by J M Bannon
* * *
4:30 p.m. Basement lab at the Continental Cattle Company
Water showered down from the top of the copper sheet. The waterfall shimmered with energy then shifted, revealing an archway to another room. Rose recognized the space, in the middle, lay the beast she had killed. She looked to her right and there was her studio; it was a disaster. Looking to her left was the cage at the other end of the factory, and another beast rising out of the vat. Elmore had the Javelin, so she needed other options. One was to run back into the studio, but she needed to find Allard and did not have time.
Rose drew out the Rod of Raziel. She held the Rod across her palms and let her senses blend into the relic.
As she stood looking through the portal she saw a light from above, for a moment her heart skipped a beat, then she realized with a wry smile, it wasn’t God or an Angel, but illumination from a hatchway in the ceiling of the room, that someone had left open and there was obviously another room above.
She stepped through the portal just as the creature she had seen earlier stumbled through the portal on her left.
Without thinking about it, she thrust the Rod at the beast and it flared as it touched the copper sheath around its chest. The creature roared in pain and fell forward onto the body of the first beast, a blue smoke dispersing into the air. Rose looked to her left and the sight of another beast shambling towards her.
She sheathed the Rod at her waist and climbed onto the back of the second beast. It was enough to get her to the edge of the hatch and grasp the edge. It took everything she had to muscle up the hole, tears pour from her eyes in response to the pain from her side. Her legs dangled as another of the beasts swiped and clawed in the corridor below. Rose felt it brush on her feet giving her the motivation to get herself up through the hatch. She felt terrible that she didn't stop the monster. She just had to trust that Dolly and the others could protect themselves.
Rose looked around her, she stood amidst a giant clockwork mechanism. A glowing bulb throbbed in time to the ticking of the mechanism that surrounded her. She approached the bulb, bathed in its glow as it throbbed with the ticking. She drew the Rod and again opened herself to understanding.
She received an answer to her immediate question; was this the master of the other clocks? Rose knew she was in the right place. Her first reaction was to rush to find Allard, but she fought it and continued to open herself to the information that filled her.
Between each tick of the clockwork time seemed to stretch and more information flooded her senses. Dates, times, drawings, experiments, construction, tests, success, failure, comings and goings, she was inundated with the design and the history of the construct and its sponsorship by Caiaphas. Her head was buzzing filling her with an understanding of the various linked structures, and where Allard may be hiding. She walked through the narrow openings between the mechanisms to a stairwell, cautiously making her way up the stairs up to the control room.
There were four men in the room at the top of the stairs. One hovered over the illuminated panels, controlling the machinery; she knew from her experience in the room below that he was Dimetri, the portal’s inventor. Rose felt as if some of his memories were hers now.
Two of the men were in a strange embrace but as she entered, they moved apart and one fell to the ground. It was Allard and his face was frozen in horror, eyes wide and staring. She had seen that look before.
Tommy was standing against the wall in utter shock next to the Necronist device.
"Tommy, everything will be all right," Rose spoke to him with assurance.
“It will?” chided the old man standing over Allard.
"You're one of the Outcast, the one who entombed Pruflas in the Emerald Tablet,” Rose recalled the vision she had had a year ago.
"It is true, I am. How do you come to know this, I have changed mortal forms several times since my work as a Macedonian Seer?" Caiaphas said as he turned to face Rose.
She observed he had been severely wounded, "I saw your otherness, you're not from this dimension; it was revealed to me when Pruflas escaped and we entombed him again,” replied Rose.
"Interesting, you claim to have witnessed me in my true form and that you were able to imprison him again?” He paused, then asked, "How is my brother?"
"Sleeping, I made him a nice bed,"
"You have my gratitude. I am certain Pruflas would have sought revenge after I encased him in a stone for two thousand years. I don't remember you being there, so you must be able to see across time," Caiaphas conjected.
