Nightshade

81

Nightingale dropped the two black plastic rubbish bags on the ground and bent down to unlock the padlock that was what passed for security for his lock-up. He pulled up the metal shutter and flicked on the light switch. A fluorescent light flickered into life. The lock-up was empty – he’d already moved his MGB to a multi-storey car park close to his office. He opened one of the bags and took out a red plastic bucket and a scrubbing brush. At the end of the line of garages was a tap set into the wall and Nightingale used it to fill the bucket. He spent the next fifteen minutes scrubbing the concrete floor clean. When he was satisfied he used paper towels to pat the floor dry, then stood up and admired his handwork.

He’d worked up a sweat, and he knew that he had to be spotlessly clean because any impurities would weaken the protective circle. He secured the lock-up and walked back to his flat. He showered twice, using a new bar of coal tar soap, taking care to use a plastic nail brush to clean under his fingernails and toenails. He shampooed his hair twice, then rinsed himself off and used a brand new towel to dry himself.

He had already laid out clean clothes on his bed and he put them on. The shoes were a new pair of brown suede Hush Puppies that he’d bought a month earlier but hadn’t broken in yet. He pulled on his raincoat and walked back to the lock-up, his hair still damp.

He took off his raincoat and hung it on a nail by the light switch, then pulled down the shutter. He stood for a while in the middle of the garage, steadying his breath, then got to work. He took a large cardboard box from one of the bags and opened it. Inside was a box of chalk. The lock-up was about fifteen feet long and ten feet wide. The protective circle had to be just that, a circle, so he carefully drew one six feet in diameter. In the second bag he had a birch branch that he’d ripped from a tree on Hampstead Heath, and he slowly ran it around the perimeter of the chalk circle. When he’d finished he put the branch back in the bag and with the chalk drew a pentagram inside the circle. He’d already worked out that the front of the garage faced north, so he drew two of the five points of the pentagram facing that direction.

He carefully drew a triangle around the circle, with the apex pointing north, and then wrote the letters MI, CH and AEL at the three points of the triangle. Michael. The archangel.

Nightingale placed the two rubbish bags close to the shutter and put the cardboard box in the centre of the circle. He put the chalk back in the cardboard box, took out a small bottle of consecrated salt water, removed the glass stopper and carefully sprinkled water around the circle. He took five large white church candles and placed them at the five points of the pentagram, then used his lighter to light them one at a time in a clockwise direction.

He stood in the centre of the circle and checked that everything was as it should be, then he bent down over the cardboard box and retrieved a plastic bag full of herbs. He opened the bag, took out a handful of herbs and sprinkled them over the candles one by one, moving clockwise around the circle. The herbs sizzled as they burned, filling the air with cloying fumes, and for the first time Nightingale wondered if it had been such a smart move to be playing with fire in a garage with the door down.

He bent down, fished a lead crucible from the cardboard box and poured the rest of the herbs into it. He used his fingers to form a neat pile and then set fire to it with his lighter. He straightened up, his eyes watering from the pungent fumes, and pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. On it were the words that he needed to say, written in Latin.

He took a deep breath but immediately began coughing. His eyes were watering and he wiped away the tears with the back of his hand. He managed to stop coughing and began to read the Latin words, slowly and precisely. When he reached the final three words he said them loudly, almost shouting. ‘Bagahi laca bacabe!’

The fumes from the burning herbs began to swirl in a slow, lazy circle and then behind him was a flash of lightning and the smell of a burning electrical circuit. The concrete floor began to vibrate and the cloying fog grew thicker. He forced himself to breathe shallowly through his nose, trying to minimise the damage to his lungs.

The fog swirled around him, faster and faster. It was now so thick that he could barely see the brick walls of the garage and the fluorescent light was just a dull bright patch above his head. There was another flash of lightning, then another, the cracks so loud that they hurt his ears.

He stared ahead, tears streaming from his eyes. Then space folded in on itself and there were a series of bright flashes and she was there, dressed in black as usual, her black and white collie dog at her side. Proserpine. A devil from Hell. One of many, but one of the few that Nightingale knew by name. Her face was corpse-pale, her hair jet-black and cut short, her eyelashes loaded with mascara and her lipstick as black as coal, emphasising the whiteness of her small, even teeth. She was wearing a long black leather coat that almost brushed the floor over a black T-shirt cropped so short that it showed the small silver crucifix that pierced her navel. Her tight black jeans were ripped at the knees and she wore short black boots with stiletto heels.

