9th Circle

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  “So now you are the arbitrator?” Darc challenged the man of the cloth.

  That seemed to stop the priest for a moment. His face went blank, before he shook his head and readopted his harder expression. Darc felt another cipher fall into place inside his head.

  “You did not do this to punish. You took no relish in the killing.”

  Once more, Father John’s face changed, this time softening almost imperceptibly. “How far have I fallen?” His tone was plaintive, beseeching. “Fallen to his level?”

  More symbols swung into place, the tumblers of glowing light aligning themselves. Darc saw the pattern. Another piece of the puzzle was clear. Darc moved a step closer to the pastor on his next circle, forcing the man to shift his positioning even further.

  “All this so that you might climb down Satan? Climb down him into purgatory?”

  A flicker of what might have been a smile crossed the priest’s face but did not touch his eyes. His eyes were deep pools of emptiness, as black and void as a moonless, starless night sky. His lips parted, revealing teeth that flashed in the low light. His robes flared around his legs as he turned.

  “I have chosen my instrument wisely.”

  The tumblers continued to snick into place. Bits and pieces of information as symbols floated around, sucking themselves into the spaces that put them all together and formed another cipher. More information flowed forth.

  “Your wife’s suicide. That’s what triggered this.”

  The once-holy man stiffened. The stiffening was another glowing shape that added itself to the conglomerate. Glowing letters formed, but they were incomplete.

  “You’re trying to save her from hell?” Darc questioned, seeking another set of ciphers.

  The insane, cackling laughter was back. There was no warmth or mirth in the laugh, only bitterness and despair. Father John practically spit out his words.

  “She took her life against God’s will. She is where she deserves to be. I have no right—no desire—to rescue her from her agony. But my…” The priest choked on his next words, the pain evident in his contorted face, even to Darc. This was clearly not gastrointestinal.

  More gleaming and glistening shapes congealed. The shapes were crystalline in their purity. Darc increased the speed of his circling.

  “Your daughter.” The priest made a sharp intake of breath at Darc’s words, confirming what the ciphers had already told him. He continued. “Did she suffer?”

  “Hers was a quiet death,” the pastor whispered, his voice barely above the beating of the fans.

  “Sudden infant death syndrome,” Darc stated.

  Once more, Father John’s face contorted, the features twisting in on themselves. His voice caught as he attempted to force the words out. He cleared his throat once, forcefully.

  “On the eve of her christening.”

  Every movement the killer made, every statement he uttered, even the facial expressions, were a continual stream of new forms that fell into place. Never before had Darc experienced this immediate a process. Questions asked and answered in milliseconds, changing the psychological landscape, filling in the blank spots of the puzzle, replacing mistaken pieces. Another answer surfaced.

  “So your daughter lingers in purgatory. Without a baptism, she is denied entry into heaven and, innocent, she cannot fall to hell.”

  “She was always scared of being alone. We kept her in our room for the first little while. But…we…it was the first night we decided to move the crib into the nursery.” A dry sob burst from the reverend, but he controlled himself quickly. He stumbled, missing his footing. “We thought when she stopped crying that we could finally…we could—”

  “So this is about your wife’s guilt?”

  The pastor shook his head, seemingly not in negation of Darc’s question, but perhaps against the memories that assaulted him. “She fought against it. Months passed, and she seemed to be doing at least a little bit better. But then…then we found out she was pregnant again.”

  “You would have another child. That was not a cause for happiness?” This was well into the gray area, misty swaths covering the glimmering ciphers. As Darc sought to piece the veil with his understanding, Trey’s rule seven popped into his mind. When you don’t have any clue what’s up, try listening, dude. Darc fell silent, awaiting Father John’s response. It was long in coming, and halting when it arrived.

  “We found out…We had…She conceived that very night that…we were…while our little baby…”

  Ah. That was where the extreme guilt welled. The guilt swirled off the pastor and formed itself into another symbol. But the equation was not yet complete.

