The Apocalypse Codex

ears stoppered with wax. Will that do?”

I hate this ritual magic stuff; it just doesn’t come naturally to me, even if I set everything up carefully beforehand—I need a debugger and a proper development environment before I can whip up so much as a hello, world invocation. (Hopefully followed rapidly by a good- bye, world from whatever I just summoned: that stuff is dangerous.) But she’s very good at it. I suppose different people have different aptitudes, but the non-repeatability irritates me—it’s anathema to observational science. I force myself to nod. “What else did you find there?”

“Aside from the Bible? That’s not enough for you?” She shrugs again, then turns it into a low-grade shudder. “Gods, you don’t want to know…They’re believers, Mr. Howard. Pentecostalist dispensationalists—they are saved, but they are surrounded by the unsaved, and they think their master is returning imminently, and anyone who isn’t saved by the time of his arrival is doomed. So they intend to save everyone whether or not they want to be saved, one brain parasite at a time.” The shudder is more emphatic this time round. “They’re also quiverfull—they raise as many children as they can as ammunition for the cause, because they’re not completely sure whether imminent means their god is coming in fifteen minutes or fifteen years. There’s a clinic in town, with a combined maternity unit and spinal injuries ward for the runaways they’ve rounded up.”

“A what?”

“You heard me.” She looks away, avoiding my eyes. She’s the kind of woman who walls away that which makes her angry, presenting an outward appearance of calm; behind it I’m certain she’s furious. “The ends justify the means: we are all to be saved, and it will take a large army to do the saving. As their women can raise larger families than they can give birth to, they use host mothers to make up the numbers. ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children’—they take that as an instruction.”

“Oh ick.” I swallow. “But why don’t they just use the hosts to—” Then I realize why: they want loyal brainwashed storm troopers who’ll fight for the cause in situations where a parasitic faith module would be a liability. (If you try to smuggle one of those giant wood lice into Dansey House or the New Annex, you won’t get very far.) “So they’re raising a little army of brainwashed believers, and they have the mind-control hosts to keep down the rest of us. And they’ve got this clinic”—if it’s real, I feel like screaming, because the picture she’s painting is so vile—“and, uh, what else are we looking at? What are their goals?”

“I don’t know for sure.” She sounds calm. “I planted a worm on their office network but then I had to break out, so I’ve got to assume the exploit is compromised. The Omega Course session went off the beaten track yesterday, and this morning they were forcibly installing parasites on the attendees. I think they’ve decided to bring their plans forward in a hurry. We’re going to have to go back in person if you want to know any more.”

Urp. Time to change the subject in a hurry. “About Johnny. Do you want to contact him, or would you rather I used the tattoo? Get him to—”

She looks at me. It’s a bit like being a nice juicy grasshopper in front of a very sexy mantis. She’s wired on something, and I wonder for a moment if she’s sourced some nose candy, then I realize: this is what she lives for. Field work: that’s why Lockhart was able to get her out here. Persephone is addicted to danger.

“Johnny is coming.” Her lips crinkle into something resembling a smile. “He has a passenger to deal with first.”

“A pass—” I stop.

They say our eyes are windows on the soul, but Persephone’s eyes are more like murky brown pools, utterly impenetrable. Only the muscles around them tense enough to betray her, faint crow’s feet of worry radiating from their corners. “I called him as soon as I closed the door.” She’s not apologizing, merely explaining. “He is meeting old friends. The Black Chamber are having problems operating in Colorado right now. And the Golden Promise Ministries have their own police force who appear to be experiencing no such difficulties. They tried to take him at one of our safe houses. He is joining us as soon as he deals with an, ah, loose end. Maybe later tonight, maybe early tomorrow.”

I swallow. “What kind of loose end?”

“Mr. Howard, Johnny and I are external assets. The whole point of working with us is that you can later swear that you didn’t know what we were doing, that we did whatever-it-is on our own initiative.” She pauses. “Are you sure you want me to answer that question?”

I stare at her. She’s a beautiful piece of work, porcelain skin and not a hair out of place after a day of escape-and-evasion: as beautiful and deadly as a black widow. “I can’t countenance murder,” I say, with a sense that if I’m watching myself from a great distance—perhaps the witness box at the Black Assizes. “Do you understand?”

“Is it murder if it’s another of those? Like the thing you took that from?” She points at the pizza box.

“If—” I stop and force myself to take a deep breath. “If they’re possessed, that changes things. But. Minimum use of force necessary to achieve designated goals. Can we agree on that?”

She looks at me oddly. “Of course we can. Who did you think I am—Murder Incorporated?”

“One can never be too sure,” I mutter. “Sorry, sorry, I had to ask.” (Because I have dealt with people in the past whose main criticism of Murder, Inc., would be their messy inefficiency.) “Where were we?”

She sits down on the bed, cross-legged. “Motives. I don’t know for sure, but I’ve made some inferences, and then there’s this damned book.” She glances at the Bible.

“What do you think Schiller’s trying to achieve?”

“Besides the usual?” Her laughter is an abrupt bark of released tension. “Well, he’s clearly set on converting the entire planet. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“I need to know what he’s trying to achieve in the short term. Through the Prime Minister.” My arms are crossed and I’m leaning against the wall and not making eye contact: defensive body posture redux. “That’s my core mission, as I see it. It’s why we’re here. We can admit that the mission’s a wash and bug out, but if so, that’s not going to help the, the victims.” The women in the maternity unit. The pithed, god- struck men in black with their tongues half-eaten. “Come on. What do you know?”

“I don’t.” She looks frustrated. “Perhaps Johnny will have something…”

“And if not?”

“We can go back in if you dare.” She cocks her head to one side. “There are ways. Let’s say…Johnny runs into the Pinecrest police. You have a host, and so does he. We kill it and shell it, then you and he stick your tongues in them and pretend to be police, and I’m your captive. I have a glamour to provide cover against shallow inspection, and—”

“If you think I’m putting that thing in my mouth, alive or dead—”

“That’s a shame.” She stares at me with those huge, darkly unreadable eyes. “It’s a low risk approach. If we make them come after us we hand them the initiative.”

I take a deep breath. “Any other options?”

“Oh yes.” She nods at the field-expedient pentacle and its inmate sitting on the desk. “That was just the direct approach. There are indirect ones. We could try to hook up that thing and snoop on whatever or whoever powers it, to learn where it comes from. Feed it misinformation, tell it where to go to find us.”

I think for a moment. “I’ve got another idea. Is there any significant risk of them finding us here, if we stay overnight? Other than following Johnny?”

“I don’t think so. You warded this room well, I sanitized the path to your car…” She thinks for a moment. “What preparations do you need that will take so long?”

“I’ve got to phone a man about a book,” I say. “I need an hour to do some admin work. Then how about we go get some dinner? It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Lend me the car keys in the meantime?”

I chuck the keys her way. “Use them wisely.”

*     *     *

AFTER PERSEPHONE LEAVES I SIT DOWN AND THUMB THROUGH the back end of the Bible, trying to get a feel for the page count. I decide I can discount the first couple of chunks; a quick google confirms that the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha look like standard factory spec. They might have been tweaked and tuned under the hood, but I don’t have time to do more than check the table of contents. The Books of Enoch, however, aren’t part of the standard trim level package, or even the deluxe leather upholstery option with sports