Then, suddenly, the organ boomed—one crashing chord, flooding the sanctuary with sound.
Someone had switched on the organ, and Little Sanctity Snow became like one reborn. She fell upon the keys with the eagerness of the starved, tiny fingers flying. There was no sheet music propped up before her; she seemed to play purely from spirit.
The organ music began with a powerful melody, but before long, it settled into a strange looping rhythm. A pulsating cascade of sound that set every member of the congregation swaying. Will couldn’t quite tell when they began singing along with the organ’s boom and storm, raising their voices to ride upon its swelling waves, but soon the song was as loud as the organ itself. But the faithful did not seem to be singing words. Rather they sang a kind of pure unified chaos, the sound both perfectly coherent and perfectly meaningless.
Little Sanctity Snow—“God’s Special Snowflake”—was whipping them into a frenzy.
And when Brother Phleger finally emerged from the vestry, dressed only in a simple black Sunday suit—nothing flashy, no worldly adornments, only a simple red cross worn around his neck—all of the thousands of worshippers rushed as one to meet him. But not a single person actually moved. It was their energy that flowed toward him, streams of color and light stronger than any Will had seen around him before. Closing his eyes, Phleger lifted his hands and received the adulation, absorbed it with the calm assurance of the righteous.
He did not speak, did not gesture to Little Sanctity Snow to stop her playing. He probably could not have stopped her playing if he tried. The girl was in a state of holy seizure, standing now to reach the keyboard’s topmost tiers. Her white-blonde ringlets flew around her small screwed-up face. Her eyes were closed tight. It was as if she was playing the organ with her whole Body not just her hands.
Arms still raised, Phleger began a slow processional circuit around the sanctuary. First he walked west, and when he came to the westernmost wall he fell to his knees, flinging himself against the glittering stone, embracing it, kissing it.
The worshippers moaned in unison. Some of them had leapt to their feet, swaying, arms held high; some had clustered around Brother Phleger, and were trying to help him stand. These zealots were hustled roughly back by Trahern’s white-robed ushers. When Phleger finally did stand, he wheeled like a drunk, crossing the sanctuary’s broad expanse along the wide aisle that bisected it. Trahern followed him protectively, fists clenched, menacing any supplicant who came too close.
Phleger seemed barely able to make it to the east wall. He collapsed against it, resting his forehead on the marble, breathing hard. Throwing his head back, he bellowed, beating his fists against the wall with intense, furious passion. Brilliant coruscations of power crackled over the white stone, like lightning seeking ground. Several women fainted. The organ screamed.
Phleger had to crawl along the aisle to reach the huge double doors at the sanctuary’s southern end. Trahern tried to reach down and help him along, but Phleger batted him back. And though the preacher seemed weak as a kitten, his rebuff made Trahern stagger, tumbling backward into the pews. The faithful set him back on his feet, dozens upon dozens of hands caressing him as they did.
When Phleger finally did make it to the huge double doors, he climbed to his feet. It seemed to require a mighty effort. He stood before the doors on trembling legs, lifting his hands.
Thus is this mighty tabernacle Consecrated, in the name of God most holy, justified by our Savior’s all-sufficient Grace, in Jesus Christ alone, for His glory alone, according to Scripture alone.
Phleger did not speak the words. Instead they saturated the air. They were a part of the driving beat of the organ, they formed themselves in the throats of his congregation. He was not speaking to them, he was speaking through them.
Then Phleger whirled, all his weariness erased in an instant. He was revitalized, resurrected. He seemed ten feet tall. His body was heavy with beneficence and compassion. He proceeded up the broad center aisle toward the altar slowly, bathed in colored light brighter than any that could have streamed through the stained glass on the brightest day, and his feet did not touch the ground. He reached his hands out as he walked, touching and stroking the followers who fell before him. He tenderly cupped a sick man’s cheek and the man collapsed, writhing like one possessed. Phleger lifted a supplicating old woman and pressed a kiss to her forehead, and when he released her she dropped like a stone and did not move again.
