James Baldwin - Stained Glass

Swallowing, I lowered my hand and stepped back. I couldn’t break this sigil, not if it was really charged. There was a bated darkness about it, and the eeriness I felt from it – and the room beyond – made me wonder if someone had already spotted me. If it had alerted someone on the other side, I had a machine gun capable of putting a few rounds into their skull… assuming that’s not what they wanted me to do.

From downstairs, I heard Ovar call out to the other guards that he’d heard something in the building, followed by quick, heavy footsteps that grew closer every second. He was heading for his post, and he was going to see and hear me.

Anxiously, I reached out towards the handle. As I did, a creeping, prickling chill passed through the leather of my gloves, through my fingertips. I jerked my hand back, frowning. Lips pursed, I slung my bag around and pulled the carton of milk. It was a long shot, but I had gotten the milk on a hunch. Close to fifteen years of sorcerous wet work had taught me that the symbolic properties of things were as important as the materials. Eggs were symbols of fertility, birth, nourishment, perhaps femininity – and the effect on DOGs probably also extended to other egg-like materials. Seeds were at the top of my list, though the only seeds at the bodega had been toasted sunflower seeds and I doubted they would have any effect. Milk was something I decided to try on a whim: the full-cream, unhomogenized stuff that was as close to the substance used to feed calves as was possible.

Feeling somewhat awkward, I opened the carton and splashed it over the door. The sigil sizzled. Sizzled. I watched a complex tracery of violet light rush through the crude black paint and then fade. When I doused it the second time, there was no response, though the ‘paint’ was sloughing off in a very un-paintlike fashion. I depressed the handle and waited for a few breathless seconds before entering, carton in one hand, my other hand bracing the machine gun against my less-injured ribs. As quietly as I could, I slunk out into the top floor: another huge single room with bottomless, circular black holes spaced across the floor. At the other end of the room, at the far western corner of the building, a human sacrifice was in full swing.

The assembled TVS members were clustered around a makeshift altar that had been mounted in front of the gaping remains of the corner window. The priest’s back was to me. The others in the room – six or seven people – were standing in a rough circle, staring up towards a ring of black lights hung from the old trolley rails on the ceiling. Those were running off a small kerosene generator which made enough noise that my footfall was unlikely to be heard.

I left the door ajar, searching for cover in the semi-darkness. There were old machines left here, and short stairwells that led up to the next floor of the grain elevator, but nothing that was going to offer real protection. I took what I could on my way across until I was crouched behind a narrow steel pillar and able to see and hear what was going on.

The black lights distorted all color that might have been present, but I recognized at least two faces. Vanya was staring up at the light overhead, his jowly face smeared with black from eyes to sagging jawline in a parody of tears – or blood. At the far end of the altar was Mason.

Jenner’s partner stood with his back to the shattered window. He was not robed like the others. He was stripped down to a bloodied wifebeater and jeans, his clothes torn, his skin striped with gore. If not for that, he looked like he’d been in a bar room brawl and come out barely on his feet. There was a huge, spreading dark stain across his shirt, radiating from his heart on the left. Mason was the only one looking down at something. He was staring at the featureless, motionless black bodybag that was lain on the table, feet pointing at the setting moon.

“—to celebrate a new brother entering the fold,” the priest intoned, mid-sentence. The speaker was masked and hooded, and I couldn’t make out any details from my position. “The price of your admission to the Anointed is to cleanse the world of an affront to the Father, Ivan Kazopov. Will you purify this abomination with your body and strength, and swear your fealty to the Eternal Light?”

“I will,” Vanya replied.

I frowned, utterly at a loss. There was something not right about Mason. He swayed in place, and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t blinking.

“The windows of Heaven are opening for you, Vanya.” The priest turned to face me, hands lifted. The mask was white, flat and featureless, save for three thin, grim slashes where the eyes and mouth should have been. Despite that, I know that it was the Spook, the one I had glimpsed on Ribbon Street through the distortion of his weird magic. His power was over the cold, inexorable twin pressures of time and gravity. “Praise the Father, blessed be his many names…”

As the praying and affirmations continued, echoed by the others in the room, I shifted the PP-90 around to hold it at the ready and tried to cobble together a plan of action. There was no obvious warding around the circle, but I couldn’t discount it. The magic on the door had been very real, and the effect of the milk very noticeable. If I was lucky, the gun would be safe to use on the humans. If I wasn’t, I was probably going to get gunned down while I tried to stop something infernal from eating me and my cat.

“Are you ready to be baptized in blood, to become a true follower of the All Father, to speak with fire and serve Him for all your days?”

Vanya nodded. “I am.”

As I watched, The Deacon – he was really the only one who could claim a title like that – took up a featureless silver box at the end of the altar and opened it. The inside was lined in black velvet. It held a knife like no other I had ever seen. The blade was glass, or crystal. As he lifted it, I saw it catch and gleam in the blacklights. The UV lighting revealed a matrix of flaws in the glass. It was hazed, like it had been broken and the pieces glued together.

“You all know me, brothers in the spirit. You know me, your brother.” The masked priest held the knife to Vanya. “You have seen his miracles wrought through me. You know that I can see past, future and present, because though the Father in his wisdom caused me to be blind, I can see. I am wise because I am following him , and following his voice.”

The proclamation was echoed by muttered ‘amens’ from around the circle, and as he spoke, Binah flattened her body against the floor. I glanced at her. My familiar was a barometer of magic, and whatever that thing was, she didn’t like it.

While the blind priest continued his dark sermon, Vanya moved around the table, holding the knife like it was going to bite him. He began to undo his belt and his fly, while the rest of the men joined hands. I was watching some bizarre mockery of a prayer circle, where the faithful touched, swayed, exclaimed and threw themselves into the holy spirit… or in this case, the unholy demiurge that apparently demanded rape and sacrifice, not necessarily in that order. If I was guessing right, it was Angkor in that bag.

As the others moved to give Vanya room, I noticed something. What I hadn’t seen, and that I could see now, was that Mason had no eyes. His sockets leaked a black, viscous fluid down his hollowed cheeks. The man on Vanya’s other side also had no eyes. His face was deeply scarred – one could even say mutilated. Even under black lights, the scars looked fresh. He was a big guy, too… six feet of lean compact muscle. He was currently singing in gibberish, and if his lack of eyes bothered him at all, I couldn’t tell.