by Kevin Hearne
“Sorry.” I shook my head, trying to clear it of her coarse phrasing. “I don’t quite follow you. Remind me of what I said.”
“Ye said all the gods are alive. All the monsters too.”
“Oh, right. They’re all alive, except for the ones that are dead.”
Oberon said.
“And the impression I got was they’re alive because we believe in them, right?”
“Um. With lots of fine print, right.”
“So in a sense it’s we with faith who create gods, not the gods who create us. And, if that’s the case, then it’s we who created the universe.”
“I think that might be taking a big step into the windowless room of solipsism. But I see your point, Mrs. MacDonagh. A person like you with such powerful faith should not be ignored. Why, faithful people around the world have made miracles happen.”
“Really? How do they do that?”
“You’ve heard of people having visions of the Virgin Mary?”
“Sure, all the time.”
“Those are created by faith. You could probably make one happen.”
“All by meself?”
I nodded. “Absolutely. Mrs. MacDonagh, when you think of Mary, what does she look like to you? Could you visualize her clearly for me, describe her to me?”
“Why, sure I can. ’Twouldn’t be a very good Catholic if I couldn’t, now would I?”
“If Mary were to appear on this earth now, what do you think she’d look like?”
The widow seemed pleased to be asked. “Ah, she’d have the patience of eternity in her eyes, she would, and the beatitudes in her smile. I suppose she’d be dressed sensibly for the modern world—to blend in, y’know, something cotton and navy blue.”
“Why navy blue?”
“I don’t know, it’s just what I associate with her. She’s not the flamboyant turquoise type, is she now?”
“All right, go on. What sort of shoes?”
“The sensible kind. But classy, y’know, not cheap tennis shoes made by a poor wee girl in an Asian sweatshop.”
“Would she wear one of those habits, the elaborate headgear you always see in churches?”
“I should think not. It’s hardly the fashion anymore. A simple white headband keepin’ her hair out of her eyes would be the thing.”
“And if she came here, to Tempe, what do you think she would want to do?”
“A saintly woman like that? She’d probably be down on Apache Boulevard, ministering to the homeless and the whores and the methamphetamine addicts—what do they call ’em, that slang term?”
“Tweekers.”
“Right. She’d be helpin’ the tweekers, she would, down on Apache Boulevard.”
When Oberon says things like that, it takes all my will not to dive into a Star Wars nerdfest; I resolutely ignored him, because I had to get the widow in the proper frame of mind. “That’s lovely, Mrs. MacDonagh. Sure she would work a powerful lot of good on Apache Boulevard. Why, if she were down there, she could help me slay this demon from hell by blessing my weapons.”
“That’s right, she could. Wouldn’t that be divine?”
Oberon and I examined her expression and found a tiny smile on the widow’s face, pleasant yet inscrutable.
I don’t know. I can’t tell.
“Mrs. MacDonagh, I want you to concentrate, or rather meditate on this—no, I want you to pray that this happens today, right now, putting all your faith into the power of Mary’s miraculous healing and the good work she would do ministering to the addicts on Apache Boulevard. Picture her in your mind as clearly as you can.”
“And ye think if I do that, then Mary will come down from heaven and walk the boulevard, freein’ people from addiction and tellin’ them to go and sin no more?”
“It’s entirely possible. Depends on how she’s feeling today.”
“Well o’ course she’s feelin’ dandy!” the widow scolded me. “She’s the mother o’ God, for the love o’ Pete!”
“Yes, but Mary has free will, does she not? You would not imagine her as a slave to your prayers. She can decide for herself whether she would like to be made manifest in the image you offer—whether she should intercede or not. Aren’t all prayers based on this assumption?”
“Well, I suppose they are. But it’s so strange to think of it like that. It’s all backwards.”
“It’s only a slight modification of causality. Faith is the bedrock of it all. It doesn’t work without your faith. No religion does. As a pagan who subscribes to a completely different pantheon, I could never induce Mary to come here.”
