Jacqueline herself was small, painfully thin, neurotic; sitting uncomfortably at her table, scrunched up and eyes down as though trying not to be noticed. Her dress would probably have looked attractive on anyone else. She had a sharp-boned face with piercing eyes, a tight-lipped mouth, and ragged mousy hair. She didn’t bother with her appearance, because she never knew how long she’d stay that way. Hyde came and went. She glanced about the restaurant, but never looked at anyone for long. She had a bottle of whisky on the table in front of her, and was drinking steadily through it, one glass at a time. Didn’t seem to be affecting her much, but then, once you’ve had Dr. Jekyll’s Formula, everything else is always going to seem like a poor relation.
And then I saw who was sitting at the table beyond, and I forgot all about Jacqueline Hyde.
I knew the face, and the reputation, from Drood files. Earnest Schmidt, current leader of the reformed Brotherhood of the Vril. Back in the day, the original organisation was a mystical supergroup, and a major supporter of the Nazis. The Vril supported Hitler on the way up, and once he was in power, he showed his appreciation by supplying them with all the warm bodies they wanted for their special experiments. Sometimes, they let him watch.
The Vril loved being Nazis, and playing with innocent lives and deaths. But once the war was over they quickly discovered they had no friends and a hell of a lot of enemies, so they just grabbed as much loot as they could and disappeared into the jungles of South America. Along with so many other war criminals.
The Brotherhood of the Vril split and schismed so many times, they effectively neutered themselves. But just recently they’d shown signs of pulling themselves together again. They’d run out of war loot long ago, but they were finding new funds from somewhere . . . which might explain what a Nazi scumbag like Earnest Schmidt was doing here, at Casino Infernale.
A portly, dark-haired man in his early forties, he sat stiffly at his table in a tuxedo almost the match of mine. Though he didn’t wear it nearly as well. He held his head high, as though to make clear to everyone present that he was not a man to be trifled with. His eyes were a pale blue, his mouth a flat line, and he had a single glass of brandy in front of him that he didn’t touch. Nazis always were big on self-denial, except for when they weren’t. Schmidt didn’t wear a single swastika or Gestapo death’s head. Or even the SS double lightning bolts. He might have passed for just another successful businessman, here for the games and the thrills . . . except for the look in his eyes. The way he looked down on everyone else in the room for not meeting his exacting standards.
“Vril,” said Molly. “I hate those little shits. You think he set those Pan’s Panzerpeople on us, on the way here?”
“He does seem to be looking at everyone else in the restaurant apart from you and me,” I said.
I picked up the croissant by my plate, and threw it at Schmidt with devastating accuracy. It bounced off his head with enough force to make him cry out. He put a hand to his head and looked round sharply and saw me smiling at him. He sat very still, and then turned away again. Saying nothing, doing nothing. Perhaps because he wasn’t prepared to acknowledge the existence of such an obvious inferior as myself.
I reached for the water jug. Molly put a hand on my arm to stop me, smiling even as she shook her head.
“Why not?” I said. “I can hit him from here.”
“Because we don’t have any proof he was behind the attack,” said Molly. “And because you never know who you might need as an ally in a place like this.”
“Him?” I said. “The only use I’d have for that evil little turd is as a human shield. Or possibly a battering ram.”
“Anywhen else, yes,” said Molly. “But this is Casino Infernale. The rules are different, here. You never know when you might need to make a deal against someone else. Someone worse, or just more immediately dangerous. You must remember, Shaman, we can’t depend on our usual protections. Either of us. We really don’t want to start a fight we can’t be sure of winning.”
“You’re no fun when you’re right,” I said.
I looked around for someone else to interest me, and immediately recognised a person of interest I knew from Drood files. A large and fleshy man in a scarlet cardinal’s robes, smiling easily about him. Smiling constantly at some private joke on the rest of us. His face was kind and calm, even serene, until you got a good look at his eyes. Fanatic’s eyes, fierce and unyielding. I knew his story, too.
Leopold, the famous gambling priest. The man of God who went from one gambling house to the next, playing every game of chance there was to raise money for his Church. The priest who never lost because he had God on his side, murmuring in his ear. Or so he claimed. He certainly had a hell of a reputation for winning against all the odds. Backed by the Vatican banks, Leopold had spent the last twenty years cutting a swath through all the great gambling houses of the world, and taking them to the cleaners. Not for him, never for him. All the money he won went straight to his Church. But this was the first time I’d ever heard of him attending Casino Infernale.
“Maybe the Vatican wants him to break the bank here, to bring down the Shadow Bank,” said Molly.
“Unlikely,” I said. “The Vatican banks and the Shadow Bank have a relationship that goes back centuries.”
And as I watched Leopold watching everyone else, it occurred to me that everyone in the restaurant was looking at everyone else, in their own quiet, surreptitious ways. A lot of people were looking at Molly, and some were even looking at me. The only completely detached person in the room was Jacqueline Hyde. And, maybe Leopold, who seemed to find the whole situation deeply amusing.
The food arrived. Two huge plates of richly steaming paella. It looked and smelled amazing, and I had my knife and fork in my hand before the plates even hit the table. But Molly stopped me with a harsh look, and I made myself sit back and watch as Molly produced a long thin bone needle from somewhere about her person. Unicorn horn—a simple and effective test for poison. Molly thrust the bone needle deep into the paella before her, and we both watched grimly as a purple stain rose up the white bone. She tried my plate, and the poison was there, too.
The waiter backed away from the table, shaking his head rapidly, to make it clear that none of this was anything to do with him. Molly rose to her feet, but before she could even accuse anyone, the whole restaurant went insane.
The spaghetti in front of the man next to us shot straight up into the air, and tried to strangle him. White ropy stuff whipped around his throat and tightened, stretched taut and immovable in a moment. More and more of the stuff sprang up into the air, wrapping itself around his head, burying his face under layers of ropy pasta. He grabbed at the white ropes with his hands, but couldn’t break them. His eyes bulged, and his mouth stretched wide as he gasped for air.
Earnest Schmidt’s salad exploded upwards, growing and shaping itself into a single massive green arm, studded with razor-sharp thorns. The green hand grabbed the front of Schmidt’s suit and lifted him right out of his seat and into the air, shaking him viciously. He grabbed at the green arm with both hands, only to cry out as he cut himself on the vicious thorns.
Jacqueline Hyde was quickly on her feet and backing away from her table, as the steaming curry in front of her took on new life. A horribly monstrous form, all hot steaming flesh, with reaching hands and snapping jaws. It towered over the small woman, a monstrous thing of bestial angers and appetites; and then it stopped, abruptly, as Jacqueline became something much worse.
Leopold’s baked baby chupacabra rose up off its plate, levitating on the air. The tiny stitches holding its mouth and eyes shut all snapped at once, and it fixed the gambling priest with terrible glowing eyes as he rose abruptly to his feet. It said something awful to him, in Spanish. Leopold stood his ground, his face twisted with loathing, and began an exorcism in old-school Latin.