by Declan Finn
Good thing I have riot-quelling gear.
I walked towards the trunk and popped it open. Inside it was our Costco purchase, which included a twenty-dollar, fifty-pound bag of sea salt.
Mariel followed me to the trunk. “Are we having a cookout after? For ninety?”
“Because holy salt is a thing and it’s twenty bucks in bulk.”
I looked back to the bonfire, trying to make a plan that would let us complete the objective. Creating a plan that would allow us to live was impossible. According to Minniva Atwood’s numbers, there were at least a hundred people down, probably closer to two hundred, and that was before the beach went insane.
But down by the bonfire end of the beach, about a mile away, was the cliff Alex looked at earlier. The cliff dropped down to a sandy beach. But on top of the cliff, and a bit back from the edge, was a small chapel.
“What’s with the church?” I asked.
Baracus laughed. “It’s to be destroyed first thing after Tiamat is raised from the ocean. What else?” he asked, as though that was self-evident common knowledge.
But the edge of the cliffs looked like a great perch for what I had in mind.
I looked to Mariel. I patted her on the arm and gave her a little squeeze. Then I kissed her on the cheek.
“Give me a moment,” I said softy.
I waited until everyone turned their attention to the bonfire and the scene before us. I stayed back by the trunk. I bowed my head and prayed for God’s blessing. I also prayed for some backup. It had worked once, without my meaning to, in the middle of London. It had been a long night, where Jihadis had tried to rip me apart and came to do violence to God’s church and kill me.
Heavenly King, You have given us archangels to assist us during our pilgrimage on earth.
Saint Michael is our protector; I ask him to come to my aid, fight for all my loved ones, and protect us from danger.
Saint Gabriel is a messenger of the Good News; I ask him to help me clearly hear Your voice and to teach me the truth.
Saint Raphael is the healing angel; I ask him to take my need for healing and that of everyone I know, lift it up to Your throne of grace and deliver back to us the gift of recovery.
Help us, O Lord, to realize more fully the reality of the archangels and their desire to serve us.
Holy angels, pray for us. Amen.
I waited a moment, hoping that this would be an easy fix for what was to come.
After a long, long moment, longer than we had, nothing happened.
I straightened up and rolled my neck. That a host of angels had not clamored to our side didn’t worry me. In fact, it reassured me. It meant that we had the tools we needed to stop Tiamat, two hundred demons, and hundreds of deranged maniacs.
I stepped around the car and clapped my hands together. “Okay, everyone, we’re going to use that church. We’re going to need both cars. Let’s get to work. It’s Deus Vult o’clock.”
21 At the Cliffs of Madness
As a homicide detective, I rarely needed to dissemble. Given my faith, I am reluctant to lie. It’s why I let Alex do the paperwork. Though given my abilities and the things I’ve encountered, I had become good at answering questions in ways that were technically accurate and, yet, didn’t reveal anything. Had I been raised by early Jesuits, they would have been proud. However, the Opus Dei who home-schooled me would have been just as happy, I think.
However, I tended to be direct in all things. It made life much simpler. Being direct meant I didn’t have to coordinate as much. It was high risk, but the situation was already so bad that I didn’t see it being much riskier than any other option.
I walked up to the orgy of madness with my hands in my pockets. The madmen didn’t notice me because they were mad. Many of the possessed didn’t even look up from the bowing and scraping they did in the sand. They were all on their knees, bowing their heads to the sand as though they worshiped the bonfire. I hadn’t seen anything like it outside of using prayer rugs—or documentaries about Imperial China, where they would bow to the Emperor like that.
As I got closer to the center of the insanity, an inner circle recited aloud from various books. All of the books present I had seen in the library of George Matchett.
Now we know what he needed with all of those books.
Standing before the bonfire, facing the acolytes, was Professor Noah Whateley. He had changed out of his smoking jacket into a robe of brilliant scarlet. His hood was back, so I saw him clearly in the light from the flames. Whateley read aloud from the Necronomicon.
