“Hey.” I startle. She’s right in front of my face, nose-to-nose with me. “We made it. Are you okay?”
“I—yeah.” I nod. “Just a sec.” I pull out my phone, call up OFCUT, and poke it at my ward. The damn thing says it’s fine, which is seriously worrying because Jesus nearly had me for a fish supper back there. The mother-of-hosts totally bypassed my defenses. On the other hand, my ward didn’t stop me feeling the missionaries back in the hotel. Come to think of it the ward I was using back in Germany and St Martin during the business with Ramona didn’t block our entanglement, either. Maybe it just plain doesn’t work on soul-eaters? I shut my eyes again. I can feel Persephone in front of me—feel the outlines of her mind, if that makes sense. I try and spread my awareness, but apart from a very faint presence outside the door (the attendant Persephone decked?) I don’t feel anyone. I open my eyes. “The good news is, I think we’re alone. The bad news is, there’s nothing down here but that.”
A quick nod. “The gate must be somewhere else, then.”
I was afraid she’d say that. “Can you tell where?”
She gives a funny little choking laugh. “You—no, don’t. Don’t look in the Other Place. We’re almost inside it’s mouth.”
“Oh.” I open the door. “Then we’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
The complaints department has shut up since Persephone drenched its mother in caustic soda, but I’m willing to make a wild-assed guess that Schiller won’t have hidden an occult portal anywhere where random visitors might stumble through it. We’ve checked the basement, and the ground floor reception rooms don’t look promising, so that leaves upstairs: his private apartments or his office. I shove the pizza box inside my shoulder bag and pull out the gun I took from its human steed. “Upstairs first.”
We go upstairs. There’s a corridor running laterally across the house and we rapidly establish that one end is residential—guest rooms, bathrooms, and the like. Which means the other end, behind a fire door, is where Schiller attends to business. He has a nice-looking office with decent quality oak paneling, bookcases full of impressive-looking leather-bound volumes, and a public desk flanked by American flags. It’s backed by a huge wall-mounted cross. Never trust a religion whose symbol of faith is a particularly gruesome form of execution, say I: but at least this is the abstract kind, lacking the figure of Yeshua ben Yusuf writhing in his death agony. “There’s also a private office.” Persephone points to a door to one side of the desk. “Do you see any wards?”
I peer at the door. Then I haul out my phone and take a look at it with OFCUT. Augmented reality for the win: my nascent necromantic spidey-sense doesn’t see anything, but there’s a spiderweb of really nasty schematics tingling and twitching all across the door’s surface. A fine thread leads from it towards the giant cross. I’ve got a nasty feeling that if you touch the door without an invitation you’re going to get to ride on Jesus’s tree, and not in a happy way. It’s probably Schiller’s idea of a cute joke. “I wouldn’t mess with that if I were—”
Bang.
I wince and clutch my head as she lowers the pistol with which she has just blown a hole in the central binding node of the trap-ward. It shorts out in a storm of fat violet sparks and a brain-wrenching twist at right angles to reality. She kicks the door hard, right above the lock. It crashes open and she goes straight into a crouch, covering the room within, which does indeed appear to be a private office. Of course, it’s unoccupied. The desk is smaller than the one up front, but there’s a much nicer chair behind it, and there are more bookcases and a much more eclectic collection of bindings visible on their contents. I raise my camera, wake it from sleep, point it at the floor, and mess with the settings. Knowing Brains it’ll be here somewhere…ah, gotcha. Basilisk guns able to set fire to wide swathes of carbon-based life forms are all very well, but in my line of work a camera also comes in handy, and this one’s a lot better than the one in my phone. I was pretty sure Brains wouldn’t have disabled the photographic firmware entirely, just augmented it. I raise the camera and start taking shots, partially obscured by Persephone’s panicky head as it snaps round and does a double take.
“Evidence,” I say. I should have remembered to do this in the cellar but I was too rattled. I turn to the nearest bookcase and begin scanning. The titles don’t mean much to me, but it’s a fair bet that someone in the library section will find a picture of Schiller’s background reading informative and useful.
