Four Dominions

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Emma followed Lilith into Highstreet’s building. Lilith knew the codes to get them in. Upstairs, the front door was cordoned off with police tape. Apparently, an investigation as to the cause of the fire was ongoing, but Lilith was familiar enough with the Paris police to know that they’d get around to it when they got around to it, never mind the grumblings of the neighbors, who were complaining of the stink and calling for smoke and fire remediation. Besides, she was ready to bet that the infamous French government red tape was already mummifying everyone involved.

  Unpeeling one end of the tape, she used her key to enter the apartment. The door, which had been split in half by the firemen, had been crudely hammered back together, using raw wood crosspieces.

  The place stank of smoke, but she was grateful that the firemen had smashed all the windows in an attempt to air out the flat after they had extinguished the fire. As expected, the rooms were a mess—what was left of them. What furniture remained identifiable was ruined and still sopping wet; it wouldn’t be long before mold set in.

  “What if it’s not here?” Emma asked. “What if it was destroyed in the fire?”

  “Have faith,” Lilith replied.

  “Faith!” Beleth’s dark voice. “Another God-word!”

  The kitchen was a complete disaster area; it was clear the fire had started there. In the bedroom, the door side of the bed was a staved-in mess, but the far side was only streaked with ash, the rucked coverlet patterned as if with graffiti. The dresser had collapsed on one side and, like a horse, kneeling, bowed its head. She opened the closet door, stepped inside. Hugh’s neatly folded clothes were intact but were of course unwearable, covered with snowy ash, stinking of smoke. Pushing aside the array of suits, she exposed the back right corner. Reaching up, she removed a plaster-covered wooden peg. Digging her forefinger into the opening, she pulled down, revealing a recess in which resided a USB thumb drive.

  “Gotcha!” she said.

  37

  Paris: Present Day

  THERE WAS NOTHING MORE TO SAY, WAS THERE? OBARTON escorted Cardinal Duchamp out of the Reliquary, back into the late afternoon, the granite angels weeping rainwater, the gutters along the pathways gurgling. The sky was low and still ominous, though the clouds were driving swiftly eastward. When he looked at the cardinal’s back, he did not even feel anger. He had passed beyond that stage, into the familiar territory most men dared not even dream of. But Obarton was not most men; he had gotten ahead in the world and, most importantly, had stayed there by ruthlessly manufacturing his own reality. Duchamp was no longer a part of his reality. He had dismissed him as a cardinal, as a man, the moment Duchamp had denounced him. Now the cardinal was but a shadow as he stepped into the car and the driver rolled away, down the winding paths toward the entrance far below.

  Obarton watched the car out of sight, then lifted his arm, signaling his own vehicle. He climbed in. There was no reason for him to speak to the driver; he already knew the destination.

  Once outside Père Lachaise, Obarton again caught sight of the car taking the cardinal back to Charles de Gaulle Airport as his driver followed at a discreet distance. He sat back, crossed one leg over the other, called up the app one of the tech people had installed on his mobile, and tracked Lilith’s presence in Paris. Hugh Highstreet might be enisled, but his cadre of people were still working like diligent mice, only now under Obarton’s relentless whip. None of them had Highstreet’s brilliance, true enough, but that only meant Obarton had to find someone of equal genius to replace him. In fact, he was determined to hire someone far cleverer than Highstreet, one who was in thrall to him, not Lilith Swan.

  He paid scant attention to the streets as they passed by, so immersed was he in his vicarious pursuit of Lilith’s whereabouts. She was in the Marais. According to the app, on the very street where Highstreet used to live. He closed his eyes for a moment, nostrils dilated as if he could smell the wood char, savoring in his imagination the look on Lilith’s face, the heaviness in her heart, as she came upon the ruin of Highstreet’s fire-ravaged flat.

  Idly, he texted Denis to ensure Lilith was, in fact, there. After some time, he received the expected reply. Then, because they had reached the Périphérique, joining the endless traffic that circled the city, he put away his phone and concentrated on the moment to come.

