“Uh—I don’t know. I can ask Ganji.”
“Probably downstairs,” Kelly said. “But a t-shirt would be good. She’s tall, so with a belt to hold up your jeans she should do okay. Can you find something?”
“Hold on.” I went into my bedroom, took a t-shirt and my second pair of jeans from a drawer. I didn’t have a spare belt, but rope would do, even a bungee in a pinch. Ganji might know about that, too, whether there was anything downstairs we could cobble together. I tapped the door again. “Here you go.”
Kelly opened the door, took the clothes. Her expression was distracted. I asked if the woman would be okay, and Kelly just shrugged. “It’s the worst that can be done to a woman,” she said, “and everyone reacts differently. She’s not saying much. She may never talk about it. We shouldn’t push. Maybe get her professional help. But she has no purse, no phone, no ID of any kind.”
“Did she at least tell you her name?”
“No. She just says it was a god punishing her, and she keeps asking me to believe her. I tell her repeatedly that I do, but it seems to make no impression. It sounds to me like a regular thing, like maybe her abuser convinced her no one would ever believe her if she reported him.” She was silent for a moment. “Do you think it was really a god? I mean, we don’t know if she’s on or off meds, you know?”
Her expression was strained, her eyes asking for a truth different from the one I was coming to understand. I shook my head. “I don’t know. But the world we live in now is not what it was . . . I’ve reached the point where I figure I’d better just accept anything. So yeah, let’s say this was a god who assaulted her. We may not have a name yet, but he’s obviously working for the bad guys.”
“But what can you do?” she asked. “What can you and Remi do against a god? I mean—you’re just men.” And then she realized what she’d said, and to whom she’d said it.
No, we were not “just men.” But I didn’t know whether what we were was enough to fight a god. “Bring her into the common room if you think she’ll come. We can try some questions, see if we get any answers. We need to find her people.”
“And if you can’t?”
“I don’t know,” I said frankly. “I’ve got no clue. But we’ve got to do what we can to keep her safe.”
“Like me,” she said quietly. “Just like me.” She looked at me a long moment, then shut the door with a quiet click.
I lingered, turning ideas over in my head. Then I went into the common room and sat down at the computer. I let it boot, and after a moment I typed in a couple of questions.
What gods are here on earth? How many of them are working for Lucifer?
An answer came in from Wiki by way of Google: ‘Lucifer’ redirects here, you may be looking for the TV series ‘Lucifer.’
I stared at the screen. It was a perfectly normal page, not black with gold letters and a dictatorial tone. “Not exactly,” I muttered at it.
Remi came in with two bottles of beers, handed one to me. I nodded my thanks, gazed at the label absently. Then looked up and met his very serious eyes. “I want a life preserver,” I said. “The water’s getting choppy and I’m all at sea.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Cleaned of blood, the young woman’s face nonetheless remained bruised and swollen. Kelly had washed her hair. Water-darkened, it lay forward of her shoulders, drying naturally. From scalp to the ends of her hair, even damp, waviness took precedence. As I recalled from the cell phone light in the breezeway, the portions of hair unbloodied were a tawny blonde.
She was seated on the couch, where Kelly had guided her. She’d been given water and a toasted bagel, which wasn’t much in the way of food but was fast. She ate it slowly, taking very small bites of torn off pieces, and I realized the possibility was good that a few teeth had been loosened from the blow that damaged the side of her face. My black t-shirt was of course baggy on her, the jean legs were rolled up, and some kind of utility cord doubled as a belt. She was barefoot.
While one side of her jaw was swollen with its complementary puffy eye, from the other side she had an oddly attractive look. Not classically beautiful as far as I could see, but an arresting face with a slightly straight nose bridge. And in the undamaged pale blue eye, I saw a strengthening clarity of purpose. Her age was indeterminant. Anywhere on the timeline between twenty and thirty, I felt.
Kelly looked at Remi and me, saw the reluctance in our expressions, the helplessness. I had no clue how a man began asking a woman about a rape. Cops were prepared; my dad had received specialized training. Me? I was just a guy, and it had certainly never been something I needed to address.
Seated sideways on the couch beside the young woman, Kelly ran a gentle hand across her back, began to rub in careful circles. “Can you tell us?” she asked. “Do you know his name?”
Even if she told us, I wasn’t sure the information would help. We’d certainly try to protect her, but despite my familiarity with the pantheons in mythology and Remi’s knowledge of specific deities of many cultures, there was a fair chance we wouldn’t have the abilities or the means to ward her against a god. Or ward ourselves, for that matter.
The stranger shook her head. I didn’t know if that meant she couldn’t, or wouldn’t.
“Can you tell us your name?”
The battered woman looked hard at Kelly, re-examined Remi. She was not quite at ease with them, which certainly was understandable. The look in her eye lost its piercing quality when she looked at me, and the set of her mouth softened. I had saved her. I wouldn’t say she truly trusted me, but she did acknowledge my help.
Still, she shook her head and did not offer her name. Instead, she repeated an earlier declaration. “I spurned him.”
