A sliver of ice ran down my spine as I thought back. “Was your friend’s name Paulo by any chance?”
Andre stopped fidgeting and frowned at me. “How’d you know that?”
I think of the girl, Cassie, lying in bed as Paulo pulled the trigger. I think of Paulo with that same gun shoved up under his chin, his brains blowing out of the top of his head. “It’s not important,” I said, and waved him to continue.
After eyeing me suspiciously for a moment, he did. “So anyway, Paulo’s girl lived in the merge not far from where this Christian guy was. That’s how he found out about him in the first place. So Paulo tells me a couple days later that he hooked up with this guy, but now he’s having second thoughts. There’s something…not right about the guy. Something evil. But I wasn’t really hearing him, you know? I was too busy thinking about some para trying to cut into my turf, so I get Paulo to tell me where this guy is hiding so I can smoke him out if I need to.”
“So where is he Andre?” Lou coaxed.
“An old church in the merge. Ain’t that some shit? Homeboy with a heart of darkness staying in the house of God.” He chuckled sickly and scratched at the stubble on his jaw.
Lou rummaged around in his desk, and then pulled out a map and looked over it for the location of the church. Andre got up and pointed it out to him. “Yeah, that’s it right there, got a cemetery in the back and everything.” He shook his head and laughed. “Man, how messed up is that? How could Paulo not tell the dude was messed up when he first heard the name of the gang?”
“What is their name?” Lou asked.
“The Bloodwalkers.”
12
The car tilted hard to the left as we took a sharp turn at an intersection. Red and blue lights flashed and sirens blared as our three car caravan made its way towards the church. Lou gripped the wheel with both hands to control our skid and bring us back into line with the patrol car in front of us. I was very glad that I had decided to wear my seatbelt for this ride.
Lou took the radio from its place on the dashboard and keyed it on. “Okay guys, kill the lights and sirens. We go in quiet and set up a perimeter. Car one, stay on the east side and watch the back. Make sure no one leaves. Car two, block the entrance on the west side. We’ll approach the main entrance on the north side. No one moves unless I give the go-ahead, got it?” He clicked off.
A static-laced voice came over the radio. “Got it.” And then another. “Yes sir.”
“So,” I said, wondering aloud, “a man calling himself Christian who can raise the dead, offers immortality to his followers, and stays in a church.”
Lou shot a look at me quickly and then returned his gaze to the bumper of the car in front of us. “Do you think this guy plans on being the new messiah or something? Maybe the anti-christ or something equally melodramatic?”
I absently fingered the Star of David that hung around my neck as I pondered it. “No, I don’t think so.” The pendant my mother had given me had a calming effect on me. Even as I replayed events in my head of the zombies, and the ghouls with those spirits trapped inside them, twisted to someone else’s whims, I was able to keep a sense of detachment. It seemed to me that there was some overarching plan, some reason other than destruction for its own sake happening here, but I couldn’t see it for the life of me. “I think it’s more a show of contempt for religion in general and Christianity specifically. Maybe he does fancy himself to be a demigod, but first he wants to insult the old traditions.” Or maybe, I added silently, the power he wields has convinced him that he is a god. My fingers moved from my pendant to the pistol under my arm. Even though I had been less than devout in my religion, sacrilege on this scale bothered me more than I liked to admit.
The church came into view, its brick façade weather-beaten and decayed. The windows were boarded over and ivy entangled itself across the front of the building. Lou pulled up across the street and parked while the other two cars moved into their own assigned positions. In the afternoon light there was hardly anything threatening about the building at all. It was just another abandoned relic from the spreading influence of the merge. The cemetery was the only thing that seemed to hold an ill omen. It started on the right side of the church and stretched away towards the back of the plot of land. The tombstones were in as sad a state of upkeep as the building. Even from my spot across the street I could see that many were chipped and overrun with moss, the light green stains spreading across the faces to obscure names and dates.
