Thicker Than Water

The thing that was inside Bic, which was a limb of the greater thing that hung over the Salisbury, might be fighting for its life insofar as it had one: Asmodeus was playing, and drawing out the pleasure.

Then finally, after what might have been the better part of a minute, the demon drew in a breath both long and deep, his eyes almost closing, and he tilted his head, first to the left, then to the right, his teeth still bared in a terrible rictus.

He held the pose long enough for the ringing in my ears to die down, and the air in the room, which had seemed to chill precipitately, came slowly back to normal. The goose bumps that had prickled our flesh lay down again, and the cat out in the alley - or perhaps another cat - made a miauling sound that was almost like the cry of a human baby. Bic still hadn’t moved in all this time.

‘Are you done?’ Imelda demanded of Asmodeus, her voice thick with disgust.

‘Oh lady,’ the demon murmured, ‘I am done, and I am satisfied. You cannot know how long it’s been since I enjoyed so rich a meal. Small, undeniably, but choice. Very choice.’

‘Then give me the goods, you evil bastard, and let’s get this over with,’ I said.

Asmodeus straightened as slowly as he’d bowed, and then he massaged his right shoulder as though ironing out a cramp. ‘The goods,’ he repeated softly. ‘Oh yes, Castor. I have what you need. I’ve tasted the part, and so I know the whole. I can give you a nostrum so potent that this new-dropped little runt that dares to call itself a demon will melt away under your ministrations like water drops on a hot iron skillet.’

He held my gaze.

‘But you have to say please,’ he announced, in a tone that was openly mocking.

‘Don’t piss me off,’ I warned him grimly. ‘I’ve got your number.’

‘Because I gave it to you,’ Asmodeus agreed. ‘But I still feel entitled to a touch of respect, because without me what are you? A dumbstruck cunt-whisker trapped on stage without anything to play for an encore.’

‘I can still play your exit music,’ I reminded him softly, and my whistle was in my hand again.

‘No,’ Asmodeus said. ‘You can’t. Not yet. Because if you do that now, you won’t have what you came for. Ask me for the ammunition, Castor. You have the tune that means me: ask me for the tune that means this other one.’

‘Give me the tune,’ I asked him.

‘Please.’

‘Give it to me, please.’

‘Inscribe it in my mind,’ Asmodeus coached.

‘Inscribe it in my mind.’

‘So deeply that it may not be forgotten.’

‘What?’

‘Say it!’

I swallowed. ‘So deeply that it may not be forgotten.’"

"‘It’s yours,’ Asmodeus whispered, smiling a smile so wide that it almost cracked Rafi’s face in half. And just like before, the notes were driven into my brain like tent spikes into frozen ground. Harder this time, and further in, so that the pain made me gasp and stiffen.

And I saw what Asmodeus was doing just a second too late for it to make the slightest bit of difference.

‘No!’ I screamed.

‘Too late,’ the demon chided me. ‘I have to take your first answer.’

I took a step forward, my arm shooting out by some stupid, gobshite reflex. Trudie Pax tackled me hard from the side and pulled me back before I could step across the circle and into the demon’s hands.

‘No!’ I said again, shaking my head violently as I choked the word out. I was trying to remember: but Asmodeus was writing the new tune - the exorcism that would destroy the Salisbury demon - in the exact same space within my mind where he’d written the one that was his own: overwriting one sequence of notes with another. He’d given me the means to rip him out of Rafi root and branch: and then he’d taken it away again as easily as he’d given it.

‘You bastard,’ I moaned. ‘You cheating, conniving bastard!’

Asmodeus actually laughed. ‘I played by your rules, Castor,’ he said, shaking his head as he settled back on his haunches again. ‘It’s not my fault if you don’t think things through. Hey, be grateful you get out of this still sane. I could have filled your whole head with that fucking music and left you drooling.’

He licked his lips, savouring the last vestiges of his unholy meal. His gaze clouded.

‘But then you wouldn’t have got the joke,’ he said reflectively. ‘And that would have taken away a lot of the point.’

21

It was more than an hour and a half later when we got back to the Salisbury. It had taken a long time to play Asmodeus back down into Rafi’s hindbrain: he was disposed to be frisky, and I wasn’t exactly on top of the situation. My head was throbbing from having the demon’s ectoplasmic fingers poked into it, and I was shaking with anger that I couldn’t use and couldn’t swallow.

‘You should probably take a little holiday when all this is over, Castor,’ Asmodeus leered as I played. ‘Maybe shoot off to the Caribbean or somewhere.