Dead Men's s Boots

And whereas the succubus – your lady – is a hunter, I am a trapper. Traps for the soul are hard to build in the stunted, solid realms of Reth Adoma, squashed down by the hideous fist of gravity.’

‘Killers Ãildcan’t be that hard to find,’ I said, with forced flippancy.

‘No,’ the demon agreed. ‘They’re not. I’ve found and eaten many, but it’s like eating the dream of a meal, and waking to find yourself still hungry. In Hell –’ his voice quivered with longing ‘– we used to let the souls lie for years on our terraces.

Let them rot, and mature, and render down into their final form. And then, oh, then we feasted.’

He laughed fondly at the memory: it was the kind of sound you really, really need to forget but know you never will.

‘Old souls, separated from flesh in a way that leaves no bruise on the tender spirit,’ he murmured. ‘That’s what I hunger for. But here, in your thin, drab world, a meal like that is a great rarity.

‘I’ve scraped up enough to survive, through the decades. Barely. And you led me to two snacks that gave me some small nourishment.

The were-thing, that built its body out of cats . . . I closed with it twice, the first time when it was following you from the law office, the second when it tried to kill you at the laboratory. Both times I managed to ingest some of its essence, while the soul was in transit and loosened from the flesh. Not perfect, but I was able to keep it down. It’s made me stronger than I’ve been in many decades.

‘But it’s the mother-lode I’m after, Castor.

I want you to take me to the waterhole, where the great, ever-living killers come to drink, and drink again, of life and youth and strength. Take me there, and turn me loose, and I’ll eat them for you. After you’ve dressed and prepared the feast for me, with your music.’

Moloch fell silent again, and the spell of his words was so strong that it was a few seconds before I realised that he was waiting for an answer. To be honest, it was an effort to focus my thoughts on what should have been the key issue right now: the born-again killers with their dead-men’s-boots system of reincarnation.

I wanted to grill this bastard about what he meant when he said that Hell’s borders had shifted, and what the great project had been.

But the demon’s expectant gaze was still fixed on me. With an effort, I stifled the questions that were jostling for position in my throat. He wanted me to give him an answer to his little proposition, but in true Castor style I ducked.