by Mike Carey
‘No. What does it mean?’
‘That Orion wasn’t considered a suicide risk.’ He grinned mirthlessly at his own joke, flashing teeth that didn’t look as though they’d fit inside a human mouth. Flesh is a plastic material to demons, but Asmodeus had never bothered to change Rafi’s body very much. It looked as though he’d done a fair bit of redecorating since I’d seen him last, though. He was both taller and broader across the shoulders, with muscular forearms which tautened the ripped fabric of his shirt. His arms looked longer, and so did his fingers - not long enough to make him look simian, but subtly out of proportion with the rest of the body.
‘Did you catch your bus okay?’ I asked.
Asmodeus stopped laughing. He shook his head at me disapprovingly.
‘I told you once that you were missing the big picture,’ he said. ‘That you don’t know the right questions to ask. That you have no idea what’s really happening, or how you fit into it.’
‘I remember,’ I agreed. ‘Didn’t stop me from whipping you back to kennel the last time you stuck your nose out.’
Asmodeus flexed those overlong fingers, very slowly. He seemed to be measuring the distance between us, and I tensed to run. Maybe Pen’s new stay-nots would hold the demon back, and if they broke maybe they’d still slow him down enough for me to get back over the threshold of the house, where the older, many-times-inscribed wards would protect me. I didn’t want to bet my life on those maybes.
But Asmodeus still didn’t move. ‘I’m kind of glad I didn’t finish you off last night,’ he grated. ‘I really ought to build up to it properly. It was just the heat of the moment. Seeing you there, and feeling Ditko pull back from the thought of it. He’s still seeing you as a way out, Castor. When you die, it’s gonna be a real blow to him. But personally I think that ship has sailed. I’m making my own arragements now.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘So I’m not here to kill you. Or Ditko’s whore. You can relax. I just wheeled him over to take a look at the old place.’ He snickered, making the noise a blade makes on a strop. ‘Build up his morale a little. You want to say hello?’
For a moment I thought I’d misheard him. ‘Say hello?’ I repeated stupidly.
‘To your old friend. He’s right here, listening. Just like he was last night. Fuck, wake the redhead up and she can even have a conjugal visit.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ignoring this last suggestion. ‘I’d like to talk to him.’
The demon bowed his head and was silent for a moment. Then, still staring at the ground, he spoke in a different voice, a voice that was as faint as a day-old echo. ‘Fix?’
‘Rafi. I’m here.’
‘I know. I know. My God, Fix, he’s got me . . . staring out of the window here. I can’t stop him, but I have to watch . . .’ He gave a choking sob. ‘Ginny!’
‘Ginny got you into this mess in the first place, Rafi.’ It was meant to console him, but I realised even as I was saying it that it wouldn’t have that effect. ‘She was working for Anton Fanke - the grand panjandrum. She was just using you.’
‘We were using each other.’ Rafi’s voice was barely a whisper. I took a step forward, straining to hear it. ‘I knew what she was, Fix. And it’s not as though I loved her. I’ve never loved anyone except Pen. But . . .’ He gave another sob and lapsed into silence. One of the dark figure’s arms twitched slightly in a vague, abortive gesture - some random nerve impulse of Rafi’s getting past Asmodeus’ guard - but only for a fraction of a second. ‘She didn’t deserve what she got.’
‘I’m going to free you,’ I promised him.
‘Sound familiar?’ The demon’s voice intervening, forcing itself out of Rafi’s mouth like hissing steam out of a pipe. ‘He lives like fucking Nero, Ditko: he fiddles while you burn. Three years, and all he’s ever done is lie to you. He’s lying now. You belong to me, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. I’m so sure of that, I’m not even going to bother to kill him just yet. We’ll leave him till the end.’
‘I will nail him, Rafi,’ I insisted, ignoring the demon’s taunts. ‘I’m onto it, I swear to you. The bastard won’t even see me coming.’
‘Fix . . .’ Rafi’s voice again, a gasping sigh at the lower limit of audibility. ‘Tell my father . . . and Jovan . . . Tell them I’m sorry. Do that for me. Please.’
