by Peter Roman
The faerie had traded Leonardo Da Vinci dreams for Mona Lisa, dreams I was willing to bet made their way into his sketchbooks and inventions. But there was no way of finding out why he’d had a gorgon in the first place. He’d disappeared in a massive explosion in a Russian forest back in the early 1900s and hadn’t been seen since. Some said it was an experiment gone wrong, but others said it was an experiment gone right. I wasn’t sure if Da Vinci was dead or not. I’d believe it when I saw the body. But maybe not even then.
I could have searched the dead for him, if I had more grace. But I didn’t, so I couldn’t. Besides, there was no guarantee he’d be able to help me any more than Morgana had, which wasn’t much.
So, who could help me now?
Cassiel was obviously no use. If he knew where Mona Lisa was, he wouldn’t need me. And he was apparently playing his own game in this matter anyway. He had as many secrets as I did.
I was pretty certain Victory had told me all she knew. I couldn’t see any reason for her to hold anything back if I was trying to save her sister.
Morgana seemed to think herself done with Mona Lisa once she’d given her to the Queen.
Which left the one outstanding mystery of this whole situation so far: the art dealer on the train. Or, more likely, Judas masquerading as the art dealer. What was it he’d said?
I’d take it to America.
Sure, it was probably a trap. But it wasn’t like I had any other ideas.
I started looking for signs to the airport as I drove. Hopefully I’d be able to catch a flight before that damned mummy caught up to me again.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO JUDAS
The thing I like about America is it’s so new. There’s no history in the country. Well, there is, obviously—just try talking to someone in the south about the civil war. But it’s not like Europe or Asia, with their thousands of years’ worth of temples and castles and other important ruins. Instead, America’s all skyscrapers and modern factories and shopping malls. You’re more likely to see a rocket or space shuttle on display than another statue of some dead man. It’s a nation that breathes modernity, even when it’s broken down, which is usually.
In Europe, you can’t escape the past. In America, there is only the future.
That’s why I went there that first time, back before I’d even met Penelope. To escape my past and find a new future.
I hadn’t seen Judas in centuries by then, not since the encounter with the dragon. I’d come close a couple of times though, thanks to the network of special friends I’d made over the ages.
I ran into Cain wandering the Mongolian steppes while I was hunting down the angel Ezekiel, who had cast himself into the wilderness. Cain told me he had shared wine with Judas around a campfire a few months earlier, and that Judas had gone to Caffa to help the Mongols with the siege of the city. I abandoned my hunt for Ezekiel and made my way to Caffa as fast as I could. I rode horses to their death and stole new ones so I didn’t have to stop. The city had fallen by the time I reached it, many of the inhabitants fleeing across the sea to Italy for safety. I searched the burning streets but couldn’t find Judas anywhere. I did, however, stumble across a talking skeleton in the basement of a looted church. It told me Judas had set sail for Sicily, posing as a merchant. I hired a ship to follow him.
He brought the Black Death with him to Europe, or maybe just followed happily in its path, and I lost him in the anarchy that spread in the plague’s wake. I even fell ill myself while searching for Judas in the Italian countryside. I lay shuddering in my bed at an inn for the better part of a week. After a while the innkeeper stopped leaving food and drink at the door, and when I finally rose and exited the room I discovered everyone else in the place dead. When I went into the world outside, Judas’s trail was long cold.
A century later I went to Spain after I saw Judas riding along a road on a dark horse there, courtesy of a vision granted to me by Odin’s lost eye. And all I had to do for the eye in return was to place it in the skull of a certain dead god in a frozen, forgotten plain in the north. I still get chills thinking about those days.
In my vision, Judas wore the robes of an Inquisitor. He rode with two angels dressed as soldiers. I don’t know what they were doing with him. The angels . . . well, they’re angels. They left a trail of burning villages behind them. The survivors I found all told the same story. The angels gathered up all the villagers in one place. They said Judas was the only one who spoke. He said he’d been sent by the church. He said all those who had dreams of inventions, of miracle potions and cures, of anything that might help their neighbours—that might help civilization—were to step forward and deliver themselves to the church for protection from their enemies, who were on the march. Those who did so were the first ones killed, the survivors said, but not the last.
I never caught him there. Somehow he knew I was on his trail. He left a message at the last village. Everyone crucified in a circle around the church. The holy artefacts inside the church broken and desecrated, the scrolls and books of knowledge burned in a fire in the nave that continued to smoulder as I arrived. A single survivor in the church, nailed to the crucifix that had once held a wooden Christ. Its charred remains lay in the middle of the fire. The crucified man looked at me as I entered and wept blood.
“Are you Cross?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything. I knew I had lost Judas again.
“He told me to tell you he knows what you are,” he said.
“Hush,” I said, for I knew this damned dying man would tell me nothing I wanted to hear.
“He says you are the nightmare that monkeys have,” he said anyway.
I left the church and I left him there. Perhaps God would be kinder to him than to me. If God were even watching.
