Sacrifices

by Jamie Schultz

  Sobell stood, trying to ignore the shaking in his hands. Something moved in his peripheral vision, but he didn’t even bother to look. Something was always moving in his peripheral vision these days. Clouds of black smoke, swarms of flies that vanished when he looked at them head-on. They were coming for him soon.

  He opened the blinds that covered the window nearest him. Merciless sunlight glared down on every corner of the room.

  “Ye gods,” Sobell said. The place was a disaster, he’d known that, but it hadn’t looked so seedy in the dimness. The white plastic 7-Eleven bag they’d been using for trash had fallen over near the door, spewing burrito wrappers, used Kleenex, and a bottle of Clarence Wilkinson’s spit—cap on and screwed tightly shut, thankfully—across the floor. Genevieve’s row of Red Bull cans was similarly disgusting, the top of each empty ringed with sticky yellow goo. The floor just outside Belial’s lair seemed to ripple, because it was covered in thousands of tiny black ants.

  Sobell crossed the room and opened the blinds next to the door. He gritted his teeth against the pain in his aching body as he bent down to pick up the trash and put it back in the bag.

  Time’s almost up, he thought. He knew more than he had a week ago, but he wondered if he was really any closer to pulling his ass from the fire. It seemed as though the options were only getting worse, the needle harder to thread.

  He tied the bag shut and set it next to the door. Then he walked back to the table and stared down at the drawings on it, but he wasn’t really seeing them. For the first time, it occurred to him that he might really die. That this hadn’t all been a fabulous lark that would, of course, come out with him on top. And what would he leave behind? A pile of money the government would likely lay claim to, if they could navigate the legal morass surrounding it. A bunch of weird objects that were already in an evidence locker somewhere and might never come out. And a criminal empire that his worthless would-be criminal heirs would fight over and carve into bits, just like worthless heirs of kingdoms in the days of yore.

  The door opened, startling him from his reverie.

  “Oh my God,” Genevieve said. She froze in the open door before coming to her senses and rushing in, slamming it shut. “What in the world are you doing?” She reached for the blinds nearest the door.

  “Leave them open,” he said.

  “Are you insane? First of all, somebody could look in, and second—gross. I never wanted to get a good look at this.”

  “Just leave them. My eyes hurt.”

  She walked to the table and stood across from him. “Hey. What’s going on?”

  He shuffled a few of the drawings around, then pulled up his gaze to meet her eyes. “Remember that rubbish I told you regarding an alternate tradition of magic and all that rot?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s not entirely rubbish. It is, in fact, true.”

  “Okay. What does that mean?”

  “The ‘typical’ occult practitioner derives power from communing with demons. This tradition,” he said, pointing at the nearest drawing, “purports to commune with something else.”

  Genevieve scowled. That’s what he’d always liked about her—she was a quick study. “Angels,” she said. “You’re gonna tell me it’s angels, and I’m gonna cry bullshit, and then we’re gonna have a big ol’ argument.”

  “I’m not talking about blond gentlemen with togas and white wings,” Sobell said.

  Genevieve groaned.

  “I’m not even talking about anything recognizable as angels in any contemporary sense. More like things out of the most demented parts of the Bible. Head of an ox, six wings, four faces. Things with seven horns and seven eyes. Much, much stranger things. Things that would give children nightmares for a month.”

  “What am I supposed to do with that information? Join a convent? Take up snake handling?”

  “If there’s a god behind all the beating of wings and the rustling of feathers, so to speak, it’s frightfully shy about showing itself,” Sobell said.

  “They just sound like a different kind of demon to me.”

  “That’s an acceptable interpretation. The salient difference, for our purposes, is that this alternate tradition has its own practitioners, with which I do not . . . see eye to eye.”

  “The priest.”

  “The priest. I presume.”

  “Well . . . the whole problem is that we’re surrounded by demons. Maybe this priest is actually part of the answer.”

  Sobell lowered his head. A moment later, he looked sidelong at Genevieve. “I fear that may be true.”

