The Apocalypse Codex

Johnny nerves himself for the coming confrontation.

The door closes behind him, deadening the sound of the damned next door. The vestry is roughly twenty feet on a side, low-ceilinged and windowless. There are lockers lined up against one wall, a table pushed up against the other, and a cold iron circle three meters in diameter propped up against the wall opposite the door. It’s plugged into a ruggedized equipment case and a spluttering plastic-clad Honda generator that doesn’t quite drown out the sound of the wind soughing into the starless sky behind the open gate.

“Eldest McTavish.” Schiller sits on an ornately carved wooden throne before the gate. He wears a charcoal- black three-piece suit under his surplice. His face is gaunt with exhaustion. One of the four missionaries who wait with him hovers solicitously, ready to support him if he falters. His smile is pained. “There are many things I’d like to ask you, if we had more time together.”

Johnny forces a smile, aware that it’s as unconvincing as a three-dollar bill. “I’m sure there are.” He keeps his face pointed at Schiller, but is scanning the room, registering the positions of the missionaries. They’re bodyguards, of course, all tooled up, suit jackets cut loose to conceal their holsters. There are a couple of handmaids in long dresses, their hair veiled, waiting beside something that looks like a giant silver soup tureen on a catering trolley. But soup tureens don’t usually contain live crustaceans that chitter disturbing thoughts that flood the room with the sickly sweet flavor of a gangrenous god’s love. “What exactly are you trying to achieve?”

Schiller straightens his back. A momentary grimace betrays his pain. “The same thing the order’s been trying to achieve for centuries, eldest. The difference is, I’m going to succeed.”

“You want to bring him back.” Johnny crosses his arms. “The Sleeper.” Johnny keeps one eye on the open gate behind Schiller. The breeze sighs faintly as it drifts through the portal, into the twilit chamber stone beyond.

“The sleeping Christ, yes. The one whose mortal vessel we call Jesus.”

Johnny nods; he grew up with this deviant theology, although he doesn’t hold with it himself—the doctrine that Jesus was a supernatural vessel for the Gatekeeper is inner doctrine, but he considers the idea that the Sermon on the Mount was delivered by a sock puppet for the Sleeper in the Pyramid to be somewhere between implausible and hilarious. “You know me through my father, I take it?”

Schiller nods. “You are the eldest son: it’s in your blood. Baptized and confirmed in a sister church dedicated to bringing this wandering in the wilderness to an end, obedient to the True Creed. I saw you in the back row in London, shining like a beacon; once your friend Ms. Hazard drew our attention, the genealogy department identified you within hours. You were sent here for a reason. It’s your destiny.”

“Maybe.” Dead right I was sent here for a reason. Johnny runs the numbers: two knives, four bodyguards, not looking good—and that’s before counting the handmaids and the boss himself, who may look like he’s half-dead but that’s only because he’s pouring his entire will into holding open the gate while his pastors funnel willing souls through it to wake the sleeping god. Threaten his holy mission and he’s quite capable of sacrificing himself to bring it all together. No, this isn’t like that job in Barcelona, or even that hairy caper in Pripyat: it’s worse. So: Keep him talking. “What do you think I was sent here to do?”

Schiller chuckles drily. “They thought they could send you here to kill me, didn’t they? You and your mistress.”

“She’s not my mistress,” Johnny says automatically before he realizes he’s been played. “An’ you don’t believe that shite about me being here to kill you, else—” He raises a hand and makes a cutting gesture across his throat, letting the blade steal into view just in case the muscle are getting twitchy: message to goons, It could be you. “So deal or quit, guv. You’ve got an offer in mind: make it.” Draw him out. Intelligence is vital.

