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Fantasy Stories

As Black As Hell

Written by John Lambshead

Illustrated by David Daniel

"For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night."

Gaston was used to waiting. The unofficial motto of the British Army was 'hurry up and wait.' Gaston had reached the rank of sergeant in the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment—the Queen's own Royal goon squad, not bad for the illegitimate son of a Charing Cross streetwalker. He had joined up after his mother's pimp had beaten her senseless with a red-hot coat hanger. Gaston had taken a white-hot poker to the pimp in retaliation. The local police had found the incident hilarious but a kindly bobby had suggested that Gaston should join the Queen's colours for a while to keep him out of circulation. The pimp was connected to one of the more vicious Kosovan white slaver gangs that imported teenage girls for the sex trade in Central London.

In Afghanistan, Gaston had come across something much older and far more dangerous than the Taliban, something that stalked and killed his section, one by one. Gaston had survived and even fought back. The Commission team that finally put down the beast had been impressed enough to recommend that the soldier be recruited. His mother was dead by then so Gaston was footloose and free. He was quietly discharged from the ranks on health grounds and disappeared into the Commission's tender arms.

Gaston sat on the floor in the back of a battered van with three others. "For Christ's sake stop drumming your fingers, MacDowell," he said.

"Sorry, Sarge," MacDowell said. He guiltily placed his hand in his lap.

Gaston closed his eyes again. The one thing a soldier learnt was to sleep when he could. You never knew when the chance might come again. The spearmen who followed Achilles knew this, as did the legionnaires who marched behind the Caesars. The important things never change.

The mobile vibrated in Gaston's pocket. He pulled it out and checked the message. It read simply 'She's in.' "Okay, boys," said Gaston. "It's on." He would have preferred to wait for daylight to deal with a Code Z but his orders were precise.

The van might have looked old and battered but the side door slid back in well-oiled silence. The four men debussed and moved purposely towards the cottage carrying bulky equipment. Two of them moved to the front door while the others knelt down in the garden. Gaston inserted a device into the door lock. A light flashed on the equipment, briefly illuminating black body armour, topped by a helmet with a reinforced visor.

The door lock opened with a noticeable click and the men froze, listening. When nothing happened, they pushed open the door and crept inside. Inside, the cottage was in darkness. The men opened the doors to each room with the barrels of bulky guns, scanning each room before entering. They moved confidently and silently through the darkened rooms, using the light enhancement technology in their visors.

Eventually, they had searched all the ground floor without finding their quarry so they clustered around the base of the narrow staircase. Gaston silently designated an order by pointing at each man and indicating a number with his fingers. The men filed up the stairs behind Gaston in the indicated sequence, keeping one metre's distance apart.

Gaston stepped on a loose board that creaked underfoot. All the men stopped and waited but the cottage remained dark and silent. Finally, they started moving again but each of the following men stepped carefully over the treacherous stair.

They stopped at the first bedroom door on the top landing and repeated their room opening ritual. The door was ajar. Gaston and a partner stood each side of the door and pushed it fully open with their gun muzzles. When there was no reaction, they moved inside, the second two members of the team taking their place at the entrance.

The room was empty except for some basic furniture. The bed was solid and the wardrobe door open, so there was no possible hiding place. Gaston started to back out when, for some odd reason, the second team member looked up.

Chaos theory insists that a single flap of a butterfly's wing in China can change the direction of a hurricane in the West Indies, sparing one island to devastate another. This may or may not be true. Certainly Chinese butterflies continue to irresponsibly flap, giving absolutely no thought to the welfare of their relatives in the Americas.

Human beings consider themselves to be inestimably superior to mere butterflies because they have created opera, organic vegetables and the Oprah Winfrey Show but in terms of irresponsible body movements they may not have advanced much further than the Lepidoptera.

The second team member looked up, changing several lives. It certainly changed his own life. Orange streetlight leaking through the window gently illuminated a lady all in black, crouching against the ceiling. She wore black leather trousers and jacket like a biker babe. Long black curly hair trailed down over her face. Her face was starkly North European pale. She crouched, hands and feet against the roof as if gravity was reversed.

The woman dropped down on the team member before he could move. Somehow, she twisted in mid air so that she dropped astride him as he fell to the floor. She grabbed his helmet with both hands and jerked hard. His neck broke with a noticeable crack.

