Dominion Page 7

  “What a pity,” said Trixie.

  “Ah well, just cards it is then,” I said.

  I offered Trixie my arm and we went up the stairs together. I chanced a quick look back and saw Connie talking urgently into his phone. Funny that. Not as funny as the mental image of Wormwood scurrying across the club like a frightened rat and barricading himself in his office, admittedly, but funny all the same.

  The club itself wasn’t particularly busy yet but it was warm and comfortingly dark and smoky, the way a proper club should be. I could hear soft music playing and the clink of glasses, the rattle of dice on the craps table and the clatter of the roulette wheel. I could feel my gambling muscle starting to twitch. I snagged us a couple of glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and nodded towards the far corner.

  “That’s his office door,” I said. “Twenty quid says he’s hiding under the desk.”

  Trixie smiled and sipped her drink.

  “I’ll go and have a little chat with him,” she said. “Try not to lose too much money while I’m gone.”

  She sauntered off with her champagne glass in one hand and a long black cigarette in the other, giving Audrey Hepburn lessons in how it was done. I watched her for a moment, and sighed wistfully. It was no good, was it? It just wasn’t going to happen. I went to look for a game of cards.

  It didn’t take long to find one, to be fair. There was a bloke I didn’t recognise sitting at a table by himself, the two decks laid out in front of him ready for Fates. I eyed the cards, the thick deck for the suits and the slimmer one of major arcana which were the trumps in the game, and I felt my gambling muscle twitch again. Trixie had told me not to lose too much money but she never told me not to play at all. I think she probably knew me better than that by then anyway. I went and sat down opposite the geezer.

  He looked up at me with eyes that glowed with a reddish light in the gloom of the club. Now normally that wouldn’t exactly be a good sign but Wormwood’s is that sort of place, in case you hadn’t gathered by now. You get all sorts in there. Other than the eyes he looked human. He was wearing a smart suit and he had a long, sharp silver ring on each finger of both hands.

  “Evening,” I said.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he said.

  “Don Drake.”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “Call me Antonio.”

  If he was Italian I was from fucking Mars, but whatever. You didn’t ask questions about who or what people were, not in Wormwood’s you didn’t anyway. That just wasn’t polite. A quick squint at his aura was enough to tell me he definitely wasn’t human. No human has a dark red aura. Interesting bloke, our Antonio.

  “Fancy a few hands?” I asked him, and he nodded.

  I glanced up at the hovering croupier.

  “Go on then, mate,” I said. “Set us up.”

  Customers never get to deal the cards at Wormwood’s place. They’re very firm about that, which is a pain in the arse. I’m good with cards if I say so myself, but when I can’t cheat, my luck isn’t always quite so impressive. The croupier reached between us to cut the two decks then began to deal the minor arcana, the suits. I picked my hand up and fanned the cards, looking over them at this Antonio geezer. His eyes glowed back at me as he did the same thing. Nothing showed on his face, nothing at all.

  My hand was a piece of shit. A ten of swords was the best card I had, and nothing went together at all. I tossed a useless two of cups face down on the table, and my opponent also chucked a card down.

  “Card,” I said, and he nodded.

  The croupier dished us each out another card from the minor arcana. The way Fates is played, you have to decide on your suits before you draw your trump and once you have, you can’t change it. That’s the Fate part of the game. I slid the card towards me and up into my fan. Ten of pentacles. That was more fucking like it. I threw in another useless card, and again the bloke opposite me did the same. I got something equally useless back. Still, a pair of tens wasn’t too bad, and a decent trump could still make it a winning hand. It would have to do.

  “Stand,” I said.

  Antonio changed yet another card, then he was done as well.

  “Trumps,” the croupier announced.

  He picked up the slim deck of major arcana and gave it a flamboyant shuffle, then dealt us each a card. I looked down at mine and had to try hard not to smile. I had drawn Judgment. Judgment is the twentieth trump so it scores one from maximum, or two from maximum depending if you’re playing Fool high or low. The house rule at Wormwood’s was Fool low, making it score nothing at all. Wormwood didn’t suffer fools gladly, after all. Anyway, that meant I had just turned a mediocre hand into a bloody good one.

