The creature flung the child to the pavement where she landed with a snarl and turned to confront her new adversary. On sighting her Master, she slunk down as low as possible, whining and pleading for mercy.
But the Beast ignored her; he was intent on something else.
Adramelech leaped upwards to the building ledge just outside the detective’s window. There he paused, but only for a second, and then, spreading his arms wide, he sailed forward.
The window and frame exploded inwards and the Beast disappeared from sight.
The sound of the last tinkle of breaking glass faded.
For a moment all was silent, then...
...the quiet of the street was shattered by a primitive, visceral roar of rage surging into the night. The cry grew louder, building into a furious crescendo of angry abandon and disappointment. Parked car alarms began to wail up and down adjacent streets, windows suddenly glowed with light, and soon sirens sounded in the distance; the din continued to increase in intensity.
Below, the terrified child began to weep in fear and despair. Trembling violently, desperate to escape retribution, she began to beat her head against the pavement. Harder and harder she smashed it until the skin of her forehead split, and great clots of blood and splinters of bone flew through the air. As the front of her skull caved in, the sounds changed from the sharp cracks of bone, to the meaty thuds of wet tissue slapping the concrete. The membrane surrounding her brain ruptured and bits of white jelly and brain matter spattered the street as she frantically pounded it, faster, harder, faster, harder....until finally, exhausted, she collapsed in defeat. She was already spontaneously healing even as, above her on the ledge, the creature stood poised once more.
There was no escape; even through trying to attain the unattainable – death. After all, death was her Master...and right now, it was not pleased.
~ 8 ~
As they raced through the back streets, Father Langevin spoke urgently into a cellular telephone. Though Maria couldn’t hear what he said, there was no mistaking his tone.
“What’s the matter with him?” Maria asked, as she tried to pull Clay to a sitting position. “Why is he unconscious?”
“The Narcan is not working,” Murphy said. “Sister, try and get him awake! Slap him! Yell at him! Wake him up!”
As Maria struggled with Clay’s six-foot frame, trying to sit him up, she couldn’t help noticing that he was a handsome man, well-muscled and fit.
Clay’s suit jacket draped open exposing the front of his white shirt now soaked crimson with blood.
The car rounded a corner almost tilting onto two wheels, tires squealing in protest.
Maria fell sideways onto the unconscious detective. “What did you do to him?” she screamed at Murphy, pulling herself upright.
The priest said nothing but concentrated on his driving. Something made her look down and she saw the high-tech looking pistol on the floor where Murphy had thrown it.
“You SHOT him!?” Her voice was high, her tone one of disbelief.
“We’re taking him to a doctor.”
“You shot him!” she repeated, too shocked to make sense of what was going on. “We were supposed to save him! Why did you shoot him?”
“We had no choice,” Langevin said, tensely.
“Choice?” Maria pulled open his shirt and surveyed the wounds that were bleeding freely. “My God, you shot him...he’s dying!”
“Those aren’t bullet wounds,” Murphy said. “He was hit with tranquilizing darts.”
“Darts? He’s bleeding so much!”
“We shot him too many times...too close,” Langevin admitted, realizing Maria wasn’t privy to details of their weapons.
“We have to get him to a hospital!”
“We’re getting him to a doctor,” Murphy insisted, spinning the wheel again and turning north on 2nd Avenue. He planned to cross the East River on the Queensboro Bridge and head north again on Vernon Boulevard. From there they’d be able to make their way to Grand Central and hit La Guardia. He muttered a quick prayer of thanks for traffic being fairly mild.
Maria grabbed Clay’s wrist and felt for a pulse. If it was there, it was indiscernible. She stared at his chest; he wasn’t breathing! “You’ve killed him...” she cried. “He isn’t breathing!”
“What?” Murphy demanded. “What are you saying!?”
“He isn’t breathing; I can’t find a pulse!”
“Oh my Lord,” Langevin said, twisting in the front seat.
Maria dragged Clay sideways until he was lying prone on the backseat and tried to jam herself sideways to kneel on the floor. “Move your seats up,” she yelled at the two priests. They complied and she managed to wedge herself upright in the cramped space.
Langevin was also kneeling and extended backwards over his seat now, trying to reach back to give Clay CPR. Once the detective was on his back, Langevin lifted his fist and pounded once on his chest and then leaned over, cupped his hands just under the breastbone and began to push rhythmically downward as he counted aloud: “One...two...three...” After 30 seconds of compressions, he stopped.
Maria, remembering her life-guard training from high school, pinched Clay’s nose, pulled his head back to open his air passage and waited. As soon as Langevin ceased pushing on Clay’s chest, Maria leaned forward and blew into his mouth until she saw his chest rise.
Langevin went back to his rhythm for another thirty seconds and Maria blew into his mouth a few more times.
They jointly worked on the detective for two minutes. It seemed more like hours before he choked, gasped and began breathing on his own. We must be on a freeway now, thought Maria as the ride changed from violent turns to straight and smooth. She felt the detective’s wrist again. The pulse was feeble but seemed to be growing stronger.
“Are we near the hospital?” she called, her heart pounding. There was no reply from the front seat. This time she screamed: “Answer me! Are we near the hospital?”
