Attrition of the Gods: Book 1 of the Mystery Thriller series Gods Toys. (23 page)

From the gunman firing his first shot to Leo boarding a plane to Birmingham airport was less than five hours. Birmingham was the first flight out of Venice and Leo had a second cousin living in nearby Coventry; for now that would have to do. Leo caught a bus from the airport straight into Coventry. He called at his cousin’s home in a council estate on the outskirts of the city. The address was 85 Raphael Close. How ironic, he would later think.

“Nah, mate. No, Peter here. This is my gaff now,” said the large, rough-looking young man who answered the door.

Leo’s face dropped and he meandered off as he contemplated his next move. He had less than a hundred euros in his pocket and was reluctant to use a card, knowing that Reuben had control of many security agencies and could maybe trace his location. How true this really was, Leo did not know, but nothing resided outside the realms of possibility any more.

At the end of the path Leo shuffled to a halt and looked around. He hadn’t noticed on the way here how run-down this estate was: boarded-up empty houses, a pack of three mongrel dogs parading around, cars with bricks for wheels. It was also getting quite late. Leo felt pangs of anxiety build up inside of him but where on earth was he going to go?

A black kid appeared and Leo swallowed nervously.

“Listen, Leo, come with me.”

Nothing surprised him anymore.

“Where to?” he asked the boy.

“Just come with me,” said the boy. “You need a friend and it won’t take Reuben long to find out you came here. Boiled sweet?”

The young guy offered up a brown paper bag containing boiled sweets then nodded his head indicating for Leo to follow him. Not exactly convinced but at least happy to have a plan of action, Leo followed.

They crossed the road and walked to a sporty-looking ten-year-old BMW. “This will do,” the kid remarked and then pulled out a tennis ball that had been cut in half. He placed the rim of the half ball around the door lock and pressed it to form an airtight seal. He whacked the ball with his hand, the air forcing the locks to pop open.

“Come on, Pops. This is probably the local drug dealer’s car, we best get going before he looks out.”

Leo looked around and, with one of the most uncharacteristic actions of his life, climbed into the passenger seat of the stolen car. The young boy expertly started the car and they drove off. Leo’s first question was not who are you, or why are you helping me, but rather, “Are you old enough to drive?”

The boy laughed. “Mister, we just robbed this car. I just coerced you into grand theft auto and all you want to know is how old I am?”

They spent the rest of the journey in silence as they drove out of Coventry and twenty miles up the road to Birmingham. Leo saw a sign for the jewellery quarter. The car pulled up outside a florist that sat in between two jewellery shops. The young lad jumped out.

“Come on, old guy.”

The odd couple headed into the shop. A lady preparing a bouquet looked up as the shop door opened.

“Hi, Chamuel,” she smiled.

Ah, so that is who he is, thought Leo, one of the Arc Hon. As surreal as the situation was, Leo did not question what was occurring. They walked through a small kitchen at the back of the shop and up some steps into a small flat. A little settee and an old-style TV occupied the room.

“Take a seat, old man,” instructed Chamuel.

Leo sat and stared at the TV, wondering if this Arc Hon would ever stop calling him “old man” – especially ironic since the Arc Hon was goodness knows how old himself.

“So, I guess you have a few questions,” said Chamuel, sitting on the arm of the settee. “Let me explain. I am going to help you out, and hopefully save your life. My name is Chamuel…”

“Yes,” said Leo. “I know who you are. Although I thought you would be older.”

“Old man, ya really got issues wiv youff, ain’t ya?” the boy cackled.

Leo resists the compulsion to correct Chamuel’s grammar. “The only thing I don’t know is why you are helping me. Simeon told me that the Watchers ‘watched’ and didn’t really get involved.”

“Yah blood, that’s true but we got to get wiv the programme on dis un.”

Leo was struggling to decipher this coded lingo. “Are sure you are an eternal entity who has existed for eons, because you sound like some chavvy kid.”

“I am an urban renaissance man. Check dis out…”

To Leo’s amazement Chamuel burst into a rap.

“Mister you dissing an immortal being,
Ya wanna be careful ya know I’m supreme.
I is Arc Hon. I can do powerful stuff.
If you like how I’m talking, I ain’t said enough.”