  “Fifty,” I said.

  Ol’ Red Eyes nodded.

  “And raise you fifty,” he said.

  We went back and forth till we got to five hundred, then he shook his head.

  “Call,” he said.

  He had a pair of sixes and the Lovers so that was him well and truly beat. I grinned as the croupier noted my win in his tablet against Antonio’s account. No one plays with anything so vulgar as cash or even chips in Wormwood’s club. Unless artefacts are being gambled for, everything is on account, with the assumption that anyone able to even get in there is going to be good for it. That had bitten me in the arse once before, admittedly, but there you go.

  “Another hand?” I asked.

  Antonio nodded.

  “I want to win my money back,” he said.

  I bet you do, I thought, my gambling muscle going into spasm now. I was starting to feel like this guy might have “easy mark” written all over him, despite his less than welcoming appearance. Looking scary doesn’t mean you can play cards for shit, after all.

  The croupier dealt again, and again I ended up with a reasonable if not brilliant hand.

  “Stand,” I said, after swapping out a couple of cards.

  I lifted my trump and slid it into my fan, carefully keeping my face smooth. Judgment again. I see…

  “Fifty,” I started.

  Antonio called me at five hundred again, and again I had him.

  “You drew the same trump twice in a row,” he observed.

  “Yup,” I said. “Looks that way.”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “Again.”

  Now, you have to understand that Fates isn’t just about gambling. The Tarot has its own power, and all of Wormwood’s croupiers are highly skilled with it. They’re all psychic too – no one ever cheats in Wormwood’s club, with the possible exception of Wormwood himself. The croupiers would know it straight away. Anyway, the point is, Fates is as much about divination as it is about the money that changes hands over it. The last time I’d had a string of the same trump in Fates it had been the Tower, the card that commonly meant danger, crisis and destruction, and my life had gone quite rapidly to shit in a sack almost immediately afterwards. I was starting to wonder about this.

  We played again, and this time I managed to get myself a nice eight-high flush. Not bad at all. Antonio was looking intensely at me over his cards.

  “Trumps,” he said.

  The croupier dealt, and I slowly edged mine up off the table. To be honest I already sort of knew what I was going to get, and I was right. I slid Judgment into my fan and swallowed. Someone was definitely trying to tell me something here, but I shuddered to think who.

  “Hundred,” I said, keen to get this over with now.

  “Raise you two hundred,” Antonio said.

  I looked down at my cards, at Judgment looking back at me. We played with the classic Rider Waite deck at Wormwood’s. The image for Judgment in that deck is the Archangel Gabriel looming out of the sky at the end of the world, in case you didn’t know. The Day of Judgment. I wasn’t finding that very comforting right then, for all that I was about to take this bloke yet again. I found myself losing interest in the game all of a sudden.

  I called him, and tossed my cards down on the table. He snarled
and leaned forward over the table towards me, his eyes blazing red.

  “I don’t believe it,” he hissed. “Three times? You’re a cheat!”

  I leaned back in my chair and let the croupier take care of it. Cheating is a very serious accusation anywhere, but especially in here where everyone should know it was flat-out impossible. That was a direct insult to both Wormwood’s security and to the competence of his croupiers. Not a wise thing to say, on either count.

  “I assure you the gentleman is not cheating,” the croupier said.

  He reached out and put his hand over Antonio’s face. His fingers grew like many-jointed spines, popping out extra knuckles and stretching and elongating until they had enclosed Antonio’s entire head in a nightmarish cage of flesh and bone. The croupier squeezed and Antonio went rigid in his seat, his glowing red eyes suddenly bulging in their sockets. A hiss of wordless pain escaped his lips and I realised he was seconds away from having his skull crushed to pulp.

  “You will be leaving the club now, sir,” the croupier said, “and you will be settling your account before you go. You will not ever be coming back.”

  A moment later another three of Wormwood’s people appeared beside him and took Antonio by the arms. The croupier let him go and his enormous hand gradually shrank back to normal size, all the extra knuckles cracking disgustingly as they retracted.

