Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk (25 page)

“That!” He pointed agitatedly at her leg. The tattoo was small, no larger than a two-pence piece. From a distance you could have mistaken it for a mole or some other sort of blemish. “That thing. Christ in heaven, what are you doing with that on you?”

Petra peered at him, puzzled by his reaction. “It’s not what you think.”

“Isn’t it? Because what I think...” Guy was aware that he had begun to hyperventilate. He fought to steady his breathing. “What I think is that you’ve got a fucking inverted pentagram on your skin.”

All at once he was back in the ruined chapel. He was being anointed with goat’s blood. He was being made the butt of Alastor Wylie’s extravagant practical joke. The terror, the humiliation, the indignity, the seething rage – all the emotions that the incident had aroused, and which he had fought to put behind him, came flooding back. He could feel the priest’s finger inscribing the warm wet pattern on his chest, feel it as thought it was happening right now, again. He was sweating all over. He could barely bring himself to look at the pentagram on Petra’s thigh – barely bring himself to look at
her
.

Petra stubbed out her cigarette. “Calm down,” she said. “Come here.”

He couldn’t move.

“Come here,” she insisted.

Reluctantly he walked over.

“Sit. Relax.”

He perched on the edge of the bed, still trembling. “How could I have missed it?” he murmured. “You’re – you’re one of his minions. Must be. You’ve finally come for me.”

“One, I’m nobody’s minion,” Petra corrected him flatly. “And two, I haven’t ‘come for you,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean. Stop babbling and look at me, Guy. Look me in the eye.”

He did.

“What’s scared you?” She tapped the tattoo. “What does this represent for you?”

“Bad things. Very bad things.”

“You’ve some kind of history with it?”

“Yeah. Stuff that’s happened throughout my life.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“No.”

“You can, you know.”

“No. You tell me.”

“Tell you what? Why I have the tattoo?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” she said. “If it’ll help.”

“But I warn you. I’m this close to kicking you out.”

She was unimpressed by the threat. “I’d like to see you try. I’ve never left anywhere against my will.” She lit a fresh cigarette from the tip of the one still in her mouth. “So, you reckon I’m a Devil worshipper? Is that what the pentagram says to you?”

He nodded.

“Well, you’re wrong,” Petra said. “Robes, virgin sacrifices, all that Dennis Wheatley guff – that’s Satanism, right? But only if you believe that Satan is an actual being. You know, the Fallen Angel, God’s shadow, ruler of Hell, the personification of evil, all that malarkey. That kind of Satanism is called theistic, and it is, not to put too fine a point on it, a load of old bollocks. Satan the ultimate bad guy is a fabrication of the Church. He’s a propaganda tool, a bogeyman used to frighten people into having faith and going to Sunday services and donating to the collection and being good little robots.”

“He’s not,” said Guy. “I’ve...”

“You’ve...?” she prompted. “You’ve met him? Is that it? Have you? Really?”

He was going to say
yes
, but settled for, “I may have.”

Petra eyed him speculatively. “Maybe you think you have. Maybe all you did was come face to face with yourself.”

“Eh?”

“The other kind of Satanism, you see, is atheistic Satanism. It says there’s no such thing as Satan, no supernatural deity with that name. There are no gods at all. There’s just us. To follow God or any other supposedly divine entity is to deny life. It’s surrendering your humanity, and everything that makes you interesting and useful as an individual. It’s abdicating responsibility for your actions and offloading it onto someone else.”

“It’s bad, then.”

“It’s not constructive, put it that way. Atheistic Satanism says bugger to all that. Be yourself. Be here on Earth. Enjoy yourself. Don’t cower in fear of divine judgement, either here or in some mythical afterlife which doesn’t exist. Listen to your heart, indulge your desires, have fun,
live
. It’s a philosophy, not a religion, and you can boil its message down to a single sentence.”

“Which is?”

“‘Do unto others as they do unto you.’ If someone loves you, love them back. If someone despises you, ignore them unless they’re actively trying to harm you, in which case neutralise them.”

“Well, it’s certainly shorter and pithier than the Ten Commandments,” said Guy.

