The Demon Collector (6 page)

‘That dog’s got himself lost, good and proper,’ he muttered as he crept through the tangling passageways.

Remembering that reference in the book, he tried to think his way towards Henry. He hissed with annoyance – why did the exhibition hall that Janus had talked to the imp about yesterday keep slipping into his mind?

The corridor twisted to the left and a bulky shadow twisted its way around the curved wall. A scraping, swishing sound followed it.

Edgy stopped dead. His heart pounded.

The noise became louder.
Swish, scrape, swish, scrape
.

Edgy started to back away from the corner.

The swaying green bulk of Madame Lillith appeared behind the grotesque shadow, sweeping with vicious strokes as she went. She froze and glared at him.

‘Give ’im to me,’ she muttered, though her mouth remained a tight line in her round prune of a face.

‘What?’ Edgy stammered. ‘Who?’

‘Your dog.’ She craned her neck forward, leaned on her brush and jabbed her thumb behind her. ‘I want ’im. Give ’im to me.’

‘Henry?’ Edgy said. He barged past her and ran round the corner.

A round hallway opened before him and Henry cowered in the centre, looking from right to left.

‘Henry!’ Edgy called, crouching to meet him as he came bounding forward. He leapt into his arms, licking his face and battering the floor with his tail. ‘That ’orrible old bat ain’t havin’ you!’

Edgy looked up. Two enormous doors stood before him. Golden rivets held thick, polished planks together. A brass plaque shone out on the left-hand door.

‘
Exhibition Hall
,’ he read out loud. ‘Well, I’ll be . . .’ He thought better of finishing the sentence and gripped the huge, round handles. Dragging one of the doors open, he poked his head round it and yelled in terror.

A huge skull with curling ram’s horns leered down at Edgy with teeth like six-inch nails. He stumbled backwards, tripping over Henry, and lay in a ball, eyes squeezed shut.

Henry’s bark echoed around the hall but all else was silent. Edgy opened an eye. The skull hovered over him as still as a statue. Chancing both eyes, he peered up and fell flat on his back, laughing at his own cowardice.

‘It’s some kind of exhibit,’ he said to Henry, who cocked his leg on a statue of a dragon that flanked the door to show how concerned he had been. The wired-together bones of some long-dead demon loomed over them, claws outstretched, jaws wide. ‘It had me fooled.’

Beyond the skeleton, rows and rows of glass cases, display cabinets, statues and vases dotted the enormous hall. Various gargoyles and fiends dangled from the ceiling, suspended by steel cable.

‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ Janus said, appearing from behind a display cabinet. Edgy gave a start and put a hand to his thumping heart.

‘Mr Janus, you frightened me ’alf to death,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Look, I’m sorry an’ all that but I’ve got to go. It’s a bit . . . mad round ’ere.’

‘Let me show you around first.’ Janus smiled as if reading Edgy’s mind. ‘It may answer some of your questions and make more sense.’

Janus led Edgy further into the hall and stopped at a huge fireplace. No fire burned here but a portrait of an unsmiling man hung above it. His eyes fixed Edgy with a sombre glare. In one hand he held a skull, in the other a crown. He was sitting on a golden chair draped with an ermine cloak. Piles of books towered behind him.

‘King James I of England,’ Janus said, ‘founder of the Royal Society of Daemonologie. He gave it the Royal Charter in 1605.’ Janus waved his hands around the hall. ‘We collect and study demons of all kinds, their habits, their history, their biology, everything about them.’

‘What for?’ Edgy muttered, glancing sidelong at a leering ossified demon.

‘Knowledge, Edgy,’ Janus said, raising his eyebrows. ‘Knowledge is power. King James realised that. To defeat your enemy, you have to know him. James I was a great scholar and was keen to defeat the powers of dark­ness.’

‘So you fight demons?’ Edgy murmured. ‘Then how come there are so many wanderin’ around the building?’

‘Not any more.’ Janus smiled and shook his head. ‘Ours is a scientific cause now. We study, observe and sometimes collect them.’

