I licked my lips. They were dry as dust.
“You … left something out,” I said.
Lilith nodded, clearly expecting the question.
“You glossed right over the dhampyri. The hybrids. The ones who were forced to give birth to so many of the Upierczi. What happened to them?”
Lilith stared at me with bottomless dark eyes.
“I think you already know the answer to that, Captain Ledger.”
“The Mothers of the Fallen,” I breathed, and those words hurt my mouth. I swallowed a throatful of broken glass. “And … their children? The girls, the dhampyri? What happened to them?”
Violin had tears in her eyes, but her voice was fierce. “Our mothers escaped to save us.”
“Some escaped,” said Lilith sadly. “Most died. The rest … we dedicated ourselves to a single cause.”
“To destroy the monsters. The Upierczi, Nicodemus, the Red Order. All of them.”
I tried to say something. Anything.
All I could do was look into the eyes of these women. Lilith, Violin, each of them.
Violin stared at me, into me. So did Lilith. Looking for my reaction, for my true feelings.
But I simply could not speak.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
The Department of Military Sciences
Worldwide
THE WAREHOUSE, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
For Rudy Sanchez it was like someone had driven a cold steel spike into his chest.
All of the display screens in the mobile computer center were filled with pages of ciphertext and meters showing progress on other sections of the two books. But the central display screen had a different image, a real-time feed from a button camera worn by Mr. Church. It was all there. The Mothers of the Fallen. Lilith and Violin. Joe.
The things Lilith said. The truths she shared.
Rudy wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. To continue watching and listening and understanding was far more than a job requirement, however. To turn away would be the worst kind of cowardice—the kind that refuses to hear the truth. The kind that refuses to care.
He touched the crucifix he wore beneath his shirt.
He barely felt the pain from the crushing, desperate grip Circe had on his other hand.
THE HANGAR, FLOYD BENNETT FIELD, BROOKLYN
Aunt Sallie stood apart so she could study the faces of her staff as they watched and listened to Lilith. She saw shock and horror. She saw tears. She saw jaw-clenched rage. She watched to see if any of them turned away, or sneered privately, or smiled, because God help them if they did.
What she saw on the faces of her people, however, was what she thought she would see. What she needed to see.
No one was looking at her. They were unable to look away. So no one saw her nod her approval of them.
ECHO TEAM, OUTSKIRTS OF TEHRAN
Top Sims heard a small sound. A wet sniff, muffled and discreet. He cut a look sideways, expecting it to be Bunny. But he saw John Smith pull back from his sniper scope to wipe his eyes and nose. Top grunted softly to himself.
He had known Smith for almost a year, had been in every kind of fight with him, had fought to save the world alongside him, but he did not actually know him. The sniper’s file was filled with data but no insight. His psych evals were by the numbers, describing a quiet man with an interior life he did not care to share. Not uncommon for someone raised in an orphanage and bounced around from one foster home to the next. No criminal record, though. No politics, no religion, and if he had opinions he never shared them. He was a blank, a question mark except in one regard: he was the best sniper currently serving in the U.S. military. The best by a good margin. He killed whatever he aimed at. He never pulled a trigger in a questionable situation; he was patient enough to wait for a clear target and an unshakable reason.
Seeing Bunny, Lydia, or Khalid cry would not have jolted Top. Not even surprised him. Bunny, for all his size and experience, was a softie who really did believe that the good guys won in the end. Lydia also had a lot of heart beneath the wisecracks and trash talk. And Khalid, the scholar of the team, was a deeply passionate man, very religious, strongly invested in social justice and ethics. They would cry. They were all probably fighting tears now.
But Smith? Smith never showed a thing. Not a goddamn thing. Not when he killed. Not when his comrades went down. Not when he took a bullet. He was the only person who showed less on his face than Mr. Church.
And yet this—what the woman Lilith was saying, what they were all finding out about the strange mission they were on—was turning dials on the man.
Smith must have sensed him watching and turned slightly toward Top. He touched his left thumb to the tear glistening in his eye then reached out and smeared the wetness along the barrel of his rifle. He said nothing, did nothing else. It was a statement and he let Top interpret according to his own understanding.
Top nodded.
Maybe he did understand.
Chapter Ninety
Abandoned Warehouse
Tehran, Iran
June 16, 2:32 a.m.
“Do you understand now?” asked Violin, her voice quiet in the pin-drop silence. “Why I had to be careful? Why I couldn’t just—”
“Yes,” I said hoarsely. “I understand.” Though I wished I could tear that knowledge from my mind. I looked at Church. He nodded, his face uncharacteristically sad.
He patted me on the shoulder. “I knew a fraction of this,” he said. “If I had known more … well, the Red Order and the Upierczi would have been more squarely on the DMS radar a long time ago.”
“We’re going to do something about this,” I demanded. “Right?”
Church gave me a fraction of an arctic smile. “What would your guess be?”
In my earbud I heard several of my team softly growl, “Hooah.”
Church turned to Lilith. “You should have told me this a long time ago,” he said, but his tone was gentle.
“It wasn’t your fight,” she said.
