The Black Angel

by John Connolly

  “I hear her at night. I thought at the start that it was someone in the building, but when I went outside the apartment to check, I couldn’t hear her no more. It was only inside. I only hear her when there’s nobody else around. It’s her voice, except it’s not alone. There are other voices with it, so many of them, and they’re all calling different names. She calls mine. It’s hard to understand her, because someone doesn’t want her calling out. It didn’t matter to him at first, because he thought nobody cared about her, but now he knows better. He wants her to stay quiet. She’s dead, but she keeps calling out, like she’s got no peace. She cries all the time. She’s afraid. They’re all afraid.

  “And I knew then that maybe it was no coincidence that you found Angel and me either, or that we found you. I don’t understand everything that goes on with you, but I do know this: whatever happened was meant to come to pass, and we’re all involved. It’s always been waiting in the shadows, and none of us can walk away from it. There’s no blame to be laid at your door. I know that now. Sure, there are other women who could have been taken, but what then? They’d have disappeared, and it would be their voices calling, but there would be no one to hear them, and no one would care. This way, we heard, and we came.”

  At last, he turned back to me, and the woman in the night faded away.

  “I want her to stop crying,” he said, and I could see clearly the lines upon his face and the tiredness in his eyes. “I want them all to stop crying.”

  Walter Cole called me on my cell that night. I had spoken to him before we left, and had told him as much as I knew.

  “You sound a million miles away,” he said, “and if I were you, I’d keep it that way. Just about everyone you’ve ever talked to on this thing is dead, and pretty soon people are going to start looking for you to answer some questions. Some of this you may not want to hear. Neddo’s dead. Someone cut him up badly. It might have been torture in order to gain information, except there was a rag stuffed in his mouth, so even if he had something to give up, he wouldn’t have been able to speak. That’s not the worst of it, either. Reid, the monk who spoke with you, was stabbed to death outside a bar in Hartford. The other monk phoned it in, then disappeared. Cops want to talk to him too, but either his order is protecting him or they really don’t know where he is.”

  “Do the cops think he did it? If they do, they’re wrong.”

  “They just want to talk to him. There was blood on Reid’s mouth, and it wasn’t his own. Unless it matches Bartek’s, then he’s probably in the clear. It looks like Reid bit whoever killed him. The blood sample has been fast-tracked to a private lab. They’ll get the results in a day or two.”

  I already knew what they would find: old, corrupted DNA. And I wondered if Reid’s voice had now joined Alice’s in that dark place from which Brightwell’s victims called out for release. I thanked Walter, then hung up and returned to my vigil upon the ossuary.

  Sekula arrived on the morning of the second day. He didn’t come alone. There was a driver who waited behind the wheel of the gray Audi, and Sekula entered the ossuary in the company of a small man in jeans and a sailor’s coat. After thirty minutes, they came out and took the stairs up to the chapel. They didn’t stay there long.

  “Checking out the alarm,” said Angel, as we watched them from the hotel. “The little guy is probably the expert.”

  “How good is it?” I asked.

  “I took a look at it yesterday. Not good enough to keep them out. Doesn’t even look like it’s been upgraded since the last break-in.”

  The two men emerged from the chapel and walked around the perimeter of the building, then headed back to the Audi and drove away.

  “We could have followed them,” said Louis.

  “We could,” I said, “but what would have been the point? They have to come back.”

  Angel was pulling at his lower lip.

  “How soon?” I asked.

  “Me, I’d get it done as soon as possible if the alarm wasn’t a problem. Tonight, maybe.”

  It felt right. They would come, and we would know everything.

  There was a small courtyard beside the U Balanu store across the street from the ossuary that doubled as an outdoor area for the restaurant during the summer. It was an easy matter to gain entry to it, and that was where Louis took up position shortly after dusk the following evening. I was in the hotel room, where I could get a good overview of all that was taking place. Louis and I had agreed that we would make no move alone. Angel was in the cemetery. There was a small shed with a red-tiled roof to the left of the ossuary. Its windows were broken, but guarded by black steel grates. At one time it might have functioned as the gravedigger’s cottage, but it now contained just slates, bricks, planks of wood, and one very cold New Yorker.

