Gates of Hell

by J. F. Penn

  Morgan stood unmoving, meeting his gaze. Her heart pounded as she challenged his authority, but she would not back down. After a moment, Marietti sat down heavily at his desk with a sigh.

  "Alright, then. But you only have three days to get the answers you want. Jake, you go too and make sure you're both back next week."

  Morgan nodded and turned back towards the door. Jake walked out in front of her, heading for the elevator. As she reached the doorway, she thought she heard another whisper.

  "Because we're running out of time."

  She turned briefly to see Marietti with his eyes closed, a look of agony on his face. A jolt of concern made her wonder if they were doing the right thing; if perhaps they should stay and work on whatever was worrying the Director. But then she thought of her father's handwriting, his desperate note and the crime scene photos of Santiago Pereira. Resolve hardening, she left Marietti to his contemplation.

  Chapter 4

  Pacing up and down the length of his library, Adam Kadmon whispered prayers under his breath, entreating the divine to show him the next step. It had seemed as if his quest had been close to completion only a few days before, but the old man had been stronger than expected. Santiago's death had left questions unanswered and Adam no longer had any hope of finding the Key unless he followed the path of the coded numbers left by the Remnant. It would take longer, but there was still time before the alignment of planets brought the dark world closer to this one, the veil between them thin enough to pierce with the Key.

  He heard a laugh outside, and a splash of water in the pool below. Adam went to the window and looked down to see one of his men by the fountain, flirting with a girl from the kitchen. Their faces reflected an age-old courtship dance that had been repeated here for generations. His family's ancestral home in Seville was nestled in the midst of the old town, a tiny entranceway hiding the palatial interior. Modeled in the Moorish style, the pool in the center of the house was open to the sky. The rest of the building surrounded it, protecting this peaceful heart in the bustling city.

  Adam's fingers touched his own face as he looked down unseen on the flirting couple. He had loved but once, and still wore the scar. The girl below laughed and Adam heard his past echo in the sound. He hardened his heart – there were more satisfying things than earthly love. He slammed the shutters of the library, banging them closed. Outside he heard the couple silence and imagined them walking swiftly away from the courtyard, never daring to look back.

  He paused by wooden shelves that stretched to the ceiling, full of books on the history of Spain and manuscripts of Kabbalah wisdom. Knowledge had no inherent morality, and Adam had learned that good and evil were in the eye of the beholder. He had been collecting these books for years, gorging himself on the pain and suffering of the people of this land. Now, it was time to act.

  Adam pulled down the book that had led him to this quest so many years ago. It was a handbook of the Inquisition, a documentation of the torture that had been inflicted on his ancestors, the Conversos, the Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity and then persecuted anyway. Tortured on the rack, broken on the wheel and burned at the stake at the orders of an empire whose end must come. Some might say that Spain was secular now, that religion was secondary to the pursuit of money and pleasure, but religion still lay at its heart. This world needed cleansing. It was past time.

  Santiago's pity still jarred him, and he remembered the old man's face as he'd jumped. There had been peace in his eyes, as there had been when he had taught so many years ago. In those early days, Santiago had taught Adam the ways of Kabbalah mysticism that were approved and sanctioned, aimed at a higher purpose. But as Adam had dabbled at the edges, where the white-hot truth of the Torah melted into ivory and then in shades towards black, he had discovered Jewish demonology and caught a glimpse of the other side.

  The black ink of the Torah letters had appeared as a deep well against the white page. In his mind, he had tipped over and fallen into the pool of pitch. As a teenager he had been mocked for his slight frame and bookish ways, but all of that had fallen away when he perceived this other realm. It became an addictive retreat as the bullying intensified. He remembered Santiago's face when he spoke of what he saw, the Rabbi shaking his head as he listened. Adam's voice had faltered, doubt flooding him as his mentor had spoken of the thin line that a righteous man must walk. He told of Jacob's ladder, and the different worlds that existed closer to God, where the air was thin and angels could walk the earth. But there were also darker realms, where the body was heavy and dense and where demons roamed. Those who could see through the veil could perceive both extremes, but the true Kabbalist must gather up the fragments of light from the broken vessels and restore them to God, leaving the darkness behind. He had made a decision then to follow Santiago's path of light … until the day the other boys had come for him.

  Adam pulled his Gitanes cigarettes from his pocket with slightly shaking hands. He lit one and inhaled deeply, allowing the smoke to permeate his lungs as he regained control. He walked to the oversize table where he had laid out the astronomical maps, the pages of calculations he had pored over for years now. In just over two days' time, at exactly 1:02 a.m., Mars, Earth and the Sun would align. Although this event was relatively regular, happening every 778 years, this occasion would be followed by four dark red "blood moon" lunar eclipses, a highly unusual Tetrad that had coincided with extraordinary religious events throughout history. One had occurred as the Jews were expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century, and Adam was determined that this event would rectify that injustice and avenge his ancestors.

  "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord comes," Adam whispered, quoting the words from the book of Joel.

  He gathered up one of the maps, rolling it into a tight cylinder, and walked to the end of the great hall, his footsteps echoing on the polished marble. He paused in front of a wooden table with a large square box set upon it, carved with symbols of the occult. Above it was his most precious possession, a painting of Blanca Pereira, capturing the beauty of her youth.