  “Please accept the apologies of the house, Mr Drake,” he said. “I will make an adjustment to your account to recompense you for the inconvenience.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, staring queasily at the guy’s hand.

  I swallowed. That was just nasty. I got up and left the card table as Antonio was escorted firmly away.

  I can’t even play cards in peace these days.

  “Don-boy Drake,” said a voice at my elbow. The thick Haitian accent was unmistakable. That and no one else has ever called me that. “Long time no see!”

  I turned and grinned at him. “Hello Papa,” I said.

  Papa Armand was very old and very black and very handsome. He was wearing a tuxedo tonight, with his trademark silk top hat tipped at a rakish angle and a thin white silk scarf draped around his narrow shoulders. Diamond signet rings glittered on his fingers as he lifted a glass of rum to his lips and drank.

  “Your health, Don-boy,” he said. “I see you brought Madame Zanj Bèl to smile on us tonight.”

  He always called her that. As far as I could work out it was Haitian Creole for “beautiful angel”. She certainly didn’t seem to mind, anyway.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s just having a little chat with Wormwood but I’m sure she’ll want to see you too.”

  “Fine lookin’ woman right there, Don-boy,” he said, although he knew exactly what she was. “Mighty fine lookin’ woman.”

  “She certainly is that,” I agreed.

  “Mighty dangerous, too.”

  “Yeah, that too,” I said, and sighed again.

  “Could be dangerous for you, I’m thinking, you pick the wrong side. She could fuck you up, that one.” The old goat was forever flirting with Trixie, but under all that I knew he took her very seriously indeed. “Come now, throw some dice with Papa.”

  He lit a cigar and led me across the club to a craps table that wasn’t being used, where he shooed the croupier away with a dismissive flick of his hand. Papa Armand was almost as rich as Wormwood and seemed to be able to pretty much do as he pleased here. He reached into the inside pocket of his tuxedo and pulled out a handful of polished bones.

  “Chicken bone,” he said. “Ver’ traditional.”

  He tossed the bones onto the green felt and stirred them thoughtfully with one finger. The diamonds in his rings caught the light and sparkled hypnotically. He pushed one bone over another and chuckled. He had a wonderful laugh, dark and rich as molasses.

  “Drawin’ vévés on the craps table, how the world change,” he said, and laughed again. “Can you see Papa Legba leaning on his cane, Don-boy? Can you smell the smoke of his ol’ corncob pipe? You stand at the crossroads wit’ Papa Legba, Don-boy, while the Houses draw up for war ‘round you. Which way you goin’ walk?”

  I was starting to feel a bit lightheaded. Papa Armand blew cigar smoke in my face, thickly scented with rum. For a moment I thought I really could see the loa of the crossroads standing where Papa Armand was, the image of a battered straw hat wavering in and out at the edge of sight in place of his silk topper. Legba had the stem of his pipe between his teeth and a kindly smile on his face that made me feel… welcome.

  “That’s quite enough of that, Armand dear,” Trixie said.

  I blinked, and as suddenly as that the image was gone.

  “Bon aswè, Zanj Bèl,” he said, and laughed again.

  He bowed low and kissed her hand.

  “Armand, you’re incorrigible,” she said, but she was smiling too. “Don, I’m pleased to say our host has graciously agreed to lend us the thing which we asked to borrow.”

  “Graciously?” I asked.

  “Well,” she conceded, “perhaps not. But he has agreed, which is all that really matters.”

  “Who could refuse Madame Zanj Bèl any request?” Papa Armand murmured.

  I left Papa Armand flirting outrageously with Trixie and went to find another drink. Wormwood was still nowhere in sight and I couldn’t help wondering if Trixie had left him whimpering in the corner of his office. I did hope so, the little git. I rounded myself up a whisky and turned away from the waiter to find myself face to face with a handsome woman in her mid-fifties. She flicked open an extravagant peacock feather fan and wafted it slowly up and down in front of her face, looking at me over the top of it. I remembered her then – I didn’t know who she was but I’d seen her there last year, the night Trixie had well and truly put Wormwood in his place. The woman had been having a heated argument with Papa Armand that night.

