The Naming of the Beasts

There was dead silence at the other end of the line.

‘I would’ve seen it sooner,’ I went on, ‘except that I’m an arrogant sod, and the first ward I found was at Pen’s place, not at Juliet’s. I’d forgotten about Juliet bringing me home after one of my drunks. Asmodeus probably put them everywhere he thought she might turn up, including your place. I’ll bet there are a couple taped to the underside of her car. A few more spread around Willesden Green Library. In her sock drawer, maybe. I don’t know. There could be hundreds of the fucking things.’

Still no answer from Nicky’s end of the line, which probably meant he was thinking.

‘You remember the passage you showed me back when Gabriel first raised her up?’ I reminded him. ‘“She is of Baphomet the sister, and the youngest of her line, though puissant still and not easily to be taken with words or symbols of art. But with silver will you bind her and with her name, anagrammatised, appease her.” You explained that to me. Every name she takes on Earth - including Juliet Salazar - is a subset of the sounds or symbols that make up her real name. I think Asmodeus has been invoking Juliet by all her old, cast-off names. That’s why Foivel Grazimir had Tlallik down as a dead number. It was a name she wasn’t using any more, even way back then.’

‘Holy mother of fuck,’ Nicky intoned, his voice dropping to the limit of audibility as he forgot to breathe.

‘So what I’m asking you now is why anyone would want to do that? What’s he planning? Can one demon bind another demon? Get me some answers, Nicky, before this blows up in my face even worse than it already has. And get a message through to Juliet, somehow. I’ve dialled her a couple of times, but nobody’s picking up. She needs to know about all this shit.’

‘I’m onto it.’ For once Nicky didn’t carp or haggle about terms. His pride was on the line here, and he was only too keen to make a start. He hung up on me without another word.

When I got to the hospital, they stonewalled me. A nurse explained that Trudie was already under anaesthetic and about to go into theatre. The damage not just to the bone but to the muscle of her shoulder was spectacular. They were going to try to sew her back together before any of the tissue started to necrotise.

I called the MOU, as Jenna-Jane had suggested, to tell them where I was. Then I sat and waited for news. I called Pen too, but there was still no answer from her house - or her mobile. Both she and Sue were probably asleep by now. I left a message on her voicemail, asking her to call me, but I thought it was likely I’d get home before she got the message.

I dozed intermittently while I waited, recharging my batteries slightly. They seemed to need it. The last three days felt like a waking dream, shot through with hallucinatory moments. My three encounters with Asmodeus ran together in my mind, so that they seemed like just the one conversation, interspersed with pregnant pauses while the two of us played a prolonged game of hide-and-seek across the face of the city. I’d found him, but that didn’t feel like much of a victory, not now I knew he’d been working on Juliet the whole time, driving her crazy for reasons I couldn’t even begin to guess.

At 4.00 a.m. I was woken up by my own phone ringing. It was Jenna-Jane.

‘Felix, this is remarkable,’ she said. ‘You saw the sigils in the demon’s lair?’

‘I couldn’t take my eyes off them, J-J,’ I said, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

‘Are you aware of what they represent?’

‘Yeah. Are you?’

‘They’re steganographic homonyms. They all denote the same entity. It appears to be the succubus who is referred to in late-medieval grimoires as Ajulutsikael.’

‘Yeah. That was my conclusion too.’

‘Which means that Asmodeus is trying to summon her simultaneously in multiple aspects or incarnations.’ She paused as if she expected me to say something. When I didn’t, she went on with sardonic emphasis. ‘Despite the fast that she’s already been definitively summoned.’

I’d never been sure exactly how much Jenna-Jane knew about Juliet. She’d sounded me out on a few occasions in a way that made me think she was fishing for more information based on guesswork or rumour. I sure as Hell wasn’t going to play join-the-dots for her now.

‘Multiple aspects?’ I mused.