Authors: Marc Olden
Bess closed the folder. “I’m telling you all this so that you can put certain things out of your mind. Laura says he’s spoken to you and he got the feeling you thought something was fishy about Shields’ death. The local police and fire departments found nothing out of the ordinary and I know what you’re going to say. The hand. Okay, let’s talk about the hand. I just told you what a nasty citizen the late Ivan Baez was. Couple of weeks ago we found his body in Central Park. Like I said, he had enemies and it looks like they closed the book. Somebody did a job on him with a knife. They also lightened his cousin’s load by removing said cousin’s head as well as one of his hands.”
Bess leaned forward. “No Druids, Miss Heggen. Just somebody out there getting even for getting ripped off by two chumps. We haven’t found cousin Crazy Horse’s hand, but I’m sure it’ll turn up. Whoever went to work on Ivan believed in being thorough. They also cut a hole in his stomach, pulled out his intestines and wrapped them around a tree.”
Marisa’s eyes snapped up into her head. She stiffened in her chair and the sickly warmth in her stomach exploded, choking off her air and she leaned forward, falling into a horrid blackness. Before losing consciousness she saw Joseph Bess rush forward to catch her, but he was too late.
The blackness claimed her first.
T
HE MAN CALLING HIMSELF
Herod said, “You’ve killed four people in New York and you still don’t have the book.”
“We intend to kill more,” said Rupert Comfort.
“That’s just what I mean. Certain friends are having second thoughts regarding how you’re going about this matter. We were told you planned to dispose only of the five who’d taken the book. It now looks as though you’ll leave at least seven dead behind you, if not more. I’ve been ordered to tell you both that each dead body is a potential hazard, that any one of the executions could trigger an investigation leading to trouble.”
The white-haired man said, “Those whose names are in the
Book of Shadows
ordered you to talk to us, of course.”
“They’re wondering if it wouldn’t be better to handle the matter of the book themselves. They’re asking if they couldn’t have gotten the book without you.”
“And then what?”
“And then they would worry less.”
Rupert Comfort’s eyes narrowed. “I see. Your friends are now ordering me about, are they?”
Herod linked his long fingers in his lap. “It’s true we here in New York have a working arrangement with you, Mr. Comfort—”
“The arrangement is we tell you what to do and you do it.”
Herod continued speaking calmly, as though there had been no interruption. “—but I’m afraid you need to be made aware of certain … shall we say, ramifications. Let’s start by saying New York isn’t England and we, all of us, live in changing times. At one time, perhaps, there may have been a need for more direction from you. But let me be blunt on this score: We don’t need much direction from any quarter these days.”
Rupert and Rowena Comfort exchanged glances, then eyed the four people—three men and a woman—sitting in front of them. They were all outsiders, members of a coven led by Herod, a dark, slim, bearded man who barely hid his contempt for the Comforts.
“The important people listed in the book,” said Herod, “don’t wish their names to become public, not even accidentally.”
“And you think the killings will lead to that,” said Rupert Comfort.
“Someone does.”
“Someone should stop thinking in such fashion. In fact, when it comes to the book, someone should stop thinking altogether.”
Herod fingered the black crucifix hanging from his neck. “Perhaps you didn’t hear what I said, Mr. Comfort. This is New York and we live in changing times. You’re not on home ground anymore. People here are upset at how you and your wife have been conducting your business in New York.”
Rupert Comfort leaned back in his chair. He appeared to be relaxed.
The
Book of Shadows
held more than a collection of spells and rituals. It held the key to the continued existence of the Druids’ village. To remain hidden and safe the Druids and witches had created “changelings” and placed them in positions of power in the outside world, substituting them for men, women and children who either had influence or would attain it.
It was the responsibility of these changelings to do whatever was necessary to prevent or head off exposure of the Druids. The changelings from the Comforts’ village were the equivalent of espionage “sleepers,” spies who maintain normal lives in an enemy nation until assigned a mission by their own country.
The use of changelings had been successful; the village survived unmolested.