Mary Jane’s voice was tight. “You can tell a man ‘no,’” she said. “You do not have to consent. He is not allowed to assault you because you rejected him.”
“He cursed me.”
“Words,” Kelly said. “Only words. They don’t affect you.”
“He said no one will believe me.”
“We believe you,” Kelly told her. “We believe.”
The woman drew herself up. Clean, now, and somewhere she believed was safe, the vulnerability I’d seen in the breezeway was banished. Taut urgency replaced it. “They will come. They will come and destroy. They will breach the gates with artifice. My brother—my hidden brother—will bring this upon us. I told him. I told him before he left. But he did not believe me. He did not believe me.” The visible eye was angry. “No one believes me. I have told them, I have told them three times. I have begged them to believe. Men will die. My brother will die, and in his death he will be ruined. But I am cursed, and they do not believe my words. They say I am a madwoman, that I am god-touched, and do not believe my words.”
And abruptly I knew it with certainty, though I couldn’t explain why. “She’s not from now,” I said. “I don’t think she’s from now any more than Lily is, or Ganji.” I looked at Remi. “Remember when Lily sent us to the battlefield? The place where the Romans slaughtered Boudicca and the Iceni? She sent us there, brought us back, all to prove a point, to make us believe she was who she said she was. I think this god, whoever he is, has sent this woman here from another time.”
Remi was unconvinced. “Why would he do that?”
The woman answered for me. “Punishment. I spurned him, and he cursed me. And no one believes me. No one believes me, and what I see will come to be.”
“Is it the demon?” I asked of Remi. “Is it Jack the Ripper? Might he be a god and a demon? If so, if he’s got the power to send people across time, he may well be the actual Jack the Ripper. And we know what happened to him.”
Remi frowned. “How do we know that? He was never caught, remember.”
“That’s it exactly.” I stabbed the air with a forefinger. “Never caught, and everyone assumes he die
d at some point because everyone dies. But if he can send himself across time, it would be easy to escape discovery. It would be easy for him to curse her and send her here from a different time. To displace her.”
Remi frowned. “Because she refused to sleep with him?”
I shrugged. “People kill people for no reason at all. In this case, he didn’t kill her because leaving her alive was a greater punishment. She suffers. That’s his curse. To make her suffer.”
The woman stood up suddenly, literally surged off the couch. She caught my hand, caught Remi’s hand, and pressed them together. Our rings made contact. “Beware the beast.” She clung to our hands, pressing them together. “Believe and beware.”
Abruptly she released us, snatched up the glass of water, spilled it across the table. She dipped a forefinger into it, then drew three shapes:
We could barely see it. In fact, we had to bend down, to catch the glint of light off the wood in order to accurately see the drawn shapes. She was using “invisible ink:” water on wood. And I had no clue what the X and two squiggles meant.
I heard Remi gust a breath of shock. He straightened, looked searchingly at the woman. Slowly he reached out and took both of her hands in his, carefully closed them within his grip. It was gentle, and she did not shy from it.
She stood there looking at him. Waiting.
He said, “Hexakósioi hexēkonta héx? Sescenti sexaginta se?”
The woman nodded.
“O arithmós tou thiríou? Numerum bestiae?”
Again, she nodded.
I needed translator microbes, or something, with Remi switching languages at the drop of a hat. And I really needed to memorize the rite of exorcism. I resolved to pull it up on my phone later.
“Can you say more?” Remi asked, switching back to English. “Can you say which beast?”
She shook her head, withdrew her hands from his grip, placed them across her mouth.
Speak no evil, I thought. I could translate that just fine.
Remi released a long sigh as he looked at me. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, considerin’ everything that’s become of our lives. End of Days, Ragnarok, Armageddon and all.”
“Still at sea, here. What about beasts?”
He wetted a forefinger from spilled water, then drew three shapes. Once again I bent down to catch the light so I could see what was written.
I straightened sharply and stared at him. “Six-six-six? Seriously?”
He nodded. “The number of the beast. Or, in Greek: O arithmós tou thiríou.”
Mary Jane Kelly, who’d been silent, was clearly at a loss. “What does any of this have to do with Jack the Ripper wanting to murder me?”
Which, of course, reminded me of yet another strand in the sticky new web. I looked at Remi. “Another photo was delivered. It’s in the truck; I forgot to bring it in. I didn’t look at the image, just the back, where he’d written a message. He said ‘It didn’t end with #5,’ and ‘Any order serves.’”
Kelly sounded worried. “What does that mean?”
Remi pressed his lips closely together as he considered what I’d said, then answered her. A tight undertone of anger was present. “There are five women everyone agrees were murdered by Jack the Ripper. Mary Jane Kelly was the last one accepted in canon as a victim. But it’s believed he actually killed prior to the canonical five and after. That photo, the message . . . we’re being told that he’s got more women to kill. And maybe already has.” He met my eyes. “We need to look at that image. Everything is important.”
Color drained from Kelly’s face. “So if the beast is really just a metaphor . . .” She swallowed heavily, as if her throat were tight. “Jack the Ripper is what she’s warning about? He wears the mark of the beast—or is the beast?”
