Vicious Circle (46 page)

“They were all in costume. Dressed in black, except for Fanke who was all in red and had some kind of a crown on his head. Made him a perfect target, only—only I saw her lying there, in the circle, and I lost it. I just screamed and started shooting. Walked right out into the middle of them—
blam, blam, blam.
If one of them had had sense enough to whack me on the back of the neck with a chalice, or one of their other bits of fucking paraphernalia, that would have been the end of it. But they closed up around Fanke like I was about to take a penalty and he was the goal. Protecting him: making sure I didn’t muss his hair with a .45
ACP
. And then another bunch came at me from the side: they must have been guarding the front door, or something. So I turned and sprayed them instead.

“I didn’t expect to be walking out of there, Castor. And Abbie was dead, so I didn’t care what happened so long as I did some serious damage. But right then something else happened, and it was as big a surprise for them as it was for me.

“Something started to appear inside the circle. It—didn’t have any shape, at first. It was like a shadow with nothing there to cast it. Like—I dunno, like a shadow in winter, when the sun’s low in the sky, because it was enormous and stretched out and sort of distorted. Then it moved and you could see that it had hands—arms. And it started to look darker. More solid.

“The satanists all went crashing down on their knees like someone had sliced through their hamstrings. Hunkered right down with their arms thrown out, shouting gibberish in Latin or Greek or it might have been the
Mickey Mouse Club
theme tune because I honest-to-God wasn’t listening.

“I froze. I knew what it was that they were trying to do, but seeing it was something else. It was a demon: Asmodeus, one of the soldiers of hell. One of their fucking generals, in fact. He wasn’t really there—not solid, I mean. I could actually see the angle of the wall right through him. And the air currents were moving through him, too, pulling him out of shape. But he was bending down over Abbie with this look on his face like Christmas had come early.

“I had a lightbulb moment, Castor. The words from Fanke’s Web site blinked on and off in front of me like I was back in school, spelling out from flashcards. ‘
Spiritually and physically prepared
.’ He needed her soul, as well as her body. He was going to—to eat her, to consume her, right there in front of me. I had to stop it. I had to stop it.

“What I did next—I just did it because it felt right. The demon was more like smoke than anything else: you can’t shoot smoke. And in any case, you’re meant to aim at the base of the fire. So I switched to automatic and I shot the pentagram. I shot their fucking magic circle.

“The Tavor’s a bastard on auto. It bucked in my hands and I had to lean down hard on it to keep from being thrown over backwards: but I was already so close to the thing, it was like using a pointer on a whiteboard. I swung the gun round in as small an arc as I could manage, given the angle, and a couple of arms of the pentagram got chewed to pieces. I hit a couple more of their guys, too: leg shots, because I was aiming down—and before you ask, no, I don’t give a fuck.

“Because it worked. All hell broke loose—no joke intended. The demon opened its mouth and it gave out with a sound I hope I never fucking hear again. Not a sound, exactly: I mean, it didn’t scream. It wasn’t even loud. But you could feel the pressure on your eardrums, on your goddamn skin, like when a plane hits turbulence and drops a few hundred feet when you’re not expecting it. It hurt. It hurt like things were tearing inside you.

“But I was on my feet and the satanists were on their knees. And I knew what I had to do. I ran straight forward—had to jump over one guy who was lying flat on the ground right in my way, holding on to what was left of his kneecap—got to the circle and Abbie was still lying there, blood all over her chest, her eyes wide open. The demon, or the demon’s shadow or whatever you want to call it, was writhing around now like a fire hose that someone’s let go of, whipping this way and then another way and keeping up that silent screaming all the time.

“I didn’t have my deck, and I wouldn’t have had time to deal out a hand of cards in any case. All I could do was call her, and hope she came. I took hold of her locket, shouted out her name as loud as I could, shouted ‘Come with me!’ or something like that, and pulled. I mean, I didn’t just yell: I
called
her, the way you do when you’re doing it on a job. I was calling her into the locket—at least, into the lock of her hair that was inside the locket. I was making that be the anchor her ghost attached itself to.”