‘Like you did with Talon?’ Edgy grimaced as he remembered Talon’s twisted, ossified face.

‘That was regrettable,’ Janus said, sighing. ‘More often we encourage demons to join us and become “associates”. That way we can work with them to understand their nature.’

‘What about the demons who don’t want to be collected or join up?’ Edgy asked.

Janus shrugged. ‘There was a time when it was all-out war. Demons didn’t like the Society at first. And the early fellows saw themselves as the last crusaders. They could afford to – the Society was stronger then. These days, we can usually reach a compromise.’

They wandered among the display cases and statues. Janus stopped every now and then, pointing out an artefact or a specimen.

‘The more we find out, the more questions there are,’ Janus murmured, his eyes shining. ‘Riddles and complexity, Edgy. Riddles and complexity.’ He traced his finger across the handle of an ornate dagger. ‘Demons love riddles. Life is a game to them, dangerous – often fatal – to mortals, but that doesn’t bother them.’ He lifted the dagger, its blade flashing red in the hellfire light. ‘In fact, they envy our mortality sometimes.’

‘Righto,’ Edgy said, unsure what to say.

His head began to spin as Janus showed him skulls and spears, enchanted talismans and fragments of bone, telling the story behind each one. Edgy forgot about the demons waiting for him outside, his need to leave or the last boy.

‘Can’t demons die then?’ Edgy asked at last.

‘They can be turned to stone with our ossifiers. The ball they fire is a combination of salts and pure elements of the earth, whereas demons are creatures of fire and light. We don’t know how ossifying works and we don’t know if it truly kills. In theory, you could chop demons into a million pieces and then put them back together again and they would come back to life.’

‘And what about this?’ Edgy murmured, touching a demon skeleton on a stand. It looked human apart from the skull, which displayed razor teeth and long spiral horns. The chin came to a sharp point too. There was a hole in the top of the skull. A perfect triangle.

‘Oh, that.’ Janus waved a dismissive hand. ‘Just the bones of Aldorath. Nothing much . . .’

Edgy looked more closely at the skull. Something bothered him but he couldn’t think what. Janus’s voice lowered and he spat his next words out, making Edgy jump.

‘My illustrious brother found them. Such a fuss over nothing. They made him chancellor on the strength of those mouldy old bones. Chancellor!’

‘Your brother?’ Edgy muttered, raising his eyebrows.

‘Yes, Lord Mauldeth.’ Janus spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Not happy with just our family title, being the eldest and all that. Oh no, he has to muscle his way into the Royal Society.’ The fire died in his eyes. ‘Anyway they’re just the bones of a demon, that’s all.’

‘Righto,’ Edgy murmured.

‘There was a time when demons ruled the earth . . .’ Janus’s voice became distant and he looked far beyond Edgy. ‘The great arch-demons waged war, multiplied, built huge cities. Do you want to hear a story? A story from the dawn of time, passed down from the mouths of demons themselves?’

Edgy listened, spellbound by Janus’s sonorous voice.

The fields were green, as green as could be,

When we from His glory fell;

And we His children then were brought

To death and near to hell.

‘The Moon Shines Bright’, traditional folk carol

Chapter Seven

The Legend of Satan and Moloch

‘Many ages ago, before Man was turned away from the Garden of Eden, the earth was fresh and blue-green, spark­ling in dew so fresh that God wasted many a foolish hour smiling down on His creation.

‘But beneath all this, in Stygian depths, Satan ruled supreme in the kingdom of hell. He sat on his throne of obsidian in his palace of beaten gold, basking in the searing heat of the lava flows, enjoying the spit and hiss as molten rock poured over ash flows and pooled around him. His queens and consorts huddled, adoring, at his feet.

‘Demons sang his praises in beautiful, haunting voices. Have you ever heard a demon song, Edgy Taylor? Its beauty would break your heart and drive you mad. They fought each other to be in his presence, plunging one another beneath the seething, flowing earth, to Satan’s delight.

