He could only vaguely adjudicate the directions. At this pace, sixty-five, seventy miles per hour, he’d probably be there in ninety minutes. Khoronos was rich, eccentric, and obviously protective of his privacy. Jack envisioned a fortress rather than an estate. High fences, security windows, steel-frame doors. Jack could pick your average lock, but he couldn’t touch tubulars (as were found on most alarm systems) and he couldn’t do a pin-wired keyway. What if Khoronos had dogs, or guards? What if he had video? They’d be waiting for him, and they’d be ready.
But then the darkness crept back, a thousand years’ worth. Khoronos, he decrypted. Aorista.
What if Faye was right?
They could be killing Veronica right now.
The ritual that never ends. At least if he died, he would do so at the hands of history, not some crack dealer or street scum.
He thought of Shanna Barrington, the black-stitched Y of her autopsy-section. He saw Rebecca Black lying crucified upon the blood-sodden bed, and the clean white walls blaring red satanic art. He thought of the sad poem Susan Lynn had written, the poem which had turned out to be her own epitaph.
He thought of the last time he’d made love to Veronica. He thought of the scent of her hair, the taste of her sex. He thought of the way she felt, so lovely and intense, so wet for him. He remembered what she’d said to him as he came in her, her voice a tiny plea, impoverished out of the desperation to communicate that which reduced all the words in language to utter inferiority.
Her plea was this: I love you.
Her love for him was gone now, he knew that, but he could never forget how beautiful things had been in the past, how important he’d once been to her.
And now these aorists, these madmen, might be killing her.
They won’t kill her, he thought. His long hair blew in the window drag. Not if I kill them first.
His eyes trained on the endless ribbon of road, his hands firmly gripped the wheel. He lit a Camel.
He grinned maniacally.
He may even have laughed aloud when he whispered:
“If they so much as touch her, I’m gonna kill everything that moves.”
Chapter 35
Aorista, Father! I am the aorist! Once more the great beautiful black bird descended, higher into the depths than ever. It felt sublime and bright in the magnificent, chaotic darkness, a black aura singing into the whisper of providence. It heard…glorious things. Portents and validities far beyond the total of all the knowledge of the world. These were the Father’s whispers.
The bird sailed effortless over the chasms, each earthwork like a channel of steaming blood bubbling red as lava, and the thick smoke of baking fat the sweetest attar to the pitlike nostrils of its beak. Below, the ushers travailed, dividing twitching faces with stubby, nimble fingers, sloughing hot skin off the backs of the beautiful, unreeling entrails from plundered bellies in scarlet bliss. Aorista! thought the bird. Aorista!
Now it perched and watched, flexing its sleek black wings. Such honor to sit here, in the lap of truth. You have honored me, drifted the whisper. So behold now all that awaits.
Yes! Aorista!
Only then, in the darkled vision, did the great bird realize the place of its perch: the very shoulder of the Father.
Go.
— and so it did, soaring back through the apsis of the tenebrae, past the castellated crests of onyx and ebon.
Back—
Aorist, Father!
— back—
Father of the Earth!
— and back, over the darkness of a thousand endless truths.
Baalzephon!
Back to the gift that lay warm in wait.
Hail!
Back to the blessed error of the world.
Veronica sensed the descent of motion. Her head bobbed with each step down. She was being carried to some low place.
When she opened her eyes she saw darkness tinted by dancing candlelight. A cloaked figure stepped away. Her carrier, too, wore the same garb; they looked like monks. Veronica tried to move, yet her limbs did not answer the command of her brain. She felt sluggish, drugged.
Her vision seemed to lag before her; she was naked in the arms of the sack-clothed monk. Where was she? And what was that, below her on the floor?
I’m not dead, she realized. And she remembered. The savaged body in the kiosk. Gilles and Marzen attacking her. She remembered the German’s big hand squeezing the consciousness out of her like water out of a sponge. They were madmen, all of them, but they hadn’t killed her. Instead, they’d saved her for something.
What? What are they going to do with me?
And what had Gilles said earlier? Something about offerings?
Her cloaked bearer stopped. The flickering candlelight blurred her vision. All she could see were smears, suggestions of solid shapes submerged in dark. She squinted, tried to blink away the myopic tatters. What stood before her looked like a primitive chancel, a risen stone altar laid across stone plinths, and sided by iron candelabra. A crude red triangle had been drawn on the wall, where a cross might hang. On the center of the altar were a small jar and what appeared to be a black…
Knife, she realized in drugged terror. It’s a knife.
Her carrier stopped beside the second cloaked figure. The candles sizzled slightly. They were black and crudely fashioned, releasing an oily fetor to the damp air. Veronica felt drenched in her own sweat, tremoring.
Then another figure entered the chancel.
Veronica stared.
The third figure faced the altar, murmuring something like an incantation. He’s praying, she thought. It reminded her of her childhood. Church. The minister standing with his back to the congregation as he spoke the offertory and raised the sacraments. But this figure was no minister, and it was not bread and wine that he raised.
It was the black knife.
It’s Khoronos, Veronica realized.
“Pater terrae,” he whispered, though the whisper rang like a metal bell in the dank, underground church. “Accept these meager gifts so that we may remain worthy in your sight.”
“World without end,” incarnated the two others.
“To you we give our faith forever.”
“Accept our gifts. Sanctify us and keep us safe…”
Khoronos turned, his hooded faced diced by candlelight. His hands clasped the earthen jar to his chest.
“Welcome, Veronica,” he whispered very softly.
His cassock came unsashed.
Veronica screamed.
No penis could be seen between Khoronos’ legs. There was only a severed stump peeking out above the testicles.
“What should I do?”
Craig was starting to get addled. He poured two Windex shooters for a pair of dolts with glasses, then came back to her. “How can I tell you what to do if you don’t tell me what’s going on?”