“Apparently he dated one of the Greatwater daughters back around nineteen twenty-four. He even designed the whole back balcony. Apparently it’s an add-on after the original was cracked in an earthquake.” He grinned like a man who’s won the lottery. “With that kind of notoriety, though, the house has a unique appeal. Bernie and I both think it will be snatched up the second we put it on the market.”
My heart started beating faster as I considered what all this could mean. “Did he design that spiral staircase?”
“Down to the cemetery? I don’t know,” Stuart said, his brow furrowing. “Probably. It fits the stories about Theophilus. Thumbing his nose at his family’s piety.”
“The family funded most of the original renovations on the cathedral, didn’t they?” Originally part of the mission trail, the cathedral had undergone a series of renovations over the years, the most current of which was ongoing.
“I think so,” Stuart said. “Why? You have that look in your eye.”
“Do I?” Frankly, I probably did. I leaned forward and kissed him hard on the mouth. “Part of that’s for Timmy,” I said. “I want you to share.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Thanks to you,” I said, “I’ve got some work to do.”
"I may be completely off
base,” I told David. "But it’s too perfect. Theophilus dabbled in the black arts. That’s common knowledge.”
“And he designed a balcony that led down to the cemetery, ” David put in.
“A cemetery,” I stressed, “that seems to be the perfect place for raising an army of the undead.”
“I’m with you all the way,” David said. “But what are we doing at the cathedral?”
“Research,” I said, killing the engine and opening my door.
“I’m sure I’ve seen boxes of Monroe archives down there. If we’re lucky, maybe there are some of Theophilus’s notes on the remodel.”
“I’m not sure we’ve been that lucky in a while,” David said.
I shot him a sideways glance. “Then we’re due.”
“No argument from me,” he said.
The archives are accessed through the sanctuary, and as we passed through the nave, we stopped and lit a candle, each of us saying a silent prayer for Father Ben.
“Are you okay?” I asked, noticing that David looked a little green.
“Fine,” he said. “Tired. A little under the weather, but basically fine.” He nodded toward the heavy metal door. “Let’s go.”
I hurried forward, pushing the door open, then treading carefully down the stone stairs to the cavernous room in which I’d spent more time than I liked to remember. “Those four,” I said, pointing to a row of large banker’s boxes along the far wall. “And I bet they’re all completely filled with bugs.”
“We’ll see,” David said, hauling the first one up to a tabletop and pulling off the lid. Sure enough, as soon as light hit the innards, I could hear things scurrying.
This
was why I’d fallen behind on my archival volunteering. Bugs. Yuck.
He brought another box up for me, equally infested, and we both settled in for the long haul. This is the part of demon hunting that I find boring, mostly because it
is
boring. And so far, nothing I was finding in the documents proved me wrong.
David, on the other hand, was obviously fascinated, spending way too much time skimming over each page before he flipped it and moved on to the next.
“This isn’t a rare-books evaluation for a collector,” I said. “We’re trying to find an answer. You want to pick up the pace?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Old habits.”
“Sounds like you’re reverting back a lot lately, actually.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Father Ben said you’ve been coming down here,” I said. “Do you want to tell me why?”
He looked at me, his smile enigmatic. “Honestly, Kate, I don’t. Not now.”
I nodded, unreasonably hurt. “More secrets,” I said.
He sighed, pushing aside the papers he was examining. “I’m not going to get into it now,” he said. “We have enough to deal with. But if I tell you it doesn’t relate to any of this, that it can wait, and that I will tell you down the road, will you believe me?”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” I said. Then, because the truth was he didn’t owe me his secrets anymore, “Yes. I’m sorry. Yes, I’ll believe you.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you or keep things from you, Katie, ” he said, his eyes soft, his attention only on me. “Let it go for now, okay?”
I nodded, then focused again on my papers. He was right. We had work to do.
Work that—unfortunately—we were still doing at half past five the next morning.
I reached over for the hamburger David had gone out for an hour earlier. “I feel like we’re in college,” I said. “Cramming for a final exam.”
“You never went to college,” he said, smiling at me.
“No, but you did.” He’d managed to squeeze school in even while we hunted, finishing out his degree after we’d retired in Los Angeles. “I watched and realized I much preferred sleeping at night.”
“Too late now,” he said, tapping his watch. “It’s morning. Should we pack it in?”
“Hardly,” I said. “We made it this far. There’s only one box left. We split it.”
He managed one deep, put-upon sigh, but it was for show only. Then he reached in and pulled out a pile of documents, our hands brushing as I did the same.
“Gotta admit it’s cozy,” he said.
I tapped his pile. “Work.”
Ten minutes later, he looked up. “I think I found something. Come here.”
I went around, reading over his shoulder from a small spiral-bound notebook filled with cramped, penciled cursive. “I can’t read it. Can you?”
“I skimmed through the earlier pages,” he said. “It’s Theophilus’s notebook, and he was definitely dabbling in magic, looking for a way to infuse the dark arts through the whole of the town.”
I grimaced. “Maybe that explains why we’re such a demon magnet after all, despite the cathedral.”
“It could,” he said seriously. “It sounds like he made some real progress. Right here, see?” He tapped the page.
“
Filum veneficum
,” I read. “Uh, my Latin’s a little rusty here. Wanna help me out?”
“An enchanted thread,” he said. “And in this part of the notebook, he’s discussing the cemetery.”
“So we’ve found it,” I said.
