Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

It was followed a moment later by the crump of a detonation, and another window blew out as something hard and metallic shot through it to arc end over end through the air, trailing a plume of feathery smoke. As it landed and bounced, another and then another window burst, and the screams of the hostages drowned out all other sounds – even the hiss of the tear-gas grenades releasing their indiscriminate loads.

I staggered back to where Juliet had been standing, almost slipping as my foot came down on something smooth and hard. I glanced down: it was a Victorinox Swiss Army penknife, multi-functional blades extended at both ends. Susan’s weapon: I’d been within an inch of being corkscrewed to death.

Juliet was kneeling over the body of one of the fallen rioters, her hand on his chest: I thought she was checking him for a pulse, but then I realised that she was searching his pockets. I grabbed hold of her arm and her head snapped up: her dark-eyed stare locked with mine. My eyes were starting to water as filaments of CS gas drifted across the store.

‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ I shouted over the shrill screams. ‘This is to soften up the opposition. Any moment now they’re gonna storm the place.’

Juliet stood, with some difficulty. ‘I’ll have to lean on you,’ she rasped, and she almost fell into my arms as I led her back the way we’d come. The hostages would be okay, I told myself. They’d suffer from the effects of the gas, but the cops would be all over the place within the next couple of minutes so the riot was over. There was nothing we could do for them now that the paramedics couldn’t do a whole lot better.

All the same, I felt more hollow than heroic as I staggered back down the stalled escalators, Juliet leaning heavily against my chest, the harsh gurgle of her breath in my ears. She’d been right: something was loose in here, and it had our number – turning victims into aggressors with a magical wave of its invisible hands, wrapped around and around us like some kind of spiritual smallpox blanket, infecting where it touched.

Skirting the debris in the ground-floor arcade was a lot harder now that I was steering for two. As we headed for the corridor where the toilets were I heard the loud slam of the main doors off to our left and the crunch of running, booted feet on the shattered glass. I went a little faster, risking a misstep that would send us both sprawling on our faces. We got into the corridor and the echoing steps ran straight on past. I was expecting a voice from behind us to shout, ‘Stop where you are. Put down the succubus – slowly!’ But it didn’t happen.

The loading bay was still empty. I got Juliet to the edge of the platform, set her down, then jumped to the ground myself and hauled her after me. Amazingly, exasperatingly, in spite of everything that had just happened and the sick horror that was throbbing inside my head, I was still responding physically to her closeness – still breathing hard and heavy, and feeling my prick stir inside my pants, as I inhaled her primal perfume.

She couldn’t climb the wall: she could barely walk. But there was a gate at the far end of the yard, and it was only bolted rather than locked. I slid the bolts and we limped through, both of us torn and exhausted and blood-boltered, like the last contestants in a dance marathon in Hell.

I had to slow down once we got out onto the street. It was dark, so if we stayed away from the street lights nobody would be likely to see our various wounds and blemishes, but the way we were staggering would draw attention anywhere. I pulled Juliet close to me and tried to pretend that we were lovers drunk on our own hormones – and, yeah, before you ask, that was an easy part to play. Every inch where our bodies touched was an inch I was painfully, achingly aware of.

The road we were in led back around to the street where I’d parked, bringing us out again behind the rubbernecking crowd. There was a whole lot more going on now, and nobody had time to notice us. Police were pushing the lollygaggers back while officers with riot shields and impact armour ran across the road towards the mall’s front entrance. White-shirted ambulance crews brought up the rear. The assault had begun in earnest now, and we’d got clear with seconds to spare.

I propped Juliet up against the car and got the passenger door open. She was starting to pull out of it now, or at least to recover some degree of control over her own movements, and she was able to lower herself into the seat without much help from me. I shut the door without slamming it, went around to the driver’s side, slid in and started the engine.

Since the road ahead was blocked I had to make a three-point turn in the road. Fortunately there was enough street theatre going on that nobody spared us a glance. We drove back towards White City stadium, where I pulled over because my hands were shaking so much that I wasn’t really safe to drive.

Juliet’s breathing was shallow now, but even, and she was looking at me with something of her old, cold arrogance in her eyes.

That stare made a lot of possible words die in my throat. Finally I said, ‘I’m sorry I dragged you into that.’

‘It’s all right,’ she answered, her voice still a harsh rasp. ‘It was . . . interesting.’

‘No, I mean I’m really sorry you were there. You killed a man, and probably blinded another. If I’d known you were going to let out your inner demon—’

She cut across me, remorseless. ‘One man was dead already. How many more do you think would have died if I hadn’t acted?’

‘We can’t know that.’

‘No,’ she agreed, sounding almost contemptuous. ‘We can’t.’

‘Was it worth it?’ I asked, still shell-shocked. ‘Did you get any kind of a handle on what we’re dealing with here?’

‘Oh yes. Didn’t you?’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Although—’ I fell silent. There had been something familiar in the way that formless evil had presented itself to my sixth sense: but it had been mixed up with a lot that was purely alien, and the gestalt effect hadn’t been something I’d been able to focus my mind on for very long – like trying to join the dots when they were spinning separately in a whirlpool. I didn’t finish the sentence: there didn’t seem to be any good way of explaining what I’d felt. ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Give me the starting prices.’

‘Soon,’ said Juliet. ‘Not yet. And not here.’ There was a long silence. Then she turned and stared at me. ‘Castor—’ Her voice had a breathy echo to it that suggested she still hadn’t finished repairing the damage to her lung.

‘What?’

‘Is that how you dress for dinner?’

There’s a Thai restaurant up by Old Oak Common where I’d eaten a few times before. It’s a perfect place for snacks and cocktails after work, or after summarily executing deranged riflemen in gutted malls – and since there’s no dress code, it doesn’t even matter if you’ve been shot through the chest and a massive exit wound has spoiled the line of your jacket.

To be fair, by the time we got there Juliet was looking almost as fresh and fragrant as if she’d just stepped out of the shower – an image I had to rein in sternly before my imagination got out of hand. The blood that had saturated her shirt front had disappeared, and the line of bruising along her jaw had faded to near-invisibility. I’d seen Asmodeus do something similar to Rafi’s body when it had taken some damage in one of his rampages, but this was more extreme and a whole lot quicker – I guess because Rafi’s body was still made of real flesh and blood at the end of the day, while Juliet’s was made of – something else. I never know how to ask.