I also couldn’t stop watching the shadows, but that was a whole lot more rational. The room that Imelda and I had kitted out for Rafi was up on the second floor, but there was no reason at all why Asmodeus would feel obliged to play by the rules. He could be anywhere in the building.
But he was in the building, at least I knew that. The sense of him was everywhere, so pervasive that I could only pick up the barest hint of a direction. Above us somewhere, and watching, even now, because there was that prickling, itchy pressure again, across my shoulder blades.
We got to the first landing, turned onto the second flight of stairs. Juliet was crowding me from behind, filled with a desperate urgency that wouldn’t let her slow down even though she knew how this was meant to work. No good. No good at all. If we kept on climbing, we’d run into the demon in the dark, on his terms, and everything would accelerate out of control.
‘Are we really taking this to the wire?’ I asked aloud, in a conversational tone. ‘It’s late, and I’m tired, and we all know what you want, you grandstanding prick. Send the women down, and Juliet comes up.’
‘No,’ said the demon’s voice, echoing down the stairwell. He sounded relaxed and amused. ‘This isn’t a hostage situation, Castor. I said I’d keep them alive until you got here, that’s all.’
‘So where are they?’ I demanded. Impossible to get a fix on him in the pitch dark. He sounded close, but the stairwell was four storeys high. Close could mean ten feet, twenty, even thirty. There’s nothing worse than a valiant charge that turns into a long-distance slog.
‘They’re here,’ Asmodeus assured me. ‘They’re not in very good condition, but they’re here. Still breathing. More or less. If I were a man, I’d be a man of my word.’
‘You fucking . . .’ The words caught in my throat. ‘If you’ve done anything to them . . .’
‘I did a few things, at first. Then I discovered it was more interesting to make them do things to each other. It’s like they say, Castor. Fear eats the soul. Get someone scared enough, and civilisation flies right out the window.’ He chuckled softly, the sound falling like aeons-old dust through the dark. ‘You’ll have to watch your step when you come up here. It’s a little slippery underfoot.’
Juliet gave a wordless cry. I knew what was coming and I lunged to stop her, but her headlong rush knocked me sprawling against the banister, which cracked and gave ominously under my weight.
Too soon. Way too soon. I threw out my arm and caught her ankle just before she got out of reach, tripping her so that she fell full-length on the stairs.
‘Don’t!’ I shouted desperately. ‘Juliet, don’t!’
She kicked me on the point of the jaw. At any other time that would probably have killed me, but she wasn’t herself right then. Blood filled my mouth as my teeth were driven into my tongue, but I somehow managed to catch hold of her leg again, dragging her back down the stairs and clambering up in her place.
‘We don’t even know what you’ve got,’ I yelled up into the dark. ‘This is all bullshit until we see them.’
A hollow click sounded from above, and the stairwell was flooded with stark, shadowless light from a 150-watt bulb hanging directly over our heads. Asmodeus, up on the second-floor balcony, took his hand off the switch and let it fall back onto the banister rail. He was obviously alone.
‘I rest my fucking case,’ I said, sounding far less tough and uncompromising than I would have liked.
The demon just smiled. ‘Do you need to see them?’ he asked, speaking past me towards Juliet, who was only then struggling to her feet.
‘No,’ she whispered. I don’t know how Asmodeus heard her. Standing right next to her, I could barely make out the word.
‘No,’ the demon agreed, almost gently. ‘Because you can smell her. You can smell her flesh, her blood and her breath, even from way down there. You know she’s still alive, but you don’t know how long that might last. And the only way you’re going to get to her, and find out how bad it is, is to go through me. You, fuck-doll. Just you. Anybody else who comes up here goes down again in pieces.’ He shrugged theatrically. ‘So what are you waiting for?’
Juliet pushed me aside. I raised an arm to halt her again, because I knew we still had time to kill before zero hour, but her hand moved in a flicker of speed, and she caught my wrist in a grip so tight I cried aloud. Evidently her strength was coming back. So was the crackling erotic aura that normally surrounded her. Her touch made the breath catch in my throat.
‘Mine now,’ she growled.
And she threw me aside so that I tumbled and rolled back down the stairs, coming to a jarring halt on the warped boards of the first-floor landing. The wood was so dry and worm-eaten that I almost went through them.
I rolled onto my side so that at least I was facing the right way to see what was happening above me, but there was no way I could stop it now. Juliet was taking the steps two at a time, her long-legged stride indicative in itself of the renewed energy and potency that was pouring into her – at the worst possible time.
I clambered up, a jolt of agony shooting through my right knee. Maybe I shouted out her name again, but I really don’t remember. She was face to face with Asmodeus now, and he was spreading his arms to receive her. The smile of welcome that broke across his face was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen.
‘What part of this are you not getting?’ Nicky demanded, exasperated.
‘All of it,’ Gil admitted. ‘You’re saying he actually wants the succubus to devour him?’
‘No, he wants her to devour Rafi,’ I said. ‘Think about it, Gil. Think about everything he’s done since he got free. First of all, he contacts the satanists—’
‘Castor!’ Trudie warned, but I had no intention of giving away professional secrets, and anyway it was all on the point of not mattering very much. I ignored her and went on. ‘They were meant to do an encore of their number from last time – carry out a sacrifice on a child who’d been born and raised and prayed over in all the right ways, and set him free. But they blew it. They couldn’t deliver.
‘That’s when he starts in on the murders. I think they’re a crude improvisation – trying to shake Rafi loose by making him despair. Certainly they weaken him. They keep him on the defensive. Maybe they loosen his hold on the body they both share.
‘But it’s plan C that Asmodeus is putting his money on. If Juliet can be made to devour Rafi – body and soul together – what will be left?’
Gil shrugged. ‘A greasy stain?’
‘The demon,’ Trudie said. ‘Just him, in some bodiless form. It has to be that. He wouldn’t respond to Juliet’s spell – he’d feel no lust for her, because it’s human lust she’s adapted herself to arouse. So he’d be indigestible. When she was finished, he’d still be there. It would just be Ditko who’d be gone.’
‘That’s insane,’ Gil objected.
‘I think it’s fucking genius,’ Nicky said. ‘As prison breaks go, it makes digging a tunnel under Rita Hayworth look like nothing at all.’
Juliet put one soft, caressing hand behind Asmodeus’ head, drawing his face in close to hers. Their lips met.
Presumably, on a psychic level, some vast ethereal centrifuge began to turn, slowly at first but with gathering speed and irresistible momentum. Being a man, Rafi was drawn to Juliet. There was nothing he could do to stop it. I’d been there and I knew how it felt: the desire that was so like despair that you poured your heart and soul and lungs and liver and lights into its welcoming emptiness, wanting nothing but to penetrate, to be accepted, to be swallowed up.
Asmodeus, being a demon, would stand out of that vortex, immune to its pull. He would watch Rafi succumb, experiencing the immense satisfaction of a long and complicated chain of events drawing to its inevitable conclusion. He had turned his enemies into the moving parts of a machine which would deliver him from his bondage; there couldn’t be many pleasures more visceral than that.