Mike Carey - The Naming of the Beasts

‘Now,’ she said, moving briskly along, ‘the Ditko situation . . .’

Right, I thought. And the Rafi situation too, while we’re on the subject. I squared my shoulders involuntarily, because I was about to tell J-J some bare-faced lies and I wanted to do it with an upright posture and a lot of eye contact.

‘I think you should send me to Macedonia,’ I said.

Jenna-Jane tilted her head to one side, looking faintly puzzled.

‘Really?’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Because Rafi Ditko has a brother. Jovan.’ J-J didn’t exclaim in surprise or ask any further questions. She just stared at me, knowing there had to be more. ‘He’s on death row,’ I went on, ‘convicted of murder. If we want to talk to him, we’ve got precisely two days to do it in.’

‘But why should we want to talk to him?’ J-J asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. ‘Ditko only became possessed after he arrived in England. It’s not likely that his brother would know anything that could help us.’

‘I copy you on that, as far as it goes,’ I agreed. ‘I started looking for Rafi’s family in the first place so I could warn them that Asmodeus might be dropping into their lives. But now I’m thinking that it might be worth a trip to meet this guy. Did you know that Asmodeus can’t walk through wards drawn by Pamela Bruckner?’

J-J frowned. ‘No, I didn’t. Bruckner is the vile-tempered little redhead, correct? Ditko’s former girlfriend, as well as yours.’

‘Pen was never my girlfriend,’ I corrected her scrupulously. I let the ‘vile-tempered’ stand, since Pen wouldn’t have taken it as an insult in any case. ‘She’s my landlady. Sometimes. The point is, I’ve seen Asmodeus ignore wards drawn by strangers. They hurt him, but they don’t slow him down all that much. The personal connection seems to make a difference.’

‘So you believe Ditko’s brother might have a similar power over the demon? But if he’s in prison . . .’

‘I just want to talk to him,’ I repeated. ‘Mostly about Rafi’s childhood. It may come to nothing. Probably will. But at the very least, deepening our understanding of Rafi may help us to bring his consciousness and his reactions to the fore when we meet Asmodeus again. At the moment the bastard seems to have things all his own way. Rafi can’t get any purchase, so he’s led around like a dog.’

I’d said my piece. It was all garbage, of course, and I felt pretty uneasy about that. Not about lying to Jenna-Jane, of course, but about going AWOL at a time when the hunt for the demon might finally be starting to get somewhere. But Rafi had begged me to deliver his message to his father and his brother. I’d already missed the boat as far as Mr Ditko senior was concerned, and this was my last chance to talk to Jovan. I really didn’t have any other option, unless it was to write Jovan a letter, send it first class and hope it beat the hangman.

Jenna-Jane appeared to consider. ‘If you think this could actually be of some value . . .’ she said.

‘I don’t think we can afford to pass up the opportunity,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘I’d need you to fly there and back today,’ she said. ‘You’re wanted here.’

‘It should be a short flight,’ I said. ‘I don’t see there’d be a problem getting a day return.’

Jenna-Jane picked up the phone and dialled, still without sitting down. ‘Hello, Edward,’ she said. ‘Could you please book a flight to Macedonia in the name of Felix Castor. Flying out and returning today. No, I have no idea. If there’s more than one airport, we need the one that’s closest to the capital city. Get him some currency too. And ground transport. Soonest would be best. Thank you.’

She put the phone down. ‘Anything else?’ she asked me.

‘Get your research team looking for a man named Martin Moulson.’

‘Who is he?’

‘I don’t have the slightest idea. But he was possessed by a major demon, and he survived. It was a long time ago, and the name’s pretty much all I’ve got.’

Jenna-Jane wrote down the name and looked at me expectantly. I shrugged. ‘I’m done,’ I said. ‘For now.’

‘In that case, you should go and talk to Ms Pax. Her mapping experiment has borne some fruit.’

As I stood, she favoured me with a warm smile. ‘I value your expertise, Felix. I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I believe that this time we’ll make the partnership work.’

‘It’s a point of view,’ I said as non-committally as I could manage. As an answer, it was better than sticking two fingers down my throat and hurling on her carpet tiles.

The first thing I saw when I walked out into the corridor was Gil McClennan standing at the far end of it, staring out of the window. He turned as I walked towards him and stared at me hard until I came level with him. I stopped, because he looked as though he wanted to say something, but he just kept on staring.

‘If it pisses you off so much that she thinks this was my idea, then leave me out,’ I suggested. ‘You think I give a fuck? I didn’t come here to upstage you, McClennan. I only want one thing and then I’m out of here.’

‘I don’t want another Etheridge on my conscience,’ he muttered, his voice a little thick. ‘You hate the unit so much, you think everyone here is expendable.’

I couldn’t keep the surprise off my face. Maybe I didn’t try. ‘You thought me and Pax were expendable last night,’ I reminded him. ‘You sent us down those stairs hoping the thing in the pool would fuck us up.’

‘Would fuck you up,’ he corrected me angrily. ‘I tried to keep her out of it.’

That was true, as far as it went. ‘A McClennan with a conscience,’ I grunted, shaking my head. ‘Must be a recessive gene or something.’

He telegraphed the punch, so I was able to knock it aside before it connected with my face. He followed up fast though, and my own uppercut glanced off his chin as he closed with me and locked both of his hands around my throat. It wasn’t a smart move, because it didn’t leave him any limbs free for defence, but he held onto me with the strength of blind rage. Two punches to the side of the head didn’t loosen him, and his thumbs were compressing my windpipe agonisingly. Reflexively, I tried to draw breath, and felt my heart race on an adrenalin flood as I failed.

Improvising desperately, I hooked my foot behind his leg and threw my weight forward. We sprawled on the floor of the corridor, with me on top, and then I rolled to the side, finally breaking his grip.

We came up together, more or less, but I’d had more than enough of this bullshit. I feinted with my right hand and threw a roundhouse punch with my left almost at the same time. It smacked against Gil’s cheek with a meaty sound. A jolt of pain shot from my fist to my elbow, but it did the job: Gil folded and went down again heavily.

I leaned against the corridor wall, getting my breath back. That was painful in itself, because my throat felt as though I’d swallowed a cricket ball. My left hand throbbed painfully, the index finger in particular refusing to bend when I tested it. It was already starting to swell up around the bottom joint.

Gil pulled himself together slowly, levering himself into a sitting position with his back against the corridor wall. The building work had evidently drowned out the sound of our fight, so nobody came out to see what was happening.

‘You . . . bastard,’ Gil panted, his voice slurred. ‘Get out of my . . . fucking . . . life!’

‘I told you,’ I panted back. ‘I’m here for one thing. If you want to see the back of me . . . give me Ditko.’ I lurched away before he could answer. I needed to plunge my hand into some cold water before it swelled up any further. I’d be fuck-all use to anybody if I couldn’t play.