She stared at him with her cold black eyes, her upper lip curled back in a sneer. ‘Jack Nightingale,’ she said. The dog growled as its hackles rose. She had it on a steel chain and she pulled on it to get its attention. ‘Hush, we won’t be here long,’ she said. The dog sat down and stared at Nightingale with eyes as cold and black as those of its mistress. ‘I told you last time, I’m not to be summoned on a whim.’

‘This isn’t a whim,’ said Nightingale. ‘I need your help.’

‘We’re not friends, Nightingale. We never were and we never will be.’ She looked around the garage and smiled. ‘Salubrious,’ she said. ‘Looks like you’ve fallen on hard times.’

‘It’s private, that’s all that matters,’ said Nightingale. ‘It doesn’t matter where the pentagram is, all that matters is that you have to stay between the triangle and the circle until I say you can go.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ said Proserpine. ‘The other way is that so long as I’m here you’re trapped inside that puny little circle with nowhere to go. I could easily just stand here until you die of old age and your bones crumble to dust.’

‘So it’s a Mexican stand-off. Let’s keep it as short as we can, shall we?’

‘What do you want, Nightingale?’

‘I need some questions answering. About Shades.’

‘Try Wikipedia.’

‘I don’t believe anything I read in Wikipedia.’

‘But you believe me?’

‘Sounds crazy I know, but yes. So will you help me?’

‘No,’ she said flatly.

‘No?’

Proserpine shrugged carelessly. ‘Why should I?’

‘What if I did a deal?’

‘You’re offering me your soul?’

Nightingale laughed, but it sounded like a harsh bark and the dog pricked up its ears. ‘I only need information,’ he said. ‘My soul’s worth more than that. But I can offer you something else.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Help.’

Proserpine tilted her head to the side. ‘Help?’

‘I’m starting to understand how things work,’ said Nightingale. ‘You and your kind move in and out of this world but there are things you can’t do yourselves.’

‘That’s your great insight, is it?’

‘I know, we’re ants compared to you, but we’re still here and you’re still dealing for souls and not just taking them. That’s always had me thinking. You’re all-powerful devils from Hell, why don’t you just take our souls, harvest them like a farmer culling cattle?’

Proserpine said nothing.

‘I’ll tell you why. Because there are some things that you just can’t do. Either because there are rules that you have to follow, or because there are physical constraints on what you can do. Either way, sometimes you need help. You need us to do things that you can’t. So here’s the deal. Answer my questions about Shades and I’ll owe you one. If you need something doing, something you can’t do yourself, you can ask me.’

‘That’s very open-ended.’

‘I’ll risk that,’ said Nightingale. ‘You’ve always played fair with me.’

‘Plus I’m assuming you’re reserving the right to refuse?’

‘Like I said, I think you’ll respect the deal.’

‘And not ask you to kill a child?’

Nightingale stiffened, wondering if Proserpine was toying with him. Did she know about Bella Harper already? Did she know what Mrs Steadman had asked him to do?

Proserpine laughed and the garage walls shook. ‘If I do a deal with you, how do I know you’ll stick to it?’

‘Because I always keep my word.’

She laughed again and this time dust showered down from the ceiling and a jagged crack appeared in the concrete floor. ‘I’ll need more than that,’ she said. ‘I tell you what, if you refuse to do whatever I ask in return, then I get your soul.’ She watched him with unblinking black eyes.

Nightingale took a long breath and exhaled slowly as he considered his options. He needed Proserpine’s help but he didn’t want to put his soul at risk, not after he’d gone to so much trouble to make it his own. ‘What will you ask me to do?’ he said.

Proserpine smiled coyly. ‘Now if I told you that, it would spoil all the fun, wouldn’t it?’

‘I’m not prepared to kill for you.’

‘Fine.’

‘Or to do something that would result in someone dying.’

‘Fine.’

‘And it’s a one-off deal. You ask me to do something for you and I do it. Then we’re good.’

‘And if you refuse to do what I ask, you forfeit your soul.’

Nightingale nodded slowly. ‘Agreed.’

‘Okay, it’s a deal,’ she said. She held out her hand. ‘Let’s shake on it, shall we?’ Nightingale instinctively reached out to shake her hand, but pulled it back when he realised what he was doing. She laughed. ‘Almost got you.’

Nightingale stared at her hand, just outside the protective circle. The pentagram only kept Proserpine from him so long as he didn’t breach it.

‘So, ask away,’ she said.

‘You know about Shades?’

‘Of course I know about Shades. Nasty pieces of work, but nasty for nasty’s sake.’

‘As opposed to your lot, you mean?’

‘My lot, as you call it, serve the Lord Lucifer. Shades serve no one.’

‘So they’re not devils? Or demons?’

