The Devil's Bible

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  “Go back!” Her lips bubbled and blistered as the power poured from her and slammed into Moloch and the dark creatures hovering behind him—and into Angelo. She watched in horror as his body flew into the stone altar, his head bouncing off its edge with a sickening crack.

  The creatures clawed the floor as they were pulled back into the dark nothingness from which they’d come. Moloch screamed with fury as the column of flame encircled him once more and then disappeared. The flames and heat were gone, too, leaving the scorched remains of the ancient church.

  But now Mouse was burning.

  Inside her, the full power was loosed and running through her body, claiming it as its own. Her muscles seized in revolt and her teeth sank into her tongue as she convulsed. Searing bright spears of pain shot through her like millions of nerves flayed and exposed to the open air. Mouse dropped to her knees, hurling bile and blood, until finally the heaves quieted and she fell to the floor.

  Despite her fear for Angelo, Mouse waited. She needed to know if she was still herself or something else—something not safe. She felt wrong, different somehow, but she seemed to be in control, and so finally, Mouse crawled through the ash toward the altar where Angelo lay unmoving, a pool of blood spreading from his head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  God, please let him live. I’ll do anything.” She laid her head on Angelo’s chest. “I’ll give him back to you if that’s what you want. Just please let him live.”

  “I . . . don’t . . . think . . . God barters, Mouse.” His voice was distorted with pain. “But thanks for the thought.”

  She ripped his shirt off and wrapped it tightly around his head, pressing hard against the gash near the base of his skull as she tried to stop the bleeding. “Can you sit?”

  He started to push himself upright while Mouse helped support his neck. He opened his eyes, and she gasped at the blood seeping from the burst capillaries there. His eyes were unfocused.

  “Maybe you should—” As she spoke, he lurched to his knees, vomiting. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

  Her arms were quivering with fatigue by the time she had half-carried Angelo down the hill to the car, but adrenaline was driving her through the exhaustion. When she lowered him into the passenger seat of the rental car and bent to let down the seat back, he whispered to her, “Go back and get the book.” His speech sounded slurred.

  “There’s not time, Angelo.”

  “Yes there is. Don’t . . . argue. Do it.”

  He was unconscious by the time she got back in the car.

  The sun had started to filter past the shades on the window of the room at the hospital when they rolled him in. Mouse moved to the side of his bed. His face bluish and bruised, Angelo looked more dead than asleep. And it was her fault. Her father hadn’t done this to him. She had.

  “Mr. D’Amato is suffering from a bad concussion,” the doctor said. “He’s very disoriented and he’s lost a good bit of blood, but he’s out of any immediate danger. I want to keep him for a few days. Heads can be tricky sometimes.”

  Mouse was too drained to do more than nod as the doctor left.

  She reached a hand out to touch him, but she shook with a sudden tremor—one of many that had coursed through her as she’d waited for the doctor to bring Angelo back to the room. It was the power of her father’s blood melting into her, touching every part of her, branding her. Mouse jammed her hands in her pockets. She was afraid to be alone with him. Her fingers closed around Angelo’s cell phone and offered an easy excuse to leave.

  She stepped out of the room, speaking quietly into the phone and hesitating a moment as she worked to remember which name to give. She’d used the courier service many times over the years for pieces of art or historical artifacts, but not for anything quite like this. The man was polite and efficient. They would have someone there that afternoon to pick up the Devil’s Bible, though they didn’t know what they were transporting. They were too discreet to ask. Mouse only cared about getting rid of it. It was a beacon for her father and a temptation for her. She left instructions and the key to the trunk at the front desk.

  Angelo was awake when she got back. She stopped in the doorway.

  “There you are,” he said.

  “How are you?”

  “Head hurts. Come here.”

  Mouse walked slowly to his bed and kissed his forehead. “The doctor says you’re going to be fine.”

  “You smell like smoke.” He wrinkled his nose.

  “Sorry. No shower.”

  He finally opened his eyes enough to reassure Mouse that he was alive and he was sane. “I’m starving.”

  “I bet I can take care of that.” She turned to leave, but Angelo wouldn’t let go of her hand.

  “Don’t go.”

  She pushed a button on the bed and told the nurse that Angelo was hungry.

  He patted the bed and, with a groan, moved his body to make room.

  “Sore?” she asked, but she wouldn’t sit beside him.

  “Yeah. What’d you do to me?” He meant it as a joke, but Mouse cringed anyway. “I don’t remember the last of it. We got out. But we went back inside the church to get the book, right?”

  “I did. And then you stupidly followed.” She tried to banter.

  “You couldn’t get it by yourself.”

  “I know. Stupid me, stupid you. Monkey see, monkey do.” She was working too hard at keeping things light, but Angelo didn’t seem to notice.

  “Then what?”

  Mouse waited as the nurse wheeled in a tray with food and checked Angelo’s vitals, asking him his name and the date. After the nurse left, Mouse told him everything: Moloch, the control he’d had over Angelo, her opening herself completely to the power inside her.

  When she finished, Angelo put his fork down. “Are you all right?”

  “I had no choice, Angelo.”