When finally he came to where Will was kneeling, Will could feel the heat pouring from his body. His dark suit was soaked with sweat. He came to stand behind Will, and as he lifted his arms to compel him to rise, acrid stink poured from his damp armpits. When Will was standing, Phleger stepped even closer to him, pressing his hot chest against Will’s back. Taking the snuffbox from his pocket, he wrapped his arms around Will’s sides, holding him tight, and holding the snuffbox out before them both. Gently, he nuzzled his chin into Will’s shoulder.
“Witness the power of the Lord Almighty,” he whispered in Will’s ear. “He is our shield and our sword, our ever-ready protector. He will annihilate the devil that possesses you. He will set things to right. You have only to believe, dear child. Believe.”
Will shuddered and stiffened as Phleger’s power seized him. As before, his eyes clenched shut, and he was unable to open them—and as before, it was not darkness that greeted him. This time, however, he was in the cold room of snowstorm white with its looming, blazing red cross. The sanctum sanctorum. It was not the real room, Will knew—rather, it was Phleger himself who was the room, and the sound of the organ was his walls, and the singing of the faithful was his voice.
And Cowdray was there.
In the room that was Phleger, the old warlock appeared as he must have in life—elegant and slim and cruel, decked in jewels and embroidery. Standing with his back to the cross, Cowdray regarded Will curiously, eyes gleaming like a malicious bird’s.
YOU HAVE RETURNED. ARE YOU VERY BRAVE, MOONCALF? OR JUST VERY STUPID?
But Will could not answer, only move his lips in unison with Phleger’s voice:
In the name of most holy God, I compel you to my will, demon!
Cowdray cringed, hissing, as if he’d been sprinkled with acid. Wisps of acrid smoke, smelling of burnt flesh, curled up from the folds of his coat. Will’s heart leapt with vengeful joy. Phleger’s power flowed through him—Holy power, the power of the faithful. It was good power, clean and strong.
The Word compels you, spawn of misery! Phleger spoke again, and the Word became Truth. You are subject to God’s command now.
NEVER! Cowdray shrieked, falling to his knees. Flames flickered around him, blue and orange. Behind him, the red cross pulsed like a beating heart.
Will suddenly saw that the silver box was in his hands. He did not hold it; rather, his hands bracketed it, and it hovered between them. The brilliant light of the snowstorm room bent and wavered around the box, as if it were submerged in very dark, clear water.
You will open the box so that the power can be sanctified.
The flames engulfing Cowdray flared up, and Cowdray shrieked, a sound of agony wrenched from the deepest part of his lost soul. His shrieks filled Will with pure, perfect pleasure—and alongside it, a desperate hunger that was just as visceral. He wanted to hurt Cowdray more. He wanted to take everything from him, everything—every iota of his power, every scrap of his self-control.
Once the power in the box was sanctified, Will knew, it would be at his disposal. He could use it to shatter Cowdray’s spirit into a million screaming, smoldering bits.
Open it. Will’s lips moved with Phleger’s voice, but the words were his own. Show me how to unlock it.
IT IS UNLOCKED, Cowdray whimpered, curled on a ball on the floor. IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN. OPEN IT YOURSELF.
Will looked at the box more closely. And through eyes opened by the power of the Word, he perceived the reality of it.
It was not a box at all.
&nbs
p; It was a door—a door Will recognized.
The door from the Hotel Acheron.
With the urgency of desire, Will reached for the doorknob.
When he touched it, a rush of suffering more intense than any he had ever known burned through him. Despair, black and hopeless, made the white brilliance of the room around him vanish into oblivion. His ears burned with the agonized cries of the souls trapped within that void. Will felt, in a horrible eternal instant, all of the hell that lay behind the door.
Gasping, Will opened his eyes.
The reality of the world rushed back in on him—the sanctuary, the mass of chanting faithful, the thundering crash of the organ, the smell of Phleger’s body behind him, the tight press of the preacher’s hot trembling arms against his sides.
Then Will’s eyes met Jenny’s.
And in Jenny’s eyes, he saw the truth. The real truth. She had opened the door of the Hotel Acheron, and she had run away from the horrors within—but she had not escaped. And, Will realized, neither had he. They were both still locked inside, trapped together in misery, and they always would be.
He couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t open the door.
Opening the box would not sanctify the power, or alleviate the suffering of the souls, Will understood suddenly. The power would poison the world. The suffering inside would not be let out. No. Rather, all the joy in the world—all the hope, all the love—would be sucked in.
Open the door! Phleger commanded, the organ commanded, the voice of the faithful commanded in unison. Make the demon suffer in the hell he created!
And oh, how Will wanted to. How he wanted to make Cowdray suffer within that hell. But Jenny’s eyes told him that he could not. That he must not. That he had to find another way.
Returning to the snowstorm room that lay behind his tightly shut eyelids, Will withdrew his hand from the doorknob, retreated from the door. Cowdray, curled up on the floor, breathed like an injured animal—quick and shallow, yet still ready to strike.
Phleger was the room. But Will was Phleger’s ability to act upon Cowdray within the room. Phleger could command—but only Will could act.
Will reached down to Cowdray, his hand trembling.
I cannot allow him to open the box, Will said, and gave Cowdray his hand. Cowdray took it, and as he helped the warlock to his feet, Will hated himself. Despised every molecule of his being.
DO YOU THINK THIS ACT WILL EARN YOU MERCY? Cowdray growled, thrusting his face close to Will’s. Will barked a bitter laugh.
Just tell me how to stop the preacher, Will said, the words soaked in bile. Stop him so that he cannot attempt to open the box again, ever.
GET ME INSIDE HIS MIND, Cowdray whispered insinuatingly. I WILL HANDLE THE REST.
With a cry of disgust, Will opened his eyes again, returned to the sanctuary. Phleger was clutching him more tightly now—it was clear that he realized something was going wrong. He was furiously muttering prayers into Will’s ear, his breath hot and moist.
Will’s bound hands hung before him. He inched them to one side. Struggling against Phleger’s tight embrace, Will was able to get one hand into the pocket of his trousers. He carefully withdrew the straight razor. Opening it, he first used it to cut the cord that bound his wrists.
And when his wrists were free, he reached up and placed a hand on Phleger’s arm, feeling for the place where the preacher’s flesh emerged from his starched white cuff. With his other hand, Will brought up the razor. He drew it along Phleger’s skin, slowly, making it hurt as much as he knew how.
The pain opened Phleger’s mind, just a tiny crack. But that crack was enough for Cowdray. With a joyous, brutal cry, the warlock’s spirit slithered into it like a black snake. Tendrils of his spirit probed the crack and stretched it wide.
NOW YOU ARE SUBJECT TO MY COMMAND, he hissed gleefully.
Phleger screamed.
Will felt Cowdray sending fat, filthy tentacles of control into Phleger’s mind, invading him. Within an instant, Phleger began spewing a vile stream of blasphemous foulness into the microphone before him. He swore, he spat, he raved. He roared every unclean word and sacrilegious profanity that Cowdray had collected in every life he had ever lived.
The shock of recoil from Phleger’s followers was like an icy wave. Where there had been song, now there was silence—the shocked silence of betrayal. Will felt Phleger’s power waver, then crack, then crumble.
Then, clenching his fists around Phleger’s arm, stroking his fingers through the preacher’s warm blood, Will used Phleger’s mind to blast a message out on a wave of magical power:
Invado!
The sanctuary’s huge double doors burst open in a blaze of light.
Warlocks, hundreds of them in black suits, swarmed inside. The faithful, already bewildered and terrified, began to scream and run. They became a stampede, a panicked whirlpool.
The warlocks, operating in Trines, made their way through the frenzy with calm purpose. They separated off small groups of the horrified worshippers, raising their hands to speak words in Latin. Where they did, the worshippers dropped, collapsing upon each other in unconscious, quiescent heaps.
Some of these warlocks began pushing their way toward the altar, where Will and Phleger were still standing, Phleger still holding Will tight within an unbreakable embrace, still mindlessly spewing profanities into the microphone before them.
As the warlocks drew closer, Will saw something.
He saw that they all wore red orchids on their lapels.
Panic iced him. He struggled within Phleger’s arms.