And that was my last encounter with Judas for centuries. I’d given up hope of finding him again. I’d given up hope of ever knowing why I was. Sometimes I wondered if it was better I didn’t know. After all, if Judas was involved, it probably wasn’t a good thing. That didn’t really make things any more bearable though. I lost myself to drink for a while in the back alleys of Europe, and then I set off to America to become someone new.
I travelled on a ship full of Irish immigrants looking for their own new lives. I’d boarded the ship after killing the angel Balthazar in a pub by the docks one drunken Belfast night. The pub is still there, for what it’s worth. The ship just happened to be leaving when I stumbled away from the scene, otherwise I may have woken up inside the local jail after I’d passed out. Or maybe inside a noose. I ran across the water and climbed up the side and onto the deck and, because it was night, no one saw me. At least I don’t think anyone saw me. I kept my mouth shut on the ship so everyone thought I was one of them. I’ve had years of practice at that.
When we arrived in America, we all went up on the deck to watch as the Statue of Liberty came into sight through the fog. For the others around me, she was a symbol of a new life. For me, she was just another statue. Statues always represent something, but in the end they all wind up fallen in the dirt somewhere, as forgotten as the dreams that made them.
I walked the roads to Chicago and got a construction job after I stole some tools from a tent in an itinerant camp. I helped build a few skyscrapers. I didn’t really have any experience with that sort of thing, although I’d swung a hammer a time or two in my days. But I was fine with heights, on account of having no fear of dying. In fact, I’d once fallen the height of a skyscraper in France’s Gorges du Verdon region and come back to life to find myself impaled on the top branches of a tree. But I don’t really like to talk about that incident.
I helped build Chicago in the day, and during the night I hung out in the jazz bars that were springing up as quick as the office towers. I was there the night Louis Armstrong had his showdown with Reuben Reeves and they blew their horns until everyone in the club knew we were in a legend. I watched dozens of men who
were even better than them play in places with no names and lose themselves to drink and women and history. And on a few of those nights, I swear there was grace coming straight out of their instruments.
I had to leave the city when I fell or jumped from the top of one of the skyscrapers one day. I was drunk on homemade whiskey, so I can’t really recall what exactly happened. But when I woke up in a simple pine coffin and smashed through its lid to find myself buried underground, in a pauper’s grave, I figured it was time to move on. Everything must pass.
The whiskey was still in my system, so I was still drunk. I dug up another skeleton from another anonymous grave and broke it into pieces. I cast the bones on the ground to figure out what I should do next. The bones didn’t have anything to say, but the skull told me Judas was working in the new movie industry in California. When I sobered up in a diner down the road, I wasn’t certain if the skull had really talked to me or I’d imagined it. But I caught a train west anyway, in search of Judas.
Instead, I found Penelope.
BUT IS IT ART?
I checked into a hotel in New York with a fresh batch of stolen ID and credit cards. Sometimes I think I single-handedly keep the anti-fraud departments at most banks in business. I showered and shaved and then slept for twelve hours. It was evening when I got up. I went out into the streets and browsed the night markets and the twenty-four-hour stores. I went back to my room with new clothes and remade myself once more. Then I settled in at the hotel bar until closing, tipping the bartender well with my stolen credit card to keep the drinks coming. Well, here I was in America. Now what?
Private collectors, the art dealer on the train had said, back when I still thought he was an art dealer. If he were trying to sell the original Mona Lisa, he would try to sell it in a secret auction for private collectors. Maybe it was a clue, maybe it was a trick, but it seemed as good a place to start as any
So. All I needed to do was track down some rich people who collected ancient mythological creatures who weren’t so mythological after all. How hard could it be?
“You have any idea where I can find people who collect gorgons and magic skulls and that sort of thing?” I asked the bartender.
He shook his head without acknowledging there was anything odd about the question. A veteran bartender. Well, you never know unless you ask.
I ordered another drink to fortify myself. Tomorrow was going to be a very long day.
After a time the bartender told me he had to close the place and wished me luck in my search. I went to the lobby and used one of the hotel’s computers to research art dealers in the city. I made up a list and printed it off as the sky outside turned grey. I ate breakfast at the hotel café and was glad to see Americans still did bacon and eggs better than anyone else. I had a couple of coffees to offset the hangover that was starting to set in, and then I went out onto the streets of New York. I bought a cellphone and loaded it up with a pre-paid card, then found a print shop and had some business cards made with my new phone’s number on it. Then I started making my rounds.
Fortunately, art galleries, like car dealerships and restaurants, tend to be found in clusters. I was able to hit two or three on the same block and then take a cab to the next group. Repeat. My approach in each was more or less the same. Walk in and wander around, trying to figure out what the hell the paintings or sculptures were, until someone came over to see if I had money or not. The conversations tended to go something like this:
Me looking at a pile of empty candy wrappers on the floor: “What exactly is that supposed to be?”
Dealer in a suit worth more than most people in the world make in a year: “It’s a statement about the exhaustion of consumer culture.”
Me shaking my head and sighing: “What’s the point of this after Duchamp?”
Dealer looking me up and down—evaluating me: “What exactly are you in the market for?”
