Play With Fire

by Justin Gustainis

  She sat back and looked at him, her normally mobile face hard to read.

  “Peters, you’ve been in Hell – not nearly as long as I have, but you’ve spent time there. Which do you prefer: there, or here?”

  “Here, of course. But then, I’m human. This side of the Great Divide is where I belong. It’s home. And here, nobody tortures me – apart from those times when you get a little frisky with the riding crop.”

  “You’re right about one thing: Hell is my home – or, at least it had been for so long that human time can’t even measure it. But that doesn’t mean I enjoyed being there. It’s supposed to be a place of punishment, remember? And it is, believe me.”

  “All right, I didn’t mean–”

  “I like it here, Peters. I like being able to see a sky that isn’t burning. I like the change of seasons. I like being the most powerful creature in my immediate environment. I like the sex. Sometimes, I even like you. I have no interest whatsoever in returning to Hell, nor do I wish Hell to join me here. Is that answer enough?”

  Peters nodded slowly. “Absolutely. Now let’s see about those church burnings.”

  Half an hour later, they had compiled a list containing the pertinent information.

  Feb. 2 – Duluth, MN. Catholic Church burned, with a priest inside. The body not completely consumed. Rumors about occult elements surrounding the priest’s death, but authorities aren’t talking.

  Feb. 12 – ten day interval. Synagogue, Albuquerque, NM. Rabbi’s body found inside, too badly burned to tell if he was ritually murdered.

  Feb. 22 – ten day interval. Baptist Church in Decatur, AL. Pastor’s body found inside, again too badly burned to learn anything about mode of death.

  Mar. 4 – ten day interval. Mormon Church in Sheridan, WY. Church’s Bishop found inside, burned beyond recognition.

  In each instance, at least one report described the fire as “very hot” or “very fast,” suggesting the use of incendiaries.

  “Sheridan was last night,” Peters said, “which gives us nine days before the next one. Or is he done already?

  “I doubt it,” Ashley said. “Four isn’t a number of power in black magic. But five is – definitely. That’s why the pentagram, a five-pointed star, is used so often in spells and incantations.”

  “So the next one is the charm, so to speak.”

  “Probably – unless he’s going for a multiple of five, like ten, fifteen, twenty, or whatever. That would add more power to the spell, but the stuff he’s been doing provides immense power, already.”

  “And besides,” Peters said, “his luck is bound to run out, sooner or later. A cruising police car is going to drive by the church just as he’s coming out, or something else is going to get fucked up. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “All of which strengthens the conclusion that the next burning will complete the ritual.”

  “So, what are we gonna do to stop it?”

  Ashley reached for her phone. “I think,” she said, “it’s time to call in a favor.”

  Thirty-Eight

  MORRIS AND LIBBY watched the late local news, and learned that three men had been found dead in the shop of a prominent Harvard Square rare book dealer. Police considered each of the deaths to be homicides, but were releasing no other information at this time, pending notification of the next of kin.

  The next story dealt with the national scene, reporting the fire that destroyed a Mormon Church in Wyoming and claimed the life of its pastor, Bishop Andrew Hayes. Arson was suspected, and the investigation was continuing.

  “Another one,” Libby said, clicking off the TV. That makes how many now – five?”

  “Four, I think,” Morris said.

  “If it weren’t for the black magic that Colleen sniffed out at the first one, I’d be inclined to label these as straightforward hate crimes.”

  “Even for hate crimes, they’re pretty damn strange,” Morris said. “The buildings and victims were all of different denominations – Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, and now Mormon. One of those isn’t even Christian. From what I’ve read, haters tend to be pretty focused, especially if they’re pissed off enough to resort to arson and murder.”

  “The only common factor is houses of worship and clergymen. What kind of psychotic fantasy would prompt someone to pick targets based on such broad criteria? Not ‘I hate Catholics,’ or ‘I hate Jews,’ or Mormons, or whatever. Instead, ‘I hate everybody?’”

  “And the wide geographical separation doesn’t make any sense, either,” Morris said. “Is it to avoid getting caught, or to carry out some ritualistic purpose, or what?”

  “Beats the shit out of me, cowboy,” Libby said.

  Then the theme from “Bewitched” started playing.

  Thirty-Nine

  LIBBY PICKED UP her phone, glanced at it, and said, “Well, now.” She looked at Morris. “It’s Ashley.”

  Morris’s eyebrows rose as Libby pressed “Answer” and said, “Hi, Ashley.”

  “Hmm,” Ashley’s voice said. “Caller ID – or magic?”

  “Who says Caller ID isn’t magic? ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’”

  “Arthur C. Clarke, right?” Ashley said. “Very interesting man. But it’s real magic I want to talk to you about.”

  “Fair enough. Quincey’s here – I’ll put you on speaker.”

  “But if you do, I won’t be able to whisper sweet nothings in your ear.”

  “Guess we’ll have to save that for another time,” Libby said, and pressed some icons. “Okay, you’re on speaker.”

  “I might as well do the same,” Ashley said, “since Peters is with me. He hates feeling left out of things.”

  “So, what’s on your mind?” Libby asked.

