Drake (23 page)

The voice thundered and roared behind me, and still I couldn't turn, still couldn't see what it was that spoke. I'm not sure I'm sorry about that, all things considered.

“Thrones and Dominions I show you, furious children,” it bellowed. “Your time here is at an end.”

Ally exploded like she'd swallowed a kilo of Semtex.

So much for the Furies.

“You have saved my soldier-sister-daughter,” the voice rumbled, its volume finally dropping slightly below the pain threshold. “For the first time in your life, Donald Drake, you have put another before yourself. Today, you offered your first real sacrifice. There may yet be hope.”

I was speechless with a mixture of awe and sheer bloody terror.

“May I–” Trixie began, in a small, hoarse voice.

“This matter of the Burned Man is not ended, and this came close to catastrophe,” the voice cut over her as though she hadn't spoken. “The thrones are watching over you, and I now task you as guardian. Guard your charge well.”

And that was all.

The atomic light and crushing pressure vanished as though they had never been. The silence was almost total. It seemed very dark in there, now that the maelstrom of light and noise had disappeared as suddenly as it had come. The Burned Man coughed and muttered to itself, but wisely held its peace for once.

I heard the creak of the van's suspension as Debbie finally climbed down from the back. She stood there staring at me for a moment, at Trixie and the Burned Man and the ragged tatters of what had once been Ally and her sisters. She had a look of dull, shellshocked horror on her face that reminded me of those people you see on the news sometimes, the survivors of disasters and war zones.

She shook her head slowly, and fixed me with a cold stare.

“I
never
want to see you again,” she said.

I
t took some doing
, but I eventually got Trixie and the Burned Man back to my place. The car park turned out to be underneath a condemned tower block not far from a parade of tatty shops. It was getting late by then, but eventually we managed to hail a cab on the high street. I don't know where Debbie went. She walked quite deliberately in the opposite direction from us when we finally found our way out of the concrete labyrinth underneath the building, and I haven't seen her since. The last I heard she'd moved to Glasgow.

If the cabbie wondered why Trixie was covered in cuts and blood and soot, or what exactly was wriggling and muttering to itself under my coat, my promise of a fifty quid tip in exchange for a silent ride home proved enough to stop him from actually asking.

I was starting to get worried about Trixie, truth be told. She hadn't said a single word since the Dominion had left, if indeed that's what it had been. She hadn't even noticed when I had picked up Ally's dagger and tucked it through my belt, before covering it and the Burned Man with my coat.

We drew up outside Mr Chowdhury's shop after a long, tense drive. Trixie had spent the whole trip staring straight ahead, her bloodshot eyes glassy and blank looking. I paid off the driver and helped Trixie awkwardly out of the back of the cab, struggling to hold the Burned Man still under my coat with my other hand. The taxi drove off, and I unlocked my front door.

“I really have got to get around to doing something about that bloody sign,” I said, hoping to get some sort of response out of her to lighten the mood.

Trixie just looked at me, haunted eyes in an expressionless face, and said nothing. I nodded and pushed the door open with a sigh, and followed her inside. For once I didn't even look at her arse as she climbed the stairs in front of me.

She walked into my office and sat down on the sofa, and still she hadn't said anything. I tossed my coat over the desk and carried the Burned Man through to the workroom. It looked up at me as I set the piece of wood it was still chained to carefully back into the hole in the altar. The ancient wood would heal soon enough. I knew that all too well from my own attempt to steal it, all those years ago.

“We need to talk,” I said to it, keeping my voice as low as I could, “but not now. Do me a favour and just keep quiet for a bit, OK?”

It nodded slowly, and mercifully said nothing. It looked too crushed with disappointment to speak anyway. I was halfway out of the door when I remembered the dagger still stuck through my belt. I had seen what it could do, and I knew where it must have come from too. If
Adam
had given it to Ally then… well, let's just say I wasn't about to chuck something like that out without giving it some serious thought first. I opened one of the drawers in the big cupboard under my books and slipped the dagger inside. I stood there for a moment, looking at the chest of drawers, then nodded slowly. I closed the workroom door behind me.

Trixie was where I had left her, staring out of the office window with a vacant look on her face. I went into the kitchen and made coffee for us both. Her cigarette case and lighter were sitting on the kitchen table, I noticed. She still hadn't moved when I came back through a few minutes later and held a cup of coffee in front of her face.

