The Demi-Monde: Winter (57 page)

Vanka nodded enthusiastically. ‘It’s the only way. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to go up in a balloon. We’re fifteen miles from ExterSteine and it’s only’ – he checked his watch – ‘five hours to dawn and as the wind shifts to the east between midnight and six in the morning it’s a perfect time. By my reckoning ExterSteine is almost due east, so all we’ll do is let the wind carry us in that direction until we see the standing stones and then let out the hydrogen from the balloon and …’

‘Crash?’

‘Sink gracefully to the ground,’ he corrected. ‘Look, Ella, I know it’s a pretty madcap sort of scheme but unless you can think of a better way of us getting to ExterSteine before dawn, this is all that’s on offer.’

‘It’s madness.’

‘You’re not frightened of heights, are you?’

‘It’s not the heights that frighten me, it’s the depths that come rushing up to greet you when you crash that I’ve always found discouraging.’

‘Don’t worry, Ella, flying can’t be that difficult.’

‘You’re not suggesting you’re going to fly it!’

‘Of course,’ answered Vanka casually. ‘Who else? Anyway, it’ll be fun!’

‘Fun? That’s a hydrogen balloon you’re talking about: one bullet and we’ll be toast.’

‘It’s night: no one will see us.’

‘What about the guards? They’re not just gonna let us waltz in and steal one of their balloons.’

‘Most of them will be drunk by now. It’s Spring Eve and everybody gets drunk on Spring Eve. And if there are any guards who aren’t drunk then your Disciples will settle them.’

Before Ella quite knew what was happening Vanka flourished a pair of wire-cutters, cut a hole in the fence and she was running behind him towards the balloon. All the guards protecting the Balloon-O-Drome must have been drunk as no one challenged them, or maybe none of them believed that anyone would be mad enough to steal a balloon. Closer to, the balloon looked enormous but very fragile. The canvas of the cover was stretched over a thin bamboo frame, and the basket that hung beneath was woven from what looked to be wholly inadequate wicker.

‘There isn’t room for more than two or three people in that basket. What are the rest of us going to do?’

‘Don’t worry about them,’ answered Vanka. ‘Rivets will come with us – he’s only little. The rest will be all right. They’re tough guys and they’ll make their way to the Quartier somehow. But I think they’d appreciate it if you said a few words of thanks before we go.’

‘How about a prayer?’ suggested Ella, only partly in jest.

Once out of the Ghetto, it was every man and woman for themselves. It was impossible for Trixie to control or to command the survivors of the WFA. So far as she could judge,
the chance of their being able to fight through Odessa and St Petersburg to the Anichkov Bridge was very slim.

But the peculiar thing was that now, when they were at their most vulnerable, the SS threat had receded. There were still fire-fights going on all around the perimeter of the Ghetto, but not with quite the intensity of before. It seemed that – despite her father’s misgivings – their plan to escape through Westgate had worked: there were hardly any regular ForthRight Army soldiers defending the route south through Rodina to the Coven. But there was still a march of almost fifteen miles ahead of them and by the look of her soldiers that would be fifteen miles too far.

Wysochi provided the solution. Using a sharp tongue and a blunt boot, he drove the fighters up onto their feet and off searching for steamers. These he commandeered at the point of a rifle, and soon a veritable motorised regiment was puffing through the streets of Rodina, each steamer crammed full of fighters. It took them an hour to get to the Anichkov Bridge, and as the convoy wheezed to a halt by the side of the Volga River, she could see that now just the half-mile span of the bridge separated the WFA from the safety of Rangoon.

But as Trixie studied the bridge, her father’s observation began to trouble her. She had expected the whole length of the St Petersburg bank of the Volga to be alive with ForthRight assault troops as they prepared to attack the Coven, but it was virtually empty. Certainly, there was a sizeable force of SS defending the bridge, but that’s all they were doing: defending it. One thing for sure was they weren’t attacking the Coven.

‘Have you seen my father?’ she asked Wysochi.

‘No, though I’ve heard that he took his men east.’

East?

For a moment Trixie felt hurt … betrayed. How could her father have deserted her on tonight of all nights?

‘There’s no ForthRight Army waiting to attack, Sergeant.’