  My cell phone was switched to vibrate. All was silence, apart from the distant growl of passing cars. And so we waited.

  The gray Audi arrived shortly after nine. It made one full circuit of the block, then parked on Starosedlecka. It was followed minutes later by a second, black Audi and a nondescript green truck, its tires thick with accumulated mud and the gold lettering along its body faded and unreadable. Sekula got out of the first car, accompanied by the little alarm specialist and a second figure wearing black trousers and a calf-length hooded coat. The hood was up, for the temperature had dropped considerably that day. Even Sekula was identifiable only by his height, as a scarf covered his mouth, and he wore a black knitted cap on his head.

  Three people emerged from the second vehicle. One was the charming Miss Zahn. She didn’t seem troubled by the cold. Her coat was open and her head was uncovered. Given the temperature of what was running in her veins, the night probably felt a little balmy to her. The second person was a white-haired man whom I did not recognize. He had a gun in his hand. The third was Brightwell. He was still wearing the same beige clothes. Like Miss Zahn, the cold didn’t appear to bother him unduly. He walked back to the truck and spoke to one of the two men inside. It looked like they were planning to transport the statue if they found it.

  The two men climbed down from the cab and followed Brightwell to the back of the truck. Once the door was opened, two more men climbed out, swaddled in layers of clothing for the cold journey in the unheated rear. Then, after a brief consultation, Brightwell led Miss Zahn, Sekula, the unknown individual in the hooded coat, and the alarm specialist to the cemetery gate. One of the hired hands followed them. Angel had locked the gate behind him when he was making his way to the hut, but Brightwell simply cut the chain and the group entered the grounds of the ossuary.

  I took a brief head count. Outside we had the driver of the Audi and three of the truck crew. Inside the grounds there were six more. I buzzed Louis.

  “What can you see?” I said.

  “One guy now at the ossuary door, inside the grounds,” he said quietly. “The driver, standing at the passenger door, back to me.”

  I heard him shift position.

  “Two amateurs from the truck at either corner, keeping watch on the main road. One more at the gate.”

  I thought about it.

  “Give me five minutes. I’ll come around from behind the truck and take the corner guys. You have the driver and the man at the gate. Tell Angel he has the door. I’ll buzz you when I’m ready to move.”

  I exited the hotel and worked my way as quickly as I could around the block. Eventually, I had to climb a wall and walk through a green field containing a children’s play area, the cemetery to my left. I buzzed Angel as I entered the field.

  “I’m in the field behind you. Don’t shoot me.”

  “Just this once. I’m gonna move with you.”

  I heard a low noise from the cemetery as Angel emerged from the shed, then everything was quiet again.

  I found a gate at the far end of the field. I opened it as quietly as I could. To my left I could just see the back of the truck. I kept to the wall until it began to curve toward the main entrance. T
he shape of the guard at the gate was clearly visible. If I attempted to cross the street, there was a good chance that he would see me.

  I buzzed Louis again.

  “Change of plan,” he said. “Angel’s taking the door and the gate.”

  Inside the cemetery, the guard at the ossuary door lit a cigarette. His name was Gary Toolan, and he was little more than an American criminal for hire based in Europe. Mostly he just liked women, booze, and hurting people, but some of the people for whom he was now working gave him the creeps. They were different, somehow: alien. The guy with white hair, the looker with the strange skin, and most of all the fat man with the swollen neck made him very uneasy.

  He didn’t know what they were doing here, but he was certain of one thing: he had their number, and that was why he had received payment in advance. If they tried anything, he had his money, he had a backup pistol, and the men that he had sourced for these freaks would stand by him in the event of trouble. Toolan took a long drag on his cigarette. As he dropped the match the shadows around him shifted, and it took him a second to realize that the falling light and the mutating darkness were unrelated.

  Angel shot him in the side of the head, then moved toward the gate.

  Louis checked his watch. He still had the phone to his ear. I waited.

  “Three,” counted Louis. “Two, one. Now.”

