Angels of Music (47 page)

She remembered exactly who he was.

Smiling, the fellow opened his coat… like a degenerate exposing his tiny male organ to a Salvation Army band. The lining of the garment was outfitted with rows of narrow pockets – each sheathing a knife of a different length, width or shape.

Rollo the Knife-Thrower, dismissed from the
Théâtre des Horreurs
for enthusiastic collaboration with
le cercle rouge
. An artist with blades, he had somehow avoided the one in the guillotine. Assolant had kept up an association with the little torturer. Kate wasn’t surprised.

There was a commotion. Soldiers and frog-men rattled into action. Shouts went up. Lanterns waved. A blinding, fizzing purple flare soared, illuminating the illustrated ceiling. A volley of shots – rifles, pistols and spearguns – were discharged. The target was a panel above the Grand Staircase. Isidore Pils’
Minerva Fighting Brutality Watched by the Gods of Olympus
would need repair. Something had moved up there… or someone had imagined something moving up there.

The flare fell to the marble floor and had to be stamped out. Kate blinked until the after-images went away.

Assolant’s scarred side was the colour of blood.

‘I saw… it,’ whimpered a soldier. ‘Like a giant bird with a human skull for a head.’

‘A ghost,’ said another.

‘
The
ghost,’ insisted a third.

‘Just a shadow,’ said a rifleman, annoyed that he’d joined the panic.

A frog-man said something indistinct through his breathing apparatus.

‘It’s just a shadow when you look at it face-on,’ said Irene, very loudly. ‘But when it’s behind you –
then
it’s him. The Phantom of the Opera. He can kill with a mere touch. Stop your heart with a whistle. See into your soul with those yellow poached-egg eyes and murder all those you love. If they were half a world away, he would still smite them dead… because he is a demon from Hell. A demon you’ve enraged by coming here. He loves only this building and music. And you’ve profaned his temple!’

Irene gathered an audience. It was as if the men
wanted
to be terrified.

Thi Minh used her rain-cloak like the Phantom’s cape and gave the troops a bare-teeth rictus, bugged out her eyes and laughed silently. Swiftly, she shinned up a column, hung upside-down with her hair dangling like a rope for a moment, and twisted around to slide out of sight… a perfect disappearing act.

The girl popped up again, and impishly put her hands around one soldier’s throat, butterfly-kissing his nose… then tipped another’s cap over his eyes with a deft move and ducked under a swiping rifle-butt.

She gestured with long fingers.

‘Watch out,’ said Irene. ‘There’s a Phantom about!’

The little group of soldiers quaked like frightened children.

‘Ignore these foreign woman,’ insisted Assolant, brusquely. ‘They are a danger to morale.’

‘Flatterer,’ said Irene, winking.

Her spook stories would be repeated. Armies were more addicted to gossip and bogey tales than a ladies’ sewing circle. Greater, more fabulous tales of the Phantom’s supernatural powers would spread. It wasn’t as if anyone needed the fear put into them. They already saw Erik in every corner. They’d be shooting at each other soon.

Who knows? Maybe he had been up there.

He must be somewhere in the house.

An electric crackle and an acrid smell startled Kate. She turned to see an elderly man, with a shock of white hair, marching across the foyer with a high-stepping, grasshopper gait. This extraordinary character was strapped into a black carapace-like corset which extended to leather and wire leg- and arm-braces and spiked shoulder-pieces. His belt hung heavy with holstered implements Kate couldn’t name. Like the frog-men, he wore a back-humping pack – but his wasn’t for breathing. Sparks fell wherever he walked and gears ground in the joints of his braces. Some sort of electric battery served as motive power. She thought he needed his machinery to walk. He had wing-like leather folds under his arms.

‘That’s Falke,’ said Irene. ‘The Black Bat.’

Kate knew his story. A case from Unorna’s watch, when she’d been an Angel alongside the detective La Marmoset and the assassin Sophy Kratides.
L’affaire du vampire
.

Falke wore an A armband, though he had a batwing insignia on his chest.

‘He’s
old
,’ said Kate.

‘Not
that
old,’ said Irene.

‘Not just old, but broken.’

‘He’s compensating well, I’d say. I wonder if those electric britches come in ladies’ sizes.’

Sometimes, Kate wondered whether Irene wouldn’t be happier on the other side.

Then, she asked herself if there really were sides.

