by Frank Lauria
“You can’t run away now. Not after a lifetime of waiting…”
Terrified by Mabel’s psychotic ranting, Christine fought back her tears. “Stop it. Stop it!”
“Get off her!” Jericho roared, as the room began filling with smoke. His fingers clamped hard on Mabel’s wrist and he twisted. Mabel snarled and clawed at his face. In that chaotic instant Mabel’s fingers seemed like slashing talons.
Christine broke free, but as Jericho reeled back, Mabel picked up a large bureau and hurled it at him. Mabel reached out for Christine’s hand.
“Sweetie, don’t leave me now,” she whimpered, pleading with Christine. “Wasn’t I a mother to you? Didn’t I give you everything? Don’t you love me?”
Jericho grabbed Mabel’s arm with both hands. As if swatting a fly, she swung her free hand and smacked the side of his skull. Ears ringing, Jericho stumbled to the floor. He couldn’t believe the woman had just decked him.
It got worse. With frightening power the woman gripped Jericho’s throat and squeezed. At the same time she lifted him against the hot wall, crushing his neck.
Frantically Christine jumped between them, but Mabel’s forearm sent her to the floor. The brief diversion gave Jericho the chance to wrench free and he wrestled Mabel to the floor. With raging desperation Jericho grasped her flailing arms and heaved. Mabel hit a glass coffee table, and it shattered.
Jericho leaped to his feet, but Mabel remained where she lay, impaled on bloody shards of glass. She screamed and writhed, trying vainly to free herself.
“Oh God!” Christine moaned. “Oh God! Mabel, Mabel!”
With one hand Mabel grabbed Christine’s shirt and pulled her down until they were eye-to-eye. “It’s your birthright!” she hissed fervently.
Jericho broke her hold and dragged Christine to the hall. The house was filling with smoke and the intense heat made it hard to breathe. They went to the stairway. The bottom floor was a churning sea of flames.
Suddenly a man emerged from the fiery whirlpool below and began climbing the stairs.
Jericho felt Christine go limp. With a dazed, ecstatic smile, she slowly moved toward the stranger as if under a spell.
“Christine,” the man called, his voice smooth and commanding.
“Christine!” Jericho yelled hoarsely. He took a long look at the man coming up the stairs and his belly turned over. It was his client—the banker. The man Thomas Aquinas tried to kill. Christine seemed to know him intimately. Eyes glazed and lips parted seductively, she glided down the stairs.
Jericho yanked her back. It broke the spell. Christine shook her head as if recovering from a blow. “No, no,” she whispered backing up the stairs.
The man kept coming, green eyes blazing intently.
“Get me out of here,” she pleaded.
Jericho took her hand and pulled her to the rear stairs that led to the roof.
When the man reached the landing, they were gone. Mabel stumbled to the man’s side, glass still imbedded in her bloody dress. Despite the pain, her eyes were glazed with adoration. And fear.
She reached out to touch him, but the man moved away, his face twisted with contempt. Her face blanched and a cold realization washed over her limbs.
“Please…” she rasped hoarsely. “I served you—only you!”
He shook his head sadly. “You had one simple job. All you had to do was keep her for me … and you couldn’t do that.”
She stood transfixed as his hand reached out. His touch was all she imagined it would be—and much more. Tenderly, sensually, the man caressed her face. A sexual ripple spread across her body as his fingers traced her ear, then moved down her neck.
Mabel was still enraptured when the man crushed her throat with one enraged squeeze, killing her instantly.
* * *
Jericho used the same escape route taken by Christine’s attacker. Except he didn’t leap to the next roof. He used the fire escape going down the rear of the house.
Christine was still shaky, so he half carried her down the iron stairway. When they reached the ladder, Jericho hoisted her over his shoulder, climbed down, and lowered her to the ground. He dropped beside her, scanning the alley.
In the glow of the street fire, Jericho spotted Detective Francis and a uniformed cop walking toward them. Relieved, Jericho stood up and waved.
