Bless the Child (50 page)

Et clamor ad meus te veniat! And let my cry come unto thee . . .

Peter skipped the last stone and rested his elbows on the iron fence, wearily.

Domine non sum dignus . . . Lord I am not worthy, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

He was a better man since Maggie . . . he knew that in his soul. Maybe that in itself was a sign. He was less arrogant, less coldly Jesuitical, less sure of everything . . . or of anything, really. More compassionate, more honest, more human.

What if she was, for him, Christ in the stranger’s guise? What if she was love, and love was all that mattered?

Or what if all this was just the tawdriest kind of rationalization, and she was merely mortal sin, disguised in angel’s raiment?

What if the Demon had marked him, one last time, while his guard was down!

Father of Lies. Cosmic Lord of Death.

Watching.

Waiting.

Peter shook his head to clear it. Maggie was not an instrument of Evil. She was good. He knew that, if he knew nothing else. But what did he know of himself?

Let my cry come unto thee, O Lord,
he prayed almost without intending to.
For if thou, O Lord, shall mark our iniquities, Lord who shall stand it?

He turned from the river and walked resolutely back toward the book depository, but when he reached the door, he did not enter. He would return to New York and finish preparing Maggie for what was to come. Everything else could be tabled until after the thirtieth.

D
evlin finished his recital of facts and wondered at the look on the Captain’s face. It was the face of an old Irish pol, the kind the New York PD had once abounded in, but didn’t anymore. Captain Francis X. O’Shaunessy had been around long enough for it to be said that he knew the location of every skeleton buried at City Hall since La Guardia left office.

At the moment, the face was a study in noncommittal blandness.

“And what exactly is your interest in this case, Lieutenant?” was the first question he asked. That in itself surprised Devlin. Ordinarily, there would have been astute probings during the recital of facts; the judicious inquiries of Irish intuition, and forty years of police experience. But not today.

Devlin flirted with the possibility of keeping his personal interest to himself, but thought better of it.

“I like the O’Connor woman,” he said. “I think she’s stumbled on to something very big and dirty. And, I’m convinced the child is in serious danger.”

O’Shaunessy sat back, his barrel chest and buffalo shoulders making the move an emphatic gesture. “I see nothing in what you’ve told me to necessitate any action on our part,” he said, and Devlin frowned. No give and take? No batting the possibilities around?

“But, Captain,” he persisted, “the Fellowes material alone gives us plenty that falls into this jurisdiction. The club on Bleecker, the drug laundry—“

The Captain cut him off with a gesture. “All unsubstantiated, Lieutenant. All from a dead witness. If you think you’ve found something of current value, turn it over to the narcotics squad. The rest is unadulterated bullshit. Understood?”

Devlin rose to go. The dismissal in the Captain’s manner was as apparent, as it was puzzling.

“Captain . . .” Devlin said, as he reached the door. “Do you know something I don’t, about all this?” There was always the possibility he was inadvertently stepping on an ongoing investigation from some other jurisdiction.

O’Shaunessy’s eyes were steady and unreadable. “What I know, Lieutenant, is when it’s smart to drop something that’s a dead end.”

Devlin nodded and opened the door, when the Captain spoke again. “The papers from the reporter . . . what’s his name . . . Fellowes. You can leave them with me for review.”

Devlin turned, looking instinctively for something in the man’s face to explain that request. “They’re still in the vault, Captain,” he answered evenly.

“Then get them out of the vault and onto my desk,” the Captain said, dismissing him again, with a wave of the hand. Devlin made a mental note to get them the hell out of Chase, tonight. This was weird. This was very weird.

“What’d the Captain say?” Gino asked, already knowing the answer from the set of the Lieutenant’s jaw.

A very emphatic no,” Devlin replied, the echoes of the conversation still resounding in his ears.

“Yeah, yeah, I can guess. Not our jurisdiction. No proof, only circumstantial. We got enough headaches already. Yada dada dada . . . Am I on the track, here.”

“Like the A-train,” Devlin replied thoughtfully. It wasn’t what the Captain had said that was out of line, but everything about the way he said it.

“So what’s that look on your face for? This wasn’t exactly unexpected.”

“I don’t know, Gino. He acted strange, and he asked me for the Fellowes notes right after he said this was all bullshit and we should stay out of it.”