The only phrase I caught was Ia! Ia!Cthulhu Fhtagn! Ia! Ia!
I was only ten yards away when I stopped. A gentle breeze blew behind me. I let it carry my call to Whateley. “So, Professor. Do I call you Curran? Or do I call you Legion?”
The Professor stopped reading aloud and glanced at me. He locked on my face for a long moment. He didn’t break eye contact as he slowly closed the Necronomicon and lowered it to the sand.
And he smiled. The smile was the last thing I needed. I knew I was right. Ever since Gerald Downey referred to me, derisively, as “saint,” I’d had a dark suspicion the demons involved knew me. When Minniva mentioned Rikers, I knew that my name had at least gone the rounds in the underworld. When Whateley knew me by sight, I was almost certain.
But that smile proved it to me. The smile wasn’t Whateley’s smile. It was Christopher Curran’s smile. It was the smile I had seen the first time I had died a violent death. It was the smile I had never wanted to see again.
“Saint,” he said.
I smiled at him. “No, I don’t think you qualify.”
Whateley tilted his head towards me, as if to ask if I was serious. “I mean you.”
I shrugged and looked around at his cronies. They hadn’t even looked at us. “I’m not dead yet.”
“We can fix that. We have a few minutes. The process has already begun, you cannot stop it. Or us.” Whateley looked around at the others. As one, the ones with the books stopped their chanting. They delicately closed the books, gently set them aside in the sand, and rose. They were so mechanical and so coordinated about it, I knew they were one mind. One thought. One legion.
Whateley smiled at the backup, ready to attack me. He glanced at me. “How did you know it was us?”
I shrugged. “Other members of your legion also called me ‘saint.’ Also, I had a talk with Minniva. Nice girl. You should have left her out of it. If you had, we would have been left out of it. She told me you jerks were still pissed about Rikers.”
Whateley rolled his eyes. “Corporate incompetence. She got the wrong email. Everyone at the black mass was specifically picked for the ceremony.” He waved around the beach at the calm, placid possessed. “Some of the people you see here are my colleagues from the university. They also joined in.”
I sighed and shook my head, as I would with any three-time loser. “Wasn’t it bad enough to get your ass kicked last time?”
Whateley smiled at me. “No. This time, I have backup from a far more reliable source.” He waved at the possessed. “No warlocks. No bokors. No stupid cults. This time, I phoned home directly.”
I nodded slowly. Many of the possessed looked suddenly uncomfortable. Some started to sweat. Some coughed. A few even fought back a bored yawn.
I met Whateley’s gaze. “I didn’t know Matchett was that smart.” I leaned in conspiratorially. “Or did he have help thinking of the idea?”
Whateley smiled, then stopped to fight back a yawn of his own. He covered his mouth with a fist, then shook his head like a wet dog to fight it off. He blinked a little, fighting irritation in his eyes. “I will grant you, that yes, the body of Chris Curran may have sent off an email to George Matchett. It may have made a suggestion about a grand finale before Matchett’s end.” Whateley shrugged and gestured at all of the books from the billionaire’s collection. “Matchett had already been putting a plan in motion. We merely helped him refine it a little. He needed
little help from us.”
I found it interesting how his personal pronouns had shifted away to a more collective way of speaking. “Do you even have a name?”
Whateley shrugged. “What’s in a name?”
I looked around at everyone from the possessed. Each and everyone one of them looked at me with the same level of loathing. It was almost the same expression on a hundred different faces. The only difference was how many sweated, how many coughed and how many yawned.
“I’m told demons are usually far more subtle than…this.”
Whateley laughed and flung his hands up. “So I have a flair for style. So what?” He shrugged. “Besides, the cult who raised me wanted a bogeyman. And when I found you … well, you were someone I could put on a show for. The cult wanted mass possession of Rikers. Curran needed to be in jail. We needed time to see who could be possessed in the general population. What was the harm in showing off?” He paused and yawned again. He fought it off and kept going. He wandered a little closer to me, grinning big. “There are so few exorcists kicking around. By the time most people would have figured it out, Hoynes would have locked the Catholic church out of the city, if not the state, so who could do anything about it? The Vatican’s ninjas?”
