by John Shirley
“What’s putting all those spirits in a mummified hand got to do with stopping a war?”
“Candidly, recruit—I don’t know. I expect all will be made clear in time. The whole plan was assembled rather hastily.”
“Assembled rather hastily?” Constantine looked at Spoink. “I can well believe it. Proof is in this one ’ere. But I’ve got to get Mercury and scarper out of here; they may come back with that fu—” The colonel glared at him warningly. “That gunship.”
“I think I can help with that,” said the young man in the long white Arabic overshirt, edging close. “I can arrange transportation for us live types . . .”
“And who the bloody hell are you?”
“My name’s Gatewood. I guess I’m a deserter. U.S. military. But I can get you to France maybe, for starts . . . If you want me to do that, you’ve got to play along with the colonel’s plan. Take these spirits out of here. I’m committed to helping them . . . And you’re supposed to go with us . . .”
“Wait’ll I get hold of the bastard entity that got me into this half-baked cock-up . . . Did you say Gatewood?” So that’s what Mercury meant. Constantine looked at the cabinet of relics. “And how do I get into that cabinet without getting the Syrian police all over me?”
“I’d suggest the method the looters used in Baghdad,” Gatewood said. “You bust the window, you grab the thing—and you run like a son of a bitch.”
“How does a son of a bitch run?” Constantine muttered, looking at the cabinet. He could see a brass lock on it. There just wasn’t any time to ponder this, to try to explain things to the priest, to do anything but stride across the room, as he did now, take off his right shoe, and smash the glass out with the heel. Shards of glass rang on the stone floor.
The room seemed to reverberate with the shock of the onlookers; it echoed with their gasps as he put his shoe back on, reached through the broken pane and plucked out the mummified hand.
“Sorry, all!” Constantine called out to the churchgoers. “Got to borrow this. I’ll try to send it back with some of that bubble wrap—marked fragile.” He returned to the ghosts—visible to him and invisible to the others—clustered around Gatewood. “How do I use this thing? Quick, before someone brains me with an incense burner!”
“I don’t have a clue, man,” Gatewood said with a shrug.
“Right. Naturally. What else.”
“Actually I can be of help, there, I believe,” Futheringham said. “Hold it in your right hand and say, ‘Here find shelter, in the hand of the servant of God, until your time of release!’ Then with conviction recite the first two verses of Psalm 91—any translation will do—”
“I know that Psalm!” Constantine interrupted. He looked around and saw that the congregation was muttering, pointing; one of them was pulling out a cellphone. Bloody cellphones are everywhere. Probably got them in limbo. Insist on them. He recited: “Here find shelter, in the hand of the servant of God, until your time of release! ‘You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust . . . ’ ” He recited it, and with conviction—one always did incant with fervor, since nothing else would work.
There was a beat, as if the magical powers-that-be were checking his mystical credit rating, then a whirlwind started up, issuing from the severed hand, an astral wind that distorted the images of the ghosts, making them warp and pull. The ectoplasmic substance of the ghosts tugged like taffy into the spiral, compressing to a downspout that spiraled into the saint’s grasp. Futheringham and the other ghosts, all of them, vanished into the whirlwind, condensed and sucked into the palm of the withered hand—and, creaking just a little, the fingers of the mummified hand closed into a loose fist, like a child holding a fragile butterfly and trying not to crush it.
Constantine stuck the mummified hand in an inside pocket of his coat. “Right, I’m off.”
That’s when the two stocky, turbaned, brown-uniformed Syrian cops came in, carrying Uzis. The priest instantly shouted at them, pointing at Constantine, obviously demanding his arrest for vandalism. The men in the congregation rushed around to join the cops, so that a crowd of hostile men, two of them heavily armed, stood between him and the door.
“This is some fucked-up shit here, John,” Spoink remarked.
“Thanks for that penetrating insight, Spoink—now you can try to make yourself more useful them an aqualung on a fish, and tell them in Arabic I’m just borrowing the hand for a DNA test. I’ve got permission from the, uh—from whoever runs this church.”
“You think they’ll buy that?” Gatewood asked skeptically.