Gaston hit her hard across the shoulders with his gun, driving her back. She hissed at him, opening her mouth to show impossibly long fangs. There was a great flash and crack of discharging capacitors that filled the room with indigo light and ozone. Invisible ultraviolet raked the woman's face causing her to moan in agony. The whine of recharging capacitors filled the room with high pitched sound. As she dropped, disorientated onto her knees, Gaston stepped up to her. He had not fired yet. He placed his gun muzzle directly against her face and discharged it. The flash flipped the woman onto her back.

"Quickly, get the restraints on." Gaston spoke for the first time since they had entered the cottage. Working with polished speed, the men slapped heavy silvered restraints around her wrists and ankles. One of the team pulled a thick leather bag over her head and fastened it at the neck.

A team member knelt to check the pulse of the man down on the ground. "He's dead."

Gaston unclipped a mobile phone and triggered a number. "Send a clean up crew. We got her. We have one friendly casualty, terminal."

The woman on the floor sat up.

A soldier walked over to her, "You killed Frank, you bitch." He kicked her in the face, as hard as he could.

****

"There's the Code Z," said Farley. "She's already had the preliminary treatment. Only the oaths are left."

"What do we know about her?" said Jameson.

Farley opened a file. "We know she has been using the name Karla. We are not sure who she really is or how old she is. She can still pass as human well enough to function to a limited degree within human society. She has made at least five kills in the red light zones. Three clients and two prostitutes have been drained to our certain knowledge over the last two years. Given that she would need regular meals, the low frequency of deaths must mean that she mostly stops short of a kill. That suggests she hasn't yet descended into animal irrationality. Frankly, I never thought that R&D would ever find a suitable candidate. It certainly took them long enough."

Jameson did not comment. Code Zs became more dangerous as they aged. Young suckers were more malleable but the old ones were the real prize for the experiment. Mental deterioration set in past a certain age, though. That was why immortal Code Zs did not overrun the world. Some became twisted obsessive maniacs that were too damn dangerous to do anything but destroy–if you could. Most shut down mentally and retreated into non-sentience to become the basis for monster and demon legends.

The two men stood behind a shield of one-way armoured glass. The woman in black leather was chained to a heavy steel chair that was itself bolted to a concrete floor, like it was in some demented dentist's surgery. She sat with unnatural stillness.

The interrogator pulled the hood off her head. She didn't move but blinked in the bright, artificial lights, watching him.

"Can you understand me?" the interrogator said.

She looked at him without speaking. The man sighed.

He raised his hand and a guard in body armour walked around him and pointed a weapon at her torso. It looked like an assault rifle but had a much thicker barrel and magazine.

"That is a Model YR03 rail gun. The electromagnetic coils accelerate a steel cored wooden bolt up to 200 miles an hour. At this range it will punch clean through you."

She still did not respond so he spoke again. "You are useless to me if you refuse to cooperate or you are too far gone to comprehend instructions, and we might as well use you to test the gun. So for the last time—can you understand me?"

"I understand you," she said. "What do you want?" Her accent was impossible to place, like one of those Eurotrash playboys who had lived in so many places that they had picked up something from all of them.

"That's better. We want you to do something for us," he said. "Are you willing to cooperate?"

"You need me for something?" She spoke without emotion.

"You will undergo a magic ritual. You will be required to do this voluntarily and to make the appropriate actions and response when prompted." The man looked at her intently.

"Yes." She licked her lips.

"If you do anything to interrupt or corrupt the ritual then you will be immediately destroyed without a second chance. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said, again.

"You don't say much do you," the interrogator said. She did not answer.

The man got up and left the room but the guards remained watching her.

A woman approached carrying a bag of arcane objects and herbs.

"Witch," whispered Karla. For the first time she looked apprehensive.

The woman set out her magic paraphernalia on the floor. She lit scented candles, dimming the lights. She put various herbs in a bowl and ground them up in Buxton spring water from a plastic bottle. Closing her eyes the witch recited an incantation sitting cross-legged on Karla's right.

"I think this is your cue, old boy," said Farley.

"Yah." Jameson opened the door and walked in. He knelt down in front of Karla.

The witch paused while Jameson found a comfortable position, then she started the ceremony proper.

