The Infernal Express Read online

  “We’re being used to draw them out,” Gallowglass said. She smiled nastily. “Morris is smarter than he looks. Sneakier, too.”

  “Given that, I have some reason to doubt the identity of the calcified chunks occupying that valise.” He ran a hand through his hair. “After all, why risk losing the real thing, when you have Otto Deaker on call to make you a replica?”

  Gallowglass glanced down. “Want to open it up?”

  “Forensic pathology is not my forte,” St. Cyprian said. “One set of bones and ashes is much like another to me. No, I intend to find out, but that’ll have to wait until Paris, when we have time—and help. From there, we can decide whether to continue with Morris’ itinerary, or come up with one of our own.” He hadn’t yet read the documents Morris had given him. The man from the Ministry had made it plain that he wasn’t supposed to do so until Paris. It was all espionage bollocks. He’d had his fill of that in the War, but his was not to question why, and all that tosh.

  “Help,” Gallowglass repeated.

  “You didn’t honestly think that I intend to stay in whatever penny-pinching hostel Morris has lined up for us, did you? No, I have a friend. One who can help us with accommodation for the evening and with discerning the identity of our…friend there, in the valise.” He puffed on his cigarette. The night sky looked positively alive with shifting clouds, and the air was growing damp.

  He looked around and noticed that the crew of the ferry were looking agitated. The sea was becoming choppier. A storm, he wondered. But was it a natural one? There was no reason to think otherwise, but something plucked at his senses. He hesitated, considering, and then, he traced the sacred shape of the Voorish Sign in the air with a finger and let his inner eye flicker open. The spirit-eye, Carnacki had called it, though St. Cyprian’s acquaintances in the Society for Psychical Research insisted that it was merely a very focused form of extrasensory perception.

  Whatever it was, it had taken him several years to learn how to utilize it safely. Humans were, by and large, as sensitive to the paranormal as animals were to earthquakes. They simply couldn’t process it as well. Humans needed reasons for things which animals took on instinct. The inability of the human mind to correlate all of its perceptions was one of humanity’s built-in defences against the many, many predatory malignancies that swam through the outer void. But sometimes you were forced to shuck those evolutionary blinders first thing, otherwise you risked being snapped up unawares.

  As he concentrated, the world became soft at the edges and yet more vibrant as his senses expanded to fill the void left by his thoughts and physical sight. He heard a rushing and a roaring, as if he were caught in a storm-tossed surf. He felt, rather than saw, the shadows of unseen shapes pass over and around him. His eardrums began to throb painfully with a strange pressure. The throbbing sensation grew louder, and became distinct. He felt as if he were in a bell tower at vespers, and he clapped his hands to his ears unconsciously. He felt Gallowglass tug on his sleeve, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  He stared into the swirling dark of the storm, seeing not simply clouds but the things beyond them. There were thousands of them, like a flock of crows, only a million strong and far fouler. Lightning snarled out, striking the water. Waves lashed the deck, and he felt the sting of salt water on his face. Gallowglass was shouting now, but he ignored her, trying to find that which he sought. He peered into the riotous dark, trying to find its heart, as the deck rolled and pitched beneath his feet. When he did, he felt his heart stutter in his chest.

  The thing was clad in lightning, and it was at once a man, a lion, an eagle, a scorpion and a snake. Two sets of wings thundered, causing the clouds to roil as the thing—the demon, he knew—writhed in the heart of the storm. Its form ruptured, spread and shrank over and over again, like smoke spreading through a burning house. A hand—no, a claw—was flung out, and lightning speared down, scorching the deck. Men and women screamed as the ferry shuddered like a wounded animal. The demon screamed, and St. Cyprian staggered away from the rail, clutching his aching head. He heard the rush of wings, and saw the thing drop towards the ferry, the storm gathering in fury as its maker descended. As the demon drew closer, he could see the ghostly chains which stretched out behind it, binding it to whatever madman had brought it into the world.

  Someone had summoned it, and he suspected he knew why. A sharp pain caused him to stumble, and his spirit-eye snapped shut. He grabbed his cheek, and whirled on Gallowglass, who had her fist cocked for a second punch. He made a placatory gesture. Rain hammered down on the deck, and he fought to keep his balance. “You didn’t have to hit me,” he said, shouting to be heard over the crash of waves against the hull of the ferry. Water sloshed over the deck, dousing him.