  There was a soft pop, and the man at the gate crumpled to the ground, shot from behind by Angel.

  I ran.

  The Audi driver immediately went for his gun, but Louis was already moving to take him. The driver seemed to sense him at the last minute, for he was starting to turn when Louis’s bullet entered the back of his skull. Now one of the men at the corner was shouting something. He ran to the cab and almost managed to open the door before he slid down the side and tried to reach for the small of his back, where my first shot had taken him. I shot him again on the ground and took the last man as he loosed off a round. It blew out a chunk of crumbling masonry from the wall beside my head, but by then the man who had fired the shot was dead.

  Louis was already pulling the body of the driver into the restaurant courtyard. He stopped when he heard the shot. Nobody emerged from any of the nearby houses to see what was going on. Either they had taken the shot for a car backfiring, or they just didn’t want to know. I pushed the bodies of the two men under their truck, where they would not easily be seen, then Louis and I ran to the ossuary. Angel was crouching at the door, casting quick glances into the interior.

  “One more down inside,” he said. “He heard the shot and came running. It looks like they’ve got the crypt stone up, and there’s a light burning by the hole, but I don’t think there’s anyone else in there. I guess they’re all belowground.”

  The heat inside the ossuary was intense. At first I was afraid that I was about to experience a return of the nausea that I had felt the previous day, thus confirming Louis’s worst fears about me, but when I looked at Angel and Louis, they had both begun to sweat profusely. We were surrounded by the sound of dripping water, as rivulets ran from the ceilings and walls, dropping on the exposed bones and washing like tears down the white cheeks of the dead. The body of the alarm specialist lay inside the door, already speckled with moisture.

  The crypt stone had been ejected from its resting place and lay to one side of the entrance, beside which a battery-powered lamp burned. We skirted the hole, trying not to expose ourselves to anyone waiting below. I thought I could detect, however faintly, the sound of voices, then stone moving upon stone. A flight of rough steps led down into the gloom, a trace of illumination visible from an unseen light source in the crypt itself.

  Angel looked at me. I looked at Angel. Louis looked at both of us.

  “Great,” whispered Angel. “Just great. We should be wearing targets on our chests.”

  “You’re staying up here,” I told him. “Keep to the shadows by the door. We don’t need any more of them arriving and trapping us down there.”

  Angel didn’t object. In his position, I wouldn’t have objected either. Louis and I stood just out of sight of the steps. One of us would have to go first.

  “What’ll it be?” I said. “Age, or beauty?”

  He stepped forward and placed his foot on the first step.

  “Both,” he said.

  I stayed a couple of steps behind him as he descended. The floor of the ossuary, which doubled as the crypt ceiling, was two feet thick, so we were almost halfway down before we could see anything, and even then half of the crypt remained in darkness. To our left was a series of niches, each occupied by a stone tomb. All were ornately carved with coats of arms or depictions of the resurrection. To our right was a similar arrangement of tombs, except that one of the stone coffins had been overturned and its occupant’s remains spilled across the flagged floor. The bones had long since disarticulated, but I thought I could faintly see traces of the shroud in which the body had been interred. The niche, now empty, revealed a rectangular opening previously concealed by the tomb, maybe four feet high and as many feet across. I could see light filtering through the gap from behind. The voices were louder now, and the temperature had risen noticeably. It was like standing at the mouth of a furnace, waiting to be consumed by the flames.