  “Apart from the usual, you mean? How about the Corpus Hermeticum?”

  “Okay – what about it?”

  “Have you tracked it down yet?”

  Libby hesitated. “Mostly. We’ve got four volumes out of five.”

  “Nice going, kiddo. Where’s the fifth one?”

  “We’re still working on that,” Libby said.

  “Crap. Any leads?”

  “Not much. A name, which is almost certainly an alias. Oh, and we’re pretty sure that the guy behind the name tried to kill us today.”

  “Do tell. Well, I’m glad he failed – for any number of reasons. What’d he use – a spell?”

  “No, a werewolf. The kind that don’t need moonlight to transform, apparently.”

  “Gracious me,” Ashley said. “I assume said lycanthrope isn’t feeling too well, right about now.”

  “I think it’s fair to say that he isn’t feeling anything at all.”

  “You go, girl!”

  “What’s your interest in all this Ashley? I mean, I’m grateful for your help in tracking down the book, and all, but...”

  “I didn’t call to gossip, Libby, if that’s what you’re getting at. It appears that, once again, we have a common interest.”

  “Indeed? What’s that?”

  “I should start by telling you about a very unusual text message I got this evening...”

  After Ashley had finished speaking, there was silence on the line.

  “Libby? You still there?”

  “Yes, I’m just trying to integrate this new information with what I already know, and come up with something that makes sense. It’s making my head hurt. But before we get into that, there’s a couple of things we learned from Adelson that you don’t know yet.”

  “Hit me,” Ashley said.

  “One is the alias that the mysterious buyer of the Corpus Hermeticum was using – Theron Ware.”

  “Black Easter,” Ashley said, almost at once.

  “You know the book?”

  “Know it? It’s one of my faves. Interesting sense of humor this guy has – and it would seem to confirm that he really is interested in opening the Gates of Tartarus.”

  “Yes it would, woul
dn’t it? The other noteworthy item is that Mr. Ware was only interested in volume five of the Corpus Hermeticum. Adelson offered to sell him the whole thing, but all the guy cared about was the last volume.”

  “So, the crucial spell’s in book five,” Ashley said. “Must be. It would be nice to get a look at one of those.”

  “Good luck with that,” Libby said. “Father Bowen said the only other two copies he knows about are locked up: one in the Vatican and the other in the Kremlin.”

  “Shit. I used to have some contacts in the Kremlin, but they joined us in Hell decades ago – although it seems like only yesterday. I still know a couple of guys in the Vatican, but neither of them is high up enough in the pecking order to have access to the secure room of the Vatican Library.”

  “Hell has people in the Vatican?” Libby said.

  “Not demons, of course – more what the Soviets used to call agents of influence.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – but I confess I am, a little.”

  “It’s like the man said in that James Bond movie, honey: ‘We have people everywhere.’”

  “We’ll talk to Father Bowen,” Libby said. “Maybe he knows somebody in Rome who can get a quick peek at volume five for us.”

  “It would be a big help,” Ashley said. “Although I’m not gonna hold my breath waiting.”

  “I’ve been taking notes while you two have been talking,” Morris said. “Trying to organize the information we have, versus what we still need to know. See if this makes sense to all of you.

  “Here’s what we know:

  1. A demon made flesh, calling himself Theron Ware, is abroad in the world – specifically the United States.

  2. Ware’s mission is to conduct a black magic ritual that will open the gates of Hell, allowing its denizens to enter our world, with catastrophic results.

  3. The ritual, Ware is using, can be found in volume five of the Corpus Hermeticum.

  4. The spell apparently involves the ritual murder of clergymen, then burning their houses of worship down around them. Each sacrifice so far has involved a different religious denomination.

  5. Four such sacrifices have taken place. They seem to be occurring at ten-day intervals, which, if that’s the pattern, means the next one will be nine days from now.

  6. Ware appears to know that Libby and I are on his trail, and has tried to have us killed once already.

  “Now here’s what we don’t know, but need to find out, pronto:

  A. How many more sacrifices does Ware need to perform to complete the ritual? Although, I agree with Ashley that five makes sense, given that number has a powerful role in black magic.

  B. What does Astaroth mean in his text when he refers to a ‘big sacrifice center?’

  C. Where will the next (and presumably last) sacrifice take place?

  D. Assuming we can find the answer to ‘C,’ how do we stop the bastard?

  “That’s what I’ve got, kids,” Morris said. “Did I leave anything out?”

  “Only this,” Peters said. “If we fuck this up, will Ashley put in a good word for us when Satan takes over?”

  “I’ve always loved your sense of humor, Peters,” Ashley said. “Now shut up.”

  Forty

  “I DON’T THINK you understand what you’re asking, Mister Morris,” Father Bowen said. “Access to the room in the Vatican Library where that book is kept is strictly limited. To get in requires written permission, and only three Cardinals are authorized to give it. Or His Holiness himself, of course.”

  “Can you get permission?”

  “If I could, the application process would take months – the Vatican’s bureaucracy is notorious for inefficiency. And, frankly, my application would prompt some very hard questions.”

  “Like what?” Morris asked.

