Slowly, lights came on in the control room and in tagged stages hundreds of small video screens lining the four walls of the room pulsed alive. A wide assortment of faces stared at me in curiosity and wary annoyance.
“The Key has been stolen,” I announced bluntly.
“Which key?” an elderly man demanded sleepily. The label on his monitor read New Zealand. “The key of knowledge, or the key of power?”
“The the Key,” I replied succinctly.
Everybody gasped, and half of them went pale.
“You mean, the Key to That Which Should Never Be Opened?” Russia gasped in horror, tightening the towel about his waist.
“Yes. And it is probably being opened right at this very moment,” I added, glancing at the rooftop monitor. But there was no sign of a rain of fire, or crack of doom. Which meant that Satan didn’t have the weapons yet. But when he did . . .
“Activate the homing beacon!” New York commanded. A soft knocking in the background was probably his knees banging together, or else a mariachi band warming up to perform.
“There’s a tracking device?” Tokyo asked in stunned disbelief before I could.
“There has always been a tracking device on the Key,” Paris declared, brushing back her wild crop of uncombed hair. “But the Guardian didn’t need to know. It would have made him lazy.”
“Oh, yeah, good thinking,” Mecca sneered, and Brazil agreed.
“Tracking beacon is alive,” London said, doing something offscreen. “All right, our satellites place the belt on a plane to Australia . . .”
“What flight?” Canberra asked, lifting a telephone into view.
“Shoot it down!” Rome demanded, shaking a fist.
Both were ignored. “. . . however, the Key is still in the United States,” London continued unabated. “Cen tral states . . . Illinois . . . Chicago . . .” His face lifted and he looked directly at me. “Brother, the Key is in the parking lot of your lodge!”
“Impossible!” the Apache Nation cried out.
“The demons have the Key, but don’t know where the Lock is,” India cried out, slapping a palm to his forehead. “And so they assume . . .”
“. . . that the Guardian . . .”
“. . . would know the location . . .”
“. . . of both?”
Curses were snarled in every language on Earth.
“Run!” Beijing, Boston, and Bora Bora shouted in unison.
“Never,” I growled, pulling the HK 9mm and working the slide. “I’ll keep them busy here while the rest of you send troops and gunships to protect the Door-of-Doors. If my death can . . .”
“But you’re at the Armory!” Paris screamed, grabbing at her hair. “That lodge holds the Weapons of Heaven!”
Everything reeled for a moment, I had to swallow twice before words came out of my mouth. “What the freaking hell is it doing in the same town as me?” I demanded furiously. “The door should be . . .”
“On the other side of the world?” Iraq scoffed. “Then, if the clarion call sounds, the Guardian would have to fight halfway across the world through the amassed armies of hell before we could get the swords.”
Fury boiled within me, but then eased. The argument was sound, and there was a dull slam on the front door of the lodge. The demons were trying to get in. Well, hopefully, it was them. Satan had made his demons damn tough, but if the Dark One sent any of the Fangels, the fallen angels, that had stood by his side and declared war on God . . .
The pounding got louder. The entire building shook. A couple of the monitors wavered and went dark.
Muttering a prayer, I pressed the cold barrel of the police gun to my forehead. Maybe if the demons found me dead on the floor they might go away. Reluctantly, I eased down the weapon. No, they’d only tear the place apart in frustration, and find the Door. Think, man, think!
“Are there any weapons here?” I demanded hopefully, sweat trickling down the back of my neck. “Any thing I can use to hold back the demons while the rest of you send troops?”
“There are already a thousand Brothers surrounding the lodge you’re in,” Chicago replied proudly. “Mostly police, firefighters, and doctors.” Then the man frowned. “Although I am not in radio contact with anybody at the moment,” he muttered unhappily.
Then if the demons had reached the front door, my Brothers were no more. A thousand Freemasons dead, I realized coldly. That was just the beginning of the slaughter to come.
“All right, F-22 Raptor jet fighters are on route from Edwards Air Force base in California,” Los Angeles replied, setting down a red telephone. “They’re armed with holy Sidewinder missiles, and blessed tactical nukes. ETA, sixty minutes.”