Chamuel clicked his fingers, pleased with himself. “Yeah man, I got tunes.”

Leo had recently experienced many surreal moments but this topped them all.

“Okay… may I enquire as to why are you helping me?”

“Man, that Reuben, he gone and fucked up. He is one bad fucker. He broke all the rules and now he gone and kicked off in a neutral zone. That fascist-making, child-murdering cunt has pissed me and the other Watchers right of. He want to fuck with us, then we gonna to see who is the man, ya understand what I’m saying, blood?”

“Not really,” said Leo, but he got the idea. “So, you are going to eliminate Reuben?”

“No, man! Did Simeon not tell you nothing?” Chamuel began to pace around the room. “Reuben has gone all Colonel, Walter E. Kurtz on us.”

Leo stared blankly. “He has gone what, on whom?”

“Man, you never watch films? Marlon Brando… Colonel Kurtz…
Apocalypse Now
??? He goes AWOL and starts his own game. No? Fuck’s sake man, what you being doing with your life…”

Leo’s continued blank stare betrayed the fact he had no idea what was going on.

Chamuel sighed. “Reuben is disqualified but he ain’t playing by the rules no more. We fink he has killed most the other Djinn and when he gets the rest he is gonna enslave the human race, ya understand me?”

Leo had heard this prophecy of doom from Simeon and their belated concern angered him.

“Isn’t that what all the Djinn were trying to do? I mean, we humans are just insects to both of you, right? This is just a game, isn’t it? And we humans are just pawns. I mean what’s the difference? Whichever of the damn Djinn win, the human race is fucked!”

“Stand down, Gramps. For a start us Arc Hon ain’t nothing like the Djinn. In fact you humans are more like the Djinn. They is you, just a bit further down the evolutionary road, that’s all. When we first came across Djinn they had limbs and heads and shit, they were just like you, organic, pushed out of their mother’s vagina, skin-covered motherfuckers. We watched as their race nearly became extinct. You see they was smart but they was weak, ya know what I mean?”

Leo shook his head in frustration. “No, how would I know what you mean?”

“Fuck man, what has that Simeon taught you? I mean, I know he renewed so maybe he ain’t sure what’s going on himself, but he must have talked about the ascension of the Djinn and shit… Please tell me he has told you about Nibiru and the coming of the Demiurge?”

Leo looked away. He’d had enough history lessons, thank you.

Chamuel took his expression on board. “Well, we ain’t got time for that shit now anyway. We need to execute the plan.”

“What plan?” said Leo hopefully.

He was pleased there was a plan. Chamuel whispered something under his breath about Simeon being a “useless hillbilly actual motherfucker”, then began to explain. “Okay, so, you are going to prison.”

Leo imagined this was a slang term for somewhere that was not really prison. He waited for a more accurate explanation of the plan.

Chamuel gave him an apologetic smile. “Seriously, prison is the safest place for you, man. I’m gonna put a friend in there who’s gonna watch your back.”

“Are you serious?” Leo said, surprising calmly. “You think I’m going to prison? What for? Why? How?”

“Listen to yourself: how, what, why! You got to stop asking and start doing, man, because if Reuben finds you he is going to fuck you up. He doesn’t like Jews at the best of times so he is going to go all Spanish Inquisition on your ass. Anyway, there is another reason.” He looked embarrassed. “One I can’t tell you.”

“Of course,” thought Leo as he watched his life spiral hopelessly away from him.

“So basically we gotta get you to commit a crime. Nothing too serious, we don’t wanna go clipping some white dude.” Leo was relieved until he heard the next idea. “Maybe just armed robbery or something?” Chamuel paused for thought as he looked out the window. “Yeah…armed robbery, that’s the trick. We can break into one of these jewellery shops downstairs. How does that sound?”

Leo had given up on being rational. “Great.”

Within the hour Chamuel and Leo case the Gold is Us jeweller two doors down from the flower shop.

“Yeah, we do this one. He got a wicked Rolex in the window that’ll look mighty fine on this wrist.”

Leo looked confused. “But when we get caught they will take it off you, so what difference does it make?”

Chamuel revealed a big toothy smile and shook his head, looking at the floor then up to Leo before informing him. “‘We’ ain’t getting caught, mister, ‘you’ is getting caught. I’m too pretty to go to prison. They be thinking their entire mother fucking Christmases come at once if they see my cute black ass in the shower.”