  I felt a breath of slightly cooler air at my neck, and in the same instant spun to my right, pushing Louis to one side with as much force as I could muster before I hit the floor. Something sliced through the air and impacted on one of the columns supporting the vault. I smelled a hint of perfume as Miss Zahn grunted with the shock of the crowbar’s impact upon the stone. I struck out as hard as I could with my heel and caught her on the side of the knee. Her leg buckled, and I heard her scream, but she whipped the crowbar instinctively in my direction as I tried to rise, striking me on my right elbow and sending a shock wave through my arm that paralyzed it immediately. I dropped my gun and was forced to scramble backward before I felt the wall at my back and could raise myself using my left hand. I heard a shot fired, and even though it was suppressed it still echoed loudly in the enclosed space. I couldn’t tell where Louis was until I scrambled to my feet and saw him pressed against one of the tombs, locked in close combat with Sekula. The lawyer’s gun now lay on the floor, but with his left hand he was keeping Louis’s own gun away from him while his right scratched at Louis’s face, looking for soft tissue to damage. I couldn’t intervene. Despite her pain, Miss Zahn was limping around me, looking for another opportunity to strike. She had removed her jacket to allow herself some respite from the heat, and in the course of her attempts to strike me the buttons on her black shirt had popped. A shaft of light caught her, and I saw the tattoos upon her skin. They seemed to move in the lamplight, the faces twisting and contorting, the great eyes blinking, the pupils dilating. A mouth opened, revealing small, catlike teeth. A head turned, its pug nose flattening further, as though another living being inside her had pressed itself hard against her epidermis from below, trying to force itself through to the world outside. Her whole body was a teeming gallery of grotesques, and I could not seem to draw my eyes from them. The effect was almost hypnotic, and I wondered if that was how she subdued her victims before taking them, entrancing them as she moved in for the kill.

  My right arm ached, and I felt as if all the moisture was being drained from my body by the heat. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t just shoot me. I stumbled backward as Miss Zahn feinted at me. I lost my footing, and then the crowbar was moving in a great arc toward my head when a voice said, “Hey, bitch!” and a booted foot caught Miss Zahn in the jaw, breaking it with a sharp, snapping sound. Her eyes squeezed shut in shock, and in the shadowy light I thought that the faces on her body responded in turn, the eyes briefly snapping closed, the mouths opening in silent roars of agony. Miss Zahn looked to where Angel lay sideways upon the stairs, just beneath the level of the ceiling. His right foot was still outstretched, and above it he held the .45.

  Miss Zahn dropped the cro
wbar and raised her left hand. Angel fired, and the bullet tore through the palm. She slid down the wall, leaving a trail of dark matter behind. One eye remained open, but the other was a black and red wound. She blinked once, and again all the tattooed eyes on her skin seemed to blink in unison. Then her eye closed, the painted eyelids on her body drooping slowly in turn until at last all movement ceased.

  As she died, the energy seemed to leave Sekula. He sagged, giving Louis the opening that he sought. He forced the muzzle of his gun upward into the soft flesh beneath Sekula’s chin and pulled the trigger. The noise of a shot reverberated around us once again, the sound finding material expression in the dark fountain that struck the vaulted ceiling. Louis released Sekula and allowed him to crumple to the floor.

  “He stopped,” said Louis, indicating Sekula. “I was under his gun, and he stopped.”

  He sounded puzzled.

  “He told me that he didn’t think he could kill a man,” I said. “I guess he was right.”

  I sagged against the damp wall of the crypt. My arm ached badly, but I didn’t think there were any bones broken. I nodded my thanks to Angel, and he returned to his post in the ossuary itself. Beyond us lay the opening in the wall.

  “After you this time,” said Louis.

  I looked at the remains of Miss Zahn and Sekula.

  “At least I might see the next person who attacks us,” I said.

  “She had a gun,” he said, pointing at the pistol tucked into Miss Zahn’s belt. “She could have just shot you.”

  “She wanted me alive,” I said.

  “Why? Your charm?”

  I shook my head.

  “She thought I was like her, and like Brightwell.”

  I stooped and passed through the gap, Louis steps behind me. We were in a long tunnel, with a ceiling barely six feet in height that prevented Louis from standing up straight. The tunnel stretched ahead into the darkness, curving gently to the right as it went. On either side were alcoves or cells, most of which appeared to contain nothing more than stone beds, although some had broken bowls and old empty wine bottles on the floor, indicating that they had been occupied at one point. Each had a kind of portcullis arrangement to close it off, the barred gate capable of being raised and lowered through a pulley and chain system outside each alcove. In nearly every case, the alcoves were unbarred, but we came to one on the right upon which the gate had been lowered. Inside, my flashlight picked out clothed human remains. The skull still retained some of its hair, and the clothing was relatively intact. The stench was foul from within.