Their hands opened immediately, letting the slim, foot-long magic instruments fall to the carpeted floor.
Morris looked at the would-be Satanists more closely. Barely out of their teens, all dressed in the black, creepy-looking clothing that is usually associated with the goth subculture.
Libby picked one of the wands and examined it. “It’s precharged,” she said. “Nothing more than an occult storage battery. I’ve seen them before One of these, and a few words of power, and you can work magic – once, maybe.”
Some of the limited light came from the five squat black candles that burned in a circle on the rug. In the middle of them lay a cat, dead. It had been sloppily disemboweled.
“Who are you people?” Ellie Robb demanded. “And what in the Goddess’s name are you doing here?”
“It was this guy showed up, today around noon,” one of the men said. “He was a magician – he showed us the cool shit he could do. He said we could get power just like him, if we did like he told us.”
Morris felt his stomach sink like an elephant in quicksand. “This man,” he said, “came to you, gave you the wands and a ritual and said to come here and... butcher some innocent animal.”
They nodded, although the phrase “innocent animal” seemed to confuse them.
“He told you to come here tonight, didn’t he?” Morris said. “It had to be tonight.”
More nodding from the goths. “Dude even did a spell over us,” the woman said. “He said it would make us strong, and, like, scary.”
“Scary,” Ashley said. The contempt in her voice could have curdled milk.
“I think–” Morris said, but then stopped. In the distance he could hear sirens. He listened for a few moments. There were several sirens wailing at different pitches, but they didn’t seem to get closer. They weren’t headed for the Sikh temple at all.
“Sounds like fire trucks,” Morris said. He looked at his companions bleakly. “Guess there’s a big fire someplace – someplace else.”
Forty-Seven
“THIS IS BILL Stuart. I’m coming to you live from a raging fire that has destroyed the Eighth Street Mosque, one of only two Moslem worship centers in the city. Fire officials said that the first alarm came in around ten thirty, and they responded very quickly. However, Fire Chief Roger Upton told me that the building was fully ablaze when the first trucks arrived.
“We’ve learned that the mosque was administered by Dr. Muhammad Faisil, a Saudi-born American citizen who also served as the prayer center’s Imam, or holy man. He led the Friday night services here for many years, and he is held in high regard by the local Islamic community. We have been trying to reach Dr. Faisil for comment, but have been unable to locate him in the chaos that you see all around me. As soon as he becomes available, or there are new developments in the story of this tragic blaze, we’ll be back live to bring you up to date. For now, this is Bill Stuart, Channel 3 news, reporting from South Austin.”
Forty-Eight
TWO HOURS LATER, Quincey Morris and Libby Chastain sat in Morris’s living room, half-drunk and waiting for the apocalypse.
Libby dropped a few more ice cubes in her glass, then topped it with Grey Goose vodka, grateful that Morris always kept some on hand. Her hands were not quite steady.
“He suckered us,” she said, not for the first time. “Bastard knew we were waiting for him and he sent those... idiots to the Sikh place.”
Morris took a sip of Jack Daniel’s, by no means his first of the evening, and carefully put the glass aside. His hands were not steady, either. “First he laid a bunch of black magic hoodoo over them, so that our sensitives would smell it from outside, along with those stupid wands. Then we’d figure it was the real deal. Which is just what we did. Yup. Just what we did.”
After a while, Libby said, “Quincey?”
“Um?”
“Why hasn’t it happened yet? It’s been hours since that mosque burned. I mean, how long does it take to open the fucking gates of Hell?”
“Dunno. Guess they’ll get it done, sooner or later. Later’s okay with me.”
“We’d know, wouldn’t we – even in here?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that if the world was ending, we’d have noticed something.”
He looked at big Desert Eagle, which he’d left on the coffee table. “Once it starts, once we’re sure... I don’t know if I’d be inclined to wait around for the demons to come for me. Think I might take my chances with God’s judgment, although I’m not sure how He feels about me, lately.”
Libby Chastain stared at the gun for a while. “Quincey?”
“What?”
“If you decide to... do it that way, would you... will you...?” Libby swallowed. “Will you kill me, first? I’m not sure if I’d have the nerve to do it myself. But if you’re not going to be here anymore, then I don’t want to be, either.” Libby began to cry softly.
Morris’s throat was so tight, he was having trouble making words come out, but he finally managed to say, “’Course I will, if that’s what you want. I won’t leave you for them. How could I leave you behind, when I love you so much?”
Libby was crying harder, now. “I – I love you, too, Quincey. I guess I always have.”
Twenty minutes later, there was a bright flash at the windows, followed, an instant later by a loud boom. Then there were sounds on the roof, like a million tiny footsteps.
Libby looked towards a window, eyes wide. “Is it...?”
Morris looked, listened, and tried to make his bourbon-addled brain focus on something that seemed very familiar. Then he gave Libby a lopsided grin and said, “No, just a thunderstorm. The weather guy on TV said we might get one late tonight.”
So they sat, and drank, and waited for the end of the world. In time, they fell asleep.
