Pariah

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Also by Donald Hounam

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  The boy on the mortuary slab is dead; so why doesn’t he act like it?

  Forensic sorcerer Frank Sampson reckons it’s something to do with the bizarre magic symbols carved into his flesh. He thinks he knows the sorcerer behind it; but the trouble is, he also thinks he may be in love with her. Or not . . .

  Life can get confusing when your loyalties are divided, you’re on the run, and the Inquisition are on your tail with a stack of dry firewood and a box of matches.

  For

  John and Katie

  Order for the detention and trial of Francis Joseph Sampson, issued on the 5th of October 2015 by the Holy Office of the Inquisition of the Society of Sorcerers.

  Whereas you, Francis Joseph Sampson, aged fifteen, son of the late Joseph William Sampson, were denounced to this Holy Office for summoning without official authorisation the demon Cimerez, a marquis of Hell ruling twenty legions of spirits:

  The Society being determined to proceed against the disorder and mischief thence resulting, the Board of Discipline suspended your licence to practise sorcery and sentenced you to undertake a pilgrimage to the tomb of our founder, Saint Cyprian of Antioch, in the Holy City of Rome; and, upon your return, to perform an act of sincere contrition before the assembled members of the Society.

  Since you have disobeyed this injunction and have aggravated your delinquency, the Tribunal of this Holy Office has determined:

  That your licence be permanently and irreversibly revoked.

  That, following your arrest by the Knights of Saint Cyprian, you will be remanded to the custody of this Holy Office until your trial on charges of insubordination, disobedience and the practice of black magic.

  That, if found guilty of these charges, you will be burned at the stake, your ashes cast into the River Isis, and your name stricken from the records of the Society of Sorcerers.

  And so we say, pronounce, sentence, declare and ordain.

  Signed:

  Ignacio Gresh, Grand Inquisitor of the Society of Sorcerers

  CHAPTER ONE

  Floating Balls

  ANY SORCERER WILL tell you: once there’s a demon in the room, all bets are off.

  Funnily enough, though, the demons aren’t the problem. So long as you say the right words, make the right smells and remember to duck in the right places, it’s easy enough to avoid getting mashed up.

  It’s the people you’ve got to watch out for. One of the first things they taught me when I was a novice sorcerer: you can never predict or guarantee any human behaviour in the presence of a demon.

  You want proof? OK, here it is: a tall, middle-aged man staring back at me from a magic circle that’s all that’s keeping him from being torn apart and dragged off to hell . . .

  Three weeks ago he was the dog’s bollocks. The king of the castle. The fairy on the top of the tree. The Superior General of the English branch of the Society of Sorcerers.

  My boss.

  He used to be all smart dark suits, beautifully polished shoes and cashmere overcoats. Now he’s wearing a stained, crumpled linen robe, tied at the waist with a ripped silk scarf. His grey hair used to be neatly tonsured – you know, shaved into a small, round bald patch at the centre as a reminder that in the eyes of God we’re all arseholes. Now it’s long and straggly, and it’s turned white, like the ragged beard covering his face.

  He used to be in charge of everything. Now he can’t even stop his own hands from shaking like twigs in a hurricane. The nails are long and black with dirt. I can see where he lost the little finger of his left hand . . .

  His name’s Matthew Le Geyt. He was my Master and he taught me everything I know. He fed the missing finger to a demon, seven years ago, to save my life – maybe my soul, if I had one.

  We’re underground, in the secret sorcerer’s lair that lies beneath the Bishop’s Palace in Doughnut Cityfn1. It’s like the inside of a circular church, about twenty yards across, with a domed ceiling and a sort of arcade round the perimeter.

  There’s mashed-up furniture; and magical gear scattered all over the place: candlesticks, braziers, a sword, various knives, silk squares, spilled herbs and spices. The chalk lines across the black-tiled floor are all smudged, apart from a small double circle around the Boss, scattered with symbols. He’s got a single white candle burning in a silver candlestick, a paper bag containing more candles, a box of matches . . .

  And even if he is the Superior General of the Society of Sorcerers, he still needs to go to the lavatory, so he’s got a metal bucket with a lid.

  The place stinks. Like someone shut a herd of cows in a small barn and fed them on baked beans, cauliflower and lentils for a month. We’re talking serious farting, with a heavy note of sulphur and a bitter edge of herbs and spices.

  That’s because we’ve got a demon.

  His name’s Alastor. He’s this bloody great huge bastard, the best part of seven feet tall, with bright golden eyes, like a bird’s, and the traditional goat’s horns. In one hand he’s swinging a scourge with a dozen chains ending in sharp hooks. In the other he’s clutching an axe. All he’s wearing is a studded leather belt; and the only reason he’s wearing that is so he has somewhere to park an evil-looking dagger with three serrated blades.

