Cain

by James Byron Huggins

  As he reached the exit he viciously kicked a chair through the glass, smashing the shattering white shards outward in a shower of splinters that sent people screaming down the street. Then he was in the open, not caring about identification as he ran quickly toward the LTD. They would find him in the end, he knew. But by then it wouldn't matter. He hurled everything into the backseat and fired the engine to break into traffic.

  Aflame with stress, his hands gripped the wheel with crushing strength. But with maddening control he contained a silent roar until he finally brought it down again, settling into a sweating calm as he reached a side street, avoiding as much traffic as possible.

  And saw Cain before him.

  Not there . . .

  "C'mon," Soloman whispered. "Let's finish this thing."

  ***

  His face was deathly pale, his eyes like ice.

  Skin stretched across a haggard face made him seem more dead than alive in the darkness. Reverently, he removed the golden pentacle from his neck, laying it to rest on an obsidian disk holding a black candle.

  The pentacle was large and intricately detailed with blazing white stars and dark clouds, haloed by a hauntingly cold night. He clasped his hands before it a moment, bending his head in prayer. Then he reached up to remove the great black cloak, settling it neatly.

  In seconds, standing silently inside the magnificent Manhattan apartment, he once more resembled the man he seemed to be to the world, except on these nights of dark ritual, of glory. Then, last, he removed his soft leather boots, carefully pouring dirt from within them into a canister, for a sorcerer must always be in contact with the Earth in order to evoke a spell.

  As he turned, he saw the gigantic figure seated behind him. Heart skipping, he began a wild movement to run and heard a startled shout erupt from his own mouth. But the figure did not move, made no effort to attack. And in a strange, spectral passage of time, no words were spoken. Each held his place in the silent darkness.

  In the voice of a god, the giant spoke.

  "Forgive me, Kano," he rumbled. "But I have need of you."

  A gasp exploded from Kano and his hands began to tremble violently. He did not know what to believe or not to believe. His breath came in quick pulls as he staggered. He swallowed, staring and shaking.

  "I—I—I ... I am here," he gasped.

  "Yes," the giant growled, seemingly pleased, "of course you are." With terrifying strength he rose and came slowly closer. "You have always been here for me."

  Kano fought to stay on his feet, glaring as the giant emerged from shadow. He had been warned, but he had doubted; it was too fantastic.

  Yet now, and with a single glance, he knew—God.

  He had come.

  He had come to him and had chosen him as his servant! But still, somehow, it seemed surreal and Kano made a visible effort to still the trembling in his hands and knees.

  "There is no reason for fear," the man said tenderly. "I am your master, and you have served me well – as I have served you."

  Kano almost collapsed from shock but with volcanic speed the man instantly snatched him by the shoulders, supporting him with iron strength. He held him patiently until Kano reached up to feel the majestic might of those titanic arms, the hard firmness of the flesh.

  It was real. It was real ... real ... real ...

  The Master. . .

  "I—" Kano swallowed hollowly. "I am here, Lord."

  "And yet you still do not know what to believe." He smiled and nodded gently. "There is no reason for fear." The Lord released him and walked slowly to the pentacle resting on the obsidian altar: "Yes, the Unknowable. One of my treasured Runes, for it portends death, enlivening the deepest of human fears."

  "Is it really you?" Kano staggered. "Is it really you?"

  The man laughed. "Do you wish to know what I have seen, Kano?"

  "Of course, Lord! I wish to know all that you know!"

  Eyes moving from the pentacle, the man reached down and picked up a stack of Rune cards, tossing one of them casually onto the altar as he spoke. "Krist waes on rodi, hwethrae ther fusae fearran kwomu, aththilae til anum ic thaet biheald."

  Kano hesitated. "I ... I know this! I have heard it before! It is from the, uh, the ..."

  " 'The Dream of the Rood,'" the Lord said. "From one who was there to watch the Nazarene die." His frown was so terrible that an un-controllable fear made Kano step back.