  Sunlight began to peek through the clouds in the west, as the sinking sun lowered itself into its coffin for another night. The light was such that he could see his face in ghostly reflection in the window, superimposed over the factories, warehouses, and company headquarters that dominated the outskirts of Paris. At length, the car carrying Duchamp exited, following the signs for the airport, and his own car exited as well. On either side of the highway rose more of the industry of France, faceless, full of massed signage, looking more or less indistinguishable from the industrial areas of any other country in the EU.

  Approximately halfway to the airport, Duchamp’s car pulled off the highway and into a roadside gas station. It stopped alongside a petrol pump; the driver emerged, dipped a credit card, began to fill the tank. Then he ambled into the station itself, perhaps to relieve himself or to buy cigarettes; it really didn’t matter. Obarton’s driver pulled his car onto the leading edge of the petrol station.

  Obarton took out his mobile once again, counted to ten, then pressed a six-digit string of numbers into the virtual keypad. There was an instant’s silence in his head, as everything save the car carrying Duchamp ceased to exist. Then with a hellacious whoomp! it and the pump itself exploded into a massive fireball plumed by thick acidic black smoke.

  “Back to the Reliquary,” Obarton said to his driver, and the car pulled out into traffic, which was just beginning to come to a virtual standstill. Car horns blared angrily, fearfully; sirens began to wail; people jumped out of their cars, screaming and gesticulating wildly in the wake of the disaster.

  Obarton’s car drove on. He seemed to feel the intense heat of the conflagration at his back, but that might only have been an illusory part of his immense satisfaction. Cardinal Felix Duchamp was gone, gone, gone, to meet his Maker or, more likely, into the arms of some demon caretaking the lowest pits of Hell. Either way, it was of no concern to Obarton.

  He began to think of his favorite scene from Witness for the Prosecution, when Sir Wilfrid says—and so pleased was he with the afternoon’s success that he recited the line of dialogue out loud in Charles Laughton’s plummy tones—“ ‘The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind finely.’ ”

  He was chuckling, still in full Laughton mode, when the focus of his vision changed. Upon the window he saw not only the reflection of his own face but also, just behind him, the horrid horned, grinning countenance of the Fallen Seraph he had glimpsed at the Vatican.

  *

  THEY ESCAPED the police presence by about a minute and a half, rounding the corner at the far end of the block even while hearing the familiar high-low, high-low bleat of sirens. The sun was obscured by clouds stretching upward from the west, where it was already dark and raining. A wind had arisen. It skittered along the street, as if hurrying them along.

  The rain came soon thereafter, and they descended into the Métro at Arts et métiers, where Lilith threw her phone into a trash bin, keeping the phone that Emma had lifted from the dead man in the Fiat. They changed at République, rode two stops, emerging at Saint-Ambroise.

  Under low, ugly skies that intermittently spit at them, they headed down rain-slick sidewalks toward a side street off boulevard Voltaire not far from the Saint-Ambroise church that gave the quartier its name. The buildings were gray and faceless. People hurried by, hunch shouldered, under deployed umbrellas.

  Halfway down the street, they entered a patisserie on their left. The plate-glass window was filled with luscious-looking napoleons, fruit tarts, and Saint-Honoré’s. The floor was much-scuffed tiny tiles, the ceiling pressed tin. The smell of caramelized sugar and melted butter permeated the air. Two middle-aged women,
one with a child in tow, were being served by a pair of young women, while a third manned the cash register.

  Lilith went up to the cashier. “Monsieur Boyer. Please tell him Mademoiselle Swan is here to pick up her strawberry tarts.”

  The woman went into the back, returning almost immediately, followed by a stolid middle-aged man with unruly hair and small, unblinking eyes. He wore a full apron over his trousers. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up past the elbows.

  “Mademoiselle, your order was for eight tarts,” he said. His face revealed nothing.

  “Pardon me, monsieur, I ordered a full dozen.”

  The muscles of his face seemed to relax. “So you did.” He nodded. “This way, if you please.”

  They stepped behind the counter, followed him down a corridor dim with pastry flour dust. Past the kitchens, they made a sharp left. The end of this elbow revealed a door, which Boyer unlocked, gesturing them to pass through.

