Vicious Circle (18 page)

All of which made about as much sense to me as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“Maybe I’m more naive than you think,” I said. It seemed safely noncommittal.

It was at this point that Po reentered the conversation. “Let me eat one of his eyes,” he suggested.

Zucker ignored this suggestion. “You think it might be possible to squeeze some advantage out of the situation,” he said. “Your sort always do. I can promise you, Castor, there’s no profit here for anyone. Just death, and then after that the things that are worse than death.”

“You’re going to kill me and
then
rape me?”

Po lifted his free hand over my head and balled it into a fist, but Zucker shook his head just once and the move stopped dead.

“They’ll close the circle,” he growled, bringing his face up very close to mine, “and do the whole thing again from scratch. Things will get bad, then. Very bad, very quickly. And they won’t need you anymore. Do you think any assurances they’ve given you will still hold after that? Do you think they’ll keep you as a pet?”

He put out a hand and pressed his index finger against my temple. His nail was as sharp and tapered as a claw, but he didn’t break the skin. With Po still gripping my throat I couldn’t pull away as the nail traced a path across my face until it rested on my left cheek, a millimeter away from my eye.

“If you’ll work for us,” he said, with an absolute calm that was a lot more chilling than Po’s slightly crazed anger, “then there’s a point in keeping you alive. If you won’t, we’re wasting our time.”

I put a pensive expression on. And underneath it, I really was thinking hard. What I was thinking was this: since I didn’t have the slightest idea what these two escaped lunatics were talking about, the likelihood that I could talk them into not ripping my head off and sucking out the juices with a straw was small. So the time had come to play my ace in the hole.

“All right,” I muttered, dropping my gaze again. “All right. I admit it, they made me a good offer. Fuck, what would you have done?” As I said it, I threw out my hands in a mute appeal—and brought my right hand around on the rebound, jamming what was in it directly into Po’s face.

I’d rather have had the dagger, to be honest—but the chalice was made of silver, too, and the base had a sharp rim. I drove it into the guy’s cheekbone hard enough to draw blood, because that was the whole point. Seeing that white metal gleam in my hand, the other were-man took a hasty step back and brought up his hands to protect his face and chest even before he saw what it was he was protecting them from.

Loup-garous don’t like silver: it’s some kind of an allergic reaction that comes with the package—with being a pirate soul and flying the colors of someone else’s flesh. Po shrieked in agony the instant his spilled blood made contact with the virgin metal, and as he slapped both his hands to his face he let me drop.

I ducked out from under his outstretched arms, and as I came up I landed an almighty punch on the point of Zucker’s jaw. Not the punch I would have chosen—you can break your wrist on a jawbone very easily, and nine times out of ten a jab to the stomach will give you a better return—but it made the most of the angle and the fact that I was already moving. The knife fell out of his hands as he staggered backward, and I snatched it up on the fly. Luckily enough, I caught it by the hilt: if I’d closed my fist around the blade I’d have left behind a few fingers.

Then I was off and running, Po’s outraged bellowing fading at my back. I was heading for the open gate I’d come in through, but once I rounded the folly and put it between me and the two loup-garous, I swerved off the path into the undergrowth, uttering a fervent prayer to the God I don’t believe in that I didn’t trip over a root or a pothole in the dark.

The fence loomed ahead of me. I threw the knife over, planted my hands on top of the fence, in between the decorative flat-metal spearheads, and vaulted up. More by luck than judgment, I was able to get one foot up on the top of the fence, and then the other.

While I balanced there, indecisive, looking for a way to shinny over without impaling myself on the spikes, something thumped into my left shoulder, hard and cold. That settled the matter: I lost my balance and went sprawling down into the street, my coat catching long enough to jerk me sideways before it tore and dumped me onto the ground on my face.

Pain was spreading out from my shoulder in hot filaments, but my arm still seemed to work so I had to ignore it for now. I scrambled to my feet, snatching up the knife again, and glanced around. This was the next hurdle: I didn’t have a bloody clue where I was in relation to the car. I took a look behind me and wished I hadn’t. The two dark figures on the other side of the fence were loping through the undergrowth on all fours, covering the distance at twice my speed. One of them—Po, I assumed, since he was about the size of a rhino—tensed for the jump, and I knew damn well he’d clear the fence like a Grand National winner.