“Marge! Over here. We need some help.”
As they neared, he recognized the cop as the hospital guard for Thomas Aquinas. Both of them had their guns drawn. And they weren’t smiling.
Jericho lifted his hands. “Hey, easy with the hardware,” he said calmly.
Without warning they both fired pointblank. Bullets smacked the brick walls as Jericho dove, pulling Christine behind a Dumpster.
“Jesus, Marge!” Jericho shouted. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Marge’s voice was calm and reasonable. Like a negotiator talking down a jumper. “It’s okay, Jer. We just want the girl.”
Jericho eyed Christine suspiciously. She shook her head, confused. “Okay…” Jericho whispered. “Tell me what’s going on.”
She shrank back against the Dumpster. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you.” He regarded her for a moment, eyes like blue ice. Then he stood up. “Okay,” he called. “I’m coming out.”
“Don’t leave me here,” Christine sobbed.
“Hands on your head!” the hospital guard called.
Jericho stepped out from behind the Dumpster and clasped his hands on his head.
“What do you want with her, Marge? Why is she so important?” he shouted as the hospital guard approached.
Detective Francis raised her gun. “Just the girl…” she told the guard. “You can kill him.”
“Jericho!” Christine screamed.
A staccato burst of gunfire roared through the narrow alley. The strobing flashes spitting from Jericho’s guns lit his savage scowl as he traded shots with Marge and the guard.
Suddenly it was quiet. Christine peered over the Dumpster and saw Jericho standing with a smoking Glock in each hand. The uniformed cop was facedown on the ground, and Detective Francis lay on her side, a surprised expression on her face.
They’re both dead, Jericho realized, the horror spilling through his belly like rancid oil. I’ve just killed two police officers.
CHAPTER NINE
“When I woke up this morning, I thought it was as bad as it could get,” Jericho murmured, staring at the two bodies on the ground. He felt used up, finished.
Then he remembered Chicago, and the anger embraced him like an old friend. Someone was going to pay for his partner’s life.
He noticed something moving near the Dumpster and turned, guns trained. It was Christine, rummaging on the ground for something.
“Come on,” he barked, suddenly alert. “We’ve got to move!”
She ignored him, hands scratching through the trash.
“Get up,” he urged, reaching for her arm. She pushed him away.
“Goddammit!” she grunted, frantically searching. Finally she found it.
It was a pill. Christine wiped away the muck and popped it into her mouth. She looked at him, eyes glazed with tears. “Mabel … she’s dead isn’t she?”
Jericho lifted her by the collar and held her sagging body against the wall.
“My best friend is dead,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Everyone is trying to kill us. I just shot two cops. Why are they after you? What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know,” Christine sobbed, her voice weak. “I swear I don’t know.”
Jericho let her go and she slumped against the wall. “You were gonna give me to them, weren’t you?” she asked accusingly.
He held out his arms and showed her two Glocks tucked in his wrist holsters. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”
Her eyes welled up with tears. “Why is this happening?” she moaned softly. “I know I’m responsible … I just don’t know why. What
did I do?”
Jericho put his arm around her and tried to comfort her. “The man on the stairs…” he said gently. “What do you know about him?”
Her body stiffened. “I don’t know him.”
“You do,” he corrected. “I saw your face. You recognized him.”
Christine pulled away and tried to gather herself. “It’s something I don’t talk about.”
“It’s okay,” Jericho said softly, as if coaxing a frightened deer. “Just tell me.”
“I have seen him before,” Christine said, jaw clenched. She looked away. “In my dreams.”
“In your dreams?”
“Dreams … they’re nightmares…” She kept her face averted, and her voice shook. “I don’t know … He takes me … he … he … fucks me,” she blurted out, forcing the words with great effort. “I’ve been fucking him all my life.”
Christine turned, face streaked with tears. “I thought I was crazy. Maybe I am, I don’t know … He was never real … until tonight.”
