Bless the Child (64 page)

“Tonight you are Pope Honorius, the Anti-Christ,” she replied in a tone to match his own. “At other times, you are Senator James Edmonds.” She thawed enough to encourage him. “In a few moments, I expect you will be just another friend of Eros.” She smiled disarmingly.

“I haven’t seen you before,” he said, “I’d remember you. You’re Tanith I take it. Are you as skilled as she, in the sexual arts?”

“Why else would I have chosen her image for this evening’s pleasures?” Ellie asked archly. “Honorius was reputedly no slouch in these matters, either, as I recall. Perhaps we could pool our knowledge . . .” She smiled mysteriously and moved away before he could do more than acquiesce. “Till then . . .” she called out as she beat a hasty retreat toward the noise that was mounting on the far side of the house.

She got there just in time to see the last of Maggie’s battle and the advent of Peter. Ellie watched the spectacle, powerless to help against such immense odds; better to head for the boat and go for help. Surely Dev could do
something
if he had an eyewitness report that Maggie and Peter were held captive against their will. If not, the local police were a backup possibility.

Ellie dodged the other guests. Most were either chattering about the capture, or else they were already disporting themselves at the banquet tables. Many were coupling on the grass, as she headed toward the woods.

The boat was where she’d left it; Ellie breathed a relieved sigh as she reached it without being discovered. She tugged and pushed it down to the water’s edge, then scrambled in, as it caught the tide; she was a strong rower and cleared the beach easily, heading out into the current.

The first wave came from nowhere, scooping the prow of the small craft high into the air, and dropping it shatteringly, back into the trough. Shaken by the unexpected assault, Ellie hung on to the oars, and brought the boat around just in time to keep from being hit broadside by the next wave.

Damn!
Where were these waves coming from? The sea had been smooth as glass when she’d shoved off from the beach, now the wind was whipping up a frenzy of wave activity, and the face of the full moon that had lit their way was covered by a huge black cloud. Ghania! It had to be Ghania who’d called up the sea elementals; Ellie glimpsed an ondine in the icy water just as the next wave smashed across the bow, and ripped the oars from her hands. Before she could recover, another wave lifted the tiny boat high off the water, and slammed it, bow-over-stern, back down onto the surface in a splintering crash landing.

Thrown clear of the capsizing boat, Ellie managed to break water, and gasp in a breath, before she was sucked down again, below the pitch black turbulence of the Sound.

Battling the icy waves, struggling to sense the direction of shore, she cried out to her allies on the Inner Planes for help, before she went under one last time.

H
oly Mother of God!” Maggie breathed the exclamation, without meaning to. “We’re in the fifteenth century.” Peter’s eyes took in the incredible scene below them in the basement’s gloom, and he felt a visceral fear, born of knowledge. He murmured, more to himself than to her, “We’re in the belly of the beast.” Rough hands pushed them both down the steps to the stone chamber.

Three vast rooms had been hewn from the foundation rock of the huge mansion. The first, in which they now stood, was an alchemist’s laboratory, replete with anvil and furnace, the heat from which contrasted spectacularly with the livid cold and damp of the ancient granite. Shelves fill with reagents, huge glass beakers and tubing, Bunsen burners, and coils of copper wire were clearly visible in the light of the torches carried by their captors.

Eric flipped a switch, and bathed the fifteenth-century room in twentieth-century incandescence. “You mustn’t feel we’ve let time pass us by, my friends,” he said genially. “We use modern conveniences when they make sense, and ancient techniques when they’re preferable. Which is often, I might add, when one speaks of ritual magic. These pragmatic times don’t lend themselves to High Ritual, I’m afraid.”

His glance fell critically on Maggie and Peter; both were being trundled along, none too gently, by several men. “There’s really no need for brutality, gentlemen,” he said with authority. “Our guests have nowhere to run to, and damned little time left, so I daresay we can treat them with a bit more courtesy, for the moment. Let’s head in the direction of that large lectern, my dear,” he said to Maggie, taking hold of her arm. “As an antiquarian, I know you’ll be interested in seeing my
Grimorium Verum,
Maggie.”

“Is this the historic house tour, Eric,” she snapped, yanking her elbow from his grip with difficulty.

“Feisty to the last, Maggie, eh? I must say I admire that in you. A pity your daughter didn’t have the same fiber. She went her death like a mewling infant. Begging for mercy, slobbering tears—but you already know that, of course. You’ll do better, I think.”