And then nothing. Slowly Asmodeus straightened until his gaze met mine again. ‘I meant what I said,’ he grated. ‘I’ll kill you last, Castor. And it won’t be all at once. I’m thinking of going home for a while, when I’m free of this meat: I’ll take you along as food for the journey. In the meantime . . . breast pocket, left-hand side.’
Something dropped out of his sleeve into his hand, glinting momentarily in the light from a street lamp. I ducked reflexively, but Asmodeus was so much faster than me that his arm was back at his side before I’d even registered that it had flicked up and out - long before my own lazy nervous system had carried the message down the royal road of my spine to my distant arms and legs.
I felt something like a punch in my shoulder. Dazed, I stared at the long slender handle of a knife sticking out of my own flesh. One of the buttons of the greatcoat hung in neatly severed halves on either side of it, dangling from separate lengths of the same frayed thread. The buttons were solid brass, but Asmodeus had thrown the knife with enough force to hammer straight through it, then through the thick cloth, and still embed itself an inch or so deep into the soft flesh below my collarbone.
‘I only said I wouldn’t kill you,’ Asmodeus snickered. ‘That doesn’t stop me from whittling you into a more interesting shape.’
My teeth clenched on the pain, I groped inside my coat for my whistle, but I’m a southpaw, and it was my left shoulder that Asmodeus had hit, so my movements were jerky and uncoordinated. The demon watched in silent amusement.
I got the instrument out at last and fitted it to my lips. I started to play the opening notes of a tune: not a banishing but a soporific, a piece of music I’d composed for Rafi during the long months when he was stuck in his silver-lined cell at the Charles Stanger Care Home. Asmodeus just laughed and walked away, seemingly unaffected.
‘Be seeing you, Castor,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Eventually.’
‘First of all, he’s lying,’ Jenna-Jane said. She said it in a didactic tone, like a maths teacher stating an axiom. ‘So a logical question to ask would be why.’
We were in her office, and it was still early enough in the day for the workmen not to have clocked on. There was silence throughout the vast building, and a slightly disconcerting echo to our words.
‘About what?’ I demanded, probably sounding childishly truculent. ‘He meant what he said about not wanting to kill me yet. I’m not dead, am I? Ecce homo, ergo elk.’
Reflexively, I rubbed my shoulder. It hurt like hell. The knife hadn’t gone in too deep, all things considered, but it had been thrown with spectacular force. I was bruised as well as cut, and my arm had already stiffened in spite of Pen’s expert ministrations.
‘But his motives for not killing you are far from clear.’ Jenna-Jane leaned back in her seat, one finger touched to the point of her chin. ‘Certainly he needs nothing from you now. As he said, he no longer believes you can free him from Ditko’s flesh.’
‘What if that’s the lie?’ I threw in for the sake of argument,
Jenna-Jane shook her head brusquely. ‘He’s removed himself from your sphere of influence. If he had any faith in your abilities, or your efforts, he would have stayed where he was, in Imelda Probert’s custody. Or else, when he left there, he would have come to you and made his demands clear. No, it’s something else, Felix. He chose his moment. Oh, I know the Anathemata gave him the opening which he seized on to escape, but I believe he acted on a decision he’d already made. He has a project, and you are a part of it.’
‘You just said he didn’t need me.’
‘As an exorcist,’ Jenna-Jane amended, with a touch of impatience. ‘He doesn
’t need you in a professional capacity. But he is still interested in you. He sought you out on no fewer than three occasions, first in Brixton and then at Pamela Bruckner’s house. He hovers around you, and he lets you see him doing it. I don’t believe for a moment that’s random.’
‘What is it then?’ The ache in my shoulder and chest made me terse.
Jenna-Jane was silent for a moment, musing. ‘Something we can exploit,’ she said at last. She stood up and crossed to a filing cabinet, where she opened the second drawer and took out the file she wanted without hesitation, seeming to know exactly where it was. She brought it back to the desk.
‘The problem resolves itself into two problems,’ she said, as she took her seat again. ‘Finding Asmodeus, and dealing with him once we have him. You, Felix, are probably the key to the first of those. At least you are our default option. If all else fails, it’s reasonable to hope that the demon will come to you.
‘The second part of the equation will tax us more. We need a mechanism that will bring Asmodeus into our power without permanently harming Ditko.’ She was leafing through the file now, holding it so that I couldn’t see its contents. ‘You say you crafted a lullaby? A sedative of some kind?’
