Dead Men's s Boots — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

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I mulled that over, couldn’t see any holes in it. But I didn’t get to be as old as I am without reading the small print before signing. RÃe sem""16;There were two parts to the question,’ I reminded him, my tone level and my face poker.

The demon acknowledged the point with a curt nod. ‘Yes. Of course. I need you, Felix, to make me an entry point. With your whistle, with your lovely little party trick, you can make a hole in their defences: bind them, and distract them, and make them stumble. They’ve held me at bay for more years than I care to count: there are a great many of them, as I said, and they’re both old and strong. They’ve found ways to keep me from crossing that threshold, though I’ve tried a thousand times. Outside the crematorium they move in flesh, and in flesh I can’t touch them. But pipe me in through the door and you’ll see the carnage a fox makes in a hen house.

Silence fell once more: the burning eyes held me in place while Moloch waited for my binding word.

‘It all sounds great,’ I said, tearing my own gaze away from his with an effort. The effort was largely wasted, though: magnetically, my head swivelled back around until the searchlight of his stare shone full on me again. It was like Juliet’s hypnotic fascination, but with no overlay of desire: it was naked coercion, the veils of seduction all stripped away. ‘But my music works on one ghost at a time. What you’re asking me to do – it can’t be done. I can’t play two hundred tunes all at once. You said as much yourself.’ Moloch hawked and spat, with great deliberation.

‘Then do whatever needs to be done,’ he said. ‘Enlist yourself an army of exorcists – or dredge your own courage up from whatever cloaca you keep it in. Invite the lady to come with us, if she’s still taking your calls. The details I’ll leave to you. The offer is exactly as I’ve stated it. That we go to Mount Grace crematorium, you and I. Together. In fact, you and I and the lady, because the odds will be against us even with her: without her we won’t prevail. You will go to avenge your friend’s death, which you’re beginning to suspect – correctly – was actually two separate deaths. I will go to feed. The lady – well, she’ll go because you’ll ask her to. Because she’s trying to pretend to be human, and in some way that makes her vulnerable to you even though she could kill you with a single flexing of her pudenda.

‘Say that all this will happen, and it will happen. Or say no, and I’ll find somewhere else to eat. The meal you so kindly laid on for me has given me enough strength to wait a few centuries longer.’

So this was it. The moment of truth. Maybe the demon was bluffing about going elsewhere: on the other hand, it was clear to see that he’d changed from the walking skeleton I’d met outside Todd’s office. He probably could wait a little longer now if he had to. Okay, he was going to be as safe to be around as sweaty gelignite. But too many people had died already, and I couldn’t see where a better offer was going to come from.

‘All right,’ I said at last. ‘We’ll go in there. Together. We’ll wipe out the whole fucking nest of them.’

‘You swear this?’

‘I swear it.’

‘On what do you swear it?’

‘On myself, because I don’t believe in any bastard else.’

Moloch bowed, with a faintly satirical emphasis.

‘Then it will be so,’ he said.

He turned to the window again and opened it as Ãd o/p>far as it would go.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘There’s something I need to do first. Before we tackle the ghosts. I want to go and sweat the lawyer. Todd. He’s in this up to his kishkas.’

‘Is he?’ Moloch still had his back turned to me, so I couldn’t see his face.

‘Of course he is. He was the one working the angles to get John Gittings exhumed and trundled away to Mount Grace. He’s handling the legal affairs of the Palance family, which means he’s conducting the whole show. And in any case, that’s why you were hanging around outside his office. Because he’s one of them: one of the killers whose scent you’ve been following. That’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Possibly,’ Moloch said. ‘Again, you’ll do as you see fit. I saved your life, and I gave you information you couldn’t have obtained by any other means. I consider that, at the moment, you’re heavily in my debt. So whatever you do on your own account, don’t include me as a factor in your plans. All that’s between us is the bargain, as we’ve already agreed it. When you’re ready to make the journey to Mount Grace, just say my name – out in the open air, with silence all around, and preferably in darkness. I’ll hear you.’

I thought he was just going to walk out of the window into the night, but the night came to him instead. Blackness spilled into the room like a solid wave, washing over Moloch and swallowing him up.