“I am a bit stressed. Truth to tell I’m a bit bloody stressed. Remember the monsterherds?”

“No.”

A snuffling, a slobber, canine whickering. That dogman was there. That mage-knacked member of this crew, a man made himself half German shepherd, a pitiful fascist meat pun that Dane scorned even as the teeth and muzzle that pun occasioned mauled him.

“Well… They used to run with Grisamentum, back when I… Back when. Well, one of my factories just got interrupted by a bunch of dust or something acting very much like some kind of bloody dragon.”

“I don’t know what that means…”

“It means there’s stuff coming back I wasn’t expecting to face again. This little shitfucker has to know something. He’s in on something. He knows where the fucking squid is-it’s his god, isn’t it? And he knows where Billy Harrow’ll be. Keep at it.”

Keep at it. Dane prayed without ceasing. He prayed silently and motionlessly. Tentacled God in darkness please give me strength. Strength to listen, and to learn. Krakens in your vast silent and ammoniac wisdom have mercy. He knew that he should listen, that he should wait and say nothing, if even he could answer the questions, which mostly he could not even if he would, which he would not, because this would not end. He knew that it would not be too long now, weak as he was and unblooding from all the holes the Nazis had made, woozy and too tired and done to even scream, a thing hanging in thermals of pain-he knew that this was a pitch of this that was its own limit, and that therefore, again, for the second time, before that moment when he would spill enough of himself out that a critical mass of lack would be reached and he would have nowhere to go but into death, the ghastly chaos sunwheel he could no longer see would be rotated. The swastika was, as its hippy antifash defenders insisted, a sign of life, even when deployed like this.

Who made you? Kraken made me. As a by-product. Uncaring. Was the comfort in that, or in the secret hope that secretly the secret kraken cared? We are all squidshit, Dane thought.

The Chaos swastika mightn’t be able to return those actually passed for much time, but it was thuggishly fecund enough to infect him, up to the very point of death, into livingness again. It would rotate with him swastikad on it, and it would wind in life out of all control, pouring it back into him, so blood would drip up, ruined organs reinflate, splayed bone ends grope for each other, grizzling as they slotted shard back into shard hole, fixing him all up, back into pain.

Chapter Fifty-Three

A “TWO-WAY MIRROR”-ONCE A LONG TIME AGO PERHAPS intended to dissemble, but now a lie that drew attention to itself. Behind it were Baron and Vardy, standing in such similar poses that it would have been comical to an observer. On the other side of the glass, Collingswood questioned Jason.

“So how come I can notice him now?” Vardy said. “I should think I recognise him, presumably.”

“Collingswood,” Baron said.

“She’s not bad, is she?”

“She’s bloody good,” Baron said. “That’s how she saw him in the first place.” Her questions to Jason had been tempered, nuanced, enhanced by various knacked enhancements: from an uncanny form of unbearable wheedling to the imposition of unphysical pain. “If you’d been here when you were supposed to… Where the bloody hell have you been, Professor?”

“Professor is it now?”

“Well.” Baron turned to him. “Look, you can’t say I haven’t given you your head, right? Thank God Collingswood isn’t in here to hear me say that-we’d never hear the end of her giggling. I know your job’s to channel the bleeding divine, and when have I ever stood in your way? Aren’t I the bloke puts ‘Do Not Disturb, Eschatology Being Revelationed’ on your door? Eh? But you’re supposed to keep me in the loop, and turn up when I need you, and do me the sheer minimum modicum of salutage and whatnot, right? You were supposed to be here for this questioning about two hours ago. So where the bloody hell have you been?”

Vardy nodded. “Apologies. But I do have news.” He organised the air with his hands. “There’s no way you get an end like this without someone wanting it-this is not just an accident. And now the Tattoo’s going mad. I still can’t work out where this ending comes into whoever-it-is’s plans.”

“He is going mad,” Baron said. He was tearing up the city. “We’ve tried to have a word with his people, but something’s pushed him over the edge…”

“So I’ve been out quizzing a bunch of the people in Grisamentum’s and the Tattoo’s penumbra, you might say,” Vardy said. “We know Adler was an associate of the former, but we don’t know why he was in the museum when he was. We don’t know what he had planned, so I’ve been wondering if it’s some of the others who were all cut loose when Grisamentum died… who are behind all this.”

“And?”

“Listen to me, this is what I’m saying. There’s a presiding intelligence behind all this. Whatever’s coming, that’s got the angels walking, it’s not some by-product of another scheme, it has intent behind it. But we don’t know what.”

“I know that…”

“No. It’s not an accident. Listen. We’re close. Do you understand?” Vardy spoke in a surly lecture. “The world is going to end. Really soon. End. Soon. And we don’t know why, or who wants it to.”

“It’s got to be Griz,” Baron said quietly. “Got to be. He never died…”

“But why? It doesn’t make any bloody sense. Why’d he want to burn himself now, then? That’s why I’ve been out there. Asking questions.”

“And? Bloody and? Where’s it getting you?”

“Does the name Cole ring any bells?” Vardy said. “If I say ‘physicist.’ If I say ‘Grisamentum.’ Any bells at all?”

“No.”

“One of the names being thrown around Grisamentum’s court around the time he, ahem, died. Died according to the oncologists. Cole’s a pyromancer. Works with djinn, is the whisper. Rather closely, according to some rumours. One of several people that for no reason we could clock was talking to Grisamentum in the last days. Apparently he was one of the ones you tried to debrief after the funeral but he always diligently refused to chat to the force.”

“… Oh, right, I think I remember. I always assumed he was there because Griz wanted a dramatic send-off, to be honest. Big sparkly pyre. What’s your point?”

“There’s dramatic and dramatic.”

“What was it he did for Griz, then?”

“Experimental pyro stuff: memory-fire, that sort of thing, he says.”

“Says?”

“I’ve been looking into Grisamentum’s associates, so I was asking around about him. I told you I had news. Not expecting much, to be honest. Expecting some hedging of bets, some ‘Grisamentum was a gentleman, you could leave your doors unlocked, was a pleasure to work with him,’ a thank-you-very-much-and-bugger-off. But what I got was a bit more surprising. He has a daughter. Cole does.”

“Mrs. Cole on the scene?”

“Dead years ago. Don’t you want to know what I heard? His daughter’s gone missing.”

Baron stared. Eventually began to nod. “Is that so?” he said slowly.

“It’s the word.”

“What does that mean?”

“First Adler, then Cole. Someone’s working through Grisamentum’s known associates. Doing things to… inconvenience them.”

“Like shoving them in bottles.”

“And snaffling their kids.”

“Why?”

“If I knew that, Baron. But it’s a pattern.”

“Bit out of your remit, this, isn’t it? Where’s the goddery?” Vardy closed his eyes and shrugged. “So… How do you think we should play this? Have a word, obviously, but…”

“Well, you’re the boss, obviously, but I’d suggest me being point man here.”

“I thought he won’t speak to cops.”

“He wouldn’t back then, certainly, but I’m not a policeman, am I? I’m an academic, like him.”

“And what more tenacious freemasonry do there be, eh?” Baron nodded. “Alright. For God’s sake, though, keep me apprised. We’ll see what we can do about tracking down young Miss Cole. Now look, this is not unimbloodyportant. Shut up and pay attention to what your colleagues are doing. Like this colleague here, right now.” Baron pointed through the window.