by Anton Strout
“Alexandra,” he started, but I shut him down.
“I think you should leave. Now.”
Rory stepped forward, moving through the rubble toward him. “I’ll show you out,” she said.
Desmond Locke sighed. “I had hoped to avoid confrontation,” he said, reaching into his coat. “But I’m afraid I will have to insist on that conversation now.”
Even in the low light of the room, the gun in his hand caught the glint of the moonlight outside. Despite my dealing in a lot of arcane and crazy things, the purely mundane weapon set off another kind of panic in my heart.
Rory saw it, too, but ignored it and kept moving for him.
“Stop your little friend, Miss Belarus,” Locke said, angling the gun toward her.
Rory was already raising her weapon, but I was pretty sure the gun could go off a lot faster than her closing with him, regardless of her prowess with the pole arm.
“Rory, don’t!” I said, fighting to stay calm. This was exactly the type of danger I had hoped to keep both my friends out of, yet here we were, in it nonetheless.
Thankfully, Rory stopped, but she kept her weapon still raised.
“I’ve got this one,” I said.
“You sure?” she said, remaining poised for action.
“Positive,” I said, and breathed out one of my words of power. Broken bits of stone statuary were spread out all around us, littering the floor of the art space, and I called out to them with my will, the connection snapping to within me.
Reaching out with my mind’s eye, I aimed the pieces at Desmond Locke and shot them through the air at him. The pieces responded in perfect unison, flying at the man, but just as they were about to hit their target, several of them shattered. The rest followed suit like stone bits of popcorn popping, forming a giant cloud of dust that hung in the air around Locke.
My friends and I backed away, all coughing, but within the cloud itself I could see there had been an invisible barrier surrounding the man, made visible now only due to our circumstance.
As the dust cleared, Locke stepped forward as calm as could be, his hand wrapped around something hanging from his neck. When he opened it, I saw a variety of lanyards and chains, talismans and charms hanging from them all.
Desmond Locke’s eyes went first to Rory, her pole arm now hanging in her hand at her side. Gone were the kind, jovial eyes of the man who had come to visit my father in our home for years. His stare was dark, purposeful, his whole face deadly serious.
“Put that thing away,” he said to Rory, pronouncing each word like an angry father talking to a child. “Before someone truly gets hurt around here.”
Rory looked to me, her eyes full of reluctance, but I nodded. Moving slowly, she took apart the sections of her weapon and, with care, slid them back into their individual compartments within the art tube.
“Much better,” he said, then added, “thank you.”
“What is going on here, Mr. Locke?” I asked. Nothing made a lick of sense to me. Then again, it was hard processing anything sensible with a gun pointed at you. That and all the events of the night had my thoughts going a mile a minute, without hope of any actual destination or understanding.
Desmond Locke turned to face me, a modicum of his old self returning to his eyes, perhaps because no one else was brandishing a weapon in the room except for him. “As I said, I’d like to have that little chat now.”
Marshall laughed, but it was short, nervous, and forced. “I say we let the man talk,” he said, his hands up in the air like he was being robbed.
I remained standing, with my hands at my side, calm on the outside but screaming on the inside.
Months ago, when I was simply being chased on a regular basis by cultists serving Stanis’s father, this type of interior panic would have sent Stanis to my rescue. But now? That time and bond was past, as was that kind of rescue. It formed an unsettled emptiness in me, mixed with genuine fear for my life. Not just mine but those of my friends as well.
I didn’t dare try anything else with Desmond Locke, for fear of their lives more than mine. I raised my hands, slow, until I stood there like Marshall was.
“Fine,” I said, not able to hide all of the bitter anger behind the word. “You want to talk? Talk.”
Desmond Locke shook his head, looking around at the destruction in both the art studio and library halves of the entire floor.
“Not here,” he said, cocking back the top part of his gun, something within it clicking. “Whatever did this might return.”
“So where, then?” I asked, desperately hoping that the “whatever” that did all this would show his ass now.
“Come with me,” he said, falling in behind Marshall, the gun pressed close to my friend’s back. “And trust me, you don’t want to find out what happens if you don’t.”
“Do we have a choice?” I asked, starting to pick my way toward the stairs leading down through the building, but Mr. Locke didn’t respond, simply driving us down through the old building and out onto the street.
Hopefully, he wasn’t leading us all to our death.
Ten
Alexandra
I never liked being down in the Wall Street area in the evenings. Once the suits and market makers had left, the neighborhood always became a bit of a ghost town. That night, however, it was a shame because as Desmond Locke’s driver pulled up in front of an abandoned and dilapidated church that sat in the shadow of Trinity Church on Trinity Place, I would have loved there to be a crowd around so that the three of us might stand a chance of escaping into it.
Instead, Desmond Locke stepped out of the car first, then gestured us out of it with the business end of his gun.
I stared up at the old church in front of us, the building one of my great-great-grandfather’s, but one that was relatively unfamiliar to me. It was more garish than his usual design, lacking the Gothic integrity of most of Alexander’s work in Manhattan, which I suppose made it no surprise that the building looked completely abandoned.