“But Atticus, how can my one wee prayer—”
“Faith, Mrs. MacDonagh! Faith! If you want a scientific explanation, I cannot give you one. Science cannot close the fist of reason around the miracle of consciousness any more than I can turn my sword into a light saber.”
Not now, Oberon.
Gods Below, go inside and chase the cats already! “Begging your pardon,” I said to the widow, “would you mind if Oberon went inside for a bit?”
“Eh? No, me boy, not at all. Good exercise for me pussies. They’re good, dog-fearing cats.”
Oberon chuffed.
Don’t break anything in there.
I let him in the front door and immediately heard his joyous barks and the terrified howling of the widow’s cats. The widow and I chuckled over it together as I sat back down and she took a sip from her glass.
“So do you think you could pray over that for me?” I asked when the commotion inside died down a bit.
“The Virgin Mary on Apache Boulevard? Sure I can, if it’ll make yer heart glad.”
“It would,” I said. “Don’t forget to mention she could help me slay a demon escaped from hell. Pray hard, if there is such a thing, and focus on what she would look like and when she’d do it, which is during the next couple of hours. And while you’re at it, I’ll give your grass a trim.”
“Attaboy,” she said, and smiled beatifically at me as I rose from my chair and trotted down the porch in search of her push lawn mower. I found it in the garage and hauled it out for a bit of brisk exercise as the widow shut her eyes and began to rock softly in her chair.
I didn’t know if this would work, but I had hope. Mary tended to make a lot more visits than the rest of the Christian saints and angels, and in the dozen or so times I’d run across her, it was always a result of some prayer for intercession someone had made on behalf of a group of people.
If it didn’t work, then I wouldn’t sweat it; I’d just take the arrows into a Catholic church and ask a priest to bless them. Anyone’s strong Christian faith would be effective against the demon, but Mary’s personal blessing would be quite a coup if I could count it.
After finishing the lawn, I returned the mower to its place in the widow’s garage and joined her on the porch. Her eyes opened after a moment and there were tears welling up in them.
“Ah, Atticus, I do hope she heard me and comes on down like ye say. I know she’s been lookin’ after me Sean, God rest him,” she crossed herself at the mention of her deceased husband, “but I don’t think he’d mind if she popped out for a bit to help some souls down here goin’ through a dark patch right now. ’Twould be a mighty blessing, an’ that’s no lie. But whether she comes or no
, it does me heart good to think she might and that there’s hope fer those benighted people who might find God in the kindness of her smile. Thank ye fer suggestin’ the prayer to me.”
I took the widow’s small, spotted hand and gave it a brief squeeze. We sat together on the porch and watched the storm clouds boil in from the east until it was time for me to meet Coyote.
“Off ye go, then,” the widow said when I made my farewell and told Oberon it was time to leave the cats alone. “Tell Mary I love her if ye see her. Oh, and Atticus me boy?”
“Yes, Mrs. MacDonagh?”
“Maybe ye should wear a helmet this time,” she teased me, “in case the demon wants to nibble on yer nose or something.”
Chapter 8
Coyote was only five minutes late.
The tires of a Ford Escape hybrid squealed as he rounded the corner. He braked sharply in front of my house, marking the pavement and sending up the smell of burned rubber. He got out of the cab and laughed. “This here is one hot ride, Mr. Druid, yessiree!” He slapped the hood a couple of times to punctuate his enthusiasm.
“You really think so? I’d think something sportier would be more fun to drive than that.”
“I meant hot as in ‘freshly stolen.’ Stealin’ cars is almost as fun as stealin’ horses used to be a couple centuries ago. You ready?”
“Yep.” I held my bow, and the quiver of arrows was strapped to my back. Oberon was all set up inside with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on DVD. I’d promised to get him the audiobook version later so that he could appreciate the trip from inside Chief Bromden’s head. “Did you remember to bring a bow?”