He looked at me to make sure I understood. I nodded tersely, as though it were what I’d have done under the circumstances. The truth was, I was having a hard time believing it was even possible. Summoning a ghost into a physical object? Channeling it, as though spirit was water and you could choose which way gravity was going to run? I suppose the hair was a part of Abbie, something she already had a link to, but still . . . In other circumstances, I’d have been asking him for details and taking notes. As it was I let him go on talking, oblivious of my slightly grudging wonder.

“Without the cards, I didn’t have any idea if it would work—and the frigging chain was a fair bit thicker than I thought it was: I had to wrap it around my wrist and give it a good hard yank. That did it; it snapped and I ran for the door with the locket in my fist—still holding the gun in my other hand even though it was empty now.

“Just as well I kept it, too, because one of those guys with a bit more presence of mind than his mates tried to come in from the side and shut me down. He got the stock of the Tavor in his face and I kept on going.

“My car was a long way up the street. Theirs were right outside and I didn’t have time to spike them. I just ran for it, got to the car, got inside and took off like a cat with pepper up its arse.

“I didn’t even know if they were chasing me, at first. Then I saw some headlights behind me, and they didn’t move out of my mirror even when I took some reckless, stupid turns. So then I knew they were onto me and I had to shake them.

“The trouble was, the car kept losing power. I was flooring the accelerator and I was actually slowing down. It was as if we were pulling a trailer full of bricks. Or a dead whale, or something. I thought the engine was going to die and leave us stranded on the street for those bastards to pick off.

“I did the only thing I could think of. I turned my lights off and took every turn that came up, making it as hard as I could for them to keep me in sight.

“I was desperate, and I was driving like an idiot. I took a right at the bottom of Scrubs Lane, just by the Scrubs, you know? And it was too tight. I scraped my side against a whole row of parked cars, ripped my bumper clean off, and nearly killed some old guy who was crossing the road. The noise was incredible, and I thought we’re cooked now, good and proper.

“But for some reason the engine cleared after that. I got her up to sixty and we belted off west. Got to here, which was where I was aiming for all along. No better place in London to hide a ghost, Castor. As you should know by now.”

I didn’t answer him. I was putting his story together with what I already knew.

Saturday evening. Bottom of Scrubs Lane. Fifty yards from the doors of St. Michael’s, just as evensong was kicking into gear. It sounded like madness, but then this whole thing was shot through with insanity from start to finish. Peace had interrupted a summoning ritual for a demon. For Asmodeus. The devil-worshippers had intended to consume Abbie body and soul, but they hadn’t reckoned on her dad stepping in with an assault rifle to throw into the works by way of a wrench. Body and soul: but they’d only gotten one out of two.

And Asmodeus?

Asmodeus had ended up trapped halfway between there and here. One foot in Rafi’s soul, one foot in Abbie’s. That was the weight that Peace had been dragging behind him as he fled for home. He didn’t just have one spirit inside that piece of jewelry, he had two—one minnow and one big bastard of a killer whale. Until he turned the corner and hit the long straight of Du Cane Road. Then—what? I thought I could guess.

If some part of Asmodeus was with them as they fled—was attached to Abbie, or flying behind her through the London night like an invisible kite with no ribbons and no string—then when they shaved that corner the demon would have turned, too. Turned a little more slowly, maybe: and a little more widely. That would have taken him right across the southwestern corner of St. Michael’s Church.

Peace dragged Asmodeus over hallowed ground at the exact moment that a religious service was taking place.
I will sing a new song unto the lord my God.
For a demon, it must have been like being hauled through a barbed wire entanglement. No wonder Rafi screamed. No wonder he lashed out and hurt people: he was going through what you could fairly call hell on earth.

And finally Asmodeus got wedged solid—trapped in the stones of the church and in the nets of prayer that were rising up all around him. His link to Abbie was severed, and Peace drove on through the night, picking up speed, leaving an invisible, formless monster from hell embedded in the fabric of St. Michael’s like a fossilized mosquito in a lump of amber.

Except that Asmodeus was still far from defunct. His insidious will fell down on the congregation of St. Michael’s like black rain, and their souls took the taint.

