The Scarlet Gospels (16 page)

The Cenobite offered a subtle approving nod, and together they stepped inside.

 

3

The Palace of the Unconsumed was as devoid of features inside as it was outside. The foyer was thick with infernal bureaucrats in gray suits, tailored to accommodate whatever physical defect afflicted the damned. One, with a ring of football-sized tumors growing out of his back, had his suit neatly encircling each of the pulsing protuberances. Some wore fabric hoods that reduced their expressions to two small eyeholes and a horizontal rectangle for their mouths. There were sigils sewn into the fabric, their significance outside Felixson's field of knowledge.

The drab passages were lit with large bare bulbs, the light they gave off never entirely solid but flickering—no, fluttering—as though the source of light was alive inside. After turning the corners of the passageways six times—every one of them committed to memory by Felixson—they came out into a place of startling splendor. Felixson had assumed the entire building was a hive of featureless corridors, but he was wrong. This area was an open space, bathed in light, and consisting only of a single, reflective metal tube, perhaps ten feet wide, that ran all the way up from the floor to the ceiling, which was set so far above their heads it remained unseen.

The Cenobite pointed to the darkness above them and said a single word:

“There.”

Their ascent was accomplished via a wide spiral staircase that sat within the reflective tube. Each of the metal steps were welded to its core. But even here in this elegant construct, the infernal touch hadn't been neglected. Each of the steps was set not at ninety degrees to the core, but at ninety-seven, or a hundred, or a hundred and five, each one different from the one before but all sending out the same message: nothing was certain here; nothing was safe. There was no railing to break the slide should someone lose their footing, only step after disquieting step designed to make the ascent as vertiginous as possible.

The Cenobite, however, was defiant. Rather than climb the stair close to the column where he could at least enjoy the illusion of safety, he ascended hewing always to the open end of the step, as if daring fate to take its due. Sometimes the preceding step had been crafted so as to incline more precipitously and ascending to the next step took a considerable length of stride, yet somehow the Hell Priest managed to make the climb with effortless dignity, leaving Felixson to follow behind, clinging desperately to the core. Halfway into their journey, he started to count the stairs. Felixson got to three hundred and eighty-nine before the Hell Priest disappeared from sight.

Nearly breathless, Felixson continued his ascent and found an archway, more than twice his height, at the top of the stairs. The Cenobite had already stepped through it and was surprised to find that there was no guard—at least none visible—at the threshold. Felixson went on after his master, keeping his head declined so far that he couldn't see anything of the chamber into which his master had led him. Felixson saw that they were in a large dome, which was surely two hundred feet high at its apex, though with his head bowed it was difficult to judge accurately. The entire chamber seemed to be carved from white marble, including the floor, which was icy cold beneath the soles of his feet, and though he did his best to keep from making a sound, the dome picked up every tiny hint and lobbed its echoes back and forth before adding them to the reservoir of murmurs and steps and quiet weepings that ran like a gutter around the farthest edge of the floor.

“Far enough,” somebody said, their command folding into a thousand tapering echoes.

A breath-cremating heat came at Felixson and the Priest from the center of the dome. The only object in the circular room was a throne so far beyond the dimensions of a piece of ordinary furniture that it deserved a better, as yet uninvented word. The thing was made of solid blocks of metal, nine or ten inches thick: one slab for the high back, one for each arm, one for the seat, and a fifth running parallel with the arm slabs but set beneath the seat.

Flammable gases blazed from six long, wide vents, one on every side of the throne and two directly beneath it. They burned with sapphire flames, which intensified to an aching white, flecked with red motes at their cores. The gases rose high above the back of the flame, which was itself easily ten feet tall, and drew together, braiding themselves into a single blazing column. The heat inside the dome would have been lethal had the dome not been pierced with several concentric rings of holes, housing powerful fans to extract excess heat. Directly above the throne, the chamber's spotless white marble was scorched black.

