Anathema

by Bruce Talmas

  Fucking hell. It’s hard to find good help these days.

  “All right,” I sighed. “Take her to St. Margaret Mary’s parish. Ask for Father Vickroy. He’ll take care of things until I get there.”

  “Roger that,” he said rather cheerily, and then hung up. I didn’t ask him if he knew where it was, and I didn’t know if demons used GPS or not. I didn’t care, really, except I didn’t want him alone with Katie any longer than necessary. Not that I thought he would hurt her, I just knew that I tried to spend as little time with him as possible and assumed she would feel the same way.

  It should have taken me a little over an hour to get there, but traffic was heavy and it was closer to two hours before I pulled into the church’s lot. I didn’t risk any magic because I wasn’t sure if the unknown magician could track me from Lynch’s farmhouse, so I had to just deal with the traffic like every other asshole on the highway. By the time I got back, Barney was already there with Katie.

  Vickroy met me in the parking lot. He didn’t seem real happy to have a demon and a teenaged girl in his church.

  “Interesting friends you have there,” he said as I got out of the Camaro. “Is that yours?” he added, once he realized that there was no chance in hell that it was mine.

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” I tossed him the keys before he could respond. “You can take it for a spin if you want.”

  “No thank you,” he replied. “The Church frowns on its priests driving around in stolen vehicles.”

  “And yet they have no problem having tickle fights with…” he shot me a look that told me I shouldn’t finish that thought. “Where are they?” I asked instead.

  “Inside. They got here about an hour ago.” He thoughtful-paused on me, so I waited for the inevitable. “The girl seems nice,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “The other one…is interesting. A demon, I assume?”

  “Yeah, but that’s the least of his problems,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry about all of this. I owe you one.”

  He chuckled humorlessly. “If we’re keeping track, it’s a lot more than one.”

  “I’m a new man as of today,” I said, “so we’ll start counting from now."

  I handed him the parchment I’d found in Simon Lynch’s safe. “Can you translate that for me?” I asked him. Gaap gave me the gist of it, but if it was that important, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.

  Vickroy looked at it and frowned. “There’s probably an app for that,” he said. The words sounded absurd coming from his mouth.

  “I doubt there’s one for that,” I replied.

  I walked into the church. It was quiet. The morning light shone through the stained glass windows to give the room a reddish tinge. It bestowed an unsettling bloody quality on everything that I’d never noticed before.

  Barney was sitting on the organist’s bench looking up at the figure of Jesus on the cross while fingering the melody to “Three Little Angels.” I tried to avoid looking at the crucified figure. I’d spent enough time on crosses to know what it felt like, and I was damn sure I’d never looked that serene while doing it.

  “He was a good-looking guy,” Barney said.

  “What?”

  “Jesus. Nice hair, deep blue eyes, good bone structure. Complexion’s a little pale, but that’s probably to do with the nails.”

  “Probably,” I agreed.

  “I bet he got a lot of pussy.”

  I instinctively looked around for Father Vickroy. Thankfully he was out of earshot. “I think that could be considered sacrilegious,” I answered. “Besides, he probably didn’t look anything like that.”

  “You don’t think?”

  “I’m not saying he was a fat slob or anything, but they’ve probably taken some liberties with his appearance over the centuries.”

  Barney stopped playing the organ for a second. “Yeah, maybe. I met him once, you know.”

  “Jesus?”

  “Yeah. Nice guy. I can’t remember what he looked like, though. Two thousand years will fuck with your memory. I mean, I remember he wasn’t hideously deformed or anything, but I can’t remember if he was that pretty or not.”

  I shrugged. “I’m sure God wouldn’t send his only son and have him looking like the elephant man. It would kind of distract people from the message.”

  “Then again,” Barney said, “he could be too attractive. Like when a smoking hot chick is talking to you, but you can’t do anything but fantasize about banging her.”

  Barney had been around for a long time—even longer than I’d thought if he’d actually met Jesus—and I think he was starting to lose some of his marbles. He wasn’t like Vassago: he’d been up and down over the centuries, but it was the Vassago effect all over again. The scary part of that was I didn’t know how many marbles he’d had to begin with. I’d learned to deal with him as little as possible because he was so unstable. Unfortunately, present circumstances precluded that strategy, so I just went with it.

  “It’s different with men than it is with women,” I said, struggling to believe I was actually having this conversation. “And he was God, after all. It would take a really horny woman to fantasize about sleeping with God.”

  “Not really. Chicks dig power. Imagine how hot they would find omnipotence.”

  “I suppose so,” I said, even more surprised that I was conceding an argument to Barakiel, however ridiculous that argument might be.

  “Hmm,” Barney said. “Good talk.” He went back to playing Three Little Angels.

  “Where’s the girl?” I asked, taking the opportunity to change the subject. It was always a delicate balancing act: If I was too blatant about not wanting to talk, he would get upset and start to pout. And trust me, there was nothing worse than a pouting demon. I’d had lots of conversations like this with him, so I was pretty good at handling it. Plus, he just did me a huge favor, even if he did fuck it up royally. I didn’t want to upset him.