  They found themselves in a laboratory, filled with all manner of computers and related electronic equipment. Staff members went about their work without even glancing up at the newcomers. Emma could feel Beleth’s bewilderment, felt almost sorry for the Power.

  Lilith handed over the dead man’s mobile. “I want to know who he called last and most and where those people are.”

  Without a word M. Boyer set to work. He did not ask who Emma was; he scarcely glanced at her. She didn’t matter to him. Only the job of work Lilith had handed him mattered.

  He plugged the mobile into one of his computers and began. After several minutes, he said, without looking up, “You must be hungry. Ask Agnes to feed you.”

  “I’ve got more important fish to fry,” Lilith replied.

  At which Boyer at last looked up. As he caught sight of the thumb drive Lilith held up, his mouth twitched in what Emma could only surmise was a smile. He pointed his thumb at a laptop across the lab, then went back to work.

  Lilith crossed the lab, Emma following a step behind. She plugged the thumb drive into a USB port on the side of the laptop, then opened a secure VPN connection to the Internet. Now whatever she did from this computer could not be traced. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and, moments later, the first of Highstreet’s several layers of firewalls popped up, preventing her from gaining access to the Knights’ server. Minimizing that window, she navigated to the icon of the thumb drive, which showed up on the screen as Drive N, and opened it. There were four folders: Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Uncle Scrooge.

  Lilith let go of a grim laugh. “Oh, Hugh,” she murmured to herself. She hovered the mouse over the Hughie, clicked to open it, returned to the server screen in time to watch the first layer of firewall dissolve. You could almost see it happening brick by brick.

  Sensing Emma hovering over her shoulder, she said, “I assume you know the codes to copy the material to the Gnostic Observatine servers.”

  “I don’t,” Emma said. “But we have a satellite server I can get into.”

  “Do it.”

  Lilith moved aside, giving Emma access to the keyboard. When the first tier of folders had been copied, Lilith opened Dewie. The second firewall, more difficult to penetrate than the first, was breached, revealing more sensitive data, which Emma duly copied. The same procedure was repeated, dropping the third and even more difficult firewall to breach. Not for Louie, however. Now all of the Knights’ secrets were revealed. Soon enough they were copied, too. Then and only then did Lilith activate the files in the fourth folder. Like the original Uncle Scrooge, this neat program undid all the temporary damage its nephews had wreaked, sealed up the firewalls one by one, at the same time removing all traces of the intrusion.

  “There you go,” Lilith said, removing the thumb drive from its slot.

  Emma, who had given Beleth a silent request to butt out, bent over Lilith, kissed her on the nape of her neck. Sparks flew for both of them, but perhaps more for Lilith than her lover. The siege Emma was fighting, which up until now she had successfully kept from both Lilith and Beleth, had entered a new stage, one more savage, more furious, than anything that had come before. It was as if Lucifer’s words, having been given life by being read, had called up hitherto-unexpected reinforcements. More violent troops, more complex siege engines, were massing around her defenses. Emma’s resources were being taxed to the limit. And then a new and more terrifying siege was wheeled into place. The words of Lucifer—Arabic, Hebrew, Phoenician, Tamazight—began a siren song, a cord of twining melodies so beautiful, so magnificent, sultry, eloquent, compelling, they sparked, dazzled, exploded soft as fragrant flowers in the space behind her eyes. She felt drawn to them, magnetized, falling into a potent trance-like state from which she knew she would never return—never want to return.

  The word-music was a warm tide lifting her into its embrace, rising up. A moment more and it would engulf her entirely. She would be beneath it, within it, swirling, ever swirling, to the celestial word-music. Sweat broke out on her hairline, her upper lip, in her armpit. Droplets of it slithered down her backbone, and she uttered a tiny moan as she swayed on her feet.

  Lilith, whose senses were already highly calibrated to Emma’s ever-cycling personalities, leapt out of the chair and held on to her to keep her from falling.

  “Emma,” she said, “Emma, are you all right?” And then, because Emma didn’t or couldn’t answer her, her tone changed. “Beleth, what the hell is going on?”