"Tied in chains that can't be seen,

Tied in chains that can't be parted,

Tied in chains that bind her being,

Hecate, Queen of night,

Hear me, Hecate, hear my summoning

She offers body, mind and heart,

Come Hecate and hear her promise,

Bind her body, mind and heart,

He is here and waits possession,

An open channel for your purpose,

On his head the geas falls,

Hear her, Hecate, work the magic,

Bind her body mind and heart,"

The witch chanted on and on until Karla's eyes dropped. Little will-o-wisps danced in green and white and blue around the three and the candles flared. It looked like a clip from a soap advert dreamt up by a planner who had pushed too much white powder up his nose. Jameson couldn't move. The witch arched her back and sighed deeply.

"Hecate, Queen of Darkness, she comes, she comes."

Then she slumped forward as if exhausted. The candle flames subsided and the will-o-wisps faded. There was a long pause and Jameson's hands and feet tingled with "pins and needles" as if the circulation had been temporarily cut off. The witch sat up and snapped her fingers, waking Karla up. She offered Karla a bowl. Yellow vapour flowed gently from it onto the floor.

"Drink and say 'With all my heart I offer,'" said the witch.

Karla hesitated, took a sideways look at a guard, then bent her head forward.

The witch put the bowl to her lips and Karla drank. "With all my heart I offer," she said.

Jameson took the bowl in turn and drank "I accept the responsibility."

The witch blew the candles out slowly and ceremonially. She said a small incantation as each flame was extinguished. When the last was out, she left the room. The guards followed and closed the door.

"Hello Karla, my name is Jameson. Well here we are, all alone."

Jameson had done some hairy things for the Commission but this was the most dangerous. He feigned casualness out of some personal sense of pride. There was no real point. He knew Karla could smell his emotions and he must reek of fear.

"We will soon have you out of all those chains." He chatted amiably and pointlessly as he worked.

He unclipped her ankles first, then her arms and wrists. Karla shot out of the chair and moved warily to the back of the room. Jameson stood still, turning to watch her. She tested the armoured glass and walls with the heel of her hand. She hit like a pile driver but the room was reinforced. Then she tried the door without success.

"I have the door key." Jameson showed it to her then put it in his pocket.

She walked up to him and opened her mouth, revealing elongated canines. He wanted to run, oh boy, how he wanted to run, but he was locked in with her. There was nowhere to go. She stopped and looked puzzled.

"I feel your fear," she spoke to him for the first time. "I don't . . . I don't like the feeling."

He pulled a rail pistol from under his arm. It was a three shot weapon that could be easily concealed as a last ditch defence. Jameson's weapons instructor had always said that if you needed to fire a second time at rail pistol range then you were already dead. So the three shot magazine was a luxury.

Jameson held the pistol at arm's length pointed at her heart. "Pay careful attention, Karla. I will kill you if you feed on a human being. I will kill you unless you kill me first."

She made a half-hearted move towards him, claws and teeth extended, but hesitated. He slapped her across the face, causing her to recoil. "What have you done to me?" she whispered.

"I will kill you if you ever feed on a human being unless you kill me first. Do you understand me?"

She then did something utterly unexpected. She backed away from him to the corner, curled up into a ball and shook. What was he supposed to do now? He squatted down beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. She shrank away.

"It's alright, Karla. It's alright," he said softly stroking her arm. "You don't want to kill me, the magic won't let you, and I don't want to kill you. You will tell me when you need to feed and I will get you blood." After a while she stopped shaking.

"Come on, get up," he said, cajolingly.

"What have you done to me?" she repeated.

"You've been bound to me," he said gently. "The witch's magic has bound you. Come on, get up."

This was ridiculous; he was treating a man-killing monster as if she was a frightened woman. The trouble was that she looked like a frightened woman, albeit one with metallic green eyes. She allowed him to haul her to her feet.

"Now we are going to leave this place. You will stay close to me and remember, attack a human being and I will kill you."

Jameson unlocked the door and walked out. He didn't look around but he heard her follow him. They walked down a corridor and into another room full of people. Everyone in that room was a volunteer and everyone was scared. They were all dead if she went into a killing frenzy. Jameson held his pistol inconspicuously at his side. Karla looked in and opened her mouth, showing long teeth. She looked at Jameson and then backed out into the corridor.

"It's okay, Karla. Follow me." Jameson grabbed her hand and pulled her behind him. She looked rigidly ahead as he paraded her through the room. He took her to a door that opened out into a courtyard.

