Drinking Midnight Wine

  “Well …”

  “You keep your mouth shut, Jimmy Thunder,” said Gayle. “And don’t take on any new cases. I may have need of your services yet.”

  “Wonderful,” said Jimmy. “Another damned freebie.”

  Gayle and Toby walked through the Shambles, in the middle of town; a narrow lane between two rows of buildings whose construction went back to the seventeenth century and earlier, though the Shambles itself was a hell of a lot older. There were a lot of people about, doing their weekend shopping or just standing around chatting, enjoying the summer day. All of them stopped to bow their heads to Gayle as she passed. Some even knelt. Gayle smiled graciously, but kept going, making it clear she didn’t want to talk to anyone. No one bowed to Toby, though a few of the older inhabitants crossed themselves or made warding signs against evil.

  “Do you know why this place is called the Shambles?” Gayle said conversationally.

  “No. But I have a strong feeling you’re about to tell me.”

  “Someone’s at home to Mr. Grumpy.”

  “Well … is there anything you don’t know?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. The Shambles takes its name from the old Anglo-Saxon word scamul, a small bench from which goods were sold at market. People have been coming to this place to shop for over a thousand years. And I remember them. I was here then, and before that. I saw you glaring at Jimmy, being jealous. Don’t. For all his centuries, he’s still little more than a child, compared to me. And though I may have taken some comfort from his company, in times past, he can no more have a claim on my heart than you. You are all passing things, and I am not. Be told, Toby; there can never be anything between us. Concentrate your mind on more important matters. Look up, at the roof to your right.”

  Toby looked up and there was Angel, perched on a gabled roof like a brooding gargoyle contemplating the world and spitting on it. Toby knew immediately who she was, who she had to be. Gayle had described her very specifically. A sudden chill went through him, as though a shadow had fallen over him. All he had to do was look at Angel to know she wasn’t human, and was never going to be. There was something of the bird of prey about her, crouching on her gable, her pointed chin resting on one pale fist, viewing the world below through unblinking crimson eyes, as though everyone she saw had but one function, or purpose, or reason for being; to be prey for her. Down in the street, in the Shambles, everyone else was carefully avoiding looking up, as though afraid of drawing Angel’s attention to them.

  “She must find it all very confusing,” murmured Gayle.

  “Find all what?” said Toby, wrenching his eyes away from the disturbing figure on the roof. His heart was beating fast, as though he’d just narrowly avoided some deadly peril.

  “Life. Existence. She is from the immaterial, after all. As far beyond us as we are from chalk drawings on the ground.”

  “Then … how did Hob persuade her to work with him?” said Toby. “What could he possibly offer her, or promise her, in return?”

  “He’s keeping her mind occupied, like a child with a new toy. So she doesn’t have to think about how far she’s fallen. About how small and limited she’s become. Essentially, Hob and all his plans are just a distraction to her, which is perhaps a good thing. She’s dangerous enough now. If she were to lose her focus, give in to rage and loss and the horror of what’s been done to her …

  “Keeping her under control must be a constant delicate balancing act for Hob. For all his power, and he is very powerful, he’s still part of the material worlds. She’s one of the few beings he can’t threaten or coerce, and I’m sure I don’t know what he could have promised her, or bribed her with. Perhaps it’s enough that he keeps her busy … and amuses her.”

  “The words divide and conquer come to mind,” said Toby. “Separate them, play up their differences, and their partnership might just fall apart. Or if there really is something she wants, maybe we could offer to get it for her instead.”

  “Probably,” said Gayle. “I like the way you think, Toby. Though I hate to think what kind of things a descended angel might develop a taste for. Look at her. What’s she doing up there? What’s she looking at? What is she seeing, feeling?”

  Toby shuddered, despite himself. “Could anyone stop her, if she got out of control? Could you?”

  “Good question. She’s material now. Mortal. Theoretically, she can be hurt, even killed. But in practice … she burns with life, like a furnace. We have no way of knowing what materials went into her making, or how much of her old nature persists in this new form. Whatever she is now … she’ll take a hell of a lot of stopping.”

