Suddenly her nostrils burned with the sweet, acrid pungency of the grave. A dark, roiling stench, it was the smell of the end of all things, of decay and corruption, of consummate foulness. It was the stuff of dread and repulsion and all that was, or ever could be, evil. She felt a chasm opening under her soul as the fetor became a windstorm in the darkness below her. The rose and the garden and the rest of the world rushed away in all directions with dizzying speed. Etienne floated in the stark nothingness at the end of time.
She wanted to scream but it was impossible. Paralyzed and helpless, she slowly twisted and writhed under the foul breath of pure malevolence. Convinced she had gone mad, or worse, had perished from a sudden stroke or coronary, and, despite her faith, had been thrust into the deepest pit of hell, Etienne finally surrendered her soul, in desperation opening herself to God.
And the Vision came to her.
Gathering itself, taking substance, the pieces of the image came together like the video of a shattering stained-glass window played in slow-motion and reverse. Etienne watched the horror unfold like the blossom of the blackest rose…
THREE
Brooklyn, New York—Sobieski
* * *
August 15, 1998
Father Sobieski had never seen Father Carenza look so upset.
Stan Sobieski had seen the vacant, terrified look in more than one priest’s eyes—the look of a cleric who suddenly lost his faith—but his instincts told him this wasn’t the problem at hand. After more than forty years in the priesthood, you sensed such things…and he’d been told to watch this priest carefully.
Carenza had come to Sobieski’s room wanting to talk, but had said nothing yet. Stan looked at him as he sat fidgeting in front of his desk. The young priest looked away nervously. There was no denying how handsome he was. His rugged good looks certainly didn’t hurt his popularity with the parishioners. They all loved his easy, engaging smile—a smile conspicuously absent right now.
“Let me start with a question,” said the young priest. “Have you ever…I mean, have you ever heard…of a priest, well, actually killing someone?”
“What?!” Sobieski had been trained to expect anything, but he couldn’t conceal his surprise. “Good Lord, Peter, what’re you talking about?”
Peter Carenza looked down at his hands; he held them palms-up, as though seeing them for the first time, the way an infant slowly becomes aware of itself. “It was self-defense, I think.”
Sobieski looked at the young man until he finally raised his head, and eye contact was reestablished. “Peter, are you trying to tell me that you…you killed a man?”
“I…I think so.” Father Carenza again looked at his hands, slowly buried his face in them.
My God! This was crazy, thought Sobieski.
“Do you want to make a confession, Father?” Sobieski tried to sound calm and professional, but the quaver in his voice betrayed him.
Peter shook his head slowly. “No. No confession.”
“Well, what then? I’m listening…”
Carenza paused, looked out the window, then back at him. “Maybe I’m going about this wrong. Let me start over.”
Sobieski watched him swallow with difficulty. There was a patina of sweat on his forehead. Such a dear man. It was hard to see him twist and suffer so.
“Before you do,” said Sobieski, “would you like a small taste of something? I’ve got some brandy in my cabinet…”
Father Carenza looked at him, nodded. “Yes, I think I could use a drink. Thank you, Father.”
Sobieski moved from behind the desk to the small oak cabinet next to his television. From within it, he produced a decanter and two snifters. Pouring expertly, he proffered one of the crystal goblets to the young priest, kept the second for himself.
Father Carenza sipped from his glass tentatively, allowing the dark, amber liquid to scorch a path down his throat. He repeated the maneuver, then looked Sobieski in the eye.
Stan smiled benignly. “Peter, let’s stop beating around the bush, all right?”
“Father, I’m sorry,” interrupted Carenza. “But you have to believe me when I tell you…this is crazier than anything you’ve ever heard.”
Stan leaned forward, studying Carenza. He was very agitated, fearful, losing control. Sobieski spoke as calmly as possible. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”
“Can’t be as bad…?” Peter shook his head. “I don’t know…I’m sorry, Father—but you’re going to think I’ve lost my mind.”
