"No. Call me Vincente."
"The invincible conqueror," Willy translated.
"Lui parla Italiano!" exclaimed DeVilbiss.
"Un po'." Willy transferred the gun to his left hand, keeping it trained on Vincent's heart.
"Let us return to the scrolls," DeVilbiss said. "The information about my kind appears in the Metaphysics scroll. Have you read the section about the reason for my existence?"
"I take it that you were once a normal man, like myself You must have had little faith in God or an afterlife, which made you desperate enough to accept a pact."
"You're dancing around my question," Vincent said. "But very well. You know the specifics of the pact?"
"It clearly stated unending life on earth, in exchange for killing people."
"But why?"
"Because whoever controls you cannot operate 'in the good light of God's day.' Have I translated that properly?"
DeVilbiss crossed one leg casually over the other. "Yes, you have. And yet that doesn't go deep enough, does it? I've tried for so long to know why they're limited to darkness, but I've never been allowed to ask questions."
"You're telling me that you don't know who controls you?" Willy asked, incredulous.
"Precisely. I was hoping you'd tell me," said DeVilbiss. "The writer of the scrolls called them the Dark Forces, the Ancient Foe of Man."
The music ended. Reverend Spencer was unaware, caught in the discussion. "It's absolutely clear to me. It means the fallen angels. The Devil and his minions."
"Absolutely clear? Then why are these revelatory scrolls attributed to Ahriman-the Devil himself?" DeVilbiss asked.
Spencer waved the argument away peevishly. "The Ahriman attribution was an ignorant assumption. Simply because the writer of the scrolls took the religions of that time to task. Ergo, the complaint of the Devil. I'd say…"
"What?" DeVilbiss asked, truly interested.
"I'd say, the scrolls were written by exactly the opposite side. Either through an archangel or by the same divine inspiration given to the writers of the Bible, God caused the message of the scrolls to be delivered to earth. He did it precisely to offset the Devil's scheme to alter men and turn them against their own kind. Before Satan was cast from heaven, he was Lucifer… the bringer of light. After he and his followers lost their revolt, God made him the opposite: the ruler of darkness. He and his followers were suddenly unable to act in light or directly against mankind. So Satan used man against man… or whatever your species calls itself."
DeVilbiss relaxed back fully into his chair and folded his arms across his chest. "Couldn't the creatures who offered me eternal life just as easily be invisible but natural things, threatened by us? All mankind is by nature bloodthirsty… whether we actually drink blood or not. Once we emerged from the caves, the invisible ones knew we'd never stop advancing. One day we would learn the technology to detect them. And, being what we are, we would try to exterminate them."
"So, are you told to kill only men of science?" Willy said.
DeVilbiss's expression grew grim. "No," he admitted.
"Or are your victims people responsible for uncommon goodness? If so, you should know that you are a slave of Satan himself."
DeVilbiss's mouth contorted into a rueful smile. "There is nothing supernatural about me. Superhuman, yes; supernatural, no. Why should there be anything supernatural about those who control me? The Devil's existence would prove God's, but never once in five centuries have I found any other proof."
Willy had his retort ready. "That's because you've always looked with the eye of reason, not faith." His old eyes blazed with intensity. He had converted perhaps a score of people over the tenure of his ministry, but now he saw the chance to make the conversion of a lifetime. Beyond a pleasing exterior and cultured behavior, the figure sitting across the room did seem to possess strong vestiges of humanity. After all the evil he had committed, he still searched, still questioned. The chance to gather him into the fold existed, and Willy fairly panted with the opportunity.
"I've looked with both reason and faith," Vincent replied, calmly. "Five hundred years ago I was the same as you… a so-called man of God."
Reverend Spencer blinked. "I don't believe you."
In a deep and pleasant voice, Vincent began to sing.
Dies irae dies ilia,
Solvet saeculum in javilla.
Teste David cum Sibylla.
