The Lucifer Messiah (17 page)

That it was Arachne, a girl of unknown age, and of European extraction to boot, who was explaining such a history to him, was an irony not lost on Sean Mulcahy. Though he had grown up on those mean streets, under the rumbling shadows of the IRT lines, he had never been much concerned with the city's past. Since he had not been back in so many years, it fell to a stranger to explain the history of his own home to him.

“The first permanent trains were in place by about 1904. They ran from City Hall in the south up to around 145
^th
Street. They put in a line to the Bronx around 1905. Then they added a line to Queens in 1915.”

“Yeah. I think I remember something about that last one. I didn't really need to go to Queens when I was sixteen, though, so I hadn't really paid that any mind.”

They had been walking for over an hour, negotiating a
maze of dank tunnels with only the light of a torch to guide them. Somehow, Arachne seemed to know the way.

“Anyway, the city bought out the old BMT and IRT lines six or seven years ago, and now it's all pretty much one system. Mostly underground, as you can see. They're talking about tearing out all of the old “El” trains altogether in the next few years.”

“So where are we?” he asked, a little bored.

“This tunnel was never actually used. They started building it, and got about halfway done before they realized they needed to dig farther underground. Something about the bedrock. That was decades ago. Now hardly anyone remembers it's even here.”

“Except Argus.”

“Well, one of the advantages to living so long is that you tend to have a memory quite a bit more extensive than most other people.”

“So I see.”

They climbed down a makeshift ladder, cobbled together from old rope and broken plywood. The ground beneath them was damp, but it was too dark to see. It felt like mud, or silt. She pointed the torch outward ahead of her until the soft flames revealed a glint of metal that might have been brass just ahead and to the left, an opening that looked more like a ship's porthole than a door.

“Through there. We need to take a slight detour. Obviously they built these things for trains, not the likes of us. Who knew they'd ever be used for foot traffic?” she said.

“Where does this lead?” he asked, no longer bored but
a little unnerved.

She did not turn to answer.

“You'll see.”

Though it went against his better judgment, Sean took hold of a very old iron railing. It was slimy with the ooze of something he preferred not to consider dripping down the old rusty pipe. He sighed when he touched it. He swore when he smelled it. It stank worse than the rat-shit he feared it to be.

With her ahead, he hoisted himself up, and crawled into the narrow tunnel.

The final leg of the passage was unlike the previous distance. Where those tunnels had been dirty, wet, and long abandoned, they were all built for trains. They were wide, with vaulted ceilings and smooth walls. As Arachne led him through their last few yards, however, it quickly became clear that they had crossed into an area of new construction. The rocky walls were rough. The frayed ends of wires and broken pipes jutted out from all sides. It appeared that a huge swath had been torn through an otherwise solid barrier, hewn
by hand,
and very recently at that.

After a few feet, they came to a light. It was filtering down from above, like a manhole cover left half-open. Arachne searched for a moment in the dim before finding a second rope ladder, hung from the dark above. She climbed it without a word, and when she reached the top, she pounded her fist against the grating.

In a few moments, the iron slid open fully. A thing that looked something like a hand reached down to pull
her up.

“Follow me,” she said from out of sight.

Sean had no choice but to obey.

With the hole fully open there was a great deal more light raining down from above. It was firelight, constantly wavering between glare and shadow, and very red. It was enough to illuminate the rope ladder, and to allow him to ascend and pass through the opening without any aid. Immediately, he wished he hadn't.

He emerged into the center of a Catholic Church, a cathedral really, and one he had never seen before. There was a smell about the place. That was what bothered him first. It was like soot mixed with urine, or slime of some kind, and a hint of mold warmed over it all.

It was fairly dark, the only light burning out of the braziers and torches set atop broom-handles and broken flowerpots at the edge of every third or forth pew. Occasional shards of sunlight peered through the torch-smoke, from cracks in the roof. Though it left most of the place in shadow, he could yet note enough details to make him wish he had not entered.