  "Don't be afraid, Kano," he said without threat. "I will not harm you. No, certainly not you. For you have served me well, and now I need even more of your loyal assistance."

  Kano found the strength to walk forward. "Anything, Lord. I will do anything you demand."

  "As you always have." The Lord laughed, suddenly focused. "I will tell you what must be done. You will write everything down. We must begin tonight. And by tomorrow I will be inside those granite walls to sit upon my throne ... once more."

  Kano searched for materials and saw the card that the man had tossed upon the altar: an image of three monolithic slabs as nobly proportioned as Stonehenge. Two stood upright, the other lay across them, a lintel. Kano knew the meaning, glanced up to see the man scowling.

  "Gateway," the Lord said, and after a moment broke himself from the trance. He released a heavy sigh that hinted of herculean power and asked, "Is The Circle in place?"

  "The Circle, Lord?"

  "Yes, Kano. The Circle. Those who protect The Family. Those who protect us from our enemies."

  "Of course, Lord! They are always in place!"

  "Good," the Lord replied. "Tell them to come to me tonight. They must accompany us to the Castle of Calistro in England which is located beside the cliffs of Lifanis. Archette is making preparations for the flight."

  Kano acquiesced.

  "Take down my instructions," the Lord said as blood gleamed in his eyes; blood or revenge. "A very powerful enemy has already cost me too much time. And I must prepare for him."

  Kano's eyes widened; he could not imagine. "But ... but who could be your enemy, my Lord?"

  The Lord frowned.

  "The son of David," he said.

  ***

  Waves crashed behind him, and Ben stared coldly. He had found the address easily enough. It was a truly titanic mansion located behind the shore near Glen Cove, directly beside icy cold Long Island Sound. It was probably fifty-thousand square feet. Four-storied with sweeping picture windows and set on a fifty-acre sandlot, it was surrounded by a spiked fence.

  After advising the chopper pilot to set down at Nassau, Ben had rented a car under a false identification. Then he'd found a discreet location where he could watch unobserved. It was an abandoned, sea-broken shell of a store located almost a half mile away, and he was forced to use binoculars. And although he doubted that anyone would disturb him, he was prepared to flash his phony identification again.

  Now he only watched, and waited. Though sometimes he worried about it, wondering if he wasn't being used, being fooled. But the voice on the phone had been coldly professional and certain – the voice of someone who knew. And, remembering the tone, he felt far less ridiculous about the stakeout, sensing that something would happen here.

  And he knew something else.

  If Archette had the guts to come out here, he was as good as dead.

  ***

  "Only one of you will survive this." Maggie stared quietly as Soloman prepared. "You're like two freight trains on a collision course."

  Soloman laid cans of black powder and a bag of ammonium nitrate on the table, along with a small case of World War II—era hand grenades. Purchased at a late-night military surplus store, they had no explosive cores. He would have to make them himself from flares, black powder and nitrate.

  Soloman said nothing at the quiet comment. Then he removed a large quantity of black powder and placed it in a steel bowl. He carefully measured scoops of ammonium nitrate until he had the proper mixture, remembering the formula: 40 percent nitrate, 60 percent TNT for maxi
mum explosive compression.

  "So." Maggie sighed and leaned forward. "What are you making?"

  "Amatol," Soloman replied, mixing ingredients. "It's the main explosive material used in artillery shells. These things don't have working cores because it's illegal to sell them with combustible material, but I can improvise what I need. I can build them."

  "How dangerous will they be?"

  Soloman shrugged. "Inside a six-foot perimeter, they'll injure 75 percent of the enemy. At fifteen feet it drops to 30 percent. Anyone outside twenty feet won't be hit at all, usually. And these are World War II-vintage, less effective than modern grenades. Most of the shrapnel tended to skip along the ground. But I'm boosting the charge to give the fragments more velocity. That means they'll probably go high. If I stay low to the ground, even if I'm close, I don't think I'll be hit."

  Maggie's eyes narrowed as he worked. "I understand chemistry pretty well, you know. If you add some ferrous oxide to the black powder, you'll have more compression."

