Vicious Circle

“Hello, Rafi,” I said.

“That was fucking weird. I was just talking to you.”

“You were?”

“Must’ve dreamed it. Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Rafi.”

He closed his eyes again, and in a second a change in the quality of his breathing made it clear that he was asleep again.

“Thanks, Paul,” I said, turning back to the burly nurse, who’d been watching me with a sort of glum fascination.

“That was it? You got what you wanted?”

“More or less. Do you carry a mobile?”

“Sure.”

“Can I borrow it?”

“Sure. But it’s a piece of shit.”

He reached a big hand into his pocket and brought out a cute little silver cellphone that he could have worn as an earring. I took it, and checked the battery charge before pocketing it.

“And your lighter,” I said.

Paul breathed out heavily enough for it to count as a sigh. But he handed the lighter over, too.

I gave him an appraising look. “You want me to lock you in here or something so you look more like a victim and less like you were in on it?” I asked him.

He made a dismissive gesture. “Yeah, go for it,” he said. “Tell you the truth, though, I’ve been thinking of looking for another job. One where I won’t have to swallow so much bullshit. Mind how you go, Castor.”

“Thanks, Paul. I owe you one.”

“You owe me somewhere between six and ten. Tell me where you drink, I’ll come over some night and collect.”

“The Jerusalem in Britton Street would be a good bet.”

“Okay. I’ll see you there.”

I let myself out, remembering to ditch the film canister under Rafi’s bunk so it would look like I’d made my delivery. The thing about lying is that it gets to be a habit, like anything else.

And then you have to remind yourself to stop.

Twenty-one

THE GREAT THING ABOUT RIDING A MOTORBIKE AT STUPID, reckless speed through the streets of a busy city at night is that it stops you from thinking about anything very much else. If you let your mind stray for more than a second or so, you’re likely to end up attached so intimately to a wall that nothing short of a scraper and a bucket will get you off again.

That almost didn’t stop me, though. I was in a weird state of mind, keyed up for a fight that might never happen—or that might already be over. If Fanke had gone ahead and completed his summoning ritual, then Abbie’s soul had been struck like a match and used up to light Asmodeus’s way into the world of men—after two unscheduled stopovers in Rafi Ditko and St. Michael’s Church. Or if Fanke had set up his kit at St. Michael’s but been interrupted by Gwillam and his hairy Catholic apostates, then probably the satanists were all dead by now—the upside—but Abbie would have been exorcised by the people who thought of themselves as the good guys—the downside. Either way, she was gone forever and the promise I’d made to Peace was blowing in the wind along with the answers to Bob Dylan’s coy little riddles.

No, the only hope here, the only way I could make the smallest difference, was if Fanke hadn’t started the ritual yet and the Anathemata didn’t know where it was going to happen. I had to hope both that the logistics of satanism were more complicated than they seemed to be from the outside and that I’d passed out before Gwillam’s needle loosened my tongue too far.

I rode straight past St. Michael’s so I could look it over without committing myself. No lights on, and no sign of life: either it was all over or the fun hadn’t started yet. Or maybe Fanke just preferred to work in the dark, which would make a certain kind of sense.

I ditched the bike three blocks up and walked back, the bundle of film canisters under one arm and the other hand in the pocket of the leather jacket, gripping the gun hard. Despair would make me weak, so I tried to turn what I was feeling into anger—which brought problems of its own in terms of planning ahead and keeping a clear perspective on things.

It had to be here. If it hadn’t already happened, this was where Fanke was going to come. What I had to do was to stop him before he succeeded in raising Asmodeus; before he spread the psychic poison that the congregants of St. Michael’s had already swallowed to the city as a whole; and before he consumed the soul of Abbie Torrington.

I put my chances pretty high: right up there with a white Christmas, the second coming, and the Beatles (living and dead) getting together again.

The lych-gate of the church was locked, as always. I took a quick look up and down the street to see if anyone was staking the place out, then shinnied over it, and dropped down into the graveyard beyond. On a moonless night, and with the church itself still mantled in darkness, there was enough natural cover here so that I didn’t need to worry too much about stealth. I just circled around to a position from which I could watch the presbytery without being seen myself.