Vicious Circle

I slid the film canisters open, found the ends, and hauled out a foot or so of each, which I tied together like the five intertwined tails of the rat king in the old folk legend. I slid the lower end of my taper in among them, balanced so that it stood nearly upright, then lit the business end. It burned brightly at first, then started to fade almost at once as the chill and the hate locked in the stones began to focus on the little point of light. I watched it with glowering suspicion for a moment or two, but it steadied. I couldn’t be sure that it would last long enough to burn all the way down to the film, but it was the best I could do.

A single voice had risen up above the murmured responses of the acolytes: Fanke’s voice, low and thrilling and solemn. I was expecting some bit of late medieval guff about how Lucifer is a good old boy and he’d just love to reach out and touch you, but this sounded older—and my classical Greek gives out after “which way to the bathroom?” and “I want mine with retsina.”

“Aberamenthô oulerthexa n axethreluo ôthnemareba,” Fanke boomed out, his voice rising now both in pitch and volume. “Iaô Sabaôth Iaeô pakenpsôth pakenbraôth sabarbatiaôth sabarbatianę sabarbaphai. Satana. Beelzebub. Asmode.”

I couldn’t have picked a better time to make my entrance. Standing up in the cheap seats, I fired one shot at the ceiling, and it roared around the room like the voice of God. The satanists spun round with their mouths hanging open, and Fanke faltered in his recitation. I stepped out into the aisle, leveling the gun at his chest.

“Hey, Anton,” I said, strolling unhurriedly toward him. “Steve. Dylan. Whatever the fuck you call yourself on a Saturday. How’s it hanging? I know how this one ends, if you’re interested. The next words are ‘I surrender.’ And then you turn around, put your hands on the altar rail, and assume the position.”

The acolytes backed away from me on either side. The last time they’d faced a self-righteous nutcase with a gun they’d found themselves transformed from chorus line to moving targets, and that experience seemed to have left its mark. Fanke stood his ground, though, and the look on his face didn’t change, except to add an overlay of sneering contempt to the cold superiority that was already there. That got my goat a little.

“Step away from the circle,” I said, close enough now so that I didn’t have to raise my voice. I tried to keep the stooges in my peripheral vision in case they went through their pockets and found out where they’d left their balls, but the first bullet was for Fanke in any case: and the second, third, and fourth, if it came to that.

He didn’t move. He was standing a little stiffly, his left shoulder a little higher than his right. I remembered him giving that spastic jerk when Peace fired his second shot: Fanke had taken a bullet, either in the shoulder itself or high up on his right arm. But he was a trooper, and the show had to go on.

“Castor,” he said, with pitying condescension. “I gave you your life. True, I took away from you a great many other things, but still the overall balance, I thought, was maintained. Yet here you are. And perhaps, after all, it’s fitting that you should be here to welcome my lord Asmodeus when he comes.”

“He missed his train,” I snapped. “He said to send his love. Now step away from the fucking circle, Fanke, or I swear on my sainted mother’s grave I am putting enough holes through you so I can see the deposition of Christ in that central panel behind you.”

“No.” Fanke shook his head, lowering his gaze to the ground as if he were meditating on human folly. “You’re not. Patience?” I took this last word to be a piece of supercilious advice, until a woman’s voice from off to my left answered shakily “Yes, magister?”

“Tell Mr. Castor how many sacrifices we’ve got lined up for this evening.”

“Thr—three, magister. There are three.”

“And what’s the order of play?”

“First the chi—the spirit. The spirit already dedicated. Then the demon. Last the woman.”

Eyes left, just momentarily, and with my finger tense on the trigger so that if Fanke moved at all I could still cut loose at him. That quick glance was enough to confirm what I already more or less knew. The woman who was speaking was the woman who I’d met a week ago in my office—the woman with the badly bruised face, who’d been introduced to me as Melanie Torrington. Then I was looking at Fanke again, and he raised his eyes to meet my gaze.

He wasn’t smug, exactly. His expression said that he didn’t think it was any great feat to outthink me.