The Naming of the Beasts

What was the matter with Etheridge? Finding no comfort or support from Jenna-Jane, he ducked his head again, slight tremors shaking his shoulders. He looked like a naughty schoolboy dragged up in front of the class to explain his misdemeanours and promise never to do it again. No, more than that: he looked damaged. A sort of faint, fuzzy-edged misery came off him in waves.

‘And this is Samir Devani,’ Jenna-Jane said. I shook hands with the last man. He had a book in his other hand, his thumb between the pages to mark his place: Kurt Vonnegut’s Man Without a Country. He was Asian, well built and surprisingly tall, maybe a year or so younger than me but in much better shape. And, like everyone else in the room except Jenna-Jane and Etheridge, he was dressed down - as befitted a dirty job, in a denim shirt, slate-grey chinos and well-worn DMs. He gave me a thoughtful, appraising look, his eyes narrowing slightly, as if he was trying to remember where he’d seen me before.

‘Looks like you’ve been in the wars,’ he said. ‘You’re favouring that left arm. It’s Sam, by the way.’

‘Fix.’ I said it automatically, and cursed myself silently as soon as the word was out of my mouth. I didn’t intend to be on first-name terms with anyone here. Unlike me, they’d presumably chosen to be in Jenna-Jane’s employ. I didn’t owe any one of them the air to breathe, let alone civility. ‘It’s just an old war wound,’ I finished tersely.

‘We tend to work in groups of four or five,’ Jenna-Jane said, forestalling any further getting-to-know-you chit-chat. ‘I make the allocations myself, balancing different techniques so that each team can deal with a broad spectrum of supernormal phenomena. Trudie performs her bindings and exorcisms via a purely physical-manipulative modality, Samir by channelling a second personality, Gil by means of spirit drawing and Victor through actual prayer.’

‘Who’s on drums?’ I asked. Samir laughed, and Jenna-Jane looked pained.

‘We all deal with the emotional stresses of our peculiar line of work in our own individual ways,’ she said dryly. ‘Felix chooses to do so through inappropriate levity. He is, however, a very fine exorcist, and we can all be grateful that he’s been unable, thus far, to push his comedy career to the professional level.’

I took the rap on the knuckles like a man.

‘Okay,’ I said, getting down to brass tacks. ‘I’m thinking we’ll start from what we know. Asmodeus has been staking out the house where I live, in Turnpike Lane. We need someone watching the house on a rota. Two someones, ideally. The rest of us can spread out across the city and scry towards the cardinal points until we get an echo. If we do that enough times, and if he’s not moving around too much, we’ll be able to zero in on him a bit at a time. Then when we think we’ve got it narrowed down enough, Jenna-Jane can bring in the heavies. We’ll use nerve gas first - OPG, assuming you’ve got enough to go around. Soften him up with that, because in my experience he won’t sit still long enough for us to try anything fancy. If we play our cards right, nobody ends up dead.’

The silence that met my little Agincourt speech was deafening. By turns, everyone looked to Jenna-Jane, who glanced at Gil and nodded. ‘Mr McClennan,’ she said.

‘Everyone’s already briefed,’ said Gil, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘I’ll be briefing Castor on the Strand haunting later, but there’s nothing we can do there until after dark, so the order of the day is Asmodeus. Pax and Etheridge are staying here to work on the raw data from the sightings. Pax is going to apply her own techniques to the map I was setting up. I’m still working through the grimoires with Klee and Middleton, so Sam and Castor can go over to the Stanger and grab us a focus. Sam’s in charge on that little outing, Castor, and you speak when you’re spoken to. Dr Webb, who’s in charge over there, made it clear to me when we spoke that he hates your guts, and the only reason he’s letting you back into the place at all is because of the respect he’s got for Professor Mulbridge. Does anyone have any questions?’

I had one, but since it was ‘What the fuck?’ I didn’t ask it. I didn’t have to; J-J answered it anyway.

‘You don’t just walk in and head a team, Felix,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘You’ve been away from the unit for a long time, and our operating methods have changed very significantly. Gil has my complete confidence, and I’m sure you’ll find him an inspirational leader.’

She turned on her heel and left, with a final nod to my new colleagues.

‘Any questions?’ Gil asked again, in a voice that expected the answer no. ‘Okay, then get moving, people. There’ll be time enough to sleep when we’re dead.’

‘Or possibly not,’ Samir observed scrupulously as we headed for the lift.

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