Anathema

by Bruce Talmas

  Chapter 14

  I went home.

  The house was a large Victorian that overlooked the city from Mount Washington. I couldn’t remember where I’d hid the key. I had demon memory, but even that didn’t help for a trivial detail from years ago. I’d only been in the house twice since I bought the place, and the last time had been eight years ago. I recited a Discovery spell that led me to a loose stone in the wall that ran the length of the short drive. The key had to be worked into the lock a little, but it finally clicked open. I pushed the heavy wooden door inward and then followed it inside.

  The place was fully furnished. It had all sorts of paintings and magical talismans on the walls, and the library was fully stocked with a rare book collection that could rival that of any private collection in the U.S. The Book of Raziel alone was priceless. I had three copies. One was given to me by the Angel Raziel himself as a housewarming gift—through an intermediary, of course—because I did him a solid. He also worked an Unseeing over the property, which meant that to any magic user in the world, this house simply didn’t exist. There were no Wards or any other signs of magic; it simply didn’t exist. It gave me a rare peace of mind, knowing that. But it also made me leery about ever coming here when it wasn’t an absolute necessity. An Unseeing worked to perfection, but only as long as no one actually saw me enter the building. That would break the spell and make it just another house on the hill.

  The library also contained a Bosendorfer grand piano that was worth over a hundred grand. I could almost feel guilty about keeping these treasures locked up in a property that was never used. Almost. If I didn’t own it, then some wealthy douchebag who probably spent money to go hunt baited lions in Africa would. The way I saw it, I was doing the world a service.

  In fact, I owned a handful of properties around the world that were all similarly furnished. Most of them were used only once or twice a year…when I needed to get away from it all.

  The clash of familiar surroundings in an unfamiliar place produced a strange sensation in me. I felt like an astronaut coming back from an extended deep-space mission to a home that had been decorated by a stranger who knew my tastes but not me personally. Everything seemed vaguely familiar, but that familiarity was generic, and only served to heighten the unsettling feeling that I was an intruder in my own home.

  A few minutes of searching led me to the wine cellar; I grabbed a bottle of merlot and went upstairs to the library. Scrolling through a few of the titles I had in stock, I made a mental list of the ones I’d like to read if I didn’t die first, then sat at the piano and fiddled around while staring out the window at the city below. Somewhere along the line I found myself playing Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, surprised to see that my fingers still knew the piece even if my mind did not. I made it through all three movements without a hitch. Even in childhood, I’d had an innate musical ability. It had always disturbed me that I didn’t know where it came from. Could demons play the piano? The human side of me was horrified at the thought.

  The piano began to bore me, so I got up and stared out the window for a long time. A foreign feeling came over me, and I realized with some surprise that I was bored. Not in a bad way. Not in the way that causes mothers all over the world to yell ‘then go outside and play.’ It was a very soothing feeling. To know that there was nowhere I had to be and nothing I had to do, at least for tonight. Sure, I could be in the middle of a warzone as soon as tomorrow, but for one night I could just be. The few hours of sleep I’d gotten in Vegas would keep me going for a while longer, so I didn’t even have to worry about going to Hell tonight. I tried not to think about the fact that there was a distinct possibility that the next time I went to Hell, it would be a permanent stay.

  Maybe I could just stay here the rest of my life. Sure, they’d find me eventually, but I’d probably live longer than if I left the house. Wouldn’t a few months of great literature, art, and music…not to mention a cellar full of fine wine, be preferable to a bloody death at the hands of Belial or one of his minions? I enjoyed the thought of it, so why dismiss it so quickly? Was I that bound to my fate? Just a glutton for eternal punishment?

  For some reason I began humming Ode to Joy. I must have been in a Beethoven kind of mood. Then I realized it was the ringtone on my cell phone. I didn’t use it that much, and I didn’t recognize the number, but not answering wouldn’t have been smart. With all the goings-on happening around me lately, ignoring a phone call could prove fatal. I answered it.

  “Hello.”

  “Jacob?” A woman’s voice, but too young to be Cassandra, whom I’d been expecting to call since I arrived in the city.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Katie.”

  It took me a moment. “Oh. Hi.”

  “I need your help.” I could tell she’d been crying. She might still be crying, but she was trying to stifle it.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “I’m on the run. I…I don’t know where I am now.”

  “I just brought you back home. What the hell are you running away for?”

  “They came for my father,” she said through her sobs. “They took him. I think they killed Sam.” Her voice was rising. She was getting hysterical, more so than when I rescued her from Jeung. I didn’t understand what she was saying. I vaguely remembered that Sam had been one of the bodyguards that first greeted us when I returned Katie to her father.

  “Who were they?”

  There was silence as she choked down her panic. She took a couple of deep breaths before going on, “I don’t know. They used magic. Like my father, only stronger. Stronger than anything I’ve ever seen.”

