Hound of Eden Omnibus

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Good morning, Rex.” Aaron peered in around the edge of the unlocked door, his polite smile wilting around the edges when he saw me holstering my weapon. I had much the same impression of him that I’d had on first meeting: the priest was gym-fit, with a pleasantly attractive round face and an annoyingly thin mustache set beneath two button eyes. “Sorry to disturb you. All ready to go?”

  “Almost.” I packed the books away into a suitcase, slung my overcoat on, and wrapped Binah’s unattached leash around my hand. She had come out to sit and study with me for a time, but had now made herself scarce. Following my intuition, I went to the bathroom and found her scrabbling in the new litter box. Just as well: I doubted the senior pastor would be amused if she were to borrow a corner of his office.

  “You… uhh…” Aaron reached up to adjust his collar when I returned with Binah clinging to her favorite place over my shoulder. “Is that..?”

  “She’s a necessary tool of the job.” I walked past him without pausing. Someone who didn’t stop to permit criticism was often allowed to continue doing what they were doing. “Today will be interesting. I don’t know much about the Church, but I had a colorful encounter with a member of your congregation once.”

  I’d expected an NYPD police chaplain to arrive in a squad car or a mid-range sedan of some kind, like a Volvo or a Camry. Instead, I passed through the garage door and found myself before a very large, very new top-of-the-line Cadillac. It crouched like a panther, gleaming under the lights over the entries to the clubhouse and Strange Kitty.

  “Colorful?” Aaron went around to the driver’s side with the casual bearing of a man who wasn’t immediately conscious that he was getting into a thirty-five thousand dollar car.

  “Uh… yes. Colorful.” I swallowed, recomposed myself, and opened my door to sit down. Binah and I were immediately engulfed in padded black leather, polished wood, and the unmistakable smell of new money. “He was a violent, judgmental sort.”

  “Violent? If he’s part of Pastor Christopher’s congregation, I hope he’ll teach this man that the only one around these parts who’s allowed to judge anyone is God.” Aaron fired up the car and started us on our way. The mouthfeel of the engine was at least as pleasant as Zane’s Harley. “Where was this?”

  “Outside the Manhattan Center.”

  “He may have been dropping in for his first service,” Aaron said. “We get a lot of crazies come in just for the coffee, too. A lot of people attend church with this very superficial mentality, you know… “I’ll just pray and everything will be fine.” They think they’ll just turn up and not have to do any work. But that’s not what being human is about… real effort is the best form of worship. Jesus was a carpenter, for crying out loud.”

  I stroked Binah’s head and nodded along. I couldn’t disagree with the sentiment, but according to the Bible, I was also a heretical inheritor of Simon Magus and expressly condemned to eternal torment. I had never seen eye to eye with the religious.

  “Well, looks like I got ranting again. I get a bit carried away sometimes.” The Pastor laughed a little, starting us north towards Manhattan.

  “To be very honest, I’m mostly sitting here and wallowing in your Cadillac. The NYPD must be paying better these days if you were able to buy this without selling your kidney.”

  He laughed again, louder this time. “Oh, this? Well, like I said… work is the best form of worship. I work two jobs and have a few investments tucked away.”

  The cynic in me had to wonder if those investments were of the kind able to be cut and snorted, but I erred on the side of social grace and held my tongue.

  We didn’t go to the Manhattan Center. Instead, we went to Times Square and rumbled down a one-way side-street, pulling up to park across from an elegant Art Deco facade. It was built into a strip of stately old hotels. The flagpoles outside carried an American flag, and a royal purple and gold INRI flag with the cross and crown.

  “You know, I always wondered something about, well, sorcerers,” Aaron said, once we were out on the pavement. “What your familiar actually do?”