Those changelings who attempted to betray the village, who forgot their sacred task, were disposed of by carefully contrived accidents. Occasionally they were taken care of in “the old ways,” such as by the Wickerwork Man.
The
Book of Shadows
stolen by the Americans belonged to Rupert Comfort’s father. Once a powerful Druid, he was the senile, toothless old man rocking in front of the cottage the evening the entire village had gone to the fields for the all-important midsummer’s eve fire festival. His had been the magic that had created changelings now in cities all over the world. Their names were written in his
Book of Shadows.
The book’s loss represented such great danger to the village that the tribe had no choice but to apply its justice harshly. Rupert Comfort’s father was the first victim of that justice. He and the boy guarding him, Rupert’s grandson, had been sentenced to die.
Rupert Comfort’s position in the tribe had saved the boy’s life. After much pleading, the white-haired priest had been told to choose just one who would die immediately. He had chosen his father, because the old man’s life was almost gone, and so was his mind. To spare him the agony of a fiery death in the Wickerwork Man, Rupert Comfort had been allowed to strangle his father with his bare hands.
When the old man’s corpse had been placed inside the Wickerwork Man, his face had been wet with his son’s tears.
The sense of urgency Rupert Comfort carried with him in his search for the book was to increase. The elders had given him one month after the
Book of Shadows
was located to bring it back to the village. If he failed or exceeded the deadline, his grandson would be burned alive, along with the white-haired priest’s daughter. Rupert and Rowena Comfort could expect no better fate for themselves—nor did they protest the tribe’s ruling. In the wrong hands, the book meant certain destruction for the village and its changelings.
Celtic justice, brutal and unsparing, applied to all, young and old, the highest and the lowest. The tribe’s way of life in an alien and modern world depended on the strictest adherence to all of its laws, a situation neither Rupert Comfort nor his wife questioned.
The Americans sitting in Herod’s East Side Manhattan apartment were part of a trend toward insolence and disrespect the Comforts had noticed among affiliated outsiders. Few, however, went as far as Herod in saying that Druids like Rupert Comfort no longer had the power to command outsiders and changelings. In the past such disobedience would never had occurred. It was unlikely it would even have been thought of.
Today it was being thought of and spoken aloud. Witches had always served Druids without question. Both served the Horned God, whom the Druids called Hu Gadarn and considered a god of fertility, the first to teach men to plough the soil. Both shared a mystic sense of the universe and both had a strong faith in that which the eye could not see. But the Druids had always been the more powerful of the two, more structured and better organized. Stronger.
From their first contact, it was the Druids who had ruled the witches, and it would always be so. It would be no different with those changelings created by the Druids.
The lives of Rupert and Rowena Comfort, their grandson, their daughter, and her husband; the survival of the village and the changelings it had created—all depended on recovering the book and disposing of those who had taken it.
There wasn’t time for insolence from anyone who was supposed to serve. Witches or changelings. Those who were to obey must obey.
Herod said, “I understand the book belonged to your father.”
Rupert Comfort, hands resting casually on his thighs, nodded.
“And I understand,” said Herod, “he was killed.”
Rupert Comfort said nothing.
Herod aimed a forefinger at the white-haired man. “That’s the point I’m trying to make. The recovery of the book is an extremely serious matter, perhaps too serious to be entrusted to a person who’s not objective. What if someone breaks the codes?”
The names of the changelings and many of the spells were written in different codes and languages.
Herod said, “I’m told some of the book is written in Manx, Pictish, Romany, Old Irish, and Welsh.”
“Also Aryan,” said Rowena Comfort, speaking for the first time. “And Shelta Than, Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Aramaic. Among others.”
“With all due respect,” said Herod, who wasn’t respectful at all, “I should point out to you that there are skilled cryptographers as well as computers in the modern world. I wouldn’t think the dead languages pose any problem for them.”
Rupert Comfort said, “Can you speak any of these languages?”
Herod said nothing.
The white-haired priest said, “I thought as much. Between the two of us my wife and I speak and write all of them.”
He stood up and walked over to Herod. Suddenly tense, the coven leader folded his arms across his chest and leaned as far back in his chair as possible.