  “I know,” Gallowglass said, one hand clamped to her cap, as if to keep it from flying off of her head. “What is it? What did you see?”

  “You don’t want to know. But it’s getting closer.” St. Cyprian staggered as another wave struck the ferry, causing it to teeter. The storm was as bad as any he’d seen. The rain was almost a solid curtain, slamming down with the force of a hundred fists. The other passengers huddled beneath the weather guard on the deck, as the crew fought to keep the ferry in one piece and on course. He glanced over his shoulder. The lights of Calais were mockingly close. “I need my bag! Where—?”

  “With the rest of the luggage,” Gallowglass shouted. She hefted the valise. “It wants this, don’t it? Maybe we should let the bugger have it.”

  “I don’t think that would buy us any mercy,” St. Cyprian said, flinging water out of his eyes. He caught sight of something moving through the crowd of terrified passengers, and his spirit-eye blinked. Shapes like ashes stirred from a cold fire moved through the lights that marked the souls of the passengers. When he looked more closely, they were gone, and he pushed the thought aside. Whatever he’d seen, it would have to wait until later. He had more urgent matters to attend to just now.

  Lightning struck the deck. St. Cyprian and Gallowglass were knocked off of their feet by the force of the strike, and the ferry writhed beneath the impact. St. Cyprian peered towards the flames which now rose to meet the rain, and saw an absence of color and sound, as something unseen stepped through the smoke. A tangible wave of malevolence, as furious as the storm itself, rolled towards him. He pushed himself to his feet, trying to call to mind words of banishment and binding.

  He’d faced demons before, but always under more salubrious conditions. The deck creaked as the entity stepped towards him. It was the thing he’d seen in the storm, hidden from the human eye in a shroud of smoke and rain and sorcery. Whoever had summoned it likely intended it to sink the ferry, after the creature had gotten what it had been sent for. He glimpsed a snarling, sub-human face in the curling smoke as it paced towards them. Gallowglass had gotten to her feet, and her hand dipped towards her revolver. He caught her hand. “No. My bag,” he said, tersely. “Leave the valise. I want to keep its attention right here, where I can deal with it.”

  She pulled free and nodded. As she scampered away, St. Cyprian turned his attentions back to the approaching fiend. He had come up against a goat-faced demon called Baphomet just a few weeks previous, during their confrontation with the Order of the Cosmic Ram. But where Baphomet had been a thing of cunning and treachery, the thing striding towards him now was all force and fury. If Baphomet had been an assassin’s knife, this thing was an artillery piece. It was a storm demon, a thing of raw power.

  He wracked his brain, trying to recall what he knew of such entities. His hand clenched uselessly as the deck shuddered beneath his feet. He held tight to the valise with his other hand. There was no time and no place to draw a magic circle, and with no sign of the one who’d summoned it, he had precious few options. The demon boiled towards him through the rain and smoke, and it was hard to keep it in sight. Talons composed of sea foam and stinging rain reached for him, and he ducked aside. The demon’s frustrated shriek assaulted
his ears, and he was buffeted by the beating of its wings.

  Thinking quickly, he slashed his arms through the air, making the sign of Nectanebus. “Strong is Horus of Hebit,” he shouted. There was no guarantee that the demon would respond to an Egyptian incantation, but he had precious few other options. “In the name of Thoth, the Twice-Great, Lord of Hermopolis, I cast thine own fury back at thee, and spit in thy teeth,” he continued, fighting to cast his voice over the roar of the storm. He swiped the fingers of his free hand out, carving the sigil of Thoth into the rain-soaked air. “In Thoth’s name, I unmake you. May thy strength be as dust, and thy form but smoke on the wind. Go thou from this place, without form, mind or will.”

  The demon paused, its form just barely visible. Lightning flickered down, striking the ocean and casting blue light across the deck. Then it surged forward, roaring like a lion. It clawed for the valise, and for a moment, he felt as if he were caught in an updraft. His shoes left the deck, and invisible hands tried to yank the valise from his grip.

