Incubi

classes were unduly influenced by the Catholic Church, so if you weren’t in the Church, and if you weren’t nobility, you were a peasant. Witchcraft and demon worship grew out of a rebellion to organized Christianity. Devil worship was the social counterculture of the times, the poor man’s way of striking back against his oppressors, and the aorist sects were the most extreme mode of this rebellion. While the average peasant was saying Black Mass, the aorists were killing priests, burning churches, and sacrificing children. They were the transitive component of a belief that was largely intransitive.”

“Action instead of words,” Jack speculated.

“Right. The aorist sects were to satanism what the Jesuits are to the Catholics.”

Randy loosened his tie. “What about the sacrifice angle?”

“Mankind has been making sacrifices for the last thirty thousand years. The only way I can identify this specific ritual is if I’m lucky enough to match its protocol to your crime scene.”

“What do you figure your chances are?” Jack asked.

“Not good,” Faye Rowland admitted. “The fund of information is too obscure. There aren’t any reference books I can just whip open and identify our sect. It’s like a needle in a haystack.”

Jack crushed out his Camel and lit another. He was thinking, thumbing his eyebrows. “Protocol… Ritual… Our forensic tech determined that the knife used on Shanna Barrington was made of some kind of brittle stone. Flint maybe, or obsidian.”

Faye looked at him baldly. “Many civilizations, once they’d begun to develop organized religious systems, believed that fire was a gift from the gods. Flint sparks, so they used flint for their sacrificial implements. The Toltecs are the best example, and the Seleucids of Asia Minor. And a lot of the aorist sects used knives chipped out of volcanic glass—”

“Obsidian,” Jack muttered.

“—for a similar symbolic reason. They worshiped demons, which they believed lived deep in the earth, so they crafted their tools out of materials that came from the same place. They were using what they’d been given to exalt the giver. Gifts of the devil to people of the devil.”

Jack felt a weird chill run up his back, the same chill he felt anytime he asked himself how far madness could go. Madness could have order, couldn’t it? It was a creepy thought.

“They were called dolches,” Faye added. “Not knives. Dolches.”

Randy looked disgruntled. “We were hoping it was just some crackpot or a random nutcase who’s into the occult.”

“Oh, no,” she assured. “Whatever your killer is into, it’s not something he read in some paperback occult manual. It’s very deep and very intricate. The aorist sects were the ultimate form of religious sedition in the Middle Ages. They butchered babies, roasted virgins on solstice feasts, gutted priests like deer.”

“Great,” Jack sputtered.

The pale lamplight made black punch holes of Faye Rowland’s tired eyes. “This guy’s no crackpot, Captain. He’s the real McCoy.”

Chapter 12

Becky reread the lines she’d scribbled in her book:

Evil kisses, or angelic sendings?

I want to be in a bed of beginnings,

Not endings.

She turned her nose up at it. Here was the next one:

THE GHOST

Remnants never vanish

but give spawn to loss

and banish all I care for

on the earth. Does this

last ghost give birth to a

new me, or another

impassioned catastrophe?

The things I do to make things

rhyme-Jesus! — what a crime to

time and art and the cooling ashes

of the broken heart. But it should

be fun at least to see what

midnight passion beckons me next

to the next caress of faith.

Becky knew her poetry wasn’t very good, not from a poet’s standpoint anyway. She didn’t care, though. She wrote poetry for herself. She’d picked up a guy last week who wanted to know about it. This was unusual because guys generally didn’t care about aspects of her that didn’t involve coitus. “You should try to get it published,” he’d said. “That would be unthinkable,” she’d returned. “Why write it if other people can’t read it?” “Because it’s not for other people. It’s for me. Poetry is how I define myself.” What a moron. He hadn’t even come close to understanding. At least he understood how to put his penis into her. That’s all she’d wanted him for in the first place.

The mirror reflected back her thirty-one years like an inner eye of all that her past had led to. Becky Black assayed herself nude. Minuscule bikini marks resembled white satin underthings against the dark tan. She worked hard to keep trim; she stood 5’6” and weighed 107. She was lithe, not skinny. Long sleek legs ascended to a sculpted contour of hourglass curves. A thought from the past lingered when she looked at her breasts. Cupcakes. They were firm as lemons, with soft-pink areolae. Philip had referred to them as cupcakes during his efforts in the bedroom. He’d used all kinds of silly, adoring little pet names for her body parts. Her breasts were “cupcakes.” Her navel was her “Becky button,” and her vagina was her “little lamb.” This aspect of his adoration amused her. Philip was arcane and very loving, but little else. “I love you more than you ever have been loved or ever will be loved,” he often cryptically remarked. This was probably true, but so what? Their one-year marriage left her bored and unimpressed. His love did not scratch her itches, so why should she feel guilty? She’d cheated on him like a she-demon at the merest turn of his inept back, the poor fool. Frequently, she had called him at work while handsome strangers put the blocks to her. Marriage seemed a silly — even embarrassing — blight that too many people let crawl over their lives. It seemed like a mistake. Philip’s love did not change the way she viewed her desires. Love did not give her completeness; adventure, risk and physical diversity did. Once she’d been talking to her friend Debbie, and said, “Marriage is like going to McDonald’s every day and eating a fish sandwich. Sometimes a girl wants a Big Mac,” which may have been the first time in history that fast food assumed a philosophical application. Philip was a fish sandwich. The marriage fell apart in a year.

Release! She thought of birds soaring from the prisons of their cages. She was free. Without the millstone of marriage about her neck, society became her own private playground. It amazed her how easily the lure of sex transformed mature, capable men into mindless marionettes with erections. She could walk into any bar at any time and leave with another pinch of the spice her life needed. She picked up all manner of men: young, old, rich, poor, conventional, eccentric. The McDonald’s theorem held true; it was variety that fulfilled her, not complacency. Becky Black didn’t want love. She wanted fireworks every night, a new Roman candle to explode in her, and catherine wheels of flesh to light the fuse of her lust.

She didn’t care how shallow her plight might truly be.

* * *

The night seemed to ripple with waves of energy, charging the City Dock into a carnival. Becky parked across