“Hi,” I said. “Shaman Bond, at your service. The very dangerous person standing beside me is Molly Metcalf, the rightly legendary wild witch of the woods. She has expressed an interest in seeing what goes on at the Order of Beyond, and since I’m far too scared of her to say no, I said I was sure you’d let her in.”
“Because if you don’t, I will take names and kick arse,” Molly said cheerfully.
The receptionist struggled to regain her calm. “Do you have a reservation?”
“No,” said Molly. “I’m going to thoroughly enjoy it. Starting with you, if you don’t get a move on.”
I saw the receptionist reach for an alarm button under the desk and I wagged a warning finger in her face. “Molly Metcalf? Turns people into things? Has a very nasty sense of humour… Is any of this ringing any bells?”
“Go right down,” said the receptionist. “Never wanted this job anyway.”
She moved her hand across to press another button under her desk, and a large trapdoor opened on the floor on the other side of the room, rising slowly and silently of its own accord. Molly and I wandered over to it and looked down. A long stone stairway fell down before us, leading deep into the earth. There was a strong smell of blood and brimstone, and a distant murmur of voices. I insisted on leading the way down, and Molly made me pay for that by crowding my back all the way. The trapdoor slammed shut behind us with a loud, solid, and very final-sounding thud. The bare stone walls beaded with water like sweat, and the air grew hot and close as we descended. I could feel presences below, like heavy weights pressing down on the world and making it cry out. We were going into a bad place, where bad things waited.
Finally, the stone steps curved suddenly round to one side and deposited us into a great natural stone cavern, deep beneath the street. The stone floor stretched away in all directions, covered with blue-chalked pentacles, circles of salt, and rows of squat solid cages made of steel and silver and brass. All designed to safely hold and contain the poor possessed creatures who were the whole reason and purpose of the Order of Beyond. There were men and women and even children, trapped like animals. Some sat and talked calmly, reasonably, arguing that they really didn’t belong in a place like this. Others howled and raged and threw themselves at the cages that held them prisoner, beating at the solid bars with hands that felt no pain. And others just sat and watched sullenly, hatefully, with unblinking eyes, waiting for someone to make a mistake.
Sitting before every possessed prisoner was a member of the order, coaxing and cajoling the possessor into speaking to them. It usually didn’t take much. The possessors do love to talk, to tease and threaten and horrify the listener with lies, half-truths, and terrible facts.
No one in the Order of Beyond was interested in helping any of these people. They didn’t give a damn for the victims. They just wanted to listen, and record everything they heard. There were microphones everywhere, and the most sophisticated recording equipment, and a whole bunch of scribes with pen and paper, to set down what was said by those voices that couldn’t be recorded because technology wouldn’t accept their existence. And sitting comfortably all around, listening intently, were the invited guests, the very well-paying clientele of the Order of Beyond. Who came hoping to hear bits of forbidden knowledge, or hints of the secrets of Heaven and Hell. The Order of Beyond sent full transcripts of everything heard to an extensive mailing list, for an extortionate fee, of course, but there was nothing like being there in person, to hear it for yourself. And just maybe to get the jump on everyone else.
Molly and I stood cautiously at the bottom of the stone steps, letting our eyes adjust to the dim lighting, the rise and fall of harsh overlapping voices, and the stench of hate and fear and things that shouldn’t be allowed in our supposedly sane and rational world. Not all the voices sounded human, though they came from human lips.
There is a river in Hell, made up of the tears of suicides. Tears are wine, among the damned
.
Beware the Many-Angled Ones, the Hyperbreed
!
Beware the Black Sun and what incubates inside it
!
Beware the howling that never ends, and the teeth that rend men’s souls
!
Even death is no escape from what lies waiting, in the worlds beyond the worlds
!
They watch you from the other side of your mirrors, only pretending to be your reflection, waiting and biding their time. And then, in the dead of night, they come out while you’re sleeping, grab you, and force you back into the other side of the mirror, so they can take your place, and do terrible things in your name. Just because they look like you, it doesn’t mean they are you
.