"I can do more than just see through time," Rose patted the Rod in its sheath. "I know all about the Nexus and how you use it to shuttle your abominable foot soldiers from place to place. We figured out your connection to the Necronists and now that I see you have incapacitated Mr. Allard here, you must be concerned that we are getting too close."
"Don't assume to know where we are in this game, I am far better at this than you. I have had an eternity to craft a plan far superior to any that an ex-communicated nun could conceive. Until you fully understand the essence of my being and the nature of all that encompasses reality, you won't have a clue what the game is here. Do you know what makes a grandmaster in chess?" asked Caiaphas.
"Winning games," Rose was prepared to play his game.
Well, that is how we rank players don't we; wins and losses. However that is not the answer; the answer is how they play the game. It is more than just utilizing moves and gambits but knowing your opponent and getting them to the make moves you want them to make, that sets them up for checkmate." he said walking over to stand next to Tommy, "There is a war coming."
It made sense to Rose, they must have been creating these creatures to support one faction in case the war broke out. Her knowledge of the United States was thin, but she knew the seceding states were pro-slavery and disadvantaged in terms of population and wealth compared to the larger Union. "This is about America. Are you instigating that civil war, or making money from the highest bidder for those creatures you are fabricating?"
"Wrong. This isn't about stealing souls, or who of your kind holds dominion over the other. My venture is personal and nothing to do with earth or you mortals, other than the part you play. Rose, you will never fully appreciate what value you have and what you are capable of because you are human. Your kind are infantile, you have been physical forms on this planet for just a short time and believe this tiny window of existence you experience is so significant."
"Don't forget I entombed Pruflas. You don't think I can do the same to you?" Rose asked, drawing the Rod from its sheath.
Dimetri worked the controls. Rose saw there was another copper door panel in this room, with water flushing down.
Caiaphas grabbed Tommy by the wrist and twisted it until Tommy was on his knees. "Now now, Miss Rose, one more move and I will send your friend here into my mind and he will never come out. My colleague will take the device and leave through that gate and I will follow him unless you want to see your friend die before you," said Caiaphas.
Dimetri picked up the soul magnet and exited the portal.
"This isn't some operatic tragedy or a melodrama, where the hero saves the day. If you think you are here to stop a great evil, you are gravely mistaken. I am the Grand Master and the moves I make force the play of my opponent, but I am not playing against you. You are not a player. You are a pawn, well maybe a slightly more important piece, but the actions you take are the ones I made you take willingly.
Both Caiaphas and Rose turned to the gate when it sputtered and closed. The tick-tock of the clockworks downstairs was gone.
Rose turned back to the old man. "You were saying…"
35
Saturday the 30th of March
9:48 p.m. Hawkin’s House
The house was in turmoil. Gunshots, growling animals, Constables, and a baby crying made it inconceivable for Angelica to remain idle. She arose and strode toward the rear of the residence where Rose's stud
y was situated. En route to the staircase she passed through the foyer and observed a young woman holding a baby, both were crying. Her hosts' sibling, she was likely a comparable age to the body Angelica possessed. In the study, Enzo and two policemen had brought up a man from the cellar. He lay on the Persian rug in front of Rose's desk. Every few minutes a shot would send a thundering echo up the steel staircase behind Rose's desk. Angelica quietly and coolly walked past Enzo to the stairwell where a Constable stood watch. She observed and sensed his fear as she sauntered past him and down the stairs.
"Miss, you shouldn't be going down there," he warned, but he did not stop her. Gun smoke permeated the air in the stairwell, an acrid carbon smell. Angelica faltered and shuddered as another shot rang out deafening in its loudness
Angelica stepped into the Reliquary, it was well lit but a haze of gun smoke clung to the ceiling diffusing the lights. Detective Williamson stood steadfast, the solitary man holding the line, like Horatius at the bridge. It was a bizarre scene, the room had been like a museum with glass cases and display cabinets. The surface of the floor tiled, the walls with wood wainscoting and mirrors. Now it was if a bomb had detonated, the entire space was a devastated with holes in the walls, glass shattered, and lifeless creatures strewn about. One man holding off a herd of ironclad bulls in Rose's china shop.