I ran without thinking, got my bearings as I was running and realized that the car was up ahead of me, maybe fifty yards or so, and on this side of the street. There was a sound at my back of something touching down heavily, and nails or claws or something of that general nature scraped on the wet pavement as Po checked his fall and took off after me.

I fished in my pocket for the car keys, pressed and pressed and pressed the stud on the key ring until a cheerful
bingly-beep
sound from up ahead told me that the car had unlocked itself. At the same time, the sidelights flashed three times: a feature that I’d never even noticed until my life depended on it.

I got the door open and crammed myself inside, pulling it closed behind me. Something slammed against the door at the same time as I palmed the other button on the right of the key fob, locking it again: it didn’t give. The knife, which I’d forgotten I was holding, clattered onto the floor of the car. I left it there; trying to fight my way out of this was going to get me killed in very short order.

Shaking like a bead of sweat in a belly-dancer’s cleavage, I somehow managed to get the key into the ignition, but then I slammed it into gear as I was turning it and stalled dead. Something smashed hard into the driver side window and it starred right across. Involuntarily, I turned my head to look.

It was Po. At least, that was my best guess. Right now it was something out of nightmare, crawling flesh half-congealed into a shape midway between human and something vaguely feline. I was judging mainly by the teeth, you understand, because for some reason it was to the gaping mouth that my eyes were drawn.

The car started up just as the thing outside drew back its clawed fist for a second blow that would probably have punched through the glass and ended up embedded in my face. The car leaped away, clipping the back bumper of the
BMW
in front with a sickening crunch before lurching out across the full width of the road. I plowed into the pavement, but fortunately missed the wall of the Bank of Scotland by the width of a nun’s chuff. Po was bounding across the street behind me, but I floored the gas and left him standing.

Thank you, nonexistent God. One I owe you.

I
N
PEN’S
BATHROOM
MIRROR
,
GLIMPSED
OUT
OF
THE
CORner of my eye because I was having to twist my head around to an angle that would have challenged Linda Blair, the ragged gash in my left shoulder looked really ugly.

“What in the name of God have you been doing to yourself,” Pen asked, with a certain degree of awe.

“I had some help,” I muttered, teeth gritted. Pain always makes me irritable: I’m sure as shit not the stuff that martyrs are made out of.

My arm had started to stiffen up as I was driving, with occasional lightning strikes of pain shooting from shoulder to fingertips. After a while, I was driving just with my right hand and only using my left—when I couldn’t avoid it—to change gear. And getting my coat off, when I’d finally managed to park the car, find my door keys in the wrong pocket, and let myself in, had been a whole heap of fun. Luckily Pen had turned out to be home, since Dylan was on another late shift. With her help, I was able to peel the coat away from the wound, yelping in anguish as it opened again. My shirt we just cut away and dumped in the waste bin: even Persil wasn’t going to bring it up white again. Then I sat on the edge of the bath, a large whisky clutched tightly in my hand, occasionally biting back colorful expletives as Pen cleaned out the edges of the cut.

Now, examining the results in all their reflected glory, I had to admit that the wound was impressive, in a grim and grisly way. It was a broad slash about three inches long on the very top of my shoulder, exactly midway between arm and throat. Small streamers of ribboned flesh hung down on either side of it, testifying to a serrated blade or a shape that had a lot of separate points and edges to it. A throwing star, maybe, although those two loup-garous hadn’t exactly struck me as being the ninja type. That involves stealth, just to go for the obvious point.

On the whole, though, this didn’t look too bad. The fact that it was a ragged cut meant it would knit together that much quicker, and Pen had done a thorough job of cleaning it out. All it needed now was a dressing strip and the home team was back in the game.

Pen wasn’t quite so convinced. “You should let Dylan look at it,” she said. “If this festers, Fix, it’ll be bad news.”

