Either way, whichever zip code you called home, the result was the same—you ended up dead, you ended up in debt to people who made more in a month than you made in a decade. You ended up wondering if all the struggle, all the roadblocks, the wasted time and broken dreams, the stress, the tension, the crying, and the anger, if all that had been worth the trinkets, sealed to you like barnacles, the shit they couldn’t bury you with anyway. What was your life worth? Your happiness? Your soul? What was the going rate on you?
I found the house. On the plywood sheet that covered what remained of the frame of the front door, among spray-painted gang tags, was the carefully drawn and painted mask of office for one of the infernal parliament, the demon lord, Melchom—Treasurer of Hell.
I could sense the powers churning inside, like the archive in D.C. A wound had been gouged into our world from elsewhere, and there were forces moving in that old boarded-up, dark house.
I pushed the door open. The hasp was already loose, and there was no padlock with it. Inside the house, old smells of shit, piss, mold, and the chemical stench of burnt meth competed with the overpowering coppery smell of fresh blood.
I didn’t have a flashlight, so I left the front door open. I moved as quietly as I could, sidestepping a half-rotted cat carcass near a yellowed pile of abandoned mail and newspapers. I stepped into what had once been the parlor of this home.
Harel was a broken pile of jagged fractures stabbing up through sliced and bloody skin. Each blood-soaked cough made his entire tortured frame shudder in pain. I stepped toward him, but I abruptly stopped when I saw the crippled angel hovering beside him.
It was beautiful and terrible—a butterfly of divine light held together by a will older than human sin. It was vaguely man shaped. It had multiple faces, some of men, others of beasts, all wreathed, blurred, in light that I knew burned mortal eyes if they stared too closely. It had two sets of wings and cloven hooves made of angelic brass. The way it moved and flowed, liquid around time and space, seeping, vibrating, static, infinite motion, slipping through the cracks of the dimensions … the things it did to my brain as I tried to look at it. It was … a Chagall painting come to life.
I was no kabbalist, but it looked like it belonged to the Hayyoth order—from the seventh sphere of Heaven; thirty-six of them in the “camp of Shekinah.” These were the beings that held aloft the pillars of Heaven, and it was hurt. Divine ichor, liquid fire, hissed as it spattered on the base matter of earth.
Only a master of the Merkabah, the ancient mystical system that predated kabbalah, could summon one of the Wheels of Heaven here. And Harel was a Merkabah master. It was impressive.
Across the room, partially embedded in the crumbling plaster, was a massive inhuman form, or what was left of it. Its gray, rubbery skin had partly been vaporized. Its face was toadlike and frozen in a grimace of pain and rage. Black blood spattered as it fell from the destroyed demon. The body was so mangled, I couldn’t place the clan or the house of origin for the thing.
I approached slowly and bowed my head as the Hayyoth turned to regard me with a face that could lay waste to nations and turn men to salt. I heard Harel moan, and then a voice that I recognized as mine begin to chant. I was rusty in Dee’s Enochian, and I felt the flesh in my throat begin to blacken and burn as I spoke.
“Ol sonf vorsg, gohu’,” I croaked in the tongue of Heaven. “Iad balt lansh calz.”
The angel looked down at its charge and then turned away from the pain of material being. It faded into memory.
I spit sizzling blood out of my throat and knelt by Harel, pushing the sweat-slicked hair out of his eyes.
“You asshole,” Harel hissed. “Set me up. You knew. You knew he would come after me. You knew and you used me.”
“What was that thing?” I asked. I could see the light fading behind his eyes.
“It was a Vodyanoi, a Slavic demon. Very old, very powerful,” Harel said. He hacked and coughed, and the jagged spears of his own bones jerked, impaling him again and again as he rasped and choked on his own blood.
“You knew he would come after me once you started talking to me about Slorzack and Berman, didn’t you, old buddy? You haven’t changed, Laytham. You’re still king of the bastards, still always working your angle. You think you are so much better than me, don’t you? You prick.”