Gino looked up sharply. “Hey, Lieutenant. What are we talkin’ here?”

Devlin shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’m moving the papers, just in case I turn out
not
to be paranoid.”

Garibaldi nodded. He’d been around long enough to know that nothing was impossible where big bucks could change hands.

“So what do you want I should do?”

“Rattle some chains, I think; see what we shake loose. I’ll take Sayles, you see Vannier, since he already knows he doesn’t like me. Let them think we’ve got more on them than we have.”

Garibaldi nodded, his mouth in a judicious twist. “Actually we know a lot, now, Lieutenant, we just don’t have proof. How much of our hand do you want me to show this guy?”

“Am I being asked such a question by the department’s best poker player?” Devlin responded, with a short laugh. “Show him nothing, and bring home the pot, just like always.”

The legendary card player grinned. “I don’t like the guys who beat on little kids and women, Lieutenant,” he said. “I could really get a kick out of getting the goods on Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

Devlin nodded. Garibaldi was a good man and a good friend. “Gino,” he said before the door closed, “watch your back. Nothing feels right about this.”

Gino grinned. “What? A deviation in the Grand Design?” he said in mock disbelief

He closed the door behind him; Devlin took his jacket off the hook, and headed for Chase Manhattan.

A
bdul Hazred waited in the Vannier library for the others to arrive. With less than two weeks until the Materialization, it was essential that each participant fully understood his role, but with a summit meeting of monumental egos, it was likely to be a difficult evening.

The thirteen most powerful magicians on the planet would gather in this room tonight; representatives of every major magical system that could command genuine power. Santería’s evil Bantu sisters, Palo Monte and Palo Mayombe, would be represented, as would Haitian Voodoo, Candomblé, Obeah, two major satanic covens, the intellectually elite Crown of Choronzon, Gnosis of Xantha, and a strange Mithraic cult, that was barely heard of outside this circle.

He himself, Sayles, and Vannier would represent the Egyptian Mysteries, and Ghania . . .
ah, Ghania,
he thought, musingly. What could one say of her Malagasy magic, born in the last throes of Lemurian decadence, before it sank forever beneath the Pacific’s southern waves? Only that it was the most malevolent of them all.

Each of the participants in tonight’s meeting had survived the Abyss; each had dedicated his or her life to the accumulation of occult power over the material world. Some had earned their power in primitive shamanic cultures, others through an intellectual education so rigorous and advanced its scope could barely be catalogued by lesser minds. And, the only thing they had in common was their willingness to serve an Evil Master, in return for receiving their heart’s desires. Some had come to their exalted knowledge through dynastic family commitments, some through personal avarice, some through intellectual pride. Of a certainty, none had come to this moment in a single lifetime.

All their stories were different from his own, Hazred thought, calculatingly, as he watched the newcomers’ cars begin to fill the circular driveway outside the library window. He was here, not out of dedication to Evil, but out of love for a Goddess and her legend. Out of desperate, urgent need to possess the Amulets that had haunted his dreams since the moment in boyhood, when he’d learned of their existence. Evil was a necessary component of the equation for him—but it was not the whole equation—for what magician could consider himself a master, if he could not command both Left and Right Hand Magic?

He had been thirteen, the day he entered the Cairo Museum on a lark, and wandered through the cool, dim corridors aimlessly, until the statue of Sekhmet had called to him.
Attend me! Priest . . .
the riveting voice had demanded, and some long-buried energy had begun to resonate within him. He’d stood transfixed before the huge black granite statue and had known, in every corpuscle, the magnitude of the calling. Once a priest of the Goddess, always a priest of the Goddess. He had been called, and he had answered.

Standing before her statue, Hazred had seen her eyes open, and an aura of flames engulf them both. Information had begun to funnel into him—or perhaps it was merely reconstituted within him, from buried knowledge, once possessed, and long abandoned.

Skeletons had fed the flames in his vision, and legions had materialized to serve the fierce Goddess. They had led him with august ceremony to an altar where predatory hawk-headed figures guarded Sekhmet’s mysteries. The walls of the museum had convulsed into nothingness, as vision after vision danced before Abdul Hazred’s expanding consciousness, weaving themselves into his being, undulating through his cellular memories, until he was once again the High Priest of Sekhmet, born of a long-dead dynasty.