Its heavy wooden doors were boarded over with a mishmash of slats and boards, but despite their appearance, Locke guided us toward them. Once in the shadowy arch of the cruciform base of the church, he moved to the boards blocking the door. He grabbed at one of the solid beams, then easily lifted it on a hidden pivot point, which allowed him to swing open the mass of boards, revealing a cleverly disguised entrance into the building behind them. They swung away as one, and Locke, again gesturing with the gun in his hand, forced us in through them.
Once inside, he secured the door before he turned and motioned us forward through the entryway into the church proper.
I pushed through the inner doors, but what greeted me was nothing like what I expected. The large open nave I thought would be filled with rows and rows of pews and kneelers was instead bustling with activity that gave it more of an office-warehouse vibe. The left side of the enormous area was filled with office space and cubicles behind a half wall, and people working in there. The other side was stacked high with caged-off shelves crammed with boxes, books, and sundry other items I couldn’t identify from where I stood.
I stepped into the space of the main aisle down the middle of the room, taking it all in as the four of us walked along.
“This doesn’t exactly scream church to me,” I said.
“Nor should it,” he said, continuing on. “Let’s just call this a different affiliation of mine.”
I threw him a suspicious look. “I take it my father isn’t part of this particular religious affiliation?”
Desmond Locke shook his head.
“I should say not,” he said. “And I wouldn’t exactly call the Libra Concordia a religious endeavor, although its roots can be traced back through various denominations of Christianity.”
I stopped walking. “Libra Concordia?”
“Balance,” said Marshall, stepping forward. “With one heart.”
“Very good, Mr. Blackmoore,” Locke said. “You know your Lat
in.”
Marshall shrugged. “Dead languages and gaming go hand in hand.”
Locke laughed at that. “Apparently, they do.”
“What is this place?” I asked.
Rory stepped over to one of the open gates of the caged-off area and reached through it for one of the boxes on the shelves. “What is all this?”
Locke reached for her hand to stop her, but Rory’s reflexes were quicker, and she pulled away before he could grab her.
“We call it the Hall of Mysteries,” he said, “for lack of anything more imaginative, and it is just that.”
“How did you accumulate it?” I asked.
“We’ve amassed a great many findings over the years, things the Church might look upon as . . . miracles.”
“Or damnation,” Marshall added. “If any part of this is what I think it is . . .”
Desmond Locke folded his hands together, the gun still in his right one, but lowered now. “And what do you think this is, Mr. Blackmoore?”
“I think you have a whole lot of what you say . . . mysteries. But if the Church caught wind of this collection of yours, it could go one of two ways.”
“And those would be . . . ?” Locke smiled.
“If I go by history,” Marshall continued, “one perception would be that anything of power could be seen to be tools of the Devil by your Church, the types of things that got people burned at the stake or flayed alive.”
“What other way would the Church react?” Rory asked. “Going with that strategy seemed to get them through the Salem witch trials just fine.”
Marshall stepped to the restricted area, raised his hands, and looped his fingers through the gate itself, eyes looking at the contents behind it. “Well, some might see all this and reckon it as definitive proof of God. Technically, everything ‘magic’ here is a miracle. Either way, I’m pretty sure the Church wouldn’t want the world to know about any of this.”
“Marsh, you’re sounding conspiracy-crazy,” Rory said. “Like tinfoil-hat territory.”
Was it, though? I turned my attention back to Desmond Locke, who was standing there looking like he was almost enjoying all of this.
“Who are your people?” I asked. “What is a Libra Concordia?”
“We are the Libra Concordia,” he said, gesturing to indicate the entirety of the activity within the church. “Long ago, the Church decided in its wisdom that while much of its trade was invested in the idea of ‘miracles,’ there was much in the world that didn’t fit with the Church itself that could also be called ‘miraculous.’”
“Magic,” I said.
“As clever as your friend here,” Locke said with a nod. “So while some thought it best to burn witches and warlocks—their books, charms—there were also those in the fold who thought it best to keep track of such things instead of destroying them. Thus was the Libra Concordia born.”
Rory laughed, but there was bitterness in it. “And the powers that be are just fine with all this? Doesn’t it amount to blasphemy in their eyes?”
Desmond Locke gave a tight smile. “Let’s just say that the ideology of some of our members does not fall in line with many of the current administrations; I hear we are quite unpopular in Vatican City.”
“So you’re outlaws,” I said. “Tsk, tsk, Mr. Locke.”
“Such an ugly word,” he said. “The early members of the Libra Concordia set about going underground centuries ago, men and women with a more . . . long-term view of what may or may not be gained by having such arcane knowledge.”
I smiled at that. I had always dismissed Desmond Locke as a religious fanatic, doing what he was told within the confines of the religion with which he held sway over my father, but it seemed there was more to him than just that. Desmond Locke was a freethinker and, in the eyes of his own religion, a bit of a heretic.
Locke raised his gun once again, but not at us, the barrel instead pointed straight up into the air. He wagged the firearm back and forth. “I trust I can dispense with this, Miss Belarus?”
“Preferably,” I said.
