Billington deflates like a popped balloon, as if overcome with a self-conscious realization of what he must look like.
'Oh, it's not voices in my head, if that's what you're worrying about,' he says disparagingly. His lips quirk. 'I'm not mad, you know, although it helps in this line of work.' A guard is walking along the catwalk outside, followed by a flash of pink. 'He doesn't really approve of madness among his minions. Says it makes their souls taste funny. No, we talk on the telephone. Conference calls every Friday morning at 9:00 a.m. EST.' He gestures at a console across the room, where an old bakelite handset squats atop an old graypainted circuit box that I recognize as an enclosure for Billington's Gravedust communicator. 'It's so much easier to just dial 'D' for Dagon, so to speak, than to bother with the eerie voices and walls softening under your fingertips. And these days we've sorted out a telepresence solution: he's taken up residence in a host body so he can keep an eye on things in person, while we restore his primary core to full functionality.
Of course it's energetically expensive for him to occupy another body, so we have to keep the sacrifice schedule in mind as a critical path element in the restoration project, but there's no shortage of centh-decile underperformers on the sales force ... ah, yes.' He glances at his watch. 'Top of the hour, right on time.' The guard and the woman in the pink suit arrive just as Billington gestures at the window. Outside, on the moon pool floor, a structure like an airport baggage-conveyor terminates in a platform just underneath the chthonian's conical head. I squint: there are lines and curves on that pointed end, almost like the helical coils of a drill, or a squid's tightly coiled tentacles. Down on the conveyor, something wriggly is working its way towards the platform. Or rather, something on the conveyor is being fed forwards remorselessly, wriggling and twitching like a worm on a hook.
**What's that — ?** Ramona is in my head, using my eyes.
**Not what — who.** I peer closer, then blink. The hairworm on the conveyor is still alive, but black fire crawls along the edges of the platform at the far end. It twists and rolls, and it's funny how a change of angle changes your entire perspective on things because suddenly I see his face, eyes bugging out with fear, and what I'm looking at snaps into focus. He's been trussed up in gaffer tape and his mouth taped shut to stop him screaming but I recognize McMurray, and I recognize a human sacrifice when I see him.
He's heading towards that platform, and now I realize — 'You've got to stop it!' I shout at Billington. 'Why are you doing this? It's insane!'
'On the contrary.' Billington turns away from me and holds his hands behind his back. 'I don't like doing this, but it's necessary if we're to meet our third-quarter target for energizing the revivification matrix,' he says tightly. 'By the way, you ought to relax: you're in the circuit, too.'
I jackknife against the straps and nearly choke myself.
'What — '
'Oh shit,' swears Ramona, despair and apprehension sweeping over her.
'Considering you appear to have prevented Johanna from returning, it's the least you can do for me,' Billington explains. 'I need a soul devourer. Otherwise it's just more dead meat, which doesn't help anyone. And while you're so inconveniently entangled I might as well plug both of you into the summoning grid to reduce the side-band leakage.'
The platform unfolds shutterlike flaps as McMurray nears it. I can distantly hear his voice screaming in Ramona's head.
**Get me out of this! That's an order!** Billington needs an infovore, I realize. He's feeding the chthonian by destroying souls in its presence. My knees feel like jelly: I've seen this sort of thing before. Which means — Ramona convulses against the straps and begins to choke.
I gag my guts rolling, because I can feel the backwash from McMurray's ill-considered words echoing off the inside of her skull like thunder and lightning. Ramona can't not obey, but she's immobile, unable to respond to her master's voice, and she's capable of choking herself to death and taking me with her.
**Get me out.'** McMurray howls as the conveyor deposits him on the killing platform under the cylinder. Then the platform begins to sink and the shutters close in on top of it and I realize what I'm looking at: a hydraulic iron-maiden, a car crusher built for humans.
Ramona's daemon is rising. I can feel a monstrous pressure in my balls. I can't see properly and I'm choking, I can't move — Ramona can't move — and a hideous heat spreads through my crotch. Her crotch. Proximity to death excites it, whether hers or her victim's. And this is about as close as it gets: the shutters are steel slabs, driven by hydraulic rams.