“Yes, well.” She circles the desk cautiously, leans towards the oil painting on the wall behind it. It’s a medium-scale picture of New Republican Jesus descending towards the Manhattan skyline on what looks like a fire-breathing war horse, wielding a spear while a squadron of B-52s circle behind him, outlined against thunderclouds. I guess it’s a mission statement for the Christ Militant or something. “Hmm. There doesn’t seem to be a safe here.”
“You were expecting one?”
“Schiller is not an original thinker; that’s not his strength. He probably has a private chapel. Very private, but it is unlikely to be hidden well. So—”
I lean towards the bookcase I’ve been photographing. It appears to be free-standing, but it’s built very solidly into the wall opposite the window, running floor to ceiling, and there’s clear carpet in front of it. The carpet strikes me as being rather thin for a plush private office. “Huh.” I begin looking at the spines of books. I switch the camera off, then pull out my phone. Again, I scan the books using OFCUT. Most of them glow faintly—contamination from Schiller’s hands, at a guess—but it doesn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for. “Would a secret door be of interest?”
“A what?” She blinks at me. “Oh, of course! Open it, please.”
“Want to double-check first?”
“Okay.” She steps forward, sees the book I’m pointing to. “The worm turns. Very droll. It’s safe.” It’s right next to one side of the bookcase, at door handle height. She pulls it and there’s a click and the bookcase begins to pivot—slowly, because it scrubs against the carpet and it’s laden with about half a ton of tree pulp.
Persephone follows her pistol into the small inner sanctum hidden behind the bookcase, and I trail behind her—and so it is that I’m close enough that when she says “shit” very quietly it’s too late for me to back out.
* * *
JOHNNY FOLLOWS HIS GUIDE PAST THE SHAMBLING, SWAYING crowd, past the queue that snakes across the front of the stage to the altar and round to a side door at the other edge of the platform, down three steps to a red carpet leading through an awning into darkness, then up six more steps and around a corner to a room off the side of the sanctuary.
“Glory!” chant the crowd, but not in English or Latin or any language most humans understand. “He is coming! Glory to God in the highest! The Sleeper awakens! Glory!”
Johnny nerves himself for the coming confrontation.
The door closes behind him, deadening the sound of the damned next door. The vestry is roughly twenty feet on a side, low-ceilinged and windowless. There are lockers lined up against one wall, a table pushed up against the other, and a cold iron circle three meters in diameter propped up against the wall opposite the door. It’s plugged into a ruggedized equipment case and a spluttering plastic-clad Honda generator that doesn’t quite drown out the sound of the wind soughing into the starless sky behind the open gate.
“Eldest McTavish.” Schiller sits on an ornately carved wooden throne before the gate. He wears a charcoal-black three-piece suit under his surplice. His face is gaunt with exhaustion. One of the four missionaries who wait with him hovers solicitously, ready to support him if he falters. His smile is pained. “There are many things I’d like to ask you, if we had more time together.”
Johnny forces a smile, aware that it’s as unconvincing as a three-dollar bill. “I’m sure there are.” He keeps his face pointed at Schiller, but is scanning the room, registering the positions of the missionaries. They’r
e bodyguards, of course, all tooled up, suit jackets cut loose to conceal their holsters. There are a couple of handmaids in long dresses, their hair veiled, waiting beside something that looks like a giant silver soup tureen on a catering trolley. But soup tureens don’t usually contain live crustaceans that chitter disturbing thoughts that flood the room with the sickly sweet flavor of a gangrenous god’s love. “What exactly are you trying to achieve?”
Schiller straightens his back. A momentary grimace betrays his pain. “The same thing the order’s been trying to achieve for centuries, eldest. The difference is, I’m going to succeed.”
“You want to bring him back.” Johnny crosses his arms. “The Sleeper.” Johnny keeps one eye on the open gate behind Schiller. The breeze sighs faintly as it drifts through the portal, into the twilit chamber stone beyond.
“The sleeping Christ, yes. The one whose mortal vessel we call Jesus.”