They weren’t Institute warlocks. They were Agency warlocks.
But it was not the Agency warlocks who reached Will and Phleger first.
It was Ben.
Ben darted up to the altar. Seizing the broadcasting microphone that stood before them, he swung the iron down, knocking the snuffbox out of the preacher’s hands. The magical connection was severed abruptly, in an explosion of ice-white brilliance. Brother Phleger fell backward, unconscious; Will fell forward, into Ben’s arms. But Ben didn’t hold him long. Casting a swift glance over his shoulder, he let Will slide to the floor.
And then, reaching down and grabbing the snuffbox, Ben ran.
Will screamed after him, a wordless shriek of betrayal. He tried to leap to his feet, forgetting that his ankles were bound. He fumbled for the razor, slashed the cord.
And then, he heard Jenny screaming.
People were closing in around her, falling around her—and she was panicking. Her eyes were stark-wide with terror. Atherton Hart had gotten an arm around her, and was sheltering her with his Body trying to muscle a path through the chaos.
And then Will saw Trahern. And Trahern, his face purple with rage, saw Will. He saw where Will had been looking—and a fierce, frenzied smile curled his lips. Pulling a silver knife from his boot, he began pushing his way through the crowd, toward the struggling Hart and Jenny.
“Jenny!” Will cried.
But neither Jenny nor Hart could hear him over the cacophony. And they didn’t see the bodyguard coming.
Clutching the razor, Will ran with unearthly quickness, Cowdray’s magic still surging through his body.
Trahern did not stab Hart—just hooked a foot around his ankle and shoved him to one side. Hart stumbled and fell into the stampedeing swarm around them, and did not rise again. Then Trahern seized Jenny’s hair and pulled her head back. She struggled against him for just an instant before the knife flashed down, sinking into her chest.
Will fell upon Trahern with a brutal cry, pulling him away and slashing his throat in one movement. Blood sprayed, and Trahern’s fingers fumbled helplessly at the gaping wound. But he fumbled only for a moment; then he dropped, gurgling.
Will fell at Jenny’s side. Blood was spreading across the white lace of her dress, spreading very quickly. He pressed his hand to the wound, raised her gently, tried to make the blood stop. But it would not stop.
“Oh William,” she sighed softly. “Everything came out all wrong, didn’t it?”
Fresh hot blood welled up through his fingers with every beat of her heart. He prayed for any kind of guidance, any kind of grace.
I love you, Jenny.
He did not speak the words, but he saw them reflected in her eyes. She placed a bloody hand over his, clasped it tightly for a moment.
Then something very heavy came down on his head, and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Alcestis
TWO DAYS UNTIL THE NEW MOON
Will was dimly aware of the sound of his own voice, moaning Jenny’s name. Someone was trying to comfort him, trying to calm and soothe him.
“Where is she?” he murmured. “Is she all right?”
“She is alive,” the voice said. A soft, female voice, one that he did not recognize. “She is alive, Will. She is alive.”
Relief surged through him, and it was enough simply to feel himself breathe.
Feeling his own breathing made him conclude that he, too, must be alive. He tried to open his eyes, but the light sent pain knifing through his skull. He retreated back into darkness.
Jenny was alive, he thought.
Praise the Lord.
He did not wake again for some time. When he did, he found that the room was dark, and he could open his eyes—but only very slowly. He swallowed, his throat dry and scorched. His body ached, but he was used to the aching by now. He now couldn’t even remember a time when his body didn’t ache.
He didn’t know where he was. He was in a room, surely, but he knew he was no longer in the New Faith Seat of Praise. He didn’t know how he knew it, he just felt the difference. There was energy here, power—but a much different kind of power. It ... tasted different. Smelled different.
He looked around himself, his eyes slowly coming into focus. The room was luxurious, with high ceilings and carved cornices. It was lit by old-fashioned gas jets, turned down low. He lay under a duvet of fine light silk.
When he tried to sit up, he discovered that he could not move. He was bound even more tightly than when Phleger had held him. He could turn his head though, just slightly, enough to see that there was an old woman sitting at the side of his bed, watching him.
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