  They walked on, through the Shambles and out the other side, and neither of them looked back at Angel again. Toby mulled over what he’d heard. No matter how many questions he asked, the answers just seemed to lead to more questions.

  “So …” he said finally. “Angel came from the immaterial realms. What are they, exactly? I mean; if she really was an angel, originally … where do God and the Devil, or whatever, fit into Veritie and Mysterie?”

  “There are many worlds,” Gayle said patiently, “some so far away we can’t even see them from where we are. Think of a pyramid, with the material worlds at the base, growing more strange and magical as they rise, until they become so unreal, so far above and beyond reality, that they leave the restrictions of matter behind and become immaterial. Spiritual realms, with gods and devils and everything in between. And right at the top of the pyramid, beyond such narrow concepts as life and death, real and unreal: The Creator. Far above and beyond the worlds we know, are worlds we cannot know. The shimmering realms, the glory plains, the Courts of the Holy. Can you imagine what it must have been like for Angel to descend from such heights, to mire herself in the material worlds? From pure thought and spirit to flesh and blood and bone? From marvel to meat? Still; the most important question concerning Angel is, did she fall, or was she pushed?”

  Toby looked sharply at Gayle. “You mean her presence here could be a punishment? She’s been imprisoned in the limited worlds for a crime of some kind?”

  “Perhaps,” said Gayle. “Then again, there’s always the danger of becoming too limited in our thinking. Things aren’t always a matter of good and evil, right and wrong. It could be she was sent here as a learning experience because there was something she needed to understand. Something she could only learn on the material planes … The immaterial are subtle beings, in every sense of the word. We underestimate them at our peril.”

  Up Market Street they went, puffing up the long steep hill, until just before the sharp fork off to the left, into Wine Street and New Town, Gayle stopped suddenly to stare across the busy road at the great stone wall on the other side. Toby stopped with her, glad of a chance to catch his breath. It was a hard climb up the steep hill, and Gayle was still setting an uncomfortably fast pace. Toby couldn’t help noticing that while he was struggling for breath, Gayle wasn’t even breathing hard. He joined her in staring at the great wall, though there wasn’t anything immediately interesting about it, for someone who saw it every day. Over thirty feet tall, it towered above them, built from old local stone, blackened now by long years of passing traffic. It was all that remained of what had once been The Priory, a fifteenth-century building long since demolished. Thick mats of ivy clung to the upper half, and there were still faint traces to be seen of old filled-in archways. But essentially it was just a wall.

  Gayle plunged suddenly into the busy road, heading for the wall with a brisk indifference to the passing traffic. Toby stuck doggedly at her heel with his heart in his mouth, trying not to hear the blaring of outraged horns as cars missed them by inches. Somehow they made the far side of the road without causing a major incident, and Gayle knocked on the dark stone. A door opened in the wall, retreating slowly inwards. Toby blinked a few times. He should have been getting used to it by now, but it still rather threw him when a door opened where a door had no business being. Particularly wh
en, in the world he remembered, he was pretty sure there was nothing on the other side of the wall except lots and lots of open space. Yet the door was undeniably there, and Gayle was already striding confidently into the gloom beyond, and so once again Toby took a deep breath and followed her into the unknown.

  For once, the room he ended up in seemed relatively normal. A little old-fashioned, with bulky, heavy furniture, but charming in a Victorian retro kind of way. Latticed windows let in streams of sunlight, and everything was bright and cheerful and airy. There were great bunches of flowers in pretty china vases on every surface, filling the air with a thick and heady perfume. One wall was covered with shelves of tightly packed hardback books, while another held shelves of decorative plates. It took Toby a moment to realise what he wasn’t seeing. There were no modern conveniences of any kind, not even an electric light. He might have stepped back a hundred years, into a quieter, less cluttered age. But he had no time to consider that, because Luna was smiling at him.

  Short and blonde and palely glamorous, she sat in a huge rattan chair that made her seem even tinier by comparison. She wore an enveloping dress of butterfly pastels, from which her delicate long-fingered hands emerged to hold a half-spread fan. A straw boater was perched on top of her long curls, and her heart-shaped face boasted an old-fashioned beestung rosebud mouth under a long thin nose and pale china-blue eyes. She looked like a fragile and very expensive doll, and while her smile was warm enough, there was an odd vagueness to her gaze.