Johnny nods; he grew up with this deviant theology, although he doesn’t hold with it himself—the doctrine that Jesus was a supernatural vessel for the Gatekeeper is inner doctrine, but he considers the idea that the Sermon on the Mount was delivered by a sock puppet for the Sleeper in the Pyramid to be somewhere between implausible and hilarious. “You know me through my father, I take it?”
Schiller nods. “You are the eldest son: it’s in your blood. Baptized and confirmed in a sister church dedicated to bringing this wandering in the wilderness to an end, obedient to the True Creed. I saw you in the back row in London, shining like a beacon; once your friend Ms. Hazard drew our attention, the genealogy department identified you within hours. You were sent here for a reason. It’s your destiny.”
“Maybe.” Dead right I was sent here for a reason. Johnny runs the numbers: two knives, four bodyguards, not looking good—and that’s before counting the handmaids and the boss himself, who may look like he’s half-dead but that’s only because he’s pouring his entire will into holding open the gate while his pastors funnel willing souls through it to wake the sleeping god. Threaten his holy mission and he’s quite capable of sacrificing himself to bring it all together. No, this isn’t like that job in Barcelona, or even that hairy caper in Pripyat: it’s worse. So: Keep him talking. “What do you think I was sent here to do?”
Schiller chuckles drily. “They thought they could send you here to kill me, didn’t they? You and your mistress.”
“She’s not my mistress,” Johnny says automatically before he realizes he’s been played. “An’ you don’t believe that shite about me being here to kill you, else—” He raises a hand and makes a cutting gesture across his throat, letting the blade steal into view just in case the muscle are getting twitchy: message to goons, It could be you. “So deal or quit, guv. You’ve got an offer in mind: make it.” Draw him out. Intelligence is vital.
“You are aware that it takes two to open the gate fully? As it says in the Third Book of Revelations, fifth chapter: ‘for the two elders of the blood of Lilith shall be as doorposts in the House of the LORD, and they shall be as stout beams of cedar: And they shall hold the lintel above them that the father of dreams shall walk under it.’ We have—had, until you showed up—a shortage of elders.” Schiller coughs. “I am the last of my line. So you can name your price, eldest McTavish. Once our father awakens and returns to bring about the kingdom of heaven on earth, you’ll have a throne at his side, and a fiery shield and sword, and any temporal reward you want. Do you want your little witch? Do you secretly dream of owning her, body and soul? You can have her, for merciful is the Lord, and you, as one of his prophets, have the power to pardon her for her sins. Would you like a billion dollars? A trillion? Immortality? The throne of England? It’s all yours, if you agree to your destiny. What do you say?”
The bodyguards are clearly keyed-up; soul-sucking knives or no, there’s no way that one against four is going to end well. Johnny nods, smiling. “Sounds like a great offer,” he says, taking a step forward—the bodyguards begin to move and so does one of the gowned handmaids, her sleeve pulling back as she raises the machine pistol concealed in it. “And I’m inclined to take it.” The guards pause. “Only one thing”—he’s in motion, bounding forward past Schiller—“first you’ll have to catch me!”
A couple of bullets crack through the air above his head as Johnny dives through the open portal. And then the chase is on.
BUTTERFLIES IN MY STOMACH; IT’S DARK AND THERE’S A breeze from behind—
A breeze.
There are two types of breeze: man-made, and natural. Sources of the man-made kind include things like desk fans, jet engines, and driving with the window open, none of which apply right now. The latter kind occur where there’s a difference in air pressure. Air is blowing from behind me, and it wasn’t doing that until we opened the secret door. Which, now I think about it, is a revolving secret door. Revolving doors made high-rise buildings with elevators possible by allowing pressure equilibration without blowing the windows out whenever a passenger hit the button for the umpteenth floor; but if there’s a skyscraper in front of me I’ll eat my hat. Rather, there is a large volume of low pressure air into which a natural wind is blowing. And in my line of work—
“Keep moving,” Persephone says very quietly.