“You’ll burn in Hell for your crimes, you vicious bastard,” Father Peter said.

“Very astute,” Eric replied with equanimity. “Hell is, of course, my final destination. As to burning . . . that really has been overdramatized by your boys, over the centuries, Peter. I expect I shall simply enjoy the company of my own kind . . .

“That should be hell enough,” Maggie said clearly.

“Very quick of you, Maggie. What a pity that wit of yours will be soon extinguished. But do let us return to this lovely book we see before us.”

The jewel-encrusted leather gleamed with four hundred years’ patina, and the vellum pages gave off, not the musty damp of old books, but the scent of rare incense. The grimoire appeared to emanate a phosphorescent glow in the dim light. But, it was an unpleasant emanation, somehow . . . Maggie thought of swamp gas.

“This
Grimorium Verum
dates from the sixteenth century, a first edition, of course. The later ones were corrupted with inaccuracies, I’m afraid. For example, this one calls for mole’s blood and pimpernel juice to quench the steel of a magical sword at its firing. Later editions permitted magpie’s blood and juice of an herb called foirole, but I find that to be inferior.” Maggie’s eyes caught Peter’s and read in them the same despairing realization—they were at the mercy of a madman

Eric smiled his chilling, mirthless, smile, and gestured them toward the next chamber. “Do permit me to introduce you to my
salon de vérité,
he said amiably, as the full impact of the room’s purpose reached them. A rack and an iron maiden faced the entrance of the darkened chamber; the diabolical contrivances looked well and recently used, despite their obvious antiquity. There was dried blood everywhere.

“We’re in Torquemada’s country house,” Maggie whispered to Peter. Barrels of pitch were lined up to her right—she remembered it was used for setting fire to the feet of victims who were “being put to the question.”

“Are you both familiar with my favorite toy?” Eric asked, fingering an odd contrivance of weighted ropes and pulleys that ascended to the vaulted ceiling of the fortress-like room.

“Strappado,” Peter answered quietly, and Maggie could hear the loathing in his voice.

Eric looked amused at his discomfort. “Strappado, indeed. Shall we explain its exquisite usefulness to the lady, who it seems, is unfamiliar with its nuances.”

“During the Inquisition,” Peter replied, his voice taut, “strappado was the favoured torture device of Torquemada’s death squad. When some poor wretch was being put into question about consorting with the Devil, she would be attached to this grotesque device . . . arms bound behind her, wrists chained to pulleys—she would be drawn up toward the ceiling to hang with weights attached to her feet, while gravity dislocated her joints, one by one.”

“Very informative, Peter,” Eric applauded, “but woefully incomplete. The beauty part was not just in the hanging, but every so often the pulleys would be raised . . .” He paused to crank them up toward the ceiling, forcing them all to look upward. “And then released . . . just
so!
” The weights plunged as Eric released the pulley, then snapped with a resounding crunch as he stopped their descent, abruptly. “The victim fell with them, of course.

“Such exquisite pain was incurred each time the victim plummeted and was wrenched back upward. Joints popping, bones rending . . . the shoulders always gave way first, then the elbows and the knees. Sometimes the entire pelvis would dislocate brilliantly. In the beginning, the screams would be deafening, piercing the brain like red-hot daggers with each new lurch. But by late afternoon or evening, there’d be only the muffled moans of agony . . . not so much fun then, really. Nicky was the best of them. He could always keep them alive and screaming longer than anyone.”

Peter shot Maggie a warning glance. Do not provoke him.

“Nicky?” she asked startled. “But this all happened five hundred years ago. Are you suggesting Nicholas Sayles was there?”

Eric looked at Maggie with a pained expression, as if she’d disappointed him with a stupid question.

“We were
all there,”
he said. “Peter remembers, don’t you, Father. You priests were such superb torturers. The Dominicans were the best, of course. Who did the Devil’s work in those days, Peter? How many innocents did your boys murder in the name of your gentle Christ?”

“It was a brutal time,” Peter replied. “The Church had much to answer for before the Throne of God.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Peter. Those priests never saw the Throne of God—the Lords of Darkness waited outside their Star Chambers to collect them for the pit. There’s a special place reserved in Hell for failed priests, Peter, did you know that? They are doomed to listening to each other’s sermons and discussing Aquinas into eternity.” Eric laughed at his little joke.