‘La Marmoset, a cleverer Angel even than you, broke Falke… and he came back,’ said Irene. ‘You broke Assolant… and he came back. It’s a pattern.’

Alraune cocked an ear. She seized on Irene’s observation.

‘In your grand old days, it seems Angels didn’t break them enough,’ she said. ‘Know who you don’t see here? Any of
my
enemies. Thi Minh and I have put a lot of them down. You probably don’t even know their names… Frank Braun, Dr Gilson, le Rat, Kilian Gurlitt. The ones we broke stay broken.’

Kate’s hackles pricked at the younger woman’s sneer.

Besides, she was wrong. The old days weren’t always dainty, innocent and amusing.

Georges Du Roy wouldn’t trouble them in this century, for a start. Kate shed no tears for him, or the other cut-up cut-ups of
le cercle rouge
. Few who’d met Clara Watson or Lady Yuki would think them more merciful than this century’s Angels. Both filled graveyards by themselves. Clara took her own sweet time about it, giving individual attention to each of her enemies – and, Kate shuddered to recall, some of her
friends
. Many welcomed death as an end to pain.

But a dark light in the German girl’s eyes disturbed Kate. An
unnatural
light.

If any Angel was ready for the next war – and the war after that – it was Alraune ten Brincken. Intelligence in her Diogenes Club file was vague and partial. One report averred she was seeded in a laboratory, grown from a culture like an Olympia of flesh. She was the Mandrake Maid. Identical sisters might be curled in embryo, nestled inside buds on a hardy potted vine. Ten Brincken wasn’t a family name, but a
genus
. She was named for the Professor who
cultivated
her.

Falke jerkily approached Assolant and came to an awkward standstill. White fluid leaked from one of his knee-braces.

Kate realised the Black Bat must be the inventor of the frog-man apparatus. If he’d concentrated on constructive uses of his inventions, he’d be recognised as a great man. He could help the lame walk and let men breathe underwater.

‘The Fellowship has lost three more,’ reported Falke. ‘Many traps are set, all over the cellars. I must be given more resources.’

Kate’s ears had pricked at the mention of traps.

Irene winked at her. They both knew who set traps in this building.

‘It is imperative we bring in this Phantom,’ said Falke. ‘The Ascent cannot go ahead until he has been removed.’

Ascent? Another A.

‘We have his women,’ said Assolant. ‘Without his cat’s paws, he’s nothing. A hollow mask.’

Kate knew that wasn’t true.

If Assolant lined up the Angels and shot them, Erik would still prevail. She trusted it wouldn’t come to that. She’d quite like to be on the prevailing team herself, rather than written off as a significant casualty.

What was the extent of this Fellowship? There must be more in it than Falke and Assolant. The Black Bat and the General were holdovers from the last century – like herself and Irene, she quietly admitted to herself. Falke was a genius and Assolant was cruel beyond reason, but neither could launch an attack on Unorna from the spiritual plane. They had to have a magician of their own.

So, some players had yet to show themselves.

‘I believe Alraune has a point,’ said Irene. ‘So many of the Agency’s old friends are here. One might almost think it a reunion. Do you figure all the folks Erik’s given black eyes have a club or a society? And they’ve finally had enough of just bitching about him and set out to get their own back? By shutting us all down.’

‘It’s more like we’re being swept aside or trodden on – an irritant in the way of huge plans,’ said Kate. ‘Nothing special, but annoying.’

‘That’s what I want on my tombstone, Katie. “Nothing special, but annoying”.’

‘I’m going with “Never Surrender”. Though, at the moment, it seems we have.’

‘Quiet, you!’ said Rollo.

The little man had a knife in either hand.

‘Are you our jailer now?’ asked Kate. ‘That’s the best you can hope for in this company, I imagine.’

Rollo fingered a sharp, curved paring knife. Ideal for peeling apples, it would do just as neat a job on a face.

‘You’re not my prisoners, my Angels,’ he said. ‘You’re my
reward
.’

Olympia, lurching a little as if her heart-clock were running down, laid a heavy hand on Rollo’s shoulder. Steel fingers clamped tight. He turned and slashed at her face, scoring a line which didn’t bleed, blunting his knife. She let him go and put her hands to her face. She pinched her wound shut and it healed over.

Rollo’s mouth hung open.

‘Don’t you know,’ said Irene. ‘Angels never bleed.’

