“So you have,” said Parris. “But I have an Evil Eye.”
There was a pause as everyone looked at him. The Card Shark turned the gun back to Parris.
“I don’t see any Evil Eye,” he said.
“It isn’t in my face,” said Parris. “It’s in my hand.”
He held up his left hand, and there in his palm was an embedded metal eye. The lids crawled open, revealing a glowing eye, and the Card Shark couldn’t look away. He looked into the Evil Eye, and was lost. All the expression went out of his face, and he just stood there, staring blankly. An empty shell. The metal eyelids closed, and Parris lowered his hand. He gestured to the two nearest guards, and they led the unresisting Card Shark away. The door closed behind him again, and this time they stayed closed. Parris looked round the table, at all of us.
“All his souls go to you, Mr. Bond. And his soul, as well. Because no one defies the rules of Casino Infernale.” He turned and looked at Eiko, who nodded quickly, hopped down from her high stool, and hurried out the dimensional door. She left it standing open. After a moment there was the sound of a scream, stopped short by a single gunshot, and then Eiko came back through the door. She closed it, nodded briefly to Parris, and sat on her bar-stool again.
“That was the guard who was clumsy enough to allow his gun to be stolen,” said Parris. “I think you’ll find the remaining guards will stay on their toes from now on.”
He didn’t look around. He didn’t have to. Molly looked thoughtfully at Eiko.
• • •
Play continued. I bet small and played cautiously, counting cards and watching the play, waiting for another opening. Leopold seemed to be doing much the same. Perhaps he was waiting for God to whisper in his ear. Jacqueline studied her every hand carefully, glowering, thinking hard, as though everything depended on every hand. And perhaps for her, it did. She was winning steadily, playing conservatively, playing the odds. The pile of obols in front of her grew.
Schmidt seemed increasingly impatient. Things were not going well for him. He squirmed in his chair, rearranging his cards again and again, as though he could force them into a better combination. He scowled, almost sulkily, as he watched his pile of obols slowly diminish. No big losses or upsets, but he was running out of souls. He glared suddenly at Jacqueline.
“Come on! What’s taking you so long! Make your bet; you’re holding the Game up! We should never have allowed a woman to take part anyway!”
Jacqueline turned into Hyde so quickly none of us could follow it. There was no effort involved, no straining or crying out—one minute a small woman was sitting opposite Schmidt, and the next, there was Hyde. Huge and muscular, a great bear of a man. A big brutal engine of destruction. And before any of the armed guards could even react, Hyde reached across the table and tore Schmidt’s head off. Just ripped it away, with shockingly casual ease. The body fell backwards from the table, still in its chair, blood spurting thickly from the ragged stump of neck. Hyde held up the severed head before him, smiling horribly into Schmidt’s still-blinking eyes.
Some of the guards cried out, almost hysterically. They were trained to deal with men; Hyde was something else. Something much worse. Leopold and I had both risen up out of our seats and stepped quickly back from the table, out of Hyde’s reach. But he had eyes only for the head in his hands. He waited till Schmidt stopped blinking, and then he kissed the dead man on his dead mouth, and threw the head calmly to one side. It rolled away, stopping at the feet of one guard, who froze where he was, gazing down at the thing with appalled fascination. Hyde turned his great head slowly to look at Parris, who hadn’t moved an inch.
“Clear up this mess,” said Hyde.
Everyone in the room flinched at the sound of his voice. Parris gestured quickly for two guards to come forward and carry the headless body out. In the end, Eiko picked up the head and took it away, apparently entirely unmoved. The extra chair was removed from the table, and Leopold and I resumed our seats. Hyde turned back into Jacqueline. And once again, just for a moment, I thought I saw the two of them reaching out to each other in the only moment when they could meet. Reaching out, but never able to touch. This evil brute of a man, and this small delicate woman. Beauty and the Beast, or two sides of the same coin?
Jacqueline gathered the remains of her clothes around her. She didn’t look at any of us.
