by Edward Lee
Nothing.
I'm going to kick some ass today, he thought, riled. Fuckers are asleep at the switch. But fifteen minutes later, he was pulling into the station and noticed all three responding cruisers parked in the lot. Well, at least they've already got Dougie back. They're probably securing him in the cell now.
Berns strode in to the station.
The booking desk stood empty. "Sergeant Naylor!" he bellowed at once. "You better have a good reason for not being at the desk!"
Bern stood still. No one appeared from the file room; in fact, nothing could be heard in the station. There should be eight or ten cops in this place right now! He looked behind the desk-
"Oh my God ...
The booking sergeant lay crumpled behind the desk, a pulpy red crater in the side of his head.
Somebody capped him....
Berns drew his gun, struggled through a sudden tightness in his chest, and proceeded down the hall.
The cop in the property room sat slumped at his desk, a fan of blood and brains splattering the wall behind him.
Dougie Jones, Berns thought and ran toward the lock up.
Another cop lay head-shot in the hall. The air seemed static; hairs rose on the back of Berns' neck when he stepped into the jail and found three more cops lying dead on the floor. Their brains had all been blown out.
"No, no, no," Berns groaned.
The jail cell that should've been occupied by Dougie Jones stood empty.
Chapter Seventeen
m
"It's called a Hand of Glory," Alexander explained, "a fairly notorious Power Relic." He held up Voluptua's severed hand. "Used to be a standard discantation would activate it, but only if it was the hand of someone good."
"Well that ain't her, according to you," Ruth pointed out. She sat huddled with him amid some ill-smelling yellow bushes, just a block from Fortress Boniface. This close, the scarlet castle looked as impenetrable as it did immense. What if they don't let me in? she fretted.
The priest admired the grotesque hand as though it were a unique gadget. "No, Voluptua was an atrocious person, a hater of God, and a servant to the most unholy lust. But I have brand-new Celestial Enchantment that will make this thing work better than they ever have in the past. I got it from-"
"Your intelligence source," Ruth broke in.
"Right
"So what's this thing do?" She looked at the hand with skepticism. "It's a fuckin' cut-off hand."
Alexander's gaze sparkled. "It'll make me invisible."
"Bullshit," Ruth smirked.
She didn't like the way he smiled after her remark. Next he struck a match and roved the flame back and forth under the fingertips. To Ruth's amazement, each tip began to bum like a candle. "That's a neat trick," she said.
"Not as neat as this," he muttered as he pulled up his black shirt. He seemed to be inspecting his navel.
"Checking for lint?" she asked.
His finger trailed over the many cursive scars that now embellished his skin. "Here it is!" Then he recited, "Um God per me invisus viflamma." He grinned at Ruth.
"What?" she retorted. "I'm supposed to be impressed?"
"Come on, Ruth, I'm invisible."
Ruth laughed good and hard. "You tool! It doesn't work!"
"Oh, I forgot, the umbric perimeter. Move back a few feet."
Ruth slid back over fallen leaves that looked like pieces of dead skin. One foot, two feet, three, then-
Father Alexander vanished.
"You gotta be fuckin' shitting me, man."
"Told you. And it'll last a long time with that new enchantment," his voice floated from nowhere.
Hand of Glory, Ruth mused. I could've made a lot of money in Florida with one of those.
"All you've got to do is approach the gate," the priest said, "and they'll open it. I'll follow you in. But first I need to tell you the rest."
"The rest?" Ruth didn't exactly revel in the sound of that.
"What you need to do once inside." His voice hovered around the bushes.
God, I wish I had a cigarette. But Ruth figured it was time to get serious. "It's got something to do with this chick you've been talking to on the horn, right?" she said.
"Venetia Barlow, yes. Venetia's not your typical twentyone-year-old girl. She has a special attribute-she's a Chastitant, which means, one, she's a virgin-"
"Wow," Ruth remarked, impressed.
"wand, two, she possesses a state of corrupted perfection. Her desire to be Godly nullifies her capacity for evil."
Ruth sighed. "I'm not following you, as always."
