Thicker Than Water

’ His people included flat-faced Feld, scarred but cuddly Speight, the man in black whose name I couldn’t even remember, and a couple more exorcists from the Anathemata typing pool - a very young man and an elderly woman - who nobody had bothered to introduce me to.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Do you have anything we can use as cover when we go out there? Mobile shields, that kind of thing?’

The sergeant, who was in Kevlar and sweating like a horse, shook his head emphatically. ‘Not until the riot units get here,’ he said.

‘We’ll handle it,’ Gwillam repeated, gesturing towards the stairs to indicate that the sergeant’s presence was no longer required. He gave us a sour nod and withdrew.

‘Feld,’ Gwillam said. ‘And Speight.’

The big man appeared at his left shoulder, the scarred Father Christmas at his right.

‘I’m going to let you off the leash,’ Gwillam said. ‘I want you to clear us a path - ideally without killing anyone. This is a police operation, and we have to stay within their rules as far as possible.’

‘What about bones and soft tissue?’ Speight asked. Somehow the question sounded worse in his mild upper-crust voice than it would have done in Feld’s guttural growl.

‘All flesh is grass,’ Gwillam observed.

Very matter-of-factly, Feld and Speight stepped out of their shoes and took off their coats. Then they removed the rest of their clothes, stacking them neatly at the foot of the wall.

Father Gwillam bowed his own head as though in prayer, but the resemblance was only superficial. When Gwillam quotes from the Bible, his power flows through the words the same way mine does through music: he was performing an unbinding.

‘Hast thou not read that which was spoken by God? He stirreth up the sea with His power, and by His understanding breaketh up the storm. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor my ways your ways. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life . . .’"

"As Gwillam spoke, something truly obnoxious and unsettling began to happen to the two men who flanked him.