  “But you. You persisted. You did not kill yourself.”

  The priest came back from wherever he had been, refocusing on Darc. “I was of the righteous. I could not take that path. And I have no desire to join my wife with the other fallen. But where I was headed, my child…my children…could not follow.” His voice and face hardened. “Where they linger, so shall I.”

  Darc stopped circling. The symbols were congealing within, but Darc did not want to let them. There was something coming. Something unacceptable. Something terrible. He asked the question that he knew he did not want the answer to.

  “You’ve already spilt the blood of innocent children. Killing one more is not going to bring the devil forth.”

  A leer crept across Father John’s face, transforming the soft and gentle features into something malevolent. He leaned in toward Darc, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “That’s why you are going to do it.”

  Darc backed away from the pastor, away from the girl and the altar, away from every piece of this horrific puzzle. Surprise was a useless sensation, one that detracted from the delicate flow of the lines of logic within. Darc had felt nothing but disdain for those who allowed surprise to incapacitate them.

  Darc was not surprised. He was stunned.

  He managed to croak out a single word. “Never.”

  The pastor ripped away the velvet covering the front of the altar. Across the facing of the lip of the marble slab, symbols had been carved, then filled in with something red.

  “Read them, Detective. Read them.” Father John paused, looking into Darc’s face, his gaze searching. “Then tell me.”

  Without any conscious effort on Darc’s part, the ciphers flowed from the marble and into his mind, sorting themselves into their proper places with no resistance. The resistance this time came from Darc. He pushed against the symbols, not accepting where they were headed, refusing to acknowledge their patterns. His breathing escalated, his heart pounding in his chest. The priest gave a sad half-smile.

  “I didn’t make the code complex. For a mind like yours, they should fall together like children’s blocks.”

  The letters fought Darc, seeking their proper places. Darc forced them out, the lines and curves sparking and spitting at him in frustration. They wept drops of light as they fluttered about in dismay.

  The priest moved around behind the girl, placing his hands on her slight shoulders. “She knows. She is prepared.” The girl’s heart rate lifted for a moment, then settled back to her normal speed, her eyes squeezed shut.

  The symbols slipped out of Darc’s grasp, slotting themselves neatly into a nice little row. The glowing cipher that formed itself pointed Darc back to the device at the girl’s head, tracing down the wires that led to the C-4. The symbols also pointed to the wires leading away from the explosives.

  Dozens and dozens of lines snaked from the cluster of plastic explosives and across the floor of the church. In his mind, Darc traced the glowing lines of logic that superimposed themselves on a map of Seattle. The lines ended in points of light that glowed an ominous red.

  Each of the points sparked in an area of specific vulnerability. A structural stress point in the foundations of Seattle. Larger tunnels in the Underground. Water mains. Gas lines.

  The pastor must have seen the dawning awareness
in Darc’s countenance. He smiled, this one stretching across his entire face but still somehow not reaching his eyes. Stretching his arms wide, he indicated around himself, his attention seeming to reach beyond the walls and ceiling of the cathedral.

  “Yes, my dark angel. My error was not in the process, but in the scope.”

  “No.” The word was a rejection. A rejection of what the priest was saying. A rejection of the glowing ciphers. A rejection of the impending disaster.

  “But to destroy an entire city?” John queried.

  “No,” Darc argued. “Even you would not—”

  “A half a million people.” The priest’s face took on an almost beatific glow. “If Satan doesn’t take notice of that…”

  “You’ve rigged the entire Underground.” It was a statement of fact, not a question, but the act of putting it into words was staggering.

  “Yes. And it will detonate, destroying the underpinnings of Seattle, bringing the metropolis crashing down.” The pastor paused, gesturing to the child. “But only if you choose for this little one to live.”

