The Dark Detective: Venator (13 page)

The beast screamed in joy, trying to lap up the blood that flowed from Max’s face, straddling his chest and forcing him backwards.

Max struggled to pull the water pistol from his coat pocket. He could smell the beast’s foul breath on his face.

“Leave him alone, you great hairy brute,” yelled Sophie.

She heaved the heavy table off her trapped legs and threw herself bodily at the creature pulling its arms behind it in a full-nelson wrestling hold. She used all her strength to force the creature’s head forwards. She smiled as the satisfying ‘pop’ told her that the creature’s neck had been broken, and it fell limply to the floor.

Max lay on the coffee shop’s floor, water pistol in hand, covered in his own blood and hyperventilating.

Sophie turned to him with the annoyed look of someone who’d just spilt a cup of coffee on a new dress, rather than someone who’d just slain a large, furry monster with her bare hands.

“Max, darling! Did that nasty, hairy brute hurt you?”

She pulled him to his feet with inhuman strength.

“What was that?” said Max weakly. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Oh him!” said Sophie. “That was the Beast of Bodmin.”

“You
know
that creature?”

“Yes,” said Sophie. “We dated for a while, but he turned out to have a really foul temper.”

“So I see,” said Max softly. “Do you think he tracked us from the bar?”

“Probably,” said Sophie shrugging her shoulders. “He always was the jealous sort.”

The coffee shop owner tottered towards them. Max didn’t know whether the man was going to faint or vomit, or both.

“Are you all right?” said the man, in a strangled voice.

“Yes, we’re fine, thanks,” said Max, blood pouring down his face and soaking the collar of his new shirt.

“What... what was that?” said the man, pointing a shaking finger at the furry carcass.

“Er... a wild dog,” said Max.

“But... but it walked on two legs,” said the coffee shop owner, looking bewildered.

“Yeah, well. I think it escaped from the circus,” said Max. “Sir, I’m going to have to close this place for a health and safety violation. You can’t serve food with a corpse on the premises.”

Max waved his Warrant Card at the shaken coffee shop owner.

“Now, if you’ll just follow my colleague, Detective Smith, she’ll make sure that all your customers leave in an orderly fashion.”

Sophie led the way, rounding up the shocked customers like an elegantly efficient sheepdog, and pushed them outside. Max pulled a roll of ‘crime scene’ tape from his pocket and tied it across the shattered window and over the front door.

The blue and white tape fluttered gaily in the summer breeze but the message was clear: ‘Crime Scene – Do Not Cross’.

“What are you going to do about that fur-ball in there?” asked Sophie.

“I’ll send a retrieval unit for the body asap,” said Max. “Er... do you want to say any last ‘goodbyes’ to your friend.”

“Good gracious, no!” said Sophie, amused. “I expect I’ll see him again some time. Anyway, I rather enjoyed killing him. It’s good to keep in practice. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Max, darling. I
am
a demon.”

Max couldn’t argue with that.

“You really look a terrible mess,” said Sophie, critically appraising the wound on Max’s cheek. “You have very red blood. I think you should clean that up, people will stare. And by the way, you’d better clean it with vodka – the Beast of Bodmin has rather a lot of diabolical germs in his claws.”

“Vodka?”

“Yes, best thing for the job. Trust me,” said Sophie.

Max wasn’t too sure that vodka had been mentioned on the First Aid course the police had sent him on back when he’d joined the Force, but Sophie had just saved his life – or at the very least saved him from having his face torn off – and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings – or annoy her unnecessarily.

They stopped at an Off Licence and bought half a bottle of vodka then made a hasty retreat back to Demon Division HQ.

Max’s wound stung like mad when Sophie dabbed it with vodka and the pain made his eyes water.

He was also rather alarmed when the wound began to smoke slightly.

“There! All fixed and good as new,” said Sophie proudly.