  “Hmm? Oh, she’s taking a nap.”

  He seemed distracted. More so than usual. “Everything okay?’ I asked.

  “No.”

  There was probably a right way to handle that situation too. I didn’t know what that was, so I just nodded. “Okay. I’m going to go talk to the girl.”

  “Okay.”

  Father Vickroy was nowhere to be seen. I went into his house and found a young man in a pressed black shirt and priest’s collar watching a rerun of ‘Jerry Springer.’ He stood up when I came into the house.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m Jacob.”

  He extended his hand in greeting. “I’m Father Pender. Father Vickroy has told me all about you.”

  I seriously doubted that. “Forgive me if I don’t shake hands,” I told him. Failing to connect my words with his proffered hand, he just stood there for a second. Finally, he retracted his hand and nodded awkwardly.

  “Where’s the girl?” I asked.

  “Uh, she’s sleeping in the bedroom. She was exhausted.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I looked at the television. The subject of the show was Are You My Baby’s Daddy? “I didn’t know you guys were allowed to watch crap like that.”

  “It reminds me how much work there is left to do in the world." He said it without missing a beat.

  I laughed. “What a load of shit.”

  He smiled ever so slightly. “Yes, that too.”

  I went back to find Katie. She was in Vickroy’s bed. She was wearing the same long nightshirt that she’d been wearing when I spoke with her on her front porch, but now she had a pair of stylish jeans with holes that were more likely painstakingly placed by a fashion designer than caused by wear and tear. She was still out cold, but I could tell from the swelling around the eyes and redness in her cheeks that she’d been crying. With all that I'd been going through recently, I forgot how much she’d had to endure in the past couple days as well.

  I decided I could talk to her later.
I just wanted to see for myself that she was still alive and well. I started backing out of the room when she stirred and opened her eyes.

  “Oh, hi.” She stretched and yawned. “When did you get here?”

  “Just now. I was just making sure you were okay. You can go back to sleep.”

  “No, I’m up now. I can’t fall asleep for more than a few minutes at a time for some reason.”

  “You want some tea,” I asked.

  She tried a smile on for size, it didn’t reach her eyes, but just making the effort had me hoping she would get over this eventually. Wishful thinking, maybe, but that was becoming a common affliction for me as of late.

  “Sure.”

  I went out to the kitchen and put the water on for tea. Father Pender must have left when I went to the bedroom. I wondered where Vickroy had gone. Maybe he'd rethought my offer to take the stolen Camaro for a spin after all. That had to be better than hanging out with a tortured demon in a church all day.

  I started to think about what I should do with Katie. She couldn’t stay in the city with everything that was going down, but I didn’t want to send her away, either. For all we knew, her father was dead and she was alone in the world. Where was she going to go?

  The teapot whistled and I poured two cups. Katie came out of the bedroom and sat in the same seat I’d occupied when I first spoke with my father the previous day.

  “So you’re idea of helping me out is to send a psychotic demon to give me a ride?” she asked. She said it so matter-of-factly that I had to think about it for a second.

  “A…a what?” I was not a very good actor. “A demon? That’s just…” She gave me a very adult-looking patronizing stare. “Fuck,” I sighed. “Yeah, I sent a psychotic demon after you. In my defense, I didn’t know he was quite that psychotic at the time.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “Hey, you’re here. You’re safe. Everything worked out.”

  “Yay. Everything’s just hunky-dory, huh?” I caught the sarcasm. “Except that my Dad’s been taken by God-knows-what and I just spent seven hours in a car with a mopy demon. Oh, not to mention that I’ve recently been held captive and…and, well, you know…And for all I know the same people that took my dad are coming after me. Sounds great, doesn’t it?” She was crying by the end of her little rant. It was a ragged, hysterical sobbing that was broken by the occasional bout of manic laughter. Pretty disturbing, really.

  “I didn’t say it was perfect,” I replied lamely, trying to bring back the smile. For some reason, it really bothered me to see her cry.

  Eventually, she got her breathing under control and the sobs subsided. Her look softened, and then her tone. Her words, though, were still pretty harsh, “Look, I appreciate all that you’ve done for me. Maybe this kind of stuff happens to you all the time and you can just shrug it off. But that’s not me, okay? I’m a sixteen year old girl. I’ve never seen a dead body until you came along, and now people are dropping like flies. I just need you to know that, for right now, I’m very fucking far from being okay. Okay?”

  I shrugged. “Fair enough.”

  “Good.” She sighed and wiped her eyes, and then it was like the breakdown had never happened. “Now tell me what you’re doing here,” she said, like she wanted in on the latest gossip during study hall. “I mean, in this city. It’s something big, isn’t it?” She leaned forward like I was about to tell her I banged the head cheerleader. Her change of mood was enough to give me whiplash.

  I couldn’t figure out how this girl did it. I felt like a beaten dog that kept coming back for more. I’d killed people for far lesser things than what she’d just said to me, yet here I was just letting her take out her frustrations on me.