  When he had first met the Rabbi's only daughter, he had been an awkward teenager with a devout love of the Torah. He had thought to win her through her father's favor, but she had fallen for the handsome, guitar-playing Javier Rueda. Javier had played on his good looks and charm, a mean bully with the face of an angel and the smile of an innocent. Adam remembered the night when Javier and his gang of local boys had cornered him in a ruined building site, back when he had been called Luis – a name he rejected as stigmatized now.

  The boys had taunted him, pushing him between them, their blows becoming rougher until he lay on the floor, hands wrapped around his head as they kicked him. He could still feel the pain and the cold of the stone beneath, as he wet himself in fear. The years fell away and he was back there, reliving the shame of it.

  "Look at the little son of a puta," Javier spat at him. "How pathetic."

  The other boys were drawn in by the taunting, wanting to bloody their hands. Wanting to be men. The stink of piss filled the air and Luis felt shame wash over him, his fear amplified by humiliation.

  Javier drew a knife, hefting it from hand to hand, his eyes flashing with desire to see blood welling. He gestured to two of the bigger boys.

  "Hold him down," he said, advancing.

  "No, please," Luis cried. "I'll do whatever you want."

  "I want you to stop coveting what you can never have." Two boys held an arm each, kneeling down and pressing Luis' body into the dirt. Another sat on his legs, pinioning him. "Stop ogling my girl," Javier said. "You're not worthy to look at her, and as punishment, I'll make sure you never look again."

  The knife had a polished silver blade. It reflected the hate in Javier's eyes as he slashed it down, once, twice and then again. A white-hot, burning pain seared across the side of Luis' face, and it was as if his eyeball exploded. He scre
amed, thrashing against the boys who held him down. With his other eye, Luis could see the excitement in Javier's face, the almost sexual arousal at the sight of blood and broken flesh.

  Javier raised the knife once more, but shouts from the perimeter of the building stayed his hand. The boys looked towards the noise and their demeanor changed. Javier bent closer.

  "Keep that other eye away from my girl."

  "We've gotta go," one of the boys whispered urgently. "There's someone coming."

  Javier nodded and they ran off, leaving Luis curled up on the ground, his hands over his ruined eye. The demolition man who had disturbed the attack took Luis to hospital, but they hadn't been able to save his eye. As the pain-relief drugs had taken him into a realm of visions and swirling mist, Luis had made a decision. He would say nothing of the boys who had done this. No one would believe his word against the favored sons of the town anyway, but he would have his revenge on Javier in the promise of the Misshapen, the Devourers and the dark Kabbalah.

  That night, as he lay in a drug-fueled dream, Luis had wrestled with the angel as Jacob once had. The dark angel was powerfully muscled, with burning skin and horns. It forced his head towards a pit, twisting his arm until Luis' face was near the edge.

  "Open this gate and the world will be devoured," the dark angel had rasped. "Creation will be remade. The one you love will be returned to you and those you despise will be torn asunder."

  He had glimpsed a whirl of oblivion in the pit, a riot of crawling things that made him both shiver and marvel at the power he might hold one day. Luis couldn't forget those words. His quest since that day had been to open the gate and let whatever was beneath into this realm.

  He had drawn the dark angel, sketching its misshapen features, its mouth dripping with the blood of innocents. A thrill of the forbidden had sparked in his mind, a way to better his teacher, a way to avenge his pain. A way to finally win the heart of the girl he loved. He had become Adam Kadmon after that – a new man with purpose.

  Emerging from the memories of the past, Adam looked up at Blanca's painting, her captured perfection unmarred. She had been despoiled by the man he most hated, Javier Rueda, who married her and became Santiago's favored pupil. Her eyes looked out at him from inside the painting.

  "I'm sorry," he whispered, guilt twisting his guts, a punishment for his own failure. Adam reached out a hand and gently caressed her cheek, the blush pink a terrible reminder of what he had lost.

  "I will not fail this time, Blanca. I will find the Key, open the gate and you will be returned to me, as the dark one promised."

  Adam reached out and caressed the top of the wooden box, tracing the symbols. A smile danced upon his lips as he considered what was inside and how the world turned again in the circle of his revenge. There had been a daughter of the union between Blanca and Javier – Santiago's granddaughter, Sofia. Those beyond the Gates of Hell required a sacrifice, starved as they were of blood to sustain them, and her death would also finish the line of Rueda.

  Footsteps echoed in the hall beyond the library and then one of Adam's bodyguards entered, his heavily tattooed features sinister in the half light.

  "We're ready for you, sir."

  Adam rose to his feet, his face grim with determination.

  "Take this box to the plane, and send someone to clean up the Sagrada Familia. We have much to do tonight."

