The Naming of the Beasts

I touched the thick mass of bandage on her upper arm, like an American football player’s shoulder pad. ‘You can’t fight,’ I pointed out gently, ‘and you can’t perform an exorcism. But you can do this. It makes sense.’

‘I know it makes sense.’ Her voice was tight. ‘But I’ve been in on this hunt from the very start. And I’ve got the feeling tonight might be it for me. The last time I ever do this. It’s hard when it’s your last time and all you’re good for is back-up.’

‘You’re not back-up,’ Gil said. ‘You and Heath, you’re our long-range artillery.’

Trudie grinned at that, a little sourly. ‘And I suppose the three of you are the cavalry?’ she said. ‘Great metaphor, Gil. You can take turns being General Custer.’

I jumped out of the van and went round to the back, where I opened the doors. Juliet was slumped among the boxes there – probably full of old campaign fliers and I’M BACKING FRANK badges – but she climbed to her feet and stepped down, the wobble in her stride barely noticeable. She was wearing a black tracksuit that Trudie had picked up from the Oxfam shop on Hoe Street; a pair of black boots with tall heels, likewise. For once, I felt no compulsion to imagine what she was wearing underneath. No electricity came from her. Even her scent had gone. She smelled of nothing but new leather.

‘You’ll need to hang back,’ I told her, for the tenth or maybe the twentieth time. ‘If you go in too fast, he’ll figure it out. And if he figures it out, we’re all dead. The only reason he won’t just kill us all outright is because he still needs you to do him that one last favour.’

‘I’ll eat his face right off his skull,’ Juliet growled.

‘A sentiment we can all get behind,’ I agreed. ‘But for the love of God, Juliet, hang back. Don’t take the lead.’

‘For the love of who, Castor?’

Another good point. I let it stand.

We synchronised watches, mostly for Trudie’s benefit: ten to midnight.

‘Luck, Castor,’ she said.

‘Yeah, and you. We’ll have a pint afterwards, yeah? I think it’s my round next.’

‘Do you even have any money?’

‘No. But I like to keep track of my debts.’

I led the way, the point of a triangular battle formation that had Juliet and Gil McClennan as its other two vertices. My skin prickled as an invisible wave of pressure swept across it, the feeling an exorcist gets when the dead or the undead are watching him.

Asmodeus knew we were coming. He’d known we were coming even before we did.

Ignoring the front door, we circled around the left-hand flank of the building. A little way along, the black brickwork gave way to a spavined wooden fence with a door set into it. The door had a Yale lock, but it had never been locked as long as I’d known it. It wasn’t even bolted: the warped wood was all that kept it from swinging open by itself. It yielded to my push and we stepped through into a backyard so thick with brambles and thistles that it looked like the set of Day of the Triffids.

The side door was open too, and the hall inside was completely dark. I tiptoed to the foot of the stairs and listened for a moment or two in silence, throwing out my arm to hold Juliet back in case she tried to step past me. Nothing seemed to be moving in the gulf of air above us.

Slowly, I began to climb the stairs, with Juliet right at my back. They creaked and shifted under us, appallingly loud in the echoing emptiness. Ridiculously, even though I knew there was no point in stealth, I couldn’t keep myself from moving softly, trying to minimise the noise.

I also couldn’t stop watching the shadows, but that was a whole lot more rational. The room that Imelda and I had kitted out for Rafi was up on the second floor, but there was no reason at all why Asmodeus would feel obliged to play by the rules. He could be anywhere in the building.

But he was in the building, at least I knew that. The sense of him was everywhere, so pervasive that I could only pick up the barest hint of a direction. Above us somewhere, and watching, even now, because there was that prickling, itchy pressure again, across my shoulder blades.

We got to the first landing, turned onto the second flight of stairs. Juliet was crowding me from behind, filled with a desperate urgency that wouldn’t let her slow down even though she knew how this was meant to work. No good. No good at all. If we kept on climbing, we’d run into the demon in the dark, on his terms, and everything would accelerate out of control.

‘Are we really taking this to the wire?’ I asked aloud, in a conversational tone. ‘It’s late, and I’m tired, and we all know what you want, you grandstanding prick. Send the women down, and Juliet comes up.’

‘No,’ said the demon’s voice, echoing down the stairwell. He sounded relaxed and amused. ‘This isn’t a hostage situation, Castor. I said I’d keep them alive until you got here, that’s all.’

‘So where are they?’ I demanded. Impossible to get a fix on him in the pitch dark. He sounded close, but the stairwell was four storeys high. Close could mean ten feet, twenty, even thirty. There’s nothing worse than a valiant charge that turns into a long-distance slog.

‘They’re here,’ Asmodeus assured me. ‘They’re not in very good condition, but they’re here. Still breathing. More or less. If I were a man, I’d be a man of my word.’

‘You fucking . . .’ The words caught in my throat. ‘If you’ve done anything to them . . .’

‘I did a few things, at first. Then I discovered it was more interesting to make them do things to each other. It’s like they say, Castor. Fear eats the soul. Get someone scared enough, and civilisation flies right out the window.’ He chuckled softly, the sound falling like aeons-old dust through the dark. ‘You’ll have to watch your step when you come up here. It’s a little slippery underfoot.’

Juliet gave a wordless cry. I knew what was coming and I lunged to stop her, but her headlong rush knocked me sprawling against the banister, which cracked and gave ominously under my weight.

Too soon. Way too soon. I threw out my arm and caught her ankle just before she got out of reach, tripping her so that she fell full-length on the stairs.

‘Don’t!’ I shouted desperately. ‘Juliet, don’t!’

She kicked me on the point of the jaw. At any other time that would probably have killed me, but she wasn’t herself right then. Blood filled my mouth as my teeth were driven into my tongue, but I somehow managed to catch hold of her leg again, dragging her back down the stairs and clambering up in her place.

‘We don’t even know what you’ve got,’ I yelled up into the dark. ‘This is all bullshit until we see them.’

A hollow click sounded from above, and the stairwell was flooded with stark, shadowless light from a 150- watt bulb hanging directly over our heads. Asmodeus, up on the second-floor balcony, took his hand off the switch and let it fall back onto the banister rail. He was obviously alone.

‘I rest my fucking case,’ I said, sounding far less tough and uncompromising than I would have liked.

The demon just smiled. ‘Do you need to see them?’ he asked, speaking past me towards Juliet, who was only then struggling to her feet.

‘No,’ she whispered. I don’t know how Asmodeus heard her. Standing right next to her, I could barely make out the word.

‘No,’ the demon agreed, almost gently. ‘Because you can smell her. You can smell her flesh, her blood and her breath, even from way down there. You know she’s still alive, but you don’t know how long that might last. And the only way you’re going to get to her, and find out how bad it is, is to go through me. You, fuck-doll. Just you. Anybody else who comes up here goes down again in pieces.’ He shrugged theatrically. ‘So what are you waiting for?’

Juliet pushed me aside. I raised an arm to halt her again, because I knew we still had time to kill before zero hour, but her hand moved in a flicker of speed, and she caught my wrist in a grip so tight I cried aloud. Evidently her strength was coming back. So was the crackling erotic aura that normally surrounded her. Her touch made the breath catch in my throat.

‘Mine now,’ she growled.

And she threw me aside so that I tumbled and rolled back down the stairs, coming to a jarring halt on the warped boards of the first-floor landing. The wood was so dry and worm-eaten that I almost went through them.

I rolled onto my side so that at least I was facing the right way to see what was happening above me, but there was no way I could stop it now. Juliet was taking the steps two at a time, her long-legged stride indicative in itself of the renewed energy and potency that was pouring into her – at the worst possible time.