she wasn’t crying at all.

  “It’s like it was scared of you,” she said. “It was amazing! Who are you?”

  “My name’s Don,” I said. “I’m a magician.”

  That may have been the single most stupid-sounding thing I had ever said in my life, but I was drunk and it had been a fucking horrific night, and dear God she was cute. She pushed her hair back from her face again. She had very long nails, I noticed, painted a glossy dark red. Now that she was nice and close I could see that her bracelet was in the shape of an ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail that symbolizes eternity. She’d probably got it from one of those awful, naff new age shops in Covent Garden but it was pretty and I was drunk enough to think maybe it was a good omen for once. I could have really used one of those about then.

  “Well Don,” she said, “I’m Ally, and I could really, really use a drink about now.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “It’s a bit late for the pub but my place is just round the corner. We could pick up a bottle from the late shop and, well, I dunno…”

  Fuck it. Just fuck it, you know what I mean? Debs had dumped me anyway, and I didn’t think I could sink any lower than I already had that night.

  Turned out I was wrong.

  “I do,” she said, and winked at me. “I know exactly what we could do.”

  * * *

  She did as well, and it was bloody great. It didn’t have any right to be, trust me I know that, but it was all the same. I knew that if I closed my eyes I’d still see his ruined face but so long as I kept them open I could see Ally’s eyes staring up into mine instead, willing and wanton. That and I was drunk as a lord from the pub and then the bottle of corner-shop vodka we’d killed between us before we moved from the sofa in my office to the bedroom. Her nails were as sharp as they were long and she seemed to get a great deal of pleasure out of tearing into my back with them. It hurt like hell but like I said, pain was good right then. My pain, the night creature’s, even hers. I had to take that night out on someone and there she was, right there under me.

  We went at it like fucking animals, rough and ugly. That’s not my style normally but I had to do something to keep his face away. I don’t think I’d ever done it quite that rough before but then I was feeling weird in general, more than even the horror and the shame and the truly monumental amount of booze could account for. I’m not sure I was completely in my right mind at the time, looking back on it.

  Maybe I finished a bit quickly but she didn’t seem that bothered, and at least she’d had the good grace not to mention the patchwork of old, faded scars that covered my chest, or the fresh plaster that I had stuck over my latest wound. Afterwards I sagged onto the sweaty sheets beside her, out of breath and knackered, and wishing I still bothered to keep some tissues near the bed. My back was actually bleeding, so I could still hold out some hope that she had enjoyed herself too.

  It had been a while, to be fair – there hadn’t been anyone since the last time with Debbie, whatever she might think, and that was a good few months ago now. All the same, I had forgotten that sex could feel quite that good. I closed my eyes and groaned with a satisfaction I knew I didn’t deserve. His face swam up out of the darkness in front of me, deep pools of black blood where his eyes had been. Fuck it, that well and truly pissed on the mood.

  I sat up and wiped a hand over my face, coughing.

  “Well,” Ally said. “That’s that then.”

  “That’s what?”

  She sat up beside me, the sheets pooling around her waist to bare her small, white breasts. Her nipples were a very dark pink, almost red.

  “I ought to be off,” she said. “I’ve got an early start in the morning.”

  I nodded vaguely, my head still full of booze and cum and shame. “You OK getting home?”

  “Oh I’ll be fine,” she said. “You frightened all the monsters away, remember?”

  I felt like telling her that no, I’d frightened one of them away and there were hundreds more where that one came from, but there was a mocking tone in her voice now that definitely hadn’t been there earlier so I thought fuck it.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “If you say so,” she said, and got out of bed. There was no mistaking her tone that time.

  Was I that bad a shag, really? Damn it, I thought it had been pretty good all things considered. She kept her back turned to me as she put her clothes on. The only thing she had kept on in bed was that bracelet.

  “Can I get your number?” I asked her. By that point I have to admit it was more out of habit than hope.

  “No,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh well, fair enough.”

  “You don’t need my number. You’ll be seeing me again, Don, I promise. I’ll let myself out.”

  I let her go on her own. I shouldn’t have, what with the Burned Man in the next room, but she went out the right door and I heard her footsteps going down the stairs. I lay back on the bed and groaned. My head was starting to pound now, my dick was sticky and my back hurt like buggery. White knights in stories never have these problems when they rescue the damsel in distress, I thought, but then I was no one’s idea of a white knight. Not by a long way I wasn’t.

  “Fucking hell,” I groaned.

  What had I been thinking? I didn’t deserve a good time, not tonight of all nights. Maybe not ever again, after what had happened. I really hadn’t been in my right mind. I let my eyes close, and saw it again.