  Chapter 5

  The private plane flew down the east coast of northern Spain and then banked towards the west on the approach to Barcelona. Morgan looked out the window at the sparkling Balearic Sea, the water a deep blue in the afternoon sun. She could almost feel the cool touch of salt waves on her skin and it reminded her of trips with her father to the Israeli coast, on the opposite side of the Mediterranean. He had loved the water, spending hours swimming with her in the waves, ducking under and throwing her up so she could do somersaults before landing in the blue. He had chosen to live away from the ocean as his love of Kabbalah had grown, moving to the hillside town of Safed, a place of scholars. After that, Morgan had barely gone swimming, shunning the swagger of the Tel Aviv strip and with no time to escape further afield. She and Elian had always worked so hard, never realizing how short their time would be together. He would have loved this ocean too.

  "Have you been here before?" Jake asked, interrupting her thoughts. He leaned over to look out her window at the city, and Morgan was acutely aware of this living man, forcing aside the memories of her dead husband.

  "Only for a conference years ago," she said, relishing the feel of Jake pressed against her. "I didn't see much of the city then, but I did devour the guidebook." She pointed down to the port area. "That long strip of sand north of the port is Barceloneta Beach, popular with locals and tourists alike. I had some marvelous paella there once …"

  "Not sure we'll get much time for the beach on this trip," Jake grinned wickedly. "Maybe another time. I could use a tan after way too long in hospital."

  The thought brought to Morgan's mind the physical scars he must have from the multitude of operations. Unwillingly, she found herself led then to the scars she could never see – mental scars he must still carry. Could she trust Jake if it came to another physical threat?

  "What's that area?" Jake asked, pointing down to a hill with a number of large buildings nestled upon it and a cable car that slanted down towards the beach.

  "Montjuïc – home to many of the city's great art collections. They hosted the 1992 Olympics there, which was also when they revamped the whole city. Not sure we'll get there either, though."

  The plane banked around and down to the airport and they were soon in a taxi heading for the Sagrada Familia basilica.

  "I love these old buildings," Jake said, as the taxi lurched around the Barcelona streets, winding its way in and out of tall blocks, dodging the motorcyclists. "Check out those balconies."

  He pointed up and Morgan leaned across to see classical caryatid figures carved into stone pillars supporting a green-edged balcony above. Red flowers spilled over from a tiny garden and a tabby cat lay trapped in a sunbeam, licking its paws. This close, Morgan could smell Jake's skin, clean and fresh with a hint of dark spice; she wanted to bury her head against his chest. She pulled back quickly at the thought.

  "We have nothing like these in South Africa," Jake continued, oblivious to her reaction. "I'd love to live in one of these flats overlooking the ocean, up where the breeze is fresh, but still in the heart of it all."

  A moment of silence passed before Morgan spoke.

  "I have a little house in Oxford," she said. "It's more of an occasional sun trap than breezy, but that's more appropriate for the British weather." Jake said nothing, waiting for her to continue. "I have a cat too. Shmi is totally spoiled by my neighbor, who looks after him most of the time. I shouldn't really have him anymore – I suppose I should find him another home, but he's independent enough. When I'm back he makes me feel as if I should just stop all this running around and adventuring. Do you ever feel like that?"

  Jake sighed softly, his expression serious. "I didn't stop thinking about it lying in that hospital bed. I knew that I had a choice. I could leave ARKANE with plenty of benefits and buy myself a place somewhere, retire from this crazy life." He turned and looked at Morgan. "But I'd be so bored in about a week, and so would you."

  She laughed. "Damn it, but you're right. Maybe we just need a weekend off."

  "Maybe you do," Jake said, "but I'm itching to get into your mystery."

  The taxi turned into the square in front of the basilica and they caught their first glimpse of the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família.

  "Wow," Jake said, as he got out of the car. Morgan followed and looked up at the four towering spires of the Passion facade that stretched into the blue sky above them. Imagined and begun by the obsessive genius architect and sculptor Antoni Gaudí in 1883, the basilica was still under construction after more than a hundred years. The towers swelled with organic grace, bet
raying Gaudí's disdain for straight lines, finding none in nature. Instead, he combined the Gothic and curvilinear Art Nouveau forms in his creation, directing the gaze towards Heaven but also tinged with a sense of fun. The four spires, representing four of the apostles, were topped with starbursts outlined in bobbles of gold. Words from the liturgy burst from the stone high above them – words that were almost out of sight of the crowd below, where only the angels could see them. Morgan wondered what it would be like to fall so far.

  Beneath the spires, a gigantic sloping portico was tethered to the ground with stone pillars like the trunks of sequoia trees stretching to meet at the center. Beneath it was the Passion facade, inspired by Gaudí, but decorated by Josep Subirachs in the mid-twentieth century. The angular sculptures portrayed the story of Christ's passion in a tableau of torture and death, watched over by a man with Gaudí's face, a tribute from Subirachs to the master who had breathed life into this glorious work.

  There were cranes on both sides of the building, and the cacophony of an active building site. The metallic thunk of tools on scaffolding, the sound of drills and the tap of chisels on stone. It was exhilarating to see something with so grand a vision, driven by a belief that spanned several lifetimes to completion.

  Morgan followed Jake into the forecourt before the Passion facade, and spotted a policía from the Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona scanning the crowds, as if he was waiting for someone. Martin had arranged for them to meet a police officer here in order to get a briefing on the case, so she caught the man's eye as they walked over.