  “Why? Maybe he can help us.”

  “If he has all the facts at his disposal, he feels about me the same way the remnants of the Brotherhood of Zagam feel about you.”

  “You broke up a party? Interrupted a ceremony? Stole something?”

  Sobell laughed through his nose and shook his head.

  “I killed what he thinks of as one of his god’s servants. What he, in all probability, calls an angel.”

  “You . . . what?”

  “The blade you ended Zagam with cleaves flesh of all kinds, my dear,” Sobell said with a trace of his old charm. “As for the seraph, well . . . I killed it and fed part of it to a demon. I am—how best to put this?—not well liked among that contingent.”

  “Jesus. Look, what is it you think this guy can give you? Let’s get your goddamn answers from him and get away from him, before he gets the news.”

  “I don’t know what it is he can give me,” Sobell said. “Only that I am afraid.”

  * * *

  “I see,” Sobell said into his phone. He stood out on the sidewalk in front of the office, shading his eyes against the sunset. “Thank you.” He hung up, unsure of what to make of the latest news. It had been Simon, cowardly, stupid Simon, who was one of the few occult brokers who was still sticking his head up, trying to make a buck. Cowardly, stupid Simon had called to let him know that in fact somebody had come to him looking for a relic, as well as various and sundry other items. Except . . . it hadn’t been the priest. It had been a leper, according to cowardly, stupid Simon. “Or, like, some dude with like fuckin’ flesh-eating bacteria or something,” Simon had said. “Beard all coming out in clumps and shit. I didn’t wanna get near him.”

  Belial, of course. Simon wasn’t in the area he was supposed to be searching, but that wasn’t the only issue of concern. Belial had apparently brought a shopping list. Failing news of a relic, he was happy to get wormwood, a dozen black candles, and a handful of other items that boded ill.

  Sobell sat on the sidewalk and waited. He’d been out here since shortly after Genevieve’s return, unwilling to spend any more time in the stinking den, and then cowardly, stupid Simon had called.

  Sobell mulled Simon’s news over until a car pulled up and Belial got out. Then he stood.

  “We need to talk,” Sobell said as Belial approached.

  Belial halted on the sidewalk, weaving slightly on unsteady legs. He stared at Sobell, uncomprehending. A runnel of reddish yellow goo oozed down the side of his face from a fissure between his eye and nose, looking like a gory tear. Something was badly wrong, Sobell thought. Belial had managed for months with a minimum of deterioration, but this was insane. How had he gotten so much worse so fast? It was as if the man was rotting away in front of him, almost in time-lapse. Blink, and another piece would have fallen off. Maybe his condition was accelerating for reasons Sobell didn’t understand—and maybe it was because Belial was tapping into powers he ought not be. That certainly dovetailed well with Simon’s news.

  “To talk,” Sobell said. “Communicate. Engage in an exchange of ideas, hopefully to our mutual benefit.”

  With a start, as though suddenly waking up, Belial focused on him. “I know what you mean. Talk.”

  “I know what you’re doing,” Sobell said.
“We’re both in peril of Hell, and you’re out making new friends and spreading your awful form of good cheer. Are you lonely, Belial?”

  A laugh that quickly turned into a racking cough erupted from Belial’s chest and throat, startling him. Flecks of blood dotted Sobell’s pink polo shirt.

  “I am never lonely, Enoch,” Belial said. “I am legion.”

  “And it’s doing such wonderful things for your complexion. I’m sorry,” he added immediately. Baiting the demon was poor sport, entertaining as it might be, and adverse to his goals. “I shouldn’t have said that. We’re both in a hell of a fix, as they say.” He paused, scanning the empty parking lot, searching the street beyond. Few cars passed by at this hour, in this commercial strip. He wouldn’t be eavesdropped upon, which was nice, but if Belial decided to eat him, nobody would be around to intervene. “Let us talk of the celestial,” Sobell said.

  Belial’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know of the celestial?”

  “Not as much as I should, and far more than I’d like. What are we looking for, Belial? You already know.”

