The Demi-Monde: Summer (53 page)

Ella woke just before dawn. She had been waiting for this day since Lilith had been sent kicking and screaming back into the furthest recesses of her soul … since she, Ella Thomas, had recovered control of her mind and her body. But it had been only a temporary reprieve: today was the day when she would die at her brother’s hand.

She lay for a moment hovering between sleep and consciousness trying to settle herself and to drive these maudlin thoughts from her mind. She had felt Death’s frosted breath on her cheek
too many times for her to shudder at his approach, but try as she might she couldn’t shift her sombre mood, depressed by the knowledge that her passing would herald the rise of her brother. Lilith might have been vanquished but Lucifer had come to take her place, and with a Dark Charismatic as Messiah it was inevitable that the Demi-Monde would embrace the Dark.

She opened her eyes, then rose from her cot to stand in the middle of the mean little cell where she had been held captive since the demise of Lilith. She felt a little unsteady on her feet, which she ascribed to being weak from hunger: the HimPerial priests who had been her wardens had subjected her to a near-fast, claiming that such a diet was necessary to cleanse her body of contaminants, to ready her for sacrifice. Nonsense, of course; all they were trying to do was weaken her, to ensure that she wouldn’t have the strength to resist her fate. Ella smiled; though her body was weak, her spirit had never been stronger. She resolved to die with courage.

No, she wasn’t frightened of death, but just wished she had been given the chance to say goodbye to Vanka … to thank him for ridding her of Lilith … to tell him how much she loved him.

All Trixie could assume was that the rapprochement between Venice and NoirVille had made the lookouts along the Nile sloppy. Unchallenged and unmolested, the
Wu
manoeuvred up the night-shadowed Nile and slipped – puffing and wheezing – into the small harbour that abutted Rodin’s workshops on the islet of Murano. En route they had found out why the Wu’s boilers were being pressure-tested by the UnFunnies; during their escape from St Petersburg the WarJunk had blown a newly soldered seam in her boiler. They had limped up the Nile to Venice on half power.

As soon as the WarJunk was berthed, Trixie, Wysochi and LieutenantFemme Lai Choi San were taken to a back room in Rodin’s workshops, where the sculptor was waiting for them, accompanied by a man who introduced himself as Nikolai Kondratieff and a very disreputable looking individual named Nearchus who seemed to be well in his cups, as the half-empty bottle of Solution at his elbow eloquently testified.

Drunk or not, it was Nearchus who commandeered the conversation. ‘So you made it?’ he slurred. ‘ABBA only knows how! Takes a yard and a half of moxie to steal a WarJunk and I never thought a woeMan—’

The glare from Trixie persuaded Nearchus to abandon this particular line of social commentary. ‘Is everything ready?’ she asked Rodin.

Rodin nodded. ‘The real Column was brought to Murano to be loaded into its flotation pontoon a week ago and that’s when we made the switch. Thanks to Kondratieff here, the fake Column has been safely delivered to the Temple of Lilith and the real one is ready for you to tow to …’ he glanced nervously towards Nearchus, ‘ … to wherever.’

‘You have our thanks, Professeur Kondratieff,’ acknowledged Trixie, ‘but you do realise that once the Column explodes you and Auguste will be the most wanted men in the Demi-Monde. Perhaps you should both take berth on my ship?’

‘My thanks for your offer, but Rodin and I have other plans.’

There was an awkward silence, this interrupted by Nearchus. ‘Well, if that’s settled,’ he slurred, ‘the sooner you’re on your way the better. A WarJunk like the
Wu
ain’t the easiest thing in the world to hide. Just takes one informer tipping the wink to the Signori di Notte and we’re all dead meat.’

Rodin bridled. ‘All my men are reliable.’

‘Yeah, sure. But I don’t think we should be taking any chances,
everyone knows that Venetians can’t keep their mouths shut. The quicker the Wu’s outta here, the better.’

Trixie shook her head. ‘My engineers tell me the Wu’s boilers need some repair work … work that’ll take the best part of the morning to finish.’

‘Fuck!’ snarled Nearchus as he slurped down another glass of Solution.

Trixie watched the man as he drank. There was something wrong with his demeanour, the way his eyes refused to meet hers. She didn’t trust him.

