Mike Carey - Dead Men's s Boots

I nodded. I had to sit down: that performance had left me feeling as hollow as a cored piece of fruit. A dull ache was starting inside my head. I stumbled across to a vacant chair and sank into it. My breath was coming as rough and ragged as if I’d just swum the Channel, and panic was settling on my mind like a physical weight.

The thing that had been Todd looked past me with its eyes focused on nothing very much.

‘What did he say?’ I asked the demon. ‘He was shouting, towards the end, but I couldn’t stop to listen or I would have lost the tune. Lost the sense of it.’

Moloch summarised with crisp precision, turning away from the shell of Maynard Todd as though it held no further interest for him. ‘That they use the ash of their cremation as a physical vessel for the possession of new host bodies. The host is tricked or forced into eating the ash. Then all the souls in this – cabal – invade the intended host at once, subduing his soul so that one of their number can possess his body.’

‘I caught that much,’ I said. ‘I thought there was more.’

Moloch nodded. ‘He said they tried to do this to you, when you went to Mount Grace to burn John Gittings. Todd gave you a drink of brandy from a hip flask. The ash was dispersed in the liquor. But the succubus came before they could complete the possession, and they had to stop.’

I remembered the sudden, terrible sickness that had come over me as John’s casket rolled through the furnace doors. Not like me at all, and now I knew why. It wasn’t me at all.

‘He also said that the procedure – the possession – is only temporary. The soul of the possessed tries to reassert itself – tries to break free from their control. It gets stronger again over time, however hard they whip it into submission. They have to meet at Mount Grace once a month to repeat the ritual, for want of a better word, and reassert their control. They do this at the dark of the moon, and they call it—’

‘Inscription.’

‘Yes.’ He stared at me with a hungry intensity. ‘Castor, he answered your question, finally, when he was desperate and trying to make you spare him. But in any case you’d only have to look out of the window. The dark of the moon is tonight.’

‘I know.’

‘We have them. We can take them all.’

I nodded slowly. ‘Yeah.’

Maybe the feeling of foreboding I was experiencing was just paranoia. I’d just performed a full exorcism – or something that felt like one. The ghost that had flown out from this room should either have vanished into the ether or else it should be heading for Hell at a good cruising speed. That was where the smart money was lying.

But what was the worst-case scenario? That the tough old soul had been cast out but had had the strength to resist utter dissolution. That it knew where it was going and had the strength to get there. Sure, the thing inside John Gittings had needed to be taken to Mount Grace and burned there again – but then, John’s house had more wards and fendings on it than Pentonville had bars. They were designed to keep the dead out, but they cut both ways: that was why the mad, desperate ghost had gone geist. But here at Todd’s offices, as I’d noticed when I first came in, there wasn’t anything to keep the evil dead from coming and going as they pleased.

So I’d had my rehearsal for the big show, and that was good: but it was more than possible I’d just told the bastards I was coming. They’d have all the time in the world to prepare us a really nasty welcome.

‘We’ve got to go now,’ I said.

Moloch gave me a look of ruthless, detached appraisal.

‘You think you can walk?’ he asked.

I nodded again. ‘Yeah,’ I said, from out of a fog of exhaustion and pain. ‘Just getting my second wind.’

‘We can’t go now,’ he reminded me, in the same cold tone. ‘We need the lady,’

I climbed unwillingly to my feet. ‘I know,’ I muttered.

‘Can you find her?’

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know. There was only one place I’d thought of that was worth looking in, and I knew for a fact I wasn’t going to be welcome there. I trudged down the stairs: I couldn’t hear Moloch’s footfalls, but the prickle on the back of my neck told me that he was following me.

The night loomed ahead of us like a mountain. Only idiots climb mountains in the dark.

I hadn’t expected to be back in Royal Oak so soon, and Susan Book wasn’t expecting to see me there. In the four or five seconds between ‘Jerusalem’ sounding again and the door opening, I braced myself for storms.

But Susan wasn’t in the mood to give me a hard time. Her eyes looked swollen with unshed tears, or maybe just with sleep. Everything about her posture suggested misery and a pre-emptive surrender to despair. Juliet’s absence was obviously hitting her very hard. Given that even looking at Juliet felt a little bit like taking a hit of some illicit drug, to be withdrawn from her so suddenly must be a little like going into the instant, unwelcome free fall of cold turkey.

Susan just stared at me. ‘I told you she wasn’t here,’ she mumbled tonelessly.

‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘I’m thinking that maybe I know a way to bring her back. Can I come in and explain?’

I hunched my shoulders against the gathering wind, playing the pity card to give myself an additional argument if my words didn’t work. Beside me, Moloch tilted his head back, sniffed the air and growled. ‘This hovel stinks of the lady,’ he said, in his car-crash-in-slow-motion voice. Susan swivelled her head to stare at him, her eyes widening. She hadn’t noticed him until he spoke.

Maybe after living with Juliet for so long she could tell what he was just by looking: that would explain the fear that crossed her face. But even if you didn’t know, he was an intimidating presence and he was glaring at her with an unreadable emotion in his dark eyes. Susan gripped the edge of the door in both hands, as though preparing to close it in our faces, but she hesitated, caught in a crossfire between her survival instinct and good breeding.

I wasn’t sure how to make the introduction, so I didn’t try. I turned to Moloch instead, as the more immediate problem.

‘Juliet lives here,’ I said to him. ‘But she’s not here now. She hasn’t made any contact with anyone since she got back from the States. Well, apart from Doug Hunter, of course, and that’s no use to us.’ I turned back to Susan. ‘Or has she called you?’ I asked.

Susan’s anxious gaze flicked backwards and forwards between the two of us. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not a word. I’m just . . . sitting here by the phone.’

‘She’s probably lying,’ Moloch said, his tone detached and thoughtful. ‘You could hurt her and make sure, one way or the other. You clearly have impressive skills in that area.’

Susan gave a yelp, like a dog that’s had its tail trodden on, and tried to slam the door. Moloch held it open with one negligent, unhurried hand. I knocked the hand away and he gave me a look of politely mystified inquiry as the door slammed in our faces.

‘Nobody,’ I said with slow, heavy emphasis, ‘is hurting anyone. In fact, you’re not even coming in here.’

‘No?’ Moloch’s voice was mild now, but there was an edge of amusement to it.

‘No. You’re going to wait on the other side of the street, under that lamp.’ I pointed. ‘And you’re not going to come near this door, or this house, until I come out.’

‘And why am I going to do that?’

‘Because if you don’t, the poor doggy isn’t going to get so much as a bone to gnaw on. If you want to eat tonight, you’ll do this my way.’

He stared at me in silence for the space of two or three heartbeats. It felt like a lot longer.