The Hierophant's Daughter

by M F Sullivan

  The Blood of Lazarus

  Miki, like most children, possessed the miraculous ability to expunge all recent trauma when given a toy. Thus, upon her early-morning airport acquisition of the rental car while Akachi spent an hour replacing Dominia’s teeth, the human returned to collect the General and the semiconscious (former) IT whiz with an attitude that indicated she had put her frightful meeting with Cicero—along with Dominia’s reaction—from her mind.

  “I can buy songs straight from this thing’s dashboard! Did you know all vehicles have access to J-Sing? What a wild world!” She wiggled to the beat in the driver’s seat of the cherry-colored, human-operated coupé; in the General’s opinion, not the most discrete getaway vehicle around these parts. “I haven’t ever owned a car, you know. They’re so expensive! All the licenses and taxes and insurance—give me a break. I let other people drive me around.”

  “I’m sure there’s no shortage,” muttered Kahlil from the back seat, one wary eye always on the dog that, happy for a car ride, panted away while the city passed.

  “Are you jealous?” Miki asked with a wrinkled nose. Dominia, trying not to be annoyed, checked her face in the mirror of the sun visor. The swelling beneath her eye patch had reduced to mild irritation. And her mouth, well—that was already healed, and had been since moments before they left Akachi’s. The dentist had marveled over the speed with which the martyr body recovered. Such recovery was commonplace to the General, but she had to admit she was particularly grateful for the enhancement at a time like this, in a place like this, where there was no safety or sanity to be had.

  Her regret was that her recovery speed meant she had no reason to linger and thank Akachi as profusely as she’d have preferred. The world as wide as it was, she would surely never see him again.

  Too bad.

  After folding up the visor, Dominia contorted in the passenger’s seat to don the black niqab that would hide her face from Kabul’s early risers along with its most bright and punctual one. Moving through the city on her own was bound to be challenging anytime, but it was set to be a downright tahgmahr in the sun. Her only advantage was that marathon, which would, she’d been told, tie up most of the city.

  It was always good to see serious people coming together for fun. Too bad it had to be against her Family, though she appreciated that aspect now. She could use a bit of levity, knowing that the Hierophant floated around the city, haunting the start of the race. Waiting for her. As if she would bring him Lazarus! She supposed it had been worth a try—nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they said—but he had to understand that she was in no mood to be subservient to him. He had to know he wasted his time.

  Yet—if it was absurd, why was she so bothered?

  “You’re awfully quiet over there, dude.” Miki glanced at the hooded General. “You okay?”

  “Thinking. Is there a password or something, Kahlil?”

  “No. He knows who’s acceptable and who isn’t. If you’re supposed to be let into a Lazarene ceremony, he’ll let you in.”

  Annoyed to hear that, Dominia demanded, “Then he has to consent to seeing me at all, let alone coming with me?”

  “Better hope he wants to see you.” The Hunter lifted his eyebrows with a certain theatrical disdain. “I don’t know why this is hard for you to grasp. The Hunters have operated in various forms for almost two thousand years: if it were possible for anyone on Earth to catch Lazarus, my people would have him by now. You don’t stand any more chance than they do. Far less. You’re going to have to hope he wants to see you as much as you want to see him.”

  “I’m sure he will,” said optimistic Miki, who never missed an opportunity to cheerlead. “He’s got to! That’s how the world gets saved. Lazarus comes to Cairo and together he and the Lady lead an army that brings about the final battle with the Hierophant.”