“You are aware that it takes two to open the gate fully? As it says in the Third Book of Revelations, fifth chapter: ‘for the two elders of the blood of Lilith shall be as doorposts in the House of the LORD, and they shall be as stout beams of cedar: And they shall hold the lintel above them that the father of dreams shall walk under it.’ We have—had, until you showed up—a shortage of elders.” Schiller coughs. “I am the last of my line. So you can name your price, eldest McTavish. Once our father awakens and returns to bring about the kingdom of heaven on earth, you’ll have a throne at his side, and a fiery shield and sword, and any temporal reward you want. Do you want your little witch? Do you secretly dream of owning her, body and soul? You can have her, for merciful is the Lord, and you, as one of his prophets, have the power to pardon her for her sins. Would you like a billion dollars? A trillion? Immortality? The throne of England? It’s all yours, if you agree to your destiny. What do you say?”

The bodyguards are clearly keyed-up; soul-sucking knives or no, there’s no way that one against four is going to end well. Johnny nods, smiling. “Sounds like a great offer,” he says, taking a step forward—the bodyguards begin to move and so does one of the gowned handmaids, her sleeve pulling back as she raises the machine pistol concealed in it. “And I’m inclined to take it.” The guards pause. “Only one thing”—he’s in motion, bounding forward past Schiller—“first you’ll have to catch me!”

A couple of bullets crack through the air above his head as Johnny dives through the open portal. And then the chase is on.

BUTTERFLIES IN MY STOMACH; IT’S DARK AND THERE’S A breeze from behind—

A breeze.

There are two types of breeze: man-made, and natural. Sources of the man-made kind include things like desk fans, jet engines, and driving with the window open, none of which apply right now. The latter kind occur where there’s a difference in air pressure. Air is blowing from behind me, and it wasn’t doing that until we opened the secret door. Which, now I think about it, is a revolving secret door. Revolving doors made high-rise buildings with elevators possible by allowing pressure equilibration without blowing the windows out whenever a passenger hit the button for the umpteenth floor; but if there’s a skyscraper in front of me I’ll eat my hat. Rather, there is a large volume of low pressure air into which a natural wind is blowing. And in my line of work—

“Keep moving,” Persephone says very quietly.

I wish I’d brought a door-wedge with me. Or a flashlight. This’d be a fine time to be eaten by a grue… I take another couple of steps forward and there’s floor under my shoes instead of carpet. Huh, I think, just as Persephone throws the light switch.

“We found it,” I say, feeling sick.

We’re in what’s left of Schiller’s private sanctum, facing an open gate. It probably used to be a small windowless room, much longer than it was wide, before he had the secret door and the altar installed. But now the light of the bare overhead bulb shows us that one of the walls is almost entirely missing. There’s a circular summoning grid installed on edge in front of it, and the damn thing is running. It’s the sump the breeze is blowing into, and I feel like throwing up when I see it because I recognize the landscape on the far side: I’ve only been dreaming about it for nine months or so.

“This is it,” says Persephone.

“Looks like it.” I walk over to the altar. It’s a plain slab of stone positioned in front of the gate. There’s an ornate silver cup on it, and an ivory wand capped in gold—ritual objects, at a guess—and a smaller grid that, thankfully, is plugged into a boring old-fashioned laptop. (Have I said how much I hate ritual magic? It makes my head hurt.) “This is the other end of Schiller’s operation. Quiet, isn’t it? He’s pumping lots of energy into it from the other side, from the church downtown, so where’s it all going? And what’s this other grid for?”

“It’s going here—no.” She’s quick on the uptake. “Okay. The small grid looks like”—she closes her eyes briefly—“yes, it’s the source of the ward that’s locking out the Black Chamber.” Without further ado, she yanks the cable connecting it to the laptop. There is a brief spark and a smell of burning plastic, then she points at the wall. “He opened this gate first. It leads to the site of the ritual. Then he opened another gate in the church to power the ritual. The ritual takes place over there”—she points through the gate—“and that which is summoned then comes here, to grow free from unwanted attention while it is still young and weak. Yes?”

I try to untangle her syntax: “That sounds about right.”

“The women in the hospital,” she says conversationally, “haven’t been disposed of because they’re its prepared food.”