“I think maybe we have. But that’s not all. I’ve seen that term before. It’s a term of art in black magic circles.”
“Meaning what?”
“Not sure,” he said. “I remember seeing it, but that doesn’t mean I’ve studied it.”
“So what should we do? Head to your apartment and see if we can find it?”
“I think I can manage one better,” he said. “Come on.”
He pocketed the notebook, then led the way upstairs. Outside, I saw that the sky had begun to fill with color from the impending sunrise, and the birds were filling the sky with morning song. David pulled out his cell phone and dialed. A pause, and then he rattled off a request in Italian to speak to Father Corletti. A few seconds later, and Father was on the line.
David looked around to confirm no one else was around, clicked the phone to speaker, then explained to Father what we had learned.
“You are right to have recalled the term,” Father said. “
Filum veneficum
is the theory through which we believe that demons in their incorporeal state communicate. They are individual, and yet they are all connected.”
“What does that have to do with the cemetery?” I asked.
“It appears that your Mr. Monroe was attempting an interconnection of his own. That, at least, would be my guess.”
“At the cemetery,” I said. “And Goramesh apparently thought he’d managed it. That’s why he wanted to use the Lazarus Bones here the first time. Raise one body, and he’d end up raising them all.”
“That would be my best guess,” Father Corletti said. “What time is it there?” he asked, his tone suggesting he wasn’t merely making chitchat.
“About six fifteen, why?”
“Because black magic is always strongest before the dawn of a holy day. A Satanist’s way of thumbing his nose at God, you see.”
“Today is Easter.” I breathed, facing east and watching the light stream over the horizon. “I can’t believe we’re too late again.”
“We’re not too late until it’s over,” David said, slamming his phone shut and tugging me to the car.
“Call Eddie,” I said, shoving my key into the ignition. “Tell him to bring weapons. And get Laura to stay with Allie. If you can’t reach her, call Stuart. I don’t want her alone. Not now. Not when an army of the undead may be rising just a few miles from our house.”
Without a better idea
of where exactly to go, I steered the car toward the center of the graveyard, near the angel statue where Goramesh had tried to raise his army so many months ago.
As guesses went, it seemed reasonable enough. The statue was a stone’s throw from the Monroe mausoleum and tucked in under the cliff upon which the Greatwater Mansion perched.
“This better be right,” I said, the van bumping along the caliche-covered roadway. “It’s a big cemetery, and I don’t have another idea.”
“It’s right,” David said, his voice all business. “Look.”
I turned to follow his finger, then gasped in surprise. Even though I’d been expecting it—even though I feared it—the sight of dozens and dozens of bodies clawing their way out of the ground shocked me. And, yes, it terrified me, too. Two against hundreds—with an invincible demon thrown in to the mix. It didn’t sound like a battle we’d walk away from.
“
There
,” David said. “Cut across the grass and mow down as many as you can.”
“Right,” I said, forcing myself to think positively. We couldn’t fail. Fail, and my children were in danger. Fail, and the whole world fell.
I gunned it, steering the car right over a line of five demons clawing their way out of the ground—and managing to take off a few heads in the process.
“That is about the grossest thing ever,” I said.
“No argument from me. That way,” David said.
I followed his finger and realized we were coming up on the rear of the angel statue.
“If they’ve already risen,” I said, “will Gora-don still be here?”
“I don’t know,” David said grimly. “But my guess is yes.”
“Because he needs to be nearby to control the zombies?”
“They’re not zombies, Kate. Not any more than I am.”
I flinched. “Right.” I knew that. This was the Lazarus Bones we were dealing with. Dead bodies returned to their original state. Portals opened. Demons diving inside. “Then why?”
“To oversee the victory, for one thing,” David said. “And why leave? He’s invincible now, isn’t he?”
“I’m rather hoping not,” I said, hitting the brake as I took a wide curve.
“He’s going to think so,” David said. “But most of all, I think he’ll be here because he knows we’ll come. And we’re the two people he wants dead more than anyone else in the world.”
“Nice to be loved,” I said, as we rounded the statue and—true to David’s theory—saw Gora-don perched on the back of a grave marker, black eyes peering in our direction.
“Party time,” David said, pushing open his door.
I grabbed my hunting vest and the sword, then followed him. Or I tried to, anyway. A crowd of five demons had gathered at my door. I scurried to David’s side of the car, jumped out, then jammed my splinted finger forward to get an approaching demon with a solid poke through the eye.
“You cannot win,” Gora-don said. “Look around you. My army walks, and today, I shall have my revenge upon you two.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said, though I confess the impact was probably lost as midway through the sentence a demon pounced on me, knocking me to the ground and landing a punch so solid in my gut it knocked the wind out of me.
“Kate!” David yelled, slicing his cane through the air and slamming hard against the demon. He wobbled and let go of me, and I used my handy-dandy sword to slice off the creature’s head, then stabbed the beast through the eye for good measure. No sense having any more headless demons roaming around.
“Rise, children, rise!” Gora-don called, wings splayed wide as he stretched out his haunches, balancing on the grave. “Rise, and do my bidding!”
All around us, graves split open, bodies emerging, covered with dirt and dust. From the far edges of the graveyard, more demons marched, slowly and methodically, as if they knew there was no hurry. We were screwed, after all. Didn’t matter if we went down now or five minutes from now.
“
No
,” I said, pulling out the water gun filled with holy water that I kept in the vest. It sliced and burned through the flesh of the demons, slowing them down enough so that I could whip around and slice through two more demons.