Bless the Child (65 page)

S
hortly before eleven, acolytes started to move among the bodies on the grass, encouraging them to end their revels, for the time of ceremony was approaching. Sated with food, drink, and sex of every conceivable permutation, the guests left their costumes behind, and donned the cowled robes being handed out by the servants.

All levity had ceased; it was apparent that the worshippers took the advent of the approaching ritual with the utmost seriousness. They began to gather in an orderly fashion, to be lined up for the processional.

Within the house, the thirteen Adepti were already assembled in the library. For them, the evening had been one of preparation, not revelry. None had eaten, for fasting was essential to the conduction of the energies. None had indulged in sexual congress, for that would have squandered energies precious to the performance of their duties. The sexual activities of the revelers had been more than adequate to raise the energy field around the mansion to fever pitch, and the chanting of the congregation would add a vibrational boost as the ceremony progressed.

Maggie stood captive and helpless, to the left of the satanic altar. Peter hung on the inverted cross above it; he hadn’t spoken for nearly half an hour, and she was uncertain if he were even conscious. His face was flushed with blood to the bursting point, and she hadn’t seen him move for some time.

There was an ungodly chill in the great chamber and Maggie’s legs felt numb and shaky beneath her; with mounting fear she saw the procession of silent, robed figures enter the chapel and file into the pews.

A ceremonial litter was visible behind the procession. Maggie strained at her bonds to see, and sucked in her breath sharply at the sight of Cody.

The child was deeply entranced or drugged, lying on an elaborate flower-strewn pallet. Clad in an Egyptian mist-linen gown, she had a garland of flowers encircling her brow. She was still and pale as death. Maggie called out her name, but there was no response, except a sharp blow to her face from a frowning acolyte. Disheartened, Maggie sank back into her bonds, dreading to watch whatever was to come.

Incense wafted from the gold censers, and the air seemed thick with the heady fragrance and the eerie, continuous chanting.

From the doorway behind the altar, a new column of robed figures emerged. She counted thirteen in all, dressed in varied ceremonial costumes, some dazzlingly bejeweled, some starkly simple. At the tail of this procession, Maggie saw Eric and three priestly assistants, dress in elaborate Egyptian ceremonial robes. Eric, Nicholas Sayles . . . she ticked them off in her mind as they stepped up to the altar. The priest who had overpowered Peter, and . . . Oh my
God!
she gasped audibly as Abdul Hazred moved into her line of sight. No wonder she had never liked that self-serving son of a bitch.

She could feel the atmosphere in the chamber begin to change, as if an electrical charge had begun to vibrate every molecule in the room in a rapidly escalating rhythm.

Maggie wanted to turn her face away as Eric and the other priests began the celebration of the Black Mass, but she dared not.
Our Father who art in Heaven, she breathed, hallowed be Thy name . . .
She would drown out the horror of the blasphemy, in her own mind at least.
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those . . .
she kept repeating the prayer over and over , a mantra against evil, until she heard the shuffle of sandal-clad feet returning to their pews, and saw that the travesty of Communion was done.
And lead me not into temptation . . .
she heard bells ring, and the congregation rise en masse, to its feet.
But deliver us from evil . . .

Maggie watched in absolute terror, as Eric began to make strange signs over Cody’s body, with what appeared to be a rod of some kind.

“I call on thee, Satan,” he cried out, “by all the names wherewith thou mayest be adjured; blessed be our efforts on behalf of Darkness.” There followed a litany of satanic names, most of which she had never heard before.

“Thou who imposeth evil and war and hatred and desperation, keep thy great legions at the ready to crown our work tonight with victory.”

Eric raised his arms in salute to the unseen Power and cried out in a thunderous voice, “I, Eric Vannier, Master of Masters, theurgist of theurgists, servant of the Old Gods, High Priest of Sekhmet, two hundred twenty-eighth in direct line from the first High Priest of the Dark Mother, hereby undertake to open the Covenant, the seals whereof were set before the Great One Herself.

“On this day shall the Isis Amulet be called forth from her Messenger. Behold, O Great Mother of Darkness and Pestilence, I set your rival’s Messenger before thee, awakened to her task.”

There followed a tirade of ancient languages . . . Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Enochian, and others she couldn’t recognize. As Eric intoned the words of power, Maggie saw the scene begin to alter—could there be a hallucinogenic in that incense? . . .
something
was affecting her mind . . . she struggled to keep control of her senses . . .

Out of Cody’s sleeping body she saw a form emerge and take definite shape. It was the young priestess Maggie knew so achingly from her dreams, the daughter of Mim and Karaden. Around her neck gleamed a golden Amulet, shimmering with the radiance of the sun itself. With the sickening crash of a great tidal wave, the world of Mim engulfed her; she felt every cell awash in the power of the Amulet she had once profaned. She fought to maintain her own mind, as the bi-location swept her in its inescapable tide.

The etheric figure of the Isis Messenger stood at quiet attention above Cody’s sleeping body, and Eric smiled with proud satisfaction.

Raising his arms once more, he called for Sekhmet’s blessing. Addressing her by a lengthy litany of names of power, first in English and then in her mother tongue, this second conjuration, too, produced its effect.

As Maggie watched, stunned and unwilling to believe her own senses, an etheric animation left Ghania’s body. This time it was a warrior, black and fierce beyond reckoning. Around its neck the Sekhmet Stone gleamed, with a cold leaden fire like that of a black opal. It seemed that Sekhmet, too, had chosen her champion.

A murmuring arose among the worshippers at the brilliant Manifestations, so clear they were nearly material.