"Is a chant from the Requiem for the Dead enough for you? Would you like the saints' days in order? The Nicene Creed in Latin? Or precisely how confessions were heard then, and what I heard? And what I thought of my noble fellow men after twenty years of listening to their sincerely contrite revel-ations? Of course I could be lying. One needn't have been a Renaissance priest to learn these things. Just as you say: reason won't tell you the truth, Reverend. Look with the eyes of faith and despair that I speak no lies." He uttered the words with a dread irony that made the minister's condemnations sound like the hypotheses of a novice.
"Where were you a priest?" Spencer asked, after a long moment of assessment.
Vincent tucked the crumpled plastic bag between the chair arm and the seat cushion, rested his elbows on the arms of the chair and tented his hands, fingertip to fingertip, in an attitude of prayer.
"Roma. La citta eterna. Later I became an abbreviator, then papal legate."
"For which pope?"
"Rodrigo Borgia."
"Alexander the Sixth."
"Bene. Esattamente."
Willy nodded his understanding. "Not a good age for faith."
"You have a talent for understatement," Vincent answered, razing the steeple formed by his hands. "There was little room for faith, hope, or charity then. Not with all the political maneuvering from within the Vatican walls, the intrigues and betrayals, the nepotism and simony. The cold-blooded murders. Not with the Spaniard Borgia who bought the papacy outright. This man of God, this Vicar of Christ, Keeper of the Keys to the Kingdom, chosen directly through God's will, threw orgies in the gardens of de Bichi, fathered three bastards and the bitch Lucrezia by another man's wife. 'Not a good age for faith,' you say? And I had the misfortune to be born into the middle of it."
"When?"
"Anno Domini 1464. Christened Innocente Farnese."
"The innocent one," Willy translated.
"But not for long," Vincent declared. "Rome was the sick body of the Vatican's unsound soul. I saw pilgrims robbed at every gate, kings' envoys spat on and stripped of their clothes outside the walls of ancient glory. Every powerful family's palazzo was an armed camp of mercenaries. I stepped over bodies in the streets each morning, come there by disease, starvation, and murder, while inside palazzi walls three thousand ducats would be squandered on a single night's feast. And there was I growing up in it, loving life but so appalled by it. Wanting the wine, women, and song yet seeing that even the earthly wages of greed, lust, and gluttony could torment. When I was sixteen I turned to God for deliverance. I fought my desires, sublimated them in favor of eternal rewards. Like you, I tried to look with the eyes of faith and consecrated my worldly life as a bargain to win an everlasting reward. If I was unfortunate in the time and place of my birth, I was at least lucky in my family. My cousin, Giulia Farnese, became mistress to Rodrigo after Vanozza dei Catanei had grown haggard bearing his illegitimate brood. Through Giulia Bella I secured a cleric's position at Borgia's right hand. Each day, from the distance you are to me, I observed the man who had been elected pastore of God's earthly flock. Do you see the irony?
The Keeper of the Faith personally destroyed mine. If God could allow such a man to hold the keys to His kingdom, then why should He care if I received eternal life?"
The long-pent-up memories released, DeVilbiss collapsed back into the chair. "But Saint Joseph did."
"I don't understand," Reverend Spencer said.
"Neither did I. I thought I was going mad. Each morning I would retire to one of the Vatican's side chapels, to mend
my constantly fraying faith with prayer. The statue in the chapel was that of Saint Joseph. It was almost life size, beautifully carved of wood, painted and gilt. About a month after I began pouring out my disillusioned heart, the statue spoke to me. 'You can have eternal life, and you don't even need to die to get it,' it whispered. When no other part of my life hinted at insanity, I began to think it must be the Devil. It whispered, over and over, that there was nothing behind my faith, that unending life had to be earned another way."
"How was it possible for a statue to talk?" Willy asked in fascination.
DeVilbiss shrugged. "After all these centuries I still don't know. But think, Reverend: Could mine have been an isolated experience? Why else have men all over the world created gods from trees, metal, and stone?"
Willy's forefinger relaxed around the trigger as he accepted DeVilbiss' proffered puzzle. His mouth hung open a moment, then he said, "It's because… most people find it difficult to deal with the abstract. They feel secure worshiping something symbolized in strong material."