‘Tell you what,’ said Nearchus suddenly, ‘I’ll have my men hitch the pontoon up to the
Wu
while you’re doing the repairs. That way you can sail at noon.’

‘We’re not sailing in daylight,’ said Trixie firmly.

This drew a scowl from Nearchus, who obviously disliked women answering back. ‘You can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous.’

‘You’re not listening to me, Nearchus; I am
not
running the Nile while the sun is up! As I understand it, the pontoon is three hundred tons of dead weight and even with two fully functioning boilers the
Wu
is underpowered. Against an ebb tide and encumbered with a tow weighing only half that of your pontoon, we struggled to make more than five knots, and
that’s
why I want to sail tonight when the tide is flowing Hubwise. I want it behind me when we make our break for the Wheel.’

Obviously recognising that further argument would be a waste of time, Nearchus stood up from the table, wobbling a little as he did so. ‘Well, if that’s what you’re intent on doing, so be it; it’s your funeral. Anyway, I can’t sit here talking all day; I’ve got work to do.’

As Trixie watched the man lurch out of the room, the nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right resurfaced, but she ascribed these suspicions to exhaustion. She’d hardly slept for the best part of two days.

Anyway … Nearchus
had
to be trustworthy. Kondratieff trusted him, and Kondratieff was a very smart man.

Sporting Chance brought a heavily veiled Norma to the Crystal Palace early on the morning of the show, passing her off as one of ‘the girls wot does the harmonising’, and such was Sporting’s popularity that no one thought to challenge her or her entourage as she swept imperiously into the great hall. And it
was
a great hall, enormous and intimidating, which was why, Norma supposed, Sporting had insisted she make a pre-performance visit to the place. Sporting wanted her ‘to see the elephant’ before the big night and it was just as well she had.

Norma had been to any number of rock concerts in her time, but none of those venues could compare to this. The Palace was a huge construction of cast iron and glass, built to celebrate the formation of the ForthRight at the end of the Troubles, the use of so much glass mimicking the way the Pre-Folk employed MantlePlex in the building of their monuments. It was a big, bold and very impressive structure though, to Norma’s mind, it had a cold functionality about it which she found unattractive, but this, she supposed, was an apt metaphor for the dispassionate efficiency of the ForthRight.

As they wandered out onto the empty stage, Norma’s nerve almost failed her. She’d never performed before an audience bigger than a few hundred people, so the prospect of appearing in front of one hundred thousand soldiers and a similar number of spectators was not one she was sure she could cope with. It was very, very scary.

Sporting sensed her trepidation. ‘Yus, it’s a brute ov a gig an’ no mistake, and the acoustics is crap too. That’s why I arranged for wun ov them new-fangled galvanicEnergy microphones to be installed. Gives a body a chance ov being ‘eard,
‘specially when it’s full to the brim of ‘alf-pissed soldiers.’

‘I’ll need more than a microphone, Sporting!’ Norma admitted. ‘I’ve got a feeling that I’ll be too terrified to speak. I don’t know if I’ll be able to carry it off.’

‘Ah, cors yous will. Once you’re out ‘ere struttin’ yer stuff, all yer stage fright will vanish like a virgin’s blush. Trim piece like yous won’t ‘ave a jot of trouble. Put on a tight frock wiv yer charms on display an’ you’ll ‘ave ‘em eating outta yer ‘and.’ She edged closer to Norma to ensure she wasn’t overheard. ‘Remember, you’s the spit ov Aaliz Heydrich an’ she’s the army’s pin-up, she is. Wun wiggle ov that pert little bum of yours and every Tommy in the place’ll sit up and beg for more.’

Norma just hoped Sporting was right.

His Holiness the Very Reverend Aleister Crowley disliked ships. He found them cramped, sweaty and somehow disrespectful. And as ships went, he doubted if there could be any more cramped, sweaty and disrespectful than the FSS
Heydrich
. Of course, he acknowledged that the
Heydrich
had been designed for the brutal and prosaic purpose of securing command of the Five Rivers, but still he would have thought that the naval architects could have lavished a
little
more care and attention on the fitting out of Captain Worden’s quarters. There was hardly room to swing a cat.