  “She likes to eat shoelaces and vomit them on the bathroom rug.” I set her on the ground. Binah froze in place, watching cars rush by. What little fur she had stood on end, so I sighed, scooped her up, and put her on my shoulder to cross the street. “I think it’s less about what she does, and more about what she is. What she is, is deeply attuned to me and my work. She sees a lot of things I would otherwise miss… I’ve noticed that my memory has improved significantly since she came into my life.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, perhaps you should get her one of those little service animal vests? It’s hard for people to know why you’re carrying her around, otherwise.” Aaron smiled, a little frazzled and a little tired, and then led the way in through the rotating glass doors.

  The doors led into an ornate Gotham foyer: black marble floor, dusky granite walls, a lot of glass and old polished wood. There were two receptionists, one male and one female. Banners and flags were on display in here, too, along with a large gold crucifix mounted on the open balcony railing, directly over the reception desk.

  “If services are held in the Hammerstein, what’s this place for?” I asked, as Aaron led me up one of the swooping staircases to the balcony level.

  “We mix around a few venues, actually. The mass public services are for Receiving members and seekers, people who are curious or who would like to worship in a safe space,” Aaron said. “This is our headquarters for the East Coast. We hold services and classes for Confirmed members of the Church.”

  “Confirmed?” Both Binah and I were looking around as we were lead an open-plan bookstore. It was comfortable and elegant up here, but a little less personal than a pre-modern church facility. I felt a twinge of instinct as Binah looked towards a room off-side the bookstore. The wall was painted in intricate Biblical murals which prominently featured a very blond, remarkably fit White Jesus. There was a bean-shaped sofa, and a video playing on a large screen in front of it. I caught a glimpse of a man speaking at a lectern across a massive sweep of congregation. Father Zach’s TV show, I supposed.

  “The Confirmed are people who have been baptized into the church. They make some pretty strong commitments to banish their inner evils, commit to work and grow into the rewards worship offers.” Aaron drew up at an inset door at the back of the room, swiped a card, and punched in a sequence of numbers to let us inside. “We’re fundamentally a Reformed denomination, so Confirmed members are those who have been ‘confirmed’ as elect.”

  “I see.” I’d never heard of ‘banishing inner evils’ as being part of any Christian denomination, but humans were always finding new and elaborate ways to beat themselves up. “How do you determine if someone is… ready for baptism?”

  “They have talk to one of our auditors. Counselors, basically. They work through their goals and their strengths and weaknesses with them, look at what they need to fix inside themselves and in their relationships with other people and God.”

  We emerged into a narrow white-brick service hallway, and took another door into a larger, far more welcoming corridor. The old hotel rooms had been converted to what looked like glass-fronted classrooms or seminar rooms, a few of which were already occupied with teachers setting up for the day. Tables and chairs, books on the tables, whiteboards up front. The rooms were all named according to the donors who had furnished them.

  On the way past, I leaned back to look through the window to glance at the cover on one of the books. Financial Breakthrough: Find Your True Wealth. “Are there many of these counselors?”

  “In New York? Quite a few.” We drew up to a door at the end of the corridor, where Aaron knocked. There was a murmur from inside. With a smile, Aaron opened the door and held it for me. It was time to meet Pastor Christopher.

  The room was quite immediately blue and red: dark royal blue walls, red chairs, stained cherrywood furniture. The Pastor rose to his feet with a placid smile, and fo
r a moment, I froze in the threshold. Christopher was tall and lean, handsome, very pale-skinned, very dark-haired. My mind transmuted his face into Vassily’s for a moment, because they looked so similar… right down to their ink-blue eyes.

  “Pastor Kincaid, this is Rex, our… the consultant who helping the SSU with the Wolf Grove case.” Aaron tripped through the introductions. “Rex, Pastor Christopher Kincaid. He manages the entire New York state branch of our church.”

  “Welcome to our Church, Rex.” Christopher’s smile broadened alarmingly as he held out a hand to shake, and that banished the associative hallucination. He smiled differently to Vassily, and I was able to catalog the differences in a rush of reality. Christopher was younger, his face was harder and more pointed, his nose less hooked, mouth smaller. His hair was short, wavy and thick, but brown instead of true black. He was dressed in a modest, crisp blue-checkered shirt and cream slacks, and that was different, too. Vassily dressed for Wall Street, not for church.

