The Scarlet Gospels (18 page)

He decided he'd seen more than enough. Not because the sights overwhelmed him. He was, in fact, quite proud to see the successful fruits of his labors. But this was only the first part of his plan. It had gone off without a hitch and it was now time to move away from here and attend to his rendezvous with Felixson. But as the Hell Priest came in sight of the fortress gates, one of which was open only a little way, he met, or rather heard, the third survivor.

“Stand still, Priest,” said a weakened voice.

He did as he was commanded and, looking off to his right, saw the Abbot, semi-recumbent, being pushed on a two-wheeled vehicle, attended by physicians who administered to him from all sides. The Abbot's weakened frame had been aggravated by the great spillage of blood down his reptilian chin and out the front of his exquisitely decorated robes. Blood still trickled from the corners of his mouth and negotiated its way between the scales of metal and gems. More came when he spoke, but he cared not. He had survived the torment that had left the whole of his Unholy Order dead, all except for himself, and this other who stood before him.

He studied the Hell Priest, his golden eyes ringed with small scales set with sapphires, giving away no clue to his thoughts. Finally he said, “Are you immune to this sickness that has taken us?”

“No,” the Hell Priest said. “My belly is twisted up. And I am bleeding.”

“Liar.
Liar!
” He pushed his attendants away from him, left and right, and stepped off the device that brought him here, coming at the Hell Priest with startling speed. “You did this! You murdered your own Order! I smell their blood on you!” The jewels flickered with color, rubies and sapphires and emeralds concealing completely the rotting body beneath. “Confess it, Priest. Save yourself the stink of your own flesh burning.”

“This is no longer my Order,” the Hell Priest said. “I am but a citizen of the Trench, come to collect my belongings.”

“Guards! Arrest him! And summon the inquisitors from—”

His orders were silenced by the Hell Priest's hand over his throat. The Priest lifted him up, which was no small feat, for the heaviness that the jewelry added to the Abbot's body weight was substantial. Still, the Priest lifted him and pressed him against one of the cell block walls.

With his free hand he scraped at the Abbot's decorations, digging his fingers beneath the silver and jewels adorning his face and tearing them away. The Abbot's flesh was soft with rot beneath, like soap too long left in hot water, and when the Priest began to remove the carapace it came away readily. In a matter of seconds he had exposed half of the Abbot's face. It was a pitiful sight, the flesh barely adhering to the bone.

And yet there was no fear in the Abbot's eyes. He drew breath enough through the Priest's stranglehold to say, “It seems we are united by a secret. You are not the only one with magic to wield. I am alive now only because of workings I prepared many years ago. You can kill me now, but I promise I will take you with me.”

He stared unblinking at the Hell Priest as he declared his immunity, and the Hell Priest knew his promise to be true; he could already feel the connection the Abbot was forging between them.

“There is much I can do short of your destruction,” the Hell Priest said.

“And the longer you take to do it, the closer the inquisitors get.”

The Hell Priest stared into the Abbot's eyes. Finally, he dropped the Abbot to the ground.

“Another day, then,” the Hell Priest said, and made his exit.

The Hell Priest arrived at the edge of the forest and found Felixson waiting for him, loyal dog that he was.

“Is done?” Felixson said.

“Yes,” the Hell Priest said, looking back as a fresh din kicked from the fortress.

There was some confusion around the gates, an argument about whether they should be left open for the dignitaries or closed against the hoi polloi. It was a consequence of what he'd done that he'd not foreseen.

The Order had always jealously preserved its privileged state, executing outside the gates anyone who had violated the law or entered without the mandatory triple-signed permission papers. But it would be impossible to seal the fortress and its secrets off from prying eyes now; there were too many corpses that would need to be tended to, too much blood to clean up. And with the Abbot in the state of mental instability in which he'd been left, there wasn't a single authority in the fortress.