It was fire-damaged, but the elegance of its original design was clear nonetheless. Great arches in the ceiling, flying buttresses, and gothic columns decorated it, but they had all been fouled, and not by smoke or flame.

All along the rafters, suspended like a brood of day-slumbering bats, were things he had seen only once before. In Russia, in 1918.

They looked like cocoons, though a thousand times larger
than any insect larva. Some dripped strange, luminous goo; giant, bulging pouches wrapped in silk and slime. There were other such things, plastered against the eaves of the broken stained glass windows, and lodged like repulsive squatters in the dark recesses of the old walls. They filled the air with a dull murmur, emitting a strange buzzing, like a thousand locusts chirping a mile away.

Great webs spun from some unknown material obscured what had once been the confessional booths. Sean could see inhuman silhouettes lurking in slow languid paces behind their translucent shrouds.

About two-dozen people milled about around them, quietly, although his arrival seemed to spur them to a nervous chatter. Most of them were cloaked in heavy robes, though a few were all but naked. Those who were exposed bore hideous visages, inhuman and twisted in ways that would have left ordinary visitors both frightened and nauseous. Sean had seen their ilk before as well, though. He turned away without paying them much heed.

“Most have already entered the first stage,” Arachne said, fairly stating what was, to him, already very obvious. “The wise one has not yet done so, however. And he is waiting.”

She led him down the main path between the pews, toward the area at the far end, where he knew the altar should be. Instead, he saw only a virtual wall of velvet tapestries and veils suspended from the rafters.

Through the barrier they passed, to find a “room” on the other side, lit by dozens of hand-made candles jammed
into every nook and crevice in the walls. What had once been the consecrated altar sat, half-broken in the center of it all.

Against the far wall there were two figures. Charybdis with her sharp West African features was just entering the chamber from a side door. Beside her stood the wizened toddler. Both were dressed impeccably in men's suits. They were clothed almost too well, considering the squalor of their confines.

To Sean's as-yet unknowing eye, the child Argus looked like a leper, deathly sick and covered in untreated sores. But he knew well enough after so many years that mere outward appearance meant so very little among a gathering of those with whom he now kept company.

“Lucifer. I believe you've already met my master and his servant, Charybdis,” Arachne stated, by way of introduction.

The black woman stepped forward at the mention of her name. Sean half-bowed out of courtesy.

“Charybdis, huh?” he said, not really surprised, but making an effort.

“I believe I was in the process of shedding the appearance of blond Northman when last we saw each other,” the black woman replied, Argus beside her stepped forward.

“And that, of course, is the wisest of us all. The eldest of our kind, Argus,” Arachne continued.

Sean moved farther into the chamber, acknowledging the child-who-wasn't.

“So, you're Argus now?” he began, not sure if it was
appropriate to kneel down to the small figure's level.

“I am. My appearance has changed since last we met, as it always does with our kind. Never fear, soon I will be my old self again, and you will see me as I was when we parted company so many years ago,” the wise old toddler replied, cordially. He seemed to have trouble getting up from his seat. Pustules and scabs were festering all over the exposed skin of his face and hands. Sean ignored them. He already knew what the child was suffering from. “But, outward bearing aside, I remain the same as I have ever been.”

“And what is that?” Sean asked.

“Your friend?” the un-childlike boy replied. Sean also noticed that his eyes bore a weird red glow, just like he had remembered them from those many years ago in Czechoslovakia when he had come to know Argus in a much different form. What the old creature had told him was his
true
form.

“We were never friends,” the wanderer sneered.

“Then let us start now. There has never been a better time. The season of changes is upon us again, as my present condition so testifies. The feast draws near. I know you can feel it, as we all do. A momentous occasion it will be, if you let us help you,” Argus said, an urgency present in his voice that belied his carefully chosen words.

“Help me? Help me do what?” Sean asked.

“To fulfill what is written.”

