“But you hid from Verrine.”
“When I tell you about the Throne King perhaps you will understand more clearly the imminent peril you are in.”
“We’re wasting time,” Lilith said. “Every minute we delay could be Hugh’s last.”
“Let’s walk then,” Beleth and Emma said together. “You said the Memorial to the Dead is some way up the hill.”
Lilith nodded; there was nothing more to argue. Besides, if she was honest with herself she could not deny her curiosity about this so-called monstrosity they might at any moment be up against.
Beleth told them the story of Leviathan and Shemhazai, the Grigori, a member of the Fallen who metamorphosed into human form in order to maniacally fornicate with female humans, an action that was forbidden to all angels, Fallen or not. This was ensured by the simple fact that they had no genitals. Leviathan annihilated the Grigori once and for all.
“But it was Verrine who got the idea in its head to kill all the offspring of Grigori-human couplings. One by one, whether they be teenagers, toddlers, or babes still suckling at their mothers’ breasts, Verrine hunted them down and broke them in two. The Thrones King’s hands were soaked in blood, a state in which Verrine reveled.”
“But how did Verrine move from one realm to another?” Lilith asked. “The doorways were sealed by God himself.”
Emma wondered how it could be that Verrine had missed Gideon Shaw, her great-grandfather. For an instant, she was taken by a powerful presentiment of a future she wanted no part of, but which she knew she must learn to navigate, or be taken under by an altogether different force than the words of Lucifer.
Simultaneously, Beleth was speaking: “That is an excellent question. There have been, so I am given to understand, momentary breaches in the membrane between realms, all caused from this side. But how Verrine could spend an extended period of time in your world is a mystery.”
“Perhaps it has to do with The Testament of Lucifer,” Emma said. “You witnessed what almost happened to me. Lilith felt the stubs of the triple wings sprouting between my shoulder blades.”
“And those words you spoke,” Lilith said.
“What words?”
“You mean you don’t remember?”
“With what was going on inside me I’m surprised I remember who I am.”
Lilith put her arms around Emma, held her close. “Here’s what you said,” she whispered in her ear. “ ‘Djat had’ar.’ ”
Emma stiffened. “That’s Tamazight. It means ‘He is here.’ ”
Lilith held Emma at arm’s length. “Who is here? Who were you talking about?”
“Conrad,” Emma said. “My grandfather.”
“I don’t understand.” Lilith’s eyes narrowed. “Is your grandfather still alive?”
“No. He died years ago.”
“Then how—?”
“Enough!” Beleth roared, turning heads, causing tourists to shrink back at the sound. But since nothing more of the sort issued from the beautiful woman, they directed their mobile phone cameras in another direction. “I will hear no more of this.”
Lilith leaned in. “You know what, Beleth? Fuck you and the whiff of sulfur you rode in on.”
Emma blinked. “I do not understand what you mean.”
Lilith snorted. “What you don’t know about human beings...” She made a curt gesture. “Come on, Beleth. We’re wasting time.”
She led the way up the winding path toward the memorial beneath which the Knights’ Reliquary lay. They were almost in sight of it when Emma said, “How do you propose to get inside?”
Without answering, Lilith grabbed her, drew her off the path, into the shadows of a stand of pencil pines. “See that dark-haired man striding up the path ahead of us? That’s Naylor,” she whispered. The man who had leered at her at the entrance to the town house. The one who had supervised the cleanup crew getting rid of the bodies of the Circle Council members she had killed. “Obarton’s most trusted guard dog.” She moved them ahead, up the path, following in Naylor’s footsteps. “He’s our way in.”
*
IAIN NAYLOR was concentrating on keeping a grip on the food while turning the key in the lock in the nether reaches of the Memorial to the Dead’s macabre interior. Consequently, he did not hear the footsteps behind him until it was too late. With the door already open, he whirled, saw two women. In the gloom, their faces were shadowed, their identities unknown, but he did admire the curves of their bodies.