“Good,” he said, sliding the gun inside his jacket. “Dreadful things. Necessary at times, I suppose, but dreadful nonetheless.” He turned away from us without looking back and once more started down the center aisle of the church.
I looked to Rory, then Marshall, who half looked like he was ready to run for the doors. I raised my hands out in front of me, palms down.
“Steady,” I whispered. “Whatever these people are, we need to see this through.”
Marshall made to argue, but Rory elbowed him.
“Relax,” she said. “I’ve got your back.”
“You didn’t a second ago when there was a gun pointed at us,” he grumbled.
Rory went to argue back, but I laid a hand on her shoulder. “Save the bickering for home,” I said. “The gun’s put away. That’s a step in the right direction, yes?”
This seemed convincing enough for Marshall, and he walked off after Desmond Locke, Rory and I falling in behind him as quick as we could.
Marshall’s eyes fixed on the rows and rows of shelves off to our right as we continued down the aisle.
“So is there, like, an Arc of the Covenant down here?” Marshall asked.
Mr. Locke turned to look back at him. “I’ll have to check,” he said, “but I doubt it.”
Halfway down the waist-high wall of dark wood to our left, Locke swung open a hinged half door and ushered us into an area beyond it that was fill with a desk, several plush leather chairs, and a couch that sat to our right. He stepped behind the desk, gesturing to the empty chairs directly across from it. Marshall and I took the chairs while Rory sat on the edge of the couch, perched and ready for action at a moment’s notice.
“So why have you brought us here?” I asked.
“Do you know how your father and I met?”
I shrugged. “Bible study camp?”
Locke laughed. “No, not that young, I’m afraid,” he said. “I was already in my late twenties and working for this organization when we he and I met. I learned of him because the Libra Concordia keeps its ears to the ground when they hear rumors of strange things happening in the world.”
“Like when the image of Christ appears in a tortilla out in New Mexico?” Marshall asked.
Locke nodded. “Or a weeping statue of Mary or any variety of such things reported to us, yes.”
“Sounds tedious,” I said.
“Truthfully?” he said. “It is. But if discovering the great mysteries of the world were easy, everyone would take to our calling. Sadly, our numbers are few.”
“But why come after my father?” I asked, steering him back to the point of his original question.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Forgive me. I first came to New York decades ago, chasing down a particular story that was passing in hushed whispers throughout the churches here—that of a young boy who claimed he had seen an angel.”
I tried to hide any reaction to his words. “My father’s gone on and on about that all my life,” I said. I left out the part where only this past year I learned it had been the work of Stanis saving him from Kejetan’s cronies. Still, Locke definitely had my interest. What I needed to know was how much he and his Libra Concordia knew about the truth of it all. “Forgive me if I seem a bit bored hearing about my father’s angel again.”
“Your father was a persuasive man,” he said. “More so back then. By the time I tracked him down, and he told me his tale, I knew I had met someone special.”
“I won’t argue that,” I said. “Every girl thinks her daddy is special, after all.”
“Naturally,” he said with a patient smile. “But the Church’s official stance on miracles such as a visitation by the divine is a bit dismissive. They know there are those among their flock who simply make up stories or, in their fervor, believe they have actually seen such things. The Church doesn’t usually move on something until a whole village has seen a weeping statue or some such thi
ng. But with my grander interests, well . . . I like to give even the craziest of tales due diligence. See how they play out.”
“You don’t sound like you believe in miracles,” I said.
Desmond Locke shrugged. “In my profession, you see proof of what falls in line with the arcane more than you do the divine.”
“And you don’t consider any of that miraculous?” I asked.
Locke shook his head.
Marshall cleared his throat and spoke. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” he said.
I turned to look at him. “Did you just make that up?”
“Afraid not,” he said. “That honor belongs to Arthur C. Clarke.”
“But Mr. Blackmoore is more or less correct,” Locke pointed out.
“Care to explain?” I asked.
Marshall paused for a moment in thought before speaking. “Back in the good ole witch-burning days, people took the things they couldn’t explain and called them magic. Eclipses, magnetism, earthquakes. But over time, as we’ve discovered the how and why of things through science, the magical mystery of it all is sort of rolled back.”
“Precisely,” Locke said. “To my way of thinking, magic is simply a science we have yet to fully understand.”
“But what does that have to do with my father and angels?” I asked. “Angels still fall in the miracle category, right? Divine servants of God and all that?”
“And there’s the thing,” Locke said, leaning forward in his chair, whispering conspiratorially to me. “I don’t think your father saw an angel. I think it might have been something else.”
“Such as . . . ?” I said, holding on to the arms of my chair, my stomach clenching as I feared hearing Stanis’s name come from his lips.
“Of that I am not quite sure,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “That is where you come in.”
“If you’re so concerned about Alexandra’s father and what he saw, why not ask him?” Rory asked.
“Religion is an easy way to find the unexplainable at times,” Locke said. “I studied your father for years as we became friends. His belief in this divine angel was so strong that I was always reluctant to broach discussion of magic with him. I thought that if it was magic that was surely at hand, it would reveal itself over time, but your father never spoke of it.”
