by Mike Carey
I turned on all the lights and checked out the three people closest to hand, making sure they were all still breathing. One of them had blood trickling down her face from a deep gash in her forehead, but none of them had suffered in the way Devani had. Post-traumatic stress aside, they’d all recover from this.
Once I went through into the pool though – taking the music box with me – I could see that not everyone was going to be so lucky. Two of McClennan’s exorcists were lying face down in the pool, and a third was sprawled at the edge of it with his head at a crazy angle that suggested a broken neck. The remaining stalwarts of the Jenna-Jane Irregulars – more than a dozen of them – were scattered around the room twitching and moaning and writhing. I remembered news footage I’d seen of the aftermath of a suicide bombing. There were no detached limbs here, but in other ways it was pretty close.
Gil McClennan had led from the front, I’ll say that much for him. He was in the pool too: not one of the floaters, but up to his chest at the far end, holding onto another man who had obviously collapsed against him. He was keeping the guy’s head out of the water with a loose armlock around his neck, although his own eyes were so wide I could see white all around the pupils. He was shouting incoherent phrases – exhortations to his team, maybe, or fragments of prayer. Whatever they were, they’d kept him alive and upright through the maelstrom. Now he was starting to retreat towards the pool’s edge.
I walked around to join him, and helped him manhandle the other man – who was profoundly unconscious – up out of the water. After a moment’s hesitation I gave Gil a hand up too. It seemed petty to keep up old enmities when we’d just survived death by blind panic.
McClennan got slowly to his feet, using the wall for support and then turning to lean his back against it when he was fully upright. His chest was working hard, but he was getting his breath back and starting to come down from the fear-high. He threw me a look, curious and slightly bitter.
‘What did you do?’ he demanded.
I’d stowed the music box back in my pocket by this time. As far as I was concerned, Gil was one end of an open mike that led straight back to Jenna-Jane, and there was no way I wanted her to know about this before I’d had time to think through the implications.
‘Why do you care?’ I asked him. ‘It’s gone. And the credit’s all yours. I was never here.’
‘The credit?’ He laughed incredulously. ‘The credit? Look at what’s left of my team!’ He came away from the wall. ‘I’ve got to get some ambulances over here,’ he muttered. He walked past me down the side of the pool but turned before he was out of earshot. ‘You think I wanted this?’ he demanded, his voice trembling slightly.
I shrugged. ‘You could have said no,’ I pointed out.
‘She doesn’t let you say no.’
‘That’s down to you.’
McClennan laughed again. It sounded even harsher than the first time. He seemed about to say something else, but whatever it was he locked it down and turned away.
I put my hand in my pocket, checking that the box was still there and unchanged. It was an involuntary reflex. A box full of Gader’el demon seemed to be identical in every way that mattered to a box full of nothing. It didn’t hum or rattle or throb with ectoplasmic energy. It didn’t even weigh any more than it had.
I’d pushed my modality to the limit, and a little bit over. I’d made the music play for me when I couldn’t play it myself, and somehow the link had held. Whatever power I tapped when I put the whistle to my lips still allowed itself to be accessed in this clumsy, second-hand and mechanical way.
What did that mean? What else could I do if I set my mind to it? I had to think about this, and soon.
But before that I had to call Trudie and make sure she was okay.
And I had to do something about Asmodeus. I had some inkling of what he was doing now, but not why he was doing it. I either had to figure it out for myself or get someone else on the case, fast. ‘I’m pretty much done here now,’ he’d said. ‘Got all the ducks in a row.’ I had a suspicion bordering on certainty that his plans were in their final phase, and I knew now who they revolved around.
I followed McClennan back through the anteroom to the reception area. He was checking his people, trying to make one of them sit up and talk to him, and I left him to it. Battlefield triage isn’t my strong suit.
Upstairs, the ambulances had already arrived, far too quickly for them to have responded to any call from Gil. Samir Devani was being loaded into one of them by two paramedics, an oxygen mask over his bloodied face. A third man was walking alongside, holding a saline drip that had already been attached to Samir’s arm.