  To think, martyrs thought of the Abrahamians as a cult! Though, as cults went, Abrahamians were considered the most charming. An infantile permutation of the martyrs’ own “true” faith, which the Hierophant brought with him from that (certainly fictional) planet called Acetia where martyrs ruled the land. She had, sometime in her centuries, been in frequent contact with all manner of human contraband for various roles in the military police; during this time, she discovered a positively ancient (positively filthy, positively illegal) United Front comic book series about a female vampire in scant clothes who came from a similar planet. Glancing through that by accident (because who read such trash, ha-ha), she had felt certain that this particular bit of his backstory was a myth; but even her skepticism about her Father’s origin could not spur her into questioning his many opinions about God, and about other religions. It was as if something in his mythos had to be provably false to assure her the rest of it was true. That was the power of the Hierophant. He could wave a truth—a horrific truth—before the eyes of anyone, and in so doing render them silent by complicity. All martyrs were cannibals. Therefore, it was in the martyr interest to believe what the Holy Father said when he explained martyrs were the true master race, made in the image of God.

  In fairness, their prejudice was more interesting than most human standards. It was not the color or the creed or even the moral character of a person that counted to the divine: it was possession of the sacred protein, which had raised them from the dead. The already metaphorical Bible was rendered in the martyr Church a massive series of metaphors for the protein, whose arrival was embodied in the second coming of Christ. This second coming was never outright stated to be the Lamb, for no true second coming would announce Himself, of course. But it was implied to the point that certain disdained human cults that had once been called Christian turned their prayers, instead, to the Lamb; and even some less-devout fringe Muslims and Jews confused the martyr Elijah with his namesake. These sects, appearing across the United Front and Europa, were not just left unmolested by the martyr government but held to the rest of the human world as shining examples of proper attitude. Subservience to martyrs was key to a long, semi-safe life.

  Other, real Abrahamians despised this sort, whether they distinguished themselves as Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. Dominia had never cared for such groveling humans, preferring those Abrahamians such as Kahlil and Tobias. They insisted on maintaining a certain purity of their faith, keeping it all as martyr free as it had always been—except to acknowledge the obvious fact that, if there could be said to be an earthly embodiment of the figure of Satan, the Hierophant was he. The martyrs were hardly more than demons: real devil worshipers who needed, from the popular perspective, extermination. This was where the Hunters came in. This was also where Dominia sometimes came in, because—not always, but sometimes—Abrahamian houses of worship, whether church or mosque or synagogue, became hubs of anti-martyr terrorist activity. These needed shutting down. Most attendants of such places were good citizens. These, the General sought to protect while Governess; but she had long since learned how to tell the difference between the two groups of humans, based on a lifetime spent campaigning against their violent variations. She had broken up more than a few Hunter cells attempting to operate across her Father’s territories, but never during an Abrahamian service.

  Lazarene services, however, were a different matter. Dominia had never been privy to Lazarus’s coming and goings and had always considered him as fictional a character as the Lady, or her Father’s martyr planet. However, she now knew that after Lazarus visited an area, his followers kept the ceremonies running in secret: so Miki explained to Dominia on the way to the actual, physical music storefront (a rarity in those nights) where the ceremony was to be hosted. The whole thing was not dissimilar to the Lamb, who bled out every Noctisdomin; the local priests would collect every drop, for Elijah’s blood was as sacred as it was physiologically vital to martyrs who were not engaging in nightly cannibalism. Such martyrs had no choice but attend Mass, yet houses were always packed with irregular worshippers when El Sacerdote and his sacred brother rolled on through.
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  Those Lazarene ceremonies that the General had broken up over the years were almost certainly not ones at which the man himself had been present; all the same, they always seemed outrageously crowded to her. He had probably passed through some years before and left his message, along with some of his blood, with a person he trusted to keep the ceremonies going in private until he could risk coming through the area again. Nobody knew which ceremony would be blessed by a personal appearance until the encryption was broken, at which time it was usually impossible for anyone nefarious to mobilize in sufficient time to reach him. There was no detectable pattern. He seemed to travel miles in the blink of an eye. Today he was in Kabul; last week, he had appeared in some obscure corner of South America after manifesting nowhere for a fortnight, which sometimes happened. Where would he end up next, if Dominia didn’t lure him to Cairo?

  “If he’s supposed to be the Lady’s partner, why doesn’t he present himself to Her? I’m sure he knows where She is.”

