by Brian Hodge
One slow 360-degree look around at the top floor, now open to the sky, and there was only one thing to ask: "What is this place?"
"As of the past few days? Abandoned, I think," Burke said. "Men like Father Laurenti, who made it clear he didn't want you sticking your nose in these matters...? It's been forever that his kind has been trying to root out the group that used this place. But, whoever they are, they seem to have been warned off just in time. Spies, remember."
Up here, it was all one capacious circular room perched upon the living quarters underneath. Hellboy had no trouble imagining the man of money and learning who might have built it centuries ago...losing himself up here, a stranger to his family, having meals sent up as he spent his days poring over charts and Copernicus, and his nights studying the stars.
The cupola was braced inside by a network of rough-hewn beams, although to Hellboy's eye, part of it had been ripped out some time in the past to keep the central floor space open and unobstructed. In the rafters were the remnants of a pulley system, although there was no longer any sign of the observation platform it must have hoisted from the floor up to the apex of the roof.
No, this place had long since been converted to other purposes.
He'd felt it even before he had seen it clearly...the accumulated weight of ritual and intent. Such things left echoes when repeated over time. Just as any old building might absorb the essences of the goings-on inside it, so this place had soaked up a resonance of mystery and dread.
It was more than just the things that hung on the walls and from the beams, although certainly they were part of it: archaic tools of torture and punishment, of recantation and forced conversions. Countless sets of manacles dangled from their chains. From pegs and hooks hung leg-irons and larger frame-like restraints designed to freeze the body into unnatural positions that would cause agonizing muscle cramps. From one overhead beam hung a mobile made of more than a dozen sets of thumbscrews. Elsewhere, high-tensile iron collars--some smooth for use as garrotes, others lined with spikes that would bite into the neck or skull--had been looped together into a giant chain. Fitted along one rounded vertical beam was a display of iron mutes, each with a band that clamped around the back of the head and a jawplate that filled the mouth with a gag. On the walls were innumerable scourges and flails, pokers and brands, pincers and tongs. Tools that poked and tools that ripped. An oak framework threaded with bolt-shafts and lined with sharp spikes for crushing knees and elbows.
They didn't appear to have been used for generations, the metal dull and often corroded, the stains left by long-ago victims faded to shadows, unrejuvenated by fresher blood. Instead, they hung as though displayed like museum pieces.
Or objects of power.
Hellboy stepped over to one of the smaller devices and snatched it off the wall, turned it in his hand: a thick leather strap with a primitive buckle for fitting around someone's neck and, in the middle, a short metal bar tipped at both ends with a pair of points. One end to jam under the chin, the other to bite into the hollow above the breast-bone. A heretic's fork, it was called, and this one was engraved with the word its users wanted most to hear: Abiuro.
I recant.
He hurled the fork at the ceiling, where it stuck into a rafter. "Seems clear enough who these used to belong to."
"Yes," Burke said. "They're exactly what they appear to be. Their history is exactly what it appears to be."
"But that doesn't explain the rest."
Because over decades, maybe centuries, a bewilderingly complex array of symbols had been chalked and painted on the floor and walls and beams. Many of them he was already familiar with. The heart of it all was the circle in the middle of the floor, large enough to hold over a dozen men without crowding, and its edges inscribed with such meticulous patience it seemed inhuman. Some sections held Hebraic words; others were rimmed with lettering from other alphabets...Theban, whose letters curled like scimitars, and the simpler Malachim, like twigs tipped with dots. The great circle was made even more intricate with an internal arrangement of seals and talismans, which had come from such sources as the Clavicula Salomonis--the Key of Solomon.
Underfoot and overhead were pictograms and sigils of ancient origin, plus refinements and inventions both medieval and Elizabethan, as well as things he'd never seen. The place was like an archaeological dig, cross-sectioned with layer upon layer from various eras and schools of ceremonial magic.
"What you see here," Burke said, "is a classic case of fanatics becoming the very thing they were trying to stamp out."
"The Inquisition," said Hellboy. "We're talking about the Inquisition here."
"Speaking bureaucratically--not in practice, thank God--the Inquisition never actually went away. It just got renamed. You knew this, right?"
Hellboy said he did. The department in the Papal Curia that, for the past thirty or so years, had worn the benign name of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had been born in the 1200s as the Holy Inquisition. Three centuries later, it became the Holy Office, although it had taken more than the name change to abolish its more barbaric practices.
"How does a thing like this happen, Burke?"
The monsignor seemed amused that he would ask. "Proximity...exposure...those are as good an explanation as any. On an entirely different level, the same thing happened during the Crusades when the armies of Western Europe encountered a level of civilization they hadn't expected: 'These Saracens may be infidels, but they're way ahead of us in science and medicine.' "
Hellboy finished for him: " 'So even though we're here to kill them, let's not let all that go to waste.' "
"And thus the exchange of ideas and technologies proceeds. There was a time when war was good for promoting that kind of cross-pollination." Burke waved at the grim relics on the walls. "Now, most of the poor unfortunates these things were used on hundreds of years ago truly were innocents. They simply had different beliefs, or had basically the right beliefs but expressed them in the wrong way...or, as it sometimes happened, they did everything right but had the misfortune to run afoul of a neighbor in a secular matter...and the good neighbor decided that Inquisitors were more likely than impartial judges to bring about the preferred outcome. A lot of land got stolen that way."
