“I have something to show you,” True said. “While I set up, would you go get the girls?”
“The women,” True corrected.
When everybody was in the one room and True had the laptop powered up, sitting atop a writing desk that had never seen a pen put to a letter, he asked if all of them could see the screen clearly. It was displaying the white seal of the FBI against a black background.
“What is this, show and tell?” Berke asked, sitting cross-legged on a bed.
“Yes.” True guided the trackball pointer over the shortcut to his image program and clicked. He hit the Browse All Images and a series of fifteen color thumbnails came up. He had gotten these pictures in a secured email attachment from Tucson yesterday morning, when he was at the field office in San Diego. “These are graphic,” he warned, and found himself looking at Ariel.
“I think we can handle graphic,” Nomad said with a hint of a sneer. His eye was mostly green today, and he could see out of it. He was still burning about that mess unloaded on them last night. To tell the honest truth he was deeply and bitterly disappointed in Mr. Half-True.
“Okay. First picture.” He clicked on a thumbnail and an image filled the screen in high resolution.
They didn’t know what they were looking at. From his chair, Terry asked, “What is that?” The image showed what looked like…pale, freckled flesh? And on it was…what? A shiny brown tattoo of some kind? The depiction of a wine glass with an ‘X’ at its center, and a ‘V’ at the bottom under two curling tails?
“It’s a brand,” True said. “It would be right about here.” He touched an area just above his left shoulder blade. “Those who know this kind of stuff say it’s a portion of the seal of Lucifer from a book called ‘The Grimorium Verum’, printed in the 18th century.” He clicked on the next image. Again there was a shiny brown mark against pale flesh, but the flesh was puckered by long ragged scars.
“Somebody’s been using a whip on him,” True said before he could be asked. “Somebody who really likes to use a whip. This symbol is supposed to be an all-seeing eye, again as related to Satanism.”
“Hold it!” Nomad had been sitting on the other bed, next to Ariel, and now he stood up. “What is this shit?”
“These are brands, the scars of several different kinds of whips, razor slashes, wounds made by fish hooks and broken glass—and other implements the experts haven’t figured out yet—on the back and chest of Connor Addison. They found them when they took him to the medical trailer after that melee. The Tucson police took these pictures.” True clicked on the third image, which showed in closeup more scars, these crisscrossed as if inflicted by the furious digging of a small metal object in the shape of a sharp-tipped, five-fingered claw.
“Je…sus,” Berke breathed.
“On his lower back, right side,” True said. The images were tagged with the locations of where they’d been found on the body.
The next image caused Ariel to shrink back, Nomad to narrow his eyes and Terry to whisper, “Oh, man.”
It was the brand of a large downward-pointing pentagram, with the head of a half-animal, half-human goat at its center, the eyes completely blackened burn marks, the horns outlined and quite artfully decorated in burn, a ‘666’ burned across the forehead, everything done with detail and obvious passion and creativity, if working with red-hot irons and electric pyrography chisels was the artist’s joy.
“This one is at the center of his chest,” True said. “You can see that his nipples have been burned off, as well.”
“I can’t look at any more.” Ariel put her hand up and averted her face.
“Okay, we don’t have to go through all these, but I wanted you to see a few.” True closed the image program and navigated to another file. “Now…this is Connor Addison speaking to the police around midnight, last night. He suddenly wanted to talk, so they wanted to hear what he had to say. You ready?”
Nomad was still on his feet. He’d moved between Ariel and the laptop as if to shield her from these hideous images of tortured meat. “Why are you showing this to us?”
“Because you need to know what’s out there,” True replied calmly.
“We already know, man!” Terry said.
“No,” said True. “No, you don’t.”
He double-clicked on the video file, and it began to play.
The scene was a view of one of those small interrogation rooms from every reality cop show on the planet, taken from a camera positioned in an upper corner. Two men, a gray-haired dude in a white shirt with a red-patterned tie, the other in a dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, sat on one side of the table. The gray-haired cop was rubbing his eyes, as if it had been a long hard slog to midnight. The man in the blue shirt had short-cut brown hair and was husky, with the broad back and shoulders of a wrestler. A notepad, pens and what looked to be a voice recorder was placed between them. On the other side of the table sat a thin, pale young man wearing the eye-shocking orange jumpsuit that Nomad had known and loved so well. Addison’s hands were folded on the table in an attitude of prayer. His neatly-combed blonde hair looked damp, as if he’d just taken a shower before coming clean.
Time and date stamps sat down on the lower left of the frame, and a frame counter on the right. The time was twelve-oh-nine.
“Let’s get started, then,” said the older cop. He had a radio rumble of a voice, like the bass presence was turned up a little too loud. “You can state your name.”
“Apollyon,” said the young man. He spoke with composed authority, in a soft voice that suited his looks but not the raging nightmare under his jumpsuit.
“Say ’gain?” asked the second cop, who sounded like a hardcore cowboy type: careful there, feller, I got five beans in the wheel.
“Apollyon,” the soft voice repeated, and then he spelled it out.
Cowboy wrote it down on the notepad.
Radio’s fingers tapped the tabletop. “And what’s your home address?”
“You know all that,” said the young man, Connor Addison or Apollyon or whatever he was calling himself.
“We’d like to hear it from you.”
The young man looked up directly at the video camera. He had a black and swollen left eye. A bandage covered his chin and his lower lip was puffed up. Nomad suddenly felt awfully proud of himself, though he knew most of the damage had been done by the Nazi Six.
“Call me Apollyon,” said the soft voice to the camera. “I am not from this place.”
Cowboy tore the page off the notepad and started to leave his chair.
“I can tell you what it means, you don’t have to go look it up on the Internet.”
Cowboy paused, thought about it, almost went anyway because his horses were restless, and then he sat down again, smoothed the page out on the table and stared across at Apollyon.
“I am the destroyer,” said the pale young man. “I am everything you fear, and I am everything you would like to be.”
“That so?” Cowboy asked, and he looked down at his piece of paper.
“That is so,” said Apollyon.
“Would I like to be in jail facing a very serious charge of attempted murder, Connor?” Radio rumbled.
Apollyon looked up again at the camera, and his battered face beamed. “They need their ears checked here.”
“Okay, then. Apollyon.” The way Radio said that, he could be announcing an ’80s hair band. “You wanted to talk, so we’re listening.” His chair creaked as he leaned back. He spread his arms out, palms open. “Let’s hear it.”
“I’d like a candy bar. Something sweet.”