  She rose jerkily from her chair, laughing breathlessly, and fluttered around Gayle and Toby, hugging them both briefly and kissing the air near Gayle’s cheeks before settling them both in comfortable chairs. She pressed cups of hot sweet tea on them and little sugary cakes she’d baked herself just that morning. I had a feeling someone was coming … She moved with graceful little darting movements, never still for a moment. Toby felt almost dizzy trying to keep up with her. Gayle didn’t even bother trying, addressing her remarks to the room in general. Luna finally sank back into her rattan chair again, and fanned herself briskly, peering almost coquettishly over the edge of the fan.

  “So nice to have visitors,” she said breathlessly. “So nice! People come and go, but they hardly ever stay … Isn’t it a lovely day? Lovely. Though of course I don’t get out much any more. You’re new, aren’t you, Toby? Yes, I thought so. You have that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. I’m usually very good with faces, but names often escape me … My memory isn’t what it was. If it ever was. And Gayle doesn’t come to see me nearly as often as she should … Sisters should be close. Should be. In an ever-changing universe, family is all we have that lasts …”

  And then Toby almost jumped out of his chair as Luna’s entire appearance suddenly changed. In the blink of an eye, the pretty dress and straw boater disappeared, and Luna was wearing a top hat and set of tails, a starched white shirt and fishnet stockings rising out of leaf-green ankle boots. Her hair was still blonde, but it was now cropped right back to the skull, little more than yellow fuzz. Her face seemed subtly sharper, enhanced by bright, almost gaudy make-up, with dark panda-like eyes and unnaturally pink lips. She was still chattering away, apparently unaware of or uninterested in the dramatic change of look. Toby jumped again as Gayle’s hand closed firmly on his arm, and when he looked at her, she shook her head slightly. Her tightly closed mouth was all the hint he needed. Don’t talk about it. Right.

  Luna crossed her fishnet legs with disturbingly erotic grace, and folded her arms tightly across her chest. She fixed Toby with a bright, unwavering gaze, and her eyes were a cold, cold blue.

  “You’re here because you need to know things. That’s the only reason Gayle comes to see me these days. I disturb her, you know, Toby. I remind her of possibilities she’d rather forget. Of who and what she could be, should be …” She stuck out her tongue at Gayle, who didn’t react. Luna laughed charmingly, like a child who’s just got away with something. “I’m not all I used to be, I know that. I’m not stupid. A bad thing happened … and in order to forget it I had to forget a lot of what holds me together. So now I’m just a ghost, haunting myself. Tra-la-la … But I am still large. I contain multitudes. Especially on Saturdays.”

  With an almost perceptible lurch, the room changed. The slightly old-fashioned setting was gone, and was replaced by a mediaeval scene, all rough wooden furnishings and hanging tapestries and glowering family portraits on the wood-panelled walls. Even the chair Toby was sitting on squirmed under him as it changed in shape and character. He looked quickly at Gayle, and was relieved to see that she still looked the same, though if anything her mouth was even tighter. Once again she indicated silently for him to go along with it. Toby swallowed hard. He had a strong feeling he was sitting in a room from the old Priory; a room that hadn’t existed for centuries. He wondered what he would see if he got up and looked out of the window; whether he would see people and places that had disappeared long before he was born. He decided he really didn’t want to know, and sat tight. The teacup in his hand had become a metal goblet half full of wine.

  The conversation continued in jumps and starts, as Luna’s butterfly mind roamed all around the subject despite Gayle’s promptings, sometimes touching on it and sometimes not. Luna’s thoughts were almost wilfully vague, never staying in one place for long. Both she and the room continued to change without warning; jumping back and forth in time and fashions, to no obvious pattern or effect. Toby never quite got used to it, but made himself concentrate on what Luna was saying.

  “So,” Luna said brightly to Gayle. “Who are you these days? Still playing at being real?”

  “I’m Gayle. And yes, I still prefer to be real, as much as possible.”