  “He can’t just waltz into Her house without bothering to help humanity! You’re pretty selfish sometimes.” As the martyr blushed, Miki laughed at her. “Humans can’t be saved from martyrs and your Father’s world without the blood of Lazarus.”

  “No wonder Christians can’t play nice with you guys.” The General checked her gun as Miki pulled the car to a stop along a line of shops tucked beneath a broad overpass, the sort of architectural feature that made her pine for San Valentino. “They must get offended when you talk about it.”

  “Some of them. Christian-identifying Hunters, especially. But it’s true! Watch, you’ll see. You’ll drink his blood and something crazy will happen.”

  “I’m not going to drink his blood,” scoffed the General, while Miki rolled her eyes and slid open the passenger door with the press of a button.

  “Still stuck in your freaky-deaky martyr ways? Whatever. You have to get over it soon. You’ve spent all this time acting like we’re a bunch of cults with messed-up beliefs, but why don’t you look at yourself? If it weren’t for Tobias, you’d have leftover skin cells in your teeth.”

  At Dominia’s humbled silence, Miki sighed, released her seat belt, and leaned over to hug her martyr friend. “Look, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You’re right. I have to admit that my Father and my people are wrong. I have to change deep down inside—not what I’m doing, but what I believe. I just don’t know if I can. Or if I’ll be able to live with myself once I do.”

  “You have to live, idiot! I don’t think we’ll manage to save the world without you. We need an inside man, right? Somebody with knowledge of your Father’s world. You can help us. And we can give you Cassandra.”

  Those words rolled over her with such cool promise that Dominia closed her eye, exhaling against the fabric of her veil. “Yes,” she said as Miki patted her cheek and released her from the embrace.

  “You’ll be fine! Remember: if the legends are true, Lazarus has done all this before. Listen to him, and you’ll end up at Cairo in no time.”

  “I will. Kahlil”—into the back seat, she thought to say—“I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He lifted a hand to wave her away, along with her concerns. “It was time for a change in career, anyway. People who know too much can be dangerous to the Hunters…I’m sure you know how it is.”

  Did she ever. Basil had edged forward in his seat and now wagged his tail expectantly. “I suppose you want to come?”

  The animal sprang over the center console, across her lap, and upon the pavement of the city.

  “What is the deal with that dog?” asked Kahlil. Dominia slipped out of the car to shrug as the door shut.

  “I’ll let you know if I figure it out. See you around.” With a pang of sorrow, the General waved to Miki through the window, and the woman who had become her friend waved back with a purse of her lips and a furrow of her glassy brow. Then, boldly, the Red Market priestess turned up her radio and hit the electric. The car whizzed off, destined for Cairo.

  Alone with the dog before a storefront whose Arabic letters she could no longer read, Dominia squinted at the time of a distant clocktower: 0400 hours, almost on the dot. The ceremony was supposed to start at four thirty, but she’d secretly hoped (selfishly hoped, according to Miki) to lure him away before it began. They could somehow acquire a vehicle of their own and get out of the sun before it rose. The marathon had already started, and the racers would be weaving through the city for several hours. Running until the dawn, and after. Something martyrs could never do. Attention would be focused on said race, so it wouldn’t be impossible to steal a car, or…

  The dog looked at her. She sighed, caught. “Why is my first thought always a criminal one?”

  You know why, Basil’s face seemed to say. Free to stop pretending he was ordinary, he shut his happy mouth and pranced in the direction of the store. To Dominia’s surprise, the front door was open, and the pair emerged in the dusty store of antique and new records to find it empty. Aside from her footsteps upon the carpeted floor, she was most keenly aware of music. The choice of song was an old Front one, more popular with humans than with martyrs for the obvious reason that the theme of the song was the love of the singer’s eponymous “Lady.” Even so, it got the occasional cover in the Americas; therefore, she recognized it, but not this version, or this accent. It might well have been the original. Had it been a new version, one of the heavily mixed, grinding bass modern songs, she might not have heard the soft drone of a familiar voice before she noticed the blue light of the holo-vision emitting in the otherwise unbroken dark. That nasal tone made her skin crawl with irritation no matter where she heard it: but to hear Theodore here? Her baby brother was in the middle of saying: “—times, we must come together as one nation: one people beneath the brilliant banner of the United Front, and the Hierophant.”

