Faustus Resurrectus

  ***

  The shock of Dez’s transformation had overwhelmed Joann, not just eliminating but destroying her perceptions about reality and its boundaries. The actual physical change was bad enough, but even worse was the energy emanating from Dez like shimmers of heat in the desert. It filled Joann with despair and hopelessness, with the certain knowledge that the evil she’d faced within the justice system was fueled by something far, far worse, and that something was approaching.

  “‘Quid tu moraris?’”

  Although her mind floated in blissful semi-consciousness, absorbing every iota of comfort before returning to her captivity, she recognized the resonant voice of Faustus.

  “‘Per Iehovam, Gehennam et consecratum aquam quam nunc spargo, signumque cruces quad nunc facio, et per vota nostra, ipse nunc surgat nobis dicatus Mephistopheles!’”

  She struggled to keep her eyes closed, to hold onto the comfort of not knowing, but her nature was inquisitive. Gradually her eyelids lifted their weight.

  Faustus stood in front of the stage, inside of some kind of design (Donovan would recognize it, part of her thought. Why isn’t he here yet?), as Coeus knelt shirtless before him. The sorcerer raised his hand high before plunging it into Coeus’s chest. Joann gasped.

  That—that can’t be possible!

  But the night’s events had demonstrated the limitless potential of existence. The knowledge was little comfort as an icy blast of wind came from the circle and Faustus began to withdraw his hand slowly, forearm muscles standing out in cords, as if he was bringing something along with it, something from inside the giant…

  Darkness called her again.

  ***

  “—coming up on the Great Lawn now.”

  The three NYPD monitors had been tied in to Tex’s camera; the other two were left long-range. All across the oval field Donovan could see the two- and three-dimensional flickering of the possessed darting in and out of the chopper’s spotlight.

  “This is unbelievable!” Astonishment filled Tex’s whisper. “Are you getting this?”

  The entire lawn had been stripped of recreational features and turned into bloodstained tundra, with a huge holding pen constructed on the dirt of what normally were softball fields #3 and #5. Its steel wire sides stood eight or nine feet high, and it was filled with people in all stages of panic. Outside it, trees hung heavy with dark, dripping shapes. Gouges had been dug out of the dirt in random spots, as those lucky or dexterous few avoided imminent death for another precious moment. At the north end, a Sigil of Baphomet as big as a helicopter landing circle had been carved into the ground. Donovan could see the detail of the goat’s head, with eyes of shining liquid, inside the inverted pentagram. His eyes unconsciously went to his bandaged hand, and he wondered how similar the scar from Coeus’s tattoo would be to it.

  “Jesus.” Captain Seifert rubbed his chin as he watched the screen. “What d’you think? Three, four hundred?”

  “Didn’t think there would be so many,” Fullam said.

  “At least we know they haven’t killed as many as we first thought,” the older blonde FBI agent, Vicki Matthews, observed.

  “Mother of God…”

  Tex’s voice drew their attention back to the monitors. He aimed his camera towards a mass rising five stories high at the north end of the lawn. At first Donovan thought it was intangible darkness, a trick of reflection and his own tension. As Tex swung the nose spotlight up, however, he saw the two-and three-dimensional flickers swarming over a structure styled in what Donovan could only think of as Gothic Anti-Christ. A huge pointed arch—created and supported by a half-dozen rib arches—served as backdrop, along with needle-like spires, buttresses and miscellaneous edged cornices. Individually they would have been difficult to look at for any length of time. Together they were literally painful to set the eye upon, offending the natural order vision seeks to impose.

  “Is it me,” Peter Lo asked slowly, “or is that…thing moving?”

  The FBI man was right, the entire structure seemed to be trembling with life. Donovan looked closer than he wanted to. Human bodies dangled from hooks and spears, grotesque set dressing for the stage. Blood dripped, black and shiny in the moonlight, congealing into macabre designs to decorate the walls. Those still alive quivered, vainly attempting to relieve the agony of the steel embedded in their flesh as they babbled soundless onscreen pleas for the release of death.

  The images stunned everyone until Captain Darenelli voiced their thoughts. “What the fuck is that?”

  “What do you want me to do?” Tex could barely speak the words.

