Bad Bones (14 page)

The drive had been intense. Nothing remotely terrible happened, but he had spent the entire journey just waiting for the bad-luck axe to fall on him from a great height. Mainly because he couldn’t stop repeating his dad’s watchwords when he was giving him lessons. Just be careful and don’t worry about
your
driving; instead, worry about what all the other idiots on the road are doing.

And boy, had he worried.

So much that his main concern became getting pulled over for being terminally cautious and driving too slow. By the time he arrived at the Mission, Gabe sincerely doubted he had any nerves left unshredded. He got out of the car and took a look round at where he was.

From the quick scan he’d given the Wikipedia article he knew that the original adobe structure had been badly damaged in a big quake in 1857, rebuilt
and then added to over the years. The long, low-rise building, set some way back from the street with a broad, tree-dotted lawn sloping down towards him, was described by the article as ‘something of an architectural mongrel’. This Sunday morning the Mission San Sebastian looked fine to him, odd only in that it was genuinely old, unlike just about everything else in LA. And it also looked like no one was there. No visitors he could see, no staff or whatever, the place all quiet and empty.

Crossing the road he couldn’t stop himself from anxiously scanning here, there and everywhere to see if he was being watched. Like by a coyote, or an owl. He walked up to a small side gate, thinking he had to keep his wits about him and try to spot any trouble before it found him. The gate was unlocked and Gabe let himself through, mentally tossing a coin as to which way he should go. Right, along the terracotta-roofed walkway with its long line of flattened arches, or left, towards the taller, two-storey structure with a cross on the roof, aka the actual church part of the Mission. Instead of guessing, he got the folded sheets of paper out of his back pocket and referred to the small schematic of
the grounds for any clues that might help make up his mind.

It looked like there was a smaller chapel behind the church, in an area marked ‘Cemetery’. The caption said it was the oldest original building of the Mission. He couldn’t call it logic – nothing that had happened to him over the last few days had been remotely logical – but it felt like if Rafael, the devil-worshipping returnee, had a connection to anywhere in this place it would be the most ancient part. The part that had been around when Rafael had last been here.

When he reached the far corner of the main church building, Gabe stopped, flattened himself against the wall and poked his head round for a quick recce, then felt kind of ridiculous. Why was he acting like he was Agent Gabriel Mason here? Because you never knew. Definitely a good enough reason, he told himself.

He looked again. There was nobody around in this part of the grounds, either, and not so far away Gabe could see the line of trees behind which was the graveyard. In there, if he was right and if he wasn’t too late, he’d find Father Simon.
Dead or alive,
said the voice in his head.

Out in the surrounding area some animal or other uttered a strange, almost-human sound, halfway between a scream and a moan, and it made Gabe tense up. He’d been trying not to think about what might be happening to Stella, in the back of the van with Benny, Scotty and Nate. While it wasn’t his fault she’d gotten under Benny’s skin, he couldn’t help feeling it was his fault Stella hadn’t been safely at home today, where Benny couldn’t get his hands on her.

But if he opened up the floodgates to the unending list of ‘what if?’ possibilities, he knew he’d be drowned by them and unable to think of anything else. Or actually do anything. He didn’t want to stop himself worrying about Stella, but in this particular here and now he had to. He had to believe Benny wouldn’t do anything terrible, while he knew for a fact that Rafael absolutely would. With a quick glance behind him, Gabe peeled himself off the church wall and ran for the trees.

He had spent so much time playing first-person shooter games he found it impossible not to imagine there really was a sniper up on the church roof, with
him in the cross hairs of his telescopic, laser-guided sights. Every metre he covered, the trees that would give him sanctuary seemed to remain just as far away, only adding to his chances of being hit by the sniper’s high-powered, hollow-point bullet. The bullet that would punch through his skin, its copper alloy jacket peeling apart, the lead core fragmenting on impact, then tearing up and making hamburger of his insides. He’d read all about it. He knew every single stage of what was going to happen, that he wouldn’t even hear the kill shot.