“No. But, Spoink—try.”
“I’ll try . . .” But he’d hardly begun when the cops interrupted with shouts of their own, coming at them, brandishing their weapons.
Constantine reached out to try to take control of the nearest cop’s mind, but the ambient mental fields were roiling, all mixed up in their emanations, seething with the anger and outrage of the crowd. It was impossible to pick out one mind or another and it was difficult to concentrate, seeing as he was about to get a bullet in the gizzard.
Then the cops—and everyone in the hostile crowd—stepped back, gasping, as a crucifix on a silver base levitated from its table behind the altar, drifting over to hang in the air between Constantine and, as he saw them, the latest representatives from that perennial demographic: those who’d like to burn him at the stake. The crowd goggled in superstitious awe as the crucifix seemed to warn them not to interfere with the strangers who’d vandalized their church.
“You making that crucifix float there like that, Spoink?” Constantine asked, whispering the question out the side of his mouth.
“Yeah . . .” The reply came out of Spoink In a grunt. A glance showed Spoink was pale, shaking, sweat starting out on his forehead. “Shit, it’s heavy. Can’t . . . do this much longer . . . not this strong . . . have to hold the Iranian back, too . . . can’t do both . . .”
“Right. Just a few more seconds . . .” Constantine took Spoink by the elbow, leading him and Gatewood around the edge of the group, sidling toward the door.
The cops whispered to one another, fingering their weapons—then one of them spat an Arabic imprecation and aimed his gun at Constantine. He was probably a Muslim after all and not impressed with Christian magic. But the priest stepped in, stroking his beard with one hand, his other pressing the gun down, telling the cop in Syriac—or so Constantine guessed—to give it a rest.
Constantine, Gatewood, and Spoink made it to the front steps, Spoink groaning and hissing under his breath, before the cross clanked to the floor. Spoink’s knees went rubbery and he nearly fainted. Constantine and Gatewood supported him between them, dragging him around the side of the church. Behind them, the priest and the cops were arguing.
The priest, Constantine supposed, was claiming that the levitating crucifix was a sign from God—perhaps in his mind he was already counting out the proceeds from Christian tourism when the word got out about the miracle witnessed by dozens in the church. They’d rename the church, probably: The Holy Shrine of the Levitating Cross.
“You need to be carried, Spoink?” Constantine asked.
“No . . . no, I feel better now . . . Let us go . . .”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yes, yes, alhamdolilleh!”
“Alham what? Never mind, just get into the fucking boat. Gatewood’ll pilot, if he knows how . . . Ineed a cup of tea like an infant needs mother’s milk, I do.” But as they tooled the launch toward the big white motor yacht, Constantine looked at Spoink and thought he looked deeply, gravely unhappy. Might crumble under just a little pressure. “Good job back there, saved our bacon, mate,” Constantine said. “I’m beginning to be glad you were sent along to help.”
Spoink only nodded, gazing into the low waves sliding past the boat. Constantine remembered what Spoink had said, in the church: . . . have to hold the Iranian back to
o . . .
“Holy shit,” Gatewood exclaimed, seeing they were headed for the motor yacht. “That your yacht? Noah’s Next?”
“Borrowed. I look like a bloody yachtsman to you?”
“No, man. What exactly you look like, I’m not sure. Maybe Sting after he’s gone through a few dozen cases of bourbon.”
“Gin—or Irish whiskey.”
“So we can’t take that boat to France?”
“I can’t stay on the yacht—they’re sinking boats that look like this one around here, according to . . . oh bugger. Look. I don’t think I’m going to get my cuppa.” He pointed.
They all three saw it then, just before their boat kissed up to the side of the yacht: a wasp-colored gunship on the horizon, coming right for them.
10
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
The Syrian coast
“I’ve got to get on your ship’s radio!” Gatewood said. “There’s one guy I know will help us . . .”
They were running across the deck, Constantine for the hatch to the lower decks so he could find Mercury, Gatewood to the bridge. They’d left Spoink in the boat so they’d have a quick getaway. There was no way they could outrun that gunship. Morris’s motor yacht, Constantine figured, was about to become a magnet for week scavengers off the coast of Syria.