  Fullam’s stoic manner didn’t keep disgust from his voice. “Nothing. You’ve been in their sights too long. Pull out.”

  “No one’s taken a shot at me yet, and these folks don’t seem the type to hold back. Maybe they don’t even have guns.”

  “What are you going to do? You can’t save—”

  “Sergeant Waring,” Clark interrupted. “What’s going on below you?”

  Donovan looked at the bottom of the monitor. Onscreen, Valdes herded three hostages from the holding pen out into the center of the lawn. The hostages—two women and a man dressed in an NYPD uniform—were forced to kneel in the open, as though Valdes wanted no obstruction to the show he was producing. Donovan watched him step behind them and, keeping the gun trained, draw a long knife from under his coat. The blade caught a shaft of firelight and flashed through Tex’s camera into their eyes.

  “Looks like—oh no!”

  Valdes raised his head deliberately, gazing at the helicopter as he seized a handful of the first woman’s hair, jerked her head back and slit her throat. A fountain of red sprayed. Without pause he repeated his actions with the other two, movements simultaneously implacable and chilling. As a final insult, he wiped the knife on the uniform shirt of the police officer he’d just murdered. Fullam cursed under his breath. Before disappearing into the dark, Valdes looked back at the helicopter. He didn’t smile, he didn’t laugh, but one eyebrow twitched as if to challenge observers to stop him from doing it again.

  “That son of a bitch!”

  “Get back here, Tex.” Fullam said numbly. “We’ve seen what we need to.”

  Everyone started talking at once. Donovan turned away, puzzled and angry. Why? Those weren’t sacrifices to any deities. Those weren’t ritual killings. Why did he do that? Cutting their throats did nothing for him from a paranormal perspective…

  The television crews were pushing at the sawhorses, anxious to get their gallon of guts for the news cycle. For the moment, they were being handled by uniforms. On the edge of the crowd he saw a cab pull up and Father Carroll climb out, clutching a gym bag. He still wore black but without his priest’s collar. Donovan caught his eye and started walking away from the media. On the other side of the barricades Father Carroll followed, until they reached a spot near where Donovan had parked.

  Father Carroll embraced him, then looked past Donovan to stare at the swirling darkness cloaking the park. “My God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My God,” he repeated. “Donovan, this is…formidable.” As though realizing there was no point to belaboring what they faced, he looked away from it, changing topics in mid-thought. “Sister Mary Faith has taken Josie in. For the moment, she’s safe.”

  Donovan nodded and gestured at his throat. “Good move with…”

  “My collar? Oh, yes. I removed it in the taxi when I saw the television cameras. I felt it prudent not to open the police up to ridicule and speculation.”

  “Definitely the right choice.” He gestured at the gym bag. “I hope you found something useful at your apartment?”

  “One or two things.” The priest eyed him. “Are you all right?”

  “Frank sent a chopper to get some visuals and intelligence on what’s going on. Valdes saw it, trotted out three hostages and cut their throats. Right there, out in the open. No negotiating, no demands to stay away. The only thing that seemed to matter
to Valdes was that we saw—” Donovan stopped, eyes narrowing as he put it together. “He wanted us to see. Why would he want that?”

  “Perhaps to elicit the very reaction he has gotten from you. To make our side charge in without being properly prepared. Against the heliophobic, that would be suicidal.”

  “How are we supposed to prepare them?”

  “That,” Father Carroll replaced his priest collar, “falls upon your shoulders.”

  “Me?”

  “These are men of secular protocols and rules. They would never take me seriously. It seems you,” he gestured at the ID tag Donovan wore, “have already been introduced.”

  “Frank asked me if I could give them intelligence, but that’s background, not tactics.”

  “If not you,” Father Carroll said plainly, “then who?”

  “I can’t go tell a bunch of cops and FBI agents how to fight those things! I mean, I could. I know how. But…that’s insane. They’d never listen to me. I told you I wasn’t as good a politician as Joann, remember?”

  “And I believe my response was ‘you’ll have to learn.’ All things are possible through the Lord.” Father Carroll’s eyes lit up and he crossed the street, heading for the stack of black-painted fence spires. “For instance, iron is a powerful weapon against the diabolic, iron like these bars. These will be most effective against anything Valdes and Faustus have conjured up, especially after I’ve blessed them.”

