Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

I put my hands in the air, fingers spread to show that they were empty.

‘You know who hired me?’ I said.

‘Probably better than you do,’ Peace answered, his voice hard. He had me on that one.

‘I’m not working for them any more.’

The gun and the hand that held it still trembled almost imperceptibly, like a strong branch on a gusty day; but it still stayed pointed at my heart. ‘That’s probably what I’d say,’ Peace observed, ‘if I was standing where you’re standing. Speaking of which, I think you should sit down. On your hands. On second thoughts, take the coat off first and fling it over by the wall. Don’t want you pulling any surprises out of there while we’re talking.’

I shrugged my coat off slowly and unthreateningly: I’d heard enough about Peace’s rep by now to believe he meant business. Abbie was watching all this in absolute silence – the kind of silence that only the dead can manage, since they don’t breathe and they don’t fidget. Her dark gaze was solemn and alert: she was a very unusual ghost. I hoped I’d live long enough to get better acquainted.

‘If I was still trying to bring you in,’ I said, as I lowered the coat to the ground and shoved it away with my foot, ‘do you think I’d have come alone? That wouldn’t make any sense. I’d just tell them I’d found you, claim the fee and walk away.’

‘Maybe.’ Peace’s face clenched for a moment in a spasm of pain, which he did his best to hide. ‘If you were sure you had found us. And if you were sure they’d keep their end of whatever deal you’ve made.’

‘I don’t make deals with demons. Or their working partners.’

Peace smiled grimly. ‘Sorry, friend. On the face of the evidence, that’s exactly what you did. Sit down.’

Again, I was punctilious about doing exactly what I was told. I was fairly sure by this time that that blanket was hiding something a lot worse than the damage to Peace’s face, and I was starting to worry about what he’d do if he felt himself losing consciousness. He certainly wouldn’t want to leave me hanging around as an extant threat. That added a certain urgency to the task of talking him around.

‘When I asked your connection at the other Oriflamme to pass on a message for me,’ I said, ‘I meant it. All I’ve been looking for is a chance to talk to you.’

‘Carla? Yeah, that was a cute touch. But by the time she called me I already knew they had an exorcist sniffing after me. I saw you coming, remember? You tried to get a fix on Abbie and I shut you down.’

‘Three times,’ I acknowledged. ‘Nicely done. The second time you almost shoved my brain out of the back of my head. How’d you do that one?’

‘We’re not swapping recipes,’ Peace said, grimly. ‘The way I read this, you’re trying to find reasons why I shouldn’t kill you. Just to let you know, your score is still on zero.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Well, let me know if any of these makes the cut. One, you’ve been hurt really badly – probably when those two werewolves caught up with you – and you need help. On top of that, I think you’ve been awake since Saturday night keeping up whatever psychic defences you’ve got so no one else will try to find Abbie the way I did: that’s why you needed to score the uppers from Carla. Sooner or later you’re going to crash, big time: I’d put my money on sooner. If you don’t trust me, you’ve still got to find someone you do trust – and you’ve got to do it fast.

‘Two, after you tried to use me as a crash-mat at the Collective , you saw me running interference with the loup-garous . That jeep that went through the fence, and knocked the big one off his feet – that was me. So how does that square with me being the enemy? The truth is that I started to smell a whole bag of rats as soon as I took this job on: ever since then I’ve been trying to find out what’s really going down.’

I paused for breath. Peace had kept his poker face on throughout the whole of that recital: I wasn’t getting to him.

‘Is there a three?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘there’s a three. You’ve got a hell of a reputation, Dennis. Everyone says you’re a hard man who’s done a lot of bad things. Even Bourbon Bryant warned me not to piss you off, and he never has a harsh word to say about anyone.’ Peace was staring hard at me and I met that stare head-on. ‘But tell me this,’ I said, quietly. ‘Are you really prepared to kill an unarmed man in front of Abbie, and let her watch while he bleeds out? Because if you are, I think I’m all out of cards.’

We carried on playing blink-chicken for a moment or two longer, but I had nothing else to say so I let him win: it was Peace’s call now. I looked up at the black void beyond the candlelight’s meagre reach, and waited for him to make it. After a long silence, he lowered his arm and set the gun down on the floor. I glanced at him again. A smile spread slowly across his face: a bleak, strained smile that was painful to look at.

‘You’ve got balls, Castor,’ he said.

Peace gave the gun a shove, and it slid across the floor towards me. It didn’t get very far: the soot-streaked concrete was too rough and uneven. But it crossed the magical midway point where I’d be able to get to it before he did – assuming he could even move.

I stood up, stepped over the gun and walked across to him. I squatted down beside him, on the opposite side of the blanket from Abbie, who continued to stare at us both in silence. I felt her solemn, calm attention like a physical pressure on the back of my neck: the light touch of cold fingertips.

Peace stared up into my face, which must have looked a bit sinister lit from below by a single candle.

‘You’ve got a bit of a reputation yourself,’ he said, letting his head fall back onto the rolled-up jacket he was using as a pillow. ‘Let’s see if you can live up to it.’ This close up, his face looked a lot paler and a lot more strained: or maybe he was just done with pretending now. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead and cheek that gleamed dully in the candlelight.

‘What happened to you?’ I asked.

‘What you said. The were-fucks caught up with me again a couple of miles further on – pardon my French, Abbie. I got one of them with a knife: clever little gadget I bought in Algiers, with a chasing of silver up the blade. He won’t be doing any ballroom dancing for a while. But I had to get in close to do it, and he—’ Peace gestured at his ruined face.

‘Is that the worst of it?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he muttered. ‘This is the worst of it. Look away, Abbie.’

The ghost of Abbie Torrington shook her head, but it was a protest rather than a refusal. She turned her back on us, her movements once again unaccompanied by the slightest sound. As soon as she was facing the wall, Peace pulled the blanket aside. It was hard, at first, to make out what I was looking at: it looked for a moment like a 1970s tank top with a complicated pattern on it. Then I realised that it was his bare flesh: not so bare as all that, though, because his torso was rucked and rutted with half-healed cuts and flaking scabs. The predominant colour was furious red, but there was yellow in there too: some of the wounds had gone massively septic.

‘Christ!’ I muttered involuntarily.

‘Yeah, by all means say a blessing over it. Might even help.’

That was wishful thinking, though: religious nostrums do have some degree of power over demons and the undead, but only when they’re wielded by someone who actually believes in them. A prayer from me would be about as much use as one of those little stamps with Jesus on them that they used to give out at Sunday school: the Royal Mail doesn’t accept them, so the message never gets delivered.