“There’s nothing closer?” Poland demanded.
Hunching her shoulders, Los Angeles scowled. “Noth ing that will stop a Fangel.”
“Brothers, we have no choice,” London stated. “The Guardian needs weapons, and the request cannot be denied. Insert your signet rings into your control panels and turn on my command. Ready . . . set . . . mark!”
A dozen of the men and woman on the screens turned their arms, and there came a deep metallic sigh from behind me.
Spinning around fast, I saw the southern wall of the lodge iris open, and there were granite racks of weapons, swords, shields, lances, halberds, bolos, katanas, and war hammers.
“Send more Masons!” I shouted over a shoulder, dashing out of the control room.
Sprinting through the temple, I raced past the pretty antiques and thankfully found some modern weapons. Stacks and crates of revolvers, automatic pistols, assault rifles, combat shotguns, machine pistols, land mines, rocket launchers, and grenades.
A shadow filled the doorway of the armory, casting me into darkness, and there came the stink of a burning sewage plant.
Grabbing a couple of revolvers off the wall pegs, I turned and pulled the triggers. Automatic weapons could not be stored away fully loaded, or else the springs inside would get weak and they’d jam. But revolvers could be loaded and safely placed aside for a hundred years, always ready for instant use. I was gambling everything that my Brothers had a couple of wheelguns ready for action, just in case of an emergency.
The twin S&W .357 Magnums roared in booming thunder, stilettos of flame extending from the big bore muzzles toward the hulking demon tromping closer. The hellspawn screamed as the silver bullets hit, but I kept firing until the hammers clicked on empty shells.
Lowering the guns, I could see that the demon was still standing. Then it sighed, dropped the bloody mace in its gnarled fist, and fell over to shatter into a million pieces on the concrete floor. Ah ha! Silver bullets save the day again. That Masked Ranger down in Texas and his faithful Apache companion had shown us the way to kill demons lo those many years ago. Why else would they have carried silver bullets?
Tossing away the revolvers, I grabbed a brand new US Army M60 machine gun from a rack, ripped off the plastic protective coating, and flipped open the breech to lay in a long belt of silver-tipped .308 ammunition. Each cartridge was marked with an Egyptian hieroglyph, Buddhist pictograph, Christian cross, Mogan David, Moslem Moon, pink stars, and lucky clovers. Perfect. That was when I noticed on the nearby wall a red box closed off with a pane on glass. Break in case of emergency? Yeah, well, the downtown fire department wouldn’t be of too much help at the present moment, let me tell you.
“Look out, Brother!” Chicago shouted dimly from across the lodge. “I have a report of a . . .”
Just then, the entire left panel of monitors went dark, and a clawed hand punched through the glass and electronics, clawing the opening wide, and a Fangel crawled into the building, eyes glowing red from the hellfires burning inside his veins and heart. Obscenely fat, the nude Fangel stepped to the litter-covered floor and spread his wings wide. Every feather was adorned with a different sin, and the overall effect was like an LSD trip in Las Vegas.
“You there, Guardian!” the Fangel growled, reaching out a
plump, pink hand the size of a Buick. “Come to me, mortal fool!”
Yeah, right. Yanking back the arming bolt, I rode the bucking machine gun and stitched the Fangel from knees to nose. Sagging into nonexistence, it puffed into vapor and disappeared.
But then another Fangel appeared at the hole in the wall. I killed it before the Fallen One could get inside the lodge. But another was right behind, and another . . . and a fifth . . . tenth . . . twentieth . . . The hammering sound of nonstop machine gun fire and unholy screaming seemed to last forever. The assorted brothers on the few remaining monitors shouted advice, but I couldn’t hear a word over the deafening fusillade of the yammering machine gun.
As the last Fangel vanished in a puff of smoke, I dropped the hot M60 and flexed my aching hands. Okay, that bought me some time. Now all I had to do was . . .
Suddenly, a policeman walked out of the swirling clouds of pungent smoke. Incredibly, it was the old cop from the street!
“What in Hades is going on here?” the officer demanded, looking about in shocked confusion.