Wysochi shrugged. ‘The ForthRight have probably delayed the attack because of the weather. No one wants to advance into the teeth of a blizzard.’

Trixie nodded. It was a sensible explanation and better than her father’s idea that Heydrich had changed his mind and abandoned the attack on the Coven. Leaders like Heydrich didn’t change their mind; that smacked of weakness.

‘How many men do we have left?’ she asked.

‘Maybe a couple of thousand,’ Wysochi guessed. ‘It was hot work.’ He cocked an ear back towards St Petersburg. ‘And the SS aren’t far behind us.’ He was right: even with only one good ear she could hear SS steamers advancing towards them through the chilled silence of the night.

‘Can we force the bridge?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think we have any other choice, Colonel. And if we’re going to do it we should do it soon, otherwise we’re going to end up as meat in an SS sandwich.’

At a signal from Trixie, the remaining WFA fighters attacked the bridge and it was an attack that soon degenerated into mayhem. Later, all she could remember was ordering their steamers to smash through the barricades defending the bridge: the rest was just a blur of firing, fighting, yelling and cursing. The SS detachment stationed on the St Petersburg end of the bridge had obviously not expected to be attacked from the rear but they fought bravely and the cost of the victory was appalling.

When Trixie eventually arrived on the Coven side of the bridge, she was flanked by only a tattered and battered rump of the army of seven thousand men and women she’d led over the barricades just two hours before.

‘The Sacrifice of Blood?’

Crowley laughed at her concern. ‘Oh, don’t fret yourself, Daemon, your life isn’t to be forfeit. I just need a little of your blood to seal the psychic union between you and Lady Aaliz.’

He gestured to the Witchfinder, who moved forward with an evil-looking knife clasped in his hand.

‘Hold out the Daemon’s forearm,’ commanded Crowley.

‘No way!’

But there were too many of them to resist. They forced her right arm out and the Witchfinder ran the tip of his knife along it, slicing a six-inch cut in her pale flesh. Immediately blood began to run, collected in a gold goblet by an adept.

Face flushed with excitement, Crowley pointed to a small stage set in the centre of the cavern. ‘Bring the Daemon to the altar,’ he boomed, ‘and Lady Aaliz, if you would approach through the unformed part of the pentagon, being careful not to step on the rest of the design.’ He pointed to the pentagon painted on the floor of the cavern that surrounded the altar, indicating the one missing side. ‘Now, my Lady,’ said Crowley, ‘if you would please kneel in the direction from which the dawn light will enter our temple.’

The Lady Aaliz did as she was bade.

‘Have the Daemon kneel facing the Lady Aaliz.’

None too gently the Witchfinder forced Norma into the pentagon and pushed her down so that she was face to face with Aaliz, the girls forming human bookends to the altar. ‘Ah, the perfect yin and yang,’ mused Crowley. ‘The perfect antipodes: one blonde, the other dark.’

A trio of musicians seated at the very rear of the temple began to play, the music they conjured from their instruments cacophonous, disturbing and somehow alien.

In the corners of the cavern incense burners were lit and acrid red smoke began to drift through the temple. The smell
that tugged at Norma’s nostrils made her head swim, and she began to feel strangely divorced from reality.

A priestess set a golden tray bearing two goblets – one containing Norma’s blood – on a stand to the side of the altar. Once the woman had retreated from the pentagon, Crowley turned to address his small audience. ‘The altar has been encased in this pentagon for two reasons: it seals the altar from the Demi-Monde, which makes it a more … comfortable place for the Spirits to occupy, and secondly, it forms a magical barrier that safeguards onlookers from the occult forces our spells will release.’ He stooped down and with two swift swishes of a piece of chalk and a few muttered incantations closed the pentagon.

Satisfied, he moved to stand behind the altar, then spread his arms and called out, ‘I command ABBA, the deity that rules this, the Demi-Monde, to send the soul of Aaliz Heydrich to the Spirit World there to inhabit the body of Norma Williams.’ Crowley walked around the altar nine times waving an incense burner to and fro, wafting thick, acrid smoke over the two kneeling girls.