I tried to make him a little more comfortable. His coat was draped across a wooden sawhorse, near the plywood-boarded windows. I grabbed it and gingerly put it over his exploded body. His works, in a small zippered leather bag, fell out of the pocket. I took out the cook spoon and the remainder of the baggie of smack I had given him. I dumped all the heroin into the spoon. It was a strong dose. I put the spoon over one of the flaring spots of fire on the floor, caused by the angel’s blood.
“Who did this to you, Harel?” I asked as the smack cooked. “Who?”
“Look in the fucking mirror, asshole,” he rasped. “I can’t believe I ever looked up to you. My life has been shit since I met you, Laytham. You going to keep that hit from me until I tell you what you want to know?”
I set the spoon carefully on the floor. I noticed the complex circles, hexagrams, and other summoning formulas meticulously drawn on the wooden floor along with overturned and still-guttering candles. It was a miracle the house hadn’t caught fire yet, but I knew it would soon. A fitting tomb. I also noticed again that I cast no shadow in the jumping light. It was a jarring reminder of how right Harel was.
“I should, you little bastard,” I said. “You were going to sic that Vodyanoi on me, weren’t you? Send it off to kill me, because the Inugami in New York and Lady Neva in D.C. didn’t get the job done. You use it on all those people who died while I was trying to make my way to Berman too? On Berman himself, when I got too close?”
Harel coughed and groaned. He made choking sounds, and I stopped what I was doing and lifted him gently, helping him turn his head to retch up some blood, then I held him up until the coughing fit stopped.
I finished putting together his needle and then carefully drew the cooked, liquefied heroin into the hypo. I leaned close to Harel. I could still see the young kid in him, up close, buried under pain and hard years, and I carefully injected him in his neck, the whole dose. He sighed and shuddered, but didn’t cough or wince.
“Thank you,” he said softly. I tossed the needle near the husk of the Vodyanoi. The candles and the angelic fire were starting to eat the edges of the room. “I guess you expect me to tell you now.”
“Shut up,” I said. “Don’t matter. Rest, Rabbi.”
“It used to make me so mad when you and Boj would call me that,” he said. “Then the name stuck, and I was ‘the Rabbi’ to everyone in the Life, on the street. I got to like it.” He hacked a little, but it was easier now. His eyes were softening too, as the pain eased. “Once I came in to help these people in Chinatown. They had this nasty Oni spirit plaguing them, and I came in the door all cool, and this old lady hugged me and said, ‘Thank God, it’s the Rabbi.’” He shifted a little and groaned. “Have no fear, the Rabbi is here,” he said. I laughed and he tried to laugh. Some blood spit up and painted his lips. I wiped it away.
“It was the closest I ever came to feeling like a superhero,” he said, “to feeling like you, Laytham. I really wanted to help people. I wanted to fight bad things in the dark and be a good guy.” His eyes rolled back and I was afraid he was slipping into shock, but he came back after a second. “I got all fucked-up in it,” he said. “But we stopped our share of monsters, didn’t we, Laytham?”
“You sure did, Harel.” My throat was tight, but at the core of me, I was calm. “Boj and me would have been dead a hundred times over if not for you. So would a lot of innocent people.
“Remember how we met? Remember how Gacy had figured out a way to come back through those fucked-up clown paintings? You found him, Harel, you stopped him from killing any more of those kids. You did that. You did good, Harel. Real good.”
Harel co
ughed again, hard, but I could see the pain was moving farther away from him. “Not exactly the way I remember it, but … okay,” he said, and smiled. His teeth were red.
“Is Boj okay?” he asked.
“He’s dying, man,” I said. “May already be dead at this point, I don’t know. I told him he was a pussy if he didn’t hang on.”
Harel tried to laugh. A wet hiss came out. The room was getting brighter. The house was on fire. I didn’t fucking care. I wasn’t moving. I’d run out of future, and my past was turning to ash in front of me.
“That will keep the stubborn son of a bitch here,” he said. “I’m sorry he’s dying. I’m sorry about his girl. We talked about that a few times when we used to shoot up together. I wouldn’t have started using smack if he hadn’t been using. I know that’s kind of a bullshit cop-out, but I think it’s true. I thought a few times about trying to bring Mita back to him, but you know how that can go.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Harel managed to focus his eyes on me. “You did set me up, didn’t you, Laytham.”
