Vicious Circle Read online

  I didn’t say a word. I was taking this personally, too, but I wasn’t going to start swearing any oaths of vengeance in front of a police officer. They’ve got a different set of rules for the general public.

  “Get yourself a lawyer, Fix,” Coldwood said sadly. “A good one. Sooner or later, we’re going to pull you in formally, and a bad lawyer’s gonna leave you with egg on your face whatever happens.”

  “I need—a lift home,” I said, slurring the words.

  Coldwood examined me critically for a few seconds, then turned to one of the uniforms standing by the door, who were pretending not to listen.

  “Drive him back,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And get the license number of that car he was driving. Just for the record.”

  He went back inside without saying good night. I guess he felt he’d done me enough favors to be going on with.

  Thirteen

  WHETHER I DREAMED OR NOT THAT NIGHT, I DON’T REmember. Sleep was like a lead-lined box that I fell into, and the lid slammed shut over my head. It was as cold as the grave in there, and mercifully quiet.

  But at some point in the night, someone must have torn away the sides of the box, because light started to filter in under my eyelids. Only a little, at first, but those first splinters broadened into crowbars, prying their way in, twisting me open to a day I didn’t want to have anything to do with. There was a tapping sound, too, of chisels working their way into the cracks and crevices of my consciousness.

  I tried to turn to get away from the light and the intrusive noise, but it seemed to be coming in from all sides. And movement was difficult in any case, because my muscles were cramped and screaming.

  I opened my eyes, which felt as though they’d been sealed shut with a silicon gun. I was in a car—Matt’s car, I realized when I saw the pine tree air freshener hanging over my head like mistletoe. What the hell was I doing there? I’d parked the car at Pen’s and then Coldwood and his little friends had bushwhacked me and spirited me away to Hendon. And since I’d gotten a police escort home . . . No, the details wouldn’t coalesce. The fever had been raging by then: I must have crawled back into the car under some vague impression that I still had to drive home, and then fallen asleep at the wheel instead. Good job. If I’d actually gotten the thing out onto the road, I’d be waking up in a morgue somewhere and finding out firsthand what out-of-body experiences are like.

  The tapping came again, louder, from right behind my head. With difficulty, I levered myself around in the seat without turning my neck, which felt like it would snap rather than pivot. Pen was standing beside the car, looking in at me with an expression of puzzled concern on her face.

  I unlocked the door and climbed out, almost losing my balance. Pen jumped in to catch me and keep me upright.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. “Not feeling too clever, to be honest.”

  She winced as the smell of my breath hit her unsuspecting airways: judging by the taste in my mouth, I could sympathize.

  “Fix,” she admonished me, but a lot more gently than I’d have expected, “have you been drinking?” I could understand the question. I was trying to lock the car and failing to get the key into the lock. Pen took the keys from me and locked it with the beeper on the fob.

  “No,” I said. “No more than usual. This is—something else. I’m coming down with some kind of bug.”

  She steered me toward the house. “What did you do to the car?” she asked, sounding concerned.

  “The car?” I echoed stupidly. My mind was a sprawl of flabby fingers that wouldn’t make a fist. Then I remembered the sideswipe on the Hammersmith overpass. “Oh, yeah. That wasn’t me. That was Catholic werewolves.”

  There are only five steps up to Pen’s front door. Somehow, they seemed to take a long time to negotiate, and we had a near disaster at the top when I lost my balance and Pen had to shove me forward into the hall to avoid me going back down again on my arse.

  “I’m calling a doctor,” Pen muttered as she hauled me into the living room and dumped me without ceremony onto the sofa.

  “I think,” I said, “I just need to lie down. Had a hell of a day yesterday. Got into a fight at White City, then the cops hauled me in to help them with their inquiries.”

  “Jesus, Fix!” Pen was looking down at me with troubled eyes. “What do they think you did?”

  “Murder.” I stared at the ground, trying to shut out the memory of the crusted spatter of blood and the terse plastic tag—like the tag you’d get from a cloakroom attendant—that marked the place where Abbie Torrington died. Wasted effort: it wouldn’t go away. “They think I murdered someone.”

  There was a silence, which seemed to expand like white light until it filled the room. Light-headed, I almost floated away on that white tide back into unconsciousness. I had too much still to do. I fought against my own body, and the room came back into focus. I didn’t think that silent tussle had taken any time at all, but when I raised my head again, Pen was gone.

  Saturday, May the sixth, I thought. Something went down on that night—something whose shape I could just barely make out through the many and disparate things it had touched. On Saturday, Stephen and Melanie Torrington are beaten and then shot in their own home. They don’t struggle. They don’t run. They just die. Later on, so does Abbie—sacrificial lamb in someone’s satanic knees-up. Then after they’ve killed her someone else walks into the room and breaks up the party with an assault rifle, aiming not at the Satanists—at least, not after the first few exhilarating moments—but at the magic circle where Abbie’s body is still lying. Was that other someone Dennis Peace? Was this where he acquired Abbie’s spirit, assuming he really had it? And if he did, was it a kidnapping or a rescue?

