by David Beers
“It’s not me inside the lion’s den, is it?” Daniel asked. “It seems that the more appropriate story is Abraham and Isaac. God asking me to slash my own daughter’s neck.”
“And in the end, what happened with Abraham, once his faith was revealed?”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t serve any god who asked me to show my faith that way.”
“Unfortunately,” the Pope said as he turned back to the window and looked out at the deceiving skies, “we have no choice in who we serve.”
Daniel hadn’t been honest with the Pope, but he didn’t look at his deception as a lie. Games were being played here and he understood that now. They had started from the moment the Church sent that psychopath to find his daughter. Daniel hadn’t realized it then, nor when he arrived here and began helping the Pope.
Games on a geo-religious level. Things Daniel was woefully unprepared for, but things he must learn and participate in all the same.
The machines down below the city still worked and they brought him to his daughter, but she was seeing more than darkness. There was black, and a lot of it, but she seemed to be staring out at some barrier Daniel didn’t understand. Brilliant orange lived on it, exploding almost constantly. His daughter didn’t look away from it, so whenever Daniel went to the machines, he didn’t look away either. She wouldn’t answer him anymore, though, and he wasn’t sure if she could even hear him.
He thought the space she inhabited … Well, it had taken him a while to come to any theory on it. However, he thought she was inside it in a manner that prevented him from joining through the machines. He could see what she saw, but through a glass of some sort. He could yell at that glass but no sound would cross the barrier, no matter how loud he bellowed.
Daniel went to the machines three times a day. Yule had ordered that technicians be there at all times, and they hooked him in. He spent a few minutes in it, checking to make sure that nothing had changed, and then he left.
Over the past week, Daniel had come to understand that the Pope trusted him—which was odd, because Daniel trusted no one within these walls. Not the Pope, not the technicians, nor anyone in between. They were all suspect, following some God who would ask a man to cut his own son’s neck.
They were insane, at the root, even if in much of their life they interacted with the world like rational people. They couldn’t be trusted, and Daniel would not make that mistake again.
So he’d lied to the Pope.
About what he saw in the machines.
And then again, but by omission as much as anything else.
Daniel realized the Pope trusted him during the past week, because he was given free rein across the Vatican. He could walk wherever he wanted, and though cameras watched every square inch of the place, Daniel quickly learned that no one was actually watching him.
He got his audiences with Yule when he wanted, and the rest of the time he was free to do whatever he wanted.
It took Daniel 48 hours to understand this.
And then his mind went off into a dangerous spiral—or at least, that’s what he thought at the time. Now, he simply understood what he was doing. If God wasn’t open for business, then Daniel decided he would make a deal with the Devil.
The psychopath.
That’s where his mind took him.
Because Daniel had escaped the motel room alive. He couldn’t have been the only one—he believed Nicki had let everyone live.
So if Daniel lived, then the psychopath must have as well.
His mind next made another logical connection, one more frightening than the first. Daniel wanted his daughter back, more than anyone else in the world. Except perhaps for that psychopath. Because he had been willing to trade the Church’s plans for a single touch of Nicki’s hair.
So, Daniel believed the psychopath lived, and would most likely want Nicki as badly as Daniel. He simply couldn’t help it.
And then the scariest thought of them all popped up in Daniel’s mind.
Use the psychopath to find Nicki.
It was a moment of clarity that any other parent would have probably called a moment of insanity. Yet, for Daniel, it seemed the only option. The Church was doing nothing. Yule no longer cared, and certainly wouldn’t start a war over Nicki now that the Black was vanquished.
Daniel turned to the Devil to see if his shop was open, given that the guy upstairs apparently wouldn’t serve Daniel’s kind.
There were obstacles, the first being the psychopath’s location. Daniel figured though, that if he survived the motel, he would have been brought back to the Vatican, and thus survived the war outside. So Daniel started looking. He asked questions as discreetly as possible, and heard very few answers that meant anything. He thought surely the Pope would show up at his door, instructing him to stop. No one came, though.
For two more days.
And then, it wasn’t the Pope. Still, God did not deem to look upon Daniel.
Instead, the Devil arrived, or at least one of his representatives. This was two days before Daniel met with the Pope.
The psychopath’s thin body filled the doorway, his skin practically hugging his bones. “You’ve been looking for me.”
Daniel had immediately felt rage rise in him, an image filling his mind of Nicki leaning over the seat and brushing his cheek with her hair. He crushed his anger though, and quickly.
“Come in.”
The psychopath entered and shut the door behind him. Here, beneath the Pope’s reign, he didn’t appear dangerous. Just a thin man who dressed in plain clothes. There was no insanity to him, but rather a subservient demeanor—like that of a long term gardener for the premises. Someone who sank into the background.
“It seems you’ve found your way into the Pope’s good graces,” the psychopath said while Daniel looked him up and down. “Well done. Where is your daughter?”
