“Bless you. Then, after reminding myself what real food is like, I wish to consume a large quantity of very good bourbon, preferably someplace private so I won’t make a drunken fool of myself. Be kind of ironic to get arrested for drunk and disorderly my first day out of jail.”
“That had occurred to me, too. I’ve got a suite reserved at the Plaza, and in its living room you will find two bottles of Jack Daniel’s finest aged bourbon.”
“Christ, Libby – this is all fantastic, but must be costing you a fortune.”
She shrugged. “The Sisterhood came through with a fat check – your half’s in the bank, by the way.”
“The Sisterhood?”
“They did hire us, remember – even if they had no idea at the time just how high the stakes really were. And they felt morally obligated to keep us on the payroll as long as you were locked up.”
The Sisterhood was a loose affiliation of female practitioners of white witchcraft. Many of its members, with successful careers outside the magical world, contributed generously to the organization’s contingency fund.
“That’s good of them.”
“Well, shit, Quincey, all we did was save the United States from a demon-possessed president last summer.”
“Arguably. I mean, Stark might not have won the general election.”
“Arguably still counts with the Sisterhood,” Libby said.
“Well, I hope you’re planning to help me put away some of Mister Daniel’s finest, later.”
“Not my intoxicant of choice. But I’m pretty sure we’ll find a bottle of Grey Goose vodka next to the ice bucket, too. The suite’s got two bedrooms, in one of which I plan to be nursing a massive hangover tomorrow. But it’ll be worth it.”
Morris smiled. “Hope you still think so in the morning.”
Libby drove a few more blocks before speaking again. “So, we’re going to get you the best steak in town, and then go on the biggest private one-night bender in town–”
“Arguably.”
It was her turn to smile. “Arguably. Then what?”
“Well, now that I’m out of durance vile, I assume the Sisterhood is going to cut off the funds.”
“I expect so. Their gratitude, like most people’s, has a short half-life.”
“In that case, maybe it’s time to go back to work.”
“Cowboy, I couldn’t agree more.”
Three
JANUARY IN DULUTH, Minnesota, and cold as the proverbial witch’s tit – although that scurrilous claim about magic practitioner’s mammary glands has never been explained, or proven. But it was warm inside the big Caddie – too warm, really, for people already wearing winter coats. That might have explained the sweat on the face of the young man sitting in the passenger’s seat, but it didn’t. The man behind the wheel knew it, too. The perspiration meant that Jeremy was losing his nerve.
“I’m not sure I can do this, Theron.”
The one who called himself Theron Ware looked at the younger man, showing none of the impatience he felt.
“It has to be you, Jeremy, we’ve been over all that before. More than once. And you agreed with me, remember?”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure–”
“He has to come out unsuspecting, and that fresh-faced look of yours is just the thing to get him there.”
“It’s not just that, it’s all of it. The whole fucking ritual.”
Ware slowly ran his hand through his thick, black hair – a sure sign that he was getting angry. It was a sign that Jeremy should have heeded.
“Need I remind you,” Ware said, “of the stakes involved here, or of the glory that will be ours – the power and the glory – if we have the fortitude to take the knowledge we have gained and use it?”
“I’ll do it, Theron, if you want,” Elektra said from the back seat. Ware did not turn around to see the look of scorn she was giving Jeremy, but he knew it was there.
“I’ve already considered that, Elektra, as you know. In some ways, it’s tempting. A female might cut a more pathetic figure than the average male, and win the priest’s sympathies more readily. But I’m afraid your years on the streets have left their mark on you, my dear. The shaman would be on guard the moment he saw you.”
Mark, the big, slow one sitting next to Elektra said, “Want me to do it? It’s cool, I don’t give a fuck.”
“Thank you for your willingness, Mark,” Ware said, “but I don’t think your ... talents are a good fit for this. No, it has to be Jeremy.”
He turned back to the man in the front seat. “There’s a term that those civil rights idiots used to use, decades ago. ‘Keep your eyes on the prize.’ Do you know what that means?”
“I – I guess it means to focus on the reward to come, no matter how–” Jeremy swallowed “–no matter how bad things are at the time.”
“Very good,” Ware said, keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. “It’s important to stay focused. And you might also focus on the consequences of letting me down in this endeavor. Do you wish to experience those consequences?”
“No, Theron – no, of course not.”
“Are you quite certain?” Ware made an unobtrusive gesture with his left hand while muttering two words in a language that none of the others would recognize, even if they heard it clearly.
A thin stream of blood began to flow from the corners of Jeremy’s eyes.
It seemed to take Jeremy a moment to realize what was happening. Then he put his hand to his face, took it away, and gaped at the blood that smeared it.
“No, Theron, please. Make it stop. I’ll do what you want, all of it, just make it stop!”
“You agree to lure the priest, and take your full part in what is to follow? Do you?”
“Yes, yes, anything. Please!”
Ware made another gesture, and the blood disappeared as if it had never been there at all.
“Then I suggest you get moving,” Ware said.