Church grunted softly. “Of course it is.”
Violin looked at me. “Joseph, you and your soldiers, you fight against madmen and terrorists to defend the world and a certain way of life, but your fight is a new one. There are older struggles.”
“Yeah,” I said bitterly. “Believe me when I tell you that you’ve made your point.”
She nodded and gave me a small smile that seemed to hold a thousand different meanings. Grace had a smile like that, and for just a moment I thought I heard Grace’s sweet voice whisper my name.
I closed my eyes for a moment. Then I inhaled through my nose and let out a big chestful of air. “Okay,” I said, “I think I have almost all the players except one. Who or what is Arklight?”
“Arklight was formed as the militant arm of the Mothers,” said Violin, and her eyes were fierce with pride. “Most of the field agents are their children.”
“Dhampyri?” I asked, almost afraid to use the word.
Violin paused for a moment, then nodded. “We are dedicated to the destruction of the Holy Agreement, the Red Order, the Tariqa and the Upierczi. We are the children of monsters, and many of us are the mothers of monsters … but we are not monsters. In comic books and movies dhampyr have super powers. We don’t. Though, there are some useful qualities, I suppose. A few ‘gifts.’ Perhaps ‘side-effects’ is more medically correct. From the Upierczi blood in our veins we have some physical advantages.”
“Speed and strength?” I ventured.
“Some,” said Violin, though she smiled when she said it, allowing me to infer what I could from that.
“What about the age thing. Are you immortal, too? Or—what passes for immortal?”
Lilith shrugged. “Some of us are pretty well-preserved for our ages.”
And I saw a twinkle in her eye that made me wonder just how old she was. And … how old Violin was.
Church consulted his watch. “The president should be calling me any time now. We h
ave to make some decisions, the first of which is whether we continue to work our separate and counter-productive agendas, or whether we combine our resources. The Red Order and the Upierczi are clearly tied to our hunt for the nukes. That makes it everyone’s fight.”
Lilith glanced around at the other Mothers. Some were stone-faced, a few still openly hostile, but most of them had predatory gleams in their eyes. Some of them even smiled. Kind of the way the big hunting cats smile. You don’t want to see that smile coming at you out of the dark.
The older women in the group nodded to Lilith, one by one, and she in turn nodded to Church. Some of the tension seemed to go out of his big shoulders.
“Then let’s go to work,” he said.
Chapter Ninety-One
Private Villa Near Jamshidiyeh Park
Tehran, Iran
June 16, 2:39 a.m.
Hugo Vox punched the wall.
He punched it for two reasons. The simplest was that it was the handiest wall, right there next to his desk. The other reason was far less obvious, even to him. It was a reason rooted in fear and hope, and that reason had a name.
Upier 531.
The wall was smooth, with painted drywall over lath. In his youth, Vox could have put his fist through a wall like that all the way to the elbow. He’d done it in college and in at least two boardrooms. Since the cancer took hold, his rage had not manifested in outbursts of that kind. Energy was to be conserved, and he feared the frailty which had transformed him from a robust bear to a tottering old man with bones of matchwood.
All of that, though, was yesterday’s news.
When he woke up after a midnight nap, his whole body was on fire. Not with pain … not the gnawing, destructive pain. No, this was something else entirely. This was a swollen pain, and expanded pain. When he’d gotten out of bed he’d actually yelled. Not from hurt, but from the sheer joy of having enough breath to do it.
Here in the office he’d spent the rest of the predawn hours working at his computer, his fingers flying over the keys. Playing. Twisting things for the sheer nasty joy of it. The fuck you fun of it. It felt like playing chess against an opponent who was bound and gagged. He moved all the pieces around on both sides. The Red Order, the Sabbatarians, the Tariqa, the Upierczi, Arklight. And Church.
As Vox thought about his old “friend,” he felt his mouth begin to turn down into its usual frown, but the burn wouldn’t let that happen. Instead his mouth twitched and rebelled and broke into a grin. A big, happy, malicious grin. The old bear’s grin.
He launched himself from his chair and slammed his fist into the wall.
All the way to the elbow.
“Fuck yeah!” he roared, and with a grunt he tore his arm free. The splintered lath tried to claw at his skin, but even though it drew blood it could no more stop him than the cancer could. Not anymore.
Not any fucking more.
He roared again and laughed, and punched the wall again and again.
Then he poured a huge glass of Scotch, gulped it down, and flung himself back into his chair. The computer was still on and he scrolled through his list of names, considering each player and the general chaos in which they all floated. All of them searching for meaning, fighting for it, killing for it, dying for it.
And not one of them—not even Church—appreciating that chaos was its own end. Chaos was its own formless agenda.
“Fuck you, Deacon!” he bellowed and pounded his fist on the table hard enough to make his whiskey bottle dance.
His phone rang and he frowned at it.
There was no screen display at all. Not even one to tell him that it was a blocked call. Vox smiled and picked it up.
“Hello, Uncle.”
“Hello, Nephew.”
“I feel fucking great today.”
“I know. It’s good to have you back.”
“Back? Hell, I was never like this before. I feel … I feel…”
“I know. It’s delicious, isn’t it?”