  “Like, why I am seeking permission to examine a book that I supposedly have a copy of, right here at the monastery.”

  “Could be it’s time for you to come clean about the theft, Father.”

  “If I thought it might do any good, I would confess my sin of negligence, believe me. But such an admission would only be regarded as proof that I am not to be trusted with such dangerous material. I would never be allowed within a mile of that library.”

  In Cambridge, Quincey Morris massaged his temples, as if he felt his head was going to explode – which is exactly how he did feel.

  “Maybe if you explained to someone in authority what stakes are involved,” Morris said. “You know, the opening of the gates of Hell, the end of the world as we know it, stuff like that, he might be willing to make an exception – just this one time.”

  “Your sarcasm isn’t helpful, Mister Morris. If I were to relate a story like that to anyone in the Vatican, I would be promptly branded a lunatic and denied access to any sensitive materials. And I’m not entirely sure that the whole thing isn’t, in fact lunacy. I know you and your... colleagues believe it – but it’s really too melodramatic, in my opinion. There must be some more plausible explanation.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, if my colleagues and I don’t figure out a way to stop this, I’ll look for you at the fire pits, Father.”

  Libby Chastain was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her laptop open to a map of the United States while she tried to make sense of the locations chosen for the church burnings. Morris ended the call and said to her, “One of the downsides of using a cell phone is that you can’t slam the thing down when you’ve just finished talking to an idiot.”

  “Well, you could,” Libby said. “But it would be rather hard on the phone. I gather Father Bowen wasn’t being helpful.”

  “Not in the slightest. In order to avoid looking foolish, he’s rationalized away the evidence that’s staring him in the face. Maybe if I sent him a cake with a pentagram drawn on top, he’d be more interested–”

  “What did you say?”

  Morris looked at her quizzically. “I said that I should send Bowen a big cake with a–”

  “Pentagram. That’s what I thought you said.”

  Libby searched quickly through her bag and came up with a pen. Consulting her notes, she began drawing right on the screen of her computer.

  “There’s probably some program that would allow me to do this digitally,” she said. Her voice held an undercurrent of excitement. “But I haven’t got time to fuck around with it. Here – look at this.”

  Morris sat on the bed next to her and looked at the computer screen. “First church burning – Duluth.” She drew a big dot over that city on her map.

  “Next one – Albuquerque.” She drew a second dot.

  “Then Decatur, Alabama.” Another dot.

  “And a couple of nights ago, Sheridan Wyoming.” A fourth dot joined the others.

  “We already knew all that, Libby,” Morris said reasonably. “I don’t see what we’re gaining by looking at it on a map.”

  “No? Then watch this.”

  “Duluth to Albuquerque.” She drew a line connecting the two points.

  “Albuquerque to Decatur.” Another line on the screen.

  “Decatur to Sheridan.” She added the line.

  “Now,” she said, “what’ve you got – or, rather, almost got?”

  Morris stared at the computer screen for several seconds. “Motherfucking son of a bitch,” he said, with feeling. “He’s drawing a pentagram, right over the United States.”

  “Exactly,” Libby said. “And, although my lines aren’t perfectly straight here, look where the final point has got to be.”

  “Austin,” Morris said. His voice was almost steady. “Austin, Texas.”

  “Yep,” Libby said. “Your very own hometown.”

  Forty-One

  EIGHT DAYS LATER, the group that Morris privately thought of as his “War Council” met for the last time. The venue, as it had been all week, was a conference room at the Austin DoubleTree Hilton.

  Had minutes been kept, they would have shown that those attending were:
>
  - Quincey Morris, whose privately-owned company, QM Reclamations, Inc., had booked the facility.

  - Libby Chastain, Mr. Morris’s business partner.

  - Special Agents Dale Fenton and Colleen O’Donnell from the FBI’s Behavioral Science section.

  - Eleanor Robb, representing an organization informally known as the Sisterhood, of which Ms. Chastain and Agent O’Donnell were both longtime members.

  - Malcolm Peters, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency and now a private consultant.

  - Ashley (aka Ashur Badaktu, former resident of Hell), partner of Mr. Peters in every sense of the term.

  Morris opened the meeting a little after nine a.m. by looking around the oval conference table and saying, “Not to be unduly dramatic, but this is it.”

  Ashley whispered to Peters, “If that’s his idea of undramatic, I’d just love to see what he thinks drama is.”

  “If our understanding of the way these people operate is correct, they will hit a house of worship someplace in Austin tonight. Their M.O. – if you’ll pardon me sounding like Jack Webb – is to abduct a clergyman, take him to his church, ritually murder him, and then burn the building down, using state-of-the-art incendiary devices. They have been known to leave traces of black magic behind, but not in all cases. To stop them from succeeding tonight, we have taken what measures we can. On that issue, maybe we should hear from the FBI next.”

  Everyone looked toward Fenton and O’Donnell, who sat side-by-side. “We’re here because our boss is persistent,” O’Donnell said. “She persuaded an Assistant Director that the church burnings represent serial homicide, rather than a civil rights matter. Then we received a tip from a usually reliable informant–” she gestured toward Morris “–that the church burners/murderers would strike in Austin next.”