Eric turned his attention to the congregation , a smile of unutterable satisfaction on his handsome face; this was an extraordinarily delicate magical Work he was attempting, and thus far it was a study in perfection.

“O great Mother of Evil,” he cried out, “thy faithful children call on thee to order the events of this auspicious night. The Isis Amulet and the Sekhmet Stone have been called into etheric apparition, now must we conjure the Isis Amulet into material form, by the great formula set down in ancient days. I, who have commanded the angels and devils to my bidding, adjure thee to come to our aid in this Great Work!” He motioned to the remaining twelve Adepti to move into a ring around the Amulets and their champions, and the solemn magi began to take their places around the child’s litter.

Then, all hell broke loose.

A frenzied commotion shook the hall outside the chamber and rattled the bolted doors. Shots zinged through the chanting, screams reinforcing them. The unmistakable sounds of battle were followed by the splintering of wood, as the chapel door shattered inward, crashing to the floor.

A camouflage-clad commando team poured through the doorway into the satanic service, stunning the assemblage into immobility, but Eric was the first to recover his equilibrium. He made a fierce, sweeping arcane gesture with his hands, and began to intone the words of a potent invocation of protection from Satan himself.

“Silence!” Hazred shouted, drawing an automatic pistol from under his robe. “Speak another syllable and you go to meet the two hundred and twenty-seven who preceded you!” Eric halted in mid-word.

Hazred turned to the child and hurriedly made certain magical signs above her body, as he murmured something Maggie couldn’t hear. The apparitions dispersed like mist before the sun, leaving her to wonder if they had ever really been there at all, or if some sort of mass hallucination had deceived her.

“Watch this one, carefully!” Hazred shouted to the soldiers, who were obviously at his command. “Watch the Twelve . . . if any speaks or moves a finger, kill him. Your own lives and sanity depend on it.”

But, suddenly, the Mohabarat commandos had more to worry about than the thirteen Adepti on the altar. There was new gunfire at their backs, that spun their attention around toward the door of the chapel.

Abraham’s team poured into the great chamber, as shots rang out in a dozen directions. A slug shattered Hazred’s gun from his hand, and Eric saw his opportunity. He snatched up Cody from the litter, and used her body as cover to break through the gunfire; the general pandemonium protected his flight. Somehow, Ghania had already disappeared from the chapel.

Seconds later Devlin was at Maggie’s side, cutting through the ropes that confined her. They hugged wildly for an instant, but there was no time.

“Get Peter!” she begged as he tried to pull her toward safety, but Abraham’s men were already freeing the priest.

“Eric’s got Cody!” she screamed above the din. There were bodies littering the floor, and soldiers with Uzis everywhere.

Abraham was shouting orders in Hebrew to his men, as they reached the door of the chapel with Peter close behind them, everything happening so fast, it was hard to comprehend it sequentially.

Maggie saw the old rabbi for the first time as he called to her urgently, “Mrs. O’Connor—you and the priest will come with me. I know which way he took the child!”

“Go!” Devlin urged from behind her. “I’ll cover you. The Israelis are on our side!”

A barrage of gunfire urged her forward.

Shots could be heard in various parts of the house—who knew how many bodyguards there were, as well as the soldiers? The Satanist might have their own army. Maggie took off at a run, following the rabbi down the hallway, marveling at how fast the old man could move.

“Who is he?” Maggie shouted over her shoulder to Peter, who seemed to have regained his equilibrium and was running behind her.

“God knows!” he shouted back, “but he seems to know where he’s going.”

Shots and shouts sounded close behind them, as they pursued the Rebbe deeper into the bowels of the old house. Maggie and Peter followed him down a winding stone stair into a cavernous subbasement; the walls were hewn of stone, weeping now with dampness.

Maggie heard another burst of gunfire, and Devlin’s voice shouting, along with a deep Israeli voice that was barking commands. The submachine gun rat-a-tat-tat was too close for comfort and Devlin was in the middle of it, but she had to find Cody, so she kept on going.

They went through a doorway at the end of a winding corridor, and the Rebbe held up his hand to halt their passage. The old man leaned heavily against the wall, laboring to catch his breath, as Maggie bolted the door behind them, worried that Dev was on the other side.

The Rebbe spoke to Peter. “We have little time, Father. Too little for pleasantries. I am Rabbi Itzhak Levi, and I, too, have been called.”

Peter looked into the Rebbe’s eyes and saw clearly, this was a man with one foot in this world and another in the next, a condition that had very little to do with his advanced age. Something resonated within the priest beneath the Rebbe’s piercing gaze. He knew of the man’s extraordinary reputation as a scholar, but it was something more profound in him, that spoke to Peter, now—some camaraderie of the soul. The Rebbe was another who had touched the mystical ecstasy of God, and hungered after it enough to pursue Him into dangerous terrain, where there were no signposts and no boundaries.

The Rebbe nodded; his eyes never left the priest’s for an instant, and Peter knew he was being weighed in the balance, like Nebuchadnezzar.

“I believe the child’s soul has somehow been ensnared by demonic energies, called up for that purpose by evil men,” Peter said. “With my own eyes, I saw the Amulet and the Stone in etheric form, close to Materialization, so I cannot discount their potential existence. Had not the conjuration been interrupted, I believe these objects would already be on the material plane.”

There was acknowledgement in the Rebbe’s expression. “The child’s soul is under attack, as we speak. I have seen the Demon. I ask you, what do you propose we do?”

“We must win it back, Rebbe,” Peter answered firmly. “Cody is besieged through no fault of her own. I believe the only course open to us is an exorcism of some kind.”