In the midst of the ambulances, incongruous, a storm crow among doves, stood a black limousine. Its rear door was open, and Jenna-Jane Mulbridge stood beside it in a light raincoat, overseeing operations with a calm and slightly distant expression.
She turned and saw me as I approached, acknowledging me with a nod. ‘I’m glad you were able to lend a hand after all, Felix,’ she said. ‘Gilbert appears to have over-stretched his own resources rather badly.’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ I answered. ‘Another would be to say that he led the lambs to the slaughter exactly like you told him.’
Jenna-Jane shrugged. ‘All’s well that ends well.’
‘How do you know it’s even over?’ I demanded.
She glanced towards the limo behind her. It had other occupants, who I could just about make out through the open door: the security man Dicks, now acting as chauffeur, and in the back seat, Gentle, who Jenna-Jane had introduced as her PA.
‘I didn’t commit my whole strength to this one exercise, ’ Jenna-Jane said. ‘That would be very poor strategy, Felix, even if we didn’t know that Asmodeus was still out there. Gentle tells me that the haunting here has now entirely ceased.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘We won.’ I looked past her to where more of the injured from downstairs were being loaded into the waiting ambulances. ‘Let’s see if any of these poor sods want to join us in a cheer.’
Jenna-Jane was in a good mood and refused to take offence, or maybe she just realised that letting my sarcasm wash over her would be the best way of winding me up. ‘You’ve been missing for most of the day,’ she said, ‘and not answering your phone. I gather the search for Asmodeus’ underground route was unsuccessful.’
‘It was until an hour ago,’ I corrected her. ‘The Holborn underpass – the part that was never reopened. He’s got a little hideaway tucked in at the south end that you should probably take a look at. But don’t go in half-cocked, because it’s a dead end. He almost killed me and Pax when he cornered us there.’
Jenna-Jane raised her eyebrows. ‘You should have called me before you went in,’ she said.
‘Before I went in, it was only a hunch. And then when we found the place, things kind of got away from us.’
‘Things?’
‘Asmodeus cornering us in the dark,’ I elaborated. ‘And then having to pull McClennan’s irons out of the fire over here. I told you to wait, J-J.’
‘Do you know what comes to him who waits, Felix?’ Jenna-Jane asked. ‘Other people’s leavings.’
‘Then you agree I was right to go in without you.’
She chuckled and wagged a finger at me, as though slapping her in the face with her own logic was just my little joke. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll be very careful. Thank you for all your hard work on this, Felix. And for sharing intelligence, as we agreed. I’ll go and look at this place, if you think it’s worthwhile, although I assume we’ll be unlikely to succeed in setting an ambush there now. Where is Pax? Downstairs? Perhaps she can be my guide.’
‘She was hurt when we fought the demon,’ I said, ‘and I got a passing civilian to drive her to a hospital. I’m going to go see how she’s doing.’
‘Then leave a message for me at the unit. Let the switchboard know where you are, and I’ll join you when I can.’ She cast a sombre look at the open doorw
ay of Super-Self, from which another pair of stretcher bearers was just emerging. ‘Poor Gilbert. I think he’ll take this hard.’
I called Sue Book’s house, and got the answerphone: Sue Book’s voice, sweetly inviting me to leave a message. I explained what we’d found, tersely and probably inadequately, and asked her to call me as soon as she could. Trudie didn’t pick up when I rang either, which was a lot less surprising: I called Nicky and got him to hack into the hospital databases. A patient listed as T. Pax had been admitted to the A & E unit at University College Hospital on Grafton Way, which was only a mile and a half away.
And since I already had Nicky’s ear, I dropped the bombshell about what we’d found in the underpass. ‘You can add some names to your list,’ I said. ‘Alongside Tlallik, Ket and Jetaniul.’
‘Yeah? Shoot.’ Nicky tried to keep his tone neutral but couldn’t quite manage it. It niggled him that he hadn’t managed to solve this one yet; it was going to piss him off royally when he found out I’d got to the answer first.
