Twenty-Two
“WELL, IF THEY won’t fucking do it, then they won’t fucking do it,” Sue Whitlavich said. Colleen O’Donnell’s boss was one of the smartest women she had ever met, and the one with the filthiest mouth – both considerable achievements, considering the number and variety of people Colleen knew.
While an agent at the FBI’s Chicago field office two decades ago, Whitlavich had gone to graduate school part time. The fact that she had excelled at both was a tribute to her intelligence, ambition, and the fact that in those days she had very little that could be construed as a life. Her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago was in Abnormal Psychology, but it was her dissertation, “Re-thinking the Monster: A Jungian Perspective on Serial Murder,” that had brought her to the attention of the Behavioral Science Section.
She’d transferred into Behavioral Science and spent the next nine years chasing (and mostly catching) serial killers before being promoted to Assistant Section Chief. Three years later, when her boss, Jack Crawford, had suffered his fatal heart attack, the top job went to Sue by virtual acclamation. But beginning a couple of years ago, the reports of her two best field agents had begun showing Sue Whitlavich that the world was an even darker place than she’d realized. Her vulgar paraphrase of Hamlet had been, “There’s more weird shit going on in the world than even I ever thought was fucking possible.”
TV and the movies notwithstanding, the FBI didn’t have anything like an “X-Files Division.” But when a Bureau investigation stumbled across something that appears contrary to the generally accepted view of reality, it usually got dumped in the lap of Behavioral Science, and Sue Whitlavich almost always gave it to O’Donnell and Fenton. The work of those two agents was rarely discussed even within the Behavioral Science Section, and never discussed outside, if Whitlavich could help it.
“It’s not like Morris and Chastain won’t take the job,” Colleen O’Donnell explained. “They just can’t – not right now. They’ve taken on another assignment, and they feel obligated to finish that one before getting involved in something else.”
“I guess you’d have to say their sense of ethics is kind of admirable,” Fenton said, grudgingly.
“It would be a lot more admirable if it wasn’t being such a fucking pain in the ass,” Whitlavitch said.
She slapped both palms lightly on her desk. “All right, we’ll hope Morris and Chastain find that book they’re looking for sooner rather than later, and in the meantime I’ll keep quietly nagging the AD to let us take the church burning file back from Civil Rights.”
“There was another one, night before last,” Fenton said. “Baptist church, down in Alabama.”
“Looks like the same signature on the ignition devices,” O’Donnell said, “and the body of the pastor was found in the rubble, next day.”
“Yeah, I saw the news,” Whitlavich said. “Whether that’s gonna make it easier or harder for me to change the Assistant Director’s mind remains to be seen. He can be a stubborn motherfucker, sometimes.”
She opened a drawer, pulled a file from it, and tossed it on top of her desk. “Meanwhile, looks like a couple of women in Vegas have turned up dead, drained of all their blood. The local law’s trying to keep a lid on it, as you can imagine – don’t want to scare the old ladies away from the slot machines.”
O’Donnell picked up the file and began to page through it. “Vampire, you’re thinking? Or garden-variety psychopath who wants to be Bela Lugosi when he grows up?”
“That’s what you’re going out there to find out,” Whitlavich told her. “I’ve smoothed things over for you with Bernie Jenks at the Las Vegas Field Office – nobody should give you a hard time. If they do, let me know, and I’ll cut somebody a shiny new asshole. Now take the file, and scoot.”
They scooted.
The main office for the Behavioral Science Section contained desks for two secretaries and an intern, an ancient Mister Coffee that nobody ever drank from more than once, an unreliable photocopier, and the agents’ mailboxes. The Bureau still had not embraced the digital age completely, so some official correspondence still came out on paper.
Fenton had pulled several sheets of paper from his box and was glancing through it is as O’Donnell said, “I hope we can get Morris and Chastain working on the church burnings pretty damn soon. All those guys in Civil Rights ever do is write legal briefs – they’ve got no clue what’s really going on.” She did not speak loudly – but, then, it was not a very large office.