‘You are forever using terms that you don’t understand, Nightingale. But no, Shades are not demons or devils, or angels or spirits. They never have been nor will they ever be. Shades are Shades.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘You have come across one?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Nightingale, you seem to think I take a personal interest in your comings and goings. That is so typical of your kind, thinking that the universe revolves around you. You are nothing to me. You are less than a speck of nothingness on nothing. I have not given you a single thought since the last time we met and immediately I have left this place you will be gone from my mind.’

‘So I should take you off my Christmas card list, then?’

She laughed and the sound seemed to come from the bowels of Hell itself, a deep throbbing roar that he felt in the pit of his stomach. The ceiling shook and plumes of dust scattered down through the fog.

‘You’re a very funny man, Nightingale. But if you are planning to interact with a Shade, be very careful.’

‘They’re dangerous?’

‘Lethal. Do not get too close.’

‘They bite, is that it?’

Proserpine shook her head. ‘They are more insidious than that. They get inside your head. They plant thoughts, thoughts that you wouldn’t normally have. They bend you to their will.’

‘By talking?’

‘That’s what they do. That is their power. They don’t stab or shoot or bludgeon, they suggest. They manipulate. They charm.’

‘And they are always evil? There are no good Shades?’

She threw back her head and laughed again, louder this time. The shutter pulsed back and forth with the sound of tearing metal and Nightingale felt a hot blast of wind across his face that made him gasp.

‘No, Nightingale, there are no good Shades.’

‘Then answer me this. What do they want? What is their purpose?’

‘Their purpose? They want to cause chaos. They want to cause pain. But it’s instinct, nothing else. There’s no plan, no rhyme, no reason.’

‘So they won’t stop? Once they’ve started?’

‘There is nothing to stop them. They’re not working to a plan or a timetable. They just keep on doing what they do.’

‘And what stops them? Say they move into a body and take it over. How long can they stay?’

‘That depends,’ said Proserpine.

‘On what?’

‘On the strength of the Shade. On the condition of the host. The host will decay. Slowly, but it will decay. And eventually it will die and the Shade will die with it.’

‘And how do you kill a Shade?’

‘That’s what you want to do, Nightingale?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘You try that and I’ll never be able to hold you to your end of the deal. How can you kill something that can change your every thought? Point a gun at a Shade and you’ll shoot yourself in the head. Try to stab a Shade and you’ll put the blade through your own heart.’

‘Assuming that’s true, assuming that you could get close to one, how do you kill it?’

‘I have heard that there are knives, blessed knives, and you have to drive them through the eyes and the heart of the host. But seriously, Nightingale, the best thing to do is to run and to keep on running.’

Nightingale nodded. At least Proserpine had confirmed what Mrs Steadman had told him.

‘Who told you about the Shades?’ asked Proserpine.

‘Why do you think anyone told me?’

‘Shades pass unnoticed in your world,’ said Proserpine. ‘They inhabit the recently dead and are rarely discovered. Was it Mrs Steadman?’

‘I’m going to pass on that,’ said Nightingale. ‘No comment.’

Proserpine laughed and Nightingale felt the vibrations through his feet. ‘You need to be careful of that one,’ she said.

‘She’s on the side of the angels,’ said Nightingale.

‘Are you asking me, or telling me?’

‘She’s never steered me wrong yet,’ said Nightingale. ‘I trust her.’

‘Well, good luck with that,’ said Proserpine. ‘Don’t come crying to me when it goes bad. And it will.’

‘What do you mean?’

Proserpine smiled. ‘For the answer to that question, I’d need your soul,’ she said. ‘Give me your soul and I’ll answer any questions you want.’

‘My soul’s not for sale.’

‘So you say,’ said Proserpine. ‘But you can call me when you change your mind. In the meantime we’re done here. Let me go.’ The dog growled menacingly at Nightingale. Proserpine flicked its chain. ‘It’s all right, we’re going now.’ She looked up at Nightingale. ‘Time to say the words, Nightingale. I’ve got people to see, places to go.’

Nightingale nodded, looked at the piece of paper he was holding, and said the words to release her. Space folded in on itself, there was a flash of light and she and the dog were gone.

Nightingale’s phone rang and he took it out of his pocket. It was Robbie Hoyle. ‘Where are you?’ asked Robbie.

‘The lock-up,’ said Nightingale.

‘That bloody car of yours is a money pit,’ laughed Robbie.

‘It’s a classic.’

‘It’s an old banger. I need to see you, mate.’

‘The Swan?’

‘You read my mind. I’ll be about an hour. Mine’s a pint.’