The Way of Sorrows

by Jon Steele

  “And getting out?”

  “Very close to the chapel there is a passage to the quarries beneath the church.”

  “Let me guess: You know of a hidden tunnel that leads back up to the streets.”

  “Yes, but it was walled up in the nineteenth century. We will need to blow through the wall.”

  “I got what we need in the duffel bag,” Krinkle said.

  “Right. First, we light up the shrine and set up candles at all the doors and passageways in and out of here. Stand the candles in six-point formations, keep the formations close together.”

  “Why?” Krinkle said.

  “Tell you later.”

  Harper opened the door of the lad’s lantern; they all reached in with their candles. At first the wicks would not light, then came a bright spark and four new flames were born. They moved quickly. When they were done, Astruc and Katherine met Harper at the entrance to the shrine, each holding a lighted candle in one hand and a bunch of candles in the other.

  “Done. Krinkle’s doing the doors and passageways.”

  Harper studied the shrine. The door was shut and locked; the path leading to it was lined with towering candle stands topped with dead electric flame-shaped lamps. But their own candles had lit up the red marble stone of the shrine and it glowed with a flickering light. So did the rays of gold light in the dome high overhead, and there were still stars in the dark center of the dome.

  Flash.

  Roman soldiers ram a crown of thorns down on the head of their prisoner. His scalp is sliced open, and blood drips in his eyes and down his chest. The soldiers cut the prisoner down from the pillar; he falls. They drag him into the courtyard, load a heavy timber across his shoulders, lash his hands to it. They haul him to his feet, march him through the narrow streets of the upper city. People on balconies and in the streets spit on the prisoner, curse him. Coming to Gennath Gate now, falling to his knees once more. The prisoner raises his head. Through the blood in his eyes he sees the black stones of Golgotha. Two prisoners had already been crucified. One was hanging from his cross; the other, his hands nailed to a crossbeam, was being hoisted up onto a post. Give me strength . . .

  Blink.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Harper said.

  He hustled along the passageway to the entrance hall; Katherine and Astruc followed. He pointed to the ambulatory ahead and the stairs going up to the Chapel of the Crucifixion.

  “Those two places next. Madame Taylor, take the ambulatory. Astruc, take the stairs and the chapel inside. I’ll do the Anointing Stone.”

  Astruc ran up the stairs, and Katherine headed into the ambulatory. They laid walls of fire across the access points. Harper set the lad’s lantern on the stone slab and built a wide oval-shaped firewall around it. He called to Astruc.

  “Can you jump down from there into the ambulatory and get around the rotunda, Padre?”

  “Or I could take the second set of stairs at the side of the chapel.”

  “Whatever, you’re up there for now.”

  Krinkle was approaching from the passageway. Harper pointed to the floor stones. “Set candles at the crossing into the entrance hall.”

  Krinkle dropped to his knees, started arranging candles and lighting them. “You want to tell me why I’m doing it while I’m doing it, brother?”

  Harper gathered the calfskins from the Anointing Stone, rolled them up and tied them closed with rope. “Something I read in the scrolls. The scribe wrote he saw six angels set fires in six-point formations around their camp. He wrote it looked like they were setting themselves behind unseen walls drawn by the fires. He wrote the light of the fires crossed the desert and pierced his eyes.”

  Harper saw bingo race through the roadie’s eyes.

  “We used the first fire as cover,” Krinkle said, “because goons couldn’t jump the first fire. Why the hell wouldn’t we know that in nowtimes?”

  “You said it yourself, the savior mission was a black ops job. No one knew about it, not even HQ. Everything about it was wiped from our timelines, including that bit of intel.”

  “Perhaps the enemy’s fear of the first fire is only superstition,” Astruc mused aloud, tugging at his beard.

  Harper shrugged. “Who cares, Padre? If it works, it works, and we’ve got ourselves a kill box.”

  “What if it isn’t superstition?” Katherine said. “And what if you guys can’t jump the fire, either?”

  Harper looked at Astruc and Krinkle; they were both looking at him.