Then she heard it. -The skull encrusted Ju Ju Staff, stored on a shelf in a cabinet whose glass doors hung askew. It called to her, pulling at every cell in her body.
She closed her eyes and felt a sense of harmony, a knowing that all would be right. She swooned with pleasure as the presence of her mentors washed over her. Black tendrils flowed from her skirt up and around the cabinet. Since her resurrection, she could manifest her aura. Her imprint on the aether could manifest into a physical form through the ichor. It flowed around her like iron filings in a magnetic field and she could make it adhere to her body and transform. It wasn't part of her, yet it was she felt she would be nothing without it bathing her. The tendrils popped open the cabinet and tenderly brought the staff to her. When the wooden shaft touched her palm, she coursed with the power of her predecessors.
The loud report crashed through the room as the Englishman shot another beast breaking through the gallery.
"Fuck me dead!" he bellowed reloading his pistol. He nodded his head in the direction of the hole in the wall. Angelica looked and spotted what looked like flickering flames and the unworldly screams of animals. "If you're up to it, I could sure use your help in ridding the house of those creatures."
Angelica strode down the hall and entered the Studio Arcana. The meat puppet crashing around the studio was smashing into equipment setting the room ablaze. She struck the floor with her staff and cited an incantation. mist was drawn from the beast into the skulls atop the Ju-Ju staff; the Voodoo Kings in the world beyond would feast tonight.
Angelica turned to the portal and stared through the doorway; she could see the factory and several beasts in the spreading conflagration. Beyond the creatures, the vat of ichor called to her, she could feel the life energy in it. Her dress transformed from a modest white lace ensemble into a sultry, flowing black gown, both fabric and ichor at the same moment. She strode forward through the vestibule and into the factory, her staff striking the ground at every other step. An invisible shield of aether protected her from the growing flames and the creatures, who died as each of them closed on her, their blue life force streaming to the staff. She stood before the vats and sent a tendril of ichor into the nearest. She had never tasted so much vitality before. Another tendril reached into the vat drawing more and more ichor to her. A questing tendril found the soul corrals. Animal and human life flowed into her augmenting her power. The absence of ichor in the vat interrupted the animation process and left two forms a lifeless mass of meat and metal in the vat.
Every cell in her body felt invigorated as she gorged on the vitality in the ichor. She stepped back into the connecting foyer and sent a wave of ichor, through the portal into Rose's workshop it advanced across the floor covering the whole basement. As the black fluid covered the floor and billowed through the air Angelica’s physical presence through the ichor was in the factory, the nexus and Rose’s basement at the same time. With the base of her staff, she stirred the ichor empowering the eldritch broth with an enchantment. The fluid transformed into a carpet of beetles swarming to the carcass of each creature; ingesting them. These illusionary beetles made of ichor were part of Angelica, their feeding fed her. The Voodoo Queen felt like she was everywhere, in multiple places, her body could sense being elsewhere in America and in London, at the same time part of the aether. The more she consumed the more chaotic the ichor became swirling, slithering and curling into the air. Through the wild tendrils Angelica could feel and touch a concentrated source of the aether above her head. She looked up and saw the opening; pulling the ichor into her, she soared up and through the hole in the ceiling of the vestibule.
Here was the aether that called to her, a pulsing globe of eldritch gases; the heart of the engine she was now within. She approached and peered into the vapors and perceived that the chamber down below was inside the globe, yet also outside it. She had to devour it. The tendrils from her skirt, some vaporous and smokey, others like tar, enveloped the globe crushing it, assimilating the etheric energy. For a brief moment she existed beyond the material realm.