  My screamers had found Vincent in the kitchen. He’d been cooking dinner, spaghetti bolognaise. There were three bowls out on the counter top, and if I’d still been watching properly, maybe I’d have noticed that in time for it to mean something, but I hadn’t been. I had been thinking about Debbie, and arguing with the Burned Man about her, and barely watching the scrying glass at all by then. After all, as the Burned Man had told me enough times before, the demons knew their business.

  They slaughtered Vincent before he even knew they were there. Danny put up more of a fight. She had to. She was in the sitting room watching telly while Vincent did their dinner. Dinner for three, I knew now. How the hell was I supposed to know they were grandparents? They were only in their early fifties after all. Danny had the boy on her lap when my screamers smashed the door to splinters. Wormwood had never mentioned a child, but then he wouldn’t, would he? He didn’t care.

  I have to hand it to Danny. She might have been a recreational necromancer and an all round evil bitch, but she fought like a cornered bear for that child. By the time I really took i
n what was happening in the scrying glass one of the screamers was on fire and a second was maimed beyond saving.

  “Stop them!” I had shouted at the Burned Man.

  “No chance,” it said. “It’s too late. There’s no stopping screamers once they’ve got their blood up.”

  When Danny finally went down I tried anyway. I plunged my Will through the scrying glass and into the mind of the last screamer. My world had washed red at once in a bloody haze of animal sensations, killing frenzy and madness.

  Stop it you fucker! I thought at the screamer, but you can’t talk to screamers. They’re not rational – they’re barely sentient in fact. A screamer is an insane killing machine, not something you can reason with, but I had to try. I knew it was hopeless but I had to try anyway.

  You got them both, you’re done, I thought, desperately trying to calm the blood-maddened beast that was even then trying to force me back out of its head. Leave it! Just leave it and go home!

  I fought it for control. I fought it for that child’s life. I saw the little boy cowering beside the fireplace, blubbering in terror. All the screamer saw was something else to kill. The room whirled crazily around me, tilting and lurching as the screamer sprang forwards. There was television glare and child wail and the stink of blood and shit and death.

  I fought it for control, and I lost.

  I felt the killing howl building in my chest and then the screamer threw me out with a shriek of fury and I stumbled back across my workroom with hot blood pouring from my nose and mouth, and that was that.

  I knew right then that I was never going to do this again. Never. I collapsed to my knees and vomited horribly in a corner of the workroom while the Burned Man laughed at me.

  “I should have been in control,” I gagged. “I should have been watching them.”

  “You should have stayed and fucked Debbie, and done this tomorrow when your head was straight, but she wouldn’t have you would she?” it said. “It’s her fault.”

  I threw up some more. It wasn’t Debbie’s fault, of course it wasn’t, but that was better than it being my fault. He was five years old. He was five, and my screamer tore him to bloody rags.

  Never again.

  Chapter Four

  I suppose I must have passed out at some point. When I woke up my eyes were crusted with dried tears and my bloody back was stuck to the sheet under me. My head was hammering like it was about to burst, and I felt sick to my stomach. I whimpered when I realized I hadn’t dreamed it. Daylight streamed through the half-open curtains and made my eyes water.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice hoarse from sobbing. “I’m so sorry.”

  I felt broken, there’s no other word for it. The hangover was nothing new, although this felt like it was going to be a vintage one even for me. I shouldn’t have brought that girl back with me last night, whatever her name was. Ally, I remembered. Ally who was far more fun than I deserved, even if she had seemed to like hurting me. I vaguely remembered I had probably hurt her, too. That hadn’t been right, any of it. I felt… to be honest it had been so long since I last felt this way, I could hardly find the word for it. Guilty, that was it. I felt guilty. Hell, I was guilty.

  Now look, let’s be absolutely fucking honest here – I kill people for a living. Oh sure, I tell the world I’m a hieromancer, and I tell myself I’m a great magician and a mighty diabolist, master of the Burned Man and all that. What I am really, when you boil it right down to the gristle, is a hitman. I summon and send demons, and they kill people. I might not rip my targets’ throats out with my own teeth, but then neither does a sniper. The Burned Man is my rifle, the demons are my bullets, and it’s the same fucking thing in the end.

  Me and the Burned Man, well, we’ve killed a lot of people together over the years. In my defence though, for what little it’s worth, they were bad people. My clients, the sort of people who know that what I do even exists, well they’re bad people too, by and large, and people like that tend to make enemies among their own kind. I’ve killed gangsters and terrorists and black magicians, for other gangsters and terrorists and black magicians. And sometimes for other people too, well-spoken gentlemen in Savile Row suits who I’ve always rather suspected might work for the government. Anyway, the point is I’d never killed an innocent as far as I knew, until last night.

  He was five years old.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again.

  “So you should be.”

