The Naming of the Beasts

Gil McClennan shivered as he stepped over the threshold. The change in temperature from the warmth of the air outside was sudden and marked.

‘Place is as cold as a tomb,’ he muttered.

‘Well, shit!’ Nicky sneered. ‘Here I’ve been looking for a good analogy all this time, and it was right there in front of my face.’

Gil’s face went through some interesting changes as he realised belatedly that he was talking to a dead man. ‘No offence,’ he offered at last.

‘None taken,’ said Nicky. ‘To be offended, I’d have to give a fuck. Go on upstairs. Joan of Arc is already up there waiting for you.’

Trudie was pacing the floor of the projection room, wearing two jackets against the cold. Her arm was in a sling, her shoulder swathed in bulky bandages. She looked almost as pale as Nicky, but without his excuse of having been four years dead. In her free hand she carried a bright orange Sainsbury’s bag.

‘Castor!’ She hurried over to us as we entered, then recoiled slightly when she realised what it was I was carrying. Her gaze went from Juliet’s face to mine. ‘I seem to have missed a lot,’ she said. ‘Can you bring me up to speed?’

Nicky cleared the table and we sat ourselves around it: a coalition of the willing, if that term includes people who’ve tried out all the other options and ended up painted into a corner. Juliet was on the other side of the room, lying on a camp bed under the projector. The mattress smelled of mildew and was unpleasantly damp, but it was the best we could do.

Asmodeus’ note - item one on an agenda of one - sat in the centre of the table. It was short and to the point.

Castor

You and your demon bitch are invited to my farewell party. In case you need an incentive - they’re alive, and they stay alive until you come. After that, it depends on how it plays.

Peckham. That little upstairs room you fitted out for me, remember? We had such good times there, it seemed like the only possible place to say goodbye.

A

‘You’ve got nothing,’ Nicky pointed out. ‘Sorry. Thought I might as well start by stating the obvious. You’ve bumped into him twice, and both times you barely survived. You go in there now - with him actually waiting for you - and he’ll kill you, sure as eggs is eggs.’

‘We do have this,’ Trudie said. ‘It got broken when I went crazy back at the MOU, but it might still be usable.’ She put the Sainsbury’s bag on the table and shoved it across towards me. I knew what it was, so I didn’t bother to open it. It made a grating rattle as I took it and put it down by my side.

‘Incendiary grenades?’ Nicky asked sardonically. ‘White phosphorus? Depleted-uranium shells?’

‘Something along those lines,’ I allowed.

‘Unless it’s an A-bomb, he’ll still kill you.’

I nodded. ‘I wouldn’t bet against it,’ I agreed. ‘But let’s not kid ourselves, Nicky. Killing us isn’t the cake, it’s just the icing. Maybe not even that. Asmodeus has worked really hard on this, and we know now that he could have walked into Pen’s house and ripped my head off any time he wanted to. The wards barely tickled him.’

‘Then what?’ Gil demanded. ‘If there’s a big picture, I’m not seeing it. This is all about revenge, surely? Ginny whatever-her-name-was - she helped out with the ritual that brought him to Earth in the first place, so he started out by killing her. Ditko performed the ritual, so he took out the last surviving member of Ditko’s family. With you, he gets the hat trick.’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘But no. I already made that mistake once - thinking this was all about me. That was why I was so slow off the mark in figuring out what those summonings were. He hates me, yeah, but he didn’t go for me. Not really. He went for Juliet.’ Juliet didn’t stir at the mention of her name.

‘She helped you put him back in the bottle the last time he got free,’ Trudie said slowly. ‘But so did a lot of other people.’ She glanced across at Nicky, who shrugged irritably.

‘I just provide a service,’ he said.

‘The effect of the wards was to confuse and enrage her,’ Trudie went on. ‘Isn’t that what you said?’

I thought about that. ‘It made her more volatile,’ I said. ‘Less in control of her actions. She did seem a little confused, at times, but mostly what she seemed was off the leash, all her responses quicker, more extreme, less considered.’

‘Removing at a stroke the effect of two years’ socialisation on Earth, and maybe a couple of millennia of experience down in Hell,’ Trudie concluded.

‘Yeah. More or less.’