“Sure did. An’ I got me a squirt gun filled with holy water for laughs.”
“All right, then. Mind if I drive?”
Coyote laughed. “Sure, Mr. Druid. This is your rodeo. I can’t wait to see where you’re gonna find us some holy arrows.”
“Arrows are right here,” I said, jerking a thumb over my shoulder at my quiver. “They’re just not holy yet.”
Coyote laughed again. “You’re just gonna dip ’em in holy water, aren’tcha?”
“Maybe.” I grinned to hide my irritation. “Maybe not. Wait and see.”
Apache Boulevard wasn’t nearly as bad as Mos Eisley. After the light rail was built, developers began to reinvest in the area and relieve some of the urban blight. But there were still stretches of low-rent trailer parks and cheap stucco boxes that passed for shelter, unpaved driveways, and yards full of soiled mattresses and rusted car parts—visual cues in America that signify poverty and discord and a spiritual wasteland.
At a few minutes after ten in the morning, all the meth addicts were asleep and there was very little for Mary to do. The people walking around Apache Boulevard at that time all had someplace to go; they all had a shred of hope in their lives. Nevertheless, there was a small knot of people crowded around her when I saw a navy-blue dress and white headband between Martin Lane and River Drive. There were even a few stray dogs and some alley cats rubbing up against her legs, as if they were gentle domestics.
To double-check whether I was looking at a true manifestation of Mary, I activated a charm on my necklace that I call “faerie specs.” It’s a spell that shows me what’s going on in the magical and supernatural spectrum—if there’s anything more to look at than the normal collection of proteins, minerals, and water.
“Aggh!” I squeezed my eyes and turned off the specs immediately, jerking the wheel of the Ford a bit.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Druid?” Coyote asked.
I blinked and saw spots. “That’s definitely the Virgin. Bright white light.” I turned the Ford into the first driveway I saw and put it in park. It was the entrance to a decrepit trailer park, covered in gravel and broken glass. Nothing grew there but misery and despair, the people living there cut off from nature and walking the world unbound from it.
Coyote and I got out, and I retrieved my quiver of arrows from the cargo area. As we approached, Mary was blessing a large Latino man dressed like a tough guy—a vato loco would be the slang term. He wore a blue bandanna and dark sunglasses, even though it was completely overcast, and his gray flannel shirt was buttoned only at the top, leaving a white T-shirt to show underneath. Tears were streaming out from underneath the sunglasses.
“Your pardon, ma’am, but I wonder if you would mind blessing these arrows for us,” I said. “We’re off to fight a demon.”
She smiled and chuckled fondly as she addressed me. “Child,” she said—she always called me that, even though I was older than she was—“I came here with no other purpose in mind.”
“The widow MacDonagh wanted me to tell you she loves you,” I said.
“Ah, Katie.” The Virgin’s smile became even brighter. “She prays to me daily, you know. And recently she’s been asking to keep you safe. So you must remain safe, Mr. O’Sullivan, and return my love to her. She has a beautiful soul.”
“Yes, she does.”
“Let us see these arrows of yours.”
Being careful with the fletching, I slowly drew the arrows out of the quiver together and then handed the quiver to Coyote. I presented them to the Virgin across both my arms, so that the heads were pointed north, to her right.
She closed her eyes, laid her hands gently on the heads, and spoke a few lines from the Benediction in the Latin Mass: “O salutaris Hostia quae coeli pandis ostium. Bella premunt hostilia; da robur, fer auxilium.” The form of her blessing was rather unexpected. I was hoping for an original composition, but upon reflection I supposed it was an appropriate sentiment: Our foes press on from every side; thine aid supply, thine strength bestow. She held on to the arrows for about ten seconds after she finished speaking. I’m sure if I had dared to use my faerie specs, I’d have seen some really interesting magic being woven around them—a split second before the light of the Virgin burned out my eyeballs.
