Vicious Circle

Fanke gave a sound that was like an incredulous laugh, and then his lips parted as he murmured something that reached me only as a formless sigh: maybe it was the satanist equivalent of “father, into thy hands . . .” He folded up on himself like an accordion—although that’s a lousy image because when you fold an accordion it doesn’t leak dark, arterial red from every infold. He fell forward onto the cobbles, his head hitting the stones with enough force to shatter bone, but that didn’t matter much anymore.

Zucker, still in animal form, limped around the body, staring at me with mad eyes. He could only use one of his front paws: the other was bent back against his chest. He must have sat on his haunches when he took that swipe at Fanke from behind—cutting right through the man’s torso below the ribs and turning his internal organs into rough-chopped chuck.

I took a step to the right, leading Zucker away from Pen. He followed, a trickle of drool hanging from his jaw. He was in a bad way, and it wasn’t just the bullet wound. His claws, so terrifying in a fight, slid on the cobbles as if he was having trouble staying upright. But he snarled deep in his throat as he advanced on me, and his eyes narrowed on some image of sweet murder.

I kept on backing, kept on shifting ground so he had to turn as he advanced to keep me in sight. His movements were getting slower and more uncoordinated. His chest rose and fell like a sheet cracking in the wind, but with barely any sound apart from a creak as though his jaws were grinding against each other at the corners.

“You know which company is the biggest consumer of silver in the whole world?” I asked him conversationally. He didn’t answer. His good front leg buckled under him and he sank to the ground as if he were bowing to me.

“Eastman Kodak,” I said gently. “That’s what you’ve been breathing.”

His eyes closed, but his chest kept pumping prodigiously. He might even ride the poison out, but he was finished as far as this fight was concerned.

I went back to Pen. I had to kneel again, fighting off a wave of blackness that came out of nowhere. I was still in that position, just starting to struggle with the layers of duct tape around Pen’s wrists, when Juliet came out of the church. At a distance behind her and on either side came two of Gwillam’s men. They had automatic rifles leveled at her, but they didn’t make any attempt to use them. They must have seen what she’d done to Po, and if they had then they almost certainly didn’t fancy their own chances against her very much.

But right then Juliet didn’t look too healthy. She’d been breathing silver, too, and it wasn’t agreeing with her any better than it had with Zucker. Of course, unlike Zucker she hadn’t taken any metal in the more handy .45 hollow-point form, so she was still on her feet. But there was a sway to her walk that wasn’t entirely voluntary, and her clenched teeth were visible between her slightly parted lips.

She crossed to me, looking down at Pen’s bound form with distant curiosity.

“Is this a new hobby?” she asked me.

“Do me a fucking favor,” I rasped, my voice as harsh as my mum’s in the morning back when she was on thirty a day. “Is there anyone still alive in there?”

Juliet glanced back toward the doors of the church, from which smoke was still issuing in thick, uneven gouts like blood from a wound. “The ones in priests’ robes are all dead,” she said. “The werewolf, too. Most of these”—she nodded toward Gwillam’s men—“seem to have survived. Who are they?”

“The Sisters of Mercy,” I said weakly. “Well, one of those church organizations, anyway.”

Juliet bared her teeth in a grimace. She doesn’t like religion any better than I do.

There was a clatter on the cobbles and I looked up to see Gwillam heading across to us, flanked by two more men with machine rifles. He made a sign that could almost have been a benediction, but it wasn’t: it was an order for the men to fan out, so that if they had to shoot us they’d bracket us from as wide an arc as possible. They obeyed silently, the barrels of their squat, ugly weapons all converging on me and on Juliet. She looked indifferent: I felt, I have to admit it, a little exposed.

Gwillam himself walked past us to where Zucker lay on the cobbles. He squatted down beside the corpse, which looked small and pathetic and undignified the way we all do in death, and put a hand on its forehead. His lips worked in silence, and I didn’t try to read them.

Then he stood again and turned to face me.

“You’re not human, are you?” he asked, and I realized that it was actually Juliet he was addressing.

“No.” She shook her head. “What about you?”