“Why are you treating us to this scholarly discourse, Eric?” Peter asked impatiently. “Surely there isn’t time for you to use any of your little toys on us before the hour of the Materialization.”

“True enough, I’m afraid, but fantasizing has its delights, too, don’t you think?”

A vast stone archway led to the last of the great chambers. By far the largest, it was unmistakably the Satanic Chapel.

Maggie heard Peter’s sharp intake of breath as they entered the huge space. She had felt it, too. A flash flood of icy-cold energy, and pure, unadulterated evil, so palpable she found it hard to breathe.

The floor of the altar room was painted around an inverted Pentagram of mammoth proportion.

“The Grand Circle,” Eric said proudly. “Do you see the strips of hide at the cardinal points, Peter? They are human flesh harvested from the sacrifices. That strip at the south, Maggie, is your late lamented daughter. The nails are from the coffin of a patricide, of course.”

Maggie felt suffocated by the visions of Jenna called up by Eric’s words; she drew back, shocked and nauseated, and was pushed roughly upright by strong, hurtful hands.

“Courage, Maggie!” It was Peter’s urgent voice she heard through the dark mist that suffused her; she fought her way back toward the sound, and tried to smile at him in reassurance, but her lips could only form a grimace.

A second circle had the altar at its center. Red velvet and black satin altar cloths, encrusted with precious gems, covered the intricately carved marble. Scenes of debauchery, murder, sexual perversion, were immortalized in the intricate carvings, and the same themes were echoed in tapestried hangings around the room. Hieronymus Bosch sense of orgies, torture, and varied atrocities completed the thematic décor, and helped hide the stone walls of the cavernous space.

“Secure her to the left of the altar,” Eric ordered the acolytes, all pretense at charm now gone. “Hang the priest on the cross,” he said with a dismissive nod toward the inverted cross above the altar. “You’ll like that, Peter . . . so in keeping with your tradition. You’ll be more of a traditionalist in death, than you ever were in life.”

“No!” Maggie blurted. “This is
my
fight, Eric, not Peter’s. You don’t have any quarrel with him.”

“No quarrel?” he said incredulously. “Are you mad? He is the Enemy . . . the Adversary. Do you think
you
have brought him here, Maggie. Don’t delude yourself! He has been called to attendance by an old Foe, who will so much enjoy watching him finally die!”

“What will you do to Cody?” Maggie demanded.

“Quite a lot actually,” Eric replied with equanimity. “She is, after all, the guest of honor. There will be a Black Mass celebrated, after the orgy. The Isis Amulet and the Sekhmet Stone will be Materialized for the final time. When they are both safely in my care, I shall destroy the Isis Amulet once and for all, so of course, Cody will no longer be needed to protect it. The child’s Ka will be placed under suitable demonic guard for eternity, so that Sekhmet may have a human dwelling place. Cody has great powers, so she will require quite unpleasant entities to keep her neutralized. Two of the Crown Princes of Hell have offered their services, I’m told, but Sekhmet has her own agenda for guardianship. She will grant her host body immortality, of course, so there will be a certain consolation for you, I suppose . . .”

With intense effort Maggie wrenched her arm free and landed a right uppercut squarely on Eric’s jaw. The shock and pain of it sent him reeling backward.

“No, Maggie!” Peter shouted, shocked as the rest.

“Oh, you’ll pay dearly for that, bitch!” Eric spat, as followers helped him stand upright. He was holding his jaw, rubbing it to ease the obvious pain, then his hand shot out, closing on her throat, and he squeezed slowly until her eyes bulged in their sockets and the fight for breath dragged her to her knees. Then he released her and she would have fallen had the acolytes not held up her sagging body.

“I don’t want you dead until you see the child damned,” he hissed. Then he signaled to the jailers to carry on, turned on his heel and left the chamber.

“Augustine,
Maggie!” Peter called to her as they were dragged in separate directions. “When they sacked the city!” The words were urgent, meant to strengthen her. She tried to focus her mind through the pain in her throat and the disorientation of nearly suffocating. What did he mean? What had Augustine said?

Then suddenly she knew. When his priests had begged permission to flee the city before the conquering. Vandal army could destroy them all, he had sent them each a message:

“If we abandon our posts . . . who, then, will stand?”

Tears filled her eyes and she let herself be dragged to the pillar, and bound there. They were not the first to suffer in a just cause . . . others had been brave in the face of death and torture. It was not beyond the power of the human spirit.

Maggie closed her eyes and began to pray.