‘First, the Lady Aaliz must drink the blood of the Daemon and by doing so subjugate its will and its astral power.’ He offered the golden chalice to Aaliz, who, with obvious relish, drank down the thick, red liquid.

‘Now, Daemon, drink this.’ Crowley noted the look of revulsion on Norma’s face. ‘Do not worry, it is not blood. This is zelie, a potion made from the hallucinogenic plant called ayahuasca that grows in the Hubland: its use was much favoured by the shamans of Old Rodina. To this I have added the juice of boiled fly agaric mushrooms, to make a cocktail to unlock your mind from the hegemony of your will.’ Norma reluctantly downed the draught. The tart red liquid made her head spin.

‘Join hands,’ commanded Crowley and Norma unthinkingly stretched out her hands towards Aaliz, who intertwined her fingers around hers.

‘Let the Rite of Transference commence.’

The seven men and five women who made up Ella’s bodyguard gathered expectantly around the basket. She found the way they looked at her vaguely disconcerting: they really did believe they were in the presence of someone truly holy. The problem was she didn’t have a clue what to say to them. As she gazed into those trusting, imploring eyes, she wondered what she, little Ella Thomas from New York City, could say that would inspire these people, that would give them hope. She turned to the greatest speech-writers in history for inspiration.

Thank you Mrs Little and her English Lit class.

‘Friends, Demi-Mondians, countrymen, lend me your ears.’

Now a little from the greatest speechifier of them all, Winston Churchill.

‘We have seen joined the greatest battle in the history of the Demi-Monde. It is a battle between good and evil; between those who wish to be free and those who wish to enslave them; between those who would embrace understanding and tolerance and those whose philosophy is infused by hate. But it is a battle that must be won. It will not be an easy victory. We see stretching before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering. But we must be victorious. We must have victory. Victory at all costs – victory in spite of all terrors – victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. And make no mistake, my friends, we now fight for our very survival.’

Though JFK wasn’t bad either.

‘Let the ForthRight know we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure this victory and the success of liberty and equality within the Demi-Monde. Let the ForthRight know we wish a new world order, one where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace is preserved.’

Not forgetting the inimitable Martin Luther King.

‘My friends: I have a dream that one day this world will live out the truth in the creed that all men and all women are created equal. I have a dream that even the ForthRight, with its vicious racists and a Leader whose lips drip with the bile of detestation and subjugation, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that one day people will be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their souls.’

A little touch more of Churchillian rhetoric.

‘So I ask you to go forth and spread the message that all of the Demi-Monde must unite against the plague that is UnFunDaMentalism. Tell the people of the Demi-Monde that we must unite to wage war by land and by river. We must wage war with all our might and with all the strength ABBA has given us. We must wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. Tell them we must fight and we must be victorious.’

And round it off with a dash more Martin Luther King.

‘But be assured that one day the chimes of freedom will ring out through the Demi-Monde proclaiming the coming of a world where men and women, black and white, HerEtical and HimPerialist, will join hands as equals and as friends. That is my message. I pray to the Spirits to keep you safe and to give you the courage and the strength to face the trials to come.’

After she had finished speaking an unnatural silence descended on her audience. Then one of the twelve – the long, beanpole William Penn who had been so assiduously scribbling in his notebook as she had been talking – stood up. There were tears trickling down his cheeks. ‘We pledge, Lady IMmanual, that we will take your message to the Demi-Monde. We pledge that your message of democracy and the defiance of tyranny and injustice will be spread to all the Sectors. We pledge to work night and day to rally the Demi-Monde to defy the evil of the ForthRight and of UnFunDaMentalism. We pledge our undying loyalty and allegiance to our Saviour, the Lady IMmanual and the creed of IMmanualism.’

Bloody hell.

Then the twelve knelt before Ella, who, remembering what she had seen the televangelists do on TV, went around placing her hand on each of the bowed heads whilst intoning, ‘May ABBA be with you.’

At last Vanka intervened. ‘Well, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for everything. Best of luck with your preaching. Go forth with the blessing of the Lady IMmanual and all that. Yeah, go forth and multiply. Now we’ve got to be going.’ He hopped into the basket and held out a hand to Ella. ‘C’mon, then, time to go flying.’