Bless the Child (69 page)

The contempt in the demon’s voice breached Peter’s last defenses. The words reverberated somewhere deep inside, flaying him, laying him bare and bleeding. He had offered the ultimate sacrifice of self, so certain it would be
enough.
The absolute rejection shocked him, humiliated him. He felt he could see his soul, its flaws displayed like open wounds. He had
used
Maggie to tease his self-identity into being . . . he had loathed his superiors’ frailties, but not his own . . . he had sought God through the mind, when only the heart was real . . .

All the meaning in his life was obliterated in an anguished instant of annihilation . . . all he had been, all he could
never
be, burst across his brain like a cosmic hailstorm.
Eli! Eli! Lama sabachthani! My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?

Desolation of the soul . . . no place left to go . . .
no place left to hide . . .

The Seal crackled behind them. Ellie shouted a triumphant “Ho!” and collapsed to her knees before the opening of the portal, as Devlin raced through the archway toward Maggie. Rafi, try as he might, could not force his way through the barrier . . .

“You’re not permitted in!” Ellie shouted to him. “Only those who believe . . .” Then she followed where Dev had led, and Rafi, confounded by his inability to follow, stood in the shadow of the ancient arch, staring inward. At least, he could now see quite clearly what was happening within the chamber.

The interior was littered like a charnel house with the remains of Eric’s last encounter with the demons. And the body of the child, now bloated and grotesque, seem almost to float above the stone altar.

Cody’s contorted face whipped around to greet the entry of the new arrivals, its demonic eyes focusing on Devlin.

“Help me, Daddy!”
it cried out, in the voice of a dying little boy. “It
hurts
me, Daddy!”

Devlin stopped dead in his tracks. The child on the altar wasn’t Cody anymore.
Daniel’s
fragile face was turned to his, blood trickling from his nose and mouth, ragged bloody hole where his chest should have been. The child opened his lips to speak again, but it was his
eyes
that riveted everyone in the room. Helpless terror and pleading were in those eyes.
Help me, Daddy,
they begged.
Don’t let me die!

“No!” Devlin cried out, wildly. “No!” He ran toward the dying child, as a shock wave hit him like a wall of buckshot. And suddenly, the pain of dying was within his own body. Pain. Fear. Dying with his son.

Devlin battled back the agony with every ounce of strength he possessed. He forced the illusion from his brain, rooting it out mercilessly.
This was not Daniel!
This beleaguered child was
Cody,
only Cody. And he would save her, no matter what it cost him. This time he would not fail.

With a shout wrenched from a place beyond pain, he forced his way forward, and lunged for the body on the altar.

A sound hurtful as clenched fists to the eardrums rent the space. An electrical ion storm crashed around Devlin, skewering him with its white-hot lightning, seizing him in its explosive power, thrusting and tearing him simultaneously, as if he’d touched a high-tension wire. The force of it lifted his body, arcing it off the ground with a thunderous crack, until seconds later, it dropped in a crumpled heap on the floor at Maggie’s feet. She could see the wounds, smell the burning flesh; she felt she had endured it all with him empathically, just as now she felt his encroaching death. She dropped to her knees beside his body, but Devlin was far beyond her help.

The
thing
on the altar was laughing, the self-satisfied cackle of conscienceless evil.
It
wasn’t her grandchild anymore, it was the Enemy, and Cody was completely at its mercy. As were they all. Suddenly, Maggie was filled with a righteous rage beyond anything she had ever known.
This
was not just about Cody anymore. This was about every vile act that had ever been perpetrated on suffering humanity by the forces of Evil.

She sprang to her feet, shouting “Coward!” to the Presence that engulfed the small body. “Using children to play your filthy games. Don’t hide behind a three-year-old! Come out and fight with the
grown-ups!”
Her voice was fierce, derisive.

“Don’t engage it! Maggie,” Peter cried out. “You can’t possibly win!”

“So, the mother of a drug addict has the audacity to fight for a child, does she?” the voice mocked her contemptuously. “And where were you when your daughter put that needle in her arm?
Mother?
Why didn’t you save that one? You could have, if you’d cared enough.”

“Don’t listen!” the Rebbe commanded. “He is the Prince of Lies. He wounds you to weaken you!” He moved in closer to the child on the altar, his lips moving in some prayer or incantation.

“Don’t get caught up in it, Maggie!” Peter begged. “Don’t speak to it directly.”

“That’s right, protect your paramour!” the evil thing shrieked gleefully. Cody’s body was discoloring into large splotches of blue and purple, as if it had been hideously beaten. The bloated head turned to Maggie, and the soul that mocked her through its opened eyes was not Cody’s.

“You think you can fight me, do you, cunt?” it hissed through the child’s bleeding lips.
“Failed mother.
Mother of the Damned! So fucking willing to fight for this one you let us carve up the other one for fun! Listen to your friends. You can’t fight me!”

But something was happening to Maggie, and she wasn’t afraid anymore.

“Oh, yes I can!” she shouted back. “You cowardly son of a bitch—women have been fighting you since the dawn of time!”

“The
Abyss, Mim!”
Ellie shouted. She slapped Maggie violently between the shoulder blades. “The lesson of the Abyss!

And it all came flooding back.
“At the moment of truth, trust only your heart. All else is illusion.”