More innocents in the crossfire. Just like Abbie. Just like Rafi.

I pulled my mind back to the present, tried to recall what Peace had just said.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why did you come here, particularly? What makes this place so special?”

“The ramparts,” said Peace, sounding just a little smug even through his pain. “Earth and air you saw, right? Outside? But it’s the water that’s really clever. That brickwork is double-skin, and there’s a hollow space in between the two layers that’s lined with lead. It’s meant to be filled with water from the mains supply, with a pump to keep it circulating, but there are all sorts of holes in it now so it kept draining away again. Whenever I felt you fishing for Abbie, I turned the pumps on and put up a wall of running water between you and her. And one time I gave you a bit of salt on your tail, too, just by the way.”

“I remember,” I said, a touch grimly.

Peace managed a weak laugh. “ ‘Set a thief to catch a thief,’ yeah? Only it doesn’t work unless you get hold of a better thief than the one you’re looking for.”

“And yet,” I reminded him, “here I am.”

“Only because someone ratted me out. You didn’t find me by looking.”

I let that pass. If Peace wanted to have a pissing contest, he could play both sides. In any case, I thought I’d heard a car door slam somewhere out on the road—far enough away that it was on the limit of hearing. Peace didn’t seem to have noticed it, though, so maybe I was mistaken.

“I’m going to wake Abbie up,” he said. “Unless there’s anything else you want to ask me about?”

“No,” I said. “I’m good. My bedtime story needs are met.”

I turned my back on him, walked to the door, and looked out. Nothing moved in the baleful moonlight. Behind me, there were only the small sounds of Peace dealing out a hand of cards on the bare concrete floor. When I glanced his way again Abbie was back, standing at his side as if she’d never left. I had to admit, grudgingly, that he was as good as he thought he was. They were talking in low murmurs, and I felt a definite reluctance to disturb their privacy.

I stepped out into the dark instead. If I smoked, I’d have lit a cigarette. If I’d had any booze left, I’d have had a drink. As it was there was nothing I could do but wait. I must have been wrong about the car door, because nothing was stirring.

Dr. Feelgood ought to be here by now. Edgy and irritable, I fished out the phone again to call Pen and ask her to hurry him along. This time I noticed what I hadn’t before: there were four missed call alerts, all from the same number: Nicky Heath’s.

The first and second times, he hadn’t left a message. The third time he had. I played it back.

“There’s something wrong here, Castor.” Nicky’s voice, stiff with tension; a prolonged scraping sound in the background as he moved something heavy across the floor. “There’s a whole bunch of people outside. They turned up in four cars, and now they’re standing around like they’re waiting for someone. I do not fucking like this. If it’s anything to do with the shit you’re involved with, why don’t you come over here and deal with it your fucking self, okay? Call me. Fucking call me, okay? Like, now.”

My throat suddenly dry, I flicked to the last message.

“This is a siege here, Castor!” Nicky’s voice was a yell now, which meant he would have had to work hard to inflate his nonfunctional lungs. “They shot the cameras out. The fucking cameras! I’m blind, you understand me? They could be right outside my door, and I wouldn’t—oh shit!”

There was an abrupt
click,
and then the high-pitched, single tone that means “message ends.” I dialed Nicky’s number with shaking hands. Nothing, for ten or twenty seconds: just silence. With a muttered curse I terminated the call and started to dial again, but before I even finished the area code I heard the sound of footsteps walking down the short path from the road.

I turned in that direction. A figure came into view a second later, stepping out of the shadows and through the narrow opening between the raised earth beds onto the driveway.

“Over here, Dr. Forster,” I called, and the figure turned, came forward into the light.

When I got a look at his face, I experienced a momentary lurch of dissociation: then my heart jumped in my chest like a test pilot in crash webbing. I’d never met Dylan Forster, but I knew that face well enough. When I’d first met the guy, only three days before in my office, he’d introduced himself as Stephen Torrington. And now, in a sudden flash of elementary logic, it occurred to me that both of those names were as good as each other because his real name had to be something different again. I also knew now why he’d had to send someone else to look after me when I collapsed at Pen’s house; at that point, he couldn’t afford for me to see his face.