I started to reply, but that was when I saw he wasn’t wearing his Masonic ring anymore. So how did he get past the automatic defenses of the lodge? In a surge of cold adrenaline, I pulled the HK 9 mm from inside my coat and shot him twice in the face.
Staggering backward, the cop hit the cracked wall and his outer layer of chitin, or whatever it was, broke off to reveal the most amazingly beautiful woman I had ever seen. Er, no, she was a man. No, a woman . . .
“May the Great Architect of the Universe protect us!” Luxembourg called from the smoky ruin of the control room. “That’s the Dark Lord!”
That caught me by surprise. This was The Morning Star, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Big “S,” his-own-damn-unholy-hairy-ass self? Oh, crap.
Holding a tiny golden Key in his pearlescent hands, Satan turned toward the flickering bank of video monitors, smiling with indescribable beauty.
“Guardian!” London screamed hysterically. “Use the Emergency—”
“Be still,” Satan interrupted, rising a hand. All of the monitors exploded, throwing the entire lodge into a Stygian gloom.
Knowing who was next on the hit parade, I turned on a heel and pelted back into the arsenal to ram my fist through the glass of Emergency Alarm. I sure hoped this was what the Brother had meant, because if not I was about to have a close encounter of the 666th kind.
I tried not to hold my breath, but did anyway. However, nothing seemed to happen for a very long second. Then the concrete floor broke apart, and a smooth jade obelisk lifted into view. Lying on top was a tiny crystal dagger. That made my stomach lurch. I knew this blade. It was shown prominently in our most secret book. This was one of the Weapons of Heaven.
When Satan and his angels had rebelled, they used crystalline weapons to attack the guardians of Heaven. Special weapons designed to kill Angels. Maybe even God. Who knows? As the thousands of Fangels and Angels died in combat, their weapons fell gently upon the Earth. A rain of flaming swords.
Famous for not being a moron, King Solomon quickly figured out what was happening and sent out his army to gather the weapons, and hide them away from Satan and his minions. Then he built a temple to protect the weapons, a really mucking huge temple that took every skilled mason in the world to complete. And thus, the Freemasons were born, guardians of the Key to the Door of the Arsenal of Heaven and Hell.
Just then, a magnificent golden light flooded the armory and Satan glided into view, his/her face taking the breath away from me. I started to weep with joy at the sheer magnificence of his smile, and got an erection at the same time from the womanly curves. His beauty was indescribable! Yet there was something sinister about the Dark One that gave me the impression of absolute insanity. Bedbugs had nothing on this guy!
“Henry, please take me to the Door,” Satan asked sweetly, the words hitting me like velvet fists.
He knew my name? I wanted to tell him to get stuffed. But incredibly, I started to obey. With a sheer effort of will, I managed to shake off the compulsion, snatch the dagger and whip it toward the Dark One with all of my strength!
The knife turned over twice and slammed into His shoulder like an avenging thunderbolt. Gushing a torrent of golden blood, Satan screamed in pain as he was driven backward to crash into the wall, the impact shattering the resilient stonework for yards in every direction.
As the Great Traitor weakly clawed at the crystal blade embedded in his perfect flesh, I stumbled closer to grab the handle, ready to pull it out and strike again.
“Wait,” Satan whispered, his breath sweet as a spring breeze on my face.
As a Master Mason, I knew better than to look the Father of All Lies directly in the eyes, but still I paused, damning my own weakness. I could feel his presence, the warmth from his body, and it made me giddy, almost drunk. I wanted to obey him, to serve, to yield, to pull out the blade and kill this asshole. Pull it! Pullitpullit! But my hands refused to move; they were numb, locked in a tempest of conflicting urges.
“You do not dare kill me,” Satan chuckled softly, a hand gently touching my arm. It was icy cold and electric pleasure at the same time. “God bade me to live after losing the war, so there must be a reason for my existence. Who are you to deny the will of Him, the Creator?”
That was a mighty good question. “You rebelled against Him once,” I retorted through clenched teeth.
“Ah, but I was given free will,” Satan answered, a flood of glorious promises cascading into my mind and soul.
