91
N ightingale took his phone out of his pocket and rang Jenny.
‘It’s on the news,’ she said before he could speak. ‘They had her picture and said that she could be dangerous.’
‘I know. Chalmers picked me up this afternoon. I’m at the house.’
‘What if they find her?’
‘They won’t. That was the deal she did. Escape and freedom. They searched my flat and Gosling Manor and they’ll have her red-flagged at the airports and ports but she’s already fled the coop.’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘I don’t want to know,’ said Nightingale.
‘Now what?’
‘Now’s the hard part,’ he said.
‘Do you want my help?’
‘You can’t help, kid. I have to do it myself. Tonight, at midnight.’
‘Be careful, Jack.’
‘Always,’ he said, and ended the call.
He walked downstairs to the hall, switching on the lights as he went. He pulled open the panel that led to the basement. He flicked on those lights too, then went slowly down the wooden stairs.
He had taken careful notes of what Aleister Crowley had written in his diary about summoning Lucifuge Rofocale. The pentagram was identical to the ones he had used when calling up Proserpine and Frimost, but the mixture of herbs was different, the candles had to be black and not white, and the incantation was longer and more complex. But the crucial part was a parchment that had to be prepared and burned at one of the two north-facing candles at the stroke of midnight.
The parchment had to be prepared from a virgin goat, and luckily Mrs Steadman at the Wicca Woman shop had been able to supply him with some. On the parchment there had to be a drawing that looked like a pentagram but with various rune-like scrawls in the centre and below it. Nightingale had sketched it from the diary and Crowley had stressed that it had to be copied perfectly onto the parchment on the day that it was required, ideally within an hour of the ceremony. The drawing could be done in the blood of a sea turtle, or the blood of the person summoning the devil. Mrs Steadman had laughed when he’d asked her if she had any sea-turtle blood and told him that there wasn’t much call for it.
Nightingale sat down at the book-strewn desk, opened one of the drawers and took out a new razor blade and a swan’s feather. He used the razor blade to clip off the end of the feather to make a workable nib, then slowly drew the blade across the tip of his left index finger. He winced as the blood flowed.
92
K err looked at his watch. It was just before midnight. There were lights on in the downstairs hallway and upstairs at the front of the house and he had waited, hoping that they would go out, but eventually he had walked around to the rear of the building and seen candlelight flickering in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and he figured that was where Nightingale was. He reached for the handle of the front door, turned it and smiled when he realised that it wasn’t locked. He opened the door and slipped inside, his heart racing. The house was bigger than anything he’d ever torched in the past, and he knew that to be sure of killing Nightingale he’d have to go upstairs.
He eased the door shut behind him. In his left hand was the red petrol can. He’d filled it almost to the top and he heard the liquid slosh around as he headed for the stairs.
93
N ightingale took a piece of paper from his pocket. On it were instructions that he’d copied from Aleister Crowley’s diary. He looked around the pentagram to check that everything was in place, then he ignited the mixture of herbs that he’d placed in a brass crucible. They caught fire easily and crackled and hissed as they burned.
Nightingale began to read from the paper. ‘ Osurmy delmausan atalsloym charusihoa,’ he said, trying not to stumble over the unfamiliar words. He spoke for a full minute, taking care over every syllable. When he’d finished, he took a deep breath. ‘Come, Lucifuge Rofocale,’ he said. He held the parchment with its bloody drawing over one of the north-facing candles and watched as it burned. ‘Come, Lucifuge Rofocale,’ he repeated. ‘I summon you.’
He narrowed his eyes, not sure what to expect. In the diary Crowley hadn’t been able to describe what Lucifuge Rofocale looked like, saying that he chose one of many forms depending on the circumstances. The burning parchment scorched his fingers but he barely felt the pain.
The thick smoke rippled and then began to spin in a vortex at right angles to the floor, faster and faster in a motion that was almost hypnotic, and Nightingale found himself leaning towards it. He took an involuntarily step forward and then another, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand still.
There was a deep booming laugh that echoed around the room and then the vortex folded inside out and a short, squat figure appeared, less than four feet tall. At first Nightingale thought it was a child, but as it moved through the smoke he saw that it was a dwarf, with a large head topped with curly black hair, a thick body and short bow legs. The dwarf thrust his chin square out as he stared up at Nightingale with blood-red eyes. He was wearing a crimson jacket with gold buttons up the front, black jodhpurs and shiny black boots that made Nightingale think of a toy soldier.
‘You are Lucifuge Rofocale?’ asked Nightingale. ‘I command that you speak the truth.’ In his diary, Crowley had said that the devil sometimes sent emissaries in his place but an emissary could not lie about his identity.
There was a blast of heat, so hot that Nightingale gasped. A wall of flame flickered along the edge of the pentagram, red at the bottom, yellow at the top, then the flames leaped higher, sucking the air from the room. Nightingale put his hands over his face and he could feel the heat singeing the hairs on his skin. The flames grew higher until they were as tall as he was, then they began to swirl until they formed an impenetrable mass of fire. Nightingale whirled around but, whichever way he faced, the heat was unbearable.
‘I summoned you to talk!’ he screamed, and in an instant the flames vanished.
The dwarf was glaring at him. ‘You dare to summon me?’ he hissed. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘You are Lucifuge Rofocale and I command that you speak the truth.’
‘You command?’ roared the dwarf.
The ground shook and the walls fell away and then the floor vanished and Nightingale was standing on the pentagram in the middle of darkness. There was nothing above him or below him and the air was ice-cold. There was no sign of the dwarf.
‘You are Lucifuge Rofocale and I command that you speak the truth!’ shouted Nightingale. His voice echoed into the distance. Then suddenly the pentagram began to plummet down in free-fall, the air rushing past his face so quickly that he couldn’t pull it into his aching lungs. Nightingale closed his eyes. ‘This isn’t happening,’ he said. ‘I’m in Gosling Manor, inside the pentagram. None of this is real.’
He opened his eyes again and he was back in the bedroom. The flames had gone. He looked at the back of his hands; the hairs there were singed and the skin blackened.
The dwarf’s upper lip curled back. ‘Happy now? Or do you want more?’
There was a flash of light so blinding that it hurt, and Nightingale shaded his eyes with his hands. The dwarf had gone and in its place was a creature so large that its head was against the ceiling and its leathery wings scraped the walls on either side of the pentagram. It had a pointed snout, jagged teeth and reptilian eyes, and when it roared the stench was so overpowering that Nightingale almost passed out.
‘Do you want more?’ the creature screamed and Nightingale staggered back.
‘I want only what is my right: to summon you and for you to speak the truth.’