  We shook hands, and he glanced at my gloves for a split second, and then the cat. “And who is this?”

  “Binah,” I replied tightly. I cleared my throat, trying to loosen it up. “She’s my familiar.”

  Christopher reached out to her. Binah backed away with a hiss, circling around my neck to put my head between her and the priest. He laughed and dropped his hand. “She certainly is.”

  “She’s been like that for a while now,” I said. “Doesn’t seem to want anyone else to touch her.”

  “Animals are what they are. Thank you, Aaron. We’ll catch up before the midday service?”

  “Yes, of course.” Aaron glanced at me, perhaps wondering if it was safe to leave his mentor and a Spook together in the same room, but at a wave from Christopher, he withdrew.

  “Take a seat.” Christopher gestured to one of the red leather chairs. They were on an angle to one another, the classic counsellor’s arrangement. “As I understand it, you’re here to talk about Lily and Dru Ross? I’ve already given my statement to the police.”

  “I’m a consultant, not a cop. I’m here to get a sense of why Wolf Grove might have been targeted by someone with considerable Christian Occult knowledge,” I took the chair. Binah left my shoulder to crouch on the back of it, her tail lashing against my head. Her discomfort was my discomfort, but there was no weird smell here, no dead plants. “In addition, I’d like to learn more about the Church and what you – and Lily and Dru – practice in the Church.”

  “‘Christian Occult’ knowledge? What do you mean by that?” He inclined his head to one side, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. I’d learned these postures and positions in college as well. More evidence of his counselor training.

  “The murder scene and a number of the activities that took place during the murder relate to medieval clerical magic,” I replied. “But as an experienced magician, I don’t really buy the Satanic abuse angle that the Vigiles Magicarum is currently tracking.”

  “As an experienced priest, I can assure you that ritual abuse is a very real problem in this city, and in every city and town in America.” His voice was very light, even melodic. The priest blinked rapidly, and then looked down as he twitched his jaw to one side. “But anyway… Lily Ross – Powell, back then – was Confirmed in the Church long before her husband. Now, you must understand that we don’t just give Baptisms away in the Church of the Voice. Have you ever watched Father Zach preach?”

  “I’ve never owned a TV,” I replied. “So no.”

  “The heart of his gospel is that we are the ones who chose to fall from grace, and so we must earn God’s love.” Christopher sat back up, and gestured to his own heart. “Jesus died for us, but that doesn’t mean we can sit on our behinds and do nothing. He believes that God wants us to take action in our own lives, to improve our selves and become the best we can be. When we work with people, we don’t just want to redeem them – we want them to save themselves, to save other people, and not just by hitting them over the head with the Bible. We teach that the way to happiness is to take responsibility for your demons. That’s why we’re the fastest-growing Church in the country: people know that, instinctively. We all get dealt a hand in life. You have to play it the best you can and you will become a better person.”

  “I see. And what does becoming a better person entail?” I mirrored his body language. He wasn’t the only one with training. “As in, how do you go about it?”

  Christopher’s face lit with warm urgency. “Well, accepting the Gospel is a big part of it, as far as I’m concerned. After that, attending services, learning, getting proactive. One-on-one and group counseling is also a very important part of what we do here. The voice of sin is always trying to make us cave into things we don’t really want to do, and talking out those demons helps to banish them. We nominate people for Election when the vessel is prepared and they are ready for the intense experience of receiving the spirit, but God always makes sure you continue to grow.”

  “So, you would have had fairly intense contact with the couple, seeing as Wolf Grove had been given a grant by the Church?”

  He nodded. “They came here every week for Profession. Dru was preparing to train as a pastor, actually, which is why I saw them so frequently.”

  “Profession?” I hadn’t brought a notepad, but I was confident I would remember everything. Binah was watching Christopher as well, and her presence really did improve my memory.

