The Quorum by Kim Newman Page B

would barely have wobbled.
    The garage swallowed the car. He disengaged monitors and punched the door code onto a pad. The Rolls opened with a slight hydraulic breath. Leech set his hat on his head, regarding himself in an ebony mirror to adjust the angle of the brim. Daintily picking up the cage of mice, he got out and stood for an instant, accustoming himself to the different, welcoming dark.
    From outside, it was hard to believe the garage could accommodate a monster like the Rolls. Inside, the car was dwarfed in a hangar-like space that stretched thousands of yards. All interior walls and floors had been taken out, leaving a brick and tile shell, roof supported by chimney columns. The structure was shored by iron pillars and struts and spines. The concrete garage area was raised above the level of the rest of the works, which went down to bare, wet earth. Front doors were nailed shut, wire mesh baskets over letterboxes. Hundreds of windows were double-glazed and net curtained. The whole terrace was hollow, an enclosure the shape of Crystal Palace.
    The noise of toiling men and machines, inaudible from the street, was overpowering. From others, he understood the smell was equally potent.
    ‘Derek,’ a waiting man said, making the horned sign with both hands, ‘blessed be...’
    ‘Blessed be,’ Leech replied, returning the arcane greeting and gesture.
    Drache, his tame architect and acolyte, had a harmless fetish for ritual and ceremony. If black magic helped him understand his Deal, Leech chose to indulge him.
    ‘The auguries are encouraging,’ Drache babbled. ‘At midnight, the rubies turned black.’
    Drache had made his sacrifices. A distinctive half-domino covered his empty eye-socket. The irregular red patch conformed to the contours of his face, outlining one side of his nose and extending from cheekbone to hairline. It matched his thigh-length leather coat.
    Ceremonially, Leech handed over the cage of mice.
    ‘For the Device,’ he explained. ‘Living components.’
    The architect accepted the offering solemnly.
    ‘Magic,’ he said.
    ‘Take care of them,’ Leech warned. ‘None must die. The participants in the ritual are all under my protection.’
    Drache nodded, serious. He had heard this before, but it bore repeating. The acolyte understood sacrifice, but was sometimes unsubtle.
    Above them and extending the length of the hollowed-out terrace, towered the Device. It clanked and screeched, every inch in motion, a crucified iron animal.
    Drache took down a brass-nozzled hose that snaked out of the innards of the Device and removed the cap as if it were a speaking tube. He dropped the first mouse into the mouth and squeezed, gently nudging the animal along the rubber intestine into the works.
    Glowing smuts pattered down, sprinkling the observation platform. The pain was so thick his senseless nostrils caught the stink. Leech knew now this would be the year. The Device was nearly complete.

BOOK
2

DEALS
    ‘The face of evil is always the face of total need.’
    WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS, The Naked Lunch

1
16 SEPTEMBER, 1970
    A part from a fitting in the tailor’s recommended by the prospectus, he hadn’t worn his uniform before the morning. Walking the length of town from his parents’ council house to Dr Marling’s Grammar School for Boys, he felt a freak in his blood-coloured cap. The badge on his roomy black blazer was an open wound. He’d never worn a tie; Mum would have to knot it for a further nine months before he got the knack. Estate kids jeered from the bus stop, shouting ‘snobby’ as Mark quickened his pace.
    Two other boys from his year had got into Marling’s but he wasn’t in their gang. At Edge End Primary, his friends had been girls; any, like Juliet Kinross, who passed the eleven-plus went to the Girls’ Grammar. His brother Chris was at Hemphill Secondary Modern, where his sister Sue would go. When Liza, the youngest, finished Edge End, there wouldn’t be an eleven-plus exam;