Page 50 of A Case of Possession
“She deserves it.”
“The hell she does. Rackham, those two so-called shamans, yes, but not Leo, and not a houseful of people on Ratcliffe Highway.”
“Who cares about them?” Town snapped, but his eyes flicked away as he spoke.
“Stephen Day does. Remember him? Short chap, reddish hair, one of the most dangerous men in London, on his way here right now to rip your spine out through your arsehole. So, who’s in Monk?” Crane looked over at the man’s awful, mad twitching. “Xan Ji-yin, I presume?”
Monk threw back his head and howled. His jaw seemed to unhinge, stretching wide and gaping, like a snake.
“Nice.” Crane had to keep talking, because otherwise he was liable to piss himself with terror. “Charming friends you have, Town.”
“This is what happens when you treat people like offal.” Town spoke with concentrated vitriol. “That bastard Hart and his madmen murdered my sister and Xan Ji-yin and threw them into the water like dead dogs. If they’d had decent burial— Well, those swine are paying now.”
“Rackham and the shamans have certainly paid,” Crane said. “More power to your elbow. Why amIhere?”
“He wants you.” Town jerked his head towards Monk.
“Him? That? Why?”
“He needs a suitable body.” Town licked his lips. His face was under control but his eyes were full of horror. “And normal people won’t do. They die, you see, all of them. He’s been through body after body, but with the best will in the world, they just don’t do, not once he starts using them, and he can’t live in corpses. He was in Monk for a while without him noticing, but now… Poor Monk. But he knew Bella, he liked her. He wouldn’t have minded, really.”
“Really?” said Crane, watching Monk’s neck muscles distort as the thing inside his body raged.
“And now he wants you. Apparently you’re a shaman. That’s what he needs. I didn’t know you were a shaman.”
“I’m bloody not!”
“He says you are. He wants you. When he’s finished here and he’s got a shaman host, he’ll go away, and it will all be over, at last. I’m sorry, Vaudrey, but you should have gone to Hammersmith. I did try and tell you. And you were thick as thieves with Hart—”
“I was a thousand miles away when your sister died,” Crane said. “The first I heard of it was this morning. Town, for God’s sake, don’t let it do this!”
Town was shaking his head. “It’s too late. Xan Ji-yin needs a body with shaman powers, and you have them, that’s all.” He shrugged one shoulder with a tip of the head, a characteristic little gesture Crane had seen his friend make hundreds of times. “I’m sorry, my dear fellow. If you don’t fight, I think it will be quick.”
“That fucking thing is not fucking taking my fucking body.” Crane’s mouth could barely work with the terror. He had seen shamanic possession reduce Merrick to a drooling imbecile, had had his mind repeatedly attacked, had even had his memories violated by Stephen once. The thought of the foul thing inside Monk moving to his own mind dizzied him with horror and fear. “You’re making a bad mistake. Stephen’s a shaman. A real one, not a fucking travesty like that reject from a charnel house. You touch me, he will hunt you to the grave. You won’t know what vengeance is till he comes after you.”
“I know vengeance,” Town said. “Hart’s dead. Xan has killed Rackham and Pa and Lo. Now he’s going to walk out of here wearing you like a coat, and that’s how he’ll finish Leonora Hart off, and I hope Hart looks up from hell to see it.”
“You bastard.” Crane thrashed and strained against the ropes, but it was no good, the bonds were tight and secure. Town got up and spoke to Monk, quietly. Then he picked up a small bowl and a knife and walked over to place them on the table. He undid one of Crane’s cuffs and rolled the sleeve back.
He took up the bowl and the knife again. “We’ll need some of your blood for this,” he explained, and sliced into Crane’s forearm.
Crane yelled, with the pain, and in the hope of attracting attention. The blood ran down his arm, splashing into the bowl Town held, unnaturally fast, too much of it, pouring out from the minor wound as though an artery had been cut. “Blood magic?” he snarled. “You’re a fucking warlock without even being a shaman. Stephen is going to kill you, and then bring you back from the dead just to kill you again, you son of a bitch!”
“I suppose he’s your new bed boy.” Town placed the full bowl carefully on the table. “They don’t usually stay around when things get difficult, do they?” He took a roll of bandage and started to wind it around the wound.
Crane spat in his face. Town’s mouth tightened as he wiped the spittle away. “Don’t do that,” he said. “This isn’t my fault.”
The thing in Monk’s body came up to the table, facing Crane, as Town finished with the bandage. Its face was moving and jerking continually, lines and creases running across it, lips twitching and mumbling.
Crane pulled violently against the ropes that bound him, knowing it was no use.
Monk raised his hands in a gesture that looked entirely Chinese, entirely shamanical, and the blood in the bowl began to stir, first rippling, then bubbling. The red darkened, cloudy brown swirls appearing through it.
Crane was thrashing now, desperate, helpless, crying out with fury. It was so damned, bloody unfair, that he should die now, or worse than die, should lose his mind to this creature, without having kissed Stephen again or even held him. It was no consolation at all that he’d told the man he loved him or heard it in return. All it meant was a full, agonising knowledge of what he was going to lose.
Nine for a funeral.
The infected blood in the bowl was rising up now in a shape like a waterspout, a rotten dark brown, defying all nature, and as Crane stared at it, he felt the ghost’s invasion.
