The scene might have been taking place in Greece or one of the eastern European countries. There was mayhem in the streets, people screaming, some breaking windows, looting, some running in despair. The camera caught a large break in the earth, jagged asphalt reaching up to the sky and a huge cloud of black dust billowing from it. As he watched, a small group of men and women approached it, including a priest, a rabbi and a Moslem imam. The group stopped beside the hole, and the religious men began chanting, one swinging a brass incense brazier over it. The group around them protected them as the maddened crowd tried to attack.
“The Alliance is out,” Melanie said, then turned to Scott, her eyes filled with love and pain. She touched his face, a caress like a whisper. “We have to hurry. We need more supplies…lots of holy water. The main battle is ours.”
Scott studied the scene on the television screen. “We need more than holy water,” he said quietly.
“I know where to go,” Rainier told him.
Lucien stood before the altar in the church, and, despite himself, he found his entire existence flashing through his mind.
Hundreds of years.
Years of life.
And afterlife.
The bad and the good.
He didn’t understand how he could be the one to take the place of a nun. A holy woman like Sister Maria Elizabeta. Someone who knew humanity and, despite her strong religious faith, was able to sense and accept how much more the world held, and that the world wasn’t black and white. Decency could be found in the shadows, just as terror could be found in the brightest light of the sun.
Sister Ana came up behind him. She didn’t touch him, only cleared her throat to alert him to her presence.
“We must…do something,” she told him. “I am not…I am not of the chosen, but I can sense that our time is slipping away.”
He turned to her. Her eyes were warm and steady—and filled with trust. He nodded. “Leave me for a few minutes, please, and then we’ll begin. I have to finish getting my message out, and those in the Alliance must hear and take steps.”
She nodded, stepping away.
It was difficult, but he cleared his mind. He waited until he felt as if he were standing in a world that was nothing but white mist. He lifted his arms, and it looked as if rays of light extended from them. He knew when he touched the minds of those near him; he felt Melanie’s presence, Rainier’s, and even Scott’s. But he had to go far beyond that. He reached out to Maggie and Sean, but they already knew, so he reached further, including to those who were in New Orleans.
His wife. His beloved Jade. He should have been with her.
He did his best to touch all the members around the world, concentrating heavily on places where the occult was accepted, where folklore had long been accepted as truth, and far more than fantasy or insanity.
The full moon would be rising here soon; to the east, it was already climbing higher in the night sky.
He reached out, as if his fingers could touch all those he needed to tell, and sent his message, then waited until the mist began to fade, until he felt his own strength waning.
He fell to his knees, drained.
Sister Ana came to his side, and he smiled as he allowed her to help him up.
“We have an army around the world,” he told her.
“I never doubted it,” she assured him.
The sisters had brought Sister Maria Elizabeta to the altar. “We have to lift the marble altar top and use it to lock the trapdoor,” he told the sisters. “It’s very heavy.”
It was heavy. He had the strength of Atlas, but even with the help of the sisters, he could barely budge it.
They were still struggling with it when the other three arrived.
Scott, the first to be called.
Melanie and Rainier.
The three earth signs.
Capricorn, Virgo and Taurus.
15
“Hurry!” Maggie urged.
Sean was driving, she was at his side, and Judy and Blake were in the backseat, along with Miss Tiffany and Bruno.
They were headed north, nine hours behind Rome, so they still had plenty of daylight left to reach the huge fissure that had opened up after a quake just south of San Francisco, exactly the kind of thing Lucien had told them to watch out for.
“We’re only about ten miles away now,” Blake said. “Sean, take the next exit and run along the auxiliary road.”
Sean did, and when they arrived, there were barricades and crime tape around the giant slash in the earth, so he eased off the road to park on the embankment, next to a California Highway Patrol vehicle. They left the car and hurried over to see that the fissure was now about twelve feet long and at least ten feet deep. It looked much deeper at the northern end, though, like the proverbial bottomless pit. A middle-aged and paunchy man who looked to be a geologist was studying the fissure, consulting charts and taking notes.
“Hey, hey!”
They turned as one to find themselves being approached by a highway patrol officer. “No sightseeing—this thing is dangerous,” he told them. He was about thirty, fit, and he wore his authority well. As he spoke, a young man climbed out of the hole.
“What the hell are you doing, you fucking idiot?” the middle-aged man yelled at the newcomer. “Where did you get your degree, dickhead? Toys ‘R’ Us?”
The younger man sprang out of the hole faster than a whiplash and socked the older man in the jaw, sending him staggering back, falling. Recovering, he picked up a trowel and went for his attacker.
“Hey!” The patrolman shouted, racing over to the two men. “Hey!”
The older man slammed the cop in the head with the trowel; the cop cried out in shock and pain, and when the younger man let out an unearthly howl and threw himself into the fray, the cop began to scramble for his gun.
He didn’t have a chance to draw it. Blake fired into the air, and the sound was deafening, causing everyone to pause for a minute.
Sean moved forward without being told, wresting the gun from the patrol officer’s hand and reaching for the trowel.