"Or is it because stone, metal, and wood possess certain properties necessary for the dwelling places of these 'gods'? What does it say in the scrolls?"
"I've read nothing that touched on this," said the old translator.
"Then you haven't read far enough. The creatures' inability to survive in open air is clearly stated. So they hide in dense matter. But you have no doubt already read that Easter Islanders, Mayans, Egyptians, Hindus, Buddhists, Abyssinians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, and Sumerians all worshiped in stone. Moses destroyed his people's calf of gold. And in wood; Africans, Druids with their sacred oak and rowan, Northwest Indians with their totem poles. Perhaps all those wood and metal and stone idols talked to them."
"And your statue wanted you to kill in exchange for unending life," Willy said.
"No. If that were the original agreement, I would have refused. It demanded killing later, once I had proof of eternal youth and had glutted myself on the fruits of youth. At first the statue only required the same functions I performed for the Church. That's when I first believed it was something other than the Devil. Why would Satan reward me for merely continuing the ill I already performed? It turned out that these tasks created far more harm than if I had committed an occasional murder, but I couldn't see the enormity of the request."
"What tasks?"
"Ones that preserved the common man's ignorance, suppressing scientific knowledge that threatened the Church's supremacy. If man continued to suffer and die from disease, hunger, and oppression, so be it. That's the reason I was able to hunt down almost every copy of Aldus's translation of the scrolls; I had Pope Alexander's blessing. Not only did the scrolls deny the validity of all religions in general, but they specifically preached that the earth was not the center of our system. I had the Church's full powers at my disposal to crush the truth."
"You see? You do argue for the Devil." Willy's face suddenly brightened. "Now I understand the purpose of two scrolls! The scroll we call Metaphysics is so filled with unbelievable assertions that the giver felt compelled to offer a companion piece as well… a scroll with facts that could be proven in the physical world. You see? The beings that control you are indeed metaphysical… supernatural… fallen angels." Before DeVilbiss could reply, Willy added, "The second scroll says that you drink the blood of other humans, right?"
"Yes," DeVilbiss admitted. "But the thing that keeps me young is a powder, delivered from a secret place. After twenty years, they changed the formula, so that I needed blood as well."
"Is that when they first demanded you kill for them?"
"Yes."
"If that's not diabolical, what is? You see how they mock God?"
"Tell me," Vincent said.
"When you were a priest, at each Mass you commemorated the blood Christ shed by drinking wine. You did this on behalf of your fellow man. The reason Jesus chose wine was that it, not water, was the drink of life in his time. These demons make you drink the blood of your fellow man, on your own selfish behalf, your wine of life if you will. What else could provide such a powerful, subliminal reminder of the side you'd chosen?"
"An elegant argument, pastore," Vincent granted.
"Compelling enough for you to see the light and end your ways?" Spencer asked.
"Which means to die."
Willy thrust out his hand. "Face facts, Vincente… either way you won't literally live forever. If Judgment Day doesn't come first, then eventually the sun will nova and engulf the whole earth. Long before that, chance will make a building fall on you or your plane crash into the ocean."
Vincent's chin lowered several degrees toward his chest. He looked past his eyebrows at the old man. "I am perfectly aware of that. I have never intended to live forever."
"But…?"
"But neither can I ever contemplate dying tomorrow."
"Yet if you die in a state of grace, you will live on. God has promised it. If you were once a man of God you can be again. You can't go on slaughtering your fellow man."
"You don't understand. It doesn't matter who controls me. And whether God exists or whether he cares about what happens to me can't be allowed to control my actions. I'm very close to giving man the greatest gift possible. What I have done, I have done. What I do, I will continue to do. I kill because I must survive to bring this gift. Once that happens, I'll be free to listen to your arguments. Now listen to mine. I need your help in removing the scrolls from the university. I will not destroy them. I wish only to hide them and prevent their translation, to protect myself until the time I'm free. I promise you this on my honor as a gentleman."
Willy laughed. "On your sacred honor? Why not swear on your immortal soul, since you have no fear of losing it?"
