Mo nods jerkily. “Yes, that’s very interesting,” she says distractedly.
“If someone had convinced them that the time was right now, not in a couple more years, they might be induced to premature action. And if that someone allowed them to obtain a falsified, corrupted version of the Fuller Memorandum, they might well try to use it to release their master-”
Mo focuses. “The Sleeper. You’re not saying it’s N’yar lath-Hotep itself?”
“No, nothing that powerfuclass="underline" there is a hierarchy of horrors here, a ladder that must be climbed. But the thing in the pyramid can set the process in motion, starting a chain of events that will ultimately open the doors of uncreation and release the Black Pharaoh. To do so, they would best wait for the conjunction of chance; but it is in the nature of mortal cultists that they are impatient. And James is of the opinion that they should be encouraged to indulge their fatal impatience.”
“I see.”
“No, I don’t believe you do. The Black Brotherhood are at their most dangerous when they work within an organization that is unaware it has been infiltrated. Your-husband. Has be been missing long?” She shakes her head. “Exactly. Something alerted you?” She nods. “James sent him on an errand, yes?” She nods again. “Imagine you are an initiate of the Brotherhood. You see an agent of a hostile organization, and you have acquired the Sternberg Fragment and are prepared to carry out the ritual of summoning and binding the hungry ghost. Would it not be to your advantage to pick, as a carrier, that hostile agent? So that you can send him back in among them, ridden by your own demon…”
Mo’s pupils dilate. Her face is pale. “You think they’re going to try to possess Bob.”
Panin spreads his hands palm-down on the table. “It is a logical supposition, nothing more.” He meets her gaze. “He is tapped for rapid advancement, is he not? James’s personal secretary, I gather. Years ago, he established a reputation as a casual layabout, a bit of a bumbler. It served him well in his field days. We see reports, you know. A very talented man, with a very beautiful, very talented wife. He will go far, if he is not eaten by a hungry ghost. Or worse.”
“What could be worse?” Mo says bitterly.
Panin shrugs. “Firstly, they have a corrupted copy of the Sternberg Fragment. Whatever James saw fit to concoct, I suppose, not expecting them to perform it on his personal secretary. Secondly-the preta they wish to summon has already been summoned: it is, in fact, already walking around in flesh. Who knows what the ritual might dredge up, given a dangling pointer into the demon-haunted void? And thirdly…”
“Thirdly?” Her voice begins to rise dangerously.
“We have merely been assuming that the copy of the Fuller Memorandum that James gave your husband contains a corrupted copy of the Sternberg Fragment. But James did not intend the situation to spin this far from his control. The worst possible case is that they have the real thing, the Sternberg Fragment and the document describing the binding of the Eater of Souls, and that they know what to do with it.”
JONQUIL THE PSYCHOPATHIC SLOANE RANGER HACKS AWAY AT my arm for what feels like a year and is probably a bit less than a minute. Then she gets annoyed. “Julian, do something about the screaming, will you? It’s giving me a headache.”
Julian Headless-Shotgun pulls a leather glove out of one of his pockets and tries to stuff it in my mouth. I clamp my jaw shut, shivering and hyperventilating, but he responds by squeezing my nostrils painfully. After a few seconds I surrender to the inevitable. The glove fingers taste of sweat and sour, dead leather. Chewing on them helps.
Did I mention I’ve got a low pain threshold?
Jonquil goes back to hacking on my arm. The pain is excruciating. If you’ve ever been bitten by a dog-this is worse. The scalpel makes a clean incision, but I can still feel blood welling up and dripping along my arm. The pain isn’t sharp-it’s a widespread violent ache. After a while it feels as if my arm has been clubbed repeatedly with a meat tenderizer. She hacks and saws and tugs-the tugging is the worst, it’s so bad my vision blurs and I feel light-headed-and then it stops.
But not the pain.
“He’s bleeding. Gareth, fetch a sock and a bandage at once. And a plate.”
I can’t see very welclass="underline" my eyes are blurring. I can’t seem to get enough air through my nose, even when I blow out around the saliva-sticky glove. My heart is hammering and I feel sick with pain. There’s a hole in my arm and it feels like it’s about half a meter long and goes right down to the bone. I’m dying, I think dizzily, even though I know better. Jonquil and her muscle wouldn’t want to risk their precious All-Highest’s ire. I lie there moaning quietly for a while, then Gareth returns. “You, lie still,” Jonquil says, and shoves what feels like a cast-iron cannonball into the hole in my arm. I try not to scream as she roughly winds a gauze bandage around the wadded-up sock, then stands up to inspect her work.
Julian bends over and holds a plate under my nose. Two red and blubbery lumps of raw meat about as long as my index finger sit in the middle of a thin pool of blood. “Anyone for sashimi?” he asks. Jonquil giggles; Gareth makes lip-smacking noises.
“Jolly good, that man.” Julian’s accent is plummy, camped-up; he peels one of the strips of meat off the plate and stuffs it in his mouth.
Jonquil follows suit, passing the plate to Gareth. “Nom nom nom,” she says around her mouthful. “Chewy!”
Goatfuckers, I think fuzzily, then everything goes blank.
The next thing I know, Jonquil’s hand is hovering in front of my nose. She’s holding a couple of white cylindrical tablets. “Here, swallow these-oh.” Her other hand tugs at the glove. I let go of it. She drops the tablets into my mouth, careful not to let her fingers close enough for me to bite. As if I would; all she’d need to do is breathe on that fucking hole in my arm. It’s kind of hard to bite someone’s fingers off when you’re screaming in mortal agony. I try to spit the tablets out but she pinches my nostrils shut. “Naughty naughty!” I hold out until my lungs are burning, but there’s only one way this contest of wills can end. “They’re only pain-killers,” she chides. “By the way, if you don’t swallow them toot sweet I’ll grind them up and inject them into you, there’s a good boy.”
Fucking Goatfuckers. She’s entirely capable of making good on the threat; I swallow. “What do I taste like?” I ask, trying to distract myself.
“Like raw pork, only not as smoky. Want some? Oh, sorry: the boys have eaten it all.” She giggles again. “Don’t worry, give the Coproxamol time to work and you’ll feel fine for your interview with Mummy.”
My heart’s still hammering, and I feel a little dizzy. My arm is cold and damp all the way down to my wrist. I don’t want to think about how much blood I must have lost. Half a liter? More? Fucking bastard goatfucking cultists. I flash on a momentary fantasy, digging my thumbs into her eye sockets-but only momentary. I have a bad feeling about my right arm. It’s throbbing like an overheated diesel engine, sending waves of pain radiating up to my shoulder and down to my elbow. I don’t know whether I can bend it. Hell, I probably need surgery to repair what these fine young cannibals have just done. Anything that takes two arms-forget it.