Juliet kissed Susan gently on the cheek, held on to her for a moment longer and then set her to one side very firmly. Susan took all this with great stoicism.
I delved into my pocket, and brought out my ace in the hole. It was the torn fragment of notepaper that I’d found in John Gittings’s pocket watch: when you looked at it, he really had gone out of his way to make sure that I’d have everything I needed. In fact, he’d been shrewder when his brain was disintegrating than he’d been at any time in his life before.
‘John was there before us,’ I said.
‘Isn’t that why he died?’
‘Yeah, but he left us some notes. This is pretty vague on their strengths, but it drops some succulent hints about their weaknesses.’
‘And you,’ Juliet said, giving me a cold, hard stare. ‘You said this tune was hard to play – that it drains you. Do you think you’ve got the energy to play it again tonight? Please don’t take this personally, but you look as though you’d have a hard time blowing up a child’s balloon.’
I’d been thinking the same thing, but since I didn’t see any other choice I just shrugged the question off. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I always am on the night.’
Juliet’s expression didn’t change. ‘If you can’t do it,’ she said, ‘you’d better tell me now. There’s no point in going into a fight with a plan that can’t work.’
‘All right,’ I admitted. ‘Right now, I don’t think I could do it. But it’s going to take us at least an hour to get over there. I’m hoping that’ll give me the time I need to get match-fit again.’
She nodded. ‘We’ll see,’ she said, with grim promise.
I left her and Susan alone for a minute or two to say their goodbyes. When Juliet came down from the bedroom I shot her a look of inquiry: she walked right past me, her face unreadable but her shoulders hunched in a tension I’d never seen in her before. Juliet normally uses her body language to draw you in: it’s second nature to her because it’s part of the way she feeds. For her to lose control of it, even around the edges, was a surprising and in some ways a disturbing thing to see.
Moloch smiled as he saw us coming, and gave Juliet an ironic bow. ‘The sister of Baphomet,’ he grated. ‘I’m honoured above all of my kindred. Never would I have imagined my lowly station would permit—’
Juliet’s ringing smack knocked him back on his heels, his head thrown sideways by the force of the blow. ‘You should have
A demon’s face isn’t that much harder to read than a human one. I could see in his narrowed eyes and tight smile that he’d already thought of a cool comeback – and that he didn’t quite have the balls to try to deliver it.
‘Are we good?’ I asked, breaking the tense silence. They both nodded unconvincingly.
‘Then let’s go commit some atrocities.’
24
When you’re climbing a mountain, the first thing you do is set up a base camp. In our case it was the building site at the bottom of Ropery Street, right next door to the crematorium and facing it across a no man’s land of churned mud. Okay, there was also a tall fence separating us from the landscaped grounds, but our line of sight was clear. Clear enough to see the car headlights coming up the curve of the drive in their twos and threes, the lights slowing and stopping and then winking out as the drivers headed into the building. The inscription had begun, or else it would begin soon. Either way, we had all our enemies, living and dead, in the same spot. Lucky us.
We stood close to the top of the tower of scaffolding that surrounded the shell of a building yet to be. Moloch and Juliet stared intently into the darkness, which held no secrets from them. For my part I couldn’t see a blind fucking thing: it was dark of the moon, and in any case the sky above us was a curdled mass of black on black – this high up, the wind was a constant barrage of sucker punches. But the storm was holding off for the moment, maybe waiting for a more dramatic moment.
‘There are armed men,’ Juliet said. ‘A lot of them. Some of them at the gate, some in front of the doors. More of them are taking up positions in the grounds. They seem to know what they’re doing. Two or three men in a group, each group in line of sight of at least two others.’
‘Hired security,’ I said. ‘Probably black-market, if they’re carrying guns.’
‘They’re carrying rifles,’ Moloch murmured. ‘They have handguns in their belts. Also grenades.’
I shrugged, as nonchalantly as I could. ‘It makes sense,’ I said. ‘This is when our dead-guy mafia are at their weakest – individually and as a group.’
‘In what way?’ Juliet demanded.
‘Well, they all need to tie up and gag their inner hostages again, so I’d guess at least some of their strength has to be taken up in keeping a tight hold on the bodies they’re wearing. After the ritual, they’re okay again for the next month. And they’re also vulnerable because they’re all here together. They know damn well that if anyone wants to take them out, this is the best time to do it. Hence the paranoid security. We should be encouraged by it, really. It shows that they’re scared.’
‘It also shows that they’re neither stupid nor blind,’ Juliet pointed out. ‘We’d have a lot more chance of success if they were both.’
I didn’t answer. I was looking down at the wooden planks of the scaffolding beneath my feet, which had just shifted in the wind. This was where Doug Hunter’s life had taken a turn for the worse, I now knew. I’d called Jan to check the hypothesis, but I’d already known what her answer would be. This was the last place he’d worked, and on the day he sprained his ankle he’d walked next door to the crematorium to see if he could beg, borrow or requisition a first-aid kit. And that was the last thing he’d done as himself.
It felt like a bad omen, suddenly: to be launching our own attack from a place with a history like that. I wanted to get out of here and make a start, because the sooner we made a start the sooner the whole thing would be over.
But as I took a step towards the ladder Juliet put out a hand and clamped it down on my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks.
‘Castor,’ she said. ‘There’s something you still need to do up here. You –’ this was to Moloch ‘– go down and wait for us at the bottom. We’ll join you in about five minutes.’
Moloch bared his teeth. ‘There shouldn’t be any secrets between allies,’ he said. ‘Whatever you’ve got to say, we should all hear.’
‘I don’t have anything to say,’ Juliet told him. ‘As far as that goes, I’m sure your ears are keen enough to pick up everything that goes on up here. But you don’t get to watch.’
Moloch said nothing. With visible reluctance he put his feet on the ladder and started to descend.
I stared at Juliet. She stared back. The elevator in my stomach slipped its cables and plunged precipitately to the bottom of its shaft.
‘You’re still weak,’ Juliet said.
‘Yeah,’ I said, my voice sounding slightly strangled and strained in my own ears. ‘I’ve been better.’
‘You may not know this, Castor, but I can give as well as take.’
For a few seconds I just kept staring. I was rummaging in my head for words. There were no words left. ‘You can-?’
‘When I feed, I take the strength, the life and the soul from the men I fuck. I started to do it to you once, so I’m sure you remember.’
I nodded. Waking in the dark, sweat cold on my face and chest, heart hammering an overclocked suburban mambo, I remembered most nights.
‘I’m not going to make love with you. It would hurt Susan if she knew, and I prefer not to lie to her. But I
Two steps brought her up close to me, and her eyes were staring directly into mine. Point-blank. Point- singularity, her pupils two black holes that dragged me in not against my will but using my will to fuel their own