Suddenly Bruno let forth a basset bay that staggered them all.
Filthy steam and smoke came gushing from the hole. “Get the holy water—quickly,” Sean ordered.
Even Maggie had gone still in shock, but now Sean’s words catapulted her into motion. She was afraid, but she approached the hole, reciting by rote words she had learned as a child as she doused the area with the holy water. As she did, it was as if the miasma took on a life of its own and shifted direction to wash her. She felt it like something black and rotting, covering her flesh, slipping into her veins. She felt it take hold of her, and she was tempted to turn and fly at her husband. She wanted to gouge his eyes out.
But then Judy and Blake were at her side, reciting the ancient words of deliverance with her, and the feeling of being invaded by something disgusting and evil faded.
The black, billowing cloud of smoke and steam disintegrated, leaving behind the scent of brimstone.
The cop, still on the ground, had propped himself up on an elbow. The geologists were in the dirt, trying to scramble up, dazed.
The older man was rubbing his chin.
“What the hell just happened?” he whispered in a tone of shock.
“Here, let me help,” Scott said, striding across the church.
He paused when he realized that Sister Maria Elizabeta was lying on the slab of marble—even in death, somehow beautiful and seeming to glow with serenity and warmth. He paused, touching her cold face and feeling the sense of loss again. He thought he heard Melanie let out a jagged little sob, and then they were all silent.
Rainier took over from the sisters, and together the three men lifted the marble and laid it over the trapdoor. Again, they all paused. Sister Maria Elizabeta looked as if she were simply sleeping peacefully. The nuns had placed her rosary in her hands, which were folded, prayer fashion, just below her breasts.
“Sh
e’s still with us,” Melanie whispered. “She will guard us from any evil that lies beneath this ground.”
She was absolutely convinced, Scott thought. She turned and smiled at him, albeit a bit sadly.
They were all startled when Celia, who’d been dragged in between Melanie and Rainier, then given over to the nuns, let out a cry, shook and wrapped her arms around herself. “He’s angry, and he’s close, so close. I can feel him. He’s furious that you’ve blocked his army. And he knows I’m here. Oh, God, he knows I’m here! He’s going to rip me to pieces, bit by bit. Disembowel me and burn the pieces before my eyes!”
Scott walked over to her, forgetting for a moment how dangerous she was, and took her by the shoulders. “Forget him. Don’t let him into your mind, do you hear me? You can fight him. He’ll make you see things, but they won’t be real. You’re with us now. Do you understand?”
She blinked and stared at him.
Then she wrenched free and backed away. “You! You will be my death! You are Capricorn, and you are sworn not to protect the earth but to destroy it. And you’ll kill me if you can. He’s telling me so, and he knows. He knows!”
Suddenly her features twisted into that mask of fury, hatred and evil. She prepared to leap at him, and none of the others were near enough to prevent her. Perhaps instinct saved him; he reached for the rosary around his neck.
She stopped, as if frozen. Her expression was stricken, and she closed her mouth, covering the glistening fangs she’d extended in anticipation of a strike. She looked around and saw where she was, then let out a shriek and fell to the ground, shaking.
“Bambina, bambina!” Sister Ana said, hurrying to the girl. She placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders, then stroked her cheeks, heedless of any danger. She crooned gently to her in Italian. Tears began to slide down Celia’s cheeks. In a moment, she had curled into Sister Ana’s arms.
The sister looked up at Scott and smiled. “We look like skinny old women,” she told him. “But we are strong.”
Scott looked at Lucien, who had appeared at his side as Celia began to change.
“So now,” he said, “you’re the Oracle?”
Lucien nodded grimly. He was staring at Celia. “She was one of his, and you three captured her.” It wasn’t a question. He was staring at the girl, reading her mind, Scott thought. “And she told you where to find him.”
“Yes,” Scott said.
“It’s tonight,” Lucien said.
“The full moon.” Scott shook his head in puzzlement. “Okay,” he said. “So tell me—how are three of us supposed to stop an evil that’s escaping from the earth all around the world?”
“You’re not,” Lucien said. “There are others out there, taking on that fight.”
“All right, so…?”
“You three have to take on Bael himself. Darkness is coming, and it is the night of the full moon. The fight begins now.”
Sean Canady wasn’t even in the right state to use his police credentials, and not even Blake Reynaldo was in a city where his badge counted. But there they were, at police headquarters in San Francisco, trying to explain the need for a public alert, and not just in California but around the nation.
Chief Brady Donahue stared at them as if they had completely lost their minds. “You’re trying to tell me that something is coming out of the ground and possessing cops?” he asked politely. “Oh—and geologists, too.”
“Yes,” Maggie said flatly. “Look, I know how ridiculous this sounds, but ask the highway patrol officer. He was there.”
“It’s the truth, the absolute truth,” Judy said, holding tightly to Miss Tiffany. “They would have killed each other if we hadn’t been there to stop them.”
Chief Donahue, a pleasant-looking man with a dignified demeanor and iron-gray hair, leaned back in his chair and smiled slowly, and then pointed at Judy. “I got it! You’re an actress—I recognize you. What is this? A new reality show? Try to see if you can get a police chief to do something really stupid, like go get a priest to exorcise a piece of highway?”
