Incubi

The guns had only slowed them down, but it was the dolch that had killed Gilles. Jack stuck the Webley in his belt and gripped the black knife. It felt like sleek ice in his hand. It felt reverberant with some unearthly power.

He scanned down the stairwell. Nothing.

“Come on, you ugly fuck. I’m here. Come and get me.”

But only silence hung in the stairs, and flickering light.

Then the tremendous weight slammed down on his back.

Jack’s lungs voided. The thing had dropped itself from the ceiling of the staircase. Entangled with it, he rolled thumping to the bottom of the steps.

Pressure ballooned his face, the cloven hand latched to his neck. The candlelight licked Marzen’s primeval visage. Dog-like jaws snapped twice, then it grinned. The light made a shadow of its horns against the wall.

Jack couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t even move under the muscled, inhuman weight. He felt encased in cement and smothering but somehow he was able to think: I’m dying.

The huge mouth spread wide, showing a black pit full of teeth. It began to lower to Jack’s face. Its breath stank of all the evil in history.

Visions unfurled. Stars burst into bright colors and beautiful kaleidoscopes. Jack saw things then, as his mind blanked out. He saw love and graciousness. He saw wonder. He saw the old man Carlson trotting docks in rotten clothes, hungry and poor but smiling, each broken step a celebration of life. He saw Faye’s sweet smile, the sun shining in her hair, and then he saw Veronica and all the love she’d had for him once. He saw all his flaws destroyed by the simple, bright light of joy and all the treasures of the world. Trees, the sky, starry nights and kisses — all these things and millions more in what would be the second before his death. Jack was dying now, at the filth-encrusted hands of an ageless evil, yet all he could see was jubilation. No, he was not scared, and he did not see devils.

He saw angels.

The roars deafened him. The ground beneath him shook like demolition as the incubus unloosed the bellow of its agony. Jack felt flattened by the tumult of noise; the taloned hand came away from his throat and the crushing weight sidled off him.

Gagging, he opened his eyes. Blood pulsed back into his brain and he could see again. Jack was alive, but Marzen lay dead at his side, the black dolch buried to the hilt in his belly.

I’m still alive, Jack thought.

He got up and turned.

A figure stood like a chess piece at the end of the light. It was waiting for him.

“Khoronos,” Jack said.

“Inquisitor. Welcome to the temple of my god.”

Jack stepped up, drawing the Webley from his belt. “You’re not like them, are you?” He pointed the revolver at the figure’s cloaked head. “I know you’re not.”

“The flesh falters, but the spirit goes on. No, you needn’t a dolch to kill me, inquisitor. Kill me with your guns, your crusader’s tools. Kill me with your prisons, your poison gas, and your electric chairs. You may kill me with your bare hands if you like. It hardly matters.”

Candlelight glistened on the lean face. The candles sizzled. Khoronos stood perfectly still and did not blink. His smile looked like a concession, a lament.

“Where’s Veronica?” Jack demanded.

“Instead of fighting us, why not join us? Be one with us in the temple of our god. We never end, inquisitor.” The clement voice drifted. “Infinity can be a beautiful thing.”

Jack’s heart felt dead. “Where’s Veronica?”

“She’s gone,” Khoronos said.

His hand bid the floor. All that lay within the shape of the Trine was a large pool of blood.

“She is with the Father now, the Father of the Earth.”

Baalzephon, the word whispered in Jack’s head.

Khoronos spread out his hands and looked up. Only the whites showed in his eyes, and a gentle smile touched his lips.

“Aorista,” he said.

Jack dropped the Webley’s hammer.

In this bizarre transition of bullet to flesh, Jack heard only a bang that seemed far away. A flash popped. Khoronos’ face split in the sack hood. The bullet mowed him down like a tall weed.

Footsteps pounded behind him. Stewie and Randy and several uniforms burst into the basement. But Jack didn’t see them, he didn’t care. They seemed to sense this and stayed themselves to give Jack room.

Jack approached the Trine.

Khoronos lay dead on his back. Blood leaked from his cracked head within the hood.

Jack knelt at the Trine.

He put his hands in the blood — Veronica’s blood. It had no heat in it at all.

Goodbye, Veronica.

He brought his hands to his face and began to cry.

Epilogue

On that night, while Jack had been infiltrating Khoronos’ phantom house, Stewie Arlinger had called Randy Eliot after having listened to Faye Rowland’s strange tale of sacrificial rites and encrypted names. Randy had easily pinpointed Jack’s location by instructing the duty programmer to recall the map grids that Jack had run through the data monitor in his vehicle. That’s how they’d found him.

Two days later the papers and the news had everything. “Suspended Cop Nails Triangle Killers,” the Post read. The police would never successfully trace the identities of the ritualists: Khoronos, Marzen, and Gilles were just names on three death reports, names without backgrounds, without lives. Jan Beck of the county police Technical Services Division easily linked the forensic evidence of the first three murders to the alleged perpetrators. The case was closed.

The body of Veronica Polk, however, was never found.

* * *

Jack did the rehab thing, if only to prove to himself that he could. He would never drink again, and, though at first it troubled him, the fact quickly diminished to insignificance. He still went to the bar, though, but drank soda water with a twist. It proved a fascinating perspective: watching a bunch of other people get drunk while remaining sober himself.

After a time, he began to think about things. He thought about love. He would always love Veronica and her memory, but he also knew that she was dead, and that the past was the past. Part of himself would mourn her for the rest of his life, but the other part would go on.

The aorists believed that time was inconsequential; whatever truth was, it went on without regard to duration. But Jack knew that this was not applicable. Time, in actuality, was short. He asked Faye to move in with him, and she did. She quit the state and got a better job with the county library system. He spent $1,400 on an engagement ring (“Ouch!” he’d remarked when the saleswoman informed him of the price); however, he hadn’t yet summoned the courage to give it to Faye. He didn’t know what she would think, or even how she might react. He didn’t know if he was moving too fast. He knew that he loved her, though, so at least he knew something. Perhaps he would give her the ring tomorrow. Perhaps tonight.

“Here are the ballistic reports,” Jan Beck said. She plopped them on Jack’s desk. Randy offered her some coffee, but she politely declined. “I’d rather drink embalming fluid than Captain Cordesman’s coffee.”

“Sure,” Jack said, “but embalming fluid doesn’t have caffeine, and what the hell do I want with the ballistics reports?”

“It was your case,” she answered, “so you can stow them. I just do tests. I’ll tell you, though — I have new faith in the.38 standard-pressure round.”

“What do you mean?”