The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge (27 page)

“I believe that is what you require,” he said.

They haggled for some time but he finally took her daemonbane amulet in exchange. Rosalynne regretted its loss but she was desperate. Pumplecheck could have held out for almost everything she had, up to and including her favors. She spat into her hand and rubbed a small portion of mugwort in to make a paste. This she smeared in a careful geometric pattern across a rose quartz crystal. She focused hard on the stone, building up energy.

Power flowed into the crystal, merging with its natural resonant frequency to create a complex signal. She waved the crystal around her like Spock’s tricorder. The oscillation frequency peaked when she pointed in a certain direction. Relief surged through Rosalynne. She had found a gate. Now all she had to do was go and open it.

* * *

A man reeled out of a door. He bumped into Rosalynne, steadying himself with a hand on her shoulder.

“What a strawberry tart,” the man said, enveloping her in a miasma of bad breath and rotgut gin.

He peered into her face, “You’re a cut above the usual tail. How much for a blower?”

He lunged at her. She pivoted using his own weight and momentum to throw him facedown in the drain. He hit with a splash and failed to get up. Rosalynne strode away without looking back. The so-and-so could drown in his own vomit for all she cared.

The crystal guided her deeper into the Whitechapel rookery, a hive of fetid alleys and grimy buildings. She heard a rhythmic tapping ahead of her but could see nothing through the murk. It sounded different from a gentleman’s stick but she gripped her athame tightly. The little knife was not much of a weapon against a sword stick but better than nothing. The tapping got closer. It had a weird double rap.

A figure loomed out of the murk. Rosalynne shrank back into a doorway. She concentrated on a spell to make herself inconspicuous, softly intoning the words under her breath. The man got closer. He swung himself forward with a crutch under each arm, right crutch first then second alongside, making the
tock-tock
sound. A knee-length coat flapped between the crutches but the man had no knees because he had no legs. He balanced adroitly as if the crutches were stilts.

When he reached Rosalynne, he turned to face her, pivoting on one crutch. So much for the efficacy of the hiding spell. She resolved to excise it from her Book of Shadows just as soon as she was home.

“Alms, fair lady, alms.” He shook his head, causing a jangle of coins from a bag slung around his neck.

She was angry that she had been frightened by a bloody crippled beggar. Rosalynne being Rosalynne, she turned her fear into anger and focused it on the beggar.

“Sod off, you creep,” she said.

“Lousy, glim-raddled dollymop.” He hopped closer, his face twisting in rage.

A perfectly formed, miniature leg swung out of the man’s long coat. A rusty chiv, tied to the beggar’s foot, sliced up to disembowel her. It was a well-practiced move that must have often been decisive.

Rosalynne blocked the thrust with her athame. The blades clashed with a metallic clang. Her knife lodged fast in the chiv’s lashings. She heaved upwards, throwing the beggar backwards off his crutches.

Rosalynne fled.

“Help me up, you pox-rotten bitch.”

She risked a glance. The beggar struggled on his back, little legs waggling in the air like an upturned cockroach. She made the traditional two-fingered English salute before resuming her flight. Rosalynne rounded a corner to find the blind beggar leaning against a wall.

“Henry?” she asked.

“You look tired, beauty,” the blind beggar replied.

It wasn’t Henry’s voice. The blind beggar had a rich baritone.

“You’re the daemon,” said Rosalynne, edging away.

“There’s no fooling you, beauty,” said the daemon, mockingly.

She automatically reached into her bag for her daemonbane amulet. The daemon smiled at her encouragingly. The amulet wasn’t in her bag. It was in the daemon’s hand.

“You were the shopkeeper, as well,” she said.

“Albert Pumplecheck at your service, madam,” it bowed, morphing into the shopkeeper. “I can’t believe you swallowed that name.”

It slapped its thigh, chortling.

“Were you looking for this?” it asked.

The daemon dangled her amulet in front of her face. She grabbed the charm but it was a trick. The amulet turned into a slimy toad in her hand.

“Yuk,” she said, dropping it.

The toad hopped off with an outraged croak. The daemon laughed like Vincent Price in a low budget movie. It changed again, this time into the form of a tall, fit man with jet black hair and a sardonically handsome face.

“I like this shape,” it said. “What do you think? Cat got your tongue, witch? Oh well, I think it suits me.”