And suddenly she knew. She
did
have the power! Of every good deed that had ever been done since time began. Of every selfless act of love and courage in the whole, long history of humanity. Of every woman who had ever fought for a child against the odds.

“You can
kill
me, demon,” she shouted at the
thing
on the altar, “but you can’t
win,
because
I own my own soul. That’s my power,
and it comes from God!

“So you can take your threats and your bribes . . . I reject them, as I reject you. You can take these Amulets and all the riches and power they could ever provide—take them back with you to Hell, for all we care. Mankind doesn’t need them or want them. We’ll muddle along just the way we are in our imperfection, because it’s our imperfection that makes us great.

“We struggle against the odds that are meant to break us and we
prevail. Do you hear me? We prevail!
We light one candle instead of cursing the darkness . . . and then we light a thousand more of them, or a million, until the likes of you are blinded by their brilliance. If we were perfect, there’d be no heroism in our goodness. As it is, we reach for God with clumsy hands, but still
we reach!
We
love,
and you
cannot . . .
and because we love you can
never
win. Because there will
always
be goodness and mercy and heroism, as long as imperfect humanity is capable of love. And love is as much part of us as our blood and bone. It is our one glorious
perfection.

“And one day, maybe eons from now, we’ll no longer be imperfect, because we’ve made that steady climb,
despite
you. And when that day dawns, you and all your evil Kingdom will cease to be. So, don’t talk to me of power!
Coward.
Yours is temporary and ours is eternal, because it comes from God.”

The demon hissed with fury. “You have no weapon against me!” it roared.

“You don’t know much about
grandmothers!”
Maggie spat back. “But how could you? We’re on the
other side!”
She was feeling her own Power,
knowing
finally where it came from.

“I know your Achilles heel, demon!” she shouted. “You can’t
take
me, without my permission. You can only
seduce.
And I’m not
buying.
I
reject you,
with all the power of my immortal soul. You can’t have me and you can’t have Cody.
She didn’t choose you.
And neither did I.
And we never will!”

A thunderous rending sound was heard before her words had died away, and a rushing of winds rattled through the space, as if the chamber had been plucked up by a tornado and cast into the heavens.

So many things happened simultaneously she could never afterward be certain in what order they had manifested. She saw the Presence blink out in Cody, like an extinguished light bulb . . . saw an unearthly radiance illuminate the primordial dark.

Some part of Cody rose from the altar and stood with Maggie, but the ethereal form was no longer that of a child. The young priestess raised her hand in ritual salutation and spoke in a voice of unimaginable sweetness.

“Hail Guardian. The Mother sends you greetings.”

Maggie touched her hand to that of the luminous apparition.

“Hail Messenger,” she replied steadily. “Thank you for showing me the Way.”

Ellie smiled in the darkness; she had waited a very long time for this moment, and she had kept the faith.

The Isis Messenger knelt beside Devlin’s body and touched the glowing Amulet to his injured face, and Maggie knew in her soul that his life had been returned to him. Then the celestial apparition stood again, and smiled at Maggie one last time, before she shimmered into nothingness, and only the child remained.

Cody sat up, and looked around the room.

“You came back to get me, Mim” she whispered softly, joyously. “I knew you’d come.”

“Yes, sweetheart,” Maggie murmured, taking the child in her arms. “I came back to get you.”

“I love you, Mim,” the little girl said, smiling. “I want to go home.”

Raphael Abraham stood riveted on the other side of the doorway, although the seal had vanished. What had he seen here? What had he heard? What manner of battle had been fought in this place? Profoundly shaken, he waited for the Rebbe to emerge from the chamber.

“What has happened here, Rebbe?” he demanded. “I
must
know. You must tell me.”

“We have seen why God has made woman the heart of our faith,” the Rebbe replied, with an infinitesimal smile.

“But the Light, the Voices . . . never have I seen anything like that in my life.”

“Then you must be sure to say a prayer of thanks for the great gift you have been given.”

“But the
Amulets,
Rebbe. What of the Amulets?”

“If I told you we could not save the child
and
the Amulets, what would you say then?”

“I would say what is the life of one child, Rebbe, if the good of the many are at stake? We have made a foolish choice.”

“And if I told you the Amulets had been banished back to Eternity by the woman’s deeds, because mankind has not yet developed the strength of character required to possess such potent weapons?”

Abraham smiled sardonically. “That, too, would seem to me a foolish choice.”

The Rebbe smiled. “So.” he said. “Now you have learned for yourself why mankind cannot be trusted to choose wisely enough to possess such weapons.”

“And of these choices that have been made here, Rebbe?” Abraham asked, “When I answer for my mission to the Prime Minister, what exactly do you expect me to tell him?”

The Rebbe’s expression was stern, but his eyes were merry. “You may tell him there are Higher Powers than he, who have been served today.”

Abraham left the old rabbi, to return to his men; he was shaken, awed, bewildered. He would have to decide what to tell them . . . what to tell his superiors. What to tell
himself.

He shook his head to clear it, and walked outside the Vannier house to stare at the sea. The night air refreshed him. He looked up at the moon and the pinprick stars that blanketed the heavens, and for the first time since he was a boy, he asked the God of his Uncle Schlomo to hear his prayers.