Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

Using it on Rafi was a spiky proposition in any case, though. He was no zombie: just an ordinary living man with a tenacious passenger. And if Asmodeus was in the ascendant, it would take a big hit even to slow him down, which would mean that the side effects would be that much more painful and extreme. Some of them might even be permanent.

‘Let me go in first,’ I suggested. ‘Maybe I can calm him down with some music.’

Webb huffed and puffed, but unlike the big bad wolf he was actually very keen to avoid having the house blown down. He was looking for a way out of this that caused the minimum damage to life and property – especially property – and he had enough sense to see that I was probably it. After all, this wasn’t the first time Rafi had played up: I’d proved my usefulness many times before this. ‘I’m not legally responsible for you,’ he reminded me. ‘You signed a waiver, and I’ve still got it on file. You go in there on your own recognisance, and if you’re hurt—’

‘You’ll deny all knowledge of my activities,’ I finished, nodding. ‘And you won’t put a penny in the collection box. Let’s just take that shit as read, shall we?’

I turned my back on him and took a step towards Rafi’s cell.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Pen yelled, and she pushed her way between the two nurses, who weren’t sure any more what their brief was. I put up my hand to block her. ‘Better not, Pen,’ I muttered. ‘Asmodeus needs me alive, and that’s the only thing I’ve got going for me here. Like you said, it’s not Rafi. He won’t hold back when he sees you: he may even take a smack at you out of pure spite.’

She hesitated, still not convinced. I left her there and went forward, hoping she’d see sense: there was really no time to argue about it while I could see Webb plutzing and quivering his way towards ordering a gas attack. I gave the door a shave-and-a-haircut knock as I went through. It would probably have been safer to take a peek round the edge of the doorway first, but I was going to have to go in anyway: this way I went in with a certain amount of panache, even if I came out again on my arse with my head flying separately.

Stepping over the threshold meant going from carpeted floor to naked metal: an amalgam of steel and silver in the ratio of ten parts to one. It’s there behind the plasterboard of the walls, too, shining out in a few places where Rafi has punched his fist through in a temper. My feet boomed hollowly on the metal plate, announcing my arrival even more emphatically than the knock. But Rafi didn’t seem to notice me in any case: he was on the far side of the bare cell, kicking savagely at a sprawled form on the floor. Not the nurse, thank God: she was lying motionless just inside the door, a spidery trickle of blood on her forehead and her eyes closed. What Rafi was destroying was the meds trolley. Pills in a hundred party colours were strewn all over the floor and they crunched underfoot as I shifted my ground.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Pen was kneeling down to check the nurse’s pulse. I took my tin whistle out of my pocket and put it to my lips, but before I could play a note Rafi threw back his head and howled in what sounded like agony. He threw up his hands and pressed both clenched fists to his forehead, jerking spasmodically from side to side. Then, with a deep-throated groan, he drew his hands down his face from hairline to chin, digging his nails in deep so that he drew blood from eight parallel gashes.

I was going to have to put a spanner in this. I felt for the stops and blew an opening chord, as low as I could. Since Rafi had been completely ignoring me up to then, I was hoping to get a certain momentum going before he realised I was there: but at the first sound of the whistle he spun to face me. I hiccupped into unintended silence. Rafi’s pale, ascetically handsome face was strained, his thick black hair hanging in sweat-soaked ringlets: his eyes – pupils, whites and all – were a black so intense they seemed to suck all the light out of the room. I’d seen the effect before, but somehow this was worse than all the other times. It was as though the blackness was brimming there, behind Rafi’s eyes, ready to spill out and drown me.

‘CASTOR!’ he boomed, in a voice that was louder and harsher than a human throat should have been able to make: a voice like the shrieking intake of a jet engine. For a moment another face moved under his, almost surfacing through skull and muscle and red, stretched skin. ‘TOO SWEET! TOO FUCKING SWEET!’

If he hadn’t tensed before he jumped, that might have been the last sound I ever heard. As it was, I just about had time to drop down and to the side, out of the reach of his clutching fingers. At the same time I blew a screaming, modulated discord that I’d used before on Rafi, to good and usually immediate effect.

This time I might as well have been playing ‘God Save the Queen’ on my armpit. He turned in the air like a cat and caught me a glancing blow on the side of the head with his closed fist. There was a split-second where my visual field shifted into juddering black and white: the whistle flew out of my hand and clattered to the floor a long way away. Then Rafi had his feet back under him and he was advancing on me at a brisk walk, grinning a Cheshire-cat grin. Pen pressed herself against the wall, out of sight and out of mind, but she was watching everything that happened: looking for a chance to get that nurse out of the line of fire. Great plan: better than mine, anyway. Without my whistle, I was going to have my work cut out even staying alive here.

I threw a punch, which Rafi swatted aside without breaking stride. His response was devastating – his open hands, fingers as rigid as knitting needles, striking out so fast I heard the whiff of displaced air before I felt the agonising impact. I staggered backwards, trying to keep up some kind of a guard, but it was like being in front of a horizontal avalanche. I went sprawling back out into the corridor with Rafi on top of me, his hands now locking around my throat.

I was staring directly into those liquid black eyes, and I saw no mercy there. I broke his grip by punching outwards against his wrists, but that didn’t make as much difference as I was hoping for. Rafi strobed, his limbs seeming to be in too many places at once, and even though I’d knocked his hands away to left and right his grip on my throat didn’t slacken. I fought to suck in a breath: if I could breathe I could whistle, even without mechanical aids, but there was nothing doing. He squeezed tighter, and darkness bubbled up inside my head to match the two dark wells I was staring into.

Over Rafi’s shoulder I saw Pen running towards me. She got a hold on Rafi’s right arm, trying to dislodge it, but it slid through her hands somehow and dopplered, seeming once again to be in a lot of places at the same time. He shrugged and stiffened, his head snapping backwards and thumping hard into her chest so that she tumbled backwards. Then he got on with the serious business of throttling me.

I was probably two seconds or so from passing out, after which all bets would have been cancelled and, no doubt, so would I. But suddenly there was a bigger, stockier shape looming up behind Rafi, and a muscular black arm locked around his neck. It was Paul. He looked strained and pale, which was scarcely surprising, but his movements were methodical: he used his greater weight and leverage to bend Rafi backwards until his grip started to slacken on my throat. Rafi hissed voicelessly and threw up his hands to tear Paul’s grip free.

Weak and dazed as I was, I forced myself to move, because it didn’t look as though I’d be getting a second chance. I rolled hard, shifting my weight to throw Rafi further off his centre of gravity, and at the same time I punched him with as much force as I could on the point of the jaw. Caught off balance, he slid sideways out of Paul’s hands and we both scrambled clear.