But sometimes, according to Burke, in their prosecution of those who deviated from acceptable beliefs, these long-ago defenders of the faith encountered practices that existed on an entirely different plane from folk remedies and other pagan traditions. Trafficking in spirits of the dead and entities that had never been cloaked in flesh at all...these, along with denial of the faith, deserved the most savage punishments of the body and cleansings of the soul. Yet, over time, the lesson was too stark to have been lost on even the most fiercely intolerant men: Here were techniques and methodologies that were working. Perhaps not enough to save the heretics from an agonizing fate at sanctified hands, but working nonetheless.
The dead could be interrogated, demons forced to reveal their secrets...
For a certain mindset, the temptations must have been insidiously subtle at first, and ultimately overpowering. After all, what did sorcerers desire that such zealous churchmen did not? Knowledge, power, the carrying out of their will...
"So they thought they could justify its use on their own terms," Hellboy said. "Adopting the enemy's ways to stamp him out, except in their own hands, it becomes something pure, right?"
"Right. The ends justify the means. It's not like we have signed confessions and records of their meetings, but from the bits and pieces we've put together, a picture emerges. They'd interrogate the dead for some of the same reasons the Inquisition would interrogate the living...to get them to incriminate other people. Or just reveal things they could use as leverage one way or another. And if they came upon a genuine adept of sorcery, or just an unconventional healer who understood herbs, they might summon demons and turn them loose on the person and his family. Their version of poetic justice, and probably an object l
esson to the victim's neighbors on the perils of straying from the true path. They saw themselves as fighting a war against the forces of darkness, and I imagine they regarded what they did as no different than a soldier picking up an enemy's weapon on the battlefield and killing him with it. And God be praised." For a prelate, Burke could do snide awfully well. "Remember, though, we're talking about only a select few, who banded together into their own society that could never have gained sanction by the Church."
"If they turned into heretics themselves," Hellboy said, "why didn't they ever get stamped out along with the rest?"
"Two theories, and the reality was probably a combination of both." Burke fumbled in his pockets; seemed to have gone without a cigarette long enough. "One holds that even though the Inquisition had no reservations about going after rank-and-file priests thought to be bewitching nuns and female parishioners, they were less eager to purge their own ranks. Because to do that, they'd have to admit they were susceptible to corruption."
"You believe that?"
"I suppose it would depend on the individual Inquisitors. For the true believers, it probably wouldn't have made any difference. But we have to assume that their line of work also attracted men who may have preached a good game, but were first and foremost sadists...deeply disturbed men who found an accepted outlet for their worst perversions. Naturally they're going to focus their attentions on the most helpless."
"And what's the other theory?"
"That they were extremely effective at maintaining their status as a secret society. They wouldn't have been the kind of group you could infiltrate, while having another agenda, or gain information about from outsiders. Supposedly their initiation rites contained activities that someone uncommitted to this unorthodox path would never have been able to bring himself to commit. Not that they regarded it as devil worship, by any means...but that's the only way it could've been regarded by someone who didn't share their views."
"And no guilty consciences within the ranks? Nobody broke down and ratted out the others?"
"I'd be surprised if there weren't feelings of guilt in some of them. But it seems that new recruits were indoctrinated to indulge those feelings with self-mortification of the flesh. Hair shirts, that kind of thing."
Burke wandered amid the free-hanging tools, the group's grim reminders of who they were, where they'd come from. He gave a flick to the collection of thumbscrews and watched them spin, clicking together with a disconcerting sense of dormant purpose.
"So they survived. Replenished their order from generation to generation..."
"And by the looks of it," Hellboy said, "survived for centuries after torture was abolished."
"They were never about torture in the first place. Not that they were any different from the rest about it in the early days...but if that's all they'd been about, there never would've been a secret society, because they already had torture at their disposal. No, these weren't the perverts. And their ultimate objectives don't seem to have varied over the centuries. They may have trafficked with lesser spirits, even evil spirits, but their highest aim has always been embodied in their name: Opus Angelorum...'The Work of Angels.' "
"And they don't seem to lean toward the cuddly image."
"No. None of that saccharine New Age pabulum. Avengers and slayers all the way. Divine wrath, that's what they're really after. The outlook is primordial."
"So were the results, based on what I saw at the Archives," Hellboy said. "Have they ever pulled off this kind of thing before?"
"Not that I know of. But this was a very high profile success. They're obviously antagonized by the implications of giving the Masada Scroll any kind of credence at all. Regardless of what it was called at any given time, the Inquisition was put in place to defend doctrines. These men tolerated no rivals to the Church, not even in thought. Is it reasonable to assume that those kind of hardliners are extinct?"