I will instruct you!
The Goddess’s voice had rung out to him.
The Messenger will be sent in thy lifetime. My Stone of Destiny will be within the reach of humankind. The work shall be done. The way will be shown . . .

Hazred was yanked back abruptly from his reverie by the arrival of the other guests.

“Number Three,” a hearty voice expounded, in his direction. We gather at last!” A tall distinguished man with an Oxford accent made an arcane sign of respectful greeting in the air, and smiled.

“Welcome, Number Eleven,” Hazred responded with similarly feigned delight. “This dress rehearsal has been a long time coming.”

A small Asian woman, who exuded malevolent power, despite her diminutive size, had heard the exchange.
“Eons,
to put a fine point on it,” she said with a dazzling smile, that despite her startling beauty, reminded Hazred of a shark’s smile at feeding time.

“Number Five,” he said to her in greeting, “you are as beautiful as ever, I see. Take care that the Goddess doesn’t feel a twinge of envy.”

The woman smiled her acknowledgment of the compliment, as a huge man with thick Negroid features swirled into the room in cloak and turban. “Number Six is as unobtrusive as ever,” the woman said with a throaty laugh; as she turned to greet the newcomer, several more guests arrived at once. A stocky Caucasian with a jet black goatee, a bean stalk of a woman, dressed in black from head to toe, a smallish scholarly sort of man in the rumpled tweeds of academia.

Eric and Nicky entered the room in tandem, obviously still engaged in animated conversation. At the sight of the assemblage, they each moved into the room in a differing direction, dividing the chore of greeting neatly in half.

Ghania arrived behind the two men, dressed far more consequentially than usual, in a djellabah and turban of some extraordinary silver silk that gleamed in an almost incandescent manner, as if the fabric had an independent life-force.

“Speaking of unobtrusive entrances,” Number Five chuckled, nodding at the witch, with a sort of grudging admiration. “Not bad for a girl of her age.”

Ghania’s gaze turned in the woman’s direction, the moment the words were spoken, although ordinary human ears could never have overheard the remark. Number Five tilted her head toward Ghania in recognition of the feat, and Ghania smiled, her deadly smile.

“Let us all be seated, my dear colleagues,” Eric began, positioning himself against an immensely ornate Jacobean desk that dominated the end of the room opposite the many scattered chairs and couches.

“We are assembled this evening for the final time before the Great Feast. Whatever last-minute questions we have, should be laid to rest here, tonight, so there will be no dissension, to muddy the energies during the Materialization.”

A murmur of discordant voices greeted this opening gambit.

“Please,
please,
my Adepti,” Eric calmed the storm with an imperial gesture. “You all seek to learn who shall occupy which place in the Ceremony. Most understandable, of course, that you are curious. Number Two and Number Three?” He turned his eyes to Sayles and Hazred. “Perhaps you would delineate the role of each participant.” The two men stepped forward.

“Look. Let’s face it,” Nicky began pointedly, “anybody in this room tonight could perform the necessary rites, and everybody wants the best roles, so assignment has been a real pisser of a job. Screw trying to give everybody a fair shake, somebody just has to decide
who
does
what.
So, I’ve taken everybody’s talents into account, where I could—as for the rest, you’ll just have to go with the flow.

“Eric Vannier will operate as High Priest, that goes without saying. Dr. Abdul Hazred, who holds the rank of Ipsissimus, and yours truly, a Magister Templi, will assist on the altar.

“Kazak Ra will set the Astral Defenses. His Mithraic Brotherhood of Arms gives him the edge in combat.

“Invocation of Elementals will be done by Varielli Le Res, because Elementals are meat and potatoes to Palo Mayombe.

“Proclamation of the Rite goes to our resident diva, Tanis Feyodorovna, the only one of us who can hit C above high C.

“Preliminary Conjuration of the Deities will be handled by Sir Reginald, since celestial protocol is his bag. Morrigan will be the Administrator of Oaths, Madam Chan will man the North Gate. Professor Theopolis the South Gate. Giles Moreau the East Gate. Ghania the West Gate. Father Duchesne will distribute Communion.”