  “But you see? That’s what I’m talking about. How do I tell them that? ‘Leave your guns holstered, boys. I got something better against those things—a skinny piece of iron!’” Donovan looked towards the FBI truck. Fullam broke from the pack and waved him over. Donovan’s heart beat faster. He ran his bandaged hand through his hair. “I don’t see how it can work, but if I can’t do this, they’re going to get slaughtered.”

  “I agree their training leads them to certain conclusions, and their lives encourage ignorance in many facets of reality.” The priest knelt to root through his gym bag. “Your life, conversely, has not. If mixing the two realities is the source of your concern, the solution is simple. Don’t approach your explanation from our side, but from theirs.

  “Put it in terms they understand.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE APOCALYPTIC CULT

  With a nod of satisfaction, Valdes watched the NYPD helicopter fly away.

  “Valdes.” Faustus called to him. He was breathing hard and his face looked drawn. “Thy presence is requested.”

  “‘Requested’? Then you were successful?”

  “Come.”

  Valdes followed him across a patch of bloody dirt. The earth was so dry it had soaked up the liquid, leaving only a dark stain and the scent of burnt copper. From everywhere he sensed the possessed, whispering seductively in their bizarre, warped language. The darkness hid them well but he glimpsed an occasional flicker of scythe blade in the torchlight.

  “Where’s Coeus?”

  “‘Procer porta’; the child was ‘the gate of the Prince.’” He gestured into the darkness. “As thou seest.”

  In front of the stage, within the Sigil of Baphomet design, there loomed a terrifying, disgusting…thing. Valdes stopped short. It writhed over and in on itself, a Chthulian vision from the heart of Lovecraft’s fevered hallucinations, seeking escape from the confines of its magical prison with every greasy lurch. It glistened, roared, twisted; its flesh bubbled and churned, changing shape in a ceaseless parade of unearthly forms and figures. It was repulsive. It filled Valdes with loathing and an urge to inflict harm upon others, and himself. It was darkness in all colors, blues and grays and purples and blacks, a palette unlike anything he had ever seen, but its magnetic ugliness drew his gaze. The longer he looked the further in he fell. Beneath the surface the figure exuded a potent lure, an almost pheremonal hold that belied the physical. In an instant he realized what he was seeing, and he turned his head with a smile. “Quin redis, Mephistopheles, fratris imagine!” When he turned back, the nightmare vision had been replaced by a giant silhouette. “…Coeus?”

  “Partly.”

  The voice was as deep as it had always been, but now possessed a quality Valdes hadn’t previously encountered. Confident and persuasive, it reminded him of his own.

  “‘Quin redis, Mephistopheles’?” the giant continued. “I see you’ve read Marlowe.”

  Valdes watched as one hand slowly rose to remove the sunglasses. The giant’s features were still scarred, but serenity had replaced Coeus’s dull brutality. Now his eyes glowed dark purple with tiny white flecks, galaxies in deepest space. His lips curled, and even his smile was more knowing.

  Valdes quickly recovered from his surprise. “I read a lot while I was in prison.”

  “Prison?” The giant glanced around his feet. “There’s something we share.”

  Valdes stepped forward and smudged the outer circle of the design. He extended a hand across the line, bridging the magical barrier. “I’m Cornelius Valdes.” Mephistopheles accepted the handshake. Coeus’s grip had been clammy and clumsy; this one was warm and firm. “Forgive me. I was expecting, well, a friar.”

  Mephistopheles gave a sly smile. “Don’t believe everything you read.”

  “Valdes…” Faustus watched, amazed, as Mephistopheles stepped free from the design. “How didst thou know—?”

  “I resurrected you to instruct me, Herr Doktor. What kind of pupil would I be if I did no study on my own?”

  “No man worthy of his destiny has it handed to him, Faustus.” Mephistopheles turned and looked at the stage, and at the structure behind it, approvingly. “Have four hundred odd years with me taken from you the thrill of discovery?”

  “What thou doth offer hath robbed from Faustus any semblance of joy at the new.”

  “Then it’s a good thing,” Valdes said, “this isn’t about you.”