  “We need to figure out what this means,” he said carefully.

  Mouse nodded. “Not now, though. I’m too tired.”

  “You look it. Have you slept at all?”

  She shook her head, the unexpected sadness making her afraid to talk.

  “Mouse, promise me something.” He didn’t open his eyes as he spoke. “Promise me that you’ll do for me what you did for Ottakar. If something takes me like that again, controls me . . . I can’t stand the idea that I might do things. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.” And she did, too well. Mouse closed her hand around the piece of dried-out tracing paper in her pocket that held the residue of her father’s blood.

  “So promise. You’ll do it. A word of mercy when the time comes.” He was asleep before she could answer.

  Mouse could never make such a promise. She watched him sleep for a moment, aware that he would dream of all the things he might be forced to do. Angelo had given her a night of peaceful sleep, and she had brought him nightmares.

  She turned and left the room. Mouse found what she needed in the little village down from the hospital. She left it in the car for later.

  The warmth in Angelo’s eyes froze her midstride when she entered the room again. No one had ever been that happy to see her come back. Mouse worked hard to smile, too, but she couldn’t. She bent over him, her hair tickling his cheek, and gave him a long kiss.

  “That’s a nice hello.” His voice grew soft with desire. “Can I have another?”

  Mouse let him pull her face back down to his.

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked when he finally pulled away and laid back on the pillow.

  “On an errand,” she offered cryptically.

  “More secrets.” He grinned. “I can get it out of you. I always do.”

  But Mouse couldn’t maintain her end of the playful banter. There wasn’t enough time.

  “What’s wrong, Mouse?”

  “Nothing. I just . . . I guess I’m tired.”

  “Come up here beside me.” He moved over to make room.

  She hesitated but
then sat down and pulled her legs up on the bed. Angelo wrapped his arm around her. She turned on her side toward him, her leg draped over one of his. She listened to his heartbeat and matched her breathing to the regular rise and fall of his chest.

  Angelo bent and kissed the top of her head. A quiet groan escaped him as he lowered his head back to the pillow.

  Mouse sat up and looked at him. “Head still hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “The doctor said they’d give you something for that. Want me to ask the nurse?”

  “Do you mind?”

  Once the nurse had come and gone, the drugs relaxed him almost instantly.

  “You sleep, too,” he said.

  She rested her head on his chest; he was already asleep. She lay there, counting his heartbeats for a while, careful to keep herself awake. When it was time, she closed her eyes, searching for Angelo’s soul. She memorized how it pulsed, how it stretched beyond his body to reach out to her and cover her in its glow. It was all the good-bye she could manage.

  Even in the solitude of the car, Mouse would not let the tears come because she knew the pain would wipe away everything else—the joy of being with him, the wonder of being loved by him, the pleasure of their lovemaking. She concentrated on driving to Oslo and focused on what would face her when she reached her final destination.

  The nurse woke Angelo during the early morning shift-change to check his vitals and make him walk to the bathroom. Groggy from the rude awakening, Angelo noticed Mouse’s absence but assumed she must have gone to eat or something. He didn’t notice the guitar in the chair until he wobbled back to his bed.

  He smiled, sure that this was Mouse’s way of holding him to his promise that he would play for her, but when he moved the guitar up to the bed with him, he saw Mouse’s christening angel. There was a piece of paper folded underneath it. And he knew.

  Her note was simple, final:

  Angelo,

  Play.

  Heal.

  Know you have given me more in a handful of days than I have ever known.

  I am yours, forever.

  Mouse

  Angelo squeezed the angel, ready to fling it across the room, but as he lifted his arm to throw it, the realization that it was the only thing of hers left to him stilled his hand. Instead, he brought it to his lips, tears falling on its head like an anointment. He made the sign of the cross as he whispered the Prayer of Protection: “Oh, God, grant her Thy protection, and in protection, strength, and in strength, understanding.”

  The thrust of takeoff pushed Mouse back against her seat. She clutched at the little wooden mouse rolling in her hand. It was just before six in the morning Oslo time; she would land in Tel Aviv in about seven hours. She hadn’t slept since that night on the train to Onstad—the night she made love with Angelo. She couldn’t sleep now either. She still had decisions to make, and yet all her mind wanted to do was relive the moments she’d spent with him. With a quiet awareness that this was probably the only time she’d have to grieve, Mouse gave herself over to the memories. She didn’t think she had much choice in the decisions to come anyway. She laid her head against the window and watched the clouds curl across the wings and then plummet into the darkness beyond.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Tel Megiddo rose from the flat terrain like a large wart.

  Mouse had rented a car in Tel Aviv and driven out into the Israeli countryside. She parked her car behind a row of trees and waited until the sun dropped behind the distant hills. Once darkness descended, she got out and crept up the back side of Megiddo. The site was relatively easy to access with just a few after-hours security guards at the far bottom of the hill. And it was sufficiently remote. Mouse needed to be alone.

