Chapter Twenty-one

 

 

I

 

"I don't know why I'm here," Jane said in the open door.

"I do," Dhevic said. "Please come in."

"I-" She stepped back, hesitant. It was broad daylight, yes, the sun on her back, normal traffic coursing back and forth on the main road behind her. It was a normal day, so what was she afraid of?

"I apologize," Dhevic said in his crisp accent. "What I told you earlier, about my..."

"Benefactors," Jane finished.

They sometimes forget about me. The least expensive motels in the worst parts of town are generally a necessity. It's clean, though. I've sprayed it for bugs and caught all the rodents with traps."

How delightful, Jane thought, and walked in. She re-pocketed the slip of paper he'd given her with the motel address.

Several bags of groceries sat on the small desk; Dhevic had obviously just returned from shopping. Through the front window, Jane could see a new silver Ford SUV parked there.

"I knew you'd come," he said.

"Oh, sure. I forgot, you're psychic. You're an...augur."

Dhevic only smiled in response. "I understand your sarcasm, but still...you're here, aren't you?"

"Yes. There were more murders yesterday. Another one of my employees-"

"Another messenger," Dhevic corrected. "Yes, I know about that."

"How much do you know?"

Dhevic made two cups of instant coffee from a portable burner he'd plugged into the wall. There were stains on the wall that appeared to be handprints, and a hole, too. Jane didn't want to think that it might be a bullet hole.

"Did you dream last night?" he asked, and handed her a cup.

"Yeah, I dreamed. Of a black church, with a bell tower. And the bell was ringing."

"The Cymbellum Eosphorus? Do you believe in it now?"

"The dream was just stress related, Professor Dhevic," Jane snapped. "I had the dream based on the power of suggestion, because of what you told me in my office. But you believe in it, right? You said so the other day.

Dhevic didn't respond, at least not vocally. Jane tried to keep focusedon his face. "The other day, you said something about this demon-"

"Not a demon, a fallen angel," Dhevic corrected. "Aldezhor, Lucifer's messenger; Hell's equivalent of the Archangel Gabriel-"

"Fine. So then there's this cult," she clarified, "and the members of this cult believe in Aldezhor?"

"They are his heralds. They proclaim his prophesy. They are his messengers."

Jane frowned. "Is that a yes?"

"Yes. There is... a cult."

"They believe this myth, and they act on it, as though it were true?"

Dhevic looked at her, but said nothing.

"They kill because they believe they're-what?-paying homage to Aldezhor? Making sacrifices for him?"

Dhevic nodded. "It's more complicated than that, but, yes. You can think of it that way."

"Are drugs involved?"

"No drugs."

"Hypnosis? Brainwashing?"

"No. Only the power of faith played against weakness and innocence. Almost anyone can become an acolyte of Aldezhor."

"Martin Parkins is an exception, I suppose, but my other employees-Carlton Spence, Marlene Troy, and Sarah Willoughby-were all level-headed, conscientious employees and quality people in general. None of them was the type to join a cult. How did they get mixed up in it? How did they get recruited?"

"No recruitment," Dhevic explained. "They were seduced. They were taken. You can think of it as something akin to demonic possession-"

"Oh, come on."

"They were machinated."

The strange word stretched a pause across the room. "What's that mean?" Jane asked, exasperated.

"Aldezhor gets people to do his bidding by tricking them, by praying on their fears and obsessions, making them believe they're true. He amalgamates lies with truth, so that he is believed. Keep in mind, his ultimate purpose. Aldezhor is the mouthpiece of Satan, the greatest liar in history. All of his messages, therefore, are lies."

"What's that got to do with-"

"Machination-it's an occult term, related, as I've said, to possession. Aldezhor is an incubus; when he becomes discarnated, when he machinates, his sexual persona emanates. He possesses his victims through a process called discarnate machination. He walks behind the possessant almost as though the possessed is a life-sized marionette. He controls everything, a puppeteer, sees everything, feels everything. You can see him in smoke, rain, and in mirrors. Sometimes, when the auras are correct, you can see him standing right behind the possessed."

Auras. Great. "And you believe this?" she asked. "Tell me. The other day you went into a trance, or something like that. And you said you believed it."

Dhevic's voice seemed to resonate. "It wasn't a trance. It was the side-effect of a vision. I have visions. It's my heritage; it's been passed down to me from my ancestors over centuries."

The air stilled. Jane tried to contemplate a way to deal with it. Visions? Machination? She didn't know of such things. But was it possible for her to believe in them?

She thought harder. She remembered what she'd seen in Dhevic's eyes two days ago. And she remembered what she'd seen last night at the psychiatric wing...

"Say it is true," she began. "What do you want? Why did you come here? The police think the only reason you're here is to exploit the situation for these tabloid shows."

"Then the police are wrong, and that's regrettable."

"So answer the question. Why are you here?"

"To recover the icon," Dhevic said. "The icon is the nimbus of Aldezhor's power to become incarnate. The recent sacrificial murders have all been perpetrated by your employees-postal employees, through the force of the icon-"

"The icon?"

Dhevic opened his leather folder and removed the polycarbonate sheet he'd shown her in her office. "You know what the icon is," he said.

"The-"She tried to remember the pronunciation of the word. "Campanulation? The bell?"

"No." He pointed down. "The striker."