And then there he was, running through the narrow stand of trees, moments later coming out the other side. Safe. Unscathed. In the graveyard.

Gabe stopped to get his breath back, as well as some of the sanity he’d lost in the previous twenty seconds. He scanned the area around him. There was no way a cemetery – even during the day, with a total lack of cold, silver moonlight – was not going to be spooky. The place was full of dead people, what else was it going to feel like? But in the silence, the only sound his own ragged breathing, there was the same zing of electricity in the air that there’d been earlier, at Janna’s house. But this time it was more intense.

The man was here, somewhere. And he was getting stronger.

Out of the corner of his eye Gabe caught a brief flare of light over to his right, like someone had just taken a picture and the flash had gone off. In that direction he saw a small building, which, if he was reading the map right, had to be the old chapel. Although what he was going to do if he found Father Simon locked in mortal combat with Rafael, he hadn’t got a clue. In his pocket he still had the crucifix, which Stella had picked up off the floor at Janna’s and returned to him, but when it came to a weapon, that was about it.

A saying of his mom’s, or maybe it was his grandma’s, came back to him, about how the brave went where angels feared to tread. He was with the angels on this one – he did not feel brave and, if there’d been any other alternative, he would not be about to tread anywhere but back to the car.

Dodging between the ranks of graves of the long-dead, some abandoned to nature and with stones leaning at crazy, drunken angles, others neat and well tended, he saw the flashing light go off again, twice, three times. Coming from inside the chapel.
Whatever was happening it looked as if it was hotting up, just in time for his arrival. As he got closer, Gabe slowed down. He could see the place better now; the roof of the small building sagging like the back of an old horse, it looked every day of its two hundred and some years of age.

He arced round to the left, where the door had to be, keeping his distance until he was facing the front of the chapel. The double doors were open. As Gabe strained to see inside he heard the wing-whisper, then he saw the owl, a grey phantom, glide between him and the building. Reining back his fear, he searched the cemetery for the coyotes, finally spotting them, their fur the perfect camouflage against the gravestones. Sentry-like, they were sitting either side of the low building. They were warning him off.

Looking back at the chapel he caught a movement. He was going to have to ignore the coyotes. Inside, he could see the figure of a man… No, make that two men.

When he got into big trouble as a child, Gabe remembered his mom asking him what had possessed him to do whatever it was he shouldn’t have done. As if she wanted to believe it wasn’t really his fault and he had no control over himself. Standing outside the chapel, the sensation of being taken over, possessed, spread out through his whole body from deep inside and invaded every part of him. More mist than smoke, as he breathed he could feel the coldness swallowing him up. And there was nothing he could do to stop its progress.

He began to move forward, not really knowing if he was being pulled unwillingly towards the chapel or walking steadfastly into whatever was going down in there of his own accord.

By the time he had stepped through the open doors it didn’t much matter either way. He was inside, where the normal rules – the ones which
made the world as he recognized it turn – did not apply any more. He knew this to be true because he’d been in the exact situation before. And only just survived.

In the small, confined space where he now found himself, the air was alive with a loud buzzing, like hornets on steroids, and thick with the acrid scent of burnt herbs and a hot, metallic smell he couldn’t identify. The vile mixture clung to Gabe’s nostrils, the taste coating his mouth, and it made his eyes water. He waited for the screaming and the jagged, agonizing knives to begin stabbing at him. Waited for his head to start expanding until his skull disintegrated from the pressure. But nothing happened.

Or maybe it just hadn’t happened yet.

A couple of metres away Gabe saw Father Simon with his back to him; he was stock-still, hands held up and out to the side, his white hair a startled, frizzy crown on his head.

In contrast, some four or five metres further back, a red-eyed figure strode left and right, reminding Gabe of a caged animal obsessively pacing in a zoo. Behind him there was what could have been a low table with something on it, but Gabe couldn’t make
out what. Dusty sunlight reflected dully off the man’s dark, slicked-back hair. The red baseball cap might have gone, but it was the same person he’d last seen at Janna’s.