Sobieski tried to smile, did a half-assed job of it. “No, I won’t. Trust me, Peter. But for God’s sake, would you please tell me what happened?” Sobieski drained the rest of his brandy. Its spreading warmth seemed to give him strength. Alcohol was becoming more of a need for him than he cared to admit.
Father Carenza drew in a breath, exhaled slowly. “All right, then, listen…”
Haltingly, Father Carenza recounted his walk to the deli, the mugger, and…the disaster.
When he’d finished, he looked spent, exhausted, overwhelmed. His breath came in short gasps.
Sobieski wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or his training or something else, but he felt oddly numb.
“You say it was like a…a blue fire?”
Peter nodded.
“Lightning? Could he have been struck by lightning? They say lightning can do funny things…”
Peter frowned, shook his head. “Do ‘they say’ it can jump from your hands?”
Sobieski felt foolish, looked away from his charge. There was no doubt that the younger priest believed what he was saying. Judging from his apparent emotional state, a hoax was out of the question.
“Tell me, Peter, is the…body still there?”
Father Carenza massaged his temples slowly, keeping his eyes tightly shut. “I don’t know. I guess it is. I kind of panicked. I just ran back here as fast as I could. I had to talk to somebody right away.”
“Perhaps we should go back…” said Sobieski.
Peter looked up at him sharply. “You mean back to the alley?”
“Yes.”
“God, I don’t know if I can.”
“It might be best,” Sobieski said. Actually it was probably the only way he could verify what happened. He had no great desire to see the poor bastard, but it was necessary. His superiors would ask for proof.
“What was it, Father Sobieski? If that was a miracle, it’s the strangest one I ever heard of.”
Stan Sobieski was not certain if there was an answer to that question. He felt inadequate, unable to ease Carenza’s despair, and hated himself for lapsing into homilies when the man needed trenchant psychological insight and honest support.
He felt compelled to say something, anything. “Father, we have no way of understanding the ways of God. But if He has chosen you to witness or perform a miracle, even if it’s something we might find distasteful or even horrible, then you must simply bear up and accept what God asks of you. It is a responsibility to the Lord, and if necessary you must carry it, like a cruel cross, for the rest of your days.”
The young priest looked up at him, pausing for a moment.
“But why?”
“Peter, if this really happened—”
“What do you mean ‘if’?! You still don’t believe me, do you?”
Carenza pushed back his chair, stood up and turned to leave.
“Father, where’re you going?”
“You wanted to see proof, didn’t you? All right then, let’s go. Right now!”
Peter none-too-gently tugged Sobieski from his chair. Well, he’d told Carenza to put up or shut up.
God help me, Sobieski thought. God help us all.
FOUR
Brooklyn, New York—Windsor
* * *
August 15, 1998
How did that old song go?
Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody, I got some money cuz I just got paid…
Well, at least the first part was righ
t. Working weekends was such a locked-in part of her job, Marion Windsor never got much time off for a regular old Friday or Saturday night date. As far as the money went, it seemed like she was always scrimping for lunch money by the end of the pay period. Even though her television journalist’s job paid pretty damned well, she had a lot of expenses because, more than anything else, she was single and living in Manhattan.
Marion smiled to herself as she drove toward the Bay Ridge precinct house on Fourth Avenue. At thirty years old, she knew, she was reaching the age where the timing of certain career moves was critical. Every local TV reporter wanted to “go national” on one of the networks or cable channels. Since early in the decade cable news’s profile had risen. It still wasn’t as glamorous as the networks, but national exposure was national exposure.
And, even if Marion didn’t want to admit it, as a woman on the Tube, she had to “give good camera.” Old ideas died hard, and despite the prevalence of female reporters and anchorwomen, damned few had any wrinkles or flaws. Of course the men could still be gray, bald, liver-spotted, or dew-lapped.
It wasn’t fair, but that’s the way the game was played.
