Thicker Than Water Read online

  ‘The red sea,’ he said, more or less distinctly. ‘Blood is salt water. That’s all.’

  ‘Lisa is asleep upstairs,’ Imelda reminded us as she came back in with the chalk. ‘Let’s do this quietly.’

  ‘We can do the invocation quietly,’ Trudie said. ‘But we can’t be sure that we can control everything the demon does once he rises.’

  Imelda closed the door, firmly. ‘Thank you for the reminder,’ she said, shooting me a look that would have knocked me back ten feet or so if I hadn’t already been up against the wall. The room was feeling a little crowded now, since we couldn’t walk in the cleared space at the centre where Trudie was about to draw the circle, and the margins of the room were full of displaced furniture.

  ‘I’m going to use the Baphomet sigil, inscribed with the ordinals of Leviathan,’ Trudie told us as she started to sketch in the first line. ‘Stanislas de Guaita, not LaVey’s Hell’s Kitchen Baphomet. Mister Ditko, you’d better be inside the circle before I close it.’

  ‘What about Bic?’ I asked her. She looked at me, thinking it through.

  ‘Outside,’ she said at last. ‘If we frame the conjuration right, Asmodeus won’t need to cross the circle to touch the boy on the psychic level. And this way there are four of us in total, which is a strong number. Should I perform the conjuration, Mister Castor, or would you prefer to do that yourself? You know this demon better than I do.’

  ‘I’d like to see you work,’ I said, which fell squarely into the ‘truth as far as it goes’ category. I was curious as to how she’d approach this - and I also wanted to keep my own powder dry in case Asmodeus cut up rough somewhere down the line. My chest was still weak from my injuries, and this was going to be the kind of balancing act I wouldn’t normally attempt even when I was at full strength. If I’d had a single other option left in the world, I wouldn’t have been trying it.

  We placed Bic at the southernmost point of the pentacle

  - Trudie complaining once again that I’d made her come without her kit so she couldn’t check the alignment with a compass - and took our own places more or less at the other three cardinal points, with Trudie as east because this was a Satanic rite and the east is Satan’s appointed sphere. Rafi stepped into the circle and sat cross-legged in the middle. ‘I’m going to get chalk all over my arse,’ he complained. It was probably meant as a joke, but none of us were in the mood for laughing.

  Trudie unwound the string from her hands, flexed her fingers, and started to weave a new cat’s cradle. She chanted a rhyme at the same time, but it wasn’t anything that a practising Satanist - or a practising Christian, for that matter - would have expected. It was a playground rhyme, starting with the familiar sequence ‘Apple, peach, pear, plum,’ but mostly muttered so fast and so low in her throat that it couldn’t be followed.

  I caught a whiff of a sour, slightly unnerving smell - like the curdled tang of formic acid when you burn an ant with a magnifying glass. In the centre of the circle, Rafi shuddered suddenly, his shoulders tensed.

  ‘Johnny broke a bottle,’ Trudie chanted, ‘and blamed it on me. I told ma, ma told pa—’ Her fingers flickered in and out between the strings like the shuttles of a tiny loom. The pattern emerged, one line at a time.

  The air in the room seemed to thicken. A cat yowled in the alley behind us and Rafi moaned, both at the same time. It was probably pure coincidence, but it felt as though the power that Trudie was putting out in Rafi’s direction was hitting random targets on the same vector.

  Her movements quickened, reached a crescendo. She held up her two hands, joined by the cat’s cradle, then tugged twice and the string magically fell free, dangling from the index finger of her right hand while her left described an arabesque in the tainted air.

  Rafi sagged and then stiffened, his limbs shifting suddenly into a new configuration as his sleeping passenger woke and stretched. I watched the demon surface within the man’s flesh. From one point of view, nothing much actually changed: it was more like one of those trompe l’oeil drawings where the same sketched outline, seen from two different angles, can be either a woman with a parasol or a charging rhino. The same thing had happened here: Rafi didn’t look any different, but he had turned into something else.

  I was trying to stay calm and detached, but powerful emotions flooded through me: indignation, that my friend should have to endure this; repugnance at having to wake this thing again against all my instincts and Imelda’s arguments; and, bubbling under, the sickening sense of guilt that every contact with Asmodeus brought me - because if I’d been a better exorcist, he wouldn’t even have been here.