The catchphrase from the Fast Show’s gay tailors popped into her head, “Suits you, sir,” Focus, girl, she thought. This thing’s dangerous and it’s stalking you.

“You are so delightfully naive, beauty. I like that in a woman,” it said. “It adds to your charms. We will have such fun together.”

He rubbed his hands together, enthusiastically.

Rosalynne ground her teeth together. This bloody daemon was getting on her tits. It was a supercilious, sexist pig of monumental proportions, even when judged against the low standard set by the average London male. She got a grip on her emotions. It was deliberately goading her.

“What do you want?” she asked, in an attempt to get to the point.

“You are in a bit of a bind, witch,” the daemon said. “How would you like me to take you home?”

Rosalynne dismissed the offer out of hand. Daemons didn’t do favors for free. They made bargains and humans inevitably got the worst of the deal. It didn’t seem to realize that it had already provided her with the means to escape the otherworld. Let it keep the amulet; she had the mugwort.

“No, thank you,” she replied, politely. Only a fool was rude to a daemon.

“Ah well,” it said, waving a hand languidly. “Please yourself. Just whistle if you change your mind. You know how to whistle, don’t you?”

The daemon did its Vincent Price impression again.

“I suppose you were the top-hatted letch as well, just throwing a scare into me to get me running?” she asked.

“Actually, no!” said the daemon. “I assumed you would run without needing to be prodded.”

A high-pitched giggle sounded behind her. Rosalynne did her startled rabbit impression and shot past the grinning daemon. She soon slowed down when a stitch stabbed at her stomach. She was hungry, she was thirsty and her feet ached. Why had she worn high heels? She bent over to catch her breath.

The top-hatted psycho strode out of the smog, like he was taking a constitutional in Regent’s Park. Rosalynne groaned and trotted off. Ten meters further on, the alley was blocked by a great heap of rotten waste. She tried climbing over it but fell when she clasped a branch that proved to be a leg loosely attached to a dog’s rotting corpse. Top Hat leered at her as she rolled on the ground. He opened the carpetbag and produced the shiny knife.

“Beautiful witch for the cutting,” he chanted, in a singsong voice.

A metal ring jarred her wounded shoulder when she rolled over to get up. She took a firm grip on it and pulled, lifting a wooden trapdoor that had been hidden by muck. Rosalynne threw herself through headfirst, almost breaking her neck from the long drop onto a hard earth floor. The trapdoor crashed shut behind her.

The cellar was lit by flames from a fireplace against one wall. A family with two young children and a baby warmed themselves in front of it. The woman gazed listlessly at Rosalynne. Her man lay flat on his back, a dry cough wracking his emaciated body.

Two women in rags huddled together in a corner. They looked seventy but were probably nearer seventeen. One’s face was already pox-scarred. A man lay on his side beside an empty bottle.

The cellar looked like a scene for hell in the flickering red and orange firelight. The trapdoor above Rosalynne opened. She saw a top hat silhouetted against the light. She ran for a vertical wooden ladder in a corner. As she climbed, a heavy body thumped down into the cellar. It giggled: she climbed.

There was another trapdoor at the top of the ladder. She pushed it open with her shoulder and scrambled through. At the top, she dropped the trapdoor shut, slamming it on a sword stick that thrust through the gap.

Rosalynne fled down a narrow corridor. She flung open a door at random. The room was lined with parallel ropes. A dozen or more bodies were suspended on them. The ropes ran under their armpits, holding them vertically upright with their feet dragging on the floor. To her horror, some of the bodies stirred. The nearest opened his eyes.

“Piss off, dollymop. I’m trying to sleep.”

She ran on, pounding up a staircase, round a corner, then up another flight. There was a door at the top. It opened outwards and she ran through—into empty space above a yard. Rosalynne felt like a protagonist in a Warner Brothers cartoon, except she dropped like a shot grouse. She hit a rope and bounced. She grabbed it desperately, hanging on for her life.

She was head-down over a huge copper vat. It was filled with strips of leather hanging in bubbling green liquid. The smell would have choked a ferret. Smoke and yellow-green steam billowed around her, leaving no doubt as to the purpose of the vat. Someone was tanning leather in boiling urine.