  While the girl’s eyes were closed, almost as if she were asleep, it was clear she was listening. The beeping of the monitor sped up, the rhythmic sound matching itself to the throb in Darc’s temple. The symbols all lined up. The meaning of the pastor’s words was clear. But Darc could not accept them.

  “Choose?” Darc asked.

  “Or you can sacrifice her.”

  The electronic ticking raced ahead of even Darc’s elevated heart rate. The timer was down below a minute and a half and speeding ever faster toward zero. The priest’s voice drilled into Darc’s head.

  “Five hundred thousand souls gone, with no time to repent. Or one of God’s chosen strangling a single little girl.” Father John’s lips tugged up. “Either way, I shall have my chance.”

  Darc sent his mind scanning across the schematics over and over again, looking for a weakness, a way out. The glowing lines were smooth, flawless. No entry point. No chink in their icy, glowing armor.

  This could not be. As his mind raced, whirling and spinning in place, getting nowhere, the monitor behind the girl slowed, coming back to a normal rate. She sat up, opening her eyes and looking directly at Darc. Darc backed up another step.

  “No.”

  But she slowly stood up, placing herself directly in front of Darc, the wires stretched taut. Her eyes never left his. Her intent seemed clear. Darc felt himself rooted in place. There was no place for him to go. He shut his eyes against the calm demand in the little girl’s eyes.

  “No.”

  She reached down and grabbed one of Darc’s hands and placed it on her neck. Darc opened his eyes and peered into the girl’s eyes. He spoke directly to her, trying to make her understand. She had to understand.

  “He could still detonate.”

  The pastor chuckled. “She dies no matter, Detective.”

  Grabbing his other hand, the girl placed it on the other side of her neck. Darc pled with her.

  “I can’t…”

  But symbols swarmed before his eyes, telling another story. The girl forced his unwilling hands more tightly around her neck. The countdown was under a minute. The numbers flowed into the stream of ciphers in Darc’s mind, forming a string of data that he was obliged to follow. He tried one more time.

  “Please. Don’t make me.”

  The girl gave Darc one more searching look, squeezed his hands, then closed her eyes, tilting her head slightly back.

  Darc gave a near sob, slowly lowering the girl’s slight form down to the marble slab. His hands slowly closed over the tiny figure’s throat. In spite of what must have been her best efforts, her heart monitor soared, the counter dipping down below thirty seconds. The girl’s face turned red, then purple.

  The priest, on the other side of the altar, placed both hands on the marble, the detonator clicking against the hard stone. His face was alight with a dark ecstasy.

  “Yes,” he breathed.

  Seeing the ever-changing colors on the girl’s delicate face, Darc almost let go, but the numbers on the monitor fell to fifteen, then to ten. The rate slowed as Darc pressed even harder and the girl’s form went limp underneath his hands.

  “Yes!” The pastor’s exclamation was exuberant.

  The ground shook, possibly from a semi passing above, the vibrations making the wires on the marble shake.

  “He’s coming!” Father John stared down at the ground, reaching his hands below to welcome the Father of Lies in.

  The monitor continued moving down to three. Then two. The beeping stopped. Another stray heartbeat, then the LED screen fell completely silent.

  Feeling his heart break within him, Darc whipped one hand to the detonator, pinning it in place. The other backhanded the priest away from the altar. Darc dropped the detonator and crushed it underneath his heel.

  “It’s already begun!” the fallen reverend screamed.

  Darc stripped all the wires off the girl’s body, then threw the monitor against the nearest pillar, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces. He turned back to the unmoving form on the slab, kneeling over her and beginning compressions on her chest.

  More symbols flashed in his inner vision, giving him all the details he needed. The girl had shown him the path. He had only now to follow it. Darc spoke to the form below him.

  “Below the age of nine, the brain can go three to four minutes without oxygen.”

  “Stop! What are you doing?” The pastor’s tone was shocked, afraid.

  “I did not break the hyoid. I know I did not. I put pressure at exactly two and five o’clock.”

