Evil Eternal (18 page)

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

His face betrayed a momentary flush of anger and Aimee was sure he’d start yelling. Instead, he grabbed his coat, stormed from the room and slammed the front door.

Chapter Twenty

Cain had left the confines of the mayor’s house to seek solitude in the cordoned-off area that had been the site of the World Trade Center. The abomination of 9/11 seemed to some New Yorkers a million years in the past as they resumed the natural ebb and flow of life. For others, the pain was as real and raw as yesterday. Everyone’s scars were different.

Unbeknownst to most was the power that hung over the site like an unseen nebula, teeming with lightning. Such delectable evil. It still reverberated in the air. And oh, the souls. Not just the malevolent shades of the beasts that had committed the atrocities, but the lost and wailing echoes of thousands of spirits that were still suffering the tortures of being burned and buried alive. It was pure chaos and Cain found it irresistible. In a place of such utter madness, Cain felt truly at peace.

Construction had begun during the spring on an entirely new complex of buildings. It was long overdue, lost in the miasma of politics and money. The newly paved stretch of barren land played host to the curious and mourning during the day and the damned at night. Cain sat in the shadows and drank in the filth and violence that would forever mar the very fibers of the death zone. Here he would find strength. Here he would convey his commands to his vile apostles while they slept in bed next to unaware husbands, wives and lovers. Here, of all places, in this city of broken faith and hypocrisy, Cain would summon the might needed to unleash a nightmare on the entire world. This time tomorrow, the people of this planet, no matter their beliefs, would know that carnal evil was real, that good no longer held the monopoly on victory.

Hell would be so pleased.

Closing his eyes, Cain cast his wretched plans into the warped minds of his converted, demonic warriors. Back in their homes, they remained still as corpses, but deep inside they chomped at the bit to be let loose. Their time was fast approaching and their master was promising them supremacy.

It was so simple. Now he knew why he had been awakened. The world, once a vast plain of lands and millions of unconnected people, had literally become a small community thanks to man’s advances in technology. Every country was linked by televisions, radios, satellites, cell phones and the Internet. All one had to do was set events in motion on one continent and watch its ripples wash over every corner of the globe.

The Christian fundamentalists would say it was the end-times as predicted in the Book of Revelation. Their thoughts and cries and actions alone would bring about Armageddon. All Cain had to do was light the match. The world would take care of destroying itself, leaving him and his minions to feed on the flesh and souls of the billions left in the wake of the Apocalypse.

“I’m in.” Shane’s words bounced off the walls and dark corners of Saint Luke’s Church.

Father Michael was on his knees at the foot of the altar. If he had heard Shane speak, he gave no indication. Shane had a strong feeling the priest would be here. Breaking in was easy, as churches were notoriously low on security systems. For the most part, they still believed in the goodness of man and the sanctity of the house of God. Forget the fact that every year they were robbed by the dozens. Small parish churches like Saint Luke’s still thought that a single lock on the door and latches on the windows would suffice, not that they would have the money required to install an antitheft system should they have decided to stop turning the other cheek.

Faint illumination from the two stands of electric candles on either side of the altar cast eerie shadows on the walls. The design of Saint Luke’s was made beautiful by its modesty. It had the requisite tall, stained-glass windows representing various saints and martyrs, and marvelous three-dimensional wood cuts of the Stations of the Cross on either side of the rows of pews. A statue of Mary, one hand over her heart, the other raised and seeming to bless the congregation before her, rested at the left of the altar while a bust of John the Baptist sat on a shelf above the baptismal font to the right. There was nothing ostentatious about Saint Luke’s. It appeared to Shane as if it had been designed that way with the intention of limiting distractions and offering quiet contemplation.

Shane remembered coming to Mass with his grandmother when he was a small boy and lighting real candles with very long wicks after putting a donation in the tiny metal box at the base of the candle stand. There were always dozens of illuminated candles and it was his job to point out a new, unlit one for his grandmother. She would stay silent for a moment and then usher him back to their pew so they could have a prime seat before the organ came to life and Mass started. She died when he was seven and he’d never returned to church. His parents were confirmed agnostics and never once forced the issue of religion on him. He had been grateful for that fact, until tonight.

He slowly, almost reverently, walked down the aisle and stopped by the second pew. Father Michael hadn’t moved since his arrival. Shane assumed he was in some sort of trance or meditating or whatever an undead person did at night. He slid into the pew and sat down.

“Come,” Father Michael said, startling him.

“I said I’m in,” Shane said. “Cain has Aimee involved now. She’s determined to be there tomorrow as his guest. If I can’t convince her not to go, I have to be there to protect her.”

Father Michael remained on his knees, silent as the grave.

“To tell you the truth,” Shane continued, “I was thinking of a way to convince her to just leave the city with me. I had no intention of going one step farther with you. I’m scared. I mean, you’ve laid a lot of heavy shit on me and that Cain thing, well, I just didn’t know if I could stand up to it and whatever else will be waiting for us. And then she drops this in my lap and I’m beginning to wonder if fate is actually a real thing. Like, no matter what I decide to do, I’m always going to end up with you, tomorrow, facing hell, saving Aimee.”

He leaned forward, resting his forehead on the back of the pew. The confession left him drained, resigned.

“I
can
protect her, right? If I keep her close to me, she’ll be guarded against Cain and his demons by whatever it is that’ll keep them from killing me. Isn’t that so?”

“Pray.”

Shane rose from the pew. “All I want is a simple answer. Will she be safe if I stay next to her?”