Vannier stepped forward. “Ghania will have a dual role, of course; as she has awakened the Messenger, she will conduct her on the Astral Journey.” He cleared his throat. “One other important point should be made here. We seek to Materialize the Isis Amulet and the Sekhmet Stone through the Ancient Mysteries of my motherland, so needless to say, the Major Ritual and Materialization will be done according to the Egyptian formulae laid out at the Temple of Isis, millennia ago. However, in deference to the extraordinary assemblage of talent that the Master has brought together to achieve our end, we will salute the many denominations of Evil represented here by working the Enochian Keys, the Tunnels of Set, the Theban Formula, the Second Formula Clavis Rei, Primae and the Oranti Conjuration as well.”

A delighted murmuring broke out among the listeners and Kazak Ra stepped forward. “A most generous gesture,” he said approvingly. “I speak for most here in saying we came to quarrel with your unilateral control of the proceedings, but perhaps that was a hasty conclusion. I salute your foresight.”

“Hear, hear,” said several voices.

“The goal is in sight,” Madame Chan interjected frostily. “If
I
am content to be a doorkeeper at the North Gate, in order to secure the great prizes, who, here, has a right to quibble over ignominious accommodations? We’ve all signed our pacts . . . we’ll each get what we most desire when the Amulet and Stone are in our grasp. Are we neophytes, to quarrel over trifles?”

Hazred smiled to himself at the tongue lashing; he saw Eric and Nicky exchange glances. Every man and woman in this room had a hidden agenda . . . any would kill the others without a pang of conscience if it served his or her own purpose. But for the moment, all were bound together by their greed. After that . . .

The tall cadaverous woman named Morrigan had begun to quiver like an inchworm in a windstorm, while Madame Chan was speaking. Quickly, two men stepped forward to hold her lanky body upright. They had all seen her in the throes of this energy before; it was the price of being an oracle.

“Beware the sacrificial offering!” she cried out in a high-pitched whine, as unnerving as the squeaking of chalk on a blackboard. “Beware the cloth where East and West are twain. Where Past and Present meet, the Future writes its own tale.” She slumped suddenly and would have crumpled, but for the two men who held her.

“What does that mean?” Theopolis demanded.

“That the gatekeepers of the Four Stations may have more to do than we’d imagined,” Sayles interjected quickly. “East and West must be superbly guarded. Past and Present meet in the Amulet and Stone . . . whoever possesses them secures the future. The oracle foresees a benevolent end to our efforts.”

Ghania smiled. It meant nothing of the kind, but it was a superb save by Nicholas.

A somewhat uneasy silence followed as all participants filed into the chapel for a last run-through of their respective roles.

Ghania closed the door on the final Adept with a smile frozen into space. She waited until the last car had rumbled out of the driveway before turning back toward the library. She made a mental note to visit several of the erstwhile visitors on the Astral tonight, while their individual plots were still foremost in their thoughts. Many would shield themselves before sleep, but she had added euphrasia to their wine at dinner and it might be sufficient to disrupt their psychic shields enough for penetration.

She returned to the library. Hazred had remained behind with Nicholas and Eric; as the third priest in the triumvirate who would Materialize, he had special privileges. She neither liked nor trusted the Egyptian, she thought with a sigh. Of course, she neither liked nor trusted any of the Adepti, although some she felt she knew well enough to understand their innermost motivations. Hazred was different. She had tried on numerous occasions to penetrate his mental armor, but either he was the most skilled magician of them all, or he was, indeed, as he claimed, shielded by his Goddess. Not that she trusted his Goddess either, come to think of it.

Sekhmet was an evil manifestation of the Goddess energy, not a genuine Goddess of Evil. Astaroth or Lilith, she would have trusted empirically, but Sekhmet was as unreliable toward Evil, as she was toward Good. She was too damned unpredictable. Some even claimed she was the malevolent side of the Isis coin.

As she entered the room, Hazred stood up to acknowledge her; neither of the other two ever did as much.

“Ghania,” he greeted her. “How goes it with the child?” She glanced at Eric for leave to speak, and he nodded imperceptibly.

“I have used the old ways. She teeters on the brink of the Awakening. This week, I will push her to the edge of madness . . . her Guardians will not permit her destruction, so they will be forced to manifest. The key to our success is the timing of my efforts. No more than forty-eight hours can elapse between her Awakening and the Materialization. If I Awaken her too soon, she will have time to become proficient in the use of her power, and we will no longer control her. If I am too late, she will not have sufficient capability to withstand the astral journey and return. As it is, she may have to be drugged, or enchanted, until the moment of Materialization.”