  Meanwhile, three miles away at the Scrubs, St. Michael’s Church was invaded by some entity so powerful that just being close to it poisoned the minds and souls of everyone in the goddamn building, sending them off on murderous trajectories that had sliced through the city like so many loops of piano wire through a ripe cheese.

  And something else. Something I was missing.

  Pen’s voice, low and urgent, was coming from out in the hall. Nobody else’s voice, just hers. I turned and saw her through the doorway, standing at the foot of the stairs, all by herself, talking away fifteen to the dozen. She was on her mobile, of course, but right then it seemed to me that there must be some spectral figure standing next to her, silent and invisible, as though she were reporting in to heaven, because there was a blaze of light around her head like a halo. But no, that was just the sun streaming in through the skylight over the front door. It was a beautiful day. About time. Way past time. But if the sunlight knew what the fuck it was shining on, would it bother to make the trip?

  Pen came back into the room, stood over me looking irresolute. “I’ve got to go, Fix,” she said. “Rafi’s seeing a psychiatrist this morning for a preliminary status hearing. I don’t want him to face that all by himself. I called Dylan and asked him to come and have a look at you, but he’s on call so he can’t. He’s going to send someone else, though—a friend. You just—you just stay here until he comes, all right?”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay.” She knelt down and gave me a quick, awkward hug. “Get better. I’ll give Rafi your love.”

  And as she straightened up again, a thought was zigzagging across my brain, trying to find an intact neuron it could connect to. Pen was still talking, but I didn’t hear a word over the ringing in my ears.

  Something about Pen? Or about Rafi? I should be there for him. I had been there for him. That was the problem. That was why he was so fucked up now.

  The door slammed, startling me out of a half doze. I tried to get up, but I didn’t manage it. I opened my mouth to say “I’m coming with you,” but Pen wasn’t there anymore. Of course, that was why the door had slammed. She’d left already.

  But that wasn’t the issue, was it? Pen was fine, because she was going to visit Rafi, and Asmodeus—most of Asmodeus—was somewhere el
se. So what was the problem? Why did I feel like there was something I hadn’t done, that I had to do right then without wasting any more time? And given that feeling of urgency, why was I still half-sitting, half-lying on the couch with my head hanging like a weight from my shoulders, staring at the floor?

  This time I managed to get upright, even though the floor was lurching in every direction at once, trying to throw me down again. I groped in my pocket for Matt’s car keys. Yeah, they were still there. I had to see someone. Juliet. I had to see Juliet, and tell her where to find Rafi on a Saturday night.

  Out into the hall. Which way now? Had to be either left or right, because there weren’t any other directions. Except I was forgetting down: there was an unreasonable prejudice against down. Down was amazing. Once you’d tried it, it was hard to get up again.

  I was stretched out on the stairs, diagonally crucified on dusty carpet that didn’t have a pattern anymore because the sun had bleached the threads to a uniform pale gold. It smelled of must and very faintly of tarragon: not the recipe I would have used. I couldn’t even remember deciding to go upstairs, so I levered myself upright, leaned backward as far as I could and fell down them again. You have to be decisive at times of crisis or people will walk all over you.

  Lying on my back in the hallway, I saw the door open and a pair of shiny black shoes advancing toward me, apparently walking on the ceiling. A man’s voice said a single word. Ship? Shit? Shirt? Then a huge face heaved itself into my field of vision like the moon rising in the middle of the day. It was a nice face, but it wasn’t one I knew.

  “Does anything hurt?” his lips said. A second or so later, the sound broke over me like a sluggish wave. I shook my head, infinitesimally.

  “Then is there any part of you that you can’t move?”

  That would have made me laugh, if I could remember how laughing worked. There wasn’t anything I could move right then. Maybe a finger, if I tried hard enough.

  The guy moved on to a lot of inappropriate touching, feeling my neck and my cheeks, pulling my eyelids down so that he could peer into my eyes, finally opening my mouth and looking down my throat with the aid of a flashlight: not a doctor’s flashlight, either—a Maglite about a foot and a half long that he must have found under Pen’s sink or somewhere similarly insalubrious.

  “Fuck you,” I said. Or tried to say: maybe I didn’t manage it, because he didn’t react in any way or even seem to hear me. He went away and came back again, once or perhaps a couple of times. Then he put a bag down on the carpet next to me, leaned in close again.

  “Do you have any recent injuries?” he asked me. “Wounds, I mean? Wounds that might still be open?”