  "Iron?" Soloman looked up. He knew virtually everything about improvised explosives—he had spent his lifetime learning it—but he hadn't heard of that. "Where do you get it?"

  "There'll be some in the kitchen," she said. "It's a pretty common household product. Usually you can isolate it from cleaning powders. I can cook some chemicals up and deoxidize them in about a half hour." She studied the grenades. "What about fuses?"

  "I'll soak some cotton string in a solution of black powder and sugar, then dry them. I'll measure them for five seconds." He grunted. "Which means I'll probably have about three."

  "Why's that?"

  "A version of Murphy's Law." He smiled. "A five-second fuse is always three seconds." He decided the mixture was as perfect as he could make it. "The grenades have a flint trigger that's struck when you release the lever. It causes a spark that ignites the fuse and when the fuse reaches the amatol it explodes to send shrapnel. But I'm adding a heavy measure of potassium chlorate and mercury fulminate to make it more incendiary. Sort of like napalm. The detonation will spread shrapnel and fire over a wider area. It'll have a larger sphere of destruction than a regular grenade."

  "Potassium chlorate breaks down very, very fast to oxygen." She pointed to burning candles. "You'd better seal the caps with wax once we mix the ferrous oxide in. That'll preserve it for a few days."

  "Good idea," he nodded. "That'll be good enough for who it's for."

  Maggie watched him unscrew a port located at the top of the grenade, removing the stem. Then he poured a measure of amatol in the canister of the grenade and set it to the side. He completed the procedure with twenty of them, leaving them standing.

  "Will those kill Cain?" she asked quietly. "I mean, you've already hit him with everything anybody could hit him with, Sol, and he's still standing. I don't ... I don't think he can die."

  "Cain can die," he answered coldly. "There has to be a point where we finally overload that healing factor. If I can hit him hard enough and long enough, I'll wear him down."

  "But what if he uses Amy as a shield again?" From the look on her face Soloman knew she was terrified at the possibility. He looked down and laid a line of string in a solution of black powder and sugar. He would remove it in five minutes and pour a careful measure of mercury fulminate along the length.

  "Amy's not even going to be there when the shooting starts," he said. "The first thing I'm going to do is get you and her clear. I don't want anybody coming between me and Cain."

  "Any ground between you and Cain is the last place anybody wants to be standing," she said, gazing at him for a long while before she leaned forward. "Sol, can I ask you something?"

  "Go for it."

  "Why do you think you're still alive?" Somehow, the question disturbed her. "I mean, Malo was a good soldier – the best. All of them were. But you're the last one."

  He shrugged. "There's no explaining it. Luck. Fate. Whatever. I've been six feet away from a land mine that exploded and killed everyone around me and I wasn't even scratched. Really, I should've died, then. I should've died a lot of times. But I'll die when it's my time. Just like Malo died when it was his time. That's all there is to it."

  "Are you afraid?"

  He grunted. "Always."

  "Were you afraid when you lived in the desert?"

  Soloman looked up. He hadn't told her about that part of his life, was surprised that she knew.

  She smiled faintly. "Ben told me about it on the night you went to the cathedral. He'd had a little too much of the sauce, I think. Got real talkative." She stared. "He said he couldn't figure what you were doing out there. Waiting to die. Trying to die. Something like that."

  There was silence, and Soloman knew he had to answer. With a frown he looked down and removed the string from the pan, laying it carefully on the table. He didn't look up as he spoke.

  "When I lost Marilyn and Lisa, I didn't care about living. That's probably the only reason I was able to pull off what I did. I had no fear – not of anything. So I hunted down the men that killed them and … killed them all. It was the only time I had ever set out to actually kill anyone. But it didn't help, in the end. I couldn't kill enough. I could never kill enough. So I went to the desert." He tilted his head slighdy. "I don't know. I was more comfortable with death, I guess, than life. The best part of my life was dead, and I suppose I wanted to die with them. But I wasn't going to give in to it. It had to work for me. Had to earn it. It's . . . hard to explain."