  Luna sighed. “Must be nice, to be so sure of who you are … Why do you never come to see me any more?”

  “I do,” Gayle said gently. “You just forget.”

  “I forget so many things,” Luna said sadly. “But then, it’s a matter of self-defence, really.” She smiled radiantly at Toby. “And I so rarely go out, these days. The town is always changing, changing … real and magical. Sometimes I think I’m the only one that endures, in spirit at least … Are you enjoying your tea, Toby?”

  The tea had become wine, coffee, cherry Coke and was now something that smelled suspiciously like urine. Toby would have liked to put the cup down, but he didn’t know what he’d do with his hands if he did.

  “Very nice,” he said, smiling politely. “What do you do here, Luna? To keep yourself busy?”

  The question clearly confused her, and she leaned back in what was now a rocking chair, patting her white-silk-gloved hands together in a distracted way. “What do I do? I have enough trouble being myself, without trying to achieve things as well. Objectives require timescales, and time … time is a trouble to me. Yesterday is tomorrow is yesterday, with hardly any time to be today. Did you come here before, or am I just dreaming of what will happen after you come? Sorry, sorry. I drift, you see. My anchors cannot hold, my self … is variable. It’s all the fault of The Serpent In The Sun. He broke my connections. I used to know what he was … but he did something bad to me, so bad, long and long ago. I had to forget it, so I forgot him … and so many other things. He hurt me. And now you’re here because … because …”

  “There are things we need to know,” said Gayle.

  “Yes! Yes! I’m not stupid, not senile! Not yet!” Luna leaned forward in her chair to snap at Gayle, her eyes sharp and piercing and entirely other-worldly. “My mind may not be what it was, but I’m still Luna, your little sister. I am a Power and a Domination, just like you, and I know secrets that are hidden from everyone. The night is still my domain. Even you must bow to me, Gayle, on occasion.”

  She changed again. The room was now blinding white walls, with steel and glass and high-tech consoles, and Luna wore a sharply cut chauffeur’s outfit in black leather, complete with a peaked cap over a pure white quiff. She wore tight black gloves and thigh-high bl
ack boots, dark as the night, and her jacket hung open at the front, baring high, firm breasts. Her nipples were as black as ink, standing out starkly against her pale, almost milky skin. Her face was sharply defined now, almost foxy. She had long, heavy eyelashes, and lips of darkest red. She reeked of sex, an almost painfully erotic presence. Toby was having trouble breathing. He couldn’t have looked away from her now if his life depended on it, and she knew it. She smiled coldly at Toby, and it was all he could do to keep from groaning.

  “I know that Nicholas is back,” said Luna, in a slow, sultry voice. “The Hob. The Serpent’s Son. I know about the changes in the world’s weather, and the way the sun is acting. I know that Angel has joined Nicholas at Blackacre, and that he is tearing the dead from the town’s cemeteries. Do you want me, Toby?”

  “Leave him alone,” said Gayle, but her voice was a small, distant thing.

  Luna smiled, a wicked, abandoned, awful smile. “How could I not know Nicholas was back? The wolf always returns to the fold, and the murderer to the scene of his crime. Or the dog to his vomit. Perhaps he’s just come back to foul the streets, because it’s been so long since he marked his territory.”

  “This town was never his,” said Gayle. “And never will be. You and I have always seen to that. Can you see what his purpose is?”

  “He’s been talking with his father,” said Luna, stretching slowly in an unbearably sensual way that brought beads of sweat to Toby’s forehead. “They think I don’t know, but I know … Nicholas was always ambitious, but in the end he is still his father’s son, and will follow the Serpent’s will. The old Enemy is planning something, something new, and he has summoned Hob back to be a part of it. Something bad is coming … something terrible …”

  “Yes,” said Gayle. “But what?”

  Luna fixed her blue, blue eyes on Toby, and leaned forward so that her breasts seemed to surge towards him. “Do you want me, Toby? Do you long to trail the tips of your fingers along my pale flesh? To sink yourself in me? Men have always wanted me, even as I drew and maddened them. It’s been so long since I was allowed anything for myself, just for me … Toby, dear; I could just eat you up.”