“Chief Donahue,” Sean said, leaning on the desk and looking squarely at the man. “I’m not asking you to do any such thing. I’m asking you to put out a public health alert. There’s some kind of toxin escaping from the fissures around the state and probably beyond—that apparently affects the centers of the brain that control logic and violent impulses.”
“Hey, Chief!”
They all swung around at the sound of the voice calling from the doorway. A young officer was standing there. “Switch on CNN. You gotta see this. It’s spreading like a plague!”
The chief frowned and turned on a small flatscreen TV. A tense female reporter was describing a rash of violence in Japan in an area recently struck by serious quakes and tremors. Scenes of a riot in the streets of Tokyo were next shown, and then a second reporter came on, live, to report that a region in Estonia, recently struck by minor quakes, was facing something like mass hysteria, with people lashing out at one another everywhere. Even as the live report aired, the on-scene reporter let out a sudden gasp and keeled over, struck in the head by his cameraman.
“Holy mother of God,” the chief said quietly. He stared at Sean and Blake and said, “I’m calling the governor. He can get it on the television stations.”
As he reached for the phone, Sean said, “Look, you just saw Tokyo—and Estonia. The governor has to call the president, and the president has to warn the country and the other world leaders. People have to stay the hell away from those fissures.”
“Great,” Donahue moaned. “The world will think I’m an idiot.”
“Toxic fumes that affect the brain,” Blake said firmly.
The cameras had switched again. A faultline along the Mississippi had suffered a series of tremors. There was a scene of looting in Biloxi.
Sean swore. “Call fast, talk fast and talk well!” He was already on his own cell phone, calling his chief back in New Orleans.
Maggie sat back, staring at Judy. They had done everything they could for now. She just hoped they wouldn’t be stopped as they moved through the area as quickly as they could, praying over holes in the ground and dousing them with holy water.
Celia was sleeping and seemed, to Melanie’s eyes, to be at peace.
She looked like a strangely contemporary Sleeping Beauty, in an odd way. The nuns had made her a bed on a pew, with prayer books and a sweater on which to rest her head. She was surrounded by a circle of holy water and votive candles, with a kneeling sister at every compass point. She was going to be all right.
Lucien, Rainier and Scott were huddled together by the altar. It looked almost as if they were holding a vigil for Sister Maria Elizabeta.
The sisters who weren’t watching over Celia were busy filling more vials with holy water and adorning the church with every cross, crucifix and scripture verse they could find—along with a few ancient symbols from even older religions. Melanie was vaguely aware of their soft chanting in the background.
She had found herself a seat on the ground near the rear of the church. She could vaguely hear the men discussing strategy, and she didn’t know why she wasn’t dragging herself over to join them, front and center.
She felt the need to be alone—even in the crowd—and she wasn’t sure why. She felt vaguely—detached. She wasn’t at all sure that she was going to survive the night, and she was worried about the future. She had never known anyone like Scott, a man who could stay strong and steady no matter what. He didn’t lose his temper, or if he did, he quickly controlled it. Whatever had occurred to him that night in the alley had made him able to accept the bizarre and terrifying with little argument or emotion.
He seemed to accept her for what she was.
After all these years, why couldn’t she do the same?
She wondered if it was a more subtle voice of the demon in her head, continually telling her that she was vile, no matter what course she had taken in the years since her change. Or was it
simply her own guilty conscience? She wanted so badly to believe that she had a future. That she could build something approaching a normal life.
Lucien had a wife and a very happy life. Other vampiress married mortals, but…
What happened at the end?
“What is that?”
She looked up, startled. Scott had come over to her and, amazingly calm and composed, hunkered down by her side. Somehow he seemed more appealing than ever, and at first she didn’t even see what he was pointing at, because she was thinking about how much she loved his hands, his long, artistic fingers and the warmth with which they held her. She flushed suddenly, feeling an urge to throw herself against him and just be with him as the world came tumbling down around them.
“Mel?” he said.
She shook her head, forcing a smile to her lips. “Are we ready to face the demon?” she asked him.
He nodded. “But what did you draw?” he asked her.
She looked at the floor beside her. She had been using her finger as a pen, drawing in the dust.
She had somehow sketched a perfect rendition of Sister Maria Elizabeta, standing with a sword in her hand. All around her, there were raindrops, and beyond the raindrops, an array of demons was falling back.
“It’s Sister Maria Elizabeta,” Scott said.
“As she cannot be anymore,” Melanie replied, then stood, dusting off her hands. Rainier and Lucien had followed Scott, and now Lucien touched Melanie’s face with the affection of a brother.
“We all miss her, and I know how much we needed her,” he said. “But it’s really always been about you three. She was the Oracle, and the Oracle’s mission was to bring you together, and then…well, there isn’t really a ‘then’ if you don’t succeed.”
“How will we know if the demon is dead?” Melanie asked. “Is it even possible to kill a demon? I mean, I’m supposedly dead, and—”