He was answered by silence. If Father Michael wasn’t so damn terrifying, he would have rushed the altar and spun him around to force a damn reply from the priest or whatever he actually was. Instead, Shane nervously pulled at his hair. He stood staring at Father Michael for a long time, stifling his questions and refusing to pray.

Ages seemed to go by before Father Michael finally rose and made the sign of the cross. He was sans hat and sunglasses and his pale, angular face started Shane’s heart pounding. He regarded Shane with bleached, featureless eyes that betrayed no emotion.

“You
must pray
.”

Shane’s fight-or-flight response was on sensory overload. His right leg twitched, ready to buckle or take wing on a moment’s notice.

“I wouldn’t even know how to pray,” he murmured.

Father Michael approached him with outstretched hands. He looked like a combination of Frankenstein and a zombie from
Night of the Living Dead
, and even though Shane had spent a week around him, something about being in a deserted church in the black of night with the undead warrior priest made him regret breaking in to announce his intentions. If he couldn’t face the man he would be fighting with, how could he possibly stand up to Cain’s hellions?

“You can think and speak. You can pray.”

Father Michael was only a footstep from him, his fingertips aiming for Shane’s head.

“What if I don’t want to pray? Maybe I…”

The words stopped in Shane’s throat as the priest touched his temples with unexpected lightness. Instantly, his fears were expelled. A soothing feeling, like warm milk being poured down his body, enveloped him. His muscles relaxed and his head felt light.

“Pray and you will find your answers.”

Shane approached the altar on legs that felt lighter than air. Kneeling before it, he felt a presence drift into the space to his left. He looked over and saw his grandmother, her head bowed in contemplative silence. She reached over and held his hand. He never once questioned how she could be there. It didn’t matter if she was real or just an impossibly lifelike projection from his memory. All that mattered was that she was here. Feeling her hand in his was the most exhilarating moment he had ever experienced, and together they prayed.

Aimee had woken up alone, angry, concerned, and a twinge of something else that she couldn’t quite define. So, Shane was mad at her and he’d spent the night on the street. He’d stormed out on her before and he slept in the great outdoors that was the city way more than he did in her bed. He was fine, she told herself. Just being a stubborn man. For someone so atypical, he was playing the part of the macho jerk pretty well.

It was Tuesday, but she had been given the day off by the mayor. He said there’d be no sense coming in, only to leave early so she could get ready for the convention. Instead, she accessed her computer from home, answered her e-mails, responded to all of her voice mails and prepared some documents that would need to be printed up and distributed tomorrow. She took a break after a couple of hours, watched a little TV, but kept thinking about Shane. He’d looked so sad last night before he left. At the time she’d thought it was a well-played mind game but now, the moment separated by a restless night’s sleep, she was no longer so sure.

The electronic buzz of the ringing phone broke her concentration. She answered before the second ring, hoping it was Shane.

“Hello.”

“Good morning, Ms. DeCarlo. It’s Rose Williams from the office. I just wanted to call and let you know that the mayor is having a car pick you up at four this afternoon.”

“A car? Wow, that would be great. Do you need my address.”

“That’s okay, dear,” Rose said. She sounded like a Norman Rockwell painting of a genial grandmother come to life. “I think we have your address somewhere around here.”

Aimee laughed, mostly at herself for being such a dunce.

“Yeah, I guess you do. Thank you, Rose. I’ll be here.”

“Very good. Have a wonderful time. Bye, dear.”

The brief phone call reignited her excitement about the night’s festivities. After a light lunch, shower and change into her dress, all thoughts of Shane had drifted to the gentle undercurrents of her mind. This was her big night and, if he wanted to be an ass about it, that was his problem. Aimee admired the black dress in the full-length mirror, gave her lip liner a final touch-up and had to keep herself from running out the door when she heard the car horn signal her chariot’s arrival.

Father Michael and Shane spent the day in the church, gathering their strength for the oncoming clash. They’d sat at the back of the church during the 6 a.m. Mass, politely ignored by the serving priest. At the end of Mass, they’d left before the priest and his lone altar boy made their way to tidy up the pulpit and lectern, only to return half an hour later to sequester themselves upstairs where the organist and choir sat on Sundays.

Shane remained in a kind of haze. He’d never before felt so at peace within himself, despite the terror he knew awaited them. Sometime during his silent meditation, his grandmother’s shadow had departed but not without leaving him a pastoral sense of purpose. Father Michael’s brief touch had opened up a doorway he never knew existed, and even though the scene behind it was filled with inhuman nightmares and uncertainty, he was strengthened by the fact that he had been chosen by a higher power for a special mission. All those years of feeling alone, rejected, an outsider even in a city as rich and diverse as New York. If he’d only known.

If he’d only known.

Father Michael touched his shoulder in the late morning and said, “Stay.”

He slipped through the rectory like a phantom and went to Monsignor Stanton’s bedside. The monsignor was in the same position he had left him the night before. His breathing was ragged, stopping for dangerously long periods of time before restarting with a sickening rattle. His time was near, but it had to be delayed.

“Stay strong for a while longer,” he whispered. “Stay strong and I will guide you.”

A wan smile spread across Monsignor Stanton’s sleeping face and his breathing became easier. He sat with him a while longer, until he was satisfied that the worst had been held at bay.

After Father Michael’s return to the church, he and Shane spent the rest of the day arming themselves and dipping their weapons in holy water. When they were done, the gunnysack was empty and they were each almost fifty pounds heavier with well-concealed armaments. They watched the sun set, bleeding the vibrancy from the stained-glass windows.

“Father Michael,” Shane intoned as night descended. They were the first words he’d uttered all day.