Bless the Child (66 page)

“The systems by which we deal with demons are vastly different,” the Rebbe said judiciously. “This would not be an easy task. I know of no instance in which it has been done.”

Maggie thought she would implode with anger. “You two won’t have to wait for the people behind us to kill you, I’ll damned well do it myself if you don’t stop talking and start moving!”

The Rebbe smiled unexpectedly, and turned to move off down the darkened corridor. “What do you ask of God for this child, Mrs. O’Connor?” he called over his shoulder.

“That she be spared, if it’s God’s will,” Maggie answered, hurrying after him. “That she be protected from all that is evil or profane.”

“And for yourself?”

“That I have the courage to bear with whatever God decides.”

The old man turned his head toward her, and the intensity of his gaze seared deep into her soul; she had not the slightest doubt he could read what was written there.

“Do you trust us with this task that your priest friend suggests?”

Maggie nodded affirmatively.

“Because we are learned men?”

“No,” she said steadily. “Because I believe you are good men.”

“You know, of course, that my faith is vastly different form yours. If I attempt what Father Peter suggest, I must do so by the mysteries of Judaism. Does this trouble you?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“Truth is truth, Rebbe,” she said unhesitantly. “The path you take to get there is surely irrelevant to God.”

The old man nodded, the faintest trace of a smile on his lips.

“So.” he said. “We will begin.” He turned his attention to a great stone archway that was now visible, directly ahead of them. Then he moved forward like Joshua onto the plains of Jericho.

The spandrel of the arch that loomed them was intricately carved with hideous gargoyles. The Rebbe came to a halt before it, and Maggie saw that the darkness beyond the arch was unlike any she had ever seen. It was viscous, somehow, and so inky black she felt she was staring into infinity.

“It is a sealed portal between dimensions,” the Rebbe said to Peter. “Feel the evil emanation.” A bitter cold had arisen around them, and a nauseating evil seeped from the chamber, making it difficult to breathe.

“You will open this doorway to us!” the rabbi demanded, startling Maggie with his powerful voice.

A crackling sound like static electricity responded, and the air around them quivered. Seconds later, the candlelit interior beyond the arch swam into view; Cody lay within the chamber, Eric beside her.

“Welcome to the Devil’s Portal,” he called out to them coldly. “At the peril of your souls, you may enter the Doorway to Hell.”

Peter and the Rebbe exchanged glances, then proceeded into the chamber, as Maggie stepped across the threshold with foreboding, thinking nothing, absolutely nothing in this world, but Cody, could make her enter this horrific place.

Eric raised his left hand and intoned some words she couldn’t understand, and Maggie felt the archway seal itself behind her.

G
hania was breathless from her frenzied flight, by the time she made it back to her room. She slammed the door and leaned heavily against it struggling to breath.
Curse Hazred,
for the traitor he was! She tore open the armoire and breathed easier at the sight of her untouched tools. Thank Darkness she’d been High Priestess to an evil Master long enough to know better than to ever leave anything to chance.

Eric had failed in his mission, but that did not mean the prize must be lost. There was no time to waste on regrets.

Ghania pulled the needed equipment for ritual from the shelf and hastily arranged the altar. She, too possessed the ancient knowledge of how to imprison the child’s Ka and snatch the dual prizes.

“Ah, little Isis Messenger,” she murmured as she prepared her magic. “You wish to escape your destiny, but Ghania is old and wily and she thinks of everything. Your nails, your hair, your blood, your sweat . . . I have them all. You, too, shall I have, when my spell is done!”

Ghania entered the Ritual Silence and circumambulated three times, in a counterclockwise circle. She poured her libation of blood and soaked the Cody doll in it muttering incantations. Then she picked up a long and lethal-looking pin from its altar cushion. As she was about to pierce the doll’s heart, a staggering blow from behind knocked the chalice from her grasp.

Ellie, wet, bedraggled and nearly naked, faced the priestess with a bloodied krys knife in one hand and a labrys in the other. She had plucked them from a display on the floor below; she, too, had a backup plan.

