Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

They were still setting up. The robed figures were moving chairs around to make a broad, bare space just below the altar. One of them – Fanke himself, judging by the red robes that Peace had already described to me – was on his knees in the centre of the space, and a scratching, rasping sound gave me a strong hint as to what he was doing: drawing the vicious circle.

So one way and another, the kiddies were all entertained. If they’d already started intoning and dancing in a ring, I’d have fired a warning shot into somebody’s back and gone in like thunder – an action replay of Peace’s moment of glory the week before – but as it was I took the time to set up my little ace in the hole. I went down on all fours: or rather on all threes, because I was hugging the film canisters to my chest with my left arm, tightly enough so they couldn’t bang against each other and give me away. I crab-scuttled out of the shadows of the chancel and across to the nearest row of pews, sliding in among them with as little sound as I could manage. Then I set down my burden with elaborate caution, and unpacked.

As already noted, old movie film is pretty much the most flammable thing on Earth. With a Molotov cocktail you need a bottle, a piece of rag, all sorts of paraphernalia. Movie film just burns, turning instantly into boiling plastic, searing smoke and blue-white flame like the flame of a dirty blowtorch: drop a match on it and you’d better be somewhere else when it hits.

By way of a fuse I used a votive candle which I’d picked up from the floor on my way down the transept: it was one of the ones that had rolled and scattered when I’d knocked over the table the night before. The thing was an inch and a half thick, but I broke it in my hands, muffling the sound inside my jacket, and pulled away the solid, almost translucent chunks of it to leave the shiny rigid wand of the wick itself – a makeshift taper, stiff and saturated with solid wax.

The nature of the sounds I was hearing from the front of the church had changed now. The footsteps had ceased, and a rhythmic chanting had begun. I hoped that the Satanist liturgy was as prolix as the regular one: I needed a couple of minutes more.

I slid the canisters open, found the ends of the films and hauled out a foot or so of each, which I tied together like the five intertwined tails of the rat king in the old folk legend. I slid the lower end of my taper in among them, balanced so that it stood nearly upright, then lit the business end. It burned brightly at first, then started to fade almost at once as the chill and the hate locked in the stones began to focus on the little point of light. I watched it with glowering suspicion for a moment or two, but it steadied. I couldn’t be sure that it would last long enough to burn all the way down to the film, but it was the best I could do.

A single voice had risen up above the murmured responses of the acolytes: Fanke’s voice, low and thrilling and solemn. I was expecting some bit of late-medieval guff about how Lucifer is a good old boy and he’d just love to reach out and touch you, but this sounded older – and my Classical Greek gives out after ‘Which way to the bathroom?’ and ‘I want mine with retsina.’

‘Aberamenthô oulerthexa n axethreluo ôthnemareba,’ Fanke boomed out, his voice rising now both in pitch and volume. ‘Iaô Sabaôth Iaeô pakenpsôth pakenbraôth sabarbatiaôth sabarbatianê sabarbaphai. Satana. Beelzebub. Asmode.’

I couldn’t have picked a better time to make my entrance. Standing up in the cheap seats, I fired one shot at the ceiling, and the noise roared around the room like the voice of God. The Satanists spun round with their mouths hanging open, and Fanke faltered in his recitation. I stepped out into the aisle, levelling the gun at his chest.

‘Hey, Anton,’ I said, strolling unhurriedly towards him. ‘Steve. Dylan. Whatever the fuck you call yourself tonight. How’s it hanging? I know how this one ends, if you’re interested. The next words are “I surrender”. And then you turn around, put your hands on the altar rail and assume the position.’

The acolytes backed away from me on either side. The last time they’d faced a self-righteous nutcase with a gun they’d found themselves transformed from chorus line to moving targets, and that experience seemed to have left its mark. Fanke stood his ground, though, and the look on his face didn’t change, except to add an overlay of sneering contempt to the cold superiority that was already there. That got my goat a little.

‘Step away from the circle,’ I said, close enough now so that I didn’t have to raise my voice. I tried to keep the stooges in my peripheral vision in case they went through their pockets and found out where they’d left their balls. But the first bullet was for Fanke in any case: and the second, third and fourth, if it came to that.

He didn’t move. He was standing a little stiffly, his left shoulder a little higher than his right. I remembered him giving that spastic jerk when Peace had fired his second shot: Fanke had taken a bullet, either in the shoulder itself or high up on his right arm. But he was a trouper, and the show had to go on.

‘Castor,’ he said, with pitying condescension. ‘I gave you your life. True, I took away from you a great many other things, but still the overall balance, I thought, was maintained. Yet here you are. And perhaps, after all, it’s fitting that you should be here to welcome my lord Asmodeus when he comes.’

‘He missed his train,’ I snapped. ‘He said to send his love. Now step away from the fucking circle, Fanke, or I swear on my sainted mother’s grave I am putting enough holes through you so I can see the deposition of Christ in that central panel behind you.’

‘No.’ Fanke shook his head, lowering his gaze to the ground as if he was meditating on human folly. ‘You’re not. Patience?’ I took this last word to be a piece of supercilious advice, until a woman’s voice from off to my left answered shakily: ‘Yes, magister?’

‘Tell Mister Castor how many sacrifices we’ve got lined up for this evening.’

‘Thr-three, magister. There are three.’

‘And what’s the order of play?’

‘First the chi-the spirit. The spirit already dedicated. Then the demon. Last, the woman.’

Eyes left, just momentarily, and with my finger tense on the trigger so that if Fanke moved at all I could still cut loose at him. That quick glance was enough to confirm what I already more or less knew. The woman who was speaking was the woman who I’d met a few days ago in my office – the woman with the badly bruised face, who’d been introduced to me as Melanie Torrington. Then I was looking at Fanke again, and he raised his eyes to meet my gaze.

He wasn’t smug, exactly. His expression said that he didn’t think it was any great feat to out-think me.

‘I wanted to be sure this time,’ he murmured. ‘The child’s spirit ought to complete the summoning, and free my dread lord from this . . . place. But just in case, I thought it would be best to have a Hecateum – a three-way offering, covering living and dead, male and female, spirit and flesh.’

I took another step towards him and actually poked the barrel of the gun into his chest. This time he gave, slightly, and his back bumped against the altar rail. I was gratified to have got some kind of reaction out of him at last.

‘Show me,’ I suggested.

‘No. Put the gun away.’

I held his gaze and said it again, with a very final emphasis. ‘Show me. Or you and me are both going to Hell a little earlier than we expected.’

Fanke turned to glance across at the woman. ‘Bring them forward,’ he said, the command sounding as negligent and world-weary as he could make it. He’d seen in my eyes that I was ready to shoot, and he’d changed his mind about bluffing me. That was something.