‘Tsukelit,’ I said. ‘Ilalliel. Aketsulitur. Notice a pattern?’
‘Not so much.’
‘Think about Juliet, Nicky.’
‘You think these names all belong to succubi?’
‘No, I think they all belong to her.’
There was dead silence at the other end of the line.
‘I would’ve seen it sooner,’ I went on, ‘except that I’m an arrogant sod, and the first ward I found was at Pen’s place, not at Juliet’s. I’d forgotten about Juliet bringing me home after one of my drunks. Asmodeus probably put them everywhere he thought she might turn up, including your place. I’ll bet there are a couple taped to the underside of her car. A few more spread around Willesden Green Library. In her sock drawer, maybe. I don’t know. There could be hundreds of the fucking things.’
Still no answer from Nicky’s end of the line, which probably meant he was thinking.
‘You remember the passage you showed me back when Gabriel first raised her up?’ I reminded him. ‘“She is of Baphomet the sister, and the youngest of her line, though puissant still and not easily to be taken with words or symbols of art. But with silver will you bind her and with her name, anagrammatised, appease her.” You explained that to me. Every name she takes on Earth – including Juliet Salazar – is a subset of the sounds or symbols that make up her real name. I think Asmodeus has been invoking Juliet by all her old, cast-off names. That’s why Foivel Grazimir had Tlallik down as a dead number. It was a name she wasn’t using any more, even way back then.’
‘Holy mother of fuck,’ Nicky intoned, his voice dropping to the limit of audibility as he forgot to breathe.
‘So what I’m asking you now is why anyone would want to do that? What’s he planning? Can one demon bind another demon? Get me some answers, Nicky, before this blows up in my face even worse than it already has. And get a message through to Juliet, somehow. I’ve dialled her a couple of times, but nobody’s picking up. She needs to know about all this shit.’
‘I’m onto it.’ For once Nicky didn’t carp or haggle about terms. His pride was on the line here, and he was only too keen to make a start. He hung up on me without another word.
When I got to the hospital, they stonewalled me. A nurse explained that Trudie was already under anaesthetic and about to go into theatre. The damage not just to the bone but to the muscle of her shoulder was spectacular. They were going to try to sew her back together before any of the tissue started to necrotise.
I called the MOU, as Jenna-Jane had suggested, to tell them where I was. Then I sat and waited for news. I called Pen too, but there was still no answer from her house – or her mobile. Both she and Sue were probably asleep by now. I left a message on her voicemail, asking her to call me, but I thought it was likely I’d get home before she got the message.
I dozed intermittently while I waited, recharging my batteries slightly. They seemed to need it. The last three days felt like a waking dream, shot through with hallucinatory moments. My three encounters with Asmodeus ran together in my mind, so that they seemed like just the one conversation, interspersed with pregnant pauses while the two of us played a prolonged game of hide-and-seek across the face of the city. I’d found him, but that didn’t feel like much of a victory, not now I knew he’d been working on Juliet the whole time, driving her crazy for reasons I couldn’t even begin to guess.
At 4.00 a.m. I was woken up by my own phone ringing. It was Jenna-Jane.
‘Felix, this is remarkable,’ she said. ‘You saw the sigils in the demon’s lair?’
‘I couldn’t take my eyes off them, J-J,’ I said, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
‘Are you aware of what they represent?’
‘Yeah. Are you?’
‘They’re steganographic homonyms. They all denote the same entity. It appears to be the succubus who is referred to in late-medieval grimoires as Ajulutsikael.’
‘Yeah. That was my conclusion too.’
‘Which means that Asmodeus is trying to summon her simultaneously in multiple aspects or incarnations.’ She paused as if she expected me to say something. When I didn’t, she went on with sardonic emphasis. ‘Despite the fast that she’s already been definitively summoned.’
I’d never been sure exactly how much Jenna-Jane knew about Juliet. She’d sounded me out on a few occasions in a way that made me think she was fishing for more information based on guesswork or rumour. I sure as Hell wasn’t going to play join-the-dots for her now.
‘Multiple aspects?’ I mused.