  “ ‘Hell’ is right.” The voice, deep and perplexed, emanated from between Emma’s half-parted lips as if she were a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Something has hold of her.”

  Lilith flashed it a glowering look. “I thought you had hold of her.”

  “I do, but—”

  “Then find out what’s gone wrong. Maybe you’ve begun to poison her. Maybe you’re killing her.”

  “Impossible, I—”

  “Nothing seems impossible these days,” she hissed at him with bare teeth. “You’re a Power.” She was trembling with rage and fear. “Find what’s gone wrong, fix it, or by all that’s holy I will find Leviathan and tell him how you’ve strayed from the Fallen straight and narrow.”

  “Get away from me,” Beleth snapped. “Put her down. Go do something else. See how your friend over there is making out.”

  “I’m not leaving her side until I know she’s okay.”

  “There is nothing you can do,” the Power said. “I do not understand you.”

  “I’m the luckiest woman on earth,” she said bitterly. “No more talk.” She gestured with her head. “Get on with it.”

  Emma lay insensate in Lilith’s arms, but disconcertingly her eyes remained open. Black as pitch, unfocused, they stared at nothing.

  At length, beneath the soft hum of the electronic equipment Lilith heard a sound. So softly at first that she was not sure that it wasn’t inside her own head. Then it repeated, and repeated again, in a kind of rhythm like that of the hooves of a horse at full gallop.

  “What’s happening?” she whispered, as if to herself. “God in Heaven, keep Emma safe.” Which was a foolish thing to say. Emma wasn’t safe, and hadn’t been since Lilith met her. She was at the mercy of occult forces so powerful Lilith could not have imagined them even a week ago. She recalled how Obarton had frightened her with the hologram of the Fallen Archangel, how Hugh had revealed the trick when she had returned to his lab. So skeptical, both of them. And where was that skepticism now? Crushed beneath the pounding hooves of the invisible oncoming steed.

  As the sound of the thrumming rose she began to feel ill, sick to her stomach. Her head hurt in a way it never had before. She could no longer feel her feet; they were as inanimate, as dead, as blocks of ice. And now she began to fear not only for Emma but for herself as well.

  “Beleth,” she whispered in a dry husk of a whisper. “Beleth.”

  But there was no response. She took a quick glance over her shoulder. There was M. Boyer with his back to them, shoulders hunched, in the middle of following the
electronic signals from the dead man’s mobile back to their source.

  Then Emma gave a galvanic start. She commenced to convulse as if a high current were being applied to her. The lids over her black eyes slid down, then immediately popped back again. Nothing in the blackness. Nothing at all.

  Lilith felt the sting of hot tears forming, over-flooding her eyes, running down her cheeks, leaving tracks like war paint. And, as her heart constricted, she thought, Love is a weapon as well as a solace.

  Now Emma was convulsing so hard and so rapidly Lilith was obliged to hold on to her all the tighter in order not to lose her. But I am going to lose her, she thought. And then, What hasn’t she told me? Is this the endgame of her resistance against Beleth?

  She bent over, put her lips against Emma’s ear. “Emma, I’m here. I want to help you.” She kissed the tip of the ear, then the lobe, like she did when they were making love. Emma was cold, so cold Lilith gasped. “Oh, Emma, please tell me. How can I help you?”

  And then, most horrifyingly of all, Emma’s mouth hinged open in a way that made her seem both more and less than human. Her tongue, black as her eyes, fluttered like a banner on the battlefield, and words deep, harsh, ragged were forced through her voice box with what seemed a strangled effort:

  “The... end... is... near—”

  In one final convulsion her head swiveled on a neck corded with immense tension, and she vomited up a gluey substance, thick and black as tar.

  38

  Mediterranean, off the Coast of Malta: Present Day

  BRAVO FELL THROUGH A THICK VELVET NIGHT, TURNING, turning. Small fish came to investigate. When a larger shadow approached, they turned tail as one and vanished. Ayla, who had scrambled after Bravo, reached him as he sank. Grabbing fistfuls of shirt at his shoulders, kicking out and up, she arrested his downward trajectory.