Rupert Comfort looked down at him. “Cryptographers. Computers. Superstitions and primitive aspects of the modern world elevated into infallible knowledge. Pathetic, I should say. Quite pathetic.”
He placed a hand on Herod’s shoulder. “Have you ever heard of the biliteral cipher devised by Francis Bacon in 1605? It involves the use of any two letters, say M and N, or even A and B. One uses the pair in combinations of five. There is no end to the codes one can invent. There is the Caesar cipher, devised by Julius Caesar and still used by us—and effectively, too, let me add. Of course, neither code is modern, nor for that matter are any of the codes in the book. In fact, they are all what you have referred to as obscure. Yet they work. But that is a fact you will never understand, you with your modern computers. Well, Herod or whatever your name is, understand this.”
Rupert Comfort yanked the slim coven leader from his chair and hurled him to the floor. Herod yelped. And the Druid was on him.
Rowena Comfort leaped from her chair, knife in hand, and positioned herself in front of the remaining witches.
None of the three moved.
Rupert Comfort kept the coven leader face down on the carpet, left hand pushing Herod’s head hard into the floor, right knee tight against the elbow of Herod’s extended right arm.
Gripping Herod’s wrist, the Druid pulled up with all his strength, savagely breaking the arm at the elbow.
Herod shrieked and the one female witch fainted.
Quickly turning Herod over on his back, Rupert Comfort covered the little man’s mouth and using his ritual knife, slashed the coven leader’s forehead to the bone three times.
Herod twitched, jerked. He fouled himself, staining the carpet beneath him and filling the room with a sickening stench.
When Herod’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fainted from the incredible agony, Rupert Comfort wiped his knife on Herod’s shirt and stood up.
The Druid kept his eyes on the unconscious man as he spoke. “Scoring above the breath, it’s called. It’s a superstition you so-called witches should be familiar with. Bleed a witch above its breath and it loses its power. The power supposedly runs out with the blood.”
Rupert Comfort slipped his knife up his right sleeve and into its hidden sheath. “Hear me well, you stinking little bunch of pretenders, you play actors who pretend to understand deeper mysteries in order to impress your friends. I have much to do and little time in which to do it. And that is why I will kill the next one of you who disobeys me. Pass this word of warning to your coven and to those changelings who dared question me. I shall give no further ultimatum.”
Seconds after the Comforts had left the luxury East Side apartment, Cornell Castle, one of the three terrified witches, threw up.
I
N HER DRESSING ROOM
Marisa sat in front of a lighted mirror and brushed wine-colored blush onto her cheeks while talking with Joseph Bess.
“I keep telling myself if I’d only had cheekbones like Katherine Hepburn, I’d have been a star. Once I considered having all of my back teeth removed, uppers and lowers. Had to have that gaunt, thin-faced look. Decided against it. Would have meant saying goodbye to corn on the cob and peanut brittle.”
The detective smiled. “You’re doing all right as is.”
“If you can call working with Hitler’s child all right.”
“Hitler’s child?”
“Our director. Tact is not one of his strong points. Where’s Gina?”
“She’s with Jackie No.”
Marisa stopped. “God, don’t ever say that to her face.”
Gina was Joseph Bess’s eleven-year-old daughter, whom he’d brought to
World and Forever
at Marisa’s invitation. The child was in the dressing room of an actress the show called “Jackie No” behind her back. When it came to sex, the actress rarely said no.
Jackie No and Gina had hit it off immediately and the child had been invited to help the actress dress for the upcoming taping.
“Jackie’s a good kid,” said Marisa. “Not as selective as she should be, but then again, most of us aren’t. She loves children. Wants to have a few of her own. She’s always looking for somebody to love. I suppose that’s her problem.”
Joseph Bess said, “Thanks for asking Gina to the show. She’s really getting a kick out of it.”
Marisa reached for her eyeliner. “Why not? It’s the least I could do, considering I fainted in her father’s office the other day and made a fool of myself. Not to mention knocking over an ashtray.”