‘Each name would correspond to a stage of the demon’s life cycle,’ Jenna-Jane went on, her tone heavy and resigned, as though she was letting me off the hook for now. ‘One theory is that they change their names in much the same way that insects moult: sloughing off old traits and aspects, redefining and reshaping themselves through the morphic power of a new name. That’s why necromancers use the demon’s name to summon and command it. Castor, if you know anything more than you’ve told me about this, now would be a very good time to put your cards on the table.’
‘I don’t know anything,’ I lied.
‘About a succubus passing for human?’
‘There’s always talk,’ I admitted. ‘Mostly you stop believing in that stuff after you hit puberty.’
A pause on the other end of the line, then Jenna-Jane’s voice again. ‘Where are you now?’
‘I’m still in town, but I’m probably not going to be here much longer. I’m just waiting to hear how Pax is.’
‘Very well. Another early meeting, I think.’
I responded to that with a profanity. I’d had enough of turning out of bed at dawn to present myself at J-J’s door. ‘I’ll call you in the morning,’ I offered by way of compromise and hung up.
I took a stroll around the hospital’s ground floor, found a coffee machine that actually worked and – more surprisingly – enough coins in my greatcoat’s many pockets to make it work. Sipping the rat’s piss that passed for black unsweetened, I made my way back to the A & E waiting room. The nurse I’d met earlier was waiting for me there.
Trudie was out of surgery and awake, she told me. The surgery had seemed to go well, but it was too early to tell whether or not there’d be any lasting loss of function in the right arm and hand. I could talk to Trudie if I wanted, but only for a few minutes and only if I promised to keep it low key. I agreed docilely and was led to a ward, where Trudie lay on one of a dozen beds, her upper body propped up nearly vertical. She was shockingly pale, and her expression slack and drained. She roused when she saw me though, and twitched her left hand in a feeble wave. Her right arm was swathed in thick bandages, and her neck was in a cast.
‘How’s it hanging, Pax?’ I asked, trying for a tone of brusque camaraderie.
‘By a thread,’ she murmured. ‘Can’t feel my fucking fingers, Castor. They’re still there, right?’
I looked down. ‘They look to be,’ I reported. ‘You want me to count?
’
She shook her head weakly, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘Can’t do it one-handed,’ she said in the same low monotone. ‘I’m useless if I don’t get it back.’
The fingers of her left hand flickered, manipulating a loop of string that wasn’t there. Of course, she meant the the cat’s cradles: the way she touched the spirit world and worked her will on it. If she didn’t get the full use of her right arm and hand back, she’d be crippled in more ways than one.
‘You’ll be fine as soon as the anaesthetic wears off,’ I promised – a guarantee with nothing to back it except my overdrawn account at the bank of optimism. I only said it to offer her a crumb of comfort, and I could see from her face that she took no comfort from it at all.
‘What happened at Super-Self?’ she asked me.
By way of answer, I took the music box out of my pocket and held it out to her. She took it in her good hand and stared at it for a few seconds, at first without seeming to realise what it was. Then she got the feel of the thing in her death-sense and swore softly.
‘You caught it,’ she said, awed even through the drug haze. ‘In a fucking box.’
‘Yeah. I did. I was thinking of tossing it in the Thames, but I may not even have to. Being separated from the Super-Self ghosts seems to have made it switch itself off. There hasn’t been a peep out of it.’
‘Throw it away anyway,’ Trudie advised me. ‘You don’t want to be around it when it wakes up.’
I took it back and returned it to my pocket. ‘What I want even less than that is for Jenna-Jane to get wind of it,’ I said. ‘It’s a neat trick, but for the time being I want it to be our little secret. Deal?’
Trudie shrugged, and then winced because her wrecked shoulder made shrugging a hazardous proposition. ‘If you say so, Castor,’ she grunted. ‘I suppose I’m lucky you confided in me. You seem to see all other exorcists as the enemy.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I don’t see the dead as the enemy. If the MOU find out you can trap ghosts in boxes, that’s going to be a bad day for ghosts.’