Edward Lee - Incubi

“Why not?”

“Those people are killers!”

“If they are, I’ll deal with them,” he’d stated very flatly.

“Let the police handle it!”

“I am the police. Besides, they wouldn’t believe any of it, anyway. Noyle? Olsher? No way.”

“Take some people with you, then! Someone to back you up!”

“No.”

“At least let me go with you!”

“No,” he’d said, and gotten into the car, closed the door, and driven away. He saw her shrink in the rearview as he pulled off. She watched after him, standing in the middle of the street. She looked very sad just then. She looked crushed.

I’m a prick , he thought now . I’m a cold, inconsiderate fucker. Now that he had a fair idea where he was headed, wisps of logic did indeed resurface. First, this could very well be a mistake and a tremendous overreaction. The odds were astronomical. Perhaps he’d written the name down wrong. Perhaps Ginny had. Second, even if it wasn’t a mistake, Faye was right. Jack should have backup, or he should’ve at least tried to get some, not that his credibility these days was particularly convincing among his superiors. He was going off half cocked and then some.

The unmarked’s tires hummed over the blacktop. The car devoured as much road as he could give it. He passed trucks and semi-rigs heading for the interstate; the long open fields to left and right blurred by. It was a pretty night, starry and warm. The moon followed him like a watcher.

What am I going to do when I get there? This was a sound inquiry. What did he think he was going to do? Bust down Khoronos’ door? Infiltrate his estate like some black-bag commando? Was he the knight in shining armor traveling through hell and high water to rescue the damsel in distress? Or am I about to make a prime ass of myself?

And suppose these guys were killers? Killers generally had weapons. All Jack had was his Smith Model 49, a five-shot J-frame peashooter, and he had no extra rounds. In the trunk was a parkerized Remington 870 with a folding stock which he hated (because it kicked worse than a pissed-off mule) and an old Webley revolver (which kicked worse) that he only kept around because it was fun to take to the range. The shotgun would be difficult to maneuver in close quarters, and the Webley, though it chambered a big.455 load, was an antique. Big, clunky, and about thirty years overdue for a major breakdown.

He could only vaguely adjudicate the directions. At this pace, sixty-five, seventy miles per hour, he’d probably be there in ninety minutes. Khoronos was rich, eccentric, and obviously protective of his privacy. Jack envisioned a fortress rather than an estate. High fences, security windows, steel-frame doors. Jack could pick your average lock, but he couldn’t touch tubulars (as were found on most alarm systems) and he couldn’t do a pin-wired keyway. What if Khoronos had dogs, or guards? What if he had video? They’d be waiting for him, and they’d be ready.

But then the darkness crept back, a thousand years’ worth. Khoronos , he decrypted. Aorista.

What if Faye was right?

They could be killing Veronica right now.

The ritual that never ends. At least if he died, he would do so at the hands of history, not some crack dealer or street scum.

He thought of Shanna Barrington, the black-stitched Y of her autopsy-section. He saw Rebecca Black lying crucified upon the blood-sodden bed, and the clean white walls blaring red satanic art. He thought of the sad poem Susan Lynn had written, the poem which had turned out to be her own epitaph.

He thought of the last time he’d made love to Veronica. He thought of the scent of her hair, the taste of her sex. He thought of the way she felt, so lovely and intense, so wet for him. He remembered what she’d said to him as he came in her, her voice a tiny plea, impoverished out of the desperation to communicate that which reduced all the words in language to utter inferiority.

Her plea was this: I love you .

Her love for him was gone now, he knew that, but he could never forget how beautiful things had been in the past, how important he’d once been to her.

And now these aorists, these madmen , might be killing her.

They won’t kill her , he thought. His long hair blew in the window drag. Not if I kill them first.

His eyes trained on the endless ribbon of road, his hands firmly gripped the wheel. He lit a Camel.

He grinned maniacally.

He may even have laughed aloud when he whispered:

“If they so much as touch her, I’m gonna kill everything that moves.”

Aorista, Father! I am the aorist! Once more the great beautiful black bird descended, higher into the depths than ever. It felt sublime and bright in the magnificent, chaotic darkness, a black aura singing into the whisper of providence. It heard… glorious things. Portents and validities far beyond the total of all the knowledge of the world. These were the Father’s whispers.

The bird sailed effortless over the chasms, each earthwork like a channel of steaming blood bubbling red as lava, and the thick smoke of baking fat the sweetest attar to the pitlike nostrils of its beak. Below, the ushers travailed, dividing twitching faces with stubby, nimble fingers, sloughing hot skin off the backs of the beautiful, unreeling entrails from plundered bellies in scarlet bliss. Aorista! thought the bird. Aorista!

Now it perched and watched, flexing its sleek black wings. Such honor to sit here, in the lap of truth. You have honored me, drifted the whisper . So behold now all that awaits.

Yes! Aorista!

Only then, in the darkled vision, did the great bird realize the place of its perch: the very shoulder of the Father.

Go.

— and so it did, soaring back through the apsis of the tenebrae, past the castellated crests of onyx and ebon.

Back—

Aorist, Father!

— back—

Father of the Earth!

— and back, over the darkness of a thousand endless truths.

Baalzephon!

Back to the gift that lay warm in wait.

Hail!

Back to the blessed error of the world.

Veronica sensed the descent of motion. Her head bobbed with each step down. She was being carried to some low place.

When she opened her eyes she saw darkness tinted by dancing candlelight. A cloaked figure stepped away. Her carrier, too, wore the same garb; they looked like monks. Veronica tried to move, yet her limbs did not answer the command of her brain. She felt sluggish, drugged.

Her vision seemed to lag before her; she was naked in the arms of the sack-clothed monk. Where was she? And what was that, below her on the floor?

I’m not dead, she realized. And she remembered. The savaged body in the kiosk. Gilles and Marzen attacking her. She remembered the German’s big hand squeezing the consciousness out of her like water out of a sponge. They were madmen, all of them, but they hadn’t killed her. Instead, they’d saved her for something.

What? What are they going to do with me?

And what had Gilles said earlier? Something about offerings?

Her cloaked bearer stopped. The flickering candlelight blurred her vision. All she could see were smears, suggestions of solid shapes submerged in dark. She squinted, tried to blink away the myopic tatters. What stood before her looked like a primitive chancel, a risen stone altar laid across stone plinths, and sided by iron candelabra. A crude red triangle had been drawn on the wall, where a cross might hang. On the center of the altar were a small jar and what appeared to be a black…