When she finished, she opened her eyes and released the slightest bit of tension that had built up in her shoulders. She smiled benignly upon me and then widened it to include Coyote.
“The last of the Druids and one of the First People of Native America are off to fight a fallen angel from the Fifth Circle.”
I’d been smiling back at Mary until I processed the end of her sentence. At that point I didn’t know if I’d ever smile again. “A fallen angel? One of the original host?”
Mary nodded. “Yes. It is twisted and blackened now, the light of heaven snuffed out long ago.”
“Hoo-ee, Mr. Druid. Sounds like powerful medicine to me,” Coyote said. He wasn’t kidding. Fallen angels weren’t ordinary demons. I wasn’t sure Cold Fire would even work against such a being, since they were condemned to spend eternity in hell rather than spawned there.
“And the Fifth Circle,” I said, “if I remember my Dante, is where the wrathful and the sullen are punished.”
“That’s correct, my child,” Mary affirmed.
“Gods Below, how did Aenghus Óg manage to summon something that powerful?”
Mary beamed patiently at me, ignoring my invocation of a different pantheon. “I do not think he summoned it so much as provided an avenue for its escape. Still, the binding placed on it as a condition of its egress is still in effect, and that is the only thing keeping it in this area.”
“Meaning that it won’t leave the East Valley until I’m dead,” I said.
“Whoa, it sucks to be you, Mr. Druid.” Coyote chuckled and clapped me a couple of times on the shoulder. “Here, gimme those arrows.” He took them from my arms and placed them back in the quiver. “I’ll be waitin’ in the hot vehicle. This white lady’s a bit too shiny for me.”
“You have an interesting assortment of friends,” Mary observed as Coyote’s boots crunched away on the gravel. “A Native Amercian deity, a pack of lycanthropes, a vampire, and a coven of Zorya worshippers.”
“I wouldn’t call them all my friends,” I said. “More like acquaintances. Mrs. MacDonagh and my dog, Oberon
, are my friends.”
“Then you have chosen your friends wisely,” Mary said kindly. “My work here is finished. Yours is just beginning, I fear. You will most likely need to pierce Basasael more than once before he is undone.”
“Basasael?”
“That is his name. He was mighty before he fell with Lucifer.”
“Christ,” I whispered without thinking.
“My son is confident of your victory,” Mary said.
“No kidding? Tell Jesus I said hi, and we should have a beer next time he’s in the neighborhood.”
“I will relay your greetings. Now go, child. You have my blessing upon you.”
“Peace be with you,” I said, and as I turned to resume my journey with Coyote, I added under my breath, “and asskicking be with me.”
Chapter 9
“I gotta admit, Mr. Druid, I didn’t think we’d be seein’ anythin’ like that. You kinda surprised me. How’d you know that shiny white lady’d be there?”
Coyote was dressed the same way as I had seen him the night before, except now he was wearing dark sunglasses. His expressions tended to run to either amused or inscrutable, and right now he was showing me the latter. Perhaps he mistrusted me. I shrugged my shoulders as I steered the SUV south to U.S. 60. “I just had faith, I guess.”
“Pfffft. You don’ have any more faith’n I do for the Christian folks.”
I felt myself slipping automatically back into the rhythms of Coyote’s speech. “Yeah, but I had faith in a Cath’lick friend o’ mine. She did the prayin’ for me.”
“Well then, why didn’ she just pray for Jesus to come down and smite the demon or somethin’? We coulda slept in.”
“ ’Cause Jesus don’ like to come down very much. People keep thinkin’ of him bein’ nailed to a cross or wearin’ a crown of thorns, or else he’s got huge bloody holes in his hands an’ feet, an’ that’s just gotta be damn uncomfortable. Plus they think he was a white guy with straight brown hair, but he was dark-skinned. Shucks, I bet you know what that’s like, when people think o’ you like one o’ them stylized sandpaintings or a fetish animal. You don’t wanna go prancin’ around lookin’ like that, do ya?”