Me handing him my card: “Something like the Mona Lisa. Only more real.”
I figured there was no sense talking in code. The dealers who didn’t know what I meant would just think I was old-fashioned or an eccentric, or both. The dealers who did know what I meant—well, those were the ones I was trying to find.
Me in another gallery, watching a machine that consumed rotting vegetables on a conveyer belt at one end and extruded their waste at the other: “Is this actually art?”
Dealer in some sort of leather suit: “It’s a statement about art. And humanity. And spirituality.”
Me handing him my card and thinking I really needed to get in the business of taking rich people’s money from them: “I’m in the market for some real art,” I said. “Specifically, the Mona Lisa.”
Dealer studying me much like the last dealer did: “The Mona Lisa is in Paris.”
Me: “Is it?”
Even if these dealers weren’t the ones I was looking for, maybe they’d spread the word about the odd customer they’d had, and the right one would find me.
I hadn’t paid for voice mail on the phone, and I kept it turned off all day so no one could reach me. I wanted to build a sense of mystery. It was kind of like dating.
I didn’t turn the phone on until the end of the second day, after I’d hit the last of the galleries on my list. This place featured a human corpse in a refrigerated display case, opened up to reveal its emptied-out insides. All the organs had been removed.
“Let me guess,” I told the dealer. “A comment on the hollowness of our consumer culture.”
“Ah, you’re a collector,” he said.
I just shook my head and handed him my card. “Call me if you get anything like the Mona Lisa,” I said.
I left the gallery and turned the phone on and it rang almost immediately. I wondered how long the caller had been trying. I walked down the street until I found a doorway leading up to some lofts. I stepped into its shelter and answered the phone without saying anything.
“I think I may be able to help you find what you’re looking for,” a man’s voice said.
“You’re a little late,” I said. “I’ve already found her.”
There was a pause, and then the man said, “I don’t think that’s possible. Not if you’re looking for what I think you’re looking for.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Sorry, that was a bit of a test. I wanted to make sure you were genuine.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call myself that,” the man said, “but fair enough. Now then, the question is if I help you, what will you do for me?”
“It doesn’t sound like we’re talking about money,” I said.
“I don’t need money,” the man said. “What I need is a service performed.”
“What kind of service?” I asked.
“An exorcism,” he said.
OF EXORCISMS AND
OTHER BUSINESS VENTURES
As it turned out, I had some experience with exorcisms. Back in the 16th or 17th century—I can’t really remember which now—I worked for a while as a travelling exorcist. I rode around Germany on a dark stallion, wearing all black, and got rid of people’s supernatural woes for them. It didn’t pay all that well—my clients were usually peasants and what passed for middle class back then—but well enough to keep me supplied in sustenance and spirits, although not necessarily in that order.
There was an epidemic of demonic possessions in Germany back then. There was also a plague of the dead rising from their graves, so I doubled as a zombie killer. Coincidentally, both problems tended to start when I entered the area.
It usually went something like this.
I’d ride into the village on my horse, which for the first visit wasn’t a black stallion but a dull brown mare. I wore simple clothes and a simple look. I’d have lunch or dinner in the village tavern. During my meal I’d study my fellow diners and try to figure out from the way the others treated them which ones had money. I’d listen to the convers
ations until I’d learned the names of everyone in the inn. Then I’d pay my bill and go on my way, just another weary traveller passing through. On my way out the door I’d wet my fingers in a little flask of holy water I’d obtained—real holy water, not the knockoff stuff you get in churches—and flick a few drops onto my future customers’ hair or feet or wherever it was they were least likely to notice.
That night, I’d circle back and ride through the village again, when everyone was asleep. I’d look for the light of the holy water, because I can see the grace glowing in it. I’d stop at whatever shack or house where I found it and slip inside. I’d pick my target: the wife sleeping in bed with the man I’d marked earlier, a son or daughter in another room, sometimes elderly people who’d fallen asleep with bibles in their laps. Then I’d summon a random dead soul into their bodies and slip back out before the screaming started.
A possession is a simple thing: it’s two souls fighting for control of one body. Sometimes it’s genuinely demonic, but it doesn’t have to be. Throw an extra human soul into the body and the same thing will happen. Especially if the new soul is someone who’s been dead for a while and doesn’t know what’s just happened. The trick works even better if you use a soul who doesn’t speak the local language. Then, in those moments when they do manage to gain control of the body, everything they say is going to sound like gibberish. Or a demonic tongue.
Once my summoning work was done, I’d ride out of the village again and spend the next couple days lounging about some lakeside or forest camp. Then I’d change into my black clothes, use a sleight to make my brown mare look like a black stallion, and ride back into the village. Usually by this time the local priest would have failed in his attempts to exorcise the demon/confused soul—you need real grace to perform such an act, after all—and the villagers would be getting ready to burn the entire family. That’s when I’d make my mysterious appearance, along with a stock line about being drawn there by the stench of evil. I’d offer to banish the offending demon and save the village from an imminent invasion of hell-spawn—for a price, of course.