He ducked through the metal doorway and turned and slid down the railing like he’d seen in movies about the Royal Navy—or anyway, he almost managed to do it. After picking himself up off the deck, he raced down the narrow corridor to Morris’s cabin. “Mercury!”
But there was no use calling to her. She was locked into her psychic wrestling match with the Akishra. He found her as he’d left her, lying on the bunk, twitching uneasily.
He gathered her in his arms, immediately thinking she was heavier than he expected. He drew his head back a little, sensing the Akishra slithering past his face as he carried her out to the ladder. But it was hard to get her up the “ladder,” the steep metal steps to the foredeck. And now he could clearly hear the drone of the approaching gunship.
“Let me have her!” Gatewood yelled. Coming partway down the ladder he grabbed Mercury under the armpits and toted her back up to the top deck. He slung the young woman over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and headed for the gangway that slanted down to the launch, as Constantine went on another, quick errand.
“Not fucking worth it,” he told himself. But he ran into the stateroom anyway, grabbed a bottle of Irish whiskey and half a carton of cigarettes he’d found there—Newports, but better than nothing—and raced back to the ladder. Then remembered Morris.
“Oh, sod him,” Constantine muttered. “Don’t be a git, John.”
But he couldn’t leave Morris and Beerfield to drown. Constantine turned and ran down the corridor to the door of the hold on the port side. He threw the latch with one hand—the other was tenderly cradling the smokes and liquor to him—and jerked the watertight door open.
That’s when the first two missiles struck the big motor yacht, direct hits on the flying bridge and the port side near the waterline.
The corridor shook like a baby’s rattle, thumping Constantine bruisingly back and forth between the bulkheads. “Ow! Jesus on a—Ow!—bike!” The shaking subsided—and he heard screams from the supplies hold. Again the ship wrenched, struck by another air-to-surface missile, reverberating as a fuel line exploded.
But all through the wrenching he managed to cradle the bottle and the cigarettes, keeping them unharmed.
The yacht began to tilt to port, so that Constantine was flung against the corridor bulkhead beside the open door. He braced himself between the two corridor walls and looked through the door to see the room filling up with water, gushing up from a hole in the deck. Beerfield was floating facedown, his hands still tied behind him, unmoving, blood jetting from his crushed forehead. Morris was using his feet to push up against a coil of anchor chain, just keeping his head clear, even as seawater boiled around his chin. His feet were tied together; if he tried to move on his own toward the door, he’d drown. He’d worked one arm free of his ropes and now he stretched it toward Constantine.
“Constantine! Help me!”
Constantine shoved his bottle and cigarettes in his voluminous coat pockets, got a grip on the edge of the door with his left hand and reached toward Morris with his right, even as water began overflowing the hold, gushing into the corridor. The ship creaked and groaned as it shifted; it burbled loudly with the furious influx of water. The air pressure balanced out the gushing water pressure enough so that the hole in the deck below Morris began to suck downward . . .
Morris threw himself at Constantine’s outstretched hand and caught his wrist, but the water still swirled around his neck and the terrible suction from below had caught him. His eyes widened as he felt the strength of the sea dragging him inexorably down, pulling him down Constantine’s wrist, his hand, his fingers—he lost his grip and slipped under the waves.
But the water was clear, and Constantine could see him down there, stuck at his hips in the fibrous hole around the fiberglass deck, flailing, frantically signaling for Constantine to pull him free. Constantine knew he could never get him loose—and there was already blood ribboning up from the edges of the gap Morris was stuck in. He was being slashed and drowned at once, and the suction would be too strong to fight. The water was filling the corridor, rising up to Constantine’s armpits—but he watched a few moments longer, riveted and helpless. Morris screamed silently, only bubbles pouring from his mouth. In another few seconds his lungs had filled, a great deal of blood had seeped away . . .
And Constantine—his senses heightened by the emergency, his third eye wide open—saw Morris’s soul coming out of his body like champagne from an uncorked bottle, straight up out the top of his head. He saw the ectoplasmic face look around in startlement and then wonder.
Then Constantine saw the demons.
