by Jon Steele
“Swell. What else did they tell you about the fire being here?”
“Big bang, big show if it goes live.”
Another switch tripped in Harper’s brain and he raced back on his timeline to the cathedral job. Quick scenes flashed through his eyes: he and the lad finding the fire in a cavern under the cathedral, transferring it to the lad’s lantern, carrying it to the nave. Fast forward: the nave flooded with devourers, the fire going out. Harper breathes into it to keep it alive. And they were not alone. There was a woman with them, a woman with blond hair, and he could almost see her face . . . Harper’s timeline cut to hash for a second, then came back. Now he was holding the lantern and the cathedral was awash with radiant light . . . Hash. Harper blinked himself to nowtimes. The new one was standing before him with a lantern in her hand. A flame at the tip of the wick pulsing, now, like something ready to explode.
Harper reached for the lantern, but the girl pulled it back. She hid it in the folds of her cloak. The crossing square fell dark.
“Ekki,” she whispered.
“No?”
“I must hold the lantern and say the words. You cannot carry the weight alone anymore, monsieur. You have fallen two times. The third time will be the last. You must wait.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s what he said.”
Harper stared at her.
“Are you quite sure that’s what he told you, mademoiselle?”
“He said if you asked that question I was to tell you, ‘I’m very sure.’”
. . . i’m very sure, i’m very sure, i’m very sure . . .
Harper listened to the words echo through the nave. The cadence, the tone, the determined delivery. He looked deeper into her eyes. Krinkle called to him.
“Hey, brother, snap out of it.”
Harper turned to the roadie. “Something’s not right, she’s not making any sense.”
“Would you cut it with the ‘Something’s not right’ stuff? She’s doing what Gabriel told her to do. And we need to get a move on. Brother Astruc is getting worse.”
Harper glanced at the priest, saw the white froth at the corner of his mouth. Harper stepped closer to the girl, reached for the lantern again.
“Ekki. Get out of my way,” she said.
“Sorry?”
She raised the lantern and the light drilled into Harper’s eyes.
“He says he’s very sure you need to get out of my way.”
She passed between them, walked to Astruc, and circumambulated his form three times, clockwise, in ever-widening circles, always holding the lantern toward the priest. She stopped, faced him. The girl was a half a yard from Astruc’s boots, standing on an imaginary line that ran through Astruc and toward the apse. Just then Astruc’s body seized up and Krinkle rushed to him.
“Oh shit, here we go.”
He knelt at Astruc’s side, pulled the penlight, hit the priest with the lapis-colored beam. The priest’s face was turning purple; he gasped for breath. Krinkle grabbed Astruc’s head, arced it back to clear the airway.
“He’s going down fast,” Krinkle said.
Harper hurried to the girl, stood in front of her.
“Ella, listen to the sound of my voice. Give me the lantern.”
“Ekki. You’re too weak to do it.”
“Ella—”
“I have to hold the lantern and say the words, not you. That’s what he says.”
Harper scanned her eyes again. No wonder she wasn’t making sense. She’d been heavily juiced. With what, Harper didn’t know, but it was kicking in and rushing through her blood.
“Mademoiselle, listen to me. I need to hold the lantern. That’s how it works. Trust me and give me the lantern.”
The girl spoke without looking at him.
“If you try to do it, the fire will die and so will everyone in the world. That’s what he says.”
Harper listened to her voice: That’s what he says. The girl was speaking in the present tense.
“Ella, who is talking to you?”
“Him. He’s out there, in the shadows. He’s telling me what to do.”
Harper scanned the nave.
“There’s no one out there, Ella.”
A death rattle gurgled through the nave. Harper checked over his shoulder, watched Astruc gasp and claw at his throat for breath. The roadie tilted the priest’s head back, trying to clear his airway.
“Do not do this, brother. Do not do this,” the roadie said.
Harper turned back to the girl. “For Christ’s sake, Ella, no one is here. No one is talking to you but me.”
The girl lowered her forehead to focus on the flame; her breath quickened.
