The Demi-Monde: Winter (56 page)

‘I am so pleased, Daemon, that you could join us in our celebration of Freyja’s Night, to help us in the performing of the ritual that proclaims the coming of Spring.’

Norma’s blindfold was untied. Standing there, blinking in the gloom, she saw she was in a huge, pitch-dark cavern with burning tapers dotted around the wall for illumination. She shivered, but not through cold: the cavern was a terrifying place. It must, she decided, be made from Mantle-ite, which was why eerie green shadows skittered like spectres around the bare walls.

Norma had the impression that she had walked into the gullet of some huge serpent: the walls were decorated with murals of the most bestial kind, concocted from screaming reds and tormented yellows with huge snakes and dragons twirling and twisting in demented patterns. And as her eyes got used to the gloom, she saw that deeper into the cave the murals became increasingly frenzied, brighter and bolder colours depicting events from some forgotten mythology, the artwork primitive and savage, a primeval kaleidoscope.

It looked for all the world like a set from a horror movie, and the players were as loathsome as the set.

There were, as best she could judge, thirteen people gathered in the cavern and all of them – with the exception of Crowley
– were dressed in deep purple robes with their faces hidden by quite hideous masks depicting various mythological animals. Well, she hoped they were mythological: the beasts that inhabited Terror Incognita were rumoured to be pretty monstrous.

Crowley took a step forward, allowing Norma to get a better look at him. In contrast to his adepts, the magician was unmasked and wore a long flowing robe coloured the darkest red and embroidered in gold with a myriad of runic symbols. Around his head was an inch-thick golden band with a gleaming red ruby at its centre.

‘Where am I?’ asked Norma, desperately trying to mask the quaver in her voice.

‘You are at ExterSteine, Daemon, perhaps the most magical of all places in the Demi-Monde. ExterSteine is a group of five tall pillars of Mantle-ite created when the Demi-Monde was young, before the Confinement. We are now atop Lilith’s Tower, the tallest of all the columns, where the Pre-Folk formed this cavern. It was here, or so mythology would have us believe, that Lilith performed her most vile and debased magic. But that was long ago: where you are standing, Daemon, is now UnFunDaMentalism’s holiest place.’

‘Why have you brought me here?’ She asked the question despite the fact that she had a pretty good idea already. Still, better to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were.

‘Every Quarter’s Eve I gather my innermost circle of adepts here to give thanks to the Spirits for the changing seasons. In the UnFunDaMentalist calendar the most important Quarter Eve is this one, the one which celebrates the movement of our world from the barren cold of Winter to the lush fertility of Spring.’ He pointed to a shuttered hole high up in the roof of the cavern. ‘The rays of the rising sun will pour through that opening tomorrow morning to signal the death of Winter and the birth of Spring.’

Totally non compos fucking mentis.

Crowley began to prowl around the floor of the cavern, pontificating as he went. ‘But tonight we do more than merely celebrate Spring Eve. Tonight we will push back the very boundaries of magic. Tonight, Daemon, we will perform the Rite of Transference, a rite never attempted before. The Lady Aaliz Heydrich will take possession of your body in the Real World and for the first time, a Demi-Mondian will manifest themselves physically and not just spiritually in the Real World. Tonight, we in the ForthRight will take our first step along the path that will lead to the Unification of the Two Worlds and the triumph of UnFunDaMentalism throughout the Kosmos.’

A twenty-four-carat screwball.

‘Well, if it’s all the same to you, I think I might pass.’

Crowley chuckled. ‘I am afraid that is not possible, Daemon; you have a leading role to play in the little drama we will be enacting tonight. Your cooperation is essential.’

‘Go screw yourself. I’m not cooperating while a prick like you tries to steal my body.’

He moved towards her. ‘The options you have, Daemon, are stark. You either cooperate in the performing of the Rite of Transference or you will be disposed of. If you refuse I will ensure that you die in the most painful and prolonged manner.’ His lips were so close to Norma’s ear that she could feel his sweet breath on her cheek. ‘I will have you drained of blood, drip by drip by drip. Do you understand?’

Out of the corner of her eye Norma caught a glimpse of the Witchfinder running his tongue over his fleshy lips.

Yeah, I understand, you mad bastard, and I’ve got a sneaking idea who would volunteer to do it.