“Yeah, I did,” I said. “You remember Grinner? He tracked you through deposits from Berman to your dummy accounts. I should have been looking more closely at Berman, but I thought he was just the latest in a long line of dead ends, courtesy of you and your pets. Berman was Slorzack’s right-hand man, and he hired you to clean up any loose ends he and Slorzack and their mystery patron left behind. You are the contract killer, you’re Memitim, Harel, and you’ve been the one throwing roadblocks in front of me since the very beginning.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been doing wet work for a few years. Not exactly superhero stuff, huh? Berman hired me when you started nosing around looking for leads on Slorzack. Memitim had a reputation for clean and quiet work.”
“I knew you were involved, and I suspected you were Memitim,” I said. “I figured if I showed up here and gave you the story, you’d contact your only living client in this mess and get instructions, or reassure him you could take me out. Grinner was keeping any eye on your phone and online activity. You were the bait to smoke out the silent partner, or Slorzack.”
The fire was crawling up the walls and beginning to lap at the plywood that covered the windows. Smoke was starting to fill the room.
“Tricky bastard,” Harel muttered. “Never trust you, Laytham. Never.”
“Then Berman’s and Slorzack’s silent partner contacted you to close the circle and finish off Berman when I managed to stumble my way to him, right?”
It was getting hot, and the air was starting to claw at my throat. The smack was carrying Harel away.
“Berman hired me,” Harel said, coughing a little. “Did … did I tell you that already?”
“It’s okay, man,” I said, looking around the room. I heard shouts outside the house. “Harel, can you tell me who hired you to kill Berman? Who paid you to send all the things at me since then? Who did this to you?”
“He turned my own summoning on me,” Harel muttered. “That’s some vigorish right there, man. Bastard has some power, to be sure. I summoned the demon up to try to kill you, the way it killed Berman, the others, and it jumped me. Good thing I had the angel ready. Always have a backup, that’s what you and Boj taught me, Laytham … right? Always a backup.”
The ceiling was a rolling cloud of fire now, and I heard the beams above me groan and creak.
“Yeah,” I said. “Always a way out. Harel, who is it?”
“Harmon,” Harel said. “Giles Harmon.”
“Who is he?” I asked. “I think I know that name.”
Harel was nodding out but he managed a grin. “You are such a clueless dumbass, Ballard. Harmon’s third circle Illuminati, he’s a big fucking hammer, serious juju. Untouchable. He’s also the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. He and Berman and Slorzack were all deep into something they wanted kept quiet. Thick as thieves … like you and me and Boj, Laytham. Thick as thieves.”
“The Greenway?” I asked Harel as he was slipping farther and farther away. “Harel, was it the Greenway? What is that, Harel?”
“I’m glad you’re here at the end of it,” Harel said. “I wish Boj was here too. You guys are the only family I got left. Only ones that really loved me.”
I was coughing. Everywhere was fire and smoke. I heard sirens off in the distance coming closer. I held him. His eyes closed.
“Thanks for not bullshitting me at the end about the setup,” Harel said. “Tell Boj I said hello…”
And he died.
I held the meat that had borne him, the real him, as long as I could. When a flaming timber crashed down near me, I stood, covered Harel’s face with his coat, and walked out the front door into the cold, dark morning.
I stood across the street and watched the old house burn until the sky lightened and the guilt settled into my bones alongside the cold.
Too many fucking caskets.
A crowd of locals gathered to watch the firemen battle to contain the blaze, but the house was lost. Finally, I walked away. I didn’t look back. Never look back.
I heard a great flutter of wings; it was probably pigeons.
TWENTY-FIVE
I asked Grinner to undertake sorcery of a more mundane nature, to find out all he could about Giles Harmon using his craft—the true names found in Social Security numbers and the oracles of electron flows and databases. He read the digital entrails and, when he sent me his findings, I came to fear this Giles Harmon.
