Страница 118 из 172
“Where’s Billy-Joe?” he asked.
Courtney gave a sullen shrug. “Downstairs again. He likes to watch.”
“Go and fetch him for me. What I’ve seen makes it fucking important that we get more warm bodies in here for possession. I want him to get word out to the shitheads on the street, make sure they keep sending them. Nobody can afford to screw up today. This is His time now.”
“Right.” Courtney started to walk towards the door at the base of the central dome which had stairs down to the crypt. She stopped and turned back. “Qui
“After what?”
“After the Light Bringer comes and, you know, we kill everyone that doesn’t do as we say.”
“We’ll live in His Kingdom, under His light, and our serpent beasts will run free and wild for the rest of time. He will have saved us from enslavement inside the false lord’s prison city; that heaven the dumb-ass religions keep singing about.”
“Oh. Okay, that sounds pretty cool.”
Qui
He spent the rest of the morning supervising the groups he had out on the streets, directing them to new targets. It consisted mainly of intimidating the shit out of their representatives when they turned up at the cathedral. A couple of times he slipped into the ghost realm and travelled through the arcology himself. The original Lancini possessed tried to keep the newer ones in line, sticking to their orders, but nothing they could say about him and what would happen if they didn’t play ball was as effective as when he actually materialized without warning in the middle of them. Three times he had to make examples out of dissenters. He couldn’t visit every group, but word spread fast enough, even without the benefit of the net.
When he returned to St Paul’s after midday, a couple of orgies had broken out on the nave floor: freshly arrived possessed, desperate for strong sensation. He didn’t stop them, the defilement of such a sacrosanct place was enjoyable; it was one of the reasons he’d chosen it for the summoning. But he did limit future numbers of participants. When the possessed got carried away, they were apt to give off their glitching effect over quite a distance, and there were still some power circuits operating around the cathedral. He couldn’t risk a giveaway impulse being tracked by an AI. Souls that’d possessed the bodies of police officers had reported how the net was exploited by Govcentral to hunt down possessed.
Until he had enough people to perform the summoning, he was going to practice restraint.
Qui
Twice Qui
Their antics had withered away, leaving them slinking round to view the gathering of possessed with mute disapproval, emitting a sullen rancour which percolated through the cathedral. Then they had began to stir, as if they themselves were the victims of an u
The demons were growing louder.
“Something you should hear, Qui
“Go on,” Qui
Frenkel was breathing hard, and trying hard not to peer into the black gulf that was Qui
“Shit,” Qui
“There was this bunch of people sneaking round the road tu
“Which two?” Qui
“There’s the chick with long hair, and that humping great black dude. The others are just soldiers, real hard nuts. Except one, which is where things get strange. He’s possessed. And he’s not from our group, we’ve never seen him before.”
“Is he controlling the others?”
“No. They’re like a team.”
“Where were they going? What direction?”
“They were creeping along Junction Road when I left. Our guys are keeping tabs on them.”
“Take me there.” Qui
Louise was thankful that the two GSDI field agents accompanying them were equipped with communications blocks. They provided her neural nanonics a direct, secure satellite circuit to Charlie and GSDI’s civil databank, circumventing the patchy net coverage in this section of the arcology. The only other reliable link they had was Ivanov’s affinity bond. This way she got to see the route to Archway Tower which the B7 AI had mapped out for them.
It had been scary coming up through the accessway from the underground road tu
Most of the buildings had some kind of route through them, interco