Incubi

“They’re not men.”

“Just sit tight.” He closed the door. Not men. She was half in shock, irrational. If they weren’t men, what were they? They’re sick motherfuckers is what they are, he answered himself. And I’m gonna blow all three of them straight into next year. They will ALL leave in body bags.

Jack brought the Remington to bear and headed back to the mirrored room.

Chapter 36

They lashed her to the floor, to iron lugs. She felt submerged in an utter blackness that was somehow beautiful and bright.

“Pater terrae,” she heard.

The three figures looked down. They’d splayed her over the Trine, her head at the top point, her feet at the lower two. Her lashed hands formed two more points. She was a human pentacle.

“Give us grace,” spoke the Prelate.

“We are risen in thy grace,” answered the surrogoti.

Sweat licked her naked body. The wavering candlelight looked far away, like dim stars. The darkness was showing her things — she knew now, and she was not afraid. She felt risen, too: her tininess and insignificance gently lifted to a higher stratum.

“Protect us.”

“We beseech thee, in our love.”

Love, she thought. She’d had love once, hadn’t she? She closed her eyes and looked back on her life. Love? At least someone had loved her here. Greater love awaited, though, infinite love.

“Protect us.”

The Prelate’s voice sounded graven. Something was wrong.

“No one must interfere.”

Interfere? She closed her eyes more tightly.

Then she saw.

She saw a man. The man was tainted yet radiant. He shined bright above whatever error she sensed. It was love that purged his taints. It was love that made him seem so bright in her mind.

“Kill him with these, if you must.”

The Prelate was handing dolches to the pair of surrogoti. “Go,” he bid.

The surrogoti turned and left.

But where were they going?

More confusion. She saw the man very closely now; he was walking through some image in her mind. It was not memory. It was not the past. The man she saw in her mind was Jack.

He was here. Now. He was coming for her.

“Flesh through blood. Body through spirit.”

The Prelate knelt at the base of the Trine, between her legs. His aura radiated about his head like black sparks, like a halo made of twilight.

He raised a third dolch and kissed it.

He looked down at her then, in all his truth—

Truth? she questioned.

— but it was not truth she saw when she looked back.

She saw through it now, to the core of what it really was. Not truth at all, but a spurious replica — a fake behind a facade.

It was corruption. Total. Final. Black.

It was the antithesis of truth.

Veronica tried to scream, but no sound came out.

The Prelate grinned, a grin not of wisdom, but of perfect evil, and in a voice thick as smoke he began the Invocation to Baalzephon, Sentinel Apostate of Creativity, the Father of the Earth, which would be followed by the Final Rite of the Transposition.

* * *

Jack stood cruxed in the room of mirrors. Its bright silver walls enticed him to look at the thousand facsimiles of himself; he couldn’t help it. He saw himself in the veins, disheveled, eyes propped open by weird fascination, and the Remington at port arms. Why had Khoronos built such a room? And what could it possibly have to do with the basement?

His reflection returned his confusion. But suddenly a darker reflection joined his own.

“So cometh the Vindicator?”

Jack spun, racking the shotgun. The reflections stifled him; it took a moment to pick the one that was real, and he knew that in that moment he could’ve been killed.

“We are risen,” the figure said. “We never end.”

A young man stood before him, in a black cassock and lowered hood. French accent, Jack thought. Gilles.

The young man’s hand gripped a knife made of black stone.

“I have seen ages,” he intoned, “and through those ages the inquisitors never change… But, then, neither do we.”

Jack stared. Someone cut this guy bad. A blade had riven him cheek-to-cheek; it made his mouth look huge and phantasmal. One eye socket had been plugged up with tissues.

“Inquisitor. Leave while you still can.”

“You’re about six months early for Halloween, fella,” Jack said. “Tell me where Veronica is or I’ll blow your shit clear to gay Paris.”

“You can’t hurt us. We don’t want to hurt you. Tomorrow we’ll be gone, and your life will remain. You can’t hurt us, believe me.”

“I’m not gonna hurt you, pal, I’ll gonna kill you. So start talking and maybe I’ll decide to be a nice guy.”

The figure took a step forward. The black knife glittered.

“Are you pure-ass crazy? One more step and I put a hole in your chest big enough to drive a bus through.” Jack brought the shotgun up, eyesighting down the bead. This was the motherfucker who’d raped Ginny. Had he done the same to Veronica?

“Let’s try one more time. Where’s Veronica?”

The figure lunged, wielding the knife. Jack squeezed off a round, which slammed into the Frenchman’s right elbow. The knife flew away with his forearm. Pellets cracked the mirrors behind the man; sprays of blood drooled down the glass.

Yet Gilles remained standing.

Jack racked up the next round. “What’s it gonna be?”

“All the truth that you can bear is yours. How much, inquisitor? How much truth can you take before you see what you really are?”

Jack veered the bead to the figure’s chest.

Gilles lunged again, reaching out with his remaining arm.

Jack put the next round into the kid’s 5x, racked a third, and put that in the lower abs. The dual report slammed Gilles to the glass floor as if a pallet of mason blocks had been dropped on him. The floor spiderwebbed amid spatters of blood, and smoke rose as Jack appraised the broken corpse. So much for him.

Then he noticed the gap.

He racked up round number four. Behind the body, a panel seemed to lean open, a black seam in the room’s