"Well, Karla. You passed the test. I guess the spell works, or at least it has so far."

Jameson walked to where his car was parked. The blue Jaguar two seater sports was his beloved. He clicked the remote and the car chirruped a welcome, flashing its amber indicators. He opened the left-hand door. "Come on, Karla. Get in."

She shrank back. "Smelly, noisy."

Jameson held out his hand to her. "We have to use the car to go home. Come on, I've even fitted darkened windows," he said, encouragingly. Home was too far to walk and it was too late for the tube. The thought of taking her on a tube train was–disconcerting.

She climbed into the Jag and perched on the edge of the seat. Jameson got in the driver's side and clipped his belt on. He tried to attach hers but she stopped him and shook her head. "I guess the seat belt laws don't apply to you," he said. Actually, very little of the United Kingdom's legal code had been written with her in mind.

He started the engine. She seemed fascinated by the parade of lights that flicked across the dashboard. "Karla, have you been in a car before?"

She shook her head.

"I suppose the technology has only been around for a hundred years," said Jameson, with heavy, and wasted, irony.

****

He pulled out of the bay and up to the security barrier. His chipped identity card lifted the bar. At this time in the morning, even the streets of London were empty and the big Jag ate the miles. Jameson was a fast, confident driver and, as he got into the mood, he swung the car through the wet streets, letting the back step out as he used the accelerator to steer. He flicked the player on.

The Jag had a state of the art MP3 system. Jameson downloaded the latest CDs into it every month. He had the system rigged to random mood selection. Theoretically, the system analysed his driving and the weather to select appropriate tracks. Jameson also had set it to favour recent recordings.

Katie Melua's perfect, crystal-clear voice infiltrated their air space.

"Piece by piece is how I'll let go of you, Kiss by kiss, will leave my mind one at a time."

A hand gripped his thigh.

Karla gripped the roof handhold with one hand and his leg with the other. "Fast," she said. "Go fast."

Good grief, thought Jameson. Jaguar sports cars had a well-deserved reputation as totty-magnets but this was ridiculous. But her enthusiasm was infectious especially to a man who still possessed a strong boy-racer streak.

He pulled the gear selector down and across to drop it two gears and he opened the throttle as they joined the Cromwell Road. The bonnet lifted as the V12 dug the rear wheels into the tarmac. The Jag shot past the gothic cathedral-like building of the Natural History Museum. Not only the dinosaurs watched them pass, a trail of flashing speed cameras winked in their wake, like photographers behind a Hollywood starlet parading up the red carpet. The car was registered with the diplomatic plates of a small African country so the traffic police could only sigh and tear up the tickets.

She gripped him hard as the Jag accelerated. "Um, Karla, you're hurting my leg."

She turned shining emerald eyes on him and released him fractionally. "I can feel your blood pumping."

There was, he thought, no answer to that. He turned off the A4, southwest to Richmond.

****

Jameson lived at the top of a small, modern block of flats half way up Richmond Hill. The building was wonderfully tasteless, and quite out of keeping with the rest of the area. He had often thought that the builder must have had serious black on the head clerk of Richmond's Planning Department to get permission for such a monstrosity. Nevertheless, the view from his flat took in the Thames and half of Richmond below. After only fifteen minutes, he found a bay to park the Jag a bare five hundred metres from his flat. It was a good night. Sometimes he needed to get a taxi home from where he parked the car.

The deadlocked door opened with a click and he punched his code into the elaborate security systems. "I will need to teach you how an electronic alarm system works," he said. "What are you waiting for?"

She stood outside. "I can't come in. Something stops me."

"Ah, I forgot the magical shield around the flat. It obviously regards you as hostile. Hang on." He reached out and held her wrist. "You are welcome in my home. That should do it, try again."

She walked in. "The kitchen is here. There are blood bags in the fridge and a microwave." She looked blank. "I will teach you how to use them. The sitting room is in here. My bedroom is at the end and this is yours."

He opened the door on a well-appointed room. "It's a little small, I'm afraid, but you know London prices."

He was gabbling, he knew. How could she possibly understand property prices? But the situation was stressful He paused but she said nothing. "It'll be dawn soon. The window is double blinded and I have drawn the curtains in the other rooms to give you the run of the flat. I need to sleep, so I'll see you later."

