The Naming of the Beasts

But as the echoes of that unlovely sound died, we both heard something new and worse coming in from the street, sickening the air. It was like the skirling call of an infernal ice cream van, playing at a hundred and some decibels, summoning ghosts and ghouls and damned souls to stop me and buy one.

‘We’ll need a way of playing this,’ I said, turning Nathan’s disc in my fingers with the gingerly care of the technologically challenged. ‘I mean . . . aloud.’

‘I think I can cut you a deal there,’ Nicky ruminated. ‘You remember the first mayoral elections? When Red Ken beat friendly Frank by a country mile? I know a guy who bought up some of the leftovers. Including one of those fucking trucks with all the loudspeakers that drives by at six in the morning and tells you that the candidate won’t come inside you . . .’

‘What do you know?’ I said, as I finally reached the upper landing. ‘They’re playing our tune.’

I drove my fist full into Asmodeus’ face. The satisfaction I took from that was tempered by the fact that the face actually belonged to Rafi, but it still felt pretty good, all things considered.

His head snapped back, but he didn’t lose his footing even for a second, and his riposte was swift and terrible. His arm swept round in an elliptical arc, the air cracked like a whip, and the world exploded.

There are two or three seconds here that I can’t account for. The next thing I was aware of was a pressure against my back, and a sensation around my mouth and chin as though someone was drinking from me through a straw of enormously wide bore.

Not knowing if I was standing on my feet or sprawling on my arse, I twitched my limbs in random combinations in the hope of getting good reports. But my eyes were definitely at floor level, and canted at ninety degrees.

The demon flickered in my blurred vision, getting closer and then receding. I steeled myself for the blow that would end everything, shut me down for good, but it didn’t come. I blinked furiously to clear my sight, and saw something I didn’t understand.

Asmodeus was dancing. Or at least that was what it looked like. The light from a street lamp, shining in through a window just off to our left, picked him out like a spotlight.

It was finally zero hour, and everything was kicking in. The bastard was writhing on an invisible cross as big as the world. But would that be big enough?

‘It’s not enough to hurt him,’ I said, with absolute certainty.

‘Not nearly enough. Moulson drove in fifteen hundred nails. He punctuated his body at microscopic intervals . . .’

‘You want something to pull him in a lot of different directions, ’ Gil said.

‘Yes.’

‘With your glass dagger pinned in his chest. So he’s stretched out taut and he can’t get away from the pain.’

‘Fuck! Yes! If you’ve got something, McClennan, spit it out.’

Gil gave us a guileless look. ‘Vote early,’ he said, ‘and vote often. Heath, how many friends have you got on all your conspiracy-of-the-month websites?’

‘A million,’ Nicky said. ‘Give or take. Why?’

‘How many of them can do a summoning?’

Asmodeus staggered, fell, scrambled to his feet. He baulked, and blood spurted between his clenched teeth in a pressurised stream.

His searchlight gaze found me across the width of the landing. His eyes narrowed.

‘Very clever,’ he bubbled. ‘Castor, I love you. I never expected for a moment that you’d make a fight of this.’