  So he’s a bloody great huge dangerous bastard, and he’d be snacking off my head if I didn’t have a silver pentacle hanging around my neck on a gold chain.

  Basically, what we’ve got here is an unresolved magical event, like a juggler’s been called away and left all the balls just floating in mid-air . . .

  About three weeks ago I realised that the Boss was involved in all sorts of murky stuff involving unlicensed sorcery and murder. Unfortunately, Matthew realised I’d realised. He’s way too old to do magic himself, so he got this tame sorcerer to summon up Alastor to chew me up and spit out the bits.

  That pissed me off. Big ti
me. But I turned the tables and I was seriously tempted to feed the Boss to his own demon—

  But I couldn’t, could I?

  The grimoires – the magic books – are very clear about this: if a demon manages to get its talons on you, it’ll turn you inside out and unravel you. Then it’ll whisk you off to hell and put you back together in a different order so all its chums can have a laugh. Why? Because demons are miserable bastards who got booted out of heaven, and the only thing that makes them feel better is if someone else is in even more pain than they are . . .

  I know it doesn’t make sense. And even if it does, it’s so incredibly out of order that I’m damned if I’ll believe it.

  Except that maybe I’m wrong. I’m wrong about most things, yeah? So if there’s even the tiniest chance it’s true, I couldn’t condemn Matthew to that.

  Which left me with a problem: what could I do with him? Couldn’t let Alastor have him. Couldn’t risk letting him go, because he’d just trot back to the Society and see about having me stuck on the end of a fork and toasted.

  So I ducked the problem and left him stuck down here in a protective circle with Alastor bouncing around outside.

  It’s a mess. But hey – it’s my mess.

  I’ve been down here for at least an hour, just sitting on the floor with Alastor blowing green smoke over my shoulder, wondering how the hell I sort it all out.

  ‘It’s obvious,’ says Matthew. ‘You have to let me go.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘We can work something out.’

  ‘Like what?’

  I sit there until he says, ‘So do you have anything to suggest?’

  Absolutely not. And I’ve got other stuff to worry about. I can’t think about this any more – not tonight, anyway. If I keep him here, it’s like I’ve got a fishhook through my own entrails and I’m dragging them out, inch by inch. If I let him go, the Society will do the entrail-dragging for me.

  It’s hopeless and my head is starting to hurt.

  ‘What about Kazia?’ he says. ‘I assume you’re looking for her.’

  ‘No.’

  He smiles. It’s not a real smile – he’s in too much pain for that. It’s the sort of smile that says, ‘You can’t fool me, sunshine. I know more about you than you know about yourself.’

  And he’s right. Of course I’m looking for Kazia.

  Full name: Kazimíera Siménas. Nationality: Lithuanian. Age: 16. Profession . . . well, none officially, but she summons demons in her spare time. And there’s a rumour going round that I’m in love with her.

  Which reminds me . . .

  I check my watch. It’s four o’clock in the morning and if I’m ever going to find her I have to see a man about a dead shark. I get to my feet.

  There’s an arch at the bottom of the stone stairs that spiral up towards the real world. I stop and check the charcoal symbols scrawled down the stonework each side, to prevent Alastor from leaving.

  He’s standing right behind me.

  ‘Are you sure I can’t take care of him for you?’ He demonstrates by dragging one of the razor-sharp blades of his knife across his own throat. I close my eyes as thick black liquid spurts out. When I open them again, of course he’s uninjured and standing there grinning down at me. ‘Just trying to help,’ he says.

  In the library at the top of the stairs, I stop to reset the spell on the cellar door. It grumbles a bit and calls me a few names, but at the end of five minutes it’s securely locked and invisible to anybody who enters the room.

  I could just sneak out of the palace the way I sneaked in: through the gardens and down to the path along the river. But tonight . . . I dunno, maybe I’m just in a funny mood.

  I open another door and follow a long, dark corridor to the front of the palace. I manage to avoid falling over any of the furniture and waking up the household, and I find myself standing on the black-and-white chessboard tiling of the entrance hall, craning my neck to peer up into the stairwell.

  That’s where I glimpsed Kazia for the very first time: hanging over the banister, two floors up, staring back down at me like she knew a twerp when she saw one.

  One of the things you learn as a sorcerer is to envision things. Whatever you’re trying to achieve – find buried treasure or lost dogs, cause naked maidens to dance on the table, summon up a demon to rub somebody out – requires an intention.

  I have a powerful intention: to find Kazia. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure she has an equally powerful intention of her own: not to be found.

  I close the front door of the palace silently behind me. The porter at the gate is fast asleep. I trot off along the Palace Road, under the railway bridge and up the hill towards the Hole . . .

  fn1 Look, I know there is a lot to take in. So I’ve stuck a glossary at the back. A bit of history, a few jokes . . .