Rosalynne lay tangled in a rope bridge that spanned the gap to a house across the yard. There was a single rope to walk on and one for each hand. She hauled herself up and shuffled gingerly across. It was not easy. Her feet kept trying to rotate over her head. Rosalynne was a city girl. Rope bridges had never entered her curriculum.

Somehow she made it to the other side. The ropes were attached to hooks screwed into the wooden wall around a small wooden platform under a loading bay. The platform creaked alarmingly under her weight. Rosalynne was exhausted. Running was no longer an option. She had to finish this, one way or another.

Top Hat appeared in the far doorway. He pointed a finger at her like a gun barrel, then stepped onto the rope. He made far better time across the rope bridge than she had. The bastard had probably been a boy scout. She watched with resignation, like a trapped rabbit in front of a stoat.

Rosalynne sprang to life when he was about a third of the way across. She sawed frantically on the footrope with her athame. The small knife was hardly ideal for the purpose but the rope was old and cut easily. It parted when Top Hat was only halfway across. He hung from the remaining ropes by his hands, his stick and bag dropping into the vat with a plop. A puff of fetid, ammonia-rich steam wafted up.

Top Hat kept on coming, swinging from hand to hand like a demented gibbon. Rosalynne resumed sawing on the next rope. When it parted, he almost fell, swinging wildly by one hand until he got a two-handed grip on the last rope. If anything, he increased speed, handing himself along the single line in a smooth motion.

Rosalynne cut frantically but the last rope was in better condition and resisted the knife. Top Hat swung onto the wooden platform, reaching out for her. The rotten wood gave under their combined weight, pitching them both into space.

Top Hat fell backwards into the boiling urine. An eruption of steam blotted out his death throes but Rosalynne heard the screams. She grabbed the remaining strand of the bridge, swinging clear of the building.

She managed to turn around and began inching her way back along the rope. To her horror, she had done her work too well, and strands unraveled where she had hacked at it. She crossed the cut and had almost reached the remains of the platform when the rope parted.

Rosalynne crashed down against the side of the building. The rope slipped through her hands, burning the skin. Somehow she braked her fall until she hung above the vat. She could not climb up. She could barely hold on. Her grip relaxed for a second and she dropped another centimeter, stripping more flesh. Blood made the rope slippery.

Rosalynne was a natural optimist but this was too much. To drown in scalding urine after all she had endured. It just wasn’t fair. She began to cry at the injustice.

The daemon sat down in the loading bay, dangling its legs over the drop. It was in its tall, dark and handsome guise.

“Look at all this broken wood,” it said to Rosalynne in a conversational voice. “This building is a disgrace. I could get splinters.”

“Haul me up, please,” Rosalynne pleaded.

“Do you want to bargain for my help?” asked the daemon, carefully.

“No!” Rosalynne replied.

Never, never deal with a daemon—that was the rule—there was always a price and the daemon always got the better of the bargain. Rosalynne looked down. The top hat surfaced on an upsurge of hot urine, rolled over, and sank down again. There was no sign of a body. She slipped another centimeter down the rope.

“Yes,” Rosalynne blubbed. “Yes, yes, yes. You win. Hurry, I can’t hold on any longer.”

“Then let’s get down to business,” it said. “The contract!”

The daemon snapped its fingers and produced a rolled-up parchment. It pulled the red ribbon and the parchment unrolled, all two meters of it.

“Shall I go through the subclauses for you, to make sure you understand the small print?” said the daemon considerately, taking a pair of reading glasses out of a breast pocket.

“No, no, I agree,” Rosalynne said. “For the Goddess’ sake, hurry up.”

She couldn’t feel her hands. Her fingers were completely numb.

“Excellent, then sign at the bottom,”

“How?” asked Rosalynne. “You may have noticed that I have a problem.”

“Just say—I sign,” the daemon replied.

“I sign,” Rosalynne said, desperately.

Her fingers finally gave way and she fell.

* * *

Rosalynne woke up screaming in her bed, in her flat, in London. She put her hands over her face—her hands, oh Goddess, her hands. She took a deep breath and looked at them. They were unmarked. Her shoulder didn’t hurt; it wasn’t even scarred. She should be filthy dirty, but she wasn’t. She lay back on crisp cotton sheets that smelled faintly of washing powder.