“We’re less than five minutes from La Guardia,” Murphy said. He sped up to race through an already red light to a chorus of horns.
“La Guardia? We don’t need an airport...we need a hospital, you – !” She didn’t finish and was immediately sorry for what she’d been about to say. Murphy didn’t seem to notice.
“There’ll be everything we need at the airport, lass” he said patiently.
“Drive to a hospital...please!” Her voice was panicky, shrill. “He may need surgery, he may be dying.”
“There’ll be everything we need at the airport,” Murphy repeated, stubbornly.
Still kneeling on the front seat Father Langevin looked at her with genuine concern. “We couldn’t help it, Sister. Together, let us pray for his recovery. In the name of the Father...”
The priest blessed himself and Maria followed suit.
“He’d better recover,” Murphy snapped, to no-one in particular. “If he dies, we may wind up envying him.”
~ 9 ~
The Vicar of Christ and Successor of Peter, was becoming increasingly mired in a jungle of red tape and bureaucracy that could strangle the best of intentions before they even reached him, thought the Most Reverend Mustavias Cardinal Malachi.
Malachi inwardly fumed at the bureaucracy that was overwhelming the Romana Curia as he strode swiftly across the Piazza di San Pietro directly in front of the Papal Palace. Decades ago, the prestigious American Institute of Management had judged the Catholic Church’s administrative body one of the three most efficiently administered organizations in the world; he wondered how it would fare today. Right now, despite his personal decades-long participation in the Curia he found its processes inherently destructive to his own agenda. What was most astonishing, however, was that despite incorporating new technology to improve its processes, they seemed to become more complex and maddeningly slower.
As he walked, he nodded and smiled politely at groups of sightseeing tourists thronging the piazza under the boiling summer sun. He also
marveled again at the sheer power exuded by the architecture of the Vatican: the statues of the Saints gleaming in the sun, the pillared arms of Bernini’s double colonnade and the omnipresent dome of St. Peter’s Basilica a white beacon of Christian hope against the blue sky. It made most people feel small and insignificant. Mission accomplished.
Lately, he thought, the Curia seemed to be occupied by administrators more in love with their rules and business processes than anything else. For instance, gaining an audience with the pope, something relatively simple for people at his level in the past, was proving to be almost impossible thanks to a new Curia-developed process that demanded he fill out forms, most which featured questions which he couldn’t and wouldn’t answer. And, the man who controlled the pope’s calendar was certainly enjoying his new power compliments of the revamped processes. Malachi felt his face redden with anger at the stupidity of the entire affair. He remembered a mediaeval saying: ‘Timeo mon Petrum, sed secretarium eius’ which, translated, meant: ‘I don’t mind Peter, it’s his secretary who scares me.’
He knew that while most Holy Fathers had understood full well the power and influence of the Curia, few popes had ever been able to bring it to heel. Most merely worked within its ever-shifting framework. Like any government with its league of mandarins, leaders would come and go but the bureaucracy would live forever. And, even most popes had quietly accepted the occasional abuse of power it wielded. Through the ages, the most perceptive popes had manipulated the power and abuses to their own advantage.
One thing was sure; though the function of the Curia was primarily to put itself at the pastoral service of the pope for the good of the Church, and help him bring the message that “Christ has Risen” to the billion Catholics around the world (and any others who would listen), there was also multiple hidden agendas quietly in progress through the old-boy networks to fulfill personal goals, strike alliances, perform or repay favors, and carry out personal vendettas.
As far as Malachi was concerned, the Curia, far from being a collegiate sanctuary for the faithful, was in fact a coldly efficient, politically-oriented congress where empires were built and destroyed, and alliances welded tight or viciously savaged. The vindictive relish of those who had been betrayed would lie still and wait, sometimes for years, for the opportunity to repay the debt. And, having been in Rome for thirty years and in the Vatican for twenty nine of those thirty, he knew that debts were always repaid.
But what had wrought this angry evaluation of the Curia by Cardinal Malachi? A mere two minute telephone conversation with one of the pope’s secretaries had been enough.
Monsignor Giuseppe Lopez, Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, and the one who handled all access to His Holiness these days, had flatly refused him a private audience with the Holy Father. Pleading overwork and a full calendar, Lopez had suggested Malachi try for early December, months away. No longer consigned merely to handling official visits, Lopez’s new powers appeared to have swelled his head.
Malachi had argued the critical nature of his mission, its need for secrecy and the most serious ramifications if he were not allowed an audience. Still Lopez had held fast while gently pressing for information on the subject of his “urgent” visit. After all, Malachi’s “application papers” had not been fully filled out.
Fortunately Malachi knew from experience that the Monsignor was a bit of a gossip – no, no that was unfair! The Monsignor merely shared most of his information with Bishop Pastoni who was the biggest gossip in the Curia. It would be disastrous for any mention of the Hellspawn to surface before he could prove its existence to the Holy Father and make him aware of the dangers. He’d be damned if he’d spill the beans first to the Joan Rivers of the Holy City. Can we talk?
