The End - Visions of Apocalypse

I lugged the holdall the three miles to Wormwood’s club. I turned into the alley, and stopped in the right place. I moved my hand over the exact piece of graffiti-covered brickwork, and muttered the words of entry under my breath before I walked into it. The wall felt cold and sticky as I walked through it, like a huge spiders web, but it offered no real resistance. There was a dimly lit, grubby bar on the other side, and there were people in the bar. Sort of people, anyway. I recognised Wormwood’s huge, hulking minder, and nodded at him.

“Evening,” I said. “I’m meeting your boss for a hand of cards.”

“You’re Drake, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, Selina said you was coming. Come on up.”

He led me through the crowd of colourful characters in the shabby downstairs bar and up the staircase with its thick red carpet, into the upstairs club. It was smoky up there already, and busier than it ought to be this early in the evening. It seemed like our rematch might have drawn a bit of a crowd.

Wormwood was sitting at his usual table, with the two decks of cards neatly positioned on the green cloth in front of him and an already full ashtray at his elbow. The waitress with the cute tail was nowhere to be seen, but there was a glass and an open bottle waiting for me by the empty chair.

“This had better be good, Drake,” Wormwood said, but his eyes glittered with avarice. He knew it would be.

“Oh yes,” I said. “It is.”

I opened the bag and lifted out the Burned Man, still chained to the sawn-out piece of ancient oak. Wormwood gaped. The cigarette fell out of his mouth and landed in his lap, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“You’re shitting me,” he said.

I shook my head. “The Burned Man,” I said. “That’s my bet.”

“What’s mine?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Against this? My debt, and pretty much everything else you have. Your money, your house, your club and the rest of your business interests. And I’m still undervaluing this, and you know it.”

“Yeah, well, you ain’t got a lot of choice, have you,” he said, and noisily sucked his greyish teeth for a moment while he made up his mind. “Deal.”

Normal blokes would have shaken hands at that point, but neither of us were exactly normal and neither of us much wanted to touch the other one. We nodded at each other instead, and the croupier cut the two decks and began to deal the minor arcana from the thicker deck.

I poured myself a drink. If I’m honest, I’d had a couple already, well a few actually, just to steady my nerves, but now I really felt the need. I tipped the first shot straight down my neck and was refilling the glass before I’d even finished swallowing. This was big. This was really, really big. I could feel the eyes of everyone in the club staring at the Burned Man in something between awe and horror. It was about then that I realised I was the only human in the club tonight. There were none of us today, it was all them. Shit.

I picked up my cards and fanned them, looking at a pair of sixes and a mixture of random junk. I kept my face smooth. Except for the uncontrollable tick that was beating under my left eye, anyway. Wormwood looked down at his own cards, his horrible face expressionless. The way the game is played, you have to decide on your minor arcana, your suits, before you draw your trump.

Wormwood plucked a card out of his fan and discarded it on the table, face down.

“Card,” he said.

I did the same. The dealer dished us each out another minor card, and I had to fight to keep my face still. Six of pentacles - this was more like it.

Wormwood said nothing, nodded. He looked at me. “I’m good,” he said. “Stand.”

I swallowed another shot of whisky and poured again. My palms were itching so bad I wanted to scrape them on the side of the table until they were raw. Three of a kind was good, but this was Wormwood I was playing and tonight I was playing for everything I had.

“Card,” I said, dropping a useless three of swords face down onto the table.

The dealer pushed a new card to me across the table, and I gently eased it up and into my fan. Six of cups! That gave me four of a kind. I nodded, trying and failing to keep my left eye still.

“Stand,” I said.

“Trumps then,” said Wormwood.

The dealer slipped us each a card from the slim deck of major arcana. You can’t change your trump card, once it’s been dealt. That’s the “fate” part of Fates. I gently eased mine up and peered at the corner of the card. It was the motherloving Tower again. I cleared my throat.

“We agreed no raising,” I reminded him. “This is it, Wormwood. What’ve you got?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Challengers first,” he said.

I shrugged and laid my cards out. Four sixes and the Tower was a blinding hand, and I knew it. A smug smile was starting to creep across my lips even before I saw the wide-eyed expression on Wormwood’s face.

“Four sixes?” he whispered. “”You’ve got four sixes, you wanker?”

I nodded. “Looks that way,” I said, unable to resist twisting the knife. “It ain’t your lucky night, Wormwood.”