‘So we’re talking about physical consumption,’ Nicky insisted.
‘Yeah. That, and . . . the other kind. Her nutritional needs are pretty complicated, Nicky. She needs the soul as well as the flesh. It’s as though lust is a digestive enzyme for her. It’s the magic ingredient that makes it possible for her to feed on us. On people. Otherwise it’s like what happens when we eat grass: we can’t break down the cell walls, so we can’t get any nourishment from it. We could fill our stomachs . . . and still, you know . . . still starve to death.’
I wound down like a clock, because I’d suddenly seen what he was driving at. I could see that Trudie had too. She was shaking her head in sick amazement.
‘What am I missing?’ Gil asked the room at large.
For a moment or two nobody answered him, because we were all still trying to work out the implications. Then I explained, haltingly, aware as I said it how absurd and unlikely it sounded. Unlikely to the point of impossible. The only thing it had going for it was that no other theory explained everything that Asmodeus had done.
‘That’s insane,’ Gil said, when I’d finished.
‘I think it’s fucking genius,’ Nicky said, shaking his head in wonder. ‘As prison breaks go, it makes digging a tunnel under Rita Hayworth look like nothing at all.’
‘So the succubus is the key to Asmodeus’ plan,’ Trudie summarised. ‘So we work without her, obviously.’ She shrugged her good arm. ‘She’s probably too weak to move in any case. It’s a pity, because she would have been our biggest gun, but we don’t let her get near this thing.’
‘And how . . .’ said Juliet haltingly ‘. . . do you intend . . . to stop me?’
She was on her feet and limping towards us. She let the surgical gown fall from her shoulders. For Juliet, disrobing serves the same purpose that shrugging the hem of his poncho back to show his six-guns does for Clint Eastwood. But this time the magic failed to flow. Looking at the half-healed cuts that criss-crossed her body, I felt no arousal at all, just a sort of numb sadness. You know that feeling you get when you watch a movie you loved as a kid, and you find out it’s nothing special? What I felt then was like that, only raised to the nth power. The true north of my libido was gone, and my disenfranchised dick had nothing to point to.
Juliet reached the table, but staggered when she got there and almost fell to her knees. Clutching its edge in both hands, she glared at me. ‘He took Susan,’ she said. Her voice had a terrible hollowness to it, as though she’d been cored out by the torture runes and was just an empty, walking skin.
There was no point in lying. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘he did. Who told you?’
She wiped her sweat-beaded forehead with the back of her hand. ‘The woman,’ she said. ‘The woman who was drawing on me, with knives and paint. She taunted me with that knowledge. Is that woman still alive, Castor? I’d be happy to know that she was still alive.’
I made a could-go-either-way gesture. ‘She might be,’ I said. ‘Jenna-Jane is a tough old bird. Juliet, sit down before you fall down.’
Nicky pushed a vacant chair in behind her, unexpectedly solicitous. Juliet had given him his one and only post-mortem erection, so maybe his feelings were running along the same lines as mine. Juliet sank down, her arms visibly shaking from having supported her weight for those few seconds.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’ll admit that there isn’t a lot you’re good for right now.’
‘We heal quickly.’
‘Quick enough to get up to fighting strength in less than an hour?’ I demanded. ‘Listen, I promised you I’d keep Sue safe.’
‘And you broke that promise.’
‘The day’s not over yet.’
Juliet bared her teeth in a snarl, and however weak her body might have been right then, she spat out the next four words with the full, scary strength of her will.
‘I’m coming with you.’
I was prepared to argue some more, But Nicky spoke up before I could. ‘Why are you even arguing about this?’ he demanded. ‘Asmodeus’ plan depends on her being there, right? He might not even let you in through the door without her. And he’s likely to let her get in real close to him for the same reason. She can be your Trojan Horse.’
Juliet turned her head to stare at Nicky with cold ferocity. She said something in her own demonic tongue that was probably very insulting and – I was willing to bet – physically impossible.
Nicky leaned back from her sudden, unsettling anger and tensed, looking like he was about to bolt. Being dead, he hates physical confrontation. When you’re running on empty, your body doesn’t heal, and every wound is irreversible.
Trudie stepped in to take some of the heat. ‘Maybe he’s right,’ she said. ‘Forget what I just said. Asmodeus is too strong for any of us. If he wants us dead, we’re dead. We’ve only got a chance at all because he needs Juliet alive.’
Gil laughed sardonically. ‘Until he finds out that she can’t do the mojo any more. That’s not going to give us much of a window, is it?’
Trudie looked at me expectantly. I hefted the Sainsbury’s bag and carefully poured the jagged pieces of broken glass out onto the table. Juliet, Nicky and Gil stared at it, their faces registering all the many flavours of nonplussed.
‘Fortunately,’ I said, ‘we have a secret weapon.’
Gil cleared his throat, looking a little awkward. ‘Actually, we have two,’ he said. He reached into his pocket and took out a slim rectangular case, which he cracked open to display the shiny silver disc inside. ‘A little present from Davey Nathan, Castor. He gave it to me this morning, but with everything that’s happened . . .’
‘Is that my anti-Asmodeus lullaby?’ I asked.
‘The extended disco remix.’
‘Thank Christ,’ Nicky said glumly. ‘We’re saved.’
20
Imelda Probert had lived – and died – in an otherwise abandoned low-rise block in a grubby little cul-de-sac in Peckham, south London. Long ago scheduled for demolition, the building hung on like most of Imelda’s clientele in a sort of limbo state between life and death. The front door was nailed up with plywood boards, across which someone had sprayed the word WU-TANG CLAN inside a stylised W logo that looked like spread wings of a bird. More inexplicably, someone had painted the entire frontage of the block matt black, although red brick showed like raw flesh in places where the paint had cracked and fallen away. From the outside the building looked not just dead but already decayed.
Imelda hadn’t minded that at all: it just guaranteed her the quiet and privacy she needed to work. Her third- floor flat had been like the spark of life in a zombie’s cooling brain. That was until I brought Asmodeus here for the first time, and shifted the balance in favour of death. Everything that had happened since stemmed from that one stupendously bad decision.
Now here I was again to put things right – with Wayne Coyne singing ‘Too Heavy for Superman’ in a dirgy adagio inside my head.
We drove up and parked right in front of the house, the four of us, like the horsemen of some B-movie apocalypse, except we were riding in a high-sided Fiat Ducato which Nicky had appropriated from God knew where. It had been modified for use in the first London mayoral election, and for some inexplicable reason had never been touched since. Its customised sides were emblazoned with Frank Dobson’s gormless, what-me-worry face along with the worst election slogan in the history of the civilised world: FRANK AND TO THE POINT. In the middle of Peckham’s genteel Georgian slum district, the van was about as inconspicuous as President Ahmed Ahmedinajad at a Village People concert.
Gil slid over and let Trudie take his place in the driver’s seat. She shot me a glance, troubled and unhappy.
‘I’d rather be in there with you,’ she said.
