Vicious Circle

my point of view he was bookended by comely hostages.

Then, with a consummate sense of theater, he held out his clenched fist to me as if in salute, before opening it wide to show Peace?s locket?on a new chain?dangling from his index finger. ?Veni, puella,? he murmured. Abbie?s ghost materialized around his hand, very abruptly, looking startled and terrified. She cast her eyes from side to side, from face to face, taking in the massed ranks of the satanists surrounding her, and me facing her across the magic circle. On me her eyes rested for longest, big and wide and full of hate.

?I don?t lie for effect, Castor,? Fanke said, speaking to me through her translucent body. ?I lie to achieve specific goals. In this case, as you can see, I?ve told the truth. Now put the gun down?unless you think that my death is a fair exchange for Pamela?s. Because my death is all you can hope to achieve: the ceremony will go on, and will be completed, in any case.?

?Where?s your male?? I demanded, still buying seconds.

Fanke actually smiled. ?I don?t have one,? he admitted. ?I?d decided to use your zombie friend?Nicholas Heath. Yes, I know about him. I know everything there is to know about your life: I?ve been close to you for a long time, after all. But when my people went to fetch the zombie, they found this other creature, and I yielded to temptation. My lord doesn?t favor the succubi. There?s something appropriate about feeding one of that kindred to the flame to set him free.?

His eyes stared into mine, mocking and malevolent: the eyes of a man who was damn sure he was holding all the cards.

?A male would still be useful,? he said, ?for the sake of balance. But it?s up to you. You can play out this film noir pantomime, if you like. Or you can take Pamela Bruckner?s place and die inside our circle. I?ll allow that. If you put the gun down right now, and aplogize to me for your disrespect.?

I hesitated. He was lying, of course, but then time was what I was playing for here on a lot of different levels.

?Where?s Nicky now?? I demanded, buying a few more seconds. I guess the wax on that candle was thicker than I thought; I guess Basquiat hadn?t called in to check her messages; I guess my luck was running pretty much true to form, after all.

Fanke frowned. ?Your dead friend, I believe, is still extant,? he said. ?But the details get a little abstruse. He locked himself into a room on the first floor of the cinema. When my people tried to open the door?? He stopped, seeing I was grinning. ?Well, perhaps you already know about his security arrangements. In any case, the succubus made a more than acceptable substitute. Hiring you was the best decision I ever made, Castor. At the time I thought I was just keeping things in the family?but it brought so many incidental benefits. But now we?re delaying proceedings, and they?ve been delayed too long already. Please?your decision.?

Fanke was looking at me expectantly, and I could see in his eyes that?unlike me?he hadn?t had to bluff at all. He was going to see this through, even if it meant me rearranging his innards with the aid of hollow-point ammunition. One way or another, the show was going to go on.

Trying to ignore Abbie, whose dead gaze still skewered me, I nodded.

?All right,? I said. ?Let Pen go, give her five minutes to get clear, and then I?ll hand over the gun.?

?No,? said Fanke, tersely. ?You hand over the gun now, and you accept my word that she won?t be harmed. No more procrastinations. Decide.?

I waited in vain for an explosion from the back pews, or for a hammering on the knocker and ?This is the police!? from the church?s main doors. The silence, in which Asmodeus?s hostile attention was like a raw overlay of subliminal hypersonics, remained unbroken.

After a long pause, and just as Fanke opened his mouth to speak again?to his subordinates, not to me, because his head snapped round to face them?I turned the gun in my hand and held it out to him, butt first. He gave a nod, quietly satisfied, and took it. Then he passed it on to a tall, cadaverous acolyte who appeared at his shoulder.

?And the apology?? he asked, looking round at me again like a coaxing schoolmaster who doesn?t want to have to resort to the cane.

?You?ll have to whistle for that,? I said. ?You know how to whistle, don?t you? If not, I can teach you.?

He gave me the coldest smile I?ve ever seen.

?Grip, keep the gun trained on Mr. Castor,? he said, ?and bring him to the circle. In fact, have someone pass a loop of piano wire around his throat, too, to make sure he stays exactly where he?s put. He has the look of a man who wants to go back on his word.?

The robed minions closed in on all sides, finding their courage all of a sudden, and a great many hands were laid on me. I was manhandled to the edge of the circle, which I saw clearly now for the first time. It seemed to be identical to the ruined one I?d seen in the Quaker hall, but complete, uninterrupted by any chewed-up arc of pulped floorboards. In fact, this one was drawn on stone?and drawn with the tip of a knife blade, rather than in paint or chalk. Various half-formed schemes that had been forming in the forefront of my mind got discouraged and left.

