Maxie’s Demon (38 page)

And if all this
seems like funny things to be noticing with the end of everything coming in at zero feet – well, you haven’t seen them, that’s all.

‘Alison, Mall, stand by him!’ snapped Fisher, lounging out on to the lawn and standing, leaning on his stick, staring up at the living
stormcloud above. The wind whistled about him, and the poplars bent low. The gate rattled and the sign swung and creaked within its frame, slowly and ponderously, as if the Wheel itself really was swaying in the balance of fate. I saw the vast eyes shift then, the red flares turn from me to him. He nodded quietly, as if acknowledging or accepting something.

And this time the claw really did falter.

Fisher moved almost faster than I could see. The stick in his hand sprang upwards with the suddenness of a fencer’s lunge, and stretched as it sprang, striking like a snake. It was a spear, a huge one, a white wood haft with a black tip glittering—

The sky hammered.
For an instant I thought Fisher was struck by lightning; but the lightning struck upwards, earth lashing fire at sky as if to revenge
the centuries of natural punishment. The spear spat steely light into the black form above, and the light lanced out and branched, beating against the matted beast fur. The demon reared up, flailing, and howled like a hurricane. We all staggered, and clapped our hands over our ears.

Except Fisher. He stood like a statue, with the cold light pouring from the thing in his upraised hand. Blue afterimages
seared my sight. The black claw blazed like a welding torch. Snaking lines of sparking light raced spitting along the arm and burst in crackling fire across the gigantic body. The fur stiffened and bulged, and seams of actinic blue-white burst out. The thing shook violently, the wolf head jerked back and was suddenly enveloped in the awesome blinding blossom that welled out from within.

From
eyes, from throat, from nostrils the white beams shone against the smoke, utterly blotting out the green glare and the red. Then the agonised muzzle was enveloped in the fireflower, and the whole vast creature burst apart in midair. Light flooded the sky, and the landscape stood out stark and colourless as the glare leaped from horizon to horizon, as if to bleach the universe a uniform white.

Then there was no monster, no dismembered fragments, only human bodies whirling in a pale tornado vortex that seemed to hurl them outward as they reached its margin. They were alive; they flailed their limbs frantically. But one by one they were gone in an instant, leaving one alone at the heart, one that hung in the air an instant and came plummeting down like the loser of a dogfight, smoky trail
and all, right down on our heads. I ducked, but it went tumbling over and down into what must be the margins of Willum’s field.

A hundred-foot fall,
at least. I winced as I heard the thud.

And suddenly there was the first trace of warmth in the grey sky, and all the birds were singing. Fisher lowered his walking stick and leaned on it with a satisfied air.

‘Well,’ I remember saying, though
my own voice sounded tiny and hollow in my ears, ‘no wonder
he’s
made a few killings in business!’

The women who flanked me snorted. ‘He did that first,’ said his wife. ‘The rest came later.’

They were both looking at Fisher, and that suited me very well. I ducked down, and was one step away from scuttling off when two hard hands descended on my shoulders. ‘What, just slipping away, Master Maxie?’
enquired the blonde cheerfully.

‘We can’t have that, can we?’ purred the brunette. ‘Not the hero of the hour! Steve is simply dying for a word with you.’

‘Hero’ would have been more encouraging if I hadn’t been reminded of a cat dabbing at a mouse. If Steve was dying for anything to do with me, he didn’t show it. He strolled back, quite unnecessarily smoothing down his hair, and pecked the brunette’s
cheek lightly. ‘Well, that’ll stop him laughing in church, eh?’

It hadn’t been laughing the way I heard the expression, but Fisher was evidently the decorous type. It didn’t stop him giving Poppy a squeeze, dirty devil. ‘Sorry we had to get you up, Poppy, but if we’d shown ourselves sooner he’d have been away like spit off a hot stove. We had to lure him as close in as possible – thanks to our
little bait here.’

‘Bait?’

He
gave me a cool look. ‘Afraid so. Since you were in the way, you might say.’

I surged up, only to be thrust down again by those impossible hands. ‘You lousy bloody bastard! You set me up for this! Right from the start! You sent me up that bloody road, that night!’