Max stared at himself in the mirror of Sophie’s powder compact. The wound was completely healed, with only the faintest white scar stretching under his eye and down his cheek.

His shirt was still covered in blood but in every other way, he really was as good as new.

“Jeez, Sophie! Where did you learn to do that?” said Max.

“Oh, I was a Girl Guide,” she replied.

Max wasn’t sure whether or not she was joking and it seemed rude to ask.

“Actually,” said Sophie, smiling sweetly, “vodka only works on Beast wounds: one of those little tips I picked up while we were dating.”

Max was really keen not to hear any more.

North of Chelsea

“Well, that was a fun morning,” said Sophie. “What are we going to do this afternoon?”

Sophie’s run-in with the Beast certainly seemed to have improved her humour. She’d been a bit depressed without having anything to kill.

“We still need to find the Brood,” said Max. “If they manage to get to the Summoner – whether it’s the Bruce woman or someone else – before we do, I’ve a feeling that we’ll be in a whole lot more trouble.”

“I agree,” said Sophie, “but where do we start?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Max. “One of the benefits of being on the side of good is that Scotland Yard has access to high quality satellite photography. We’ll look for any recently deceased plant life on a large scale. Nothing organic can live around demonic energy for long, right? A large nest of Brood must leave a trace.”

“What? You want us to look at photographs for the whole of London?” yelped Sophie. “That’ll take days!”

“Yeah, I know,” said Max, tracing a tentative finger down the rapidly healed scar. “But I think the Brood will want to stay central if they’re going to give the Bruce woman the amulet – and we have to assume they now have it – so we’ll check out Zones 1 and 2.”

“Next you’ll be suggesting we check the database of Oyster card users,” moaned Sophie.

“Yeah, well, that’s a thought,” muttered Max tiredly, “or we could just check out politicians’ main residences and second homes, but we’ve got to start somewhere – perhaps you have a better idea?”

Sophie was unusually silent. Max rather enjoyed the change.

“What if we don’t find anything?” said Sophie in a small voice.

“We will,” said Max, with an assurance that he didn’t feel. “We have to.”

Hours later with their backs aching and their eyes scratchy and dry from staring at thousands of images on a computer screen, they were close to giving up.

“I’ve checked every park and piece of open ground that I can think of,” said Sophie. “But what if they’re not near a park? What if they’re somewhere that doesn’t have any plant life? How will we find them then?”

“That’s unlikely,” said Max. “London is one of the greenest cities in the world. We’ve got more parks and open spaces per square mile than...”

“Spare me the tourist twaddle,” said Sophie, grumpily.

Fair enough, thought Max. To be honest, the same question had been racking his brain; not that he had any intention of admitting it to Sophie. Then something caught his eye. It was a satellite photograph of an elegant Georgian house in Belgravia.

“Look at this!”

He pointed at the screen.

Sophie looked fed up. Briefly she scanned the screen then her eyes lit up.

“Yes, I see it, too,” she breathed.

They stared at the photograph. It was quite clear that a once carefully tended roof garden had been reduced to a few brown twigs. The shrubs and small trees looked as if they’d been scorched by a flame thrower. Max had never seen such violated plant life. He figured it must mean the nest of Brood was a large one. Bingo.

“Oh, fun!” said Sophie. “Let’s go!”

“Woah! Hold on there a minute, pardner,” said Max. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Sophie shook her head and Max couldn’t help noticing that the sun glinted off her red curls in a rather alluring manner. He shook his head to clear it, making a huge effort to focus.

Sophie stared at him curiously.

“How about a plan?” said Max. “Weapons? A way of making sure we both come out of this alive? Or undead, at least. We don’t know how many Brood demons there are, for a start. And supposing they’ve already called the Mother and she’s waiting for us?”

“No, they haven’t,” said Sophie, “I’m sure of it. If a Great Evil like that was already in London, I’d have felt it. I’ll bet you the Mother is going to be called by that Lily Bruce woman. I’ll bet you your next month’s salary.”

