‘You know why the lion limps?’ he asked me, his voice a low, exultant growl.
I braced myself to rise as he bent forward and hit him with as much force as I could manage. He didn’t even seem to feel it.
At that moment, Trudie appeared in the hole behind and above him, head down. Dangling over the abyss, she flung her right arm out to its full extent, and there was a smacking sound as something hit the back of Asmodeus’ head. He grunted in surprise and faltered in his step. Then he raised a tentative hand to his head, which had sprouted – as if by magic – a vertical appendage. He turned his head slightly, and I saw that it was the shaft of a claw hammer, the business end of which was embedded several inches into his skull. So that was what Trudie had picked up in the dark: not a mere brick but a handy multi-purpose assault weapon.
I rolled to the side and jumped up. Asmodeus turned to keep me in his sights, but there was a drunken list to his body and a jerkiness to his movements. Still, he was between me and the manhole and there was no way I was getting up to ground level without going through him first.
I headed straight for him, then as he moved in to close me down I stopped suddenly and jabbed out with my left hand. Ordinarily the punch wouldn’t have had a chance of getting past the demon’s guard, but now it connected with his face, Asmodeus’ momentum adding to mine to give it some real heft.
Asmodeus stopped in his tracks, his knees buckling slightly, and I did what felt natural and inevitable at that moment. I reached past him, grabbed the handle of the hammer and wrenched it down and to the side, turning the bifurcated claw inside his skull like a spoon inside the shell of a coconut. The hammer came free in my hand with a liquescent crunching sound, and Asmodeus crashed down onto his knees, then onto his knees and elbows.
He was trying to rise, but for the moment Rafi’s nervous system wasn’t cooperating. The switchboard was down, and there was no way of routing messages past the crimson ruin at the back of his skull to the still functioning limbs and torso.
I dropped the hammer – reluctantly, but I needed both hands – stepped onto the demon’s back and launched myself from it towards the manhole in a graceless lunge. Trudie got out of my way just in time to avoid being headbutted, then helped me to clamber up as I got my arms and then my upper body through the gap.
‘We did it!’ she gasped, her voice hoarse with disbelief.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed, ‘we did. Now run like fuck!’
Trudie looked towards the open manhole. Judging by her face, she thought the fight was over. A groping hand thrust over the rim made my point for me. We took off down the road tunnel like two sprinters vying for gold.
We were running against the traffic. Car after car braked and slewed to avoid hitting us, then accelerated past us with a blast on the horn or a bellowed curse from the driver-side window.
We put enough distance between ourselves and the demon for me to think we were free and clear. Younger and fitter than me, Trudie got an early lead and kept it, but then as she reached the steeper ramp at the tunnel entrance she turned like Orpheus at the doorsill of the Underworld to see if I was coming. Something whipped past me, something perfectly round, flashing a startling silver-grey with reflected light so that it looked for a moment like a lightning bolt caught in a bubble. It flashed past Trudie too, missing her head by a few lazy inches but bumping her shoulder and spinning her on her axis like a skater doing a sudden unplanned bracket turn. Her eyes widened in shock and she made a sound like a gasp broken in two.
I was level with her in a second and caught her before she could fall. There was a splintering crash from somewhere up ahead of us, where the manhole cover had ricocheted off the concrete wall of the tunnel and struck the wing of an articulated truck a glancing blow. The truck jackknifed, its trailer swinging round to form a wall-to- wall roadblock. For a moment it looked as though it was going to keel over on top of us, but it rocked back on its wheel base at the last moment and settled.
Trudie’s mouth was working, but no sound was coming out. A dark stain spread out and down from her shoulder across the front of her shirt. The manhole cover had barely seemed to tap her, but it must have weighed close on a hundred pounds, and it had whipped through the air like a discus. The damage was obviously a lot worse than I’d thought. She sagged in my arms, but I took the weight and kept her more or less on her feet.
‘Not yet, Pax,’ I yelled. ‘Not yet. Stay with me!’
I manhandled her on towards the truck, whose driver was now climbing down out of his cab with a look of anger and confusion on his face. He shouted something at me but I ignored him, heading for the narrow gap between the back of the trailer and the tunnel wall. There was just room for us to squeeze through.
Trudie was taking some of her own weight by this time, but her breathing was ragged and shallow as we stumbled up the ramp. Even in the baleful light of the street lamps I could see her face was pale and glistening with sweat.
‘Can’t . . . move my arm,’ she muttered. Then she stopped dead in the road and was violently sick.
I looked back towards the mouth of the tunnel. A dozen or so cars were stopped there, and the trucker was having a loud argument with some of their drivers. At any moment I expected to see them flung aside as Asmodeus came storming through, but there was no sign of the demon. For some reason he’d given up the pursuit, maybe because flinging the manhole cover had taxed Rafi’s damaged body too far, and he’d had to stop and recuperate.
We still had to get out of there though, Pax to an A & E department and me to—Shit, what time was it? I looked at my watch, which showed 11.59. The Super-Self raid was about to start.
Trudie’s gaze met mine. ‘Go on,’ she said, teeth clenched on the pain. ‘I’ll flag down a car.’
‘I can’t leave you lying in the street,’ I protested.
She pushed away from me, stood swaying but unsupported. The whole of the front of her shirt was soaked in red so dark it looked black under the street lights. ‘I’m not lying anywhere,’ she snarled. ‘Go, Castor. I’m not dying; I’ve just got a broken arm. If you think your little toy will do the job, you have to get it over there before Gil sends the troops in and somebody dies.’
A car was coming towards us, slowing down as its driver saw the snarl-up ahead and realised that the tunnel entrance was blocked. Trudie finessed the argument by stepping into its path and forcing it to a sudden halt. The driver was a young guy in a Kings of Leon T-shirt, his windows wound down and his stereo banging out some Jamaican dance-hall number. He stared at Trudie’s blood-soaked shirt in almost comical horror.
‘I have to get to a hospital,’ she said.
‘Y-yeah,’ he stammered. ‘Okay. Jesus!’ He opened the car door and got out to let her into the back seat, although he cast a woeful glance at his light-tan upholstery. He looked almost as pale as Trudie did.
‘Go, Castor,’ Pax said again. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ve memorised your number plate,’ I muttered to the dance-hall fan as I passed him. ‘Get her to where she needs to go. Don’t leave her.’ Then I accelerated into a run as I headed on down Kingsway to the junction with Aldwych.
The Strand was close by, but I was winded and sore from my tussle with Asmodeus and from the earlier hundred-metre freestyle fleeing. I couldn’t keep up the pace, and by the time I got to the bottom of Exeter Street I was limping along in a slo-mo parody of a run.
The pavement outside Super-Self was deserted and the door wide open. Turning in off the street, I almost went sprawling as I tripped over a body lying right across the threshold.
It was a man, tall and well built, lying on his stomach. He was breathing like a bellows: quick and shuddering gulps of air that made his upper body rise and fall as though he was trying to do push-ups.
The Spiro Agnew wristwatch on his right hand told me who I was dealing with.
‘Samir,’ I said, and then when he didn’t answer, ‘Turk? What’s happening?’
There was a sound like the stuttering
The lower half of his face was a mask of blood. His mouth gaped open, and the stump of his tongue writhed like a snake as he tried to speak.
16
I could feel it long before I reached the stairs. The fear-thing was awake and feasting. It was almost like a
