neck and shoulder, so that he fell to the ground as heavily as a bag of hammers. It had all happened so fast that the echoing boom reached me a second afterwards.
But as the echoes of that unlovely sound died, we both heard something new and worse coming in from the street, sickening the air. It was like the skirling call of an infernal ice cream van, playing at a hundred and some decibels, summoning ghosts and ghouls and damned souls to stop me and buy one.
‘What do you know?’ I said, as I finally reached the upper landing. ‘They’re playing our tune.’
I drove my fist full into Asmodeus’ face. The satisfaction I took from that was tempered by the fact that the face actually belonged to Rafi, but it still felt pretty good, all things considered.
His head snapped back, but he didn’t lose his footing even for a second, and his riposte was swift and terrible. His arm swept round in an elliptical arc, the air cracked like a whip, and the world exploded.
There are two or three seconds here that I can’t account for. The next thing I was aware of was a pressure against my back, and a sensation around my mouth and chin as though someone was drinking from me through a straw of enormously wide bore.
Not knowing if I was standing on my feet or sprawling on my arse, I twitched my limbs in random combinations in the hope of getting good reports. But my eyes were definitely at floor level, and canted at ninety degrees.
The demon flickered in my blurred vision, getting closer and then receding. I steeled myself for the blow that would end everything, shut me down for good, but it didn’t come. I blinked furiously to clear my sight, and saw something I didn’t understand.
Asmodeus was dancing. Or at least that was what it looked like. The light from a street lamp, shining in through a window just off to our left, picked him out like a spotlight.
It was finally zero hour, and everything was kicking in. The bastard was writhing on an invisible cross as big as the world. But would that be big enough?
Asmodeus staggered, fell, scrambled to his feet. He baulked, and blood spurted between his clenched teeth in a pressurised stream.
His searchlight gaze found me across the width of the landing. His eyes narrowed.
‘Very clever,’ he bubbled. ‘Castor, I love you. I never expected for a moment that you’d make a fight of this.’
He slumped against the wall, his eyelids flickering like those of an epileptic in the grip of a grand mal seizure. He was on the ropes. The very mechanism he’d chosen for his escape – using Juliet’s guaranteed fatal attraction to separate out the human from the the demonic parts of the amalgam he’d become – gave us our window of opportunity. If there was ever a time when Asmodeus’ grip on Rafi’s soul could be prized free, it was now. The demon had done the groundwork for me. All I had to do was to bring it home.
As though God loved me, I found my whistle ready to hand. It had fallen only a few feet away, and it hadn’t broken. I took it in my hands and raised it, my fingers finding the stops by automatic reflex. I pursed my lips.
I couldn’t even feel the mouthpiece where it pressed against my mouth. I tried to blow a note, and red froth sprayed the metal. The tingling, sucking absence in the lower part of my face made sudden, sickening sense, and I moaned aloud.
Reeling like a drunk, Asmodeus wheeled about.
‘But everything’s relative,’ he growled. ‘Isn’t it? You feel like playing me another of your lazy little ’tudes? No?’ He kicked something across the floor at me – something red and wet that looked as though it belonged in the little plastic bag you find up a chicken’s arse and throw away before you cook it. Part of my jawbone; I could tell by the fact that it still had three teeth embedded in it.
‘Then let’s shut that fucking PA up,’ Asmodeus slurred. He crouched low on his haunches and leaped into the stairwell.
There’s a moment in the execution of any plan when you realise that you’re just not as good as you think you are, that you’ve done everything you could and it isn’t enough. You got the angle right, and you gunned the engine like a maniac, but your bike isn’t going to make it to the other side of the canyon.
That moment fell on my shoulders now. I struggled to my feet, trying it on for size. It felt like it belonged, like I’d been wearing it, more or less, ever since the night when I sat down in Rafi’s cramped bathroom and performed the one, crappy piece of improv that was destined to encapsulate my life.
I flexed my legs to see if they were going to give. Then I charged the window and kicked it out of its rotten frame in one piece. It fell and shattered on the pavement below me with a crash that could be heard even above the screaming discords of the demon lullaby. Climbing up onto the ragged ledge of splintered plasterboard where the window had been, I launched myself after it into the street.
Two storeys isn’t even twenty feet, but it’s enough to snap your legs like a couple of twigs unless you’re either a professional stuntman or very lucky. I’m not either of those things, but I was aiming for the Ducato, which stands eight feet high on its wheelbase. My feet staved in the roof and part of the near-side panel, turning Frank Dobson’s slick smile into a leering grimace, and no doubt taking Trudie to the brink of a heart attack.
A second later the front door of the building was ripped off its hinges from the inside and tossed negligently away through the air.
Asmodeus stepped out into the night, shaking his head the way a dog shakes itself off after diving into ice- cold water. His gaze tracked from side to side, seeming to miss the van first time round even though it was right in front of him, but then catching it on the next pass.
He walked towards us, the glass dagger protruding obscenely from his chest. Fresh blood gouted from it with each step.
I banged on the roof of the van to get Trudie’s attention. ‘Give me the gun,’ I shouted, but what she would have heard was ‘WUFF-uffa-FUH!’ I didn’t really have a working vocal apparatus any more, and in a wistful, just- about-to-go-into-shock kind of way, I was starting to miss it.
Asmodeus was maybe three strides away from us when Juliet plunged through the doorway behind him and tackled him from behind. They went down together and rolled almost under the van’s wheels. Juliet’s hands were locked around Asmodeus’ throat, but he had his own hands – which looked much bigger than Rafi’s right then, the muscles in his forearms standing out like ropes – clamped to either side of her head. He forced her head further and further back, trying to snap her spine.
I dropped off the roof of the van, falling on all fours but scrambling to my feet again quickly. Trudie was fumbling with the shotgun, but she only had one hand and she couldn’t seem to find the safety. Nicky had only demonstrated it once, and things can slip your mind in the heat of the moment. Right then, the moment felt hot enough to scald.