“It wasn’t exactly ‘Your annuity matures’ to start with,” I grumbled back gracelessly. Then, remembering my manners, “Thanks for patching me up. But let’s not bring Dylan into this. He might draw the wrong kind of conclusion about the circles you move in.”

“Was it this that cut you?” Pen asked, holding up the knife. I’d put it down on the side of the bath earlier, well out of the way. I really didn’t like to see it in her hands: that edge was just too damn perfect, and Pen was too emphatic with her gestures when she got worked up. I took it from her, quickly but gently.

“No,” I said. “This would have made a clean cut. A really clean cut. Have you seen the edge on it?” I turned the blade edge-on to her so she could see it in all its scary beauty. That meant I was looking at the flat of the blade, and I noticed now that it had a floral motif on it: leaves in pairs, etched directly into the steel, ran from the hilt to within an inch of the point.

Pen gave the knife an ill-favored look as I put it down again on the sink top. Then I had a better idea: I took a used toilet roll tube that looked to be about the right width and slid the knife inside it. The broad tang stretched the cylinder enough to hold the blade rigidly in place. I was a lot less likely to lose a finger on it now.

“I hate it when this stuff happens,” Pen muttered, dropping blood-encrusted swabs of cotton wool into the waste bin. “Why do you take jobs that get you beaten up and cut open and thrown off roofs and all that macho rubbish? Aren’t there enough of the other kind?”

“The other kind?”

“You know what I mean. ‘Get that bogey man out of my closet. Bring Granny back so she can tell us where she put the rent book. Tell my Sidney I’ve remarried and there’s no room in my bed for him anymore.’ ”

She turned her back on me to wash her hands. It looked unnervingly symbolic.

“I can’t always tell which kind of job is which,” I said, defensively. “I don’t get any special kind of pleasure out of this stuff.”

“No,” she agreed glumly. “I suppose not.”

“How’s Rafi?” I asked, to change the subject.

“Still asleep.” She turned to face me again, wet arms folded, face set. “I’m serious, Fix. You should just walk out of this one while walking is still an option.”

This was a disturbing development: normally when I bring up Rafi it derails the conversation at least long enough for me to get to the door. Obviously we were starting to know each other too well.

“The problem is, Pen, I’m working on a lot of different things right now. I can’t walk out on all of them.” It was the plain truth for once: I really didn’t know which job Puss and Boots had been sent to frighten me away from. The answer could be right there in what they’d said to me, but I was buggered if I could dig it out. “Someone didn’t close the circle, and a little bird flew the nest.” That didn’t sound like Coldwood’s drug barons. It might refer to the thing in the church, but there was nothing birdlike—or little, for that matter—in the presence I’d sensed there. Abigail Torrington? Maybe. But she hadn’t flown anywhere: she’d been flat-out stolen.

What it came down to was that I didn’t have enough information just then even to guess who wanted shot of me, still less why. But it didn’t matter in any case, because the part of me that’s stubborn and intractable and bloody-minded—which is not a small part, by any means—was determined to stay with this until I knew what it was about. Pen read that conclusion in my face and shrugged, giving it up in disgust.

“Just remember I told you so,” she said. “So I don’t have to say it later on when something ten times worse happens to you.”

“I’ll sleep on it,” I said. Then I gave her a hug and retreated to my room at the top of the house, which normally gives me a bit more perspective on the world.

Tonight I was too bone weary to think. But before I surrendered to gravity and sleep, I called Nicky. He didn’t sound very happy to hear from me.

“Christ, Castor. What is it, three hours? Even Buddy Bolden doesn’t give you the right to ask for fucking miracles.”

“I’m not looking for a progress report, Nicky. I was just wondering if you happen to know where the
Collective
is moored right now.”

“Thamesmead,” he said, without a pause. “Thamesmead West. Pier Seventeen, just down from the Artillery Museum.” Yeah, that would be the sort of information a paranoid zombie would have at his well-preserved fingertips.

“Who’s on board?”

“No, Who’s on first.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“I’m not the society pages, Castor. Last I heard, Reggie Tang was over there. Couple of guys from South London I don’t know from fucking Adam. It’s nine-tenths empty, like always.”