  ‘Who calls so loud?’ the demon asked mildly, raising his head - Rafi’s head - and twisting it around to an unnatural angle so that he could stare directly at Trudie. His voice was razor blades shaving your mind too close. ‘Come a little closer, girl. Let me look at you.’

  ‘Asmodeus,’ I said, from his right-hand side. ‘You offered me a deal, the last time we spoke.’

  ‘I’ll get to you, Felix,’ Asmodeus growled, ‘when I’m good and ready. But let me taste the Christian soldiers first, for reasons of decorum. Too much to hope that you’ve brought either one along as a sacrifice, I suppose?’

  ‘I adjure you to keep in your place,’ Trudie said, trying hard not to flinch as Asmodeus leaned forward the better to examine her. ‘And - and to make no move without our hest, in plain words stated. Qui tacet non consentiri videtur.’

  Rafi’s handsome face distorted suddenly, the lower jaw sagging like wax to reveal a gaping, shapeless mouth with too many teeth. Trudie’s shoulders jerked and her hands came up reflexively for a moment, before she got control of herself and lowered them again.

  Asmodeus inhaled deeply. ‘Mmmm,’ he rumbled appreciatively. ‘Scrubbed so clean it doesn’t even smell like meat. Pissed yourself just a little, though, didn’t you, sweetheart? You were almost sure your little circle would hold, but there’s always that little niggling doubt, isn’t there? Suppose God is too busy watching the sparrows fall in the market place. Snap. Crunch. Where’s little Trudie?’

  ‘You won’t be harming anyone in this house,’ the Ice-Maker said from directly behind him, her voice cold and hard.

  Asmodeus snarled - a long, rumbling sound like distant thunder. He didn’t look at Imelda, any more than he’d looked at me; but then, we were known quantities. He’d gravitated towards Trudie because it’s in his nature to test out all the variables before he moves. He lowered his head, Rafi’s joints making audible clicks and cracks as Asmodeus reshaped his fleshly tabernacle more to his liking.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Not yet awhile. You’re as safe as if God himself had gathered you into His embrace, my little doves. And Castor - Castor has even less to worry about. Like he said, we’ve got a deal. Even the meanest little lick-spittle in Hell will tell you that Asmodeus keeps his word.’

  Finally his head swivelled round to bring me into his field of vision. ‘How did it go again, Felix?’

  Meeting that pitch-black gaze was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but there was no way I was going to give him the satisfaction of blinking or looking away. ‘You said if I gave you a taste of the thing that’s haunting the Salisbury, you’d tell me how to fight it,’ I said.

  Asmodeus nodded, scratching absently at his chin - at Rafi’s chin - and leaving blood-red runnels in his wake - because his fingernails had extended into two-inch talons. ‘That’s what I said,’ he agreed. ‘So. Is it Christmas?’

  I nodded towards Bic, who was curled up in a foetal position at the pentacle’s nadir. Ever since Asmodeus had made his eerie appearance the boy had fallen still, all his mumblings and muscular tics abruptly stopped. He was like a statue now: a study for the starring role in a pietà.

  ‘There,’ I said.

  ‘That little morsel?’ Asmodeus snickered nastily. ‘I need enough to get the taste of it on my tongue, Castor. You want to take advantage of my judgement; my fine discrimination. I can�
��t make up my mind on the first bite, can I?’

  ‘The demon at the Salisbury touched this boy first,’ I said, cutting through the bullshit. ‘And it put its hand more heavily on him than on anyone else. Trust me, there’s enough there for you to work with. What I need from you is a promise - a binding promise - that the boy won’t be harmed.’

  ‘Ah.’ The demon’s gaze flicked back to me, an ironic smile tweaking the corners of his lips. ‘We might have a problem there.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Oh yes indeed. A binding promise? What in all Creation could bind me against my will?’

  ‘Then the deal,’ I said, climbing to my feet, ‘is off.’ I unshipped my whistle and put it to my lips, sounding a chord that Asmodeus would easily recognise: the same tune I always played when my goal was to push him back down into the depths and give Rafi a little respite: a little time alone inside his own head.