Norma reluctantly acquiesced: anything was better than that piece of shit being given a free run of her body.

With a self-satisfied smirk of triumph, Crowley gestured to one of his adepts. ‘If you would ask the Lady Aaliz to join us.’

Aaliz, when she entered the cavern, looked entirely different in appearance from the clean-cut RightNix girl whom Norma had met at Dashwood Manor. Her blonde hair had been dyed a raven black. Her ears were circled with piercings, which, as far as Norma could see, were decorated with the studs taken from her own ears. And she now had a Celtic cross tattooed on her shoulder, the design copied from the one Norma sported.

To all intents and purposes, Aaliz Heydrich was now Norma Williams. And Norma realised that with her hair dyed blonde and her studs removed, she was now Aaliz Heydrich.

As she watched Aaliz Heydrich strut across the floor of the cavern, Norma experienced a weird out-of-body sensation. It was as though she were watching herself walk towards her. And that was when she noticed the weird difference between herself and Aaliz: Aaliz was her mirror image. Everything about her was reversed: they had inscribed the Celtic cross tattoo on Aaliz’s right shoulder rather than on the left. She could tell by the way Aaliz used her left hand to brush back an errant trail of hair that she favoured that hand: Norma would have used her right. Even the parting in her hair was to the right, while Norma’s was to the left.

Freaky.

And when Norma thought about it, she realised that the majority of Demi-Mondians were left-handed.

Crowley’s voice cut through her reverie. ‘Tomorrow, at dawn, the power of the Goddess of Fertility, Freyja, will claim the world from the frosted grip of Goddess Skadi. The blossoming of dawn’s light will signal the Goddess Freyja’s rise to dominance in the Demi-Monde and the rebirth of the world. And
when this light falls on the Lady Aaliz it will also signal her rebirth in the Spirit World.’ He turned to his gathered disciples. ‘Let us prepare.’

The Witchfinder stood behind Norma. She felt his scuffed fingers fidgeting at the bows that tied the straps of her dress, felt a tug as the bows were undone and felt the dress slipping from her shoulders, sighing to the ground to leave her standing naked.

Crowley eyed her slim, naked body hungrily.

She had read about the prurient, vile things Crowley – when he had been a black magician in the Real World – had persuaded his disciples to do to conjure Spirits, had read about the degenerate and bestial antics he and his supplicants got up to in the place he called the Abbey of Thelema. Her flesh crawled when she thought about the bastard so much as touching her.

She saw that Aaliz Heydrich had been similarly stripped. Now the two girls stood stark naked facing each other across the cavern. The Witchfinder didn’t know where to look first.

‘You, Daemon,’ announced Crowley, ‘will be adorned with the Runes of Power and the incantations that will demand the Spirits manifest themselves.’

For the next half-hour Norma was obliged to stand stock-still as Crowley’s adepts daubed designs and emblems over her naked body, culminating in the draughting of the sign of the Valknut on her forehead. When she looked up, she found that Aaliz Heydrich’s body had been similarly decorated.

Crowley circled the two naked girls, examining his disciples’ handiwork. ‘You should know, Daemon, that all magic is about harnessing Man’s natural power through the application of the magician’s will. Will-power is the essence of all magic. Through the sublimation of your natural powers to my will, I will be able to direct and order the Spirits. But where is this natural power of Man most evident? The answer lies in the sexual
appetites of Men and Women. Sexual lust is the natural companion of magic: wed sex and magic and a psychic engine of vast occult potency is created.’

Crowley must have seen the look of mounting horror that dressed Norma’s face. He chuckled. ‘Do not be alarmed, Daemon, I am not suggesting that you participate in a sexual ritual. Far from it: with both you and the Lady Aaliz being pure in body you exert a huge attraction to the Spirit World. Your beauty, your purity and your latent, unexpressed sexual appetites, Daemon, will stimulate my adepts to heights of sexual desire, and thus stimulated they will generate all the sexual energy necessary to bind the Demi-Monde with the Spirit World.’ He clapped his hands in triumph. ‘But first we must have the Sacrifice of Blood.’

Crockett puffed contentedly on his clay pipe. ‘Did Miss Trixiebell listen, Major?’ he asked from his perch on a crate in the warehouse that Baron Dashwood’s regiment had made its home.