  “We encourage our members to profess the sins they have committed, or want to commit.” Christopher spread his hands. “This is how we learn to implement self-mastery. I suppose it’s similar to Catholic confession, but the intent is not to absolve sin. It’s to conquer it. We don’t record anything that’s said.”

  “I see.” Which meant he was unlikely to tell me anything about the murdered people beyond platitudes. It was still worth a try. “Did either Lily or Dru discuss anything to do with drug use or drug dealing?”

  “Excuse me?” The Pastor balked, then frowned. “Absolutely not. Lily led the drug addiction relief classes here sometimes.”

  “There is evidence that they were due to receive a shipment of contraband at their home,” I said, watching him levelly. “A week and a half before they were murdered.”

  “I can’t divulge anything said to me in session,” he said. “But I will say that I am fully confident that neither Lily Ross or Dru Ross were involved in anything of that nature. They were good people who cared for very vulnerable children.”

  There is was again, that one phrase that everyone kept on using: 'very good people'. “You were aware that most of them were shapeshifters?”

  “Of course. We work with Supernatural Support Units all over the country,” he replied. “We were one of the first modern churches to make outreach to the FBI, actually. We provide pastoral support and education for the communities the SSU works with. Brother Aaron is part of that program. Pastor Zach has a strong interest in providing a strong foundation for those with… abilities. It’s very easy for young shapeshifters or young people with arcane ability to be pulled onto very dark paths. We help them to understand their powers are a gift which is given to them for a higher purpose, and that God could just as easily take it away.”

  I drew a deep breath, pushing against the tight embrace of the parasite in my body. Binah hopped down to the floor, and began to nose around the chair. “Why are you so confident that ritual abuse is an issue here?”

  “Easily.” He sat back, spreading his hands. They were very large for his frame, like he’d never quite grown into them. “I was a victim of it.”

  Short and to the point, but effective. “Is this something you are able to discuss?”

  “Of course. It’s the reason I entered the ministry, after all.” Christopher worked his jaw again, brows furrowed in thought. “My family was bad soil, as Father Zach put it to me once. My father was a very violent man, an alcoholic. My mother was a house-mouse… she wasn’t a bad woman, but she was helpless aga
inst the likes of my father. I was born in the Newark projects. Ran away at seven years old.”

  That all sounded familiar. I’d run away from home at eight. I listened, keeping one eye on Binah as she sniffed her way around the room.

  “I was picked up downtown by a man who told me he was from a shelter for abused boys. He said his name was Thomas… he bought me dinner, got me a new warm coat, walked me to his car, then drove me out to a junkyard,” Christopher continued. Some of the light had drained from his eyes, leaving them flat and glassy. “He chained me up in an outhouse building like a dog and injected me with heroin. Then he raped me.”

  The bluntness of the word and his strangely academic recitation made it all the more confronting. I said nothing – partly because what was there to say? Partly because for the grace of GOD went I.

  “That went on for a while. He got me hooked, and once I was hooked, he started to sell me to others.” The pastor drew a deep breath, and sighed it out. “One night, I was taken to a warehouse where there were people getting ready for a Satanic ritual. I recognized a lot of these people. TV stars. Politicians. Police. They sacrificed a little girl and ate her heart and other organs in front of me. I wasn’t a virgin and therefore not an appropriate offering, so I wasn’t going to be killed – just used and made fun of.”

  “The world is full of monsters,” I said.

  He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Father Zach found me when I was sixteen. I was still hooked on heroin and prostituting myself to feed the habit, though I’d escaped Thomas by that point. I catcalled Father Zach when he walked past me late at night, actually. Can you believe it?”

  “I believe there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

  He smiled a wry little smile. “He turned back to me, and he said: “Young man, you don’t have anything to offer that I want. What can I offer you?” I asked him for a cigarette and a cup of coffee, because it was cold that night. He agreed… we went to a diner and got talking. I told him I’d never trust a man ever again, and he said to me: “You don’t need to trust anyone yet. What you need to do is listen to the pain of your own heart. That pain is the voice of the Lord speaking to you, telling you that you need to get help.”