He couldn’t hide the insanity—not when it came to those with the sight. Even the word daughter sounded different. It sounded … hungry.
“That’s why I’m looking for you.”
“I assure you, I don’t have her,” the psychopath said with a little smile.
“What’s different about you?” Daniel asked. “Besides the obvious, the fact that you’re completely crazy.”
“I don’t understand what you mean. Why would something be different about me?”
“Why did they pick you to find Nicki?”
The psychopath cocked his head slightly sideways, his smile not disappearing. He looked at Daniel as if he might be looking at the most clever ant to ever live. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
“I imagine that’s because most people never even see you. Not until you show up at their house in the middle of the night, then they never forget you. But up until that moment, you’re little more than a shadow. I see you though, and I’m asking. What’s different about you?”
The psychopath’s head straightened and he stepped further into the room. His hands were at his sides, possessing no fear nor desire. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Daniel stared at him in silence for a few seconds, deciding whether or not to pursue the question. In truth, all that mattered was Nicki—the singular reason he searched this man out. Whatever made him, it wasn’t important.
“My daughter is inside the One Path. She’s alive, and I want to get her back.”
The fingers on the psychopath’s right hand twitched, but he said nothing.
“There’s something different about you, even if you won’t tell me what. It’s why the Church only sent you to come get her the first time. I imagine they’ve sent only you for years and years, because you have a knack for finding people like me. Like my daughter. I want you to find her again, with me in tow.”
The psychopath was silent for what felt like unending minutes. He said nothing, his right hand’s twitching unnoticed by him, and stared at Daniel.
Finally, he said, “I would be excommunicated.”
; “She’s the last of her kind, isn’t she? Me, maybe, but I’m not much anymore. Her, though … there aren’t any others like her and you know it. The Church’s experiment is finally almost over and she’s the last one. How long has it been since you chased another with the sight?”
The question hung in the air unanswered.
“That’s what I thought,” Daniel said. “She’s the last. Somehow, it’s ended. So, if you’re caught, you might be excommunicated, but you still have one more chance at someone with the sight.”
The psychopath licked his lips, looking remarkably like a pointy faced serpent.
“You can’t come with me,” he said.
Daniel smiled, having known he would demand such a thing. “That’s not how it works. Because if you leave without me, then I blow the whistle. We both go, or no one goes.”
Again, his tongue darted out before disappearing behind his lips.
“What happens to her when we get her?”
“Does it really matter what we say here?” Daniel asked. “I can tell you whatever you want to hear and you can do the same for me. In the end, we both know we want diametrically opposed things, so we can deal with that when we get there.”
The right side of the psychopath’s lips pulled up into a slight smirk.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Daniel said. “There is something different about you, and that’s why they send you alone.”
“I’ll need a few days to arrange things, then we leave,” the psychopath said, completely ignoring Daniel. “Be ready. There won’t be time to waste.”
Daniel nodded.
He didn’t think there were any stories in the Bible about Daniel making deals with the Devil, but perhaps Daniel might not have lived as a slave for all those years if he had.
It just so happened that the Devil’s representative returned on the same afternoon that the Pope had scheduled his meeting with the High Priest—intent on pressing the issue, whatever the hell that meant.
“It’s time,” the psychopath said.
Daniel stood from his bed, silent.
The psychopath stepped out the door and Daniel followed. He went into the hallway and saw the other man was already moving down the hall without looking back.
Daniel picked up his speed, his heels clicking on the marble floor beneath him. The psychopath made no such noise; he moved as if gliding over the world.
Daniel watched him take a left and found himself at the same corner a second later. The psychopath hadn’t waited, but was making a right out a door and into one of the outside corridors. Daniel kept following, losing track of where they were headed. Turn after turn after turn, and still the psychopath kept walking at that almost impossible speed. He did it with ease, even though Daniel was nearly at a trot the entire time.
They moved across the Vatican, winding through hallways and corridors that Daniel had never seen.
And finally, the psychopath stopped walking. Daniel stepped up next to him, breathing hard.
“Get in,” the psychopath said.
A car sat in front of them, an old one even by the Old World’s standards. The psychopath moved to the driver’s side and Daniel to the passenger’s. No one said a word as the car started and pulled out of the small parking lot. Daniel looked around, checking the windows for anyone that might be looking, but he saw no one.
The psychopath drove from the parking lot and onto the main road. Other cars passed by, but no one looked twice at them. The two of them were just everyday commuters, no reason to give them a second glance.
It only took another 10 minutes to make their way through traffic, and then they were at the Vatican’s outer gate. They rolled up to security.
“Business outside the city walls?” the sentry asked, looking in at the two of them. Daniel gave him a brief look, but then looked forward.
