Thicker Than Water

‘When I’m finished. Kneel, Thomas. Kneel and pray to me.’

Gwillam was about to comply when I punched him in the mouth and sent him sprawling. The gun flew out of his hand and clunked away end over end into a corner.

Juliet shot me a look of pure rage, which was actually something of a relief. I didn’t want to feel what she’d just made Gwillam feel: I’d been there, and seeing it happen to him had brought the whole thing back: the seismic, heart-stopping lust, the almost unbearable pleasure, and the black abyss of cold turkey afterwards.

‘Your point’s made,’ I said. ‘My turn. My show.’

Did you ever play cards for money? And if you did, can you remember a time at the end of a desperate night when you bet everything you had on a lousy hand, knowing the only way you could win was if everyone else bought the bluff?

That was me right then. Except that I knew Juliet wouldn’t buy it for a moment, because she could smell my fear the way dogs are supposed to be able to. So actually I was betting on something else, and the odds were pretty easy to calculate: two years on Earth, against fifteen millennia in Hell.

My number came up.

After maybe five or six seconds — long enough for most of the late 1980s to flash before my eyes — Juliet relaxed and shrugged. She shot Gwillam one last glance, where he lay at the foot of the stairs, and he gave a ragged moan as her gaze swept over him, as though he’d just been lashed raw and her stare was a splash of vinegar on his open wounds. ‘I’ll wait in the car,’ she said, and walked away, stepping over Baldy’s sprawled unconscious body.

I got Gwillam into a sitting position. His breathing was still uneven and his eyes wouldn’t focus at first. I half- led and half-carried him through into the study, dumped him into a chair that looked like an eighteenth-century antique, and while I was doing that I noticed a decanter of brandy standing on a dresser. I poured a shot, which I managed to get down Gwillam’s throat after three tries: I took one myself, too, purely for medicinal purposes.

Slowly the good father came back to himself, anger and hatred filling the void left by his recently discovered passion.

‘You consort with demons, Castor,’ he sobbed, his voice breaking. ‘This one, this succubus, and even worse. You think we don’t know that you took Asmodeus from his cell? You profane this place and imperil your soul.’

‘My soul?’ I touched the dressing on my cheek, made a half-shrug with just the one hand. ‘Well, I’m gambling on a deathbed conversion, so I’m hoping I’ve got a bit of leeway yet.’

Gwillam had been staring at the empty brandy glass. Now he looked up at me, his pale face streaked with sweat. ‘Without sincere repentance,’ he said, ‘I can promise you, God won’t listen to your apologies. Some sins are mortal.’

I leaned down to bring my face in close to his.

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘They are. And being as stupid as a hatful of arseholes is one of them. You screwed up, you sanctimonious fuckwit. I thought I’d stop by and tell you that before things at the Salisbury get even worse than they are. Because I’ve got other places to be and this was your mess before it was mine.’

From somewhere, Gwillam found the strength to stand. He thrust his face into mine, his eyes wide and his face white with rage. ‘You persist in thinking that, don’t you, Castor? That the whole world is full of the waste products of other people’s mistakes? That your role in life is to clean them up, and take the thanks for it? But Asmodeus alone is proof enough to refute that.’

‘I’m all that’s keeping Asmodeus locked down,’ I pointed out, wiping a little spittle from my face.

Gwillam’s eyes narrowed. ‘You took that monster from a place where he was safely contained,’ he said. ‘Under control. Who knows what you’ve started? Or what we’ll have to do to stop it if it gets away from you. Because it will be us, Castor. It will be the soldiers of God — the ones with an actual vocation — who clear up after your mistakes. Just as it has been through the world, down through the ages. We watch, we weigh, we decide, and then we act. You simply cut out the first three stages of that process!’

As he spoke, something clicked into place. Watch? Weigh?

‘You had a tail on me,’ I said.

Gwillam gave a choking laugh. ‘Is that meant to be an accusation? Yes, we followed you — as soon as the Mulbridge woman deigned to alert us to what you’d done. If she’d called us at once — but there’s no point in repining after the fact. God works in his own way — and although you didn’t lead us to Rafael Ditko, you did lead us to the Salisbury, and to William Daniels. We don’t trawl the sink estates of the world looking for miracles. God made you an instrument of his light and truth. He does that, whether you like it or not.’

Gwillam smiled coldly. His composure was coming back to him at a steady trickle, bringing with it the unshakeable sense of his own rectitude.

‘The situation at the Salisbury,’ he said, ‘is one that a faithless man like you can’t understand. So there’s nothing to be gained by discussing it.’

By way of answer, I held up my right hand, fingers spread. The red, inflamed flesh in the centre of my palm was clearly visible. Gwillam’s eyes widened as he stared at it.

‘And that’s after only a few hours on the estate,’ I said. ‘How holy do you think I’ll be if I rent a flat there?’

Gwillam started to speak, but I rode right over him. ‘You should have been like your namesake, Father Thomas, and looked for a little more proof before you threw up your hands and started singing hosannas. You find a boy with wounds in his hands and you think he’s a saint in waiting, right?’

‘I won’t discuss–’

‘Don’t waste my fucking time. You already said the boy’s name, and his mother told me you were there. She just couldn’t bring herself to tell me why, but then she was seeing Bic’s wounds as part and parcel of the other sick shit that was going on in his life. It must have stuck in her throat a bit when you told her it was good news from Heaven.’

Gwillam was silent for a moment, but he found his voice again soon enough. ‘The appearance of the stigmata is a miracle,’ he said. ‘One that recurs down the centuries, as a sign of Christ’s manifested blessing.’

‘Either that or hysteria,’ I said. ‘Only this time — this time, Gwillam, it isn’t either of those things. It’s a demon.’

He stared at me in amazement, and then in undisguised scorn.

‘A demon?’ he echoed.

‘Yeah.’ I nodded. ‘A demon that loves wounds. That seems to live in wounds, somehow. Some poor kid who was into self-harm summoned it. I think he did it without even meaning to, just by being on its wavelength. It makes people cut themselves, or other people. It fills their dreams and their waking minds with the eagerness to see blood spilled. And it makes blood well up from healthy flesh, as though there were wounds there. That’s what Bic has got. A curse, not a blessing. Unless Jesus has got a really fucked-up way of showing that he loves us.’

I took the thick wodge of Nicky’s printouts from my inside pocket and let them fall on the carpet in front of Gwillam. ‘Read it,’ I suggested, ‘and weep. And after that, go and fucking do something.’

I left him sitting there, visibly reassembling the armour of his righteousness. No way of telling whether he’d believe me or not, but if he did there were things he could do while I was away to stop the situation at the Salisbury from reaching a crisis point. It was better than nothing, anyway.

As we drove back into London, Juliet maintained a thoughtful silence. I did the same thing, for a while, but then I thought what the hell: we were already on rockier ground than we’d been at any time since she decided to live on Earth instead of killing me. What did I have to lose by pushing the boat out a little further?

‘Is this thing a friend of yours?’ I asked.

I didn’t look around, but I felt the pressure of her gaze on me.

‘I mean,’ I said, ‘don’t get me wrong here, okay? If this is another of those off-limits topics, just tell me. But if it’s not, I wouldn’t mind knowing. Does this thing that makes people cut themselves into ribbons so it can nest in the torn flesh go way back with you? Is it a friend of the family? Did it bounce you on its knee when you were a little girl?’

We’d gone another couple of miles before she spoke, and I’d stopped waiting for an answer.

‘They’re called the Oleuthroi. And I’ve never met this one before. In fact, I haven’t seen any of his breed for twelve centuries. And the last one I saw was an adult, very old, enormous, that I and my