One of them said, “Djat had’ar,” words he did not understand, and immediately thereafter, “Et ignis ibi est!,” Latin he did understand: Let there be light! What light? he wondered.
And then it began.
Someone was screaming. He was screaming. He could not stop.
*
CHAOS.
It wasn’t the gunshot that so unnerved Obarton, though that was reason enough for alarm. It was the eerie screaming, drawn-out, terrified.
Chaos.
Obarton had once been witness to someone being eaten alive by a pack of wild dogs. The victim had made just such a dreadful keening as he lost part after part of himself.
Chaos.
It was Obarton himself who had loosed the dogs.
Now he drew the snub-nosed revolver from its gleaming leather holster at the small of his back. No more gunshots—just the one. But that scream kept on and on, until he could bear it no longer. Unlocking the door, he yanked it open, only to be greeted by a scene out of a painting by Jackson Pollock. Blood splashed the walls in long, arcing swaths and wild asymmetrical spatters. His men—the ones left standing—were backed up against the walls, their bodies coated with blood, their eyes fairly bugging out of their heads. But the unearthly keening was coming from Naylor. He was writhing in the cold fire of blue flame. His face was a distorted mask, hideously blackened lips pulled back from bared teeth, his limbs already foreshortened; the unearthly fire had eaten away his hands and feet. He swayed back and forth like an abandoned marionette.
And through this chaos, this carnage, stalked Lilith Swan, his bitch-nemesis. How did she know where he was? Then he saw Highstreet’s mobile, which had never been turned off. Damn. But how had she gotten in? Then he saw her reach out, push Naylor over. Of course. Naylor had a key. Damn-damn-damn.
“Hugh,” Lilith said, not giving a second glance to the pistol pointed at her, “where is he?”
“Beyond your grasp, I’m afraid,” Obarton replied with a false bravado. “Or he will be seconds from now.” He thought he had pulled the trigger, but the edge of a hand came down on his wrist with such force that the bones shattered on impact. He moaned, dropped the pistol, cradled his hand in the crook of his other arm. Pain knifed through him like a chef’s blade through muscle, and he moaned again. All the blood drained from his face. His eyes rolled in their sockets. And then he caught sight of his attacker, and abject terror gripped him.
He recognized Emma Shaw’s face immediately, but what were those black talons grown out of her fingertips? He had no more time for speculation. He screamed as one of the talons punctured his flesh just beneath the breastbone, pinning him to the open door.
Lilith brushed by them, entered the cell, began to untie Highstreet, to minister to him as a mother would to her wounded child. Then she returned to where Emma Shaw had impaled Obarton, said, “I will kill him now, Emma.”
“Wait,” Emma said, in a strange, deep-throated rumble that sent a shiver down Obarton’s spine.
“Look! Look what he’s done to Hugh! He deserves—”
“I know what he deserves,” Emma said. She eyed Lilith for a moment. “Go back to Hugh. Make sure he’s okay. I need to spend some time with Obarton alone. Then he’ll get what he deserves.” When Lilith still hesitated, she added, “I promise.”
When they were alone with the dead and the dying, Emma said, “We have breached your firewalls, Obarton. Every secret the Knights have or ever had is now in the possession of the Gnostic Observatines.”
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“You’re a liar. It’s impossible.” He sputtered. “We would have known; I would have been told.”
“And yet you weren’t, and none of your IT people are any the wiser.” She leaned in, pressed her talon deeper into the core of him, so that he shouted, whimpered. Tears overflowed his eyes, shuddered down his fat jowls. “Here’s a little taste of what we’ve taken from the guts of your servers.”
“They’re Lilith’s servers, too.” Then, and only then, did it hit him how utterly and irrevocably the landscape had been altered. He felt like a child all alone in the night.
Emma waved a printout from the lab before his eyes, saw his gaze riveted by the information liberated from the deepest levels of the Knights’ servers. He gave a little yelp.
“Now that we have cleared up who’s telling the truth, Obarton, I have only one question you need to answer.”