The crime was over in less than five minutes. They had a brief problem when Leo refused to go in armed so they agreed that he would have to at least assault a police officer while resisting arrest. As they entered the shop a tall man, early twenties, smiled at Leo asking him if he needed any help. “Plenty,” Leo thought drily. When Chamuel followed him in carrying a holdall the man’s attitude changed to one of caution and he returned behind his glass counter.

“Racist motherfucker sees a black man and thinks he’s about to be held up!” remarked Chamuel. “Well, he is about to be held up.” replied Leo.

“Yeah, well let’s see his face when he realises Woody Allen is heading up the heist.”

Despite the situation Leo laughed, albeit it slightly hysterically. Chamuel pulled out a machete and screamed in his best Hollywood tough guy voice. “OK Ishmael, fill this bag full of the sparkly shit or I’ll cut your fucking head off.”

The young shop attendant pressed an alarm under the counter and ran into the back of the shop, locking the door behind him. Chamuel randomly smashed the display cases and filled the holdall. He went to the shop window where the watch was displayed, reached in grabbed the Rolex then turned to Leo, handing him the holdall and a bag of boiled sweets.

“Enjoy and keep in touch.”

Chamuel opened the door just as a cop car pulled up, and quick as a flash ran down the road. One young female officer ran after him as the male PC moved to apprehend Leo. Leo closed his eyes as he attempted, for the first time in his life, to assault another human being. The ineffectual punch caught the cop off guard, and as he stepped backwards he toppled off the pavement and fell to the road.

Shocked, Leo realised he could easily make his escape as the cop was slow to recover.
Fuck,
what now?
He thought. Fortunately another squad car could be heard approaching. The only thing that Leo could think of doing while waiting for them to get there was to give it to the copper. He politely kicked the young PC, wondering how this lad would cope with a real villain as he curled up in a ball to protect himself. Soon Leo’s ordeal was over as the second car screamed to a stop and two burly coppers wrestled little Leo to the floor.

“Fuck you, pigs!” he shouted unconvincingly. When questioned at the station he refused to cooperate and name his accomplice so they threw the book at him as he hoped they would.



Leo lies on his bunk and smiles at the absurd memory of being dragged away by police outside the jewellers; the look on the shop assistant’s face had been a picture, as Chamuel had predicted. “Wow, that seems like yesterday and yet like a lifetime ago,” he muses.

Leo is aware he has only bought himself a few weeks with his crazy act but he also knows that the signs indicate weeks are probably all he has left anyway. Now he needs to get in touch with Shane and somehow escape or die trying. If he’s right the black guy, Robert, was “the friend” sent in by Chamuel and he has a vital part to play in the plan.

Vienna, 1910

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” George Orwell
 

As arranged Chamuel and Amitiel waited for Reuben outside the Theatre An Der Wien in the Mariahilf district of Vienna. Chamuel had recently discovered the pleasure of boiled sweets and he took two from his pocket, offering a slightly fluff-covered yellow one to Amitiel. She declined.

“So, is he out of the game?” Chamuel asked his fellow Arc Hon.

“What do you think?” said Amitiel. “I mean, he was the last one to see Benjamin, he can be connected to all the other disappearances and we know he is responsible for slaughtering far too many humans unnecessarily. Whether he is the one doing all the killing or not, he is definitely out of control. We intercepted these only last week.”

Amitiel showed Chamuel four black-and-white photos depicting mutilated gypsy children.

“Ah, I see you’re appreciating my artwork.” The tall, gaunt, pale blonde Reuben appeared behind the two Arc Hon.

“Humph,” said Amitiel, unimpressed. “Every form you take looks the same. I assume you have worked out that I am Amitiel and this is Chamuel. We have not met for a long time and I don’t think you two have ever had the pleasure.”

Reuben looked at Amitiel. Her current form was a teenager of angelic beauty and he had trouble dragging his eyes off her delicate features. He then directed a disgusted stare at Chamuel, a skinny black ragamuffin.

“No… I tend to avoid the western Oriental gentlemen. I’m not very cosmopolitan,” he commented.

Reuben pulled out some keys and opened a side door into the theatre.