Hours later, they awoke to find sunshine, chirping birds, and a gentle breeze blowing. The world was still there.
Forty-Nine
QUINCEY MORRIS AND Libby Chastain stood on Morris’s front porch, drinking coffee and watching the traffic pass by in the street, just as it always did. First, though, they’d turned on the television, to find that the most interesting thing to happen in the world overnight had apparently involved a young British prince cavorting naked in a Las Vegas fountain.
Libby sipped from the mug Morris had given her and said, “I have the worst hangover of my entire life – but, right now, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
“I know just what you mean,” Morris said, “as well as exactly how your head feels.”
They watched the world go by for a few more minutes before Libby said, “Do you suppose they could be just... playing with us? The demons, I mean.”
Morris shook his head, instantly regretting the movement. “I doubt it,” he said. “You take a bunch of kids who’ve been looking through the front window of a candy store and drooling for – well, forever. Then, one night, the door to that place swings wide open. I don’t see them hanging around on the sidewalk for a while longer, just to tease the people inside.”
“You make a nice analogy,” Libby said. “Okay, then – what happened? Why didn’t the world end last night? Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”
“I was about to say, ‘Beats the hell out of me,’ but that might be an unfortunate turn of phrase. I haven’t got the faintest idea, Libby. But once my head stops pounding, I thought I’d make a few calls to folks who were with us last night, see what they think. You might want to do the same.”
“Sounds like a good idea.” Libby studied her coffee mug with great interest, or appeared to. “You know, last night, while we were sitting inside, waiting to die – or worse – we probably said some stuff...” She let her voice trail off.
“Did we? My memory of it all is pretty vague,” Morris said. “I know we talked, from time to time. Probably got pretty maudlin, what with the booze, and all. But I can’t recall anything specific. Can you?”
“I had some weird dreams, once I dr
ifted off,” Libby said, “and it’s hard to separate what really happened from what didn’t. But, no – I don’t remember anything in particular.”
“Just as well, I’m guessing. We were pretty drunk.”
“Yes,” Libby said. “It’s probably just as well.”
Fifty
OVER THE NEXT several days, there were a number of conversations between and among those who had been involved in the desperate effort to keep the gates to Hell firmly closed. The good news was that they had apparently succeeded. The bad news was that none of them could understand how success had been wrested from the jaws of a defeat that seemed poised to devour them all.
That the Eighth Street Mosque had been the target of Theron Ware’s crew there was little doubt. In the wreckage, fire investigators found the remnants of incendiary devices that were identical to those used in the four other recent arsons involving houses of worship. Also found among the ruins was the charred body of a man whom dental records identified as the mosque’s Imam, Dr. Muhammad Faisil.
There was no shortage of theories among the group members to explain what had happened – or rather, what had not happened.
Malcolm Peters: “Ashley and I had figured that the ‘magic number’ of church burnings was five, or a multiple of five – since that’s a very important number in black magic. I thought that Ware would go with five, because every new sacrifice put him and his crew at risk of being caught. But maybe he’s an arrogant bastard, and he’s gonna keep going until he hits ten, or fifteen, or whatever fucking number he has in mind. Maybe he’s making more than one pentagram – who knows? I think we’d all better keep an eye on the news – if there’s another church burning with the same M.O., it shows that Ware is still in business – which means we’re still in business, too.”
Ashur Badaktu, aka Ashley: “I think the stupid bastard’s fucked it up. The fifth sacrifice must not have been enough to open the Gates of Tartarus. There was some additional sacrifice, or ritual, or spell necessary before the Big Barbeque, as I like to call it, could happen. Ware attempted it, and failed. And there are no do-overs in black magic. If he blew it, the chance is lost – unless he wants to start all over again, with five more sacrifices. Personally, I think he’s dead and gone. When Ware screwed up, whatever major demon gave him flesh and sent him over here probably got disgusted and yanked him back home. My guess is, we’ll never hear from him again.”
Special Agent Dale Fenton: “I’m no longer convinced that any of the people behind this are demons, or even magic practitioners. Maybe the black magic that Colleen sniffed out the first time has another source. This could be simply a group of vicious lunatics traveling around the country, randomly killing clergymen and burning their churches. Serial killers, in other words. I grant you, the Bureau has never seen serial murder carried out quite like this, but there’s a first time for everything. Or maybe the killers have read too many comic books, and they really believed that creating a pentagram with the locations of their crimes would open the gates of Hell. If so, then they were clearly mistaken – thank Heaven.”
Eleanor “Ellie” Robb: “What we may have here is an example of divine intervention. I think it entirely possible that Theron Ware and his cohort did everything right – from their own evil perspective, I mean. They carried out a bloody, depraved ritual that would really have opened the gates to Hell. I understand that there are some among the Infernal, such as Astaroth, who feared that such a catastrophe would bring on Armageddon, the final battle between Heaven and Hell. But what if God, or the Goddess, or however you wish to call our Creator, decided that it was not yet time for Armageddon, and simply forestalled the spell by saying, ‘No – this will not be permitted.’ I think it’s as good an explanation as any, and better than some I’ve heard.”