  CHAPTER TWO

  Grown on Trees

  I’VE SAID IT before, so I’ll say it again: there’s a lot I can do with a dead shark. I just didn’t expect Dinny to turn up with anything so bloody big.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

  ‘’Ow should I know?’ Dinny does his special French shrug. ‘You are the magician.’

  ‘Sorcerer. Magicians do card tricks.’

  ‘So make trick with two ’undred pound.’ Dinny doesn’t like to be reminded that he was a sorcerer himself, until his Gift vanished.

  We’re in an upstairs room in the remains of one of the old university colleges, slap-bang in the middle of the Hole.

  Not a hole. The Hole.

  That’s why they call it Doughnut City. After the college wars, eighty-five years back, there was nothing left in the centre of Oxford except an enormous pile of rubble, still oozing magic. Nobody who mattered wanted to move back in there; but there were plenty of poor people who couldn’t afford to mind if their skin came out in boils or an arm fell off, and they drifted in, moved the wreckage around and made the best of it.

  Most of the magic that did the damage had a short half-life, so these days only the occasional finger or toe still falls off. The Hole has turned the clock back to the Middle Ages: wood and tin shacks, piled on top of each other in the shells of the old buildings; open sewers; a population who don’t need magic to dismember and disembowel each other.

  There’s the sound of gunfire and a lot of screaming. Nobody gets much sleep in the Hole. One day the army’ll move in and clean it all up; but tonight there’s just a small gang of us up here glaring at each other: me, my mate Charlie Burgess, Dinny Saint-Gilles and a couple of his goons.

  I’m placing two small silver pentagrams on the marble mantelpiece, above a gaping cavity in the wall where the fireplace used to be. I’m not quite sure what they’re supposed to save me from. They certainly won’t protect me if the sagging ceiling decides to fall in.

  Water runs steadily down the crumbling brickwork where the oak panelling has been torn out for firewood; it forms a puddle on the floor, then trickles out under the door and down the stairs. On top of the stench of rotting rubbish drifting in from the street through the broken window, there’s this stink like urine coming off the shark. It’s about four feet long and it’s lying on a sheet in the puddle, with the sawn-off tip of some sort of spear still sticking out of its side.

  ‘I mean, how’m I supposed to get it back to my place?’

  Dinny does the shrug again.

  ‘But all I wanted . . .’ I hold up my hands, a couple of feet apart.

  ‘Sharks,’ says Dinny. ‘They do not grow on trees.’

  ‘And you said fifty quid, anyway.’ I don’t think we agreed a price, but that’s all I’ve got in my pocket.

  Dinny lost both hands a couple of years ago. The light from the lantern glistens along two steel hooks as he waggles them under my nose. ‘Two ’undred.’

  ‘You’ll have to take it back.’

  ‘’Undred fifty.’

  I decide to let that stick to the wall for a bit. I crouch beside the sh
ark to inspect the snout. I need time to think. I’m desperate, but I haven’t got that kind of money.

  ‘Where’d you get it, anyway?’

  ‘Fell off the back of a boat,’ one of Dinny’s goons sniggers. Big bloke with a tiny round head like a billiard ball.

  My money’s on a private aquarium. I’ve got the shark’s mouth open. Not a pretty sight, but most of the teeth are present and correct and in better shape than Dinny’s. For the procedure I have in mind, all I need is the barbels – the two fleshy whiskers growing from each corner of the mouth; but I’m sure I can find something useful to do with the teeth, the eyes, the heart, the liver . . .

  Useful rule of thumb: no sorcerer ever turned his nose up at a dead animal.

  Charlie used to be a sorcerer too. He’s sitting quietly on a broken chair, rolling a cigarette. He’s this little bloke with curly hair, bleached white. He’s post-peak and can’t do proper magic any more; but he can still handle elemental work for the jacks – the police.

  He’s a good mate, because he catches my eye and pulls the corner of a banknote out of his jacket pocket. He holds up three fingers; I hope that means thirty . . .

  ‘OK.’ I get to my feet. ‘Here’s the deal. I pay eighty quid tonight, after you’ve helped me get it back to the monastery—’

  ‘Are you taking the mickey?’ Billiard Ball is so outraged that his glasses fall off. He just manages to catch them and sticks them in his pocket.

  ‘Then tomorrow night you come and take what’s left away, and I pay you another twenty.’ I guess I can find it somewhere. ‘That’s a hundred quid.’

  ‘No, no!’ Dinny waves his hooks madly. ‘I don’t take less than one ’undred thirty.’

  My heart’s in my boots. I’ve got to have that shark if I’m going to find Kazia.

  ‘’Undred twenty.’ Dinny manages not to stab himself as he folds his arms. ‘Final offer.’

  So I’m standing there, wondering whether I’ve died and gone to Another Place where I’m doomed to spend eternity haggling over a dead fish with a French psychopath with no hands—

  When the door bursts open and two uniformed jacks burst into the room.

  ‘Freeze!’ one of them yells, waving a pistol.