"Probably not."
"The Opus Angelorum is just the last remnant of those type of extremists. And after all this time, they finally let something drive them aboveground."
"Intentionally?" Hellboy asked. "Or did somebody slip up?"
Burke didn't answer, but his expression seemed to favor the latter.
"So why are we here? Why are you showing me this?"
"To introduce this group to you in a way that words alone could never depict. You've already seen their handiwork. Now take a look around at their soul. Because somebody needs to stamp them out. But I'm afraid that men like Father Laurenti, however much they may be opposed to the Opus Angelorum, are neither equipped nor prepared to do it in the way it needs to be done. And I think you know what I mean."
Hellboy was sure he'd seen shrewder looking men, but at the moment, he couldn't think of any.
"I know you don't want to meddle in Church business--fine, fine. But I don't see this as Church business. This is a Church aberration." He stepped closer, put his hand on Hellboy's shoulder. "What you need to understand about this group is that until the past few days, it was never much more than a legend. A few whispers, a handful of references in some old journals and correspondence that turned up over the centuries. That's the only way the rest of us got any insight at all into what they were. Even so, it only shed light on the past. Never anything contemporary."
"Until the past few days, you say. What happened then?"
"A close encounter of the third kind," Burke said. "We caught one of them."
Chapter 7
She'd napped on the plane, but Liz was still feeling groggy and dislocated when she reached the Vatican. Start factoring in the time zones and her body really started to rebel. Here, late diners might still be tipping wine glasses and demitasse cups, but back home, she would have been in bed for hours.
A local BPRD agent had met her at Da Vinci Airport and driven her to Vatican City's North Gate, the breach in the wall that admitted visitors to the museum complex. At this time of night, it was closed to the public, but after a few minutes of identification checks and confirmation, a pair of Swiss Guards admitted her. One of them radioed someone to relay the news that she was here.
They then escorted her inside the museum's lobby, where she discovered that the fabled opulence of the Vatican extended even to places where they sold tickets. And here, not unwelcome, was a familiar face already, Kate Corrigan coming over to greet her with a quick hug.
"Are you coming with us?" Liz asked.
Kate shook her head no. "I'll be flying instead, to get to the safehouse ahead of you and help with the logistics from there. In case you haven't guessed, we're still making this up as we go."
"And the other end is...where? Pretend I'm ignorant, because I really am. H.B. wasn't big on details when he called."
Kate rolled her eyes. "Maybe I should just let him fill you in once he's down."
"Down from where?"
"You know the lantern tower on top of St. Peter's?" Kate leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper. "Looks like a nipple on a breast, but maybe that's just me." She drew back again. "Hellboy and Abe have been up there with the scroll for hours. Abe anyway. Hellboy disappeared for a while just before sunset, but he's back now. They've been waiting it out up there because they thought it was the place least likely to draw another attack like the other night."
Liz had always liked Kate, who was a decade older, give or take, and seemed a good deal looser than her academician's demeanor and no-nonsense bob of hair led many to believe. She had a definite thing for witches, historically speaking, and it was Liz's intuitive but deeply entrenched suspicion that nobody went to that much trouble to research the lives of the witches of Old Europe and New England--with neither dismissal nor judgment--unless she was a bit of a wild lass herself inside, who would very much like to command the wind.
Just the same, for a long time Liz had also found something a bit sad about Kate. Never got the sense that there was somebody special in her life--at best, just a series of not-so-special anybodies who filled the rare tem
poral gaps between the demands of the bureau and her books and her university position. You could see it in her eyes, though--in lieu of the wind, a longing for some kind of anchor.
Spending time around her often left Liz thinking of the future: As much as I like her, as much as I admire her and everything she's done...I do not want to end up like her...and I'm afraid time is running out on that.
Kate then steered her to a broad-shouldered man in a black cassock, who warmly shook her free hand. Kate introduced him as Father Rogier Artaud, the survivor of the other night's attack on the Archives.
"Any relation to Antonin?" she asked.
Eyes blanking, he turned his palms up and opened his mouth as if something more should come out than a terse croak.
"French poet, dramatist?" she prompted. "He pioneered something called the theater of cruelty...?"
"Ahhh...I was born in Belgium," he said, as if that explained everything.
"I'll take that as an inconclusive no," she said.
A nice looking guy, this Rogier Artaud: one of those men who could lose half his hair across the top and look all the better for it--stronger, somehow. A nicely shaped head and a prominent pair of cheekbones went a long way.
He pointed down to the case she was holding. She'd also brought an overnight bag with essentials for what she'd gathered would be a longer return trip, but had set it aside on entering the lobby; unless plans had changed, they would also be leaving from the North Gate. This case, though, hadn't left her sight since leaving the BPRD. Even when she'd napped, she'd locked it to her leg. Overkill, probably--how far away was it going to sneak on a Boeing 767?--but paranoia dies hard.