I felt warmth spread across my belly. The two snakes that were tattooed there writhed in discomfort. They were a protection from lesser magics, and right now they were telling me that someone was working magic against me.
“Oh crap,” Lou said, doubling over against the steering wheel. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
I grabbed the radio from the dashboard and keyed it. “This is Inquisitor Goldman. Is anything happening at your positions?”
A second later a tinny voice answered. “East side’s clear. But I feel weird, like I left the oven on at home and I need to go check it.”
“The west side parking lot is clear,” another voice said. “No cars in sight and no activity.”
“How do you feel though?” I felt silly asking the question of an STS officer, but there was a ward present here and I needed to know what I was up against.
“I’m fine, sir.” His answer was tight and clipped. He put up a good front, but I was betting that if I asked him to go knock on the front door he wouldn’t get more than ten steps from his car before he turned back.
The snakes slid across my midsection feeling of scales and slime. It was a minor protection ward that surrounded the church. It made everyone want to avoid this place. But I felt nothing except for the warm serpents. I reached out with my power and tried to touch what was beyond the crumbling walls. There was nothing. Frowning in concentration, I pushed harder willing myself to find the minds of any people inside.
“You getting anything?” Lou asked, still gripping his stomach in discomfort. He reached for the glove compartment in front of me, opened it, and began working his way through the mess of papers and debris.
“Nothing,” I replied and shut down my power. If there was anyone in there they were well shielded. “You won’t make it to the front of the church in your condition, and none of your men are in any better shape. I’m not really looking forward to going in there with no backup. Maybe I should call Ben or Terri to come out here. We can just keep watch till then.” I tapped the butt of my pistol impatiently. I didn’t want to be relegated to keeping watch while a rogue was within spitting distance. If Simon weren’t a vampire I’d call him, but the sun hung happily in the sky with barely a cloud in sight. Some of the older vamps could take the sun’s rays for extended periods, but none enjoyed it, and Simon wasn’t that powerful. But, I reminded myself, what was bad for vampires was also bad for necromancy. The light of day disrupted their magic. Hopefully it would be enough to give us an edge.
Lou had instructed his men to contact Oakland PD and tell them that the spiders and rollers were in danger from this new gang. Andre had refused Lou’s offer to stay in the safety of STS headquarters. Not surprising really considering that for him that was the equivalent of the lion’s den. The regular PD couldn’t stop anything the necromancer could throw at them, but maybe a visible police presence in the area would give him reason to pause.
“Hang on a sec,” Lou said, and pulled something out of the compartment. He opened his hand and a small chain hung from his fingers. At the end of the chain was a small copper hoop. He pulled the chain around his neck, secured the clasp in back, and tucked the hoop under the collar of his shirt. “Oh man,” he said, and breathed deeply. “That is much better.” Keying the radio he said, “Put on your ward breakers.” He set the radio back and looked at me. “Now we don’t have to wait.” He scowled. “Unless you want to. Why didn’t you call Ben or Terri for this, Frank? We could use the extra firepower if this guy is a
s whacked out as we’re assuming.”
“Ben’s busy with something else right now.” I was forbidden from telling him about the Demon ambassador because he wasn’t an Inquisitor; even though we were on the same side the council liked to keep its secrets. “And I want to keep Terri out of this. She’s powerful, but I don’t know if she’s ready for something like this. Seeing Paulo kill himself really rattled her.”
Lou looked stunned. “You’re joking right? She’s a tough kid and needs the real world experience,” he chided.
“Real world experience comes quick when someone’s hurling death-magic around, Lou. She shouldn’t be around this yet.”
He grunted, conceding the point. “Still, if you don’t let her know what’s going on it’s going to be like a slap in the face to everything you two have been through together.”
I gave him a blank look, not wanting him to know how much I agreed with him. “Let’s go. Your ward breakers won’t last very long against this.”
“You’re the boss,” he muttered.