Fifty-One
AND SO EVERYONE went home – except for Quincey Morris, who was already there. He offered to drive Libby Chastain to the airport, and she accepted, but on the way neither of them had much to say to the other. Silence between them was usually comfortable, a simple acknowledgment that there was nothing interesting to talk about at the moment. But this time the quiet had an uneasy quality – although, if asked, neither of them could have told you why.
As the Mustang slowed to a halt outside the door to the United Airlines terminal, Morris reached down and popped the trunk so that Libby could retrieve her bag.
Often at such moments or parting, Libby would lean over and kiss him on the cheek – but not this time. “Pleasure saving the world with you again, cowboy – if that’s what we did,” she said. “Let me know if you get a lead on book five of the Corpus Hermeticum.”
“Will do,” Morris said crisply.
She got out, slammed the door, and turned toward the rear of the car. Through the half-open window Morris called, “Libby!”
She turned back and looked at him.
They held the look for half a second before Morris said, “You take care now, hear?”
Libby gave him a half-smile and said, “Sure will. You too.”
Then she was gone.
Fifty-Two
NOTHING IN OAKLEY, Kansas, could ever be called “booming,” including the motel business. So Roy Hastings, owner, manager, and desk clerk of the E-Z Rest Motor Hotel was delighted to rent three rooms – and for a whole week, no less! – to the rather odd crew who had rolled in a couple of days ago. Even better, the guy who seemed to be in charge, Mister Ware, had said he didn’t believe in credit cards – so he’d given Roy a non-refundable cash deposit big enough to cover the rooms, as well as any conceivable damage that the four of them could have done to the place. Hell, for that amount of cash, they could cart off the entire contents of each room, plumbing included, and Roy would still be ahead financially – with a bunch of catch that the IRS didn’t have to know about.
They were a strange bunch, though. Mister Ware – a good looking fella in his mid-thirties – seemed all right, but the three who he referred to as his “charges” had made Roy a little uneasy. If they’d tried to register alone – without Mister Ware and all his cash, that is – Roy might reluctantly have told them he had no vacancies.
The one they called Jeremy had a boyish face but crazy eyes and the other man, Mark, had a big, muscular body but the kind of vacant look on his face that said not too much was going on upstairs. Then there was the woman, Elektra. She had a slutty way of dressing that Roy kind of liked, but her face reminded him of that movie he’d seen on HBO a couple of years back, about this crazy hooker in Florida who had killed a bunch of guys before being caught and electrocuted.
But appearances could be deceiving, as Roy would be the first to admit. They were religious folks, and if they were right with the Lord, then they were okay with Roy Hastings, too.
They must be Godly – Mister Ware had spent quite a bit of time talking with Roy about the different churches in town. He said that his little group were looking to settle in Oakley, and wanted to find the kind of church that would make them feel most welcome. He’d been very interested in the size of the congregations, and the number of people who usually attended Sunday services.
Roy, a Methodist, had answered as many of the questions as he could, and had even called a couple of friends who attended other churches to get more information. He hoped that Mister Ware and his group would find the kind of church they were looking for soon – Sunday was only three days away.
Fifty-Three
IT TOOK A while for Morris’s nerves to recover completely, but after a week had passed from “The Night the World Was Supposed to End, But didn’t,” he no longer jumped at loud noises. There was, it seemed, no second shoe about to drop. The Apocalypse had been averted, although Morris would have been easier in his mind if only he could have understood why.
He would have welcomed the distraction of a new assignment, but none had been forthcoming. Things appeared to be slow in the ghostbusting business. Morris spent a lot of time searching online news sources for information ab
out any new church burnings, but America’s houses of worship had apparently been left inviolate following the destruction of Austin’s only mosque.
Then he began to consider the possibility that the spell might not require the bloody pentagram to be drawn over a map of the U.S., and started to wondering if the one calling himself Theron Ware had set up shop in another country, there to begin his campaign of fire and murder afresh. But nothing showed up in the international news reports to confirm his fear.
Eight days after that chaotic, fearful night in Austin, Morris’s shoulder muscles had finally unclenched fully, and he actually felt like eating a full meal, for a change. He was mentally running down the list of friends who might like to join him for dinner at one of the city’s nicer restaurants when he got the call that made his body tighten up all over again.
“Mister Morris, this is Father Bowen. I’m relieved to hear your voice – I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday.”
“My phone’s been on, far as I know, Father. And if this is about the Corpus Hermeticum, I already told you–”
“I’m not in Montana, Mister Morris – I’m in Rome. I have no doubt you would have answered my call if you’d received it, but the local phone companies are on strike. Their computers are still processing local calls, but international calls aren’t going through – or haven’t been, until now. Something about the satellite uplink. Same for email. I’m just glad I’ve finally reached you.”
“What are you doing in Rome, Father? Trying to keep your job?”
Morris and Chastain Investigations: Play With Fire & Midnight at the Oasis Page 17