There were three of them. To Constantine the demons seemed to come from the shadows of the sinking ship, growing from pinpoint size to bigger than a man in a single moment. The three demons came at Morris’s soul from three sides.
The First of the Fallen had sent the demons that Morris would most fear—he was an arachnophobe, and these creatures had bristle-furred naked human bodies, with hooks for hands and heads that were entire giant tarantulas attached at the thorax to each demon’s neck, each spider big as a terrier; each with extra-large mandibles and clusters of yellow eyes.
Morris’s soul wailed; Constantine could hear the cry in his mind.
Please, Lord God, no! I serve Jesus! I am bringing about His Second Coming! No! Noooooooo, Lord Jesus, no!
Since Morris’s anatomy existed in his mind it had taken shape astrally; one of the demons pierced Morris’s spirit in the eyes with both its mandibles, as if using the soul’s eyesockets for convenient carrying. The other demons used their bristly hooks to grip him by the genitals and the wrists. He shrieked telepathic protestations: it was all a misunderstanding, they had it wrong, he wasn’t intended for Hell . . .
But Lucifer knew better—he knew Morris had made millions of dollars deceiving people, he knew about the young women he’d taken advantage of, he knew far worse about him—and his demons dragged Morris’s soul down, first into the dark corners of the hold, and then into another plane entirely. The Devil had sent his emissaries to bring another televangelist straight to Hell. Morris’s physical body, arms lifted to drift like seaweed, gaped emptily up, as if staring longingly toward Heaven. Not him.
Constantine turned and thrashed his way to the ladder, fighting the water as the ship gave another shudder, preparing to go under. He had to grip the handrails hard enough to make his fingers ache, to keep from getting flung back into the water filling the corridor. Feeling like he weighed a thousand pounds he worked his way up the ladder and onto the slanting deck.
He saw immediately that the deck was slanting to port, and they’d left the launch on the starboard si
de. He tried to clamber up the steepening deck to the starboard rail, but it was like going up a slippery roof that was shifting in an earthquake and he was soon sliding across the foredeck, cursing roundly as he went past the mechanical windlass, fetching up at a stanchion beside the port hawsehole.
He fumbled desperately for a hold but pitched over the side, catching the stanchion at the last moment.
Dangling. Cursing. Wondering if the ship was about to flip over onto him and bear him to the bottom of the sea.
Constantine hung there trying to remember an invocation that would be of use. Hoping his cigarettes hadn’t gotten wet and crushed. (After all, he might survive.) Cursing some more . . .
“Constantine! Let go!” came a voice from below him.
“What? Who’s that?”
“Gatewood! We came around below you! Hurry! Just drop!”
The ship lurched once more and the decision was made for Constantine; he lost his hold and dropped less than a yard down into the boat, falling on his feet but pitching onto his back. “Ow! Buggerin’ shit!”
His head had fallen into Spoink’s lap. Dazedly, Constantine looked up at Spoink—at his upside-down face, from this vantage—and past the long hedge of beard, seemed to see another face entirely, a kind of furious ape, almost like the war god he’d seen on Carthaga.
Constantine sat up hastily. “Bony lap you’ve got there, Spoink.” He looked to see that Mercury was safe—she was curled up in the bottom of the launch. “Here, where’s that chopper, Gatewood?”
At the tiller, hurrying the motorized launch away from the sinking yacht, Gatewood replied by pointing. Constantine looked and saw that the gunship was headed away from them. Thinking its job done, he hoped.
“Where’s Morris and that other guy?” Gatewood asked.
“Dead. Couldn’t get them out.” Constantine shifted on the seat, trying to get more comfortable in his wet clothes. He could feel sea salt rasping his underwear against his rump. He fished the half-carton of cigarettes from his pocket and found an uncrushed pack. There were only two packs intact, blessedly protected from the water by their cellophane. He tore the pack open, extracted a cigarette, lit it, then found the whiskey bottle in his other pocket and had a pull at it. He wanted to get the image of Morris’s soul being dragged down to Hell out of his mind. “Ahhh . . . Christ on a fucking exercycle. Needed that.”