We got out of the car and jogged across the street, our guns in hand pointing skyward. The grass in the front came up to our knees, but there was no real cover to speak of, so we kept low and weaved our way towards one of the boarded-up windows to the right of the main entrance. We stopped in front and looked from side to side, scanning for threats. Finding none I looked back at the plywood covering the window. I tapped Lou on the arm and hooked my thumb over my shoulder at it. Painted on the plywood was a figure similar to the one that had been painted on Paulo’s apartment. Only this wasn’t just a head, it was a whole body done in vivid color and detail. I realized then that the image on Paulo’s place wasn’t of a vampire as I had first assumed, but of an idealized version of a ghoul. The picture on the wood was only slightly reminiscent of the things I had faced in the cemetery, but still I could make out the resemblance: the smooth waxy skin, the black malevolent eyes, and the talon-tipped fingers that dripped blood and gore. Beneath the painted monster was a body sprawled out on the concrete, its body ripped and torn like the two gang bangers I had seen two nights ago. Part of the necromancer’s madness became clear to me then, like parting cloud cover. He believed that he was making superior beings when he bound unwilling spirits to the flesh of ghouls. It was evident in the care taken to craft this image that that was what the painter actually saw instead of the misshapen monsters that were the reality. Ghouls were not beautiful creatures, they were the tattered remains of a body and spirit locked together in despair and insanity.
Lou and I were still staring at the painting when we heard a gun’s hammer cocking behind us and someone said, “Put your guns away or I’ll splatter your brains all over the pretty picture.”
* * *
The inside of the church was a mess of carpenter’s scaffolding and drop cloths. Repairs had been underway when the church had decided to shut its doors forever. Plastic sheets covered the pews on both sides of the aisle where Lou and I now stood, a man with a gun behind us. The place stank of moldering wood and rat droppings.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” I quipped.
“Shut up,” the man behind me said, and then rapped me on the head with the barrel of his pistol. It wasn’t a gentle rap, either.
“Please don’t damage our guests, Caleb.” The voice echoed throughout the church as if it had come out of the walls themselves.
Rubbing at the fresh bump on the back of my head, I looked around to see where the speaker was. He was probably using the same spell of obfuscation that Caleb had used to sneak up on me and Lou, because to my eyes the room was empty except for the three of us. A rustle of wings pulled my attention to the rafters overhead. Two ravens took flight from their perch and alighted on the horizontal beam of the crucifix that hung behind the pulpit at the back of the church. They sat on opposite ends of the golden crosspiece, their heads flickering from side to side to take in the scene until their glossy black eyes came to rest on me. The crucifix was the only extraordinary thing that remained in this place; while everything else bespoke modesty and humility, the cross was a thing of grandeur. It was eight feet tall, six across, and hung from wires fifteen feet above the raised platform at the back. Behind it against the back wall was a design of the sun, spikes of dull gold radiating out from its center. The whole thing was lit from beneath by small spotlights so that it looked to the people in the pews like the cross burned with its own light, the design of the sun behind it adding to the display. And while the lights no longer worked, it didn’t diminish the display. It was the ravens that turned it from an inspiring vista of hope to one of judgment, their dead eyes weighing my worth in silence.
I noticed the snakes had stopped their dance along my stomach. Whatever ward was being used was only effective outside the building. I wondered what the officers outside would do now that Lou and I had vanished. The cloaking spell that Caleb had used probably shielded us from view as we entered the church, so what would they do?
The air around the pulpit shimmered and six figures became visible as they took their places. The man calling himself Christian was immediately discernable by his air of self-importance. He strode up to the podium and stood behind it as if about to give a sermon. The five other figures, four men and a woman, moved to either side of him. Christian wore black jeans and a dark crimson trench coat with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders. His arms were covered in tattoos of symbols I had never seen before, but I knew they held power. The ink crept out from his shirt collar up his neck and onto his face so that little of his pallid skin showed through. His eyes were dark and sunken as if he hadn’t slept in days, and a malevolent intelligence sat behind those eyes. They were, I realized with a start, remarkably like the raven’s eyes.