In time, a few absentee Cenobites would return, having by chance escaped slaughter, and the predictable infighting would begin. But for now, there were only a few confused guards at the gates, the dead inside, the damned who'd served them, and no doubt a swelling congregation of flies.

 

7

“Harry?”

Harry opened his eyes and sat up. Norma was at the edge of the stage.

“Are you awake?”

“I am now. What's wrong?”

“Somebody's trying to get in, Harry. The spirits are doing their best, but they say they can't keep them out much longer.”

“How many are there?”

“Two. What do you want to do?”

“I want to take a piss.”

He came back from his bathroom break with a bottle of brandy in hand. He took a hit off the bottle, handed it to Norma, and made his way up the stairs to the front door.

The alcohol had quite a kick and, with nothing to soak it up, he all but lost his footing on the darkened stairs as he ascended. But he got to the top without breaking any bones, slid the bolts aside, and opened the right-hand door. There was no way to do it quietly. The door grated over the accrual of debris as he opened it. It was still dark outside, which meant Harry couldn't have been sleeping for very long.

Norma's ghosts, he sensed, had come with him, and he addressed his invisible companions as he climbed up the garbage-strewn steps to street level. “I'm not getting any twitches. That's a good sign. But if something goes wrong get back to Norma and get her out the back way, okay? The fire exit had chains on it, but I broke them, figuring you'd have your pals watching the alley. So you just get going with her; don't wait for me. I can look after myself and I'll find you wherever you end up. I hope to God one of you is listening, because if I ever lost her…”

He trailed off there, unable to give voice to his fear. He was at the top of the steps now, and rather than loiter outside the hideaway he wandered to the intersection, checking in all directions. There was no one around, and the traffic was light.

He idled around the block, pausing to light up the stub of a cigar, which he felt—contrary to the connoisseurs who wouldn't touch anything that had been near a flame—was nicely pungent after a couple of hours of being smoked, then tenderly put out, smoked again, then extinguished once more. Now it was ripe as an old sock, and nurturing it to life gave Harry the perfect excuse for lingering here and assessing the state of the street.

He got to the end of the far side of the block and pulled on his cigar only to find that it had conveniently died on him again. He took out a tattered book of matches he had in his jacket pocket and tore one match off, to give himself a nice hot flame to rekindle his stinker. As he bent his head to the task, his peripheral vision caught sight of a man and a woman approaching him from the north end of the block. The woman was small but fierce looking; the bald man at her side was easily a foot and a half taller than she.

It was Caz and he had brought company. Harry drew on his cigar to get a good, fragrant cloud going. He glanced in their direction but did nothing that could be construed as a signal. Then, turning his back on them, he retraced his path around the building, waiting until Caz and company had turned the corner, at which point Harry headed back down the garbage-littered steps and waited.

Only when they reached the top of the flight and began their descent did Harry go inside and wait for them to follow. Harry had met Caz's friend once before. He remembered her name was Lana. She was barely five feet tall, but every inch of her was solid muscle. Her body had more ink on it than Harry's and Caz's combined, but it wasn't because of her passion for the art form. Every bit of her skin, face included, was a living, breathing scroll—an encyclopedia of arcane writs and sigils that, she said, “barely kept the spirits at bay.” The woman was a magnet for the supernatural. Harry was happy to see her.

“I brought her along in case we had some problems,” Caz said when he entered the building.

“Hi, Harry,” Lana said. “Good to see you again.”

She extended her hand, which Harry took. Her grip almost crushed his fingers.

“Lana,” Harry said, the epitome of restraint.

“She's got an apartment she'll let us have for as long as we need it.”

“Anything for Norma,” Lana said.

“So let's get her moved, shall we?” Caz said. “I've got my van parked just down the street. Shall I bring it around?”

“Yeah. We'll be up here by the time—” He stopped. Then quietly said: “Damn.”

“Visitors?” Lana said, eyes darting about as she took in the surroundings.