I nodded. ‘I used to use it on Rafi when he was at the Stanger. And then I worked on it some more with Imelda. It seems to knock Asmodeus offline for a while. Sometimes it sends Rafi to sleep too, but other times it lets him be himself for a while.’
‘May I hear it?’
Wincing, I took out my whistle. I played a few repetitions of the tune, clumsily and stiffly. When I’d finished, Jenna-Jane nodded. She had that schoolteacherly look on her face again, as if she’d been listening to a proposition in pure logic.
‘I’d like you to record that for our technical team,’ she said. ‘Before you leave today.’
I made a negative gesture. I didn’t want Jenna-Jane and her white-coated cut-throats to go chasing up any blind alleys, diverting as that might have been at any other time. ‘I tried it on Asmodeus last night,’ I told her. ‘He just ignored it.’
‘But it worked in the past.’
‘It worked when I had him as a captive audience,’ I said, pointing out the obvious. ‘It’s slow, J-J. It does the job, but it’s slow. It’s never going to make a difference in an ambush.’
‘My people will look at it,’ she said. ‘Dissect it. Possibly turn it into something that works a little better.’
‘How?’
She gave me an austere look, hearing the scepticism in my voice. ‘Amplification,’ she said. ‘Distortion. Tonal variation. Peak-trough manipulation. Subsonic harmonic mapping. Instrumental translation. Modal translation. Conceptual reflection and repetition.’ She didn’t bother to wait for my inevitable reductionist put-down. ‘The craft has developed its own specialised vocabulary here at St Mary’s, Felix,’ she said. ‘Its own theoretical underpinnings. Trust me. You made the right decision when you came to me. Now, I wanted to pick your brains on two other matters.’
‘Go on.’
‘The first is the one that Gentle raised with you yesterday. The succubus, Ajulutsikael. I have it on the very best authority that what Gentle said is correct: that the demon remained on Earth after she was raised to kill you, and that you remained on . . . shall I say, friendly terms with her.’
I waited her out. Knowing how sharp she was, I wasn’t prepared to say one word on that particular subject. There was always a chance that I’d give something away without meaning to.
‘She ought to be in my custody,’ J-J said.
I kept up the deadpan for as long as I needed to. Finally, Jenna-Jane sighed theatrically.
‘Very well,’ she murmured. ‘That will have to be a discussion for another day.’
She took a single sheet of paper out of the file and set it down in front of me. It was a badly photocopied passport photograph. Badly enough that it took me a few seconds to identify the person I was looking at.
‘Trudie Pax,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Jenna-Jane confirmed. ‘She’s applied for a position here at the MOU, as an exorcist. I’ve already assigned her to a team, on a probationary basis. What do you know about her?’
I paused for a couple of seconds of reflection. Was J-J really using me as a reference for Trudie, or was this some kind of loyalty test for me? Given the circumstances in which my path and Trudie’s had last crossed, it could be either. But ultimately I didn’t care enough about this political bullshit to lie.
‘She gets the job done,’ I said.
‘You’ve worked with her?’
‘Yes. Recently. When I was trying to clear up that mess at the Salisbury. You probably read about it in the papers.’
‘The riots. Yes, I was aware that something interesting was happening there, and that you were involved in some way. I offered my services, but the detective in charge of the operation - Trotwood, Deadwood, something of that nature - declined. So you and Miss Pax performed an exorcism together?’
‘No, a summoning. She’s good.’
‘But you don’t like her?’
‘She was part of Gwillam’s bunch. You know how much I love religious fanatics.’
‘But you’d have no misgivings about working with her again?’
Another pause for thought. ‘No,’ I grunted at last. I prefer known quantities to unknown ones. Trudie hadn’t flinched when the shit started flying.
‘Good,’ said Jenna-Jane. ‘Because she’s here now. And given her background, I was very much inclined to make her part of our Asmodeus plan.’ She put the sheet back in the file, scribbled something on the inside of the file folder and closed it again.
‘The plan,’ I echoed sardonically. ‘You mean amplification, distortion, attrition and general masturbation?’
Jenna-Jane looked at her watch, a little theatrically. ‘I think it’s time to introduce you to the rest of the team,’ she said.