The Tick-Tock of the surrounding machinery stopped, and the room was silent. Angelica walked back to the where the hole in the floor had been was now concrete. The vestibule was gone.
* * *
5:23 p.m Streets outside the Continental Cattle Company, Omaha Nebraska
Elmore's pyrotechnics had taken hold. He was outside the Continental Cattle Company watching the flames erupt from all the windows. The brick walls were holding but the wooden roof had already collapsed. He had to keep moving back to cope with the intensity of the heat.
Joe Murray had come up next to him."Hey, Joe how are ya doing?" said Elmore.
"Elmore, you look like shit,"
"I feel like it." the Marshal told the young Sheriff, lightly touching the bruising on his face.
“What’s with the Spear of Longinus?”
"What?” said Elmore giving him a queer look.
"The Spear of Destiny the one that pierced the side of Christ," said Joe.
"Lady from England gave it to me. She didn't mention any of that," said Elmore touching his swollen eye.
"Do I ask?" Joe just looked at the ground kicking rocks across the dirt.
"You'll find at least one body in there. The deceased is James Leary, a trapper, and troublemaker. He was working for a guy named Wilburn, a Company man over at Astor. I'll be seeing the judge about a warrant for his arrest."
"Here, or back in Denver City?"
"It can wait until I get back to Colorado. I will talk to the Judge about bringing Wilburn in for questioning and then I'm thinking about taking a vacation," said Elmore.
"Whereabouts?"
"London," said the Marshal.
"London, England?" confirmed Joe.
"Yep."
"You know they don't call a vacation a vacation over there they call it a Holiday," Joe informed Elmore.
What do they call Christmas then?
"Christmas, I guess. You can ask when you go on Holiday."
36
Sunday the 31st of March
12:05 a.m Dimetri’s Villa Lago d'Orta Italy
Rose, Caiaphas and Tommy all looked to down as a black slime and wispy haze crept across the floor and pooled around their feet. The source was the staircase from the engine room.
Angelica climbed the stairs to the chamber, as her eyes fell upon the old man her demeanor altered. Shock and rage charged through the entire room. Before Rose could say “Angelica,” the slime formed black tentacles which rose and writhed to engulf Caiaphas.
“Where is my child?”
I don’t know who you are but killing me won’t get
your answer. He gasped with pain then laughed as the tentacles tightened crushing him. Only his head could move and he slowly turned it to look at Rose. “The irony here is the bullets have already killed this body,” said the old man.
Rose stepped in front of Caiaphas “Angelica is this man the one that helped you escape from Haiti?”
"Out of the way Caldwell," howled Angelica the ichor reverberating with her words.
“Angelica, the negro enchantress! How could I forget you? Let me say you look nothing like the boy, yet he has an angry streak and a talent for the metaphysical.
It hit Rose that Angelica had the Ju Ju Staff, the primitive relic that had been wielded by the Voodoo Kings and Queens. Upon the relic were the skulls of the previous five Hougan’s. The black mist swirled around the staff and in and out of the eye sockets of the skulls.
“You should be a proud mother. Gerrard in my care has shown he is adept. He shows his mother’s power and his father’s discipline a perfect combination for what I plan to do with him.
The ichor rippled and the tendrils around Caiaphas contracted. Rose heard Caiaphas’ bones crunch and his body distorted. Rose cringed.
“Rose, tell her about me she does not understand that this physical form means nothing," Caiaphas forced the words out of his contorted body.
Angelica, you may as well be talking to him by wire type. He is not Caiaphas, this is just somebody that he controls. He is from another world and is immortal. You won’t get anywhere this way.
“Another plane of existence, but you’re directionally correct. You see, Miss Du Moya you are not the only one that can inhabit a mortal form. In fact, I have been doing this since before your species figured out how to write. Now I have held up my part of the bargain when you died I made sure your son inherited and was fostered by an excellent guardian. That guardian is me,” said Caiaphas.
