fucking funny,' she said, just before slamming the door closed behind her.
And as Clay also left the vehicle, his body pulsing with the potential for violence that was to follow, he was forced to admit that the woman was right; it was funny.
When you looked at it from a certain way, it was all funny.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kingsley is dead.
Conan Doyle, for that is how he is known to all and sundry, sits in the foyer of the Grosvenor Hotel with an unlit pipe propped between his lips. His eyes glaze as he gazes across the elegant foyer at ladies and their gentlemen, bustling to and fro. It is the middle of November, yet already the spirit of Christmas is in the air. Conan Doyle spies a small boy, perhaps five, running circles round his Ma'am's legs as his Da has an angry word with a bellman.
The father often loses patience with the boy. Conan Doyle can see bruises on the child's inner arms, dark purple marks where his father's thumb and fingers have gripped too tightly. The mother loves her husband, but she holds her breath, hoping his temper is satisfied by berating the bellman, and quietly trying to calm her boy so that he does not draw his father's attention.
The bellman is new to the job. Conan Doyle can see this from his shoes. The uniform is new, the buttons polished, but the shoes are badly scuffed, heels worn. The man had not been working at the Grosvenor long enough to have saved money for new shoes.
And Kingsley is dead.
The bellman has no money. The boy's father is far too rough with him. But Conan Doyle's own son, the pride of his heart, had been taken by the influenza. The wounds that Kingsley had received at the Somme had not killed him, but they had weakened him.
Kingsley is dead, and now a fortnight later Conan Doyle sits in the foyer of the Grosvenor Hotel and frowns as he glances up at the woman who has just entered through the revolving door. She is a large woman, stern-featured and well-dressed, and she carries in each hand a tiny Union Jack, the flag of Britain. As if in a dream, she waltzes silently and alone, waving these small banners, and then she disappears through the revolving door once more, returning to the street.
Moments later, a roar begins to build. Voices. Tears. Dancing feet.
Armistice. The war is over.
Kingsley is dead.
'Peace,' a voice says, dry and cold. It is not a greeting, but an observation, and even then it is more cynical than celebratory.
Conan Doyle taps his pipe on his knee and glances up into a the face of Lorenzo Sanguedolce, his olive skin, fancy mustache, and Italian accent marking him as a suspicious character in these times of war.
'Kingsley is dead,' Conan Doyle tells him.
Sanguedolce nods. 'Yes. But he has not gone far, Arthur. Not yet. You may still be able to speak with him for a time yet.'
Ice forms around Conan Doyle's heart and he cannot meet Sanguedolce's eyes. 'I think not.'
'No?'
'No. If I speak with him, I may become too fond of the idea of joining him.'
When he looks up, they are no longer in the Grosvenor Hotel, these two men. Conan Doyle stands on Wandsworth Road, looking up at the face of the Three Goats' Heads pub. The name of the place is repeated on three signs, two on the building itself and one on a post in front of it, along with a faded reminder that one might also find Watney amp; Company's inside. The windows are filthy. Gathered in a small circle is a quartet of rough looking men in dark Derby hats.
The war has not yet begun, will not begin for years yet.
Conan Doyle enters the Three Goats' Heads. Ale spills from glasses as the barkeep slides them along a table. The air is choked with smoke, a fog that obscures his vision.
In the center of the pub there is a table that is clean, save for a single pint of ale. Despite the crowd, no one goes near. Impossibly, there is a circle of clear air around and above the table, as though the wafting smoke is kept out by some invisible wall. Conan Doyle has come to the Wandsworth Road this evening in response to a note, a summons signed by Lorenzo Sanguedolce. He has heard of the man, of course, the one they call Sweetblood the Mage. He has dismissed much of this talk as merely that. Talk.
One glimpse of Sanguedolce's eyes, like bright pennies, and the way he seems to exist separate from the world, even in the din and dirt of a public house, and he knows there is more to the man than talk.
Conan Doyle sits across from Sanguedolce. He says nothing by way of introduction. They have never met, but still they know one another.
'You're a fool,' Sanguedolce says, voice dripping with venom.
'What?' Conan Doyle demands, taken aback.
'Languishing in memories, in the comfort of the past,' Sanguedolce explains. 'You can't afford the luxury.'
All other sound in the Three Goats' Heads is abruptly silenced. The smoke thickens, becomes a wall of gray, and their small table is nearly in darkness. Beyond the table, things move in the smoke, and Conan Doyle is certain that they are not the patrons of the bar, not thick-necked men in dark Derbys, but others. Things that move in shadow, thrive in it, even consume it.
He has been drifting inside himself. Lost. Sanguedolce is right. He is a fool. But somehow, despite it all, he has found the arch mage's mind, touched him. Even now Lorenzo's face shimmers and blurs. Morrigan's power interferes, as do the spells Sanguedolce used to hide himself, so long ago. Conan Doyle brushes a hand through the air, clearing some of the strange ash that hangs there, and he can see Sanguedolce more clearly.
For the moment.
'Quickly, then,' Conan Doyle snaps, angry at himself, angry at Sweetblood. 'Talk. What is Morrigan's plan? What does she want you for?'
'Idiot,' Sanguedolce says. 'I was hidden for a reason.'
The arch mage draws back his hand to strike, but it never touches Conan Doyle. The smoke and ash coalesce around them and Sanguedolce seems a part of it, now, gray shadows enveloping him, erasing him.
'No!' Conan Doyle cries. 'Wait!'
'This is not my doing. There is too much darkness between us, too much power.'
But his voice sounds distant, muffled, and diminishing with each word. Then…
'Here.' And a hand thrusts out of the smoke gray shadow, a fingertip touching Conan Doyle's forehead, a light tap just between the eyes.
Slivers of pain lance through his head. His eyes burn. Bile rises in the back of his throat. Images erupt in his mind. Flashes of color, accompanied by the shrieking of children and the agonized wail of mothers. A city on fire. A highway lined with the dead. A barricade built of rotting, festering corpses. Charred flesh falling like snow from a dead black sky. Holes in the world, craters where entire nations had once been. A small, grinning girl with a bloody mouth and sharp teeth, looking up at her father with a knife in one hand and her mother's eyes in the other.
Armies, marching.
Disease on the wind. Red welts and yellow blisters, a crowd dropping one by one, like wheat beneath the scythe.
And from the darkest corners of the world, hideous beasts begin to emerge. Demons. And worse.
'My Lord,' Conan Doyle whispers. 'Morrigan doesn't have this kind of power. What does she call?'
Now he feels himself choking on the smoke, the gray shadows sheathing his eyes, smothering him, crawling up his nostrils. Conan Doyle passes a hand before him and the gray withdraws only enough that he can see the outline of a face in the smoke. The lips move, but Sanguedolce's voice is in his head, not in the smoke.
'You don't listen. This isn't Morrigan's plan. But she has already corrupted the sorcery of my chrysalis. My power is already seeping, drawing attention. It must be sealed again. The things you have seen.. they are inevitable