"Don't worry about it." The priest's voice sounded aggravated. "For five thousand years, Lucifer has dedicated his existence toward one goal, and that is to achieve some sort of passage from the Living World to Hell, and vice versa, and he's succeeded in a number of waysincarnation, subcamation, spatial transposition, interstitial egression-but none of these methods effect a permanent exchange ... until now. His Warlocks and Bio-Wizards have devised a technique known as Involutionary Redeposition. It involves intricate occultized oblations here and on Earth."
"Oblations?"
"Sacrifices. In other words. Lucifer wants to bring Venetia into Hell, and it's Boniface's job to do it for him."
"What's Lucifer want with Venetia?" A notion finally sparked in Ruth's head. "He wants to pop her cherry?"
Alexander groaned. "No, Ruth. He wants to bring her here by sending six defiled angels there first. One second later, over twenty years will have passed. Remember what I told you about time in Hell?"
Ruth rolled her eyes. "How could I forget that confusing shit?"
"In a little while, Boniface will initiate an Involutionary Redeposition in his courtyard, which will transport six insane angles to Earth. One second later, acolytes of the Devil on Earth will initiate their own Redeposition, which will transport Venetia here."
Ruth frowned. "And in that second, twenty years go by?"
"Roughly, yes."
"So then this Venetia chick goes from Earth to Hell. What then?"
"She'll be imprisoned and taken to Lucifer for Infernal Conditioning and Indoctrination. Because of her Chastitant status, Lucifer can corrupt her and turn all of her inborn Godliness into pure evil. He'll be able to use her as a weapon against all of his enemies in Hell. It would be the equivalent of giving nuclear bombs to terrorists in the Middle East. This is serious business, Ruth."
Satan can use her as a weapon? Ruth's mind ticked. "So that's it. Our job is to knock her off when she gets here, or fuck-up this Involution whatchamacallit so she doesn't get here."
"No," the faceless voice said. "But that's a good guess. It's our job to make sure she arrives here safely, at a place underground called the Lower Chancel. In it there's this slab of rock called a Pith. That's the Dolmen-or platform-on which the Angels are moved from Hell to Earth and Venetia is moved from Earth to Hell."
Ruth winced. "On a fuckin' rock?"
Alexander sighed. "It's a magic rock, Ruth, okay? A magic rock."
Should've fuckin' known. His sarcasm pissed her off. "Look, man. I don't know what the fuck any of this shit is you're talking about. All I do know is I get to get out of here in a thousand years if we pull it off. So let's just go do it, and you tell me the rest of the funky shit along the way."
Alexander's faceless voice sounded relieved. "Excellent idea. And on that note ..."
Ruth stepped back into the umbric perimeter; Alexander was pointing the Moon-Sextant upward.
"Time to go to the fortress?" Ruth asked with some unease.
"Not quite yet. There's only one more thing to do."
Ruth sighed. "What's that?"
"Adopt a baby," the priest told her.
(II)
Even with ten live cops in the station now, it still sounded silent as a morgue. Berns had given his report to a state deputy chief named Moxey, who seemed young for the high rank and brawny as a fullback. "Six dead cops, but only five of them had their se
rvice pieces in their proximity."
"Which means Dougie Jones lifted one of them," Berns lamented.
"This isn't looking too good for you, Captain." The snide deputy chief looked back blank-faced. "This might be the worst police massacre in East Coast history."
"Tell me about it." Berns leaned against the booking desk as the six dead officers were taken out on stretchers. "I figured Jones wrong. Thought he was just a dumb fanatic punk."
"This was organized. He must've had an accomplice waiting around the station, which is damn near impossible."
"Not damn near. It is impossible," Berns insisted. "There's no way Jones could've contacted an accessory to let them know he'd been busted."
Moxey snorted. "Captain, somebody shot six veteran cops in the head. There's no way Jones could've pulled that off himself, even if he'd had a piece hidden on him." A glare. "You frisked him, didn't you?"
I ought to punch this asshole in the face, then quit. Fuck it. "He was frisked five or six times. He wasn't hiding a piece." Berns struggled not to shout.
"Got the playback loaded up, sir," " a tech guy said from the security office. They walked back to the small room full of TV screens.
"Here comes the moment of truth, Captain," Moxey sniped to Berns then, to the technician, "Roll'em."