“Tried to drown me, witch?” she said, her voice low and deadly. “Did you think you were the only one who’s known the Sea Gods in her time?”

Ghania grabbed her knife and unfastened her djellabah, letting it fall around her; she kicked it out of the way. The two faced each other.

Ghania was larger, heavier, but staring into Ellie’s eyes she knew she faced her match.

“To the
death!”
she spat in challenge.

“You can bless your Gods, if I follow you no farther than
that,
witch!” Ellie retorted, her face fierce and grave.

They began to circle, taking each other’s measure, weapons poised and eager. Ghania struck first, her knife slicing the air a hairsbreadth from Ellie’s abdomen. Ellie feinted left and caught Ghania’s great head with a ringing kick like a ballerina; she had spent one lifetime in the Cretan bullring and the knowledge gleaned there at death’s elbow had never left her. Ghania’s head snapped back with a grunt, but she kept on moving.

Each woman sought to engage the other’s eyes in the way of magicians, but they were matched in skill and neither allowed entry. Ellie’s teeth clamped shut as Ghania’s knife scored her thigh; she whirled away from the blade and set her krys knife in the flesh of Ghania’s arm.

They prowled around each other like tigresses; the dual-headed axe blade carved the air in front of Ghania’s breasts and would have opened her from gullet to navel, had it connected with its mark. Ghania threw back her head and laughed, but Ellie met the ugly sound with a Cherokee battle whoop, that had chilled the blood of enemy warriors since the Adoni People had taught it to the Tribe. The war whoop disrupted Ghania’s energy field momentarily; Native American Magic was alien to her own. But, she managed to recover enough to lunge, knocking the axe from Ellie’s hand with a shattering blow to the wrist.

Parrying, thrusting, feinting, the two women fought like Amazons, so evenly matched in combat skills that only exhaustion or Fate could tip the scales toward victory.

Ghania was chanting now, and Ellie tried to catch the drift of her spell.
Sweet Jesus!
she was calling up the elementals, opening the psychic door to allow entry from the spectral world. Christ!
anything
could enter through the Astral doorway . . . Ellie wracked her brain for a means of keeping out the Astral entities, but Something was already materializing before her, even as she fought. A female figure, gaunt, bloodless, eyes so filled with bloodlust it was painful to focus on them. Ellie drew back in alarm. Her strength was too far gone to fight on both planes, simultaneously.

But the figure wasn’t after her. It hurled itself at Ghania’s immense body with a ferocity that pushed Ellie to the far side of the room.

Christ almighty, it was Jenna!

The entity attached itself like an etheric leech, strangling the witch with the strength of her own magic turned back upon itself.

Ellie, wounded and panting with exhaustion, fell against the armoire and watched in fascination as Ghania attempted to extricate herself from the entangling etheric stranglehold.

The old witch tried to curse her tormentor, spewing spells in a dozen different tongues, but every one was driven back before she could complete it, by the savagery of the Jenna/entity’s attack. So fierce was its intent that Ellie felt compelled to look away, but as she did so, her eye fell on the sickle axe she’d dropped, and she reached for it instinctively as Ghania staggered toward her, once again.

“This is for
Cody!”
the Jenna/entity screamed, as it pounded the witch at every vital center.

“This is for
me!”
It grabbed her by the throat from behind and, with mighty shove, sent her hurling in Ellie’s direction.

Ellie raised the labrys above her head and, with a single blow, split the witch from crown to collarbone. The falling body wrenched the crescent axe from her bloodied hands, as Ghania crumpled to the floor.

“
That
was for God,” Ellie said evenly to the great corpse that lay at her feet.

She raised her head from the debacle, and saw the etheric entity already beginning to fade. The expression on its face was more victorious—and sadder—than any she had ever seen.

Ellie knelt down to pray

Devlin
crouched to the left of Abraham in the only cover available in that portion of the long stone corridor. The battle directly behind them had been bloody and swift; the Israelis were pros. Sounds of combat emanated from various areas of the house; the Vannier contingent had obviously employed both armed guards and booby traps for a contingency like this one.