Rollo looked at his knife and tried to stick it in Olympia’s chest. She caught his wrist and stopped his thrust. He strained, but she held him fast. The knife-point was inches away from her body. She kept hold and forced him to his knees, then wrenched his arm and made him drop the weapon. He yelped like a whipped dog. Mrs Eynsford Hill quietly snaffled the knife to go with the fork she’d stolen earlier. If she found a spoon, she’d have a dinner service.

None of Rollo’s comrades made a move to help him. The foyer was so cavernous, underlit and crowded he could probably be killed without anyone paying attention. Olympia or Alraune would do the job – maybe even Irene. The American might easily take Alraune’s sneer about ‘the grand old days’ as a challenge to show enough ruthlessness to keep up with this young, urgent, callous century.

The crowd stirred. Whispers went round. People shifted in half-scared, half-eager excitement. They reminded Kate of an audience who know a great star is about to make an entrance… or those flocking birds who sense a coming earthquake and fly off
en masse
.

Rollo didn’t complain at his ill-treatment – as if he knew no one would listen.

Assolant and Falke looked to the staircase which dominated the foyer. The Paris Opéra often threw parties entirely on the steps. Kate had never seen a more impressive set of stairs under a roof.

Bare-chested Nubians with long white silk kilts and hats like lampshades formed rows on the steps. They raised trumpets and blew a discordant fanfare. Kate would have expected this sort of spectacle on the stage, not in the lobby.

Plumes of flame, reflected to infinity in the mirrors and polished gilt trim, puffed out of dragon-mouth mortars. More of Falke’s ingenuity?

Someone shimmery appeared at the top of the stairs.

‘Antinea,’ went up the cry. ‘Antinea, Antinea…’

Kate did not recognise the startlingly beautiful young woman.

The Queen of Atlantis wore a gigantic headdress of peacock feathers. Her sheer aquamarine sheath would have been too risqué for the Folies Bergère. She was decorated like a potentate’s Christmas tree. More jewels hung off her than A.J. Raffles and Arsène Lupin could steal in their whole careers. Six little attendant girls with fish-masks and scaly leotards held a twenty-foot train.

‘Oh no,’ said Irene, ‘not
her
!’

Kate looked to Irene for further explanation.

‘As I live and breathe, Joséphine Balsamo!’

‘Countess de Cagliostro?’ asked Kate.

‘Yeah, that’s the hussy.
Another old friend
.’

‘D
AMN IT, SHE
’
S
still
young
,’ said Irene, bitterly. ‘She really is one of
those
.’

‘Those?’ prompted Kate.

‘The frozen-in-time people. Not like you or I… No looking in the glass for grey hairs or tiny wrinkles… no worries about an extra glass or
petit-four
adding to the
avoirdupois
.’

The Countess de Cagliostro hadn’t aged since the Affair of the Marriage Club, the best part of (cough) forty years before. Two thirds of Irene’s life had passed since then. A few heartbeats for Jo Balsamo.

‘You don’t think she’s
really
Cagliostro’s daughter? She’d be over a hundred and fifty years old.’

‘Didn’t you read the stop press, Katie? Jo Balsamo doesn’t claim that any more. Now, she’s supposed to be
Antinea
. Eternal Queen of Atlantis. Which means she’s been around for
thousands
of years. And has picked Paris as capital of her new Atlantean Empire.’

‘Come on, Irene! She has to be a fraud!’

‘Of course she is, but she’s an
old
fraud… and doesn’t look it. She’s the same woman all right, the besom we saw off in the seventies. No mistaking those eyes. How does she do it? Smearing on a tincture of royal jelly and bee-venom? Maybe she was born that way, to age from birth to young womanhood and then
set
… like a pudding. Old as sin in her heart but fresh as a daisy in bloom on the outside.’

The store-room was cramped and mouldy. Water had got in, ruining a collection of
papier-mâché
animals. The Communards had used this part of the building as a jail. When the opera company took back the house, they didn’t trouble to change locks or take out grilles in the doors. So it was easy to use the store-rooms as cells again.

Welcome to the Dungeons of Atlantis – don’t mind the damp.

Rollo, the leering little beast with the bald head and the hairy wrists, had shoved them into three adjacent rooms. Elizabeth was in with Olympia (almost completely wound down). Thi Minh (jaunty as ever) and Alraune shared a cell with a pile of broken musical instruments. Irene and Kate were stuck with Unorna (still dead to the world).