  ‘No.’ Asmodeus and Trudie Pax said the word at the same time. I watched him and I put out a warning hand to tell Trudie to keep out of this. She was here because Gwillam wouldn’t have let me take Bic without her, but that was as far as it went - and it didn’t give her a voice in the negotiations.

  I lowered the whistle. ‘Go on,’ I said.

  The demon bared his teeth in what could equally well have been a grin or a threat display. ‘I have to admit,’ he said, ‘that my indifference was feigned. I want this. It’s been a while since I tasted another demon’s substance. A pleasure too long denied. So I’m inclined to . . . unbend a little to make it happen.’

  He paused, staring at me through narrowed eyes. I waited him out.

  ‘Your circle,’ he said, ‘already binds me in certain ways. If I add the sigils of my own name - my true name - to those already present, then your hold on me is that much stronger. You could cripple me if I broke my word to you. If you’re strong enough, you’d even have a shot at destroying me.’

  ‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Except that I’ve only got your word for it what your true name is, and I can’t read your symbols. You could write George W. Bush down there and I wouldn’t know any better, would I?’

  ‘The law of analogues—’ Trudie Pax began.

  ‘Trudie,’ I snapped, ‘I swear if you open your mouth again I’ll put you outside the door until we’re finished.’

  She gave me a long, narrow-eyed stare, but she fell silent.

  ‘The lady is, however, entirely right,’ Asmodeus said. ‘A false name would make your circle convulse and the space within it rupture. We’d all suffer - and I, being inside it, would suffer most of all. You’d know whatever I wrote was truth because I wouldn’t be screaming.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not into all this black-magic gubbins,’ I said, ‘and I’m not taking your word for anything. Try again.’

  We locked stares for a moment longer.

  ‘I’ll set it to music for you,’ Asmodeus snarled.

  ‘Done,’ I said at once. Because that was what I’d been hoping for all along.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ Asmodeus instructed me. ‘And cover your ears. They may bleed slightly, but that can’t be helped.’

  I put my hands to my ears but kept my eyes open: you can say what you like about my table manners and my love of my fellow man, but Mrs Castor didn’t raise any stupid children.

  Asmodeus gestured, and a complicated sequence of notes came into my mind from nowhere. I knew, without needing to be told, what it was: it was a portion of his essence - the part of him that could be broken down into sound, and made accessible to my death-sense. He was giving me the wherewithal to destroy him: the magic bullet. A dizzy sense of triumph filled me, and I found it hard to keep my poker face intact. When this was over, I would have most of what I needed to set Rafi free from the burden he’d been carrying for the past three years. I could finally nail Asmodeus to the wall and let my friend walk away clean.

  I lowered my hands. My ears were filled with clamour and roaring as though someone had just used my brain as the clapper of a bell. ‘Okay,’ I said, unable to hear the sound of my own voice, ‘this is how it plays. Anything inside that boy that isn’t boy, you can feed on. Whatever piece of the demon is gripping his soul. Take it out of him, and do whatever the hell you like with it. So long as no harm comes to him in the process, and nothing is left inside of him at the end that isn’t human. Nothing of you, and nothing of this other entity. Give me a yes or a no, Asmodeus. Not an inch or an ounce of this is negotiable.’

  The demon’s lips moved - or rather the man’s lips moved and the demon spoke through them. I couldn’t hear the word, but I could read it: and a nod is a nod in any language.

  Asmodeus crawled spider-like to the southern tip of the pentagram, where he stared down at Bic with feral delight. Slowly he leaned forward as far as he could, lowering his upper body on jackknifed arms and craning his neck back until the point of his jaw touched the ground a scant inch from Bic’s face. The boy seemed asleep, his eyes closed, his body absolutely still and his face perfectly inexpressive.

  Asmodeus spoke another syllable - again, I could only see his lips move, not hear the sound - and something rose up from Bic’s slumped form like steam from a kettle.

  You must have seen a cat with a mouse. Well, if the cat and the mouse were both nine-tenths invisible, and if they didn’t move, then that was a little like what we saw: the thing that rose from Bic met another thing that was exhaled in a malevolent hiss from between Asmodeus’s clenched teeth, and the air roiled and rocked at their inter-penetration. But it wasn’t a battle, because there was no point at which Asmodeus was moved to more than token effort. The thing that was inside Bic, which was a limb of the greater thing that hung over the Salisbury, might be fighting for its life insofar as it had one: Asmodeus was playing, and drawing out the pleasure.

