Vicious Circle

and on Juliet. She looked indifferent: I felt, I have to admit it, a little exposed.

Gwillam himself walked past us to where Zucker lay on the cobbles. He squatted down beside the corpse, which looked small and pathetic and undignified the way we all do in death, and put a hand on its forehead. His lips worked in silence, and I didn?t try to read them.

Then he stood again and turned to face me.

?You?re not human, are you?? he asked, and I realized that it was actually Juliet he was addressing.

?No.? She shook her head. ?What about you??

Gwillam?s brow furrowed. ?Tell me your name and lineage,? he snapped. ?In nominibus angelorum qui habent potestatem in aere atque?? He broke off as Juliet laughed a rich, suggestive laugh. Either she was recovering from the silver poisoning more quickly than I would have believed possible, or she was putting up a hell of a good front: but then, she always did that.

?I was old when your religion was young, O man,? she murmured in her throat. ?I do not fear your god, and I will not come to heel like a bitch when you call on me, whether you know my name or not.?

?Then I?ll tell my men to shoot,? Gwillam said.

?And I will walk through the bullets and feed upon their hearts, new-ripped from their chests,? she said. ?But you I will kill after the manner of my kind, for I am succubus and mazzikim. I will make you love me, and be lost.?

Gwillam?s face went pale, and I could see that that threat had gone home. It struck me, though, that Juliet was actually making the threat at all rather than just going ahead and doing it. Subtlety isn?t her strong point, as a rule. I wondered whether the silver she?d inhaled and the time she?d spent in thrall to Asmodeus had left her weaker than she looked.

With an effort, and slowly, Gwillam turned his attention to me.

?You killed the girl?? he demanded. ?Snuffed out her spirit? Was that why the ritual failed??

?You tell me,? I suggested.

His eyes narrowed, and he stared down at my hands as I fished the locket back up from where it lay in the crook of Pen?s armpit.

?No,? he said. ?She?s still there.?

?If he goes for his Bible,? I said to Juliet without looking up, ?feel free to rip his throat out.?

I stood, slowly.

?If I can prove to you that Abbie Torrington isn?t a threat anymore, then will you walk away?? I asked Gwillam.

?If you can prove that, yes,? he said, without a pause. ?You have my word, Castor. I wouldn?t snuff out an innocent soul without powerful reason.?

I nodded. Good enough.

?Asmodeus already has a human host,? I said.

?I know that,? said Gwillam. ?We assessed that situation two years ago, and decided that it was better not to act: to kill Rafael Ditko might simply set Asmodeus free to act on the human plane.?

?And you?d have to do it,? I reminded him bluntly, a bit annoyed by the supercilious tone. ?With Asmodeus bonded to his flesh and spirit, killing him wouldn?t be anyone?s idea of a picnic.?

Gwillam acknowledged the point with an impatient wave of the hand.

?I cut a lock of his hair,? I said, hesitating slightly because I shied away from saying this?from bringing what I?d just done out of hiding and nailing it down with words for other people to see. ?Rafi?s hair. I tied it around my finger. And then when Fanke had made his invocation?when he?d summoned Asmodeus to feast on the sacrifice inside the circle?I got there first. It was Rafi?s hair that burned, not Abbie?s. It was Rafi?s soul that was consecrated and offered up, and it was Rafi?s soul that Asmodeus got a mouthful of as he came down to feed.?

Gwillam stared at me in dead silence, waiting for me to go on. Juliet was looking at me, too, her expression unreadable.

?Asmodeus had never entirely left Rafi. Part of him was stuck inside the stones here, waiting to be released by the offering of Abbie?s soul: the other half was still where it?s been for the past two years?stuck like shrapnel in Rafi Ditko?s flesh and spirit.?

Gwillam?s expression was one of profound shock. ?So the demon???

??was starting to eat itself. It?s like a very nasty version of trying to lift yourself up by your bootstraps. If Asmodeus devoured Rafi?s soul instead of Abbie?s, the ritual that was meant to free him was going to consume him at the same time. He had no choice but to back off, even if bailing out in the middle of the show aborted the ritual and undid everything that Fanke had managed to achieve. That was why it all fell apart in there. And that?s why Abbie doesn?t matter now?at least as a weapon in your fucking holy war. Asmodeus severed the link, and went scuttling back to the prison he was trying to escape from in the first place.?

