Mike Carey - The Naming of the Beasts

‘He’s trying to kill us,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why, when he’s walked the thin red line for so long, but he’s out for blood, and we’re all in danger until he’s locked up again.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Pen snapped back angrily. ‘He came after you. Twice. That doesn’t mean he wants to hurt me.’

I took a deep breath, wincing because my ribs were bruised too and it bloody well hurt. ‘The woman he killed in south London,’ I said. ‘Her name was Ginny Parris. She was involved with Rafi around about the time he was getting into all the black magic stuff. She helped him with it, because she was part of that scene. But they were lovers too, Pen. And for one of those reasons or the other, or maybe both, he went to her flat tonight, had a little chat about old times, and then murdered her with the leg of a table.’

Pen looked me squarely in the eyes, unimpressed. ‘Then the connection’s obvious, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘This woman helped Rafi to perform his summoning. You tried to exorcise Asmodeus afterwards. It’s the people who were there on that night – that’s who he’s going after.’

‘No,’ I said flatly, ‘it’s not.’ This was the hardest part to explain, but I tried anyway. ‘Asmodeus was talking all the while we were fighting. Taunting. Making jokes.’

‘He does that, Fix.’

‘I know. But he said one thing that stuck in my mind because I didn’t get it at first. He said, “Count backwards, down to zero.” It felt weird. Sort of abstract, when you put it next to the “I’m going to feed you your own intestines” stuff. I thought . . . maybe he was thinking of a surgical operation, where the anaesthetist tells you to count down from ten, and you fall asleep when you get to seven. That kind of black humour would be in Asmodeus’ style.’

Pen carried on staring at me, not speaking. She knew there was more.

‘But just now, after he came here – after I saw him jumping off your roof – I realised something else. Something I probably should have clicked on earlier. When we fought, Asmodeus wasn’t talking to me. Rafi was – he told me to run. But when Asmodeus referred to me, he used the third person every time. “He’s funny. He makes me laugh.” He never spoke to me once; he was just talking to Rafi the whole time. So he was telling Rafi to count backwards, not me. To count down to zero. And I’m nearly certain he meant it as a threat, or a promise.’

I did put my hand on her shoulder now, leaning forward until our faces were almost touching. I had to make her understand this. ‘He meant, “You’re going to lose your friends, one by one. I’m going to take out everyone who ever meant anything to you, until there’s no one left.” Pen, who’s to say he even started with Ginny? He could have been busy on this ever since he broke free from Imelda’s. He’s had time to work his way through Rafi’s entire address book by now. I don’t want to think about what we’re going to find when we start looking into this properly. And I don’t want you to be next.’

Pen swatted my hand away and put the tips of her fingers lightly, momentarily, to my chest: not pushing, but warning me to keep my distance. ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I’m staying here.’

‘I’m telling you, he didn’t just come for me. He was hanging around here before, that’s obvious. He was probably the one who trampled your tulips. If he decides to—’

Pen cut across my words. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t believe you, Fix. I just said I’m staying.’ Well, I’d known before I weighed in that this was going to be tough. I opened my mouth to hit her with a fresh wave of eloquence, but she hadn’t finished. ‘If Asmodeus was after me, then why was he up on the roof when I live in the bloody basement? You know the answer as well as I do. It’s because I’ve put wards on every window and door and wall of this place. They’re strongest at ground level, because that’s where I cast them, but they work all the way up to the chimney stacks – otherwise you’d have woken up to find Asmodeus sitting in your lap. Today I’ll do the upstairs rooms and the eaves. And I’ll work outwards from the house through the drive and the garden, planting stay-nots every four or five feet. He won’t be able to get within a hundred yards of us.’

‘Pen, you can’t live like a hermit,’ I pointed out. ‘You’ve got to come out some time.’

‘You said it would just take a couple of days. I can stay at home for a couple of days. I work over the phone mostly anyway, so it’s no hardship.’

‘A couple of days was a guess,’ I protested. ‘It could be weeks, or months. We just don’t know.’

‘I’m staying,’ Pen repeated. ‘Don’t try to argue me out of it, Fix. If Rafi needs me, I want him to know where to find me. And if Asmodeus comes round, I’m not scared of him.’

Not scared? I was fucking terrified, and I didn’t care who knew it. I’d seen what the bastard could do.

When the sun came up I climbed up onto the roof using an extending ladder that I’d half-inched from a building site down the street. I was pretty sure I could get it back before anyone clocked on for the day.

Sitting precariously on the ridge, I inspected the damage. It made interesting reading. The demon had raked the slates with his fingernails, snapping several and scoring deep gouges in others, but he hadn’t punched at them or tried to tear them free. Pen was certainly right when she said that if it was a matter of strength alone he could have smashed his way in without even working up a sweat. So whatever had kept him at bay, it had nothing to do with the physical properties of slate and wood and lead flashing. Pen’s wards had taken the strength out of his hands and the will out of his cold, clammy heart.

That made them something special in the way of stay-nots. In St Albans, when I’d gone after the leader of the Anathemata, Father Thomas Gwillam, with Juliet riding shotgun, I’d seen my favourite succubus walk through a door that had a dozen different wards on it. They hurt her, but they didn’t slow her down. I’d seen her walk through Pen’s wards too, for that matter, seen it a dozen times, most recently when she’d brought me home after one of my epic drunks. The only thing different this time was that the demon Pen was keeping out was a passenger inside the body of her ex-lover. Food for thought. Maybe not all magical prophylactics were created equal; maybe, as in quantum physics, the observer was part of the system.

After I came down, I made up a list of people I should call: people who’d known Rafi at college and might possibly be on Asmodeus’ hit list now, and people he’d introduced me to later when we met up for one of our infrequent reunions. Some I didn’t have numbers for, and the numbers I did have, when I finally picked up the phone and tried, weren’t always live any more. But I put the word out (lie low, lock your doors and windows and don’t talk to strangers), and I asked everyone I could reach to call anyone else they knew who might have counted as a friend or acquaintance of Rafi’s either in Oxford or in London.

But Rafi had been born in Pilsen, in the Czech Republic, and for all I knew he had an entire extended family out there. Would Asmodeus go after them? He might be disinclined to try. Demons are chthonic powers, and they don’t respond well to air travel: the one time Juliet had tried it, it had knocked her out for days. Asmodeus could take a bus or a train, but it was a long trip and most of the demons I’ve met have tended to have a hard time with the concept of deferred gratification. Hopefully – assuming I was right in the first place about what he was doing – Asmodeus would start with the targets that were closest to hand.