A Madness of Angels

the point.”

Vera made an indignant snorting noise.

I said, through a particularly rich bite of coconut, cream and hot chocolate sauce, “What has our religious nut friend here upset is the two men at the back of the restaurant with the tattoos running across every inch of their skin and the rich purple glow of embedded power emanating from their flesh – although it is ironic that someone that insensitive actually noticed them. Are you going to be civil or do I have to bang heads together?”

Vera simply grunted and ordered more water.

I was settling into my second pancake when the two shapeshifters arrived. I could tell by a number of things what they were: by the emanation of slippery, unstable deep brown magic crawling off their skins like oil off a puddle of water, by the flash of yellow in their eyes when they turned their heads quickly round the restaurant, looking for the table, but most of all, by the old man’s sandals they wore over their neatly socked feet, which, while being in appalling taste, left room for the shape of their toes to change. I waved at them, and they, sniffing cautiously, drifted over to our table.

“We’re looking for Mr Swift,” said one.

“And what do you do?” asked Vera. “Write fortunes on the back of cigarette packets?”

“We bite,” replied the woman coldly. “Among other things.”

“Have a pancake,” I said, waving my fork in cheerless welcome. “I’m Matthew Swift. I’m guessing a nice young man with a pair of stylish whiskers called Charlie sent you?”

They sat down carefully, eyeing up the table. “There are… those who do not like… anything,” said the woman at last, pretending to scan the menu as she spoke. “We’re committing to nothing.”

“Sure thing,” I said with a shrug. “Welcome to the pack.”

The last to come was the biker, and he certainly wasn’t alone. He came with two others, one of whom could have been three men. When he turned sideways he just about managed to fit through the door, and when he sat down, the chair, creaking and moaning, just about managed to support his weight. It wasn’t that he was fat – not in the traditional saggy-belly, drooping-chin sense of fat. He was pure and simple big: his thighs bulged in their black leather trousers, his shoulders strained the edges of his studded, extra-large black jacket, his chest threatened to burst through his black T-shirt, his beard ruptured off his face like curling smoke from a volcano, his hands were the size of the plate from which Vera ate her salad, his fingers were thick and raw, his every breath was like the rising and falling of a glassmaker’s bellows, his expressions stretched from ear to ear and twitched over the end of his expansive Roman nose. I had never seen such a man – and more, there was a slippery power about him, more than just the bulk of his presence, a flash of orange and golden fire on the senses, visible out of the corner of the eye, impossible to pin down. He smelt of dirt and car oil and the road, and uncontrolled, risky power. He looked at us and said, “Fucking hell. Who hit you lot with a fucking haddock and hung you out to dry?”

Behind him, Blackjack said, “I don’t think they’re really looking for love.”

“Hello, Dave,” I murmured at Blackjack.

“Hello, sorcerer. Hello, bastard pig priest and your bitch consort slut of a minion,” said Blackjack, nodding at Chaigneau and Oda. He sank himself onto a chair next to me with an expression of polite goodwill on his face. Then to me, “Hear you got into trouble.”

“It’s fine.”

“Yeah? How fine?”

“Chocolate pancake with cream fine,” I answered. “It’s not going to be civil; but there are people here, aren’t there?”

“Oh, it’s going to be another massive fuck-up,” murmured the third arrival. I looked again, and recognised him.

“Survived, then?” I asked.

The warlock was still dressed to the nines in what I could only politely call “ethnic dress”, although by English standards he looked as ethnic as mushy peas. He grunted. “Got the old gang back together? A little talk, a little chat, a little sniper fire through the window at night?” he asked. He helped himself to a fingerful of hot chocolate sauce still in its pot, licking his digit clean with a loud slurping noise. “You know, I really hoped it was you who fucking got done at Sinclair’s place.”

“How did you survive?” asked Oda incredulously. Then, only a little quieter, “Why you?”

“Psycho-bitch,” sneered the warlock, “there are gods watching over me older than the furry fucking mammoths.”

“This is going to be hilarious,” sighed Blackjack.

“Is this it?” asked Vera incredulously through a slurp of thick pink milkshake. “The best that Sinclair and Swift could muster – a bickering pack of badly dressed drones?”

“I’m a fucking warlock!” he retorted. “Master of mystic fucking arts!”

“He’s a sorcerer,” she replied, indicating me, “and I’m told that means he could like, totally pop your eyes out of your skull with a thought. Doesn’t stop him looking like a starving pigeon, does it?”

“Thank you,” I muttered, snatching the hot chocolate sauce away from the warlock’s dabbling fingers. “I’m glad we’re all getting on so well. Sit down, warlock, no one’s going to get shot here.”

“You sure of that?” he replied.

“This is a public space. Besides, too many people have brought far too many reinforcements. It’d be a bloodbath and if anyone here is planning on shooting us” – my gaze moved round the table – “they sure as hell wouldn’t get out of it alive.”

“There are always car bombs,” said Chaigneau with a bright, white smile. “Guy Lee is renowned for his flexibility in these matters.”

The big biker said, “You think you can park anything round here without it getting done? Traffic wardens would have it in thirty seconds. ’Sides, Guy Lee isn’t going to kill us in the pancake house, because, talking straight, us being here is one big fucking joke. Are we going to do any introductions?”

“I’m Matthew,” I replied.

“Halfburn,” said the biker, neck bulging in what might have been a nod. “Although if we’re going to be real friendly about this, you can call me Leslie.”

“Leslie?”

He met my eyes full on, and his gaze was the colour of burnt tar on a night-time road. “Yeah,” he said. “You got something to add?”

“No.”

“Good. This is Blackjack,” jerking his chin at Blackjack, “and the guy in the skirt,” indicating the warlock, “goes by the online chatroom name of Mighty Magician 1572, and his real name’s Martin.”

“Hello, Martin,” I said, nodding at the warlock, who grunted.

Halfburn grinned, leant forward so his saucepan-sized fists rested heavily on the table, looked round until he had every gaze fixed on his face, and said, “So – is there anything other than fucking pancakes to eat in this dive?”

There have been alliances before, within the magical community. Magicians and all their subspecies come in every shape and size, faith, creed, sex, colour and political inclining. This naturally leads to affiliations, groupings, clans of like-minded individuals with similar buttons to be pressed. Sometimes, even these pig-headed bickering clans can agree on a common cause. Back in the Dark Ages they agreed to fight a couple of faerie hordes, although myths and records for those times are blended. In the Renaissance, rumours leaked of epic battles with demon spawn crawling out from their caves, and alliances of alchemists in the cities swapping intelligence with the last hiding druids cowering in the countryside on where the necromancers were hunting for their dead. In the 1800s there were stories that one of the very earliest urban magicians, among the first to taste power in the machines and smoke and bricks of the city, rather than the older sources of magic, created an alliance of beggars and aristocrats, to further the study of this new wonder together. Stories also tell that the magician in question died impaled on the end of an enchanted rapier thrust through his chest by one of his erstwhile allies; but, again, records