All humility aside, Marion knew she was a good-looking woman, and if network slots were assigned purely on looks, she figured she’d have as good a chance as anybody. Her taste in clothes was neither trendy nor flashy, but she wasn’t a frump. She could be comfortable in a pair of jeans or a suit from Saks. Her auburn hair and sea-green eyes warmed up any television monitor and the alto timbre of her voice carried just the right blend of wonder and expertise. Since getting the job at WPIX five years ago, she’d become popular with the viewers and had steadily built a reputation among her colleagues as a thorough investigator. Her bosses soon realized they were wasting intelligence and resourcefulness by sending her out to cover the Boat Show at Madison Square Garden or the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Oddly, Marion discovered she had a knack for getting past the smooth surface of a story. She could pry the lid off a news piece the way you’d open up an old watch to see how it worked. Her big break came when she got the chance to check out a scam involving city purchasing agents and bogus vendors. Her initial story led to a week-long special assignment that unveiled corruption in other shadowy corners of city government. The story was nominated for several awards, and though she didn’t win. Marion knew she’d “made her bones” in the industry. She was a Member of the Club, and people took her seriously.
Her beat was Brooklyn. Gradually she’d focused in on the crime stories that bubbled out of that borough, and she soon became a regular face in the crowds at all the Brooklyn precinct houses. Using her intelligence and natural charm, she established contacts and confidants at most of the stations. She had a reputation for being a fair and honest reporter, so a lot of the cops weren’t afraid to tell her things she needed to give her stories the depth and reality that made them so distinctive.
Damn, I’m good, she thought as she parked her Mazda RX-7 in the back lot of the 72nd Precinct station. Smiling to herself, she gathered up her mini-camcorder and adjusted the sound levels on her body-mike before going in the back door, looking for Corporal Binderman.
“Marion!” came a familiar voice.
Elbowing her way through the lobby which was, as usual for a Saturday night, filled with every type you could think of, she worked her way to the dispatch desk. Freddie Binderman, all two hundred fifty pounds of him, sat before his radio consoles, smiling expectantly.
“Hi, Freddie, what’ve you got for me?”
Freddie moved a large McDonald’s vanilla shake to the far corner of his desk in a half-assed attempt to hide it. “Gee, Marion, you sure do look nice tonight…”
“Why thank you,” she said, trying to mask her impatience. Twenty minutes ago, he’d called her with a tip on what might be an interesting story. He wouldn’t give her any details—other than that it was “pretty weird”—and by now her curiosity was raging.
Freddie’s unflagging infatuation with her only complicated the situation. Several times he’d actually worked up enough courage to ask her out, and once she’d accepted a lunch date, back in early spring. It had been a mistake. Freddie had taken it as a sign she wanted to get involved with him romantically, and she’d had a hell of time getting out of the situation without ruining the professional side of the relationship.
Freddie continued to just stare at her while the noise and color of the precinct whirled around them. This was no good; she had a job to do.
“Uh, Freddie…what’s going on out there?”
He grinned self-consciously. “Sorry, Marion. Here…” He handed her a piece of paper with an address on it. “Came in just before I called ya. A kid said he saw a jogger gettin’ mugged, and the guy got hit by lightnin’.”
“What? Who got hit by lightning?” She glanced at the address—it would be easy to find.
“The mugger. Our blue-n-white’s on the way now. I heard ’em on the radio, callin’ for a meat wagon.” Freddie took a pull off the double straws in his vanilla shake. “The guy must be a real crispy critter from what the kid said…”
Marion grimaced, nodded. “Freddie, your descriptive powers are stunning.”
“Really? Do you really mean it, Marion?”
“Corporal, you’re incredible, you know that?” She smiled and waved good-bye. “I’ll let you know how it turns out.”
“You kiddin’? Hey? I’ll be watchin’ y’ on the news tonight. I’ll see for myself.”