  “Do I?”

  “‘Something pure, to take on the taint of corruption in my stead.’ Sound familiar?”

  A sneer distorted Belial’s face. The runnel slipped down into his beard. “Yes. Of course. So what?”

  “We’re in this together, you might remember.” From Belial’s expression, Sobell guessed he didn’t remember, or didn’t care. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Belial, just tell me about the angel.”

  Belial surprised him by looking around, to the parking lot, even behind himself. “We need one, you and I. To take the corruption. To cleanse us of rot and decay, that we may continue.”

  “Were you thinking about telling me this at some point?”

  “The search is the same. We have found no relic. No sacrifice that can call down the divine. Without that, there is no hope.” He showed his teeth in a grimace that Sobell could interpret as either a smile or a threat. “More bodies means a better search, and since your man Clarence was so cheap with his aid, I sought to remedy that.”

  “Very . . . enterprising. Any other activities about which you’d care to enlighten me?”

  “The search continues,” Belial said. Nothing else.

  “As it happens, I do have one fairly major concern,” Sobell said.

  “And that is?”

  “There’s that word in the prophecy—Gomorrah. I mislike that word. It has . . . connotations.” He lowered his voice, a sudden stupid superstition kicking in. He hated himself for it, but he did it anyway. “There are angels, and there are angels,” he said.

  “So there are.”

  “Yes, well, going up against the lowliest janitor among the angels would be bad enough—believe me, I know—and the word ‘Gomorrah’ implies something else entirely. Let me make this clear to you: the very, very last thing I want to fuck around with is a destroying angel.”

  The grimace was a smile, Sobell was pretty sure, and among the nastiest he’d ever seen. Belial stretched it farther, pulling more bloody tears from his eye. “Have you seen one, in all its awful splendor? No man should go to his rest without gazing upon such a thing. ‘And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.’” Belial was unable to get the last words out without giggling.

  “That is profoundly unfunny.”

  “I am a Lord of Hell. Think on that, and tremble. If we must slay one of the divine host, then I shall slay it.”

  Sobell thought back to the seraph he’d killed, the one whose heart he’d ended up donating to the God-damned demon that had led him down this path. The creature had been terrifying, even crippled, trapped, and with much of its power stripped away. He hadn’t casually talked about killing the thing—had never, in fact, spoken of it before mentioning it to Genevieve. That was not a rumor he wanted floating around with his name pinned to it. For Belial to openly boast about wanting to kill that thing’s angry great-granddaddy suggested the demon was completely detached from any sort of perspective about its place in the universe.

  “So you need your mob to find the relic, the relic to summon a—fuck me—a destroying angel, and then a miracle to kill it.”

  “If that’s how you choose to look at it. All turns on the angel. To destroy or be destroyed.”

  “I might have a line on the first bit. The relic, not the mob. Give me a day or two to run it down. Meanwhile, don’t stop looking. Remember, we’re in this together.”

  The demon nodded. Now Sobell felt like laughing.

  Chapter 22

  “Sobell thinks we need an angel,” Anna said as she put her phone on the table. She felt like kicking the damn thing through a window, and she wasn’t sure why. Possibly it was the maddeningly slow nature of the trickle of information she was slowly compiling, and possibly her demon was just feeling extra murderous at the moment. “I don’t even know what that means, exactly, but that’s what Gen says.”

  “What else does Sobell know about it?” Karyn asked.

  “Just that. He didn’t say why we need one or what we were supposed to do with it. Gen just said he thought that might be the key, and that the priest probably knew how to get ahold of one, and that Sobell thinks we should be careful about using the word ‘angel’ because they’re actually really horrible, or something like that.”

  “I just got a text from Elliot,” Karyn said. “She’s got something on the priest. Nail’s on his way. Want to ride along?”

  “Uh, actually, no.” Anna didn’t care for the worried way Karyn’s forehead wrinkled up. “Right before Gen called, I got a call from Freak. Uh, Luisa Moreno. She wants to meet. I figured I’d go check that out.”