  “Not Egyptian then,” he wheezed, fighting to keep hold of the case. Storm-demon…Assyrian, maybe, he thought. Winds tore at him, and water stung his eyes as blows made by unseen fists caught him on his head, shoulders and back. The only thing keeping him alive was his hold on the valise. Where was Gallowglass? He needed his bag.

  “Oi!”

  He looked down, and saw Gallowglass splashing towards him, his Gladstone in hand. “The cuneiform tablet,” he shouted, as he fought against the demon’s pull. “The one made out of red clay!” The tablet was one of many collected by various Royal Occultists over the years. This particular one had been crafted in the ovens of Babylon and was, or so Carnacki had claimed, the work of a powerful asipu—a wizard, learned in ancient Chaldean wisdom. Whether it would serve him better than an Egyptian incantation, he had no idea, but if he wanted to prevent the creature from sinking the ferry, he had no choice but to try.

  Gallowglass snagged the tablet and held it up. It was roughly the size of an avocado and about as imposing, but as she brought it out, he felt the demon’s attentions fix on the square of baked clay. Without waiting, she wound up and flung it to him with a strength and accuracy that would have put a champion bowler to shame. He extended his hand and the tablet smacked hard into his palm. The demon released the valise and reached for the tablet. Its gale-like shrieks deafened him, as he fell to the deck. It loomed over him, lightning outlining its inhuman shape.

  St. Cyprian thrust the tablet out, as a morass of wet air enveloped him. “Heed him that stilleth all to rest, that pacifieth all,” he coughed. “Heed him by whose incantations everything is at peace.” The stone grew hot in his hand, and the pressure of the storm beat down on him. His clothes were soaked clean through, and a numbing chill crept through his limbs. “The gods—the gods are upon his right hand, and his left. They are behind him, and before him, their hands raised against you. By the circles of this seal, you shall heed and fly henceforth from this place,” he bellowed. His hand ached with the heat of the stone, but he did not drop it. Instead he thrust it out further, as if driving it into the face of the demon. Thunder shook the ferry, and lightning scoured the lashing waves.

  There was a thin, piercing shriek, and the sound of wings flapping and then all at once, the storm began to abate. He sank down against the rail, the now-cool stone rolling from his hand. Gallowglass snatched it up and dropped it into the bag. She crouched beside him. “Still breathing?” she murmured, as she caught hold of his shoulder.

  He patted her hand. “Wheezing, mostly, but I’ll live.” He looked at the crew and passengers. No one seemed to have understood what had just gone on, for which he was grateful. They would think it had just been down to the storm and a particularly choppy bit of water. The capacity of the human mind to blind itself to certain hiccups in reality was an excellent survival trait, at times. Regardless, he didn’t want to press their luck. They were well and truly off their patch now, and his authority, for a given value of the word, stopped at the Straits of Dover. He blinked as someone suddenly appeared in his line of sight.

  “You dropped this, dear,” a round faced woman said, cheerfully. “Wouldn’t want you to lose it, after you went to so much trouble to keep it away from the storm.” She was dressed like a woman who collected stray cats and always had sweeties to hand. She nudged the valise towards him with the toe of one sensible shoe and sank down beside him, opposite Gallowglass, who stared at her warily. The woman clucked her tongue. “Look at you, aren’t you a sight? You must be soaked clean through. Well, let’s get you up and into the warm, if we can, dear.”

  Bemused, St. Cyprian allowed her to take his arm. She had a surprisingly strong grip for a woman of her size. “Up we go! Jolly good, there’s a fellow,” she said. “What’s your name, then?”

  “Charles,” he said.

  She smiled widely and shook his hand vigorously. “Well Charles, I’m Elizabeth. We shall be great friends, I think.”

  6.

  Gare du Nord, 10th Arrondissement, Paris

  St. Cyprian stretched and gave a slight groan as his back popped. He’d been a bundle of aches and pains since Calais, his body paying the price for his confrontation with the demon. It hadn’t returned, but he knew better than to hope that it was gone for good. Creatures like that were harder to get rid of than bedbugs. He lowered his arms and looked about him, taking in the bustle of the platform as the sun set and the lights came on.

