“Tombs?” Joann hesitated. “
The
Tombs?”
“I’m told he’s on his way there now. Apparently there was an altercation with the police officials. He started ranting about devils or some such, and perhaps it got out of hand. Perhaps he was high.”
“You’re wrong! He’s still alive!” The knowledge lifted her spirits. “
The
Tombs is a jail. It’s one of the places downtown they hold detainees.”
“Oh. Well, then that
would
be good news, I suppose. He’s not dead, he’s only on his way to imprisonment.” The monk raised one curved eyebrow. “Miles from here.”
High?
The understanding his words brought weighed her shoulders.
Ranting about devils?
“He tried.” The monk patted her shoulder. “But…he
is
only a bartender.”
Arrested.
Her head hung down in defeat.
You should have known they wouldn’t understand…
“Damn you, Donovan…” she whispered.
“Exactly.” The monk inhaled slowly, satisfied. “And now it’s time to do what
we
came here to do.”
Joann barely noticed as he raised his index finger and touched her forehead.
Then it all went black.
***
Still soaking wet, Donovan returned to the Vulcan. He looked at the stole, then at the bandage on his left hand. Quickly he wound the stole around his right hand, neatly tucking in the end. He flexed both hands and made fists.
Just like you’re getting into the ring.
He gingerly walked the bike down the steps from the South Gate House, across an overpass and along a paved walkway that wound near the Lawn. The darkness was thicker here, closer to the source, and it became more difficult to see. He thought he should be more frightened than he was, but with everything else stripped away, all that remained was saving Joann.
Fear ends where the inevitable begins.
He left his key in the ignition and edged through trees and bushes. Every branch he moved near threatened to crack, forcing him to pick each step with care. Caution made him take short, shallow breaths. A thin white trail from his nostrils made him realize how low the temperature had dropped here. Despite the cold, sweat mixed with holy water and trickled down his back. He swiped drops from his eyes and carefully held a branch aside. From here he could see most of the stage, its backdrop dripping gore from the damned that had been hung. In front of the stage sat an altar made of stone and wood. Only a few shapes moved around it; Donovan guessed most of Valdes’s mob were fighting the police. He couldn’t identify any of the shapes until he saw someone in a brown monk’s robe carrying Joann’s limp body to the stage.
“Joann!”
As he started forward, his path was immediately blocked by sharp white edges. He whipped his arm out and the spire slid into his hand. He lashed out, and the blessed iron cracked against a sliver of white face. The possessed man howled and dropped backwards, black blood stark against his skin. Donovan pivoted and threw a roundhouse punch at another who stood behind him. His left hand, its bandage wet with holy water, caught the creature full in the jaw. Pure white light burst from the contact. It howled in pain and clapped spindly, jagged fingers to the burn. Two more possessed grabbed his arms. Donovan lurched, staggered, and tumbled to the ground, taking them with him. His holy water-soaked jacket made them screech and smoke, and he was able to wrest himself free. He sprang to his feet and raised the spire in time to parry the scythe-blade that had unfolded from another creature’s arm.
“
He burnsssss!!
”
Donovan dodged a blade that swung at his head and made a break for the altar. The darkness grew thicker and deeper, confusing him after a few steps. He saw no one near him, but he could hear rustling and the wet slicing sound of scythe blades unfolding from the forearms of the possessed. In the distance he saw meager torchlight and ran for it. Suddenly, the monk appeared in front of him. He no longer carried Joann, and he stared at Donovan with bemusement. Donovan stopped short and started to raise the spire, but found to his amazement he couldn’t. He stared at his arm. It began to tremble, a shiver that ran up to his shoulder and spread through his entire body. His chest contracted and he gasped, unable to breathe. His throat muscles trembled and squeezed shut in the throes of fear he’d never before experienced or even comprehended. His legs buckled, and he dropped to his knees. Paralysis swept over him. He tried to raise his head but his muscles were locked, and he could only stare at the ground. Valdes and a bald man in scholar’s robes joined the monk, but Donovan’s muscles had stretched so tight he could barely move to see them. Everything felt tight and cold and dark…
***
“I trust this is the last distraction we’ll have this evening?” Mephistopheles said archly. “We have no more time to waste.”
