“Women came with water jugs to the standpipe as did a slave leading a thirsty donkey. For though Needle Alley was too narrow for a camel to pass, the donkey was thin and the carpets it carried were loaded on its back rather than in panniers as we do now . . .”
Hani stopped. “There’s more,” she said politely. “If you’d like me to read it.”
Ingrid Nordstrom shook her head. “I need to go.” She seemed about to say something else but hesitated on the edge of speaking.
It would be about the son of Lilith, Hani imagined. Most of the people Hani had talked to about this, which admittedly was very few, were unsettled by the idea of djinn and vampyres. “This vampyre’s good,” explained Hani, her voice firm. “You do get good ones . . .”
The woman looked surprised.
“It’s true,” Hani insisted. “I’ve checked it in a book. If a son of Lilith survives seven years undetected, he can travel to a land where a different language is spoken and become human. He can even marry and have children. Although,” Hani paused and her face grew serious, “the children will still be sons and daughters of Lilith.”
“How fascinating.”
“And I won’t be much longer,” Hani promised. “As soon as I’ve finished here I’m going to the library.”
“Take your time,” said Madame Ingrid, and was surprised to discover that she meant it. Hani had become such a regular at the Third Circle it was hard to remember she was there on sufferance . . . That was what the bey had said the first time he brought her in, on sufferance. Ingrid wasn’t to let Hani become a problem.
He’d been staring at Hani when he said it.
Ingrid decided to leave the child to her story. These were difficult times for everyone. And getting more difficult. She just hoped the bey wasn’t being too strict with the girl.
CHAPTER 51
28th October
A window opened in the air in front of Avatar: a sleek black ’copter, blades chopping to a deep bass beat, smoked-glass windscreen and not a decal in sight to say where it came from or who might be inside.
“Floating focus,” said the Colonel. He was talking about the spectacles.
“And the ’copter . . . ?”
“Mi-24x Hind gunship, adapted for three 20mm cannon with Hellmouth, Rattlesnake and Quickdraw rockets—$189.3 million, plus $1.6m per missile. Old model.”
“No,” Avatar said crossly. “I mean, who does it belong to?”
“No idea,” said Colonel Abad. “It won’t tell me. Didn’t want to tell me its model number or price range until I told it you were in the market to buy one. Then the imprinted sales coding took over, always does . . .”
Avatar looked at the tiny machine that floated in front of his eyes. Watching as toy-sized doors blew back and even smaller figures tumbled out, guns ready. Somewhere just above his hearing, sirens wailed and a gun spat, distant as the echo of yesterday’s firecrackers. The black-suited figures were firing over the heads of an unseen crowd.
“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
The Colonel thought about this for a split second. “As much as you want and more.” His voice was apologetic. “It was the hidden door,” he explained. “Not an original idea but effective. One of the Medicis did something similar at the Pitti Palace. Of course, the difference is, this one had a silent alarm.”
Even Hani had been impressed. Solder shut every normal door on level Dminus4, then leave an exit through the back wall of a strong room. The safe’s entrance had featured antique defences: tear gas between inner and outer layers, tasers positioned down both sides of the frame, all the stuff that putting a gun to the wounded suit’s head had miraculously disabled. But the trapdoor at the back, that had tripped an alarm satellite in low-earth orbit. And half the intelligence agencies in Europe were busy going ape-shit . . .
It looked like one of them had arrived.
Climbing the first twist of stairs was easy. More so since Colonel Abad showed Avatar how to adjust the spectacles to infrared. The cold the Colonel could do nothing about, except get Avatar back to the warmth of an upper deck as soon as possible. Although, at Colonel Abad’s suggestion, Avatar did empty his rucksack of its handcuffs, pepper gas and rope, and slice a hole in the bottom and another on either side, then invert the bag to wear as a tunic.
“Protect your core temperature,” the Colonel advised him, “if you want to stop your brain from shutting down.” Avatar was slightly surprised to learn his brain could shut down, but he did what Colonel Abad suggested, mainly because he’d been doing pretty much everything the Colonel said since it first suggested he turn on those lights.
“You’re manipulating me,” Avatar said, stopping dead at the thought.
“That’s my job.” The familiar bearded figure smiled sadly, having first popped into floating focus. “Only in the specifications it’s called functional motivation.” With an apologetic shrug, Colonel Abad vanished and Avatar was left staring at riveted steps lit by a dull red gloom.
His skull ached as if someone had nail-gunned a metal band around his head and the only proof Avatar had that his hands were still attached to his wrists was that he could see one of them in the half gloom, wrapped dead and pale round the handle and trigger of his Taurus.
Another endless twist of stairs, then another, and still Avatar was waiting to recognize the door that led through to the ripped-out deck with the frozen pipes. So he kept climbing, breath ragged in his throat and his jaw too numb to do more than mangle his words.
“Sweet fuck . . .”
He was swearing for the sake of it, for the company. Because every time he said something the Colonel flicked into focus at the edge of his vision. Avatar’s serious, sympathetic new friend, iconic with history.
“Sweet, sweet . . .”
“Door’s ahead,” said the Colonel. “But first stop and listen to me.”
“No,” said Avatar, shivering. “Won’t be able to start again.”
“The enemy eat children.”
Avatar nodded. Quite probably. There were some weird fuckers around. One of them had left a dead body on his dad’s beach.
“You need to listen. I mean it.”
Avatar tried.
“Better,” said the voice. “Look, I don’t have time to make you me . . . Tempting though it is.”
“You?” Avatar muttered. “Why the fuck would I want to be you?”
“Then who do you want to be?”
“Me,” said Avatar. “DJ Avatar.”
Colonel Abad sighed. “Failing that,” he said, “and it will fail, who else?”
It seemed an odd question. No, Avatar decided, fighting the cold for long enough to reach a conclusion, it was an odd question. “Raf,” he said, not having to overthink his answer. In the past he’d always dreamed of being Hamzah, but not since that night with the kidnappers, when Raf appeared. Raf was different. Raf was . . . Everyone else thought the bey was a trained killer, one of the Sultan’s best, but Avatar knew different . . .
Raf was weirder than that. Way weirder.
“You know about Lilith?”
Adam’s first wife had been bounced from Eden for refusing Adam. Well, for refusing his suggestion that she spread them. When Adam got bounced in turn, Lilith fucked him against Eden’s outer wall and got pregnant, while Eve was still sulking (this was before Adam repented). After Adam got Eden back, Lilith fucked the snake and gave birth to the djinn.
Like her, not having eaten of the fruit, her children never died.
Avatar had seen the vid nasty several times.
“He really is . . .” Avatar felt the need to stress that, just in case Colonel Abad thought he meant Raf was one of those kindergoths and candyravers who haunted the clubs behind Place Orabi, where the dress options were sun-sucking black or ghetto ghastly.
“Really?”
“Too right,” said Avatar. “Raf can see in the dark and hear things better than a bat. Kills like an animal when necessary, without conscience . . .”