He was playing back the surveillance tapes. "Screen One's the booking room, two is the hall, three's the jail anteroom," the tech said, and pushed a button. Berns watched the grainy screens and saw two cops taking a handcuffed Dougie past the front desk, where the booking sergeant sat. The sergeant smirked. They passed the property room, where another cop looked up from his desk, moved down the hall on the second screen past a third cop, then passed three more police waiting in the jailway on the third screen.
"Nun killer, huh?" one cop remarked. The cell door swung open. "Takes a tough man to kill a nun."
"You pigs can kiss my ass," Dougie said, smirking. "Come on, uncuff me." Then another cop shoved him.
"Shut up, punk. Big bad Satanist. What's the matter, your mommy lock you in a closet when you were little?" a cop said, then shoved Dougie again.
"Hey, that's assault! I got my rights!" Jones complained. All five cops chuckled.
Now the biggest cop unlocked Dougie's cuffs and prepared to put him in the cell. "You got anything to say, shithead?"
Dougie turned, grinning, before the cell door could be closed. "The only thing I've got to say to you ... is this: Stekk ceffaen mzeluum eoziforus ... "
Berns felt a knot in his gut. The screen jiggled a little; the camera was looking down from a high corner, and he could see the backs of all three police in the hall. They all just stood there, as if looking at Dougie.
One at a time, each cop calmly withdrew his service revolver, put it to his own head, and-
Berns flinched, gritting his teeth. Moxey rubbed his eyes. The three shots sounded unreal over the reproduction, and the muzzle flashes momentarily whited-out the screen. Two more shots were heard from the hall and property room.
Berns' eyes darted to the first screen. The booking sergeant looked drugged. Then he put his gun to his head and squeezed the trigger.
Dougie walked out to the booking room. He seemed to fiddle with something on the desk, then took the sergeant's gun. Was he whistling a tune? Lastly, he winked up at the camera and left the building.
"Holy mother of God," Moxey muttered. That accusatory edge to his voice was gone.
"There's our accomplice," Berns said, still in disbelief. "No accomplice. Multiple suicide."
Moxey's lower lip trembled. "Captain Berns. How do you account for what we just saw?"
"Well, if I didn't know better, I'd say that Dougie Jones, a self-proclaimed Satanist, just initiated some kind of occult spell that made six of my cops blow their own heads off."
"That's ridiculous, Captain-"
"I know, sir. So how do you account for it?"
Moxey stared. "I-I-I ... I can't."
Don't think about it, don't think about it, Berns reinforced over and over. It's impossible, so don't try to figure it out. He didn't believe in the occult; he only believed that other people did. Delusional people. Crazy people.
Instead, he stuck to objective tasks. He put out an immediate APB for Douglas B. Jones, and also sent his picture to every newspaper and television station in the region. Now he sat in his makeshift office at the substation, which had been restaffed by more county cops from Manchester. The bodies were all gone now, and the evidence section was finishing up.
Still, the atmosphere of death clung to the air. "I'm going out for coffee-be right back," he said, and walked out.
Four girls in bikinis traipsed down the boardwalk, but Berns didn't notice. An old man in a stained raincoat and rotten sneakers shuffled by, searching garbage cans. A dirty hand stuck out.
"God spake that charity will be rewarded in Heaven," the wizened voice begged.
Berns, oblivious, shrugged and gave him five bucks.
"May the Lord keep you and bless you," " the old man creaked, and shuffled away.
He sure as shit didn't bless me today.
His cell phone ringing in his pocket gave him a jolt. uN- xNowN NUMBER, the screen read. Berns answered it anyway. "Berns here."
"Hey, Captain..." The voice sounded as wiry as the description of the caller. "How'd you like my work back at your rinky-dink station?"
Berns suddenly felt melted to the bench he occupied. "Where are you, Dougie?"
"You'll find out but by then I'll be long gone." Then a laugh.
Berns' throat turned as dry as the sidewalk. "How'd you do it? I saw the security tapes." In the background he heard motor noise. Bus station? Airport? he wondered.
"You know how I did it, Captain." Dougie sounded as cocky as Freddie Johnson.
Berns stood and snapped, "What? The Involution, Eosphorus? Some Satanic shit like that!" He yelled, "Level with me!"