She did not speak or even move as he let himself out. Jameson was tired but sleep eluded him. He had total faith in The Commission's magic geeks when they assured him that Karla couldn't possibly attack him. Yeah, right. They gave the assurances but it was his neck not theirs. How the hell had he volunteered for this? You killed suckers, as quickly and safely as possible, before they killed you. What you didn't do was have them over as houseguests. He listened intently but all he could hear was his heart, thump, thump, thump. Come to think of it, she could probably hear it too. Jameson checked his rail pistol was charged and rolled over.

When he woke, it was mid afternoon. The flat was as silent as the grave. Jameson winced; the metaphor was unattractive. He put his robe on and knocked gently on Karla's door. There was no answer so he pushed it open. The room was just as he had left it, the bed unruffled. There was no evidence that she had ever been in it. Where the hell was she?

He found her in the lounge, sitting cross-legged on the floor, in the darkest corner, to the side of the window. He almost drew the curtains; cursing himself gently, he turned on the light instead. She had a book open on her lap. She must have been reading in the dim light. He made a note that her night vision was extraordinary.

Reading was a good sign. It suggested her mind was functioning. "What attracted your interest, hmm, the complete works of William Shakespeare. You like the Bard, then."

Jameson had read English Lit. at Cambridge. He had obtained a good rowing blue and a poor third class degree. Two sorts of people went to Oxford and Cambridge in Jameson's day. The first group was state school geeks with oversized brains; they generally got firsts. The second group was the public school educated sons and daughters of the cream of society, that is the thick and the rich. They spent three years networking and clubbing, and got thirds. It was very unfashionable to get a second since it implied that you were too geeky to enjoy the social life and too dim to cut the academic mustard.

He had kept his course books after graduating. Many of them were still unopened, but they filled the spaces on his shelves nicely. His Shakespeare, however, was well thumbed.

"What are you reading? The Sonnets? You have a taste for romanticism, then." She did not answer but it was important that he keep communicating with her so he took the book from her hands and read from the open page.

"In the old age black was not counted fair, or if it were, it bore not beauty's name; but now is black beauty's successive heir, and beauty slander'd with a bastard's shame."

He flicked down the page. "Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, as those whose beauties proudly make them cruel; for well thou know'st to my dear doting heart . . . Thy black is fairest in my judgement's place, in nothing art though black save in thy deeds, and hence this slander, as I think, proceeds."

"The Dark Lady Sonnets!" he said. Jameson had a soft spot for these poems. His one attempt at amateur dramatics had been a part in Shaw's play based on the Dark Lady of the Sonnets. His girlfriend of the moment had played The Lady so he had been persuaded to play the Beefeater. He had a scant dozen line of dialogue. The only one he could remember now had been something like "Halt, who goes there?" The girlfriend had dumped him right afterwards for the smooth bastard who played the romantic lead, young Will Shakespeare, himself. But Jameson's interest in Shakespeare had been awakened and had never quite died.

"He was so young," she said "but his words hung in the air."

"You were there?" he said. "You heard the Bard?" Jameson gazed at her in astonishment and increasing excitement. The rational side of his mind insisted that coincidences like this did not happen. But the romantic part whispered that it was not impossible.

"Are you really that old, Karla? Could you have met Shakespeare?" he said, doubtfully.

"The poet's words were like quicksilver, like fire in my head," she said, "and he loved me."

"He loved you?" said Jameson, in astonishment. He paced the room, excitement mounting. Could she lie in her current state? Why would she lie? Do suckers fantasise? He knew so little about her kind. Mostly, he just killed them.

"I wish I had paid more attention to Gimpy Harris' lectures," Jameson said. Gimpy Harris was Professor Auberon Harris, an eminent Shakespearean scholar. Jameson had slept off several hangovers through his lectures.

"What did Gimpy say about the Dark Lady?" Jameson ticked the points off on his fingers. "She was older than Shakespeare. She was probably not an aristocrat. He called her black because of both her colouring and the wickedness in her heart. She was devious and unfaithful. Loving her was wrong in some way. The Bard was almost vicious in his denunciation of his love for her and the damage it would do to his soul."

He thumbed through the Dark Lady arc with a new eye. "Then will I swear beauty herself is black, and all they foul that thy complexion lack."

"So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, and death once dead, there's no more dying then."