There's a whine of motors, deepening and slowing, and a muffled noise I can't identify. I can't breathe, or Ramona can't breathe, and her daemon senses the flow of life from the killing box down below. As the flow spurts into us the daemon feeds greedily, and Ramona convulses and falls unconscious.
With the last of my energy I inhale in a ragged breath, and scream.
'Oh dear,' says Billington, turning round. 'What seems to be the problem'
I draw another breath.
'You really shouldn't have done that,' says the woman in the pink suit, standing in the doorway.
'Hurt her — ' I gasp. Then I start coughing. I can't sense Ramona's daemon, but Ramona herself is deeply unconscious.
'She needs water. Lots of seawater.' I'm breathing for two of us but I can't quite get enough air, because what Ramona needs now is full-body immersion. I can feel it, the changes in her cells, her organs slowly contracting and rearranging inside her frame, the fever of mutation that will only end in her death or complete metamorphosis — 'What took you so long, dear?' asks Billington, looking at the doorway.
'I was putting my face on,' says the woman in pink. I'm still gasping as a pair of black berets close in on Ramona's chair with buckets in hand, but something about the woman in pink trips my attention. Hang on, that's not Eileen — 'Excellent.' Billington glances at the black berets bending over Ramona and frowns. 'We seem to have a little problem, this one isn't as robust as the last.'
I peer at the woman in pink. In one hand, she holds a shiny metal briefcase; the other arm is stretched rigidly down, close to her body, as if she has a ruler up her sleeve. I try to focus on the sparkling around her: class three glamour, at least, I realize. She's taller and younger than Eileen, and if I squint — I look past her at her reflection in the glass — red hair — 'What do you expect?' asks the woman everyone but me seems to think is Eileen Billington. 'She's not a movie hero, is she? And neither is he, for that matter.'
'Not now that I've terminated the reel,' Billington says briskly. 'You, you, and you, go chuck the piranhas overboard, fill the fish tank with seawater, and get it over here — '
'Really?' asks the woman. 'Are you sure it's all over'
Billington glances at her. 'Pretty much, apart from a few little details — mass human sacrifices, invocations of chthonic demigods, Richter-ten earthquakes, harrowing of the Deep Ones, rains of meteors, and the creation of a thousand-year world empire, that sort of thing. Trivial, really. Yes, it's all nailed down, dear. Why do you ask'
'I was curious: Does it mean we're safe from any risk that the Hero-designate playing the archetypical role is going to leap out of the shadows, armed to the teeth with specialized lethal hardware, and wreck all our plans'
Billington begins to turn. 'Yes, of course. Why are you worrying about — '
To my necromancy-stunned eyes it all seems to happen in very slow motion. Her clenched fist unclenches: a bone-colored bow drops down her sleeve like a concealed cosh until she grips it by one end and brings her hand up to unlatch the briefcase. Both sides of the case eject, leaving her clutching a handle and a sling attached to a pale violin that she raises to her chin in a smooth motion that speaks of long practice. The halves of the case contain compact amplified speakers, and there's a stark black-on-yellow sticker on the underside of the violin: THIS MACHINE KILLS DEMONS. I start to shout a warning as Ramona begins to stir, her gills flexing limply against the base of her throat and her mouth pouting, and Billington begins to inscribe a sigil in the air in front of his face — 'This is a song of unbinding,' says Mo, and the bow slides across the faintly pulsing things-that-aren't-strings, glowing like gashes in my retinas and trailing a ghostly haze when she moves. The first note sounds, wavering eerily on the air and building like the first breezy harbinger of a hurricane. 'It unlocks — everything.'
Across the room, a particularly alert black beret shouts a warning and raises his MP-5. The second note wavers and screams from the body of the instrument, resonating painfully with my back teeth. Every hair on my body is trying to stand on end simultaneously. These aren't sounds the human ear is supposed to be able to hear the psychoacoustic model is all wrong: I feel like I'm suddenly listening to bat song, the noises that drive dogs wild, the raw and bloody notes of silence. The brief hammering of gunfire drives nails into my eardrums then stops in a