  The crisp, rapid rhythms of Parisian voices filled the air, punctuating the thick clouds of pungent cigarette smoke which hung over the platform like arrows. Newspaper vendors hawked copies of the evening edition of Le Figaro and, more quietly, off to the side and out of sight of the police, L’Humanite, the paper of the French Communist Party. Ever since the National Bloc coalition had taken control of France in 1919, anti-Bolshevik sentiment was at an all time high, thanks to several recent strikes and the ever-evolving horror show that was the Russian Revolution.

  Their arrival in Calais had been remarkably free from interference, and their trip to Paris much the same. Like as not, the defeat of the demon had set their mysterious opponents back on their heels for a bit. Binding one of the servants of Hell, any Hell, Christian or otherwise, was no easy task, and casting the creature away as he had done was certain to have had repercussions—messy ones—for the one who’d summoned it.

  He was unable to resist a smile, at the thought. While he wouldn’t wish death on any man, one should expect to get burned, if one played with fire. That’ll teach you to send a dodgy demon after the Royal Occultist, chum, he thought, as he watched a pale woman in red drift through the crowd towards the exits. She was the color of milk, and he wondered whether she were an albino. Whatever she was, she vanished as quickly as she’d appeared, and his thoughts drifted back to their previous track.

  Then, the demon hadn’t been the only unnatural thing aboard the ferry that night. He thought again of the shapes he’d glimpsed among the passengers, like cinder and ash stirred from a fire, and wondered what they could be. Things without souls, or with only the tattered remnants of such, perhaps. The souls of men were like coins in a vault, parcelled out to pay for misdeeds or painful experiences; most never came close to emptying their vault. But on some rare occasions, a soul was stripped free of living flesh, and what was left behind was no sort of thing at all.

  He twitched slightly, as something cold slid across his spine. He had ‘the creeps’, as Carnacki had called it. A feeling that unfriendly eyes were on him. He’d felt it often enough in the trenches, and more than once since. Though he and Gallowglass had seen neither hide nor hair of their enemies, St. Cyprian was certain that their unknown foemen were still nearby, watching them, waiting for the right moment to strike.

  “You’re looking fit as a fiddle, Charles,” a woman said, from behind him. He forgot about the cinder-souls and turned to see Elizabeth Amworth and the dark-haired young woman she’d identified as her niece, Sarah, coming tow
ards them, carrying their luggage. “I always say the air of Paris does a world of good for the soul. Isn’t that right, Sarah dear?”

  As ever, the younger woman replied inarticulately. Elizabeth, however, was anything but inarticulate. He’d become well acquainted with the vivacious, middle-aged woman on the ferry, and then later, in Calais. She was a dab hand at cards, and had a sense of humor that, at times, made Gallowglass seem prim.

  She extended her hand and St. Cyprian took it, lightly brushing his lips across it. He felt a slight tingle as he did so; as if he’d gotten a mild shock. He pushed the thought aside. Some people simply had strong auras, easily sensed by one as psychically attuned as himself. “As ever, you are correct, Elizabeth,” he said. “May I help you with your luggage, perhaps pay off a bit of that bally debt of mine with a bit of sweat?”

  “Oh nonsense, Charles. What’s a few bob between friends, eh?” She patted his arm. “And that’s what we are now…friends.”

  “Ah…yes,” he said, trying to ignore Gallowglass’ leer. “Are you staying in Paris long?”

  Elizabeth smiled. “Not so long as all that. We’re taking the Orient Express—isn’t that right, Sarah?” she said, reaching out for her companion. The younger woman glared at St. Cyprian as if it were his fault. “She’s positively giddy,” Elizabeth went on, hooking the other woman’s arm and pulling her close.

  “And with good reason,” St. Cyprian said. He tipped his hat. “Perhaps we’ll see you again, if that’s the case.” He smiled. “Give me a chance to earn my own back at the card table, what?”

  “Oh, I’m certain of it, Charles,” Elizabeth said, smiling broadly. She straightened his tie for him and added, “Now, we simply must be off. Shopping, you know, such fun! Toodle-pip to you both!” With a cheery wave, she tugged Sarah away.

  “I still say she was cheating,” Gallowglass said, as they watched the two women vanish into the crowd. “And that other one…brr.” She shivered. “I’ve seen cheerier guard dogs.”