Blood shall rain down, and offal, and the great Beast that is Babalon shall come again, and all Hell shall rise up with her, and…
The Celestials are coming to judge us all, in their million-mile-long spaceships, and we shall be as ants before them…
Please, I don’t want to be here, I shouldn’t be here, there’s something running up and down inside me, and it hurts it hurts it hurts…
You can hear broadcasts from Heaven and Hell every day, on certain designated frequencies. To hear a recording, phone any of these numbers…
“Okay,” said Molly. “Most of this is bullshit, and I should know.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” I said. “I find it very disturbing to be constantly reminded that I’m in love with the original girlfriend from Hell.”
Molly shrugged. “You can’t be a witch of any standing unless you’re prepared to make deals with both sides. And I have to tell you, Eddie, that which side is which depends very much on where you’re standing.” She studied the shadowy figures in their various cages and sniffed loudly. “People pay good money to listen to this shit? I half expected one of them to start spouting pea soup, yelling,
Your mother knits socks in Hell
! Demons lie. It’s what they do.”
“Except when a truth can hurt you more,” I said.
And then a grossly fat man with a purple birthmark covering half his face called me by name. My real name, not my cover identity. In the great babble of voices I was pretty sure it had gone unnoticed, for now, but I moved quickly over to the silver-barred cage before he could use the name again. My torc would keep the recording devices from picking up anything concerning me, but I didn’t want to draw anyone’s attention. I needed to be just Shaman Bond, here. The possessed man was entirely naked, with strange designs daubed all over his dead white skin in dried blood and shit and vomit. He giggled softly and patted his fat hands against the bars of his cage, so I could see he’d bitten off all his fingers. His unblinking eyes were full of blood, and when he spoke his voice was like a child gargling with razor blades, like your best friend telling you he’s slept with your wife, like a cancer growth would if it had vocal cords.
“Edwin Drood, sweet prince of a ruined family, we meet again. Do you remember me? We spoke once before, in the cellars under Dr. Dee’s House of Exorcism. I promised you the world and everything in it, and you turned me down. Too good to listen to the likes of me. But here you are now, searching for wisdom in the strangest of places. Shall I tell you what you need to know, sweet Drood?”
“You don’t know anything I need to know,” I said.
“But I do, I do! Nothing is hidden, from Heaven or Hell. You seek the undying killer, the saint of slaughter, Mr. Stab. And I know where he is.”
“And you’ll tell us, for a price?” said Molly, standing close beside me, as though to protect me. “What are we supposed to do, break you out of here? I don’t think so.”
“No charge, no charge at all, little witch,” crooned the awful presence behind the fat man’s unblinking eyes. “Because getting what you want won’t make you happy, or free, or wise. You humans make your own way to Hell, with every step you take. And so I give you Mr. Stab. My very own poisoned chalice, a gift from Hell to clutch to your family’s bosom.”
“You demons are so full of yourselves,” said Molly. “If you’re going to tell us, tell us.”
“As you wish, dear little indentured soul. Go you now to the Café Night, and someone there will tell you exactly where to find dear Mr. Stab.”
He was still laughing loudly when we left, a horrible, dirty, disturbing sound, even though the attendants shocked him again and again with cattle prods to try to shut him up.
And so by Merlin’s Glass we went straight to Café Night, a deliberately dark and gloomy establishment tucked away in a corner of Kensington you can’t get to without trying really hard. From the outside, the café looked like just another coffeehouse, a place for suburban mums to sit down after a hard day’s shopping and catch up on the latest gossip…but that was just a simple glamour, with an attached
Move along, nothing to see here
spell, to keep the uninformed from entering. Café Night has a strict entrance code, and nonmembers enter strictly at their own risk. The place started out as meeting place for vampires and those foolish romantic types who longed to be their victims. It was called Renfields back then. These days the Café Night catered to the kind of immortals whose presence wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else.