“He is real,” Jericho assured her. “I saw him before. My firm was protecting him. I was his damned bodyguard.”
“I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be—I won’t let him harm you.”
She half smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid of me,” she confided sadly. “I’m afraid if I see him … if he tries to take me…” Christine paused. “I’m afraid I’ll want him, too.”
A pair of headlights swept the alley. Jericho looked up and saw the flashing red and blue of a police car. He took Christine’s hand and pulled her into the shadows.
“They’re looking for us. Come on.”
Christine didn’t resist. “Where are we going?”
“To get some answers,” he muttered, almost to himself.
* * *
It seemed as if the entire city was in crisis. Sirens wailed constantly as Jericho and Christine emerged from a cab and approached St. John’s Church.
The great wooden doors were locked. Jericho pulled his Glock from its holster and hammered it against the door. Loud minutes later, the door opened a crack and Father Novak peered through steel-rimmed glasses.
Jericho pressed his Glock against Father Novak’s jaw.
The priest stepped back and opened the door. “You don’t need that,” Father Novak said calmly. “You have no enemies here.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Jericho said, ushering Christine inside. “This girl was attacked. She was about to be killed by Vatican Knights—priests like you—so don’t tell me we’re safe here.”
“They’re not like me,” Father Novak said flatly. “These men are a misguided clique who think they are doing God’s work. They are not.”
“I want to know what’s going on,” Jericho said with quiet menace. “And I want to know now.”
Father Novak met his stare. “Put the gun away. Did anybody see you come?”
Jericho holstered the Glock. “No.”
“Then we should be safe,” the priest said, leading them to the altar. “According to scriptures, he cannot see inside the house of God.”
Jericho and Christine exchanged glances. “Who can’t?” Jericho demanded.
Father Novak paused and peered at them over his steel-rimmed glasses. His expression was both curious and sympathetic. “Perhaps now you are ready to believe,” he said gently. “Come with me.”
The priest waved his hand as they went behind the altar rail. Jericho saw two young priests standing guard at the door. They moved aside as Father Novak entered the vestibule.
Looks like battle stations, Jericho noted as they passed. Might have to shoot our way out.
Jericho had visited the underground chamber before, but Christine wasn’t prepared for the feverish religious activity taking place. It looked like a medieval war room, with monks and priests working over scrolls, illuminated manuscripts, alchemist’s texts—and computers. Several scholarly monks were seated around a shriveled old crone, taping and translating the woman’s singsong babble.
When the old woman spotted Father Novak she clasped her hands together in prayer. Her parched, wrinkled features glistened with grateful tears as she opened her hands and lifted them.
Jericho squinted in disbelief. The deep, bloody wounds mutilating the old woman’s palms a few hours before had stopped bleeding. In fact, the wounds were completely gone.
“Her hands are healed.”
Father Novak nodded, dark eyes watching him intently. “Faith is very powerful.”
“Who is she?” Christine asked.
“A Polish peasant,” the priest said carefully. “Two weeks ago she entered a trance and—in a language she had never known—began to prophesize the End of Days.”
His last four words chimed in her brain like funeral bells. “The End of Days?” she repeated under her breath.
“The destruction of man—and the Unholy’s reign on earth.”
Jericho could feel Christine’s terror. “Why don’t you stop all the church talk and just tell us what’s going on?” he demanded, stepping between them. “Who’s after her?”
“Do you know the number of the beast?” Father Novak asked quietly. He picked up a sheet of paper. “From the revelation of St. John, from his dream?
“Six-six-six,” Christine recited.
Father Novak scrawled the numbers 666 on the paper. “In dreams, numbers appear backwards. The number of the beast is not six-six-six,” he explained somberly, turning the paper upside down. “It is nine-nine-nine!”
And I shot Kennedy, Christine thought. “What does this have to do with me?” she asked impatiently.
The priest picked up a bottle of water on the table and poured some into a bowl. “Holy water,” he told her. “Give me your hand.”