"You did a pretty good job." Dougie cracked a laugh. "But not good enough. That's why I'm moving on, taking our business somewhere else."
Passersby gaped as Berns stood red-faced, blaring into the phone: "How'd you do it? What? Don't say it was some Satanic spell, Dougie! Don't say it was some voodoo fucking bullshit!"
A reserved titter. "It was a Self-Annihilation Hex, Captain-"
"Bullshit!"
"But don't worry. I can only do one. I'm just an Underling. Freddie was the Myrmidon. When he martyred himself for Iblis and the Exalted Duke Boniface, some of his wisdom came over to me. It's a piece of work, Captain ... when you're a believer. But the Hex was nothing. Know what else I inherited? The Power of Unholy Decryption. Now I can read the Intercessions myself."
"Don't give me that fucking occult bullshit, Dougie!" Berns screamed.
"And I have the copy, since that night we burgled Freddie's room at the Wharfside on Fifth-"
Berns' eyes shot wide. "Yeah, Dougie, and I have the original! Sue Maitland said they were instructions! Instructions for what? More nun murders? More sacrifices?"
"We call them Involutionary Oblations, Captain."
"And what language is it written in? Some gobbledygook Satan language you made up with your little devil club?"
Another titter. "Oh, you want to know so you can have it translated, huh? Well, you know what, Captain? Today's your lucky day. The Intercessions are written in Zraetic."
u 11h at?"
Dougie roared laughter. "And don't hold your breath trying to find someone who knows it. I gotta split, Captain. I just jacked me a car off a pretty hot babe, had some fun with her, too-after I blew her head off with the gun I pinched from one of your guys-"
"Don't you hang up, Dougie!"
"You wanna know why you'll never catch me, Captain? 'Cos you don't believe in anything-"
"Don't hang up!"
"Hail Boniface-"
"Dougie!" Berns screamed.
"Praise be to Lucifer-"
Then Dougie hung up.
(HI)
"Pr
aise be to God," Dan said with a great grin after Venetia told him what had happened at the convenience store.
"Amen," Mrs. Newlwyn agreed. "The Lord, indeed, watches over His flock."
The three of them said a short prayer of thanks in the atrium. But Venetia was still shaking.
"I just can't believe it," she said. "And Captain Berns thinks the case is over now." Through the high, narrow windows, the sunset approached. I just came very close to never seeing one again ... "I can't wait to tell Father Driscoll."
"Where is he?"
"I haven't seen him all day," Dan said. "But I know he said he had to go to the diocese."
"Well, he must be back-his car's out front."
Dan nodded. "He's around someplace. This morning he told me to set up the buffer to make sure it's working. For some reason it's my duty alone to buff the entire atrium floor tomorrow. But Driscoll never told me where the buffer was."
"I'll-I'll show you," John offered, crossing the atrium with some paint buckets. "It's upstairs in storage."
"Thanks." Then Dan caught Venetia's eye. "I'm going into town later tonight, if you want to come along."
That's his way of inviting me to that awful bar again, she realized. He just doesn't want to say it in front of Mrs. Newlwyn. "I'll pass tonight, Dan."
"Whatever. See you all later," Dan said to everyone, and followed John.
Mrs. Newlwyn seemed puzzled. "It seems that Father Driscoll isn't the only one who's made himself scarce."
"What's that, Mrs. Newlwyn?"
"I haven't seen Betta, either. She's been acting rather secretive lately."
Venetia held her tongue. She's probably taking a nap 'cos she doesn't get much sleep at night. Ask John about that. "I'm going to look for Father Driscoll. If I see Betta, I'll tell her you want her."
"Thank you, dear." The tall woman made for the kitchen, leaving Venetia in the darkening atrium. She wandered, checking the downstairs offices. What do I tell Mom about this Dougie Jones business? She dreaded the question.
Fatigue caught up quickly. Part of her wanted to take a nap; the terrifying ordeal at the store had sapped her. But still she felt impelled to look around. Every office she checked was musty and unoccupied. As she continued, she contemplated her strange encounter with the priorturned-bum Father Whitewood. Wish I hadn't lost that note, she thought. But he was just a nutty old man. The murders last spring must've pushed him over the edge, poor man.