"Read in one way, that could have come straight out of the Necronomicon–the Book of The Dead," whispered Jameson. Oh this surely was not possible.

"For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night."

"He's talking about the undead, the creatures of the night!" said Jameson, belief starting to overcome scepticism.

"In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn . . . For I have sworn thee fair; more perjur'd I, to swear against the truth so foul a lie."

"Oh my God, it's all here. The Dark Lady was a black-haired vampire, the undead who feed on death so that they never die, a creature of the night. His soul was foresworn for loving her." Jameson was stunned. He had read these passages a hundred times and seen them simply as the record of an unfortunate love affair. That was the problem with Shakespeare. There were so many ways to interpret the words, depending on the reader's mindset.

He knelt down beside her and pushed the hair out of her eyes. "What do you remember, Karla? What secrets are locked in your head? Gimpy would have sold his soul for an hour with you." That might have been literally true but Gimpy would still have paid the price.

"It's been so long," she said.

"Do you understand what was happening to you, Karla?" he said. "You were regressing fast. Soon, you would have been completely animal. Then you would have made a fatal mistake. Well, you are going to be kicked out of it now."

****

Jameson gunned the Jaguar up the North Circular. London's north western inner ring road is a driver's delight. Large roundabouts connect stretches of urban duel carriageway, offering a constant challenge. Karla was a particular temptation as speed thrilled her and she urged him on, not that he ever needed much encouragement.

The player had selected Franz Ferdinand. "You see her, you can't touch her. You hear her, you can't hold her."

Tonight he was barely getting into his stride when a large Ford attached itself to his tail. Jameson dropped a gear and accelerated away from it. The Ford followed and deployed hidden blue flashing lights and a familiar bee-boo noise.

"Damn, I seem to have picked up the only patrol car in London. Let me do the talking," Jameson said.

"You want her, you can't have her. You want to, she won't let you."

He pulled over, killed the player and lowered the driver's window. "Who do we think we are then, sir, Michael Schumacher?" Only London's Metropolitan Police could make the word "sir" sound so deeply insulting.

"No, Officer. I think I'm a diplomat. My passport." Jameson handed it over. The bobby examined it with his torch. It was a perfectly good passport that declared Jameson to be an attaché of the Republic of Hamrandi. "As you see, I have diplomatic immunity to prosecution."

"Where's Hamrandi, when it's at home?" the guardian of the law asked.

"Africa," said Jameson succinctly.

The policeman sniffed, eloquently. "Amazing how diplomats from the poorest countries have the flashiest cars. And what about her? Is she a diplomat too?"

"No, Officer. She's just a colleague. And as she is simply sitting there she doesn't need to prove anything, does she?"

The policeman shone his torch at her. "Would you mind removing your sunglasses please, madam?"

She just looked at him.

"Take your glasses off, love," said Jameson.

Karla removed the shades. Her eyes flashed metallic green in the torchlight. She hissed at the policeman, who jumped.

"Amazing what women can do nowadays with coloured contact lenses, isn't it?" said Jameson, cheerfully.

The policeman was so rattled that he failed to reprimand Karla for not wearing a belt. Nevertheless, he rallied manfully. "Yes, sir. You may be a diplomat but keep your speed down, or we will find reasons to keep pulling you over and making your life miserable."

"Absolutely, Officer. I shall certainly be more careful in future," Jameson assured him.

"See that you do." With that parting shot, the guardian of the law reasserted his dignity and strode back to his motor.

"We had better be more circumspect for the rest of the evening," said Jameson, propelling the Jag at a sedate pace.

"Slow," said Karla, succinctly. She had improved immensely in the last fortnight and now even initiated discourse. But she was still not one would call a sparkling conversationalist.

Jameson pulled into the rear car park at the Brent Cross shopping centre, leaving the motor tucked well away in a dimly lit corner. He opened the passenger door for Karla and handed her out. As he wanted her to behave like a lady, he elected to treat her as one. She took his arm, as he had trained her. He had put a lot of effort into training her and the more he tried the faster she learnt. He escorted her to a shop that had one dress in the window, a dress with no price tag. Simpsons was a ladies outfitter, not a dress shop.

"Are you up to this, love? You will have to maintain control out of my sight. Can you do that for me, Karla?"

"I can do it," she said.