  “Madame Taylor makes a good point,” Astruc said.

  Harper grabbed the roadie’s duffel bag, stuffed the calfskins inside, and zipped the bag closed. He picked it up and faced the candles on the floor, staring at the haze of light rising before him.

  “Here goes.”

  He passed through the firewall.

  “Impressive,” Krinkle said.

  Harper walked toward him, tossed the duffel to him through the roadie’s firewall. The roadie caught it.

  “Careful, brother. It’s full of things that go boom.”

  “Sorry. Here’s the deal: The goons will come through those doors in waves.”

  “You sure?”

  “Father Astruc’s priestly touch is causing me flashes. This hall lines up along the last steps of the Way of Sorrows. Just now, the goons are like me, they’ve got no bloody choice but to walk the walk, including Komarovsky. When the first wave materializes, wait for them to charge so we know they’re not apparitions. We take as many down as we can with head shots.”

  “Oh,” Krinkle said. “I forgot to tell you. The new ammo is for body shots. Anywhere within a five-inch circle of dead center.”

  Harper looked at him. “But a head shot will do just as well, yeah?”

  “Oh yeah. We just have more kill for the bullet on this job.”

  “Good to know. Astruc and Madame Taylor—”

  “For God’s sake, Harper. Considering we’re about to go to war, do you think you guys could just call me Kat and save your breath?”

  Astruc and Krinkle were looking at Harper again.

  “Your call, brother. Command protocols in back-to-the-wall jobs come under the heading of ‘your friggin’ job.’”

  “Fine. Komarovsky is on the same clock we are. He needs to kill Max in the midnight hour. We hold the entrance long enough for Komarovsky to know he’s got a fight on his hands. When I give the call, Astruc and Madame Taylor fall back to the rotunda through the ambulatory. Krinkle falls back from the passageway. Set up at the shrine, establish a fire line, and hold.”

  “Then what?” Katherine said.

  “That depends on Komarovsky. Our mission is to secure your son by any means that will buy me enough time to give the all-clear.”

  “What do you mean ‘buy enough time’?” Krinkle said. “You do it as soon as we get Max.”

  Harper shook his head. “There is no all-clear until Komarovsky is finished. He does not get away this time. Otherwise Max will never be safe. Sorting Komarovsky is my job. Is that understood?”

  Harper checked the nodding heads: one, two . . . Katherine did not nod. He stared at her through the glow of their firewalls. She had that same I’m just here to get my son back expression on her face.

  “Is that understood, Madame Taylor?”

  Her emerald-colored eyes sparked in the light. As he watched her, a thought dropped in Harper’s head. A voice calling from the other side of the universe asking for confirmation that all was well in paradise and if the next stage of evolution had begun; that was the brief from Astruc. Looking at Katherine Taylor just now, Harper sensed the next stage of evolution had begun. Katherine Taylor wasn’t just the mother of the child conceived in light or the child of the prophecy or just an ordinary little boy called Max; she was the mother of a new life-form on the planet. Question: Then why the hell did Inspector Gobet send her into a battle zone with minimal chance of survival? The dead soldier in Harper’s head dropped an answer: If the cop wanted you to k
now, he would have bloody well told you, boyo.

  “Yeah, I understand, Harper,” Katherine said. “What I don’t understand is why the walls are moving.”

  Harper scanned the massive space of the entrance hall. He saw it: walls bending outward, ceiling rising, the floor stones stretching and widening like some insane hallucination.

  Astruc called down from the top of the stairs. “Komarovsky is creating another dimension of space-time within the walls of the church so he can fit in as many goons as he wants.”

  “You mean he’s making this place bigger?” Katherine said.

  “It won’t be bigger in reality,” Krinkle called from his position. “But it will sure as hell feel like it.”

  Katherine looked at Harper; he was staring at her again. “What?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Is there something else on your mind besides space-time? Or are you just making eyes at me?” she said.

  Harper pulled one of his SIGs from his belt and loaded a round into the firing chamber: ka-clack.

  “There was something on my mind, but I think I figured it out.”