“Or he’s a god,” I said. “The god who raped her. He just didn’t kill her. And of course he could also be a demon appearing as both the god she knows and the murderer we do. He may well become what he feels is best for the particular time period and audience.”
“We have to assume he’s stealing hosts,” Remi continued. “Body-hopping. Well, unless he had the juice to bring the Ripper’s actual body across time.”
“Or the god’s, made corporeal.” I shrugged. “We don’t know. We don’t know a damn thing about what he can do.” I thought back to the night I’d walked out the Zoo’s back door with a woman hot to trot, only to have her nearly kill me as she welcomed me to the war. “That first night,” I said sharply, “I broke her arm. His arm. Whatever. It means he’s physically vulnerable.”
Remi’s expression was dubious. “The host is vulnerable, yeah. But we don’t know that the actual surrogate is. He may just vacate the premises if he’s in jeopardy.”
“But what if it really was the Ripper? What if he’s in his own body?”
Remi’s brows ran up. “You mean, preserved it all these years?”
“If he’s in his own body, maybe he is physically vulnerable.”
“Or not.”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
Kelly’s tone was thin. “But what does a woman, one you say may have come from another time, have to do with an English murderer?”
“Maybe nothing,” Remi said, then added, “Maybe everything.”
That’s when our magic phones blew up with an alert, and the computer screen changed to black background with vivid gold letters printed across it.
Chapel of the Holy Dove.
We’d seen that message before. “Why?” I muttered. “Why again, and why this time?”
Remi sat down at the computer and typed in “Why?”
Chapel of the Holy Dove.
NOW.
Followed by one last sentence.
Bring her.
“Okay, wait.” I stood just off Remi’s shoulder, reading from behind him. “That’s a little weird, because no one other than Grandaddy knows she’s here. Is this him messaging us? Because I did ask him to come in person.”
“Well, he will be in person—just out there instead of here.”
That earned him a mild stink-eye. “Why would he? Why not just come here? Then we don’t have to haul ass over there in the middle of the night and bring her as well. She needs to rest. And why not just call us?”
Remi turned the swivel chair to face me. “Grandaddy’s never been one for answering all our questions, now, has he? Some, sure, but there’re plenty he’s never answered even when we’ve asked him directly.”
I checked my watch. “It’s almost midnight. I think I’ve had maybe three hours of sleep across the last six days. But since our angelfamilias has spoken, I guess we should go.”
I looked at the woman. She had not resumed her seat on the couch, merely waited quietly for what came next as she followed every word.
“A man we know wants to meet, and is asking us to bring you, too. We’ve known him all of our lives. We trust him. You’ll be safe.” I considered whether we should tell her who—or, rather, what—he was. Or whether she’d even know what an angel was.
Which reminded me.
I turned to Remi. “Hey, what language did you use when you spoke to her? I mean, you wrote the 666, which is Biblical.”
“The triple six is not strictly Christian,” Remi said. “In the Jewish tradition, the physical world is represented by the number six. The Torah describes a six-part, six-day process that created the universe, and the universe encompasses six distinct directions: north, south, east, west, up, and down. There are your three sixes: First, the physical world; Second, the six parts of the process; and Third, the actual six-day process.”
I huffed a breath. “And now we see exactly why Grandaddy pushed you toward Comparative Religions: for situations just like this. So, were those numerals she wrote on the table Hebrew?”
Remi shook his head. “Greek. But Gree
k was the prevailing language among many peoples back in the day. Same way English is the official language of the airplane industry throughout the world. Nothing goes out over the radio that isn’t in English, regardless of nationality. Centuries ago, scholars, scientists, and royalty, the well-educated upper classes, all spoke multiple languages. I asked her in both Latin and Greek. But I’m not truly fluent in either, outside of the specific words and phrases needed for reading religious writings in the original texts.” He shrugged. “I can cobble together some phrases.”
I nodded absently, began to wander around the room as I thought, hands on hips. I was still sore, still stiff, and couldn’t quite hide a slight limp because my left hip was complaining about how I’d landed when the bike went down.
Kelly noticed. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah . . . I laid the bike down the other day, out on the highway.”
She was astonished. “In the middle of traffic?”
“No, no traffic.” I patted the air with a hand, tried to calm and dismiss her concern. “I’m fine. Sore, but fine.”
“I can get you some ibuprofen. I have some in my pack.”
A park ranger would. “I’m good.”
After another trip around the common room to think, I paused in front of our visitor, tried to shed the slow-building tension before it could knot up my neck and shoulders. “Would you be willing to come with us?” I felt it was important that she be given the choice, regardless of what Grandaddy had asked over the computer—well, provided that was Grandaddy at the origination keyboard. “It’s a safe place. Like a—” But I did not, after all, mention the word “temple,” since she’d been raped in one. “Remi and I—” But again I stopped short. I didn’t consider us holy, but obviously we had some celestial juice in our bodies. I just didn’t know how to describe it to her. “The structure has been made safe. No one may harm us there. Remi and I will look after you.”
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