  “Mr Drake,” she said, her voice low and flavoured with an American accent, from somewhere in the South. “You haven’t been paying any mind to that fool of a Houngan I hope?”

  I tried on my most disarming smile. “He’s harmless,” I said, although I knew he really wasn’t.

  “He is not, and you know it,” she said. So much for my disarming smile. “He’s crazy, and he’s dangerous.”

  “Look,” I said, “sorry, but I don’t think we’ve been introduced. You seem to know my name but I’m afraid, um…”

  “They call me Miss Marie,” she said, and gave me a flirtatious smile. “Just Marie to you, honey.”

  “Right,” I said, feeling a bit awkward.

  I offered my hand and she shook it, and gave it just a little bit too much of a squeeze before she let go. I have to admit I’m not used to being flirted with. It was weird, and I couldn’t help thinking that I’d really rather she didn’t. That was how bad I had it for Trixie, I have to admit.

  “About that old fool,” she said, leaning close enough for me to smell her expensive French perfume. “I have to say, Mr Drake, you could do a lot better. If you’re feeling the need for a teacher, well, I’m sure I could show you a few things.”

  I was sure she could, but that was hardly the point. The point at that precise moment was that one of her breasts was resting on my arm, and she didn’t seem to be inclined to move any time soon. It really was making me feel a bit uncomfortable.

  “Call me Don,” I felt obliged to say. “And I think I can pick my own friends, ta. I’m a big boy.”

  She laughed at that, covering her mouth with her fan as she did so. At least she moved away a bit to do it, that was something I supposed.

  “Oh I’m sure you are and I’m sure you can,” she said, “but can you pick your own side? He’s leading you by the nose like a hog to market, and you’re going the wrong way.”

  “Oh yeah? How’s that then?”

  “I’ve seen you around, and I’ve heard things,” she said. “The way you speak to Wormwood, for one. That isn’t normal, honey. A mortal speaking to an archdemon
like that, shoving him around. That’s the sort of thing that gets a man noticed, and that kind of notice isn’t always good, if you take my meaning.”

  I wasn’t sure that I did, but I didn’t get the chance to ask her to explain.

  “Is everything all right, Don?” Trixie asked from beside me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  Marie tipped her head to one side and looked Trixie slowly and unsubtly up and down.

  “Mmmm,” she purred. “Well hello there.”

  I have to say she looked a lot more interested in Trixie than she had in me, which was a bit of a relief. It was also quite funny, in all honesty.

  Trixie blinked at her in obvious confusion, and it was an effort not to laugh. For all that Trixie was death walking when she wanted to be, she could still be endearingly naive in other ways. The thought that Miss Marie was attracted to her would never even have entered her head, I was sure.

  “Hello,” she said. “Do I know you?”

  “Why, would you like to?” the woman asked.

  “No she would not,” Papa said, appearing on my other side in a cloud of cigar smoke. “No one want to know you, old whore.”

  “Haven’t you died of the goddamn clap yet?” she asked. “I was trying to talk to this gentleman here, and this lovely lady.”

  “No one want to know you, no one want to talk to you,” Papa snapped. “Maybe you forget what I told you, Marie. You’re not welcome here, in my eyes.”

  “Erm,” I said, “we should probably go. Goodnight Papa.”

  “Go well, Don-boy,” he said. “Orevwa, Zanj Bèl. I will dream of you.”

  Trixie smiled and we left him to his argument.

  “Who was she?” Trixie asked, as we made our way down the stairs.

  “You know, I have no idea,” I said. “Probably no one.”

  Chapter 9

  The skull was delivered to my office the next afternoon.

  I opened the door to see one of Wormwood’s boys standing there, a reasonably human-looking one wearing a plain black suit. Human-looking apart from the spines growing out of his neck, anyway. I was fairly sure he was one of the waiters who had helped to sling Antonio out of the club last night, but I couldn’t have sworn to it. He had a big aluminium flight case in his hand, and over his shoulder I could see Wormwood’s huge black Rolls Royce idling at the side of the road. The tinted front window rolled down and Connie nodded at me from his position wedged in behind the wheel.