Abraham’s men had engaged the Mohabarat troops as well as the home team, who seemed more like mercs, than urban bodyguards, both in combat skills, and armament. It made sense, of course; with Vannier’s international drug and arms connections, he would have access to the best soldiers of fortune money could buy.

Devlin spotted the sniper just as Abraham was about to move out into the corridor. It wasn’t an easy shot in the semi-gloom—the man had better cover than theirs—but the detective dropped him with the first round.

Abraham touched Devlin’s shoulder in acknowledgement, and moved out silently into the now empty corridor. By the time they reached the locked door at the end, all gunfire had ceased behind them.

“Housekeeping?” Dev said shortly.

Abraham nodded. “We must find the child and get out before the noise brings police.”

“You’ve got twenty acres of privacy, here, plus the Long Island Sound,” Devlin said. “That’ll buy us some time.”

Abraham grunted a noncommittal response and tried to force the door. When it didn’t budge, he blew the lock with his automatic. Seconds later, they were on the other side, staring into the blackened maw of the portal straight ahead of them. Vaguely visible in the darkness were the occupants of the interior chamber. Rafi and Devlin exchanged glances, and Devlin headed into the archway that separated him from Maggie and Cody.

But he couldn’t get through.

Shocked by the repulsion that hurled him backward, he threw his weight against the forcefield more vigorously. Only a slight electrical tremor betrayed the existence of the psychic seal.

Puzzled, Abraham lent his considerable strength to the effort, but with the same unsatisfactory result. Devlin shouted to Maggie, but it was obvious sound couldn’t penetrate, either.

Devlin and Abraham exchanged confounded looks. How had the others entered? What kind of force was it that repelled them?

Abraham reached up to examine the edges of the spandrel for clues about what produced the repulsion. “My men will be here shortly,” he said. “We’ll penetrate when reinforcements arrive.”

Maggie
had to struggle to keep her equilibrium within the freezing chamber. The Evil was so palpable in this place, so dense, it encroached on her life-force, sucking at her, leaching off energy like a black hole in space that swallows all in its path. She centered her breathing and prayed for protection, but it seemed in this place, even her prayers were thrown back at her, unable to find their way.

She moved toward Cody, who lay, pale as a lily, on the great stone altar in the chamber’s center. The stone looked eons old, and emanated the temperature of an Arctic ice flow.

She reached out to the child, and the eyes flicked open. Maggie drew back, shocked; it was not Cody who stared out from those alien eyes.

Peter, too, saw the Presence clearly. He made the sign of the Cross and opened the
Roman Ritual of Exorcism,
which had been blessedly overlooked by his captors, because it had been secreted in his pants pocket, not in the Dominican robe.
Oh, God,
he prayed,
let my frailties not tip the scales against us.

Instinctively Maggie drew back from the eerie malevolence in the child’s gaze, and did not touch her, as she’d intended. She turned shocked, questioning eyes to Peter, but the Rebbe spoke.

“They are here,” he said. “The demons. There are many, but one is in authority.” Peter glanced at the old man, whose eyes were shut. Obviously, he could see clairvoyantly.

“You bastard! What have you done to Cody?” Maggie demanded.

“What we’ve done, my dear Maggie,” Eric responded, “is banish her soul to a place where it will be imprisoned for eternity.

“Cody is now no more than a nesting place for demons. Had we finished our conjuration, Sekhmet herself would have taken charge of her person, and granted her immortality. But since we were rather rudely interrupted, I had no choice but to bring her here. Now, of course, I intend to Materialize the Amulets, and I intend to kill you.”

Peter wasn’t certain why he felt suddenly emboldened; perhaps it was the sense that he’d reached the final battleground. He stepped closer to Eric and spoke. “The most propitious hour for Materialization has passed, Vannier,” he said firmly. “As to killing us . . . you have no weapon, and we outnumber you.”

“Then I shall simply call upon the Prince to kill you,” Eric replied contemptuously.