I followed Jenna-Jane, about as enthusiastically as Dante followed Vergil, down a maze of branching corridors into a room labelled STAFF LOUNGE. Even as a work-in-progress it was pretty well appointed: big enough for a couple of dozen people to chill out without bumping shoulders, widescreen TV, Tchibo coffee machine. I guess if you can afford to use pure silver as wallpaper, then a few comfy chairs and a coffee machine aren’t going to break the bank.
Three men - one of them Gil McClennan - and a woman were sitting in a group at the far end of the room, talking animatedly, but they stopped and turned to face us as we came in. The woman stood, seemed about to put out her hand for me to shake and then thought better of it. After the discussion in J-J’s office she came as no surprise, but I still found seeing her called up enough unpleasant memories to make me grit my teeth momentarily.
‘Trudie Pax,’ Jenna-Jane said.
‘We’ve met,’ I answered bluntly. The tall dark-haired woman flushed slightly and looked away. I noticed that she had several dozen thicknesses of string wound round each wrist. Where I conducted my exorcisms via music, Trudie channelled hers through the children’s game of cat’s cradle, making visual patterns where I made auditory ones. I also noticed that she’d cut her hair extremely short. It had been a good decision. The ponytail she used to wear made her resemble a Lara Croft strippergram, whereas now she looked as though she’d switched role models and gone for Ellen Ripley.
‘The newest member of our little family,’ Jenna-Jane was saying. ‘And she comes with truly impressive references. ’ Knowing all about Trudie’s references, I decided the safest bet under the circumstances was to nod and say nothing.
‘I’m not counting you as new, Felix,’ Jenna-Jane went on, in a teasing voice that set my teeth on edge. ‘I see you more in the light of a lost sheep who’s come back into the fold.’ She turned her attention to the two remaining strangers, who’d also stood. Gil McClennan remained resolutely seated. ‘This is Victor Etheridge,’ Jenna-Jane said, and the younger of the two gave me a nod. He had sandy-coloured hair, a slightly exophthalmi
c stare and a physique that made a hatstand look broad in the beam. He was wearing a jet-black suit over a jet-black T-shirt, which had the effect of making him fade into the background of his own outfit.
‘Felix Castor,’ he said. And then he winced, his head jerking to the side as though someone had punched him in the mouth. His eyes clenched shut, then opened again and looked at me sidelong. ‘I’m really . . . very . . . I’m pleased, because . . . Pleased to meet you. Because . . . Peckham . . . Peckham Steiner always spoke of you with respect.’
The kid’s head swung round again so that he could look at me full on. His expression was wide-eyed, expectant, as though he’d brought out the big guns and expected to see an appropriate response; but even leaving aside his curious delivery, dropping Steiner’s name didn’t impress me all that much. The crazed millionaire godfather of the London ghost-breaking scene had lost his marbles long before he died, and if this Etheridge character had been his protégé, he might be more of a liability than an asset.
‘You were a friend of Steiner’s?’ I asked, keeping my tone as neutral as I could.
Etheridge stared at me, looking slightly perplexed as though the question was a tough one that he hadn’t expected. ‘He was my patron,’ he said at last. ‘He . . . yeah . . . was going to start a school, if you . . . For exorcists. A school. To teach his own skills to a younger generation. It never really got off the ground, but there were . . . he . . . three or four of us . . .’ He tailed off, looking to Jenna-Jane like an actor asking for a prompt. She said nothing.
I resorted to the dumb nod again. I’d heard of that school before, and I knew damn well why it had never happened. In the last years of his life Steiner had had a million schemes. Some of them had come to pass - like the Oriflamme, the exorcists-only club on Castlebar Hill, and the exorcists’ hostel that had become known as the Thames Collective (built as a houseboat, because ghosts can’t cross running water) - but most had fallen by the wayside, forgotten, as Steiner moved on to the next big thing.
What was the matter with Etheridge? Finding no comfort or support from Jenna-Jane, he ducked his head again, slight tremors shaking his shoulders. He looked like a naughty schoolboy dragged up in front of the class to explain his misdemeanours and promise never to do it again. No, more than that: he looked damaged. A sort of faint, fuzzy-edged misery came off him in waves.