We backed out of the room, Gil carrying Juliet. She seemed to have lapsed into a sort of waking dream state, muttering to herself and twitching fitfully in his arms.
‘You’re a marvel, Felix,’ Jenna-Jane muttered tightly as we retraced our steps through the cell blocks. ‘You came all this way to rescue a monster that’s lived on human flesh and human souls for millennia. Broke in here, terrorised and assaulted my staff, caused untold damage to my systems. I’ve known for a long time that you were losing your bearings, but this goes beyond anything I could have expected.’
‘Always more sinned against than sinning, J-J,’ I said. ‘But think about Mr Dicks before you throw the first stone. We had a deal, and I stuck to it until you tried to have me killed.’
Jenna-Jane laughed incredulously. ‘Tried to have you killed? Is that what Gilbert told you? It’s nonsense. I admit I wanted to delay you in Surrey. Of course I did. I simply didn’t trust your objectivity when it came to the succubus – and I’d say your present actions provide ample evidence that I was right.’
‘They’re following us,’ Gil muttered.
I glanced back over my shoulder. The myrmidons were advancing from cell door to cell door, corner to corner, staying far enough back to be no immediate threat but clearly waiting for their chance. That might mean there was a flank party somewhere. I slowed down as we approached an intersection, but the ambush I was expecting didn’t materialise.
We could see the metal stairs ahead of us now, and Gil accelerated toward them. The black uniforms came out from behind the stairwell when we were ten strides away from it. At the same time, the ones who’d been tailing us closed up the gap, trapping us neatly.
‘No innocent bystanders here,’ one of the guys in front of us said. He was an unprepossessing specimen, with lank black hair and a drooping Spanish-waiter moustache. He slapped his baton into the flat of his hand with a ringing thwack. ‘Drop the girl and let the professor go. Otherwise I’m letting these men off the leash.’
‘If you do, she dies,’ I said.
The guy smiled unpleasantly. ‘Better get on with it then,’ he suggested. ‘Because we’re not moving. On my mark, gentlemen. Three . . . two . . . one—’
‘Don’t any of you move a muscle!’ Jenna-Jane ground out, her voice deep and carrying. ‘I forbid it! Do you understand? ’
The rent-a-cops fell back a step out of pure reflex, responding to their master’s voice. The leader looked nonplussed. ‘Professor . . .’ he began.
‘The succubus is a valuable medical resource,’ Jenna-Jane snarled caustically. ‘By heaven, I will have the skin off the back of the man who harms her. Now, you will back off and you will allow these men to leave, unharmed. Anyone who disobeys will answer to me. Doubt me not, you whoreson dogs.’
I’d already started to have my suspicions with ‘by heaven’, not to mention the flogging reference. By the time she got to ‘whoreson’, I knew damn well what I was dealing with. This wasn’t Jenna-Jane; this was Rosie Crucis.
I moved towards the stairs, shifting to avoid turning my back on any of these sonsofbitches. ‘You heard the lady,’ I said. ‘Come on, McClennan.’ Gil was baffled but he wasn’t stupid. He stayed with me as I shuffled round to the foot of the stairs and put my foot on the bottom step.
‘Give them some ground!’ Rosie bellowed, and the myrmidons fell back as one man.
‘Did I ever tell you I loved you?’ I muttered to Rosie.
‘Often and often,’ she chuckled. ‘But don’t ask me to kiss you with these lips, Felix. It would be a crime against nature.’
Gil was staring at us in a kind of existential horror, his eyes wide. Then the penny dropped, visibly. ‘How did you break the wards?’ he whispered.
‘I didn’t,’ Rosie whispered. ‘I went under them. There were no wards on the floor.’
At the top of the stairs we paused. I looked to the right of the door and found what I expected to find: a locked junction box. I let go of Rosie and took the fire axe to it, breaking off the lock with three clumsy strokes. Inside were two red buttons. The one on the left was labelled LOCK and the one on the right RELEASE.
‘Any idea where you’ll go from here?’ I asked Rosie.
She shrugged, and an uncharacteristically wicked grin played across Jenna-Jane’s features. ‘I haven’t had a tumble in five hundred years,’ she said. ‘I think I might remind myself what the sins of the flesh are actually like.’
‘When that gets old,’ I said, ‘drop by and say hello.’
‘Certainly, Felix,’ she agreed. ‘Perhaps even before.’
I hit RELEASE. There was a prolonged, ragged-edged chunk-chunk-chunk sound as hundreds of cell doors opened in near but not perfect simultaneity.
Rosie slipped away. Through my death-sense I felt her go, but even if I hadn’t, I would have known it was the real Jenna-Jane I was now looking at as her face twisted into an expression of naked, almost berserk hatred.
‘Castor!’ she choked.
‘I think you said three days’ probation, J-J,’ I reminded her. I held up thumb and forefinger, almost touching. ‘I came this close to making the grade.’
I slammed the great steel door shut and threw the bolt.
19
We held our council of war at the Walthamstow Gaumont. Nicky wasn’t exactly thrilled to host, but he was still feeling sheepish about missing the boat with the anagrams in Asmodeus’ summonings, so I had a little leverage to work with.
He let us in off the street, giving the bundle in my arms – Juliet, now wrapped in my greatcoat and still more or less out of her head – a curious look.
Gil McClennan shivered as he stepped over the threshold. The change in temperature from the warmth of the air outside was sudden and marked.
‘Place is as cold as a tomb,’ he muttered.
‘Well, shit!’ Nicky sneered. ‘Here I’ve been looking for a good analogy all this time, and it was right there in front of my face.’
Gil’s face went through some interesting changes as he realised belatedly that he was talking to a dead man. ‘No offence,’ he offered at last.
‘None taken,’ said Nicky. ‘To be offended, I’d have to give a fuck. Go on upstairs. Joan of Arc is already up there waiting for you.’
Trudie was pacing the floor of the projection room, wearing two jackets against the cold. Her arm was in a sling, her shoulder swathed in bulky bandages. She looked almost as pale as Nicky, but without his excuse of having been four years dead. In her free hand she carried a bright orange Sainsbury’s bag.
‘Castor!’ She hurried over to us as we entered, then recoiled slightly when she realised what it was I was carrying. Her gaze went from Juliet’s face to mine. ‘I seem to have missed a lot,’ she said. ‘Can you bring me up to speed?’
Nicky cleared the table and we sat ourselves around it: a coalition of the willing, if that term includes people who’ve tried out all the other options and ended up painted into a corner. Juliet was on the other side of the room, lying on a camp bed under the projector. The mattress smelled of mildew and was unpleasantly damp, but it was the best we could do.
Asmodeus’ note – item one on an agenda of one – sat in the centre of the table. It was short and to the point.
Castor
You and your demon bitch are invited to my farewell party. In case you need an incentive – they’re alive, and they stay alive until you come. After that, it depends on how it plays.
Peckham. That little upstairs room you fitted out for me, remember? We had such good times there, it seemed like the only possible place to say goodbye.
A
‘You’ve got nothing,’ Nicky pointed out. ‘Sorry. Thought I might as well start by stating the obvious. You’ve bumped into him twice, and both times you barely survived. You go in there now – with him actually waiting for you – and he’ll kill you, sure as eggs is eggs.’