I kicked the door open and strode in like I was there to condemn the place on moral health grounds. The café was distinctly gloomy, with artfully arranged track lighting to keep it that way while still allowing you to see who or what you were talking to. The background music drifted from the Cure to the Mission to Gregorian chants, and the air was perfumed with the sickly reek of rotting lilies. Café Night was big on atmosphere.
Shadowy faces glared at me from every table, but nobody moved and nobody said anything, because I’d taken the precaution of armouring up before I crashed my way in. No one here would say a word to a small-time operator like Shaman Bond, so it was time to be Eddie Drood again and command respect the hard way. My silver armour might not be as familiar yet as the golden, but it still marked me for who and what I was, and what I might do if I didn’t get the answers I wanted. So all the various immortals, dark and dangerous creatures in their own right, were quite happy to just sit still, keep their heads down, and hope I’d pick on someone else.
A few did get up to leave, heading for the rear door the moment I entered. But I’d already sent Molly around the back, and the fleeing immortals stopped dead in their tracks as they found Molly lounging threateningly at the rear door. The immortals retired sullenly to their seats, and Molly came forward into the café to smile at me. Everywhere, cold eyes moved quickly from me to Molly and back again, but still no one had anything to say. They hadn’t lived for so very long without learning to keep their mouths shut until they knew what was happening.
I studied the various faces unhurriedly from behind my featureless silver mask (there’s something about the lack of eyeholes that really freaks people out), and finally settled on the few major players present. The only ones who might admit to knowing Mr. Stab, and where he might currently be found. They weren’t exactly top drawer, any of them. An elf lord in delicate filigreed brass armour, chased and etched with protective spells in old elvish. A monk in a tattered red robe, with a face so lined it was almost impossible to make out his features, marked as significant only by the Sumerian amulet around his neck. A couple of Baron Frankenstein’s more successful creations, dressed in black leather from head to toe, to hide their many scars. And a painfully thin presence in a grubby T-shirt and faded jeans who I only knew by reputation, the Hungry Heart. He had a plate full of steaming raw meat set out before him, and he was cramming it down as fast as he could shove it into his mouth. Blood dripped down his working chin, unnoticed.
Proof, if proof be needed, that immortality isn’t everything.
The elf lord looked vaguely familiar, so I started with him. He sneered openly as I strolled over to his table, disdain written all over his arrogant, high-boned features. He made no move to get up or reach for a weapon, but even sitting still with both empty hands resting on the tabletop, he was still the most dangerous thing in the café, and both of us knew it.
“I know you,” I said. “Where do I know you from, elf lord?”
“I was there,” he said in his sweet, sick, magical voice. “Leading the attack on you, in our ambush on the motorway. After your own family betrayed you to us. We came at you on our dragon mounts, singing our battle songs, with our brave new weapons. We had you outnumbered, we had our arrows of strange matter, and still you triumphed. Elf lords and ladies of ancient lineage, friends and family I had known for centuries, all fell beneath the thunder of your terrible gun. I am the only survivor of that day, but rest assured, foul and cursed Drood…the Unseeli Court does not forgive or forget.”
“Good,” I said. “Neither do I.”
“We shall be at your throat all the days of your life!”
“Of course you will,” I said. “You’re an elf.”
And then I turned my back on him, and ignored him. Knowing that would piss him off the most. There was no point in questioning an elf. He’d cut his own tongue out before taking the risk he might say anything that would help me. I looked thoughtfully at the monk in the scarlet robe, and he straightened self-consciously under my silver gaze.
“Know, O mortal,” he said, in a surprisingly rich, deep, and commanding voice, “that I am Melmoth the Wanderer, that original lost soul upon whom the legend is based. Long have I wandered, across all the world, through lands and peoples whose very names are now forgotten.”
And then he stopped, because everyone else in the café was laughing at him. I couldn’t really blame them. I’d already met a dozen Melmoths in my time, all claiming to be the original, along with as many Draculas, Fausts, and Count St. Germaines. Even immortals have their wannabes. I leaned in close for a better look at the Sumerian amulet, and the monk flinched back in his chair. Up close, the thing was clearly a fake, and I turned my back on the monk too, and looked at the Frankenstein monsters.