The Naming of the Beasts

This time it wasn’t Asmodeus’s voice; it was Rafi’s. It came as something of a jolt because Rafi had almost never managed to surface by himself, without the help my whistle could provide. Asmodeus was the dominant partner in their forced marriage, with all the rights and privileges that entailed.

He was dressed very differently than when I’d seen him last. He’d have to be, of course: you can’t walk around Brixton dressed in Marks and Spencer pyjamas and hope to avoid public notice. From somewhere he’d dredged up an all-black ensemble - boots, trousers and an overlarge shirt open to the waist over a string vest of the kind our American cousins call a wife-beater. Or maybe these things had been some other colour to start with, and had turned black after the demon put them on.

He walked around me, taking his time. The face was still Asmodeus: the black-on-black eyes, like holes in the world, would have told me that even without the mocking, bestial expression. If he was surprised that Rafi had taken momentary control of the communal vocal cords, he didn’t show it.

‘Think he’ll make a fight of it?’ he growled. ‘Or will he turn and run? I don’t mind either way; I’m just asking. As his friend, which way do you think he’ll jump?’

Asmodeus was talking to Rafi, over my head. If I hadn’t been preoccupied with the matter of my imminent death, I might have been offended. My hand went to my tin whistle by automatic reflex, but there was no help there. I’d never managed to work out a full exorcism for Asmodeus, though I’d tried a hundred times. Oh, I could have come up with a tune that would have have changed the balance of power between Asmodeus and Rafael Ditko, but there was no way I’d get beyond the first few bars before the demon made me eat my whistle.

He smiled, interpreting the gesture correctly and obviously being of much the same opinion as me with regard to my chances.

‘He’s funny, isn’t he?’ he grated, continuing his conversation with his internal audience. ‘He makes me laugh. He’s got that Dunkirk spirit. Eat as much shit as God wants to cram into your throat, but never say die.’

He took a step towards me. I threw a punch, but it didn’t connect. Asmodeus moved, faster than a snake, and batted my hand aside. ‘Count backwards,’ he said, ‘down to zero.’ Then his arm came back, and he smacked me open-handed across the face.

The force of the blow spun me round as a DJ spins a record. I hit the pavement again, tasting blood in my mouth, my head ringing. I looked up blearily as Asmodeus, in no particular hurry, walked across to join me. Behind him, headlights stabbed out of the darkness, turning the demon momentarily into a silver-edged silhouette.

I had to force myself to move. Knowing that it was either move or die helped, but the ringing in my ears distracted me and my fingers didn’t want to do what they were told. I reached for my whistle again and drew it out as the bright red double-decker bus loomed up behind the demon’s shoulder.

Asmodeus stared down at me, shaking his head in pitying wonder. ‘It’s like people say,’ he snickered. ‘If all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And if all you’ve got is a whistle, the whole of life is one big fucking show tune.’

He leaned down, his hands reaching for my throat. ‘Opera,’ I corrected. ‘Götterdämmerung, you smug bastard.’ I plunged the whistle a couple of inches deep into his left eye, and as he bellowed in pain and rage I slammed my foot into his stomach with all the force I could muster.

The timing was almost perfect. Asmodeus took two steps back, but regained his balance almost immediately and didn’t actually fall. That didn’t matter though, because the two steps had taken him off the edge of the pavement. He went under the nearside wheel of the bus and vanished from my sight.

The bus went into a skidding stop, slewing round in the road. A body like a shapeless sack was dragged along with it, trapped in the wheel arch in some way and dispersing itself in red-black smears of pulped flesh across the rough dry asphalt.

I was up and running by this time. One glance back over my shoulder showed me that Asmodeus was moving again already, his arms weakly twitching as he tried to lever his ruined body up off the road surface. I knew from past experience that no amount of purely physical damage would keep a demon down for long. Flesh is like an item of clothing to the Hell-kin, and they’re used to making running repairs. It would take Asmodeus a few minutes to replace his lost body mass though, and I could use that time to get clear.

I was sorry that Rafi had had to suffer along with Asmodeus, sorrier still for the poor sod of a bus driver, whose trauma at running down a pedestrian was now about to be compounded by seeing the man in question get back on his feet looking like a couple of hundred pounds of rough-chopped chuck steak. But needs must when the devil drives, and the pushy bastard has been my chauffeur for as long as I can remember.