  “I’m starting a war. Basically. That’s why I didn’t want you anywhere near here.”

  “I’m here now, so you’ll just have to deal. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Actually you are. You’re coming with me. There’s a safer place than this near here.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “My house,” I told her.

  She jumped to her feet, "Your house!?" Then she thought on that for a second. “Wait, I thought I wasn’t welcome there.”

  I shrugged again. What could I say? I’d changed my mind. I'd been doing a lot of that lately.

  “Yeah, well, things change.”

  Chapter 23

  I put her up in a spare room in the wing opposite my room. It reminded me a great deal of the penthouse suite at the Bellagio: elegantly expensive, yet bland and lifeless. She loved it though. In fact, she loved the whole house.

  “I can’t believe you live here!” she called out as she ran from one room to the next. After about ten minutes of that, she came back to where she began and started to go over things a second time, slower now so that she could take it all in.

  “This is by far the coolest house I’ve ever been in,” she said.

  “Glad you like it.”

  “I would never leave this place. How often do you come here?”

  “This is the third time.”

  “Ever?" She sounded like she just got punched in the gut. "How long have you owned it?”

  “I don’t know. Ten years or so.”

  She just stared at me, stunned. “That’s a crime. This place is beautiful. Look at that view!”

  We were in the library. She was staring out the same picture window I’d been looking out of when she called me from New York. It looked over the city’s skyline, now pinpoints of light since night had fallen. It could be a very beautiful city in the dark.

  “And these books,” she said as she turned away from the view to examine the room. “They must cost a fortune.”

  “They do.”

  “How rich are you?” she asked. She came from wealth, but she knew enough to see that this was on a whole different level.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Rich enough.”

  She laughed. “I’d say.”

  She started checking out the paintings. “Who’s that?”

  I looked up. It was a picture of a girl named Anna I’d painted years ago. Pictures of Anna were all I painted. It was some sort of therapy. Or penance.

  “That’s Anna.”

  “Oooh,” she squealed again, just like the sixteen-year-old girl that she was. “The love of your life?”

  “Something like that.”

  “She’s beautiful,” she said. It was true, although I’d never quite been able to capture her likeness on canvas. “Where is she now?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You didn’t kill her.”

  She didn’t bother to respond. She simply went on to the next topic of conversation based on whatever crossed her field of vision.

  And so it went like that for some time. She asked every question that popped into her head, and I answered as simply and vaguely as I could. I might have cared for the girl, but I didn’t want to be best friends with her. In fact, all I could think about was getting her as far away from me as possible.

  “You know, this is only a temporary fix,” I said finally, sitting down in an antique leather armchair in the corner. “You can’t stay here. We need to find someplace safe that you can stay.”

  “I’ll start looking for a place if I need to,” she gave me a wink, “but you can afford to set me up for a little while.”

  “True, but we need to get you out of this city.”

  “Relax.” For some reason, she bent over and gave me a peck on the forehead. It took everything I had not to pull away. “I can take care of myself.”

  I had no doubt of that, under normal circumstances. She was a tough girl, but these weren’t sexed up sixteen-year-old boys she was dealing with, these were the allied forces of Hell. A kick to the groin wasn’t going to stop Belial, however satisfying that might be.

  “I’m not saying you can’t, but things are going to get very dangerous. By this time tomorrow, this place cou
ld be a warzone.

  “You’ll figure something out,” she said.

  Everyone seemed to have complete, unwarranted faith in my abilities. I was getting really sick of that.

  ********

  Once Katie made herself at home in my spare bedroom, I took a shower. My previous night’s trek through the woods, not to mention laying on a barn floor and spending a night in Hell, had condemned my clothes to the dumpster, but I didn’t have it in me to trash the coat. It smelled like I’d been at an all-day luau and that I'd been the one on the spit, but that coat and I had been through a lot. I could be sentimental if I wanted to be. Truth be told, I was getting used to smelling like dirt and smoke, but I could tell from Katie that the smell was pretty pungent. I might have to bite the bullet and take it to the dry cleaners.

  When I came back down the steps, Barney was holding court in the kitchen with a bottle of wine and a plate of cheese and crackers. I hadn’t wanted to bring him along, but leaving him at the church would have required way too much explaining and apologizing to Father Vickroy. I didn’t know where he found the cheese and crackers, but they had to be well past their due date if he found them in this house. Oh well, he was a demon: he’d live. I had brought him with us as an added layer of protection for when I had to leave the house, but I doubted his ability to protect anything more than the bottle of wine he was holding in his hand. He seemed depressed, so I just let him be. Whatever was eating at him could wait until later.

  Katie was reading a first-edition Dostoevsky in my library when I returned. She looked up when I came in and frowned. “Did you change?” she asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Because you look exactly the same.”

  I looked down at myself: black shirt, jeans, black boots, and an overcoat. Everything was identical to what I’d been wearing before; they just didn’t stink like Lucifer’s armpit.

  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” I told her.

  “Fine, if you want to look like a sleazebag, that’s your business.”

  It wasn’t really the look I was going for, but I had bigger fish to fry.