“Not you talking . . . Marc Rochat.”
Harper flashed the lad falling through the sky.
“What did you say?”
“He says you need to get your friend out of the way. He says, ‘I’m very sure the fire will hurt him.’”
Same inflection, same tone; it was the lad’s voice. Bloody hell. Clémence tolled through the nave, louder still. They’re dying, the children are all dying. Harper spun around, saw the roadie gathering Astruc in his arms.
“Get away from him!”
“We cannot lose him!”
Harper flew across the altar square, slammed into Krinkle, and knocked him away from Astruc. They rolled over the floor stones, slamming into the wooden benches at the edge of the crossing square. The roadie broke free, reached for Astruc; Harper pulled him back.
“Leave him!”
“No!”
Then the lad’s voice again:
“C’est le guet! Il a sonné l’heure! Il a sonné l’heure!”
Powerful, resonant, hitting a perfect third tone above Clémence; harmonizing, humming, rolling through the nave. A stream of radiant light shot from the lantern high into the lantern tower where it pulsed in time to the sound, then it broke into thousands of glittering shards, tumbling down and disappearing as they touched Astruc’s form. Lausanne Cathedral shuddered a little, as if all the world had come to a gentle stop.
Harper looked at the lantern.
Only a delicate fire at the tip of the wick now, and a new bell sound rumbled through the nave; a deep-throated, comforting sound. It tolled seven times. Marie-Madeleine, Harper thought; the biggest bell, not the oldest one. Fading light passed through stained glass windows along the south aisle and caught bits of limestone falling from the lantern tower. The limestone bits sparkled in reds, blues, greens. Harper checked the angle of light passing through the face of God at the center of the cathedral rose set high in the south transept wall. The protected zone around the cathedral had rejoined real time. Evening it was, 19:00 hours. Harper sat up, leaned into the benches.
“Sicut erat in principio,” he said.
“In principio erat Verbum,” Krinkle answered, pulling himself from the floor to join Harper. He laughed a little.
“I have to say, brother, on a scale of one to ten on the exothermic reaction meter, I’d give that a billion. Was it like that the last time?”
“Sorry?”
“The first fire. Was it like that the last time it went live?”
Harper thought about it. “From what they allow me to see on my timeline, sort of.”
Krinkle looked up into the lantern tower, watched as limestone bits fell.
“You know, I’m not too sure how much more of that this place can take,” he said.
Harper brushed dust from the shoulders of his mac. “Not much, would be my guess.”
They sat in meditative silence a few minutes, taking in the scene. It looked normal except for the young girl in the black floppy hat and long black cloak, holding a lantern over the form of a defrocked priest.
“Do I need to check on Brother Astruc?” Krinkle said. “I mean he’s alive and all, isn’t he?”
Harper looked at his wristwatch; the second hand was ticking now. He looked at the priest. Resting comfortably in hibernation mode; one breath
, one heartbeat per minute.
“I’d say all’s well for now,” Harper said. “What are our orders from here?”
“Hold till relieved.”
“Right.”
Harper shifted his eyes to the girl. Her breathing had calmed and she relaxed except for her right arm. It was trembling from the weight of the lantern she still held toward Astruc. Harper got to his feet.
“Wait here a minute, would you? I need to talk to her in private.”
“About what?”
“The nature of reincarnated souls, one soul in particular.”
Krinkle got up from the floor stones, parked his butt on the bench. He reached into the pouch of his overalls, pulled a pack of gold-filtered smokes. He lit up and the radiance hit him fast.
“No problem. I’ll just wait here and pretend to forget what you just said.”
“You do that.”
Harper walked to the girl. She didn’t look at him.
“Could you take the lantern, monsieur? I’m very tired.”
He scanned her eyes. The juice had dissipated and the girl was released from whatever spell it was that had had her. Harper took the lantern from her, stood it on the floor stones next to Astruc. He looked around the crossing square, pointed to the wooden benches opposite Krinkle.
“Why don’t we sit down, mademoiselle?”
“Já, þakka þér.” Yes, thank you.
