Fires Rising (28 page)

"Father? Are you okay?"

Heart racing, Pilazzo looked down at his hands and saw: blood pooled in the center of his palms, dripping through his fingers onto the floor, the rosary squirming eerily about his bloody grasp like a worm in a rain puddle.

"He's coming," he said, mind nearly paralyzed from the vision he'd just glimpsed. "And he's bringing his army."

P
ilazzo gripped the rosary tightly; the others in the room cowered at the mere sight of it, now doused in the priest's own blood. Timothy kneeled before the priest, hands clasped in uncertain prayer. "What can you tell us? How do we prepare ourselves?" The boy's good eye triggered back and forth between the bloody rosary and the priest's face.

Pilazzo took a deep breath and expelled it in a nervous gush. "I'm not certain there is any way to prepare for the horrors I just saw."

"What did you see?" Timothy's wounded gaze pinned Jyro as if the two had discussed the probability of this uncertainty coming to pass.

"Fires…tremendous flames rising high above the city."

"You saw the future," Wrath said, holding the transistor radio in a swollen, scabby hand. "A future you must stop."

"Father," Timothy said. "We knew we had to find you—the sinless one. It is equally imperative that we locate the chalice."

Pilazzo shook his head, a cold bullet of pain lancing into his brain like a stab from an icy needle. "I do not know where it is. All I know is that the beast is coming." He gazed suspiciously around the room, images of the dog from his mind's nightmare haunting him. It had grown stronger from his first vision, more vicious, more powerful. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair. His heart beat heavily in his tightening chest. "I need some water, please."

In seconds Seymour appeared with a bottle, which he handed to the priest.

"What happened, Father?" Timothy asked. "Did you sleep?"

"Sleep? No. But I dreamed. And I saw."

There was a pause of uncomfortable silence. Jyro said, "It is growing dark outside. The city is in bedlam."

Pilazzo shot the vagrant an intense glare. "Dark? Is it night?"

Jyro's eyes narrowed. "It's getting close..."

"How long was I in here for?"

"You've been in here for hours. We stood outside the door the entire time, listening to you praying. We left you alone until you started screaming."

"Screaming?"

"Yes, in Latin."

Pilazzo peered at the rosary, still in his bloody grasp. "I do not speak Latin." The images from his dream lingered like some terrible document of war.

Fires…huge flames rising over the city.

"God's power is in you," Timothy said. "He works in mysterious ways."

Pilazzo nodded.
And he works quietly and suddenly too
. He took a deep breath, listening to his heart and the rush of blood pumping through his veins. "I do feel…something in me. But I cannot explain it."

He checked his memories and again saw the dreamlike vista of apocalyptic fires burning the city down. He'd seen some buildings on fire upon his return to St Peter's. The activity surrounding them seemed to warn of unmanageable chaos. "How bad are the fires?"

"Show him Wrath," Jyro said.

The large black man flipped the switch on the radio. The announcer from earlier, sounding once concerned but lucid, now spoke over a thin wave of static in a staggering, fearful tone, pausing five to ten seconds between sentences:

"…authorities are insisting that you stay in your homes, to make certain that all doors and windows are locked. It is also recommended that you arm yourself should a transgressor find his way into your home…as reported earlier, rampant violence has made its way as far north as the Bronx. At this time, there seems not to be any violence reported outside the city of Manhattan…again, it appears that most of the violence is being committed by employees by the city's construction units…I know this does not make any sense, but those individuals under this inexplicably bizarre influence appear to have no purpose other than to destroy those seeming to be a threat to them, these being two oddly diverse groups: the cities' homeless, and those active in the clergy. The city has brought in their entire police force. This has resulted in gunfire and bloodshed, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of deaths, some officers and many more offenders. The President has declared a state of national emergency, calling upon the National Guard to intervene. Troops have been dispatched to the city and are now poised at the entrances and exits of all the city's tunnels and bridges, while shelters have been set up to provide safety to those whom appear to be under immediate threat. The offenders, seemingly numbering in the thousands, are reportedly fighting back by starting random fires throughout the Metropolitan area. Recent reports claim at least twenty fires burning out of control at this time in the city. Hundreds of firefighters have been brought in from seventeen counties, but so far are unable to keep many of them under control. This sudden wave of inexplicable violence in the city is being watched by the world, and although other cities are showing scattered reports of copycat activity, nowhere is there evidence of a similar wave of inexplicable and most bizarre disorder. As the fires in the city rage out of control…"

"I've heard enough," Pilazzo said.

Jyro said, "Turn it off…" and Wrath complied.

The priest gazed up at the growing crowd in the room, thoughts of his visions haunting his mind over and over. He motioned toward the radio in Wrath's hands and said, "I have seen the dire results of this. The city
will
burn to the ground. Millions will die."

Pilazzo stood, the rosary gripped tightly in his bloody hands.

As if in response to his meager actions, an explosion sounded in the building. Everyone in the room yelled out. Rollo shouted a prayer. Wrath and Marcus raced away to investigate. Jyro and Timothy caugt the priest in their exhausted gazes, seeking a desperate answer.

Pilazzo nodded. "It's time."

P
ilazzo went downstairs into the lobby of the rectory, flanked by Jyro and Wrath, with Timothy leading the short procession. The other vagrants staggered about aimlessly in the lobby, coughing and yelling and struggling to make sense of what had just occurred. Dallas appeared out of a cloud of dust emanating from the hall leading toward the recreation center. His shirt was gone and Pilazzo could see a landscape of homegrown tattoos on his scrawny chest and stomach.

"Something happened at the hole," he cried, baring a row of brown teeth. "I didn't go into the room, but there's a lot of smoke coming out."