Rafael looked so different Gabe’s heart almost stopped there and then. He was much wilder than before and his barely contained anger seemed to give the man a rippling aura, as if he was sending out intense waves of heat, and every time he randomly punched the air there was a sharp burst of light. Then the man pointed straight at him.

“You came! My disciple, you
came
!”

This time the voice didn’t echo in Gabe’s head. He could hear it for real. See the man’s eyes flare as he spoke.

“Yeah, I did!” The words, a dry croak, stuck in his throat and any moment he expected the attack to begin. “I came to help stop you!”

The man laughed, a harsh crow-like caw, and Father Simon swung round.

“Gabriel? What are you…? Where’s…?”

“Not here, Father…” Gabe moved closer. “She’s not here.”

“Ha, Gabriel – you have returned, like me!”
Rafael pointed at himself. “And this time you are angel-named, as am I!” He sounded triumphant, as if by being there Gabe had given him some kind of advantage.

The whole atmosphere inside the chapel changed. The power had shifted, and it hit Gabe like a gut punch that his arrival had been the catalyst, that he had allowed a switch to be thrown. He saw it now, with an awful clarity. Somehow Father Simon had managed to trap Rafael within the chapel walls, and his own unscheduled, unwanted appearance had royally messed it all up.

“No one sent me!” Gabe shouted, moving towards Father Simon, who looked drained and exhausted, like he had the heaviest of weights on his back.
Dead
weight
, said the voice in his head.

“I found him, Gabriel…” said Father Simon, gasping for breath. He reached out for Gabe’s arm and held on to him. “I finally found him, after much searching … and I discovered, as I thought – as I feared – that he had been thrown out of the Church for the disgrace of his many, terrible heretic sins. The evil things he did, Gabriel, I can’t begin to tell you!”

“You don’t have to, Father,” Gabe said. He’d seen
plenty and didn’t have to be told anything about what Rafael could do. “Can I help?”

Father Simon didn’t appear to have heard anything Gabe had said, his eyes round, staring at Rafael. “This man sacrificed the living, bathed in the blood of children, sold his eternal soul for forbidden knowledge. This man sinned like no other and for that was consigned to Hell. They tried to remove you from this Earth, Rafael! They failed, but where they failed
I
shall succeed! I
shall
succeed, Rafael!”

The dark, shadowy figure spun round in a circle, and as he came to a halt he held one hand up high. “I
am
Rafael Delacruz!” he yelled. “And your church,
anyo
ne’s church, means nothing to me… I am here to do nothing less than serve the Bringer of Light on Earth!”

Fireballs exploded in the air around Rafael. In the blasts of light Gabe saw he was holding what at first looked like a dripping piece of meat, and then he knew it wasn’t just a piece of meat, it was a heart. And the table behind Rafael was an altar, with the body of a large dog on it.

“I am back here to open the eyes of a slumbering world and continue His work!” Rafael let the heart
drizzle blood on to his face, then flung it behind him.

“His, and all the other heathen idols you worship!” Father Simon coughed and pulled himself back up to his full height, pointing at the sneering, gloating man in front of him. “As Isaiah says: ‘How art thou fallen from heaven, Oh day-star, son of the morning!’ – Lucifer by any other name! Satan the Great Adversary!”

“Your kind, you have your resurrection myths, and I have
my
reality…” Rafael, smiling as another burst of light shot up towards the roof beams. He thumped his chest with his other hand as he spoke. “I am His servant! And. I. Am.
Risen!
”

Gabe stared at Rafael in disbelief, the truth hitting him that, right there in front of him, was some kind of Dark Angel. He couldn’t believe he’d just thought that.

It was insane, completely unthinkable. Or would be, if he hadn’t totally lost his grip on reality. And right now he could feel the rope connecting him to the world outside this ancient chapel running through his fingers as if it had been greased. The world where he was just a kid at school, whose biggest problem
until a few days ago had been how to deal with a fixated, bonehead of a dope dealer, not Satan’s Resurrected Servant on Earth. He had
got
to get his act together. He had to remember that he did not believe in any of this!

Then the doors to the chapel slammed shut behind him.