“I’m just a woman in love with a man,” she said. “I only want what any woman wants—to be able to hold her man in her arms. I only want to know what every other woman knows. I want to be together. And I will not suffer anything to get in my way. Do we have a problem, Mr. Parris?”
“I don’t think so,” Parris said carefully. “Mr. Schmidt broke the rules of the Game when he tried to intimidate you. I would have had my people remove him, anyway, if he’d continued.”
“Then play on,” said Jacqueline. And we did.
• • •
The cards went back and forth, to no productive end. Obols passed back and forth across the table, from pile to pile and back again, while I waited for my moment.
Leopold looked at me thoughtfully. “There’s something about you, Shaman. Something I didn’t expect. You’re so much more than your reputation.”
“The nail that stands up gets hammered down,” I said easily. “I prefer to hide my light in the shadows.”
“And I have to ask,” said Leopold, quite casually, “what the infamous wild witch herself, Molly Metcalf, is doing here with you? According to Church files, she is quite definitely involved with a Drood, these days. The remarkable Eddie Drood, no less. I think I can safely say, none of us saw that one coming.”
Molly snorted loudly at the bar. I carefully didn’t look in her direction.
“She still is attached to her Drood,” I said. “I just hired her to be my bodyguard. Dangerous place, this Casino Infernale.”
“And how did someone like you, Shaman, acquire enough money to hire someone like her?” said Leopold.
“With a percentage of my winnings,” I said.
“Of course,” said Leopold. “I knew it would have to be something like that.”
“How did you get to be the famous gambling priest?” I said.
“There’s a lot of card playing goes on at Seminaries,” Leopold said easily. “Almost the only vice we can indulge. Young men together—very competitive. . . . You know how it is. I discovered I had a gift for the cards, and the Church found a use for that gift.”
“And you always win?” I said.
“God gave me a gift, not a miracle,” said Leopold. “It’s all about knowing which cards to back. Like these.”
He placed his cards face down on the table, patted them almost fondly, and then pushed forward every obol in front of him. It was quite a large pile. Leopold smiled around the table.
“Would anyone care to call me? I assure you, God is on my side here.”
I pushed forward my entire pile of souls, to match his. “Do we really need to count them all?” I said to Parris. “It’s every soul I have, against every soul he has.”
“This is acceptable to me,” said Parris. “If it is acceptable to you, Leopold?”
“Of course!” said the famous gambling priest.
Molly was all but bouncing up and down on her stool, trying to catch my eye. I didn’t look at her. I knew what I was doing. I nodded to Leopold.
“You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”
He turned over a full house. Jacks over tens. Should have been a winning hand. Anywhen else, it would be. But I turned over four aces. And for a long moment, no one at the table said anything.
“God might be on your side, Leopold,” I said. “But the cards are on mine.”
Leopold stood up abruptly, staring at me with a shocked, ashen face. He looked genuinely upset. “I don’t understand. . . . It’s not possible! You are not who
you appear to be, Shaman Bond! You are in the employ of dark forces! It’s the only answer!”
I looked at Parris. “I’m not in the employ of dark forces. Really.”
“No demonic possessions here,” said Eiko, from the bar. “The mystical null is still operating.”
Leopold’s shoulders slumped, and the fire went out of his eyes. The guards escorted him out of the door, and he went quietly.
Jacqueline looked across the table at me. “Just the two of us now, Shaman.”
“Shouldn’t that be three?” I said.
“Funny man,” said Jacqueline. “But don’t try anything funny with my other half. You wouldn’t like me when I’m funny.”
“Lady and gentleman,” said Parris. “Let’s play cards. It’s still all to play for.”
He shuffled the cards, thoroughly, and play went on. It didn’t take long before Jacqueline decided she had the perfect hand, and bet all her souls on it. You would have thought that she’d learned better by now, or at least spotted a pattern. But no, she bet every soul she had on her hand, and I pushed forward my pile to match hers. She slammed her cards down on the table, and glared at me defiantly.
“There! Four kings! Beat that!”