“And maybe we could talk a bit.”
“I’m very tired, monsieur.”
“Sure. Come with me, we’ll sit over there.”
He led her to the benches and she sat. Harper sat at the far end of the same bench. She watched him with heavy, exhausted eyes, studying the distance between them. She got up, walked closer to him, sat down next to him.
“What did you want to talk about, monsieur?”
“It’s about the lad. The one who called the hour before you. A little earlier, you said . . .”
Her heavy eyes closed and she fell toward him. Her head landed on his chest. Harper sat very still.
“Ella?”
The new one was sound asleep.
THREE
She squeezed through the gap and eased her way into the stairwell. She reached for the handrail, braced herself, and straddled the dead woman. There was a Glock 35 on the next step; the retracted slide said the gun was empty.
She stepped over the body and saw an iPhone in the woman’s left hand. She leaned down, pulled away the phone, and pressed the power switch. The screen asked for a nine-digit code. Icons at the top of the screen read plenty of battery, but no signal. She slid the phone into the pocket of her cloak and looked at the body again. She saw a gold ring on the dead woman’s left hand. The woman was married; had to be the missing boy’s mother. She felt the woman’s trousers and coat pockets: empty.
“Doesn’t make sense. Why was I inside the vault with your kid?”
She counted her way up the steps, listening for signs of anyone ahead. At step seventeen she reached the two men in camouflage. Matching Brügger & Thomet submachine guns strapped around their shoulders; both breeches open, both weapons spent. The Glock 35s in their hands were spent, too. She patted down the men. No wallets or IDs, but they had phones hooked to their belts. She reached over and tested each one. Both asked for a nine-digit code; plenty of battery, no signal. She looked at the men’s faces. Unlike the dead woman, they were still identifiable, but she did not know them.
She looked at the woman at the bottom of the stairs. The body down there was dressed in civilian clothes; the bodies up here wore matching camouflage. But all three had carried Glock 35s and cell phones locked with nine-digit codes. All on the same side, she thought. She pulled her own gun from her belt, set her index finger along the trigger guard. She remembered that’s the way it was done; then she remembered her own gun was a Glock 35.
“We were all on the same side. But who the hell were ‘we’?”
She leaned around the corner of the stairwell and saw a long hallway where the fluorescent lamps sputtered on and off like strobe lights. The passage was more tunnel than hall: one and a half feet wide, six feet high. There were brass casings and discarded ammo magazines scattered over the floor. She listened for a voice or a moan. There was nothing but the buzz of the fluorescent lamps.
“Nice and slow, whoever the fuck you are, girl.”
She stepped up between the men’s bodies and into the tunnel. She walked slowly over the brass casings, trying not to slip, trying not to make a sound. Her eyes adjusted to the erratic bursts of light and she began to see things. Walls pockmarked with bullet scars and slash marks and wild patterns of blood spatter. Closer: bone chips and brain matter embedded in the walls. The signs read there’d been a hellish firefight here resulting in multiple head shots. She didn’t bother to question how she knew such a thing. She filed it away with knowing how to handle a gun and reading French.
“Got to go with it till we get to the really scary stuff and wake up screaming. That’s the rule of fucked-up dreams, n’est-ce pas? Wait a sec.”
She looked back through the flickering light, saw the two dead men at the top of the stairwell. They had been butchered like the woman outside the steel door, but none of the three had taken a bullet wound or head shot. Meaning our side had the guns and the other guys had . . . knives? And there was the blood. The bodies she had seen bled out red and their blood had a metallic smell. The blood on the walls was darker, more viscous, and it reeked. She looked at the blood on her sweater and jeans. Same color, same texture, same foul smell as the blood on the walls. She added it up: She’d been in the middle of the firefight before ending up in the concrete room, one bullet in her Glock. That meant she’d unloaded fourteen rounds into . . . men with knives?
“Weirder and weirder.”
As she thought about it, the idea of talking to herself was fairly weird, too; especially after thinking about it some more and not being able to remember her own name.