“Faustus hath completed the spells. As the bargainer, Valdes, it falls to thee to open the Amaranthine Gateway.”
“I’m well aware of my duties,
Herr Doktor
,” Valdes said. He turned to Mephistopheles. “As for distraction, yes, that should be the last of them. I suspected Donovan Graham would show up, so I took precautions. Here, and at the Hospital.”
“A Circle of Neith hath been cast there,” Faustus assured him. “None shall enter—”
“If he was able to get this far,” Valdes scoffed, “do you think simple magic would stop him? Or anyone helping him? I sent someone to guard it. Don’t worry; it’s safe.” He looked down at Donovan. “He’s not going anywhere, is he?”
“No. I found what the dark represents for him.” Mephistopheles brushed off the forearm of his sleeve. “Are you ready, Neil?”
Valdes looked towards the stage. “Yes, I am.”
TWENTY-SIX
CONSUMMATUM EST
W
ith all the action on the Great Lawn, the NYPD perimeter around the park had grown skeletal. The sidewalks were practically deserted and lit by flashing lights from sporadic clusters of patrol cars. Sawhorses jutted into Central Park West, abandoned in the face of reality. Disarray and anxiety clouded the air. Father Carroll crossed the avenue and hurried north.
The interior of the once-impressive medical complex was as silent as a deserted stadium. Father Carroll located the shimmering light that Donovan had seen and quickly made his way to the corner tower’s top floor.
He found himself in the center of a corridor. The portal was in the room at one end: four lit candles, all black, marked the primary compass points around a circle on the floor, a circle formed by a chain of tarnished silver links. Outside the circle, touching a point facing Central Park, white powder had been poured in the shape of a scallop shell. In the middle of the circle, broken bits of copper wire were arranged into a Star of David. At each corner of the star fat red candles burned, propping up six mirrors to face each other. Burnt almonds and singed wheat stalks lay scattered around the circle’s interior while in the middle of the Star of David, a glyph had been drawn in dark, shiny liquid.
Carefully, the priest brought his face close to the doorway. A familiar, static-electricity buzz tingled his beard. He looked the entrance up and down and gingerly extended a hand. A purplish light shimmered as his touch came closer. He nodded, respectful of the craft.
“Circle of Neith, I’d say.”
The spire felt sturdy and righteous in his hand. As blessed iron, it would split the blockage like gossamer. He took a step away and raised it like a paladin’s sword.
“Father! Praise be!”
The voice made him freeze. He turned, arm still high, and found himself facing the silhouette of a stout woman dressed like an Old World Irish mum.
“Can you help me find my son? He was with that nasty man, and I’m afraid something might have happened to him.” She started to approach, then cowered back at the raised spire. “Please don’t hurt me, Father.”
Father Carroll looked at the spire, gave a sheepish smile, and slowly lowered his arm.
***
“
73…51…22…8…0!
”
Shadows receded like the tide, making the normal dark of a summer night a sunrise by comparison. Clark lowered his machine pistol to survey the landscape. Over a third of their force was gone; no blood, no bodies, no evidence of their presence remained. The officers and agents who were left fired random shots as they drew together. “Vicki, what happened? Can you see?”
“
I don’t know—whatever was blacking out my monitors has just lifted.
”
Yarborough came to his side. “Anything?” Clark shook his head impatiently. The captain grimaced; they’d made it roughly a fifth of the way up the Lawn. “Matz!” he growled into his radio. “Matz! Where the hell are you? Get down here and secure these hostages,
pronto
!”
Static distorted the response. “
…tack…fight…a moment…
”
A figure streaked along the field. “Stop right there, goddammit!” Yarborough fired a warning shot he ran to intercept it. “Surrender right now!”
Clark watched him, noting a growing number of whitish flickers in the shadows around them. He was not a religious man, but Donovan Graham’s insinuations about devils refused to leave his mind. Inside his body armor his heart hammered, and tension sweat made him look like he’d just gone for a swim.
