Rod Rees - The Demi-Monde - Winter

Trixie’s eyes widened in amazement and her guts churned in horror.

‘He has a file on you.’

Trixie felt as though she was going to faint. Her senses swam. She slumped back into the couch, drained of strength and energy. Trickles of horror rippled over her skin. If the Checkya had found out she was conducting an unlicensed archaeological dig…

‘I thought that piece of news might bring you to your senses.’

‘But… but… but…’

Oh, for Spirits’ sake, Trixie, get a hold of yourself!

‘A file?’

‘Yes, a very thick file: a very thick file containing some very nasty jottings about the activities of a very silly girl.’

‘But why? Why did he show it to you?’

‘Trixie, don’t be so naive. Beria wishes to coerce you into doing a job for him.’

Trixie swallowed hard. Beria was famous – infamous – for liking young girls. She would kill herself before she let that debauched piece of shit touch her.

Her father obviously understood the foul thoughts Beria’s name had conjured in her mind. ‘It’s not like that, Trixie. Showing me the file was Beria’s not-so-subtle way of making me appreciate the consequences of your not cooperating with him. Believe me, he will never touch a hair of your head… not whilst I’m alive, that is. No, they’ve captured a Daemon, a Grade One Daemon.’

Trixie’s mouth fell open. She almost laughed. Daemons were inventions used to frighten children into being good, monsters evoked by Crowley to keep the hoi polloi cowed and submissive. No one – well, no one educated or with a spark of intelligence – believed in Daemons.

‘A Daemon? What, a real Daemon? But they’re just figments of fantasy.’

‘Apparently not. And this one isn’t just a common-or-garden-variety Daemon, this one’s sentient. This one has a memory of the Spirit World.’

‘How did they catch it?’ It was a stupid question: as far as Trixie was concerned Daemons didn’t exist, so how could they be captured? It must all be twaddle.

‘I don’t know the details but it seems that Crowley used his magic to lure it from the Spirit World. We’ll know more tonight. Crowley is delivering her…’

‘Her?’

‘Yes, it’s a female Daemon, a she-devil, a succubus. Apparently the Daemon has taken the outward form of a girl of about your age. As I was saying, Crowley is delivering her here tonight.’

‘I’m sorry, father, I’m having a little difficulty with this. I mean… Daemons don’t really exist… it isn’t RaTional.’

Comrade Commissar Dashwood slammed his fist onto his desk so hard that he made both an ink-pot and Trixie jump. ‘Are you so monumentally foolish, Trixie, that you can use the word “RaTional” so openly? Have you listened to nothing I’ve said? The Checkya have a file on you: they think you’re a protoRaTionalist, a potential HerEtical. By the Spirits, Beria even insinuated that you might be a Suffer-O-Gette.’

Shiver and shake time.

‘You must be careful now, Trixie. One more slip and it’s the Lubyanka for you… for us. And don’t think I’ll be able to save you: all of the Dashwood family will be travelling in the same tumbrel. Have you no idea just how evil these people are? Have you forgotten the fate of your friend Lillibeth?’

Trixie shuddered: she still had nightmares about what had happened during the Cleansing, the night when Heydrich and his henchmen had simultaneously assassinated King Henry and Tsar Ivan and seized power in the ForthRight, when they had rounded up all of the Royalists and their families and shot them as Counter-Revolutionaries. She still remembered the screams of the Marlboroughs – who had been dining with them that night – when the Checkya had come to arrest them, had dragged them outside and thrown them into the black, windowless steamers.

She remembered going to the Academy the next day and no one having the courage to ask where Lillibeth Marlborough was. Lillibeth Marlborough: Trixie’s best friend. Overnight Lillibeth became a nonNix: someone never to be mentioned again, someone it was better never to think of again. Even the daguerreotypes showing the school teams that Lillibeth had captained had been removed. And when Trixie had protested they had Censured her.

‘I haven’t forgotten, father, I’ll never forget.’ A tear trickled down Trixie’s cheek.

‘Don’t cry, Trixie. Crying isn’t going to bring Lillibeth or any of them back. What we’ve got to concentrate on is surviving in this crazed world.’

‘So what does Beria want of me?’

‘Apparently Crowley is unwilling to hand the Daemon over to the Checkya for interrogation, which I think is quite sensible of the chap. Crowley might be as mad as a bag of bolts but even he knows that once inside the Lubyanka the chances of getting anything sensible out of the creature, Daemon or not, are negligible. Under torture, people

… Daemons are liable to say anything. So Beria has suggested a more softly-softly approach: seduction rather than rape, so to speak.’

‘That must be a novelty for Beria,’ observed Trixie wryly.

‘Indeed. Beria’s suggestion is that the creature is held under house arrest where it is given an opportunity to commune with a like spirit… that’s “spirit” with a small “s”.’

‘Here?’

A nod from Trixie’s father.

‘Me?’

Another nod.

‘But why me?’

‘Beria has cast his eye over all the daughters of senior Party officials…’

I bet he has.

‘… who are roughly the same age as the form taken by this Daemon. He was, so he says, looking for someone of high intelligence, strong character and who is loyal to the Party. Apparently you scored two out of three. He had you evaluated at Mrs Albemarle’s last social by an odious man named Captain Dabrowski.’

That slimy Polish bastard.

‘Was he the man you hit, Trixie?’

‘Yes, father. He was overly familiar with me.’

‘Bravo. Perhaps you should have hit him harder. Next time perhaps. Well, beaten or not, Dabrowski has recommended you to Beria. It seems the Captain was quite taken by my little Trixie.’

‘So what do I have to do?’

‘This Daemon, who calls itself Norma Williams, will be brought here to live with us. The house will be guarded, of course, but every effort will be made to make this guarding as unobtrusive as possible. The idea is that you and the Daemon will… bond, and gradually over a couple of weeks you will find out the truth about it and the Spirit World.’

‘I don’t know if I like the idea of bonding with a Daemon,’ admitted Trixie. ‘What does this thing look like? Does it have horns and a tail? They always draw Daemons with horns and a tail on the covers of penny dreadfuls.’

‘No horns and no tail, or so I am told. Apparently it looks and acts just like a normal young woman.’

‘Very well: I don’t suppose I have any option in the matter, do

‘ None whatsoever,’ was her father’s bleak answer.

The Real World: 12 June 2018

The Memories of Dupes: each Dupe is provided with an appropriate and fully functional memory of his or her life as a Demi-Mondian prior to the OutSet of the Demi-Monde plus a realistically flawed ancestral memory.

– The Demi-Monde® Product Description Manual: 14 June 2013

Ella was back in the General’s office in the company of the Captain, the Professor and, of course, the General. She was glad of the company: the meeting with Heydrich had shaken her, had frightened her. More… it had scared the shit out of her. Heydrich might have been just a virtually rendered Dupe but there had been something disturbingly real about him. No computer-programmed entity could walk into a room and dominate it like that: it wasn’t natural. She shivered: the thought of being involved in anything that required her meeting or interacting with that madman again most certainly did not appeal at all. Not even for a million bucks…