I arched my brows. I had been directly told that there were no such things as ninjas at the Vatican. I would have made a note to ask Auxiliary Bishop O'Brien, but it wasn’t that important in the short run.
Whateley took a deep breath but fought back another yawn. He sighed and nodded, rolling his eyes all at the same time. “Okay. Maybe involving you was a mistake. But how was I to know you’d have the charism to cast out demons … and have a list of priests in your call tree?”
Then the vomiting started.
Whateley turned around. One of his possessed dropped to the sand and vomited. He was coughing up nails. Another one dropped next to Whateley and nails came out. The vomit was sporadic, and all over the gathering. Whateley looked frantically from person to person. He finally noted that his possessed were afflicted with sweating mucus, or coughing, or yawning, or vomiting up objects that had cursed them.
Whateley whirled on me, his face a familiar mask of hate and rage. “Wait. What have you done?”
I smiled beatifically in his face. “I’m a distraction.”
If you have a good memory and have read the chronicles of my supernatural battles, you would notice one constant theme. Generally, I do not land the final blow. With the exception of a certain shootout in King’s Point, Long Island, the solution to the problem was never a bullet or a bomb. It had always been the hand of God. Sometimes it was holy water and exorcism. Once it was a fireball from Heaven. Or angels. Or an artifact from before time. Or an army of golems.
In this case, part of the solution was a bag of sea salt bought wholesale.
My plan was simple. Jeremy would take Grace and hole up in the church. It would be the fallback position of last resort and a gathering place if we had to exfiltrate from the area in a hurry.
Mariel took up position behind the church, at cliffside, with her AR-15 and a rosary wrapped around the hand that gripped the rifle stock. I had suggested that she shoot to the rhythms of the Hail Marys, or Glory Bes if rapid fire were required.
The most important part of the plan went to Doctor Sinead Holland. She knew the area best and took her car out to the local post office. Pearson had the address, and she knew the path. Her mission was to retrieve the package from Rome, then get it back to me.
Sinead was off and driving within a minute of our arrival at the beach.
But Sinead was merely the backup. If everything went wrong, her mission was going to be our last chance, short of an orbital strike from Heaven.
But, before that, before anything else, the opening gambit of the plan belonged to both Father Pearson and Lena.
My ward stood on the cliff between our two snipers and focused her mind on one thing and one thing alone—generating a soft, gentle breeze. The breeze was barely noticeable amid the racing wind by the water, the waves crashing closer and closer to us on the beach, or all of the chanting. Had any of them noticed, they might have felt that the breeze went one way while the winds everywhere else blew another.
On this gentle, soft breeze floated a light mist of blessed holy salt.
Further down the beach, within sight of only madmen, was Father Pearson, praying the rite of exorcism at the entire crowd around the bonfire. All of them were focused on me, so none of them had even tried to put up resistance.
I armored up, the golem armor covering me from head to toe. I said one word, that my armor amplified loud enough so that it reached Lena on the cliffs above.
“Maelstrom.”
Then the wind really picked up.
The gentle breeze was for two reasons. First, to introduce the holy salt so slowly that none of the possessed noticed an assault was going on. The second reason was to avoid kicking salt in my eyes.
The storm of holy salt that Lena unleashed with her mind was almost like a tornado, a maelstrom six feet high and wide enough to cover most of the beach. Yawning possessed had salt dumped in their mouths. Possessed who were still standing took salt right in their eyes, blinding them with a scream.
The bullets started flying then. Mariel opened fire from above. Unlike the battle in Rikers, there weren’t thousands of other candidates ready to be possessed if someone had died. Most of the possessed down here had all wanted this. Whateley said as much. They had wanted the power. They had wanted the rewards of the damned.
