Books Of Blood Vol 6

'Tell him we'll pay double his normal rate,' Valenun said.

'You hear that, Mel? Twice your usual fee. So get over here, will you?' He gave the address to his brother-in-law, and put down the receiver. 'He's coming over,' he announced.

'Now?' said Harry.

'Now,' Byron glanced at his watch. 'My belly thinks my throat's cut. How about we eat? You got an all night place near here?'

'There's one a block down from here.'

'You want food?' Byron asked Valentin.

'I don't think so,' he said. He was looking worse by the moment.

'OK,' Byron said to Harry, 'just you and me then. You got ten I could borrow?'

Harry gave him a bill, the keys to the street door and an order for doughnuts and coffee, and Byron went on his way. Only when he'd gone did Harry wish he'd convinced the poet to stave off his hunger pangs a while. The office was distressingly quiet without him: Swann in residence behind the desk, Valentin succumbing to sleep in the other chair. The hush brought to mind another such silence, during that last, awesome night at the Lomax house when Mimi's demon-lover, wounded by Father Hesse, had slipped away into the walls for a while, and left them waiting and waiting, knowing it would come back but not certain of when or how. Six hours they'd sat - Mimi occasionally breaking the silence with laughter or gibberish - and the first Harry had known of its return was the smell of cooking excrement, and Mimi's cry of 'Sodomite!' as Hesse surrendered to an act his faith had too long forbidden him. There had been no more silence then, not for a long space: only Hesse's cries, and Harry's pleas for forgetfulness. They had all gone unanswered.

It seemed he could hear the demon's voice now; its demands, its invitations. But no; it was only Valentin. The man was tossing his head back and forth in sleep, his face knotted up. Suddenly he started from his chair, one word on his lips:

'Swannl'

His eyes opened, and as they alighted on the illusionist's body, which was propped in the chair opposite, tears came uncontrollably, wracking him.

'He's dead,' he said, as though in his dream he had forgotten that bitter fact. 'I failed him, D'Amour. That's why he's dead. Because of my negligence.'

'You're doing your best for him now,' Harry said, though he knew the words were poor compensation. 'Nobody could ask for a better friend.'

'I was never his friend,' Valentin said, staring at the corpse with brimming eyes. 'I always hoped he'd one day trust me entirely. But he never did.'

'Why not?'

'He couldn't afford to trust anybody. Not in his situation.' He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand.

'Maybe,' Harry said, 'it's about time you told me what all this is about.'

'If you want to hear.'

'I want to hear.'

'Very well,' said Valentin. 'Thirty-two years ago, Swann made a bargain with the Gulfs. He agreed to be an ambassador for them if they, in return, gave him magic.'

'Magicr

'The ability to perform miracles. To transform matter. To bewitch souls. Even to drive out God.'

'That's a miracle?'

'It's more difficult than you think,' Valentin replied.

'So Swann was a genuine magician?'

'Indeed he was.'

'Then why didn't he use his powers?'

'He did,' Valentin replied. 'He used them every night, at every performance.'

Harry was baffled. 'I don't follow.'

'Nothing the Prince of Lies offers to humankind is of the least value,' Valentin said, 'or it wouldn't be offered. Swann didn't know that when he first made his Covenant. But he soon learned. Miracles are useless. Magic is a distraction from the real concerns. It's rhetoric. Melodrama.'

'So what exactly are the real concerns?'

'You should know better than I,' Valentin replied. 'Fellowship, maybe? Curiosity? Certainly it matters not in the least if water can be made into wine, or Lazarus to live another year.'

Harry saw the wisdom of this, but not how it had brought the magician to Broadway. As it was, he didn't need to ask. Valentin had taken up the story afresh. His tears had cleared with the telling; some trace of animation had crept back into his features.

'It didn't take Swann long to realise he'd sold his soul for a mess of pottage,' he explained. 'And when he did he was inconsolable. At least he was for a while. Then he began to contrive a revenge.'

'How?'

'By taking Hell's name in vain. By using the magic which it boasted of as a trivial entertainment, degrading the power of the Gulfs by passing off their wonder-working as mere illusion. It was, you see, an act of heroic perversity. Every time a trick of Swann's was explained away as sleight-of-hand, the Gulfs squirmed.'

'Why didn't they kill him?' Harry said.

'Oh, they tried. Many times. But he had allies. Agents in their camp who warned him of their plots against him. He escaped their retribution for years that way.'

'Until now?'

'Until now,' Valentin sighed. 'He was careless, and so was I. Now he's dead, and the Gulfs are itching for him.'

'I see.'

'But we were not entirely unprepared for this eventuality. He had made his apologies to Heaven; and I dare to hope he's been forgiven his trespasses. Pray that he has. There's more than his salvation at stake tonight.'

'Yours too?'

'All of us who loved him are tainted,' Valentin replied, 'but if we can destroy his physical remains before the Gulfs claim them we may yet avoid the consequences of his Covenant.'

'Why did you wait so long? Why didn't you just cremate him die day he died?'

Their lawyers are not fools. The Covenant specifically proscribes a period of lying-in-state. If we had attempted to ignore that clause his soul would have been forfeited automatically.'

'So when is this period up?'

'Three hours ago, at midnight,' Valentin replied. 'That's why they're so desperate, you see. And so dangerous.'

Another poem came to Byron Jowitt as he ambled back up 8th. Avenue, working his way through a tuna salad sandwich. His Muse was not to be rushed. Poems could take as long as five minutes to be finalised; longer if they involved a double rhyme. He didn't hurry on his journey back to the offices therefore, but wandered in a dreamy sort of mood, turning the lines every which way to make them fit. That way he hoped to arrive back with another finished poem. Two in one night was damn good going.

He had not perfected the final couplet however, by the time he reached the door. Operating on automatic pilot he fumbled in his pocket for the keys D'Amour had loaned him, and let himself in. He was about to close the door again when a woman stepped through the gap, smiling at him. She was a beauty, and Byron, being a poet, was a fool for beauty.

'Please,' she said to him, 'I need your help.'

'What can I do for you?' said Byron through a mouthful of food.

'Do you know a man by the name of D'Amour? Harry D'Amour?'

'Indeed I do. I'm going up to his place right now.'

'Perhaps you could show me the way?' the woman asked him, as Byron closed the door.

'Be my pleasure,' he replied, and led her across the lobby to the bottom of the stairs.

'You know, you're very sweet,' she told him; and Byron melted.

Valentin stood at the window.

'Something wrong?' Harry asked.

'Just a feeling,' Valentin commented. 'I have a suspicion maybe the Devil's in Manhattan.'

'So what's new?'

'That maybe he's coming for us.' As if on cue there was a knock at the door. Harry jumped. 'It's all right,' Valentin said, 'he never knocks.'

Harry went to the door, feeling like a fool.

'Is that you, Byron?' he asked before unlocking it.

'Please,' said a voice he thought he'd never hear again. 'Helpme...'

He opened the door. It was Dorothea, of course. She was colourless as water, and as unpredictable. Even before Harry had invited her across the office threshold a dozen expressions, or hints of such, had crossed her face: anguish, suspicion, terror. And now, as her eyes alighted upon the body of her beloved Swann, relief and gratitude.