The Naming of the Beasts

‘Sound familiar?’ The demon’s voice intervening, forcing itself out of Rafi’s mouth like hissing steam out of a pipe. ‘He lives like fucking Nero, Ditko: he fiddles while you burn. Three years, and all he’s ever done is lie to you. He’s lying now. You belong to me, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. I’m so sure of that, I’m not even going to bother to kill him just yet. We’ll leave him till the end.’

‘I will nail him, Rafi,’ I insisted, ignoring the demon’s taunts. ‘I’m onto it, I swear to you. The bastard won’t even see me coming.’

‘Fix . . .’ Rafi’s voice again, a gasping sigh at the lower limit of audibility. ‘Tell my father . . . and Jovan . . . Tell them I’m sorry. Do that for me. Please.’

And then nothing. Slowly Asmodeus straightened until his gaze met mine again. ‘I meant what I said,’ he grated. ‘I’ll kill you last, Castor. And it won’t be all at once. I’m thinking of going home for a while, when I’m free of this meat: I’ll take you along as food for the journey. In the meantime . . . breast pocket, left-hand side.’

Something dropped out of his sleeve into his hand, glinting momentarily in the light from a street lamp. I ducked reflexively, but Asmodeus was so much faster than me that his arm was back at his side before I’d even registered that it had flicked up and out - long before my own lazy nervous system had carried the message down the royal road of my spine to my distant arms and legs.

I felt something like a punch in my shoulder. Dazed, I stared at the long slender handle of a knife sticking out of my own flesh. One of the buttons of the greatcoat hung in neatly severed halves on either side of it, dangling from separate lengths of the same frayed thread. The buttons were solid brass, but Asmodeus had thrown the knife with enough force to hammer straight through it, then through the thick cloth, and still embed itself an inch or so deep into the soft flesh below my collarbone.

‘I only said I wouldn’t kill you,’ Asmodeus snickered. ‘That doesn’t stop me from whittling you into a more interesting shape.’

My teeth clenched on the pain, I groped inside my coat for my whistle, but I’m a southpaw, and it was my left shoulder that Asmodeus had hit, so my movements were jerky and uncoordinated. The demon watched in silent amusement.

I got the instrument out at last and fitted it to my lips. I started to play the opening notes of a tune: not a banishing but a soporific, a piece of music I’d composed for Rafi during the long months when he was stuck in his silver-lined cell at the Charles Stanger Care Home. Asmodeus just laughed and walked away, seemingly unaffected.

‘Be seeing you, Castor,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Eventually.’

‘First of all, he’s lying,’ Jenna-Jane said. She said it in a didactic tone, like a maths teacher stating an axiom. ‘So a logical question to ask would be why.’

We were in her office, and it was still early enough in the day for the workmen not to have clocked on. There was silence throughout the vast building, and a slightly disconcerting echo to our words.

‘About what?’ I demanded, probably sounding childishly truculent. ‘He meant what he said about not wanting to kill me yet. I’m not dead, am I? Ecce homo, ergo elk.’

Reflexively, I rubbed my shoulder. It hurt like hell. The knife hadn’t gone in too deep, all things considered, but it had been thrown with spectacular force. I was bruised as well as cut, and my arm had already stiffened in spite of Pen’s expert ministrations.

‘But his motives for not killing you are far from clear.’ Jenna-Jane leaned back in her seat, one finger touched to the point of her chin. ‘Certainly he needs nothing from you now. As he said, he no longer believes you can free him from Ditko’s flesh.’

‘What if that’s the lie?’ I threw in for the sake of argument,

Jenna-Jane shook her head brusquely. ‘He’s removed himself from your sphere of influence. If he had any faith in your abilities, or your efforts, he would have stayed where he was, in Imelda Probert’s custody. Or else, when he left there, he would have come to you and made his demands clear. No, it’s something else, Felix. He chose his moment. Oh, I know the Anathemata gave him the opening which he seized on to escape, but I believe he acted on a decision he’d already made. He has a project, and you are a part of it.’

‘You just said he didn’t need me.’

‘As an exorcist,’ Jenna-Jane amended, with a touch of impatience. ‘He doesn’t need you in a professional capacity. But he is still interested in you. He sought you out on no fewer than three occasions, first in Brixton and then at Pamela Bruckner’s house. He hovers around you, and he lets you see him doing it. I don’t believe for a moment that’s random.’

‘What is it then?’ The ache in my shoulder and chest made me terse.