As for the throne itself, it was virtually white-hot, and sitting in it, his pose formal, was the creature whose indifference to the blaze had given him his apt moniker: the Unconsumed. Felixson had heard of him in whispers. Whatever color his skin had originally been, his body was now blackened by heat. His vestments and his shoes (if ever he'd worn them) and his staff of office (if ever he'd carried one) had burned away. So too all the hair from his head, face, and body. Yet somehow, the rest of him—his skin, flesh, and bone—was unaffected by the volcanic heat in which he sat.

The Hell Priest stopped in his tracks. Felixson did the same, and even though he had been given no order, he went down on his knees.

“Cenobite. Do you know why you have been summoned?”

“No.”

“Come closer. Let me better see your face.”

The Cenobite approached within perhaps six strides of the throne, showing no concern for the incredible heat that emanated from the spot. If he felt it, he showed no sign.

“Tell me of magic, Cenobite,” the Unconsumed said. His voice sounded like the flame: steady and clean but for those flickering motes of scarlet.

“A human artifice, my Sovereign. Yet another of man's inventions designed to grasp divinity.”

“Then why should it concern you?”

It wasn't the Unconsumed who spoke but a fourth presence in the chamber. An Abbot of the Cenobitical Order made his presence known as he emerged from the shadows behind the Unconsumed's throne and made his way at processional speed across the chamber. He carried the staff of the High Union, which was fashioned after a shepherd's crook, shouting condemnations as he approached. Behind his back, the Abbot had commonly been called the Lizard, a nickname he'd earned from the countless scales of polished silver, each set with a jewel, that had been hammered into every visible inch of his flesh, assumed to cover his entire body.

“We have found your books, Priest. Obscene volumes of the desperate workings of men. It's heresy. You are part of an Order,” the Abbot continued. “Answerable to its laws only. Why have you been keeping secrets?”

“I know—”

“You
know
nothing!” the Abbot said, slamming his rod against the cold marble, punishing the Cenobite's ears with its din. “A Cenobite is to work within the system. You seem content to work outside that system. As of this moment, you are exiled from the Order.”

“Very well.”

“And personally,” the Abbot continued, “I would have you executed. But the final judgment lies with the Unconsumed—”

“—and I see no punishment in execution,” said the Unconsumed. “You are never again to set foot in the monastery. Your belongings have been confiscated. You are banished to the Trench. What happens to you there is not my concern.”

“Thank you,” said the Hell Priest.

He bowed, then turned and headed for the archway. Wordlessly, he and his servant exited the chamber and began the long descent.

 

4

Caz kept odd hours, but there was an emergency buzzer hidden in a niche in the brickwork beside the front door, which only a select group of people knew about. Harry used it now. There was some static on the intercom and then:

“Caz isn't home right now.”

“It's D'Amour. Let me in.”

“Who?”

“Harry. D'Amour.”

“Who?”

Harry sighed. “Harold.”

Sixty seconds later Harry was sitting on Caz's overstuffed sofa, which occupied fully a quarter of his living room. Another significant fragment was taken up by books, his places in them marked. His subjects of interest could scarcely have been more eclectic: forensic pathology, the life of Herman Melville, the Franco-Prussian war, Mexican folklore, Pasolini's murder, Mapplethorpe's self-portraits, the prisons of Louisiana, Serbo-Croatian Puppeteers—and on and on, the towers of books looking like a bird's-eye view of a major metropolitan city. Harry knew the etiquette of the books. You could pick something out of the stacks and flip through it, but it had to go back in the same place. You could even borrow them, but the price of a late return was always something disgusting.

Of all the men Harry had ever called his friend, Caz was easily the most intimidating. He stood six feet six inches tall, his body a mass of lean, tattooed muscle, a good portion of it done in Japan by the master who'd taught Caz the skill. Caz wore a coat of ink and color that stopped only at his neck, wrists, and ankles, its designs a compendium of classic Japanese subjects: on his back was a samurai in close combat with a demon in a rain-lashed bamboo grove; two dragons ascended his legs, their tongues interwoven as they wrapped around the length of his dick. He was bald and clean shaven, and had anyone caught sight of him coming out of a bar at two in the morning, shirtless and sweaty, they would have stepped out onto the street rather than get in his way on the sidewalk.