‘Men and demons are like fires in the dark – bright and hot. Every now and then a spark of anger or hatred would flare up, then flicker into the blackness and die. But one demon, Moloch, caught hold of his spark, a smouldering ember that he clutched to his heart. He blew on it with a bitter breath, whispered his grievances to it and it grew into a furnace cupped in his gnarled palms. The fire of hatred burnt into his veins and consumed his heart.

‘When God had thrown Satan and his rebellious angels down into the pits of hell, it was Moloch who had wanted to continue the battle, to rise up once more and crash like a fiery tide upon the walls of heaven. But Satan had counselled deviousness and trickery, knowing that they could never beat the Almighty.

‘“Better to confuse and corrupt man, the Almighty’s pride and joy,” Satan had said and set off to tempt and torment humankind.

‘“Better the field of battle than to skulk in the shadows, whispering obscenities into the ears of village idiots,” Moloch hissed to himself.

‘Day after day, Moloch crouched in his dark cave of ash and stared out.

‘Week after week, Moloch wondered,
why should Satan sit upon that throne?

‘Month after month.
What gave him the right to be worshipped by the other demons?

‘Year after year.
He is no better than the one God, demanding our tribute and adulation!

‘Century upon century added heat to Moloch’s anger, until one day he burst forth and threw himself at the startled Satan.

‘Demons howled in despair as Moloch plunged the great Satan into the molten lava. Satan had never been challenged. He never expected to be. He was unprepared. Moloch cast Satan into his dark cave of ash and sealed him in.

‘Satan hurled himself at the dark cave walls. Mountains threw themselves up into the sky. Satan pounded his prison confines. Hills rolled across the earth’s crust like waves. Finally, Satan threw himself to the floor and despaired, weeping bitter tears that flooded from his cavernous gaol, leaving salt seas between the mountains.

‘In his grief, Satan tore at himself and gouged at his flesh. In his madness, Satan shaped the skin, blood and nail he ripped from himself. He fashioned limbs and eyes, horns and teeth. He laughed and tormented the creatures in the darkness and they grew to hate and fear him, even though he had fashioned them from his own body.

‘The demons hated and feared Moloch too. He had thrown down the great Satan. He was preparing them for a war against heaven, a war they could never win. He was leading them to their destruction.

‘Yet who could oppose Moloch? The demons were all too afraid, too craven to stand against him. They crawled at his feet, begged for his favour and mercy.

‘All except one.

‘Salomé. Satan’s queen. She stood proud in the blue-green world and defied Moloch – until he decided to cast her into Satan’s pit.

‘“Do what you wish,” she cried. “At least I’ll be with the true master.”

‘In a rage, Moloch broke open the seal of Satan’s cave. Sensing freedom, all the creatures of the pit spewed forth, blinded by the daylight, battering into Moloch’s face. Seeing his weakness, Salomé plunged her fist deep into Moloch’s chest and tore out his heart.

‘“You have been loyal,” Satan said to Salomé. “You can have any gift you wish.”

‘“Give me Moloch’s heart that I may keep it hidden and separate from his foul body,” replied Salomé. “ That way he will never rise again.”

‘“Very well,” Satan agreed, “but you must protect it and every thirteen years you must show me that you still have it safe.”

‘He knew that if she wished she could replace Moloch’s heart and bring him back. So Satan hid Moloch’s body from prying and disloyal eyes. And to this day, nobody knows where the body lies.

‘Salomé, her wish granted, feared Satan’s distrust. She knew that only if she held the heart of Moloch could she keep the ear of Satan. So Salomé hid the heart where nobody would ever find it. Not even Satan himself.’

A spell of silence hung over the exhibition hall. Janus sighed and lowered his head as if exhausted by telling the tale.

‘So has anybody found them? Moloch’s heart or the body?’ Edgy whispered. The names echoed in his mind. He could still hear the boy gasping them out with his dying breath.

‘Some say it’s only a story,’ Janus muttered, his gaze distant. ‘Fools! I’ve worked long and hard to prove that Moloch exists and to find his body. But recently my investigations have become more than academic.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Edgy said, frowning.