The Naming of the Beasts

So we sat, and we talked, and we went nowhere. Jenna-Jane restated her moult theory, that demons start out as simpler organisms, and change their names as they develop. I didn’t care, and I barely listened. Asmodeus had Pen and Sue, and that was all I could think about. Obviously it would help to understand what the fuck he was up to with Juliet, but I didn’t think insight was going to come from looking at pretty pictures. It was something to do with what Juliet was and what she did - and it had to fit in with all the other shit he’d been doing since he escaped.

Unless I was wrong. Unless he was just rabid and tearing at the world, and in the end he’d kill us all just for the immediate sense of relief it would bring.

I got up from the table. ‘I have to make a call,’ I said. Jenna-Jane and Gentle continued to pore over the printouts, and made no answer.

I crossed to the window, far enough away that I wouldn’t be overheard, and dialled Sue Book’s number yet again. Just the same answerphone message, and this time I found I couldn’t muster a reply. How do you say to an answerphone ‘a monster has stolen the woman you love’? I just said ‘Call me, Juliet. Please, for fuck’s sake, just call me.’ Then I hung up.

I stared down at the lawn. The piano still lay dead in the long grass, and the stolid Mr Dicks still stood by the gatepost, arms folded, glaring at the pre-dawn rubberneckers. He looked up at the window, and when he saw me watching him his eyes narrowed. I had too much on my mind right then even to flash him a wave.

Behind me, Jenna-Jane was rummaging in her pockets - an incongruously human thing for her to do, making her seem for a moment like a forgetful grandma, looking in vain for her front door keys.

‘Is the succubus his ally?’ Gentle was asking. ‘Could summoning all her aspects make her stronger? A sort of ontological layering . . .’

‘It was driving her insane,’ I muttered.

There was a momentary silence from behind me. Then I distinctly heard the dry click of Jenna-Jane’s tongue against her palate, an involuntary but very discreet expression of surprise and enlightenment.

‘Not a benign effect at all,’ she mused. ‘A form of torture.’

‘Or just an uncontrolled regression,’ Gentle chipped in.

A sequence of seven tinny and discordant notes sounded suddenly from somewhere nearby. J-J took her phone from her pocket and put it to her ear.

‘Mulbridge,’ she said, with a simplicity more arrogant than any degree of ostentation could ever be. Honorifics were for mere mortals.

She listened intently for a few seconds, then started to interject questions and comments. ‘Where? How far, exactly? Good. Good. What’s the address? Thank you.’

When she slapped the phone closed, less than a minute had elapsed.

‘Your Mr Moulson, Felix,’ she said. ‘The man who was possessed, and allegedly found a way to free himself. We’ve finally run him to ground. Appleton House, Godalming Lane, Eashing, in Surrey. It’s straight down the A3. Only twenty miles, apparently.’

I headed for the door, but I went from giant strides to dead stop again in the space of three steps.

‘Shit!’ I exploded. ‘Pen’s car. He fucking totalled her car!’

‘You can take my car,’ Jenna-Jane said without hesitation. ‘Gentle, give Mr Castor your radio. I’ll go and tell Dicks he’s to take you directly there.’

She hurried out of the room. Gentle took a somewhat bulky walkie-talkie out of her pocket and held it out to me.

‘What do I need this for?’ I demanded, nonplussed. ‘I’ve got my mobile.’

Gentle shrugged. ‘This uses police freaks,’ she said. ‘Some areas you don’t get good coverage from the mobile network. Radios always work - at least top-end kit like this does. You use band one unless there’s local interference, fall back to two, then three, and so on. Soon as the switchboard at the MOU picks you up, you’ll be patched through to Professor Mulbridge wherever she is.’

‘Wonderful,’ I muttered. ‘A hotline to God.’ I took the radio and shoved it into my pocket. I went downstairs with Gentle at my back, still explaining the finer points of the radio’s operation, but I couldn’t make myself listen any more. My mind was seething with questions and doubts. Why had Asmodeus taken Pen and Sue, instead of killing them here? How had he taken them, for that matter? In the back of a white van? Rolled up in a carpet? How did kidnapping fit in with the other things he’d done since he got free? Why did he need them alive, when he’d killed Ginny Parris and Jovan Ditko without a second thought?

Out on the lawn, Jenna-Jane was talking animatedly to Dicks. The big man shot me a glare as I approached, then nodded curtly - to Jenna-Jane, not to me.

‘It’s imperative,’ Jenna-Jane said. ‘This is the most important lead we’ve had so far, and we have to be free to pursue it wherever it leads.’ She looked round and seemed to notice me for the first time. ‘Castor. Good. Get into the car.’