  Well, this was covered under doctor-patient privilege, so it was okay to talk. But my teeth were clenched together and they wouldn’t separate. Coming through, coming through, I thought, coherent sentence coming through. But they didn’t fall for the bluff, and nothing at all happened. I managed to roll my eyes in the direction of my shoulder: a minimalist clue, but he seemed to get it. He pulled my coat open, undid the top three buttons on my shirt and peeled it back. He nodded at what he saw there.

  “You’ve got an infection,” he said, a whistling echo to his voice sounding like a cheap guitar effect. “I’m going to—”

  His voice became a ribbon in the air, a flick of motion traveling from one end of it to the other like the crack of a whip seen in fascinating slow motion. When it got to the farther end, it fell off into absolute silence.

  * * *

  I half-woke with a mouth so dry it felt like it was full of panel pins. I tried to speak, and something cold and wet was pressed to my face. I was able to put my tongue to it and get some moisture. The pain faded a little, and I faded right along with it.

  The next thing I was aware of was “Colonel Bogey March” playing on someone’s car horn. Who invented that story about Hitler’s ball? I wondered dreamily. Alternatively, who got in close enough to count?

  Then memory poured in on me from all directions at once and I sat up as abruptly as if I was spring-loaded. I was in my own room, lying in my own bed, and the window was open. Alarmingly, dislocatingly, it was evening outside.

  “Fuck!” I croaked. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

  I threw off the covers, discovering in the process that I was naked and slick with cold sweat. My fever had broken while I slept, and now I felt weak but relatively clearheaded. Clearheaded enough to remember . . . something. Some revelation that had loomed out of the fog of my malfunctioning brain and caught me in its headlights just before I collapsed. But not cool enough to remember what it was.

  Juliet. It was something to do with Juliet, and her plans for tonight. For some reason, I had a feeling—no, a dead, cold conviction—that it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to send her spirit into the stones of St. Michael’s Church. I wasn’t sure why, but I had to be there and I had to stop her.

  I found my clothes neatly stacked on the chest of drawers just inside the door, my coat slung over the back of a chair. My mobile was in my pocket, but when I tried to turn it on I realized that it had run out of charge. Occupational hazard for me: I came to the technology late and unconvinced. I turned out every pocket, but there was no sign of Matt’s car keys.

  I hauled the clothes back on in the order they came to hand. I needed a shower in the worst way, but there was no time. I stumbled down the stairs, my legs still trembling just a little.

  The phone was in the kitchen, and so was a short, stocky man with a sizable beer gut. He was sitting at the kitchen table, leafing through a very old magazine, but he closed it and stood up as I came in. He was wearing a brown corduroy jacket that looked slightly frayed, and National Health glasses that did nothing for his florid, pitted face apart from magnify one of the least impressive parts of it. The top of his head was bald, but tufts of hair clung on around his ears like thin scrub on treacherous scree. I gave him a nod, but I had too much on my mind right then for small talk. I picked up the phone on the kitchen wall. The short man watched me dial.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. He had a very faint Scottish accent.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Can you give me a moment?”

  The communal phone at the refuge rang a couple of dozen times without anybody answering. I was about to give it up when someone finally picked up. “Hello? This is Emma, who are you?” A little girl’s voice, with that awkwardly formal telephone manner that some kids pick up from grown-ups without quite knowing how it works.

  “My name’s Castor,” I said. “Can I speak to Juliet? Is she there?”

  There was a murmured conversation on the other end of the line, then, “She’s gone out,” Emma said. “You can leave a message if you like.”

  “Thanks. The message is that she should call me.” I thought that through. No good: I’d be on my way west. “Actually,” I said, “the message is that she shouldn’t go to church. I’ll explain why when I see her.”

  “I’ll pass that message on,” Emma piped.

  I hung up, and turned belatedly to acknowledge the little man who was still watching me in silence. “Whatever you did to me, it worked,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged—magnanimously, really, considering that I’d just cold-shouldered him after he’d pulled me back from the brink of—something. I had to go, but I had to know, too. “What was it?” I asked. “What was wrong with me?”

  “Clostridium tetani, mainly,” he said.

  “Clostridium—?”

  “You had a bad tetanus infection. You should have kept your booster shots up. Tell me, have you been playing with werewolves lately?”

  I hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Why?” I demanded.

  “Yeah, I thought so.” He scratched his jaw, looking at me like he wanted to examine me some more and maybe write a monograph on me for The Lancet. “It’s something I saw before once—and it struck me so much I tried to read up on it. The wound on your shoulder was made by some kind of caltrop or throwing star. Whoever threw it at you was a loup-garou, and he’d licked the blade first, got it n
ice and wet with his saliva.