The psychopath handed him a card. The man didn’t really even glance at it, but simply pulled a scanner of some sort from his belt. He passed the card under it, paused a second, and then apparently received some sort of clearance from the scanner. He handed the card back to the psychopath.
“Be careful. We’re winning, but it’s still dangerous out there.”
“We will,” the psychopath said.
… And then, they were beyond the Vatican’s walls.
“Where are we headed?” Daniel asked.
“We have to take a flight,” the psychopath said, “and we can’t do that from inside the Vatican. It’ll be noticed immediately. Outside we can.”
“So, where are we headed?”
The psychopath smiled slightly. “A hundred miles down this here road,” he said, affecting some ancient drawl that Daniel didn’t recognize.
“What’s that? How you’re talking?”
The psychopath’s eyes flashed to the rearview mirror, then back to the road. “Just something that was killed a long time ago.”
“So we go and get on the plane, then what?”
“I’m really not used to all these questions,” the psychopath said. His knuckles stuck out like lug nuts as he gripped the steering wheel.
“Get used to them. What’s after the plane?” Daniel kept his eyes on the psychopath, refusing to trust him for a single second during this entire trip. He didn’t know how much the man could accomplish without him, whether he could kill Daniel right now and still get to Nicki by himself.
“I checked around as much as I could. She is in the One Path. You weren’t lying about that. So, we get in the plane, if that’s what you want to call it, and from there we fly to your daughter.”
The psychopath was fucking with him and Daniel knew it.
“How do we find her?”
“You keep asking that,” the psychopath said. “Do you ask a butterfly how it turns from a caterpillar into something with beautiful wings? I don’t think so, so why do you keep asking me how we’re going to find her?”
“You’re no butterfly.”
“We’ll find her. That’s all I’m going to tell you.”
Daniel looked at the psychopath for a few more seconds, and then turned to the front of the car. He wished, right then, that he had some sort of weapon. Even a knife would do. Anything to keep this man at bay when the violence started—and it would start; Daniel held no doubts about that.
Yet, he had no knife. No weapon. It was he and this man who possessed deceptive strength—and probably a gun, too. Just because Daniel hadn’t been able to get one didn’t mean he couldn’t.
“How far away is the plane?”
“An hour,” the psychopath said, and then the car fell silent.
The psychopath certainly didn’t think of himself as a psychopath. He thought of himself as Jackson Carriage, his birth name. Psychopath wasn’t a term that ever came into his mind, though many people throughout his life thought such a word. Jackson, for his part, knew himself to be a devotee of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He just had a problem.
But he knew it. He knew he had a problem. It wasn’t like he was one of these people running around doing awful things with no idea that they were afflicted.
Jackson had heard that word—afflicted—years ago, and it stuck with him. It seemed the most accurate description of his psyche. He was afflicted. It wasn’t his fault; he’d been made like this, and inside him was that affliction.
When Daniel Sesam brought him the offer that they go find his daughter, Jackson was honestly torn. He’d stood there in Sesam’s small room, conflicted. Jackson loved the Savior and the Church that handed down His messages. Indeed, he’d served the Church his entire life. Most people in the Old World served the Church in some manner, as It owned most businesses. That’s not what Jackson meant, though. He served the Church by working for It. Inside the Vatican.
He had wanted to be a Priest as a boy, but that notion had only been a dream. Jackson’s family life had been—and another word he really liked—troubled. The Catholic Church was wary of bringing boys from troubled families onboard as Priests.
The unspoken belief was that troubled families bred troubled boys, and while God could help such troubles, He wasn’t too keen on having those types of people spread his Holy Gospel.
Jackson accepted his lot, but never let it deter him from working for the Church. Getting close to God was all he ever really wanted. There was no trouble in God, only safety.
So, he’d spent the early part of his life doing whatever the Church would allow him to do, and he did it happily. Twenty years ago, when he was 25, Jackson found his actual calling, though.
The sight.
A Priest hadn’t given him his directives, but rather a man showed up at his dorm inside the Vatican. Brent Tarrier.
“You’re the construction worker?”
Jackson had looked up from his bed. He still remembered what he’d been reading—he remembered everything about that moment. It had been his fate, for better or worse. The book was Journey of a Soul.
“Yes, I work construction,” Jackson said.
“Not anymore. Starting tomorrow, you report to me. I’m in Building E. My name’s Brent Tarrier. I’ll be outside at 7:00 in the morning. Be there.”
Jackson’s brow furrowed but Brent hadn’t waited, not even one second longer.
Jackson’s superior called him a few hours later, telling him that he’d received word Jackson was being reassigned and he would hear soon what his next role would be within the Church. Jackson said nothing, only thanked the man.
He went to Building E the next morning. It was across the Vatican, a building of much more stature than the dorms that Jackson and his ilk occupied. Priests came and went from this building, while Jackson never saw them at his dorm. Not unless someone was sick and specifically requested to see one.