Vincent flushed pink in his anger. "Do you think I'd sit here staring at a gun so calmly if I felt I couldn't convince you?"
"What I think is that you're guile personified. The purest form of evil that can exist in a man's body."
Now DeVilbiss laughed. "Then pull the trigger: ensure your own destruction as well as mine. If you kill me, they'll send another within days… one who will not even pretend to my compassions."
"I can't let the scrolls be taken."
"You don't have to do anything," DeVilbiss assured. "Just let me have your security system key."
Willy's eyes darted down to the desk drawer in front of him. He caught himself an instant later and returned them to DeVilbiss, but not before his opponent had registered the all-important information.
"How many others hold keys?" DeVilbiss asked.
Willy reached out for the glass. "You lie," he said with conviction. "You've been destroying the words of the scrolls for centuries. You won't stop now." He lifted the glass and readied it for throwing. At the same time he inched his revolver forward, still pointed at DeVilbiss's chest. At last he seemed nervous. DeVilbiss knew that Willy was fighting his deep-seated aversion toward taking a life, no matter how monstrous. "I must kill you," he said, as if to himself.
"They'll lock you up for murder," DeVilbiss said, rising slowly and casually, as if ready to leave the room.
"Not when I prove you're what you are. Sit down!"
DeVilbiss ignored him, straightening to his full height, placing his left hand on his hip, his right gesturing, palm up. "How? With oversized incisors? They'll call them a genetic defect. My pale skin? A dislike of the sun. They'll find any explanation but the truth. Don't you understand? After all those silly movies, everyone knows what a vampire is. A shape-changer, invisible in mirrors, crumbling to dust when the sun hits him. Nothing like me. If you insisted on your story they'd institutionalize you. You'll never translate another word."
"Shut up!" Willy commanded, thumbing back the revolver's hammer.
DeVilbiss took a step forward, almost to the desk. " 'Thou shalt not kill.' "
"Silence!" Willy screamed. His armjerked up; his hand retrained the revolver at the mouth that mocked him. DeVilbiss's eyes went wide with
horror.
The gun boomed. The bullet entered DeVilbiss's open mouth, smashing through his upper wisdom tooth and exiting out his cheek, leaving a gaping hole.
Roaring his pain and outrage, DeVilbiss lunged forward and grabbed the huge desk by the edge. Seeing that his bullet had done so little damage, the minister threw the holy water at his attacker's face. DeVilbiss's head snapped back from the cold assault, but he was otherwise unaffected. By the time Willy Spencer realized his second failure and was about to aim his gun at the vampire's heart, DeVilbiss had the desk firmly in his grasp. He threw its huge mass over as if it were made of cardboard. Willy flew backward into the chair and then down in a crumpled heap, firing off a second shot as he collapsed. The bullet caromed off a brass telescope on an upper bookshelf and disappeared into a wall. The desk landed fully on the old man, burying him under its weight. DeVilbiss darted around it and wrested the revolver from the hand that stuck out from beneath a pile of papers. He tossed the weapon into a corner, then clutched his head with both hands and dropped to his knees, rocking back and forth, moaning his agony.
No wound had ever hurt as this had. His tongue found the jagged remnants of his wisdom tooth but could not reach as far back as the exit wound. Behind the tooth, it felt as if an army of angry hornets were trying to sting their way out of his head. His ear throbbed red-hot with every heartbeat. The movement of any muscle on that side of his face created a torment that had him weeping with pain.
Vincent fought the pain, as he had a thousand other times. He crawled to where the reverend's head lay, captured under the overturned chair. He grabbed the man's white hair and yanked on it until the old eyes popped open.
"You are a fool," Vincent hissed. "Like the idiots who invented wearing garlic and tying coffins shut. But I'll give you one more chance to live." He paused, to hawk up a thick glob of blood that had trickled down his throat. He spat it onto the still-open Bible. "When you read about my existence, you believed. Therefore, you feared for your life. Therefore, you would have entrusted your translations to others. Who are they?"
The Book of Common Dread Page 23