“Caleb,” Christian said, “Take your place.” He gestured to his right.
“What about their weapons?” Caleb inquired.
Christian tipped his head back and laughed. When he was done he leveled his gaze on me. “Leave them. They can’t harm us anymore.”
“Yes, lord.” Caleb tucked his gun into his waistband and sloped past us, his ratty jeans scuffing the floor, his skin the color of fresh cement.
Every instinct I had was telling me to shoot the bastard and be done with it, but I knew that would not end it. A man who could beat Shadowcasters could easily laugh in the face of my pistol. Still, my hand twitched with anticipation. Perhaps the squad had gotten so caught up in trying to out-duel him in magic that they had failed to try a more straightforward approach. My hand sank towards the holster.
“Hold, Inquisitor.” The voice was Christian’s, but it held power and it echoed through the church like a thunderclap. Everyone flinched back, except for the ravens that remained motionless. The tattooed snakes on my stomach burned to life, catching his power and shunting it aside. I let my hand fall back to my side, but it was of my own volition, and that was a small victory in my eyes. He had no power over me. “You would try to do what others who were far more powerful than you failed to?” He laughed then, the sound like the racking coughs of a dying man. “In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, but neither of you has one eye do you? Of course we could change that, couldn’t we? Yes we could. My ravens are hungry and they tell me that eye meat is the best there is.” A pale tongue darted out across his lips.
“He’s insane,” Lou whispered to me. I nodded without looking at him.
“Insane?” Christian asked. “Well it is said there is a thin line separating genius from madness, but I assure you I am not mad, simply misunderstood. I wish to bring an end to the suffering that death brings. Look at my acolytes.” He spread his arms out to either side to encompass the people around him. “They no longer fear death, but rather embrace it as they would a long-lost relative. Look at them, Inquisitor; perhaps you recognize one of them.” A smile spread across his thin lips.
My eyes wandered over the four men, each dressed casually like they would have in life. All of them wore some artic
le of clothing that was the same shade of red as Christian’s coat. Their skin was gray and lifeless except for one whose flesh was darker than the rest and had blue bruises around his throat. He had been strangled to death and now stood looking at me out of milky, death-hazed eyes. All of them wore bands around their wrists like the one Paulo had, a single raven’s feather hanging from each. But none of them looked familiar.
Then my eyes landed on the woman standing farthest to Christian’s right. It was Cassie, the girl that I had seen Paulo kill. Shot twice in the chest, but she stood motionless, her head hung low so that her blond hair swept over her face revealing nothing but a shadow. Cold rage spilled through me at the sight. Through my Recall I had shared in her death, held the same gun that had killed her, and yet there she was. It wasn’t her, but some atrocity that mimicked her, that animated her body like the ghouls in the graveyard. My fists clenched and I trembled with emotions that were partly mine and partly remnants of Paulo’s feelings for her.
“Yes,” Christian purred. His face lit with a malign glee, the skin stretching tight with his smile, his eyes like twin dark pools. “You remember Cassie. Such a shame that Paulo turned out to be a coward. Shot himself in the head so that I couldn’t reanimate him, and then you destroyed the new body I fashioned for him.” He shook his head in mock regret. “How did you do that by the way? A mere psychic, you couldn’t have fought them as you are. You must have cheated, as you Inquisitors are wont to do.” He waved it away. “Not important. What is important is that Cassie is mine now since Paulo had…second thoughts.” He looked askance at her and asked, “Dear, is there anything you would like to say to Mr. Goldman?”
Slowly her head rose and the mess of dirty blond curls fell away to the sides to reveal the delicate pale face hiding behind them. Her eyes met mine for the briefest of moments before she shook her head and let the curtain of hair fall back into place to hide her from the world. It broke my heart.
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