"Mr Jameson?" said the personal shopper. "We are expecting you." The lady—Simpsons does not have shop assistants, they have ladies—looked somewhat askance at Karla's tattered leathers.

"My friend," Jameson gestured at Karla, " has just flown back from a spiritual odyssey to Nepal. Her luggage is believed to have been rerouted to Bangkok via Istanbul. While the airline looks for it, she will need daywear, business wear, an evening outfit and something suitable for bike riding; she favours leathers. I expect you to make appropriate suggestions as she is somewhat out of touch, fashion wise. Charming place, Nepal, but somewhat rural." Jameson indicated Karla's outfit, which spoke for itself.

"Does sir require an account?" said the lady. By way of answer, Jameson laid a Coutt's Classic Card down on the counter. Coutt's were the Queen's bank. Liquid assets of one hundred thousand pounds were required to open an account.

"Charge it to that," Jameson said.

"Madam will require underwear to match?" said the lady. From the look on her face, she was estimating her commission on the sale.

"I would imagine so," said Jameson, vaguely. He retreated hastily from what was clearly becoming a male no-go zone.

****

The lady raised a hand and a younger version materialised at her elbow. "Madam will need luggage to carry away her selection. Go round to V&J and pick up a set."

She seized Karla by the arm and led her determinedly into the racks. Karla gave him a look of desperation over her shoulder so he smiled encouragingly. Jameson, preparing for a long wait, took out a packet of Dunhill. One of the staff frowned at him and pointed to a sign indicating that the whole arcade was a no-smoking zone.

Cursing Blair's nanny government, he trooped out to the car park and joined a small huddle of pariahs camped around the main entrance. The rebellious "enemies-of-the-Blairite-state" sucked on their burning weeds and stomped up and down to keep warm. He flirted for four cigarettes with a charming girl from Hackney, any difference in social class submerged in their common exile. They were the dispossessed in the new politically correct society.

Reluctantly, for the young lady from Hackney was a very nice girl who had admitted to certain interesting fantasies regarding Jaguar sports cars, he dragged himself back to the shop to see how the wardrobing of his pet creature of the night was proceeding. The personal shopper was standing outside the changing area talking to Karla, who lurked within where Jameson couldn't see her.

"Madam wears it well. The gentleman wished you to have eveningwear and that is eveningwear. Look, he has returned. Why not show him?" She reached in and hauled Karla out into the shop.

The personal shopper had dressed the Dark Lady in a wisp of a little black dress with matching strappy sandals and clutch bag. "I feel ridiculous," muttered Karla, sulkily.

"You look fabulous," said Jameson, simply. "We'll take it."

Karla elected to wear her new black leathers out of the shop. Jameson let her have her way as he thought she had received enough fashion shocks for one night. She was definitely starting to look mutinous. Jameson insisted on carrying the luggage. He was intellectually aware that she could carry him and the luggage with one hand but, dammit, a gentleman carried the bags for a lady. And back there in that shop, she had looked every inch a lady.

Four youths hung around the Jaguar. "Nice wheels, mate," said the largest. "We've been looking after your motor for you to make sure it don't get damaged. Might still get damaged unless you pay us a pony."

"Sod off," said Jameson, succinctly. "Or I'll set my girlfriend on you."

The youths straightened up and closed on him. Jameson ran through the options in his head. Karla was well fed so shouldn't be hungry. The magic spell would probably force her to intervene if the yobs attacked him. That could rapidly get out of hand. Perhaps better to have a more controlled situation. It would be a good test of how well he could control her and how well she could control herself to please him.

"You have been very patient tonight, Karla, so I give you these four. No killing or maiming but other than that, have fun. Oh and Karla." She looked at him. "No feeding."

"Really," said Karla, happily. "I can play with them?"

"Sure," said Jameson. "Have a ball." He hoped he wasn't making a terrible error.

"Hold on a min—" a yob started to say.

Karla grabbed him, picked him up and heaved him horizontally across the car park.

"No," said Jameson, in genuine anguish. "Mind the Jag." Too late, the yob crashed into the wing, leaving a dent.

The gang leader produced a knife and ran at her. He thrust viciously at her face. She caught him by the wrist and twisted. Something broke with a crack. Karla kicked his legs out from under him and rabbit punched him as he fell. The last two made a run for it, but she was on them, like a cheetah running down rabbits. She grabbed them, one hand on each neck, and crashed their heads together. Then she tossed them casually aside.