The man Fanke had called Grip shoved the gun into the small of my back more emphatically than was necessary, and kept it there while another robed figure?a tall, heavyset woman?passed a loop of piano wire very carefully around my neck. The care was for her own fingers; as soon as it was in place she pulled it tight, and I felt it bite into the flesh below my Adam?s apple. The two loose ends of the wire had been tied around wooden blocks: she held one in each hand, like a paramedic with the charged plates of a defibrillator, but what she was actually holding, in effect, was the drawstring of a guillotine. If I moved from this spot, my head was going to stay right where it was while my body did its best to make shift without it.

Fanke walked around the circle to stand opposite me. Abbie went with him, dangling weightlessly in the air, his clenched fist wrapped around where her heart would be if she were alive and still had one. Her confusion and fear were terrible to see.

The robed acolytes?except for Grip and the woman with the piano wire?took their stations with solemn faces all around in a wider circle that extended from the altar rail to the ragged heap of displaced pews, and to the aisle on either side. There were more of them than I?d thought: at least forty. Some of them must have come in through the main doors after the rest had set up shop and opened up for them, which explained why I hadn?t seen Pen and Juliet being brought in. One of them was the little doctor with the Scottish accent who?d given me my tetanus shots after I passed out in Pen?s hallway.

The crucified Christ stared down at us, looking dubious about the whole proceeding.

?I?d prefer to start with you,? Fanke said, without animosity. ?Like Pamela, you?re a little out of place here. In many ways, beneath the dignity of the occasion. But the child?s spirit must be sundered. That won?t wait. To attempt any other sacrifice before the one that raised my lord is concluded would be unwise. So you?ll have to wait your turn, Castor. And you?ll have to watch your efforts and machinations come to nothing before you?re allowed to slink away into death. This isn?t cruelty on my part, you understand. Just . . . logistics.?

?Well if it?s just logistics, I don?t mind,? I said. ?I was starting to think you didn?t like me.? The wire tightened fractionally around my throat.

?Marmarauoth marmarachtha marmarachthaa amarda maribeoth,? Fanke said, in a singsong voice. The acolytes came in on the chorus. ?Satana! Beelzebub! Asmode!? They threw out their hands, then drew them in and clasped them together in what was clearly a ritual gesture.

?Iattheoun iatreoun salbiouth aoth aoth sabathiouth iattherath Adonaiai isar suria bibibe bibiouth nattho Sabaoth aianapha amourachthe. Satana. Beelzebub. Asmode.? More hand-wringing. An acolyte at Fanke?s left hand held out a candle, and one on his right lit it with a taper. Fanke took it in his left hand without dropping a syllable. ?Ablanathanalba, aeeiouo, iaeobaphrenemoun. Aberamentho oulerthexa n axethreluo othnemareba.? Even though most of the room was already steeped in darkness, the area around us seemed to be getting darker still. I made the mistake of looking up, as though the church had some internal sun that was being eclipsed. Something hung above us in the gloom?something like black smoke, except that it was shot through with branching filaments of deeper dark like veins and capillaries. It was spreading out from a point directly above Fanke?s head, and it was descending toward us. Or rather toward Abbie, who saw it coming and struggled like a fly in a web, her thrashing movements buying her no headway at all. ?Please!? she whispered. ?Oh please!?

He looks a lot smaller in the medieval woodcuts, but I knew who it was that we were looking at: Asmodeus, coalescing out of the stone in answer to Fanke?s summons. The cold came with him, concentrating around us with such suddenness and intensity that I felt the skin on my face stretch taut.

Fanke held the locket up in his right hand, on a level with the candle flame. ?Phokensepseu earektathou misonktaich,? he said. ?Uesemmeigadon Satana. Uesemmeigadon Beelzebub. Uesemmeigadon Asmode, Asmode atheresphilauo.?

He brought his hands together to let the locket meet the flame. Or at least he tried to, but it didn?t come. Abbie dug her heels into nothing and strained backward against him, and although his hand trembled like a struck lightning rod, for a moment it didn?t move. His right arm was the injured one?the one where Peace had shot him?and I?d seen before that his movements with that hand and arm were stiff and jerky. Maybe that