They had wanted Hell.
We were going to give it to them.
At the edge of the circle of madness were Bokor Baracus and Alex Packard. Alex opened fire into the crowd, mowing them down with as many bullets as he could fire. He only went for headshots. The mad were fresh bodies for the demons. The demons were … demons. Either way, they were fodder for Alex’s gun. He also stood between Pearson and the ring of death. Pearson was the big gun.
Baracus and Alex had one job. They were to target anyone who wasn’t debilitated by the onslaught of holy salt and prayers by Pearson. Alex protected Pearson from any who could make their way out of the salt storm.
Baracus, with a face mask and goggles, was to go into the salt storm.
Whateley whirled on me and roared, “You’ll die for this!”
I drove my armored fist into his face so hard I spun him around. “Dying for salvation? Gladly.” I grabbed him by the shoulder and headbutted him with my helmet to his face. “No capitulation.”
Whateley came in with a right hook for my face. I blocked it with my left. I decked him in the face with my left hook as I blocked an uppercut with my right. I shot both hands forward and grabbed his neck and his shoulder, then drove my knee into his guts.
Whateley bent over, and charged me, plowing me into the dirt. He straddled my armored chest and pounded into my face. The clay cracked and shifted, reforming to keep up with the endless pounding. The blows drove my head in to the sand without any remorse or letting up.
Meanwhile, Bokor Baracus charged into the maelstrom of salt and sand. He wore a medical mask to cover his mouth and nose. He wore goggles to keep the salt out of his eyes. And he led with a machete. Heads flew left and right. He was a blur of speed and strength. When we had fought in the past, he had let his arrogance overcome his good judgment. This time, he wasn’t holding back. He was an endless whirl of death. He took a leg so hard and fast, he swept a demon off his feet, into the air, and took the head off before the body hit the ground.
Bokor Baracus swept through the mad and the possessed like a plague of rats through a cheese factory. Athame in one hand, inverted against his forearm, and the machete in the other, he went to work at what he did best.
The first possessed blocked his overhead blow with a forearm. Baracus slashed him across the belly with the athame, cutting open the artery just off the aorta, and then whirled to his left, the possessed already dead to him. He pivoted on his right foot, t
o launch a roundhouse kick to the man on his right, and the machete decapitated another on his left as he swirled around.
As Baracus’s left foot touched the ground, his athame arced down and across the throat of the person in front of him. The machete followed with another decapitation strike on his right. As the pommel came down, it knocked aside the body in front of him, clearing the way for a snap-kick to the throat in front. The machete, hardly even decelerated from its swing, changed direction and arced up, under the chin of the man on his left and coming down on the skull to his right. Another pivot allowed Baracus to cut another throat in front of him, break the neck to his left with a roundhouse, and he lunged forward with the blade in a great arc, sweeping aside everyone in front of him and killing someone else on his right.
It was a thing of terrifying elegance. Baracus was a whirling dervish, no movement wasted, and no hesitation. Each move constantly flowed into the other like a dance of death. It was much like watching the ballet, and with every swing of an arm, someone else died. He was efficient and unstoppable. Everyone with a blunt instrument was mowed down like wheat, unable to stand up to the athame. Anyone who wielded a sharp object had nothing to stop the machete. No one had a gun.
“A pity.” Whateley threw another right for my head, snapping it to one side. “There won’t even be a world left after Tiamat is done with you. No papal commendation for you. Just annihilation.”
“Fine,” I spat. He threw a left, I slipped it, jerking my upper body to the right. Whateley punched the sand so hard, he buried his arm up to his elbow. I hooked the arm with my left and bucked my hips so hard I flipped him. I rolled to my feet. “Heaven is my target destination anyway.”
I smiled through my heavy breathing. I was winded but still ready to battle Whateley to the death. The mad and the possessed had fallen around us for several yards. Mariel had been busy. She fired with such rhythm, I could even hear the praying.