I wish I’d brought a door-wedge with me. Or a flashlight. This’d be a fine time to be eaten by a grue… I take another couple of steps forward and there’s floor under my shoes instead of carpet. Huh, I think, just as Persephone throws the light switch.
“We found it,” I say, feeling sick.
We’re in what’s left of Schiller’s private sanctum, facing an open gate. It probably used to be a small windowless room, much longer than it was wide, before he had the secret door and the altar installed. But now the light of the bare overhead bulb shows us that one of the walls is almost entirely missing. There’s a circular summoning grid installed on edge in front of it, and the damn thing is running. It’s the sump the breeze is blowing into, and I feel like throwing up when I see it because I recognize the landscape on the far side: I’ve only been dreaming about it for nine months or so.
“This is it,” says Persephone.
“Looks like it.” I walk over to the altar. It’s a plain slab of stone positioned in front of the gate. There’s an ornate silver cup on it, and an ivory wand capped in gold—ritual objects, at a guess—and a smaller grid that, thankfully, is plugged into a boring old-fashioned laptop. (Have I said how much I hate ritual magic? It makes my head hurt.) “This is the other end of Schiller’s operation. Quiet, isn’t it? He’s pumping lots of energy into it from the other side, from the church downtown, so where’s it all going? And what’s this other grid for?”
“It’s going here—no.” She’s quick on the uptake. “Okay. The small grid looks like”—she closes her eyes briefly—“yes, it’s the source of the ward that’s locking out the Black Chamber.” Without further ado, she yanks the cable connecting it to the laptop. There is a brief spark and a smell of burning plastic, then she points at the wall. “He opened this gate first. It leads to the site of the ritual. Then he opened another gate in the church to power the ritual. The ritual takes place over there”—she points through the gate—“and that which is summoned then comes here, to grow free from unwanted attention while it is still young and weak. Yes?”
I try to untangle her syntax: “That sounds about right.”
“The women in the hospital,” she says conversationally, “haven’t been disposed of because they’re its prepared food.”
“It. The Sleeper?”
“Yes. And I’m ending this now.” And she takes a step towards the gate, crossing its threshold before I can shout at her to wait.
So of course I follow her.
WHEN I WAS A KID MY DAD ONCE TOOK ME UP TO THE YORKSHIRE Dales, to go walking and see the limestone pavements around Malham. They’re eerie landscapes, carved by glaciers and corroded by water over thousands of years—on a bright, dry summer afternoon it feels as if the bone
s of the Earth are poking through the parched skin of a mummified planet.
This place looks well and truly dead at first sight. I take three steps after Persephone and nearly go arse over tit, for with each pace I land too late, too far away. Lower gravity than Earth, but not too low—this planet still has a breathable atmosphere, which suggests something is still putting oxygen into it. Above me the sky is dark, save for a broad sash of bluish glowing dust that crosses the upturned bowl of the heavens—and a sun, angry and red-eyed and much too small. It’s daytime and the milky way (or what passes for the ecliptic of the local galaxy) is visible and the ground underfoot is dry, uneven grit and stone slabs. Mountains rise in the distance, beyond a fencelike series of isolated lumpy posts.
I look away hastily and see Persephone turning, to face the thing behind me.
The gate is a circle of darkness hanging in the air, its bottom edge just brushing the ground. About fifty meters behind it start a flight of steps so wide they seem to reach halfway to the horizon. I look up. Steps, and more steps. And up, and up, vanishing towards a false perspective, a horizon capped by a monstrous pillared building, somewhat like the Parthenon.
“Oh fuck me,” I mumble.
The ground under my feet vibrates, as if a heavy truck has just driven past. Earthquake is not a natural thought to crawl into an English brain, but it’s an understandable one when there’s not a truck in sight, nor one within a thousand lightyears for that matter.
“Huh. So this is the Sleeper’s plateau?” Persephone observes with bright-eyed interest. “Because it’s smaller than I expected—”
There’s a scritching in my shoulder bag: the complaints department is enthusiastically pointing the way ahead—right up the side of the pyramid.
The Apocalypse Codex Page 32