hyperextended as the joints in her fingers popped one after the other, elbow and wrist cracking, and still she pointed at my heart.
Marcus kept struggling to get out, trying to escape from something that can never be escaped. It wasn't until he spun completely around now that he saw I'd closed and barred the charnel house door. His jaw dropped to his chest when he realized he was trapped.
'No,' he groaned as they covered him, writhing and punishing. 'You can't… wait!'
Hotfoot Johnson fought to get free as Marcus tottered a few steps in the street, gurgling like an irritated baby. He finally managed to gulp enough air to let out a scream. It came from the recesses of his soul, and when it finally ran out he kept shrieking without sound. His mouth opened wider and wider until I could hear the hinges of his jaw creaking, but still nothing came out. His women twirled about him, hugging and tugging at his wrists.
He seized his head with both hands, trying to squeeze my fear and faults out of his brain, just as someone came up from behind and brought a stick down on the back of his skull.
Marcus floundered and dropped onto his face, rolled over twice, and lay still. The jackdaw broke from Self's grip and flew to its master, where it sat on his chest making weeping sounds.
Fane drifted from the shadows, his bloodshot eyes appearing more tired than bitter. He stood holding one of his pine splints in his fist. It was too light and thin to have actually hurt Marcus if the kid hadn't already been collapsing.
I could tell that Fane badly missed his robes, scapular, tunic, and cowl. He wore a black wrap usually seen only on Muslim women. The scent of heavy oils and pine preceded him by twenty feet as he limped toward me.
'You could've beaten that boy easily,' he said. 'Why didn't you?'
'Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answers to, Fane, or I'll let you inside my head too.'
He was smart enough to be scared by that.
The distant noise of a Harley back-ending a flatbed trailer and the shrieks and breaking glass followed as we turned and walked out of the alley. Man, did that get old fast. I wondered if it made him a better or worse penitent for having been dead on the operating table those twelve minutes after his accident. His victims didn't trail him, so perhaps he had found some redemption in purgatory.
'I've been to the Givat Ram campus of HebrewUniversity,' he said, 'and I spent time at the Shrine of the Book to look at the Dead Sea Scrolls. I spent much of the morning at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.'
'You're a regular tourist.'
'They're evacuating visitors. You can feel the city about to tear itself to shreds, but I needed to stay.'
'Why?' I asked.
He still drew strength from the weakness in his legs, hobbling fast to keep up the pace and enjoying the agony it brought. 'I wanted to see and learn all I could while I was here in the Holy Land. My intent was to discover something that might help.'
'Did you find out anything useful?'
'No,' he said while the motorcycle trapped in his former life echoed behind us. I thought perhaps he'd found God again, but not yet his soul. Maybe there was still time. 'Nothing that might help in the coming battle.' He rankled his nose at me. 'You need a bath.'
'I've had a bad day.'
He nodded at that and we didn't say anything for a time as we walked. The hail had ended. Self glanced about moodily, and once I caught him looking into his own palm. I stopped at a shop and got him some cookies, which he ate noisily. He offered one to Fane, and Fane took it and held on to it but didn't take a bite. He said, 'I was visited by John this morning.'
That stopped me. 'In a dream?'
'I don't really know. Possibly. I felt awake and I was standing, but I often am in my dreams.'
Pane had plenty of his own Freudian traumas to deal with, and I couldn't be certain if the abbot had returned or if Fane's subconscious was merely boiling over with hidden meaning.
'What did he say?'
'He said that the first angel has been loosed. The other six will soon follow. And Michael remains chained.'
Several hundred Jewish settlers attacked Israeli Arabs' homes in Nazareth. Sporadic conflicts and further rioting spilled into Hebron, BidiyaVillage, Jisr al-Zarka, Netzarim Junction, and the Erez border crossing. Israelis took to the streets in anti-Arab protests at several points throughout the country. In northern Israel, at Tiberias, residents raised an Israeli flag over a mosque and set fire to the building before police restored order.
The full moon rose over Babylon.
I made it back to the gratis hotel room and could feel the presence of my mother as I walked the corridors. I knew someone was already in my room.
I turned on the light.
My father sat on the edge of the bed and stared blankly ahead.
Gawain lay on the floor, hands folded neatly over his belly. His blind eyes focused on me and the corners of his mouth lifted. He'd been stabbed twice in the stomach.
I kneeled beside him and took his head in my lap. I tried to make him as comfortable as possible. He did not appear to be in pain. His serpent's tongue twined as he mouthed words I didn't understand. I talked to him for a few minutes about nothing that mattered as my tears trickled onto his forehead. He closed his eyes and let out his last breath.
We stayed like that for an hour while I cradled Gawain's corpse, and finally I accepted that this truly was the apocalypse.
Self crouched at the window and pointed into the sky as the bloated moon slowly became as blood.
Finally my dad turned and looked at me. With that mad intelligence blazing in his moronic gaze he whispered, 'Megiddo.'
Chapter Eighteen
It was Easter Sunday.
Most of the train and bus service had been disrupted due to the disorder. I decided to rent a car from Sixt on King David Street. They were reluctant to let me have the Jaguar XJ8, but I paid in cash and took all the insurance.
If we were going to travel to the end of the world, then we might as well cruise there in style.
It was dangerous to be out. The heavy hail came down in fits and starts. Israeli helicopter gunships kept up their buzzing and Palestinians were lynching and setting fire to anyone they considered an Israeli spy.
Mobs roamed freely. The drive to Megiddo would take us through some of the worst areas of the fighting. It would keep everything in context, listening to the shouts and shrieks in these days of rage.
I was eager to get started. I'd never owned a car that came close to the roaring power, stealth, and deftness of the Jag. Who would have guessed you could get such a quality beast here in the Middle East, at the brink of the final war, while children huddled against stone walls and had their kidneys shot out, on the day Christ had risen two thousand years ago?
My father sat in the backseat with Self, and they held hands like a parent and child. They whispered together and occasionally tittered. Self complained about his hypoglycemia some more so I stopped at a bakery and got him a hazelnut honey lekach.
He took two bites out of it and spat it on the ground.