Sean threw up his hands. He had come all that way for this? To hear the same old thing he had rejected those many years ago?

“Christ. You never give up, do you? That goddamn book again, huh? That was bullshit in Prague. It's bullshit now,” he said.

“No less uncouth despite the decades, I see,” Charybdis snickered, from the shadows beside the altar.

“Screw you,” Sean answered, turning to look at the woman in the man's suit. “Come to think of it, I might just have to do that. Last time I saw you, you were some big Swedish lookin' guy, but you got yourself in a nice little package this time, nice rack, probably some nice gams under that suit. And I've had a lot of women, but never a black bitch.”

Charybdis did not take the insult lightly. She quickly brandished a blade from within her coat. In a moment she had crossed to where Sean stood, the knife poised in front of him.

He did not budge from his place, staring her down with a face that was as implacable as a statue.

“Come and try it,” she seethed, and turning to Argus, “maybe he isn't worth all the effort, after all.”

Argus, as always, remained the coolest temper in the room. Though tiny and faltering in his stride, he managed to step between the two, growling Charybdis and the stoic, bemused Sean. Neither wished to anger the ancient sage, and both stepped back.

“You must forgive my associate, Lucifer. Charybdis has always been sensitive to his appearance, especially when he has taken a form that is perhaps not as manly, as he prefers.”

“I told your errand girl, and I'll tell you. Don't call me
Lucifer. You know better,” Sean snapped.

“But how can you still deny the obvious? I think you most certainly are him. The one who's coming Galatea, scribe of Nestor, recorded all those ages ago. In fact I have no doubt.”

“I don't think so.”

Argus smiled his chapped, split lips. Several teeth were missing from inside his mouth.

“Of course, it may not matter what you think. The Morrigan believes in you. That's why she tried to kill you in the city they now call Leningrad, and later with your unfortunate lady friend in Venice.”

The suggestion caught Sean off-guard. He grimaced. The face of beautiful, lost Orlanda intruded for a moment upon his thoughts. Argus was clever, he remembered that well enough. The old creature was willing to go to any length to sway him, even dredging up his most private pain. He clearly had no qualms about rubbing salt into that deep, secret wound.

Sean shrugged it off. He had no intention of discussing the subject. Telling Maggie had been enough, and she was the only person he had spoken to about it. He looked back at Argus, staring him down, peering at him for any hint of a reaction.

Sean realized something in that instant. Argus shouldn't have known about Orlanda. He'd killed all three of the agents sent to snare him, agents of the Morrigan, he had believed. How did Argus know about her?

He didn't have time to consider it. As he had so many
times before, he took a breath, and forced the image out of his mind.

“That's why she continues to hunt you. You are the greatest threat to her in centuries. She fears you. She wants to eliminate you before you can realize your significance.”

Argus was coughing while he spoke. A brownish drool seeped from his gaping mouth. He made no effort to stem the flow.

“My significance?”

“Perhaps you were not ready for the full truth of it in Prague, those many years ago. And perhaps I erred in expecting you to understand then. But now we do not have the luxury of long contemplation,” he said.

Argus lectured as best as he was able in his weakened state.

“You will be the next Keeper. And with my help, you will be the greatest Keeper in all of our long history. Once our kind were led by such a king. Once the Children of Nestor knew the rule of a benevolent protector.

“To the Greeks he was
Eosphorus.
To the Romans,
lucemferre.
He brought the gift of light, as the morning star banishes the darkness. He was wisdom. He was peace. But as the old ways died, ancient secrets became dangerous superstitions. The heirs of the pagans vanquished him, he who they called Lucifer, the enemy.

“Now their descendants know that name as an evil moniker. They demonized him as they demonized us. But for all these many ages, while we have hidden from the outside world, we have held fast to the hope that the light bringer would one-day return. And now he has.

“You will lead us back to where we once were. You will lead us out into the world from which we so long ago retreated. You will return us to our rightful place in the open, into the light. The time is coming when humanity will be ready to accept us again.