Free Exeunt Demon King by Jonathan L. Howard Page A

than minded to grind buggers like
you to dust with them if you get any bright ideas. Now,” his
expression softened to an entirely insincere smile, “how can I help
you?”
    After a
nervous pause, the snowy hedges and borders chorused a shaky,
“Merry Christmas, Police Sergeant Parkin.”
    “ And a Happy Saturnalia to you too. Now piss off out of it
before I do you.”
    The door
opened and Johannes Cabal stood framed there. He was a tall, lean
man in his late twenties, blond hair cut sensibly short, blue eyes
that had seemed nothing other than cold for a long time. He wore a
white shirt but otherwise almost all black; trousers, socks, a
black cardigan. Red tartan slippers and an enormous revolver
completed his wardrobe.
    “ Herßliche Weihnacten , Parkin. Forgive
the gun, I’d quite forgotten to expect you.”
    “ Not at all, Cabal. Just chatting with your charming garden
gnomes.”
    “ Not gnomes!” cried the garden folk in horror at the slur, but
Parkin had already gone in.
     
    While Parkin made himself comfortable in the parlour, Cabal
went off to fetch his annual bribe. He returned to find Parkin
singing Once in Royal David’s City with the box.
    “ Good voice, yon box,” said Parkin, unabashed when he saw Cabal
watching him from the doorway. “What’s in it anyway?”
    “ Nothing you’d want to know, much less see.” Cabal held out an
envelope stuffed with banknotes. “Your, ah… Remind me, how do we
dignify this?”
    “ Your very kind contribution to the police benevolent fund,”
Parkin said as he tucked the envelope away in his coat. “It might
amuse you to know, that’s actually where eighty percent of it does
go. I keep the rest as a Christmas bonus, buy something nice for
the kids.”
    “ I find your brand of honest dishonesty endlessly fascinating,
Parkin.”
    “ Aye, well. It’s all in the degree, isn’t it? There’s plenty
back in the village get their knickers in a twist every time this
place is mentioned. Me and my tiny force of plods, though, we don’t
care because you keep your nose clean in this parish. The fact that
you don’t elsewhere is what this,” he tapped the safely ensconced
envelope, “is for smoothing over. Truth is, I don’t see what it is
that you get up to that’s so much worse than what some of those
doctors in the city do. It’s all in the degree. Well,” he started
to draw his gloves back on, “I’d best be on me way.”
    Something stirred in Cabal. Perhaps it was the season and the
memories, perhaps it was Parkin’s non-judgemental view on Cabal’s
work and unexpected attack on the smug ranks of the loathsome
medical establishment, but Cabal suddenly felt the need for some
companionship, somebody just to chat to for a little while as the
night drew in.
    “ Could…” Cabal floundered in the unfamiliar waters of social
interaction for a moment. “Could I interest you in a drink before
you go? It’s a long walk back to the village, after
all.”
    Parkin
stopped. He weighed Cabal up for a few seconds, then sighed and
said, “You’re not going to poison me, are you? That would be a
bloody silly thing to do.”
    “ Poison?” Cabal was taken aback. “Ach, nein! I would not… I
only kill in self-defence.” He laughed. Parkin had never heard
Cabal laugh before, had hardly thought him capable of it, and its
unforced nature did a great deal to reassure him. “My laboratory
is, that phrase… in mothballs for the winter precisely because it is such a
difficult time to gather specimens.” He shook his head. “You have
nothing to fear, Sergeant Parkin. I do not kill casually. I
abominate death.”
    So,
abominating death, Cabal instead turned to the water of life for
his guest. Specifically, a single malt that was very much to the
sergeant’s taste. Cabal was going to make some tea for himself but
Parkin insisted that he would not drink alone and so Cabal
acquiesced but insisted on adulterating it with a little water to
the mock horror of Parkin