Here’s the upshot: Iris’s invocation has got a dangling pointer, an un-initialized variable pointing to an absent preta. But there’s a soul in the vicinity, cut free-mostly-from its body. So instead of hooking onto the Eater of Souls, the preta manger, it latched onto me. So she’s just spent fuck knows how much carefully hoarded ritual mojo to bind me into my own flesh.
Like she said: “Fatal accidents never have just a single cause, they happen at the end of a whole series of errors.” Well, Iris has strung about five errors together and she’s about to go down hard, because I’m about to turn fatal on her.
I open my eyes again and stare at the canopy overhead.
The feeders in the night are dispersing-but they’re not going back from whence they came. They’re rippling outwards, through the temple towards the walls. This body’s occupied. But outside the doors, the vessels I’ve been prepping are waiting.
The chant continues, as do the invocations and imprecations in the name of an absent monster. I lie back and try to calm my hammering heart. I don’t feel quite myself-I’m sweating and cold even though it’s a summer night, and my skin doesn’t seem to fit properly. It’s very strange. The cultists continue with their rite, which takes some unexpected turns. There is a large silver goblet of wine, into which a hooded man empties a familiar-looking syringe full of blood-it boils and steams on contact, which is rather disturbing. Then a quorum of the chorus line start to shed their robes, and don’t stop at their underwear. They walk around me naked, which is really disturbing because they appear to be into mortification of the flesh in a big way-even bigger than Opus Dei-with a genital focus that makes me wonder how they ever get through airport metal detectors. Or reproduce. No wonder Jonquil is an only child-
And speak of the devil’s daughter: here’s her mother, leaning over me-black robes covering up who-knows-what, and really clashing with her blonde rinse. Iris unhooks the gag, steps back, and throws her arms wide: “Speak, oh Eater of Souls!”
I work my jaw. It feels subtly wrong, as disarticulated as if I’ve just done hard time in a tomb and haven’t noticed I’m one of the walking dead. I force myself to inhale, try to salivate, turn my head sideways (that feels wrong, too) and expectorate. A thin stream of spittle lands on the bedding beside my eternally sleeping companion: it’s black in the torch light. Dust, of course, because I can’t be bleeding. Right?
“Speak!” she commands me. I stare at her, and feel a nearly irresistible urge to bite her throat out. Right now I should be trying to make like I’m a freshly reincarnated Eater of Souls, but I am thirsty and I am hungry and I have just been through hell and I really don’t care.
Some imp of the perverse takes control of my larynx: “I’ll drink your blood,” I croak, and instantly regret it. But much to my surprise, her eyes light up.
“Certainly, lord! Bring the chalice!” she shrills over her shoulder. A naked minion steps forward, bearing the huge silver goblet: it’s full of what I’m pretty sure is red wine, and it smells wonderful. Iris accepts it and holds it near my face. I slurp greedily, spilling more than I suck into my mouth. It’s thick and sweet, like tawny port, but also warming, as if there’s a trace of ginger or chili oil dissolved in it. “In the name of the Unhallowed One, I command you to stop drinking,” she says.
I freeze momentarily, acutely aware that I want to keep going, but-she won’t order them to untie me if she doesn’t think I’ll obey her, I realize. And I really, really want to be untied. I can sense the feeders all around us, dispersed throughout the soil around the crypt, doing what they do best: eating in the darkness, consuming and corrupting and possessing the material forms that are normally denied to them. Soon, they’re going to take possession of their withered husks and go looking for more upmarket digs. I don’t want to be tied down and helpless when that happens-
Evidently Iris mistakes my indecision for compliance. She turns to her audience: “The Eater of Souls obeys!” she calls. “The first test!”
She turns back to face me, triumphant and happy. “What would you have me do to hasten the opening of the way?” she asks.
“Untie me.” I tug lightly at the ropes. “Untie me.” My right arm feels wrong, but so does my left-they both obey me, but feel oddly distant. Blood sugar must be low, I tell myself. Or that wine has a kick to it.
Wrong response. Iris is shaking her head. But she’s still smiling. “Not yet,” she says. “Not until the rite of binding is complete.” Rite of binding? Uh-oh.
“The rite is complete,” I tell her, hoping she’ll buy it. “The blood and the wine…”
“I don’t think so.” She looks at me sharply, and I see something greenish reflected in her eyes. Something behind me? She turns back to her altar before I can work it out, walks towards the front of her congregation. “Bring me the sacrifice pure of heart and soul!” she calls.
Then the true horror show begins.
THEY’RE CULTISTS. WORSE: THEY’RE THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE Black Pharaoh, hated and persecuted wherever they are exposed to the horrified gaze of ordinary people.
Why?
There is a pernicious and evil legend that comes down to us from ancient history: the legend of the Blood Libel. It’s a regular, recurring slander that echoes down the ages, hurled against out-groups when an excuse for a pogrom or other form of mass slaughter is desired. The Blood Libel is a whisper that says that the strangers sacrifice babies and drink their blood. There are variant forms: the babies are stolen from good Christian households, the blood is baked into bread, the babies are their own incestuous get by way of the bodies of their own daughters. No embellishment is too vile or grotesque to find its way into the Blood Libel. The most frequent victims are Jews, but it’s been used against many other groups-the Cathars, Zoroastrians, Kulaks, Communists, you name it. The Romans regularly used it against the early Christians, and doubtless they’d stolen it from somebody else. Its origins are lost in antiquity, but the sole purpose of the Blood Libel is to motivate those who believe it to say: “These people are not like us, and we need to kill them, now.”
I always used to think that was all there was to it.
But now I know better; I’ve witnessed the wellspring of the bloody legend and seen its practitioners in action.
And I’m still in their hands.
16. EATER OF SOULS
MEANWHILE, SOME DISTANCE ABOVE MY HEAD, HERE’S WHAT happens as Iris’s rite runs to completion:
Benjamin paces around the Chapel of the Ancient and Honourable Order of Wheelwrights, nostrils flaring to take in the sweet summer night air, heavy with pollen and sweet with the scent of new-mown hay.
Benjamin is a mild-mannered debt management consultant from Epping, and he’s doing very well, thank you. He works out for half an hour every morning in the gym downstairs from his comfortable office; then he goes to work, where he helps distressed businesses find ways and means of improving their cash retention practices. He spends his evenings arranging social activities under the aegis of his local church (who the neighbors consider to be slightly odd but generally friendly and helpful), and sometimes, at the weekend, he plays with the church paintball team.
Epping is one stop down the line from Barking, which is what the neighbors would think of him if they could see him now, wearing the black cloak of a member of a very different Order, and carrying a gun that fires something more substantial than paint pellets.
Grigori, in contrast, is not mild-mannered at all. Grigori is a violently aggressive young thug from the slums of Nizhny Novgorod, born in the year of the collapse of the Soviet Union and raised half-feral amidst the wreckage of the timber and steel industries. Conscripted into the Russian army at eighteen and subjected to twelve months of brutal training, he showed a remarkable aptitude for butchering Wahhabi guerillas in the hills of the Kadar zone during the Dagestan war. Already tapped for promotion to sergeant he was instead inducted into Spetsgruppa V, “Vympel,” the FSB’s special operations unit, where he was taught German, Arabic, and sixteen different ways to strangle a man in his own intestines.