?Rafael Ditko.?

?Rafi Ditko,? I agreed. My friend, who I?d just betrayed for the second time. And as if to make things worse than they were already, I saw that Pen?s eyes were open and she was hearing this. The gag taped across her mouth prevented her from commenting, except with her eyes?but they were eloquent enough.

Gwillam seemed impressed. ?I have to congratulate you, Castor,? he said, with a solemn edge to his voice. ?You?re easily ruthless enough to serve with the Anathemata, if you ever found the light. But?? he hesitated, massaging the bridge of his nose as if he was raising a slightly delicate subject with as much tact as he could ??why should that change my feelings about Abbie Torrington?s soul? She was consecrated to Asmodeus. What is there to stop some other adept, as ruthless and as lost to human feeling as Fanke, from finishing what he?s started??

The question took me off guard, but I improvised as well as I could. ?Nobody else knows about her,? I said. ?You?ve just killed all of Fanke?s crew, and Zucker took care of Fanke himself.?

?True. But what has he written about this on his message boards? Whom has he confided in? What will his . . . parishioners in the satanist church do when they learn of his failure? No, you dealt very cleverly with the immediate problem, but in the longer term the threat still stands. The girl?s soul is still a detonator looking for the right bomb. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar?s. Render unto God that which is God?s.?

I opened my mouth to tell him to take his sanctimonious shit somewhere private and render it unto himself, but he hadn?t quite finished. ?Yehoshua!? he said, almost in a singsong voice. ?Yehoshua, of all men king and of all men brother, I praise thee and live in thine eyes! The vessels being diverse, one from another. What shall we do unto her, according to the law? And when it was day, he departed. Even unto Simon?s house.?

I was too slow out of the gate. I didn?t guess what he was doing until I glanced sideways at Juliet, realizing suddenly that there was a tension in her stillness. She was standing rigidly erect, completely unmoving, though the muscles in her neck stood out like cords.

?That was the cantrip that binds her,? Gwillam said. ?Should I speak the cantrip that destroys her??

I took an involuntary step toward him. The machine rifles converged on me like the eyes of snakes, targeting on movement. I stopped, realizing that I wouldn?t reach him alive.

?Should I speak the???

?No,? I said. ?Don?t. Don?t do that.?

I would never have believed that he could get the measure of her so fast. But Juliet?s very power lay in filling your eyes and your nose and your mind with her essence: if you?re dealing with an exorcist, that?s a high-risk strategy. You take him out quickly, or you find that you?ve given him all the ammo he needs.

?Then give me the locket,? said Gwillam.

I looked down at the locket in my hand, but did nothing. The tableau stood for the space of three heartbeats.

?Castor?? Gwillam murmured warningly.

?You take the locket, and then you leave??

?As opposed to killing both you and your demon whore, which I so clearly could? Yes. Take it. It?s the best offer you?re going to get.?

He was right there. I threw the locket across to him and he caught it one-handed. Juliet?s eyes narrowed, but that was the only move she made: the only move she could make.

Gwillam signaled to his men?a clockwise rotation of his index finger in the air that clearly meant ?pack up the tents.? They started to file away in good order, two of them carrying Zucker, just as the stained glass windows to either side of the church door blew out in party-colored shards, vomiting smoke and fire up into the night.

Gwillam went last of all, and he lingered for a moment as if there was something else on his mind.

?I told you that we investigated Ditko, two years ago?very shortly after you signed him in at the Charles Stanger clinic,? he said.

?Yeah. You told me that.?

?It might make you feel a little better about your part in all of this if I tell you something we found out at that time.? I didn?t say anything that could have been interpreted as ?oh, do tell? but he went on anyway, looking at me thoughtfully. ?Fanke had a mistress back then?dead now. In his sexual liaisons he?s always favored the young and stupid. He seems?seemed, I should say?to take a certain pleasure in imprinting his own will on people too weak or vapid to resist.

?Her name was Jane?plain Jane?but she?d rechristened herself Guinevere when she joined the satanist church. Obviously she was living out some romantic