Mike Carey - The Naming of the Beasts

That moment fell on my shoulders now. I struggled to my feet, trying it on for size. It felt like it belonged, like I’d been wearing it, more or less, ever since the night when I sat down in Rafi’s cramped bathroom and performed the one, crappy piece of improv that was destined to encapsulate my life.

I flexed my legs to see if they were going to give. Then I charged the window and kicked it out of its rotten frame in one piece. It fell and shattered on the pavement below me with a crash that could be heard even above the screaming discords of the demon lullaby. Climbing up onto the ragged ledge of splintered plasterboard where the window had been, I launched myself after it into the street.

Two storeys isn’t even twenty feet, but it’s enough to snap your legs like a couple of twigs unless you’re either a professional stuntman or very lucky. I’m not either of those things, but I was aiming for the Ducato, which stands eight feet high on its wheelbase. My feet staved in the roof and part of the near-side panel, turning Frank Dobson’s slick smile into a leering grimace, and no doubt taking Trudie to the brink of a heart attack.

A second later the front door of the building was ripped off its hinges from the inside and tossed negligently away through the air.

Asmodeus stepped out into the night, shaking his head the way a dog shakes itself off after diving into ice-cold water. His gaze tracked from side to side, seeming to miss the van first time round even though it was right in front of him, but then catching it on the next pass.

He walked towards us, the glass dagger protruding obscenely from his chest. Fresh blood gouted from it with each step.

I banged on the roof of the van to get Trudie’s attention. ‘Give me the gun,’ I shouted, but what she would have heard was ‘WUFF-uffa-FUH!’ I didn’t really have a working vocal apparatus any more, and in a wistful, just-about-to-go-into-shock kind of way, I was starting to miss it.

Asmodeus was maybe three strides away from us when Juliet plunged through the doorway behind him and tackled him from behind. They went down together and rolled almost under the van’s wheels. Juliet’s hands were locked around Asmodeus’ throat, but he had his own hands – which looked much bigger than Rafi’s right then, the muscles in his forearms standing out like ropes – clamped to either side of her head. He forced her head further and further back, trying to snap her spine.

I dropped off the roof of the van, falling on all fours but scrambling to my feet again quickly. Trudie was fumbling with the shotgun, but she only had one hand and she couldn’t seem to find the safety. Nicky had only demonstrated it once, and things can slip your mind in the heat of the moment. Right then, the moment felt hot enough to scald.

She blanched when she saw me, and almost dropped the gun. ‘Oh shit!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Castor!’ I held out my hand, and she put the shotgun into it without a word. Probably just as well. The conversation was likely to be pretty one-sided in any case.

Asmodeus had rolled over on top of Juliet. He drove her face hard into the pavement and lurched to his feet. He turned to face me, his agonised features rippling like water.

‘Now . . .’ he snarled.

‘Fifteen hundred nails,’ I’d said. Actually, they were tiny metal discs, which sounds a lot less dramatic, but that doesn’t lessen what Moulson did. Inch by inch, he had waterproofed the house of his own flesh against the bad weather coming from Hell, and when it was all over the house was still standing. Fifteen hundred surgically precise incisions. Fifteen hundred grinding ordeals as he forced the metal deep enough for it to stay. He said it had taken most of a day.

A shotgun doesn’t score quite as high on accuracy, but it’s a fuck of a lot faster.

I fired the first barrel.

Glass. Glass ground up as fine as birdshot. It was such a light load that at twenty yards or so it probably wouldn’t even sting. But this was six feet.

Asmodeus’ jacket and shirt were flecked, ripped, stripped away by the multiple, stinging impacts. The demon flinched, drawing in a harsh, astonished breath, and then he bellowed in agony as our purpose-built payload started to work on him.

We’d selected three pieces of glass from Rafi’s photograph for Juliet to use as knives: we thought overkill was advisable under the circumstances. That still left a whole lot of fragments that were too small to have any viable use in hand-to-hand combat. A little bit of Rafi’s arm here, the other half of his face there. It seemed a shame to let them go to waste. Nicky carefully unpacked the shot he normally kept in the gun, looking thoughtfully at the little pile of glass shards. Then he went away from the table and came back with a hammer.

Asmodeus stared at his hands with a sort of numb fascination. Blood from a dozen lacerations welled out onto his palms, between his fingers, down over his wrists.

‘Fuck,’ he said distantly.

With terrible deliberation, he focused his will on his raised hand, trying to exert the same authority over that tortured flesh that he had enjoyed by right of conquest from the night when he moved in right up until now.

The flesh didn’t obey. Didn’t even answer. Asmodeus started towards me. Anger and consternation crossed his face, but what finally stood out there was fear.

‘When you die,’ he grated hoarsely. ‘When you die, Castor . . .’

That was as far as he got. He fell a few feet away from me, twitching. I followed him maybe a second later, unable to hold myself upright any more. I was staring directly into his eyes, so I saw when they filmed over, and then cleared again.

‘Fix . . .’ Rafi whispered.

The street was alive with noise suddenly, as black cars and vans and at least one eight-wheeled truck rolled into the small cul-de-sac and screeched to a precipitous halt that left the asphalt streaked with burned-rubber spoor. Doors slammed open, men and woman in black stealth gear jumped down and deployed themselves in blunt wedge formations, looking in all directions for an enemy who wasn’t there.

Thomas Gwillam stepped out of one of the cars and surveyed the carnage. His cold, appraising gaze started up high, at the broken window, and ended with the bodies on the pavement, lingering on Rafi before finally coming to rest on me.

‘I came as soon as you called,’ he said. ‘But of course you didn’t call until you could be sure I’d arrive late. I warned you against false pride, Castor. What good is back-up that arrives when the battle’s over?’

He had a point. Astutely, I lost consciousness before I could be made to admit that. Glad to be out of it, to tell you the truth. My jaw was starting to sting like a bastard.

There’s a lot to be said for fainting dead away at the awkward moment when the action is over and done with and the cleaning up has to start. Other people can bear your wounded body from the field and take care of all the messy stuff, while you cavort with pastel-coloured bunny rabbits in a magic garden where marshmallows and bottles of single malt whisky hang like fruit among the trees.

In this case though, the ancillary staff weren’t up to the job. Gwillam and his people were only interested in Rafi, and apart from them the only one who was even capable of standing on her own two feet was Trudie Pax. The first thing she did – since she knew a thing or two about clinical shock – was to slap me awake again.

That was something of a blow, to be honest. I would have preferred to wake up in a hospital bed, with all my missing parts sewn back into place and a gentle novocaine high percolating through my body. Instead I found myself still on the pavement, aching in every limb, joint and organ, and with some sort of agonising neural fireworks display going off in what was left of the lower part of my face.