“Something. I just felt a twitch in the ink. But it's gone. It could have been something passing over. You never know in this damn city. Let's just get the lady out of this shit hole. Five minutes, Caz?”

“Five'll do'er.”

“Lana, come with me, will you?”

“You got it, boss man.”

Harry detected a note of sarcasm in her voice but chose to ignore it as he guided her back through the dimly lit maze.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Norma said as they came into her room. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Sorry. He said he was a friend of yours,” Lana said.

“You know I'm talking to
you
,” Norma said.

“I'm not going to let you get sick, Norma. A lot of people depend on you. Me included. So we've decided that you're staying at my place.”

Harry winced, waiting for Norma to come back at Lana with some other objection, but she just sat there, a smile forming on her face.

“What's so funny?” Harry said.

“Nothing,” Norma said. “It's just nice to have you all bullying me around for my own good.”

“So we're having a pajama party?” said Lana.

“Yes, we are,” Norma said.

“No arguments?” said Harry.

“Nope.”

She was still smiling.

“Sadomasochistic ghosts are one thing,” said Harry. “But this? This is weird.”

 

8

There was a goodly number of signs that something of substantial consequence was about to happen in New York tonight. For those with the sense to read the signs—or hear them or smell them—they were everywhere: in the subtle elegance of the steam that rose from the manholes on several avenues, in the pattern of gasoline spilled from every automobile collision that involved a fatality, in the din of tens of thousands of birds circling over the trees in Central Park where every other night they would be sleeping and silent at this hour, and in the prayers the homeless souls muttered as they lay concealed for safety's sake where the garbage was foulest.

The churches that stayed open through the night hours for those in need of a place to calm their hearts saw more souls come than they would surely see in half a year. There was no pattern to these men and women, black and white, shoeless and well-heeled, unless it was the fact that tonight they all wished they could cut from their mind's configuration the part that knew—had always known, since infancy—that the great wound of the world was deepening, day on day, and they had no choice but feel the hurt as if it was their own, which of course in part it was.

The trip to Brooklyn had been eventless so far. Caz had taken Canal Street and crossed the Manhattan Bridge.

“We're heading for Underhill Avenue,” Lana said as Caz brought them over the bridge onto Flatbush. “Left on Dean Street, go straight for four blocks, then right.”

“Holy goddamn shit stop the van,” Harry said in a single breath.

“What is it?” Caz asked.

“Just stop!”

Caz put on the brakes. Harry looked into the rearview mirror, studying what he saw there as he murmured, “What the hell is
he
doing here?”

“Who?” more than one voice demanded.

*   *   *

From the cover of Hell's timberland the Hell Priest would have happily lingered and watched how the farce of death was developing within his former place of residence, but he had more urgent business. He took three strides, which brought him to the barbed thicket that surrounded the forest, marking its end. Its gnarled branches were so intricately intertwined that it looked as solid as a wall. The Cenobite thrust his hands into the knotted thicket, the barbs tearing open his flesh. He pushed in as deep as his wrists, and then he grasped the tangled branches and pulled them hard. There were several small flashes of white light from the severed branches, and they spread outward in all directions.

Felixson watched in awe. He'd seen plenty of workings more spectacular than this, but to feel the power it was generating—that was worthy of his wonderment. The thicket grove was in the transforming grip of his master's energies, and its brambles were suddenly pliant and swaying like thorny seaweed in the grip of a furious tide.

Seconds before it happened, Felixson could feel the old feeling in his stomach and balls, the feeling that meant the work he was doing—or in this case witnessing—was about to erupt from mere theory into reality. He held his breath, the significance of the maneuvers he was watching now so far beyond the rudimentary state of his own magic skills that he had no idea of the consequence it would have.

The entire grove was shaking. Felixson could hear noises like distant fireworks, boom upon boom upon boom. There was fire striking fire in every direction. Felixson glanced up at his master's face and to his astonishment saw there an expression he'd never seen before: a smile.