Dead Men's s Boots

As it was, he looked like someone who’d taken The Matrix a little too seriously. The fingers of his two hands were cat’s-cradled around something small that gleamed white between them. He turned it slightly every now and then: the only move he made. Then, when he saw that my gaze had turned to it, he opened his fingers and let me see what it was: a tiny skull, about the size of a human baby’s but longer in the jaw, picked clean of flesh. I was willing to bet that it was a cat’s skull.

‘First things first,’ Moloch said briskly.

‘We don’t want to be int¾t terrupted, so let’s draw the curtains around our tent. Keep out the riff-raff.’

He spread his fingers with a flourish, letting the skull tumble off his palm. It made it most of the way to the floor: then it just stopped, in the air, six inches or so above the shag pile.

‘Normal service will be resumed,’ Moloch murmured. ‘Eventually. Until then the walls will have no ears, and nobody can drop in on us unannounced.’

Unable to take my stare off the weirdly suspended skull, I sat at the furthest edge of the sofa, putting as much distance between myself and the demon as I could – and keeping the whistle firmly gripped in my left hand, ready for use.

Moloch noticed, and he affected to be hurt. ‘I saved your life the other night,’ he reminded me reproachfully. ‘We’re fighting the same fight, Felix.’

‘Are we?’ I asked bluntly.

He gave me a slow, emphatic nod. ‘Oh yes. Trust me on this.’

‘And who are we fighting against, exactly?’

‘The immortals.

The killers who found the exit door on the far side of Hell. You remember I spoke to you about rhythm. Sequence. Cadence. I know the end of the story, and you know its start. Shall we embrace like brothers, and share?’

‘No,’ I suggested. ‘Let’s not. Tell me what you want out of me and what you can give me, with no bullshit, and I’ll tell you if I’m interested.’

The demon pursed his lips. ‘I confess,’ he said, ‘I prefer a certain degree of commitment at the outset. A promise, at least.

It doesn’t need to be sealed in blood. If I tell you what I know, you’ll use it to further my interests, as well as your own. Just swear, on something you care about. The formalities aren’t important.’

I stared him out.

‘Felix.’ He made a sound like the desiccated, risen-fromthe-tomb-unnaturally-alive mummy of a sigh. ‘We have to roll a boulder up a very large hill together. Without some basis of trust between us, it’s going to be hard work.’

I shrugged.