“Yes it goddamn well is.”
The caller paused. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
“You know there’s no going back?”
“Shit, don’t try to scare me with burned bridges, Uncle. I’m ready to light the match.”
They both laughed quietly about that. Vox, perhaps, laughed a little bit louder.
“Then let it all burn down,” said Father Nicodemus.
Chapter Ninety-Two
Arklight Camp
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 3:04 a.m.
We had a quick strategy session during which Lilith told Church that he could have Arklight teams to assist with the refinery raids. He accepted without hesitation. While they began working out the details, I moved outside, needing some space to process everything.
Violin found me in the shadows outside of the warehouse. We stood together looking at the stars. Then she said, “This must be so hard for you. So strange. You, an American soldier … fighting monsters.”
“Since I joined the DMS last year, nothing has been normal. I’m not sure I even believe in that concept anymore.”
“This is normal for me,” she said. “This is all I’ve ever known. I was born into this world.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. It is what it is. Perhaps someday I’ll find another kind of normal.”
“Maybe I can help you look.”
“Maybe you could.”
“About the Sabbatarians,” I said. “You guys seem to hate each other worse than the Dodgers and the Giants. But you’re both kind of on the same side, right? So what gives?”
“‘Same side’?” she snorted. “Hardly. They know that most of us were either breeding stock for the Upierczi or born from those forced matings. The Sabbatarians, in their great Christian mercy, consider us Satan’s whores. The dhampyri doubly so.”
“Jesus.”
“They long ago named us enemies of God and marked us for extermination.” She shrugged. “We have responded in kind.”
“Then I’m glad we put a bunch of those assholes down.”
Violin nodded but said nothing.
Above, the Milky Way pivoted around us.
“You know, one of the things that’s eating at me here,” I admitted, “is Nicodemus. Who the hell is he?”
A haunted look flashed through Violin’s eyes. “As long as there has been a Red Order there has been a Father Nicodemus associated with it. My mother thinks it is the same man, but I don’t believe that. I don’t believe in ghosts or demons; I think it’s part of the propaganda the Red Order has always used. Besides, it’s probably a title passed down from one person to another, much in the same way that ‘Scriptor’ is passed down through the LaRoques.”
“Don’t priests sometimes take new names when they take holy orders?” I asked. “Biblical names?”
“Not as frequently these days,” said Violin, “but yes.”
I pulled my cell and called Bug and told him to hack the Vatican or whoever certifies priests. “If these Nicodemus guys are legitimate clerics,” I told him, “then there should be records in the registry of holy orders. Find out.”
I slipped the cell back into my pocket.
“Nicodemus is a strange man,” said Violin. “I saw him a few times when I was a little girl down in the Shadow Kingdom.” She cut me a look. “That’s what they call it.”
“Yes, very dramatic,” I said sourly. “Can you give me a physical description of Nicodemus?” She did, and I felt my skin crawl. “Okay, that’s a step over the line into weirdsville. That description exactly matches the inmate.”
“What happened to him?” asked Violin.
“He disappeared.”
“How did he escape?”
“I didn’t say he escaped,” I said. “He vanished from his cell. No evidence at all of a jailbreak. Security cameras went haywire, guards saw nothing, and then he dropped completely off the radar. I was there when it happened. Thoroughly creepy and bor
derline impossible the way it happened. But even so, it couldn’t be the same man. Could it?”
Before she could reply Church appeared in the doorway and snapped his fingers for us, and we hurried over. Lilith was with him. “Circe,” he said into the phone, “you’re on speaker. Repeat what you just told me.”
“When Rasouli gave the flash drive to Joe, he mentioned the Book of Shadows. When Lilith sent us her scan she included a note saying that Arklight believes that the Book is the secret history of the Red Order and the Holy Agreement. It’s in ciphertext, however, and it’s unreadable. Arklight had it for years and couldn’t crack it. The same ciphertext is used in a book called the Voynich manuscript, which is in a library at Yale. We now have both complete texts, and the language is the same. With me so far?”
She didn’t wait for an answer and instead plunged ahead.
“Rasouli also mentioned the Saladin Codex, which is a text on mathematics. MindReader pulled multiple translations of it and just finished a comparative analysis. The Codex is a work of minor importance and one with a number of flaws. Now, from a distance, we have two unreadable books and one that is readable but seems to be entirely unrelated to this matter.”
“That’s from a distance,” I said. “How about close up?”
“Well … Rudy and I may have made a little progress,” continued Circe. “First, you have to understand that ciphertext isn’t a code. It’s mathematical. However, even when using MindReader to analyze the Codex for a key to the cipher we came up dry. But here’s the thing, and this changes everything … this is where the Voynich manuscript comes in.”
I looked at Church and saw him stiffen. Lilith, too. You could feel the tension crackling all around us.
“We think the Voynich manuscript was allowed to be found by the Order. It puts it out there so that anyone can find it and read it. Every page is on the Net. They don’t care if the average person finds it—it’s gibberish to them. However, if you have that as a reference, and you have access to the other two books, then you can read them all.”
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