“Maybe that guy whose name we gave them in New York will move things along,” Fenton said. He tossed everything that had been in his mailbox into a nearby trash basket. “Let’s get some lunch,” he said. “I hear the canteen’s got fried chicken, with watermelon for dessert. Yum.”
She looked at him. “It’s winter, Sachmo – remember? Watermelon’s out of season.”
He grinned at her. “Hell, I’m just jivin’.”
“Yeah,” O’Donnell said as they turned toward the door. “I be down with that.”
Ten feet from where they’d been standing, intern Walt Duran unobtrusively made a note and stuck it in his shirt pocket. Then he went back to the arrest reports he’d been given to sort.
Walt planned to apply for the FBI Academy next year, when he finished college. He was a Criminal Justice major at George Mason, an avid gamer, and one more thing worth noting – Walt Duran was an occasional stringer for the Branch Report.
Twenty-Three
THE BRANCH REPORT is an online gossip column with delusions of self-importance. This undue self-regard has been fed by the fact that the publication very occasionally stumbles upon a story with actual news value, and breaks it hours before what publisher Frank Branch likes to call the “lamestream media.”
Mostly, the Branch Report consists of nothing more than links to items appearing in various “news” sites on the web – most of which are of the right-leaning variety. But occasionally, Frank Branch puts in an item that hasn’t appeared anywhere else in cyberspace – yet.
Walt Duran had barely spent the $100 fee that Branch had sent him through PayPal when this item appeared in the Branch Report:
Sources inside the Justice Department have revealed that “occult investigator” Quincey Morris, who was mysteriously freed from prison after facing a slew of federal charges stemming from the last RNC convention, has been hired by the FBI to investigate the series of fire bombings of churches and synagogues that have occurred over the last six weeks. Morris’s “partner,” one Elizabeth Chastain, calls herself a “white witch.” Maybe she can use some magic to keep Morris out of jail this time.
A great many people followed the Branch Report, some of whom would never have admitted as much publicly. One of its regular readers, who found the item concerning Morris and Chastain to be of great interest, was a man known as Theron Ware.
Twenty-Four
“I MUST SAY Mal, you’re looking well,” Libby Chastain said. “I was about to add ‘for someone who’s been through hell, but then...” She let her voice trail off, with a smile.
“You’d be right, too,” Mal Peters told her. “When you’ve actually been in Hell, six months in a federal detention facility is a piece of cake, by comparison. Besides–” He laid his hand briefly on the thigh of the beautiful, thirtyish woman next to him “–I had regular conjugal visits, even if the correction officers never knew about them.”
Malachi Peters had once done “wet work” for the CIA, spending a number of years all over Europe killing people whom somebody in Washington regarded as a threat to national security. That had lasted until 1983, when Peters, on a mission in Budapest, had been betrayed – and shot dead.
As James Bond would have been shocked to learn (if he really existed), killing for patriotic motives is still considered murder in the eyes of the Almighty. Peters’ soul had been judged and consigned to Hell, where it had remained until last year.
That had been the year that one faction in Hell – demons being a
s prone to quarrels and cliques as humans, if not more so – had decided to have Republican Presidential candidate Howard Stark secretly possessed by one of their number and continue his campaign. With demonic assistance, the thinking went, Stark could become President, then use the powers of the office to carry out Hell’s longtime agenda – the destruction of the human race.
But another group of demons, some of them quite important in the hierarchy, had decided that if the plot succeeded, it would bring on the long-predicted battle between Heaven and Hell called Armageddon. The faction opposed this, because they had no faith (unlike some of their kind) that Hell would triumph in this ultimate confrontation. And if there was a worse punishment than the miseries of Hell, that group of demons was not eager to find out what it might be.
So their leader, Astaroth, had sought out a hitman. Peters had been given flesh again and sent back to Earth, with instructions to assassinate Senator Stark before he could win the White House. What would happen to Peters afterward had never been made clear.