Yarborough returned, panting. “We have to keep going. We can’t let them take back momentum.”
“I can’t see shit!” Darenelli hissed. “These goddamn flashlights—”
“What’s that?” Clark pointed north, where a light had begun to shine. It grew brighter until it revealed the truth of their situation: grinning white faces leered all around them.
The apocalyptic cult had them surrounded.
“
We got the 264.
“
Now kill the rest!
”
Yarborough slowly raised his radio. “All units assemble! Collapse the perimeter and get down here,
now!
”
Hoofbeats and motorcycle engines rumbled and the ground shook at the approach of a force from the west side.
“Matz!” Darenelli cried, dropping the flashlight to clutch his shotgun with both hands. “Never thought I’d be so glad to see his ugly mug—”
He stopped short when he saw Captain Matz’s face; it was draped over the chalky, grinning visage of a cult member in a top hat. Behind him, more rode the NYPD motorcycles. They, too, wore faces peeled off police officers.
“Jesus Christ,” someone breathed.
The police force turned outwards. Half the men went to their knees and took aim with their weapons while the rest stood above them to do the same. In all, Clark estimated they had between a hundred-fifty and two hundred people left.
The cult members tightened their circle.
***
As Valdes, Faustus and the monk walked away, Donovan’s body cramped into a motionless curl. The darkness, vast and suffocating, became his entire existence. His mind shrank inward.
Joann’s going to die.
She thought I was out of my league. She was right. Conrad was right. I’m nothing.
All of this is my fault.
I deserve to die.
Misery swept over him. He had no more energy to resist the fist crushing his spirit. It would kill him, he knew, if the possessed didn’t take him first. He didn’t care. His strength seeped away, leaving behind only numbness. He closed his eyes...
How can this be the right path, Father, if it ends here?
...and nothing happened.
He waited for the final gasp of suffocation, for the killing blow, but neither came. His breathing, labored and hot, continued. His skin and clothing, wet with holy water, went untouched. The earth remained firm beneath him. Somehow the world went on. He forced his eyes open and saw only darkness. The grass of the Great Lawn tasted bitter on his lips.
Blood?
He imagined what he looked like, groveling in the dirt, and tried to find anger to spur himself into action. None was there, no emotion remained. Failure had wrung everything out of him. Everything except one, lone thought:
Maybe this
isn’t
the end of the path.
But it
had
to be; nothing about the situation had changed. Had it?
Fear ends where the inevitable begins.
Donovan pushed himself up out of the dirt and into a crouch. His head reeled and he staggered but remained upright. None of the possessed were around. From the south he heard gunshots and shouts; to the north, a single voice incanting something in Latin.
He stood motionless. The struggle back from the darkness had left him drained and adrift. As he gazed about the empty lawn, an absurd memory came to him:
The Comparative Religion final had been tough, but he’d finished it with a little time to spare. As he brought his paper up to Father Carroll, he noticed some students praying for divine guidance. He smiled at the priest, who watched the room with some amusement.
“No atheists in foxholes, I see,” he’d said.
Father Carroll had chuckled. “Don’t look for God where He’s needed most; if you didn’t bring Him, He isn’t there.”
The bandage on his left hand, Father Carroll’s stole on his right, both squished with holy water. The iron spire lay at his feet. He stared at it, feeling faintly ridiculous and ashamed of his weakness.
If Joann is that way, why are you standing here?
He picked up the spire and headed for the stage.
***
Valdes sensed the setting to invoke Lucifer before he saw it.
Since the portal had opened in the Cancer Hospital, he’d become aware of an unusual frequency vibrating in his inner ear. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was a change from the usual energy of the city. That frequency had changed upon the arrival of Mephistopheles, becoming lower and more guttural, and now had shifted once more with the imminent arrival of Lucifer. This new resonance—for it wasn’t an audible sound, but a sensation that stirred darker emotions—combined qualities of dread from the first and terror from the second, but it was more than the sum of those parts.
Of course it feels different than anything,
he thought.
This is the edge of the abyss.