Quickly she jumped into her Mazda and cut through the back streets to the scene of the incident. She’d already lost a lot of time, and she hoped she hadn’t missed all the action. Turning the final corner, she eased her RX-7 up to the nearest curb and jumped out. Apparently the ambulance hadn’t arrived yet—a good sign as far as she was concerned. A rim of spectators defined the entrance to the alley, and as soon as some of them recognized her and her equipment, they began forming a path for her.
When she reached the innermost circle, she saw a patrolman kneeling by an odd-looking, blackened lump. He was covering it with a blanket. The other cop was kneeling, talking to a Latino boy of perhaps ten or eleven. Adjusting the gain on the directional mike, Marion keyed on the mini-camcorder and listened to the interrogation through her headphones. The reception wasn’t the best, but she could still hear every word.
“…and I was just cutting through the alley, honest, Officer.”
“All right, kid. Right. Just tell me what you saw, okay.”
“It was getting dark. I heard a guy screaming and yelling, so I stopped an’ turned around to run.”
“Why?”
“The guy sounded real angry, man. You know—mean and shit.”
The cop nodded. “Oh yeah, right. Mean and shit. Okay, so what happened? What did you see? You said you saw it happen.”
“I did! I did see it! I was hiding behind those trash cans—right back there.
“He was holding a gun on this guy, this guy in gym shorts. The dude with the gun, everybody in the neighborhood called him Venus, man. I don’t know his real name. Anyway, he was all ’based-up, man, I could tell.”
The officer nodded, wrote down a few words on his notepad.
“Then what happened?”
“Venus said he’d shoot him if he didn’t give him his money, and the guy didn’t have any, see, so I knew he was going to get shot.” The boy paused to rub his nose nervously. “I never saw somebody get shot before…”
“C’mon, kid, out with it. Did you see anything or not?”
“I saw it, man. Venus sticks the gun in the other guy’s face! All of a sudden I see lightning bolts! They come out of his hands and zap! that crazy mother is gone, man…”
The boy seemed to be staring through the brick wall of the alley, as though witnessing the scene all over again. Something about the way he talked compelled Marion to believe him. Marion talked to people all the time in her business. You got to know when they were lying and when they
weren’t.
This kid was telling the truth—at least as he knew it.
“Lightning bolts, huh?” The cop closed his notebook, shook his head and smiled. “Yeah, right, kid…”
“Hey, man, it’s the truth!”
The cop stood and looked at his partner. “We ain’t gonna get anything else. I’m gettin’ fairy tales here…”
The other cop nodded, frowned knowingly. “Where the hell’s that ambulance? Good thing this guy doesn’t really need it.”
The boy tugged at the officer’s sleeve. “Ain’t no fairy tale, man. That dude stood there kinda smokin’ for a second or two, and then he fell over. Pieces breakin’ off and shit. Just like you guys found him. I swear.”
“Sure, kid. I’ll put it in my report…”
Marion’s pulse started to jump as she heard the wail of the ambulance as it wheeled around the corner. Doors opened, slammed shut as paramedics rushed into the alley.
“Jesus Christ, what’s that?” asked the first one to peek under the blanket.
“That’s the victim,” said the first cop. “Hit by lightning, I figure.”
The paramedic, a young red-haired kid of maybe twenty-two, shook his head. “I don’t know, Jack. I seen lightning victims, and none of ’em ever looked like that.”
The officer shrugged and lifted his cap to absently scratch his scalp. It was like a signal to clear the area; the paramedics began to gingerly wrap up the remains, and the officers started dispersing the crowd, which had been, Marion noticed, uncharacteristically silent.
“Okay, show’s over, folks,” said the cop who’d been interrogating the boy.
“Aren’t you going to ask him what happened to the mugging victim?” asked Marion.
The cop, whose silver badge announced his last name as Jaskulski, looked at her, suddenly recognizing her. “Miz Windsor, how ya doin’?”
“Well, aren’t you?” she persisted.
Jaskulski grinned lopsidedly, then flashed a glance at her mini-camcorder. “Hey, look, I don’t tell you how to do your job.”
The Blood of the Lamb Page 3