  “You want Nail to take you?”

  “No, I’m good. Really. I promise I won’t work even a little dark magic. I’m just talking to a kid, that’s all.”

  “All right.”

  Anna grabbed her keys and left before Karyn’s concern grated on her any more. Karyn meant well, her heart was in the right place, and she was probably even right, for the most part, but Jesus. This was getting old.

  She found Freak at a corner not far off the exit from the 5, hanging with some of the kids Anna had seen before. She recognized Momo, anyway, though his partner Heavy was nowhere to be seen. To Anna’s surprise, Freak opened the car door and got in.

  “Let’s get outta here for a few minutes, huh?” Freak said. She looked around the interior of the car, opened the glove box, shut it. “You got old wheels.”

  “I didn’t hear you offer to pick me up,” Anna said. “Your ride in the shop?”

  “Just go, huh? I need to look at someplace else for a bit.”

  Anna turned around and headed back up the 5. Freak didn’t talk at first. Instead, she busied herself playing with the sun visor, the cup holders, the little compartment between the seats. Kid had a ton of nervous energy. It was already getting on Anna’s nerves.

  “No, fuck no,” Freak said as Anna hit the turn signal for a downtown exit. “I can’t look at that neither. Just drive.”

  “Okay.”

  Another mile passed. Freak picked up a bunch of paper scraps out of the compartment below the radio and started going through them.

  “I think there’s a Wendy’s receipt in there, if you’re really interested,” Anna said. “Come on, kid. What’s on your mind?”

  “Uh. I wanted to, uh, thank you. For the doctor. My pops got pretty fucked-up, but the doc fixed him up all right. Didn’t even give us no bill. Said you’d take care of it.”

  “Yeah,” Anna said. She reminded herself that Moreno likely wouldn’t have been in that position if she hadn’t broken the wards, but there was, strangely, no guilt associated with the thought.
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br />   “What happened?” Freak said.

  “You should probably ask your dad that.”

  “I did. He said, ‘I ain’t gonna lie to you, girl,’ and then he didn’t say nothin’ else. He didn’t lie to me, but he didn’t tell me a fuckin’ thing. Bum a smoke?”

  Anna handed her the pack.

  “I hate that fuckin’ priest,” Freak said as she tapped the cigarettes against her palm. “Pops didn’t want to talk about it, but come on. I know he didn’t get jumped or nothing like that. The guys are still talking ’bout the crazy shit that went down yesterday. I ain’t no idiot.” She lit up, took a drag off the cigarette, and blew smoke out her nostrils. “I hate that fuckin’ priest,” she said again.

  “I think he’s trying to help you out.”

  Freak flicked ash in the ashtray. “My ass. Looking at us with those sad eyes all the time. He’s doing this for him, not us. ‘Come, ye hood rats, into my arms and I’ll give you a big fuckin’ hug and then go off’n stroke my hard-on while I think about how good I am.’ I tell you what, shit only got worse since that son of a bitch come around.”

  “What do you think he really wants, then?” Anna asked.

  “Way he goes on about ‘atonement’ and all that when he’s had a few, I’d say he’s working off some guilt. My old man just about thinks he walks on water, though. Stupid. Guy feels like he done wrong, I wish he’d just go off and say a million Hail Marys, leave us the fuck alone.”

  Freak fell silent and turned to watching the other cars, looking curiously into each one as it went by, checking out the occupants, the driver, the stuff jammed in the back window. “I’m pretty worried, though,” she said after a while. “He’s all fired up about something now. Stayed up half the night talking, praying, talking again. Like my old man needs that shit.”

  “How you doing with all this?” Anna asked.

  “Me?” Freak scoffed. “Good enough, I guess. I look around, though, and I ain’t stupid. How’s this end? Just keep going like this forever? Naw. People gonna die. Way things are going, Flats and the ’Teeners gonna kill us all. We’ll take a bunch with us, I guess.” She flashed a G with her hand and smiled ironically. “Gant Street forever.”