  There was affection in her green eyes, along with compassion. But there was something else, as if she realized a bitter irony.

  "You were alive, Sol, and you wanted to die," she said. "And now you're fighting a dead man that wants to live."

  Soloman stared, absorbing the thought.

  "Yeah. I guess so."

  She glanced at the grenades, the massive shotgun, the handgun with magazines and ammunition laid in a dangerous glossy black display.

  "I pray that you can stop him, Sol." She closed her eyes. "You're the last one."

  Soloman frowned. "I'll finish it, Maggie. I promise. I'll finish it and then you and Amy can be together. And ... and maybe I could tag along ... if you don't mind the company."

  Her eyes were both sad and joyful.

  "No, Sol." She smiled. "I wouldn't mind."

  ***

  The sun was still high when the Lear landed at the international airport in Birmingham.

  It was an English industrial metropolis, proud and expansive. And although it was far from dusk, early darkness obscured the distant factories and hotels that lined the horizon. In the west, a great column of smoke stretched into the sky like a funeral pyre.

  The jet door opened, and eight men wearing obviously expensive casual clothing deplaned. Then another man deplaned, a broad-shouldered giant who held himself with an imperious, lordly manner as he turned his head. Preternatural quickness flickered in the black eyes as he appeared to see all that was, and more.

  Of imposing stature, he held himself with a vaguely threatening aura of concentrated physical power. And over a wide, low brow that hinted of phenomenal intellect and will, a long black mane of hair fell slightly past his shoulders. Dressed entirely in black, his long dark cloak lifted to a deep-born north wind which had risen abruptly, overcoming the roar of dying engines. His pants were loose and luxurious, and laced boots of thick leather sheathed his legs to the knees. He wore black gloves over hands that appeared large and capable.

  Hesitating at the kingly image, airport police turned after a moment, politely requesting papers, and one of the men presented all that was necessary: a flight plan, visas, passports, and detailed manifests of cargo. Obviously, from the professional manner in which everything was inventoried and available for quick verification, the expedition was well organized. There were no untoward developments and in an hour they had cleared customs.

  The only curious attachment was a six-year-old girl with sunlight hair, sleeping soundly inside the jet. Her
papers were also in order and at the faintly intimidating request of the father, the leader, police declined to awaken her. His daughter was very tired, he said with no discernible accent, and needed to rest. Holding the dark and ultimately dominating gaze for a moment, officers exchanged hesitant glances, finally acquiescing.

  It was finished.

  Customs officials allowed two vans, which had been waiting for the jet's arrival, to approach. And while the men loaded cargo and luggage into the secondary vehicle, the giant carried the child, still sleeping soundly, to the back of the first vehicle where he laid her gently on a cot. He turned to nod dismissively to the police who watched with curious interest, amazed that a child could sleep so soundly.

  Then the van left the tarmac and drove toward the mysterious north, a land where misty forests and ancient castles stood poised on the edge of ice-mountains that rose hauntingly above the sea.

  ***

  Father Barth, sweating and breathing heavily, held a hand over his chest. He was perilously exhausted, his vision blurring with each document he lifted so tiredly from the shelf.

  He cast a glance at the Librarian Superior to see his face drawn and haggard, as if he could not continue. Then Barth looked at the ancient Aveling to see the pale visage sternly set. Obviously the older priest was similarly exhausted but revealed no sign of relenting.

  Only a handful of the documents remained. Then Aveling motioned generously for Barth to sit while he finished the task.

  Accepting, Barth collapsed while Aveling moved quickly, finding and sorting and discarding with a skill keenly honed by a night of frantic filing. And then they were done, the vault cleared with every paper meticulously inventoried and cross-checked.

  Aveling let the last document fall dead to the floor, stumbling slightly as he exited. He reached the table and motioned for the Librarian Superior to move aside. Then the Jesuit Superior General sat where the lists had been so hurriedly but carefully compiled. His eyes roamed, concentrated. He went from one book to the next, finding and referencing.