She crept to the end of the tunnel, her Glock pointing the way ahead. She looked around the corner. The passage continued ten yards, then cut left. Same scene: dark blood, bone, and brain matter on the walls; brass casings and ammo mags on the floor. She followed on to where the tunnel split into two. This way was clean, that way was a charnel house. She took the clean hall but hit a dead end thirty yards on. She doubled back to take the bloodied hall. She made the same mistake at another intersection and realized she was in a maze of tunnels and the only way out was to follow Charnel House Road. She backtracked, made three more turns, and came to another bloodied stairwell. She raised her Glock to eye level and aimed upstairs. Quiet. She climbed, counted thirty-nine steps to the doorway. She jumped around the corner, panned left to right with her one-bullet gun.
“Jesus.”
She was taking aim at a large, windowless room of wrecked laptops on desks and banks of video monitors on a wall. The room had been sprayed with the same explosive pattern of black blood, bone, and white matter as the tunnels. The ceiling lights were not working here, but dull gray light filled the room through an opening where a steel door had been pried open. Not as thick as the door to the room at the bottom of the stairs, but just as solid.
“So there’s outside. All we have to do is walk outside, see the really scary stuff, and wake up.”
She stepped into the room, saw three clocks on the walls. No numbers on the faces; just black marks for the minutes and hours on white faces, black arms for hours and minutes, long red second hands. The clocks looked familiar, but she had no idea why. The left clock was labeled PST and marked the time at 1:29. On the clock in the middle, labeled GMT, it was 9:29; on the clock on the right, labeled CET, 10:29. Time zones, she thought. Pacific, Greenwich Mean Time, Central European. Question:
“Which fucking time zone am I dreaming in? Or is it all three?”
She noticed the clocks weren’t running, and the second hands of all three were straight up. She looked at the bank of wall monitors. Only the big monito
r in the center was still on, and it crackled and buzzed as a jumble of numbers, symbols, and letters flickered onscreen. She stepped into the middle of the room. Tucked in an alcove opposite the monitors was a desk. It took her a second to make out the body slumped across it. It was the body of a man, wearing the same camouflage as the dead men at the top of the stairwell. She kept her Glock aimed at the open door as she eased across the room. She rounded the desk, pulled away the body. It tumbled to the floor, landed on its back. He’d been sliced open, and his guts dripped onto the floor.
She knelt next to him, patted his pockets: nothing, and the cell phone clip on his belt was empty. She looked at his face again, saw the moist red slash across his throat. She touched the dead man’s forehead. He wasn’t warm, but he wasn’t cold. Come to think of it, the rest of the dead were the same temperature. She thought about her dream so far. It consisted mainly of her seeing and touching dead people. She wondered if this might be a good time to scream her head off and get back to reality. But again, she realized she was unafraid.
“Nothing but a dream.”
She looked around the floor for the man’s cell phone, then atop the desk. No phone, but there were radios and speakers, rows of small monitors with distinct labels: Sitting Room, Kitchen, Hallways, Bedroom One, Bedroom Two, Back Garden, Front Garden. There were more, but the labels were splashed with red blood and a thickening pool had formed on the desktop. Probably where the ones with the knives killed him, she thought. There was a headset with an attached microphone hanging off the desk. It was connected to a panel labeled Comms HQ. She picked it up.
“Hello? Is anybody out there?”
The line was dead.
She dropped the headset. It landed next to a wireless computer keyboard. She stared at it. It was clean but for eight keys; letters and numbers plus the shift key. Each of those keys bore the same bloodied fingerprint.
She looked at the main monitor on the wall. The screen sputtered with one line of data: 1 @ 3 U c G n. Seven characters: three keys using the shift key, four without it. She looked at the dead man on the floor, remembered she found him slumped over the desk. She leaned down to check his hands. His hands and fingers were bloodied but for the index fingers. Both were smudged as having touched something. It’s him, she thought; he typed the characters before he died. She looked down at the dead man, trying to remember if in any of her really fucked-up dreams the dead could speak.