  “From what I’m told, you always do,” Katherine said.

  Harper turned, faced the doors of the church. Flying into our last battle on the back of myths and legends, the roadie had said . . . Hang on. He reached into his sports coat, found the matchbox from LP’s Bar, and dropped it in his trousers pocket. Then he dug through the coat again and pulled out the regimental tie of the 28th Artists Rifles. It was still knotted, and he slipped it over his head and fitted it around his neck.

  “Nice tie, brother,” Krinkle called from beyond his firewall.

  Harper looked at him. “Cheers, mate. How much time left?”

  The roadie looked at his watch. “None.”

  Then came the tolling of a single bell in the tower, tolling in threes and sixes. They’re dying; the children are dying . . . Like Clémence, the execution bell in the belfry of Lausanne Cathedral. Swell, Harper thought, just what the world needs: a One True God with a fucked-up sense of humor. Harper picked up the lad’s lantern, held it at his side.

  “They’re here.”

  ii

  The great doors of the church were opened by unseen hands, and the sounds of Jerusalem’s war rushed in. The dark sky above the rooftops sparkled with stars and tracer fire. On the ground, sixteen shadows appeared in the outer courtyard. They floated toward the church and held at the threshold. Slowly, they crept across and floated over the floor stones. They wandered like blind things feeling their way. When they neared the firewalls, they pulled back.

  “What do you know? It works,” Harper said.

  The shadows gathered in the center of the floor in a wedge formation. One at the point, then two, then three, then a line of ten; then there were sixteen goons in black jumpsuits and balaclavas. They were crouching low to the floor. They rose to their feet with heads bowed and revealed the lances in their hands. The weapons were ancient and well-used things; wood staves, iron pyramidal tips and shanks. They raised their faces and opened their dead black eyes. The goon at the point scanned the faces behind the firewalls. It locked its dark eyes on Katherine Taylor for a long moment before addressing Harper.

  “Surrender the whore,” it said.

  Harper looked at Katherine. “I guess it means you, Madame Taylor.”

  “I guess it does.”

  “Do you feel like being surrendered?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Fine.” He turned to the goon.”Sod off.”

  He put a bullet into the goon’s head. The thing glowed like being set alight from within and it dropped; its dead black eyes melted and dripped from its skull. The rest of the goons charged; Katherine, Krinkle, and Astruc opened up. The goons whirled like dervishes; they deflected the bullets with the flat sides of their lances. Harper held the lad’s lantern high.

  “C’est le guet! Il a sonné l’heure!”

  The flame in the lantern and all the flames in the church flared with the light of the sun and the goons were truly blinded. SIGs emptied. Five seconds later, the floor stones were littered with brain-fried goons; fifteen seconds later their forms turned to ash. A menacing wind rushed through the doors and scattered it. The firewalls dimmed as the ash tried to choke out the candles. Harper held the lad’s lantern high over his head.

  “Transit umbra, lux permanet!”

  The firewalls held and the ash dissolved into oblivion. The wind died away. Except for the war in the real world, there was no sound.

  “Reload,” Harper said.

  Clicks and clacks sounded as ammo magazines were swapped out. Katherine Taylor’s voice echoed off the stone walls.

  “Okay, that’s sixteen less of them.”

  “That was only a recon unit,” Astruc said. “Probing our defensives, reporting our numbers, seeing who is who.”

  “But they’re dead, they won’t be reporting anything,” Katherine said.

  Krinkle called from beyond the firewall at the passageway. “Komarovsky can see the world through their eyes. Before their eyes melted in their heads, I mean.”

  Harper stared at Katherine. “And he sure as hell saw you.”

  She stared back. “I guess he did.”

  Bloody hell, so that’s it, Harper thought.

  He lifted the lantern from the Anointing Stone, passed through his firewall, and walked to Krinkle. “Take the lantern, stash it quick. If they kill this fire, they kill the rest.”

  “Roger that.”

  Harper returned to his position. He faced the door.

  Flash.