Jane looked at the engraving again. At first she was bothered that the church in the engraving was identical to the church in her dream but, again, the power of suggestion. She'd seen the engraving in her office already, and her subconscious mind remembered that and inserted it into the dream. The striker, she thought. She squinted. The ball of the striker was star-shaped. It stands for the Morning Star-Lucifer. "So this striker, this icon-"

"Is what's called a power relic," Dhevic finished. "Think of it this way: the striker is the object of your cult's worship, like a crucifix in a Catholic church."

Jane tried to sort her thoughts. "And you're here because..."

"I'm here for the icon. I'm here to retrieve it, to confiscate it-and return it to a secure location."

More silence.

"I don't believe for a minute that a striker from a bell in hell-"

"The Cymbellum Eosphorus," Dhevic intoned.

"-is in my town, causing people to become possessed."

The man nodded. "I understand. I'm not asking you to believe it. Just help me retrieve it. I believe it's hidden somewhere in the west branch post office."

She thought further. Okay. There's some hokey piece of iron that people believe is part of this bell. I can deal with that. Dhevic thinks it's in my branch. If it is, the logical thing to do is let him get it, and maybe all of this will end.

"You want me to let you into my post office to look for this thing, is that it?"

"Yes," Dhevic said.

"Well, I don't know if I can do that," she told him. "People will ask questions, and the police already want to bring you in for questioning. I'm probably breaking some law by not telling them that I know where you're staying."

"I've committed no crimes."

Jane peered at him. Everything was opposites. Whenever she looked at him she couldn't believe he was anything but benevolent, if a bit bizarre.

"Tell me how to find the icon. If I find it, I'll bring it to you."

"It's a very dangerous object. It's very powerful-"

"It's only powerful if you believe in it. I don't believe in it. I just want this to stop. I'll go along with whatever charade I have to end it."

"Is this a charade?" he asked in a softer voice. "Look at me. I want to show you something."

Jane grit her teeth. "No."

"You'll believe ... if you look at me."

"No! You're hypnotizing me-"

"Very well." The man was smiling gently. "The icon will be hidden in some dark place, below ground, a basement, a crawlspace or a conduit-"

"Of course. How creepy!" she mocked.

"Because its owner exists in dark, low places."

"Fine." She thought about it and thought about it. Maybe I should let him go with me, find this thing, and be done with it. She kept feeling like she could trust him, without knowing why. "I have to go to the bathroom," she said, distracted.

"Right over there," he told her and pointed.

She got up hesitantly and looked around at the dilapidated accommodation. "I mean-there aren't, like, roaches and rats in there, are there?"

Another smile. "No. I evicted them all personally. I told them that if they expected to stay, they'd have to split the cost of the room with me."

Jane spared a laugh and went in. Actually, Dhevic had cleaned the bathroom quite well-that or the housekeeping staff, but Jane doubted that this motel even had a housekeeping staff. She sighed and looked at herself in the mirror over the sink. Her eyes had dark circles; she was tired, worn out. All the more reason to get this over with, she thought.

She stiffened at a skittering sound. Roach, probably. The things made her hair stand on end. Forget about going to the bathroom and just leave, she suggested, but a morbid curiosity seized her.

The skittering came from the bathtub behind her. She pulled back the shower curtain and, indeed, saw a large palmetto bug roving around near the tub mat.

But that's not why Jane nearly had a heart attack.

Lying on top of that rubber tub mat was a slim naked woman with her throat cut. Jane's feet felt nailed to the floor. The woman was young, with long flowing mocha hair, her mouth agape in death.

At the end of the tub sat a pile of clothes. Jane recognized the colors at once: the light-blue shirt and the slate-blue shorts. A post-office uniform. And that's when she knew who she was looking at; it was Doreen Fletcher, one of her newest employees.

Carved on Doreen's chest was the likeness of a bell with a star-shaped striker.

Jane sucked in her scream. She popped open the narrow bathroom window, crawled out, and ran.

There was no time to think. Her biggest fear was that her heart might begin to fibrillate from the shock of what she'd seen. The car, the car, she thought manically. What if Dhevic was waiting for her? Fortunately, she'd parked toward the end of the motel, in front of the office. When she peered around the corner, her car remained, and there was no sign of Dhevic.

She took a chance, jumped in, drove away with her foot to the floor.

Police, police, police, came the next staccato bursts of thought. Steve, I've got to find Steve. She could pull over right now and call him but she didn't want to stop. It would only take a few moments before Dhevic realized that she was gone-and what she'd seen and he would be after her. She pulled off the main road onto a side street, cutting across town. There was a county sheriff's station just up the road. I'll be safe there. I can call him from there-

But the rest of her thoughts severed.

Hands were on her from behind.

Rough hands first cupped her breasts, then slid up to her throat. Now she truly believed her heart would stop.

Dhevic's right behind me, in the back seat...

But as the hands tightened, her terrified eyes shot to the rearview mirror, and that's where she saw the face.

Not Dhevic's face at all.

It was the face of Aldezhor.

Suddenly ghosts of the fallen angel's hands were covering her own on the wheel. She heard a chuckle and a whisper, felt the faintest kiss at the side her neck, then a foul hot tongue licked her skin.

She heard words not in her ears but in her head.

You will not foil me. And you will not challenge my servants.

The hands were forcing Jane's to steer to the side- The arrival of the Messenger is at hand...Jane's car thudded over the curb, plowed down into a ravine, and collided with a yard-wide oak tree.