“We have merely been assuming that the copy of the Fuller Memorandum that James gave your husband contains a corrupted copy of the Sternberg Fragment. But James did not intend the situation to spin this far from his control. The worst possible case is that they have the real thing, the Sternberg Fragment and the document describing the binding of the Eater of Souls, and that they know what to do with it.”
JONQUIL THE PSYCHOPATHIC SLOANE RANGER HACKS AWAY AT my arm for what feels like a year and is probably a bit less than a minute. Then she gets annoyed. “Julian, do something about the screaming, will you? It’s giving me a headache.”
Julian Headless-Shotgun pulls a leather glove out of one of his pockets and tries to stuff it in my mouth. I clamp my jaw shut, shivering and hyperventilating, but he responds by squeezing my nostrils painfully. After a few seconds I surrender to the inevitable. The glove fingers taste of sweat and sour, dead leather. Chewing on them helps.
Did I mention I’ve got a low pain threshold?
Jonquil goes back to hacking on my arm. The pain is excruciating. If you’ve ever been bitten by a dog—this is worse. The scalpel makes a clean incision, but I can still feel blood welling up and dripping along my arm. The pain isn’t sharp—it’s a widespread violent ache. After a while it feels as if my arm has been clubbed repeatedly with a meat tenderizer. She hacks and saws and tugs—the tugging is the worst, it’s so bad my vision blurs and I feel light-headed—and then it stops.
But not the pain.
“He’s bleeding. Gareth, fetch a sock and a bandage at once. And a plate.”
I can’t see very welclass="underline" my eyes are blurring. I can’t seem to get enough air through my nose, even when I blow out around the saliva-sticky glove. My heart is hammering and I feel sick with pain. There’s a hole in my arm and it feels like it’s about half a meter long and goes right down to the bone. I’m dying, I think dizzily, even though I know better. Jonquil and her muscle wouldn’t want to risk their precious All-Highest’s ire. I lie there moaning quietly for a while, then Gareth returns. “You, lie still,” Jonquil says, and shoves what feels like a cast-iron cannonball into the hole in my arm. I try not to scream as she roughly winds a gauze bandage around the wadded-up sock, then stands up to inspect her work.
Julian bends over and holds a plate under my nose. Two red and blubbery lumps of raw meat about as long as my index finger sit in the middle of a thin pool of blood. “Anyone for sashimi?” he asks. Jonquil giggles; Gareth makes lip-smacking noises.
“Jolly good, that man.” Julian’s accent is plummy, camped-up; he peels one of the strips of meat off the plate and stuffs it in his mouth.
Jonquil follows suit, passing the plate to Gareth. “Nom nom nom,” she says around her mouthful. “Chewy!”
Goatfuckers, I think fuzzily, then everything goes blank.
The next thing I know, Jonquil’s hand is hovering in front of my nose. She’s holding a couple of white cylindrical tablets. “Here, swallow these—oh.” Her other hand tugs at the glove. I let go of it. She drops the tablets into my mouth, careful not to let her fingers close enough for me to bite. As if I would; all she’d need to do is breathe on that fucking hole in my arm. It’s kind of hard to bite someone’s fingers off when you’re screaming in mortal agony. I try to spit the tablets out but she pinches my nostrils shut. “Naughty naughty!” I hold out until my lungs are burning, but there’s only one way this contest of wills can end. “They’re only pain-killers,” she chides. “By the way, if you don’t swallow them toot sweet I’ll grind them up and inject them into you, there’s a good boy.”
Fucking Goatfuckers. She’s entirely capable of making good on the threat; I swallow. “What do I taste like?” I ask, trying to distract myself.
“Like raw pork, only not as smoky. Want some? Oh, sorry: the boys have eaten it all.” She giggles again. “Don’t worry, give the Coproxamol time to work and you’ll feel fine for your interview with Mummy.”
My heart’s still hammering, and I feel a little dizzy. My arm is cold and damp all the way down to my wrist. I don’t want to think about how much blood I must have lost. Half a liter? More? Fucking bastard goatfucking cultists. I flash on a momentary fantasy, digging my thumbs into her eye sockets—but only momentary. I have a bad feeling about my right arm. It’s throbbing like an overheated diesel engine, sending waves of pain radiating up to my shoulder and down to my elbow. I don’t know whether I can bend it. Hell, I probably need surgery to repair what these fine young cannibals have just done. Anything that takes two arms—forget it.
“What are you going to do with me?” I ask.
“Patience, patience! You’re going on a magical mystery tour! It’ll be fun!” She turns to Gareth. “What’s he got in his pocketses?”
“This.” Gareth produces my wallet and opens it in her direction. She jumps back with a hiss as my warrant card falls out. “Ooh, nasty! You naughty boy!” She grabs the wallet and turns it round. “Credit card, debit card, driving license, library card, Tesco clubcard. Huh.” She pulls out a solitary twenty-pound note. “Civil servant. Right.”
Gareth and Julian seem to think it’s funny. Civil servants shop at Tesco, don’t have platinum credit cards, and suffer being eaten alive by cannibals in the course of their duty—and they think it’s funny? A vast sense of indignation threatens to overwhelm me. Fucking bastard over-privileged snooty upper-class goatfucking cultists.
“Ooh, look! Shiny!” Gareth has found my NecronomiPod.
“What’s that—ooh!” Julian leans over, and they nearly bang their heads together, cooing over the glamour-shedding curves of the JesusPhone. “Wow! Here, let me feel that—”
“Mine! Preciouss! Is it an iPod Touch?”
“No I think it’s a—” Julian straightens up suddenly. “It’s an iPhone, isn’t it? How do you turn it off?”
I lie on the foam pad, a puddle of dizzy throbbing misery.
“Why would you want to switch it off?” Gareth demands.
“Because it’s a phone. They can trace them, can’t they?”
“Let’s see ...” I hear a familiar sound effect as his finger finds the home key. “How does this work—ooh! Wow. What are all these icons?”
“I thought you knew—”
“Yes, but he’s been messing with the home screen.” Gareth finds the earbuds, untangles the white wires trailing from the jacket pocket. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
“Guys.” Jonquil sounds tense. “We don’t have time for this—”
I lie there, trying to be invisible, hoping Gareth is as stupid as he seems.
“It must have an off button somewhere,” Julian mumbles. “Shiny ...”
“Mine!” Gareth clutches it possessively. The earbuds are wrapped around his hand, convolvulus climbing.
Jonquil clears her throat: “If you can’t switch it off, leave it behind. It’s time to go. Now.”
“Bah.” Julian shakes himself and steps back. Bastard, I think. “Put it down, Gareth—”
“Mine!” Gareth squeaks, and plugs the earbuds into his head as his thumb is inexorably dragged to the NecronomiPod’s home button.
“Stop him—” Jonquil is too late, and she and Julian are clearly not B-Team members in my eyes because she steps behind Julian as he grabs up his shotgun and brings it to bear on Gareth—
Who is limned in black, dancing to a different beat as the writhing white wires drill deep into his consciousness through the shortest possible path, drilling and eating and consuming the unauthorized intruder who has had the temerity to plug himself into a device running a Laundry countermeasure suite—