“Oh, there are other rules,” said Petra. “I’m just giving you the
Readers’ Digest
version. Hopefully this is helping you calm down so you can stop having this big girly hissy fit.”

“I don’t know.”

“I just don’t want you getting the impression that I’m some boggle-eyed lunatic who bites the heads off bats and has lots of strange leather-bound books at home. I’m not. I’m completely sane, and I dare say better adjusted than ninety-nine per cent of Christians. I mean, holy wars. What’s that all about? Christians seem to spend half their time killing other Christians, or failing that people from different religions, all in the name of a supposedly loving God. It’s like Pascal said: ‘Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.’ Look at the Irish situation – Catholics versus Protestants. It’s all so pointless, and it could end tomorrow if everyone stopped blowing each other up because they think God wants them to and started being true to their own natures instead.”

“That’s a pretty simplistic view of the problem. There’s politics, history, territorialism...”

“But when you get down to it,” she said, overriding him, “almost every conflict is a clash of ideologies. And if you dispense with all forms of orthodoxy – politics, nationalism, and especially religion – then what you’re left with is just people, human beings, and human beings by and large want to coexist in peace. They don’t want endless death and mayhem. It’s common sense.”

“And that’s what your pentagram represents?” Guy said. “All of what you’ve just said?”

“And more, but in essence, yes. It’s a reminder, a secret token of commitment. Believe me?”

Guy found it hard to look at the tattoo. This was not helped by the fact that it was in such distractingly close proximity to Petra’s pussy. He made a conscious effort to focus on the pentagram and not the erotic, enticing pink-lipped slit just a few inches away.

The tattoo was tiny and innocent, just lines etched in ink. Merely a symbol.

“Can I touch it?” he asked.

Amused, Petra popped the stub of her second cigarette in the empty Skol can she was using as an ashtray. “Go on, then. If it’ll make you feel better.”

Guy placed a forefinger on her skin. Ludicrously, he anticipated some kind of reaction within himself, revulsion, nausea, something like that, or perhaps a sudden burning sensation in his fingertip, as though the tattoo was magically empowered and liable to scorch those who were intimidated by it. But there was nothing, just the soft warmth of a woman’s inner thigh.

“You know what would make
me
feel better?” Petra said.

“No.”

“If you slide your finger up a bit. Go on. And a bit further.”

“Like that?” said Guy, obliging.

“Yes,” she purred. “Just like that. A bit further still. Oh, yes.”

L
ITTLE BY LITTLE
over the next few weeks, Petra explained her form of Satanism to Guy. She never lectured or hectored. She simply answered when he asked, laying out the fundamentals and leaving him to digest them.

She told him she had started out as a student of the writings of Anton LaVey, the American occultist who ran his own Church of Satan in California and had published two key books,
The Satanic Bible
and
The Satanic Rituals
, neither of which Guy had heard of. Somehow the eccentric and inconsistent Mr Ingram had not seen fit to stock them at Shamballa (...And Other Dreams). She told Guy about LaVey’s notion that Satan was the “Black Flame” that burned inside every person, the embodiment of will, a source of great inner power if you knew how to tap it. She talked about the Nine Satanic Statements, a kind of secular Apostles’ Creed, and the Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth, a repudiation of the Ten Commandments. There was also a list of Nine Satanic Sins, among them Stupidity, Pretentiousness, Self-Deceit, Herd Conformity, Lack of Aesthetics – things to be avoided if you wished to lead a productive, fulfilling life.

Petra had eventually drifted away from LaVey’s ideas. There was an undercurrent of selfishness there, a peculiarly American brand of
fuck you
which didn’t sit well with her. Plus, given that the whole point of LaVeyan Satanism was to foster self-reliance and individuality, then it was necessary, even obligatory, to turn your back on your teacher and find your own way. LaVey had provided her with a template to work from, at least. The rest was down to her.

She was a rational, pragmatic person, so LaVey’s penchant for magical rites also held little appeal. She acknowledged that they served a function as psychodramas, enabling one to work through frustrations and mental blocks and emerge the other side with a clearer head and a healthier outlook. She felt, however, that enlightenment could come simply from approaching a problem carefully and with an open mind, confident in your own ability to resolve it.