  Then finally, after what might have been the better part of a minute, the demon drew in a breath both long and deep, his eyes almost closing, and he tilted his head, first to the left, then to the right, his teeth still bared in a terrible rictus.

  He held the pose long enough for the ringing in my ears to die down, and the air in the room, which had seemed to chill precipitately, came slowly back to normal. The goose bumps that had prickled our flesh lay down again, and the cat out in the alley - or perhaps another cat - made a miauling sound that was almost like the cry of a human baby. Bic still hadn’t moved in all this time.

  ‘Are you done?’ Imelda demanded of Asmodeus, her voice thick with disgust.

  ‘Oh lady,’ the demon murmured, ‘I am done, and I am satisfied. You cannot know how long it’s been since I enjoyed so rich a meal. Small, undeniably, but choice. Very choice.’

  ‘Then give me the goods, you evil bastard, and let’s get this over with,’ I said.

  Asmodeus straightened as slowly as he’d bowed, and then he massaged his right shoulder as though ironing out a cramp. ‘The goods,’ he repeated softly. ‘Oh yes, Castor. I have what you need. I’ve tasted the part, and so I know the whole. I can give you a nostrum so potent that this new-dropped little runt that dares to call itself a demon will melt away under your ministrations like water drops on a hot iron skillet.’

  He held my gaze.

  ‘But you have to say please,’ he announced, in a tone that was openly mocking.

  ‘Don’t piss me off,’ I warned him grimly. ‘I’ve got your number.’

  ‘Because I gave it to you,’ Asmodeus agreed. ‘But I still feel entitled to a touch of respect, because without me what are you? A dumbstruck cunt-whisker trapped on stage without anything to play for an encore.’

  ‘I can still play your exit music,’ I reminded him softly, and my whistle was in my hand again.

  ‘No,’ Asmodeus said. ‘You can’t. Not yet. Because if you do that now, you won’t have what you came for. Ask me for the ammunition, Castor. You have the tune that means me: ask me for the tune that means this other one.’

  ‘Give me the tune,’ I asked him.

  ‘Please.�
�

  ‘Give it to me, please.’

  ‘Inscribe it in my mind,’ Asmodeus coached.

  ‘Inscribe it in my mind.’

  ‘So deeply that it may not be forgotten.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Say it!’

  I swallowed. ‘So deeply that it may not be forgotten.’

  ‘It’s yours,’ Asmodeus whispered, smiling a smile so wide that it almost cracked Rafi’s face in half. And just like before, the notes were driven into my brain like tent spikes into frozen ground. Harder this time, and further in, so that the pain made me gasp and stiffen.

  And I saw what Asmodeus was doing just a second too late for it to make the slightest bit of difference.

  ‘No!’ I screamed.

  ‘Too late,’ the demon chided me. ‘I have to take your first answer.’

  I took a step forward, my arm shooting out by some stupid, gobshite reflex. Trudie Pax tackled me hard from the side and pulled me back before I could step across the circle and into the demon’s hands.

  ‘No!’ I said again, shaking my head violently as I choked the word out. I was trying to remember: but Asmodeus was writing the new tune - the exorcism that would destroy the Salisbury demon - in the exact same space within my mind where he’d written the one that was his own: overwriting one sequence of notes with another. He’d given me the means to rip him out of Rafi root and branch: and then he’d taken it away again as easily as he’d given it.

  ‘You bastard,’ I moaned. ‘You cheating, conniving bastard!’

  Asmodeus actually laughed. ‘I played by your rules, Castor,’ he said, shaking his head as he settled back on his haunches again. ‘It’s not my fault if you don’t think things through. Hey, be grateful you get out of this still sane. I could have filled your whole head with that fucking music and left you drooling.’

  He licked his lips, savouring the last vestiges of his unholy meal. His gaze clouded.

  ‘But then you wouldn’t have got the joke,’ he said reflectively. ‘And that would have taken away a lot of the point.’