Things had not worked out quite as either side had planned. But the election had come and gone, and Howard Stark, although still alive, was neither possessed by a demon nor President of the United States. Morris and Chastain had played a vital role in bringing about that outcome, as the new President, Robert Leffingwell, was well aware.
And now Peters, who had been released from prison the same time as Quincey Morris, sat on Libby Chastain’s couch next to the most beautiful woman that either he or Morris had ever seen. She could, at will, become the image of any man’s ideal woman, but her usual human form was tall, blonde, slim, and quietly elegant.
“I wondered whether you’d use your powers to visit Mal secretly. I guess I’d have been surprise if you didn’t.”
The woman sitting next to Peters called herself Ashley when on this plane of existence. But in Hell she had been a demon of the fourth rank called Ashur Badaktu, given human form by Astaroth and sent to assist Peters in his task of murder. She was also instructed to keep him happy, orders she had carried out by fucking him stupid at every opportunity.
“Almost every night,” Peters said. “Sometimes the toughest part of prison for me was getting out of bed in the morning.”
“Libby and I were glad to learn that the two of you are still among us,” Morris said. “Us humans, I mean.”
“We were afraid that you were both going to be called back to Hell,” Libby said, “once the matter of Senator Stark was resolved satisfactorily.”
“You’re not the only one,” Peters said. “It’s pretty stressful knowing that every time you go to sleep, you could wake up to find yourself in Hell – forever.”
“I keep telling him not to worry,” Ashley said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got it figured out. When I was allowed to leave Hell, there was a big division among the hierarchy over whether to put Stark, and the demon possessing him, in the White House. The whole Armageddon thing, you know?”
Morris and Chastain nodded. They already knew this part of the story.
“Well, the way I figure it,” Ashley went on, “things got worse after I left, especially once the Stark plan went to shit. My best guess,” she said, “is that there’s a civil war raging in Hell right now. Astaroth and the others are too busy with that mess to worry about a couple of pawns like Peters and me who’ve been left over on this side of the board. With luck, they’ll forget about us for centuries, maybe longer.”
“I was very glad that you were still here in January, Ashley, to pay that call on President Leffingwell with me,” Libby said. “Presenting him with one living example of supernatural power might have been enough, but both of us together...”
“Yes,” Ashley said with a smile, “that did seem to seal the deal, didn’t it?” She gave Libby a very direct look – the kind that would have brought almost any man literally to his knees, panting with lust. “Is that the only reason you were glad to see me back then, Libby? Are you glad to see me now?”
Libby was using magic to guard herself, but even so she felt her body responding to Ashley’s succubus-like power. Being a demon, she was unconstrained by such human baggage as sexual morality. Ashley knew that Libby was bisexual and, some time back, had invited her to frolic. Libby had declined, provisionally.
“Cut it out, Ashley,” Libby said, not quite severely. “This isn’t the time, or the place.”
In that same throaty alto, Ashley said, “That implies that there will be a proper time and place, doesn’t it?” A wicked smile curved her full, red lips. Libby was aware that Morris, seated in a chair to her right, was shifting his weight uncomfortably.
Peters put a gentle hand on Ashley’s shoulder. “Come on, honey. Not now, okay?”
Peter’s relationship with Ashley, both before prison and since, was the kind that a man might have with a pet leopard. He did not give orders, but polite requests were usually complied with. Both leopards and demons, after all, are capable of affection for humans – up to a point.
Ashley rolled her eyes. “Oh, all right,” she said, in mock annoyance. “There goes my plan for the orgy I was going to suggest later. Okay, so what shall we talk about?”
“Well, the thing is,” Morris said, “we’d like to ask a favor.”
Ashley raised an elegant eyebrow. “Indeed? Well, since we’ve already established what kind of favor you’re not asking for, I’d be very interested to hear what I can do for you.”