  If this was Belial’s doing, then there was no doubt that Charles Silva was either dead or very soon would be. Telling his teenaged daughter didn’t seem the best way to keep the peace, even to my untrained ear, so instead I asked, “Do you have someplace safe to stay?”

  “No, there’s nowhere to go. I’m underage and don’t have any money, so I can’t get a room anywhere. I need you to come get me.”

  My first thought was that this could be a trap, but I didn’t think she would be so convincing if she were being forced to do this by someone. Still, I didn’t want her being anywhere near me for the foreseeable future.

  “What? Uh, No.”

  “Why not?”

  The real answer: Because I’m about to start a war with a bunch of demons and maybe an Angel or two, and probably some truly twisted individuals to boot.

  My answer: “You just can’t.”

  “You said I could come to you for anything.”

  Crap. She had me there. “There’s got to be someplace for you to go. Just for a few days. A relative or a friend’s house?”

  “No. I don’t have any family in New York, and I’m not going to a friend’s house. You said I could call you if I needed you.”

  “Yeah. Call me. Not come crash at my place.”

  She was silent for a while. I thought maybe she was crying, but she was doing it very quietly if she was.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  I looked at the Pittsburgh skyline from my window. Moments ago, that view had calmed me. Now, suddenly, I wasn’t bored anymore. So much for my “Me Time.”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “So you’re just going to leave me out here with the wolves? In the street? That’s great.” Now she was giving me a guilt trip on top of everything else.

  “No, I’m not going to leave you out there,” I said. “Where are you right now?”

  “Long Island.”

  “How’d you get to Long Island?” That was a long way from Silva’s estate.

  “I drove.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know…”

  “I know how to drive,” she interrupted. “It’s illegal, but I can do it.”

  “Okay. Find someplace public. Somewhere that’s open all night.”

  “There’s an all-night diner a few blocks from here.”

  “Perfe
ct, give me the name and address.” It took her a minute, but she read out the street signs around her to give me an idea of where she was.

  “Okay. Stay there and sit tight. I’m sending someone to get you.”

  She started to say something, but I hung up on her and started scrolling through my phone to see if there was anyone I could send. The first one I thought of I knew would be in New York, but I really didn’t want to do that to her. I got to the end of my phone list without any other viable candidates. With things the way they were, I had to send someone that I could trust completely. He fit that category, but was wrong for the job in every other possible way.

  With no other option, I called him up. The phone rang four times before he answered.

  “Yeah.” He sounded angry.

  “Barakiel? Where are you?” There was a lot of noise in the background.

  “At a strip club.”

  Of course. “I mean what city?”

  “New York. Where else would I fucking be?”

  “I need your help,” I said. Barakiel was a minor Fallen, and he was technically under my command, so he was beholden to me. I thought of him first because, as per our bond, he couldn’t betray me even if he wanted to, which made him anathema to all the other demons. I think he held it against me that he’d become a pariah among our kind, but he never explicitly told me so. He was too passive-aggressive for that.

  I explained the situation: that I was in Pittsburgh and didn’t know anyone else I could trust with such an important task. He listened without interrupting, which had always been one of his strengths.

  “I could be in Long Island in a half hour if I left now,” he said when I was finished. His tone suggested he was planning to hang out at the club a little while longer.

  “Well then go. And call me when you get there.”

  “Fine,” he said, and hung up on me.

  I did not feel good about this plan at all. I had never asked Barakiel to do anything for me, even though I could have made him my personal slave if I wanted to. Understandably, he wasn’t real keen on this whole pissing-off-the-devil scheme of mine, so we had reached an unspoken agreement that he would lay low, and I wouldn’t ask anything of him that would put him in further hot water with The Man Downstairs. It was an agreement I’d just broken. Desperate times called for desperate measures, I told myself, but I couldn’t even convince myself of that. I hadn’t spoken to Barakiel in years, and his sanity had always been questionable to begin with. I just hoped I wasn’t making a huge mistake.

  I had told Katie that I wouldn’t leave her out with the wolves, and that was the truth. The problem was that I’d just sent one of the wolves to pick her up.

  Chapter 15

  Barakiel called me an hour later to tell me the girl was safe. I thanked him for his service and told him to put her on the phone.

  “Hey, it’s me,” she said.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Good. Hole up somewhere safe. My friend’s going to watch over you until this has all blown over.”

  “Okay.” She waited a beat. “Hey Jacob?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “Put Barakiel back on the phone.” I didn’t want her getting emotional on me. Although she seemed to be holding it together well, I could hear in her voice how close she was to losing it. Barakiel wasn’t the best traveling companion for someone in her state.

  “Yeah?” His gruff voice jolted me after talking to Katie.

  “Barakiel, watch over her like a hawk. Kill anything that tries to touch her.”

  “No problem,” he answered. “And by the way, call me Barney. No one calls me Barakiel anymore.”

  I almost told him how ridiculous that sounded, but he was incredibly sensitive for a demon.