The leader groaned and rose to his knees attracting her attention. He would have done better to have stayed down. She moved over to him. Jameson noticed that she slid like an ice dancer. She really was extraordinarily graceful, a beautiful man-killer who moved like a tigress. Karla hauled the leader up by the front of his denim jacket. Blood ran down his face and neck. She stared at it in fascination, opening her mouth to reveal long canines. He fainted dead away, becoming limp in her grip.

"No feeding, Karla. Remember," Jameson said softly.

She licked the blood from his face and shuddered. "No feeding," she repeated, retracted her teeth and dropped him.

Lights appeared.

"Oh no, not plod again," said Jameson.

A "jam-sandwich" pulled into the car park and made its way unhurriedly towards them.

"Well, well," said the Keeper of the Queen's Peace, emerging from the police car. "If it isn't the diplomat from . . . where is that place?"

"Hamrandi," said Jameson.

"Hamrandi," repeated the bobby, with satisfaction. "The attaché from Hamrandi."

The gang leader revived and groaned. "As I leave and breathe, Chippy Jones," said the policeman, with a grin. "The North Circular's answer to The West Side Boys. Working the old 'guard your wheels for you mister' were you, Chippy?"

The policeman applied first aid with the back of his hand across Chippy's face, knocking him fully awake.

"We was attacked," said Chippy.

"No, attacked eh, how shocking," said the bobby, looking utterly unshocked. "Have you been beating up the local wildlife then, ambassador?"

"Not him, her!" Chippy wailed.

"The young lady." The bobby laughed. "She hammered you! All together Chippy, or did you line up one at a time, like gentlemen?"

"She ain't yuman," said Chippy.

"What would you know about being human, Chippy?" said the policeman, scornfully. "Do you want to press charges, sir?" he asked Jameson.

"Against this shower?" said Jameson. "I can't be bothered."

"You had better be off then." He looked at Karla, thoughtfully. "Interesting bodyguards you Hamrandi people use. Good night, sir."

****

Jameson noticed that Farley was nervous, very, very nervous. He fidgeted, he sweated, he adjusted his laptop and he adjusted his tie. He was an analyst not a field operative. His job involved collating, analysing and interpreting data. He planned operations and briefed the agents. He might have worked for an insurance company or been the bloke who determined the optimum failure rate of light bulbs to maximise profits but, amongst other things, he was a financial expert.

The Commission still had people who hung out in Gothic cemeteries and ancient temples but in London, you followed the money trail. Farley had antennae sensitive to the smallest sniff of bad money on the move around the merchant banks and clearing houses of The City.

Often, the Commission's analysts found illicit transactions that had no paranormal interest at all. But that was all right too. The Commission could always use additional funds and the original owners of the loot were in no position to complain.

Jameson knew that Farley had briefed too many field teams for the danger aspect of the work that the agents did to bother him. He had acquired the essential knack that all staff officers need, of emotionally disconnecting himself from outcomes. He did his very best to prepare field operatives for their task but if it subsequently went pear-shaped and people died–well, he had done his best. But Jameson was willing to bet that Farley had never sat on a sofa next to a demon, hence the nervousness.

"I first noticed the movement of money, through an account at CBJs. Large sums are being laundered from the trade of Aztec grave goods. Someone has access to unknown burial grounds in Mexico."

"And the money is being used for?" asked Jameson.

"No idea," said Farley. "It's just accumulating at the moment. We traced the movements to a banker and put a watcher team on him."

"What makes you think we have a Code Z?" asked Jameson.

"The people who bought the grave goods. Some just had breakdowns but others. . . ." Farley shrugged and pushed a London Evening Standard clipping over to Jameson. It read "Islington dad slaughters baby twins and partner before cutting his own throat."

"There was something else," said Farley. "One of the watchers disappeared, a young woman. She turned up in the Thames, drained of blood."

"The banker?" said Jameson.

"He's taken to working at home during the day and only comes into the office after dark," said Farley.

"So he's been possessed by a sucker. The best time to take him would be at midday, when he's torpid, at his home. Why are you briefing us? Karla is also . . . not at her best in daylight." Jameson smiled at her."

"Oh, I agree with your analysis, Major Jameson. But we don't know where he currently lives."

"The dead watcher," said Jameson.

"Must have followed him to his new lair, yes.