  She also needed the deep power of the place. The soil at Megiddo was saturated with the blood of battles and sacrifices, consecrated by hundreds of ceremonies, and marked with the ruins of dozens of churches from a dozen religions. Even contemporary politicians sanctified the place in the name of peace as they shook hands over empty agreements. Believers knew it was where the end would begin, the final battle between good and evil, though theirs was a different vision of Armageddon than her father’s—epic versus intimate, multitudes versus the beat of a single heart.

  No matter whose vision and regardless of politics or faith, the land seethed with pent-up power just waiting to be used.

  Once she reached the top of the hill, Mouse lay down among the relics and ruins to catch her breath and to summon her strength. She wasn’t the first to do so. For thousands of years, people here had looked down on massing armies as they prepared to brutalize each other in the fields below, blessing the good and cursing the bad.

  But they all murdered each other’s sons. They all prayed to some form of God. They all sought power in his name. All of them raped and pillaged. Mouse couldn’t see the black or white, the good or bad. They were all pieces on the board, and she was just a pawn. How was she supposed to know what was right? What did Mouse know of good?

  Despite her searching, Mouse had never found so much as a flicker of light inside to prove her goodness. And now that the power ran freely in her, now that it was her, surely that made her something other than just Mouse. Was she a demon now? After spending so much of her life hoping to be Father Lucas’s andílek, his angel, to now be a creature that belonged in the pit at Houska with the hollow-eyed children was more than Mouse could bear. She sat up weeping. She had spent her long life running away from being her father’s daughter, and now that was all she was. How could she not be, with his blood in her veins and now his power coursing through her body?

  A wild keen of the wind sweeping over the mound was the only response, so she looked for an answer inside herself. Her eyes ached as they rolled back in her head searching for even a tiny glow. Angelo had sworn he saw it in her, and Father Lucas had believed, begging her in the last words of his letter to “be strong and believe in your goodness as I do.” But still Mouse found only darkness.

  As she opened her eyes again to the stars, Mouse saw a low bank of clouds moving in from the south. The ancients had asked the same questions about their purpose: What were they here for? What were they meant to do? Their stories were no different than hers, and their answers weren’t simple either. Gilgamesh or Garuda, Helen or Baba Yaga. They were all both hero and villain, truth seeker and fool, killer and redeemer. And so much more. Angelo had said something like this, too—that the world was not made of good or bad, dark or light, but of shades and degrees; that our purpose was to find the light in ourselves and others. Compassion, understanding, harmony—that’s what Angelo had said he thought God wanted.

  What if he was right? Mouse stood up, wiping the tears from her face. Some part of her had accepted this idea in regard to others—that there was good and bad in everyone. But she still saw herself the way the world saw her when she was young: all those faces afraid of her and of what she could do, the Church closing its doors because she was tainted with her father’s blood. She’d let all of them frame her understanding of herself. Even now, she’d let Bishop Sebastian define her as a weapon, as a warrior. But what if he was wrong? What if Angelo was right?

  If the world was made in shades of both good and bad—did that mean she was, too?

  And what about her father?

  Flashes of lightning illuminated the towering storm as it slid toward the mound. She thought about her father and the story he told of his fall. She knew what he had been before and what he was after, but she found herself wondering for the first time what he could be.

  Mouse needed answers to those questions before she could decide what to do. She knelt and took a razor from her pocket, made the quick slit at her bruised, swollen wrist, and shaped the circle quartered by a cross in the chalky gravel where she had just lain. She let the blood flow long and soak deep into the soil.

  Then she sat just outside the circle and pulled the folded paper from her pocket. She called the power of Megiddo’s
sacred soil to her. The ground around her was so overcharged with energy that the hairs on her arms lifted and stood on end. She would not tap the power that was now fully part of her, not yet, not until she needed it. If she needed it. Mouse ran her finger along each word of the binding spell as she spoke it, and as soon as each word left her lips, the letters disappeared from the page.

  There was nothing but darkness inside the circle, and for a moment, Mouse thought the spell hadn’t worked. But then the darkness grew—billowing up in a column and out where it stopped like it was trapped in a glass cylinder. It also grew darker, as black as the pit at Houska. There was a loud sound, as if the sky was being torn in two, and the darkness was pared away in an instant to reveal the outline of a man.

  Her father filled the circle as he swung to look her in the face.

  “Bad timing.” He spit the words, though he gave her his most charming smile. He held his human form and wore his typical black clothes and cloak, making it difficult to see him against the darkening sky.

  “Hello, Father.” Mouse tried to sound normal.

  “You need to let me go. I’m in the middle of something very important. I’ll come right back as soon as I’m done. Promise.” He snarled the threat as thunder crashed in the distance and rolled toward them with a high peal.

  “This is a one-time spell, and I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get it,” Mouse said. The fire behind his eyes frightened her, but she tried to match his sardonic tone. “Anyway, I just want to talk.”

  “Talk?” His voice exposed his wariness, and Mouse wondered what he thought she could do to him.

  “Well actually, to ask a question,” she said calmly.

  “I don’t have time for questions.” He ran his fingers through the air just inches in front of her; the invisible barrier sparked and squealed with electricity. Mouse felt the tingle of power, no longer just in her gut, but rippling along every nerve, ready for her command.