“No,” I said, showing her my cards. “I have four kings. You have four queens.”
Jacqueline looked down at her cards, and her jaw dropped. “No! That’s not possible! I had the four kings! I did!”
“The cards in front of you are quite definitely queens,” said Parris. And they were.
“You cheated!” roared Hyde, as he lunged across the table at me.
I was expecting the change, but even so it happened so suddenly it caught me by surprise. Only the width of the table kept Hyde’s clutching hands from my throat. I threw myself backwards, rolling out of the chair and across the floor. Hyde threw himself across the table. I scrabbled backwards, and every guard in the room opened up on Hyde. He charged forward so fast he actually avoided most of the bullets, and the few wounds he did take healed almost immediately. He towered over me, massive and monstrous.
I could see Molly on her feet by the bar, frustrated because she couldn’t use her magics to help me. I was feeling equally frustrated without my armour. I yelled to Parris to give me back my gun, but he just shook his head.
“You don’t need a weapon,” he said loudly. “I have my own weapon. Eiko!”
There was something in the way he said her name that made Hyde stop and look around. Just in time to see Eiko turn into a female Hyde. She didn’t become big and bulky, like a female bodybuilder or wrestler. She was tall but slender, lithely muscular, full of a terrible burning energy. Like Jacqueline’s Hyde, just looking at what Eiko had become made you want to kill her on sight. She was wrong, awful, an abomination. Everything a human being is not meant to be, brought to the surface and made material. Evil in the flesh. Eiko launched herself at Hyde, and the two monsters slammed together in a horrid form of violence that was almost sexual. They tore at each other with their bare hands, ripping flesh away in great bloody handfuls. The wounds healed quickly, and the fight went on.
Until Eiko, the better trained fighter, got Hyde in a headlock, and held him there just long enough for Parris to shove the Evil Eye in his hand right into Hyde’s face. He cried out as the metal eye looked into him, and then he changed back, into Jacqueline. Because that was the only way he could escape what the Eye was doing to him. The moment Jacqueline reappeared, Eiko punched her savagely in the side of the head, and let go. Jacqueline collapsed, weeping in pain and loss. The guards all looked at Parris, the same question in all their faces. Should we shoot her now?
Parris thought about it, and then shook his head. “Let her live. As she is. That’s a far worse punishment.”
Two guards hauled Jacqueline back onto her feet, dragged her to the dimensional door, and threw her out. Before the door closed, Jacqueline looked back at me and screamed I’m glad I poisoned you at the restaurant! Which solved one small mystery, at least.
Parris gave the transformed Eiko a hard look, and she changed back into her previous self. I thought I sensed a certain resistance in her, but apparently Eiko was smart enough not to argue with Parris while he still had his Evil Eye. Eiko went back to sit at the bar, and Molly looked at her thoughtfully.
“That dress didn’t half stretch,” she said.
Eiko ignored her.
I picked up my chair, pushed it back into place, and sat down at the table again. After a moment, so did Parris. He gathered all the obols on the table into one big pile, and pushed them over to me.
“All Jacqueline Hyde’s souls are now yours, Mr. Bond. With the exception of her own, which she never bet. So, somewhat to my surprise, I must confess, you are now the winner of this year’s Casino Infernale.”
“The Game isn’t over yet,” I said. “You’re still here, representing the Shadow Bank. So let’s play on, you and me. What do you say, Mr. Parris?”
“I am tempted,” he said slowly. “Though I’m not sure that’s ever been done before.”
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you want a chance to win back all these souls I’ve accumulated?”
Eiko stood up at the bar. “This is not acceptable, Mr. Parris. You know it isn’t. It is not in the traditions of the Big Game for the Shadow Bank to put the souls it owns at risk.”
“Our game,” I said to Parris. “We get to decide the rules.”
“I am in charge here,” said Parris, not even glancing back at Eiko. “I make the decisions.” He looked at me for a long moment. “Why should I play, Mr. Bond?”