“Here,” I said.

She reached out and took it, that was something. I had been starting to get a bit scared that she might have gone catatonic on me. I held her fags out to her as well, and she took them from me without a word. She took a cigarette out of the case without even looking, lit it one-handed and blew a long stream of acrid Russian smoke into her coffee.

I put my cup on the edge of the desk and crouched down in front of her to look her in the eyes. She looked so lost it broke my heart. I wanted to hug her, but I didn't quite dare.

“Trixie,” I said gently.

She surged to her feet and hurled her cup across the office with a primal scream of rage. The cup exploded against the far wall, sending a great gout of black coffee bursting across the dried remains of Lavender's head that still decorated the plaster.

“Why?” she shrieked. “Why did he
arm
her? I'd have had the bitch if he hadn't given her that
fucking
dagger!”

I took a wary step backwards. She had stopped bothering to try to mask her aura. The rotten taint had receded considerably from where it had been when she was trying to command the Burned Man, but it wasn't gone altogether. There were still thin black tendrils running through her golden glow, surrounding a pattern of greenish blooms like mould on stale bread. One of them was moving even now, almost too slow to see, but I swear it was getting bigger.

“Trixie,” I said again, “look, um, sit down, yeah? I think I know the answer but… well, you're scaring the shit out of me right now, to be perfectly honest with you.”

She looked at me and blinked in surprise as though noticing I was there for the first time.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

She sat down and retrieved the cigarette she had dropped on the floor when she hurled her cup. She brushed ash from the end and took a slow drag, looking expectantly up at me. I had a sip of my coffee and sighed.

“Look,” I said, “I mean, I'm half guessing some of this here but… well, I think I've got it straight in my head now.”

“Go on then,” she said.

“So, Adam,” I said, and stopped again. “You
do
know who he is, yes?”

“Yes,” Trixie whispered. “I know.”

I must admit I had rather been hoping that she hadn't, but there we were. I sighed again.

“Right,” I said. “So, well, you know he isn't exactly the most trustworthy of people then, don't you? By reputation at least, if nothing else.”

“I suppose,” Trixie said, almost too quietly to hear.

I nodded. “So, the way I see it, he's been deliberately trying to make you fall all along, ever since you first, you know, slipped a bit. He's been setting you up, and he's been using Ally to do it. He brought the other two sisters back and put them in Ally's body to make that fight too tempting for you to resist. He gave you the chance to end your war in a single stroke and finally go home at last, if you just killed her. You were never going to be able to turn that down, were you? But you're
good
, Trixie, that was his problem. You're hell on wheels with that sword, if you'll pardon the expression, and he couldn't take the risk that you might actually beat her on your own. That, and he had to make Ally think he was helping
her
if he wanted to get her to go along with the plan at all, so he gave her the dagger to give her an edge in your final showdown. With that in her hand and her sisters' power added to hers as well you couldn't beat her, could you? Not on your own, anyway, not unless you used the Burned Man.

“He might have told you I'd eventually give it to you but he never believed that and he never even wanted me to, because that would have spoiled his plan. No, he needed you to have to steal it, because so long as you didn't legitimately own it the only way you could use it at all was to force your Will down into Hell and attempt to directly command it, which is what he wanted you to do all along because
that
would guarantee that you fell good and proper, wouldn't it?”

Trixie stared at me for a long moment, then nodded miserably.

“Yes,” she admitted.

I pushed my hands back through my hair and grimaced. “The only thing I don't get is
why
. Why did he want you so badly in the first place, out of all the angels?”

“Because I'm good at what I do, like you said,” Trixie said, her voice flat and numb. “That's why. I'm a soldier. A very good one. He needs soldiers like me, for what's coming.”

I blinked at her. “I thought…” I started. “I'm sorry, but you're the only angel I've ever met. I sort of thought you were all like that.”

“Oh no,” she said. “We are the messengers of the Word. The Word is life. The Word is light and the Word is love, and renewal and growth and healing and peace. Also the Word is law and judgment and justice, and sometimes… yes, sometimes the Word is death. There are a multitude of messengers for all these many facets of the Word, but only a very few of us are soldiers. I'm among the best of them. I'm a killer, Don. That's what I'm
for
. He wanted me for what I can do, that's all.”