  “Sure. Whatever you want.”

  ********

  After I knew Katie was safe, I was able to regain some of my Zen calmness. Not all of it, but enough to relax with a few more glasses of wine and take a look around the house. I added the Masamune to my sword collection, surprised by some of the items that had been kept hidden all these years, waiting for the moment when and if I’d be back to admire them. There were some potent talismans on display. Magical items that, in the hands of the right person, could wreak havoc. Like with everything else I owned, I would almost have been ashamed of keeping such wonders to myself, except I knew the damage they could cause in the wrong hands. Better for them to sit and gather dust here, away from those with the knowledge and willingness to use them for their intended purpose.

  I only realized I’d been up through the night when sunlight streamed in through the window and broke me from my reverie. I watched the flaming ball of gas clear the city’s horizon, thinking about the razor’s edge human existence walked every day. Any closer to that blazing star, and we would burn up. Any farther away, we’d freeze to death. We were in the Goldilocks Zone, as they called it. Just the right distance for human life. We faced infinite probabilities like that every day. Leave the house ten minutes early, get hit by a bus. Leave ten minutes late, get fired from work. Leave at just the right time, and you’re the billionth Starbucks customer when you buy your morning coffee and get a billion dollars or free coffee forever. Life was funny like that.

  But I didn’t need a billion dollars, or coffee, or to be hit by a bus, for that matter. I didn’t have a job, or anything else to tie me to this world. So why was I suddenly thinking of mankind as ‘us?’ I’d never thought in those terms before; it made me uncomfortable.

  My boredom had quickly devolved into unease. I was antsy and, despite having only been there for a short time, I needed to get out of the house.

  After a quick shower and shave, I put on my best Sunday clothes—which just happened to be the clothes I’d recently purchased in Vegas. It was Sunday, and I was about fifteen years overdue for Confession.

  ********

  The church of St. Margaret Mary’s was in the rundown part of Lawrenceville. The building itself was old, but it had undergone remodeling since I’d seen it last. They had expanded the church to house about a hundred more people. A new coat of paint and a new lighted sign at the street made the message of the Lord that much easier to receive. I had to laugh, though. Of all the verses in the bible, the Old Man had chosen the shortest one. Big block letters had been arranged to spread the word:

  JESUS WEPT

  I had to hand it to him: he didn’t sugarcoat things. In this godforsaken part of town, the message seemed even more appropriate. And judging from the recently-expanded church, people were still flocking to hear his message.

  It was always tough to tell with Catholics though. Sometimes they spent money simply because people were willing to give it. They had that in common with government. The government can only punish you in this world though; the Church had one up on them there.

  I went in through one of the side entrances. A number of people were scattered along the far wall, either waiting to give their confessions or doing penance for the confessions they’d just given. As I watched them, I thought that if you could serve your penance within ten minutes after giving your confession, you were wasting your time. I’d needed ten years and I was only scratching the surface.

  I cut through the pews rather than walk all the way around the back of the church. As I got to the far wall, the door to the confessional opened up and an older gentleman walked out. I stepped in front of the old woman who was next in line.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll add it to my list.”

  I closed the door and sat down next to one of those old-fashioned grates that obscured but didn’t completely hide the face on the other side.

  “Welcome,” Father Vickroy said from the other side of the wall. My father’s voice, although I’d never called him “Father.” “Old Man” was as close as I could ever come, but that was enough for him.

  His voice had taken on a thinner and huskier quality in
the decade I’d been gone, but it still carried weight. He cleared his throat and asked, “How long has it been since your last Confession?”

  It was disorienting to hear him after all these years. I had to fight to find my own voice, surprised by how it affected me. “Uh…it’s been a long time.”

  “Give me a rough guess,” he said. I could tell he was smiling. Some things never changed. I could always tell when he was smiling simply from the sound of his voice.

  “Fifteen years? Somewhere around there.”

  “Wow. That is a long time. And what sins have you committed in that time?”

  I thought about that. Wouldn’t that be a treat to confess all of the things I’d done since I’d been gone and just have all my sins washed away? It wasn’t very practical, though. Half the people waiting outside would be dead by the time I finished.

  “Can we just go over the ones I didn’t do? It might save some time.”

  He laughed. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that,” he said.

  “Oh no, it really is,” I said, then added, “Old Man.” When I said it, it sounded almost like a question, even though I hadn’t meant it to. Like I was just testing out the title to see if he would respond.

  There was silence from the other side of the confessional, but I could feel his heart rate shoot up as the realization set in.

  “Jacob?” He said it like a question. Like he was testing the name to see if I’d respond.

  “Yeah.”

  I heard the rustle of his robes as he came around the far side and opened the door between the two tiny rooms. He looked so much older than he had when I left. Smaller somehow.

  “Jacob!” He grabbed me in a tight embrace. “I don’t believe it! You have no idea! How I’ve prayed for this day!”