“The universe is amoral,” she said. “It doesn’t care how we behave or what we do. The only truths are inner truths. Answers don’t come from outside, from other people or some nebulous supreme being. They come from within.”

Guy, for his part, began revealing his past to her, particularly his repeated encounters with what he thought must be the Devil. In each instance Petra was able to offer a plausible rationale, showing him that he hadn’t in fact bumped into Beelzebub but had instead misinterpreted the experience and seen demonic influence where there was none. Molly Rosenkrantz, for example, had obviously been unhinged, quite conceivably schizophrenic, or at the very least so obsessive and insecure that she had faked being possessed by an evil spirit in order to tighten her hold over Guy. When that had had the opposite outcome, scaring him off, she had got desperate and resorted to the razor blade. And as for his vision of Alastor Wylie on the beach in Thailand, what drug was it he had taken? LSD? Ahem! That was a great big clue right there. Wylie had been busy elbowing his way into Guy’s life. Guy had had no wish for him to usurp the role of his late father. So his subconscious mind, liberated by the acid, had recast Wylie as the Devil. His id had been communicating its feelings to his ego in the way it knew best: through symbolism. There was nothing more to it than that.

“But Clive Milward?” Guy said. “He died in a fire. It was as if...”

“As if Satan was punishing him?”

“Well, yes.”

Petra snorted. “No, that was just what it was, a teenager disposing of a fag butt carelessly and setting the place alight by accident. I’ll tell you what’s instructive about that whole incident at school. You got those three boys expelled. You, Guy Lucas, were the agent of their downfall. Nobody else had anything to do with it, and that includes Satan. You triumphed. You did exactly what had to be done. They got their just deserts. That was the Satan here” – she jabbed Guy’s chest – “the Black Flame inside you, doing its job. Your stepdad seems to know a thing or two about that.”

“Don’t call him that. Stepdad. Ugh.”

“Your mother’s husband, then. Wylie. That whole sham ritual he put together – he got you back, good and proper. That’s how it works. Someone fucks with you, you fuck with them in return, at an appropriate level, to ensure they never do it again. No wonder he’s such a big cheese in the government. From what you’ve said about him, Wylie’s got Satanism down pat, even if he’d never call it that himself. He’s manipulative and shrewd, and I’m sure he never has a moment of self-doubt. He gets what he goes for. He makes the most of his life. He succeeds.”

“You sound like you admire him.”

“Subjectively, because of what he did to you, I think he’s a big fat turd,” Petra said. “But objectively, I have to say there’s a lot to like about the way he operates. If only he had more of a conscience, Alastor Wylie is the sort of man who could change the world for the better.

A
UTUMN GREYED INTO
winter, and Guy fell ever more deeply under Petra’s spell. She seemed to be the person he had been waiting for all his adult life, the one who came along and made everything clearer, the one who spoke sense and put the world into perspective. He began to be unable to imagine himself without her. His dead-end job in a dead-end town became immaterial. Life was infinitely rich with Petra around.

As Christmas approached, Guy grew convinced that he had found his soulmate. He started to do something he had long since given up doing: making plans for the future. In all of them, Petra featured centrally.

Then, one gusty Saturday afternoon, the Mods rolled into town.

They came in a swarm of buzzing Vespas and Lambrettas, each scooter adorned with a plethora of rearview mirrors like elaborate chrome antlers. There had been fights all along the south coast that year, in places like Brighton and Hastings, gangs of Mods and Rockers coming down from London to clash on the beaches, a revival of a noble tradition going back to the ’sixties and the antagonism between the original Young Moderns and their mortal enemies the Teddy Boys. This particular group were out for a scuffle, but had apparently got lost on their way to the venue. Either that or they were simply enjoying a weekend jaunt to the seaside, although it seemed unlikely. The way they meandered up and down the seafront road on their scooters in close formation, now and then one of them veering across the white lines into the opposite lane, carried unmistakable menace. They were troublemakers, no doubt about it. Whatever they had in mind would be fun for them, but not for anyone else.

Soon enough they got bored of parading around. Hunger drove them to seek food. Mr Fernandinho’s chippie was the place they chose to find sustenance.