Four
LEBRON JAMES FAKED left, went right, then seemed to defy gravity as he blew past the defender and went for the basket. He made the emphatic jam, and managed to get himself fouled in the process.
Father Joe Middleton shook his head in disgust and wondered if it would be blasphemous to ask the Lord to grant the Knicks something that resembled a defense. Although his vocation had brought him to Minnesota, he was a New Yorker born and bred, and had been a Knicks fan most of his life, heartbreaking though such devotion could often be. After a moment, Father Joe concluded that God probably had better things to do than get involved in a basketball game, even though players and fans of every sport seemed to call upon His intervention with great regularity.
Then the doorbell rang. Father Joe was alone in the rectory tonight, which meant it was up to him to both answer the door and minister to the needs of whoever was on the other side. He assumed ministering of some sort would be called for – it was too late for deliveries to the church, and Father Joe hadn’t ordered a pizza. He clicked the TV off and gave a small sigh. Well, at least he would be spared the aggravation of watching the Knicks go down in defeat yet again.
Opening the door revealed a fresh-faced young man in his twenties who was plainly agitated about something.
“Father, you gotta come,” he said rapidly. “Please Father, it looks bad.”
“Take a deep breath,” Father Joe told the young man. “I mean it – a deep, deep breath.”
The visitor complied, perhaps tamping down his adrenaline a bit in the process.
“Now tell me what’s happened,” Father Joe said.
“Guy’s been hit by a car, just two blocks from here. I saw it happen. The son of a bitch that hit him didn’t even slow down – just kept on truckin’.”
“Come in,” Father Joe said. He quickly opened a nearby closet, put on his black overcoat, then picked up the small leather satchel that contained everything he would need to perform the Anointing of the Sick sacrament at the accident site. “Did anybody call 911?”
>
“Yeah, my buddy did. He said he’d stay with the guy while I ran over here. We better hurry, Father – the guy that got hit, he was bleedin’ real bad.”
Father Joe grabbed a set of keys from a hook near the kitchen door. “Come on. My car’s out back.” A few seconds later, as he was fumbling to get the black Oldsmobile’s door open, two thoughts skittered across the back of his mind, like errant leaves in the wind. One was the absence of sirens. Duluth Emergency Services was very efficient – there should have been sirens wailing by now. The second thought was that the young man who had followed him out to the driveway hadn’t gone around to the passenger side, waiting for Father Joe to unlock the door. Which meant he must be standing right behind ...?
That was the last coherent thought Father Joe had for quite a while. He heard rather than felt the sound of something hard impacting the back of his skull, briefly filling his brain with a brilliant fireworks show, before everything went to black.
Five
FATHER JOE WOKE up with a headache that dwarfed any he’d had in the past, and the priest had known more than his fair share of headaches over the years.
Then he opened his eyes, and realized that the throbbing in his skull was the least of his problems.
He was naked, lying on his back atop something that was smooth, hard and cold. A quick glance around told him that he was in the sanctuary of his own church, Saint Bartholomew’s, and his position relative to other objects he knew well – the pulpit, statue of Saint Bartholomew and the rank of offertory candles – meant that he was atop the altar, devoid of the ceremonial cloth that usually draped it. He tried to move, and found that his wrists and ankles were somehow tied to the marble slab with rope. He was trying to wrap his mind around his predicament and figure out both how he’d got here and what it meant, when a pleasant male voice said from behind him, “Welcome back to the land of the living, Father – although I don’t think you’ll be staying.”
Father Joe strained his neck in an effort to get a look at the speaker, but the man was already moving. He passed through the periphery of the priest’s vision and a second later was standing at his feet, gazing down at Father Joe with an expression of amused contempt.
The man appeared to be of average height and build. His midnight-black hair was brushed straight back, and a well-trimmed goatee encircled his mouth. His shirt and slacks were of the same color as his hair.
Father Joe took all this in within an instant, then his attention was riveted on the knife the man was holding. It was more of a dagger, really, at least a foot long from the ebony hilt to the tip of a blade that glinted briefly in the ceiling lights. The man toyed with it as he spoke, allowing Father Joe to see that the hilt was intricately carved, with small jewels worked into the wood.
The man’s face briefly split into a grin. “You like the getup? Like something out of a bad horror movie, isn’t it? And the facial hair adds a nicely Satanic touch, don’t you think? Personally, I prefer a nice gray Armani, or even a sweatshirt and jeans for casual wear. But my disciples expect this kind of image, and in this age image is everything, or very nearly. Don’t you agree, Father?”
The man tilted his head a little, not waiting for a response. “Do you know, I don’t believe I’ve called anyone ‘Father’ since the old man died, lo those many years ago.” A dreamy expression briefly appeared on the man’s face, but it was the kind of dream from which you’d wake up screaming. “What I wouldn’t give to have him trussed up there, in your place. I could keep him alive and screaming for hours, I expect.”
“In any case, you’re far more appropriate for my purpose.”
Father Joe tried to speak, and failed, his voice box constricted with fear. He cleared his throat and tried again. “And what purpose is that, exactly?”
The man raised an eyebrow. “I would have thought that was obvious. Where are you now, Father? I mean specifically.”