"Anyone hurt?" Pilazzo asked.

Timothy looked around the room, counting the men. "Marcus is missing. Where is he?"

Dallas said, "He was with me. I told him not to go in there but he went anyway and then…and then something in the hole exploded. I shouted for him but the smoke got too thick and I had to get out of there."

"Is there else anyone in there?" Pilazzo asked, also trying to count the others despite forgetting how many of them there were.

Dallas shook his head. "I don't think so."

Pilazzo stepped into the rec room hallway. "I'm going in," he uttered, his voice a notch above a whisper. Timothy stepped alongside him but Pilazzo put a quick hand up.

The rosary dangled from it.

Timothy stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the priest's blood-encrusted hand…and the rosary that swayed back and forth from it.

"I am protected. Let me go."

No one countered Pilazzo any further as he separated himself from the group, save for one weak call of protest from Timothy, which he ignored. He stepped down the hallway, debris crunching beneath his feet, the thirty second walk feeling longer as he mined his way through the settling dust. He squinted against the invading grit, the reassuring rhythm of the rosary in his still-bleeding hands leading the way.

About halfway down the hall he beheld an odd red glow emerging from the rec room. He quickened his pace and upon reaching the open doorway, witnessed a bizarre spectacle.

The chalice—
evil's
chalice he instantly knew—was here, floating above the hole just as Timothy and Jyro had described it. It was spinning like a UFO in some mocked-up home video. Blood oozed over the rim, its flow unaffected by the chalice's rapid revolutions. A spectacular array of dark red beams emanated from the glistening blood, bounding and flickering about the room not unlike lasers on a concert stage, reflecting every which way from the floating clouds of smoke and dust. Pilazzo stepped into the room, entranced by the miraculous sight, the rosary in his pocket at once writhing crazily, warning him of his actions. He stopped and gripped the charm, seeking purposeful direction in its message.

Behind, a multitude of concerned voices called out:
Father! Be careful!

Their voices sounded like distant whispers in a crowded room, barely making their way into his tumultuous world. He felt mesmerized, his consciousness hovering somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, burgeoning dreams of
happiness
suddenly tempting his mind. Yet, despite these unexpected and inexplicable feelings of bliss, he sensed the fervent approach of something else…something dark emerging from the hole: a gush of pungent subway air invading his nose, the distant moans of pained voices filtering into his ears.

He chose to ignore the warning signs.
Somewhere in here is pure happiness. Heaven and peace on earth.
He stepped forward, arms now outstretched in an attempt to gather these remarkable offers of welcome.

From behind: "
Father! Come back!
"

Ahead in the storm of light and dust he could hear the persistent scuffle of eager feet against grainy cement, of tools punching into hard soil.

In his mind the swift promise of comfort came to him, and he suddenly saw himself as a young boy again, smelling the sweet aromas of his mother's cooking as he settled down to do homework in his kitchen.

No…they're both gone. Dead and gone. This cannot be!

The rosary shifted in his hands, and although his body was not in contact with it, he could feel the pressure of its message against his chest, his heart. He shook away the reverie. Suddenly he was no longer feeling any comforts, but instead fear as he gazed ahead at the construction workers climbing from the hole, emerging from the red light and smoke like apparitions, men whose tortured faces were coated with grime and blood, crazed eyes upturned showing only whites, teeth clenched to combat the painful efforts of their ascent.

The chalice was spinning faster now, the blood beginning to loose itself upon the men as they used the grappling hooks in their hands to pull their injured bodies onto the unyielding wooden floor of the room.

Still, Pilazzo stepped forward.

He squeezed the rosary. Fear engrossed him, and he made every pained attempt to pull away from the threat now only a few yards away. He peered down at his feet, feet that were no longer there, but buried beneath a twisted pile of rubble.

Ahead, as the smoke cleared, he could see the tail end of a subway car sticking out of the bottom of the hole, construction workers covered in blood and dust and tattered clothing, crawling out from the door at the end, onto the splintered floor of the rec room.
  

Pilazzo's lungs heaved, taking in the dirt and dust with every painful gasp. A moment's time passed when no additional workers emerged. Then, with the subway car jostling slightly, two very large men climbed out.

They were carrying the ancient crate between them.

With a crooked lunge they heaved it up upon the soiled steel of the subway car and passed it along to three other workers kneeling on the edge of the hole. It hit the floor with a weighty thud, attracting the remaining workers out of the hole like wounded jackals to a carcass.

The men moved with lumbering ferocity, hiking from the hole on all fours, some of them utilizing hooks and screwdrivers to gain purchase on the hard soil, others simply using their bloody hands to assist themselves. The filthy men were all over the hole's edge, like maggots on meat, and Pilazzo imagined more of them down there, making their way up.

In a move that was more instinctual than decisive, Pilazzo held the rosary out before him and recited an ancient biblical passage:

"Be gone, befouled spirit, and take thy demons with you! Return to the depths of hell and wallow in Satan's wasteland! God of heaven, God of earth, God of all creation, I implore you. The power of the Lord, Jesus Christ commands you! No power to the enemy! Lord, hear my prayer!"

The room went silent, the workers suddenly unmoving, eyes wide and white and peering up at him—
hundreds
of eyes he could see, glimmering in the darkness like the eyes of the workers in the subway, like those of the painter perched in the rafters at Holy Innocents. The moment was a defining one, the silence thick in its unknowable tension, the priest holding his rightful charm forward in a vulnerable attempt to challenge the minions of the beast whose sole purpose was to take down the very man before them—to retrieve the talisman in his wavering hand, and conquer mankind.