“It’s something along the lines of the way you helped us at the Republican Convention last summer,” Libby said.
“Oh, you mean ‘Now you see me, now you don’t?’”
Libby nodded. “Yeah, pretty much.
“Well, that’s always fun. I love the way they scream when I do the big reveal. When and where is this party of yours going to take place?”
“The when is tomorrow, if you’re free,” Libby said. “Assuming the man we want to... impress is home, that is, and will open the door to us. There’s a tricky aspect to that, which I’ll explain to you later.”
“And the where is Brooklyn,” Morris said. “Just across town.”
“Brooklyn, huh?” Ashley pretended reluctance, “Well, I guess that’ll be okay.” She glanced at Peters. “To paraphrase something lover boy here once said to me – I’ve been in Hell, so I guess I can handle Brooklyn.”
She looked at Libby then. The gaze was not lustful, as it had been before, but speculative, instead. “So, if I do this job in Brooklyn tomorrow, that means you two will owe me a favor. Each of you. Are we agreed on that?”
Libby took a deep breath and said, “Yes, Ashley. I, personally, will owe you a favor. And if you want to cash that in by having me jump in the sack with you afterwards – then, okay, that’s what I’ll do.”
Ashley held the look, but there was some amusement in it now. “Gracious me,” she said. “You must want to impress this guy in Brooklyn pretty badly.”
“I said I’d fuck you, Ashley.” Libby sounded tired. “Let’s not talk it to death.”
After a moment, Ashley said, “Nah – that makes it too easy. I may ask you for a favor someday, Libby, but it won’t involve you getting naked and letting me wrap my thighs around your head.”
Libby’s voice was steady as she said, “Fair enough, then.”
Ashley stood up to leave, and Peters followed suit. At the door, Ashley turned and gently rested her hand on Libby’s cheek. “But the day will come, my dear – and so will you, over and over.” Ashley took her hand away and grinned. “Afterwards, you’ll be asking yourself why you ever waited so long to say ‘yes.’”
After their guests had gone, Morris returned to the living room. Realizing he was alone, he turned and looked back. Libby Chastain was resting her back against the front door, her face a trifle flushed. Morris thought he heard her say, very softly, “Maybe I will, Ashley. Maybe I just will.”
Twenty-Five
THERON WARE AND his crew had rented a house in Billings Montana. The contract he’d signed was f
or a year, but they would be gone inside two weeks. Cheap motel rooms were all very well most of the time, but now Ware had some magic to work, and he needed space and privacy.
Billings was over one hundred miles from Sheridan Wyoming, which was to be the site of their next sacrifice. But all the towns anywhere near Sheridan, on both sides of the border, were tiny – certainly small enough so that a group like Ware’s might be noticed, and remembered later. The Billings metro area, on the other hand, contained over half a million people. It was easy to disappear in a place that size.
Ware had set up his equipment in the basement, and the scrying spell he’d been preparing was almost ready to go. He heard footsteps thumping down the stairs, and a moment later Elektra came into view, wearing the flannel shirt and ancient jeans that were her standard attire.
He had found Elektra Hamilton in a girls reform school two years ago, when she was seventeen. She’d been in the children’s prison (for that is what a reform school is) for a year already, sent there for starting the fire that burned down her house, killing her parents and baby sister. When she turned eighteen, the court had decreed, she was to be transferred to a women’s correctional facility, there to spend the next twenty to thirty years contemplating the enormity of her crimes.
Elektra had protested volubly at her trial that the fire was a terrible accident, and that she’d had no intention of hurting anybody. But once Ware had helped her escape and she had joined his little band, her explanation was considerably more terse: “The fuckers deserved it.” Even her nine-year–old sister, Ware had asked, who’d suffered from spina bifida? “Especially her, the whiny little cunt.”
Reaching the bottom of the basement stairs, Elektra asked, “Whatcha doing?
“Preparing to do a little scrying,” he told her.
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