But such was the importance of the Column to the ForthRight – and to Bole – that Crowley had ignored his instinctive aversion to all things maritime and sailed with the
Heydrich
. He was determined to personally oversee the seizing of the Column: Bole would brook no failure.

Taking a reassuring sip of Solution, he decided not to think about failure. Everything, after all, was proceeding
very
satisfactorily. Sure, Ptah’s laboratory had been destroyed, but
Empress Borgia had been very cooperative and had handed Ptah over to the ForthRight. The good doctor was now being interrogated and he was confident that the Plague’s secrets would soon be theirs. Sure, Norma Williams was still on the loose, but now the ForthRight had control of the Coven she would be hunted down and disposed of.

And Bole had been
very
happy with the arrangements made to rid the Demi-Monde of the Lady IMmanual. In just a few short hours she would be blown to smithereens by Kondratieff’s bomb. Moreover the message he had got from Bole was that he was equally pleased that the girl’s brother would be killed alongside her. Now all that remained was to take the Column.

‘Is the flotilla ready, Comrade Captain?’ he enquired of the Monitor’s captain.

‘All five Monitors are in position, Your Holiness,’ answered Worden. ‘Immediately we receive the signal that the enemy WarJunk has taken the Column under tow and has cleared Venice, we will move to intercept it.’

‘Excellent. And have we had word from SS Colonel Clement’s Invasion Force?’

‘We have, Your Holiness. The ten steam-barges carrying the StormTroopers are anchored at the Hubside of the Yangtze ready to land on Terror Incognita at your command.’

Crowley gave a satisfied nod. No matter what was waiting for them in Terror Incognita, two thousand heavily-armed SS StormTroopers should be enough to force a path to the Great Pyramid. Now all he needed to do was find the patience to wait until the renegade Trixie Dashwood delivered the Column into his hands.

Billy was just getting it on with one of his priestesses when an imperious voice coming from the doorway halted the girl in
mid-fellatio. ‘Good evening, my Doge, I hope I’m not interrupting anything important?’

Billy looked up to find the skinny item called Mohammed al-Mahdi smiling at him. Billy didn’t like the guy; he was a real miserable fucker who took his role as NoirVille’s religious leader – the Grand Mufti – just a tad too seriously for Billy’s taste. If ever there was a cat in dire need of getting laid, it was the Grand Mufti.

‘It is time, my Doge, to prepare for the Ceremony of Awakening. We must take you to the Temple in order that we might familiarise you with the rituals in which you will be participating tonight.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Billy answered as he leaned over to the bowl standing on the floor beside his bed and took another toot of Dizzi; nowadays he couldn’t think straight unless he was hooked up. And once the drug had worked its magic and he was back in the Pleasure Zone, nothing – not even all this New Age shit the Grand Mufti was laying on him – seemed stupid. He pushed the girl away and swung his legs off the bed. ‘So where’s Selim?’

‘The Grand Vizier has been ordered by His HimPerial Majesty Shaka Zulu to remain in Venice rather than attend the ceremony. His Majesty feels it is important that your opponents do not take advantage of your absence to create trouble.’ The Grand Mufti waved a couple of his priests into Billy’s room. ‘I have ordered two of my most senior priests to attend—’

‘No way, José. Only bitches look after this cat.’

The sour look on the Grand Mufti’s face told him what he thought of
that:
the guy really had it down on woeMen. Not that Billy gave a shit: even a million bucks wasn’t enough for him to let a couple of zadnik priests loose on his body. Billy Thomas was no hump.

The Grand Mufti gave a reluctant nod. ‘Very well, my Doge.
I trust you have committed all the incantations you will need to recite at the ceremony to memory.’

‘Yeah, no problemo,’ Billy lied: he’d only managed to memorise some of the crap that the Grand Mufti wanted him to rap. He hadn’t been about to waste too much time on homework when he could be screwing one of his priestesses. But he guessed it wouldn’t harm to show willing, after all, the deal he had cut with Selim was that if he did the business at the ceremony he would be escorted to the JAD. Then it would be back home to enjoy the dough Bole would be laying on him. As far as he was concerned, the sooner he was out of the Demi-Monde the better. ‘Okay, Mr Mufti-man, let’s roll. Wouldn’t do to be late for my sister’s funeral, now would it?’