I swallowed. I had a sudden sick suspicion that Trixie might just have been a little bit in love with Adam, even though she knew who he really was. I wasn't going to ask. I didn't want to know. She leaned forwards and covered her face with her hands, and said nothing.

I sat down behind my desk and swivelled my chair so that I was facing out of the window, staring at the gathering dusk with my back turned to her. She deserved her privacy for a moment, at least. I sipped my coffee and fought the prickly sting of tears at the back of my eyes. It was so… tragic, I suppose that's the only word for it. Tragic in the classical sense.

After a few minutes I heard her get up, and then she put a hand lightly on my shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said after a moment.

I turned to look up at her, and she smiled at me. She seemed to be coming back to life, that was something I supposed. I shrugged.

“What for?”

“For being prepared to take the fall for me,” she said. “For calling the Dominion. For saving my
soul,
you idiot!”

“I…” I started.

Oh but there was so much there that I could take the credit for, if I wanted to. If I just had the sheer bloody brass neck and cheek to do it. It was tempting, I have to admit. She was so… just
so
…

“Yes, Don?”

I gave her a wan smile. It was no good, I just couldn't quite bring myself.

“I panicked, bullshitted, panicked some more, and fell back on my Catholic upbringing as a refuge of last resort,” I admitted. “I didn't really do
anything
, at the end of the day.”

“You offered to damn yourself for me,” she said, then frowned. “
Can
you do that? Directly command a demon, I mean?”

“Buggered if I know,” I said, and grinned at her. “Doubt it. I can't say I've ever tried.”

She laughed, and it sounded so good to hear her that I was glad I
hadn't
taken the credit. Well sort of, anyway.

“So I suppose you didn't know how to call the Dominion either,” she said.

“Not a clue,” I said. “That was a combination of having a rough idea of the right sort of thing to say and sheer bloody desperation, I think.”

“And one of the strongest Wills I've ever seen,” she said.

I felt myself blushing. “Yeah, well,” I said. “I have been doing this for a while you know. You can talk, the way you stood up to the Burned Man's curse like that. I've been there myself, and I'd never have believed it was possible.”

“Mmmm, yes well I've been doing this a good few thousand years longer than you have,” she said. “I might have picked up a trick or two myself along the way. There's a funny thing, though.”

“What's that?”

“The Dominion certainly seemed to think that you could have done it, if you'd wanted to. You wouldn't have been making much of a sacrifice otherwise, now would you? Believe me, it would have known if you were bluffing.”

“But I
was
bluffing,” I said. “That was twenty-four carat Don Drake bullshit. I just wanted to get the Burned Man off you before you did something you'd regret, that's all.”

I wasn't going to tell her how close I suspected she had come to freeing the Burned Man as well. I think we'd
all
have regretted that, if she had, but as far as I was concerned she had enough to feel bad about as it was.

“I'm not so sure about that, Don,” she said. “Trust me, if a Dominion thinks you can do something, then it's a pretty safe bet that you can, even if you don't know it yourself yet.”

Well now, wasn't
that
an interesting thought. And then there was the matter of how I had somehow managed to summon Adam all by myself, too… thoughts for another day, I told myself.

“There's something else about the Dominion,” I said. “It talked about the Burned Man, and it called me guardian. The Dominion did, I mean. So… what? I'm the guardian of the Burned Man now, is that it?”

“What? Oh good heavens, no,” Trixie said, shaking her head with a smile. “The Dominion wasn't talking to you then. I'm astonished it even noticed you at all, never mind that it actually spoke to you. You have no idea how much of an honour that was, Don. Dominions are… well, nothing at all like I am. All the same, a Dominion would no more give a task to a human than you'd be likely to hand out jobs to the individual bacteria in your stomach.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a tiny little bit crushed. “So, um…?”

“It was talking to me,” she said. “It was giving me my new assignment. I'm not going home just yet, I'm afraid.”

“You? What are you the guardian of, then?”

“The Burned Man, of course,” she said. “You had that part right at least. And since the Burned Man currently belongs to you, well, I think the boss just made me your guardian angel.”

I stared at her.

“You're having a laugh,” I said.

“No,” she said, and smiled at me. “No, I'm really not.”