  . . . the prisoner staggers through the killing fields of Golgotha; he cannot support the crossbeam on his shoulders any longer. He falls a third time, this time on his back. The crossbeam hits the back of his head and drives the crown of thorns deeper into his skull. The prisoner cries out in agony, and blood spills onto the black rock. The Roman commander stands over the man, kicks him in the side. The commander is not pleased with the prisoner’s dulled senses. He turns to his soldiers, calls for the Essene healer attending the crucifixion. The commander wants the prisoner conscious when the nails are hammered into his flesh . . .

  Blink.

  Fifteen goons in black now, all taking form in the entrance hall of the church. They were tall, powerfully built. This time they stood in a Cannae formation behind bloodred shields; three sets of two to the left and the right, three soldiers in line at the middle, inviting Harper to attack at their weak center. The goons drew short swords, slapped them against their shields, and marched ahead.

  “Let ’em have it.”

  Harper fired three rounds into the goons, one went down. Katherine, Krinkle, and Astruc opened up and two more goons dropped. The rest raised their shields and formed a shell. Spark rounds ricocheted off stone and ripped through the hall. Harper charged, hit the ground, and slid into the middle of the formation. He pulled one of the goons to the ground, pressed his SIG point-blank against the thing’s body mass, and fired. The goon skidded back and broke open the formation. Harper pulled a shield over himself as bullets rained down on the goons. The bullets stopped, and Harper tossed the shield aside. He was surrounded by goons bleeding dead black from their eyes.

  “Fall back.”

  Astruc charged down the chapel’s back stairs; Katherine got up and followed the priest down the ambulatory. Krinkle called to Harper.

  “Hey, brother, you sure about this?”

  Flash.

  . . . the Essene touches the prisoner’s bloody lips with a sponge soaked in myrrh. The prisoner revives a little, looks into the Essene’s eyes. “Remember these words, healer, pass them to those who will take me down from the cross.” The prisoner’s voice is weak and he speaks in a whisper. The Essene leans close to him and listens . . .

  Blink.

  “I’m sure,” Harper said. “We’re about to have a visitor.”

  Krinkle, Astruc and Katherine retreated. Harper got to his feet. He kicked the
dead goon closest to him. The thing turned to ash. He walked around the floor stones kicking each of them; they all turned to ash. He waited for the rush of wind to come through the doors, but it did not come, and for the moment the courtyard was clear of incoming shadows. Harper smiled to himself. Komarovsky was out there thinking things over, unsure of his next move. The real world reflected the pause, and the sounds of war in the Old City quieted.

  “Right.”

  He stuffed his killing knife in its sheath, leaned down, and picked up one of the swords from the floor stones. He crossed back behind his firewall at the Anointing Stone. His right thigh throbbed, and he saw blood seeping through the bandage. The roadie had hit him with an injector jet and he felt no pain, but the wound had broken open.

  “Swell.”

  Outside the church a grinding roar echoed off the stone walls of the courtyard. Harper scanned the real world beyond the doors. He saw the attack chopper, hovering low over the rooftops now. Its nose stooped into a firing position and a Hydra rocket fired from its left wing—whoosh—and then came a mighty crump as the rocket found its target. The thick walls of the church trembled as a fireball rose into the night.

  “Really, really swell.”

  He knelt on one knee. He laid the SIG and sword on the ground. He tightened the bandage to stop the bleeding. When he finished, he looked at his hands. For a second he thought it was blood smeared from his leg; then he saw droplets of blood seeping through the bioskin gloves covering his palms.

  Flash.

  . . . the commander orders two of his soldiers to step on the prisoner’s wrists. When they do, the commander kneels near the prisoner’s head, leans over him, and presses the point of the first nail into the prisoner’s left palm. The commander raises a hammer, swings down hard, and drives the nail through the prisoner’s hand. My God! The commander presses the point of the second nail into the prisoner’s right palm and swings down again with the hammer once, twice, thrice. Ahhh! The prisoner is suspended in a place of crushing pain. He sees the commander’s face; black drool drips from the corners of his mouth and his silver eyes are wide with rapture . . .

  Blink.