Hesitantly, Christine held out her hand. With great care, Father Novak pricked her finger with a pin, and squeezed a drop of her blood into the bowl. The moment her blood touched the holy water it began to churn and bubble.
“Cute trick,” Jericho scoffed.
Father Novak drew himself up. “You really think I’m performing tricks for you? Do you think that’s what this…” He swept his hand across the room filled with monks and scholars. “… Is all about?” He shook his head sadly. “You flatter yourself.”
Jericho had no rational answer. He watched the priest move to a desk and pick up a book. It was filled with drawings and symbols that were obviously satanic. Father Novak pointed to a symbol that was vaguely familiar. Jericho tried to recall where he had seen it before. Then it came to him. It was the sign that had drawn him to the book of heraldry.
A symbol shaped like a question mark. He’d also seen it someplace else …
“Regressus diaboli,” Father Novak intoned, reading the Latin text beneath the symbol. “The return of Satan. Does this seem familiar to you?”
Jericho stared at the symbol, then at Christine. Her eyes were wide with terror. Father Novak took her left wrist and pushed her sleeve up, revealing the red birthmark.
It was shaped exactly like the question mark symbol in the book.
“This is no trick, this is no game,” Father Novak declared. “He’s in her blood. She was chosen.”
“Chosen for what?” Christine asked helplessly, not wanting to know the answer.
“Every thousand years, on the eve of the millennium, the Dark Angel takes a human body and walks the earth. He comes for the woman who will bear his child.”
Father Novak glanced at Christine. “It must be in the unholy hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve. If he consummates your flesh with his human form, he will unlock the door to hell. All that we know, all that we are—or could be—will cease to exist.”
What insane bullshit, Jericho observed. “The Prince of Darkness wants to conquer earth, but he has to wait until between eleven and midnight on New Year’s Eve?” he asked scornfully.
Father Novak’s sharp features became steely. His voice was calm, but his jaw shook with anger. “It’s not New Y
ear’s per se, but a momentary celestial alignment,” he said slowly, as if instructing a child. “The Gregorian monks studied the heavens and calculated the precise moment of this event. They created our calendar by mapping this event and counting backward from that moment.”
Jericho had heard too much. He took Christine’s hand. “It was a mistake to come here.”
“It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe…” Father Novak warned. “He is real. And he will not rest until he has found this girl.”
Christine pulled her hand free from Jericho. “Why did he pick me?” Her question suggested she believed the priest.
Father Novak shrugged. “You were born when the stars were right. A man’s body was also chosen … just like yours.”
“If the Devil does exist, then why doesn’t your God do anything?” Jericho challenged.
“He isn’t my God. He is our God.” Father Novak replied fervently. His glazed expression reminded Jericho of Thomas Aquinas in the subway tunnel. “God does not say He will save us,” the priest reminded. “He says we will save ourselves.”
“Save myself?” Christine snorted. “What am I supposed to do, get a restraining order? Sorry, Satan, but you have to stay five hundred feet away?”
“We must have faith,” the priest repeated. He opened a large, leather-bound manuscript. Inside were vivid illustrations of men through the ages, battling a great beast with a fiery sword. “According to the prophecies a protector will come—a righteous warrior—to keep the girl from harm.”
Medieval comic books, Jericho scoffed. Especially the fiery sword. “What amazes me is that anyone buys this fairy tale,” he declared flatly. “Here’s the Devil, with all his incredible power … and someone can just take him down with a flaming sword.”
Father Novak smiled. “You look with your eyes and you see a sword. I look with my heart and see faith.”
“Between faith and my Glock nine, I’ll take the Glock,” Jericho said, looking at Christine. He could sense she was wavering.
The priest’s smile faded. “I’m afraid nothing less than a pure heart can defeat pure evil,” he said regretfully. “You understand … you’ve done your job. You brought her to the people of faith who can protect her. We will hide her.”