He scratched his immaculately shaven neck a moment. ‘If you remember, I did suggest you’d be a lot
safer heading back to the junction. I knew It was trying to lure someone in, someone who would suit It – or Them, or whatever you like. Naturally It was drawn to Dee and Kelley’s little experiments. They opened a way for It, closer in to the Core; and that alerted me. That was why I’d been hanging around here lately, hoping I’d get a lead. That was why I warned you, that night.’

‘You could have
been a bit bloody clearer!’

‘What, said a ninety-foot hairy demon was after your backside? You’d really have believed that on top of everything else, wouldn’t you?’

‘So you just let me walk out into … into …’

‘Oh, no. Nothing like that. Not unless I had to, anyhow. But you’re fast on your feet, Maxie my boy. I was on your tail that night, but I hung back too far. You got away from me, and blundered
right on in. When It appeared, I was too concerned about you to deal with It immediately, and It backed off before I could reach It. Then you did a runner. Ever since then we’ve been searching. We almost got you with the cops, and back in Prague. We had a little trouble with the watchmen there, but Mall and Alison actually hove in sight of you—’

I sank
down, groaning. The women with swords –
not the demon’s creatures at all, but these two Amazon bitches.

‘Yes,’ he said severely. ‘And you’d have saved everyone a lot of trouble if you’d only hung on. We’d have settled Kelley’s hash easily enough.’ He tapped his shoe with his stick, and I flinched.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ I muttered. I’d as soon see someone tap-dance on an A-bomb. Maybe I’d done Brother Edward another favour,
at that.

Fisher grinned. ‘Anyhow, by the time we tracked you down again you were on your way home, so it seemed simpler just to let the thing come after you. We needed to get It in really close. You were never in any real danger, though.’

‘Huh!’ was about the best I could manage. ‘Look, since you’re so bloody communicative, I suppose you wouldn’t mind just telling me who you really are – and
why the hell you’re mucking about anyhow? What’s happened to that – to them—’

‘Me? Just another eccentric billionaire,’ he said, a little absently. ‘But on the Spiral you rarely stay just one thing long. And like you, I’ve got powerful contacts. As to what’s happened – to the people who made that thing up, you mean? Back where they came from, back to the moment in time where that thing first
got its claws into them. As if none of this ever happened. Those were pretty desperate moments, though, mostly. They weren’t very nice people, any of them; they needed the demon’s power to become what they wanted to be, and you saw what that looked like. The last of them, anyhow, the ones still individual enough to take on any real shape. Thugs and no-goods writ large. They split up because they could
push deeper back into the margins of the Core that way, and because they looked less alarming. But they were only really shells for that thing. The one you could never see clearly, the one who started the process, who began sucking others in.’

‘I
suppose I felt that. That there was something really weird or inhuman about them, anyhow.’

Fisher’s wife nodded. ‘You would. You’re bright, and you
had strength enough to resist what they dangled in front of you. They hadn’t. Most of them are on their way back to the gutter or the gallows now.’

‘Not all,’ said the big blonde, shaking that mane of hers. ‘One there is I know does well by her vices, and dies rich and in good name none dare question, a pillar of Mother Church.’

Fisher shrugged. ‘Well, it happens sometimes. I’ve no control over
it, thankfully. My life’s complicated enough as it is.’

‘Jesus, you think you’ve got troubles?’ All this talk about gutters and gallows had brought everyday life back with a rush. ‘What about me? The cops still think I’m Mr MacManiac! And if they don’t get me Ahwaz will – and will anyway, if I end up in jail! I’m screwed!’

Fisher shook
his head. ‘No, no – that isn’t the case at all. Look, I
need a drink and some breakfast, and I’m sure you do – but come along with me a moment. Let him go, Mall. Poppy, ladies, you’ll excuse us for a few minutes? And maybe scare up some bacon and eggs?’

‘I wish you hadn’t mentioned that drink,’ I grumbled, trotting along beside him and his infernal long legs. He swept around the pub and back along the path to the junction. ‘Couldn’t we have it first?’

‘This’ll only take a minute. You see there?’

Oh God. He was pointing that stick over the gate into Willum’s field. And yes, I certainly did see, though God knows I didn’t want to. You couldn’t miss it, not with that smoke or that smell.

I swallowed. ‘I don’t think I want any bacon. That was—’

‘Yes. Your demon. The man who began that creature, who started the whole fearful thing off, its heart
and driving will that began using his powers to swallow others, up and down the very length of the Spiral itself.’