  “Stop!” The priest grabbed Darc’s shoulder, trying to drag him away from the girl. Darc continued speaking to the form below him.

  “I put you into fine ventricular fibrillation. Your heart’s still beating, little one. The rest of your body just doesn’t know it.”

  The percentage chance of survival, the exact number of beats per minute necessary to start the heart again, the seconds left until brain damage set in, all floated in front of Darc’s eyes. The pastor stopped pulling at Darc’s shoulder, running off to the side. Moments later he was back, carrying a length of rebar that he swung at Darc’s body, knocking him off the altar as he screamed in rage.

  “Never!” He flailed at Darc’s head, apparently seeking to incapacitate the detective to the point that Darc could no longer help the girl. “He will come!”

  Darc reached up, stopping the pastor’s swing at its apex, gripping the length of rebar, seeking to wrench it away from the crazed minister. The man of the cloth held on with the strength of his passion and despair, baring and gnashing his teeth inches away from Darc’s face.

  Glancing around for anything that might help, Darc noticed the girl’s teddy bear propped against the side of the altar. Symbols that had lain dormant in his mind awoke and spun into place, stunning Darc with their sudden clarity.

  “Teddy bear. Death. Dog.”

  The priest sneered into Darc’s face. “You think to speak in tongues?”

  “Mongoose. Sharp. Teddy bear.”

  “Enough!” The pastor jerked the rebar away from Darc, sending him reeling back toward the altar, where the blood-slicked floor took the detective’s feet out from under him. He bashed his head against the corner of the marble structure, flashes of light joining the ciphers dancing inside.

  Shaking his head against the sudden pain and disorientation, Darc reached his hand back, encountering the ratted teddy bear. He held it up in front of him.

  The minister stepped back in mock disbelief, looking down at his fallen opponent. “No toy will save you, my dear detective.”

  “No, but this might,” Darc responded.

  As the priest stepped forward, his robe twirling about him, Darc reached inside the toy for the scalpel the girl had placed there for him. It had been drawn in the picture of the bear she had left for him. It was a symbol he had not been able to identify until now. She had d
amaged her favorite toy to give her hero a fighting chance.

  Darc began circling the pastor once more, the priest’s stance and movements registering in Darc’s mind as slashes of light. The man of the cloth was surprisingly agile and skilled, and his madness lent him strength. Darc knew himself to be handicapped by his concern for the girl behind him. The seconds were ticking away on his ability to revive her. The statistics flashed in front of him.

  “Fourteen hundred milliamps. One minute, seven seconds.”

  “She is gone,” the priest snapped.

  “Seven pounds per square inch pressure directly over the zyphoid process.”

  The reverend laughed. “You will not have the—”

  Darc lunged with the scalpel, forcing the pastor to dodge, but that was exactly what Darc had planned. While the minister was off balance, Darc sprinted forward and rammed his shoulder into the killer’s side. The pastor went careening off the chancel, falling backward into one of the many torture devices spread about the chapel.

  “No!” he screamed as he fell.

  This specific device was a pointed iron stake, set at an upward slope that was heated by one of the cauldrons of Greek fire. The iron point skewered the priest right through the abdomen, his intestines spilling out and sizzling on the superheated metal. The pastor screamed frantically, his cries contracting his diaphragm around the stake even further.

  Darc threw down the scalpel at the feet of the cleric, turned away from the sight, and raced back to the girl, the priest’s screams following him every step of the way. He leaped up onto the altar, beginning compressions once more.

  “Remember the mongoose,” he whispered to the girl.

  From off the chancel, the priest’s screams intensified as he flailed about on the stake and managed to kick over the cauldron containing the Greek fire. The fire spread out and up, covering his skin, engulfing his robes.

  Darc continued speaking into the girl’s ear. “The shield. Think of the shield.” He pumped faster and faster on the tiny chest of the form beneath him as the screams from the pastor rang about the church.