If word got out prematurely, there would be legions of naysayers who would leap to the fore. They would laugh at the very idea of a spiritual entity having taken bodily form to invade earth, even though they based their lives, careers and daily existence on the belief of same.
And, once they stated their positions, they would not be allowed to drift back into the woodwork, or quietly sit on the fence. Since they argued against such an occurrence, they would be expected to back up their position, to fight him and to prove the folly of such a belief.
The resulting battle would not be pleasant. Malachi’s motives and his mental capacities would be questioned. And they would conduct an aggressive campaign to discredit him. Before long they’d have Malachi firmly in bed with the UFO nuts and New Age cuckoos.
No, he had to inform the pope directly and have the active support of the Holy Father before he could reacquire his budget and quietly recommit his forces to track and destroy Adramelech. He knew the Holy Father was a no-nonsense man with an analytical mind who, once informed, made quick and irrevocable decisions. So he would have only one chance to make his case.
He sighed tiredly as he walked. Here he had the biggest spiritual bombshell in hundreds of years and he couldn’t inform his commander-in-chief because of the whim of a clerk. Of course Malachi understood the need for process and security. Unfortunately, he was also sure the refusal was mere petulance over his own reluctance to furnish a reason for his access request. Well, he thought, so much for the official route. Now he’d have to try the back staircase. Malachi was thinking of the unofficial channels which were occasionally able to by-pass the front-office screening of the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household.
Of course, he knew full well that access to the back staircase depended directly on one’s span of influence among the papal secretaries within the Curia. And, it didn’t hurt any if those in strategic positions, or those who had the ear of the Holy Father, owed you a few favors. Still he felt reasonably sure that if he brought Archbishop Bortnowaska, the pope’s personal secretary, into his confidence and convinced him of the threat, despite the new “process improvement” he could be assured of a papal audience. Bortnowaska was a fair and reasonable man.
He pondered the best approach: through an official appointment with the secretary, or should he just ensure he made contact at the Papal Mass the next morning?
He decided to wait until they sat down after Mass for the usual repast where he would ensure that he gained a seat next to Bortnowaska.
Of course, when Monsignor Lopez saw them together, he would guess immediately what Malachi was up to, so he would have to move fast. Lopez might get in a snit and find some ingenious way to head him off.
It would probably be better to tempt Bortnowaska, drop a hint of something big and ask him to attend a meeting of The Seven. Once the Archbishop was faced with a united front of Cardinal Malachi, two Bishops, a Monsignor and the three official Anti-Christ Watchers from the older orders of the Benedictines, the Franciscans and the Jesuits, and they shared their knowledge of the Hellspawn with him, he would doubtlessly act. The question was, would they get to see the old boy, or be judged mad as the proverbial hatter?
Malachi stopped for a moment and pulled a small solid-state recorder from his pocket. He made a brief note to get copies made of the ancient testaments and news clippings before he met with Bortnowaska. He hoped access to such information would soften him up for the meeting.
He resumed his trek across the square from the 1,100 room Papal Palace towards the Curia Generalizia dei Gesuite, the Jesuit headquarters where he kept his office. As he walked, he lifted his face towards the warming sun and idly wondered how Saint Peter would react to the surrounding extravagance if he were alive today.
Likely he’d be impressed...not!
~ 10 ~
“Charter 104, taxi runway 31. Wind is three ten degrees at five...altimeter thirty-one inches.” The controller’s voice was mechanical sounding and raspy with a brief bout of static. First Officer Danny Gostini keyed back an affirmative and looked over at Captain Wayne Bowden.
“Let’s go Danny old boy,” Bowden said, bringing the nose wheel around a bit as he advanced the throttles of the Airbus A320.
The 162
,000 pound airplane began to roll along the taxiway. Gostini checked off the taxiways they passed on the way to runway three one. They both watched the ND groundspeed readout to monitor taxi speed.
“What about the lights?” asked Gostini.
“The special set? Not tonight if you don’t mind. Sooner or later the FAA is gonna have our ass if we turn them on before we’re airborne and in international air space.”
The co-pilot chuckled and began the routine of the pre-takeoff checklist.
“Flaps two, Wayne,” Gostini said.
“Roger....flaps two,” Bowden answered.
“Trim four degrees, nose up, rudder zero.”
Gostini confirmed the flaps were deployed properly. “Two indicated on the screen,” he said.
“Wing and engine anti-ice off,” Bowden continued, touching a switch over his head. “Takeoff data....” he paused and his expert eyes scanned dozens of instruments including the artificial horizon, the initial altitude the flight was cleared to, and the RDMIs to make sure they were functioning properly.
“Takeoff data reviewed and set,” Bowden continued. He moved the side joystick full up and down, then full left and full right to ensure the flight controls were working correctly.
“Flight controls...check,” he said.
They droned on through the checklist as they approached runway 31 and were told by the tower they were cleared for takeoff, given departure instructions and told to intercept their enroute at thirty-five thousand feet.
Bowden called out the indicated take-off speeds from his computer display: “One four five...one five zero...one six two.”
The pilot lost no time as they swung into position. He lined up the nose wheel on the white centerline stripe as they completed the final pre-flight check.
The Plan Page 23