“Color me relieved. Got to admit, the old magician almost had my goat. I thought there might be something to all this horseshit mumbo-jumbo.”
“Of course, mysticism was invented for the peasantry. You are far out of your depth. You are being turned like a card between masters. The Ace of Clubs. In all of this you are but a blunt instrument. If anyone murdered your father, it was Helios Augustus. Likely by poison. Poison and lies are the sorcerer’s best friends.”
I took the blackened cocoon from my shirt pocket. So trivial a thing, so withered a husk, yet even as I brandished it between thumb and forefinger, my host shrank farther away until he’d stepped into the house proper and regarded me from the sweep of a velvet curtain, drawn across his face like a cowl or a cape, and for an instant the ice in my heart suggested that it was a trick, that he was indeed the creature of a forsaken angel, that he meant to lull me into complacency and would then laugh and devour me, skin, bones, and soul. Beneath the balcony the music changed; it sizzled and snapped and strange guttural cries and glottal croaks resounded here and there.
A quick glance, no more, but plenty for me to take it in—the guests were all pairing now, and many had already removed their clothes. The shorn and scorched patches of bare earth farther out hadn’t suffered from the ravages of ponies or cleats. Servants were not reapplying chalk lines; it must’ve been pitch in their buckets, for one knelt and laid a torch down and flames shot waist high and quickly blossomed into a series of crisscross angles of an occult nature. The mighty pentagram spanned dozens of yards and it shed a most hellish radiance, which I figured was the point of the exercise. Thus, evidently, was the weekly spectacle at the Paxton estate.
“Don’t look so horrified, it’s not as if they’re going to rut in the field,” Paxton said from the safety of the door. “Granted, a few might observe the rituals. The majority will dance and make merry. Harmless as can be. I hadn’t estimated you for a prude.”
My hand came away from my side wet. I drew the Luger. “I don’t care whether they fuck or not,” I said, advancing until I’d backed him further into the study. It was dim and antiquated as could be expected. A marble desk and plush chairs, towering stacks of leathery tomes accessed by a ladder on a sliding rail. Obscured by a lush, ornamental tree was a dark statue of a devil missing its right arm. The horned head was intact, though, and its hollow eyes reminded me of the vacuous gaze of the boy in Muybridge’s film. “No one is gonna hear it when I put a bullet in you. No one is gonna weep, either. You’re not a likeable fella, Mr. Paxton.”
“You aren’t the first the sorcerer has sent to murder me. He’s gathered so many fools over the years, sent them traipsing to their doom. Swine, apes, rodents. Whatever dregs take on such work, whatever scum stoop to such dirty deeds. I’m exhausted. Let this be the end of the tedious affair.”
“I’m here for revenge,” I said. “My heart is pure.” I shot him in the gut.
“The road to Hell, etcetera, etcetera.” Paxton slumped against the desk. He painstakingly lighted another cigarette. His silk shirt went black. “Father, the crones, other, much darker personages who shall remain nameless for both our sakes, had sky high ambitions for me when I was born. That’s why I went to a surrogate family while Floddie got shuffled to a sty of an orphanage. It must be admitted that I’m a substantial disappointment. An individual of power, certainly. Still, they’d read the portents and dared hope I would herald a new age, that I would be the chosen one, that I would cast down the tyrants and light the great fires of the end days. Alas, here I dwell, a philosopher hermit, a casual entertainer and dilettante of the left-hand path. I don’t begrudge their bitterness and spite. I don’t blame them for seeking my destruction. They want someone to shriek and bleed to repay their lost dreams. Who better than the architect of their disillusionment?”
To test my theory that no one would notice, or care, and to change the subject, I shot him again. In the thigh this time.
“See, I told you. I’m but a mortal, and now I die.” He sagged to the floor, still clutching his cigarette. His eyes glittered and dripped. “Yes, yes, again.” And after he took the third bullet, this one in the ribs an inch or two above the very first, he smiled and blood oozed from his mouth. “Frankly, I thought you’d extort me for money. Or use me to bargain for your friends whom you’ve so quaintly and clumsily searched for since they wandered away a few minutes ago.”
“My friends are dead. Or dying. Probably chained in the cellar getting the Broderick with a hammer. It’s what I’d do if I were in your shoes.” I grudgingly admired his grit in the face of certain death. He’d a lot more pluck than his demeanor suggested.
“I hope your animal paranoia serves you well all the days of your life. Your friends aren’t dead. Nor tortured; not on my account. Although, maybe Daniel wasn’t satisfied with one double cross. I suppose it’s possible he’s already dug a hole for you in the woods. May you be so fortunate.” He wheezed and his face drained of color, become gauzy in the dimness. After the fit subsided, he gestured at my chest. “Give me the charm, if you please.”
I limped to his side and took the cigarette from him and had a drag. Then I placed the cocoon in his hand. He nodded and more blood dribbled forth as he popped the bits of leaf and silk and chrysalis into his mouth and chewed. He said, “A fake. What else could it be?” His voice was fading and his head lolled. “If I’d been born the Antichrist, none of this would’ve happened. Anyway…I’m innocent. You’re bound for the fire, big fellow.”
I knelt and grasped his tie to pull him close. “Innocent? The first one was for my dad. Don’t really give a damn whether you done him or not, so I’ll go with what feels good. And this does indeed feel good. The other two were for your sister and that poor sap in boarding school. Probably not enough fire in Hell for you. Should we meet down there? You’d best get shy of me.”
“In a few minutes, then,” Paxton said and his face relaxed. When I let loose of his tie, he toppled sideways and lay motionless. Jeeves, or Reynolds, or whatever the butler’s name was, opened the door and froze in mid-stride. He calmly assessed the situation, turned sharply as a Kraut infantryman on parade, and shut it again.
Lights from the fires painted the window and flowed in the curtains and made the devil statue’s grin widen until everything seemed to warp and I covered my eyes and listened to Dan Blackwood piping and the mad laughter of his thralls. I shook myself and fetched the Thompson and made myself comfortable behind the desk in the captain’s chair, and waited. Smoked half a deck of ciggies while I did.
Betting man that I am, I laid odds that either some random goons, Blackwood, or one of my chums, would come through the door fairly soon, and in that order of likelihood. The universe continued to reveal its mysteries a bit later when Helios Augustus walked in, dressed to the nines in yellow and purple silk, with a stovepipe hat and a black cane with a lump of gold at the grip. He bowed, sweeping his hat, and damn me for an idiot, I should’ve cut him down right then, but I didn’t. I had it in my mind to palaver since it had gone so swimmingly with Paxton.
Bad mistake, because, what with the magician and his expert prestidigitation and such, his hat vanished and he easily produced a weapon that settled my hash. For an instant my brain saw a gun and instinctively my finger tightened on the trigger of the Thompson. Or tried to. Odd, thing, I couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t so much as bat a lash. My body sat, a big useless lump. I heard and felt everything. No difficulties there, and then I recognized what Helios had brandished was the mummified severed hand he’d kept in his dressing room at the Hotel Broadsword. I wondered when he’d gotten into town. Had Blackwood dialed him on the blower this morning? The way things were going, I half suspected the creepy bastard might’ve hidden in the shrubbery days ago and waited, patient as a spider, for this, his moment of sweet, sweet triumph.