  She cringed. There he was, floating behind the counter, no doubt left on for her. Lo and behold, his doll-size hologram sat behind the desk of her office. She would never adjust to seeing that simp sitting there.

  “But there are those who do not believe in the cause: who wish to divide our great nation amid this tenuous transition of power. This is why I am tightening border security in and out of the Front, and am issuing a temporary stay of applications for travel visas. Those of you who had legitimate reasons to leave the country on business or even pleasure, I’m sorry to say a certain former Governess and her terrorist organization ruined it for the rest of us. As for said terrorist organization”—he must have meant René’s refugee ring and the Hunters behind it—“we are doing all we can within our borders to detain and punish every member for his or her part in this sordid effort to undermine our nation’s unity.”

  Theodore was, by far, the newest addition to the Holy Family. In his human life, he had been a doctor of some small acclaim who had, in a turn of apparent luck, been selected to watch over young Lavinia, whose first twenty-four years of existence resembled death in all ways, including lack of pulse or organ function, but for one: she grew. When she was around ten, Theodore graduated medical school, and a few years later, he had kissed enough asses to catch the attention of the wrongest right people one could hope to know. Thus, he found himself overseer of a sleeping princess for over ten years, and when she awoke, his service was rewarded by martyrdom, and, the greatest honor possible, adoption into the Family. He had been there when she awoke, and that miracle of all miracles that a once-tiny body should have grown while dead was overshadowed by the greater miracle: that twenty-four years of clinical death might end in sudden life. Why Theodore reaped the reward for this achievement of the protein, Dominia would never understand. As he exclaimed with joy, “With that in mind, I’m pleased to announce the initiation of our long-term space reallocation program!” she could not help but think his reward should have been the ending of his life.

  Ghettos were the first step to genocide. She had known them to be coming but had not anticipated them so soon a
nd could not stand to hear of them now. She kept up with snatches of Theodore’s babbling explanation but found her mind drifted off; she turned off the holo-vision, because she didn’t need to hear him to know what he would say. The rationalizations would be the same as they’d ever been: something about how the most recent wave of immigrant humans represented a dangerous trend in immigration, where, rather than good, hardworking human families coming to contribute to civilized society or labor as the servants of martyrs, people flooding through the borders came to incite rebellion amid their human compatriots. Yet, now that they were there, they could not leave. Ones already in the country needed to be contained, though this was a concept always delivered in terms as whitewashed as possible. People were sensitive.

  Dominia, however, was not sensitive. She knew what would happen and recited it in the silence of the shop as Basil led her around the counter to the poster-hidden door that revealed the basement stairs. Humans would be herded like chattel into ghettos, then camps, with healthier ones slaughtered and distributed for food to United Front population centers where martyrs thrived in happy neighborhoods the way humans once had. Many immigrant humans had worked hard amid their neighbors to earn and maintain their homes, their lives, and their families; martyrs hungered to steal that away. Those nice houses would be redistributed to more deserving hands by Theodore as he played favorites in his term as UF governor; those lives would be ended and used to sustain the lives of so-called higher beings; and those pretty, talented children who had once been the future of humanity in the Front (a flicker of hope that Dominia had inspired by the notion that things could change, and humans and martyrs could both work together to meet the future in an optimistic way) would become martyr children. Martyr children who, like Dominia, would grow up to hate the parents they felt abandoned them, either by getting themselves murdered, or by accepting their child’s fate and moving on. To a developing and confused mind, a crime nonpareil.