“No deal,” said Max, who was already a bit hard up. “Now concentrate – time for a weapons’ check.”

“You
do
know the way to a girl’s heart,” whispered Sophie.

“Yeah, but you’re not a girl and as I seem to have to keep on reminding you, you’re a cold-hearted killer so don’t you forget it,” said Max.

Sophie smiled coldly. “Oh don’t worry – it’s not the kind of thing I’m likely to forget. And neither should you.”

The silence stretched uncomfortably between them.

Max made the first move by opening the lock to his weapons’ chest and Sophie shuddered with pleasure.

There was a delicately inlaid silver letter opener – clearly ancient; several cheaper modern letter openers – also silver; a crossbow with wooden arrows (for vampires), and silver darts (for demons); a shot gun with silver bullets (for werewolves); and several bottles of Holy water (for everything else). Rather incongruously, there were also two more plastic toy water pistols: odd looking, perhaps, but important weapons in the fight against evil.

One of the rarest and most powerful weapons in the chest wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Catholic church: it was a beautiful gold censer. Priests filled them with incense and swung them through the church during solemn Mass. It was supposed to help carry the prayers of the faithful up to heaven. Max filled his with a combination of olibanum and holy oil – more commonly known as frankincense and myrrh. That mix of three holy materials turned it into a powerful killing tool in the fight against darkness. It was hellishly expensive so Max only used it as a last resort.

“And, er, you can have these,” said Max, blushing slightly.

He passed Sophie a pair of soft, black leather gloves. “To replace the pair you damaged. They’re lined with lambs’ wool and I’ve put some protection spells on them – so you can use the silver weapons and avoid splashes from the Holy water.”

“Darling boy!” said Sophie softly, “I didn’t know you cared. And you’re blushing! Red has always been my favourite colour – especially on you.”

Max frowned and delved deeper into the weapons’ chest to cover his confusion. He had the unsettling feeling that Sophie knew exactly what he was doing.

They packed up the weapons and Max re-filled the water pistols with Holy water. He decided to take the crossbow because although it was hard to hide from civilians, it was his favourite weapon. Plus, it could be useful against the Brood if the darts were dipped in Holy water first. He wasn’t sure how powerful these Level Threes were in such large numbers – a demon’s power increased in the presence of evil, in the same way their powers receded in the presence of pure goodness. Max wasn’t particularly looking forward to finding out just how much power these Brood demons now had.

“So how do we play this one?” said Sophie. “Shall I just knock on the door and wait to be invited in like last time?”

“That’s Plan B,” said Max. “Plan A is to try and find a way in around the back or through the servants’ entrance and approach by stealth.”

He glanced at Sophie’s disapproving scowl. “It won’t kill you to go in the tradesman’s entrance for once in your lives, but it might kill you if you don’t.”

She tossed her curls in annoyance.

“Ideally, I’d like to pick off the Brood one by one, rather than risk a full scale battle like last time,” he said.

“Oh, but that was so much fun!” said Sophie.

“Possibly,” said Max, trying not to smile, “but this time there’ll be a lot more of them – and they’ll probably be expecting us. Actually, by now I reckon they’ll definitely be expecting us. The word’s on the street – thanks to the
Malleus
doppelganger.”

Sophie pouted but she didn’t argue. For a change.

Max ordered a taxi, which restored much of Sophie’s good humour, and they were soon heading west along Warwick Way.

The taxi driver had thrown a few witty comments about Max’s crossbow, but as they’d fallen on stony ground, he decided that discretion was the better part of being a taxi driver and had concentrated instead on listening to some of the wilder UFO theories being put forward on Talk Radio.

The streets in this part of London were wide and tree-lined, the houses expensive. Max felt scruffy and conspicuous. Sophie, on the other hand, blended in perfectly. Even the taxi driver seemed to think that she belonged there and thought she must be a very kind lady to let the (very) odd-job man share her ride.