  The flush in Faustus’s face cooled to granite. Mephistopheles nodded and inspected his fingers as he flexed them. “Quite an ambitious undertaking you’ve been on, Neil. Contacting me takes a tremendous amount of focus and desire. A resurrectus maledicat—by yourself—is truly impressive.”

  “Thank you. I wasn’t totally without guidance, though. I had a grimoire to help me through the zodiac sacrifices.”

  “Did you? You certainly made the most of it.”

  “So far. But I’m not finished yet.”

  Mephistopheles paused in his exploration of the physical and cocked his head. Coeus’s misshapen features took on a bemused cast. “Such confidence.” He inhaled deeply the scents of blood and death. “I’ll decide whether you’re finished. And then I’ll decide whether to hang you from your ribcage on that hook above the stage.”

  Valdes didn’t look up. “You could,” he acknowledged, taking out his pack of cigarettes. “However—and I mean absolutely no disrespect—you aren’t the reason I did all of this. The grimoire helped me get to Faustus. Faustus helped me get to you. Only you can help me get to the King. And he can get me to what I want.”

  “I reign over desires and wants, Neil.” Mephistopheles’ smile revealed teeth perfect and sharp. “If you want something, it will involve me.”

  “That’s my understanding. However, my understanding is also that you provide the things; the King is the power that creates them.” He tapped out and lit a cigarette. “I want to deal with him.”

  “Is that what you learned from reading Marlowe? Mark your blood on a piece of paper for the King and you get a servant like me?” Mephistopheles drew himself up to Coeus’s prodigious height. His aura darkened the world around him, and the muttering of the possessed grew silent. “Do you think I’m an errand boy, Neil?”

  “I think you are the path to get me where I want to be, but you aren’t the destination itself.” Valdes held his ground and continued to smoke. “Nothing personal.”

  Mephistopheles stood astonished. He looked at Faustus, back at Valdes, blinked, and chuckled. The sound began as grating, stone on steel, and r
ose to a wheezing rasp that echoed across the Lawn as the possessed joined in.

  “Yes.” Mephistopheles shook his great head and peered down at Valdes. “Neil, you might actually understand how things work.” He spread his hands and gave a slight bow. “I would be delighted to work with you towards achieving your desires.”

  Valdes smiled. “Let me tell you what I’m looking for…”

  ***

  Fullam met Donovan a few steps outside the group, indicating what Donovan carried on his shoulder. “What’s that?”

  “One of the spires the city is using to build a wrought-iron fence. There’re a bunch of stacks of them back there.”

  “Why are you—?”

  He looked towards the officials. “What’s going on?”

  Fullam stared at him for a long moment. “Valdes’s stunt with the hostages,” he finally said, “convinced Clark and a few captains that we can’t wait this out or wait for them to open negotiations. They’re definitely going in, and are drawing the plans now.”

  “Can you get me a few minutes?”

  “If I can’t, crack a couple of heads with that thing. Start with the FBI.”

  Clark seemed to be leading the discussion. Fullam waited for a pause before inserting himself. “Excuse my interruption, gentlemen, this is Donovan Graham. He’s one of my research people, been working with me the last few weeks. He’s got background on Valdes and his group that might be helpful.”

  “Graham?” the FBI man repeated. “Do you have another involvement in this case?”

  “Joann Clery is my fiancée.”

  “He’s also the one who picked up Valdes’s trail at the Cancer Hospital,” Fullam added.

  “What sort of background information do you have?” Ed Devine, a large, round-bellied man in a tweed sport coat, asked. “Because I have never seen anything like what they’re building outside of a horror movie. People impaled on hooks? Hanging thirty feet in the air? What kind of terrorist group is this?”

  “They don’t think of themselves as terrorists. Valdes has created a powerful cult of personality.” Here we go. Donovan moved through the ring of people, to where he could make eye contact with them all. He stood in front of a map of Central Park, which had designs showing the directions from which the police forces would approach. “There’re all kinds of cults of personality—political, military, religious. This is the last; specifically, an ‘Apocalyptic Cult.’ They have a purpose and a cause: to bring about the Apocalypse. They believe in a literal Heaven and Hell. They believe they’re soldiers for Hell. They believe you and all of your men are soldiers for Heaven. They believe they’re fighting Armageddon—the Final Battle—right here, right now, against you.”