“Why would I?” he said, transferring his gaze to her face. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”
“Me? I’m not going to kill you, Obarton. Just extract information.”
“You have everything. You just showed me—”
Emma shook her head. “I want more, Obarton. I want the location of the Knights’ Reliquary.”
*
“HUGH, HUGH.”
Highstreet, safe in her arms, was weeping openly. All the pain was tolerable now, as the misery leached out of him, replaced by relief and a sense of the most profound love he had ever felt. He was so deeply grateful to Lilith for coming after him, for finding him, for delivering him from his own private hell on earth.
“I’m here now,” Lilith said. “Obarton and his kind are over and done with. You can return to your life without fear.”
“I don’t...” Highstreet began to weep all over again. He was not ashamed, not with Lilith, who knew him like no other human being, who accepted him unconditionally.
“Take your time, Hugh.” Lilith was using the water in the jug next to him, cleaning his wounds as best she could with the sleeve of her shirt. “No need to hurry.”
“I don’t want to go back to my life.”
Lilith paused in her ministrations. “No? What do you want, Hugh?”
“I have no idea. Except...”
“Except what?”
“I want to be wherever you are.”
Lilith burst out laughing, kissed him on the forehead. “But that’s a given.”
*
“WHAT ARE you talking about?” Obarton winced in pain. “You’re standing in the Reliquary.”
“Oh no, I don’t think so.” Emma leaned in farther. “There are no reliquaries in this underground bunker, only instruments of incarceration, interrogation, and torture.”
“You’re wrong. You—”
“Please don’t insult my intelligence. You would never have taken Lilith to the real Reliquary. Would you?”
When Obarton refused to answer, she pushed the talon all the way in. Tears of agony appeared, and Obarton quivered. He looked like a waif with nowhere to run. “Would you?” she repeated.
His head dropped. “Please. Please don’t let her near me.”
“Would you, Obarton?” Emma pressed.
“N... no, I wouldn’t.” He gasped. “I never would have revealed the real Reliquary’s location to that bitch.”
“But you’ll tell me.”
“What? N... no. Why would I?”
“Because I’m the only one who can keep you from Lilith. I’m the only one who can keep you alive.”
“Is... is that a promise?” His eyes, redrimmed in pain, searched hers for an answer.
“Yes.” She cocked her head. “And unlike yours, Obarton, my word is a sacred oath.”
He hesitated, licked his dry lips.
“Time is running out,” Emma told him. “From the moment I withdraw this talon it will take you...” She shrugged. “Actually, I don’t know how long it will take you to bleed out. But I do know that Lilith will get to you before that happens.”
“How do you know—?”
“Because you’re a coward, Obarton. There is no sacrifice in you. It’s every man for himself.”
He licked his lips again. His breath was hot and rapid against her cheek. “Al... all right.” And then he told her, gave her the map coordinates to the Knights’ most sacred of sacreds, the place that held all the secrets not enumerated on their servers—their Reliquary.
“You’ll keep your promise,” he said then. “You’ll keep Lilith away from me.”
“As I said.”
“You won’t let her kill me.”
“No one is going to kill you, Obarton,” Emma said softly. And when the tension had been replaced by profound relief, she added: “Death is too good for you.”
Immediately his face paled again. “What do you mean?”
And then he screamed. One of the talons on her other hand pierced the fabric of his trousers, carved a bloody semi-circle, separating him from his genitals.
She grinned at him with grim satisfaction. “This is your life now, Obarton. Get used to it.”
Part 4
The Hollow Lands
43
Arwad, Syria: Present Day
BRAVO’S AND AYLA’S FIRST SIGHT OF THE ISLAND OF ARWAD was of the high stone walls and fearsome fortifications that had successfully repelled wave after wave of would-be invaders. Within, among the ruins, Captain Kreutzer told them, was a sleepy fishing village and not much else. The war in Syria, though only miles away on the mainland, had not touched the island. In all, Arwad seemed a homely place, a rocky, barren isle with little to recommend it, save as a fortified outpost during times of war, but, ironically, not now.
