Mark Stone - The Judas Line

Black shaving bag. Right … eight by four inches of simulated leather zippered shut. “Okay, now what?”

“Inside there are six metal vials and a small glass jar. Open the jar and smear some of the contents on your forehead and chest. It’ll protect you; then give me one of the vials.”

Outside the window, we passed Redmond, barreling south toward Bend and a team of commandos waiting to kill us. In the bag I found the vials, the small jar and what looked to be several silver cigarette cases. The small jar contained a pinkish-white paste that smelled like charbroiled ugly. Grimacing, I applied the paste and tried not to puke; it smelled so bad. After wiping my hands I handed Morgan one of the six silvery vials, the contents of which he gulped in one swallow.

At my inquiring look he said, “Pennyroyal, Master Wart and Blessed Thistle herb. For that little extra kick, you know.” He grinned like a skull grins, with horrifying knowledge and lost hope. Then the smile faded, replaced by an angry scowl.

“Shit!” he swore suddenly. “Why the hell am I driving to Bend when there’s a Catholic church in Redmond?” He said a word I won’t repeat. “I’m such a damn idiot !”

Noon traffic on the highway was fairly light, but there were still enough cars to cause concern as he yanked the steering wheel hard to the left and spun the truck, tires squealing and smoking, into a one-eighty. I kissed the side window in time to see an old, red Saab hatchback miss us by a hair and rumble off the road into the sandy, scrub-filled flatland. In the side-view mirror, as we sped back north, I saw the driver of the Saab raise a finger in a gesture as old as man.

“Please don’t do that again,” I rasped through clenched teeth. “Please, please, please!”

“No promises, but if it will make you feel better, take a drink from a vial.”

Sounded like good advice, so I did.

If someone had peeled back my skull, exposing my brain, then poured white lighting on the vulnerable gray matter, that wouldn’t even come close to the feeling that coursed through my skull.

Wow.

“A kick in the pants, eh Mike?”

“It’s not my pants that have been kicked.” I shook my head in an effort to chase away a sudden case of double vision.

“I should have planned to stop here first,” Morgan grated after turning onto a residential street. “But noooooooo, I had to think of returning this stupid truck first.” His fist smacked into the steering wheel three or four times, his anger pulsing through the cab like heat waves.

“You’re only human, Morgan.”

“You sure about that?” he snarled.

“Of course I am, you nitwit, now shut up and drive,” I barked out like every Drill Instructor in history-hard, fast and loud. He tried to hide it, but I caught the telltale beginnings of a smile.

Smirking myself, I stared out the windshield as we pulled into a large parking lot. The brick building dominating it looked more like a high-class no-tell motel than a church, but the cross on its peaked roof gave lie to that impression. The sign in front declared it to be the St. Thomas Catholic Church.

Screeching to a halt under the overhang between a pair of pillars and the front doors, we jumped out, scrambling, stumbling, only to find both of the main doors locked.

Undeterred, Morgan shouted a Word and the right-hand door shattered, the pieces flying inward in a shower of deadly splinters.

“I’ll pay for it,” he panted, propelling me into the church and up the nave.

It took a second or two for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and by the time we reached the altar, the dancing spots of light in my eyes had faded somewhat. “What now, Morgan and why a church?”

He led me to the altar. “Because no demon will enter holy ground, and no elemental would dare perpetrate violence in what they call ‘the Creator’s footprint on the earth.’ This is where the Grail is strongest, in the hands of a true believer.” He leaned in and whispered fiercely. “You banished two demons, Mike, and I can tell you see the Grail as it really is; you weren’t fooled for one second. It has no reason to hide from you .” My eyes widened in shock as I realized he was right. It didn’t look like a silver brooch or glass rose; it looked like what it was, a simple cup. He dug out the Silver from the front pocket of his jeans and I decanted the Grail from the purple bag. “We could just dump the coins into the Grail,” he continued. “That might work, but it also might destroy both of them, and I won’t be the person who broke the Holy Grail, man.”

Understandable. “Now what?” A strange, distant thap thap thapping sound came to my ears and we both shared a nervous look as we realized its significance. A helicopter was hovering above us.

“Crap,” he muttered, sweat beading his forehead. Hurriedly he emptied the contents of the little black bag into the Grail, which was nestled in the palm of my hand.

Cha-chink. Tiny, innocuous coins, gleaming bright, flooded the bowl. Roughly circular, they had a shining brilliance that drew the eye and their weight was a steady pressure in my hand. It was one of the most beautiful-and most terrible-sights I’d ever seen.

The Silver made me sick to my stomach; a burning bile collected at the back of my throat and my skin crawled. Maybe the Lord had graced me with prescience, I didn’t know, but I knew that if I touched those glittering, malevolent coins, something bad would happen, something biblical.

Rotors cleaved the air outside the Church. The copter would be overhead any second now, I realized.

“Mike, all you have to do is exorcize the coins,” Morgan breathed. “That’s all you have to do, man.” He gently placed his hands on either side of my face. “You can do it, Mike.”

A Ritual of Exorcism on the fly, just like that? “I don’t know the words to exorcize an … an artifact.” Thwap, thwap, thwap … much closer.

Morgan’s breath, slightly sweet, caressed my cheek, his lips only inches away. “My friend, it’s not about words, it’s about faith . Now, duck!” The Beretta appeared in his hand as if by magic, while his other pushed me down behind the altar.

Thwap, thwap, thwap … then deafening reports as Morgan fired several times. A scream of pain. More reports and splinters of altar rained down upon me.

Faith, it’s about faith, I thought, staring at the beige-rimmed bowl with its terrible contents. Faith. Faith. Faith in myself, faith in Morgan, and more importantly, faith in the Lord. But what word could contain such faith? Faith that when our backs are up against it, the Lord will be there lending us strength as we falter, courage when we have none, and peace when our time has come. What words could convey all that? I’d fought demons, seen/felt elementals and trusted in a man who, had things been different, would have been my greatest enemy instead of a man I’d come to think of, not as a lost soul, but as a brother. What choice did I have?

As slivers of wood rained down and bullets tore gaping holes in the cross hanging on the wall above my head, the words came to me-timeless in their simplicity and love. Not an exorcism, but a simple prayer:

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul:

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name sake.

Another scream of pain split the air along with the sound of hundreds of rounds tearing the pews into matchsticks. There came an agonized groan and I knew Morgan was hurt. I heard someone, a woman, yell, “Give it up, Olivier!”

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,