He cut an intimidating figure, to be sure. But one glance at his face and it was a very different story. Caz found some source of delight in everything, and as a result he had an unmatched kindness in his eyes. There was scarcely a time when Caz wasn't smiling or laughing out loud, the one significant exception being that portion of his day he spent drilling pictures and words on other people's bodies.

“Harold, my man, you look serious,” Caz said to Harry, using a nickname Harry allowed him and only him to use. “What's troubling you?”

“If I'm going to answer that question, I need a drink first.”

Caz prepared his specialty (B
é
n
é
dictine with a pinch of cocaine) in the little office behind the store, and Harry told him everything that had happened so far, every damn bit of it, sometimes reaching back to his earliest encounters.

“… and then this thing with Norma,” he said to Caz. “I mean, they got us both, y'know? How could we both have been fooled? I rarely see her frightened, Caz, maybe twice in my life, but never like this. Never hiding in some shit hole because she's afraid of what's going to come for her.”

“Well, we can get her out of there tonight, if you'd like, my man. We can bring her here. Make her feel comfy. She'll be safe.”

“No. I know they're watching.”

“They must be keeping their distance then,” Caz said, “'cause I haven't had a twinge.”

He turned his palms over, where two of his synthesized alarm sigils had been inked by an ex-lover of his in Baltimore.

“I haven't felt anything either,” said Harry. “But that might mean they're getting smarter. Maybe they're running some interference signal, y'know, to block our alarms. They're not stupid.”

“And neither are we,” Caz said. “We'll get her somewhere safe. Somewhere…”—he trailed off and a Cazian grin appeared on his face—“… in Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn?”

“Trust me, I know
just
the person. I'm going to go over there now. You go back to Norma. I'll call you when everything's ready.”

“I don't have a phone,” Harry said. “Lost it in the demolition.”

“Fine,” Caz said. “I'll knock. Any idea how many are after you guys?”

Harry shrugged. “No. I can't even figure out why they'd choose now. I've been in the same office since I started out. And she's been in that same apartment doing her thing all these years. There was never any trouble from the Pit before. What do you think they want?”

“You,” Caz said. “Plain and simple.”

“What?” Harry said. “No. If they wanted me, they'd come for me. Christ knows they do it often enough.”

“Yeah,” said Caz. “But they always fail.”

 

5

Harry came back to the basement sex club to find Norma in conversation with a ghost she introduced to Harry as “Nails” McNeil, who had not come in search of Norma but had wandered in on a lark to reacquaint himself with his favorite old stomping ground.

“He loved getting crucified at the summer and winter solstices,” Norma told Harry. Norma listened while the invisible presence added something to this. “He says you should try it, Harry. A crucifixion and a good blow job. Heaven on Earth.”

“Thanks, Nails,” Harry said. “But I think I'll stick to plain old masturbation. On that note, while we wait for Caz to get here, I'm going to settle down for a couple hours of sleep on the stage next door. The scene of many of Mister McNeil's finest hours, no doubt.”

“He says, ‘Sweet dreams.'”

“That's pretty much out of the question, but it's the thought that counts. I brought some food, Norma, and a pillow, and some brandy too.”

“Oh my stars, Harry. You shouldn't have gone through so much trouble. And you don't need to stay either. I'm perfectly fine.”

“Indulge me.”

Norma smiled. “We'll keep our chatting down,” she said.

Here was a first, Harry thought as he tossed the pillow down on the stage in preparation of sleeping beneath a cross on boards that had no doubt seen their share of bodily fluids. There was probably something significant about that, he thought vaguely, but he was too damn tired to get very far with the notion. Sleep overcame him quickly, and despite Nails McNeil's good-night wish, Harry's dream—in the singular—was not sweet. He passed the dazed hours dreaming he was in the back of the cab that had brought him here, only the familiar streets of New York were now a near wasteland, and his driver—far from ignorant of what was pursuing them—simply said over and over, “Whatever you do, don't look back.”