The Phoenicians inhabited it first, eventually declaring it an independent island-state, one of the first known examples of a republic. These people at first called themselves Canaanites, meaning “merchants.” They are recorded in the Bible, in both Genesis and Ezekiel, as skilled oarsmen and guardsmen. The Greeks renamed them Phoenicians, after the prized cloth of purple they made and exported.
The morning Bravo and Ayla were dropped off via launch, having said their farewells to Captain Kreutzer, was like any other in recent memory. Above them, gulls wheeled and cried beneath the blazing sun as the launch motored through the gap in the arms of the breakwater toward the sweeping harbor. Sails were strung from old spars, bleaching, caught now and again by gusts of wind coming off the water. Fishing boats were tied up, men working on repairs, or chatting after a long night’s fishing. Above them loomed the great fortified walls from ancient times, throwing knife-like shadows onto the new but shabby apartment buildings shoved up against the rough shingle beyond the boat basin.
The inhabitants are mostly Sunni Muslims, just like the extremists who captured you, so have a care, Kreutzer had told them. But here and there the ancient traditions of the Phoenecians remain, remembered and practiced by the remnants of the most influential families.
The sea air had done wonders for Bravo’s healing. His body bore only vague shadows of what had once turned much of his flesh black and blue, and only a touch of swelling, here and there, served as reminders of his physical trials at the hands of his sister and then the Syrians. As for Ayla’s cheek, the wound was a brown slash, small, almost insignificant, giving her only a twinge now and again.
Their appearance on the beach provoked a predictable response. All heads turned in their direction, but keen eyes had spotted the freighter that had brought them to the shores of Arwad, and it seemed as if the ship was known on the island, for no gaze that landed on them was in the least bit hostile. Nor was it particularly friendly. A mild wave of curiosity fluttered through the bystanders before they returned to their work or their conversations. Only one woman was moved enough to head toward them, picking her way carefully over the broken-up shell shingle. She was barefoot, holding the hem of her robe up to her shins. She passed through the surf as if it were her home, belonging fully to neither the land nor the sea.
She w
as neither young nor old. Her hair was long, cascading thickly over one shoulder. She was handsome and strong, with good bones beneath her sun-burnished skin. As she approached, she watched them with an enigmatic expression, neither her wide-apart eyes nor her full lips giving away her thoughts.
After they exchanged the usual Muslim greetings, she said, “Good morning. My name is Kamar.” She spoke to them in an Arabic dialect Bravo knew well. Her eyes were the color of sand. They were watchful, canny, but not hostile. “You have come a long distance to Arwad. Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me why.”
“I am Bravo and this is Ayla.” Bravo smiled. “And, yes, we have come a long way, and are hungry and weary. I wonder if you could direct us to—”
“But of course,” Kamar said. Her returning smile was wary, circumspect. But Muslim tradition required that she accommodate the strangers no matter their objective. “You shall be guests in my home. You will eat and drink your fill, and afterward you may rest comfortably in the shade of my palm trees.” She gestured. “Come now. Come with me. The heat of the day is just beginning.”
*
“NOW,” KAMAR began. But before she could continue, a little girl came running into the dining area where they were sitting among the remnants of a veritable feast of small plates their hostess had whipped up while they were washing the days of grime off them. They shared the tiny bathroom. Kamar’s house was old, low ceilinged, dark, and smoky, the rooms small but spotlessly clean and tidy. The sharp scents of spices mixed with the mellower aromas of caramelized sugar and ground pistachios. It was a homey place, a house you would always want to come back to.
The little girl—Kamar’s eight-year-old daughter—looked at the visitors with the straightforward curiosity of a child as she climbed up into her mother’s lap. Kamar wrapped her arms around her daughter, rocking her gently as she kissed the top of her head. The little girl seemed to be in seventh heaven.
“My name is Haya Ahirom,” she said. “Who are you?”
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