After a few seconds, Father Joe was able to croak, “On the altar.”
“Very good. And what purpose does any altar serve, hmmm?”
Father Joe didn’t try to speak this time – but he didn’t have to.
The man in black smiled, as if at a prize pupil. “Exactly – a sacrifice. A more meaningful one than that charade you go through here every weekday and twice on Sundays.”
He raised his head and looked toward the back of the church. “Stop dragging your asses and get it finished, people.” His voice echoed in the near-empty building. “I’d rather not explain what we’re about to the half-dozen old bags who show up for six o’clock mass!”
Looking back at the priest he said, more conversationally, “Actually, it might be rather amusing to have them here and make them watch what we’re going to do to you. But we need to be done and gone before the cock crows, more’s the pity.”
“Done – with what?” Father Joe croaked.
“Why, the ritual, of course, the final step of which will require us to burn this place to the ground. That’s what my minions – I just love that word – are doing, however slowly. Setting incendiaries at strategic points, to make sure this holy shithole burns hot and fast. We can’t have the fire department saving any of it – it just wouldn’t do, you know.”
He peered at Father Joe for a moment. “I see the prospect of burning alive has just occurred to you. Don’t worry, Father – we’ll be finished with you before the incendiaries go off. You’ll be spared the experience of the flames – which is more than your church did for many of my brethren, back in the old days. The Burning Times, they call that period now, did you know? Well, guess what – the Burning Times are back. Only this time, we’ll be doing the burning. And when we’re done, all of you will burn.”
“You mean... all... priests?” Father Joe had to force the words out.
“Oh, no, my dear man. You’re thinking on too small a scale. I have something rather... Ah, but it seems that the minions are done, at last. Come on, children – gather ’round!”
Soon Father Joe was surrounded by three more people. He recognized one of the men as the one who’d lured him out of the rectory. He’d been joined by a red-haired woman with a hard face, and another man with a large build and vacant expression. The first two produced sheets of paper with words typed on both sides and held them expectantly. The man in black looked at the third. “Don’t tell me Mark, that you’ve forgotten your copy of the ritual. For your own sake, don’t you tell me that.”
The large shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug. “I already got it memorized, Ware. I’m good to go.”
“I don’t care if you think you know it by memory. The invocation has to be done precisely as written, and I don’t want you getting all excited and forgetting something once things start to get messy. Now get out your copy!”
“Okay, okay. Be cool.” Mark produced a folded sheet of paper and opened it out.
“That’s better.” The man in black looked at Father Joe. “It may occur to you to try disrupting the proceedings with some of your holy mumbo-jumbo. Be advised at the first word from you – the very first – I will cut out your tongue. Understood?”
Father Joe nodded.
“Very well.” The man in black looked at the others. “Let us begin.”
The four of them began to chant, in a language that had already been old when Christianity was young. The priest prayed silently – not for deliverance, but for God to receive his soul on the other side, despite what Father Joe regarded as his many sins and shortcomings. He was distracting himself by considering the theological question of whether what was about to happen to him constituted martyrdom when the voices ceased.
“Very good,” the man in black said. I’m sure our Master will be pleased. Now let’s really make him happy.”
He picked up the big knife and stepped forward.
Over the next few minutes, Father Joe tried very hard not to scream. But his resolve lasted less than thirty seconds.
Six
“I CAN’T SAY I’d be surprised
to see somebody from the Civil Rights Division drop by for a look at this case,” Byron Cummings said, “but I don’t see what interest Behavioral Science has in a church burning.”
Cummings was Special Agent in charge of the FBI’s small Duluth field office, and he didn’t much appreciate agents from Washington – or, in this case, Quantico – trying to tell him how to run an investigation. Of course, the FBI hadn’t been called in yet, and neither of his visitors had tried telling him to do anything at all, but Cummings figured it was just a matter of time.
Especially these two – Fenton and O’Donnell (who Cummings, both a racist and sexist, privately thought of as “the black guy and the redhead with the tits”). He’d heard about this mismatched pair before. Rumor was they’d got in some kind of trouble in Idaho or Iowa last year, but nobody in the Bureau’s extensive gossip stream seemed to know what kind of trouble it was, or why these two hadn’t been fired over it.
One story said that they’d been involved in the death of Walter Grobius, a secretive uber-billionaire who’d been killed in a massive fire at his Midwest estate. A variation of the rumor held that Grobius had been some kind of devil worshipper or something, and that Fenton and O’Donnell were trying to hang a bunch of ritualistic child murders on him.
But none of that shit mattered to Cummings. The death of Father Joseph Middleton and subsequent torching of St. Bartholomew’s church might or might not call for federal involvement – the Duluth PD hadn’t put in a request, so far. But if they did, the local field office, led by Byron Cummings, was going to handle it – not a couple of affirmative action poster kids from serial killer central.
“It seems that Father Middleton’s death had certain... ritualistic elements to it.” That was from Fenton, the black guy. He had short hair, a thin mustache, and a suit that probably cost more than Cummings’ last paycheck.
Play With Fire Page 2