  I sat bolt upright, my heart thundering in my chest. The light was behind her, coming through the gap in the curtains and stabbing into my bloodshot eyes like blades. The crusty sheet had torn away from my back when I sat up, and I could feel myself bleeding all over again. Damn, how bad did she cut me up exactly? Not that I cared. It had been fucking brilliant, and that just made the guilt so much worse. I deserved to bleed for that thought alone.

  For a moment I thought Ally had changed her mind and come back, but this wasn’t Ally. She had swapped her tight leather coat for a cream linen jacket and white silk blouse and designer jeans, but the blonde’s aura was as blindingly bright as it had been when I’d seen her across the road from Big Dave’s café window the day before yesterday.

  “It’s you,” I said, rather stupidly.

  “It is me,” she said. “Well spotted.”

  “I mean…” I stopped to rub my eyes, to get my shit together enough to think for a moment. “How the hell did you get into my bedroom?”

  “The front door was open,” she said. “I came in.”

  Bloody Ally must have left the door on the latch when she swanned off last night, I thought. Oh that’s just wonderful.

  “I’m not really… y’know, awake yet,” I said. “Who the hell are you anyway?”

  “I’m me,” she said. “You just told me that.”

  “Yeah. Wait, I mean… for fuck’s sake, what are you doing in my bedroom?”

  She smiled and opened a handbag that looked like it was probably worth almost as much as I owed Wormwood. She took out a flat silver case and extracted a cigarette, then lit it with a slim gold lighter. She smoked those weird Russian cigarettes, I noticed, the black ones with the gold filters that cost a fortune and stank to high heaven.

  “Smoking a cigarette,” she said.

  I massaged my temples with both hands and groaned. Now, as I think I said before, this woman was absolutely bloody gorgeous. I mean seriously, captivatingly, I-can’t-think-straight-for-looking-at you beautiful. I was a hell of a long way from being in any fit state to really appreciate her at that precise moment but I wasn’t dead, you understand? I started to get that weird feeling again, like maybe I wasn’t quite in my right mind. I probably wasn’t, all things considered.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “My name is Meselandrarasatrixiel,” she said, almost singing the peculiar name. “Just call me Trixie, it’s easier.”

  “Trixie, right,” I said. “And you’re a… what, exactly?”

  “Breath of fresh air, I should think,” she said, “after the couple of days you’ve had.”

  “What the hell do you know about that?”

  She smiled and flicked ash on my bedroom carpet.

  “Oh I know a lot of things, Don,” she said.

  I coughed. “Fresh air you’re not,” I said. “At least open the window if you’re going to smoke those bloody things in here.”

  She turned and did as I asked, giving me a moment to admire her behind in those tight jeans. Like I said, I wasn’t dead yet but I wasn’t completely daft either. Even leaving the aura aside, no human woman had ever looked like that no matter how much surgery or Photoshop was involved. My first thought was succubus, but she was way too classy for that. Succubi tend towards streetwalker-chic at the best of times, and this Trixie looked more like a princess than a prostitute.

  “Can I at least get dressed?” I asked her.

  “You can do whatever you like, it’s your flat,” she said.

  “
Maybe some privacy?”

  She laughed. “I want many things, Don, but seeing you naked isn’t one of them,” she said. “I’ll wait in your office.”

  She closed the bedroom door behind her on her way out. I swung my legs out of bed and sat there for a moment, my head pounding and my tongue curled up against the roof of my mouth like some awful cross between a rancid mothball and a dead hamster. At least I didn’t feel sick anymore, that was something. I worked my shoulders, trying to feel if my back was still bleeding. It seemed to have stopped again so I crawled into my dressing gown and dragged myself to the bathroom.

  I felt a lot better for doing the shit, shower and shave routine, and by the time I’d got some clean clothes on I was actually feeling almost human again. That meant it was time to worry about why there was a total stranger in my flat. A drop-dead gorgeous total stranger with an impossible white aura, at that.

  I wandered through to the office to find Trixie sitting on the sofa smoking another one of her posh cigarettes, her legs crossed and one of my clean cups balanced on her knee for an ashtray. I darted a look at the door to my workroom, but it was reassuringly still closed. Hopefully she hadn’t felt the need to be too nosy while I was in the shower. To be fair, if she had, if she’d stumbled upon the Burned Man, I doubted she would still be there.

  “Right,” I said, “first things first. Coffee?”

  “On your desk,” she said.

  I blinked. She had actually made coffee, which was great, but that meant she must have been in the kitchen. That wasn’t so great. There were still the two dead toads left over from last night lying in the sink, after all.

  “Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

  She shrugged. “Sit down Don,” she said.

  I sat in the chair behind my desk and pulled the coffee gratefully towards me. She’d got it dead right, black as tar and so strong it was almost burned. Perfect. She smiled at me as I sipped it.