I looked at the black, flattened thing in the margins of the field, spread out like a charred starfish. ‘I never saw his face. I never will now, that’s for sure. Who was he? Where’d he come from?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Fisher leaned on the gate like any city slicker playing the rustic.
Any minute now he’d start chewing a grass stalk. ‘He could have been anybody, couldn’t he? A secret policeman. A guard at an extermination camp. A serial killer. A religious fanatic, or a tribal one, a nationalist. A terrorist leader. A gang boss. An ideologue, even, who never so much as stained his hands, yet killed and enslaved more than all the rest put together. Maybe he was born long ago, maybe
he hasn’t been born yet. Does evil need a single name? Let him stand for all of them. But he must have been a pretty accomplished son of a bitch even before he discovered the Spiral and moved out on to it, drifted gradually outward towards the Rim. Good and evil there, they become absolutes in themselves. So he changed, and grew, and moved back again, in a new form – a heightened form. As they
always seem to.’

He
sighed. ‘And so it ends. Because he was hungry for new experience, for a new link back into the Core. Cruising up and down, looking for new people to live through, and gradually take over, and use up, and absorb. All subject to him, all becoming part of him, till in the end they just faded into his memories; and in time he forgot them. Pretty good likeness of a demon, wouldn’t
you say?’

I nodded. ‘But why me?’ was about the best I could manage.

‘Why anybody? He was casting about for somebody from the Core. He got you and Kelley; he preferred you. Maybe he thought you had more brains and talent. I’d say he was right. He thought you were special enough to take a risk on. I’d been after him for some time, but he was clever, he never came close enough to the limits of
the Spiral, and his power with it. He could always get away. You drew him too far, and I’m grateful; and it’s given you your reward.’

He reached down and plucked a grass stem. I twitched it out of his mouth. ‘What sodding reward? What’re you flaming well rabbiting about?’

He nodded
towards the field. ‘This. A car wreck, with an anonymous burned body beside it, origin unknown. It could have been
you, the man who stole the car. It still could be.’

I gaped at him. ‘Don’t be daft. OK, no fingerprints, maybe, but the Filth have still got dental records, tissue-typing – they’ll know it’s not me!’

‘But do they know who you are?’

‘Listen, it’ll be all around Soho by now! Waxie Maxie sent out to lift a Ferrari – oh.’

He grinned. ‘Got it now? Knew you were smart. The cops don’t know who Waxie
Maxie is, or was once. They don’t have any records filed under that name. They have a dead man they won’t be able to identify, so they’ll assume it’s this Mr W.M. And the others who know it isn’t, Ahwaz and so on, they’ll probably assume you got it on the marshes with the rest. But they won’t be in a hurry to prove that to the cops, will they?’

I leaned on the gate and held my head. ‘What then?
So I’m dead. What do I do? Where do I go?’

‘Anywhere you like.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘Don’t you understand? Did Ahwaz know you by your real name? Did anybody? It really is Waxie Maxie that’s dead here. You’re shot of him at last, and all the debris that went with him. The petty villain’s gone. All that’s left is—’ He paused, and squinted at me, and took a deep breath.

‘—Julian Everard
Maximilian von Arnim de Belvere Hastings Ferris –
whew
! – who made a minor mistake so long ago everyone’s forgotten. And, incidentally, your conviction for that’s scrubbed off the record by now. So even that can’t be used against you.’

I’d done
a lot of gaping lately, but never better than that. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t even form a coherent thought. All I could do was gawp at him with my
face hanging out.

‘So,’ he chuckled, ‘congratulations, Mr Ferris. All you have to do now is decide how you’re going to start your new life. And you’re a bright enough lad for that. In fact – don’t take this wrong, but I think we could probably find some room in C-Tran for somebody with your education and, er, street smarts. Clerical, certainly, but maybe something more interesting. How about
PR? Or marketing?’ He looked me up and down a moment, and a slight shadow crossed his face. ‘Marketing, definitely.’

And of course it was just exactly then that my pride started to act up – never when I really need it, of course. ‘A job. Well, thanks. With somebody always knowing who I am, of course. Somebody always keeping just the tiniest bit of a weather eye on me. Watching my timekeeping,
checking my expense sheets, counting my petty cash.’