Ignoring everything I had ever been taught, I looked the Dark One directly in the eyes. “Yeah? Guess what, asshole. Me, too!” And I yanked the blade free to plunge it directly into his hairless chest.
At the blow, Satan went stiff, and screamed for only a second before I went stone deaf. In silence, I leaned inward, putting my weight and strength against the dagger as I moved it about trying to find whatever a fallen angel had in place of a heart. Golden light erupted from the wound, and He beat against me, but the blows fell without impact, and I seemed to grow stronger as He became weaker. A hundred thousand voices cried out inside my head, promising me anything, everything! Grimly determined, I ignored them all, concentrating on the task. Let hellfire burn me, or demons eat my soul, I didn’t care. But this pretty little sombitch was going down for the count, here and now!
Suddenly going limp, Satan whispered something too low for me to hear, and then crumbled into a silvery ash.
As I stepped away from the disintegrating form, the entire planet seemed to shudder and the ceiling cracked apart, admitting the cold blue moonlight. Then the sun rose over the horizon, filling the world with a clean clear light that banished every shadow of Darkness. And then, the darkness of every Shadow.
Dumbstruck, I gazed in awe and wonder at the quite unexpected sight of dawn occurring in the middle of the night. Then the sun appeared to tremble, and for the first time in recorded history the burning lid raised and the Great Flaming Eye of God looked down upon the world, oddly appearing exactly as it did on the back of the American one dollar bill.
“I’ll be damned,” I whispered, almost dropping the dagger.
As if in reply, the Eye looked through the millions of miles of space and directly into my upturned face. No, you will not.
Instantly, I felt refreshed and renewed, young and healthy and full of beans. My hearing returned, as did a tooth missing from childhood. “Thank you,” I shouted.
But the Eye had already moved onward, healing, fixing, finding, repairing. Now images of the world poured into my mind, and I could actually “see” a million demons vanish into smoke, and ten thousand Fangels crumble into sheer nothingness. Then the floor of the lodge cracked open and the crystal weapons faded away from sight. Gone back to wherever they originally came from.
Now, His gaze moved on, the pollution disappeared from the land, sea, and air. An endless bounty of fish returned to the barren oceans, extinct species sprang back to life, and every nuke
turned to solid stone.
As the new dawn swept the globe, cripples began to dance, the blind suddenly could see, the deaf could hear, and every disease vanished: cancer, AIDS, rabies, acne . . . along with killer bees, army ants, and almost every other blood-sucking parasite, including TV evangelists, telemarketers, and used car salesmen.
The Age of Miracles had returned, and once more God was in our everyday lives, watching benignly down from above. Satan and his hellish minions were gone forever! Which would mean an end to war, and most of the other brutalities that we did to each other on a regular basis. However, this was also the end of the Freemasons, our millennia-old trust finally fulfilled in dirty old . . . er, in beautiful, glistening, downtown Chicago.
Unfortunately, this meant that I was out of a job, and I had really enjoyed being the covert guardian of a divine mystery for an all-powerful, world wide secret society.
Hmm, I wonder if the Elks have anything special that needs protecting?
Nick Pollotta has been a ditch digger, inorganic chemist, martial arts instructor, stand-up comic, and a chicken rancher, but much prefers typing pretty songs on the alphabet piano. Regularly attempting to break lightspeed, Nick has over fifty published novels under a wide variety of pseudonyms. His latest novel is Damned Nation, a Dark Fantasy set during the American Civil War.
THE THINGS EVERYONE KNOWS
Tanya Huff
“BUTI’MAthief.”
“Why, so you are. It’s interesting that never occurred to us, what with this being the Thieves Guild and all.”
Terizan’s lip curled in spite of all efforts to keep her expression neutral. Tribune One’s lip curled in return. Tribunes Two and Three shuffled their seats out of the direct line of fire as surreptitiously as only master thieves could shuffle. Gaze locked on One’s face, Terizan’s right brow flicked up.
One laughed.
When that was it for confrontation, Two and Three exchanged nearly identical expressions of chagrin.
Under Cover of Darkness Page 7