“Because I’m not much of a catch, am I?” I said. “Who’s ever heard of Shaman Bond, that matters? You need a big name, a Major Player, someone important, to win this year’s Big Game. On your first watch as the man in charge of Casino Infernale. You need a celebrity to win. That’s why you brought in the Card Shark, just in case. But you won’t get much credit off my name. Shaman Bond as the winner? You’d be a laughing stock. So I’m going to give you a chance to be the big winner yourself. What would that do to your prestige in the Shadow Bank organisation?”
“You’re risking everything you’ve won,” said Parris. “Why do you want to play on?”
“I told you,” I said, smiling. “I want to break the bank at Casino Infernale.”
“All right,” said Parris. “Let’s play.”
“No!” said Eiko. “You can’t do this! I won’t allow it!” She strode forward, to glare at Parris. “I will become Hyde again if I have to, to stop you. To enforce the rules! The Shadow Bank will thank me for it, and give me your job!”
Parris nodded to the guard standing behind Eiko, and he shot her in the back of the head. The impact sent her stumbling forward, but she didn’t die immediately. She’d already started the change, but it was too late. Too much damage had already been done. Her body lurched and twisted, muscles rising and falling, until she fell to her knees, cried out one last time, and died. She lay still, a horribly malformed shape that was neither one person nor the other. A single great eye bulged out of her face covered with blood from the great exit wound in her forehead. Parris gestured almost lazily to the two nearest guards, and they picked up the body and carried it out through the door. Parris looked round the room.
“I will not have my authority challenged.” He looked at me, and smiled a horribly normal smile. “It is so much quieter in here, without her, isn’t it? Now, what do you suggest, Mr. Bond? What game should we play? More poker?”
“I was thinking of something simpler,” I said. “Why not bet it all, bet everything, on one turn of the cards? Man to man, luck to luck. I’ll bet every soul I’ve won; you can match that with an equal number of souls owned by the Shadow Bank. You have the authority to do that, don’t you?”
Parris looked down at the pack of cards on the table, the back stamped with the same stylised deat
h’s-head image as the obols. He looked back at me. “I do admire your style, Shaman! If not your sanity. Very well! Let’s do it.”
From the bar, Molly was looking at me as though I’d completely lost my mind, but she didn’t interfere. I hope you know what you’re doing was written clearly in her face. I shot her a quick reassuring grin. I knew what I was doing, but I was still so nervous my heart was all but jumping out of my chest. I had everything under control, nothing could go wrong, but this was Casino Infernale, after all.
Parris and I ended up standing at the head of the table, facing each other, the pack of cards between us. We both looked at each other, eyes steady and unyielding, the tension on the air so heavy you could have hammered in nails with it. Parris picked up the pack of cards, and shuffled them with professional thoroughness. He put them down again, breathed deeply a few times, and cut. His card was the jack of hearts. He smiled, pleased and relieved. A good card. A winning card, usually. I made my cut, and turned up the ace of spades.
Parris was so shocked he couldn’t even make a sound; just stood there, looking at his card, and mine. I’d just doubled my already considerable number of souls. The surrounding guards made a whole bunch of impressed noises, despite themselves. They were all edging in closer for a better look, caught up in the thrill of the moment. Parris had gone grey in the face. He looked sick. I think he was genuinely shocked, to have lost so many souls that belonged to the Shadow Bank, so quickly. A wise man would have quit right there, got out while the going was good. So, of course I pressed the point.
“Double or quits?” I said brightly. “A chance to win back all the souls you lost.”
He nodded quickly. He shuffled the cards again, not quite so steadily, and cut to his card. A ten of clubs. Not bad. I cut the king of clubs. And just like that, I owned four times the number of souls. Parris had lost, and lost big. Betting souls that weren’t really his to bet.
“The Bank will have my balls for this,” he said numbly. “They’re watching, recording everything that happens here. They see everything, know everything, that happens at Casino Infernale. And they have to acknowledge my bets, my losses, made with the authority they granted me, or no one would ever wager at Casino Infernale again. . . .”