Harmon was untouchable. Everything I thought Berman might be when I had learned of his connection to the Illuminati, Harmon actually was. He was not someone I could just come straight at. He was one of the Unseen Masters, kings of this world, and I was a knave, at best. A knave with so much blood on his hands.
Sitting in a Starbucks, staring at Harmon’s bland, tanned, perfect face on a computer screen, I knew what I needed to do to get past him and get to Dusan Slorzack. It didn’t only seem necessary or appropriate, it seemed just.
I began the ritual the following night. I traced the blade of the athame along my left palm. The hotel room was a void dotted with islands of flickering tallow light, my nude body a highway of scars and tattoos. The newest tattoo had just been added that afternoon in preparation for tonight’s rite.
The pain of the blade was sharp and bright as silver as it crawled coldly up my fate line. I let the midnight-black blood dribble over the edge of my hand and fall like fat, heavy drops of rain on the carcass of the goat that lay at the heart of the summoning circle.
It had taken a little doing by some friends in the Life here in Chicago and bribing some of the kitchen help at the hotel to sneak a live goat up to my hotel room, but where there is a will, there’s a way. Besides, it didn’t make noise for long.
A chain of complex formulas arrayed outward from the circle in numerous geometric patterns, each a part of the occult circuit, each a key and a door.
“Ave Guardianorum omnium Tenebrae,” I began in Latin. “Accipe sacrificium signum meum. Gratum et cautior in vestri coutuntur me.”
I lifted the dark green bottle to my lips. It held some of Harel’s blood, my semen, mescaline, and cheap wine. I drained it as I clenched my bloody fist. I poured the dregs over the carcass to mingle with my blood.
“Ego nunc summone Dominus hostiam diabolorum, Magni deceptore Ipse, priusquam oculis meis. Oportet quod sit lumen tinea continetur clara sit, ut cogatur Officium Luciferi assumere, serve meus Consuasor.”
It was hokey shit. I felt like I should be wearing a Metallica T-shirt and sporting a mullet. But my heart was black and sick with murder, and bloody fire burned behind my eyes. The ritual was a prop—they all were. The robes, the daggers, and the chalices—even the sacrifice—all theater. It was the will, the intent, and the karma that drove the bus, but the rituals and props put you in the proper mind space and kept you there. Those had value at times, especially when you were calling something to you from outside.
My vision wavered, like heat
coming off an asphalt road. I spoke its name in Sumerian, in Aramaic, in Coptic, in Latin. The name became a curtain of language, of intent. The world became sound and flickering light. I felt a flush as the mescaline kicked in. Time became taffy, stretched, looped, and finally knotted. My tongue and my lips no longer served me; they were a machine to call across the waters between worlds, to sound a chime in the depths. I was like a flare in the dark night of eternity.
Then something moved in the deep. It glided toward the flare, toward our world.
The room grew brighter. The candlelight became the light of battery-powered lamps. I tasted more than smelled the choking grit of coal dust. The air in the hotel room grew stale and hot, like there wasn’t enough of it.
It stood in front of me in the form of a man dressed in a faded Hank Williams Jr. concert T-shirt. His jeans were torn and bloody, and the helmet on his head had a deep crater to the left of the glaring headlamp. His face was shadows, but I knew what it looked like. It was my daddy’s face.
“I figured you’d pick another face this time,” I said after swallowing hard.
“I didn’t pick it,” It said in my father’s thick, twangy West Virginia accent, “you did. You always do. So what do you want this time, O divine excrement?”
“Fuck you,” I said, the anger welling up in me.
“Yes, that is it,” It said. “Fuck you. That is precisely what I am here to do. Now, how do you intend to help me do that this time?”
“Three wishes,” I said. “Same as before.”
My father’s face smiled in the shadows of the lamps. I never got to see Pa’s face at his funeral. Carbon dioxide poisoning turns the victims purple, almost black. It swells them up like a balloon, too much sausage packed into too little skin. When the rescue party found him and the other miners, they knew the second they pierced the chamber’s wall there would be no open caskets for these families.
Nightwise Page 25