‘No.’

‘So what are we going to do, Sir?’

Baron Dashwood was torn. He was an officer and a gentleman so his first instinct was to do what he was ordered to do by his commanding officer. That his commanding officer was also his daughter made the prospect of ignoring those orders even more difficult. But he was certain that the WFA were being led into a trap and whilst he had a responsibility to Trixie and the WFA he also had a responsibility to the two hundred men under his command.

It was a difficult, an impossible decision, and unfortunately it was one he had to make quickly: there were only fifteen minutes left until the breakout began. He looked around at the men huddled in the warehouse – many of them the Poles he
had freed from the work camp. He couldn’t betray these men: he couldn’t allow them to be needlessly killed or captured by the SS.

He loved Trixie but …

The irritating thing was that it was his own arrogance that had brought him to this: if he hadn’t assumed that Heydrich was just a vicious idiot then he would have realised that it was he who was being played for a fool, that it was he who was being played as a patsy. How Heydrich and his cronies must have laughed when he swallowed their charade about the ForthRight attacking the Coven. How they must have howled when they allowed him to escape from Dashwood Manor knowing that he would warn his Royalist friends in the Coven and in this way reinforce Heydrich’s little pantomime. How could he have been so stupid as to have underestimated them? How could he have forgotten how cunning these bastards were? But the game wasn’t over yet. Maybe they had underestimated him.

‘We’re not going to Westgate with the rest of the army,’ he said finally. ‘That’s what the SS want us to do. We’re going to get out through Southgate and then head east to the river and down into the Hub. Assemble the regiment, Captain Crockett. If we’re challenged by the SS we’ll tell them we’re an Anglo regiment being reassigned to the attack on the Quartier Chaud. Tell the men they’re only to fire as a last resort. We’ll escape the Ghetto using guile, not muscle.’

Crockett gave the Baron a salute. ‘Sounds like an excellent idea to me, Major, I always had a strange aversion to fighting to the last man.’

For Trixie the final battle of the Warsaw Uprising was the worst experience of her short military career. It was the one she came closest to losing.

Despite the reinforcements, despite the confusion caused in the SS ranks when her father had smashed his way into the Ghetto, despite the best efforts of her fighters, the breakout soon degenerated into chaos.

As the first of them vaulted the barricades shortly before twelve, Trixie knew that it would be a murderous night. Within seconds the battle had become a fire-racked confusion, and the fighters of the WFA were cut down in swaths as they desperately fought their way through the ruins of the city towards Westgate. The carnage was terrible and Trixie sensed that outnumbered and outgunned, they were doomed.

The weather saved them from complete annihilation. It was the last night of Winter and the season had obviously determined to go out with a flourish. The blizzard that swept through the Ghetto was as bad as any she had ever experienced, so bad that it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, to distinguish snow-covered friend from snow-covered foe. These last savage snows of Winter churned with the smoke from burning steamers and smouldering buildings to make the Ghetto a scene from Hel.

But even shrouded by the blizzard, the losses were terrible. After an hour of the bitterest fighting of the whole Uprising, only a battered remnant of the WFA smashed its way to Westgate. And there in the smoke- and snow-drenched darkness, the Poles and the SS grappled with each other in hate-filled fury, their firefight enveloping the gateway.

But in the end the sheer bloody-mindedness of the Poles triumphed and Trixie led her fighters out of the Ghetto.

The fighting provided the perfect cover of chaos and mayhem for Ella, Vanka and Rivets – together, of course, with Ella’s twelve dutiful disciples – to make their escape.

But rather than going towards the river as Ella had expected, Vanka headed for Middlegate. The reason was made clear thirty minutes later, when they were crouched by a barbed-wire fence that surrounded what looked like a flat, treeless playing field.

‘Where are we?’ whispered Ella as she scrolled through PINC.

Vanka was quicker with his answer. ‘Welcome to the John Hanning Speke Balloon-O-Drome, home to the First Aerial Detachment of the ForthRight Observation Corps.’

Ella peered out into the darkness that shrouded the Balloon-O-Drome. There, gently swaying in the breeze, she could just make out the bulbous form of a balloon. The penny dropped. ‘You mean us to fly to ExterSteine?’